All Forum Posts by: Mark Miles

Quote from @Germán Rimoldi:

Quote from @Mark Miles:

Quote from @Germán Rimoldi:

Hi, I'm currently developing an app that automatically generates reports by extracting data from Airbnb. 

I'm working on research to create a service that helps people find the right asset class for their investments, comparing options like tiny homes, cabins, domes, and more. As part of beta testing, the service is completely free.

I'm eager to understand if others find this research valuable. 

Please feel free to DM me if you would like to receive this report for your city.

 What data are you extracting from Airbnb? The only data that you can extract directly from Airbnb are things like list prices which don’t tell you what homes actually booked for. You can also check calendar blockage but you don’t know at what price those days booked for, nor do you know if they’re reserved for an owner stay. You should be more clear on your data sources and your data attributes, so we can truly understand what you’re doing here so we can decide if there’s any value here

Hi Mark, 

We are comparing different property types for the same location. That is, comparing Average Daily Rate and Occupancy Rates for Cabins, Tiny Homes, Treehouses and more. 

The app helps anyone to understand which type of property may perform better in a given location. 

Lolol are you a bot? We keep asking you questions and you keep just copy/pasting the same responses over and over and over. I vote that we abandon this thread, no point in dealing with a bot or a broken record who won’t take the time to properly answer our questions. Good luck to you!

Quote from @Germán Rimoldi:

Hi, I'm currently developing an app that automatically generates reports by extracting data from Airbnb. 

I'm working on research to create a service that helps people find the right asset class for their investments, comparing options like tiny homes, cabins, domes, and more. As part of beta testing, the service is completely free.

I'm eager to understand if others find this research valuable. 

Please feel free to DM me if you would like to receive this report for your city.

 What data are you extracting from Airbnb? The only data that you can extract directly from Airbnb are things like list prices which don’t tell you what homes actually booked for. You can also check calendar blockage but you don’t know at what price those days booked for, nor do you know if they’re reserved for an owner stay. You should be more clear on your data sources and your data attributes, so we can truly understand what you’re doing here so we can decide if there’s any value here

Lmao, #1 biggest nationwide decline is the Poconos. Can’t say i’m surprised

Quote from @Cliff H.:

What Michael, John, and JD said: AirBnB is dead from April on. People are booking late or not at all. 

Maybe AirBnB tweaked their algorithm, maybe they completed their pivot to boutique rentals, maybe all the 20 year TickTockers complaining about taking out the trash finally gave up on the platform and took their parents with them?

Either way it’s not you, it’s them. Our bookings in New England are down 80-90% on AirBnB, fortunately there’s other platforms and repeat customers to fill in the gap. 

This is the part where we talk about the importance of “owning the relationship” with your guests, not letting a platform, with an algorithm that can change overnight, control the equation. 

If all continues at this rate I’d expect to see a lot more markets self correcting as STRs sell or return to mid or long term markets.

Note: none of this is to say that I or anyone else has all the answers here, but the dangers of depending on a single platform or service, like a Airbnb, for all of our STR business was writing on the wall for a while now. It's the same circumstance that happened with Facebook tweaking their news feed a few years back and millions of businesses losing traffic on the switch to "pay to play" or Amazon purchasing competitors to a top selling product and selling it at half the price as an "Amazon Basics". In any market you have to control the relationship with your customer. If there is an intermediary between you and them, there's a real possibility of losing that customer or business when it's beneficial to that intermediary's own best interests.

 Hey Cliff, thanks - interesting comments. So are you saying that your VRBO bookings have remained steady and fruitful? And it’s merely your Airbnb bookings that have fallen flat since April?!

Quote from @Kelly Whitaker:

My husband and I are looking to get our first STR soon. We've been thinking about different items we want to offer our guests, including baby items like highchairs, portable cribs, etc. (Our target guests are families with young children travelling together.) Multiple young families could mean multiple babies needing a place to sleep, so...

Has anyone offered TWO of each baby item? Would this.....

A- increase our bookings

B- increase our chance of having 1 of the 2 items stolen

Help settle the debate! Thanks!

 It depends on your house size I suppose. I own some really large houses and in those houses I do indeed stock baby supplies because we tend to host a lot of multi generational families and we are often getting requests: “my niece just had twins, do you have two cribs and two high chairs?” So we do! it seems to get us bookings that we might not otherwise get 

Quote from @Daniel Murphy:

We're not 100% satisfied with our cleaner for our STR. We know a lot of other people in the area that are feeling the same way.

My experience so far is that my cleaners are great cleaners, but not so much at running a business and preserving quality control as their business expands.  

Does anyone have any experience in creating a cleaning company that is systematized? Or an example of a good cleaning crew, with the systems they use for work flows, owner requests & quality control? 

 I thought about it because in some of my markets, I have the same issues that you do with Cleaners. In order to make it worth it, I would have to create a cleaning company that does cleanings for other people too. Then you will have a lot of headaches.

You will have annoying Employees and you will have annoying homeowners who aren’t pleased with what your employees did. There will be a lot of headaches in managing a cleaning company. And it feels like margins are pretty slim.

I certainly see why you want to do it, I have thought about it too, but I’m not sure the juice is worth the squeeze here. On the surface it looks like a process-centric company but there will be a LOT of communication, dealing with tough personalities (both employees & homeowners)…

I mean, the first time your employee doesn’t show up to clean a house when one of your clients (a homeowner) has a same-day turnover about to check in, you will lose your mind with stress and grief. Unfortunately 😫😫

Sounds like a lot of stess to me

Quote from @Michael Vinson:

Quote from @Andrew Steffens:

We have had good luck on Fiver with similar projects

It’s been a few years since I’ve used Fiverr.  I was under the impression they could only be hired through the platform on single project basis.  Anyone in particular that you’ve used?  I had to kiss a lot of frogs before to find a good one.

 Tell them you need their email address to share some Google docs with them. Once you have their email address, you can email them off platform to discuss an arrangement for ongoing work. You can still pay them through fiverr if you want.

For example, you can request to purchase a 20 hour package of work from them through fiverr (sellers can make custom offers thru fiverr). They track their hours and once that runs out you can make a decision to renew or not, with all payments going through the fiverr platform for simplicity

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

My entire STR operation is run by virtual assistants from fiverr and Upwork. It's great, I am very hands off and don't have to pay huge fees to property managers. It's a true win-win

Quote from @Carl N.:

If I am in long term area but want to operate as an STR am I able to create a sublease from a long term lease that I can then lease to people for under 30 days. A property management company mentioned this as their work around saying they have guests sign a lease stating they are subleasing from them.

You won’t be able to list on any of the major sites like Airbnb and VRBO because the local government will see your listing and immediately start issuing fines to you.

They can also send the police over to evict or harass your guests. As will the neighbors.

Don’t even try it, it won’t go well. You’ll thank me later.

Also that property manager is super sketchy and I’d walk, no run, far away from them as fast as possible

Quote from @Luke Carl:

People are going to stop going on vacation. Probably tomorrow.

Couldn’t agree more. And when people do go on vacation, they love hotels. A large family would never want to share a private house. With a private pool, a private hot tub, and a pool table of their own. STRs are toast, sell them all

Quote from @Dennis Nikolaev:

I'm new to Virginia. busy day job.

please advice on a goon STVR property management company.

ideally it would cover more then just Richmond VA.

Evolve is definitely a goon STVR property manager. In every sense of the word