Property managers must put much thought into how they want to go about charging and accepting rental payments. They’ll need to know what forms of rental payment they will accept, how many payment installations they will allow and, most importantly, how much they should charge per night.

This article will walk you through some of the main factors to consider when working out your approach to rental payments.

How much should I charge for rent?

One of the trickiest parts of short-term property management is setting the right rental price for each listing.

How do you calculate rent? Many factors must be considered when deciding what rental payment to charge per night per property.

Some conditions you should take into account when calculating how much rent to charge for your property

• Property size: you can charge higher rental payments for bigger properties 
• Property appearance and design: modern and luxury properties should earn more
• Location of the property: the more desirable the location, the higher the price

But factors about the property itself aren’t the only things that should affect your rental price. In order to achieve maximum revenue, you should also consider the following:

• Seasonality: rental properties can earn more during peak travel seasons
• Day of reservation: guests will generally pay higher prices for weekend stays
• Supply: property managers with lots of competition in the area must stay competitive 
• Events: hosts can boost their prices when they expect upcoming local events to draw in travelers
• Occupancy: when they see upcoming vacancies in their calendars, property managers should lower their prices for those dates to encourage bookings

Since there are so many dynamic variables to account for, prices for rental properties should not be static. Property managers should be consistently updating their prices in order to account for all these changing factors and earn as much revenue as possible.

Click here to learn more about strategically pricing your rentals. 

What forms of rental payment to accept

While landlords of long-term rentals may be comfortable accepting checks or cash, for a property manager dealing with a steady stream of changing guests, it is far simpler to stick to quick, trackable payments by credit card or bank transfer. 

You can use a payment processor like Stripe, which can be integrated with your central property management software so that all payments or outstanding charges can be automatically recorded without requiring you to manually input relevant details.