Well, it’s no secret that people are managing their short-term rentals virtually wherever. They happen to be in the world and wherever the owners happen to live in the world. Myself included my team and I have managed tens of thousands of guests and my personal portfolio and I spent most of that time thousands and thousands of miles away in South America where I spend most of my time. So, I want to talk this week about why I think virtual management is the future of property management.

Welcome to short-term rental riches will discuss vesting 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 for talking about a topic this week and that really excites me. And if you’ve listened to the show for a while, you know that it does because we have lots of episodes on how to better virtually manage, our properties and how to do it remotely. Well this week I want to talk about why I think virtual management is just the future of property management. I want to give you three main reasons why I think this is the case and I want to end with Some questions that you can use to talk to your property manager about or if you’re managing your short-term rental yourself questions that you should be thinking about things that you should be doing with your own property.

So first of all, let’s just start off with like a real quick evolution of property management. I remember when I had my first long-term traditional rental and I put it up for rent, I was managing it by myself. I even put a sign out front of the property that said for rent at put it online. Line, I was taking phone calls, it was taken emails. I was driving to the property to show potential tenants. I was printing out actual lease agreements and getting signatures and person and doing walkthroughs and it was just a lot of work, right?

It used to be that way, used to be that way, for traditional property management, but that has come a long way. Now, we have companies like Blackstone for example, that if acquired nearly six hundred billion, Dollars and real estate. And there’s no way they’d be able to manage all that real estate. If they didn’t have all the tools and the software programs to help facilitate, those interactions, those transactions, they just wouldn’t be able to do it if they didn’t have all those tools and so traditional real estate investment companies and large property managers have adopted a lot of these tools as well.

Now, we look at the short-term rental space. It’s no secret that we have a lot of tools now, to and companies like vikas. ASA are managing thousands of properties companies like evolve vacation. Rentals has popped up and now they’re managing. Close to 30,000 properties, but not all property managers are managing their short-term rentals equally. So, I want to talk about the difference between virtual management and traditional short-term Rental Management why I think virtual management is the way to go for a lot of people and the first reason would kind of just touched on there, is that it’s just Easier to do than it ever was. And you know what? I think it’s going to continue to get easier and easier. As we have more tools as our guests become more familiar and comfortable with the way people are managing their properties.

It is the future in my opinion. And it’s my personal management strategy that I’ve adopted. However, while virtual management can be a great option, it doesn’t make sense for everyone. And this brings me to reason to why I I think virtual management is a Future Property Management, because more and more people are going to be using this strategy working with another virtual manager. So, why would someone choose to not virtually manage their property themselves? Well, there’s a couple main reasons here, the first one is, it doesn’t always make financial sense. So, I talk a lot on this channel about how you can do this yourself, and that is what I’m recommending, but it doesn’t make sense for everyone. And if you want to have a team that’s covering your property 24/7.

Well, unfortunately, you can’t just hire one person. You can’t even higher, just 23, I think it really takes a minimum of five team members. That can of course be virtually before you can sort of hand off the operations of your property and let them handle it for you. And to hire five, people doesn’t always make financial sense. If you’re just getting started and you have just a few properties. Even if you Have 15 properties. Depending on the actual net income that you’re making hiring a full team could take all of that and net gain away. And I know this personally, As I Grew my portfolio, I wasn’t always working with my own team.

I was working with some other outsourced providers different managers on the ground. I tried lots of different options. Fortunately, I’m in a place with dozens of properties. Now where I have my own team and they’re amazing, they do amazing job and we just keep getting better. Better. So that’s the first reason. It doesn’t always make financial sense for us as short-term rental owners to hire our own team. And reason number two, why a lot of people wouldn’t want to manage their property themselves, even if it is virtually, and that’s because it takes a lot of work to hire a team. So, not only does it cost quite a bit or it can cost quite a bit, but hiring multiple people takes a bit of work and sometimes someone gets sick or someone One can’t show up and you need someone to fill in for them so it takes a lot of work to hire your own team and this could just be creating another job for yourself, right? If you start investing in short-term rentals to earn higher returns which I still believe that we can earn some of the highest returns in real estate with the right properties.

If that was your main goal and it wasn’t to create another job for yourself. Well, then hiring your own team is not going to be the ideal option either. So, reason number one, why I Virtual management is the future of property management is that it’s easier, right? We have way more tools and we ever had. But reason number two, I think it is the Future Property Management, why most people will adopt it is because not, everyone wants to manage their property and it doesn’t make financial sense for a lot of people to manage their own property if they wanted managed 24/7.

So, this brings me to number three. Why I believe virtual management is a Future of property management and that’s that traditional property management is a lot more expensive. Yes, it is. Now not to say it can’t be a great option for a lot of investors and it certainly is someone that just wants to buy an investment doesn’t want to have to do anything. Working with the traditional short term, rental manager can be a great option and you know it a lot of times, they dominate a local vacation rental market, they might have their own direct booking website. Which brings in a ton of traffic and so they might not even need to rely on Airbnb and some of the other channel manager so it can be a great option.

It’s definitely the most hands off but it all comes at a cost, right? So traditional short-term rental managers are going to charge between 22 even 40%. And remember, this twenty to forty percent is coming off your gross income. It’s not coming off your net income so we really affect your return. The short-term rental and there’s one other thing to keep in mind. If you’re working with a traditional short term, rental manager, and that’s that most of the time they own your listings.

So, what do I mean by they own your listings? Well, when you put your property up on Airbnb, you start to collect reviews and you’re building a history with that property. Remember every single review that we get for our property, helps future reviews. So, owning that history and having a good history, becomes a very valuable Part of your short-term rental, but most of the time, when you work with the traditional short term rental manager, they’re going to own your listing. So, they’re going to create their own with your property.

They’re going to be building reviews. Hopefully, they’re doing a really good job, but at the end of the day, if they’re not and you decide to part ways, maybe you want to do it yourself where you’re going to have to start over, you’re going to have to start from scratch with zero reviews and That Could set you back a little bit. We know that a property. That’s He’s got a hundred five star or great reviews, versus a property that has to Five Star reviews. We know that the algorithms are going to push the property with more reviews up and so starting over could be a challenge for you. If you decided that your relationship, you’re the property manager, you’re working with just didn’t work out. So that’s something to keep in mind.

“We covered a lot of topics on this podcast and a quick action will bite size format. So, you have the tools to acquire and improve your short-term rentals on your own. But if you want to go deeper, I have a special invite for you. Join us once a month that are rested, investor Clubhouse, where we go in-depth on an individual topic, everything from analyzing properties to improving operations and our bottom line, we cover it all the clubhouse members and myself are sharing best practices to earn the most revenue with the least amount of headache and I would love to have you there as well. That’s restmethods.com forward slash Rich. Our lives are shaped by those. We spend the most time with. So, if you want to take your STR to the next level. Come join us. I hope to see you on the inside.”

Okay, so more and more people are managing their properties virtually because it’s easier. They are working with a virtual property manager because they maybe don’t want to do it themselves or it doesn’t make financial sense or three. They don’t want to work with a traditional property manager because that 20 to 40 percent. Missions are just too much. So, reason number 4 why? I think a lot of people would want to consider working with a virtual property manager is that they already have a lot of the pieces in place. They have a great property, maybe they have good housekeeping connections, maybe they have a good maintenance contact on hand and they just don’t want to do all the daily operations, handle guest, maybe they don’t know how to handle guests properly, or they don’t know how to get rid reviews removed or work with resolutions with Airbnb or list the property themselves, maybe you’re just getting started and there’s a lot to learn in the short-term rental industry.

So, by working with a virtual manager, you can save a fair amount of your property management expense, but still kind of have the best of both worlds. So, if you’re one of those owners, you might want to consider working with a virtual property manager, I am super excited to announce that. We are in fact, working with other owners now, we are partnering with other owners and we’re using my personal team that I’ve spent years building to help manage other people’s properties.

So, again, I think this is something you can definitely do by yourself, but once you start to scale 3 4 5, 10, 15 properties, it definitely becomes a job unless you pass off some of the tasks. So, if you’re an owner out there and you have a lot of the pieces, has in place already for your short-term rental. Well, you might want to consider virtual management. I mentioned the Valle vacation rentals again. They are taking this approach. Now, they’re not necessarily handling your whole guest interaction from what I understand, they don’t handle the middle part. So, after a guest check in, they handle pre and post booking in the middle, they are going to coordinate with a contact that you already have. So, check out some virtual property managers out there. They’re not all equal. They’re not all doing the same things or not all offering the same services but it could be a great option for you.

Another thing that’s come up, more recently is that a lot of owners are taking medium term stays which require a little less work right? If someone checks in for a month versus an average three night stay well then there’s a lot less going on but there’s still pieces going on. Guest still has problems. They still have questions. We still need to verify those guests and there’s some additional things that we need to do with medium term stays. So, if that’s part of your strategy as well, well, then virtual management could be a good option for you too.

So, we got a great question from a fellow podcast listener, and this is in regards to how you can help manage other people’s properties. So, let me just jump into his question here. First of all, he says, I love the podcast. I listen to it all the time in the car. I probably listen to just about every episode. Yeah, all 170. So, thanks Seth is coming from Seth by the way, glad you liked it. And I hope that Content going forward, helps you to better manage, whatever properties you are plan on managing, and for everyone else out there. He says, I’ve recently started managing my in-laws’ properties and I’d like to suggest a topic that I would certainly benefit from knowing more about, would love an episode or two about how to best set up structure and handle all the different accounts tools involved with managing other people’s properties. And there are quite a few in summary you touched on some of these aspects and last past episodes, but I greatly appreciate an episode dealing with the right, best way to structure and handle. All the accounts involved when adding someone else’s property to your Str management portfolio. So, let’s get into this last piece and this is the questions that you want to be asking yourself or a potential property manager.

If you are looking at your property, managed or if you are playing on managing someone else’s property. The first question is, how much experience do they have? They’ve been doing this for a long time. Do they own On properties. What types of properties? Do they work with right? Remember, there are lots of different short-term rentals from treehouses to villas along the ocean, and they do have slightly different management styles.

You want to know about their experience. Another great question. If you’re looking for property manager, is that, are they going on your listings? And so, for you, Seth, if you’re managing your in-laws’ properties, if they already have a great amount of good reviews than it, probably, Probably in the owners in your in-laws. Best interest to keep that account as it is with all those reviews and they could do two things. They could share their account with you as a co-host, which gives you access to almost everything except for filing resolutions. If they want you to have full access will, then they could just simply share their credentials with you. So, that is a good option. If they’re comfortable with that. Then the question comes up, how do you handle the money? Do you send it to? Directly are keep the same way it is, in charge them on top or do you have it all, come to you and then you send them a payment at the end of the month. That is a traditional way that most property managers do it. That’s how my company is doing it. But Airbnb does have the ability to split revenues so that you can have a percentage. Go to you, the rest of it, go to your in-laws in this example but there’s no one right way to do it. I’ve even seen companies now just charging a flat. That V8 for virtual Management Services and so that could be another potential option to everything. Just goes to the owner and you may be charged a monthly fee.

Another option could be to split profits over a certain amount of income. So, let’s say your in-laws wanted to earn at least fifteen, hundred dollars, a month for themselves, but you knew the property could make three thousand dollars a month. So, you begin working with them, you partner with them, you help them manage the property and when that property makes Thousand dollars a month, maybe you both split the difference above what your in-laws wanted to earn above the1500. So, you’d split the fifteen hundred dollars in additional income for example just one other way that might work for you.

Another question that you’re definitely going to want to ask a property manager what tools they’re using. So, there’s all kinds of tools available pricing tools digital guidebooks property management software platforms. Are you going to be able to see Your transactions. How is all of the backend working? Now a lot of the big management companies have their own proprietary software while that’s saves a lot of money on cos that’s not always the best idea because if we think about it specific software, that is popped up in the short term went on is tree. A lot of times is to serve a specific purpose and so to have one program that is the go-to for everything that’s quite difficult and I would just say that that Not exist.

So, if you’re working with a manager that’s using multiple different software options, that can be a really good benefit for your properties Seth, you asked specifically, how would you structure and handle, all the accounts involved with adding someone’s property and so you’re going to want to add their property to all these different software sources as well. I think because there’s so many software pieces and because there’s always new ones coming out that you might decide to switch to that, it’s probably easier for you to handle all those costs on your end or charge them back in a flat fee to your in-law because those are things that are just always changing.

That’s how traditional property managers would do it as well. So, over the coming weeks, we’re going to introduce some more ideas, more Concepts, more things that your property manager should be doing for you, or if you’re managing your properties yourself, things that you should be doing and every step of the way with a guest reservation. So, I hope this Information helps you to find the best property manager, or to improve it yourself. There are a lot of moving pieces that go into this. And as I mentioned, if you’re interested in working with us directly, we be happy to. This is something I focus my career on for years and years and I spent a lot of money and I’ve built an amazing team that I trust that manages my property better than I ever could by myself and also at a discounted price to what I would pay. Pay to a traditional property manager. So, if you’re interested in that at all, you can head to Strriches.com, there’s Property Management button there and stay tuned.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to talk about everything you or your property manager should be doing before guest checks in, while I guess is in your property and what you should be doing after that guest checks out. Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week and I’ll talk to you soon.

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 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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