All Forum Posts by: Alex Scattareggia

I am very interested in how this project turns out. I sent you a PM as well, but the difficulty I have had when looking at these kind of projects (at least in my markets) is getting an accurate quote on what the total cost will be.  It seems to vary pretty wildly.  Good luck!

Quote from @Chai Xiong:

Spend more time focusing on VRBO bookings than Airbnb, you will thank me later ;)

 This might be good advice for you or might not. These kinds of statements usually come down to personal preference and you will only find out by trial and error.  

One thing that I have had success with however is to price the OTA´s differently and drive bookings to the one that I want to do business with the most.

  As an example, based on fee structure, customer service, cancelation policy and a few other factors this is the list of where I want customers to book. 

1. Direct Booking

2. Trip Advisor

3. Airbnb

4. VRBO

5. Booking.com 

6.Others

So what I do, especially in advance, is price Booking and VRBO higher for the same nights vs. Airbnb, TripAdvisor and our direct booking platform.  The extra income offsets whatever issues I may have with that particular OTA.  

If there is availability on a more last minute basis, I can always bring the price down across all the OTA´s to ensure occupancy.  But whenever someone tells you one site is ¨better¨ than another take it with a grain of salt and price accordingly. 

Quote from @Frank DiGiorgio:

Hi All, 

I just purchased a canal access home in Central CC. I'm looking for a PM who will allow me to do ALL bookings. They would handle pool maintenance, changeovers and emergency calls. Does anyone do a flat monthly rate to be on call and breakout the changeover and maintenance costs? That's what I had in my Orlando STR, and I'm hoping I can find the same in Cape Coral.

Also, looking for a good insurance company that hasn't bailed on Florida yet.  

Thanks in advance BP Family!

 As others have already pointed out you are not really looking for PM but really just a handyman/cleaner.  The cleaning piece is going to be the most important and that is where I would put my focus first.  Making sure that they can do that part of the job reliably and to the standard that you expect. If they happen to be handy, even better, and you can possibly incorporate that same person into the business to be on call if there is some sort of urgent need at the property. 

Pool Maintenace should be easy to find at a flat fee twice a month, independent of the cleaner.  

 We have a similar arrangement at one of my properties that is far away from any big residential area.  The cleaner lives near the property and is the same person that handles any day-to-day issue at the property. The key is to have a system in place for everything that could go wrong, (from pilot light going out, to clogged toilets etc.)  Make a system or a manual upfront which is time consuming but will save you a ton of time on the back end so that the person going out there.  Again this takes a lot of trust and vetting on your end because this person has to be reliable (and local to the property) in order for this arrangement to work.  But if they are good at the job, it will save you a ton of money in management fees. 

If you really wanted to get creative and incentivize good work, we have experimented with giving bonuses to our cleaners based on the reviews.  So if they have 95% 5 star cleanliness reviews over a 3-month period we give xxx$ bonus.  

You probably won´t get it right on your first try so don´t stress too much, it will be a trial-and-error process.  But when you find someone good make sure you take care of them and incentivize them to stay local to you.  Good luck!

Quote from @Ala Yuhya:

Hello! I currently own & operate a very profitable luxury STR in Tulum, Mexico - I'm having trouble connecting with investors to showcase this property. The property has grossed 200k in 21/22 and is on track to surpass that this year. Does anyone have advice on where I can find investors that would be interested in a property like this?

You are in the most saturated market in all of Mexico. 
The issue is not realtors or their lack of reach.  It´s that every person who has googled Tulum once in their life is buried under an avalanche of promotion for new construction condos and homes in Tulum.  I have actually done a bit of work on that market and haven´t found a lot of people who are really killing it.  

If you are, good for you, it is not an easy market to succeed in.  Send me the listing and if I have anyone who is looking for something similar I can pass it on.  Good luck in your hunt.  

Quote from @Collin Hays:

You can't always have good reviews.  Don't let reviews hold you hostage from running a sound business.  

 Yup!  

The thing that gets lost in these conversations is what kind of business are you running.  If it is a $100/night studio than the cost of the pet fee and the bed runner is a huge expense.  If it is a $1500/night 5 bedroom house than probably just eat the cost and move on.  There is obviously going to be a threshold where you just chalk it up to ¨the cost of doing business¨ but that is going to differ for everyone.  

FWIW I have had very good luck with getting reviews taken down if they are ¨revenge reviews¨ in response to asking the guest for some compensation.  I know from reading these threads that this is not necessarily the rule. If you keep the entire conversation on the app where Airbnb can see the whole conversation this helps. 

Quote from @Alberto Nikodimov:

Best time to improve your Airbnb is during low season. I recommend going through your reviews, see what guests recommend you to improve in order to make their stays better. Take advantage of the low season to keep your bookings up with good reviews in high season!  

Also, low season can be good to list your new airbnb. So you can focus on getting 5 start reviews, build the property profile and be ready for high season!

What have we as a community done to receive such deep and penetrating insights as these?

In all seriousness, what are the purposes of posts like these. I browse other forums here on BP and they are not riddled with self promoting or pointless posts as frequently as the STR ones. Would be nice if 10-20% of the threads weren't people giving the most obvious and intuitive advice that any person with a brain could deduce on their own. Save it for instagram!

Really well thought out post.  The overlap between the two sectors means that you could easily translate skills from one to another.  

I don´t own or manage anything that would qualify as a boutique hotel, but we do have two properties with multiple doors located at the same property. What I have noticed is that the property with seven doors is only marginally more work to manage than a SFH rental. The fact that everything is at one address really does cut down on management time and work despite being 700% more doors. I would imagine this scales to a boutique hotel as well.

Good luck!

For any of our non digital locks (basically everything the guest doesn´t access) we use standard key locks.  We have a lockbox with a code on the property with the keys inside.  We can give access to those areas to cleaners or ourselves if need be through the lockbox.  Easy!

Huge uptick in fees in my markets.  I think the feature that Airbnb implemented on the guest side (where you can look at the total upfront instead of a night rate) will become the industry standard.  Especially on 2 or 3 night stays when the huge fees are factored in I have seen total prices increase by 20-30% of what the initial cost looked like. 

Completely property and market dependent.  Across all of our portfolio the split looks like 54% Airbnb, 21% VRBO, 18% Other OTA, and 6% direct bookings. 

However, what is interesting is that in some of the markets that we invest the numbers skew much higher towards VRBO and in another one we are doing almost 80% of the total booking through Airbnb.