Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
[00:00:16] Short Term Rental Management.
[00:00:19] Yeah, it's party time. It is officially time to party and I'm grateful to be here.
[00:00:26] Lou Carl, the captain of co hosting. I'm just kidding. I don't even co host. But you know, I'm a man of million nicknames and I am here to bring you the goods on managing rental properties. I've been doing this a long time. I have hundreds of units of my own and I have been on Airbnb since 2011 and of course, a lot of long term rentals as well. Happy to share my knowledge with you because I got a big mouth and a microphone man. So let's do this. Short Term Rental Management. We're going to talk today about new listings, going live with a new listing. So this, this topic is a bit on the noob side of things, but that's okay. We're learning how to manage properties. That's what it's all about. I like that captain of co hosting.
[00:01:18] I'm going to copyright that captain co host.com which if you, if you want to learn how to co host, if you're looking to pick up a couple extra bucks, come join me@sts/.com. I have an awesome online course, live coaching, Online on demand courses. We want you. Come join us. STS plus calm. But today we're talking about going live with a new listing. So there's a couple of myths here.
[00:01:49] Well, myth might not be the correct word, but there is a strategy involved here and you need to do it correctly. And don't, as I always say, overthink it.
[00:02:02] Okay, Got a shadow coming from somewhere. If you happen to be watching on YouTube, maybe that'll help. There we go. Is that better? Not that anybody cares. All right, so one thing is that you hear occasionally that when you're brand new, you get sort of a boost with the algorithms on the OTAs. And I will go ahead and say that first of all, there's no way to prove that. But I do agree, I think that that does happen. It's nothing to get too, too excited about. I think people get too caught wrapped up with that. I hear about people talking about all my goodness, I got to take advantage of my boost, my new listing, you know, boost on the algorithms. It's going to pump me up and give me more bookings. And yes, it will. It likely will.
[00:02:45] So keep that in mind that when you are going live, we do think that The OTA algorithms find ways to put you in front of more people. And of course, they have the 20% discount for the first three bookings and such, which. That's an Airbnb thing, and I do recommend that you take advantage of that. Now, you might want to raise your prices 18% before you do the 20% discount, but that's up to you. I'm not here to talk about that today. So, yes, you go live, you get a little bit of a boost.
[00:03:17] Take advantage of it. Don't screw it up. You know, going live, the most common thing that happened is that somebody books your 4th of July for 100 bucks because you didn't think of that far ahead. And that happens to everybody. You're going to make mistakes when you go live, okay? But the boost going live is real.
[00:03:39] But frankly, it's not that big a deal.
[00:03:44] Now, I do want to talk briefly about what. What happens when you go live and you don't have any reviews. You know, you do need to go a little bit lower than your competition on the reviews. This is something I teach all the time. And Management Monday, World famous Management Monday. Come on, hang out in there. If you don't have access to management Monday, join stsplus.com.
[00:04:02] but when you don't have any reviews, you do need to undercut the competition a little bit.
[00:04:08] You know, say 10%, 15%.
[00:04:14] And that is a decent way to kind of combat the fact that you have no reviews. Hey, this house is awesome. It's more like, hey, you're taking a chance.
[00:04:25] Okay, so keep that in mind. But when you go live, you do get a boost. Theoretically, again, no way to prove algorithms.
[00:04:35] But usually what I see happen is people go live and they get a bunch of bookings, and then all of a sudden, they're not getting as many bookings, and they're worried about. They're, oh, my goodness, I'm not gonna be able to pay my mortgage and stuff like that. It's like, first of all, you should have known how much you were gonna get coming in on a regular basis before you bought this house. Enemy method. Enemy method. Enemy method. Enemy method. If you don't know what that is. Enemymethod.com but if you didn't know and you just kind of let it rip and winged it, and you're sitting there like, oh, man, I was getting so many bookings, and now I'm not getting any bookings.
[00:05:19] Well, that's because your damn calendar is full.
[00:05:22] The algorithms. Number one thing with the research that I have done, Our research shows that the number one thing the algorithms are looking for is availability. And if you go live and you get pushed a little bit, presumably because you're number one, you are new and number two, your calendar is freaking empty. So you have a lot of availability, therefore you have a product to sell and then you get a bunch of bookings and it really doesn't take that much. You really only looking to book the next 30 days of your calendar, give or take.
[00:05:52] You're really only going to stay about 30 days booked.
[00:05:56] That's an average number. Don't quote me on that any. You know, Random House is going to be different than the other Random House.
[00:06:03] One house will be smaller and higher occupancy, one house will be bigger and less advanced availability or more advanced availability, whatever the case may be.
[00:06:14] I confused occupancy and availability there. You get my point. Smaller house will probably have more availability and last minute bookings than a larger house is what I was getting at.
[00:06:26] But once you get that first 30 days filled, the next 30 days of your calendar filled, you're not going to get as many bookings. There's nothing to book. You've sold your product. You've got to wait until more product comes available as the days roll on. Okay, so if you're new and you're freaking out because you're not getting any bookings, you've probably already gotten all the bookings you're going to get with a lot of exceptions. If you have a bunch of empty spaces on your calendar and you're not getting bookings, then you got a problem. Most likely that problem is that you're priced too high.
[00:07:01] Most likely there's a million other things that it could be.
[00:07:05] Not responding to guests in a timely manner. You got horrible pictures, et cetera. The pyramid of pricing, which is another video I've done. You can find that on our YouTube channel.
[00:07:17] The five factors of a of a listing.
[00:07:22] There's only five key elements of a listing. You got to make sure they're all on point and changing them, you know, occasionally.
[00:07:29] This episode of the Short Term Management show is brought to you by Short Term Rental, Long Term Wealth.
[00:07:36] This is the book in the STR space written by my lovely wife, Avery Carl. It has hundreds of reviews on Amazon and it will teach you literally everything you need to know about str, Short Term Rental, Long Term wealth, the book, wherever books are sold.
[00:07:57] But my point of the day of the call today is that I love you first of all. And second of all is that once you go Live. Yes, there's gonna be a boost. And yes, especially if you do that first, 21st, 3, 20% off thing on the old Airbnb.
[00:08:10] But once you're booked, you're booked. And then it's just gonna be normal. And then, I hate to tell you, what's gonna happen is you're gonna start freaking out because you've given birth. You're having postpartum depression is what it is. Oh, my goodness. I went through this whole process. I listened to every one of Luke's podcasts. I joined SCS plus and it was amazing. And they helped me with all this stuff.
[00:08:30] Sorry for all the plugs. Today just kind of happens. But we would love to have you code podcast. By the way, if you Want to join SDS Plus.com and save a couple of bucks because you're a fan of this show, use code podcast.
[00:08:45] But it's a twofold situation. Then you're having postpartum. It's much like running a marathon. I just ran one this past Sunday. Detroit marathon. Gorgeous, beautiful course, Extremely well organized. Was my 29th full marathon and it was incredible. Thank you, Detroit. Thank you, Canada. Went into Canada. It was awesome. It was awesome.
[00:09:06] One of the best marathons I've ever done. Top three, maybe four.
[00:09:11] Fast, easy course. Yeah, it's got a bridge, but who cares? It was gorgeous. Anyway, I know running is boring.
[00:09:20] Matter of fact, my biggest Instagram post ever was about running 2.2 million views. I'd love to have you join me there, Luke. Cash flow Carl. On the. On the old gram. So anyway, you've given birth, you've gotten some bookings, you're having some depression postpartum, because you did it. You ran the marathon, you crossed the finish line, you did it. And now it's like, oh, what do I do next?
[00:09:46] Well, I hate to tell you, but you start saving for that next down payment. And that is the hard part part. Running the race is not as hard as training for it.
[00:09:55] Period. End of story.
[00:09:57] Running the race is very difficult. It's hard. You got to maintain and be smart and trust your training.
[00:10:07] But once you've crossed that finish line, once you've gone live with this property and put it into service, if you're doing things right and you've paid attention to short term rental management and the short term show and all of the resources that are out there and available to you, reality sets in and you're like, oh, crap, now I gotta go save for another down payment. What am I gonna do next? Am I gonna buy Another vacation rental in a different town. Am I gonna buy a long term rental? That sounds so boring. But everybody says I should do it.
[00:10:36] And that's when reality sets in.
[00:10:39] So don't go hard on yourself when those bookings stop, because they will. When you first go live, it feels like you're opening the water hose. Booking, booking, booking. Not all the time, especially if it's a slow season. You know, it might take two weeks to get a booking, but you get a booking. It's very exciting. It's like social media, but you got paid for it. Oh my goodness, these people are coming to stay in my house. There's a lot of anxiety, is it going to be perfect, etc. And then, you know, reality sets in and you're like, oh crap, this is the deal. This is it. Now I'm just stuck with this house for the next 30 years, which is an amazing thing. That's a most amazing thing. Do not diminish that power of being stuck with that home for the next 25 years.
[00:11:26] Because if you got a 30 year mortgage and you hold that home for 20 years, 30 years, next thing you know your mortgage is paid off and you got a paid off asset that you can pass off to your kids or if you get in ill health at that point in your life, you can use the equity from that home for, you know, I hate to say it, but reality is the truth. And you know, might have some medical bills a little later in life that you couldn't have paid if you didn't buy this house. So good for you.
[00:11:57] But at that point, it's time to move on and go buy another one. And I hate to tell you, time to start training all over again. You got to eat right, got to hydrate, gotta save those pennies, man.
[00:12:09] Save, save, save, save, save.
[00:12:13] So yes, we get a boost. No way to prove it. I do personally think it happens on all of the platforms. It happens a lot slower on vrbo. Things are very slow on vrbo, by the way. I don't know if you noticed, there was an announcement, it's been in the news a little bit that Uber might be buying Expedia. So we'll see what goes on there. If and when that does actually happen, we'll do a show about it here on short term rental management because that would be a big deal in our, in our business. Expedia, of course, is vrbo hotels.com and Uber is talking about possibly purchasing the company. So we'll see, see where that goes. You'll be the first to know.
[00:12:57] But again, for my noobs, when you go live, yes, there's a boost. It's not that big a deal. Take advantage of it. Once your calendar is 30 days full, you know the next 30 days are really what you're looking to fill on your calendar. If they're not filled, drop the rates on those dates that you need to fill in the gaps with and get them out the door.
[00:13:17] After that, you've given birth, it's set free into the universe, and it is off to go do its own thing. And now we have to go save up for another one, which is very difficult. Real estate, as I've said a thousand times before, real estate is expensive. You do not give yourself enough credit for how hard you've worked to purchase the properties that you own. Even if it's only one or two.
[00:13:43] Give yourself some credit.
[00:13:45] It is an amazing thing. Do not get wrapped up in all this crap on social media.
[00:13:52] The billions of gurus there are out there, they're in every space, by the way, it's not just us. Seems like there's more in our space than any other space, but that's because we're in our space.
[00:14:02] I'm going to leave you with a fantastic quote from Erin Hansen.
[00:14:08] Erin Hansen, she's a poet, and here's the quote, and it's badass. And basically this is saying, go out there and get you some. All right? There is freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky and you ask, what if I fall?
[00:14:23] Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?
