Lessen Your Airbnb Expenses | Airbnb Tip for New Hosts

So as short term rental hosts, as short term rental operators, we have to leave consumable items in our properties for our guests. These are things like shampoo and toilet paper, but there's one that I bet most of you are leaving and you might not need to be leaving, which means it's an extra expense out of your pocket. I want to talk about it this week. 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. There's so many intricacies that go into a short term rental property and we've talked a lot about them on this show, over 160 episodes now. So welcome back once more. This week we're talking about consumables. These are things that we have to in our properties, but we don't necessarily need to have all of them. Toilet paper, that's an obvious one. We've got to have toilet paper. But this week I want to talk about paper towels. I know it's not the most exciting subject, but the reality is these things can add up and every expense that comes out of our pocket comes off our bottom line. And that means we're making less money. So if there are certain expenses that we don't need and it's not going to impact our guests, well, we should eliminate those. So this is something I'm experimenting with my properties. We just took all of our paper towels out of all of my properties. And you're probably thinking, tim, that's crazy. People need something to clean in the kitchens, to use his napkins, all these things. And they do. And we're providing something, but not paper towels. So we decided to switch to bar mop towels. These are all white. They're something that we can bleach and it's something that we can reuse. And the reality is, is that these bar mop towels are less expensive even than one roll of paper towels. So it really got me thinking. It's something we're testing out and I wanted to share it with you. Now I want to talk about whether this is right for you because this doesn't make sense for all properties. If you only have one property and you're putting a few paper towel roll each month, it's not really a big deal, right? But if you start adding more properties to your portfolio, which I Hope you're doing, two, three, five properties, and each month, you're spending 10, 15, $50 on paper towels. Well, this really starts to add up. So aside from just paper towels, I want you to really think about all the consumable items that you are purchasing for your property. There are necessities, ones that you absolutely need to have one about soaps, for example, I did a whole episode on soaps. Yes, I know not all these episodes are super exciting and super fun, but the reality is they're real things that we need to consider with our short term rentals. So you should have soaps in there, Multiple different kinds. You should definitely have toilet paper. Of course we want towels and linens. But paper towels is one of these kind of green areas. And I had a friend tell me recently that they decided to go green so they're using less of these paper towels. And the reality is that we can rewash these bar mop towels. So you want to make sure that you're getting pure white ones and you can bleach them. So you might actually be using a little more paper towels than you're thinking too, because I bet a lot of your housekeepers out there are using your paper towels for cleaning as well. Okay, so that's just a little bit on paper towels. So should you actually be leaving them? Well, let me ask you a question. If you have a roll of paper towels sitting in the kitchen and it's pretty small, you know, it's got less than half, for example, do you think that's a good idea to leave that? I would say no. Why? Because your guest is going to be thinking about the person that was using that before you. Similar to the way they will think that if they see a roll of toilet paper that's not fully used. Now, there's some things you could do to dress it up. You know, you can put a little sticker on it or stamp showing that you've professionally touched this, your housekeepers have, and then it's ready for the next guest use. But a lot of times you might be throwing those out. Your housekeepers might just be using up the rest and then you're having to replace them. So think about that first, do you want that look in your property? The second question you want to ask yourself is how much you're really spending on this consumable item. If you're not spending a lot, well, then this podcast isn't going to help you out that much. But I hope it gets you thinking about the other consumable items that you are purchasing to see if there might be a way for you to save costs there without cutting corners too. We don't want to come off as being cheap with our rentals. Right. Of course, every rental has different standards, but toilet paper, for example, is one of those areas where we do not want to buy bad toilet paper. A third question you might want to ask yourself is how long are your guests actually staying? Because if they're staying in your property for a long time and, and you put one paper towel roll out to start, well, you're not going to be replenishing that. That's one of the side benefits about having medium term stays or longer term stays is that we have a little less expense with consumables. So if you're only doing medium term stays, you can afford to put a few more consumable items in there for your guests. So let's get to costs here. When I started looking at this, I couldn't believe that we could actually buy a bar mop towel brand new for less than the cost of a paper towel roll. That's crazy to me. So how are we doing this and still making our guests feel comfortable and having something to use while we're leaving? Several bar mop towels freshly cleaned. Of course, you don't want them have any stains on them. If you do have stains on them, though, after washing, your housekeepers can use these as cleaning rags. So we leave some fresh ones and then we're also leaving a separate one as a hand towel just to dry their hands. And, and that's one that we will leave hanging over the dishwasher or right there next to the sink. So yes, there is going to be a little more laundry, but you know, it's not going to be a whole bunch. And if you end up saving half your costs, this is quite a bit of money or can really add up. At least it is for us. You know, we're doing hundreds of reservations every month for any of those of you out there that are running property management companies or you have bigger portfolios. Every expense that we take off and that is unnecessary, that comes right back to our bottom line and that goes right into our pocket. So consider your consumable items. Make sure that you have the necessities, but everything over that, see if that's something that you really actually need. We're trying this out right now. Part of this podcast is just to get you thinking and understanding and evaluating your business a little more. We might get some feedback on this and if we do well, then we will make a change. But if we don't, we're gonna end up saving a lot a lot of money. So until next time, there is a little bit on paper towels. I hope you're having a wonderful week out there and I look forward to talking with you soon.

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