Top 5 Tips For Managing Your Airbnb Remotely

What’s up guys? In this video, I’m going to share with you my top five tips for managing your Airbnb or short term rental property completely remotely. Probably one of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked lately is James, should I invest in a property in my own backyard somewhere close to home that I can get to drive to etc? Or should I invest in a property that’s totally remote that’s in somewhere that I may want to vacation to? Or just in an area where the return on investment looks like it’s going to be the best? And my answer is always the same. My answer is always that if you want to invest in your own backyard for other personal reasons, or if the numbers are just great, then go ahead and do it. But you shouldn’t do it based on the idea that you’re going to go and do everything yourself and have the flexibility to go buy the property, because that’s gonna have you working much more in the business than on the business. And it’s just not going to be high leverage for US investor, I highly encourage people to invest in markets, because they actually are interested in that market or because the returns are great in that market, not just because the market is close by. I am a big advocate for investing in properties remotely. And so I want to share with you in this video, my top five tips for how to make that possible, because I find that a lot of people are really shocked to hear me say that. And a lot of people have this idea in their head that managing the property remotely is going to be incredibly challenging. And it absolutely can be if you don’t have the right tools, systems strategies in place. So that’s what I want to share with you in this video to make that journey much more streamlined, much more seamless, and just overall much easier and more enjoyable for you. So with that being said, let’s start with the first tip, which is having a really, really great and most importantly, reliable cleaning team. Clean team reliability is probably the most important thing overall, when it comes to managing a short term rental property remotely. If your cleaning team is not one that you can count on to be there on time and do a good job without you having to overlook all their work that’s gonna make managing the property remotely a whole lot more difficult, not to mention way more stressful. So take the time early on to screen through a few different cleaning company options. Make sure you carefully consider the decision you’re making here. And my advice as well is to have someone as a backup that you can use. If you’re in a bind. Having this set up and off your plate not needing to worry about this is going to make hosting remotely way more enjoyable. And it means that now anything that needs to be dealt with last minute that’s going to relate to guest satisfaction can be so primary number one, tip number one is have an absolutely amazing and first and foremost reliable cleaning team local to your property that can take care of its needs on the ground. Now tip number two, which goes hand in hand with that is having a really great team of maintenance people, I recommend having one person that’s just a general handyman, that’s gonna go by to the property maybe once a week or once every two weeks. If you have a single family home that’s got things like a yard, a driveway to maintain in the winter, things like that. If you just have a condo or an area and a property that doesn’t require as much ongoing maintenance, that won’t be super necessary. But it is still good to have a general Handyman in your Rolodex you can call up to go by there whenever something is needed at the property. Beyond that it is really great to have a pre vetted list of different trades people in that area so that if you have a plumbing issue, you can call your plumber. If you have an electrical issue, you can call your electrician so you don’t have to frantically search for the right person when the time comes, I highly recommend getting that list put together in advance and people that you’ve vetted that you know are in the area that you know are generally available, have good rates and are going to do good work. There’s nothing worse than having a water issue where there’s a leak in the basement. And now is the time when you have to frantically search around to try to find a plumber. As your basement fills with water. You want to have the person already heading over to the property when that happens. You don’t want to just be starting your search for the right guy. So that’s step number two is find a really reliable maintenance people number one, a general handyman, but also supplemental that is your different trades people for the more specialised work that may need to be done at the property. Now third, which goes again hand in hand with those two things is systems you want to have systems for your team. Yes, that’s pretty obvious, right? Or at least it shouldn’t be at this point. If you’ve been watching my videos sidenote, if you haven’t been watching our videos, you’re new the channel here. Make sure you hit subscribe to stay up to date with the two new videos we post every single week. And while you’re at it, you might as well hit the like button down below as well. But at this point, you should know that I’m a big big advocate for systems. So what I mean by this is making sure that your cleaning team has a clean manual that shows them exactly how their property should be staged, where they can find everything and what to do when something happens. So for example, if they run out of supplies, or if there’s a damaged item at the property or something goes missing, you should have systems and processes established for what they’re going to do in those different scenarios that are inevitably going to come up after however long that you’ve managing the property or owning the property for two systems on that front are really important. But one thing that I think gets overlooked more often than not, is systems for your guests processes for your guests. Because again, if you’re not there close by, if you’re not right next door to the property, you’re not gonna be running over to troubleshoot the guests that can’t figure out how to get the projector to work, or doesn’t understand how to work the hot tub, or is having a hard time just even unlocking the front door, you’re certainly not going to want to call on your maintenance person or your cleaning person to go and drive over there and deal with that, that’s gonna get expensive really quickly. And so having really good systems, and really good backups for those systems is gonna be really important as well. So for example, anything that can be even a little bit complicated to use, like a hot tub, sauna, a projector, you know, a set of speakers, whatever it might be, if I have it at the property, it might be a little tricky to use, then I’m gonna have a video that explains in detail and shows exactly how to use that thing, including any kind of troubleshooting that might be necessary. This can be for a fireplace, this can be for front door lock, whatever it might be, if it’s going to potentially have questions, might as well shoot a video, what I like to do is just grab my iPhone selfie style, just record a video of me going in and using the thermostat or using the hot tub and I go flip the camera around, show them exactly what buttons I’m pressing, why what they do, I found that this works just a lot better than written out instructions. Because what people tend to do with written instructions is nothing. Realistically, most people don’t read them, they don’t actually go through and take the time to sit there and read them. But I found that if you send a guest a video on how to use the hot tub, then they’ll actually take the time to watch it. Go figure. So I found that that works really, really well. And that just helps so that you’re not going to have to be as involved and your guests are still going to have a really great stay. Now, the fourth tip that I have is me, again, goes pretty hand in hand with that automation. So this is some of the tools that I’ll typically have those kind of explainer videos for a lot of my smart home automation. I’m a big, big fan of automation, because it allows you to control things from afar, that otherwise you just wouldn’t be able to control. And so for example, on every property that I have, I have a smart thermostat, it allows me to then adjust the temperature of the property remotely from wherever I am in the world. So if the guest leaves the property and cranks up the air conditioning or cranks up the heating in the winter, I can just adjust it wherever I am, or my team can adjust it to a more reasonable amount so that my hydro bill isn’t absolutely through the roof. It’s also really cool that with these ones pretty easy to programme most cases, so you can set it so that when the person is away from the home, it’ll automatically turn things down or turn things up or whatever it might be depending on the season. And just means that you’re going to save a bunch of money. Now the other thing I like to automate is going to be my TVs. Smart Home Automation for the TVs just again makes nice and user friendly for the guests. Another really great one for me personally, as a host that I really love is the August lock, I like to again, there’s tonnes of different smart home automation options out there available for locks, specifically for door locks.
I personally really liked the August lock because it integrates really nicely with Airbnb, and you can have different redundancies in place. So for example, I can unlock that door remotely from anywhere in the world. So the guest is ever having a really tough time getting in no stress, I’ll just unlock the door for them, they’ll scenes that they can unlock it with their app, there’s different ways you can set that up, you can also get a keypad for it so they can punch number new keypad. And then the last piece as well. With most of these automation things you want to have redundancies in place. So putting a redundancy like a lockbox in place, just in case there are any issues that can’t be resolved through the technology that you have that next kind of backup in place. So those are my top four tips. Now it’s time to move on to number five. 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 asset buying the properties themselves, or you’re looking to earn a full time income managing other people’s properties on here. have you be, 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. My final tip for making sure that you can manage your property remotely really, really effectively. And that’s up here. That’s your mindset, I find that probably one of the bigger things that holds you back from managing property remotely. It’s just the way that they think about their property. And they think about hosting and managing the property on Airbnb, the way that you’ve got to think about it is like a business, you want to treat this property like a business and solve things, the way that a business owner would solve them. It means not getting emotionally invested into the issues that happen and not taking things too personally, I find that when problems come up, we can often feel powerless. If we can’t go and actually do it yourself. You know, a lot of people have this mentality of if you want it done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. But when you’re managing the property remotely, just not an option. So I’ll be here to hop on a plane and fly over to the property to get some problems sorted out. So you’ve got to rely on other people. And I found that that’s often a mindset shift for people is that it’s not about trying to solve the problem one time, it’s about trying to figure out how the problem can be solved forever. So whenever a problem gets comes up, just see that as an opportunity. Again, you want to train your mind to see that as an opportunity to improve your systems. If something comes up that requires your input or that means that a guest had a less than great experience, you just want to build that into your future systems. So that doesn’t ever happen. Again, remember, any issue almost can be solved. So just focus on solving the problem. Don’t take it personally don’t get too upset about problems that happen. It’s natural. It’s part of the learning curve of all of this and just try to figure out solutions that you can implement that don’t require you that are going to last and solve the problem indefinitely. Those are my five tips for managing property remotely. They worked really well for me and I finally worked really, really well for the people we work with as well. If you have any questions, comments, anything else you want to ask or you want to know about, just let me know in the comment section down below. Like always, if you found this video helpful and valuable if it was at all, you know, even just enjoyable to watch, then please let me know by hitting that like button, it just tells me that you actually liked this content, you want me to create more of it. And it also helps me to get these videos in front of more people. So it really really appreciate if you take half a second and just hit that Like button below the video. Last but not least, if you’re new here, or you’re not yet subscribed, make sure you subscribe to the channel by just clicking the subscribe button down below. Because we post two new videos every single week and the goal with every single one of them is just to help you to perform better with short term rentals, whether you manage them, invest in them, host them whatever it might be. So just make sure you subscribe to the channel if you want more of that. All that being said, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for watching, and I will see you in the next video.