[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is short term rental management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
It's a mother and child reunion. We're going to talk about parent child listings. In other words, basically having two listings in one house. If you have an upstairs, downstairs, or a left, right and ab unit one. Unit two, and how to facilitate that with your Airbnb and VRBO listings on today's short term rental management after a word from this week's sponsor. And today in the house is my main man, Mister CK, Chuck Kramer, once again, repeat offender. We will be right back.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: This episode of the short term show is brought to you by the short term shop. 30 year fixed mortgages, tax benefits and long distance management training made easy are just a few of the perks of owning a short term rental. The short term shop can help you buy and learn how to manage your property from anywhere in the world. Just go to theshorttermshop.com and click Get Connected again, that's theshorttermshop.com, and we are brokered by exp. See y'all over there.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Chuck Kramer, how you doing, buddy? Great to have you back on the show. And I know you have experience with this topic. I'm just gonna let you run with it.
[00:01:29] Speaker C: Sure. Well, it's a beautiful beach day here, so let's get done. So I get out and get some sunshine.
So you did. You described one of the situations of a parent child relationship, and we're talking about a list. We're not literally talking about buildings.
You can have a duplex as an excellent example where, especially if they're connected, you can rent them individually or you could rent them together. But how do you do that without getting double bookings? How do you make sure when somebody rents one side or one half that the listing for the whole place is blocked? Another situation for parent child is where you're offering the same property but in different formats. An example here might be you have an eight bedroom, but the way the house is laid out, you can lock off a floor and also rent it as a four bedroom. That can be helpful for last minute bookings as well as off seasons. So we'll talk about both of these. The solution is basically the same, and at the end we'll talk about why you want to do it. So let's use this. Let's start with a situation like the duplex, where you can rent either a whole house or parts of it out separately.
And I'm going to use one of mine as an example, because it's exactly what I said. It's a duplex. Uh, it's got a top unit and a bottom unit. Or you can rent the entire unit. It's in our case, it's a four bedroom. They're both exactly the same. Two bedroom downstairs, two bedroom upstairs. Um, we find that honestly, we make more money renting them separately than we do together. But we don't want to miss those high peak time where people want four bedrooms. And uh, we get a premium for the whole house. It's not, it's not a plus b. It's a plus b times 20%.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: So really? Yeah.
[00:03:21] Speaker C: In our market, which is also your market for this particular house, um, there are not that many four bedrooms. Uh, you know, if you've been on uh, uh, price labs or air DNA, you know, checking that stuff out, we've only got about 64 bedrooms in our market now. We got a lot more five bedroom and up and we got a lot more three bedroom and lower. But that, that sweet spot of four bedrooms, we don't have a whole lot. So we have, we have less competition. We can charge more. The rates are higher.
On the other hand, the two bedrooms, for me, the occupancy is higher. This thing's just rent and rent and rent. The first thing is you gotta, you need to have a PM's system that will handle this hospitable, recently added the parent child setup, or maybe they're just about to. I sometimes get access to advanced features on these products. So um, uh, take that with a grain of salt. Maybe by the time this hits it'll be actually released, if it's not already. Ownorez has done this for a very long time and it's fairly easy. You simply set up your listings. And in Ownorez, uh, they have a little box that says, you know, should I block another property? Mutual blocking they call it. So if somebody rents, uh, the a side of my duplex, uh, for Saturday to uh, uh, Saturday, it blocks off the a side, but it also blocks off the whole house because now the whole house is not available. And then that works the other way too. If someone books the whole house, it blocks off a and b.
It works great. I have never ever had an issue with this. And when you think about it, it's really simple. I'm shocked that more systems that just don't build this in, maybe that maybe they didn't feel the demand was there, I don't know. But it's a simple process. The harder process it takes a little bit of setup is with Airbnb and Vrbo specifically. I've had no trouble with any of the other otas. You have to, when you set your houses up there, they're very concerned about making sure this is a real property and a real listing. And when you start setting up items that have the same address, it's going to set off a couple of bells. So you may have to call and go through support. With Airbnb, it's, it's, it's less than five minutes. Once you get somebody on the phone, they just basically got to flip a couple switches saying you're okay, and then you never have to talk to them about it again. VrBO is a little bit more complicated because they use geolocation, not just street addresses, so they've got to go check off a bunch of things to make sure you're not bothered. That, and that actually took a couple of days to get set up in the beginning.
But again, once it's set up, there's nothing else to do. Now, what if you don't use a PM's or maybe you only list on Airbnb and you don't want the expense?
There is a way to do it, but it's not foolproof. And that is you can use ical links, the ICS synchronization, which we all know how prone that can be, to double bookings because it's not an instantaneous update.
In fact, VrBo is famous for that, in that they say, yeah, we only do our ical syncs about every 15 minutes, but you would just create your two listings on Airbnb or three, depending on your relationship, and then you would go to the import export calendars and get the export for each one. And then you would go to the import for synchronization between them and you would input the other two calendars. So it'd be just as though they, you were putting on a different, excuse me, a different platform. Not any different. There's some caveats to all this. Oh, let me back up. I'm sorry. Price labs. You're using price labs and I'm going to use my duplex as an example. Price labs supports this concept. And in fact, they even offer a discount for child listings. So in my case, where I've got the big house and then I've got two, two bedrooms that are exactly the same except for the fact one is upstairs, one is downstairs. I actually pay less for those two, two bedroom listings, pay like $2, $3 a month, something like that. Um, but I pay full price for the whole house. I can also sync all my prices if I wanted to. I can have those two bedrooms always be the same price.
Um, they, they've set up this facility for people that may own, like, multiple condos in the same building. Every condo is exactly the same. Just, you know, therefore they can all be the same price. Uh, it makes it easy. And again, I mentioned earlier, we charge a premium for the big place. So.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Hey, guys, if you're enjoying the content of our podcast but you have additional short term rental questions, we host a weekly live question session that you guys can join for free. It's at 01:00 p.m. Eastern on Thursdays, and if you head over to strquestions.com comma, you can sign up. So not only am I the host of this show, but I also own and manage my own properties. And I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have about short term rental investing. So please join us anytime for a free weekly live Q and A on Zoom. Sign
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[00:08:26] Speaker A: I've got questions. What does it look like on my dashboard on the management software? Like, let's say I'm using Oneorez or hospitable or logify or something.
Do I have three listings?
[00:08:38] Speaker C: Yes, they are. These are separate listings, and I'm glad you brought that up. Now, for a site like Airbnb, that also doesn't make a difference because Airbnb doesn't charge you for listings in your software. You're often paying based on listings. Right? And so you're going to have some extra cost in your software because they are new listings, but it's very minimal. Right?
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Don't we want to scare anybody new?
[00:08:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: 1020 bucks a month or not even. Yeah.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: Yeah. Now, you may think this is going to be more work because it's more listings. If you have everything set, and I'm going to plug owner res here, if you have everything set up already, the easiest way to do is you take a listing and you clone it, and then you make your couple of changes to reflect the fact that it's, you know, the upstairs unit or the downstairs unit or it's only, you know, like in my, I had a listing for my four bedroom. I cloned it to reduced everything to be two beds, only the downstairs.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Clone it on what? On Airbnb.
[00:09:33] Speaker C: I'm sorry.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Owner as yeah.
[00:09:36] Speaker C: And then from owner, as you say, post this to Airbnb. Post this to Vrbo. Post this to home to go or whatever else you use, it'll go up. And as I said earlier, with Airbnb Verbo, you're going to have to call them after, after it's posted and the information is there. More often than not, your listing will not be live because their system will see a conflict. Multiple listings for this exact same address, but they're fine with it. It's not any different when you think about it, then renting out your rooms individually, which Airbnb loves. Now, on the other hand, that's not allowed on verbal, which is another reason you need to call them. They want to be sure, you know, they want to understand what you're doing, but it is allowed.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Have you ever rented by the room? Do you have any experience with that? What if I want to rent two rooms in the same person? Is there something for that?
[00:10:25] Speaker C: Or you would do it the same way with mutual blocking, you would just set it up as a child listing. This can be tricky from the regulation point of view. I know you're the news systems we have here. It's not like there's a big newspaper or a local news station because we're a small town here. But there was a thing in the news of mayor of a neighboring city here was ousted for, amongst other things, that he was running an illegal boarding house. And it turned, it got my curiosity up. So I looked it up and it turns out all throughout the panhandle here, you're not allowed to do that. And when you start running by the room, as opposed to, you know, a legitimate separate home space is called a boarding house. And boarding houses are highly regulated. And then when you get above that at the state level, at that point, you're, you're covered by the hotel people and not the short term lodging people, transient lodging people. So there's a, there's a lot more loops that you've got hoops that you got to jump through if you're going to rent by the room here.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: But that's just a market specifically. Again, got to know your market.
[00:11:29] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:30] Speaker C: And really you got to know, you got to ask the questions. I mean, this guy lost his job and hit the fines were five figure fines for him, and he was the mayor. It was big money because you're in a whole different class then, you know, I know Airbnb is out there telling you this is easy to do and all that, but, and it may be, it very well could be where your property's at, but, and it could be a way to make a little extra money in your off seasons. But look into the regulations, and it may not be covered by short term regulations. It may be covered by boarding house regulations or hotel regulations. So.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: So if. If you're shopping for a new property, would you say that it is appealing to you to find one that has multiple units? That's ever never really even been on my radar, but it seems like.
[00:12:16] Speaker C: Yeah, it's extremely appealing.
In fact, I bought one property here specifically because it also had an ADU, an accessory dwelling unit, or what we call here a carriage house. And this is pretty common in our area. A lot of homes have carriage houses behind them. Well, that can be a second rental.
I'm seeing people in the smokies now. Look at outbuildings, like garages and stuff and turning space in there, either the whole place or a space inside it, into a separate rental unit. Yeah, it's absolutely desirable. You know, you can rent them separately or you can rent them whole, you.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Know, in a combination you operate in. You're in these big vacation. Not big, but these vacation specific markets. It's not that. Is it common? Can I. Can I find one of these easily or not?
[00:13:04] Speaker C: If you were searching for one online. No, it's. There's no way to, you know, say, can I rent two houses? And easily. And it used to be, up until a couple of years ago, Airbnb allowed you to reference your other properties to do this sort of thing within your description. You could put the c property number, this, and Airbnb would turn it into a link. They stopped that.
Gosh, I think it was 2019.
No, it was 2020. It was after COVID started that when they were trying to cut down their house parties and stuff, and they never put that feature back.
You know, you could put language in there about, you know, check our profile for our other home next door that you could rent for your larger group, but there's no way to search for it. I mean, the only way to search is put in the number of people, as we know on Airbnb, that Max is at 16.
So.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Okay, so give me a. Give me a two minute explanation. I'm brand new. I got this duplex. I want to rent side a, side b, which means I need. But they do have a whole. In other words, they do need a door going between the two units on the inside to rent the whole thing at once. So I need listing for the whole place. I need a listing for a and a listing for b, right? Is that right? Okay, so explain. Do I again on owner's. It's going to be different but for a guy like me, that's not using Onorez, I think I got to make it three Airbnbs. Three verbose. Clear that with Airbnb and Vrbo first, and then connect all three of those units to my hospitable or igms, whatever you're using.
And then you have three separate units. And then if somebody books a, let's say it's a, b and c, and c is the entire building.
So if somebody books a, c is now blocked off, but b is available, is that right?
[00:14:51] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah, simple as that.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: Simple as that.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: No kidding.
[00:14:56] Speaker C: If your pm's supports it.
And the term is mutual blocking.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Mutual blocking, yeah. Okay. Interesting. I would imagine most of them are pretty hip to that at this point in time.
Maybe we're together.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: I mean, owner as has had it, well, since I've been using it. So that's a lot of years. I mean, hospitals was just getting around to it again.
I don't know that the others do it.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah, do your research. You're looking for multiple blocking, is that right? And so if this is something that you're interested in or maybe going to go down this road, just make sure you find a management software that supports that. It sounds like a very simple process.
[00:15:36] Speaker C: It is. And it's a one time setup.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah. It's all about blocking the calendar. So if unit B gets booked, unit C gets blocked, unit a gets booked, unit C gets blocked. If unit C gets booked, unit a and B both get blocked.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: There you go. Simple as that. Okay. All right. Well, listen, that's great. Anything we missed?
[00:15:56] Speaker C: Well, there's the other part of this. If you have a. If you have a sort of a Lego kind of process. And the example, I'm going to use an example of, I've got an eight bedroom in the smokies where I can actually lock off the bottom floor. Now think about an eight bedroom. We sleep 24.
You don't get 24 people booking at the last minute, you know. So our lead time on an eight bedroom is six to twelve weeks, usually. And we get some farther out. We almost. In the seven years we've owned that place, we've only had two bookings that have been less than 30 days out. So what do I do? If I got an open calendar, I mean, I can run, you know, discounts south of Wazoo and it's just not going to matter. People aren't going to bring together a group of 20 and come at the last minute.
Probably not. So that's when my, my four bed I offer it as a four bedroom. So I've got another listing. It's a child listing now. It's up there.
I have an arrangement with the people, do my cleaning. They get a notice telling, hey, you got to go lock off the bottom floor.
I pay less for the cleaning, of course, because now they're only cleaning half the house.
And during the winter especially, I get a lot more bookings as a four bedroom because groups are smaller. But I also only make it available for 45 days out. And I block holiday times. I never want that place to book. Instead of my big place, it's cheaper. Last year, because I was just going over these numbers. A week or two ago, we did $32,000, as in four bedroom bookings. So these are all last minute, less than 30 days out, mostly during the off season. That was a significant amount of extra income.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Wonderful. Okay, great. I'm going to touch on this briefly, even though it's off topic. This. The sleeps 24. What's the sprinkler situation there?
[00:17:43] Speaker C: That's why I sleep 24.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: 24.
[00:17:45] Speaker C: No, that's why I sleep 24 and I don't sleep 25. It's in the city of Gatlinburg, which has always required.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Oh, so this is not a severe county thing. It's Gatlinburg, which has had regulations forever and no big deal.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: Yeah, but, you know, even in the county, I'd be fine at 24 with no sprinklers. So.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: So 24 is the sprinkler count.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: 24 is 25, and up is where you get into sprinkler.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Please check with severe county. We are not experts on rules and regulations. Big disclaimers here. For all of the things we're talking about on short term rental management. We are not licensed professionals. Chuck and I are just landlords, so our opinions are our own. Please check with the county. But. Okay. Good to know. Good to know. All right. Anything we missed on parent child, which every single time I say that, I think about Simon and Garfunkel.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: Just a couple small things. And this depends on the location, but you have to check with your local authorities as to whether or not you require additional permits. Now, here in destin. No, I checked with the city and they said you get a permit for the house, the whole place, and it covers you for the other two. So I don't have to pay any extra? I don't have any extra permits. I don't need extra signs. None of that stuff that can change jurisdiction by jurisdiction. But it's. It's something to check.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Okay. Very, very very good information there. Fantastic. All right. Chuck Kramer, always a pleasure. You can find Chuck on the client club Facebook group. He's hanging out over there all the time. If you would like to buy a house with the short term shop, which is exactly what we want. We want you to buy a house, and we want to facilitate that process with our, our fantastic kick ass real estate agents, of which Chuck and I are not. But we've got the best agents in the business, and we want to help you. The shortterm shop.com and
[email protected]. Hit me up anytime. And as always, on behalf of Chuck Kramer, don't overthink it.
