Short-Term Rentals
Prologue
HOA communities like lakeside homes or hill station homes often attract short-term guests. Homeowners in these HOAs list their properties on Airbnb to earn extra income.
But as more renters started coming in, the HOA began facing issues. Unauthorised stays, added wear and tear on common areas and growing safety concerns made things difficult to manage. Without a clear process, short-term rentals quickly became a challenge for HOA management.
Problem Space & Opportunity
To address these concerns, many communities introduced rules for short-term rentals. Homeowners were required to pay a rental fee and obtain approval from the HOA Management before every short-term stay. However, enforcing these rules manually was difficult. Homeowners had to visit the HOA office, fill out paper forms, submit documents in person and wait for updates via phone or email. The process was time-consuming and often led to delays.
This is where we at ADDA stepped in. We envisioned a digital STR (Short-Term Rentals) workflow, one that works online and reduces delays.
This is the story of how we created the "Short-Term Rentals" workflow, a simplified solution for HOAs (HOA Manager and Home Owners) to mange short-term rental process simply.
Objective
To create a closed loop workflow that enables homeowners to request short-term rentals for their units through the homeowners mobile app, while allowing HOA managers to efficiently review, approve or reject those requests via the HOA manager web portal.
Personas
This feature serves 2 distinct personas:
Home Owner
✦ Owns properties and rent them for short term stays
✦ Requests short-term rental approvals from HOA Manager
HOA Manager
✦ Approves or rejects short-term rental requests
✦ Verifies information and ensures compliance
I handled the design for
the homeowners experience.
Research & Insights
To understand the real-world challenges of managing short-term rentals in communities, we explored current STR process, studied HOA by-laws, examples scenarios from high-turnover HOAs and spoke with homeowners and managers.
Some of the findings that we gathered through our research:
✦ Rental policies has to be reviewed and accepted by homeowners before submitting any request.
✦ Since rental policies differ among HOAs, the guidelines are designed to be configurable from the manager's setup.
✦ Tax on STR registration is optional in some HOAs, depending on specific state regulations.
✦ There is a maximum occupancy limit set for each unit, so homeowners will not be allowed to add more than the permitted number of renters.
✦ Payment is mandatory for request submission; the request can only be submitted after successful payment.
✦ Not every homeowner can request for STR. The homeowner must first register their unit and receive approval for their unit before they can begin submitting rental requests.
Designs
I came up with a complete flow for homeowners to manage short-term rentals, starting from request submission to viewing submitted requests. The flow includes form filling, payment and clear status updates like payment pending, awaiting approval, approved, rejected and cancelled. After a few iterations, the design looked like the following:
Rental Request Submission
Nancy Drew
✦ Owns 2 properties in Oakland Lake Community
✦ Wants to get approval from HOA Management for upcoming short-term rentals
Rental Request Statuses
Accessing Rental Policy
Rejection & Cancellation Cases
Insights & Decisions
With each iteration, we implemented a few insights directly into our designs. The insights & decisions are as follows:
Decision 1 ✦ Culturally Inclusive Field
On Left: First Name + Last Name fields.
On Right: Single Full Name field. Renter name structures vary across cultures. One field makes it more inclusive.
Decision 2 ✦ Progressive Disclosure
On Left: Ask total number of renters (Rental Party Count) up front. Then, show no. of field(s) accordingly.
On Right: Use “Add More” to add renters one by one, helps reducing clutter and cognitive load.
Decision 3 ✦ Filter inclusion
On Left: STR statuses shown as horizontal chips. Users had to scroll and considered as hidden.
On Right: STR status as a filter dropdown, which keeps all options arranged in one place.
Decision 4 ✦ Ensuring Limitations
On Left: No info shown about guest limit.
On Right: Showing the max limit up front helps users stay compliant and helps them make easy decisions.
Decision 1 ✦ Culturally Inclusive Field
On Left: First Name + Last Name fields.
On Right: Single Full Name field. Renter name structures vary across cultures. One field makes it more inclusive.
Decision 2 ✦ Progressive Disclosure
On Left: Ask total number of renters (Rental Party Count) up front. Then, show no. of field(s) accordingly.
On Right: Use “Add More” to add renters one by one, helps reducing clutter and cognitive load.
Decision 3 ✦ Filter inclusion
On Left: STR statuses shown as horizontal chips. Users had to scroll and considered as hidden.
On Right: STR status as a filter dropdown, which keeps all options arranged in one place.
Decision 4 ✦ Ensuring Limitations
On Left: No info shown about guest limit.
On Right: Showing the max limit up front helps users stay compliant and helps them make easy decisions.
Decision 1 ✦ Culturally Inclusive Field
On Left: First Name + Last Name fields.
On Right: Single Full Name field. Renter name structures vary across cultures. One field makes it more inclusive.
Decision 2 ✦ Progressive Disclosure
On Left: Ask total number of renters (Rental Party Count) up front. Then, show no. of field(s) accordingly.
On Right: Use “Add More” to add renters one by one, helps reducing clutter and cognitive load.
Decision 3 ✦ Filter inclusion
On Left: STR statuses shown as horizontal chips. Users had to scroll and considered as hidden.
On Right: STR status as a filter dropdown, which keeps all options arranged in one place.
Decision 4 ✦ Ensuring Limitations
On Left: No info shown about guest limit.
On Right: Showing the max limit up front helps users stay compliant and helps them make easy decisions.
Decision 1 ✦ Culturally Inclusive Field
On Left: First Name + Last Name fields.
On Right: Single Full Name field. Renter name structures vary across cultures. One field makes it more inclusive.
Decision 2 ✦ Progressive Disclosure
On Left: Ask total number of renters (Rental Party Count) up front. Then, show no. of field(s) accordingly.
On Right: Use “Add More” to add renters one by one, helps reducing clutter and cognitive load.
Decision 3 ✦ Filter inclusion
On Left: STR statuses shown as horizontal chips. Users had to scroll and considered as hidden.
On Right: STR status as a filter dropdown, which keeps all options arranged in one place.
Decision 4 ✦ Ensuring Limitations
On Left: No info shown about guest limit.
On Right: Showing the max limit up front helps users stay compliant and helps them make easy decisions.
Design Elements
Designed a custom illustrations and icons to make the Short-Term Rental feature more visually engaging and user-friendly.
Rental Icon
Designed a module icon for Short-Term Rental, featuring a rent board to visually indicate the concept of short-term stays.
Rental Illustrations
Designed illustrations using ADDA mascots, with supporting elements to represent different short-term rental scenarios.
Rental Icon
Designed a module icon for Short-Term Rental, featuring a rent board to visually indicate the concept of short-term stays.
Rental Illustrations
Designed illustrations using ADDA mascots, with supporting elements to represent different short-term rental scenarios.
Rental Icon
Designed a module icon for Short-Term Rental, featuring a rent board to visually indicate the concept of short-term stays.
Rental Illustrations
Designed illustrations using ADDA mascots, with supporting elements to represent different short-term rental scenarios.
Rental Icon
Designed a module icon for Short-Term Rental, featuring a rent board to visually indicate the concept of short-term stays.
Rental Illustrations
Designed illustrations using ADDA mascots, with supporting elements to represent different short-term rental scenarios.
Impact
The feature was initially pilot-launched with 2 HOAs, resulting in positive feedback and smooth usage. This success let the team to expand the rollout to other HOAs in the USA.
Feature Adoption Rate (in first 6 months)
86%
Rental Requests Submitted Within the First 3 Months
4.1K+
Learnings & Reflections
Since this feature was primarily built for users in the United States, I quickly realized how deeply geographic and cultural context can influence user behavior. One key takeaway for me was that understanding regional context isn't optional, it is a fundamental part of designing thoughtful, effective experiences.
👋Hey mate! Mobile view’s still in progress. I request you to switch to a desktop or laptop for the best experience.
