All Forum Posts by: Sofia Sharkey

@Sofia Sharkey as far as becoming a super host It depends on your goals:

a) Are you aiming to be a large management company with 50+ listings? If so, then you’ll likely not have a super host status because it’s very difficult to retain with large volume.

b) Do you just have one vacation rental that is unique and in a unique area? If so, you probably want to be a superhost. For the requirements, a quick google search helps with that: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/829/how-do-i-become-a-superhost

@Justin Knighten disregard how much they made. Your returns depend on:

a) Purchase price

b) Your setup investment (7k on furnishings or 20k)

c) Your management and how desirable the area / your place is.

To figure that out, go to the Airbnb site and choose similar listing in the same area (same # of beds and baths). Then check the availability and check out the prices (week days vs weekend). Write it out and calculate the average daily date, the occupancy, and the average monthly gross. Do that for at least 5 listings and then do the same choosing from other platforms. That will give you pretty accurate comps for the area.

At that point, based on the daily rate and the gross revenue you can see if the purchase price makes sense. 24K is super low if this is going to be a full time vacation rental.

@Greg Moore

I have several short term rentals in Kansas City which is different from vacation rental markets as tourism is not big here. March was planned to be our best month ever with calendars full at nice rates. Then COVID happened and we got a wave of cancellations 🦗 crickets. Some of my units were not profitable for the first time ever in March and April. May was ok and then in June we saw a spike in travel. July, August, and September were fantastic months and October is shaping out to be strong as well.

Lesson learned: not to be over leveraged. We were able to stay a float because we don’t pay very high mortgages / rents so even in hard times most of our units were able to ride it out. Here in KC much of our competition went away because they could afford their STRs anymore. Many hosts were desperate to get people in so they lowered the prices drastically (In March I saw beautiful full houses going for $40 a night) then got lots of parties and guests who damaged the properties. Now many of them are dealing with angry neighbors / communities for being the party house as well as trying to recover from the damages.

@Joe Prillaman

We’ve looked into several tools as well and this is what we use.

Smartbnb to automate guest communication. This has been excellent to increase touch points with guests and save time

Pricelabs for pricing automation. We still tweak manually since we have the pulse on the market but this gives a great foundation

Turnoverbnb to find and automate cleaning. I know you can add the cleaners directly on Airbnb now but my cleaners prefer this platform as it’s user friendly and reliable

Remotelock to automate check ins with unique codes per guest. We love this lock (we tried several and this is the only one we haven’t had issues with)

VR scheduler - testing this as we speak for our internal tasks, maintenance, and possibly cleaning if it all goes well

Hope this helps!

@Paul Sandhu your posts always make me laugh! Thank you

@Boris Mordkovich thank you Boris for that feedback! @Tom Sharkey

@Nancy Bender what I would do is call vacation rental management companies and ask for the gross revenue on homes X size, then condos X size in a specific area/ neighborhood you’re interested in so you can compare apples to apples.

@Mark Lee my husband and I arbitrage a few units and they have been very profitable. You need permission to sublease from the owners / landlords but unless your city calls it specifically, you do not need a brokers license (from what I’ve leaned). Of course it wouldn’t hurt to have it if you want to do this long term.

We recorded a podcast with lots of info on how to do arbitrage the right way, I hope it helps you as you embark on this journey (podcast: short term rental success stories episode 72) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/short-term-rental-success-stories/id1457263788?i=1000487281611

Good luck and keep us posted on how it goes!

@Matthew Stallings in addition to the feedback you get here, you can call vacation rental management companies and ask for the gross income / or the booking revenue for properties with those specifications (7 bedrooms, 9 bedrooms in X neighborhood). You can google “vacation rental management near Disney” to find a few of the biggest ones. Those companies have great comps because they may have hundreds of listings so their data is much better than someone who has 1 house. As a professional in the field, after I run my own numbers I do this to complete my market research and get a complete report.

@Melinda A. Harleaux if you want passive income, buy a property in a desired location of town in growing cities like Kansas City. Then hire a STR management company to turn in into a cash flowing short term rental.