BNBGuard – any experience/reviews?

After seeing an article for BNBGuard I spent time on their website, and came up with the same questions as both thara and TruleEConcerned. When I saw it was $41 per month (ex GST) for a single landlord (with possibly multiple properties), I assumed the worst for the cost for a OC with more than 100 lots. 

Every month I spend about twenty to thirty minutes reviewing the listings for my suburb on the main short term accommodation websites putting in a variety of date ranges to try to pick up any apartments in our complex on the sites.

Having a knowledge of what our apartment layouts are (where windows / doors / walls are and what bathrooms look like) means I can positively identify if they are in our complex and commonly narrow it down to a couple of apartments based upon the aspect. I would be very surprised if a piece of software could do the same without being “trained” in what to look for specifically. 

I look forward to hearing if any Flat Chatters have had a real world experience with them. 

Hi folks, I’m cofounder of BnbGuard and I’m happy to answer any questions about our service.

@tharra – Yes, we constantly update our technology to stay on top of changes at the sites we monitor. We use only publicly available information and access points to the sites. 

@TruleEConcerned – We use more than two dozen data points when looking for matching listings. Photos are a key part of this. We’ve done a lot of work identifying the best features to use in comparing photos of rooms and exteriors of properties. 

We currently have two service tiers – Standard (which monitors  just Airbnb, for $8 per property per month) and Premium (which monitors Airbnb and 11 more sites, for $41 per property per month). For both we notify you if we find a match, and send you a weekly wrap-up email.

Based on customer feedback we will also soon offer a monthly and quarterly version of our two plans, for about 1/2 and 1/3 the cost.

For all our plans, if you cancel within the first 30 days we’ll refund your money entirely. So it’s risk-free.

For larger customers we can customise plans to suit. We offer volume discounts for >10 units, and special deals for entire buildings and property managers. If you contact us I’m happy to discuss these with you. 

We also do once-off checks for property buyers. 

@Happy Strata – I’m a landlord myself, and I found that doing the checks BnbGuard does across 12 websites takes just over 3 hours per time. It is also very boring. That’s why I decided to start BnbGuard. I was worried about my own properties and didn’t want to keep checking all these sites all the time. I have better things to do with my time.

We do check thoroughly, doing multiple kinds of searches on each site to work-around its quirks. Until you reverse engineer the sites’ search algorithms, you don’t realise how much you may be missing. We have found new matches for property managers who had a junior staff member checking for them, because it really is harder than people think to do it properly.

I realise we’re not for everyone, but we do address a real need. Short-term holiday rentals are only going to get more common and more of a problem in our major cities, and we believe a growing number of these will be illegal.

Thanks!