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Acme House Company is a DBA of Acme CA, Inc., operating as Casago Coachella Valley. California DRE #02420145. Michael E. Flannery, Designated Broker.
Guide · Choosing a manager
The useful questions are not about commission. They are about whether the company can tell you, without looking it up afterwards, which authority governs your parcel and what it requires.
Existing owner? Access your Owner Portal
This valley punishes generic management. Five cities run five separate programs, and the differences are material: La Quinta’s page states a permanent ban on new General and Primary permits outside listed exempt areas, Indian Wells sets a 29-night minimum on new licences, and Palm Desert prohibits short-term rentals in R1 and R2 except under an On-Site Owner permit. Ask a prospective manager to describe the rule that applies to your specific address and to name the source. The answer, and how fast it comes, tells you most of what you need to know.
Follow it with the private-document question. Ask who reads the CC&Rs, who obtains the annual HOA Letter of Approval that Palm Desert requires in defined zones, and what happens if the association’s rules conflict with the plan being pitched. A company that treats the HOA as an afterthought in a country-club market is telling you something.
Anyone can run a desert home in February. Ask what the preventative maintenance schedule looks like in July: how often the HVAC is serviced, who holds the pool contract, what the response time is when cooling fails mid-stay, and who pays for the guest outcome. Ask to see the shape of a maintenance calendar, not a promise about one.
Most of these city ordinances require a local contact reachable 24 hours a day, and Palm Desert lists failing to respond to a complaint within 30 minutes among its operational violations. Ask who that contact is, where they are, and what happens on an April festival weekend when several properties need attention at once. A phone tree is not a local contact.
Before signing, establish what happens at the end: notice period, who holds the permit and the tax registration, what happens to reviews and listing history, who owns the photography, how future bookings are handled and how owner funds are settled. In Coachella the permit question has a specific edge, because the City states permits are not transferable to another person, entity, parcel or owner.
We would rather you asked those questions than took a number on trust. Fee and program terms are confirmed for your property through the Owner Portal rather than quoted on a public page.
Which authority governs my parcel, and what does its page say today? In a valley where one city permanently bans new permits in the main categories and another sets a 29-night minimum, a manager who cannot answer that immediately is going to learn on your property.
It is the least informative comparison you can make, because the same percentage buys wildly different operations. Compare what happens when the air conditioning fails in July, who holds the pool contract, who answers at 2am on a festival weekend, and what the exit terms are. Fee questions are handled for your property in the Owner Portal.
No. Permits attach to properties and owners, not to management companies. Coachella states plainly that permits are not transferable to another person, entity, assessor's parcel number or property owner. Palm Desert separately requires a property management company running three or more short-term rentals to hold an active business licence before applying for or renewing permits, which is a different thing again.
Next step
Continue to the Owner Portal for a property-specific conversation. Prospective owners choose I’m considering the program. Existing owners sign in as an owner. Nothing about your home is sent from this page.
