All Forum Posts by: JJ King

Hey Larry! Renting out your house is a great idea. Assuming you have already thought about the logistics like cleaning, check in etc, so I won't touch on that. What would like to mention is that I'd recommend Airbnb over VRBO for hosting and here's why: 

• UX: Airbnb is much more user friendly to create an account and list a property.
• Liability: VRBO provides no insurance / damage protection. Airbnb has both liability insurance and a host guarantee (actually getting the guarantee requires you to jump through hoops with tons of documentation, but better than nothing.) 
• ID Verification: VRBO does no identification verification, anyone can make a profile and book with a fake name and number. Airbnb requires government ID and other verifications in order to book. 
• Reviews: No reviews or profile pictures are the norm on VRBO. Airbnb reviews are more reliable and common, the platform is built on it. 
• Chargebacks: We've had people stay through HomeAway/ VRBO who used stolen credit cards and we didn't find out until long after their stay when the actual credit card owner did a chargeback, leaving us with nothing. Airbnb collects payment and pay you, so you don't need to worry about chargebacks. 

Now I'm not saying Airbnb is better than HomeAway in all instances, but for a person just renting out their home and not running a full time business, I would highly recommend Airbnb over HomeAway. One thing to consider though, Airbnb does weigh heavily in the guest's favor. If your guest is unhappy with anything about your property, chances are they will win. Just make sure to set accurate expectations and offer a clean space. 

Hey everyone! I am super interested in the vacation rental industry and try to stay on top of industry news as much as possible. I recently came across this site called Outsite.co that has me thinking about a whole new market. It's called CoLiving. Think WeWork and Airbnb had a baby. 

The model is to sell digital nomads on this idea "Live anywhere in the world". As an investor, you would rent out large properties to members and guests for weekly / monthly terms. What they get is a community of like minded people, a place to work, and a furnished room.

How would one go about finding properties internationally or domestically to rent / buy? 

I was thinking the drama of different people living under one roof would be a lot more drama and management than the typical STRs I manage but maybe not. What are everyone's thoughts on this? 

Hey Julie! Professional photography for your listing is a must. I find that bright minimal styled areas seem to book best but it really depends on the market and what your guest is looking for. 

I like the idea of a video walkthrough on youtube! That could be very useful, but I don't think you will be able to link it on most listing platforms, so it would need to serve as a way to bring people to your listing. 

I'm interested in the numbers of what you are paying for rent and how much of a cut the property manager is making. To me it doesn't seem like there would be very much money left over for you after you pay the property manager and pay rent. 

I'm with Paul on this one, I'd say after your first couple of bookings to raise that cleaning fee! Even though you are doing it yourself you'll be losing money on laundry and cleaning product expenses. I ran the numbers for my business to see that we were losing money at $45 a cleaning and raised it to $70-$90 depending on the bedrooms and we have not seen a decrease in bookings after raising the cleaning fee. We also use a laundry by the pound service and that is the way to go if there is one nearby. It makes the cleaning much quicker because the laundry is already ready and you don't need to wait. Another plus side is you will never have a guest use up all of your clean laundry that you were going to use for the turn. 

Side note: you all did a great job on the kitchen! 

@Adam Faber, you could make an Airbnb profile for the name of your VA company and then cohost all properties from that account, that way the owner does not give up access to the master account. The cohosting account would still have access to respond to messages and accept / alter reservations. Also airbnb just rolled out new tools for people with multiple listings and those may be available to someone who cohosts through a single account, not too sure about that.

I'm not aware of anything in the HomeAway family like Airbnb's cohosting but I don't do much business through there and when I do I just communicate through my PMS so I don't log into the dashboard too much. 

Hey Adam, I think the people who would benefit from what you are talking about would be the same demographic who use the Airbnb co-hosting feature, although not sure about actually making much money on it. You can charge a percentage through airbnb, so in theory you could cohost for multiple hosts and charge fees to each one depending on your agreement. 

I've used the Guesty receptionist service and it's really just a step up from an auto response. It is focused on saved responses and "if-thens". If a guest asks this, you say this type of responses. Pretty much the opposite of personal. 

I too am interested in VAs so I am staying tuned to see if anyone has successfully trained an affordable VA to do guest messaging.

Hey Burt! I think if there is a demand for STRs in the area then go for it, they can be a great way to produce more income than a traditional rental. A couple things to keep in mind:

-Check out local regulations to make sure full home rentals are legal.

-Managing a short term rental is much more time consuming that a tradition rental because there is a lot of back and forth with guests and you need to schedule cleanings, etc. 

-You will need to completely furnish the home which will be more upfront costs.

A website to see some good data to analyze other Airbnbs the area is https://www.airdna.co 

Another interesting thing I came across is: https://www.loftium.com/ they will pay the downpayment if you split your airbnb income with them, which is a unique concept. I haven't looked into it that much but it does seem you may need to live in the home for an agreed amount of time.  

Yeah it can be a bit pricey. If I only managed a few units I would use smartbnb, it looks like a good service. My company actually got a deal with Guesty so we pay a flat per listing rate instead of a percentage. 

Check out Guesty, their automation is very robust. It can be a little glitchy at times but definitely gets the job done. 

I use BeyondPricing for some listings and that syncs prices to both HomeAway and Airbnb, or you could just sync to Airbnb and push from Guesty to HomeAway. 

Message me if you want to go more in depth about it!