hello youtube this is richard founder of short-term rental secrets.com and
Airbnb super host you're joining us now in the third part of our mini-series
which is behind the scenes all of the different details that we did to lift a
new property in Windham upstate New York in this episode we're going to talk
about how to think about the description and the title and the actual written
word I hope you find it helpful okay so I just finished entering the description
and this is about 500 characters or sorry 500 words and here's what I wrote
again I'm going to list it now with this and I'm going to see what the response
is and I'm going to think about it and I'll probably come back and update it in
a day or two or a week it's a perpetual living document right but for right now
my description the summary is decorator design brand-new custom built 2016 I
include that it's brand new so new custom build 2016 ski-in ski-out home
this home is co-owned by two families and it was built specifically for ten
plus people living in it plus room for guests family or kids friends the home
is less than 20 feet from the white wastegate rail and is literally ski-in
ski-out come home for bathroom breaks change of
clothing and lunch also great for hiking mountain biking amazing fall foliage and
mountain lifestyle it doesn't get any better than this and then i've indicated
that it's good for families with kids and for big groups again i'm sort of
painting that you know when you're skiing and you're cold and you need more
clothing or it's this nice spring skiing day and you've got too much clothing one
of the beautiful things about skiing in and skiing out if you come home for
coffee you come home and you change your clothes you come home for lunch and if
you've never done that you wouldn't know it and if you've done that then you know
i'm speaking your language so i try and paint the picture as much as possible
and then likewise for the amazing fall foliage and mountain lifestyle just
planting seeds how people might use this now I'm at the place where I need to
come up with the listing title the name of the place I only have 50 characters
which is really challenging but it's super important and this is an area
where almost no matter what I have found that as much time as I spend tweaking it
making minor adjustments in proves it so I'm going to start with
something I'm not sure it's perfect again I have this challenge of both the
summer and the winter since we're listing it for both and a few of the
differentiating facts of this home versus others are that it's brand-new
that it's large and you know accommodates two whole families that
it's ski-in ski-out again that's going to be much more relevant in the winter
than in the summer so these are a lot of challenges that I have and I only have
50 characters so what I'm going to start with and now I'm going to sleep on and
continue to think about it monitor is new mountain lifestyle family estate ski
and ski out it's not that romantic it's more
descriptive than it is romantic but it does talk about mountain lifestyles
brand-new family ski in ski out so for now I'm going to run with that and see
how that feels tomorrow morning this is what guests must do add more guest
requirements I want government issued ID submitted
and I want recommended by other hosts that have no negative reviews and even
though these requirements can mean fewer reservations this is a brand new very
expensive custom built home that I own with another family and we want as much
security and as little problems or headaches as possible so I'm going to
add additional requirements suitable for children to 12 yes suitable for infants
under 2 I'm going to say no because they have no cribs no pets no smoking allowed
no parties or events allowed and additional rules no shoes or ski boots
and house no parties no smoking no events please the cool to our neighbors
and
limit outdoor recreation and loud music to earlier than 10:00 p.m. again I'm
going to work with Adam to speak to the other owners of the home see what else
they want to add but I wanted to tract and deter people that I don't want there
so anybody wants to come and party or be outside past ten o'clock or play their
music really loud they're not my people and so I would rather put this right
here and leave the reservation then have a problem with my neighbors or my home
okay so this is actually new since the last time that I've listed a home on
Airbnb I'd read about it but now I'm actually experiencing it for the first
time so the default setting on Airbnb listings is now with instant book on and
you can see here this little lightning bolt that's showing you that it's going
to be on and Airbnb really wants people to have instant books that guests can
just go ahead and check in now there's this tab down here which is in blue
require all guests to send reservation requests and I'm actually going to do
that and they warn me that I'm going to miss out on benefits by not having
instant booking on which is I'm going to get less searched I'm going to have less
earnings and so on but here's the thing since I own this home with another
family and I don't have all of my calendar dates set up I need to go ahead
and be willing to lose out on bookings if they're only going to book on instant
book because I need to check multiple calendars and until we figure out sort
of the lay of the land I'm going to be really conservative with
this and you should think about it too if you don't know your calendar then how
can you take instant bookings so I understand why they're doing it and if I
was doing this purely for income like this is an investment property and I
wanted to rent it 365 days a year absolutely but since it's not an
investment property I can't rent to 365 days I don't know which days I'm going
to be there what weekends what holidays etc the other family hasn't necessarily
decided it I'm going to go ahead and require that guests give me some
information about them and their stay and then I will approve their stay Wow
they really really are pushing this incident book in fact did you know on
average Windham hosts who let guests book instantly got 32 percent more surge
views in the past month wow that's interesting I suppose I could do instant
book for the summer and then just block off my calendar in the winter and I'm
going to think about that nine nights maximum and the reason I'm doing that is
because in this particular home nobody's going to come all this way and stay one
night and it's probably not worth it for us
weekends are probably when people are going to use it most and so I don't
really want to assume that somebody's going to read this for just Friday night
and then leave Saturday and then somebody else is going to want it just
for Saturday so I understand that I'm reducing the number of nights that I may
rent but I'm okay with that and I don't want to rent it for more than nine
nights because this isn't meant to be a long-term solution for anybody again
both families to use this home certainly in the winter okay so this next section
is incredibly important and this is where you need to do a fair amount of
homework I recommend opening up another tab pulling up Airbnb pulling up home
away or VRBO and look in your exact community take a
look at what other people are asking and getting take a look at the ones that
have the most reviews what that basically means that those prices have
cleared right so if somebody has ten reviews whatever they're asking chances
are they're getting or close to it and that's why they're asking it if
somebody's a brand-new listing they can be asking a thousand dollars a night and
if nobody's ever stayed there it doesn't really matter so use the number of
reviews than the number of stars as a barometer for what the market clearing
price is and then if you're connected to beyond pricing which I really encourage
you to do go there and do some work on the different market statistics take a
look at the occupancy rate what the hotel rates are doing over time and
educate yourself on the pricing it's really important after all you're doing
this for income and the price is going to be the most important determinant in
whether you succeed or you fail you set it too low you're going to not make
enough money and/or how a lot of headaches and problems with
people that are not necessarily your right people set it too high and you'll
have too much of a vacancy not enough success and so the pricing is super
important and that's going to take a little bit of time for you to figure out
as well I always recommend and not film videos pricing on the low end to get
started in this particular case because we have a brand new home that was built
in 2016 and I own it with another family we've sort of discussed what we think we
would rent it for and we've never rented it before and we're fine not renting it
so if we get our price we're happy to rent it and if we don't we're happy for
it to sit vacant we're kind of in a win-win situation so I'm going to go
ahead and start with a base price of $750 per night and weekly discount I
don't recommend discounting it all weekly or monthly so I'm going to leave
that at zero okay cool so here I am I'm ready to publish I'm going to do what I
recommend that you do and just underneath over here you'll see this
preview button I want to preview this listing just like a guest would it's
going to take a little bit of time but I always find that doing that sort of like
review is really helpful and then the product is better I've been putting this
listing together now for about 2 and 1/2 hours which is a fairly significant
amount of time it's a big home it's a new listing I have about 50 photos I'm
trying to paint the picture and sell the dream because I really want this to
result in the right guests and the right amount of income and I'm asking a fair
amount of money so that it's worth our while to actually do this so yes it
takes a little bit of time but if you do it well and you really spend the energy
to do your homework and think about writing it properly and then review it
in a day or two days and then a week or two and keep tweaking it yours off to a
really successful opportunity and I think you're going to make a lot of
money so I'm really excited to go ahead and preview this right now and then
publish my listing boom okay so there is my listing 100% refundable seat like I
do not want that I don't know why that didn't show up when I was setting this
up it might just be the default but that's not
estable to me so I'm going to go ahead and change that extra people no charge
that's not acceptable to me either so I'm going to go ahead and change that so
you definitely want to go through this and make sure that you agree to all the
terms because air B&B has changed their listing policy and they're making some
assumptions which I personally don't recommend and I personally want to
bye-bye so I'm going to go ahead and make these changes all right everyone
I've gone ahead and I've published I'm in the preview mode again I'm going I'm
looking at it again and there's definitely room for improvement there
always is and I want you to be really transparent so for instance this house
was not built with air conditioning which people might just assume but since
it's in the mountains it's always runs cool so I did not check that amenity box
and that's not enough for me I've actually gone ahead and written here in
caps please note because this home is in the
mountains there's no air conditioning be truthful be honest the last thing you
want is 15 people descending on your home for their big whatever it is you
know kids 15th birthday party and they need air conditioning and your home
doesn't have air conditioning now you have a mess on your hand so I always
encourage you to be forthright and honest they'll never need air
conditioning but it's in their own mind they need air conditioning then they
should rent somebody else's home although what they'll likely find is
that there are no homes in Windham with air conditioning because it's just not
the way it's done up in the mountains so I'm just looking through this all now
the other thing I want to point out is that it's really important after you
publish to go back into the listing itself and click on every single tab
because as I'm doing that there's just so much information that you can fill
out and I recommend it like the house manual and the guidebook and additional
details and information we talked about the cleaning fees and the extra guest
fees these are things that are really personal Airbnb is trying to make this
as easy and quick as possible so they hit the maximum number of listings and I
get that but this is your home or this is your investment property so you
should decide for yourself what's important to you and not just take the
default settings which is what I'm going to go back and do and
I know there's been a long video I hope you enjoyed it I hope you've learned
from it and I hope it's been helpful so if it
has please go ahead and like the video leave any comments or feedback or
suggestions that you may have this is about a community and we're all learning
from one another so I'm really appreciative and I hope that you'll go
ahead and subscribe to the channel we've got great content coming out three days
a week now and I really appreciate your time in your interest so I'm going to
keep you informed as to how this thing goes we'll see how much demand there is
for C house in your summit with no air condition okay have a great day