New to STR

[Kenzer Hodgson]

Hi everyone! I’m new to the world of short-term rentals and just bought my first duplex. I’m in the process of converting one of the units into a short-term rental and could use some advice.

I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth using a dynamic pricing tool to maximize revenue and whether I should invest in property management software to help manage bookings, communication, and other tasks.

Any recommendations or insights from your experience would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Kate Stoermer]

For 1 property, its a cost/benefit analysis in my opinion. Software automates what you already know (hopefully) - for some folks they get in trouble because they assume the software "knows" and they don't bother to learn it. While to some extent software can act appropriately based on averages, that'd different than actually understanding the marketplace and workflows and optimizing.  

Further, the costs - depending on your margin as well as the time to learn it vs doing it yourself may not be worth it. 

That said, VRBO doesn't do auto messaging and that's a PIA that makes a channel manager a nice tool to have, but often the cost isn't worth it until you get at least 1 more unit - again, my opinion.  

I do like the efficiency of pricelabs in terms of easily monitoring your comps (if you use the Neighborhood tab and load in your comps)