Smart Thermostats for Vacation Rentals: Easy Guest Control and Energy Savings

arguably one of our biggest property expenses when it comes to utilities is our Heating and Cooling now this isn't for every property if you happen to be in Paradise somewhere maybe it's not as important for you but for most people it is so making sure that we have a good system in place and an easy to use thermostat for our guests is essential it's also going to help us save on our utility bills so this week we're talking about smart thermostats for your vacation rentals thermostats

that are easy to use but also help us save a few bucks if you haven't tuned in well we've got a whole bunch of episodes for you you can head over to str-riches.com we're narrowing down on 200 episodes now I can't believe it and quite a few of those we talk about technology this week we're going to talk about one other and we're not talking about smart locks we're not talking about cameras all the though if you're interested in cameras go back and check out episode

149 this week we're talking about smart thermostats ones that are easy for our guests to use and ones that provide us a lot of control virtually and I've used a lot of thermostats and my time as a professional real estate investor and with my portfolio and I'm still using quite a few but I just discovered a new one I purchased about a dozen of them we've installed them and they're working really well so I want to share with you what I look for in a thermostat

why I think these ones are really good and just a few things about Heating and Cooling first off Heating and Cooling is arguably one of our biggest expenses whether it's electric whether it's propane or gas it can really really add up especially if we have cold Winters and especially if we have hot summers and it's also something that we can't get around right we can't have a guest check into our property that's too hot or that's too cold they have to be comfortable if they're not

comfortable you know what's going to happen they're not going to leave a good review and it's just not a good situation so it's really really important that we have a good heating and cooling system in place I swear it feels like every other week uh every other day almost we've been changing air conditioning units at some of my properties across the U.S it can be a really big expense make sure if you're buying a brand new HVAC system that you are depreciating it it's a capital

expense you want to make sure you're taking your appropriate tax deduction so if you missed our episode with Tom wheelwright or Keystone CPA Amanda Han we've had them on before a lot of good tips there but it is a big expense and there's not a way around that so we want to make sure that we're running our heating and air equipment our HVAC systems is efficiently as possible and to do that we're going to use a Smart thermostat so without further Ado I want to break

down the features that I find most essential for a smart thermostat out for a vacation rental the first one is the ability to operate it virtually or from wherever you happen to be as many of you know I'm thousands of miles away from most my properties South America where I spend most my time and so having the ability to log in virtually is a really really big plus it allows us to make sure that the temperature is set appropriately for our guests before they show up

and of course not all thermostats are like this right any new smart thermostat that you've heard of some Nest or ecobee there's a whole bunch of them and we're going to talk about a couple options and then the one that I use specifically but there's a lot of smart thermostats out there now just like there's a lot of Smart Lock systems and they're not all created equally some are a lot easier to use than others so I think the first thing that we want to look

for is the ability to easily use the thermostat virtually to be able to log online and make changes if we need to so another feature that I think is essential and it comes with most thermostats pretty much all thermostats these days but again you want the ability to be able to operate this function remotely and that's the auto feature so let's say you have a guest checking out and you don't have another one checking in for two days well you won't you don't want to be

heating your property of the max or cooling your property to the max why there's no one there but you also don't want the temperature to drop too low or to go too high to where it takes too long to bring that temperature back to a comfortable temperature before your guests actually arrives so you want an auto feature to where you can set the thermostat to automatically turn on if the temperature drops below a certain temperature maybe 65 degrees for example or if it goes above a

certain temperature maybe 78 degrees now all air conditioned heating systems are going to cool and heat a little quicker than others depending on the size of the property depending on how much space are actually Cooling and the actual equipment itself if it's a new system it's probably going to do a better job than one that's maybe 15 years old so we want to keep that in mind we don't want that auto temperature to be too high or too low to where we can't get the temperature

back down to a comfortable level before our guests actually Checks In now the great thing with these smart thermostats is you can measure that really easily so let's say there is no guest in your property and you want to change the temperature from 80 degrees it's in the in the summer down to 75 degrees well you could just turn the thermostat on see how long it takes to go down to 75 degrees you know how high you can go and how low you can go and

still leave yourself enough time to adjust the temperature so that it's perfect when your gas checks in another feature that I think's really kind of essential with thermostats it's not available on a lot of them that's the ability to set a Max temperature and a minimum temperature so what do I mean by this let's say your gas checks in It's the middle of the summer and you're out in the desert in Arizona and they've been traveling in the car and it's 100 degrees outside even though

it might be you know nice and cool in your property at say 72 degrees your guests might show up and turn your thermostat down as far as it can possibly go and one of the things that's going to happen is if they turn it down too far well then the coils on your actual equipment can freeze and so this this is a common issue we have guests checking in they want the the temperature to be as cold as possible so they adjust that and then it

ends up damaging our equipment so some thermostats like the one that we're using now has ability to set a minimum temperature so you can't go below 66 degrees for example or I should say your guest won't be able to go below 66 degrees now 66 is plenty cool for everyone right so the ability to set these minimum and Max temperatures is a really nice function it also allows you to to control your expenses a little bit more right 67 degrees 70 degrees that's very comfortable temperature

no one really needs to be adjusting it below that or above you know a certain 75 degrees let's say in the in the winter when it's cold so by using a thermostat that allows you to set a maximum and a minimum you can not only protect your equipment a little bit better but can also save a few bucks on your utility bills all while your guest is still comfortable in the property so we want the ability to be able to operate our thermostat remotely we want

the ability to have an auto feature we want to be able to set a minimum and Max temperature the other thing we want is a thermostat that's just easy to use so one that has a simple up arrow and one that has a simple down arrow I own the nest thermostats I own some of these ecobee and modern looking thermostats that I think look really cool and for me in my own home this can work really well but we have to remember that our guests aren't

familiar with our properties if they're showing up and they're only there for a couple days and we have some sort of modern thermostat that's a little more difficult to use some people might have a challenge with that so an easy way to limit that is just use a thermostat that's really simple and so a standard up down arrow that's that's about as easy as it gets the next feature that I really like is ability to manage a whole bunch of thermostats at the same time using

a dashboard so this one might not apply to everyone if you're just getting started you just have one or two properties then it's probably not that much of a big deal but if you're planning on scaling all these little decisions become more and more important so the thermostat that we're using has a great dashboard you can log in you can create property groups you can control everything real easily at your fingertips and it also only costs about a dollar per unit per thermostat per month or

ten dollars per year so that's much more affordable than some of the other ones I've seen out there so let's say you're in the market for a new thermostat I think these functions are essential you want the ability to operate it remotely if you you're planning on adding a lot of units then you're going to want some sort of management dashboard you're going to want the ability to set an auto feature you're going to want the ability to have a minimum and maximum temperature that you

can set for your guests that they can't override you're going to want one that's easy to use that not a lot of people are going to have challenges with a simple up down arrow I think is probably the best way to go so the last thing we're going to want to look for if we're in the market for a new thermostat just to make sure that it's compatible that it's easy to install or that someone can easily install it for us so some of the older

thermostats and me they might not have what's called a common wire and if you're in the mark for a new thermostat you just want to make sure that the new one you're purchasing has at least the adapter or adapter to easily install the thermostat if all is good usually these things shouldn't take more than 30 minutes or so to swap out so if you're in the market for a new thermostat I would highly encourage you to make sure that whichever one you go with has all

of those functions now I've got a few options for you I know that they have most these functions one is the ecobee you can get from Costco I don't think that they have a very easy dashboard to use at least with a lot of devices I wouldn't say it's the easiest device to use it's it's a little more modern but we've had guests have issues with that one it's available at Costco it's it's a decent price looks cool and it's probably going to save you some

money on your utility bill because it operates things a little more efficiently but I wouldn't say it's the best one in the market so we're going to get to that one the second one that a lot of you are probably using or definitely heard about is the nest thermostat and that's ran by Google right so you use a Google account for that one and again that has a lot of the great features that we've talked about I wouldn't say it has all of them and again

we have some guests that occasionally have a challenge with that one it's one where you have to spin and they also don't have an easy to use dashboard if you're operating a lot of properties okay so finally thanks for sticking with me here the one that we are now using in all my new properties and swapping out the old ones are is in Emerson Scentsy Wi-Fi smart thermostat it's available on Amazon and probably your local home stores as well it can range from like 80 to

130 dollars so it's also not very expensive a lot of these Nest thermostats and stuff for you know maybe around 200 so this one's actually more affordable and it has all the features that we just talked about all those features including the low monthly subscription a dollar per device or ten dollars per year you can't beat that that's pretty good so if you're out in the market shopping for new smart thermostat check out the Emerson Scentsy Wi-Fi smart thermostat it's what we've been using we've installed

over dozen of them in some of my properties were swapping out the old ones and they're really easy for our guests to use it's also helping us save a little bit on our utility bills and these are the same thermostats that my virtual team is making sure are always set at the right temperature and we can do that for you as well as well as virtually manage pretty much all aspects of your properties the same way that we manage mine so if you missed some of

our episodes on Virtual management go back and check those out and if you're interested in chatting with us to see if your properties might make a good fit we'd I'd love to chat with you you can head to striches.com there's a property management button there just a couple quick questions and then we can set up a zoom call to chat more and until next time I hope you have a wonderful week short-term rentals what all starts with the properties you acquire but you want to make

sure that you acquire the right properties I want to give you my ebook that will show you how to do just that there is no charge it's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers just go to restmethods.com that's r e s t methods.com