Four of six units failed permit renewal. My fee went with them.
I hold land and long rentals and I don't normally sell services. This one came out of a favor. Someone I've known for years bought six units in a mid-size college market over two years and could not keep up with the turnovers, so I agreed to co-host at 12 percent of collected nightly revenue. No onboarding fee, no monthly minimum, no term. I coordinated cleaners and linens and paid those vendors myself, then billed the owner monthly. In season the six units together ran about $13,800 gross a month, so my fee was roughly $1,650 and my outstanding vendor float sat around $3,100 at any given time.
In month seven the city moved from an open registration to a capped number of non owner occupied permits with an annual allocation. Four of the six units were non owner occupied and did not get through. How caps and renewals work varies by city and state, and I had never asked to see the registration certificates or their expiration dates, which is on me. Anyone in this position should get the current ordinance and a local attorney's read in writing before onboarding, not after.
We canceled 41 confirmed bookings covering July through September. The platform penalties landed on the owner's account. My response and acceptance metrics took the hit because I was the one handling every one of those messages. Then the owner disputed the last $3,100 of cleaner and linen invoices on the grounds that no revenue came in against them. Four months of back and forth ended with me collecting $700 of it.
All in, roughly $9,000 of unpaid fees and written off vendor costs, and about five months of Saturdays.
What I'd do differently: see a copy of each unit's registration and expiration date before I touch a listing, never carry vendor float, and get the owner's obligation to reimburse advanced costs written as a debt that survives whatever happens to the revenue.