MTR Listing Tips

Hey, I think I'm live. This is Shauna from She's Got Assets. I'm gonna go live in a few other spots. Let's hope this works. Okay, I can see myself double. It's kind of trippy. Okay, let's see if we can go live on Facebook. Um, hold on. All right, we're gonna get in there. Let's see if this works. Go live. Okay, it's working. All right, just gonna get a few things in the back end. All right, I think we're live. Oh my gosh, I'm looking at myself in a lot of places, which is kind of disconcerting. So, all right, I'm gonna just make a quick comment and then I've got a fun presentation to share. So if anyone's there, let me know if you can see me and hear me. That's always helpful because otherwise I don't know. I'm assuming everything is working, but please let me know if not. All right, I'm just going to do a quick comment, let a few people jump in. All right. Oh, I can't mention everyone. I already did that. Okay. Well, I see a few people here. Again, if you can see me, if you can hear me, just give me a shout out, give me some love because otherwise I'm talking to myself. Um, but thanks for tuning in. It's a little last minute tonight. I've kind of got off of my schedule here, but I'm trying to get back onto it. So let me know where you're calling in from, and, um, if you have a midterm rental, let's do that little icebreaker. Let me know. Love engagement. Um, okay, I am going to do a little quick presentation on MTIER listing tips and then talk about my new, um, school that I set up. Called The Asset Society. I'm really excited about it. Lots of great content, lots of value. Hey Richard, awesome, thank you, I appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Someone, someone said something. Thank you so much, Richard, I appreciate that. Okay, I'm going to— and they have this new thing that you see, like, it's— if anyone's on Instagram, let me do— like, there's a vertical option, which is interesting. So yeah, looking at myself, which is not awesome. Okay, so I'm gonna, uh, present something really fast. Let me just— give me one second. Share screen, get the right thing up here. Let's see. Okay. I think this is it. Hopefully this works. All right. Can everyone see that? Let's hope everyone can see it. Okay. Perfect. Hey, Marisol. Awesome. Thanks for tuning in. I appreciate it. Okay. So tonight we're gonna talk about midterm rentals and some quick listing tips. I do a lot of review of student listings and these are some of like the common things I see. So hopefully that you'll get some value from this. Also, if you have a listing you want me to check out, just drop that in the comments. I'm happy to give a quick review. So we are talking about MTR listing tips, making sure this is showing. This is presenting, should be presenting. Let's hope it is. Okay, let me know if you can see my screen. I think there's a delay. If you can see the screen that I'm sharing, it should say like MTR listing tips. Okay, I'm just gonna assume that everyone can see it, so. We're going to dive in. Okay. All right. So just a little bit about me. If you haven't met me before, I'm Shona. It's so great to meet you. I'm the founder of the She's Got Assets community. Shona buys houses, cedar and porch properties, and my latest shiny object is the Asset Society. I'm super excited about it. It's a really great platform. I'll talk some more about it. I'm also the host of the She's Got Assets podcast. I did a really great interview all about AI today. I was really excited. I can't wait to share that. We have 14 doors. 7 Midterms. And yes, I actually do this. And you can also find me on places like Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts. If you want more content, check that out for sure. So just a little, little bit more about me. So I've been a landlord for a very long time, like over 20 years. I can't believe I'm saying that. Pretty much ever since I moved to Portland. I'm the marketing and branding expert and my background's in design. So I kind of bring that to the real estate space, which I think is why I love midterms because there's a lot of design involved, a lot of experience experience. Uh, prior to being in real estate, I founded a creative agency that was acquired. This is our little scrappy team here back in the day. Um, I grew up in the vacation rental business, so it's kind of in my blood. This is like way before Airbnb was ever a thing, right? Very old school answering machines, calendars, things like that. I've helped 70+ students, um, land $6K to $9K midterm rental contracts. I love working with students. So it's a little bit about me. All right, so I'm assuming everyone like on this probably knows about midterms, but if not, just a quick overview here. Um, what I love about midterms is you get cheaper, more cash flow compared to long-term rentals. You know, you only have a couple turnovers a year compared to the constant turnover of short-term rentals. I think people don't think about that. That is exhausting. Not for me. Um, I also believe we're truly providing a needed service. Like fully furnished housing with all the comforts of home, traveling medical professionals, digital nomads, corporate housing, displaced families with insurance claims. There's quite a few different people that we serve, but I really believe it is a valuable service to the community. Um, and I think you just get more freedom from your investment. You get more cash flow and you're not kind of at the mercy of short-term rental laws that are constantly changing. So that's what I love about midterm rentals. If anyone can relate to that, let me know in the chat. Okay, so we're going to break it all down, um, how to get your listing up quickly and avoid a lot of the common mistakes that I see. Um, so mistake number 1, I think people will come no matter how you market your property. I think we probably all know that's not quite true. I think sometimes we just forget that, but I will cover that. So I see a lot of really, really bad listing pictures. Um, yeah, these are actual photos. The latest one is, uh, a friend of mine sent this to me, and it's I don't know what this guy was doing hanging out in his lawn, but I didn't really want to see that in the pictures, right? Like bad lighting, cluttered photos, not clean, right? Like I don't know anyone that— these are not going to stop the scroll. You're not going to want to stay here. And these are all kind of DIY photos, right? So please don't do this. If you take anything else away from this, don't take your own photos. Hire a photographer. Totally worth it. Um, so would you really want to stay here, right? Probably not. I would be like, nope, keep scrolling. I wouldn't even get past the scrolling, right? Um, or would you want to stay in somewhere like this? It's nice and light and airy, right? It's professional photos. Um, it looks really inviting. It's got cozy, it's got style, but it's not cluttered. It's light, right? And according to Airbnb, photos are one of the top 3 reasons guests choose to book. I think it's just human nature. We want to stay in nice places. You know, people want comfort and style. And you know, when you're looking at these kinds of photos, that does not say that. It just, makes you wonder if they ever clean the place, right? Um, so high-quality photos showcase your property and its unique features. And also, when you're getting photos, make sure to document, um, the things like the washing machine and the storage and things like that that sometimes real estate photographers aren't thinking about because they're doing listing photos. So you definitely want to hire a real estate photographer that you want to be really clear it's a midterm listing. So make sure to capture like the dresser and the washer dryer and the stuff in the kitchen, right? It's a little bit different. We cover that in the course. Thanks, Marcel. I appreciate that. I don't know how I got that name, um, but it stuck somehow. Um, so basically, show, don't tell. Hire a professional photographer. Ways to find photographers: I think most real estate agents know great photographers. Um, look in your local REIA groups. You can also go on Airbnb and they will— they'll match you with the photographer as when you put up a new listing, and typically they'll just deduct that for you from your first booking. The only downside is you don't own the photos, but it's a great tip if you want to get done quickly and you don't know any photographers. So I would like to share that. Um, the other mistake I see is waiting until everything is perfect to list your rental. I think that, you know, just get it out there, stage your photos, because you can lose a lot of money. Like, if you don't list, you could, you could lose months of income, right, by not listing your property. So just get it out there, do your best. Um, definitely be thoughtful about it. But here's like an example, right? If you don't list in the first month, month number 2, you're collecting $6,000 versus listing ASAP. Um, I talk about this in the course, like, we're going to virtually stage it and get it out there and get it marketed and test a lot of things, right? You're collecting $12,000 versus $6,000, which is a pretty big difference. Um, and midterm inquiries can come in really fast and furious, very last minute. So you just never know. And the longer you wait to get up, the more opportunity you could be missing. Um, so the other really big mistake I see is not putting your best photos forward. You, like, upload the photos to the platform and you just kind of, like, do all your stuff and then you don't You need to preview the listing, like actually pull it up and look at that, view it, like, like share the link kind of thing so you can get, see the power the public will see it. I mean, it's really important to look at like your grid, right? You want to make sure that this, these like top 5 photos are showcasing your best features. A lot of times I look at student things and I'll see like, you know, there's 3, 2 photos of a couch and 3 photos of the outside because the you just upload your photos and you don't actually organize them and you have to look at the public view of your listing to actually see how it's gonna work. So the goal here is like this image, you wanna have your best image. Usually it's an interior, something that's inviting, that's cozy. Then you wanna showcase like your kitchen and your bedroom and your bathroom. Just have a, a good variety here and don't just post like 5 pictures of the living room because someone may not click through to see the rest of them. So we're really trying to capture them. With this grid here. So it's really important. Again, you typically need to step back and look at your photos to see how they look, or your listings, right? Or share it with a friend and ask them. The other thing that's really important is we really wanna optimize this headline here, especially for Airbnb. We don't have a lot of real estate here, but we wanna use like really targeted keywords like pet-friendly, long stays welcome, extended stays, right? We don't wanna use a lot of superfluous listings like charming or beautiful, things like that, because we're really trying to let people know, hey, we are, We are open to longer stays, extended stays, especially on Airbnb, 'cause most people think of that as just short-term rentals. So it's really important that you optimize your title really thoughtfully. You have very limited characters. ChatGPT is a great use for that, but just make sure you're getting in those really good keywords. So key tips here, make sure your listing is optimized, focus on the property amenities, right? The location, that these are the things I see. Does it have off-street parking? Is it pet-friendly? Fence, backyard, dedicated workspace, washer dryer, fully stocked kitchen. Those are the kind of things people are looking for for midterms versus short-term listing. It's like vacation friendly, it's hot tubs, it's like, you know, vacation stuff, right? Midterm is dedicated workspace, fully stocked kitchen. It's a very different type of listing than someone that's looking for a vacation, right? They're going to be looking for different things. So you want to optimize it for the midterm stay, someone that's going to be there a while. They're there to live and work, they're not there on vacation. I think we all at this point use ChatGPT. If you, if you're not, you definitely should be using it. Here's some sample prompts. You are a world-class copywriter who specializes in real estate. Craft a compelling rental listing description for a fully furnished midterm rental property with flexible lease terms, you know, located in neighborhood and setting. And definitely give it feedback. Sometimes it can get kind of flowery over the top in a little bit. You can just tell us and make sure you're putting the human touch on it, but it's a great way to get those creative juices flowing. Um, you know, here's a few also. Just give it feedback, like have a conversation. Definitely make sure it fits your vibe and kind of the brand, you know, tone and style feedback. Does it sound appropriate? You can say, give me 10 alternatives, give me 10 more descriptions that don't mention X. Like, you can just go back and forth, kind of beat it up. Don't just take the first thing it spits out because it usually needs some massaging. And make sure you're prompting it well. Um, so that's kind of high level, some really good listing tips. Um, And then again, the top places to advertise. There's a whole lot of places out there. This is like high level, like bare bones, right? I think people don't realize you need to post on Zillow. My tips are turn on, turn off rental applications because we want to do, we want to pre-screen. And a lot of places, um, once someone gets an application in, they kind of have a foot in the door. So I like to turn that off and make sure you're checking furnished under amenities. Airbnb is also really more known for short term, but they definitely get a long midterm stays from there. So be on there, just set your, your minimum stay to 30 days. And then Furnished Finder is not just traveling nurses. I get a ton of insurance leads from there. So these are the top, top places to list. There's a lot of other ones, but bare bones, do this. And then, um, make sure you're in these databases. Um, ALE Solutions, Sedgwick, THG, CRS, right? These are, um, temporary housing companies that partner with insurance companies to place families, right? So it's really important that you get into their databases. And here's kind of an optimized listing example. We really want to speak to the, the guest type that we're— whoops— that we're looking to host, right? So we're gonna— we're like, here we say relocate to our pet-friendly home, making sure that we're pet-friendly is super important. Specifically designed for families in need of temporary housing, right? And then we're putting our company name here so people can Google us. We offer flexible stays for those encountering home repairs, relocation, you know, temporary housing, extended stays, pet-friendly, fenced yard. We're using all the keywords that people are looking for to really optimize our listings, to let people know, hey, we are pet friendly. Like on Zillow, right, we have flexible lease terms. We're not just a 12-month stay, right, which a lot of people expect. On Airbnb, people are used to like, you know, a couple night stay. They don't think there's longer stays, right? So we're really— we're kind of tailoring it to whatever platform we're on that we're really emphasizing flexibility, temporary stays, flexibility, pet friendly, all of those things. We want to make sure you bake that into your listing. That's really important. Take a screenshot of that. Something that we cover in the course. Um, so that's very high level. Are there any questions so far? Any listings? And I'm happy to take a look at any listings and see if anyone wants feedback. Or if you're watching the replay, feel free to post it. But those are high level, the things I see to really optimize. Um, now I have a really exciting announcement. I have— I've had the MTR Playbook for a long time and MTR Essentials, but I just launched a new school community. It's called the Asset Society. So you get the full MTR Essentials program, all the tools and tips and just how to, how to start, how to launch and start your first midterm rental or maybe optimize it for insurance. And that's all inside of the community. I'll post a link really quickly. It's just $97 a month. There's no commitment. You get weekly coaching or monthly coaching calls, private community. It's not cluttered like Facebook. So it's a really a great place for education. There's tons of resources and modules. In there. So that is something new I just launched. So I'm going to stop sharing and then I'll put a link in the chat. But any questions about that, or if anyone has listings they want me to review, I'm happy to do that. But I'm really excited about Skool. It's just such a great— it's a great platform. It's really focused. I'm going to be putting podcast episodes in there, kind of first preview stuff. All the, like, content will be in there. It's really easy, just— it's a great learning platform and it's a lot different. It's a lot more cost-effective too than the other courses that I have. Um, it's a little more self-paced, but definitely gets a little bit of support and community. So I'll drop a link to that in there. Any questions that anyone has? I hope my slide deck work— it doesn't look like it went forward, but, um, any other questions about where to list, or if you want me to preview a listing, I'm happy to answer that. Um, answer any questions about listings. But it's really important that you really look at your listings, optimize them, definitely preview them from the front end, because a lot of times people don't do and I think they messed up, especially the photos. But be in all the right places and really get, get good photography and write the right descriptions and you will get found. But it's really important that you do that. So, all right, last call for questions. If anyone's watching the replay, feel free to reach out. And the Asset Society just launched, so I'll have it, the full MTR Essentials course in there. And it's like a private community. You can see there's a map where everyone is. It's a great resource and it's really cost-effective compared to the other programs. So it's a great way to get started. All right, well, I don't see any questions. Um, if you're watching the replay, like, feel free to reach out, or if there's a topic you want me to cover, I'm happy to do that. But hopefully you guys got some value from that. And yeah, if you have new listings you want me to look at, just pop them in here and I'm happy to give you a quick give them a quick, like, once-over. Um, yeah, I don't see any last chance. Don't be shy. I see a few people here still. If there's any topics you want me to cover, I'm happy to do that too. Um, yeah. All right, well, I think I'm gonna sign off then. Thank you guys so much for spending a few minutes with me. I appreciate it. If you're interested in the Asset Society, it's a great resource. Again, there's no commitment, um, just a lot of content, and it's way less distracting than Facebook. I'm already kind of in love with it. But this, this group will stay open, but my private coaching group has moved over there. So anyone that's already currently a student will have access to it, which is awesome. Um, but yeah, okay, well, I don't see any questions. I always feel like I'm talking to myself, so I'm gonna sign off. Thank you guys so much for, um, tuning in. And again, if you have questions when you're watching the replay, feel free to reach out and I will get back to you. Have a great evening.