Newbie, Wanting to learn about airbnb's

[Gary Christensen]

I've been doing electrical work for 30 years, and my wife and I want to get out if the rat-race!

We want to focus on airbnb properties. We would appreciate any guidance on what to do/look for first.

[Mike Shemp]

@Gary Christensen

We're in a similar situation.  We're working our W2 jobs, but building up our short-term rental portfolio to hopefully escape the rat race.  We started 5 years ago and we have 3 properties that are short term rentals that we manage remotely 7 hours away.

We decided we wanted to do short term rentals instead of long term because they seem to have higher cash flow, and we were willing to accept the additional work and risk involved with them.

Some advice to consider:
- To help sleep better at night, go into your first deal with some additional emergency savings for anything unexpected that you didn't consider.

- Purchase unique, vintage, higher quality furniture on Facebook Marketplace, estate sales, and garage sales instead of buying cheap stuff from the big box stores.

- The automation services such as Hospitable, Pricelabs, etc. are worth it in my opinion.  

- Build a good team consisting of your cleaner and handyman.  After that look for a good electrician, hvac, plumber, and appliance person.  Pay them as soon as you get their invoice and treat them like gold.  

- When you find yourself not sure what to do with a guest situation, just ask yourself "What would I want the host to do for me if I were the guest?"

Hope that helps get you started!

Mike