Mastering Airbnb Success: Insider Tips for Investing in Short-Term Rentals

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Unlock the door to financial freedom and the joys of property ownership with us, Christine Fiske and Beth Rooney, as we share the insider tactics to thriving in the Airbnb market. Ever wondered how to strike the perfect balance between creating a lucrative investment and a personal haven? We cover everything from selecting prime locations to financial planning, ensuring you're equipped to make informed decisions in the short-term rental arena. With our host Christine's expertise, we navigate the complexities of mortgages, taxes, and operational costs, providing you with a blueprint for success.

Step into a world where design meets profitability; we bring you the secrets behind crafting a space that doesn't just house guests but captivates them. Our Cape Cod property serves as a case study in merging modern aesthetics with amenities that command attention. Discover how a hot tub and a bocce court can skyrocket your property's allure and how to tailor your offering to your guests' wishes. We also reveal the power of transparent communication in setting the right expectations — a game-changer in the world of vacation rentals.

Finally, we peel back the curtain on the life of a short-term rental magnate. Christine imparts her wisdom on the significance of a reliable team to transform your investment into a bastion of passive income. We chat about the nuanced journey from career to real estate mastery, the unexpected delights of property appreciation, and the personal perks that come with owning a slice of paradise. By the end of our discussion, you'll feel inspired by the tax benefits, the freedom to travel, and the satisfaction that comes from a well-managed rental portfolio. Join us as we master the art of short-term rental management and savor the sweet rewards it offers.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hello everyone, this is Christine Fisk from the Abundant Investor. I'm here with Beth Rooney and today we have a great episode for you. If you've ever thought about having a short-term rental or an Airbnb, this is the podcast for you. We are going to dig into what does it look like to acquire, to manage, to run an Airbnb and, should you, do you want to get into this type of real estate investing. After today's podcast, we think you're going to have a good sense of that, and if you are interested in jumping into the world of STRs which we love then we are really excited to help you with that, and we have a couple offers at the end of the podcast that we're gonna share with you.

Speaker 2: 1:17

Oh, christine this is so great. This is such a fun topic. It's one that is so interesting to so many people, because who doesn't love traveling and staying at an Airbnb? I mean, what's more fun than that? I love it. As a matter of fact, I just booked one out in Chicago. We're going to visit my son in June. We're really excited about it. We're staying right downtown, it looks great and just so many. It's just such a fun topic because it's a happy topic, right. So if you want to get yourself involved in this world of really hospitality and, you know, hosting- people at a home that you own.

Speaker 1: 1:59

What's the right place? Where's the right place to start? Love that, I love the question, and I do think it's generally a really happy topic and exciting topic. I think the best place to start is to start envisioning. Where can you imagine yourself having an Airbnb? Where would you like to have one? And I think the frame first gets to be is this purely an investment? Or am I buying this property because I like to have one, and I think the frame first gets to be is this purely an investment? Or am I buying this property because I want to have a place in a location that I like to go to, that my family likes to travel to? Or maybe I just I end up there for work regularly, right? Is it a place where you want to be traveling to, or is this like purely? Hey, I see this as an investment opportunity. I think I could make some good money doing this, provide some awesome experiences. That's the first thing that you want to think about.

Speaker 1: 2:44

The other thing that I would say to think about is you brought up the hospitality business, and that's exactly what this is. So, unless you're outsourcing all of that and you're really just the investor of the piece of property you're investing in, that property, of the piece of property You're investing in, that property you want to think about. Do I want to be in the business of having people stay at a home that I own? Do I want to be managing the cleaners? Do I want to be interacting with guests on a regular basis, setting up a space that guests will love? Do I easily put that hat on of hospitality hat, or is that something that I'm just not very interested in? But I want to explore being a short-term rental host owner, because I think that I can financially have a good investment and, in a lot of cases, a stronger investment than if the property was simply a long-term rental. So I think you've got to look at it through those lenses first and figure out what fits best for me?

Speaker 2: 3:37

Yep, yeah. So what I'm hearing you is what I'm hearing you say this there's really it's a two-step process. The first step is what's your goal? Is it to have a place that you can vacation in sometimes and use to rent out so that covers your expenses, so you basically vacation in that spot for free or for very little cost? Or is it a pure investment, play, or you know, there's a third kind of topic around is it in a college town?

Speaker 2: 4:04

Maybe you have a child going off to college and you want a place where you can, um, stay when you visit the child, and you know the market because you're there a lot and you see that there's a demand for it. So there's like this, this first step of like what, what's my goal, what am I trying to accomplish? And then that's step one. Step two is OK, now, what do I want my involvement to be? How much do I want to be involved and how much do I want to outsource? Because the good news is you can't outsource almost all of it. But a lot of people get into this business because they like the idea of being in the hospitality world. So let's drive into that, I think, one of the things that will help people make that decision is the numbers. Okay, so let's just start off with a cold hard tax. What should people be considering when they're starting to like analyze and look at numbers?

Speaker 1: 4:57

Well, I think with any investment property you want to be looking at, you want to be looking for a good deal. So if you're buying a place for a short-term rental, it's really not much different than if you're buying it for a flip or you're buying it for a long-term buy and hold. It's very similar. You want to see can I get a good deal? So a lot of times, this is you're finding something on MLS that works. Sometimes it's finding an off market property, so something that's not on the market for everyone that you might've found from being connected to other investors, which we always, you know, we love to encourage people to connect with other investors, connect with us.

Speaker 1: 5:33

Networking is such a big part of investors' success. We find more and more, and so finding the property and then understanding what are the ongoing costs. So we like to think of these a lot of times as PITI. It's what are your monthly mortgage payments plus your interest and your taxes? What are those ongoing expenses? So when I bought my first property, that was my biggest expense and it will be for most people, unless you're paying cash or putting a really big chunk down and you want to think about what. What kind of rent do I need to command in order to pay these monthly bills and they're not the only bills, though. You want to think about your other expenses as well. I know me. It was important to be able to cover that fee, and then, if I could use it some myself and basically break even, I was happy. That's how I started, that's before I had my investor mindset right.

Speaker 2: 6:28

I wanted a vacation home.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Once I had an investor mindset, I was thinking more about what's my revenue? So what's my overall revenue for the year and on a monthly basis, and then what is my take home? So what are we earning after expenses every month? And the other expenses that you have to think about are the upkeep of the place, right. You always want to have an emergency fund set aside, so if something happens like your appliances go, your water heater goes, you're not in a panic to cover that. So you always want to have that money in some type of a savings account or just set aside so that you're prepared. It's just like any emergency fund.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Yep, just like a long-term investment, or just like your residential home, your primary, exactly, exactly so you want to have that set aside, and then you want to think about some of the ongoing fees. So some of the bigger ones tend to be landscaping. Also, if you are going to hire a property manager and this is a big question for a lot of people are you going to have somebody managing this property or do you want to self manage Property management, or some people call it co-hosting, and there's a little bit of difference between how people classify those things. They tend to range anywhere from 12%, maybe 10, but 10 to 12, all the way up to we've seen 25. I think 25% is about the highest that I've heard lately. Sometimes it's 25% co-hosting fee and then if you have to have a maintenance person come, that's not included. So you really want to think about having those funds as well, yeah, and you want to run the?

Speaker 2: 8:04

numbers. Can we just stop there for a second, because that was a lot, that was a real lot. Okay, so you have, like, the ongoing costs, the PITI, right, and then you have these, like you know, managing the property, and that's a big difference, right? So let's just break out, if we can, let's break out what a property manager, like a pure property manager, does versus a co-host that is helping you maybe with the marketing and the pricing and the guest communications and stuff. Can you just take our listeners through kind of a pure play example of each of those? And then you know, understanding that there's a, there's some gray in between, where, where people can sometimes be both Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Yeah, that's really great. So property managers have been around for a really long time and with long-term rentals it's very typical that a landlord will hire a property manager to manage a property and it's really no different. You can do this with a short-term rental as well. You can have a property manager. The property manager is generally responsible for letting people in and out of the building. So if you have to have an electrician come over because you have an upgrade that you wanna make or something goes wrong, they are going to be the one typically to manage that call and that coordinate that process.

Speaker 1: 9:27

A property manager often will do ongoing maintenance things like make sure that the lawn gets mowed, make sure that the locks get changed and make sure that the trash goes out things like that right. So they're overall managing the property. Sometimes they're taking calls from the tenants as well, and sometimes they are the person who's finding tenants as well. So we've seen property management firms that do that. Sometimes that's a real estate agent and in the case of short-term rentals, sometimes it's the owner themselves.

Speaker 1: 10:01

So a co-host is a relatively newer term that kind of bubbled up and came to be when Airbnb and short-term rentals really started to take off about 10 years ago and a co-host is someone who actually communicates with the guests. But much more than that. They're thinking about booking the place as much as they can or as much as you want to. Some people don't want to have their place booked out all the time. They'd rather rent it at a premium, for fewer days and have less wear and tear. So, again, that's really your preference and your goal and maybe your co host advises you on what is best for your market. Ideally, the co-host really knows your market and they know how to use software and systems that price and manage your property to get you the most the top dollar for that property, whether it's renting it out, having a really high occupancy rate or having higher rates at peak times.

Speaker 1: 10:55

they're thinking about that and in a lot of times they're managing the guest and then, with some co-hosting, they're managing the property manager. They have a separate property manager. So you've really got to ask a lot of questions. If you're thinking about bringing on a co-host or property manager to understand, within their scope, what are you paying them for?

Speaker 2: 11:13

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense and I think that's a great example of where you can, you, and then you can blend those things right so you could have a property manager who's taking care of really the physical asset, the building, and really very minimally interacting with your guests, and then you could, and you could, then you could do all the co-hosting yourself.

Speaker 2: 11:38

You could be managing the Airbnb, the price, all that kind of stuff, or you, you know you can, you could offset, you could have somebody do all of that, and you may happen to live right down the street from the property and be very, you know, be very handy and take care of the physical asset and then outsource the management of everything.

Speaker 2: 11:56

So the nice thing about this is what I'm hearing you saying is that you really get to choose. You have a lot of options and you know, one thing that I've noticed is, like you said, that co-host the term is relatively new. It's a, it's a, it's a job that a lot of people, I think, really enjoy doing, and so it's a growing space of people that are getting involved, you know, getting involved in making themselves available and running their own little entrepreneurial business, being a co-host. So that's a really great thing. So it's good to know, because I think if people aren't involved in this space, they think that they have to be that person or be really hard to find that person, and I think what I'm hearing you say is not really no, yeah, no not really.

Speaker 1: 12:44

I love what you said about choice. There's really a lot of choice here and you know we can advise you on this if you're not sure where to find these people or where to find the person that fits all the niches that you're not interested in filling yourself. We've got a network of folks that we have gotten to know and we also have a lot of experience in doing. I've done things many ways, without co-hosts, with co-hosts, with property managers, with both. So you know we can point you in the right direction for whatever your needs and desires are here.

Speaker 2: 13:17

I love it. I love it. So let's just shift gears a little bit. Let's put our hospitality hats on. What makes a great space? What makes a home really feel comfortable and really good to guests? What makes guests happy?

Speaker 1: 13:32

Yeah, that's a great question and a really important one, because if you're setting up a short-term rental, you really want to be thinking about what is the optimal guest experience. And I like to, you know, I like to put myself in the shoes of the guests here and say, if I were coming to this area, what are the things that I would like in terms of the physical environment of the house, the amenities in the house and that the place has access to? What's the feeling I want people to feel when they come here? Is it one of, like, rustic comfort? Is it a modern city vibe? Like?

Speaker 1: 14:07

You really have to think about who's your ideal guest, and this is like marketing 101. It's coming up with who's the ideal guest and how would I surprise and delight them and create an amazing experience for them. And so that's going to look different for everyone and most likely you're going to find a lot of overlap with your ideal guest and yourself, because we tend to just do that. It's human nature and you want to think about what in the space is going to make them feel really comfortable. For me, personally, I like a really nice, clean aesthetic with a design that is like also fun and modern and up to date. So I think thinking about, um, you know, for me that's, that's a no brainer Um, my coastal properties I incorporated, I mean one of the reasons.

Speaker 1: 15:00

Actually, we bought in Cape Cod, which is um off the coast of Boston, here a very popular vacation destination, and when we used to rent there were we would find a lot of places that were outdated, that it looked like, frankly, like grandma's cottage that hadn't been updated. And when we used to rent there were we would find a lot of places that were outdated, that it looked like, frankly, like grandma's cottage that hadn't been updated in maybe 30 years.

Speaker 2: 15:17

So we have a lot of that out there.

Speaker 1: 15:19

You're right, there's still quite a bit of that out there. You may not see it as much on Airbnb. They're still out there and they're out there. So we wanted to incorporate like modern touches. We wanted an elevated feel without going over the top, right, we wanted it to be affordable to families or like we wanted to attract a certain type of guest that was probably going to come with some extended family. It had things like shiplap. We incorporated really modern finishes. It had things like shiplap. We incorporated really modern finishes. Really clean, like white kitchen with some color, right, like not bland. That's just.

Speaker 1: 15:59

I'm pulling in my personal style to what would be really comfortable for me and then thinking about amenities that our guests would love as well. So, just to go back to that example of the houses on the Cape, we just added a hot tub, because a lot of people that come in the shoulder season are now looking for hot tubs and in the summer it's a nice thing to do to go unwind after a day at the beach. You come home, have dinner and maybe it's something to do. It's something people maybe don't have access to in their daily lives. That's a treat and that also enables us to price accordingly when we add an amenity like that. We also had an old bocce court that had gotten overgrown and we just refinished that for people. So it's something different.

Speaker 1: 16:42

And I think today, this day and age, when there are more Airbnbs, especially in a lot of markets and I think that's what's holding some people back from starting I'd say, if you've got a great idea, if you've got good style, you can still do really well with an Airbnb and you want to be thinking what are the amenities that people are looking for? So some people yeah, some people will be content to just sit around, but I think a lot of people these days are looking for ways to be active. So we've got the cornhole, we put out the bocce right, we've got the hot tub, so things like that, and just thinking about, what do people really want in this market?

Speaker 2: 17:18

Right. I think that's so important because you think about, like you know, what are they going to like, how are they going to be spending their time? Say the week that they're there right In your example they're probably going to spend most of their time away from the home during the day at you know the lake or the beach or doing something you know away from the home. But when they come back, what can keep them there? You know, so they're not going out for dinner every single night and then you know there may be like being able to make dinner at home and then enjoy each other's company there.

Speaker 2: 17:44

I think thinking that through is so important, christine, and we've talked about that before on this podcast we and we've talked about that before on this podcast we have a course where we spend like a whole session on really helping people decide what they want their brand to be or their Airbnb and what they want to feel like, because you may also have a business traveler and another you know in another scenario might be somebody, and they just want it to be you know the Wi-Fi to be working, a workspace that's bright and clean and open and an easy come and easy go Exactly so it's really like.

Speaker 2: 18:21

I love what you're saying is like really putting yourself in the shoes of the guest and understanding what they want. You know it's interesting. I just was booking a. I mentioned the place in Chicago. We've got that done, great. We're also going to spend some time in the Cape and one of the properties I was looking at I was really excited about. I was just about to book and I was actually interacting with the owner and he mentioned that he didn't have a flag for the beach because he's just outside of the neighborhood that allows access to the beach, so right and you need to be clear.

Speaker 2: 18:54

you have to bring a flag and put it in the beach in order to be allowed on the beach and if you're sitting at the, you know there's somebody that walks around and checks, and so, having been going to this area for many years, I know that there is somebody that walks around and checks.

Speaker 2: 19:07

It'll be very uncomfortable to be kicked off the beach right, and I've seen it happen.

Speaker 2: 19:12

So I assumed that he was in this particular neighborhood, because it looks like it is, but it turns out that he's just outside of it, like by one home, and so he didn't have the flag, so you'd have to walk about a mile, a mile and a half, to the beach that you could go to without the flag and I like, oh, that is a deal breaker, yep, and I think things like that you know, like that you have to be up front with guests and let them know, like even you know there's a beach right here and you will have access to it, or you won't. Or there's this amenity that you you know like. There's like, um, some communities right that have like a community pool, but you can only go to that pool if the homeowner has joined and allowed to set it up for you as a guest can go. I know there's other areas like that. So I think the amenities are so important at the home, but then what's around it and being really clear about what is available to you and what's not available to you.

Speaker 1: 20:08

That's right and thinking about what do people want to experience? So one of our other Cape houses is close to a pond and you can walk to the pond super close and we have a canoe and the canoe was sitting in the yard in the spring and we had a guest say, well, it would have been so great to have been able to use the canoe. And I thought we haven't really let guests use the canoe before and we haven't put it on the boat rack, for we put it on in the summer but we didn't put it on for guests in the shoulder season. So you know, I thought about that and I thought that was interesting feedback. So we're going to you know they're coming to a pond and it's such a nice experience to canoe or paddleboard and some people have their own, but you're probably most people aren't bringing a canoe, so we're making the canoe accessible to people.

Speaker 1: 20:53

Now, yeah, there's a bit of risk with that, but I think overall it's going to be a rewarding experience and people will take care of it and generally people are good guests. By the way, like I just want to say too, I think a lot of people get scared that they're going to have bad guest experiences. They're pretty rare, especially the type of bad experience where your property gets damaged or something like that. It's really in my five years of hosting I've had hardly any knock on wood physical damage of property. So, and if I do, it's usually minor and some of the guests will let you know Mistakes along the way.

Speaker 1: 21:32

grab something or yeah, yeah, I agree with you.

Speaker 2: 21:34

I think you know we talk a lot about this. We talk about mindset all the time on this podcast, right, and there's a million reasons why you can convince yourself not to do something, and I think that probably is a big one where people are like, oh, who's going to be staying in my house? And you know, you know you don't think about when you go to a hotel like who stayed here last?

Speaker 2: 21:55

night, that's always my response when people go to a nice. I mean, these are not. You know, if you're staying at a really terrible Airbnb, you might think that or something. But like, if you're staying in a really terrible hotel, but like, you know, you you're, you've created this beautiful space. It's not inexpensive, you know. So people are spending some money to be there. They were going to be respectful of your spot, and then you have a whole cleaning crew that comes in and all that, like it's. It's just like a hotel in terms of cleanliness and all that kind of stuff. So I think that the mindset could. The mind can take you in so many different directions and tell you not to do things, and we're here to say that that's probably not the mindset to have as an investor.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Exactly no, you and you want to be thinking about how do I continually make this better, Especially because your rents are probably rising over time, right? So the rents that people paid the first year aren't the same rents that people pay the fifth year, and so you're able to take some of that cash and reinvest it back into the property and continue to create an amazing guest experience. Because guest needs are changing, your ideal client might change too. I love it.

Speaker 2: 23:06

So, Christine, what does success look like If you're, you know, as an owner of short-term, mid-term properties? What does success look like for you?

Speaker 1: 23:18

Yeah, for me. I mean, I think, having great guests and feeling like I'm providing an experience for guests that is memorable for them, when people tell me that they make like amazing memories at my places or that it was home base during a very special time like college graduation, like that, just to me, that lights me up, like that makes my heart swell, I feel really good about that. And there's the financial side as well, um which you know, if we're able to cash flow these properties, like that's also amazing. Um, and we really look at them carefully before we get into them. So they are all cash flowing. Um.

Speaker 2: 23:59

Yeah, I just interrupt you there for a second, because that's really neat, because you know there's a second step to cash flow, right? What does cash flow does is it provides you with time freedom, right? You're not. You're not, then, exchanging time from time for money on everything you do. It's creating it's not passive income, where clearly we're understanding that it's not 100 percent passive. But once you have these properties up and running and you really understand how to attract guests and how to really treat them well and provide, it becomes a little bit easier to manage. But that cash flow gives you the freedom of being able to not have to exchange every hour for money. That's right and we know. Yeah, yeah, I mean for money.

Speaker 1: 24:43

That's right and we know, yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's huge. It first of all having another source of revenue, having a source of cash flow. That is not my main profession. It's a very you know, it's a comforting feeling. I it's as easy as that. It's just nice to know that that is not only cash flowing but also those properties are appreciating and it's really been fun.

Speaker 1: 25:07

And we you and I both know people that have left their nine to five to manage their properties full time and they and continually upgrade them and be looking for the next one, Because I mean, it might sound for a new investor. It might sound like, oh, how do you keep buying properties Well, we'll talk about that on other episodes and using the BRRRR method and taking out equity. So this can become a full time thing for people, and a lot of people are doing this on the side. We at our investor panel this week we talked to several people that have other jobs, like as lawyers, running a law firm and then having several properties that are also cash flowing. So a lot of people are out there doing this, not talking about it as much, or you just may not know and yeah, it's, I would say it's.

Speaker 1: 25:55

It's just really nice to have that income and, you're right, it's not totally passive. You know that I spend time on this and that time seems to go down and I've outsourced more and more of it as we grow. So, yeah, I think it's, it's tremendous. And then not, we haven't even talked about the tax benefits of owning real estate, which are incredible as well. So there's, yeah, there's so many gains. And then to know, I can go down to the Cape on Memorial Day weekend, no problem, I don't have to go. Try to find a place when most you know there's a lot of other people down there. Oh no, I'm going to go down anytime I want to, as long as I think ahead. And it just you start to think about travel differently. You start to think about other places where you might want to have a property, and rarely does the value of the property go down.

Speaker 2: 26:49

So I feel like it's such a great investment. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think that's so interesting and I think it's fun for people as they go to vacation. You know, a good step might be instead of staying in a hotel, like that's exactly what we're doing in Chicago. It was like my gut was to book a hotel, and you know that's how I'm used to traveling right, especially to a city.

Speaker 2: 27:11

And then I was speaking to my son. He said you know, why don't you look at an Airbnb? Chicago is not like Boston where you can do short-term rentals. I said, oh, great idea, and it just it would provide just such a different experience. Now, like my, you know, my daughter will be staying with us, my other sons will be staying with my son, and so she's not in a room by herself or like even it's a joining room. It's just not the same, you know, as being home with somebody. Yeah, refrigerator, right, like breakfast. We already have plans to have have, you know, a dinner at the house one night. You know it just it just makes it a different experience. So, you know, it gives you the chance to start to feel, think about, like, okay, now, when I, when, as a, as an owner of a short-term rental. What's the, what's the experience I want to provide. So I love that. I think a good first step for people is to start staying in in more of these short-term rentals when they travel.

Speaker 1: 28:03

You'll learn. Yeah, I love that so much. You'll learn so much from doing that. We did a trip about four or five years ago to Europe and we stayed in. We were moving around quite a bit and we stayed in Airbnbs. I think we stayed in five different ones over the course of three weeks and it's fascinating because you just learn what you like, what you don't, what you would do differently. You get ideas, you get inspired. Some people have amazing guidebooks for their guests, some people have the best bedding and you're like where is this from? I've got to have this right, yeah yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 28:38

That's really that's great yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:42

Yeah, exactly, that's really. That's really. That's great, yeah, so what are some of the things that people should be thinking about when it comes to, you know, building a team around this? What, like you know, you know what. Who are some of the people that you should have on your team as you get involved in this?

Speaker 1: 28:58

Well, as soon as you have your eye on a property, if it needs some renovation, I would really suggest trying to find people to help you renovate it. So if you're not going to be doing all the work yourself and it's not in your neighborhood, you want to make sure that you've got a contractor, an electrician, a plumber, whatever you're going to outsource. Start looking right away, but don't wait until you close on the property, because you're going to want to start that work as soon as possible so that you can start to book your Airbnb out. I think you also want to really give some thought to how involved you want to be in the property. If it's your first one, it may not be a bad idea. Even if you want to hire a co-host, it may not be a bad idea to start renting it out yourself a little, just so that you can understand what that's like. If it's not for you, that's fine. You can find co-hosts aplenty. They're out there. They're eager for your business. So, finding a good co-host, I would recommend interviewing someone. I mean this could be a whole separate podcast episode how to ask questions and interview a co-host. What to think about if you're going to hire a property manager, what to look for there and with anything.

Speaker 1: 30:02

I think finding the team for me is always about asking people I know and then sometimes asking people I don't know who are native to the area, like you know hey, do you have a good electrician? I can think of, like the last short-term rental that we set up. I was buying some furniture from someone off of Facebook Marketplace and they were super nice and relatable. And they said that, oh, we own a property in the same area and I said, oh, amazing. I said, do you have a great handyman that you like or a handy person that you like? And they did, and they shared it with me, and so I think that's so much more valuable than going online and just finding the person in Google search, because you want, like, a word of mouth referral if you can get one. Otherwise, you want to interview a lot of people and find the right people for you. Find people that you feel like you can trust, find people that have examples of other great work that they've done and have backups, because you never know when your person is on vacation or not going to be available and you have an emergency, so that I would say, like, have a backup in your back pocket, someone that you've talked to before you need them.

Speaker 1: 31:09

And cleaners cleaners is another big one, beth. I think having cleaners that you can trust, that will show up, that you can rely on and again have a backup. We just had to. So we found a great cleaner for our latest setup and then I had a quick turnover. Somebody booked last minute and I asked my property manager to get bring the cleaner and she said, oh, she's on vacation this week. And I said, oh my gosh, wow, I was so glad that I had hired someone else, even though they weren't our first choice. In a pinch they were able to help us out, and you've got to be managing these people.

Speaker 1: 31:47

In the beginning. I have my cleaner send me pictures A lot of times. In this particular case earlier this week, I had her send me pictures of the bedrooms when she was done, of all the rooms, and some things were a little sloppy, so I had to go back to her and ask her to go back. She had left and I said I really have to ask you to go back and set up the rooms to look like the pictures that the guests see. And so she did, and so it is that you have an expectation and your guests have an expectation. We didn't even get into marketing the properties, but you want to market and we talk about this in our A to Z Airbnb course. We didn't even get into marketing the properties, but you want to market and we talk about this in our A to Z Airbnb course. We have at least one whole class on marketing and we talk about it throughout, really showcasing what you've got so that guests can really understand what it would be like to stay there and then being able to deliver on that.

Speaker 2: 32:40

Yeah, so important. Let's talk a little bit about our course, the AZ Airbnb course. It's eight different sessions where we get into everything that we talked about today, almost in the same progression that we've we followed this podcast. So we start about out about you know, where should you buy? What kind of Airbnb do you want? What do you want your brand to be like? We get into how do you analyze the numbers. We provide spreadsheets and all the details of everything that we sort of discussed today. We get into how to furnish it and what kind of amenities to put in there. We get into how to run it and how to price it, how to market it, how to find guests, and then we get into how to communicate best with guests. We give you examples of technology you can use if you want to do it yourself.

Speaker 1: 33:32

I mean, there's so many other resources available.

Speaker 2: 33:35

Yeah, exactly, I mean, this course is chock full of information we give, we tell you, like, from down to the the details of what is the best lock to buy, to what cameras do you have, or security systems, to as widespread as how do you analyze property. So I think it's a really great way for people to take what we talked about today and really drill down into a lot more detail.

Speaker 1: 34:03

Exactly If you're thinking about an Airbnb and you're feeling like the process feels like a big one, this course is for you and I think it's. I think it's such a great value because there's so much in here and it's self-paced, so you get to run the courses as you want. It comes with an awesome workbook so you can in other resources too yeah, we go room to from.

Speaker 2: 34:28

We go room to room like we'll take the kitchen and we'll give you a list of all the things you need to buy for your kitchen. You let's go from to the bedroom, like what you know how many um pillows and blankets should you have for guests? We have recommendations on like the best towels. I mean, it's everything you need to know. It's great.

Speaker 1: 34:48

It's really great, yep. So, yeah, I love that, and I think for people that want to get started, that want more direct contact and coaching, then our coaching is a really great resource for that, too. So we will guide you through six personalized sessions on zoom, an hour each, with the ability to access us in between those calls where we support you in everything, whatever it is that you want to work on specifically. So it's very personalized for you and it is like having a coach in your pocket to guide you through the process. So, um, it's fun for that, too, you know it's.

Speaker 2: 35:24

yeah, we we've just wrapped up um working with it, with somebody that bought them but ended up buying.

Speaker 2: 35:30

We can help you find an agent who specializes in investment properties and specifically short-term investment properties, all throughout the country, thanks to our great network here with EXP.

Speaker 2: 35:43

But that was really fun to do that Like we took somebody that knew she had an inkling that she wanted to be a real estate investor. We knew she wanted to, in this case, own a midterm rental. We helped her identify several markets. We helped her decide which market. We put her in touch with an agent and just helped her through the process, like you know, being a resource to say which way should I set this room up, and you know she would send us pictures of some sketches she had and we could give her some feedback on that, just like another set of resources, somebody that you can trust, that who's you know been through a lot with real estate to help with that. So we will put a link for both the A to Z Airbnb course and how to work with us, as with our coaching program, in the show notes. Christine, you've been so helpful today. Thank you for being such an open book, for sharing so much of your experience.

Speaker 2: 36:39

Thank you for being such an open book, for sharing so much of your experience this has been. You know, the lessons learned from running a short-term rental are plentiful and thank you for sharing so many of them Anytime.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Absolutely. This has been great. Thank you so much.