If you've owned your home with us for a while, you know the old routine for long-term stays (29+ nights): collect a utility deposit from the guest, wait for the stay to end, track down your actual utility bills, and reconcile who owes what. It worked, but it was slow, paperwork-heavy, and honestly, nobody loved it — not you, not your guest, not our team.
So we replaced it with something better: the Utility Fee Guarantee.
The short version
Instead of a deposit, we charge your guest a modeled daily utility fee — calculated specifically for your property based on its size, type, and location — built into the reservation up front. No deposit to collect. No statements for you to chase down after checkout.
And here's the part that matters most to you: if your actual utility bill for the guest's stay comes in more than 20% higher than what we charged, we make up the difference. Every time. That's the guarantee. You're protected exactly the way you were before — with a lot less friction to get there.
Why we made this change
The deposit model asked a lot of everyone involved: guests had to front extra cash at booking, and you had to track down and submit utility statements weeks after a stay just to get your share back. Most of the time, the deposit-and-refund dance settled out to a small amount of money — not worth the hassle it created for anyone. We looked at the numbers, and a modeled daily fee with a guarantee behind it gets you the same financial protection with none of the back-and-forth.
How your daily fee is calculated
We didn't just pick a number. Your property's daily utility rate is modeled using real data specific to your home: square footage, whether it's a single-family home or a condo, and your local market's actual water, gas, and electric rates (researched directly from your municipality's current utility schedules). Homes with private pools/irrigation and larger footprints are priced differently than pooled-utility condos, and every market's rates are reflected individually — your Palm Springs home isn't priced like a Scottsdale condo.
This same modeling process now runs automatically for new properties as they're onboarded, so your daily rate is right from day one rather than starting on a generic placeholder.
What's covered — and what isn't
The Utility Fee Guarantee covers normal household water, electric, and gas usage during a guest's stay. It does not cover pool or spa heating — that's priced and billed separately, exactly like it is today, since it's a discretionary add-on guests purchase for specific dates rather than a fixed cost of every stay.
If you believe a stay cost you more than we collected
Most owners will never need this, but if you genuinely believe a long-term guest's actual utility usage exceeded what was charged by more than 20%, here's exactly how to get made whole:
- Send us the actual utility bill(s) covering the guest's stay dates.
- We confirm the guest's occupancy dates align with the elevated usage on the bill.
- We compare the confirmed usage-period cost to what was charged for those same dates.
- If it's more than 20% higher, we credit you the difference directly — as a statement credit or check. No guest deposit refund process to navigate, because none was collected in the first place.
The 20% buffer simply accounts for normal rate volatility — seasonal spikes, minor billing-cycle timing differences — so the guarantee is triggered by a genuine, meaningful gap rather than routine noise.
A quick example
Say a guest's utility fee for a 30-day stay was $150, and your actual utility bill for that exact period comes in at $210 — that's 40% higher. We'd confirm the guest was in residence for that billing period and credit you the $60 difference. If instead your bill came in at $165 (10% higher), that falls within the normal variance the fee already accounts for, and no additional credit applies.
Bottom line
You get the same protection you've always had against a guest's utility usage costing you more than expected — just without deposits to collect, statements to chase, or a drawn-out reconciliation process. We built this because it's better for you, better for your guests, and it's one more example of running this business the way it should be run: efficiently, transparently, and with your investment as our top priority.
Questions about how this applies to your specific property? Reach out to your Owner Success contact any time.