If you’ve been watching this channel for any time at all or listening to the podcast will you know I’m a huge believer in using tools and software in the biggest one that I always recommend is using a property management system for your short term rentals I’ve been using one for 5 years and I just changed to a new one so I want to tell you why and which one I went to stay tuned let’s jump right in.

Welcome to short-term rental riches will discuss investing in real estate with a specific focus on short term rentals quick action items to wire. Scale your portfolio I’m your host Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast man and there are so many changes going on right now with with my business and my properties adding new ones and adding new team members and just all kinds of exciting things going on one of the biggest changes I’m making right now is I’m switching from a property management software that I’ve used for over 5 years that I’ve recommended heavily to a lot of people I’m moving to a new one and I want to tell you which one that is and why I’m switching and just some of the challenges that come along with that so I hope you guys are doing well I hope you’ve checked out our new short term rental riches podcast website it’s S. T. R. riches we have all the prior process on there you can search easily there categorize you can find lots and lots information on there so check that out if you haven’t already but let’s get into this let’s let’s jump right in well I’m switching in a nut shell because I haven’t been super happy with the service of gas the gas he is who I’ve been using I’ve recommended them a lot and I have to say they’ve really helped me get to where I am because. Aside from their actual management software that can help manage reservations and price scene and messages and all that they also have a gas receptionist service which means they were actually handling messages from I guess for me so I haven’t had my own receptionist team until now I just hired a bunch of new team members super excited about that I will be talking about that more in the future and kind of what that looks like and and some of the things have gone into that. But for now I just want to talk about switching from gas heat so I do have to say before we get into any of this is that software programs are changing so so quickly and there really are so many to choose from when I first started you know there was a couple and I would meet him in person at these conferences you know but now I mean there’s literally probably 100 different programs to choose from so if you’re not listening to this in real time it’s very likely that either the software using of the software your thinking about using has added new features or changed something so I want to talk about a few that I recently checked out guests see which I was using and the new one I’m going to before that though I want to give you some background I have with software because I used to sell software for a living when I was getting started with real state for almost 10 years I sold software to automotive shops in northern California that helps run the whole business so it helps manage their gas and help manage their pricing their payments history all those things much like what our short term rental software can do for us so I have a lot of experience with software programs even though they’re totally different industries the amount of software that I’ve explored I kind of think helps and one thing that I found very very interesting when I was working with all these automotive shops is this the shops that used their software and took advantage of all the features were almost always outperforming the shops the didn’t so the ones are using software and using all the features and really taking advantage of it we’re almost always outperforming the other businesses and I think that that’s probably similar in the short term rental space a lot of times when I would see someone might have the best software possible but they were actually using all the features so whatever program you have if you don’t have one yet highly see. Just checking one out and you’ll get several recommendations from this episode but if you don’t have one yet this is like the first step to automate everything inmates setting up your platforms you can scale just because we have the best software doesn’t mean that we’re using it properly so I switch mainly from gassy because I no longer need their receptionist service I wasn’t happy with it the response times weren’t fast enough and you know they went through the whole code curve like a lot of us did and so I believe they let people go and then they hired new people so you know just having to re teach people about our properties and things like that I’m just at a point now where it works for me to be able to hire my own the whole team that might not work for everyone but that’s why we can use the software programs to automate a lot of the messaging and most all of them do that now so the ones at all talk about can automate a lot of the messaging so what are some of the other programs are looked at while I looked at my V. R. if you’ve heard of that one ironically enough the week after I signed with the new company guess the bot my VR so they’re probably going to become a monopoly in the software space not a monopoly but they have a lot of investment behind him and I will say that their software is awesome and my VR software is awesome but even though the software is awesome for the price I just found it some other wants to be a little more reasonable and basically have most the same features so I looked at my BR I thought it was great I think it’s a little more geared towards actual vacation rentals so they had a better internal website and things like that set up a lot of my properties are more urban and less traditional vacation so the price was really expensive is basically the same as gassy them a per unit costs which for is about 5 times when I’m paying with with the new program that I’m using so I looked at my V. R. I. use gas in the past. I looked at smart BMB which I recommend in the past and I think it’s a great software but I I think it’s good you know for 510 properties mainly you know I’ve I’ve got over 40 now and there’s a few little features that everyone might not need that I’ve seen find pretty valuable lease us some way to handle certain things like check in forms for example getting gas information verified automatically a lot of the less expensive programs that I looked at like your Porter and smart BMB and host of fi didn’t have a check in form option yes he does and this is 1 of the things I was looking for or at least to work around a way to automate it so that was a feature I didn’t see it a lot of programs but again these things are changing constantly so I looked at my B. R. I looked it host a 5 I looked at your Porter and I looked at smart BMB smart BMB and your Porter don’t have a stripe integration stripe is a credit card processing company that most everyone in the short term rental industry uses so if you’re taking your own reservations or taking reservations from VR BO or homeaway you’re gonna need to charge our credit card processing and that was an integrated with those programs at the time of this recording when it when I looked at them so that’s huge for me because that we do lots reservations outside Airbnb itself you’re only doing Airbnb you know that’s fine I can be that big a deal so that was really the biggest 1 for me is that stripe integration everything else I found I could do in the new program dun dun da what’s the new program I’m going with the toast away I found it to be really good basically has most all the same features that guest he has and with my amount of properties I’m paying $10 a unit I guess he’s a percentage I think. You know I was sort of grandfathered in because I’ve been using them forever but I was paying 3 percent with them and that really adds up for me you know based on the amount that each one of my properties was doing that’s like 4 to 5 times the amount that I’ll be paying with host way so a big savings so hosts the way is the new program I’m going with I think it’s great there support was great have lots and lots of good features they have a scaling price level so if you only have a few units it’s going to be more expensive per unit I think it’s around 30 Bucks or something like that but it will scale down as you get more properties and I don’t know about you but I’m planning on adding a lot more properties I’m in this for the Honda run and so I want a software program that I can grow with it’s also not that difficult to switch programs so obviously there’s some things that we have to check off we got to add our new automated messages and we have to pull our Airbnb account over which these things sink they integrate easily so I basically turn off on one turn it on on the other one I’m gonna have to double check any reservations are already open but after that you know we should just be Roland it integrates with price labs which is what I use for pricing and grades with lots of software programs and this is maybe one of my favorite features with host way is that it integrates with Xavier or zap year I’m not sure how you pronounce that but if you’re familiar with that zap here is a program that links thousands of different programs online together so even if host away doesn’t have a built in feature which day cover almost every feature you could imagine that you would need with for short term rentals they’ve got they’ve got pretty much all of it there’s not nearly enough time this episode to go over what all those features are I guess the big point I want to make is that software super super important there. As a lots of programs available now they’re all changing but we got to make sure they’re actually taking advantage of the features in our program so if you’re not using one yet check out these I think smart BMB your Porter a great option if you’ve got maybe 5 or less units more than that check out a host of 5 host away I think those are a little better for 5 plus units and if you want check out guest seat in my V. R. but in my opinion after using gas C. for over 5 years 11 their software I think they’re just too expensive and the other programs have come so far and they’re getting better and better that I can’t justify the price with them if you’re using one program right now you’re considering switching just consider some of the challenges you might have getting historical data in there which most programs let you upload it back in disconnecting and reconnecting your listing sites like Airbnb and B. R. BO that’s the other thing is all integrate with VR BO homeaway and Airbnb which of the top ones as well as booking but just double check those things you’re not using software please please just turn off the video or stop listening to podcasts and go online and stories one I swear it’s gonna make things so much better and you can always change to a different one in the future if you need to I hope this helps I know it’s kind of tacky I know I’m kind of just jumped around there so many features with these programs but I’m using host way now just wanna let you guys know that because I’ve talked about gas the whole bunch of the past hope you guys are doing awesome out there wherever you are until next time have a great week. There’s so much money to be made the short term rentals but it all starts by having the right property if you guys haven’t yet seen my free ebook on our website rest methods.com head over there and get a copy it’s going to break down what I look for in a property and some great short cuts so that you don’t have to spend hours and hours researching at over rest methods.com and you can grab your free copy there if you want a crash course in everything I’ve really learned to short term rentals in over 5 years managing over 15000 Gasol recorded on our last live event I am happy to say we broke it down really nicely into a bunch of different modules that you can watch at your own pace it takes you from start to finish from finding a property we talk about analyzing the property but then also some of the more important pieces how to find your team and how to set up everything so that you can run your operation is passively as possible and free up your time you can find that it rests methods.com forward slash virtual.

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