All Forum Posts by: Benjamin Vail

Go with the developing area, close to things. That is a strategy that has worked well in Columbus for us. Make the house nice inside, and be honest with people about the “rough neighborhood” in your Airbnb listing. It won’t be for everyone, but more than half of the Airbnb guests looking for a place on Airbnb wont care about that. You want to attract the half that is not bothered by it. What they will love is the lower rate, and better deal they are getting on their room because it is in a rougher location. 

Stay away from condos, do SFH, or 2 unit houses. If you do a 2 unit, there is more upside on renting the 2 units out to one group on Airbnb on high demand dates (like Steelers games). oh yes, also make sure you use dynamic pricing for your dates. It will be critical to your profitability.

If you need help deciding, or set-up, or managing, I would be happy to jump on a call. 

- Cheers! 

Hi Brian, my company Housepitality hosts an Airbnb house in Indianapolis, and we are looking to add a few more houses to our management team there. I am in Columbus, but am happy to chat sometime. Thank you! 

6 houses with frozen pipes already this year, 4 have now frozen twice. When tge are STR jouses, you must solve the problems fast. Stupid me, i was working with a hair dryer, and being scientific about it, but I should have been asking Paul Sandhu, and should have been using a flame thrower!

Columbus OH, and Indianapolis IN are open for business! We have a management team in each city, so let me know if you are interested in seeing numbers, or looking for help. 

I started a co-hosting company. We love co-hosting! We also call it property management. Just added our 32nd STR unit, and looking to add market #4.

I have spent many hour looking through second hand furniture, but after just furnishing our 32 STar house, I have found that buying on Amazon, with a spreadsheet and links to the items that I have bought before, works the best. 

Here are the headaches you can save yourself: 

1. Coordinating with people selling the items. 

2. Coordinations with your crew picking up the stuff. 

3. Items not being as nice as new items. 

4. Bed bugs. 

5. People that overvalue their old crappy stuff. 

6. Lifting and moving heavy stuff. 

7. Trying to fit that big couch in the tiny front door. 

8. Haggling 

9. Delivery fees

Here are the benifits: 

1. You can order everything you need in the list in about an hour. 

2. Everything on your list can be delivered directly to the actual house within 2 - 5 days. 

3. Everything is new, and nice. 

4. Pay someone to unpack and assemble. 

The other thing I’m learning is to have some cookies ready when the mailman arrives. They are generally not happy to have to drop off 38 big boxes from Amazon. 

We run 32 STR units in the midwest. My partner was set on August locks, and I hate them. They are flashy, but we spend WAY to much time and money sending crew to fix their issues. I have Remotelock on one, and love it. I also have non-wifi keypad locks ($60) on about 20 houses, and that system is my favorite. We have the cleaners change the codes every guests. If you get that system down, then you shouldn't have issues with guests checking in early (as long as the cleaners change the codes as the last thing they do). Always, Always, Always, have a back up lockbox in case the locks have issues! Have 2 back up lockboxes, and you will sleep better at night!

I think 2% is good, but don’t get caught up on this stat. I think an optimized listing should get 500 - 1000 views per month, and get 5 - 20 new bookings per month (1 - 2%). 

If your doing a good job of filling your calendar with optimization, (75% booked in next 30 days, 30% booked in next 90 days) then your actual listing views should be lower than when you first get started. If your booking rate is lower than 2%, it does not mean your doing bad, it could just mean you have a lot of available dates on your calendar. 

We are doing Short term rentals in Columbus. It is currently a decent market, but starting to get saturated with Airbnb and STR properties since the city passed favorable legislation 6 months ago. The number of properties on Airbnb has doubled in those 6 months time. If you are wanting to get in now, you should have a solid property, and a solid game plan. I'm happy to help you out, just send me a PM. Also, be on the lookout in the next week for the city's registration process. I got a sneak peak of what the registration process will look like, and it looks to be a bit more cumbersome than we anticipated.

Best of luck! 

My wife and I do this, and love it. It pays for our vacations! We keep a locked storage room in the basement. We put most of our clothes down there. We give access to our food to our guests (they are paying $300/night, so they can eat my Cheerios!). get a back up lockbox in case your main keypad/system fails. Get a good cleaning crew, and make friends with your neighbors.