Short Term Rental Tips

Interested in short term rentals?

Are you considering owning a short-term-rental or Airbnb property but don’t know where to start?

I’m here to help. But first, let me tell you how it all began for me and my family.

We moved to Austin back in 2014 and purchased a home. My husband and I both do design work so we were excited to tackle a project and design a dream home for ourselves and our two daughters- London and Arden. We bought a home in a lovely neighborhood outside of downtown Austin in the Eanes School district. Coming from Los Angeles at the time, our new half-acre home with four bedrooms felt huge to us at 3700 square feet with a pool!

We quickly planned out our design, added a bedroom and additional square footage, created the look and feel and got to work gutting the home. Four months later we were overjoyed with our new dream home. Our neighbors were more friendly than we could believe and we found a circle of friends we felt at home with. Life was good. Better than we could have hoped for in record time. Just as we were feeling settled, my husband, who had been an entrepreneur since graduating college got a full-time job offer that was everything he could have hoped for. However, it was in Northern California. A long standing client asked him to run the design division for a new aerospace company blending his passion for design with his love of flying and aircraft. How could he refuse?

After he commuted for nine months, coming back to Austin only on the weekends, we realized this wasn’t working for our family and all moved to Napa. Leaving our brand new beloved home was very tough. We weren’t ready to part with it yet and didn’t know what was going to happen with the aerospace start-up long term so we decided to turn our home into a short-term rental and listed it on Airbnb and VRBO. Right out of the gate, we were making about 10K a month in passive income and our life was permanently altered. We’re designers and I’m a realtor so we realized our best assets could be put to building a portfolio of homes that would allow us to retire sooner than we’d imagined was possible. So, our short-term rental journey began.

After a time, and losing a home in the 2017 Napa fires, we decided to move back to our beloved Austin. What was a happy accident became a lifestyle. Today, we are still building our portfolio for ourselves. As well as, helping others to get started on their own short-term rental, passive income opportunity. We’ve learned so much in the past eight years and have designed many homes for multiple clients on their own road to freedom.

The five keys to having a profitable short-term rental include:

Have a point of view.

Design a home with unique properties that stand out from the herd. Design on 2-3 key colors that will anchor your home so when shoppers are scrolling through AIRBNB or VRBO your home stands out. Consider what the pictures will look like and what the focal point is for key hang out areas like the backyard, kitchen and living rooms. If you have a wreck room, make it awesome. Stay in line with the color palette and esthetic of the home. So no used old traditional pool tables in a modern home, for example.

Have consistency.

Create a level of design equality for all rooms so all guests feel special and the house reads well in photos with a similar esthetic throughout. One of the reasons we believe our Austin home does so well is that no one is feeling ripped on their bedroom. Most of the rooms are of a fairly even size and the design has a similar vibe throughout so no-one is stuck with an outdated or thrown together bedroom.

Make it fun!

Consider amenities that are conducive to vacation (ex: pool, bar, volleyball, pool table, etc). Your selling a vacation basically so give your guests more than just a home. Give them a place where they can see themselves relaxing. Think, hammocks or a row of loungers by the pool. A bar is always a great add. It may not even get used that much but it sold them with the idea of escaping from regular life with a few cocktails with their family or friends. Corn hole looks great in photos and gives parents the fantasy of bonding with their kids or even getting a break from them while they play. Even an instagram wall or mural that brands the home with a name is a great marketing tool to have your guests take photos and share with their friends.

Seek larger lots (unless in a city) to keep neighbor complaints to a minimum.

Our first home is in a neighborhood. And that half-acre which seemed huge after our townhome with patios in Los Angeles, but we did get neighbor complaints. We installed a noise regulator which notifies our property managers if the volume goes above a certain level. We ended up building a fence to be twice the normal height as a sound barrier and planted tons of bamboo and trees to accommodate our neighbors but now we seek homes on larger lots in desirable or beautiful places so our neighbors and our guests can both have peace.

Hire a property management company.

They are marketing and booking experts and will increase your occupancy rates so you’ll earn more. For example, we had to answer every single text message previously. Do you have Olive oil? What kind of coffee do you supply? Is there a crib for our baby? The list of questions was endless. Plus, we had cleaning crews that needed to be called and scheduled and could not offer same day bookings because we didn’t know what time the cleaners would show up and be done. Property management companies, well good ones at least, have their own cleaning crews so you have reliable turn around times and same day bookings which increased our revenue dramatically. It used to be that we would have bookings from Thursday to Sunday. Or Friday to Monday. The middle of the week was often empty. But our property managers have algorithms that can reduce rates when we’re not booked and get people in and out on the same day so there’s no more holes in our months. they offer true passive income as they handle all details so you can truly have freedom. They will pay for themselves and some.

If you’re ready to take the plunge and find a short-term rental of your own and start earning passive income so you can truly love and live your life to the fullest, give me a call!

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