My Experience Hosting 30,000 Guests and Counting

I can hardly believe it here we are at episode 200 every single week for nearly four years we've been coming out with a quick actionable episode to help you along your real estate Journey but with a focus on short-term rentals and we have covered a lot a lot a lot a lot has happened over the last nearly four years so I want to recap that this week and go over some of my biggest failures things that I've learned managing with my team now over 30 000

guests when we first got started that very first episode was my journey from zero to ten thousand guests so we've come a long way we've learned a lot and I want to share with you 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 man Edge and scale your portfolio I'm your host Tim Hubbard so yep here we are years later thank you for everyone

that's tuned in I can't believe we have hundreds of thousands of people who have listened in from nearly a hundred countries around the world yes short-term rentals exist in the whole world that's one of the exciting things about them I want to share a little bit of my back story because a lot has changed since that very first episode four years ago those of you that have tuned in each and every week well you know a lot of the changes but for anyone joining us for

the first time I want you to know that our advice comes from Real World experience we are in this and we are doing it along with my personal portfolio so when I got started a long time ago in real estate that was back in 2010 I was doing long-term traditional rentals for quite a while for for about six years five six years and it was a very slow route as real estate often is I got my license to be a licensed real estate agent in California

definitely not necessary if you want to be investing in real estate but it did allow me to land a position working as a commercial broker where we sold Investments all kinds of Investments so shopping centers apartment buildings we didn't sell short-term rentals actually but land Warehouse basically everything else and I learned a lot in that job it basically gave me the foundation for my investment career so I was building slowly but surely I my first property was a four Plex I moved into it I did

the house hacking thing and then I just kept sort of adding properties and then in 2015 that's when I switched my first long-term rental over to a short-term rental and I never looked back so from those very first guests that's when the learning curve started and it hasn't stopped there is so much information out there so I'm excited to be able to do these podcasts every week because it helps me sharpen my skills I'm constantly studying constantly going to conferences constantly listening to other podcasts or

YouTube channels or learning whatever I can to improve my business and I hope that it's helped improve yours as well so once I got started with those first short-term rentals well then I realized wow this is making so much more money than my long-term rentals were once I found some opportunity outside of California I only found that by the way by doing research and getting out there and actually checking things out luckily we've got a lot of that research at our fingertips but that brought me

to Tennessee uh after that I actually moved out of the country a lot of you know I've spent most of the last six seven years in Colombia but that didn't stop me from building my portfolio in the US I also expanded into Oklahoma I'm now looking in other markets but I've also acquired in Brazil so it's been a fun Journey it's definitely had its ups and downs but now I've got around 70 properties they're not all short-term rentals about 45 of them are though and I'm

constantly looking to add more I'm actually working on a development down here median where I currently am purpose-built short-term rentals on a beautiful lot overlooking the city I'm really excited for it it's a new Venture for me I hope it works out but construction is a different ball game especially in a different country so I will continue to keep you posted on that but needless to say I'm not stopping in the short-term rental industry and so I'm excited for the next 200 episodes to come short-term

rentals have allowed me to do what I really got got into real estate in the first place four and that was so that I could travel I love traveling and I was really fortunate to go to Spain when I was in high school I got to live there for a few weeks in the summer and it was just enough for me to realize that this is a really big world there's a lot of cool places to see and everywhere is different um every city within every

state within every country it's all different it all has a different vibe and a different energy and so I love exploring in fact when this episode airs for the first time I'm actually going to be in Europe I'm really excited getting ready for a four week trip actually heading to Poland heading to Albania heading to France heading to Portugal it's gonna be a really good time I am going to be working a little bit but it's also going to be a good time just to reflect

on the journey up until now so that has been the journey up until recently this year and then an exciting thing happened we realized that the team we had built to help manage my own portfolio was big enough to where we could start taking on properties wherever they have happen to be so we begun working with other short-term rental owners everywhere from Canada to the east coast from studio apartments to properties that fit 20 people so that has been a lot of fun we've built an

amazing team nearly 15 people now from all over the world mainly Philippines mainly Europe mainly Mexico but we don't discriminate against countries we're going to hire the best talent that we can find so that's been a lot of fun and I'm excited to see where it takes us in the near future before we jump into my biggest failures I just want to go over a few of the pros the positive things that have happened in the short-term rental industry since we published our first episode in

November of 2019 quite a while ago one big thing that's happened is we have more OTAs now we have more online travel agencies more places for us to list our properties and it's also easier for us to list our properties than it's ever been we have more software programs than we've ever had we also have an industry supporting short-term rentals now when I first got started trying to find a housekeeper was not that easy you might be able to find a good housekeeper to clean your

house with a bunch of furniture in it while you're living in it you know maybe once a week or you might be able to find a housekeeper to help clean your property when you're getting ready to sell it but someone that specifically worked in the short-term rental industry was a lot harder to find than it is now so now we have professional companies that we can look out to we have applications geared towards helping us find people to help service our short-term rental properties we have

new tools that have been created to help protect our properties so that's one big lesson I'll get to is that the property protection piece is an important one but the nice thing about it is that we've pretty much got it figured out now another one that is really positive for the Str industry as a whole is that we've generated billions of dollars in tax revenue for cities and municipalities and that has helped boost a lot of local economies and Global economies just Airbnb alone has collected

over seven billion dollars in tax revenue just from the U.S and just from Canada now again this doesn't sound like oh a bunch of taxes is a good thing but this is helping so many people it's helping so many jobs it's provided business for restaurants and local entertainment and it's helping to keep the gears move and the wheels turn of so many local economies and big economies and so this is something that's not going away short-term rentals are not going away we know that for a

fact and now on to the failures and you better believe after over 30 000 guests we've had our fair share you name it we've pretty much come across it but we've learned from all of those issues all of those failures and so that's the goal so you don't have to recreate the wheel you can learn from our mistakes I think the biggest failure that we've ever made and unfortunately it's happened more than once is when a guest shows up to our property something happened at some

point and they weren't able to get in the property so so luckily this hasn't happened in a long long time I actually did a whole episode on this you can go back and check that out but that is the biggest failure as an Str or short-term rental operator if our guests can't get in boom we failed so that's number one the second failure or set of failures I should say is just all of the issues we've had with guests yeah I don't want to paint all

daisies and Roses here because we've definitely gone through some tough times going through covid those were tough times when when our normal guests switched from being an international traveler from flying in from across the U.S or from a long drive in to local guests well we had issues we had issues with parties but we learned how to combat those we learned how to protect our properties and so we've learned from these mistakes we now have processes in place where our guests are signing digital contracts they're

uploading their ID so that we can match it with their credit cards we have cameras in place we have deposits we have signage we have all sorts of things to help protect our properties not to mention Insurance specifically for short-term rentals which was much harder to find back in 2015 when we got started so we've learned how to protect our properties go back to Str riches.com where we have all of our episodes and just search for property protection you'll find a whole bunch of things that

pop up to help you protect your property the same thing that we're doing with ours and now our partners properties so yeah we've had some bad guests we've also had some crazy stuff happen and you know that these types of things happen in hotels as well right anywhere where people are living for long periods of time or staying over and over stuff's just gonna happen so yes we have had attempted suicide before we have found dead animals that fell down through the roof Rafters and got

stuck behind walls creating lots of odor stuff that you really couldn't even think about but what do we do we learn from these things that's just the name of the game that's how we continue to improve that's how we continue to get better and that's what helps us continue on right knowing that we've come across most issues knock on wood I know there's some out there that we saw them come up with but we've come across a lot and so it's removed a lot of the

fear we're open to just diving in now so the next failure or I guess system you could say that I didn't really put in place soon enough was an excellent bookkeeping system as you know with the short-term rental we have lots of transactions much more than we have with long-term rentals where I started with my real estate career so I was adding properties I was adding properties all the time whenever I could and that created a lot of transactions and they're coming in different ways right

they come in differently from booking.com than they do for air Airbnb for example then we have the tax repentance on the back end so I feel really fortunate now to have an excellent team helping out with all this and also have the right software systems in place but this is one that I kind of let go a little too far and bookkeeping if you've got hundreds of thousands of transactions that add up that could take a little bit of work going back through so if you're

building your portfolio right now take it take a second look at that make sure you have something and you're not overlooking anything another failure during the covid time actually I I was sort of stranded outside of Columbia where I had been living I was down in Brazil so you could say stranded but luckily I was stranded in what I'd call a paradise so I really lucked out there but before I can go back to Columbia I went back to the US and I was just waiting

for the borders to open up in Columbia before I could go back there and I've got a type A personality I I guess I can't just sit still for a really long time so I I was there in one of the markets where we have most of our properties and I was looking to improve things looking to make systems better and looking to make it easier for everyone too is the other thing to make our operations easier so I got the idea which a lot of

short-terminal operators that are doing a lot of volume get the same idea it is a natural progression for a lot of us to start doing all of our laundry in-house actually to the point where I bought a commercial property and I was going to build a laundromat and so I went through the plans I spent a lot of work and a lot of money on that property getting it ready to put in a laundromat and then the machines were not available because of govid and so

that set it back and then the construction costs went way up so I still have the building I ended up getting a few just industrial machines we still use them to tilt today but I don't make money on that property in fact I lose money each and every month on that property it does help us with our operations and I do see that property being a good asset in the future but right now that is not one that I'm winning on so lesson learned here there's

a lot of work that goes into creating a new business and that was the other part of this a laundromat it's a totally new business so not only did we have the setbacks with construction and the Machinery but at a certain point the borders opened down in Columbia and I wanted to go back home and so I was not there to continue setting up this business yeah not a total failure something we still use but something or some place where I probably could have invested my

money a little bit more wisely the next major failure or really lesson learned has to do with the team has to do with your employees or contractors that are helping you out and so I've learned a lot working with a lot of different people and I learned that sometimes we have to rip the Band-Aid off even when it doesn't seem easy sometimes we have someone working with us that just doesn't fit our culture or maybe doesn't have our company or our property's best interest in mind

and so I've worked with a lot of different team members fortunately I've had to let some of those go and it was never easy but I learned a lot and the lesson here is that sometimes we we know this and we procrastinate we procrastinate and we push it off until maybe we have to or we just can't take it anymore so do yourself a favor really consider who you're working with and if there's someone that just it's bad energy all the time when you're working with

them or they keep dropping the ball no matter what you do maybe it's time to look for some different help so that of course is not fun okay so to recap the biggest failures there the number one the granddaddy of them all is if your guests can't get in well then you failed you dropped the ball same goes for a double booking don't don't let that slip by you that can happen if we're not monitoring things right if we don't have our property management system set

up properly double booking is basically the same as someone not being able to get in because you're leaving someone stranded and hospitality is the name of the game in this business we can't let that happen so that's the first one second one is get ahead of your bookkeeping and your finances know all of your numbers I was just growing really quickly like I said and so it didn't really matter to me at that point but I'm sure I could have trimmed down a lot of unnecessary

expenses had I paid a little bit more attention so use some of the systems in place like QuickBooks and use your property management software and hire additional help if you can't handle it all on your own the next big failure I had was with the laundromat and so that's not one that a lot of us are going to have so lesson learned there if you're not willing to put in the time to make your property successful to make your business successful or learn what you need

to know or hire who you need to hire if you're not willing to put in that time then it's very unlikely that you're going to have a venture workout well for you and so that was a big lesson learned for me with the laundromat and then the last one there if you're working with a housekeeper if you're working with a maintenance person some sort of team member someone that helps you out and the relationship always seems a little rough things things aren't always working out right

maybe the ball is getting dropped and they don't have your best interest and mine well maybe it's time to rip the Band-Aid off and to find some new help it's going to make your life a lot easier I promise okay so a lot of failures this was just scratching the service I mean we've really gone through so much more than you could probably imagine so check out our prior episodes you can also go to restmethods.com you can see recommended resources there we have all my favorite

resources software programs used information from my accountant all kinds of stuff for free for anyone out there listening it will help you with your Str journey I promise so on to the fun stuff on to the good stuff the positive side and where I see the short-term rental industry heading so the first thing is we have a lot of venture capital entering the space we have hotels building short-term rentals into their portfolio so we're going to be working in with the big dogs here pretty soon

when I first got started with short-term rentals in 2015 you could throw up a property you could do fine because people were loving it but now we've got some increased competition coming in is there an Airbnb bust no I don't think so our properties are doing just fine our partners properties are doing well so don't let the media intimidate you if there's a good opportunity out there run the numbers and I suggest jumping on it a really exciting thing that's happened for all Industries is AI

and we know that there's lots of different ways to use AI in our short term rental business to help write listing descriptions to help write reviews to do market research we can save a ton of time with AI and you better believe it that is making its way into the short-term rental industry we have medium-term reservations really making Headway in the short-term rental space because why well people are living in short-term rentals now they're not just traveling and them so that is an opportunity for a

lot of us and for a lot of us that is an opportunity we can use maybe just in our slow season we've talked about that one before as well this next one you could call a positive but unfortunately for the other side of the equation it's actually negative for a lot of people and that's that rents are very likely going to continue to increase with higher interest rates people cannot afford to buy properties right now construction companies have higher costs to build properties which means the

supply isn't going to keep up assuming interest rates stay this way of course every Market's different but the reality here is that we're entering a renter's nation which means more people are being forced to rent but that does on the other side that pushes up our rents right and it also pushes up our short-term Rental rent well I'm really rambling here I mean there's so much to talk about for the last four years I just want to give you an idea of our background where we

started where we're going where some of this information is coming from I hope it's helping you through your journey I want to leave you with some of my favorite books that have also helped these have been my biggest Mentor yeah we don't necessarily have to be working with someone physically to be mentored by them and so find your favorite YouTube channels find your favorite podcasts uh and if you can't work with someone locally or physically to Mentor you through some of these things then books can

be your next best friend so I'm just going to read through some of my favorite books here ones that I really highly suggest that you read as well they will change your life if you're not a big reader maybe go to YouTube check out a 30 minute summary on on these books I swear they'll really change your life so the first one is the gap and the gain and this is by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan and I want to read a quote from this one

it says the way to measure your progress is backwards against where you started not again against your ideal in the future where you want to be because if we're always looking out into the future where we want to be then we always feel behind and we can't appreciate all the things that we've accomplished and so I hope over the last four years you've grown your short-term rentals have done really well you've acquired more or you're at least hiding that in direction and you can go back

and see these moves you've made to go where you want to go so I really like that book it really makes you think differently about things and if you're a type A personality like me or an entrepreneur we're always just looking in the future and so sometimes we've got to take a second and just look at all we've accomplished and where we've come from so that's a great one Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich can't say enough about that one it's almost 100 years old and

it's as Timeless as ever the slight Edge I've talked about that one a whole bunch of times but doing little things over time equals big results traction that is an excellent one if you're just starting your business whatever business it happens to be it also can relate really well to our short-term rental portfolios and how we can structure our team who not how excellent book also by Dan Sullivan Benjamin Hardy about who we can hire and not how we can do things ourselves um excellent excellent

book I've talked about a while of course Rich Dad Poor Dad that is like the foundation for the mindset for most of us Real Estate Investors out there and and that is that our our house is not an asset if it's not making us money then it's not an asset buying rental properties with cash flow that pay us to own them that is an asset that's the main point of the book but definitely check that one out if you haven't will change your life there's so

many good resources but the reality here is that the more we learn the more we can eliminate fears the more we can eliminate uncertainty the better investment decisions we will make remember invest in real estate is not a guessing game we have tons of information out there we can run the numbers to see if something makes sense or not I know that interest rates are higher right now if you've been following the podcast for a while though well you would have heard my episode back in

November 2021 which was literally titled why you need to refinance now and so I didn't come up with that on my own I didn't have a crystal ball knowing that interest rates were going to go up obviously there's a chance that they couldn't but from everything I learned and the people I follow that's what I saw and so I follow people that are smarter than me that have been through a bunch of Cycles we're going through one right now in fact I'm looking for new properties

at the moment and you know a great thing about a lot of the properties that I've seen recently is that they have price drop after price drop after price drop I'm sure you've seen this out there if you're also looking we are now in a buyer's market so there's always two sides to every story I know I'm totally rambling but I just get really excited about short-term rentals there's so much opportunity there's also opportunity in it for us to have it as a lifestyle asset where

we can partially use it for our lifestyle but then we can also make money off of it too so there's lots of ways to do it out there I hope you've had a great journey over the last four years and I'm really excited for the next 200 episodes I am a lifer in real estate and I hope that you'll stick around with me thanks for tuning in again until next time I hope you have a fabulous week want to get on the 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