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Comment by EasyMark | Hacker News Reader

I've rented out a couple rooms in my house in the past for airbnb during special events in Austin to make some hobby money, shared my kitchen, they have a private bathroom. It doesn't cost $200 to clean. I can clean up after them typically in less than an hour.

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It cost you nothing but time and some supplies. If you asked a random person to clean it, they would refuse. So you have to pay them. Minimums for cleaning would be 3 hours. At 50 an hour plus taxes and travel $200 doesn't sound unreasonable.

The people cleaning your hotel room who can barely speak english and get skiddish if you are wearing a law enforcement uniform definitely don't make $50 an hour.

If you can't efficiently get cleaning services for your rented out room, maybe you should get out of the hotel business!

Unless you have a pipeline of the undocumented then you have to go through a company.

Wait, your point is that those paying their cleaners well, above the board and with a contract should go out of business?

But those paying cash, no taxes, low salary abusing people, should remain in business?

What an insane take.

I think nearly all the house cleaners will be extremely surprised to hear that they earn $50 an hour. Even more, they get all their travel-related costs reimbursed! Oddly enough, that's not what they see on their payslip. And that's assuming they get a payslip at all.

FWIW I've never seen $200 cleaning fees on AirBnB for a room-in-a-house accommodation, but if I saw that then yes, I'd call BS. I've only ever seen fees that high for whole-home rentals.

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