How much work are STRs really?

[Roy H.]

Everyone says LTRs are passive, STRs are work.

But why? What exactly makes them more work that can't be automated?

Let's assume you self-manage. The most prominent problems that I can think of are:

• Booking/screening
• Cleaning/laundry/turnover
• Handyman on-call for repairs
• Answering questions from guests
  

You can set up autoresponders to handle booking/check-in/check-out and even requesting reviews/feedback. Cleaning/turnovers can be done with online software as well. Questions from guests during their stay can be handled from your phone in seconds or even outsourced.

You can almost automate everything down to the point where the only thing you need to deal with are major events (repairs, complaints, etc.).

So if you have systems like this in place, are STRs really more work?

You're eliminating a lot of the labor and still hauling more than an LTR (I'd imagine so) even with tools.

Or do people just say that STRs are busy from a perspective without tools and automation? Or am I missing some major hassle of owning an STR? I'm still learning as much as I can.

PS: For those have who skin in the game, how many direct interactions do you typically deal with from your guests on average? What kind of questions do you get? Are they respectful of business hours or does that not exist?

Thanks for any words of wisdom.

[Mike Anderson]

I work in IT, and have done work for some of the biggest names in tech. My most recent job i manage a team of engineers of 25 engineers that run and manage a hospital's IT department. One of the core principals I've instilled in my team is lets work toward a world where we know about issues before they happen and fix them before people notice, we have tools that will alert us that a particular piece of equipment has broken a trend line and will break down in 6 hours, so we can make adjustments before the problem creates an outage. When we do have an issue we have a meeting after the fact and our goal is to figure out what we have to do to "never talk about this again" how we fix this issue so its fixed for good and we never need to deal with it again.

I've tried to figure out how to aligh that methodology into the STR world. Obviously you can't anticipate everything but we have tried to do the best we can and we will make adjustments accordingly in the future as we learn more. I think a "fully automated" system in this world is not reasonable but we should work towards it, but i think you can get it close enough and invest your time wisely into things that will make a difference.

We did a few things in our rental to "get ahead" of problems.

- Replaced every bulb with LED bulbs, this helps us save money on electricity and the lifespan on LED is much longer than an incandescent bulb.
- We proactively replaced both toilet seats with the best seats you can buy at home depot, the cost difference is like 30 bucks but if that prevents a call or two fine by me, one was already broken invest a little extra to prevent calls.
- We bought extra's of items we know go missing, like steak knives, towels, and other kitchen items our cleaner knows where they are stored
- We bought smoke detectors that don't need batteries, again one less thing.
- We had leaks on 2 of our 3 faucets, we had a plumber try to tell us they had an O ring and could fix one of them. Instead i bought new faucets as the existing were old and leaking. I bought a good brand, but a middle of the road product in that brand. Thought too myself if 2 are bad, might as well do the third as i was doing it myself and they are the same age. So now my place has all new faucets. I could of saved money, but honestly how long before another O ring goes bad when a guest is there.... Statistically much lower a chance a new faucet goes bad
- We noticed a door sticking when we were there and we fixed it, a guest will eventually complain so we handled it.
- We had a toilet that was cracked, i didn't buy a 600$ toilet, but i bought a better one, that also had a ton of parts availability. Again i don't want to deal with it, and if i do i want to be able to get parts easily.
- We had fans that were all over the place one with a battery remote, 2 without, 1 with a switch that turned the entire thing on and you had to use the pull cords to turn the light on. I rewired/fixed them all so one switch turns on the light, the other turns the fan on all fans in the house. Consistency, they all work the same now and it make sense. Guests don't need to figure it out it should be easy and intuitive for them.
- When I did the faucets i cleaned out all P traps really well. No known issues but i know they are clean now. For the shower traps i proactively put liquid plumber in them, one of them got considerably better. Took me 10 minutes, but now I know that both are good, I didn't know of any issues but the time/effort/cost was cheap enough, and its a common enough problem might as well get ahead of it.
- I saw folks talk about source on the TV, we use comcast, netflix, hulu, amazon prime all of them are accessible using the xfinity button so I hide the TV remote. Tv is programmed to force to the source of comcast, and to use any of the apps just hit one button. Easy peasy for guests, and i have a template made to respond to folks if they have issues. No source changes are ever needed to access anything.
- I utilize all the wifi stuff i can. Noise monitoring, wifi thermostat, wifi lock, wifi security camera and flood light. I have an app that allows me to reboot my router/cable modem too. I can make adjustments to anything in just seconds if guests have an issue.
- I also use a free hostfully guidebook, which has info on how to utilize all my household items with pictures, has restaurant recommendations, hiking trails, the whole 9 yards. I spend a few hours on the front end to set it up, but don't plan on doing a whole lot in the future. I send this link in my automated Welcome message, if they ask for recommendations in the future i have a template that resends the link and lets them know our recommendations are all there.

My goal from doing the above is i bust my butt for a week, spend some money on the front end in hopes that i have set myself up for 2-4 years of the least amount of issues i can have. Then on a day to day basis I let yourporter automation run, pricelabs run, and i do a response here and there to make guests happy. It's all about the systems and planning for stuff before hand. I'll make adjustments as I go but I think setting myself up like this will set me up for future success, and allow me to focus more on future deals and not day to day operations. Lastly it cant be said enough that a good cleaner and handyman is worth their weight in gold. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THIS. You might as well look at your cleaner as someone that is a business partner and is a part owner of your business because basically they are. Treat them well, and recognize the huge contribution they make in your success.