Short Term Rental Riches

Compared to the hotel industry, the short-term rental industry is still just a small share of the pie. Although it is growing! And not just growing but merging with the hotel industry. The hotel industry is taking note of the STR industry and vice versa. But at the end of the day, the hotel industry is still a giant and the travel industry’s leader. Some hotel chains have tens of thousands of rooms and so they have access to incredible data. Data on the return of work travel, data on the average length of stay and average price, and perhaps most interestingly, data on the future outlook of the travel industry as a whole!This week I want to share some insights I learned from a conference I recently attended with some of the biggest players in the industry. I think you will find what they had to say to be quite exciting :) A quick review on:  The great “merger”  Is business travel returning?  What areas are most ripe for investment?  Industry expert’s opinion on a potential “recession” Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.S.  I'm excited to share that we've just locked in our dates for our next live event in Memphis! It takes place August 19-21 (Friday-Sunday). So if you're interested in learning the ins-and-outs to successfully acquiring your first STR or the tools you'll need to scale your STR empire to the moon, come join us! More info here P.P.S. Did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here

Whether you sold your house, decided not to rent your home any longer, are doing a major renovation, or dropped the ball and got some bad initial reviews with your short-term rental, you might want to consider deleting it. This week, we will talk about how to delete your Airbnb listing (not your entire account!) and what other different Airbnb alternatives are worth pursuing before making that final and irreversible decision. I have removed quite a few listings myself over the years and so this week I’ll share with you my experiences and some facts on: Why you might delete your listing Before and after considerations How to delete your Airbnb listing  Airbnb Alternatives you might want to consider Can Airbnb deactivate my listing? Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

There are times when a man’s best friend gets promoted to its highest calling, as a crucial companion for members of the community. As a service animal. Today, a lot of people rely on them to help assist with disabilities. This higher calling however brings about a new set of rules you need to know in regards to your short-term rentals. By law, we have to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate service animals. But what about emotional support animals? (ESAs)How do you really know the difference between a service animal, an ESA, and a pet? And how do they exactly fit in our short-term rentals? It gets tricky. So, this week we’re busting all the common myths about service animals and vacation rentals. We will discuss: What’s a “Service Animal”  What’s an “Emotional Support Animal” (ESA) What’s the difference??? Can you deny them? The questions you can ask Airbnb and Vrbo policies Can you charge pet fees? Here is a link to Airbnb’s policiesAre you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.s. did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here

Have you considered putting out the welcome mat for the furry, four-legged travelers of the world? Well, there’s a pretty substantial market for pet-friendly vacation rentals. Study shows that more than half of pet owners bring their furry friends along on vacations and this is becoming the trend. According to Airbnb, the most popular amenities right now include wifi, free parking, and..a pet-friendly space! There is also growing evidence that pet-friendly properties are more lucrative than their non-pet neighbors. For starters, pet owners tend to stay longer in one location, meaning higher occupancy rates for your property, which also means maximizing the potential for earning in your listing.  The question of whether or not to allow pets, however, is not an easy one. Many short-term rental owners have split opinions on the subject. If you are wondering if maybe offering pet-friendly properties isn’t a bad idea, after all, there are some simple ways and ideas to accommodate man’s best friend and protect our properties at the same time. This week, we’ll discuss: Pros and cons   Expectations to include in house rules Pet-proof your rental (Furnishing for your pets) Pet fees and cleaning fees How to request money for accidental damage to property? Longer-term stays (people don’t leave their pets at home forever) Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.s. did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here

Why is it that we can have two identical properties right next to each other but one waaay outperforms the other? Just a small change in occupancy or our average daily rate has a big impact on our bottom line so we need to ensure our short-term rentals are advertised in the best way possible. Monitoring our properties against themselves or monitoring their performance, however, can be a bit confusing. There are so many changes we can make to our listings on Airbnb or wherever we have them listed but how do we know if they are actually going to make a difference? In short, we need to measure them. What doesn’t get measured can be managed, as the common saying goes. So this week we’re going to talk about three ways you can measure the performance of your short-term rentals after making a change to see if they are performing better! And if you have more than one property already make sure to tune in to the bonus tip (#4) that might make things a bit easier for you :)This week: Listing performance insights Conversion rates Page views An easily exportable report with data you need Comparing one property to another Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.s. did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here

I know the hesitation. You’re staring at your Airbnb listing wondering… is this the right title? Is this the best title? Did I charge the right cleaning fee? Should I change my photos and descriptions? Am I missing something? Because we rely so heavily on listings sites like Airbnb and VRBO to advertise our properties for rent as short-term rentals, it's important that we do what they want when it comes to our online listing setup. It’s only right that we do what they ask, isn’t it? Would your property be staying booked so easily without them? Hopefully! But for many of us, that’s not the case, after all, they do spend $100s of millions on advertising on our behalf :) And so when I say “do what they ask” I'm actually referring to machines. Yes, machines. I can say with 100% certainty that on the other side of our computer screen there is not a human being reviewing our listings; it is a machine. A machine looking for certain data that it can plug into its algorithms to let Airbnb know that the listing is in fact a good one or a bad one less deserving of lucrative reservations.  So how do we make these search algorithms (machines) happy to ensure that our listings are viewed by as many people as possible? That’s what we’ll uncover this week in a quick episode breaking down the top five. Doing what they ask Completing the listing sections (correctly) Safety features A few pointers in regards to photos  Keeping up on our listing (Monitor)  Superhost metrics: (VRBO “premier host”)   Refer back to some of the prior episodes mentioned this week: Episode 118 (listing titles) Episode 70 (Must have photos) and Episode 91 (what NOT to do with your photos) Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.s. did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here

Operating short-term rentals will give you a new appreciation for the spaces we live in. It gets us thinking more about interior design but it also has us thinking about how durable our interior design will be. Or at least you should be thinking that if you already have a rental property. How well will your rental hold up to guests coming in and out on a regular basis? It would be hard to argue that every guest (or long-term tenant) will treat our properties exactly the way we do. As a result, we’re likely to get some additional wear and tear. But not all parts of a rental will receive the same amount of wear. Normal wear and tear are all based on usage and if there is one place I can guarantee your guests will always use, it's the bathroom. So because it gets used every time a guest stays with you it needs a little more attention. We’ll shed some light on wear and tear this week with a focus on our bathrooms. Including:    The bathroom items that will wear out Budgeting A couple items you need but don’t want your guests to see An item you probably haven’t thought about (you will need) Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live event, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.s. did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here

I feel super fortunate to have been able to meet and become friends with some really big-time real estate investors. A friend of mine owns and manages roughly $400 million between himself and his investors’ portfolio so when he starts changing the way he does something my ears perk up. I’ll get to what he says shortly into this week’s episode but for now, I’d like to ask you if you can think of anywhere where a property costs less five years ago than it does today? I didn’t think so.  Prices have skyrocketed in most real estate markets. I know that is not news to most of you but what exactly is it that makes you think these properties are expensive? Yes, the price is certainly higher but are they actually more expensive? For me, a property is expensive when it no longer makes money. When it can’t cash flow. When the rents and income no longer exceed the expenses it takes to own the property. That is the point when a property (for me) does not become a sound investment option. And so if we look at it that way then a property’s sales price actually has much less to do with the whole equation.If you’re looking for one more nudge to help you pull the trigger, I’ve got another metric for you: price per square foot (psf). It allows you to compare between properties and provide a whole bunch of insight to help you make a better-informed decision. So this week we’ll talk all about that and:  Past Prejudices Using today’s numbers to make a decision All about Price Per Square Foot (PSF) What causes PSF to change Construction Costs Check here for stats. And new home  source ▪  Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.s. did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here

The fewer questions we receive from our guests the easier it is to manage our short-term rentals and if it’s easier it’s likely that we will continue doing it and building our portfolios! At the same time, receiving fewer questions also indicates that our guests have everything they need! So we talk a lot about communication on this channel and how to best serve our guests. One of those ways that we highly recommend is to have a digital guidebook. It’s not just about communication but it's how we are communicating and a digital guidebook allows us to relay information in a very easy and visibly pleasing way. This week we’re going to talk about how we can get our recommendations and property information over to our guests using a FREE option that doesn’t require a software subscription.  We’ll be using my favorite program in the world! I use it every day in both my business and my personal life and couldn’t imagine staying organized without it. And I know that ANYONE with a short-term rental could benefit from using it.This week's episode we’ll dive into:    Sharing info with your guests efficiently Providing better instructions Creating a FREE digital Guidebook Creating a FREE digital Housekeeping checklist Listen to my episode about Notion here and you can check it out online at www.Notion.so  Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live event, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.s. did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here

There is quite a lot that goes into furnishing a property and I’m not just talking about the money. It takes some thought. A good design takes work and since it is such a crucial element to the success of your short-term rental you want to make sure you do it right. You may think you have the interior design skills your guests will be seeking out but are you sure? The first place we like to start is with a floor plan or what you could call our “road map” (see last week's episode #125). In addition to outsourcing your floor plans, you can easily hire someone on Fiverr or Upwork to help you with the virtual design!  Other sites are taking that even one step further… You can now actually order all of the furniture they have recommended from the same exact place where you got your design help! Pretty cool right. And easy. So this week we’ll talk about a couple of options and break them down:  What exactly can these virtual designers do?  Where can you find them?  How much do they cost?  Coordinated order purchases - time Are they actually worth it?  Check out Modsy here and Amazon Showroom here Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well. Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)  You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live event, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more! P.s. did you know that we just launched a mastermind group where we can talk directly? Find out more info here