Improve your response and acceptance rates

Response and acceptance rates are the two metrics most under your control. Improvements here pay back fast — usually within a month.

Improving response rate and time

Turn on push notifications on your phone

Email alone is unreliable. Push notifications get you faster, more consistently. Settings → enable push for messages and booking requests.

Prepare templates for the situations you see weekly

You don't need to write a 300-word reply from scratch every time. See Message residents through the Inbox for ready-to-adapt templates.

Set a "I'll get back to you" reply for when you can't respond fully

A 30-second placeholder counts as a response and buys you another window of resident attention:

"Hi [name], thanks for the request — I'll have a proper answer for you within the next few hours."

Get team coverage

If you're routinely missing late-evening or weekend messages, invite a team member who can cover those windows. See Invite team members and manage roles.

Plan for breaks

If you'll be unavailable for more than a day, either block the dates (or contact support for a full listing pause) or set an away message explaining when you'll be back. Both keep your metrics honest.

Improving acceptance rate

Tighten the listing description so the wrong residents stop requesting

If you're declining a lot, your listing is probably attracting people it shouldn't. Look at the declines and ask: what should the listing have said up front?

Common fixes:

Be specific about who lives there — "mostly remote workers in their 30s" filters out people looking for party houses.
State the rules in the listing — "no pets, no parties, 22:00 quiet hours" stops requests from people who can't follow them.
Set realistic stay minimums — if you only take 6+ month bookings, putting 30 days as your minimum invites declines.

Use availability properly

If specific weeks are blocked (you'll be using the apartment yourself, big maintenance, etc.), block them in the calendar. Requests for blocked dates can't reach you, so they can't hurt your acceptance rate.

Raise the price if you're swamped

If you're getting too many requests to handle (and declining many), the easiest fix is a 10% price bump. Demand falls; the requests you do get convert better.

Don't decline what you should accept

Sometimes hosts decline out of caution that turns out to be unfounded. Before declining a resident with green-flag indicators, ask yourself: "What specifically about this resident is wrong, and is that something I can address with a question first?"

See Review a resident profile before accepting.

The compound effect

Faster, more reliable response → residents book before competitors → fewer no-fit declines → higher acceptance → better ranking → more right-fit requests → easier to maintain fast response. It's a positive loop. The hardest step is the first one — once you're at sub-1-hour response, staying there is easier than getting there.

Tracking your progress

Check Performance weekly. The lag between behaviour change and metric improvement is about 4 weeks (the rolling window). Be patient — improvements made today show on the dashboard a month from now.

Frequently asked questions

Q: I respond in 30 seconds via WhatsApp. Does that count? A: No. Only Inbox replies count. Move conversations into the Inbox.

Q: My acceptance rate is low because residents keep asking for stuff outside my listing. What do I do? A: Update the listing so residents stop asking. Most "weird" requests trace back to ambiguous listings.

Q: I keep getting requests from people who don't read my house rules. How do I filter them? A: Make the most important rules prominent — at the top of the listing description, not buried in House Rules at the bottom.