Tim Hubbard presents a short-form podcast/YouTube episode aimed at short-term rental investors about saving time and money furnishing properties by using virtual interior designers and online sourcing tools. He recommends creating floor plans, then using services such as Fiverr or Upwork for 3D staging or turnkey platforms (Modzi/modzi.com) that pair virtual designers with ordering from multiple retailers without markups, and notes Amazon Showroom as another visualization/order option. He emphasizes designing for the guest avatar (business travelers vs families), budgeting, and mixing locally-flavored items with mass-market pieces; closes with links and resources on restmethods.com.
Questions this video answers
May 11, 2022.
About $150 ("for as little as like 150 bucks").
restmethods.com.
Chapters
Do you need some help furnishing your property? You are in luck. We have the ability to work now with virtual designers easier than ever and they're going to help us save a lot of time sourcing the furniture. There's actually some websites. We can do it all in the same place and I want to share those with you this week. 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. Happy, happy, happy, you're here again. As always, it's fun doing these podcasts and we do appreciate all the feedback and the reviews. If you haven't left us one yet, I would really appreciate if you would head over to itunes or Spotify, wherever you're listening and just leave us a real quick one. I want to jump in today's episode and talk about getting some additional help furnishing our property now. Furnishing super important, right? It's what our guests see before they make a decision to book our property. And so we got to make sure that it is good that we did a good job. So there's tons of resources to learn about interior design now. We've got YouTube, we've got Pinterest. There's another great app called Houzz that I really like. It's H O u Z Z. There's tons and tons of cool apps for interior design. But even then, even with all of this, are you sure that you are the best person for the job? Well, if you're at all doubtful or you think you could use a little help, well, that's what this week's episode is about. It's about getting some additional help from virtual designers. We're want to share some websites with you and also where you can order the furniture. Do it all in the same spot. So if you didn't listen to last Week's episode number 125, jump back and check that one out. We talked about floor plans and why it's really important to have a floor plan for a property, especially when we're furnishing. Right. This is what the pros use. The pros use floor plans. We can't space new furniture out in a space as easily without a floor plan. So go back and check that one out. It won't take you long at all to create a floor plan and you're going to need it to work with your virtual designers. So where do we go from here? Well, if we're just working with one room, for example, there's quite a few places we can go. We can go to Fiverr or we can go to Upwork. Those are places where you can find outsourced work. You can send them that floor plan or you can send them pictures of the areas and they can create a floor plan for you or space for, for you. It might be slightly different depending on who you're working with, but they can create a 3D image of your room with furniture in it. Virtual furniture. That is right. We can do all of this remotely. And you will be impressed if you haven't seen this already. I mean you can't even tell sometimes that these properties, that these aren't real pictures with real furniture in them. It's pretty crazy. I have a property manager that helps me with some of my long term rentals and we had one come up for lease and she said, hey, I virtually furnished it. She sent me a picture and I was like, wow, that's really cool. Like that is the same space and that is what it would look like with furniture in there. So it's a great way to help out along your furnishing process. And so you can do that on Fiverr or Upwork or I'm sure there's some other sites available. If you just search 3D staging online, you're going to find some options. Now one that came up that is really cool I think because you can get this 3D help, but you can also order all of your furniture from the same spot and they don't mark it up. And this is Modzi, or maybe it's Modzi. I'm not exactly sure how it's pronounced, but it does look very helpful. I haven't used it personally myself, but I'm looking forward to checking it out and using it. And so they've got some great options on there. Basically you can hire your own interior designer to work with your space virtually for as little as like 150 bucks at the time of this recording. And they can help you design the space with that actual furniture that you're going to use and then you can order that furniture right through there. And they work with over 100 different furniture outlets like Wayfair and Pottery Barn and they don't mark up the furniture. So it's going to save you time for sure and it can save you a lot of money. If we're working, if we want to work with a traditional professional interior designer, that can be Quite pricey. Of course, we set budgets for all these things, but they have to go out to your space. A lot of times they'll, you know, maybe want to work with more custom furniture. So it can definitely add up. Of course, you set your own budget for things like that, but it's definitely going to take longer, Right, Versus sending some pictures, sending your floor plan and getting someone online to give you pretty immediate help and professional help. So check out modzi or modzi.com and one thing before we jump to the next option, I just want to remind you that as you're working with one of these designers, remember this is a short term rental, right? This is investment property. Unless you're spending a whole bunch of time in it yourself. You want to make sure that it's best designed for your guests. For your guest avatar, we've talked about that before, that's the person that's going to be staying in your property. So make sure it's designed for them and not for you. You know, if it's a, if it's someone coming in for work, you want to make sure that you have a workspace there for sure. A desk, maybe even a microphone, super fast wifi and maybe a little bit more of a modern type of feel. Right? So make sure you know who's staying at your property if they're families with little kids. And you're very likely going to have different furniture than you would for a solo business traveler. Right. So remember that when you're working with one of these professional designers, keep that in mind. Now, the next option for sourcing your furniture really easily and being able to view sort of a 3D type of model is with Amazon Showroom. Yeah, the big, big Amazon. They have their own option now. Now it's not quite as developed as Modzi, where you're actually going to be working with your own space. You know that you've uploaded and Modzi also has an app that you can use to scan your space as well. I believe so. But yeah, with Amazon you can at least view like a living room, for example, or you can view a bathroom and you can view the furniture and how it's laid out. So maybe you have a clock on the wall, for example, you say, ah, you know what, I don' how that clock looks with this paint color. You can easily change paint colors on there. Well then you can remove the clock and you can choose from another available option from Amazon and put it on there and you can design the whole space and then order everything at the same time. So that makes it pretty easy. I used to order a ton of stuff on Amazon, I still do, but I do like to get a little bit of local kind of flair going on there. You know, maybe not tied specifically to the local city, but something that doesn't seem brand new like Amazon or Ikea, just to make it feel a little more cozy. So I do like to mix that in maybe 20% or so of the furniture so it doesn't feel like you open an Ikea box and, and your guests are going to know too if, especially if they stay in several short term rentals or they stay in short term rentals often. So check out Modzi, check out Amazon Showroom, check out Fiverr Upwork if you want to get an idea of a 3D space in your property, or maybe you're just thinking about redoing a space, it's already furnished and you're like, you know what, I think it's time for a redo. Want to get a new couch, want to change the paint color, want to do all these things? Well, that's good to check it out with a 3D model. Take those things into consideration. I think we're just going to keep having more and more cool tools to be able to manage our properties remotely to, to do all of these things remotely and get really good information. So I'm excited about short term rentals as I have been for a long time. I hope your journey's going well and until next time, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day. If you're looking for a ton of free resources, well, you can check out the links in the show notes or head to our website restmethods.com where you'll find free guides, house rules, and my ebook on finding the best short term rental properties. Thanks for tuning in.
