We all wish we had the most amazing property imaginable, right? Some of us do but we don’t all have that luxury. Sometimes there’s issues with our property, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still earn five star reviews every time this week. I want to break down five things. You can do to make sure that your non perfect property earns five star reviews every time stay tuned.

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 your portfolio. I’m your host Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast. I just got back from a wedding in Miami. I got on a plane from Southern Brazil and headed up north and I gotta say every time I leave Brazil to had to go US especially down here in southern Brazil. I it just reminds me how big this country really is, so quite the journey back to the US, but weddings are always a great time, aren’t they? So, it was really good to be back there for a few days and I always enjoy coming back to Brazil too. So, during my stay there in Miami I rented in Airbnb. I want to talk about this week, because that property was not perfect. By no means was it perfect. But the host earned 5-star reviews, and based off her prior reviews. She’s been earning 5-star reviews with basically everyone hundreds. And so, I want to break down five things that we can all be doing every time to make sure that we are in 5-star reviews. Even if we don’t have a perfect property, before we get into that though, if you’ve missed our past episodes, go back and make sure you check them out.

We had Jason Hartman on last week, who’s someone that I’ve been following his research for a long time. He is an expert in the space. He’s an expert in macroeconomics and really helping us figure out if a market is risky and why it’s risky. So, check out the podcast last week or the YouTube channel, if you’re tuning in there, where we had an interview with Jason Hartman packed packed full of great stuff. Okay, let’s get into it. So, the first step to make sure that we’re always earning 5-star reviews even if our property is not perfect, is to make sure we have an accurate and honest listing. Now, you know, if you’ve been listening to podcast for a while that we’ve talked about this before, but we have to set the right expectations. We’re not going to be able to earn a 5-star reviews if we leave out some issue or something, that a guess is going to discover when they show up to the property that they didn’t already know about. So, we got to make sure that the listing is as detailed as possible. We got Fill out all the sections and if there’s something that your guest is going to see and they’re not going to like, well, you need to make sure that they’re aware of that, and sometimes that requires putting a picture in the listing, doesn’t mean you have to make it the first picture. But let’s just say your parking situation is not ideal. For example, maybe it’s around the block or it’s not right next to the property or it’s in a drive way that just doesn’t look that great. Well, you still need to take a picture of it to let your guests know. No, because they’re going to see it either way, right? So that’s the first thing we got to make sure that our properties are perfectly portrayed online. So, there’s no negative surprises. When the guest shows up, I’ve mentioned before that, I’ve actually put slightly less appealing pictures on some of my properties to start off with just a set, the expectations, a little lower. I know that sounds crazy, but a little darker image of the living room. If someone, Zap and it’s full of natural light. Well, that’s going to be a pleasant surprise, right? And that’s an easy way to start off on the right foot with your guest experience, okay?

So, the second piece to making sure that we always get 5-star reviews with our properties, even if they’re not perfect, is our communication. Communication is key. That is the name of the game and hospitality and know as much as I would like to. A lot of times, we can’t automate everything we need to have some personalized. Just communication. I gave an example, an earlier episode where a lot of us are automating our check-in instructions and our check out instructions. For example, a lot of us are automating a welcome message, but the problem with automating all those is that let’s say you automated your welcome message to go in at 5 p.m. and your check-in time was 3 p.m., but your guests didn’t actually show up till 9 p.m. there. Plane got delayed, or travel plans, or whatever it happens to be, and you’ve already sent them a message saying, hey, I hope you checked in.

Okay, that doesn’t look good right in this very obvious that that came from a machine, came from automation. So, make sure that your communication is on par. One thing that my host did on this recent trip, for example, is she communicate with me right before I actually got to the property? I told her what time I was going to be there? She said, hey I left the door unlocked for you. This happened to be a Guest House in the back and then she did the same thing before I left. So, she had very pleasant station. And this wasn’t in person by the way, this was through text message, but she had very pleasant communication right before I checked in right before I actually checked in and right as I checked out, and I got to say she made the communication process and the check-in. Super, super easy, which I was very grateful for because it is a journey coming down from Brazil. So, it was very nice to show up and have a smooth check-in and have the good communication. So timing is super crucial and unfortunately, you’re a I bought it. At least not yet isn’t going to know when your guests flight got delayed. Although, you know, that might be around the corner, I’m not saying that you’re ever going to be able to replace your guest’s communication with the bought, but I do think it’s going to be very helpful in the future.

There’s a company called the guest Guru, for example, that’s working on this at the moment and know there’s probably a lot more. I don’t see it ever replacing our Communications. Our guests experience team, does an amazing job, and a lot of things just happen and pop up that we can’t really program in. So, even though a, I might be helping us in the future, we still got to make sure that our communication is great. Because if it’s not what’s going to happen, we’re going to get a ding and we’re not going to get the 5-star reviews that we need, okay, on to number three, personal touches. So, if you’ve been in the short-term rental space for a while and you’ve stayed in a lot of them, you know, there’s some properties you show up to and it just feels like you’re showing up to some property that there was no care put into it. And looks like someone opened a bunch of Ikea boxes and they just threw it up in a weekend. That’s not a super great experience, right? It’s nice to have some personal touches in there, and there are several ways to do this. So, the first way you can do this is just by leaving some little note, leaving some food, for example, I know that some people leave wine but make sure that you’re careful with those things. Because there are, well first of all it’s the drinking age, you know, if you’re giving wine to someone that’s not of age that could create an issue but there also may be some tax consequences. If you’re providing Hotel type amenities, it may change your tax consequences so I am not a CPA, but make sure you look into that. So, my host, left, some goodies, she left some bananas, which I ate very quickly. She also left some chocolates, which I really wanted to eat very quickly, but I know that once a one, I’m going to eat them all.

So, I was proud of myself. I hid them in a cabinet, the whole trip. Actually, I forgot about him. It’s crazy how, when we don’t see things in front of us, we kind of forget about them sometimes. So, I don’t buy them at home because I know that I can’t control my sweet tooth, but that was a very thoughtful touch and especially after a long journey. It was nice. She also had bottled water, and she also communicated that the things that she left there were free for me to use or consume.

And so great job with communication and great job with her personal touches. Another way that we can really win a lot of points with our personal touches our through our personal recommendations for. Remember as a host, we don’t always want to be constantly talking with our guests and may be bothering them in my situation. For example, I don’t know how long the flight was the two flights, but it took a long time and I was tired. Little bit of jet lag going on. Didn’t really want to be exchanging a A lot of messages and she did a good job at that at reading my communication level to make sure she wasn’t sending too many when I was in sending a hardly much at also, a good way that you can get recommendations out without bothering your guests through a guidebook. We’ve talked about guidebooks a lot, we use a digital version called host family, but we also leave a print out in all of my properties. And if you just joining us for the first time on the show, great to have you, you can head to Strriches.com and check out all of our past episodes. I can’t believe we’re nearing in on 200 episodes, that’s just crazy. But I’ve got a portfolio that are built around the US now and also outside the US, so five different markets to outside of the US and almost 70 properties now. So, it’s been an exciting Journey. We’ve learned a lot. So, go back and check out some of those prior episodes. If you’re just tuning in for the first time, one you’ll find on hostfully, that’s episode 31, believe it or not, that was long time ago. But you know what this information lasts, real estate investment fundamentals, they’re evergreen. And most of this information is still very, very relevant, except for occasionally some software programs that maybe change or something like that. I also talked about a way that you can get a guide book for free by using notion, which is arguably my favorite program. I’ve ever discovered in the last couple of years to check that episode out. That’s 127. There’s really Endless Options with notion, I use it for my personal life and also, for my business investment portfolio, all of that, all of that. Actually, my notes for these podcasts, a use, an ocean. So, check that one out. That might be a free good option for you, if you don’t already have a digital guidebook. Okay?

So on to step number four, the first step we have an accurate honest listing, the second step we have excellent host, communication and that is throughout the duration of the reservation. From beginning to end number three, personal touches we’ve added them, wherever we can, we created a guidebook and our property doesn’t feel like it was just opened up from a bunch of Ikea boxes number four is location. So yes, sometimes by having the best location ever, it kind of makes all the other things less important. And so, you know, they say location location location. The same is true for short-term rentals. Again, we’re going to have this in Our list scene.

It’s going to be very clear but if someone’s in a fantastic location maybe where they’re close to attractions all these things, maybe they’re not actually spending that much time in your property and the location makes it so nice that they’re going to leave you a 5-star reviews as long as you take these other four boxes even if your property is a little older it maybe needs a renovation. It has to be clean. Remember an older property can still get good reviews, but has to be clean if it’s not clean or it doesn’t feel clean, you’re not going to be getting excellent reviews, one other quick thing, just add here is that if you have a guest that left, you some sort of feedback, something that they didn’t enjoy, and you haven’t fixed it yet. Well, you need to fix it because guess what, if one guest in like it? Other guests are not going to like it as well. So really make sure that you’re watching and reading the private feedback and making sure you got a close eye on your property.

Okay, the fifth thing thing that can really impact our reviews is the length of the reservation. So let me explain here. If you have a property where average night stay is one night, that doesn’t really give you a lot of time to show your great host communication. It doesn’t give the guests a lot of time to explore your property or maybe to explore your recommendations. And so, if they have one little thing that kind of goes wrong, they might leave you a bad reviews. Just because they didn’t have the opportunity to see your property shining and its best light and to see how you care, as a host. So, the length of the reservation can really make a difference, can make a difference if it’s much longer to, right? So, the longer the reservation is the more opportunity. We have to show our guests that we care. Again, we don’t want to be in their space or message them more than their messaging us, but we want to have excellent response times. We want to be there if ff they need us, so reservation length can really make a difference to, but it can also work against you, right? So, if it’s a longer reservation and you’ve just dropped the ball on a couple places, well then you might get a bad reviews from that too.

So just to recap we can have a property that is not perfect. It maybe needs some Renovations it has to be clean, remember that. But as long as we’re doing the following five things, we can still get five star reviews every time. The first thing, we want to make sure that our list is accurate and honest, the second thing we want to make sure that we have excellent guest communication, every step of the way, the third thing we want to make sure that we have some sort of personal touches and this could be your guide book, but you could go further than that as well. And leave some items in your property or leave some sort of notes or something like that in your property. So having some personal touches the four thing is, if your property has a stellar action. It might make some of these other things, a little less important. But remember, this is an average of all of these things when your guest is staying with you, they’re not going to rate you just based on one thing you need to make sure that you’re doing a good job at all these things. The fifth thing is the length of reservation. So, if it’s a one-night reservation, you don’t have a lot of opportunity to let your non perfect property shine you, just don’t, unfortunately, but with a longer reservation, you do so is by no means an exhaustive list of everything we need to do.

I hope you’ve been enjoying the podcast. If you didn’t know yet, we’re also managing other people’s properties and so we’ve managed cash. Probably close to 30,000, guests. Now my personal portfolio, my team does an amazing job. You can check that out at restmethods.com. We’ve got a property management button there. We also have a lot of my recommended resources and all kinds of contents. So, thanks again for joining in. I love the feedback to if you guys have any questions or you have any specific topics, you want to go over, please let us know. And until next time I hope you have a wonderful week.

Want to get on the fast track to Financial Freedom through short-term rentals? Well, all starts with the properties you acquire. But you want to make sure that you acquired the right properties. I want to give you my e-book 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 REST methods.com

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