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.

[Michael Baum]

Hey @Roy H.. I interact with all my guests before and during their stay. After if I need to. I don't autobook so I find out if the people are real or fake.

Many on here have some full automated systems which allows them less work and greater freedom. I only have one place so I spend the time to chat with each guest directly.

Everyone seems to appreciate the contact.

As for questions, that runs the gamut. Where can I rent a boat, which path do I take to the beach, do I need to bring XYZ, do you have XYZ, we have 12 people in our group can it sleep that many with kids? On and on. I work hard to make things as good as I can for the guests.

Some ask hardly any questions and some are texting me 3x a day. It all depends.

[Luke Carl]

@Roy H. Excellent questions! I think the answer will vary greatly depending on the host. @Michael Baum is crushing it but he's doing everything different than me. I DO allow instant-book and would have it no other way. My entire operation is automated. I often go 3-4 days I don't even look at any of my apps or messages of any kind. I also have a full-time assistant that is looking at everything during business hours and would alert me to any issues should I be needed. But the whole point is that I am not needed so she rarely contacts me about the short terms. 

My long term rentals (I have many more LTR than STR) have been a lot of work this year and expensive. I've had 3 evictions. One of which the tenant gets to stay for free for almost 4 months.

No matter how you look at it. LTR STR this is a business and you have to deal with issues and put systems in place.

50% of all humans that buy a rental property sell it in the first year. Those people that sell didn't build the right systems. 

Long story short. 

Host A may spend all day long on one STR, (you see these types of folks on facebook)

Host B may have 6 STRs and spend 5 minutes per week (me)  

[John Underwood]

Even without the automation I don't spend that much time on my Vrbo. I do like Michael and contact my guests to make sure they are having a 5 star experience. This doesn't take much time. My wife makes sure the cleaners have the cleaning schedule. 

Its not that much work, but it's still more than my LTR's.

[Ian Shinnick]

@Roy H. (take this with a grain of salt since I have been in the STR game for a whopping two months and only have one place) I fall in the middle between the great and powerful @Luke Carl and @Michael Baum. I have all of my preliminary and welcome messages automated but I also chat with each guest directly. We have had a few hiccups (propane ran out, broken TV, Etc) and I think the direct chat helped us save at least one 5 star review. 

Interactions vary by guest but I would say I chat at least 2x with each guest but I had one honeymoon couple that I didn't talk to once. Questions we have received are similar. Where can we get firewood, how do I turn on the fireplace, where are the good hiking trails, any suggestions for dinner, can the cabin sleep 12, you say no dogs but I can bring my dog, etc. etc. etc. 

[Paul Sandhu]

23 front doors and 83 beds.  The furthest is 7 minutes away from my house.  It's a full time job with no set hours.  But the pay is pretty good.  Was grossing 15k a week before the pandemic.  After the pandemic I had 2 renters.  One was furloughed for a month and went home.  The other was layed off so he did carpentry, roofing and maintenance in exchange for rent.  So I really went from 73 renters to just one guy doing work in exchange for rent.

[Justin Anderson]

If you're only doing one, it's definitely something that's very easy to manage and squeeze in around your day.  On the whole, "management " isnt overwhelming at all and anyone with half a brain can do it.

But let me give you a couple of examples just this week of things I'vehad to deal with...

- The AC was out, had to pay a service call for a tech to find out someone had flipped the breaker off.  Took several angry messages/calls with the guest and an hour coordinating with the tech.

- Toilets backing up throughout the house.   Suspected septic needs to be pumped, but the few we work with are busy for the next several days and don't want to navigate the roads due to the recent rains.  Sent a plumber to get us up and running in the meantime. A couple of hours calling and talking to all involved.

- Guest can't get the TV working and troubleshooting over the phone wasn't working.  Service call to change the TV input.

- Guest breaks a dining room chair before checkout.   New guest PISSED there are only 3 chairs at the table.  Spent the next 8 hours going to 6 stores trying to find a similar store,  only to have to drive an hour away to get one.

LTRs have renters that learn the quirks of your place and generally take decent care of it. STRs are there to have a good time and have to learn everything from scratch and have challenges.  Heck, I even had one family come from Hawaii and had never seen a thermostat.  You judt never know what you'll run into.

You definitely need a stable of good folks to clean and maintain the property and that takes time,  even if yourr local.  If youre not local, get ready for some growing pains as you get crazy quotes for you, the out of town owner with money.. And don't get me started on finding reliable cleaners. 

Proper rate setting is where a good PM would earn their money.   Most owners I've worked with leave 30 to 50% money on the table due to vacancies or underpricing.  Wheelhouse or beyond pricing is a great way to get started, but definitely plan on spending time on there tweaking things.

Bottom line is this is doable and not a big burden at one property.  It won't suck a lot of your time at all once you have a good team in place.  But when things pop up you are expected to spend time to smooth out the inevitable hiccups.

[Doug Pintarch]

WE have 2 and self-manage.  @Luke Carl has his automation systems running like a Swiss watch and should be consulted about his methods (He'll even let you call him in person if you ask nicely!) But we do exactly the opposite.  We do not EVER autobook - we screen every inquiry as much as possible (read: "Online stalk"). We only use VRBO - no other sites, no friends and family program either. If my sister wants to stay in our place she goes on VRBO and we book it there. We do ours like @Michael Baum does his.  Hands-on baby!   We go down and clean for turnovers, we have a cleaner that alternates units so we can see what's going on in each of them all the time - we keep on top of linens, general maintenance, and supplies ourselves and enjoy the whole process (And the money we save!)  We do, however, have a handyman, a plumber, an electrician, and a painter.  All pros, we're knuckleheads and don't want to screw up the big stuff!

[Luke Carl]

@Justin Anderson totally rules but I would never in a million years send someone to one of my properties to change the input on a TV. 

Almost everything that has been mentioned on this thread I handle by getting upstream. Book Suggestion: Upstream by Dan Heath 

I don't think there's any right or wrong way to do any of this stuff. Do what works for you. I automate and I've got over 2000 5 star reviews to back up my methods. 

[Gerald Pitts]

I automate as much as possible on 2 properties, and I probably deal with them once or twice a day on a busy day.  30 mins max.  Even THAT is probably my own control issues that I'm working on.  There are sometimes a few days that go by with nothing.  I'm focused on scaling bigger, and learning what I can about that.  

[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.

[Brian G.]

@Mike Anderson what app allows you to reboot your router/modem? Are they plugged into a smart power plug that you can turn off/on?

[Brian G.]

@Roy H. An STR is much closer to a hotel than a LTR. Lots of guests, turnovers, etc. So while a lot can be automated there is still a lot more guest interaction, communication with cleaners, coordinating with a handyman as needed, calling a service tech as needed, etc. IMO, if you are looking to maximize your ROI, don't mind being engaged when needed and have some flexibility to put out the occasional fire as @Justin Anderson describes above then the returns can be well worth the extra time. It doesn't require a ton of time once your systems are in place: your automation tools, team, etc.

[Mike Anderson]

Originally posted by @Brian G.:

@Mike Anderson what app allows you to reboot your router/modem? Are they plugged into a smart power plug that you can turn off/on?

Xfinity app allow you to reboot from their app the router. I opted to get the managed router even thought I always put my own router/firewall in. Reason being if there is an issue i can call and send one of their techs out and they own the solution end to end. If i put my own equipment in then I am responsible for it. 

[Paul Sandhu]

 You are a smart guy.  A lot smarter than other people on here with less than 100 posts.

[Gerald Pitts]

Great work, Mike.  This should be its own article on setting up a new STR.  

Originally posted by @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.

[Evelyn Badia]

Hosting for 10 years.. and remote hosting for the last 2 years. 

One home in NY (2 apartments in one home)
One in Puerto Rico

Set up time: Are you doing the work? shopping? setting up furniture? painting? designing?

Do it right from the beginning to avoid problems at the end.

Are you in a hurricane state?

Buy the supplies you'll need like a generator, etc while prepping the house. Not during the hurricane season when everyone is getting them. You don't think you'll get one. Ok sure.

Get smart TV, one remote.

Will you do all the turnovers or hire folks? How much will it cost you? How big is the house? 

You can spend from 1.5 hours to 4 hours depending on the amount of mess and the detail of cleaning.

Schedule a deep clean once every 4 weeks during the high season.

Schedule going through your property once a quarter to fix any and all issues. Retouch paint, sticky doors, clean gutters in the fall, change smart lock batteries.

Automate communication, I use igms (free for up to 4 listings) it was the best thing I did. 

Once a guest book it triggers my automation. (thank you for booking, you're about to arrive, how was your first night, I hope you had a good trip)

Your house manual will answer ALL the questions your guests have about your home and your town. From how to turn on the tv, to where is the grocery. My guests rave in my reviews about my house manual

Before COVID I use and believe in instant booking, it's perfect if you set it up right. 

Make sure you have a team for emergencies. handy person, etc.

Have extras of sheets, towels, wine glasses, and cups.. ohh and cutlery.

It's work but it doesn't have to consume your life if you do it right. 

[Gi'angelo Bautista]

We have 13 properties in the Bay Area that we manage and here are something things we do that takes a lot of time. It's basically a full time job with working on weekdays and weekends. 

[Jim Edelson]

I'll put it this way.  Being a ST manager is a bit like being a wedding planner.  Everything is compressed into a short time period and it needs to be perfect.  Every event has the potential (likelyhood?) to present a new set of challenges.   

Being a LT manager is a bit like raising cattle.  You put them out to pasture and keep a distant eye on things.