How to Stage Your Home for Short Term Vacation Renting

November 1, 2021 by Mulberry Maids

Tweet

With travel being as popular as ever again, now is a great time to rent out your primary residence or rental property as a short term vacation rental. This can be a fun and relatively easy way to earn a little extra money, and provide a great service to local visitors. That being said, you also need to make sure that your home is clean, clutter free, and staged right to provide a successful stay for your guests. At the end of the day, vacation guests want a peaceful and clean place to stay, and that all starts with the correct staging of your home. 

As one of the top house cleaning services in Fort Collins, we have a great deal to recommend on this topic. With these tips, you’ll know the right way to stage your home, and how to keep it clean and clutter free for your guests.

How to keep your home or rental property clean and clutter free?

Before we get into the topic of staging your vacation rental, make sure to read up on decluttering tips and our short term rental cleaning checklist. If this all seems a bit much for you to do on your own, consider hiring a professional cleaning service to help with your short term rental cleaning flips. 

Once you have a good grasp on what needs to be cleaned in a short term rental, you can focus on the act of decluttering and getting your home staged perfectly for new guests. 

Focus on the first impression

When guests arrive at a vacation rental, they are excited and anticipating a great getaway with family and friends. Focusing on the first impression that the guest will see is really critical. This will depend on the type of home you have, as making a great first impression for a condo rental will differ from a vacation home in the woods. 

Think about what the guest will see first, and how they will react to it. For example, if your front door is off of a large patio, make sure that the patio is neat and clean. Make sure to sweep the patio or other exterior areas around the front door, and make everything as inviting as possible. 

If you have a condo unit in a building that you do not personally maintain, you can still focus on the first impression when they arrive. Put out flowers or plants around the door, or hang a sign on your entryway letting people know that they have come to the right place. 

Additionally, one very common complaint with short term rentals is access issues. You may have a perfectly staged home, but that won’t matter if the guests can not get in! Make sure to have clear instructions for home access to make sure that the initial arrival goes smoothly. One helpful and easy tip is to get a key lockbox with a four digit code to hang on the front door handle. Make the code the last four digits of the primary guests phone number. This is a good habit to get into, and will be very easy for the guest to remember. 

Welcome basket and guestbook

Once your guests make it into the home successfully, it is always nice to greet them with a welcome basket, guestbook, and some treats. These things leave a great first impression on the guest as they start to settle into your home. 

A guest book is a fun way to see who has stayed at your place, while a welcome basket can be filled with helpful information about the surrounding area. This can be in the form of local magazines and brochures, maps or any other useful things for new visitors. The welcome basket can also include some goodies, like little local candies, coffees and teas, or anything else that makes a new guest feel welcome. Depending on the clientele that are checking in, you can also stock the refrigerator with some extra drinks, such as flavored sparkling waters, or local beers and sodas. 

Sheets and towels: like a hotel room

Even though your short term rental is not a hotel room, it is imperative to treat it like one. This is most important in the staging of the bedroom and bathroom. While it may take an extra minute or two, taking the extra care in making the beds neatly and folding and presenting towels with care, goes a long way. 

Make sure:

• Towels are folded clean and crisp in the bathroom, and that there are enough for the number of guests that are arriving
• Beds are made neatly, with pillows fluffed and blankets tucked in tightly

Pillows and blankets

Like the bedroom and bathroom, the living areas should be clean and orderly. Make sure all blankets on any couches are folded neatly and staged well. Additionally, make sure that the pillows are fluffed and placed decoratively and inviting wherever they belong. 

Have a clean and low clutter fridge with goodies!

While the refrigerator does not need to be totally empty, make sure that it is clean and organized with whatever may be left inside. It is always a good idea to leave some extra goodies inside for guests, such as waters, sodas or other adult beverages. 

Shampoos and soaps displayed neatly

Similar to leaving some food or drinks for guests to have, make sure that you have stocked up on extra shampoo and soap in the bathroom. Make sure that they are laid out neatly for the guest to use. If the shampoos are being kept in the shower, make sure the labels and bottles are clean with no residue, and face the labels out to create a neat and orderly shower look. It can also be helpful to leave a small first aid kit, as well as floss and toothpaste in case your guest forgot theirs. 

Good lights throughout the home

While this is not necessarily a point of home staging, having good lights throughout the home is important. You want to make sure that your guests can see well at night, and you want to create a comfortable and cozy atmosphere for them. 

Additionally, you might want to look into some motion sensor night lights to help guests who need to get up in the middle of the night. These lights are really cheap and efficient, and can really make getting up at night easier and safer. Strategically place the lights near beds and bathrooms to light the way to the bathroom through the night when someone gets up and triggers the light. 

Keep personal items to a minimum

While every short term rental is different in terms of its use when it is not rented out, there is a good chance your rental will have at least some personal items stored in it. This is totally fine, but you should take care to keep your own items to a minimum. If some of the items will be useful to a guest, then you can keep them out as shared things to use. 

If you have items that you don’t want to remove from the home, and that don’t add any use to your guest, consider locking them away in a cabinet. This is nice because the item will be out of the way to decrease clutter, and it will not be in the way for the guest. Having a couple locked cabinets or closets throughout the home will help to keep the home clutter free when guests arrive. 

Top notch cleaning

While everything on this list is important for staging a home, the absolute most critical aspect to correctly stage a home is to make sure it is impeccably clean! While guests notice all aspects in the presentation of a short term rental, cleanliness is always the top one, and even a beautifully staged home that is not meticulously cleaned will suffer in reviews and guest satisfaction. 

The best thing to do from a cleaning standpoint is a routine deep cleaning. This will likely not be performed in between each guest visit, as most guests will not make too much mess. Depending on the size of your rental, and the frequency of guests, a deep clean may need to be performed every month or two. This cleaning should go beyond a typical rental flip cleaning, and will hit other areas such as wet wiping baseboards and cleaning all of your windows. The more that you clean and keep the clutter to a minimum, the easier and more effective staging your rental will be. 

High end house cleaning services in Fort Collins for all your needs

Whether you have a short term rental that needs to be cleaned after guests check out, an office downtown needing weekly cleaning, or just a one time deep cleaning to free up some of your time, we are your go to cleaning service in Fort Collins. We are a results focused service oriented company who prides ourselves on offering the best cleaning service around. 

So let us take some chores off of your plate, so you can take a day to read a book at the Old Town Library instead of doing the dreaded task of cleaning your home. Reach out today via phone or email, or book your next cleaning directly online in just a few minutes!