The Works BnB Review

The Works BnB is a boutique, founder-led Airbnb and short-term rental manager based in the Twin Cities metro area of Minnesota. It was founded in 2022 by Jo Hanson, described on the company's own site as a licensed Realtor, property manager, and interior designer, after she and her husband, Harv Hanson, opened their first short-term rental in northern Minnesota back in 2020. Today the company covers the Twin Cities metro, with its property-management page naming more than 25 surrounding cities, alongside a standing niche in northern Minnesota lake-cabin markets like Giants Ridge and Lutsen. Its pitch to owners spans three services - sourcing an investment property, designing and furnishing it, and then managing it day to day - built around a pricing structure that's genuinely unusual for this list: a flat monthly fee instead of a cut of your rental revenue.

How it works for owners

The core management offering, laid out on the company's property-management page, covers Listing Creation, Ongoing Listing Optimization, daily Revenue Management, a Personalized Welcome Guide, 24/7 Guest Communication, Cleaning + Turnovers, Post-Clean Quality Checks, Maintenance Coordination, Financial Reporting through an owner portal, Off-Platform Marketing, and Direct Booking. Interior design and staging are offered as a separate add-on rather than a bundled default. Instead of the percentage-of-revenue fee most managers on this list charge, The Works BnB says it charges owners "a monthly fee that includes all tech subscriptions, security cameras, noise monitoring devices and smart door locks" - bundling hardware and software an owner would otherwise buy and manage separately. The page calls this "Clear Pricing," but no actual dollar figure appears on it, on any other page we found, or in public search results.

A separate property-owner page describes a different, membership-based track aimed more at corporate and medium-term placement - relocation firms, renovation companies, insurance housing, medical visitors, and snowbird travelers - where owners "apply for membership," go through a review, and "pay for your membership" to get started, with an optional branding package on top. The site doesn't make clear how that membership track relates to the flat-fee management service described above, so a prospective owner would likely need to ask directly which path applies to them. A separate promotional "Refresh" design-and-management package, meanwhile, caps intake at "2 new clients" a month - consistent with a small, hands-on operation rather than one built to onboard at volume.

What we could verify

The facts above are internally consistent across the pages we checked: the 2022 founding and Jo-and-Harv-Hanson origin story on the about page line up with the six properties shown on the listings page - in Minneapolis, Chanhassen, Maple Grove, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie - and with the Twin Cities service area named on the property-management page. The homepage claims "92% 5 STAR REVIEWS," "720 HAPPY GUESTS AND COUNTING," and Airbnb Superhost status "since 2020" - all self-reported, with no link to an underlying review source we could check independently. Its "Refresh" page adds specific case-study numbers, including one property going from $47K to $112K in annual revenue and another generating "$65k worth of bookings in the first 6 months" - again self-reported rather than third-party verified. A LinkedIn listing for the company shows one to two employees, consistent with the small, founder-run scale suggested elsewhere on the site.

Outside the company's own site, verification got thin. A direct Better Business Bureau directory search for "The Works BnB" in Minnesota returned zero results - no profile, no rating, no complaint history. Yelp and Trustpilot both blocked automated access to the company's pages on their platforms (HTTP 403) at the time of this review, so we could not independently confirm guest or owner review counts or ratings on either site. That leaves the company's own homepage stats as the only review data available for this write-up.

How it compares to our top pick

The Works BnB's flat-fee structure is a genuinely interesting alternative to the percentage-of-revenue model that dominates this list - for an owner running a strong-occupancy property in the Twin Cities or northern Minnesota, a flat bill can mean keeping meaningfully more of the upside than a 20-30% cut would leave elsewhere. But "Clear Pricing" without an actual number is a claim, not a disclosure, and a six-listing portfolio with one to two employees is a small base to bet a full-service handoff on. One Fine BnB works with owners nationwide rather than one regional pocket of Minnesota, and quotes a custom, owner-specific fee up front rather than asking an owner to apply and wait for a number. See how The Works BnB and the rest of the field stack up in our full best Airbnb management companies ranking.

Bottom line

The Works BnB looks like a real, small-scale Twin Cities operation with a founder whose background - real estate, property management, interior design - actually matches what the company sells, and its flat-fee model is a legitimately different pitch than most managers on this list make. An owner going in should still expect to do some of the vetting work the site doesn't do for you: get the exact monthly fee, current portfolio count, and contract terms in writing, since none of the three appear on the company's own site or in any public source we could locate.