Short Term Rental Riches

As many of you know we recently starting managing other properties - we’re really excited to bring on our new partners but as Ive been meeting with owners from all over the place (around the world) I'm finding that the competitive options differ quite a bit.

Not just in services but in fees. Many fees that owners don’t even know are being charged. I looked up an example with Vacasa recently to illustrate the example and a $500 reservation had over $1100 in fees.

So as we evaluate our options I thought it would be good to do a recap to make sure you’re totally aware of any and all “common” fees in the industry.

Please note that not all property management companies charge all of these fees, and the specific fees and amounts can vary depending on the company's policies and the services provided. It's essential to carefully review and understand the fee structure of any property management agreement before entering into a contract.

Short-term rental fees:

• Flat monthly management fee
• Cleaning fee per guest stay
• Booking/Reservation Fee per booking
• Advertising and marketing fee
• Technology/software fee for using property management software
• Furnishing and decor setup fee
• The maintenance fee for coordinating repairs and maintenance
• Seasonal rate adjustment fee for adjusting rental rates based on seasons or demand
• Guest communication fee
• Key exchange fee
• Administration fee for managing paperwork and documentation
• Monthly statement fee for providing financial reports
• Credit card processing fee for handling guest payments
• Inventory and inspection fee for conducting property inspections
• Security deposit management fee
• Late payment fee for managing overdue rental payments
• Cancellation fee for cancellations made by guests
• The utility management fee for managing utilities on behalf of the owner
• Emergency after-hours service fee for handling guest emergencies outside of regular business hours. 

Remember:

1. Your management fee comes off your GROSS income
2. Who owns your reviews listings / whats your contract policy? Do you need to start over? That could be difficult in a down economy..

I’ve also worked with a lot of management companies more so on the Long term rental - sometimes it’s really hard to find the right one.. If you’re interested in help managing your properties and we’re a bit different in that we use my team to manage your properties

Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well.

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live event, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

We would all love to have our properties 100% occupied but many times a 100% occupancy rate is a clear sign that we are not charging enough money per night. What if we increased our rates 20% per night and, even with a lower occupancy, were making more money?

And then we have to think about the opposite equation. What if we have a low vacancy, does it make sense to offer a long term discount to try and increase our revenues?

I know, it’s odd to hear the word discount and increased revenues in the same sentence but with the latest travel trends showing that guests are opting for longer stays this can be a reality.

Many people give out discounts because of the fear of not getting booked but, oftentimes, caving into that fear ends up earning less profit at the end of the day. Whether you are using your pricing tools or not, you might want to stop first and think if offering discounts works out to your advantage.

I know, I know… You hear a lot of opposite opinions about whether to send special offers or not for longer stays. Luckily we have access to a lot of data that can help us figure this out to determine whether a long term rental discount is truly going to help us or not.

It’s not a guessing game. The data shows us what to do, as it almost always does in real estate. This week let’s discuss whether a long term discount makes since for your property:

• Pro & Con recap of long term reservations
• Do you know your numbers?
• Do you know your averages?
• Expenses to cover and consider
• Duplicating discounts & custom pricing
• Things to consider when calculating or giving discounts

Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well.

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

One of the biggest components of a short-term rental is the turnover between guests and all that dirty laundry.
Sometimes you can hardly tell your guests even used the linens and others, well…

I’ll let your imagination run with that one

Either way it’s something we have to deal with and the bigger the property the more laundry we have. For some of us it’s pretty easy; your housekeeper shows up, throws it in the washer, cleans the property and has fresh linens to replace before they’re done cleaning. But for others properties this isn’t so easy…

What happens if you have 3+ bedrooms?

There is too much laundry for one load, so what happens then? Well maybe you’re housekeeper thinks they can fit it all in one… so they try anyway. Or maybe it’s obvious they’re going to do multiple loads so they end up waiting around for the second load to finish even after they’ve finished cleaning the property. Whether you’re working with a professional housekeeping company or paying someone on your team directly the more laundry you have the more it’s going to cost you. That’s a no brainer right. So what do we do?

I’ve learned a ton about laundry over the days managing tens out thousands of guests with my team. Even to the point where I purchased a commercial building and brought in industrial sized laundry machines on forklifts.

Those babies can handle whatever we throw at em’

They’re bolted to the concrete to make sure they don’t spin out of control and run through the wall.

While this is a natural progression for many growing larger portfolios, for others just getting started, we also need other alternatives. This week we talk about those alternatives. Stay tuned as we break down your laundry options for your short term rental:

• Challenges doing laundry in your property
• Wear and tear and the life of your machines
• Housekeeping costs
• Off-site options, worth it?

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)

Are you managing your property yourself? If so, make sure to get a copy of our management handbook to make sure you’re not missing any crucial steps - get your copy here

If you are looking for help managing your property, we’d be happy to see if we can help. Lets chat

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

“I’m going to turn the thermostat as cold as it will go.”

Your guest thinks to themself stepping in from the hot summer sun.

Regardless whether or not your property is at a cool temperature - some guests will still turn down the thermostat…all the way. This ins’t just a challenge for your equipment, it can also be a challenge for you pocket book. Air conditioning and heat are usually one of the largest utility expenses for most properties. And those bills get even worse if your property is not properly equipped.

Whoa that’s a tongue twister–say that one 3x fast. “Property is not properly equipped”

Ok down to the point.

The easier the thermostat is to use the easier it is for you guests.

And they are not all created equally. In my personal portfolio we use multiple different brands.

But, I now have a favorite.

I purchased a dozen or so of them and we’ve tested them…

All is looking good so I figured it’s time to pass the tips on to you all.

This week as we dive into everything from:

• Potential HVAC issues
• Essential thermostat settings
• Several Industry Options
• The thermostats we now use

Looking for the closest possible thing to a turn-key short term rental you can find. Check out the episode I did with my friends Dave and Leon who are building them :)

Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well.

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

Even if an older, short-term rental property is not perfect in terms of its amenities or aesthetics, it can still earn perfect five-star reviews on Airbnb.

It can still outperform a brand new, well-designed competing property by leveraging five key concepts.

The money is in the details.

On a last-minute trip to Miami for a friends wedding I stayed at a guest house in a nice little neighborhood near my friends wedding venue.

The neighborhood was nice but the property… egh, not so nice.

But it had everything I needed.

It met my expectations.

One slight little hiccup however, and it would have been really easy to slip this Airbnb a less than perfect review.

I left a glowing 5-start review though for 5 basic reasons!

All of which we’ll cover in this weeks episode.

Stay tuned as we dive into the five things you can do to make sure your non-perfect property gets perfect reviews—everytime.

Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well.

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended)

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

Before we can determine whether or not a real estate investment will be a successful one we need to first look at the bigger picture.

We need to know and understand the demographics and fundamentals driving each market. 

Once we know what real estate markets are ripe for investment it drastically helps to narrow down our options.

With a market decided, we can go hunting.

But it’s not always easy to determine what makes a “good” market for investment.

This comes with practice, education, and experience.

So when I’m doing my market research I turn to advice from some of the industry’s leading experts.

This week we had the luxury of interviewing someone who’s education has been a big influence in my life.

Education that has saved me from putting my money in real estate markets that were too risky (and that’s evident now as prices fall).

I’ve gone to several of his conferences in person and been listening to his podcast for years soaking up all of the knowledge that he shares so freely and wisely.

He is, arguably, one of the industry’s most recognized and respected thought leaders in real estate; Jason Hartman.

Jason is the host of the popular “Creating Wealth Real Estate Investing” Podcast. With almost 2000 episodes and years of experience under his belt, Jason brings a ton of value.

Stay tuned as we dive in deep to: 

• Why money is still “cheap” 

• What makes a market risky

• Examples of risky markets where you don’t want to invest

• Which markets are ripe for investment and why

• What it means to live a “Rich” life

You can find out more about everything Jason has to offer by visiting his website here.

Need help managing your short term rental and you don’t want to go it alone? Shoot us a message here and we’ll see if we can help. 

Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well.

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended) 

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

If you have been investing in real estate for a while you know it has a lot of moving pieces. 

Especially if you have ever remodeled a property.

All those tiny little expenses need to be recorded. From the miscellaneous screws you bought at your local Home Depot to the new, fresh vanity for your master bathroom.

Don’t forget the gas you paid for on the way to the home goods store; that should be expensed too.

So maybe you’re not doing the remodel yourself.

If you’re like me, when I started I definitely got my hands dirty.

I’m not saying I knew exactly what I was doing but that’s where I started anyway.

It was fantastic graduating to the point where I could pay professionals to do professional work.

No more uneven grout lines or crooked tiles.

But of course hiring professionals costs money… and yep, that money has to be tracked too.

If you’re working with a local handyman many times you’ll send over an easy payment through the Cash app or Venmo.

But as you get bigger, you add more properties, and then you add more expenses.

Sometimes, you come across the occasional vendor that doesn’t accept venmo payments.

Checks only? Yeah, that still exists unfortunately.

So now you need to send a check out that’s not going to process until it’s cashed.

I’ve got an easy solution I’m getting too soon–I promise.

And I’m not referring to the turn-key short term rentals we recently talked about (although that’s an excellent way to skip the bookkeeping too)

But first let's flip the switch here and assume we’re no longer referring to a long term rental property.

Tips from the Short Term Rental Riches Podcast and you’re friends' Airbnb success have led you down the path to getting in the STR game.

And as you dive in head first the amount of transactions you have shoots through the roof.

Cleaning supplies. Furniture. Housekeeping payments. Utility payments. Software subscriptions. Landscaping. The list goes on and on…

This week we’ll break down how we can make all of the expense tracking and banking so much easier!

I’ll share with you my best practices and what I’ve learned paying hundreds of contractors, and hundreds of thousands of dollars (remotely) over the years. 

This week as we dive into everything from: 

• Safe banking options & what makes them “not safe”

• My struggles

• Features you need 

• Why speed matters

• Sharing features with your team

• Connecting to accounting programs 

• Two banking options to make your life easier (Incl. one I use)
  
  

To find out more about the bank options recommended you can head here to Relayfi.com or mercury.com

Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well.

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended) 

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

There is a lot to learn in the short term rental industry. The environment is constantly changing; new tools, tips, markets to look for, and best practices to incorporate into your short term rental (or your upcoming purchase. 

Too much to learn in fact that there is no way for me to process it all myself. So to change things up a bit i’ve decided to bring on a few other experts in the space.

This week we meet with my friend and former Airbnb employee Danny Rusteen. Danny is also the author of the best selling book “Optimize your BNB” and has a new book coming out soon I’m excited to talk about “profitable properties - Airbnb Insider secrets.”

Danny doesn’t just talk the talk, he also owns and operates arguably one of the best performing properties in all of Medellin, Colombia. Medellin is no small city… thousands of Airbnb’s are actively listed there and it takes work to get to the top of that list.

He brings a ton of value this week as we dive into everything from: 

• What it means to live a “Rich” life

• Why direct bookings are important 

To get in touch with Danny you can find him at https://optimizemybnb.com/ or get a copy of his book here. He is also launching the Optimized Business course, which I believe could be of great value to you. By using the code STRRICHES, you can enjoy a 50% discount for three months. The course begins on May 29th.

Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well.

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended) 

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

There is a lot to learn in the short term rental industry. The environment is constantly changing; new tools, tips, markets to look for, and best practices to incorporate into your short term rental (or your upcoming purchase.

Too much to learn in fact that there is no way for me to process it all myself. So to change things up a bit i’ve decided to bring on a few other experts in the space.

This week we meet with Jonathan Farber. John is the real deal. He also happens to spend half of his year in Medellin, Colombia where I ran into him and have had the pleasure to meet up with several times afterwards for dinner and drinks.

I’ll let John tell his own story on the episode but just know that he brings some EXPERT tips. Join us this week as we discuss with a fellow short term rental expert: 

• Why having virtual team members is necessary

• Best practices for hiring your own VA

• How your team can “train themselves”

• How traditional management can hurt (or crush) your STR returns

• The current economic and industry outlook 

• What it means to live a “Rich” life

Make sure to catch Johnathan on his popular podcast - Millennial Millionaires. You can also find out how to work with John and have real estate deals hand picked for you by going to: 

Are you enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe, leave a rating and a review, and share it! This helps us reach others that may find the info helpful as well.

Get a copy of my 12 proven house rules to protect your property from almost every negative situation (highly recommended) 

You can find all of our links here including our website, recommended resources, upcoming live events, short-term rental playbook, Instagram, and more!

When I first got started with my real estate investment career the idea of a turn-key rental always sounded enticing to me.

Turn-key property = a property you can purchase that is renovated, rented, and professionally managed all in one spot.

Easy peasy.

Problem was, after visiting multiple states and markets, I wasn’t able to find many opportunities that led to decent returns.

In fact, some of the so-called “opportunities” weren’t earning any cash-on-cash return at all.

That’s what led me to start investing in short term rentals.

It was a natural progression after having used them during my world travels time and time again. 

Now years later, after over 25,000 guests have passed through my personal portfolio and for the first time I’m witnessing a potential turn-key short term rental investment opportunity just beyond the horizon. 

An opportunity to purchase a short term rental property that comes professionally designed, fully furnished, and ready to list online with minimal effort. 

A short-term rental that also happens to have an exceptionally affordable entry-level price. 

It’s brand new.

It’s eligible for bonus depreciation.

You will never have to pay property tax on it. 

All with the potential to earn much higher cash-on-cash returns.

Heck, our team will even help you manage it!

I know, I  know, this all sounds too good to be true…

I’ve dedicated years to becoming an expert in short term rentals and I’ve never come across an opportunity like this that has so many value-added components all in the same place.

Until now…

People all over the world are choosing many short-term rentals for the experience they provide—no matter the size. 

And if you’ve followed my content for any length of time then you already know that many of my smallest properties also happen to be my best performers.

So when I travelled to Phildelphia recently and saw with my very eyes an opportunity to purchase a short-term rental that I could have delivered anywhere in the USA, my ears perked up.

Listen in to this week’s episode and find out how a couple friends of mine are changing the short-term rental investment landscape.

They’ll break down how a park model home has the potential to multiply your investment returns and save you from the hassle of getting things going on your own.

We break down all the highlights this week including: 

• Defining a park model home 

• Tax benefits from day one 

• Built to last with minimal maintenance

• How a $100k investment could earn 4x more than a $1 million investment

• Who these properties are right for

• A truly turn-key short-term rental opportunity? 

If you want to find out more you can simply leave your email here and setup a quick meeting with our week's guest who has already worked with dozens of other happy investors.

Worried about the management? My team and I might be able to help you out with that as well.

If you haven’t heard, we’re now partnering with others to help manage properties (no matter where they’re located) just like mine—find out more here.