Handy Review: From Our Team of Superhosts

It can be hard to find a reliable and consistent cleaning team that always does an excellent job at maintaining your rental. This is especially true for hosts or property managers who are first starting out and don’t have too many connections within the industry yet.

Many hosts have turned to Handy for their general house cleaning, along with other basic tasks for their rentals. Handy offers a Handy happiness guarantee, helping you be at ease that the Handy Pros that get sent to you will do an excellent job. While Airbnb and Handy’s partnership ended way back in December 2015, Handy remains a solid platform offering access to all sorts of services for your house or rental.

While Handy isn’t exactly an STR-focused cleaning service, there are still numerous Airbnb hosts and property managers who turn to the platform thanks to their convenient solutions. So, we’ve decided to do a Handy review and see how well the platform can cater to short term rental businesses.

Best Handy Services and How Hosts Can Use Them for Their Airbnb

The Handy platform doesn’t really have any features aside from quick booking and their Handy Happinness Guarantee. Instead, we’ve decided to list a couple of their services that you might find handy, pun intended, for your vacation rentals.

• Home Cleaning: General home cleaning services that can be scheduled weekly, biweekly, or monthly, with a minimum 3-month commitment.
• Handyman Service: Includes more niche services like air conditioner installation/transfers, furniture assembly, mounting, and locks installation. The handyman service is great for new rentals or redesigning your space. It also covers carpentry and home repair services if ever your rental gets damaged or if you’re simply aiming for proper maintenance.
• Painting: Painting can be a tiring and time-consuming task, especially if you’re looking to paint the entire house. You can hire a Handy Pro to do the job for you. This includes interiors, walls, accent walls, doors, baseboards, and general house painting jobs.
• Plumbing: Handy offers services for drain, toilet, and faucet repair. They also have Handy Pros who cover replacement or installation, unclogging services, and other general plumbing needs. It can be helpful to have plumbers check out your pipes to ensure proper plumbing maintenance. We’d never want guests to experience these problems while they’re renting the place.
• Electrical: Finally, Handy also has certified electricians who can take care of your wiring, lighting, and outlet needs. They can also perform routine checks to ensure all of your house wiring is in good shape, reducing the risk of electrical-related accidents.

The great thing we’ve found about Handy is that they offer Handy Pros for almost all types of needs. This can make it easier to find the right people for the jobs that you need to be done within your rental. Check out all of the services they offer.

Handy Pricing: How Much Does Handy Cost?

Now, one important question is how much does Handy cost? Unfortunately, Handy doesn’t have a set price for their services. To be fair, they do cover a large amount of services from house cleaning, electrical, plumbing, furniture assembly, and handyman services, which can make it difficult to set a standard price.

Prices will also depend on the general market within your area. Cleaners in Akron can be cheaper than those found in bigger cities like New York or Los Angeles. Additionally, it will also depend on the number of beds and baths within your rental, which will be asked before booking cleaners.

For the purposes of this review, we’ll include prices for a 3 bed, 2 bath rental located in New Jersey. The prices that were presented to us were:

• Weekly Cleaning Services: $145 for a 12-month commitment, $155 for a 6-month commitment, and $162 for a 3-month commitment.
• Biweekly Cleaning Services: $153 for a 12-month commitment, $162 for a 6-month commitment, and $167 for a 3-month commitment.
• Monthly Cleaning Services: $162 for a 12-month commitment, $167 for a 6-month commitment, and $311 for a 3-month commitment.

Note: You may need to pay extra fees for inside cabinet, fridge, and oven cleaning, along with laundy services and interior window cleaning.

In general, we’ve found prices for cleaning for a standard 3 bed, 2 bath house around $120-$200 per cleaning, depending on your location. You can also get discounts for recurring cleaning plans, which can be helpful if you’re looking to consistently maintain the cleanliness of your rental.

Handy User Experience

Handy has an extremely simple site that displays everything you need from the get-go. This makes it very easy to navigate and find the services that you are looking for. For us, we went straight to the “Vacation Rental Cleaning” section to find any available Handy Pros within our area.

The booking process was fast and only requires you to submit a handful of requirements. The platform asks for your zip code, to determine your location, the number of beds and baths your property has, and the date and time that you’re looking to schedule. You’ll also need to leave your phone number and email address to get a starting price for your house cleaning service.

You’ll then be redirected to the booking page where you can choose the cleaning frequency, commitment term, and extra services you’d like to avail. From there, all you need to do is enter your exact address, along with your payment information and you’re Handy Pros will arrive on the day/s you’ve selected.

The entire booking process only takes a few minutes and you’ll get your booking confirmation soon after. Their Handy Happiness Guarantee is also a great way to ensure quality. They’ll send you another Handy Pro if you aren’t satisfied with the work your previous one has done for free. It also covers any potential damages since bookings made on the platform are insured.

Handy Reviews From Across the Web

This final section of our Handy review will talk about the various comments and feedback left by Handy users. It’ll help us see the general customer review, and find out if they were left with a good experience or a bad one.

• Leslie kept it simple with: “Great cleaning, pleasant personsality.”
• Blake Leja disappointedly said: “The person who accepted the job should not have. I do not believe he ever read the notes. It said a ladder was required. He did not bring one. He had to drill into cinder block, I had to provide constant assistance. He never worked with the equipment ( concrete anchors). It took him longer time than what was expected. He showed up 20 minutes late with no notification. And now the installation must be re-done as it was not installed properly.”
• Kirk left this Handy review: “Able to find a professional quickly through your site. Easy to navigate on your app, as well!”
• Jo said this: “Kathryn continues to take personal interest in meeting my cleaning needs. Very thorough and effective. Thanks”

As a whole, Handy seems to provide a good experience. Thisis reflected by a 4.2 out of 5-star score over on TrustPilot, with numerous great customer reviews praising the easy booking process, great job that the Handy Pros have done, and the overall excellent service. However, there are a few outliers who didn’t have a good experience. Some users reported late cancellation notices, poor Handy Pro encounters, and tardy workers.

This just reflects the general situation of Handy as a whole. At the end of the day, Handy is merely a platform that connects customers in need with the professionals who can get the job done. They have no control how a Handy Pro acts and there will almost always be a sour apple among the bunch.

Final Thoughts

All things considered, we do think that Handy does have a place within the vacation rental space. The platform is great if you don’t have a cleaning or maintenance team of your own, or if you don’t have easy access to one. The coverage within the platform covers pretty much everything you’ll ever need in your rental. The cleaning isn’t too bad for the price and makes for a great routine maintenance plan.

However, we simply can’t recommend it for guest turnovers. The booking found within the site can’t be controlled, so you can’t schedule cleanings after a guest checks out. It also doesn’t have any direct integrations with PMS or booking channels, making it hard to automate your cleanings and other services. We recommend using platforms like Turno or Tidy, since these are rental-focused cleaning services. A better option is to have your own local cleaning team, especially if you already have a large portfolio. It’ll save you time and money since you’ll be talking to the professionals directly, you can also negotiate rates since you’re essentially contracting them for your rental/s.

If you’re considering starting out your own Airbnb rental or just looking for a new addition to your portfolio, we suggest checking out our BNBCalc property analysis tool to give you an insight into properties on your radar. It can help you make data-driven decisions, based on what active rentals are already earning, allowing you to get an idea of not only revenue but also expenses, and paint a fuller picture of your potential investment.