It used to be a total pain in the **** to mount security cameras had around all the wires yeah that’ll attrition come out often times but now we have these beautiful battery powered security cameras are they worth it and are they a good option for short-term rentals that’s what I want to discuss this week on the short-term rental riches podcast.

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.

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast it’s really nice to have hi at our properties and for more than just the obvious obviously having a security camera is good for security right but it’s also good for some other things that maybe you haven’t considered so I want to talk about a few of those things this week but also talk about 3 of the main features that you want to look for when you’re considering a security camera for your short term rental and I want to give you 5 options including the ones that I use on dozens of properties with my team so let’s go ahead and get started security cameras are for security Honda has them but there’s other things that we can use them for in the short term rental world for example when we have a guest check in let’s say there’s 2 people on a reservation but 6 people show up if we’re operating our properties remotely that’s going to be hard to figure out and less we have those guys out there and it’s so security cameras will allow us to do that we’ve got to be careful where we mount our security camera though because we can’t record any inside footage that should be a no brainer for all of you out there but sometimes that’s not super obvious if we have a camera with it a nice 180 degree view mounted on the side next to our front door and someone opens the door and abuse into that property technically you’re recording inside the property if you use that footage to try to win an Airbnb case for example they’re probably going to deny it so we want to make sure that the placement is good in a place where we can see people entering our property now if we have multiple entry doors on a property we’re gonna want to have multiple security cameras so that we don’t have people come. In the back when we thought they were coming in the front so on and so on that’s pretty obvious right so we can verify guests come in and we can also verify if they’re bringing in a furry friend a Pat when maybe they weren’t supposed to so for my team what we do with our receptionist as when we get someone checking into our property this sort of a locks that we use notify as our team the first time that guest uses that lock that we we know that the gas is checked in they have found our property so and that allows our receptions team to know that the gas just showed up and they can go check out the security cameras and verify that the gas is showing up with the correct amount of gas and without a pet and there’s no issues can also help us to sometimes against my messages and say Hey I can’t get into the property and we can pull up the camera and say we don’t see you at the property maybe you’re at the neighbor’s unit or whatever it happens to be so can help our guests out that way it’s also just good protection for gas in general too and a lot of our guests like knowing that the exterior premises of a lot of our properties are protective security cameras we have had people’s cars broken into over the years we’ve managed over 20000 gas with my team so we’ve had a lot of stuff happen in so those cameras are helpful in a situation like that that’s really helpful to send to a gas they can send to their insurance company and they can get reimbursed if there happen to be damage on their car of course that depends where your security cameras all our our main security cameras are showing the front door but not inside all the access doors into the property but sometimes you’ve got to put a camera on the inside no not in the closet or the bathroom or anything like that but if you have a property small apartment building or somewhere that has a common area a lot of my. Properties are like that we have common area hallways with security cameras in there as well so it’s good to have a camera anywhere where you have access doors to your property so those are a few things beyond the obvious security protection that might be helpful with you and your short term rental having a security camera want to talk about a few things to look for when your purchase senior security camera and I’m going to get to the ones that we’re using as well the biggest one I would say is having access remote access and I know that sounds like a no brainer but some companies some cameras have a lot better access than others and we wanna make sure that we have online cloud storage and it doesn’t have to be stored locally on NST card or something like that you can of course after we go through this you can go on YouTube and you can verify some the cameras I can give you options for their people out there doing full reviews on these cameras but I will say the ones that were used in a worked pretty well and they’re easy to install so having remote access is a huge huge thing and the more cameras you add. You’ve got to be conscious of that if you if you have 50 cameras for example you got to have a platform that’s easy to navigate as you scale to allow your team to be able to monitor things easily so the platform the online platforms important making sure it has cloud storage the insulation is huge I mentioned the beginning of the episode there’s a lot of wireless options now if we have a wireless option that it’s gonna be a lot easier to install we don’t have to call a technician now we can literally we can give them up right away there’s a lot of good options out there including the one that I am using the wired options if you’ve got someone to help you install them then it go with the Wierd one because then it’s one less thing to worry about right a dead battery or unit going down a camera going down because it ran out of battery so if you can’t do the wired one the cost difference in the cameras is you know they’re pretty much the same price so go for the wired option if you can so the costs on these things very there some really cheap ones out there and there’s some really expensive ones we can find the best options right on Amazon.com one other additional things that you need to make sure that you’re doing if you have a security camera which I highly highly suggest is disclosing that you have to disclose that your listing so that your guests now and actually is one of the reasons you can get your listing taken down or at least temporarily if you are using a security camera and you have not notified Airbnb or filled in the section that says using a security camera so there’s some great great reasons I have a security camera it’s really the ultimate protection it can save you from so much headache make entry not parties coming in making sure if someone shows up in the past there was an authorized you can charge them for those fees as long as it’s not a service animal if you miss that absurd co back because there’s some strict regulations on service animals but if it’s not you can charge extra fees you can see. See when they checked again so you know that they got in okay you can monitor the parking areas and make them feel more secure and have more protection for their cars and all those types of things so that’s pretty obvious when you’re buying your actual camera make sure that it’s got a good online storage access platform you can access it from your mobile phone and that it’s only recording really when it picks a motion otherwise it’s just going to fill up a lot of space most of them are doing that now most of them have night vision which are also going to want consider the insulation you can do wired go for wired because they’re not half changing batteries but if not there’s some good wireless options and give you mine and just one quick second make sure you’re not recording anything on the inside and make sure you disclose it you have a camera okay 5 the camera options that I’m sure you’ve heard about if you’ve been searching now Google mast so Google I have these at 10 properties actually of cool nice cameras this is sort of always involving paying with my portfolio in any new properties and trying things out so I hope you do find value in these podcasts this is real world advice and and I use these products that I mentioned on the podcast and the things that recommend those are things I’m implementing using with my team so hope you’re finding some value in it and if you have something else that you want to talk about please right and you can send us an email at contact at rest methods.com or you can jump over to our website at C. R. riches.com so okay Google mass that is a very common one and they do work well they have different options on there you do have to pay for their nest aware subscription which is going to provide you the cloud storage I don’t know the exact prices on that but that’s something you’ll want to consider especially if you’re planning on adding multiple options there’s a cheaper version out to colds moto Z. M. O. D. O. and I still have this on a lot of properties I’m using a wired version. It still works well it’s outdoor it’s weather proof but the one that I’m using now I like a lot more she might see that one on there the cost difference I would recommend just going with the one that I mean you see the next one is are low you’ve heard of that they have some good cameras again they’ve got the whole spectrum a a lot of different options another one Amazon blink and this is probably the least expensive one and they do have a battery powered options you can throw it up right away but from what I’ve heard it doesn’t do a good job of picking up motion and if it’s not picking up motion then it’s not doing its job it’s not going to really help you out so the camera that we are using is the real link Argus T. T. that’s what worries and it’s not the newest version now it is a battery operated version but it’s got a solar panel attached to it and you can move the solar panel to really help extend the life of the batteries we’ve had some of these have been installed for over 6 months course when you install on their fully charged but you can see the batteries on the platform and they’re still going really well so those ones are using now like I mentioned I’m also using Google maps cameras a mall season is the motor ones but all the new properties or adding I’m using those cameras now does have a mobile platforms our whole team can check it out there and this is a really good thing to the cloud storage cost is low it’s it’s really low actually the time of this recording for $4 you can have 5 cameras on there with a certain amount of storage for just as little as $10 you can have 20 cameras on their platform saving I think 180 gigs of storage so the real inexpensive monthly subscription and it’s a good camera you can find on Amazon.com I don’t think it’s more than 120 to $150 so if you’re shopping around that’s one that we’ve been using lately and we’re happy with it if you don’t have a. Cameri yet go out and get one because it can save you so much trouble and offers so much protection and they’re expensive now and they’re easy to install if you don’t have someone install the worst one go with the battery powered option it’s going to be better than nothing so until next time I hope your properties or stains secure and I’ll catch you next time cheers. I want to get on the fast track to financial freedom for short term rentals what all sorts of the properties you choir 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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