hello youtube this is richard founder of short-term rental secrets.com and
Airbnb super host on today's episode we're going to answer a subscribers
question which is how do you manage listings remotely ie in places that you
don't live day to day so in my personal experience there's three different
business models that all work one's not better than the other they just have
different pros and cons and price points and the question is how much involvement
do you want and so we'll get into that in a second but let's go ahead and label
what they are so the first one that you could work with is what's called a full
scale property service team this is likely a corporation it might be called
Acme property managers and they're in and around the community where your home
is and they likely manage 20 30 50 60
different properties and you're just one of their portfolio of properties that
they've managed from A to Z the second one is a much smaller scale much more
entrepreneurial it might be an individual or a couple like Billy and
Monica they may not even be incorporated but they make all of their income from
managing the vacation properties or the remote properties in your area and
instead of having 40 50 or 60 under their belts they really can't handle
more than say five or six and so that's a second alternative and then the third
alternative is to not have property managers at all but go out and assemble
your own cherry-pick team of people that do things like cleaning and when there's
a plumbing issue a plumber and so you basically oversee it you are the
property manager and you just have hands and feet on the ground so the obvious
question is what are the pros and cons for each one well let's start with
number one the property manager likely the most turnkey solution the most
scalable the most automated requires the least amount of time and energy from you
but it comes at a price likely they're going to charge the most
maybe as much as twenty or more percent of your rental income to handle it and I
also think that the quality of service can be variable since you don't have a
consistent team always working on your property they have different employees
coming and going and so on sometimes I have found that there's a variability in
the quality of attention that my property received the second business
model the Nouriel individual or the couple is a
solution that I tend to look for but the pro is that you really get personal
experience they get to know your home they get to know the area their
dependence on you for income so like to actually care about the relationship and
therefore they really try and make it work you know for both you and them and
the guests so that's a really good solution it comes at a lower price point
typically than a full-service one because they don't have the same
overhead but it is still relatively expensive now the con is they can be
hard to find and you are dependent on an individual or a couple and things happen
to an individual or a couple like they get sick or they take vacation or they
move out of town or god forbid somebody passes away and now your business is in
jeopardy the third option where you assemble your
own go-to team of people the pro is the cost is the lowest and the quality can
often be the highest because you're actually involved the attention to
detail and the quality control is the highest the con is it's hard to find
these people there may be turnover so you may be looking for them you know
repeatedly or time and time again and thirdly if you're new to the area
entirely like for instance I bought a home down south I'd never really been
there I don't know who the good plumbers are I don't know who the good HVAC
people are I had to develop that network over time and that can take some time
and effort and if you're not prepared to invest that that's a negative so let's
turn to how do you actually find these people and how do you differentiate you
know between and amongst them so the first one is relatively easy on the
property management side just Google look at Yelp reviews the one thing that
I would recommend and I think people just don't do enough of is before you
hire them ask for a list of references and then actually I call them and ask
some questions how long have you used on how many times
have they done turnover did they ever miss a same-day turnover have you
noticed any deterioration in your reviews you know like the cleanliness
gone down how attentive are they just ask like questions that would help you
make a decision between hiring Acme property management and beta
property management so the second group of the individual or the couple the
entrepreneurs that handle they're a little bit more challenging to
find and really you have to do a little bit of legwork and that includes going
into the local real estate offices and asking them if they know anybody
oftentimes they do rights like my sister does this on the
side or you know I know this homeowner and they seem to have a caretaker that
might be what they call them a caretaker that takes care of their property
they're really happy with and again you're going to need several different
names and numbers and you're gonna have to question them but speak to everybody
when you go down to this property ask your contractor ask your electrician ask
the waitress ask whomever you want to assemble as many opportunities and names
and then speak to them and see which one is the right fit because that fit is
really important they're all going to do good work but who do you get along with
working well when it's midnight on a Friday and there's an ice storm and you
need help the cleaning team is an interesting one because there's a couple
of different things you can do you can literally do a google search and then
just look at reviews on Yelp and so on and here you might find entrepreneurial
people that are advertising or have their own website and you want to try
and strike a business relationship right beyond transactional you don't want to
be just somebody's called them and hired them once you want to explain to them I
bought this property I have a 30-year mortgage I'm going to own this thing
outright I'm going to be here for 30 years and what I really want is somebody
on the ground who is responsive to me and doing the cleaning to my level I'd
like to try you out I want to see how clean it is and so like that's one
option is where you're looking for somebody and you're partnering with them
and then of course the other alternative is to do and I recommend you do them
both a ton of networking and find out who's good in the neighborhood heck find
other hosts in your neighborhood and ring their Bell and knock on their door
and say who does your cleaning and are you happy with them so this requires a
little bit more legwork but if you find a good team you're going to be really
happy so just to give you a very broad sense of what you might expect to pay
for these different levels of services and again there's different geographies
and different vacation versus urban but let me just try and paint a broad stroke
that full-service property management team is likely going to be somewhere 20%
or north of your entire rent role now that might be an obstacle and make it so
it's not even possible if you're trying to pay your mortgages and expenses and
so on you have to take a look at your net number and make sure that
after you pay them their fee their cut that you have enough money left over and
you may not so like don't consider that that second group which is more
entrepreneurial they do similar services that's going to come at a discount
because they don't have all the same overhead and office staff and people
answering the phone and so instead of paying 20% you should look to pay 15% or
ideally 10% maybe even less it really depends but it should be at a discount
to that first group where it's a property management and then the third
one which is really just a cleaning team if you will there I recommend that you
strike a flat rate so for every turnover you pay a certain amount and it should
be based on how many hours you think they need to spend there and what the
local wage is but just to give you an example it might be 15 to 20 dollars per
hour and for a modest-sized home it might be a four hour or six hour
turnaround and so maybe it's a hundred one hundred and fifty two hundred
dollars and if you watch my should I charge a cleaning fee video you'll see
that I suggest charging even a premium of that so you make a little bit of
money on the cleaning fee so currently I use a mix of the second option and the
third option I don't use any full-scale property managers I really solid people
in place both at that second option and the third and it works really well for
me but one tip that I would share with everybody is no matter where you go
whether it's the first second or third you want to be really involved you want
to be really knowledgeable you want to be really clear and train these people
to work with you for your standards right just because they're professional
cleaners or professional property managers doesn't mean that they know the
way that you want your home cleaned or the way that you expect it to be set for
guests and so be really thorough and be really detailed and have them come clean
when you're on location as you start to build the trust in your team you can
spend less and less time and rely on them more and more knowing that they're
fully trained and capable and executing at your standards the subscriber thanks
so much for asking the question I'm sure it's a question that's on many people's
mind and I just sort of take it for granted so I really appreciate you
reaching out if anybody has any comments or questions go ahead and leave them in
the comment section like the video please I'd really appreciate that and
like I said we have a lot more content coming
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voice of more money in your pocket until then happy