Michigan company · reviewed 2026-07-27
Great Stays review
A Detroit, MI short-term rental manager covering Detroit and Ann Arbor and the surrounding area. The only metro-Detroit specialist in this set; the rest of the Michigan field is lakeshore and Up North.
What the company publishes about itself
- Described in our management dataset as Detroit's largest independent short-term-rental manager, Michigan-licensed, with an owner portal.
- Around 164 managed listings recorded in the same dataset.
What it does not publish
A management rate. Like almost every Michigan manager we have checked, Great Stays does not put a contract length, a notice period or a cancellation term in public either. None of that is unusual and none of it is a red flag on its own — but it does mean this review can tell you what the company says it does, and cannot tell you what it costs. We do not estimate fees.
What to ask them
Ask for the percentage and the exclusions in the same sentence, ask whether the booking accounts stay in your name, and ask who is within thirty minutes of the property in February. The full list is in the fourteen questions.
What the service list actually implies
Service lists tend to converge — everybody markets, cleans, coordinates and reports. The differences that matter sit underneath: who employs the cleaner, how far the maintenance contact lives from the property, and what happens on the one weekend of the year when everything happens at once.
Great Stays names 2 of the 36 markets in our atlas — Detroit and Ann Arbor among them. A published service area is a commitment of sorts: it is the list they will be measured against if a guest has a problem two hours from their office, and it is the first thing worth testing against your own address rather than your mailing town.
What this review can't tell you
These are the questions that decide the deal, and none of them can be answered from a website. Ask Great Stays these, and keep the reply.
- The number. Ask for it in writing, with the base it is calculated on, before any conversation about what your property could earn.
- Contract length and notice period. A twelve-month minimum that runs through a Michigan off-season is a very different commitment from a rolling arrangement.
- Whose name sits on the Airbnb and Vrbo accounts, and whether the review history follows the property if you leave. This is the single most expensive thing to get wrong.
- The winter arrangement — heated, drained or checked — and the name of the person doing the checking.
How it compares to our top pick
Our statewide pick, Airbnb property management services, publishes two tiers — 20% full-service / 10% partner, plus a one-time onboarding retainer — before you speak to anyone. Great Stays publishes no rate and, in exchange, brings a genuinely local operation in Detroit and Ann Arbor. Which of those is worth more depends entirely on whether your property needs somebody who can physically be there.
If the property genuinely needs somebody on site — old building, private water, a long drive from where you live — local usually wins even at an unknown price. If it does not, the published rate is worth a great deal.