How To Be A Successful STR Host: Tips From A Pro

Hey.

Hey. Welcome to another episode of the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics and the training and the confidence on how you can get more direct bookings. So my name is Liam Carolan and I'm Mark Simpson's co host. Today we're going behind the Host which is the mini series where we look dive into a successful and interesting short term rental host and their business. We're going to be asking some questions questions and really extracting the juicy information which you can then take within your business and implement and just hear about general success stories and things which are interesting to other hosts. So today we're actually going behind the behind the Host with Stephanie Figueros from Alora Hosting. Welcome along Stephanie. How are you doing today?

Good, good. Thank you for having me, Liam. Happy to be here.

I'm happy to, happy to have you here. I know we've spoke before in the past about the websites. I know you've just, just as we record this, you've, you've had your speaking gig at STR nations, which is amazing. So I'm really excited to dive into your business and I'm not going to spoil anything for people listening in. I'm going to let you introduce yourself. So first question is, is who is Stephanie, where are you in the world and what do you love most about hosting?

Yep. So I'm Stephanie Figueros. I am from Southern California, specifically Banning or the Inland Empire. It's about two hours east of la actually if you're going to Joshua Tree or Palm Springs. I am the last piece of civilization before the desert. So that's usually how people are able to find out where exactly I am. And the best part about hosting for me it's I'm a registered nurse turned real estate investor entrepreneur and the satisfaction that I get from hosting guests is pretty much the same as what I used to get from taking care of patients and seeing them go home, except this time they're going on vacation. And it's so much nicer because we're starting at usually around a 10 instead of a 2. And all we got to do is maintain those expectations and go above and beyond. So that's something that I really love about hosting.

How many of the properties are you looking after and what kind of model do you use?

So right now as far as running or managing, I'm at 8. California, Texas, Tennessee and Florida. I have a mix of houses that I own, houses that I partner on and then houses that I co host for the ones that I co host for are actually out here in California currently. And the ones that I own and partner on are the ones that are in Texas, Tennessee and Florida looking to expand into other areas or markets as well. But the cool thing is doing it once with one state or one market, you can easily apply that to a different market. So I think that's kind of a little bit special, especially being on the west coast when the majority of my properties are on the east coast.

When it comes down to the model that you use, you mentioned that you've actually got a couple of things going on there. So there's properties that you're partnered on, but you also do co hosting as well. Why have you decided to go into those two different models? Is there reasons that you've decided to go in those two different models? And how did you get started in which one came first?

I honestly think a lot of it was just the natural progression. I started with my own properties. I actually started with arbitrage first kind of accidentally while I was looking to purchase. So I don't have that arbitrage anymore. But that was kind of my proof of concept of being able to host and to do this Before I dove in and just started putting money back into a down payment. But then I started running out of my DTI or my for debt to service ratio or debt to income ratio. It was getting maxed out. So in order for me to continue to acquire, it started to be where people noticed what I was doing with my own properties and wanted to participate, but didn't want to do all the work and wanted to do it with me. So that led to joint venturing and then eventually I had other people who wanted me to run their properties for them. And at the time I didn't have the bandwidth to be able to do it successfully and to do it well. But now that I've built that bandwidth in that system, now we're into co hosting as well, while also continuing to acquire our own personal deal. But we pretty much just treat everybody's properties as if it's ours. And I guess that's the cool part of it too. They get to pretty much be the hands off part of it. And whatever we use for our own operations, we just apply it to their properties.

So take me back to before you got into hospitality, you mentioned you were a nurse, but how did. What was the moment where you went, hey, do you know what, I'm going to switch nursing for hospitality. Take us up to that moment and was it start just by yourself or was there you know, sort of other people involved.

Sure. So for me, I left the hospital during the pandemic. I think I hit a light bulb moment in the hospital that this wasn't going to be what the rest of my life looks like. I've been a nurse for about eight years now and I think just hitting that pandemic level really just put the, lit the fire. So I decided I wanted to create a life by my own design. Didn't know how I was going to do it, but found that real estate was really the best vehicle and to be able to have that flexibility, time, freedom that I truly wanted. So I worked, I took a position to work from home while I learned how to do real estate investing as a nurse. And then at that point my boyfriend and I, we do this together. We pretty much just learned everything we could through podcast, YouTube videos, reading and short term rentals. Just I, for whatever reason, I just felt like this is, I really like the travel aspect of it. It really fit into the lifestyle I wanted to live. So I, that's, I just was like this has to be it. But funny enough, my first in person meetup in California, everyone told me to not do short term rentals and it was because nobody was really doing it, at least where I lived. And so it wasn't until I kind of expanded my horizons and I came full circle after diving into other different strategies and real estate, mobile home flipping, wholesaling, none of them was really panned out because for me it was just like, I'm going to make it work with short term rental investing. I don't know how but, but I'll figure it out. And eventually it led to why I do long distance real estate investing. And now I'm. I was the one thing I was so scared of doing just because of that you're not next to your property. But now I feel like it is one of the best things to do is to get outside of your own neighborhood because now it's like everything is possible. And I think that's kind of what that taught me.

So what is your day to day role in your business at the moment? Is there anybody else, you know, partnered or is there anybody else on your team who helps you as well?

Sure. So we've evolved a little bit. I used to kind of be the, I wore every single hat for the most part between my boyfriend and myself. I did more so of the operations, acquisitions. He kind of helped on the back end with maintaining our bookkeeping, financial aspect and keeping attention to that. But now with allure hosting. I partnered with two of our really good friends. One that's an awesome marketer actually for Google, and then another, you've met him, Omar, that's. He's a CPA for commercial. Commercial assets. So partnering with them on growing this, my role has kind of evolved into. I've taught what I know about the operations aspect and because I've worn all the hats, I know pretty much every aspect of what we do on the marketing side, operations, hiring, maintaining, and so on, so forth. But now I kind of do more on the acquisitions end and I oversee like all of our virtual assistants and make sure that everything is moving forward in each lane. They all have, everybody has their own departments. I'm kind of like that backdrop of it to make sure that it's going smoothly. And then when it comes to questions on all aspects of the business, I'm usually that go to person just because I have worn that hat for a while with multiple properties while I was still working at the time. So, yep, that's kind of where I am at this point.

Thank you so much, Stephanie. So is there anything that I've missed or any questions or final thoughts before we close things off?

No, not that I can think of. This was super fun. Liam, thank you again for having me.

It's been so fun. Thank you so much for spending your time with us. And of course, if you're listening to this on the podcast or watching on the live, thank you so much for putting your attention with Boostie. I know there's so many places you can put your attention and you know, we just really thank you for putting it with us. And hopefully you've got some good sort of nuggets of information from this and I've certainly learned more about Stephanie A. Laura hosting and I'm excited to see what you guys do in the future. So I'm sure we'll speak again. Stephanie, thank you so much for coming on and bye for now. Bye.

Thank you.

Having a blast Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard on the tea is loose leaf making up those rhymes don't write it just do it loosely.