The BEST (and WORST) Airbnb Renovations

What are the best renovations for Airbnb and short term rentals that I’ve personally seen? We dive into a handful of the most impactful changes and updates I’ve made to our properties.

Obviously, we want a clean, updated, and nice property. Every real estate investor does.

But in today’s video, I share the number one mistake I see with people and their Airbnb renovations.

We need to consider our *level* or renovation. 

We talk about updates like granite countertops, and choices like hardwood versus vinyl plank.

How do we decide these things?

In the video, I discuss that framework to decide which renovations to add to your short-term rental.

Next, I share the three things you need to check off before you make an update or reno.

If these three things are a ‘yes’, you should do the reno.

I’ve done full-gut renovations. One place literally had spray paint on the carpet (among everything else).

I’ve also done light renos and near turn-key properties. 

I share the three biggest ROI changes I’ve made, and one just might surprise you. 

Finally, I share some quick tips that will save you LOTS of time and money.

For example, did you know there’s an ideal ratio of guests to bathrooms?

And what kind of smart tech should you add? Return on investment isn’t just about money. It’s also about getting time and peace-of-mind in return too.

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Expand Transcript

What’s up guys, in today’s video, I’m going to be sharing with you some of the biggest mistakes that I see people making when they renovate their properties for Airbnb, I’m also going to share with you some of the most incredible returns that I’ve ever gotten on renovations that I’ve done on Airbnb and short term rental properties. Some of the things I’ve done that have gotten just absolutely insane returns on investment that are in the realm of furnishing, and and renovation. So without further ado, let’s dive right into it. Let’s start talking about the number one thing, the biggest mistake that I see people making, which is over renovating. I see a lot of people and there are a lot of people on social media who go and they renovate properties for Airbnb and short term rentals specifically, and what I’ll often see is that they’ll go a little bit over board on the renovation of the property with things like granite countertops, things like hardwood flooring, a lot of things that, you know, the guests of a short term rental property just aren’t frankly going to care about. So for example, I had a member of student that I work with asked me, you know, should we do a granite or laminate countertop. And so for some properties, I’m not saying for every single property, you should always go laminate. But for the average property, you just have to ask yourself, is a guest actually going to be willing to pay more for my property on Airbnb, because it has granite countertops, as opposed to laminate ones. Now for the average property for the average listing, the average guest is booking, that’s not even going through their head, they’re not even considering they’re thinking about, you know, doesn’t have games in a nice place doesn’t have good internet, they’re not thinking about what the countertop is like, they’re only going to be there for a few days. So for any properties, where you’re doing some kind of a burr or you’re looking to actually force the appreciation on the property. In those instances, yeah, sure that granite countertop may actually be worthwhile, because that might actually lift the value of your property get you a better refi maybe in the future be able to sell it for more. But when you’re renovating an Airbnb, specifically, you’re really looking for things that guests are actually going to care about. And so spending a whole bunch of money on something like a granite countertop is not going to move the needle forward on that front. So oftentimes, if you’re doing a burger and you’re using it for Airbnb or something like that, you need to kind of balance those two things. But if you’re purely just renovating for the purpose of making it a more attractive short term rental, then the things that you want to renovate are going to be the things that guests are going to care about, that’s going to lead more people to book with you or lead them to book for longer, or lead them to pay higher rates for your property than for other properties or what they would for your property in its current state. So absolutely, you want to have a clean property, you wanna have a nice property, you want to have an updated property that has a nice aesthetic to it. So if you have some, you know, ugly shag carpeting that’s 20 years old in the property, then replacing that with some new you know, laminate or, or nice flooring, vinyl flooring, something like that is definitely going to make sense. If you’re going to go and upgrade that to hardwood and spend the extra money, probably not really worth it from an Airbnb perspective solely. Now, again, not to say that that’s not going to increase the value of the property. So for the burr reasons that might make sense, depending on the property, depending on the location, and all kinds of other factors. But specifically for Airbnb, those higher end renovations, unless you have a really high end property that is catering to high end clientele, it’s just generally not going to actually be worthwhile. So what I recommend sticking to I promised you at the start of this video that I was also going to talk about some of the best bang for buck that I’ve gotten on short term rental renovations that I’ve ever done. And I want to share that with you as well. So certainly, I’ve done a few different types of renovations for Airbnbs. And so I’ve done everything ranging from like a full gut job where we went into a property that had blue carpeting that it didn’t spray paint, painted blue, if you can imagine and you know, was totally outdated everything else, then we really just did a full gut job through to just some minor cosmetic renovations or buying properties that are relatively turnkey. So there’s quite a spectrum here. And I can share on different levels what some of the most profitable renovations have been for me. Now, on the gut job. Really one of the probably the best things I ever did was decide to paint the entire property off white is a nice warm off white, it was right through the entire property, every single wall, just nice and white. And so a lot of times like I can say for myself, when I went in and decided to do that I was terrified, this place was gonna look like an insane asylum. But what it allowed us to do was get painters in that were really, really efficient. And they came in and they painted the entire thing all in one go. It was really, really quick as opposed to having much accent walls and different colours and all kinds of different stuff like that. It also means that the property is colour is going to be relatively timeless, right we’re not going to have to go in and refresh the paint but when that specific colour of paint that we put on the walls like you remember back in the day beige was really and right now Gray’s tend to be quite in, but those Bad’s kind of come and go with, whereas with white, we’re sprucing up the place and giving a colour through the decoration through the wall or through, we’re putting up those other elements. And those are a lot cheaper and easier to switch in and out when the styles change when the season changes that sort of thing. So we can keep the property updated for way less money and way less downtime, because to repaint a property is going to take time for the property beat down, you’re gonna be a lot more headache and a lot more expense. Whereas if you’re just switching the decorations, you’re switching out some of the wall art, that’s going to be a lot quicker and easier to do, you can do that in between turnovers. So that’s one really good tip is to go with a really neutral colour that’s going to stand the test of time when it comes to your wall painting on a short term rental. 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 ease. 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’ll 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. One of the things I’ve also done on properties that has yielded an incredible ROI has been adding additional bedrooms. Now only do this if your property can actually support it, what you don’t want to do is have a bunch of small little bedrooms chopped up to cram people in like sardines, and then only have one bathroom to share amongst 10 people, that’s going to be a really miserable experience. As a rule of thumb, I don’t recommend having more than five people per full bathroom. Ideally, you only want to have about four people per full bathroom. Because as you can imagine, if you have a bunch of people trying to share one shower in the morning, you have like 10 people trying to share one shower, that’s going to be a nightmare. You also want to make sure that your common spaces like the living room, the dining room, the kitchen are sufficient to accommodate all the people that your property is going to use going to house right. And so the opportunity here is like if you find a property that has an unfinished basement, and it’s got lots of living space down there, and the potential to add a couple of bedrooms, adding those bedrooms can give you a huge return on your investment. Because adding on bedrooms, if you’re not needing to put on a full addition to the property and add square footage, then it really is relatively inexpensive to frame up some walls adding a couple more bedrooms. And in doing so you allow yourself to access a whole nother segment of demand in the market of those larger groups. And larger groups are typically willing to spend more money on their stay because they’re typically splitting the cost amongst a larger group of people. So in my experience, that’s been probably the highest ROI renovation that I’ve done has been adding bedrooms to properties that have the ability to do so. Now another thing to watch out for is if ever you’re buying a rural or cottage type property, and you’re doing that, if it’s on septic, make sure that your septic system is large enough to support that many bedrooms, there’s a few different nuances and things to watch out for. And again, we’ve got other videos and trainings and stuff that go into way more detail on the specifics of that. But adding additional bedrooms is a huge, huge win for those ones. Now, this isn’t necessarily in the realm of renovation. But some things that I’ve really loved adding to properties as well are going to be Nest thermostats, any kind of a smart thermostat, again, pretty minor, you can do it yourself, it’s not really a renovation, so to speak. But this one’s going to be a really big ROI. Because before having a nest, I would regularly get a hydro bill at $400. Because the guest turned up the temperature in the wintertime or turn it down during the summertime and really cranked it and then when they left and they’re not there, that’s just staying exactly how it is. So if we have four days in between a guest checking out and another one checking in, that’s four days where the property is being cranked the heating or the AC is being cranked down, and no one’s even in the property. Now Nest even goes a step further. So you can have it on a schedule. So that automatically comes down at night goes up in the morning, that sort of thing. And you can also turn on HomeAway Assist, which basically monitors to see if people are there at the property and it’ll go into kind of power saving mode. If people if it doesn’t sense people there at the property. It’ll know that people aren’t there and then it’ll turn the the whether it’s heating or cooling down for that period of time. So now asked for me is an absolute must. I really love other smart tech that doesn’t really necessarily fall into the category of like getting an ROI. But there’s other smart tech that I like as well like August door locks, noiseware systems, all kinds of different tools, they’ll just help make your hosting a lot easier. So although you don’t necessarily get a return financially on those sorts of things, you do really get a return on your investment from a peace of mind and just getting your own time back perspective. Now, there’s also a whole bunch of other amenities and things that I love to add on to properties. Those are just a couple ideas of some of the renovations that I like to do on properties that always consistently yield additional ROI. If you can add another bathroom to your property to allow you to comfortably accommodate people back can be great as well. But oftentimes, it’s a little bit trickier and more expensive to add a bathroom in than to just add in a bedroom if you’ve got something like an unfinished basement. So those are some my best renovations and some of the ones that I definitely recommend avoiding let me know in the comment section down below if you have your list of preferred renovations things you absolutely love to do things that you hate doing. I personally think another one is is vinyl flooring, vinyl flooring is just so durable, it’s really nice. So upgrade to vinyl over something cheaper that’s going to scratch up and gonna get water damage. That’s another really good one. Again, let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below. If you got value from this video, make sure you hit that thumbs up button make sure you give this video like really helps out growing the channel and growing this video getting in front of more people. And if you’re new here and you haven’t yet subscribed to the channel, make sure you hit that subscribe button. All that said, thanks so much for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.

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