Everything you need to know about Serviced Accommodation and how to get started

Welcome. This is a very special episode. And this episode you're about to watch, my conversation with Trish McGear, all about service to accommodation and also those of you who do watch to the very end, Trish will be giving you a free download that you can take and keep for your phone, for your computer, for your iPad, and it's called her Cuddle method. So make sure you watch to the very end where she explains about that. So without further ado, this is my conversation with Trish McGee.

Thank you, Mark, for having me along. And for those of you who may need some subtitles, this is a Belfast accent, just in case. Serviced accommodation has become one of the strategies that's blown up on the back of Airbnb, booking.com and that kind of stuff. So that's kind of where I come in and that's where I've cut my teeth in service accommodation and corporate lets.

When you are looking to take the training that you've got from service, accommodation, weekends and whatnot, and you're looking to put theory into practice, which is where so many people fall down, what tips and advice? How can we go from the theory to doing? How can we go to finding our first property or first properties to agree to this rent to rent model? What sort of ideas can you shed here?

Right, so the first thing I would say, and it's the, it's the, it's the essence of all good marketing and that number one is who is the client that you think is going to go into that property? You know, am I looking for apartments, am I looking for two bed properties? I'm looking for three bed, am I looking for, you know, do they have to have en suites? Know what your market is? So again, are you going for the regular kind of, you know, weekend, dare I say, people who are coming in and they're tourists coming into that area, are they going to be more corporate type clients, are they going to be bigger groups, are they going to be smaller? You've got to pick what you think is your marketplace. So the first thing I'd say is do your research in your area. There's no point in rocking up and having a property and find out you can't get the bloody thing let and you can't get it booked. Number one, research.

This is obviously, it's a big thing research, knowing the area, knowing your client, knowing all of this, we call it the customer avatar and then the boostly academy world. So where's the next steps then? So you've done all of this, you've found the area. What do you then do in your advice? What do you teach on these programs? When you're looking to take that next step, people are looking to go to the estate agent or the owner.

So when you've decided on your area, looking at whether you're corporate or whether you're going to do the holiday trade, the passing trade, the weekend trade or a bit of a mix and you've worked out which property, the next thing you want to do is, and this is easy to do, set up a rightmove plus account. Go into rightmove, pick the area geographically that you're looking at, draw a border around it and look for the properties in that area that are for let's that fit the kind of format you've just discussed. Your ideal customer avatar probably wants a two bedroom apartment with a nice ensuite. They want parking, they want close to city centre, they want something modern. You can then use a rightmove plus account to draw a nice little map in the comfort of your home with a gin and tonic in your hand and pick out the properties that fit that profile and then start to knock them off the list. So before you've even gone to an agent, you've now narrowed that maybe a list of several hundred properties down to 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 properties for you potentially to ring fence as they should be on, they should be on.

Your watch list and then again doing a bit of research on those 10. What would you recommend? If they've got those 10, would they then go and look at them? Maybe the streets, the areas, the amenities?

Absolutely, yep. The next thing I would do when I'm looking at those properties, I'm then looking at, you're taking cues from what you're seeing. So what you're looking at is you're filtering them by the price per month. But you also want to take cues from what you can see on the screen, the description of the property. Does it look like it's available? Like right now you want to look at condition of the property. What do the pictures look like of that property? Does it look like it's been looked after? Does it look like you're going to have to put a bit of money into it because you might be solving the landlord problem. If you come along and say, look, I want to rent that property, I'm going to put some money into it which is going to improve it. I'm going to give you a really good rent on it for a period of time, but you're going to have to give me some leeway for me to make, you know, obviously my money back by doing something different. But you've got to take cues by actually reading the text, looking at the picture, and seeing what the evidence is telling you about that listing.

So here's a question. From all the years that you've done this and from all the people that you've seen and coached Ruby's process, what is the biggest mistake that people make at this stage?

Okay, I think the biggest mistake is that people go in, they've been on a course and like, hey, we've all done it and I've done it, come fresh out of a course, full of ideas, full of enthusiasm. But you then go out and the first thing you do is you stumble into an estate agent with a vague idea of what you're looking for, a vague idea of what you can afford to put into the property, and you're using language that the agent has heard 100 million times before from everybody else who's ever come off a course. So the biggest mistake is not actually doing the due diligence yet, not being really clear on your avatar, not being really clear on your market, not being really clear on the sort of property that you need to acquire for the marketplace you want to be in, and not being clear on the costs, not being clear on how much you're going to need for the light fittings, the knives, the forks, the spoon, all your setup costs. That's not even accounting for what you have to pay the agent. And if you're going to go in and talk business, you need to be really, really clear.

This is maybe something that the world of hospitality can teach the world of service accommodation, of exactly the overheads, everything that you need for your property. Like having two of everything. You know, it's something simple as having two of everything, maybe three of everything, depending on how often you want to flip these serviced accommodations. So, okay, we've done it. We've narrowed it down 700 to say seven. And we've gone from seven down to three, and you're ready. So you've done your research, you figured out the overheads, you figured out the costings down to the minute detail. You're ready, you've got good questions. What's next?

I think the scariest thing for some people is to go into an estate agent and start to talk about. I want to, you know, so they all talk about corporate lets. Most people go, I've got corporate lets, I've got clients that are ready to book that property. And I just want to you know, whatever, whatever state agent is a business person. Their responsibility is not to you, their responsibility is to their landlord. So you have to talk in a way that is to the benefit of the landlord. So again, I think one of the mistakes we make when we're novices at this and when we're new in any business is that we're busy talking about money. You know, I'm going to give the landlord more money, I'm going to give the agent more money. I'm going to, you know, it's going to be, you know the phrases I hear people use all the time. This is going to be maintenance free. La la la. If you think an agent has never heard somebody say those words before, you are, you're living under a rock.

I think the expression that comes to mind is you can't bullshit a bullshitter.

Totally, totally. So if you go in to see an agent, you go in and you go in with a sample of maybe one or two properties that are of specific interest to you.

Yeah.

I would also recommend that when you go, you go in and you are very clear on what you're saying, the sort of client you have and you're upfront with the agent that it is your intention to put your corporate clients into that property. Now, this is where it gets sticky because an agent will say, what other experience do you have? And this is where someone's bottom falls out and they think, well, I haven't got any. It's always really good to bring someone with you who has that credibility and experience to get you going and get over that. When you are specific with an agent, when you go in with costings, when you go in showing that you are ready and willing and able to move on the deal now and you can sign off on that property, then you are much more likely to have an agent say, I will put that proposition in front of my landlord. Those are the words you want to hear. Yeah.

What if I've done the relevant training but I haven't got a friend or someone nearby that I could reach out to? What would you recommend?

Don't forget it's also talking to other landlords. So there are some things you can do. And it's the same kind of scenario if you're in property networks. You want to be keeping your ears open for other landlords who've got properties that they're saying, I'm sick and tired of dealing with tenants. I'm fed up, I'm out of the game. Because your next deal could come from a referral of Another landlord. It doesn't have to be through an agent. Above everything else, this is about relationship building. And all too often what we're trying to do is we're trying to think that just the money on the table is what will get people to say yes. It doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank if you don't come across as credible and trustworthy. Okay? So the first thing I would say is make sure that you are relationship building with the agent. So don't expect the agent to give you a deal the first time you meet because most agents, including when I was an agent, will see somebody once and that person will never be seen again. You are not going to give that person your deal. You're going to give the person the deal or pick up the phone and call them and say, I have a landlord here with a property that's sticking. But you will call that person who's invested in the, in the relationship with you. So please, please, please, you're going to do this. Use this as a long term strategy and put in the work to build relationships with your network.

I love this. I really appreciate your time here. Trisha Anderson, you've shared some amazing content for anybody who is, who is at that, right at that beginner stage. Now my question is how can people reach out to you if they want to find out more about this stage? How can people contact you? How can people find out more? How can people get on a call with you to find out more and how you can help?

Right. Well, one of the things that I do, because I am very much into the whole relationship building thing and I'm going to give this to people listening as a bit of a gift. I am going to give you a little checklist download that's called the Cobbles model. And this is a way for you to remember when you are negotiating, whether you're negotiating with an agent or whether you're negotiating with a landlord. The Cobbles model is a way for you to remember what you should be doing in that conversation or in that negotiation. Okay? And on the bottom of that little download mark is a link. Now that link enables people to book a call with me and they can talk about any subject in relation to their business, whether that's how to negotiate better, how to put their pitch forward, how to, how to summarize what their deal is, how to get their finances together on the deal. They could talk to me about any of those things on that.