What You Need to Know About Running a Short Term Rental Business | The STRR Podcast #104

Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches, where we'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals to help you build wealth faster with as little headache as possible.

This week we're going to answer some questions. We're going to answer quite a few questions from you guys. So this will be the first time doing this. We do get lots of questions. I usually try to bundle them up and put them in a podcast episode, but. But there's a lot of other ones that have been coming in, so I just wanted to take a chance to kind of do like a rapid fire Q and A. So I'm just gonna read the questions that I got and give you my best answers and hopefully it helps you out there because the reality is we usually don't ask enough questions. We kind of were trained this when we were in school growing up, right? Like no one wanted to ask a stupid question. And it. I'm guilty of that myself. There's lots of questions I'm sure I never asked that could have been beneficial. So hopefully this week we can answer some of those for you. The first one is from Bill in Mississippi and he said, I'm just getting, or if just getting started, can we hire VAs virtual assistants to help set up and run the automation like Smart Airbnb and Price Labs, or should we do this ourselves? I'm trying to purchase my first one. So Smart bnb, that is a management software for short term rentals. Price Labs is a pricing, dynamic pricing tool for short term rentals, specifically for short term rentals. And my suggestion, my answer to this question would be to set those things up yourself, at least for your first property or your first couple properties. But after that, absolutely, you can have your VA help you set up anything really, as long as you've provided the training and the access to the tools you're using. So my VA's help me with all those types of things. So. Good question, Bill. Next question, Austin. This is from Austin and it's about building your network. He says, hey Tim, Currently I'm aggressively searching for my first property. The biggest challenge I'm dealing with right now is networking. My circle hasn't yet. My circle hasn't yet reached out to the people I would like to have on my team. I'd love to know a little bit more about how you would advise for a young real estate investor looking to get some skin in the game. Sincerely, Austin. This is a great question, Austin, because as you may have heard, our network is our net worth and that really is true, or at least a lot of that is true, is that we get more and more opportunities and if we have a bigger network and, you know, we can get more real estate deals, we can learn of new lenders, we can get all these resources that we might not otherwise be able to get if we have a smaller network. So that's a great question and I think it's very, very important. And my answer would be we just gotta get in there. So great start listening to the podcast. You know, hopefully you're checking out some YouTube channels and checking out some events in your area or virtual events, but you gotta go step further than that and you really have to reach out to the people providing the content or on social media platforms. So you really have to reach out and you'd be surprised. A lot of people are much more accessible than you might think they are. So give it a shot. I think you'll find that you get some good feedback and it's one of those things that just takes a little bit of time, but at least acknowledging it is going to set you off on the right path. So good question, Austin. Next question comes from Skip in Tennessee says quick operational question. Do you have one Netflix and YouTube TV account for multiple units or are you setting up one account per unit? It's a good question. So YouTube and Netflix, those are two different subscriptions and they both work a little differently. I don't currently have a YouTube subscription or a premium subscription for all of our properties, but I do have Netflix. And the Netflix account I believe allows for like five simultaneous users. So I try to set up an account for each five or so properties. The reality is that in those five properties it's pretty unlikely that everyone's going to be watching Netflix at the same time. So you might be able to stretch that and use one Netflix account for a few more properties. But I do think Netflix is really important. I mean, it's kind of replaced TV, right? That and YouTube. So make sure you've got a smart TV. This next question is also from Skip and it's which mattress do we use? This is a tough question because there's not a one size fits all mattress, right? Some people like a mattress that's slightly firmer, some like one that's slightly softer. But the one that we use almost exclusively is a queen size mattress off of Amazon and it's made by Zinus Z I N U S. It's called a 12 inch. So it's 12 inches thick green tea memory foam mattress. We get really good feedback on this again from the majority of all of our guests. We can't have a perfect mattress for everyone, unfortunately. But this one's worked out really well and I know personally I like it. I sleep in a lot of these different rentals when I'm visiting the US and I really like it. And it ships in a box. It's easy to get. By the way, we have this mattress and we have a lot of other favorite resources on our website at restmethods under recommended resources. So you can go there and check out the door locks. We use a lot of the software, use a lot of things we talk about on this podcast. So great question, Skip. Next question from Wayne in Arizona says first congrats on the hundredth episode. Well, thank you Wayne. I found your webinar and your weekly podcast to be very helpful and practical, so thank you for that. Since participating in your webinar almost a year ago, I now have three short term rental properties, two local in Tucson and one in Michigan, using an Airbnb co host. So congrats Wayne. That is very, very good news. Glad you took the leap. I bet you're glad as well too. The tools you've suggested such as Price Lab, Smart BNB and Air DNA have made this more manageable, especially while I still have my full time job. It's all gone very well for with us now qualifying as Airbnb super hosts and generating a nice profit. So thanks once again for being big part of this, of this success. All that leads up to this question, what resources would you recommend for me to begin more direct bookings? So that is a good question. Direct bookings are bookings that we can take with our short term rentals directly. So not through Airbnb, not through vrbo, but and my answer to this question, I think the easiest way to handle this is to use a management software platform and those management platforms like the one I use, Hostaway has a built in option to list your rentals online on your own website. So that's the easiest way. And then he also asks how you can go about taking payments on that. We use a credit card company called Stripe and you'll want to link that directly into your management software. And then if you get a direct booking, it's gonna, it's all gonna sync up and just work pretty seamlessly. Now keep in mind, if you're taking direct bookings, you don't have the Airbnb host guarantee like you would have. So you wanna make sure you get a deposit and you really vet your guests well. So you don't have any issues popping up. So great questions, Wayne, and congrats. Congrats on getting several rentals already. That's, that's great news. Alec in Arizona, and I know Alec, he's a friend of mine, he just bought a vacation rental. So congrats, Alec. He has a luxury type vacation rental and his question was, I have an extra living room, an extra space essentially that's not being used. It's essentially a second living room. Should I add more sleeping space? So this is a good question as well, and I would say it depends. So it depends on your type of rental and depends on the type of guest you have coming. So luxury rental, I would be much more inclined to add more sleeping space because you usually have families headed there on vacation. So the more space, the more opportunity you have to get your property booked. Now I experimented a lot with this with a lot of my smaller rentals and I found that sometimes the rental is too small and you're adding extra sleeping space like on a sofa, couch or something like that. It's kind of cramming too many people into a space. That was just my experience. And the more people you have in your property, the more people you have to accommodate. So keep that in mind. It could be a little more difficult on the management side. One thing you can do is charge an extra per guest fee over a certain amount. So let's say your vacation rental had spots for eight to sleep in. So but you wanted to add another spot, maybe get a 9th and a 10th guest. Well, you can advertise for eight people and then charge an additional amount on your 9th and 10th guest. And so that's an option available in Airbnb. So take a look at that. Good question, Alec, and congrats on the property. Next question from Michael. Says, Tim, I've got to say you have the best resource out there I've run into. I went through a few training sessions for short term rentals to get different perspectives and I'm so glad I ran into yours first. You have set the standard at delivering value.

Thank you, Michael. The other two compared to your training just doesn't compare. Just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart because you've guided a good portion of my goals in business this year. You're welcome, Michael. And that is great to hear. So Michael is referring to our STR playbook that we added not too long ago on our website, Rest Methods. I really do try to jam pack that with as much info as I can. It's actually A recording of the virtual event that we do, and the next one's coming up, so if you don't get a chance to attend it live virtually, we will have a copy and that's what will become our STR playbook. So it is jam packed as much as I can possibly fit in there. So his question says, any tips on utilizing host fleet guidebooks? I was attempting to do one guidebook per property, but that would cost a lot. I wanted to do that because each property has different instructions on entering into the property. So that's a good question. And hostfully is the guidebook resource that I recommend. It's the one that I use with all my properties. And I would say, you know, they do charge you per property. Now, a lot of my properties are very similar. They're in multifamily properties, so I might have four units that are pretty much identical. I don't send my checkout instructions in the guidebook because those are changing with each guest and it would just be a little too much hassle. So I have pretty generic information in my guidebook, but that's still very helpful. So it has all of my favorite local recommendations. It has information about parking for multiple units if they all happen to be in the same building or complex. So I don't have a guidebook for every single property individually. I do have a guidebook available for any guest visiting that's going to match their property, but it's not going to be as specific as having check instructions and stuff like that. I would say this can save you a heck of a lot of questioning, and it does make it very nice for your guests. So if all your properties are totally different, I would definitely consider just kind of paying a little extra money and having one guidebook per property. So hopefully that helps answer your question, Michael. And thanks everyone for all the questions. We actually have a lot more, so I'm gonna do another episode and hopefully I can answer as many as they come in and bundle them together. And we can keep doing these podcasts. They're really good questions. So thank you for sending them, by the way. We like to get the feedback and you guys can check us out and all the podcast platforms. You, you can also find us on Instagram at Rest Methods. So if you've got a question, please don't hesitate to ask it. I can't promise that I'll get back to you right away, but I do want to get back to everyone. So until next time, have a wonderful day.

Sam.