MTR Summit Recap

[Jamie Banks]

I had the pleasure of attending the MTR Summit hosted by Jesse Vasquez. Here’s a few takeaways

1. Most people get into MTRs with the intention of renting to traveling medical professionals but they’re only a small sliver of the MTR market. Military, government workers, families relocating or displaced due to a tragedy, students traveling for internships, and digital nomads are all different customers who need temporary furnished housing. 

2. Don’t be afraid to niche down. Targetting 1-2 customer types can really help you grow your business. If you want to target displaced families for example start making connections with insurance companies. Be proactive and consistent with your outreach to build B2B relationships. 

3. OTAs such as Airbnb, VRBO, etc are great but shouldn’t be your only source of leads. Tell everyone and anyone that you are a furnished housing provider to get your name / brand out there. Many of the investors I met get at least 25% of their business from referrals. 

[Nick Zupec]

Robin, welcome to BP :) I think of getting contracts directly with the agencies as kind of like direct to seller marketing. You will probably get a lot of no's before you get a yes. It may also be dependent on when you catch them so it is helpful to follow up every so often. But when you do get a yes, it is worth it! I also think it is really important to have a value proposition. If you were in their shoes, why would they want to work with you? For example, in our market all of the MTRs turn to STRs over the summer because we have a lot of seasonal vacationers so traveling professionals really have a hard time finding anything from May-September. I tell them that we will commit to them for the full 12-months or longer, which many others don't. Whenever we get an application from someone that we get on Furnished Finder (and full disclaimer... we are new at this so haven't done a lot of them yet) I ask for their recruiter and staffing agency on the application and add it to a spreadsheet. Then I call the recruiter to do the employment verification. At the end of that call, I ask them if they frequently place travelers in our area. If they say yes, I give them my 20 second pitch. A recruiter yesterday took my name and number and said she would pass it on to her travelers in my area the future. That was a small win. At the end of this contract, I will probably reach out to her on LinkedIn and tell her that we had a great experience with our guest/tenant and send her our website for future reference. If she engages back, I will remind her that we would always be interested in working with them directly if there is anyway that we can help to fill a need for them. I always try to phrase it in a way that we are being a solution for them.

Allen, I haven't gotten an agency contract yet, but I talked to some others that have. I agree that you would have a hard time asking them for a higher amount if they can see your properties online listed for less. Our contract that we are negotiating now is with a large local company. We were networking with another investor that provides MTRs to this company in the offseason, but they are making all of the tenants leave in the next few weeks to switch the units to STRs for the summer. We just asked that investor how much the company pays them monthly so we had a benchmark (and it was quite a bit higher than we are getting direct). The other investor's properties are a little bigger, but ours are more updated and in a better location so I think we should be able to get a similar amount. When we were emailing with the company, they asked us to provide information on properties that we could provide them and include photos and the pricing structure. Knowing what they pay to others was huge for us in feeling confident throwing out a higher number than we would on Furnished Finder or Airbnb. If you can find anyone that has agency contracts in your area, that would be ideal so you could have a similar benchmark of what the agency is willing to pay.