Airbnb management companies in Kenya, and how to tell them apart.

The market sits broadly between 15% and 25% of revenue for full short-stay management, and the headline rate is the least useful thing to compare. What decides the bill is the base the percentage applies to — revenue collected, or some definition of "net" that has already had platform fees, cleaning and consumables taken out of it — and what sits outside the fee entirely: onboarding, listing creation, photography, a markup on the cleaners, an exit fee, or a minimum charge in a month with no bookings. Goldstay charges 20% of revenue collected, with no onboarding fee, no listing fee, no exit fee, no margin on any contractor, and nothing at all in a month with no bookings. The only setup cost is photography where we judge it necessary, at USD 100 for a studio or one-bed and USD 150 for two bedrooms or more.

There is no answer to that which is true for every host, and a firm that tells you it is the best one is selling rather than advising. What the right choice depends on is what you own, where you live and how much of the work you want back. If you are in Nairobi with one furnished unit, enjoy hosting and can meet a guest at short notice, self-managing genuinely earns you more and you should keep doing it. If you are abroad, own more than one unit, or are losing evenings to guest messages, the things worth comparing are whose account the listing lives on, what the percentage is charged on, whether anyone takes a cut of the cleaners, and whether the money reaches your own overseas account on a stated date.

Not one worth trusting on its own. "Top 10 Airbnb management companies in Kenya" is almost always either a directory selling placement or a firm's own blog post with itself at number one, and nobody publishing those has read a host's monthly statement or seen what happens when a unit is handed back. Some of the best operators in Nairobi have no website at all and run on referral. A shortlist of three, built from hosts in buildings near yours and from the eight questions below, will serve you far better than any ranking — and it costs you one week.

In practice, yes, and the words are used interchangeably in Nairobi. Co-host is Airbnb's own term for someone given permission to run a listing that stays on your account; Airbnb management company, short-stay agent and Airbnb agent all describe the same job. The label tells you nothing. What separates firms is whether the listing stays on your account or moves to theirs, what the fee is charged on, and whether you get an itemised monthly statement or a figure in a WhatsApp message.

Often, yes, and you keep the whole fee by doing it. What you are taking on is the listing and its photography, nightly pricing across the year, every guest message including the ones at 2am, screening, arrival and security registration, a cleaning turnover reliable enough to survive a same-day changeover, linen and consumables, the prepaid meter, and maintenance at short notice. That is a part-time job with no days off, and it is entirely doable if you are in the city and want it. It becomes very hard from a different timezone, because almost every one of those tasks needs a person physically present within the hour.

Some do and some quietly do not, and it is worth establishing which before you sign rather than after a notice from the management committee. A growing number of Nairobi buildings restrict or ban short lets in their house rules, and some cap how many units may operate one; operating against those rules is the commonest way a host loses the unit entirely. There is also a county single business permit, which starts at around KES 5,000. We confirm the building's position before listing anything, and if it does not permit short-letting we will say so and put the unit on a long lease instead. Our guide to what changed in Nairobi short-stay licensing sets out the current position.

It depends entirely on whose account the listing was on, which is why that is the first question to ask any firm. If the listing is on your own Airbnb account and the manager was added as a co-host, everything stays: the reviews, the Superhost status, the ranking history and the listing itself. If the listing was created on the manager's account, the review history is theirs, and you begin again as a new listing with no reviews — which in a competitive Nairobi building is worth considerably more than the difference between an 18% and a 20% fee.

If you live in the city, own one furnished unit, enjoy the hosting side and have cleaners you trust, we are a convenience rather than a necessity and we will tell you that on the call. We are also the wrong answer for a unit outside the neighbourhoods we cover, because the whole model depends on getting a person there the same day, and for a host whose only criterion is the lowest headline percentage — ours is not the lowest number on the market, and the pages above explain what it includes instead.