Hello YouTube what's going on it's Richard founder of short-term rental
University and Airbnb super host and today I'm coming to you from the lovely
Nosara Costa Rica where I intend to spend a significant amount of time going
forward because of its beauty and today's video is how you can spend more
of your time enjoying being an Airbnb host and worrying less about all the
negativity and things like squatters and things that we do to proactively avoid
these situations as well as a step-by-step guide if I found myself in
an uncomfortable situation with squatters what I would do but the very
first thing that I want to turn our attention to is problem avoidance
let's mitigate the problems let's be proactive instead of reactive and the
very first thing that I see happening often especially with new hosts and/or
hosts that are scaling is desperation when you become desperate for the income
sometimes you take shortcuts you cut corners you overlook certain things that
feeling in your gut that tells you something is amiss and I'm not really
sure whether I should accept this reservation then the dollars and cents
come in and you start to think about the money and the mortgage payment or
whatever and you just make decisions that aren't really rational so the very
first thing I want to spend a moment on here is how to remain rational and calm
listen to your gut listen to your intuition and some of the tools that we
use to ensure that we get the right guests in our property to avoid long
term problems and things like squatters so the first thing we do is we look for
people that have prior reviews just like they're gauging our ability to host on
the number of reviews that we have and what people say about us and whether
we're super hosts we to screen our guests so we want to make sure that they
are good guests it doesn't mean that we don't accept people with zero reviews or
one or two reviews we do that on a daily basis but in those instances we always
push back and ask more questions so if somebody has no reviews we ask them what
brings you to Jackson Hole what brings you to nosara who are you traveling with
I see you're new to Airbnb why haven't you used it before
why are you using it now we have the ability to ask
as many questions as we want in advance once you accept the reservation you no
longer have that luxury so go ahead and respond quickly keep
your responsiveness level high but ask any questions that are important to you
for you to gauge whether or not this is a good fit for you and if it's not a
good fit or they don't respond or you don't like their answers then turn them
down we are not desperate by clearing them off the calendar our calendar
remains open for a better guess somebody who's more qualified who will love your
place who will take care of it who won't stay an extended period of time another
red flag is when people make reservations with one person for me most
of my properties are multiple bedrooms four or five bedrooms so when I see
somebody that's booking with one person it's a little red flag and that triggers
another inquiry how many people are traveling who's coming with you we try
and be very friendly about it not accusatory right it's all in the tone
and how you present and the line of questioning and so we say things like
you made the reservation for reservation request for one person but we're a
4-bedroom house could you clarify who else is coming with you and how long
you've known them or something like that so it's a friendly request and then
often we get positive responses and in many cases we'll go ahead and accept it
but if we don't get a response or we get a cryptic response or an elusive
response then that's a red flag and we just don't accept it we're willing to
forego the short-term revenue for the long-term wealth that comes from holding
short-term rentals for an extended period of time measured in decades right
so we're not desperate the third thing we do and this is a huge tip is we read
the reviews of the guests the people that stay here there's a couple of tips
that we have and we want to share them with you so the first one is err review
that is a Google Chrome extension that we plug into our Google Chrome browser
and it allows us to see the reviews that other hosts have made of this guest as
well as the guest reviews of 'fire hosts the reason that's important is many
times somebody who's a problematic guest is a problematic guest in multiple
people's homes and if they leave scathing reviews or low number of star
reviews for other people I don't want to bet that I'm the exception now I'm gonna
get the five-star review if somebody gives three star reviews and is nasty
across the board and they've done so three four or five times for other hosts
my guess is that that person's level of expectations are high or they try and
negotiate the price after the fact or they have an alternate agenda or a
slightly different off Airbnb sort of culture and I don't want to host them in
my house at the same time Airbnb has tried to for just can't ID
discriminatory purposes which I believe in not allow us to see the photo
I believe in air review we do see the photo and I believe that if somebody
books a request in air B&B and you click on the number of guests there's a little
bug in Airbnb right now then the photo most times let's say nine out of ten
times shows up and what am I looking at in the photo I'm not looking at age I'm
not looking at color I'm not looking at anything that's anti-discriminatory but
I can't express to you how many times I see somebody that I don't want in my
home because of the selection of their thumbnail so for instance if it's a
recent college graduate that some come out and they're a perfect gas for me but
their photo is of them you know doing shots or drinking beer and I have a no
party policy that's not congruent with the type of guests that I wanted my
property and chances are they're a better fit for somebody else who has a
more party focused environment or live style themselves so I have on occasion
restricted people from booking my reservation requests turndown pash into
my pocket because of the thumbnail selection it tells a lot of things about
people and what it is that they do and so I don't use it for anti
discriminatory purposes and I don't recommend you do the same thing but they
say a picture's worth a thousand words Airbnb has started to block it yet you
can click on guests and see their photo and also on air review you can see their
photo and all of the prior reviews that they've left for other hosts and what
posts say about them so that's an amount of information before you accept
the reservation and also I want to empower you to say no no is one of the
greatest tools we can have it's your business you are not desperate for the
money if you turn these people down chances are there's somebody right
behind them with a better fit for you who might even be willing to pay more
money and be a better guest and give you a five-star review and the name of the
game here is longevity not getting burned out not getting stopped out not
having legal disputes and not focusing on that stuff right so turning to the
bad like what happens if you get a bad guest you've went through your screen
you did air review you wrote them about how many guests everything sounded right
you didn't have a bad feeling in your gut so you approve the reservation and
somebody came and now they're a bad guest and they've decided to stay and
squat well that's never happened to me in the short-term rental market but it
has happened to me in the long-term rental market and so the reason I share
this with you is it's not indigenous it's not native to short-term rentals
its indigenous or native to being a landlord and owning land and renting
that land out to a tenant those tenants have rights whether they're long-term or
short-term they have rights and while we believe that we own the property and
we're the boss and we dictate everything just recognize that as soon as you have
a tenant in there whether they're long term or short term
they have rights and there's rules and laws established I believe in all
countries that delineate what rights we as landlords have and what right today
as tenants have and if you're not familiar then before you do anything you
need to become familiar and the best way to do that is to hire a lawyer and not a
general lawyer not the lawyer who set up your LLC not the lawyer who helped close
the transaction not the lawyer who's in your family contact a real estate
attorney somebody with specific knowledge on tenant law and evictions
and I've had to do just that with a long-term peace in a property I own many
years ago in Brooklyn and I hired a pitbull of a lawyer in tenant-landlord
like eviction specialties and even then it was incredibly expensive took a very
long amount of time was filled with the motion and just like I can't believe
that the tenants have these laws this is my property why am I paying for
heat and electricity and I'd like to turn the utilities off and all these
vengeful things to try and get the person out but those are all against the
law so don't even go there let's skip all that negativity
let's outsource it to the right person who's a lawyer
and just buckle up and know it's gonna take longer and try and get it out of
your mindset and focus on positivity somewhere else and then don't repeat
those same mistakes again so the very first thing is to recognize that there
are laws you can't act the way that you would
like to and there are things that we can do which are called lawyer up with the
right lawyer and find somebody who's an expert in this and who has your back in
each community there are different lengths of time that a tenant has to be
in place before they have certain rights and that changes so on this video I
can't tell you specifically what happens in your area but guess what your lawyer
can so you're going to spend some money you're going to spend some time it's
going to be aggravating just be prepared for it but again this is all like not
going to happen because we screened our guests properly this is in that point
zero zero zero one percent chance that somebody is the wrong Apple or has come
on hard times and you did all the right screening and you just start in this
unfortunate situation which by the way does happen and is a reality and so if
you're in this position then I want this video to help you but if you're not in
this position then I want you to realize just how rare it is and not focus on
that and not limit yourself and your growth and your business and your
opportunities by distracting your mind and thinking about self-limiting
negativity instead I want you to focus on abundance and how beautiful
Airbnb hosting is and what kind of life it can establish for you so it happens
whether it's a long-term tenant or a short-term tenant the rights are
different than they change you will be working with the best real estate expert
attorney who's a knowledgeable person on tenant landlord and eviction
that's who you find and you let them handle it so I hope you found this video
helpful please go ahead and like it leave comments below what happened in
your case did you have squatters whatever you do do not take matters into
your own hands safety first responsible hosting
these are critical things and don't fear it it won't happen to you but if it does
hire the best lawyer possible with the right expertise you found this video
helpful like it subscribe to the channel and let's grow friends