How to get started with Serviced Accommodation. With Trish McGirr S6E2

Foreign. Welcome to the Boost Hospitality Podcast. My name is Mark Simpson and season six of this podcast is all about serviced accommodation. This episode is with a guest called Trish McGear. Trish is one of the leading experts in negotiation. So if you are looking to get into serviced accommodation and you are struggling to get over the research, the planning and how to convince an estate agent or a landlord to let you rent their property on a rent to rent model, this is the episode for you. Make sure you listen right to the very end because Trish is going to leave us with a free download that you can get to discover her cuddle method. So without further ado, please sit back, listen and enjoy my episode with Trish McGeer to the boost Hospitality Podcast. Could you please introduce you for anybody who doesn't know who you are and what you do and what we're going to be talking about today, please?

Yeah, no problem. 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. Yeah, Mark, as I say, really, really pleased to be along. And I'll give you the potted version of me because you can see by this white hair, I'm slightly older. You know, those who are watching, you know, this is a bit like that one where they say about the. If you're watching in black and white, you know, anyway, this white hair, you know, gives you an idea about how old I am anyway. But I've been around property since 2004, but long before I was a property person, I've been a business consultant and trainer, a professional trainer, if you want to call me that, and a professional business consultant for many, many years. And I came into property in 2004 because I wanted to build up my pension because I had left the nhs, Mark, so, like a lot of folk apparently got a gold clad pension. But at the moment when I left the nhs, I realized, oh crumbs, I don't have anything to fall back on. And property became something that I looked at sort of four or five years after I set my first business up. Since 2004, I've probably been out there and tried virtually every property strategy that there is and for anybody who's listening or watching right now are thinking, oh, yeah, that sounds like me, yeah, I was one of those people who chased the shiny penny for a while. A new strategy came out, I wanted to find out about it. Now, that might be the trainer in me because I'm always curious, but I also don't believe the hype and as I say so, I've tried virtually every property strategy out there, some very successfully, some not so, but I also set up a letting agency. So where I came into understanding anything about service accommodation is when I ran my estate agency, we actually did corporate lets. And our agency was based in the northwest and we did corporate lets over in Rochdale. When the holiday company Air Tours, which is now a part, I think of tui, I think the air tours finished, they folded. But they used to bring their holiday reps back from abroad, bring them back to the UK and they needed accommodation, but they didn't want to do normal book normal lets. What they wanted is they wanted fully furnished, fully done up properties, knives, forks, spoons, cup saucers, the whole thing. They effectively wanted a corporate let for a six month period of the year. And whenever I had my agency and had some properties, I was like, oh, okay, this, this doesn't sound that attractive because six months of the year I'm going to find a tenant. The six months of the year it's going to be a bit of a pain in the ass because I'm going to be flush, but I've got to do the property up. But what happened was Ertur's basically agreed with us at the time that if we took five of our properties and did them up to a really good standard, not only would they give us top, top dollar for renting those properties to them, but that they would give us a retainer on those properties for the months that they were not available for lettings. So that's how I came in to finding out anything about inadverted commas, corporate lets and of course now you. Here we are in the marketplace and 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.

Nice. So Moving forward to 2019, where are you currently with the world of SA? Where do you currently specialize? What, where do you like to work? What sort of passion projects are you currently working on in the moment?

Right, the thing that I absolutely love and the thing that I think I'm bringing more now to the marketplace is going back to my learning and development hat on. Because when we set up some service accommodation in the Northeast, I basically did a joint venture with someone who had a couple of properties and wanted to expand. Now he didn't have the level of experience that I have not again in corporate lettings. Never mind. And you know, in doing sort of property generally. And I agree that we would partner up and we would go and we'd take on some more properties, we'd negotiate with some estate agents and we'd do it on a basically rent to rent basis. So he needed my credibility, my experience and I needed his legs on the ground basically. So we partnered up to do that and that was very, very successful because what we took on board was a corporate client very similar to the Artur's model, who needed something for an extended period of time for a number of staff. But what I brought more to that wasn't the front end of service accommodation, so it wasn't doing the cleaning the beds and sorting that. My bit is very much negotiating, getting to the first part because you'll never get the place left if you. First of all, if you can't negotiate with an agent or an owner to let you have their property, especially during the rent to rent model. And if you do have corporate clients who need a period of time. People always talk, I hear, take people talk about corporate model, but the problem with the corporate model is you're dealing with a body corporate. You have to speak in a language they understand and you have to offer them a package that is very attractive and doesn't just feel like a hotel booking. It needs to be a packaged offer that's put across the right way. And that's the bit that I specialize in. It's a bit that I've always been good at because that's the world I've come from. And that's the bit that I bring to the table now when I'm working with people.

I like that. So this is what we're going to talk about today. On today's episode, we're going to talk about, number one, how to approach a owner or an estate agent to agree to a rent to rent model. We're going to go and we're going to cover the biggest mistakes that you see other people making at this stage. We're going to talk about many things. But where I do really want to focus and start off this conversation, what you spoke about. So before you've even got people through the door, before you do any of that, 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 ide 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? Because again I see people kind of just going, well I'm just going out, speaking to agents and I'm looking at, you know, am I looking for apartments, am I looking for two bed properties, I'm looking for three bed, I'm 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 because it's no different to buying a property. Do you buy a single let property to put a family in or do you go for an hmo because you're looking in an area where there's a bigger demand for that type of thing. 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.

So we've done the research, we found the area, how do you go? I mean 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 boost the 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, right?

So the next thing is, so if you've decided in any given year, you've decided the sort of properties that look like they have the highest level of demand. And again as we know, this is corporate, this is hospitality Mark. We're not talking about buy to let properties where there's going to be someone in for six months, okay? So you've got to work out, you know, your nightly rate, you've got to work out what your running costs of that property are going to be, whether there's someone with a head in the bed or not?

Yeah.

Again I see people doing it back to front and it's kind of like well I'm reckon on that property I could get 60 quid a night and therefore that. But you've got to work out your running costs on the good days and the bad days. So when you've decided on your area, you know, looking at whether you're corporate or whether you're going to do the holiday trade, the pass and trade, the weekend trade or a bit of a mix. Yeah. 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 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, whatever. 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.

I like that. Picking out like a right move plus account going on, draw a big circle, narrowing down 700 properties to maybe 10 and then again doing a bit of research on those 10. What would you recommend if they've got those 10 would Dave then go and look at them? A bit of streets, the areas, the amenities.

Yeah. 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. Okay. Because these are going to be probably rental properties could do this. We could get really detailed here and we could talk about doing them on sales properties as well. But that's a slightly different strategy. But we'll talk about rent to rent for now. So you're looking at ones that are up for rent and you're looking at, you know, filter 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? Okay. Because we want to pick out landlords who are likely to be motivated to get rid of that property sooner rather than later. So if the price is maybe slightly lower than others, that indicates the landlord might be getting a wee bit twitchy about getting rid of it. 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, obviously, my money back by doing something different. But you've got to take cues by actually reading the text, looking at the picture, seeing what the evidence is telling you about that listing.

Yeah. So really good advice there. Loads of notes to be taken. I'm making notes, literally, as I go along. So here's a question from all the years that you've done this and from all the people that you've seen in Coach Ruber'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. I've heard the stories from the guy on the stage who said, last year he was living in a truck, and then this year he's got his Porsche on the driveway. You know, I've heard those stories and run off thinking, that could be me. But I then. 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.

I Like that.

Okay. And not being clear on the costs that, that this is to set up. Mark, I could throttle guys who are in training, who. Listen, we all want the dream of being financially free, but this is not a zero cost strategy. Okay. You're going to have to build, bring that property up to a standard that is suitable for the client you want. That means if you don't have the money yourself, you're going to have to get someone on board who has the money. Yeah. So that's another big mistake, not being clear on how much you're going to need for the light fittings, the knives, the forks, all your setup costs. And that's not even accounting for what you have to pay the agent because the agent may want some more money. Okay. To take a bigger deposit. And if you're going to go in and talk business, you need to be really, really clear.

Yeah, definitely. I think. And 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 would be free of everything. Depending on how often you want to flip these serviced accommodations. If you are going to go for the weekend travelers, touristy routes and then in the weekdays fill it with contractors and business people, you know, you're going to have a quicker turnaround. So, yeah, I think, you know, failing to prepare, preparing to fail. And that's fantastic advice for anybody who is at the very beginning stage of all of this, then absolutely follow Trish's advice there because that's massive. 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've figured out the overheads, you've figured out the costings down to the minute detail. You're ready, you've got good questions. What's next? What's the next bit of advice?

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. You know, an estate agent is a business person and they have to first and foremost take their landlord's expectations into account. Number one, 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 first. Yeah. 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 Mummy. 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 la. If you think an agent has never heard somebody say those words before, you are on, 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, my advice is always this, as you say, you don't go in and saying, have you any properties? And you certainly don't go in saying anything. I'll consider anything. Because the agent just goes, this person hasn't got a freaking clue what they're talking about. So you go in and you go in with a sample of maybe one or two properties that are of specific interest to you. 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 and I have no credibility and I've never done this before and it's my first one, it's always really good to bring someone with you who has that credibility and experience to get you going and get over that. Now this is where I'd like to tell you a story, if you don't mind, Mark, because it illustrates this point. Because as I was saying before at the start, I did a deal with a guy up in the Northeast, two guys up in the Northeast, actually, who didn't have as much experience, but they had a property and they had a lead. The property didn't really suit the lead because the lead was a really juicy, good one. And it would have been very easy just to say, I can't close this deal because I don't have the property. So this is what I would say. Even if you have an inquiry, that's a good, solid inquiry, not a booking for next Week, by the way. But a client who is saying, I believe you might be able to help me and you are of service to your client, you can legitimately use that inquiry. It could be by email, by the way, which is what we have in the email inquiry, which said, I have a requirement for this number of people for this number of months, and this is the daily rate that we're thinking of paying. Okay? Now, this is really good leverage because it is true and it is specific. So you're not bullshitting. So we took this inquiry and I drove the three hours from my home up to the northeast because I could get me good suit on and I could walk in with experience because I've been an agent and talk to the agent about the sort of property that we needed to fulfill this requirement. And we pointed out one property that we thought met that was a close enough match. But we said we had a problem because for us to do something with it, we needed a decision quickly. And we needed to be able to get access to the keys so that the property could be done up quickly so that the client could move in within five days. Now, I'm not suggesting everybody's going to do that, but it is a very specific, and it was a true case and it did work, believe you me. The guys, the poor guys were all weekend painting and decorating this property, okay? And they literally turned this around in a weekend, which included painting it, decorating it, putting in the furniture, and signing off on the contract. Now, I dealt with the contract element because the agent wanted someone who understood when they were looking at a corporate contract, what they were talking about. So my advice, I'm using this scenario as an example because that particular weekend where it was like, holy crap, can we actually pull this off? Turned into £130,000 of corporate bookings in 12 months. Am I going to say that that happens every time? No. But here is what I'd like to say. 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. And those are the words you want to hear. The agent will not open his book and introduce you straight to the landlord. But. But if you are specific and if you are confident and if you present your paperwork and you present your proposition in a professional way, and they believe it is in the interest of the Landlord, they will put that proposition, we got an answer, back in 24 hours. Okay, right. But can I just say what happened? Because this was just the bet. This was just like one of those. As we were about to go and get the keys, sent him up to get the keys to. What happened. The manager had basically let the property to a group of students that morning. Because the communication between the manager and. Anyway, so we said, okay, that's not going to work and we've got a client moving in in five days and we actually use that as more leverage to go to another agent and get another property. There you go. So anyway, there you go. So it can happen, but you have to keep your cool.

So here's a question then. I'm a first time doing this absolute newbie straight out the gates. 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 in that? Falling short of giving you a call, of course. What can you do to get that leverage? If you are so much of a newbie and you've never done this and you don't know anybody in the area that can come and sit in with you, have you got any sort of like little things that you can do to maybe gain that leverage? Anything you can recommend?

Yes, there are. Okay, so there are a few things I'd like to say to everybody who's listening or watching and they're thinking, I don't even know. I don't even know how to walk into an estate age. 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. But even if it is from another landlord, please do the same thing. Be clear on your costings, you know, be clear what you're able and willing to offer. There's always a degree of negotiation in this, Mark, and that's I think, where a lot of people make the mistake. So have some sort of little prospectus. I'm not saying a 52 page document, but at least have something that shows that you've done the thinking and that you've a solid proposition to offer. It does help for you to have a bit of a brand. I'm not talking about having a ton of, you know, really crappy business cards, but, you know, have, have a sense that you're a business person. Yeah. Because you're going to deal with these people. People want to know that you look like you're trustworthy. Be able to show that you have the money to back up what you have just said.

Yeah.

Okay. This comes with confidence. But even if you've got to get someone else in the body with you, give you the money, you've got to say, I can make good on this because the money is in place to give you the deposit. Maybe give you a bigger deposit than you need. Yeah. Okay. Because people want to know, if I'm going to give you my property, I want to know you can afford this. One of the biggest things that kills the deal. And as I say, if you're in a network and most of the guys in service accommodation, they're in some sort of network, there are property groups all over town. Watch and look for the conversations that are happening in those groups. Because there are guys disposing of single properties and multiple properties all of the time. If you care to go and look.

Yeah. Would you recommend. This is just me picking up, total newbie. Would you recommend maybe asking in these networks if you could go and sit in on one of these estate agent chats? Is that something that is done? Is that something that people like to see? Just to sort of go and sit in and I say, if you, if you're, if you're new to this, you've done like the course, so to speak, you've gone and been sold the dream, you've come out. And if you're not confident, let's say you've done the research but you're not that confident, would you recommend just go sitting in on a few of these meetings just to see what the language gets spoken and whatnot?

The first. The first, yeah. The first one is always the hardest, mark, isn't it? Because, you know, we've got it, we've got to go out and that's the first time the training wheels are off and you're on your own. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I would say is always ask other guys that are doing it now. Don't be surprised nowadays, of course, because people want to coach you. One of the things that I do offer, I will say this genuinely, if people record some of their calls, so if they're having an initial estate Agent call rather than calling in. I'd say to them, if you can record some of your call, I'll debrief where you're losing it a bit. Because this is 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 long term strategy and put in the work to build relationships with your network.

I love this. We're coming up to 30 minutes and 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 would negotiate with an agent or whether you're negotiating with a landlord. The cobbles model 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 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. But if I give you that as a little gift, it will give people the basics that I've been talking through about how to get through to the negotiation. Because you'll never get the deal unless you can start to give people what they want. Landlords want rent and they want their properties looked after. Agents want to make a commission, but they don't want to deal with balloon heads. Yeah. And the guys that are booking the accommodation want decent quality accommodation at a price. That's right. And they want half decent service. If you deliver on those, you will have a business that succeeds.

Love it. Thank you so much, Trish. I will give everybody who wants that link in the show notes, so please make sure you can you check that out. You can also get a full transcript of Today's interview on boostlead.co.uk podcast. Whilst you are there, please make sure that you go and download the other five seasons of the Boost hospitality podcast and make sure you check out for more of these episodes of season six where we're talking about nothing but sa. Whilst you are here, one last thing to ask. Please go leave a review. One of those lovely five star reviews that you can leave in itunes or wherever you listen to your podcast. But for now, thank you very much for tuning in Trish. Thank you so much. If anybody wants to go and quickly find you via what is the best way, how can somebody come and get hold of you right now?

Right, if they want to come and get hold of me right now it's just Trish McGurr on Facebook, t R I S H M C G I double R on Facebook and my website is basically email address the same. It's www.trishmagur.co.uk or trishrishmgir.