From the desk:Corporate / Furnished Housing

The rate card in their vendor agreement isn't the rate I quoted

First furnished unit, 2 bed near a research park, and I got as far as a vendor packet from a relocation management company. I'd quoted $2,550 all inclusive. Their standard rate card for my market and unit type shows $2,180, and there's a line saying vendor invoices at card rate less a 4 percent administration fee unless a market exception is approved in writing.

So $2,180 minus 4 percent is $2,092. That's $458 under my number, which is the entire margin over what I could get renting it furnished to individuals at around $2,050 with no packet, no insurance minimum, and no 45 day payment terms.

The rest of the agreement: 30 day cancellation by them at any point after arrival, unit must be re-cleaned at vendor cost if the assignee complains within 48 hours, $1M general liability with them named as additional insured, and a clause requiring me to provide a substitute unit of equal standard if mine becomes unavailable. I don't have a second unit.

What I'm weighing is whether signing at a loss on rate buys me something I can't get otherwise. Volume, presumably. But volume from a firm that can cancel on 30 days and pays in 45 isn't obviously worth $458 a month, and the substitute unit clause looks like something I'd breach the first time a pipe fails.

The exception process exists, so people clearly get above card. What gets an exception approved? Is it unit quality, or is it just that they had nothing else available that week?

Answer

1stephen_ok9CO2CPRO6

Exceptions usually get approved when their alternative is worse, which means availability and location relative to the assignee's worksite. Unit quality mostly gets you repeat requests rather than a better rate.

The clause I'd push hardest on isn't the rate. It's the substitute unit obligation. As a single unit operator you cannot perform it, and signing something you can't perform is how a $458 argument becomes a much larger one. Ask them to strike it or cap your exposure at the cost difference for the remaining nights. They deal with single unit vendors constantly and there's usually a version of that language for people without inventory.

45 day terms on a business where your utilities bill monthly is a working capital question. Two units on those terms and you're carrying about three months of costs before the first check lands.

3 replies

3mitchell_ray4 Get yoursPRO6

The 48 hour re-clean clause is the one that would bother me. I've watched arrival complaints get made about things that were fine, because someone flew in tired at midnight. If you're paying $200 a pop on somebody else's say-so with no inspection, price that into every stay.

3raj_mehta14CapitalPRO6

I'm mostly out of my depth here but the 30 day cancellation reads asymmetric. Can you cancel on 30 days? If the answer is no, you've given them an option and gotten paid nothing for it. That seems like the sort of thing you'd trade for the rate exception rather than argue about separately.