What goes in a house manual, in the order a guest needs it.
A house manual fails in one of two ways: it is a binder nobody opens, or it is three laminated apologies taped to appliances. The manual guests actually read is ordered the way a stay happens — arrival first, the quirks where guests meet them, checkout last — and it is short everywhere it can be. The worked examples are from the invented Juniper House manual on the sample page.
Arrival: written for someone tired
Directions with the real warning ("the GPS sends you up the gravel fork — stay left at the mailboxes"), where to park, the keypad and when the code arrives, the first light switch. A guest reads this page in a car at 9 PM with one bar of signal; every sentence past what they need right now is a sentence in their way. It is also the page to send before the stay, on its own.
The wifi, where they stand
Network and password at the top of the manual and on the page — and in the house, beside the router, because the sample host’s guests "text me the wifi password while they are standing next to the router." The manual’s copy and the house’s copy agree, letter for letter.
The quirks, without apology
"The back slider sticks: lift the handle up while you slide, and it moves easily." The fix, stated once, as instruction rather than confession — the sample host apologised for that door in three places, and the manual’s whole job is to say it once, where the guest meets the door. A quirk with a fix reads as a house that is looked after; an apology reads as a listing photo that lied.
The rules you actually mean
Hot tub closes at 10 PM, no shoes on the deck, quiet hours — the three or four you would message a guest about, stated plainly, with the reason only when the reason helps ("the neighbours are close"). Twelve rules teach a guest that none of them matter.
Your five picks, not your fifteen
Where you send everyone: the breakfast place, the walk, the one restaurant worth booking, the grocery store, the urgent-care address nobody wants to search for at midnight. Five, with one line each on why — a page of fifteen is a brochure, and guests can smell sponsored.
What breaks, and the fix that works
The TV’s one trick ("HDMI2, then the soundbar remote"), the burner that clicks, the breaker’s location, and when to text you instead. Every fix you have ever typed into a message thread belongs here — that thread is the manual’s first draft.
Checkout: asks, counted
Three asks, stated as the short list it is ("dishes in the washer, heat to 62, pull the door till it clicks"), and the checkout time with whatever flex is real. Guests do the checkout list that fits on a phone screen; the one that scrolls gets skipped whole.
Three questions.
Printed binder or a link?
Both, same words: the link before the stay (arrival page up top), the printed copy where the coffee is. The binder is for the guest whose phone is dead; the link is for the one in the car.
How long should it be?
Six to ten short pages covers a house. The test is not length but order: can a tired guest get in, get online and get warm using only page one?
Do house rules belong in the manual or the listing?
Both, agreeing. The listing is where a guest consents to the rules; the manual is where they remember them. A rule that appears only after booking reads as a trap — and reviews say so.
Get the sample manual first
The invented Juniper House manual: the host’s notes and the finished manual as a PDF — arrival page, wifi, quirks, picks and checkout.
Your rental’s manual written from your notes within two days, $39 / £32 incl. VAT / C$55 / A$59. Not affiliated with Airbnb or any platform; we contact no guest for you.