Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happier you’re here again. I’ve been doing a bit of traveling.

I left Southern Brazil and I’m now back here in Meine Columbia, where we’re building a resort boutique style hotel. Uh, it’s moving along well. I’m excited to share photos. , And videos and, share the actual property once we get up and going. I’m hoping the first few units out of 20 this is gonna have 20 will be up and ready, maybe in just the next few months.

So really excited for that.

And once that’s complete, our team is of course going to be managing it ourselves. For those of you that have been tuning in for a long time, well, you know that I started this journey a long, long time ago with my own personal properties, but now we manage properties really around the world at this point in over 25 cities, and so I wanna share with all of you property managers out there, some of the things that we’re doing to help grow our portfolio, things that you can do.

I’ve got 13 strategies to help you grow your short-term rental management business in this episode.

All right, so the first step, the first thing you can do to make sure that your name is out there, this is really some low hanging fruit, is to sign up for Airbnb’s co-host network. So just go to airbnb.com/cohost. Sign up there so that your name, your property management business. Is out there in the Airbnb world, of course, you wanna make sure that your property management name is also in your about profiles.

On all the listing platforms where you have all of your properties listed.

The second thing they’re gonna want to do is just make sure that you have a CRM system set up. So a place where you can take notes on potential owners that might want to join you. These are big decisions, right? And so you may have quite a few conversations with someone and they decide later on that they want to join you. We know that a lot of owners out there sometimes contemplate changing management companies, or maybe they’re managing the properties themselves and they’re sort of deciding if they wanna join a management company. maybe something happens where they get a bad review or they have some, uh, really challenging guests and then they throw their hands up and they’re gonna reach out to you,

So keeping track of all those notes. It’s gonna be very, very helpful. Make sure you don’t forget any details about the potential properties that might be joining you. Now there are some services set up to help you find people proactively. And so I’ve sort of bucketed this all into step two, which is having the CRM system, but also doing some proactive searching.

We had Brooke Fouts on this channel a long time ago. He started a company called Ventry, V-I-N-T-O-R y.com. He built a property management business. In the past, he discovered some of the things that really helped grow it.

One is outbound marketing, and so he’s got a company set up to help you do this without going through all the workload. So that’s the second piece is make sure you have a CRM program set up a way to track all these notes, and then also consider some outbound marketing through one of these third party companies.

The third step to growing your business is to have some good referral networks, right? So we know that real estate agents, for example, a lot of times they sell new homeowners or new short-term rental owners. A property and those owners don’t have a manager lined up. And so connect with local realtors in your area.

That can be a great referral source. You might also consider connecting with local interior designers. You know, especially the ones that specialize with short-term rentals.

You can talk with. Short term rental cleaning companies, a lot of times they know these owners very well and they might have some owners that aren’t super satisfied with their current management setup or maybe they’re managing the properties on their own.

So referrals are really, really important. They’re also one of those strategies that can help you grow your business indefinitely, right?

A fourth step that you can take to help grow your business is what Michael Sjogren calls the UI method. He’s from STR Secrets. We’ve had him on the show before. So discovering underperforming properties. I’m gonna go ahead and just read off my notes here, but the first one is to get air DNA. We’ve talked about this tool before. It has access to all of the Airbnb listings across the world.

You’re gonna want to use. Their map section to narrow down on properties within your market.

You can use the filters within air DNA to search for properties that have. Less than stellar reviews, you could say. , And this could indicate owners that are having a hard time with the existing management company. Then you’re going to find that property on Google Maps. That’s gonna take a little bit of, kind of filtering around, but you basically are gonna zoom in on air DNA.

And then you’re gonna find that same Airbnb listing on Google Maps. You can confirm the address by searching for it. On Zillow. You’re gonna use a tool called prop wire.com to find the owner’s name and their mailing address. I realize there’s a few steps here, but this definitely works. Uh, and then number six, you’re gonna use another tool called True people search.com to actually get that owner contact info, and then you’re simply going to reach out to them

if this owner has a property that’s with another property management company and those reviews are suffering, well, then it’s very likely that they’re open to other options. So get in touch with them. This can be a great way, but yes, it does take a little bit of work.

The fifth step is to make sure that your presence on Google is really good. So you wanna optimize your Google presence. You want to get reviews from all of your existing management clients. So that the more reviews you have, the more visibility, the more you show up in your local market.

Of course, having more reviews is gonna help build credibility with future clients. So all of these steps really compliment each other, right? You don’t want to do just one or the other. If you’re doing all of these steps, then you’re gonna grow much, much faster with better results.

Now growing is one thing, but growing efficiently without all the stress is another thing. So if you’re out there and you’re already growing, well, congrats to you if you’re looking for help, if you’re feeling some of these bottlenecks.

Well, our team at Corley loves working with other smaller property managers. We have a really big team on the backend. We’ve got over a hundred SOPs that we help implement in all of our management partners, processes and operations. And so we handle everything from revenue management to the guest experience, to listing and all the technology piece so that you can focus on growing your business.

So if you’re interested in chatting with us, we’d love. To meet with you, you can go to t riches.com. There’s a partner with us button there.

The sixth step is that you want to create brand visibility. Through your existing properties and through your existing website, so not Google, but your direct booking website where you’re showcasing all of the properties that you’re managing.

That of course means that you want to have a very nice website, right? If a new potential partner or owner wants to join you and they go to your website and it looks kind of hacked together, then it’s not gonna be that great. , You can also advertise your services within each of your properties,

the more your name is out there, no matter where it is in your properties, on your profiles online and Google and your direct booking website, this is going to help build your presence and this is gonna help build your company.

The seventh thing you can do is either create or join existing Facebook groups or other social media groups and really contribute value to them. Let people know that you know how to manage properties, that you have great results, and people will naturally see that they will reach out to you. And after meeting with them, you’ll be able to prove your knowledge in the industry and in your specific market.

To help acquire new partners.

The eighth one, and this is one that I know really well. Is to create content, free content, just like this channel. It can be a podcast, it can be a YouTube channel. Share your expertise. That’s what we’ve been doing here on this channel for the last six years now, almost. So I hope that you’ve been finding value in all of our content.

We’ve talked about all kinds of things. It’s been a fun journey. If you have been enjoying the content, please, please leave us a, a, like a thumbs up or subscribe to Spotify or Apple, wherever you prefer to listen to the content. These things take a lot of time to grow a channel, but if you put out good content and you put out good value, then that channel will grow faster.

And it’s a really, really good way to, , show credibility and show your expertise, uh, and to reach a really wide audience.

Step number nine, after you’ve grown your business a little bit and you have quite a few owners in your market that you’re helping manage their properties well, you can have some homeowner appreciation days, and the better connection, the better relationship you have with your clients, the more referrals you’re going to get.

If you’re doing a really good job managing their properties, then naturally they’re going to tell their friends, they’re going to tell their family, and through word of mouth, you’ll be able to grow much, much faster.

Okay, and step 10. Now, this one’s not going to be for all of you out there, but if you’re in a market that has some really prime properties, maybe you wanna identify some that are generating over a hundred thousand dollars, for example, and you’re actually going to send them personalized gifts. So you can either use that owner’s direct address that you would’ve uncovered in step four, or you could send it right.

To the vacation rental property address. We know that the short-term rental guests aren’t gonna be going through the mail, and so you can leave it right there in the mailbox. Now, you’ll want to send a nice handwritten card along with it, but good news, you don’t have to actually hand write out all the cards.

You can use A company called Handwritten. Written is spelled with A-Y-W-R-Y-T-T-E-N. It’s a really cool company that will custom write any message you put in there. With actual ink, and it looks like it was written, but you can send them out in bulk. Remember, you wanna reserve this just for your target properties because sending out personalized gifts could add up.

But when you send that gift out, make sure that it’s something memorable. Have your branding on there in some sort of subtle little way. Let them know that you have a lot of experience in the market. Consider sending something like custom luggage tags, for example.

All right. Step 11. And this one’s a little bit different. This is lease arbitrage. Now I know you’ve heard a lot of negative things about lease arbitrage out there. Uh, and this isn’t exactly. Management, but it does help you grow your portfolio, right? And there’s a lot of owners out there that maybe have great properties that aren’t yet short term rentals, and they don’t want to go through all the work of furnishing and doing and all that.

Well. This is a good opportunity for you to partner with them. You don’t own the properties, right, but you lease them from them or you create some sort of partnership where you ultimately are managing these properties. You have full control and then you’re growing your portfolio. For those of you that have tuned in for a long time, you know that I’ve done this with, uh, some properties.

I have 10 properties in our portfolio that I signed a seven year lease with. It’s worked fabulously well, uh, and it’s also given us a lot more credibility in that market because we have 10 more properties than we otherwise would’ve had.

Step 12. This is a bigger step, but I think a lot of you property managers out there, if you don’t already own properties, you are hoping to own properties one day. And being a property manager is a great natural progression into that because you can own a thousand properties, but if you don’t know how to manage them well, well then they’re not gonna do well.

You’re not gonna have good returns, and the whole thing doesn’t work. And so ownership is a great way to grow your management portfolio. Most of you know that’s how we started. We started with my own portfolio that I’ve been growing since 2010. And that automatically helped us earn the trust of a lot of our management clients, knowing that we manage my properties alongside all of our partners.

Now, of course, , owning property has a whole bunch of other things that go into it. We’ve talked about all of those things on this channel. Times are a bit different than they were several years ago, but there’s still great opportunities out there.

Another great side to being a property manager is that a lot of times your partners, your management clients at some point wanna sell their property and. You are the first one to hear about it. And so sometimes you can work out some good deals. You already know how to manage the property, of course, and it’s a win-win for both sides.

A step 13. I saved this one for last ’cause this is really. further down your growth journey. This is to actually acquire another property management business. Now, that might sound like this huge undertaking, but there’s a lot of property management businesses out there that aren’t that big, right?

Maybe they have 10, 20, 30 properties and they’re just burnt out. They’ve been doing it for a long time. their owners love them, but they’re just done with it,

And so this can be a really good way to increase your portfolio really quickly. Of course, this does require you invest and purchase that company in the management business. Usually the valuations, how much someone might sell their property management business for. It varies, but it can be anywhere from one to three times what they’re earning in revenue on an annual basis.

We know as property managers that if we do a good job managing properties. We should continue to manage properties for years and years and years, right? So we have this sort of lifetime expectancy from our clients.

And if you’re doing a really good job that that can easily be seven to 10 years And so if you invest today to acquire maybe a smaller company, knowing that you can expect to earn revenue from these properties for the next 3, 5, 10 years. Well, of course that all goes into the calculations, but it can be a great way to grow your portfolio quickly.

So there you are. There’s 13 strategies to grow your short-term rental business.

I know that was a lot to take in, especially if you’re, you’re driving or you’re multitasking, you’re handling guest questions. So we put together an ebook that goes in much more detail on all of these 13 steps. You can get it by going to st riches.com, or you can grab it down in the show notes.

I hope you found those helpful, and we will of course have lots of tips on how to actually manage all of these new properties effectively coming in the near future. Stay tuned and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.