Episode 151: 9 Steps to Starting your Airbnb (Part one)

How to build an Airbnb Business: 9 Steps to Starting your Airbnb (Part one)

It can be quite a process, but it doesn’t have to be. Setting up an Airbnb that is. After we have our perfect property ready to go we have to furnish it, install home automation tech, and provide details to our guests.

It’s crucial that we do not overlook anything because, as you know, our initial reviews can make or break the success of our STR. I recently got back from hopping around the US and one of the stops was in a city where I own properties and I was doing just this with one of my team members.

So I’d like to break down the process for you in a nut-shell to make sure that you do not overlook anything during the initial setup. And if you haven’t set up your 1st STR yet well… then this can be your 15-minute handbook 🙂

This week we will discuss:

  • Making a plan
  • Ordering & Coordinating furniture
  • Setting up / installing furniture
  • Where to get help?
  • How long does it really take?
  • Essential rule to make sure you don’t FORGET anything.

 

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Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast hope you’re doing excellent out there wherever you are I just got back from a long trip along for me it was about 3 weeks and I was jumping around all over the place all over the U. S. I always try to pack in way too much I guess I have sort of a type a personality but anyways we got some new properties set up in Oklahoma where I have some properties already and I’ve had some for several years and I met my manager over there that came over from Tennessee and we knocked down 2 apartments in just a couple days so I want to break down this week the process for you from start to finish on physically setting up our property I’ve gotten 9 steps for you and they are by no means a comprehensive in fact a lot of the 9 steps I break down in much more depth than other podcasts but I wanted just to give you briefly in a nutshell what the process is so you make sure that you don’t leave out any of those steps.

Welcome to short-term rental riches will discuss investing in real estate but with a specific focus on short-term rentals quick actionable items to acquire manage and scale in your portfolio I’m your host Tim Hubbard.

So the first step is we gotta have a property right and I know this one ‘s obvious but we want to make sure we have the right property I don’t want to beat this point up I’ve got lots of other episodes on this if you guys haven’t heard those yet or if this is your first time listening thank you for tuning in you can check out all of our prior process at S. T. R. riches.com we got a bunch of resources for you there but that is the first that began to make sure you have a good property and and I’m assuming for the purpose of this episode one that’s already renovated as well so I’m assuming you got that out of the way our next step is making a game plan and again talked about this point to talk about making floor plans and I have a whole episode on that but we got to have a game plan or floor plan for our property we got to kind of know how we want to furnish it before we’re going to furnish it we want to make sure we know what style we’re going within what type of gas we’re going to have an apartment or in our house during our vacation rental we’re in our yard whatever type of short term rental it is we need to know what type of gas is going to be staying there because that’s going to determine the type of furniture that we put in there so after we know that we need to go ahead in order are furniture I’m already on step 3 right now I tell you guys gonna blow right through this this is in a nutshell step 3 we need to order our furniture and there’s all types of different places to do that the easiest way is to order on Amazon but that doesn’t necessarily provide a nice looking ran off there is lots of good stuff that we can get off of Amazon and we definitely order a lot but we like to get a combination of furniture. And make our properties a little more unique so doesn’t look like we just opened up a big box from my kia or something like that so you can order from all over the place an online we can definitely do that I always recommend getting some furniture locally to or at a thrift store or on Facebook marketplace course that takes time and if you’re not there locally which I am not I spend most my time in South America very far from all the properties that either got to have someone on your team that helps you with that or you can always hire designer interior designer you wanna make sure that you don’t just have all one type of furniture so that is a big piece we can go on and on about that and I haven’t prior episodes but I just wanted to put this point in here to show the process so we need our property we need our plan we need our furniture we need to deliver our furniture we need to get it at the property so that’s point number 4 and that could be done. If you’re ordering online you can ship right to the property if you have a manager that helps you can ship right to them of course that’s gonna be a lot of boxes a lot of furniture down box and take over the property takes a lot of time and you’ll end up with a lot of cardboard trust me you got to find a place that cardboard too so if you’re not shipping it to someone to help you on your team you’re not ship it directly to the property well you could send it to a mail center a post office box but you got to check with them too they don’t really like having big mattresses show up and all that so there is a little bit of a balance that goes on with the coordinating and you want to make sure that you really planned that out it’s best to send in this few shipments as possible so you’re not bouncing all over the place around back to the property and if they’re expensive items you might want to think about shipping those to your personal residence if you happen to live near the property that’s an easy way or if you do have some sort of mail center you might want to send that the more expensive items to that post office box or anywhere where you can accept packages another thing that they have with Amazon is I have to pick up locations so if you don’t feel comfortable shipping the furniture directly to the property or to your house if you’re not living locally you can check out some of those drop off locations of this pickup locations I should say but you have to haul them right so this is a lot of furniture so what do we do well I lucked out on this one because one of my managers for Memphis we have a big delivery van that we use there and you can fit how much is in there you can stand up I mean it’s like a full blown delivery man actually bought it to run this laundry operation which we are using them for laundry more on that subject in another episode but anyways we have a giant delivery van and so they packed that thing full and he drove over wasn’t too far likely and that made it so much easier so I met him in Oklahoma City and we had some help to unpack it all and that really stays a long time because you can spend a lot of time. Time on the furniture piece if you’re not just ordering all lines that can take a lot of time the last thing I want to talk about here is how much time this really does hate and that depends on the size property but we will get to that so after we got a property we’ve got our furniture plan together we’ve ordered our furniture we gotta figure out the best way for us to accept it or to have it delivered and then we got to set it up right so that’s point number 5 and if you’re ordering furniture that’s already put together will in that process is going to be a little easier of course it’s gonna be a little more difficult to ship Edward Camilla more bulky to move to get to keep that in mind but if you’re getting furniture from ikea for example marijuana little pieces in there if ever put something together for my kia so it’s nice to have some help because these things can take longer than you expected if you’re on a time crunch it’s nice to have an extra hand where can you find extra help well you can look on places like TaskRabbit or next door or thumb tack these are all sort of a service oriented websites where you can look up people locally where your properties are to get an extra hand there one time contractor jobs where you guys can negotiate on how much it’s going to cost and if you don’t have extra help it’ll just take longer but it is nice to have an extra hand if you can fit it in the budget quick intermission I’m really excited to announce the next dates for our annual virtual band we only do it one time a year and it’s jam packed with cover all what’s on this podcast but it’s sometimes hard to wrap our minds around how much there really is it goes to a shortfall business so if you want to find out how my team and I have managed over 21000 guests with great reviews we’ve got 2 jam packed days free October 22 to 20 third the prices to go up as we get closer to the date so I hope you can find your way over to rest methods to. Comments rest methods.com and save the spot today and look forward to seeing you on the inside. So after we get it all set up and that includes putting our art on the walls making sure we have our linens that are betting and all those little things there are a lot of little things so you want to make sure you have a checklist checklists are the best ways to make sure that we don’t forget anything that’s why airlines and pilots have been using them for a very very long time so I have H. shack list and the next step is getting our home automation set up so this is part of the furniture but things like security cameras door locks which we definitely want to have a digital door lock and getting your smart TV connected so those are things you need the internet for. And so you got to set up the internet too and that is another coordination act unless the property that you are turning a short terminal already had a recent internet connection well then usually it’s pretty easy you can just plug your modem and but if it hasn’t had an internet connection before or maybe it’s in a room that you didn’t want to allocate a little bit of time for that because it could take longer than you think to have a wire re routed and that is a big piece to the whole puzzle internet’s really important you want to make sure have a strong signal throughout your whole property even if you have outdoor space lounge area can get internet out there the more signal the better so we’ve got our property we’ve got our furniture in place to figure out the coronation we got all of our home security and automation tactics set up including the internet now it’s time to take photos again another thing that you’re going to want to schedule out so we can pack all these things and if we schedule really well I’m gonna tell you how long it took us to set up this property at the end of the steps that you might be surprised but we gotta have pro photos and I highly recommend having professional photos you don’t want to doctor mother too much torsional gonna show up your property and it doesn’t actually look like the photos maybe it’s too light again I know I’ve covered these topics in prior episodes in the past we’ve talked about all these things and more debt that just want to give you this whole process in a quick nutshell so professional photos you know that already that’s super important now step number 8 and this might not come as a normal stab but this one ‘s very important and it’s to stay in your property yeah seriously sleep in the bed stay there it’s important because X. guaranteed something a little bit you weren’t aware of unless this happens to be a property that you lived in for a long time and you know what I get back your hand but if the new pro. Operator he bought it specifically for short terminal there will be things that pop up and you know what if you don’t find them you know who’s going to find them you know who’s gonna find those little issues and stock and come out a good way it’s going to be your gas yeah and we don’t want our guests finding the issues for us so that’s a really important one and it is an easy one. If you allocate enough time and I am me guilty as charged but I did not allocate enough time on this last trip to actually stay in this property I know how I am I sound like a hypocrite the only I did stay in another short terminal in the same city that is set up a while ago and you know what even though we’ve had that one for a couple years there were some real small things that I he broke down to make sure we changed or improved so it’s always a good idea to stay in our short terminals because the little things just pop up okay so that was 8 status the 9.here is just how long does this take. Well I will tell you that we did these 2 apartments at the same time they were in the same building so that made it easier but about 2.5 days now that’s 2.5 days of set up that doesn’t count the time that my team used are spent finding the furniture in organizing and doing all that and there were a couple little things that we didn’t quite get to a couple maintenance items that we want to tackle before we actually launch these properties but it took about 2.5 days so that was from start to finish we had a plan together for the furniture we ordered the furniture we had it shipped to playstore organized in a place that was convenient and secure so nothing goes missing we did have a couple extra hands on this one which made it nice putting together some of the bags in the furniture and stuff like that and fixing some little maintenance items while we’re there we got our home automation set up so I had the internet set up for this property before I went out there in this property happen to have an internet connection already in it so I didn’t really need to do too much there when I showed up plugged in the modem and we had internet so that was good but then we set up all the routers installed the door locks we installed the security cameras to make sure those were all dialed in and then I had the photos scheduled for the day then I flew out of town and so we were really backed up in reality is akin to spend another couple days there I would really like to stay in those properties now our housekeeper that helps us out there we’ll be going through the property again to double check things and we’ll make sure that we have all of our tease crossed and her eyes darted before we actually launch the property because the launch is the most important those initial reviews can a make or break you. So those are 9 steps 9 points to starting a property to finishing the property just in a nutshell again I’ve got lots episodes in all of these topics in depth and the topics within the topics to go back and check those out at S. T. R. riches.com if you haven’t already it’s a lot of other resources on there and it would also love to hear from you guys I know you have tons and tons of good questions and my team and I have managed over 20000 guest arrivals in my portfolio now so we’ve learned a lot believe me anything you can pretty much think of we’ve handled or figure down or come across and so no question is a stupid question please let us know if you have something else that you want us to chat about and one last bonus tip for you on this whole process this is after you use it stayed in the property that is that you went around with a little label maker Hey you label the all of the things in the house that didn’t make sense or that weren’t super intuitive to use so if your controller these TCL TV is that we buy have the sole controller and the volume buttons on the side a lot of gas don’t find the volume buttons you might want to put a little sticker there sometimes people unplug our internet routers so we label the internet routers internet please do not unplug people on internet so they find that one out the hard way and who knows why they’re employed you know maybe they think it’s a noise monitor or something like that but these little types of things happen if you have any sort of device or anything in the property it’s not intuitive and you can answer with a tiny little label then just print out a label and put it there and then that will answer the question now if we want to answer more in depth questions we can do that in our guide book and stay tuned because I’m gonna do a part 2 to this episode which is all the online set up so give me listing up study number property management software and. The actual software that I use that’s the whole other side of this we got to make sure we answer all of our guests questions before they ask him that’s how we get good reviews that’s how we keep high occupancies and that’s how we can earn really really great return some of the best returns in the real estate world that I’ve encountered and that’s investing in short term rentals so thanks again for joining in it’s great to have you here and I look forward to doing part 2 to this to stay tuned until then have a fabulous week. I want to get on the fast track to financial freedom for short term rentals what all searching the properties you acquire you want to make sure that you acquired the right properties I want to give you my you doctor will show you how to do just that there is no charge to my gift to you for being one of our subscribers just go to restmethods.com that’s R E S T methods.com.

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