Reacting to Shelby Church’s Top Airbnb Takeaways

What’s up guys, in today’s video, we’re going to be reacting to another video from Shelby church, she’s talking about five things that she wished you knew before renting out her house short term. Now, of course, if you’ve been following the channel for a while now, you will have seen my other videos reacting to the other videos that Shelby church put together when she talked about buying this property in Palm Springs. And if you’re unfamiliar with the situation, go back and watch those videos, I talked about a whole bunch of different mistakes that she made when she was purchasing the property, basically, amounting to not really doing any form of due diligence on the on the property. And actually like purchasing the right one for short term rentals, she got into a market with bad regulations into a bad property pay too much for like all these different things, all these different issues. So I’m curious to see if she’s learned and what she has learned from this first year. And this big, essentially failure, this big mistake that she’s made. And my hope with this whole channel I want to highlight is that I can help people to avoid making these similar kinds of mistakes. Because when you’re investing in real estate, it’s very easy to make small mistakes that have huge dollar amount consequences. If you’re buying a half million dollar home, overpaying for that property by five or 10% is going to be 10s of 1000s of dollars. And so it’s really, really important that you know what you’re doing and know how to avoid these mistakes. Same thing on the revenue side of things, if you get a property that, you know, based on the on the analytics, it should be able to do 80 $100,000 a year in bookings if you don’t optimise your performance enough, and you fall short by five 10%, because you don’t know how to price the property the best way or how to optimise the listing or things like that, again, that’s 1000s of dollars that you’re just flushing down the toilet. So these small small shifts can make really, really big impacts in both either a positive or negative way. You want to make sure that you’re not having it happen in a negative way by just going in without experience. So with all that said, let’s jump in. And let’s see what Shelby has to say.

1:59
It’s now about a year and a half since I started doing short term rentals at my house in Palm Springs. And some things have really turned out different than I expected. I’ve now had over 40 Different groups stay at the house and let me tell you, I’ve learned a thing or two. So these are gonna be the six Things You Need to Know Before Renting Out Your House short term. The first thing I’ve got a bonus thing, a sixth thing that I wish I knew was that my house wasn’t gonna get trashed back before we had our first renter, I kind of regretted spending so much on furniture pieces, I even talked about it here in this video thing I would do differently is spend less money on a lot of the furniture pieces that we got, because the thing is there are gonna get messed up, okay. But in reality, things didn’t get messed up, I was really concerned that the nice furniture pieces would get damaged. Because I did have some movers that scratched a console table. But our renters have been really good with our furniture, there is this idea that if you rent out your house to strangers, the place is going to get trashed. Let me tell you after having about 50 Different groups stay at my house, this has not been the case for the most part, people are very respectful, the furniture has held up great, nothing really has broken, the only thing that’s broken is the tail off of this little dog. That’s a this is something that’s good to know going into it. Because if you are skimping on nicer furniture pieces, because you think they’re gonna get destroyed, you don’t need to be doing that in 2023. If you can invest in a few nicer furniture pieces, it’s going to set your place apart and make the whole experience feel more luxurious. You don’t have to ball out on everything. But I’m glad I did with certain pieces because they’ve held up really well. But I just found with myself, I was nervous to buy certain furniture pieces, because I thought they’re gonna get get trashed. And they haven’t. I remember specifically this coffee table I was nervous about but it hasn’t broken and people always comment on it. It really goes with the style of the house. And so I don’t regret getting it because I think that a few key furniture pieces that are pretty nice are going to set your place apart now. So I agree and disagree with this. It’s actually a really good point to bring up. So I agree that the house doesn’t get trashed. If you manage things properly, and you have a good property, everything else like you’re not going to have damages happen frequently. That being said two things I want to point out one thing is that accidents do happen. So I actually would be a little worried about having a really expensive table like that, that could easily be broken just by accident, because especially since it is such a unique piece. If you replace it with just a generic coffee table, you either have to get the property rephotographed now, or you’re going to have guests that are disappointed because it doesn’t look like the pictures. And so the problem is like she probably spent quite a bit of money on that table. And it’s going to be a real pain to have to spend hundreds or maybe even 1000s of dollars on replacing that table with the exact same one, it’s probably going to be hard to find one that looks the same or looks similar. And so it’s just kind of a pain to have something like that, because it can happen not because your guests trashed your place, but just because an accident happens

5:00
You can run issues there. The other thing is that although people might like it, they don’t really like the individual piece enough to be willing to pay more or to book your property over another one because your coffee table is nicer, what they actually like and what shall be is actually, to our credit, done a pretty good job of here is the overall aesthetic. And so a lot of times the goal is not to go and ball out, as she says on expensive furniture pieces, it’s more so to get an overall style and aesthetic, that actually looks really good. By being intentional about your interior design, you don’t want to just go out and grab whatever couch you find on sale, you want to actually put together a an interior design plan for your property so that everything looks good. And that doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot more money or spending hardly any more money at all. Sure, you can go and do the exact opposite and just throw it basically have your place whole place look like an Ikea showroom. And that’s not what you want. But you can achieve a really, really similar aesthetic that she’s got here without having to ball out and buy really expensive pieces. And that’s really beneficial. Because number one, you save a bunch of money. And number two, it’s then a lot easier to replace those pieces down the road. If you’re buying from like larger suppliers, you’re not buying one offs. And it’s less expensive to replace them if you do have to, not because guests went and trashed your place. But just because accidents happen. And things also just get wear and tear over time. And so a lot of items you will have to replace like not frequently, but you will have to replace them from time to time. I’m 2023 People are getting actual interior designers for their short term rentals. So I think if you’re trying to compete in the more luxury space, you got to have some nicer furniture and you don’t eat again, I think you have to have good interior design. But you don’t have to have more expensive furniture to be so worried that it’s going to get trashed, I actually would encourage you if it is within your budget to go for the more expensive piece, it’s just I would not recommend taking that kind of financial advice from her. And I would I would recommend against that I would recommend that you don’t go for the more more expensive piece, you go for the piece that actually matches an overall aesthetic better. Again, paying more for something doesn’t make it better. paying more for that table doesn’t make it a better table, it doesn’t get you more bookings. And it doesn’t have to pay a higher nightly rate. Having a nice aesthetic in the living room does track for people to book it and does have them pay a higher nightly rate. But again, you don’t do that by having an expensive coffee table, you do that by having a good interior design plan. It’s just like that saying, if you buy cheap you buy twice. And that can be so true with furniture, I’m glad I invest. But again, I just want to highlight and point out like you don’t buy twice in this instance, because like there’s nothing about that coffee table that is more durable than a less expensive coffee table. That thing is not built for durability. So the idea that if you buy cheap you buy twice that’s based on like you have to replace it more. But this coffee table is not going to need to be replaced the less it just looks nice, right? And so you want to get the best of both worlds of having something that is inexpensive to replace if you do have to. And that also looks nice, because there’s no added durability that you get from spending the extra money she did on that coffee table. So the in some nice pieces that have held up really well. Because the truth is, everything is still in really good condition. So you don’t need to be super worried about stuff breaking. Next thing I wish I knew is that I could list my short term rental on booking.com. I want to thank booking.com for sponsoring this. Oh no. Okay, so this is obviously about to be very highly biassed opinion on booking.com Because she’s literally being sponsored by booking.com. I am horrified for what’s in store for her. And don’t take this advice. Yes, you can list your property on booking.com. But for most people, most people it just doesn’t make any sense to do so. Oh man, I could do a whole other video on this and that and in fact, I actually have done other videos comparing Airbnb booking.com VRBO. But in short, booking.com is really not a great, a great platform to list your property on for most people. For two reasons. One, you’re probably not going to get a whole lot more bookings if you have a property like Shelby’s that’s a larger property booking.com The property like booking.com start as a hotel booking website. And so naturally the people that go to booking.com are looking for hotels or hotel equivalent properties. They’re usually solo travellers going on business couples, that kind of thing. And so when they’re looking when you’re looking for just the same way that you if you’re looking to go on a vacation with your family, or you know you’re going with a group of friends and looking to get a house it’s not like you think instantly Oh, I’m gonna go to booking.com to book that. You go to book hotel and if there’s a condo on there that someone has like a short term rental, it’s a one bedroom or studio condo, great. I get a little kitchenette. It’s kind of nicer than a hotel. So for those have properties booking.com can be good, but it’s probably not gonna be worth your while to list on booking.com for a property like Shelby’s The other thing is that it’s not anywhere close to as user friendly or in two

10:00
So as Airbnb so for example, Airbnb processes all your payments for you so they deal with handling people’s credit card info, charging them any refunds dispute booking.com That’s on you, you have to process people’s credit cards you have to store the credit card information you have to deal with if they dispute you or they have a fraudulent credit card, you’re the one that deals with that you have to uphold a merchant processing account, which means that there’s a merchant processing reputation attached to it. So there’s a whole lot of complexity, you can have a whole bunch of issues that people like using fake credit cards to book your places you can have like people refunding and disputing transactions and then get your merchant processing account shut down. Like there’s all kinds of issues that you have to have good plans in place for it and good like processes for how you deal with that kind of stuff. Because when you’re dealing with booking.com, bad stuff all falls on you. And so it is a very, very different can of worms. And there’s a lot more involved than just like pressing a couple of buttons and launching it now you have another platform, right? It is totally different. So it can make sense. But for most people, the better off taking the energy that they’re going to put into listing on booking.com and just funnelling it into optimising Airbnb and or VRBO a bit better for their property so they can get that perform better there, because probably just not going to be it’s one of those situations where like the juice just really isn’t worth the squeeze.

11:17
I’m going to skip over everything to do with booking.com. Because it’s all just going to be sponsored, I don’t want to go into I don’t want to give them free advertising. Let’s let’s carry on to the next section here. Guys just want to take a quick break here to say that for those of you watching, who want to build cashflow, and long term wealth by purchasing Airbnb and short term rental properties, there’s a link in the description right down below for a free training that will walk you through my exact strategy for investing successfully in Airbnb s. Now if you’re not ready to actually buy properties, and you want to get started managing other people’s properties on Airbnb the same way I got started and build a full time income managing other people’s properties. There’s actually another free training linked in the description down below as well, there’ll be a really great fit for you. So whether you want to invest in short term rental properties and actually build amazing cash flow and long term wealth by acquiring the assets, buying the properties themselves, or you’re looking to earn a full time income managing other people’s properties on Airbnb, we’ve got some awesome trainings that are linked in the description down below, that will definitely help you out. When you sign up for the trainings, we’re also going to send you a few other tools and resources completely for free just to help you get started. Again, the links to sign up are in the description down below. And both trainings and all the tools are completely free. So make sure to register for the trainings, links in the description down below.

12:40
So yeah, I wish I knew is how important amenities are when it comes to short term rentals. 2023 amenities are kind of a must, you’ve got to have more than just a house. Luckily here we have a pool, a hot tub and a firepit. If I were to go back in time, I think it would add one of those little putting greens for the citrus trees are maybe an outdoor kitchen instead of a grill. I mean, I’m seeing some that have full pickleball courts that I think is so smart. If I had the space for a pickleball court 100% I would have gone are the days where you couldn’t just have a studio or one bedroom apartment, people would rather just book a hotel. So a couple things there. I think amenities are super, super important. One of the most under looked at opportunities for most people who have short term rental properties. That being said, I think that she’s like overblowing how much she’s only looking at like the super expensive things. So rather than spending 10 $20,000 I don’t know how much a pickleball court would cost to put in or putting green cost put in sure those things can make sense. For some properties. I’m not saying categorically don’t do them. But for the average person with an average property like hers, for example where you don’t have the space for that. To me as simple as having cornhole like you know the yard game or spike ball or like bocce ball, those things can go really long way putting a projector in the place you have like a little movie theatre that can go really long way and so you’re not spending 10s of 1000s of dollars you’re spending maybe a couple $100 to add those amenities in and you’re gonna get a lot better bang for your buck out of those typically on like most properties also not gone are the days of putting a one or two bedroom condo up on Airbnb and having a perform well. That’s just not true. There are still people that book those she doesn’t have experience in that which is why she’s saying that, you know she she has a very limited perception of like short term rental because she only has the one property but amenities are super helpful. They’re just different with a one or two bedroom condo. Because with a one or two bedroom condo, you don’t have a group of people that are coming in they want a pool and they want bocce ball and they want that kind of stuff. They want amenities like a coffeemaker and they want an alarm clock and they want you know fast Wi Fi those types of amenities. So just depends on the on the typical person that’s booking your property, what kind of amenities are going to be most valuable to them? But focusing on that is super important. It’s also equally important that you showcase these amenities within the first few photos of your listing. 100% agree with that? Yeah, a lot of people don’t actually read the description so they need to see it in the photos. So if you’re not

15:00
Looking to do short term rental, it’s much more worth it to do a play second host groups that you can have some cool amenities just

15:07
yes or no without getting too into the weeds on it. Again, there are smaller properties that can still do really, really well on Airbnb.

15:15
Yeah, and you should always have amenities, whether you’re hosting groups or smaller groups, or like, single people, but the amenities are going to be different depending on who you’re hosting.

15:25
offer people a more unique experience than what you can get at a hotel. Next thing you should know is that if you do go down this path, it will always be in the back of your mind. Because the reality of it is you’re signing up to maintain a house and houses always have little things little quirks that need attention. It’s so fun to dream about, you know, having a vacation house to use for free and furnishing it and all the fun things. Be forget that once it’s up and running, you just are always aware that there could be an emergency at the house, there could be a leak, the hot tub could break normal maintenance things, not even from guests doing its job. So again, this is just a factor of her not having a good team in place, which makes sense because she just kind of jumped into this and just kind of figuring out as she goes, which I don’t recommend, because then things like this happen. Like you’re you she’s made a lot of mistakes along the way. But if you have a really good team, the reality is like for me, I really only think about the property once a week when I do a call with my team to touch base on where things are at. And I don’t have to worry about it beyond that, because my team takes care of it. Yeah, there are maintenance things that come up. But you don’t have to be the one to worry about it. It’s like any big real estate investing firm, you know, the CEO of the firm isn’t the guy that’s worrying about whether there’s a leak out one of the units at one of his properties around the world, right, because there’s teams in place to deal with that stuff. And so as long as you build the right team, whether that’s a property management company, or whether you’re building a team in house, having a team that’s really, really good, and that takes care of that will take that burden out of your head, from guests doing anything wrong. And so it does just complicate your life a little bit. But I do think it’s good to know like you’re signing up for just, you know, minor headaches here and there, I find I’m able to make it fit with my lifestyle, and having a property manager helps a lot too. But that comes at a cost, I’m not really going for making a profit on this. I just want to break even and have a property manager. So I have more time to focus on other things, the whole the whole again, we dove into this in a whole other video. But the whole idea or mentality of I’m not trying to make a profit on this, I’m just trying to break even is a horrible, horrible, horrible mentality from an investing perspective. Because it just allows you to buy it just allows you to do the mental gymnastics, essentially, to justify buying a deal, that is a bad deal. Because you go oh, well, I just need to break even on it. But like why you can just also buy a really good property that also meets all your other goals for like lifestyle purposes. And that gets your return on investment. And that gives you a lot more of a safety net gives you a lot more of a cushion just makes a lot more sense. To focus on other things. Just know that the reality of having short term rental is homeownership. It’s maintaining a housing without reality hits, a lot of people would rather just have a more passive investment and then rent an Airbnb from time to time but not have to maintain the whole house. The next thing I wish I knew was that you can sometimes actually make more money. When you lower your nightly rate our first year the rental was live. No getting almost like having some form of pricing strategy is a good idea. Because if Yeah, of course, if you’re if your property is is set at $1,000 a night and no one books it, you make funny enough less money than if you drop the drug nightly rate down to $800. And someone bucks it right $800 Is greater than $0. No kidding. Like, you know, you have to like it’s just a little laughable. And I think not many people go as far as Shelby has here and like full on buy the property and operate without having a single thought go into like, should I have a pricing strategy, but like, I think a lot of people do at the very least underestimate what it’s going to take to do that. So you do have to have a dialled in pricing strategy to make sure you actually get the property booked and that you’re not leaving money on the table. Because if you overprice it, it doesn’t get booked and if you underprice it then you leave a bunch of money on the table. So yeah, of course that’s super, super important. Because she probably left like I don’t know, 10 $20,000 this year on the table, but just not pricing the property well enough and not could have made it profitable, like makes a really big difference. It was live we were strictly 700 A night even in the middle of the summer, it didn’t really make sense our strategy was really just to take the highest paying bookings and leaving it empty at other times because utilities are pretty expensive here and we only get a certain number of rental contract. I’ve mentioned this before but in Palm Springs you only get 36 rental contracts so you don’t really want to use what you get as a huge huge mistake she made that she’s she’s just like

19:48
totally botched it by by basically like cutting off cutting yourself off at the knees right when she got started by investing in a market that has very restrictive rules around short term rentals ism all up on the $400

20:00
Are night low season bookings when you could be getting $700 A night. So it was kind of tricky to figure out how to do this. But you could also be getting like 750 or 800 or $900 a night for some of the weekends. If you just have flat pricing, it doesn’t it’s not actually reflective of there’s different levels of demand for each different night of the week, a different weekends throughout the year, like all these things, and she really should have a better pricing strategy than just, this is my price. It’s just not imagine if Hilton just price their property like that, like their hotel was just literally always the exact same price on a Friday night, a Tuesday night, winter summer, no matter what you like, you’re just leaving a huge amount of money on the table. How do you do this? Well, what I found is even despite the utilities being expensive, and despite there only being 36 rental contracts and bookings that we can do, it is actually better to just lower the nightly rate at certain points and take those lower bookings, you know, especially if you have a short term rental that doesn’t have a restriction on the amount of bookings that you can do. Really, I wouldn’t hesitate to lower the price. If you’re not getting bookings a couple months out. We also you just got to think she could get maybe a two week long booking from someone if She lowered her weekday pricing down a bit, right and just like optimise your pricing better, maybe one of those contracts would be a two week long booking at a slightly lower average nightly rate, as opposed to a three night long booking with a $700 note rate. Like you have to factor all these things in you can’t just set a single price, we definitely made a good amount off of only doing $700 A night bookings. But we ended up at the end of the year finding that we didn’t even use up all our rental contracts, it definitely would have been better to take some bookings at a lower nightly rate than That’s crazy. That’s crazy. They didn’t even get all their 36 rental contracts used up. That’s just that’s I can’t like that is just a really terrible pricing Pricing myths out there. And at all I know this one might seem obvious, but when you only have a limited number of rental contracts, you might be hesitant to lower your price. I found that going into the summer this year, we had more money in our short term rentals bank account. Even though we have lowered our nightly rate a little bit about $100 A night lower on average. I’ve personally found with our house that lowering the nightly rate a little bit has actually made us more money, even with a limited number of rental contracts. Because this year, we’re not going to leave money on the table. We’re going to actually use up all of our rental contracts. Okay, so those are a few things I wish I knew before renting my house out as a short term rental. A lot of it really has been about how I expected it to go. Yeah, so I mean, there you have it, I think, again, it just showcases like this is this is someone that got into a short term rental property and investment property and really didn’t do any kind of due diligence didn’t treat as an investment and then is you know, doing a lot of justification, frankly, for like the poor performance. And that’s fine. Like for her it works but for you good chances are you’re probably not in a position where you want to be spending time and effort and money on a property just so that you can break even on it or take a loss and so yeah, honestly, I would just I would just recommend like learning from these mistakes. I think there’s a few things that I agreed with the things I didn’t agree with. I want to know your thoughts as well. So let me know in the comment section down below if you liked the video If you got value from it. If it was helpful to you make sure you hit the like button so you can show some love to this video help more people see this and avoid these mistakes themselves. And if you’re new to the channel here, make sure you hit the subscribe button to stay up to date with the two new videos we post every single week. That being said, thanks so much for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.