All Forum Posts by: Chris Frydenlund

@Will Pritchett: Currently Wimberley, TX will be our chosen location. How much should I expect to pay for satellite internet? Is that the only way to get internet? What's needed to get regular internet? I most likely will lease/buy unrestricted raw land outside the city limit. 

@James Carlson: Thanks for the great advice. I didn't know that was possible. No doubt I'll use that strategy. 

And what people buy is the experience. An experience you don't get in a small apartment in Houston.

Thanks for your input Rick Pozos . Actually the most successful rental in the area I'm looking at is an old airstream. And it's not even pretty inside. I like to copy an existing success to minimize risk. The most successful rental in the area is an old airstream. It has close to 100% occupancy according to several data sharing software I purchased access to. And they charge $130 on weekdays and $145 in the weekend. I base my rental prices and occupation rate on similar rental properties. I'm not comparing apples and oranges. I've excluded properties from my comparison that doesn't relate to my future property. Other properties are tiny houses and small cabins. You're right about the Internet. It might be more expensive out there.

My wife and I are planning to rent out an older airstream in the Hill Country of Texas (between San Antonio and Austin) with views of mountains or on a river (prime location). Year round rental targeted couple's getaway.

According to data from Airbnb (purchased), we'll on average be able to rent it out for $110-$130 on weekdays and $130-$180 in the weekend. Occupation rate between 50%-80% (top 10% of properties). The numbers depend on the specific location in the area and vary a lot. Average nights booked will be 2 nights (assumption). Thought about 2 nights min. to lower turnovers, but could have the opposite effect too.

We've seen an airstream for $15K in great condition. We're still looking for a place to put the airstream, though. We want to rent land instead of buying. Land is getting expensive in this area and not a lot for sale, so that made me think it'll be too expensive to own vs. leasing. Rent will cover land expenses (property taxes, utilities, etc.).

We'll be managing the property from Houston, TX (3 hours away). We'll install wifi controlled A/C, install a keyless lock and hire someone to clean the place. We believe it'll be difficult or very expensive to find someone to come clean the property out in the country and be available on short notice. I was hoping to get away with $40/clean-up.

Revenue: $2,000 (50% occupied) - $3,000/month (80% occupied). $24,000-36,000/year.

Expenses (assumptions): $40/clean-up (have no clue), utilities $50/month (have no clue), internet and netflix $80/month, land rental $500/month, Airbnb fee 3%, food and beverage supply $5/booking (too much?).

Cash Flow: $1,000/month (50% occupied) - $1,800/month (80% occupied). It seems too good to be true and I don't like that. I like to be very conservative in my calculations.

Would you do anything different and why? 

Any advice on how to find land to lease or other ways to place an airstream on a prime location?

Should we get the airstream ($15K) financed to leverage our money?

Do we need insurance?

Experience with couple's getaway outside the city? What have you experienced is different from other types of short term rentals?

Should/should not get my cleaning fee covered? Maybe partial covered?

My suggestion to you as an agent is to focus on being valuable to your target market. People don't have an agent like a doctor they always go to, so they'll be looking for one for the first time. 

Host local events to accommodate first-time home owners' lack of knowledge about buying a house. Invite your local lender, inspector, etc. I know a lot of agents who are tired of people contacting them about a house, but they don't have an agent and they're not approved for a loan.

That's just one example. Think of ways you can bring value to home owners who need to sell their home and looking to downsize or planning to build their own, etc.

Start Facebook Live every day giving tips to these people. If you speak to clients every day you probably get new questions every day. Post your answer and over time you'll have a very valuable FAQ on your Facebook that people share with each other and through that you'll get a lot of exposure.

It's about building a relationship with people. What you do offline (at the office) with a client do the same online or create events that'll have the same purpose.

After your initial meeting with a client invite them to follow you on your Facebook Page where they can get a lot of their questions answered. That'll also save you for a lot of work in the long run and be very unique and valuable to them. Don't ask random people to like your page. You have to meet them first in some way (over the phone, physical meeting), they have to know who you are first just like in real life. How can we like someone we don't know? 

Focus on getting one ambassador at the time. These people will be so valuable to you and free. They'll promote your stuff, recommend anyone they know to you, and so on. Once you found a home for your client go the extra mile maybe give them a little gift, something they didn't expect. This is where you get the most bang for your buck. They'll not see it coming and you'll always be in their memory. The money spent on that gift might be what makes them actually recommend you. People always remember the end of an event. So even though you gave them a great service throughout the entire process, but you came 1 hour late to give them their key or something and it was on a rainy day and they sat in the car with a screaming baby... That'll be their best memory of you. Invest your time and money in the first and last meeting with them, because that's what they'll remember.

I think you must rethink your question. Or consider what you're asking for. It's like building a house. Are you looking for a company that'll handle all of it for you, or do you want to be more involved? It'll save you money if you become the contractor and hire specialists to create your blueprint. Then pay individuals to do each task. But like building house without experience it'll require a lot more of your time and you'll make mistakes that'll cost you. On the other hand you'll gain experience without doing it all and you know what works and what you're paying for. You don't when you just pay someone to do it all. In this industry a lot of people pay a high price for almost nothing. And how would you know? You don't because you don't know what you're paying for. That's why I hate every time I take my car to service. They can say whatever they want I have no clue if they are right or not. You can use fiverr for different tasks that's needed and you might even be able to find someone to create your strategy. Fiverr is meant for specific tasks just like the design of a logo. You didn't pay the designer to also print out your business cards for a good price. That's a service offered by someone else. The same with SEO. It's a complex project consisting of many tasks that you can outsource individually. I have only used Fiverr for design purposes, but you might use them for proof reading content on your website, newsletters, social media posts etc., find keywords for different search engines (google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.), analyze competitors on different platforms, find topics to write/talk about, setup social media accounts, and so on. I hope you see the pattern. Good luck!

Why concentrate on $4/click if it doesn't generate anything? Just because it's cheaper doesn't mean it's better. It's the wrong focus in my opinion. It's all about ROI just like direct mail. If you can afford spending $1000/month on PPC and you get $10,000 in return then who cares if you paid $100 per call or click? I'm not saying that we all should spend a lot of money per click. I'm saying it's more than just the price/click. Since you want to get into PPC here's a few tips: Google is your friend even when it comes to price. Your competitor may pay less than you and rank higher than you. It's because of the quality score and that's why SEO and PPC goes hand in hand. Once you manage to create an accurate ad that reflects the content you advertise on the link you have to start focusing on SEO and your overall track record on your google Adwords account. If one ad is misleading/inaccurate and you haven't done anything about it for months Google will punish you, and it'll also hurt the rest of your ads. So by optimizing all your ads they all benefit from each other. Then you need to be patient. Google reward those who satisfy their users over long period of time. Over months you'll see your price/click drop if you have an accurate ad that performs well. All these factors affect your quality score and at the end determines which position you should have and how much it'll cost you. I agree that you should focus on long chain keywords. Take over markets with low to no competition rather than try to outbid the others on expensive keywords. A quick way to determine competition is by looking at how many pages exist on Google with the same keyword in title and url and then start to analyze the pages shown on page one how well their page is optimized. Lower amount of pages with same keywords in title and url and bad SEO on pages on page one is a great place to start. It's relatively inexpensive and you'll see results within a shorter timeframe. Plus once you've taken over the market for a lot of those keywords you'll end up getting a higher ROI than with the expensive keywords and you'll stay on top longer. I hope these tips will help you spend your money wisely on PPC.

What is your product or service? Optimizing your website to be found on Google is just one of many places to be found and in Real Estate it's very competitive. But you have a lot of options. Look for the white space (places with less competition). Is everybody in your field trying to rank on page one on google? What about Facebook? That's another search engine and a place people are searching for help. Twitter? A great place to set up keyword alerts and interact 1-on-1 with potential customers, who need your service. On Twitter you can get to your customers before they are able to look anywhere else. LinkedIn is also a search engine you can be found on if this is where your target market will be searching for your service. My point is that there are a lot search engines. Google is one and very competitive. Biggerpockets is less competitive and more specific which makes it a great place to be found if this is where your customers look for your service.

I use Mashvisor.com to analyze the market in the area I'm interested in. For $20 or $30 a month you have access to data from Airbnb showing occupation rate for each property and much more. Then they compare with the MLS and calculate what you could make if you buy that property. Pretty cool website. I live in Houston myself but looking for something in the Hill Country. They didn't have data out there, so I had to purchase the $50 plan that allows me to request areas they don't have already. They have Austin and Houston already, but not smaller towns. Another website is Airdna.com. I haven't tried their service yet. They take $20 for a report that covers a city. But they have an awesome tool I like. But that's $600 for a state. Pretty expensive. Overall these tools helps you understand the market. And there's no guessing or speculation about the Airbnb market since you are able to look at all their data. I know how much to charge each month, how many bookings my potential competitors have each month, etc.