Do You Still Pay Commission on Bookings You Generate Yourself?

Many Wine Country homeowners wonder: If I find a guest myself, do I still owe my property manager a commission?

The short answer? It depends.

The Reality of Day-to-Day Management

Even if you find the guest, your property manager is the one making sure that guest has an exceptional stay. They handle communication, check-in, housekeeping, maintenance, and every last detail that keeps your property five-star ready. In short, the manager’s workload doesn’t disappear when you land the guest.

However, if your arrangement with your manager is such that they strictly only handle the day-to-day while you own marketing and pricing, there may be a case to retain commissions, assuming they are paid for their services through another manner (i.e., an hourly rate for day-to-day support).

The Value of Marketing

For full service property managers (those that handle both operations and marketing), it’s also worth looking at the bigger picture when it comes to marketing. A great property manager does much more than upload your home to Airbnb or Vrbo. They may run paid ads, invest in social media, partner with influencers, publish SEO-rich content, or build email campaigns to bring guests back year after year. For more on article follow this link to learn how the best-performing vacation rentals get marketed in Sonoma County.

Attribution—figuring out exactly why someone booked—is rarely clear-cut. A guest might tell you they heard about your home from a friend, but maybe they also saw an Instagram reel last month, read an email newsletter, or stumbled onto your listing through a paid ad campaign your manager funded.

In reality, that “self-sourced” booking was the result of multiple touches that kept the property top of mind and ultimately drove guest to stay at the property.

Focus on the Bigger Pie

We always encourage owners to zoom out. The goal of hiring a top-tier manager is to grow your total income—not just protect a few direct bookings. 80% of 100 bookings will nearly always earn you more than 100% of 70 bookings.

It is most important to make sure you and your manager agree on how value is created, how it’s measured, and what success really looks like to you as the owner. This can be a more constructive, collaborative approach to ensure both parties are clearly working toward the same, shared vision. This shared vision may be earning the property more money or may be around delivering higher quality care to guests while giving back the owner more time to themselves.

Of course, if the manager’s fees are not justifying the investment in their services, that can be a separate challenge. It is just as important to clarify how the manager makes money and structures their fees.

At Vinifera Homes, we believe in complete transparency and fair alignment. We never want to bring on a client that we can’t actually add incremental value to. Given this, we’re happy to help owners deeply understand their expected incremental returns from bringing us on as their managers. As part of our standard process to ensure mutual fit with property owners, we develop a tailored assessment that includes a submarket analysis of demand and supply, comparable property performance, guest review insights, revenue projections, and clear, actionable recommendations to help you reach peak returns — even if you ultimately choose not to partner with Vinifera Homes. If you’d like us to conduct a property assessment, please don’t hesitate to fill out this form.

Written by Anish Patel, Head of Owner Relations at Vinifera Homes (anish@viniferahomes.com)