Saving your Guests from Construction Catastrophes

in the short-term Rental World our guests experience is top priority if we don't get that right well then we don't get good reviews and then you know what that means that means lower revenue and a worse performing property so this week we're talking about one of those things that can be completely out of our control and that is maintenance and construction issues stay tuned as we break down a few tips to keep your guests expectations in check this week on the short-term rental riches podcast welcome

to short-term rental riches we'll discuss investing in real estate but with a specific focus on short-term rentals quick actionable items to acquire manage and scale your portfolio I'm your host Tim Hubbard welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast this week we're talking about construction and how sometimes it's completely out of our control whether our HOA our condo associations doing construction whether our neighbors doing construction or whether we had construction planned in our property a renovation for example and we didn't quite get the timeline right

and so our guests are running into issues so I want to break down just a few tips this kind of sprung up recently because with one of my properties actually my property down in Brazil we had a couple little issues that property is in a Condo building I think that's 13 floors tall uh my property however is on the second floor but on the second floor is sort of like a wrap around Terrace it's sort of the base structure of this tall building right so fortunately

my property is a little bigger because I have that outdoor space and our condo association is painting the whole building and so you can imagine a tall building like that that's quite a task and the other day my property manager sent me a little video and said hey our guest sent us these issues and it was a video of painters on our porch pressure washing the building and the guest was videoing it so that's that's not what we want right this actually happens to be the

only property that my team and I are not managing ourselves mainly just because this is Portuguese speaking down in Brazil and we don't really have anyone on our team that speeds Portuguese yet except for my broken Portuguese so I do have a manager down there she does do a great job but this is something we didn't really get ahead of right we should have set some better expectations so that we never got this video from our guests they should have known about this if they were

checking into the property so I want to break down just construction a little bit some of these things are out of our control and some of these things are in our control just make sure that we're setting the best expectations possible so that we can continue to get great reviews even if we're doing some sort of renovation or there's some sort of renovation or construction going on near our property before we jump into these topics though we've recorded or we've had quite a few shows so

we're coming up on 200 I can't believe it but just a real quick recap we've talked about Construction in different ways before and maintenance issues so if you missed episode 146 go back and check that out talks about whether or not or how you should know if it's time to renovate your property so that's 146 87 episode 87 we talked about the best flooring for an Airbnb and that's my personal opinion but I think you'll agree so if you missed that one check that one out

and then if we go way back to episode 42 we talked about some best practices for working with contractors and maintenance technicians because that really is a skill the better we can handle those relationships and set expectations with the people we're working with then the easier that's going to be for both sides so go back and check out those episodes if you missed them let's say that you're planning to do some sort of construction well the first thing I would say is that most the time

and this is almost always unfortunately our construction projects take a little longer than expected so let's say you're planning on adding another bathroom for example that can be a big construction project and as much as we want to have guests in our home as as much as possible getting that nightly Revenue we can't do that if there's construction project going on so make sure you leave yourself plenty of time that's the first thing we need to be proactive and block our calendar advance and make sure

that we give ourselves ample room to finish the tasks we have planned so the next thing that might come up is some sort of renovation project or a renovation happening around you let's say it's at the neighbor's house that causes a little bit of noise but you're still able to rent your short-term rental but maybe not in a perfectly quiet setting like it normally is and so what do we do here well we have to make sure that we set the right expectations right so if

there's construction going on your guest is going to hear it they're going to find out about it so we need to let them know before they actually book our property a couple things you could do and I know you probably don't want to do these things when you first think about it because you might get less bookings but that's reality if your property's less desirable because there's some sort of renovation going on we need to be up front with that so what you could do let's

say there's some sort of outdoor Landscaping project going on for example you could take some pictures of it make sure that's in your listing for people that are booking during that time you might want to take it one step further and actually put it in your house rules put it in your rental agreement that says we are doing this outdoor Landscaping project no one's going to be accessing the property uh between these hours it's only during working hours every little detail that they really need to

know and yes that is going to deter some people from running your property but others will still rent it you might have to have it at a discounted rate until those projects are complete but at least you're going to have some income coming in and at least your guests are not going to be unhappy because they knew what they were renting before they booked it so had I done that with my property down in Brazil we wouldn't have had that issue with the guests we made

it right I'll get to that part in just a second but again we just want to make sure that our expectations are right so we can do that by putting in the house rules we can do that by putting that in our confirmation message you might want to turn instant book off on your prop property during these times of construction or where not everything's 100 percent and just take requests that way you can communicate with the guest before you actually take a reservation and everything will

be nice and clear it'll be in writing and so everyone will be on the same page that's another good way that you could do it so the other scenario that might come up where you still want to rent your property but there's some sort of construction going on is the same example that I gave about my property right that's if you happen to be in some sort of HOA and the actual building's doing renovation maybe they're painting interior common hallways maybe they're changing the roof on

the building maybe they're you know you name it fixing the elevator whatever it happens to be these things come up luckily if you're in an HOA these are things that they plan out right they need to get funding for these construction projects and so all of the owners and the property need to know so it's usually something that you can plan out plenty far in advance to make sure that you know everyone's on the same page there so that's actually one of the bright sides about

being in an HOA there is a downside where they can change the rules for the building so you might be able to rent short-term right now you know 30 days or less if the majority vote changes at that HOA they could simply restrict short-term rentals so that's one of the downsides to HOA but one of the upsides is they take care of your exterior maintenance right they take care of the common exterior walls and Landscaping and roof and everything so if you're completely hands off that

can be a good way to go you just got to make sure that they allow short-term rentals and there's no risk of them changing that so another scenario that might come up that might disturb your properties and it's really completely out of your control that's if your neighbor is doing construction there's not much we can do about that right if you happen to be in an HOA a lot of times they have times of the year where you can't do construction so maybe maybe you're in

a very touristy area there are simply times where your HOA will specify you cannot do construction during these times so that might save you during your busy season but maybe on the off season your neighbors doing a complete renovation project there's Hammers and drills going every day that could very easily disturb your guests and if you have a single family home maybe your neighbor is building a brand new home and a nice lot right next to yours it's the same scenario right it's going to be

a lot of construction noise it's going to be a long project we all know how long new construction takes these days I mean this literally could be years right so if you're looking to get into a property you haven't quite acquired it yet and you notice that it's next to construction this is something you really want to keep in mind because you might have some very unhappy guests or no guests coming in because you don't have good reviews during this construction process so I had a

property like this as well not really much we can do about it right we just have to go back again to setting those expectations maybe we have to Discount our rates and we just have to be really clear about what's going on so our guests have the best possible experience so how do you make your guests happy if some of this construction noise or some unexpected maintenance or some expected maintenance that you didn't plan well for slips through the cracks well what we like to do

is really just ask our guests how can we make this right for you now of course if it was something drastic where they couldn't sleep at all and they left the property then we're going to be refunding them right but sometimes it's just a minor inconvenience and that's just a good way to start right how can we make this right for you A lot of times that just ends in a discount but that's fair if they didn't get a good night's sleep then we need to

make that right for a guests another thing you can do if there's some sort of construction that you can't control make sure you have a white noise monitor leave it next to the beds have ear plugs there those are really simple things you can do if you know there's going to be some additional noise so maintenance construction these things are just going to happen we've got to keep our properties in Tip-Top shape luckily most of the time we can plan for it but in some of

these other situations where it's out of our control we just need to make sure that we're a hundred percent transparent so that our guests know what they're getting when they book our property and they still have a great time and they leave us great reviews and we just keep the cycle going so I hope that gave you a little bit of insight and hopefully your construction projects are staying on time I know that most of mine haven't so if yours have well you are probably one

of the lucky ones and until next time I hope you guys have a fabulous week remember if you have any ideas or things that you want us to talk about head over to str-riches.com and just scroll down there you can request a topic we'd love to hear from you thanks for tuning in and until next time take care fast track to Financial Freedom through 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