Not a template. The eighteen questions guests actually ask, grouped the way a guest reads them, with an example answer under each one that you can copy and change. There is nothing to download and no address to leave.
Almost every host starts one. Far fewer finish one, and the reason is nearly always the same: the document opens empty. A blank page asks you to decide what a house manual even is before you have written a word of it, and that is a genuinely hard question to answer at ten at night after a turnover.
So start from the questions instead. Every one below is a thing a guest has asked a host, and they are grouped in the order a stay actually happens: getting in, the things inside the house, the handful of rules, the practical business of staying, and the part only you can write.
The only three answers a guest needs before they are through the door. If you write nothing else, write these.
The door code, where the key is, or who to meet. Say it the way you would say it out loud.
The lockbox is on the porch rail, to the left of the front door, about knee height. The code is 4412. Push the button at the bottom to clear it first, then the numbers, then slide the cover down. The key inside opens both the front and the back door.
Code is 4412.
The difference is not length, it is the three things the second one left out: where the lockbox is, how it opens, and what the key is for. Every one of those is obvious to you and invisible to somebody standing in the dark.
Which spot is yours, whether the street is allowed, and anything that gets towed.
The driveway is yours, both spaces. The street is fine overnight except on the first Tuesday of the month when they sweep it. Do not use the gravel pull-off next door, it belongs to the neighbours and they do have people towed.
The times, and whether late or early is ever all right.
Check-in is any time after 4pm and there is no need to tell me when you are arriving. Check-out is 10am. If you need an extra hour, ask the night before and the answer is usually yes; on a day when somebody is arriving behind you it will be no, and I would rather say so than have you rushing.
These are the ones that arrive as a text message in the evening. None of them are hard. They are just not written down anywhere.
The network name and the password, exactly as they are typed, capital letters and all.
Network: Blue Heron Guest. Password: heron2024, all one word, no capitals. If it asks for a username, it is the wrong network: look for the one with Guest on the end.
Saying how it is typed is the whole job. More guest wifi problems are capital letters and the number one against the letter l than are actually broken routers. There is a whole page on this one: giving guests the wifi without being asked twice.
Where the thermostat is and how it works. This is the question hosts get asked most after the wifi.
The thermostat is in the hallway by the stairs. Press the up or down arrow and it will change; it takes a good ten minutes to do anything, so set it and leave it rather than pushing it up to 80. The bedroom radiator has its own dial on the side, turned all the way up is 5.
Which remote, which input, and what is already signed in.
Use the small black remote. The silver one is for the soundbar and only does volume. Press Home, then pick the app you want. Netflix and Disney are signed in already; please do not sign in to anything of your own, it is a shared television and the next person gets your account.
How the coffee maker works and what is there to use. Filters, pods, the good pan.
The coffee maker takes a number 4 filter and there are plenty under the sink. Ground coffee is in the freezer, which is where it keeps. The cast iron pan is in the drawer under the oven and you are very welcome to use it, it just does not go in the dishwasher.
Which cupboard. Where the hairdryer is comes up far more often than anybody expects.
Hairdryer and iron are both in the wardrobe in the front bedroom, on the shelf above the hanging rail. The washer is in the basement at the bottom of the stairs; detergent is on top of it and a normal cycle is about an hour.
Where the extras live, so nobody has to ask.
Spare towels and a spare set of sheets are in the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs. There are extra blankets in the chest at the end of the bed, and spare pillows on the top shelf of the wardrobe.
Every listing has these four and none of them belong in the same list as which bin goes out on a Tuesday. How they are worded matters more than what they say, which is the whole of four house rules, written so nobody argues.
Which bin, which day, and where it goes out to.
Blue bin is recycling, green is everything else. They go out to the kerb on Tuesday night and come back in Wednesday. If you are leaving before then, just leave them where they are, I will sort it.
The short list. Three things is a list people do; ten is a list people ignore.
Three things, and nothing else: strip the beds and leave the sheets in the hall, start the dishwasher, and lock the back door. The key goes back in the lockbox.
A ten-item check-out list is the single fastest way to turn a five-star stay into a four-star review. Anything on that list you would do yourself in four minutes is a thing to take off it.
Who to call, and what you would rather they did not try to fix themselves.
Text me first, any hour, and I will either sort it or tell you who is coming. The one thing I would ask you not to touch is the breaker box in the basement; if the power goes in one room, call me rather than flipping switches.
Everything above a competent stranger could write for your house. These two are the reason a guest remembers where they stayed, and they are the two that no search engine will give them.
The two or three places you would actually send a friend to.
The diner on Main does the breakfast everybody in town actually eats; go before nine or wait forty minutes. For dinner, the place by the marina is the one worth booking and the one on the highway with the big sign is not. If you want a pizza at ten at night there is exactly one option and it is fine.
The one thing people miss because it is not on the first page of a search.
Twenty minutes north there is a county park with a beach nobody uses because the sign is small and the turning is easy to miss. It is the left immediately after the red barn. Take your own water, there is nothing there, which is the point.
Roost gives you the same eighteen questions on your phone with the answers blank, so you are filling in a form rather than starting a document. It takes about two minutes and what comes out is a link you send the day before check-in.
Long enough to answer the questions and no longer. Eighteen short answers beats three pages of prose, because nobody reads a rental on their phone the way they read a book: they arrive with one question, find it, and close the page. Write each answer so it survives being read on its own.
How to get in. It is the only answer that is needed before the guest is through the door, and it is the one that generates a phone call at nine at night if it is wrong. Everything else can be found by looking around the house; the door code cannot.
Both. On the fridge it survives a dead phone and a bad signal. In the manual it can be copied rather than typed, which matters because most guest wifi passwords are long and mixed case. The two are not alternatives and neither one replaces the other.
A listing is read once, before booking, by somebody comparing places. A house manual is read during the stay, by somebody standing in the kitchen who wants one fact. Burying the thermostat instructions in a paragraph about the view is why it gets asked anyway.
Anything you would not say out loud to somebody standing in front of you. A list of twenty rules reads as a warning, and a guest who feels warned behaves like a suspect rather than a guest. Keep the four rules that matter and write the rest as help.