How to Earn 5-Star Reviews for Your Non-Perfect Property

We all wish we had the most amazing property imaginable, right? Some of us do, but we don't all have that luxury. Sometimes there's issues with our property, but that doesn't mean we can't still earn five star reviews every time. This week I want to break down five things you can do to make sure that your non perfect property earns five star reviews every time. Stay tuned. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. We'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Quick actionable items to acquire, manage and scale your portfolio. I'm your host, Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. I just got back from a wedding in Miami. I got on a plane from southern Brazil and headed up north. And I got to say, every time I leave Brazil to head to the US especially down here in southern Brazil, it just reminds me how big this country really is. So quite the journey back to the US but weddings are always a great time, aren't they? So it was really good to be back there for a few days. And I always enjoy coming back to Brazil too. So during my stay there in Miami, I rented an Airbnb and I want to talk about this week because that property was not perfect. By no means was it perfect, but the host earned a five star review and based off her prior reviews, she's been earning five star reviews with basically everyone, hundreds. And so I want to break down five things that we can all be doing every time to make sure that we earn five star reviews even if we don't have a perfect property. Before we get into that though, if you've missed our past episodes, go back and make sure you check them out. We had Jason Hartman on last last week who's someone that I've been following his research for a long time. He is an expert in the space, he's an expert in macroeconomics and really helping us figure out if a market is risky and why it's risky. So check out the podcast last Week or the YouTube channel if you're tuning in there where we had an interview with Jason Hartman, packed, packed full of great stuff. Okay, let's get into it. So the first step to make sure that we're always earning five star reviews even if our property is not perfect, is to make sure we have an accurate and honest listing. Now you know if you've been listening to podcasts for a while that we've talked about this before, but we have to set the right expectations. We're not going to be able to earn a five star review if we leave out some issue or something that a guest is going to discover when they show up to the property that they didn't already know about. So we got to make sure that the listing is as detailed as possible. We've got to fill out all the sections and if there's something that your guest is going to see and they're not going to like, well, you need to make sure that they're aware of that. And sometimes that requires putting a picture in the listing. Doesn't mean you have to make it the first picture. But let's just say your parking situation is not ideal. For example, maybe it's around the block or it's not right next to the property or it's in a driveway that just doesn't look that great. Well, you still need to take a picture of it to let your guests know because they're going to see it either way. Right. So that's the first thing we got to make sure that our properties are perfectly portrayed online so there's no negative surprises when the guest shows up. I mentioned before that I've actually put slightly less appealing pictures on some of my properties to start off with, just to set the expectations a little lower. I know that sounds crazy, but a little darker image of the living room. If someone shows up and it's full of natural light, well, that's going to be a pleasant surprise. Right. And that's an easy way to start off on the right foot with your guest experience. So the second piece to making sure that we always get five star reviews with our properties, even if they're not perfect, is our communication. Communication is key. That is the name of the game and hospitality. And no, as much as I would like to, a lot of times we can't automate everything. We need to have some personalized communication. I gave an example in an earlier episode where a lot of us are automating our check in instructions and our checkout instructions. For example, a lot of us are automating a welcome message. But the problem with automating all those is that let's say you automated your welcome message to go in at 5pm and your check in time was 3pm, but your guest didn't actually show up till 9pm, their plane got delayed or travel plans or whatever it happened to be, and you've already sent them a message saying, hey, I hope you checked in okay, that doesn't look good. Right. And that's very obvious that that came from a machine, came from automation. So make sure that your communication is on par. One thing that my host did on this recent trip, for example, is she communicated with me right before I actually got to the property. I told her what time I was going to be there. She said, hey, I left the door unlocked for you. This happened to be a guest house in the back. And, and then she did the same thing before. So she had very pleasant communication. And this wasn't in person, by the way, this was through text message. But she had very pleasant communication right before I checked in, right before I actually checked in and right as I checked out. And I gotta say, she made the communication process and the check in super, super easy, which I was very grateful for because it is a journey coming down from Brazil. So it was very nice to show up and have a smooth check in and have the good communication. So timing is super crucial. And unfortunately your AI bot, at least not yet, isn't going to know when your guest flight got delayed. Although, you know, that might be around the corner. I am not saying that you're ever going to be able to replace your guest communication with a bot, but I do think it's going to be very helpful in the future. There's a company called the Guest Guru, for example, that's working on this at the moment. I know there's probably a lot more. I don't see it ever replacing our communications. Our guest experience team does an amazing job and a lot of things just happen and pop up that we can't really program in. So even though AI might be helping us in the future, we still got to make sure that our communication is great. Because if it's not what's going to happen, we're going to get a ding and we're not going to get the five star review that we need. Okay, on to number three, personal touches. So if you've been in the short term rental space for a while and you've stayed in a lot of them, you know that there's some properties you show up to and it just feels like you're showing up to some property that there was no care put into it. It looks like someone opened a bunch of IKEA boxes and they just threw it up in a weekend. That's not a super great experience. Right. It's nice to have some personal touches in there. And there's several ways to do this. So the first way you can do this is just by leaving some note. Leaving some food, for example. I know that some people leave wine, but make sure that you're careful with those Things because there are. Well, first of all, it's the drinking age. You know, if you're giving wine to someone that's not of age, that could create an issue. But there also may be some tax consequences. If you're providing hotel type amenities, it may change your tax consequences. So I am not a cpa, but make sure you look into that. So my host left some goodies. She left some bananas, which I ate very quickly. She also left some chocolates which I really wanted to eat very quickly. But I know that once I eat one, I'm going to eat them all. So was proud of myself. I hid them in a cabinet the whole trip. Actually, I forgot about them. It's crazy how when we don't see things in front of us, we kind of forget about them sometimes. So I don't buy them at home because I know that I can't control my sweet tooth. But that was a very thoughtful touch and especially after a long journey, it was nice. She also had bottled water and she also communicated that the things that she left there were free for me to use or consume. And so great job with communication and great job with her personal touches. Another way that we can really win a lot of points with our personal touches are through our personal recommendations. But remember, as a host, we don't always want to be constantly talking with our guests and maybe bothering them. In my situation, for example, I don't know how long the flight was, the two flights, but it took a long time and I was tired. A little bit of jet lag going on. Didn't really want to be exchanging a lot of messages. And she did a good job at that at reading my communication level to make sure she wasn't sending too many when I wasn't sending hardly much at all. So a good way that you can get recommendations out without bothering your guests is through guidebook. We've talked about guidebooks a lot. We use a digital version called Hostfully, but we also leave a printout in all of my properties. And if you've just joined us for the first time on the show, great to have you. You can head to SDR Riches and check out all of our past episodes. I can't believe we're nearing in on 200 episodes. It's just crazy. But I've got a portfolio that built around the US now and also outside the US so five different markets, two outside of the US and almost 70 properties now. So it's been an exciting journey. We've learned a lot. So go back and check out some of those prior episodes. If, if you're just tuning in for the first time, one you'll find on Hostfully, that's episode 31. Believe it or not, that was a long time ago. But you know what? This information lasts. Real estate investment fundamentals last. They're evergreen and most of this information is still very, very relevant, except for occasionally some software programs that maybe change or something like that. I also talked about a way that you can get a guidebook for free by using Notion, which is arguably my favorite program I've ever discovered in the last couple years. So check that episode out. That's 127. There's really endless options with Notion. I use it for my personal life and also for my business investment portfolio. All of that, all of that. Actually my notes for these podcasts I use in Notion, so check that one out. That might be a free, good option for you if you don't already have a digital guidebook. So on to step number four. We've made sure the first step, we have an accurate, honest listing. The second step, we have excellent host communication and that is throughout the duration of the reservation from beginning to end. Number three, personal touches. We've added them wherever we can. We created a guidebook and our property doesn't feel like it was just opened up from a bunch of IKEA boxes. Number four is location. So yes, sometimes by having the best location ever, it kind of makes all the other things less important. And so, you know, they say location, location, location. The same is true for short term rentals. Again, we're going to have this in our listing. It's going to be very clear. But if someone's in a fantastic location, maybe where they're close to attractions, all these things, maybe they're not actually spending that much time in your property and the location makes it so nice that they're going to leave you a five star review. As long as you tick these other four boxes. Even if your property is a little older, it maybe needs a renovation. It has to be clean. Remember, an older property can still get good reviews, but it has to be clean. If it's not clean or it doesn't feel clean, you're not going to be getting excellent reviews. One other quick thing just to add here is that if you have a guest that left you some sort of feedback, something that they didn't enjoy and you haven't fixed it yet, well, you need to fix it because guess what? If one guest didn't like it, other guests are not going to like it as well. So really make sure that you're watching and reading the private feedback and making sure you got a close eye on your property. The fifth thing that can really impact our reviews is the length of the reservation. So let me explain here. If you have a property where average night stay is one night, that doesn't really give you a lot of time to show your great host communication. It doesn't give the guests a lot of time to explore your property or maybe to explore your recommendations. And so if they have one little thing that kind of goes wrong, they might leave you a bad review just because they didn't have the opportunity to see your property shining in its best light and to see how you care as a host. So the length of the reservation can really make a difference. Can make a difference if it's much longer too, right? So the longer the reservation is, the more opportunity we have to show our guests that we care. Again, we don't want to be in their space or messaging them more than they're messaging us, but we want to have excellent response times. We want to be there if they need us. We. So reservation length can really make a difference too, but it can also work against you, right? So if it's a longer reservation and you've just dropped the ball in a couple of places, well then you might get a bad review from that too. So just to recap, we can have a property that is not perfect, it maybe needs some renovations, it has to be clean, remember that. But as long as we're doing the following five things, we can still get five star reviews every time. The first thing, we want to make sure that our listing is accurate and honest. The second thing, we want to make sure that we have excellent guest communication every step of the way. The third thing, we want to make sure that we have some sort of personal touches. And this could be your guidebook, but you could go further than that as well and leave some items in your property or leave some sort of notes or something like that in your property. So having some personal touches. The fourth thing is if your property has a stellar location, it might make some of these other things a little less important. But remember, this is an average of all of these things. When your guest is staying with you, they're not going to rate you just based on one thing. You need to make sure that you're doing a good job at all these things. The fifth thing is the length of reservation. So if it's a one night reservation, you don't have a lot of opportunity to let your non perfect property shine.

You just don't, unfortunately, but with a longer reservation you do. So this is by no means an exhaustive list of everything we need to do. We've got almost 200 episodes in the past on all these little things that can really help us improve our properties. So go back and check those out. I hope you've been enjoying the podcast. If you didn't know yet, we're also managing other people's properties and so we've managed, gosh, probably close to 30,000 guests now in my personal portfolio, my team does an amazing job and we're partnering with specific partners that have properties that work well with our portfolio. So you can check that out@restmethods.com we've got a property management button there. We also have a lot of my recommended resources and all kinds of content. So thanks again for joining in. Love the feedback too. If you guys have any questions or you have any questions, any specific topics you want to go over, please let us know. And until next time, I hope you have a wonderful week.

Want to get on the fast track to financial freedom through short term rentals? Well, it all starts with the properties you acquire, but you want to make sure that you acquire the right properties. I want to give you my ebook that will show you how to do just that. There is no charge. It's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers. Just go to restmethods.com that's R E S T methods dot com.