Tips on Creating Unique Properties from a Superhost

Okay, so today we're talking unique properties. Are they worth the effort? I'm Liam Carolan. I'm the co host of the behind the Host miniseries on the Boostly podcast. We're a series which dives into other hosts from all over the world. We look at their business, we look at some of the things they're doing, may be different, and how you can apply some of it to your business or even just give you some inspiration and some ideas. So listen in for the next 20 minutes as we've got a treat for you. Today we're going behind the business of a host is who's renowned for building unique stays. We've got Alex Bills on the podcast today, which is amazing. I'm really excited to dive into this. And Alex is a super host. He's a writer for Bigger Pockets, which is an amazing sort of real estate sort of thing in the US there. So it's a very famous publication. He's a YouTuber, he's an expert on funding and building very unique stays. So without further ado, let's say hi to Alex. Thank you for being here and welcome along.

Oh, thanks for having me on, man.

It's exciting to have you here. So before we get started into some of the questions about Unique Stays, if you can just introduce, you know, sort of your business, where you're based and just a little bit of history of how you got into short term rentals.

Yeah, so I'm based here in Asheville, North Carolina. So it's like a mountain community, a mountain town. The way I started was about I was originally in the Marine Corps, in the United States Marine Corps. Coming off the end of my enlistment, I had like about a year left. I sort of decided I didn't want to reenlist. Just started reading a lot of real estate books and stuff and I came across a flipping mentorship like how to rehab properties and blah, blah, blah. And this is about six or seven, seven years ago now. And the mentor, the main mentor of that program, I realized his long term wealth, a lot of his long term stuff was actually in short term rentals even back then. So I actually started really picking his brain about that and he actually helped me decide on the market where I live here in Asheville. Ever since then I moved from like I left the military, moved directly here and then I just started looking for property. I look, I started looking for property that I felt like would do good as a short term rental. But everything that I was looking at was either way at that time, way out of my price range or it was just, it wouldn't do well as a short term rental. It would have maybe done as like a good, as like a long term rental or maybe like just like if someone was just living there long term. But there wasn't really anything unique about it. So my very first short term rental I ever managed was. And my very first real estate investment was a new construction ground up development from raw land to what we have today. And one turned into two, 200 into four, two turned into four and then right now we're developing 24 of them with like some investor capital raised and stuff.

Wow. So that was going straight in for one built from ground up. I mean there's something here in the UK we don't see very often. I don't know, is it very common in the US or is that something.

Absolutely not. There's, there's, there aren't really any books or anything written on it. Usually I like to defer to books or anything. YouTube channels can be a little helpful. I just leaned on like some real estate principles, general real estate principles that help me through that.

And when it comes down to these, you know, to, to what you built. So obviously it takes back to that first one. What was the end result of your first one and how did it help your journey?

Yeah, no, I mean our first one was I always thought a frames were super, super cool and I mean they've only become more and put more into the mainstream after like the COVID lockdowns and stuff. But yeah, it was like I wanted to develop something that wasn't just unique on the inside but like the structure itself looked really cool. I also wanted to build something that was like permanent we say permanent foundation stick built where it wasn't like. I'm not against like tiny houses on wheels clamping those, those do phenomenal. But I wanted to build something that if it didn't end up working out I could sell it and like someone could get like a home loan or something on it. But again I didn't have too much money when I first started. I got a home loan, a construction loan which you can get here in the States for a. It was a second home loan and we still own it to this day. It's an 800 square foot cabin. But I know last year, last year it did 82,000 in gross and it's an 8 or sorry 84,000 in gross and then it netted me I think 56,000 after all bills and everything were paid. But a small 800 square foot cabin on the side of a mountain. Yeah, that was my first project. I mean I definitely cut my teeth in development with that first project but it was almost like I was stung by the bug of like I was so motivated from that first one, how well that did. And also the experience that we've created for. So we've hosted probably 300 people, 400 people through that specific property so far. Just the experiences we've created in that one, I mean just led to all the stuff that I'm doing today.

They say income is an exchange of value and if you've got those people staying there, having a great time, paying good rates.

You're making memories. Exactly.

Yeah. We swear by that. My, I've got a hosting company here in the UK and you know, it is about helping people make memories that will last a lifetime which really.

Absolutely.

So the ones that you're now building, you're now doing 24, did you say?

Yeah.

Wow. So that's quite a change. What, what do they look like? What sort of, what sort of kind of construction I guess are they and what is the plan with those?

So same thing, short term rental, they're, they're long term holds. I don't plan on selling any of my properties with my investors usually there about. We hold them eight to 10 years. We hit the 10 year mark. I mean they can hold them for longer if we need any capital that we need to pull from them and we can do cash out refinances. But what I'm sticking to right now is what I realized the last couple years was the best use of my time. There wasn't really any difference between going and looking at a one acre parcel or looking at a 15 or 20 acre parcel. Because I'm just a developer, I had my own GCS that worked for me and stuff. Time difference. There wasn't really too much time of my people spending time on evaluating a property, especially bringing people out to get bids and everything. But I like to stick right now to like 6 to 12 cabins within the same as I like to say a micro resort. You're creating a micro resort community. It's like a log cabin court. Like they're really, they've been really popular always. But I like to stick to like a theme, whether it be like tree houses, cottages, a frames, barn type of houses, log cabins I feel like will do any good anywhere in the woods. Same thing with a frames. But I like to do like 6 to 12 cabins with some sort of theme attached to each one of them.

And Looking at those themes and you know, if we dive into the uniqueness of these places, and certainly I've seen them on your website, how unique some of them are. How do you think that has helped and why unique stays?

I like to say Instagrammable properties, where you are developing properties, we're building properties where outside of the city the properties and experience in itself. And I'll tell you that helps with the seasonality if you're in a very seasonal market is right. So like I don't live in the craziest seasonal market, but here what I've realized is during the down season the property becomes the attraction. During the high season, the city or the market becomes the attraction. So that it's almost like there's like a built in seasonality thing about it as well. But like I always say, Instagrammable properties, people like posting properties like that. Like hey, we stayed in an A frame for a long time. We haven't had any social media attached to our actual properties. And we're doing that now because so many people have asked us about it. Hey, do you have an Instagram? Hey, do you have a Facebook account? We'd love to send you the pictures that we took on our properties. And that usually doesn't happen with just like a normal house. Right? So that, that's I guess my whole.

Thesis on that 100% that having an Instagrammable property like you say they will do your marketing for you if they're posting social media and if you've got your own hashtag, that's, that's really up Bootle street, you know, that sort of stuff is how you can market them places is amazing. So how much effect does that have on the bottom line revenue? So having these unique stays, if you had just gone for traditional, you know, everyday cabins versus something a bit more special. How much in your estimation say percentage wise or even Montreal wise, do you think that's brought in?

Oh yeah, percentage wise. So I can compare it to one of our houses that we have that we developed that a frame for about 250,000, 270,000 probably today. 280,000 is probably what it go for because that was done prior to Covid turnkey compared to a property we just purchased at about 800,000 or it's just a normal cabin and it's still in the rent up phase. So it's not stabilized, but that one does. The average daily rates are almost about the same, which is absolutely crazy to think about. I could have never predicted that. I mean take for instance Treehouses. If you look at the average daily rates of tree houses, if you analyze a treehouse, I mean they bring in anywhere between 4 to 500, 4 to $700 a night depending on what the season is. So I would say sometimes double if not triple than a normal rental, which is, I mean absolutely crazy to say. But if you look at the numbers, I mean like a tree house can bring in four to $600 a night and it's maybe a 600 square foot treehouse where maybe it costs 250, 400,000 a build. So it's crazy numbers once you get into like the uniqueness. I mean if you look at like Airbnb's like I know Boostly is all about direct booking, but it's like if you look at like Airbnb just completely redesigned their website for unique stays, all their tabs are, are structured around unique stays now.

Yeah, they call it, is it the, the wow factor or whatever.

It is the omg. But like even, even they even have tabs for a frames, log cabins, tree houses outside of the omg. So it's like that's, that's where the market is sort of going towards like if you want to command these premium rents, there has to be something unique about the property.

Absolutely. And the obviously the outside's unique. Is there anything you do to the experience when guests stay? You know, so looking at the guest experience, what sort of things do you do to add to that experience?

Yeah, I mean the general stuff like the freebies. This was actually something I took from a host out of Australia. We do something called Puppies and Pancakes where like we, we allow dogs and pets in all of our properties and we actually like to leave out like a little bit of like a, it's like a shaker for like, like ready mix for pancakes. And instead of leaving a bottle of wine or like maybe beer or something, we like to leave that out with like a spatula and like a waffle maker. So that's probably one of our cheapest and most requested like freebies. Like whenever we look at the reviews, that's always something that's mentioned. But simple stuff like water bottles and board games is always something that we include inside of the property and just a well designed property. I mean we like to do open floor plans when we're developing our properties. And I mean obviously just a clean property in general, but there isn't really a lot of maintenance when it comes to these newer properties because they're new development so they feel newer when you're on the inside of them.

I mean it's one of the things, isn't it, when you book a place to go and stay, you always want to stay in somewhere better than the level of your own home, don't you? So when you go to these places, even if you're going to place in the middle of the woods or hiking, that sort of thing, you really want an experience. And that sounds.

Yeah. And that builds into your customer avatar, which is what Boostly always talks about is like what is your customer avatar. So it's like that, that's who we're targeting. A lot of times with the unique properties. I would say that you are targeting a more of a like a younger crowd compared to say like a senior crowd. The senior crowd, people coming off of like VRBO or something are going to be people who are used to the more like traditional accommodations with like houses and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's cool. And one of the things I want to touch on, you mentioned that you're now building like mini little sort of communities of a few places. What is the benefits of having all these in one place? And is the guest avatar the same for each of them?

I would say the guest avatar is the same. And just scale is one of the reasons why we did that. It's cheaper to build when you're building six at the same time in the same area. And then also you can accommodate the GC that. The general contractor I'm currently using is one of the biggest ones in the city. I talked to him two years ago. I'd taken over some of my smaller ones but he, he just didn't have the bandwidth for it. Now I can bring him a two, $3 million development and sort of he's more interested in that. So. And with that comes also some, some savings on the development costs because they already have the team and people actually want to work for them. Especially now coming out of COVID it's still harder to find people. So teaming up with a firm that people want to work for and they're not having that trouble of finding people has been crucial.

Brilliant to hear. And coming out of COVID like you mentioned there, what effect has that had? Because you mentioned you've been going for seven years on there. What effect coming out of COVID have you seen there's much more demand for your style of short term rentals.

Yeah. Because Covid in general just put short term rentals in the spotlight. We don't. So the city of Asheville itself does not allow for short term rentals so we operate all of our properties and develop all of our properties in the county. So you pull up the map of Asheville and then we just choose properties that are right on the border. That's like a 15, 20 minute drive to the city. We just did that out of necessity because I didn't want to be tying up my own capital, investor capital, in a market that potentially was like operating illegally. I know a lot of people do it and a lot of people do it profitably, but it was just something I didn't want to, I didn't feel comfortable doing. So we did that out of necessity. But what Covid did, it was it pushed a lot of people out of the metro markets and push them into more rural markets. So Covid definitely helped us with that. And then I feel like everyone wants to stay like in a unique property or an A frame now after Covid. So like we're, we're seeing 85, 90, 95. If we hit 95%, we raise our prices. Right? But 90% occupancies even coming out of COVID here in the United States, we're going through a market correction going like, technically we're in a recession right now, but I mean, the unique properties, my A frame is still at 90% plus on occupancy.

And, well, like you say, people want to escape, you know, from places like the city, go and stay somewhere rural if they can take their pets with them, if they can have an Instagram experience, you know, you're building something special there. So let's talk more about the tech that you use in your business. So what tech do you use within your business? And is there anything which has proved the most helpful out of all the tech?

I mean, I feel like at this point, I feel like a broken record. I mean, what Arthur has done with StayFi is phenomenal. StayFi is almost like a cornerstone to our business, especially now that we're going to be building out. I mean, this is one of the reasons why I got connected with Mark to build out our own direct booking site. I mean, Stayfi is like a pillar to that, in my opinion. And yeah, Stayfi is one thing, and digital guidebooks is really helpful. Automated messaging, just normal. I think outside of like Airbnb, vrbo, just having a tool that you can automate, it's surprising how many hosts don't use like a property management software. They're just like, say, listed on Airbnb and vrbo. I know that's outside of Boostly, but it's very surprising. How so many people like, it's the boosting model. Like my property lives on Airbnb, like Airbnb and vrbo, I look at them as just marketing channels for your business. It is not where your property needs to has to live because they have complete control over it. So when it comes to technology, StayFi, a digital guidebook and just a PMS is just crucial. And honestly, recently we started using virtual assistants to handle some of our messaging. One, it's been cost effective, but it's also been effective just in the overall guest experience because the VAs that we use are people who have worked for Airbnb in the past. So that's been a recent tool that we started using. It's just virtual assistants.

I love that. Then stayfi, like you say, is an absolute pillar. And for anybody listening who doesn't know what StateFi does, it'll basically allow you to collect all your guests emails, the entire group who's staying at the property. The idea is they log onto the WI fi, they have to give their email address to be able to log on to the free WI fi, which is fair exchange. And you've then got their email which you can then market to and like.

And like Arthur said in a podcast I think he was on get paid for your pattern. It might have been this one, but he had said like do people get scared I've like about entering their email or blah blah, blah. I've never had a guest ever complain about it ever.

The same as when you. When I stay in a hotel, I just accept it. I go, well do I want the WI FI or not? I'll give them my email. You know, I mean you just don't. Worst comes the worst. You can always unsubscribe, can't you? If you really.

And the landing page, the landing page is usually prettier than what the hotels offer anyways. Like it's a pretty clean landing page.

That's exactly it. And do you do much email marketing at the moment for the emails?

We're going to start doing it now. I know, I know. Safi just added like an email marketing section to where we were collecting through mailchimp. But yeah, that, that is the focus of the rest of this year and then going into next year is just transitioning into a direct booking platform where again Airbnb, Vrbo, the, the OTAs, they're going to be the, they're going to be the marketing piece of our business or part of our marketing piece. But you need a self sustaining business. I have my own horror story about Airbnb taking a property off like. So it's ever since then, that happened a couple, a year ago. Ever since then it's just been direct booking.

So that's, there's been a lot of people in the same boat where Airbnb, I mean, first of all, Airbnb, vrbo, they are, they're great marketing.

Oh, absolutely.

If you're using them like shop windows to be able to draw people into your, you know, into your funnels and actually come and stay, or even if they come and stay once, if they've booked via these OTAs, you've then got their details. You can always remarket towards them as well. That's the thing where for businesses like yours with unique stays, the great thing is that it'll be more findable on places like direct booking websites, on Instagram, on social media because of the number of people who will be talking about it. So, you know, it's a fulfilling sort of funnel where people see you on Airbnb, they may be able to see that you've got direct booking websites and, and come to your direct. So I'm excited for you for that. So appreciate that with your business so far, you've obviously, you know, sort of scaled up. You've got the unique stays sort of nailed. You know, you're in a market which is definitely growing, especially since COVID And you know, especially even with the recession coming is pretty recession proof because the people who are going for unique stays may have more disposable income as well. What's been the biggest challenge so far and how have you overcome it?

Yeah, I mean, I already briefly talked on it. I mean just the, with the development piece, it was just the, the skyrocketing of material. So it's like we had budgets that were caught in the center of that where it's like budgets were done prior to Covid. We started building and then obviously that happened. Instead of doing a 1300 square foot house, we just scaled it down. So that's one way we did that. And then same thing with like tradesmen and people, it was very difficult to find people. But now teaming up with that bigger gc, that is one way that we alleviated that on the development piece and then just on the management piece, it's just been maintaining good people. I'm sure it's happened to you. I'm sure it's happened to a lot of people who've talked. It's like a lot of the people that you probably started with prior to Covid. Is not a part of your team now. So it's like if you need to let that go or if you need to like let someone go. It's like I struggled with it initially the first year into Covid, but it's like it has to happen because it's like the market that we exist in now is not what it existed prior to Covid.

Often this is one of the things we find that people struggle with is just finding good people and retaining good people. And that's the struggle, isn't it?

Which, and it's like it's, it's even harder to get rid of bad people even though they understand your whole business and they might have been with you for a while. That's in my opinion one of the hardest things to do is a bad person that knows your business and it's like, okay, I got to retrain a new person. But being on the other end of it, it's so worth it to, to find those new people if that current person is not fitting in that role.

And you mentioned you touched on the fact you've got VA's now. How is your day to day routine changed from what it started off as to what it is now?

Yeah, so no, I mean that's the whole like old adage, working on my business instead of in my business. So I've realized what, where I bring value to my business is content creation and then develop like putting together these communities. I'll probably never be able to delegate. I'm not going to say never. But the hardest part to delegate on the development side is just like I said, my like one of my superpowers is being able to identify unique like properties and like the highest and best use for a property. So me putting together communities, looking at properties and content creation is the only thing I focus on. And that's what I've told myself.

That's really cool. That's really cool.

So it's, to answer your original question, it's freed me up to be able to do that.

And what advice would you have? There'll be people listening to this who go, well, you know, I think I've got a bit of land. I think it could be something special. What advice would you have for them?

So I always say when you're, when you're looking at a piece of land or even if you have a piece of land, but mainly if you're looking to do this yourself, you need to think of access to the property. What does the access leading to the property look like? Because you have to think of the entire guest experience, not just the guest experience at your property. What does the drive look like going from to the property and then leaving the property? A lot of times guests are going to be coming in at night. A lot of times guests are going to be new to the area and you don't want to be, you don't want them to be going like 30 minutes of a gravel road in an area. Maybe they lose cell phone reception. Like they're in an area that they don't know. So I would say the biggest thing is going to be access, is going to be like, think about access to the property. And I always like to say like you want to be sort of off of a state maintained road or like a paved road of some kind.

Yeah, just for easy access. Definitely. And if there's people who you know, need, need information, want to do some training on this sort of thing. Is there anything that, that you can offer Alex, if people.

Yeah, yeah. So I actually just. I spent the last six months on and off putting together a short term rental development course. I essentially created the course that I wish I had when I started six years ago. I probably would have saved 2, $300,000 at this point if I had that course when I first started. So I've done a lot of coaching in the short term rental space and there have been a lot of friends and people that I've coached, probably over a hundred students at this point that have asked me about what I do. Because my YouTube channel's different than I've just coached on short term rentals, but not necessarily on short term rental development. And my YouTube channel is mainly short term rental development. But I decided to put a course together for those people and they absolutely loved it. And I was like, oh, I think more people want to be doing this stuff. Especially now with like how crazy the competition has gone for people who are looking to purchase their own short term rentals. I mean I started really early with sort of just making that my first property that I developed. But yeah, I created the course that I wish I did. What if I started six years ago is what I've been saying.

And what sort of format will that, will that course be?

And yeah, it's, it's seven sections, it's all online. There's a group coaching aspect to it as well. Put together a 65 page workbook. It's essentially just follow along essentially your bible from start to finish of what a. It starts literally with what a short term rental is and then it'll take you through the entire development process. How to look for land, what to look for in the land, how to put together your development team, how to put together your overall team. There's a small management piece to it, but that's, that's not the point of the course. The point of the course is to be able to get a property off from like raw land to development all the way up. And there's also like, if you want to raise capital, there's some stuff in there in the course of how to raise capital and stuff like that.

That's cool. And just to double check, because we've got listeners who will be listening to this. Some will be on the podcast, some will be watching this on live. So is it for people who are based in the US and is it, or is it, is it worldwide and when is it starting as well?

And yeah, it's, yeah, we're launching a September 15th. I've tried to make it as I, I didn't try to. All my examples come from the US because that's where I'm obviously based out of. But there's a lot of pretty high level stuff on, I'm sure that can be sort of molded to whatever country you're in. It. The biggest thing I can think about when you, when you jump to a different country because I've talked to a lot of people in Canada and stuff is just understanding what your zoning laws are when it, when it comes to raising capital. A lot of that's going to be the same when it comes to the different types of structures. I try to keep it pretty fluid. I try to talk about like when you're choosing a market, I like to say that if, when you're choosing a market, no matter where you live, there's some, some place or some market that's close to you where people like to take say like a weekend vacation. Right. So stuff like that, it's like, it's not specific to the United States. Some of the zoning stuff that I talk about might, might be, but it's still some pretty high level stuff for like just international markets as well.

But it's certainly inspiring. I mean, you've got my thoughts running with, you know, I live in a sort of holiday part of the UK and you know, there's always great bits of land, there's always woodland and stuff like that where you could see.

Yeah, we talk about glamping in the course. We talk about tiny houses on wheels. We talk about a lot of different structures. It's not just permanent foundation stick built Houses because like again my goal with the course was to try to bring in as many people in the short term rental world into this course. Whether you're starting if you want to build your own stick built house or you can just start with like a glamping scenario. It's. It covers everything in between.

That's really cool. I really feel we've got an idea of, of your business Alex and, and what you can do and, and how it helps. So as we come towards the end of these, we like to ask a couple of quick fire questions. These answers can be as short, as long as you like and just a bit of fun. So what's your favorite film or TV show? How do you pass the time on. On Netflix or whatever? One of your choice?

Yeah, my favorite movie actually is the Prestige. I was a, I was a, I say was, I was a magician for 20 years prior to the military or anything. So I love anything magic related. Good old Christopher Nolan movie the Prestige. Probably my, one of my favorites.

Brilliant movie. Great twist as well.

For anyone who has no absolutely crazy.

Melted their brain, what is the worst piece of advice you've ever received or heard?

Wow, that's a good question. It's not really a piece of advice. So I'm, I'm, I'm Middle Eastern, I'm first generation American, but my family's from the Middle east. And the, the cultural thing in our culture is to keep everything really close to the best is not really to share anything, especially what you're working on. So I would say that's man, what a phenomenal question. That would probably be the worst piece of like overall like thing that I grew up with was keeping everything close to the vest. And it's like, no, you need. That's why I created the YouTube channel was because like I knew I wanted to share what I was working on and it's one of the reasons why I'm on the podcast now.

That's really cool. And you know what? I always, I love that question because when you turn it around and go, well, what would be the best thing is to share and to, you know, give information and share it openly. Well actually how much more does everybody get? Because nobody can be an expert in every single area.

So by doing that, you're not your own, you're not an island. I mean that's, that's the biggest, that's what we see in the military. You're not an island.

I love that. I love that. And finally, who inspires you?

There's a lot of people that inspire me in the short term rental world. I mean you and Mark are probably one of the biggest ones. I mean especially with where my business is at right now. Greg Dickerson is my one on one mentor. I'll talk about him to the day. He's sort of the backbone of everything that I do. Yeah, Greg Dickson. I mean, and you guys, I mean the, the book, the, the Boost Lee book has been absolutely phenomenal. I mean I've been trying to follow that thing down to a T. Awesome.

Thank you very much. We'll pay you afterwards.

That wasn't a plug, guys. I promise. That wasn't a plug.

But yeah, thank you so much, Alex. And I mean there's two more questions for it. First of all, how can people get in touch with you? What's the best way to do so.

Yeah, so my personal website, alexjarbo.com that has my YouTube channel, all the podcasts I've done and it also has the course, um, there's a little button up there called Free Masterclass. Click on that. It'll take you through the, through the, I guess the, the webinar and sort of the high level stuff of the course and then if you were interested in purchasing it at the very end and go about doing that. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I don't know if you guys use, I mean I'm sure it's, it's pretty popular but that's usually the social. I don't, I stay off of Facebook and Instagram for a lot of things because honestly I don't trust myself with it. But yeah, I'm, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn as well.

That's cool. That's cool. And so we started the, the podcast with asking unique properties, are they worth it? So are they worth the effort? And I'd love you to, to just end on that note and just give US youR, your $0.02 of, of. Are they worth it?

Yeah, absolutely. Especially even, even if you build a unique property and it doesn't work out as a short term rental, someone's going to want to live in that thing. Like if you do decide to sell it off is what I say. Because like you always got to think of exit in mind. I know you, you don't start a business with the intention of ever ending it. But I always like to think of the exit in mind. So it's like if it doesn't work out as a short term rental, there's going to be a couple that's going to want to stay in that or live in that all day.

So I love that. Well, Alex, thank you so much for sharing behind the host with us and for sharing the news about your course. So I'm sure there'll be people who are watching the live who want to dive in before the 15th if you listen to this on the podcast, still touch base with Alex, obviously via LinkedIn or follow him on YouTube. And Alex, just once again, thank you very much. And yeah, any last closing comments?

No, that was it. I talked about everything I wanted to talk about. It's just again, the unique stays. Think about Instagramable properties. Would you post this on Instagram on your story as like something that you're proud that you stayed in?

Love it. Love it. Well, thanks again and bye for now.

Awesome. Thanks, brother.