Vacation rentals is becoming the preferred choice for vacation or getaway. Whether you rent out a furnished room or a luxury villa on a short term or long term basis, you must have encountered troublesome clients that either flaunted the house rules or left the premises with some of your items. How do you deal with such situation?

Remember it is unethical to install secret cameras in shortlets irrespective of the worth, hence it isn't easy monitoring what goes on in your home or how people toy with your investment.

The answer is two words - Security Deposit.

A security deposit is a one-time, refundable sum of money a vacation rental owner requires a renter to pay in addition to the total booking rent. You can think of it as insurance against unpredictable tenants.

As a vacation home rental host, you get bookings from different people you don’t know, referred to you from vacation rental websites you list your property on. Even though these websites try as much as possible to verify the identity of the guests prior to move-in, there is no assurance as to how careful, responsible and/or tidy they may be.

What happens when the host realizes a renter broke some items or mistakenly left with certain objects from the property? And the renter is nowhere to be reached? Huh! How many of such situations can the host handle?

Why Collect Security Deposit?
There have been cases of renters fleeing a vacation home with some of the appliances and in some cases, renters leave the owner with damages to take care of after check out. Security deposit is your insurance against such renters. A security deposit assures you that a renter will be motivated to take care of your property like his own and abide by the rules of the property (if they want their security deposit refunded at the end of their stay). The security deposit also gives you rest of mind that whatever damages caused or by the renters or certain missing items will be taken care of with the money.

My questions now are:
Who pays for security deposit?
What's the best way to pay security deposit?
When does my security deposit gets returned?
How much is the standard amount to ask as security deposit?
All the answers to these questions can be found in this writeup : Useful Tips on Security Deposit and Vacation Rentals