hi and welcome back to my channel I'm Matt the creator of Airbnbuncovered.com and
Airbnb super host on this channel I uncover some of the best kept hosting
secrets as well as share with you everything that I've ever learned after
hosting over 3,000 guests if you're thinking about becoming an Airbnb host
then this video is for you today I'm gonna go over what's involved in setting
up your Airbnb and how long you can expect that to take there are two main
components to getting your house ready to welcome your first guess and we're
gonna cover each of them in today's video today we'll talk about setting up
your home and creating your listing on Airbnb including check-in and check-out
processes I hope that you're enjoying the content on my channel so far and if
you are I hope that you'll subscribe so that you don't miss out on any upcoming
videos and if you're already subscribed thank you
please don't forget to give me a thumbs up if you like this video it's a huge
help with the YouTube algorithm so let me dive into the first area which is
setting your home up for Airbnb the way I see it there are two big chunks to
this part the cleaning and the maintenance part in last week's video I
talked all about decluttering removing personal items and giving your home a
deep clean this is a great place to start but let's go a little bit deeper
in this week's video you have to pay particular attention to how clean your
kitchen and bathrooms are because these are of prime importance to guess make
sure that there is no visible mold or mildew in either of these rooms toss any
dead or near dead houseplants same goes for fridge for food in your fridge that
is nearing expiration I just want to point out that this process is the same
if you're planning to list your entire home or your sharing
a part of it like a spare room every area that a guest has access to has to
be clean when you're decluttering try to create space for your guests belongings
a couple drawers in a dresser and some hangers and space in the closet should
suffice if you can only afford space in one or the other then clear space in
your closet sometimes guests like to travel with items they don't want to
wrinkle so that's the clean part what about the maintenance part as for
maintenance make sure you don't have any burnt-out lights check for any loose or
malfunctioning doorknobs or windows double check that wires for your
electrical appliances are in good shape and not frayed or worn replace loop
replace that loose deck board and make sure your door locks are in good working
order I just read an article earlier today about a guest complaining that the
front door didn't lock this is a huge no-no a review that mentions the front
door not locking could all but kill your listing also double check that the
batteries in your smoke detector and carbon monoxide monitor are good and
that both are function Airbnb encourages every home to have a
carbon monoxide monitor and smoke detector and I think these are
must-haves sometimes Airbnb will even give away free carbon monoxide detectors
so keep an eye on their site for an announcement oh hell you might be okay
with a toaster that needs a little jiggle to get the toast out or a lock
that you need to fiddle with to open your guests probably won't be so bring
your home up to tip-top shape so how much time should all of this take well
that depends on the size of your home and its current state do you have a lot
of clutter and personal items in your home and set aside a couple days to sort
through your stuff and either store it if it's valuable or high highly
sentimental or toss it or donate it remember the age-old secret of design
less is more maybe you don't have a lot of clutter but your home needs some
maintenance set aside the same amount of time a few days to get all of this done
if you have a smaller home with relatively little clutter then you're
probably fine with half a day or even just a few hours if you're a real neat
freak look at readying your home for your first guests as motivation to get
all of your home to-do items off of your list the next one time set up activity
that you need to do is set up your listing on Airbnb this usually takes
between 2 & 4 hours and I'm including the time it takes to take pictures of
your space Airbnb provides a step-by-step guide to creating your
listing fill in all the fields in this process even the optional ones having a
complete listing helps to boost your search ranking if you're stuck on what
to write then check out a couple of listings in your area for inspiration
once your listing is live you want to go back to the Edit listing screens and
adjust the settings that were not available in the step-by-step process
I'll explore these options in a future video one often overlooked part of
setting up your Airbnb is designing your check-in process many new me hosts often
overlook this part and then they are scrambling right before their first
guest arrives think about how you're gonna facilitate key exchange does your
address appear correctly on Google Maps will you meet your guests in person and
if so we're thinking about your check-in is much easier if your air being being a
standalone house but in a condo or an apartment things get complicated if
you're not planning an in-person check-in then where will you leave the
keys lock boxes are the de facto but they can freeze or be removed once your
guest has the keys exactly what do they do after that if your lock box is
hanging from your front door knob and it's easy but if it's in a different
location then you need a step-by-step instruction
guide or maybe you're going to use a smart lock on your front door and in
that case you need step-by-step instructions on how to download the app
and then more step-by-step instructions on how to use the app sell them are
these provided by the smart lock manufacturer similarly if you need check
and instructions then you mean check out instructions often this part is
overlooked what do you guess do with with the keys when they're leaving will
you meet them in person and grab them or do you want your guests to do anything
before they leave take out the trash start the laundry start the dishwasher
turn down the heating or the AC map out your check out and check in processes
before your first guests arrive otherwise you'll be scrambling and
you'll look disorganized to your guests to answer the question of how long in
total it will take to prep your home and set up your Airbnb listing I'd say
somewhere between a few days and maybe 3 to 6 hours depending on the condition
and size of your home you might be wondering what would happen if you don't
bother doing all of this well the short answer is your Airbnb is probably not
gonna work the way the Airbnb algorithm is set up is that it gives new house a
natural bump in search results for a few days after the listing goes live these
first few days are your opportunity to secure a few first bookings your ratings
and response time will fuel your ranking in search
ideally matching the boost you received right out of the gate but to sustain
this level of activity you need to have five-star reviews from your guests and
guests will not give you five star reviews if your home is dirty cluttered
or need of maintenance and that's causing your search ranking to go way
down and guests won't even see your listing let alone Bukit so I encourage
you to do all of the upfront work as best you can
are you currently setting up your home for your first gas
I would love to hear about your progress please tell me in the comments down
below now let's bring it all home in this week's episode we went over what's
involved in getting your home guests ready and how much time you can expect
to spend doing that I went over both of the major one-time set up activities and
those were physically setting up your space so that included decluttering
cleaning and maintaining then we talked to both the virtual stuff your Airbnb
listing your check-in and check-out procedure I hope you find this video
helpful if you did please give it a thumbs up and if you're not already
subscribed then please do so and click on the notification bell so that you'll
receive a notification when I post a new video until next week thanks for
watching and bye for now
you