Hey guys, Sharon from digital nomad quest. And this is Sean with everything Rei and today we’re gonna talk about how we launched our first Airbnb. Now if you guys are new to this channel welcome, I’m all about teaching how to build passive income, become financially free and design your best life. So you guys are interested in that make sure to subscribe and hit the bell button to be notified of my latest videos, make sure to subscribe to Sean’s channel where he talks all about real estate investing. So as you guys may have already seen in previous episodes, we have decided to move to Dallas, Texas. And you might already know we’re actually doing this for many different reasons, a lot of it is for real estate investing reasons. And in order for us to make this move, we had to actually Airbnb our primary residence that would help offset the cost of the two mortgages we’re going to have so we bought a place in Dallas, Texas, actually. And then we have the place in the Bay Area. And the idea is that the fully furnished rental will bring in rental income that will offset the costs of the mortgages of the two properties.
So one of the challenges that we encountered in the particular city that I live in, there is a short term rental ordinance, which means that you need to abide by their rules, which means you have to get a permit and they are going to only issue permits for people who actually live on the property because we are moving away to another state. Obviously, we’re not going to be there on site to make sure that guests here are abiding by whatever rules so to bypass that ordinance by doing 30 plus de fully furnished rentals, you’re no longer in that short term rental category anymore. You don’t have to pay transient occupancy taxes anymore, you have to buy by the city small ordinances it’s as if you have a regular long term rental contract with a normal tenant. So I’ve
posted a couple of videos on the Airbnb process. But now we’re actually complete as you guys can see, we’re not in the studio anymore, we’re at a different place. We’re in a transition period where we’re going to wait till our property closes in Dallas so that we can actually move in so in order for us to prep this Airbnb we actually took my friend Michael elefante is Airbnb course not actually completely done with it yet, but it gave us some idea of what the dashboard looks like and what we should start thinking about. And if you want to check out the course there’s a link below in the description.
So before we even had some Airbnb, real smart home features in HomeReady, the lock was ready a Yale door lock, which is August enhanced Yale slash Google whatever like door lock, where you can program the codes, you can have it on App and give a QR code, you don’t have to physically be there to make sure that they turn cheese or you have to worry about them copying keys, once the tenant is out, you can change the locks so that they don’t have access to the property. Cool thing is it integrates with Airbnb directly. So when someone books your place on Airbnb does yell app will automatically create a code for them. That’s really cool, too. And maybe you can put a link in description below as well with that product.
Yeah, and another thing we actually were thinking about is that we have laundry machines in the downstairs like garage area that is actually converted into a room. But we were wondering if we were going to make that into a whole nother bedroom. Or we should just make this like a separate area that they access. And if we are able to put our personal belongings in there to store we were just worried about those types of things. So what we decided was that room wasn’t going to be a room we listed on Airbnb as a bedroom, we decided it would just be the laundry room. And we would block off a certain portion so that people couldn’t access like our other personal belongings that we didn’t want them to touch. So we put like this tarp over everything. And then we made it so that people can go into that downstairs garage area to use the laundry machines before we were thinking Oh, should we have like stackable ones in a closet and stuff like that and just seemed like really complicated. So we just left it the way it was, we just made this into an entire home Airbnb versus like room by room to make it a lot easier for us. But it turns out that there were a lot of different things we needed to think about not just you know, this laundry thing, there’s so many different things we had to fix. But it’s been like a maybe one to two month process. Now, because of all these different things we needed to fix up about the home. But we’re just going to break down like all the different things we repaired. So we started listing down a bunch of things. As you guys can see, I have like this whole list of things that I kept listing off for Airbnb that we needed to do, but we were kind of taking our time with it until we actually got a booking we put this listing on Airbnb with some photos that we took after we cleaned the house a little bit, we decided you know what, we should put it up sooner so that we can even see if anyone’s gonna book it, we put them up, we put up all the listing details, which is actually a great learning process for us because we didn’t know what it would look like to publish a listing. When we started doing that were like, Okay, now we know how to replicate this in the future when we have more Airbnb listings. And then we actually got an inquiry maybe a week or two after we put it up. And this was from these Tesla interns who wanted to stay for a longer period of time. As you guys already know, we put our Airbnb listing for 30 plus days. That’s what we were worried about. Right? We’ve heard a lot of stories where people get bookings really like quickly off the bat. However the way we’re doing it was okay, we’re not going to have it open until maybe November. We also limited it so that it had to be a 30 day minimum requirements with the listing
on the market to see there’s an appetite for someone who wants to book 30 Plus rentals in our area. Historically people were booking stuff or tech jobs but because of COVID and whatnot law that business travel has stopped we put it on maybe in like late September. October and for the first few weeks, we’re getting no bites. We didn’t really set up everything properly anyway. But actually, surprisingly, maybe in the middle of October, we did get disapproved query that. So I want to stay for 51 days. And so that was really exciting for us. We knew right then we had a hard deadline of like early November to get everything done. So once we got that booking, and we realized it was the JIT, we started getting a little worried because at first we’re very lackadaisical, but we knew there was some key issues that had to be fixed with the home three big things that we’ve repaired one in the backyard, I had a fest that blew down about a year ago, I just didn’t fix it because I didn’t care and my neighbor didn’t care. Second thing was my house do look very appealing on the outside. I think curb appeal matters a lot. When people are first coming into an Airbnb, they want to feel like you’re going to a nice house, not just some crappy old shack just for a few $1,000 You can have the whole place repainted. And all the stucco cracks can be fixed. Third major issue was that in my personal bathroom, there were some deficiencies with a shower, it’s kind of hard to use come black grime here and there from my house, I don’t care. But if you want to have it be like a short term, fully furnished rental, it has to be up to a certain standard, so I had to completely remodel a bathroom.
And I think there’s something wrong with that shower, right, they wouldn’t be able to turn it on completely the way
well, the handle is broken, I couldn’t find a replacement for that handle. So you have to use like weird finicky like hand movements for it. And there was also a Jacuzzi on it but has been used for many years. So when used to koozie like black stuff would come out and no way to clean it because the blacks in the Jets, right? It was like let’s just replace the whole thing and start from scratch. And while talking to the contractors at first LD want to replace the shower and the bathtub but then they’re like if I replace that amount replace the tiles I’m also replace the flooring brewery that with the toilet, we must replace the vanities and the mirrors. And we replaced the entire thing, the whole bathroom,
which initially I was like kind of worried about all the costs are adding up did end up costing a good amount of money, we’ll go into the cost in a bit. Basically, you know, we’re prepping this Airbnb, we’re going to be gone for a couple years, will it really make back everything and I’m pretty sure it’ll be good. I think that this in the long run will be a good idea. Because if we end up kind of moving to different primary residences, this can act alone as an air b&b, a good amount of rental income for us. So it’d be great for us to kind of grow our wealth. Well,
I’ll say before you go that don’t forget that, you know, we’re spending the money. It’s like it’s sunk costs, that the house is actually physically better. Now, it does look a lot better. And I think it does make the value of the property increase as well.
Yeah, definitely. Now that we’ve done it, I’m just very pleased with what we’ve done. It’s always a good idea to fix up the home and actually make the property appreciate in value. In regards to the inquiry we got they paid a total of $8,796.32 on Airbnb, and the total paid to us out of that was $7,713.44. And dividing the total paid to us by 51 Nights is about $151 A night which we actually think we can boost in the future because this actually had no reviews at the time right so now that we’re racking up those reviews, getting people to stay hopefully getting some positive testimonials, we could possibly boost the price of our Airbnb crazy
that Airbnb got 50% on top what we got right now your $1,000 they then get a lot nice. But also, you know, like the price right now is also pretty moderate, because we’re also in the winter months. I think during spring and summer, that’s when travel really happens. You’re gonna get more interns coming from these different tech companies, maybe $10,000 a month. Who knows?
We’ll see that’s pretty ambitious. But we’ll see. I mean, I think right now that price we charged for this inquiry, it was pretty low compared to some of the other ones on market. Yeah. So hopefully we can boost it. Hopefully in the better months, the more in demand months, we can boost it even more. All right. Now let’s go back to the repairs that we mentioned the bathroom remodel ended up being about $6,000 out 4000 That was in labor. So it was kind of a difficult process because we actually had some communication issues with our contractor. It ended up taking longer than we had expected. We were worried he wasn’t going to come in at the times he was supposed to it did drag out and it was getting very close to when they were supposed to move. And it was actually what a day or two before the day before
I finalize everything Yeah, honestly, he did a great job though. A great job, a great price. Just some things happened that were unexpected, right? Like he told us that death in the family got to be gone for a week, which I understood and then later on, he finished the project. But then when we came back from a trip we checked everything and we found there were some issues here like some things were connected right there was a leaky and some pipes and Tom to come back to finish the job then he got into a car accident or that delayed things as well. So for us, we weren’t sure like he really injured from a car accident or is he just telling us as an excuse, we were 100% Sure, but he did eventually come back again at the very last day and he made everything work. So now everything’s good to go.
So the whole thing was really remodeled the bathtub, new shower, new toilet, new vanity, new light fixture new tower, new shower tiles, new tiles on the floors, everything is new and it was pretty gross before so I’m pretty happy that we fix that up. And before that we actually did fix the fence in the back that John mentioned and we did that before the bathroom
we spent $2,700 for the fence that’s broken into two components do $2 For the fence that is access to the backyard 2400 for the fence that separates us with our neighbor who is behind us So over that part $2,400 part, we split that 5050 With our neighbor behind us. So our total volume was 1500 for the fences.
Now we were also thinking about the paint of the exterior, it was something that felt a little more optional, but we decided to go for it turns out, we’re very happy we did that we did a white paint with black trim ended up looking really fresh, and we paid about $3,600 for it,
and include powerwashing of repairing the broken stucco painting, and you would damage and clean the paint and materials for the actual paint job itself.
We also did add like a little brown accent in the front too. So it looks actually very good. On top of that white and black look. Now we also have this ugly green mat in the front that was sort of to act like fake grass in the front yard, we decided to remove that and then put in grass seeds, we’re going to pay someone maybe $1,000 or something to like do that. And we actually saved on that expense. By doing it ourselves. We were like hoeing the lawn and watering things, planting seeds, it was good that we actually did that work because we save some money there. But a big chunk of this transition was we had to move a lot of this stuff in this one house and move it to another house that we’d be staying at for a couple months for that transition period. So I would say that was underestimated in terms of time that we actually left it kind of to the last week or two because this ended up being a very stressful process.
So we had a roommate at the time as well. And so it’s also hard to get him to clean up the stuff and you’re good to go as well. It’s a huge process, right, you’re living in a place for five plus years, you have a lot of old things, we actually got these garbage bags from the city to those garbage bags that we could come in and throw away all the unnecessary things that we have in your house difficulty
to have having that roommate was we wanted to keep taking photos while we clean up a room and then like put those on Airbnb. But you know, we were leaving that kind of to the last minute that we didn’t have everything removed so that we could do that while you
start moving things you realize how many things you have and how many trips you have to make some driving back and forth between one house to another house screaming like duffel bags worth of things over, dumping it over, going back and filling it up, coming back and dumping it over and over again.
And meanwhile, we also knew that we should put laminate cards around the house to signal to the guests like oh, this is how you use the shower or this is where the trash bags are and stuff like that. So those cards would be very helpful for the guests had to write those up. And we also had to create a guidebook and I thought the guidebook actually turned out really well. It had very instructional things. It had stuff about local eats local things to do local places to drink. So we had a lot of information in that guidebook, but you had to spend a lot of time writing that up. The way we created that was we actually bought a template on Etsy. As you guys know, I totally advocate digital products on Etsy. So if you ever need templates, where you can design something for an Airbnb guidebook, Etsy is a very useful marketplace to get those types of goods. So we ended up buying a template that we could use and fill in to create our guidebook for Airbnb. Now the total cost of the cards in the guidebook somehow added up to about $50 I was shocked at how much that cost. A lot of that pricing was for the laminate cards, I would say the printing of the guide book ended up being kind of expensive too. So maybe you guys should print it at home instead. Anyway, it’s $50 at Staples to get those all created. Meanwhile, we also got cleaners to start cleaning the house at first we’re gonna do that by ourselves. But we didn’t realize this was supposed to be like a deep clean now we went on turnover b&b To find our cleaner, who ended up doing a really great job, we didn’t realize again, it was a deep clean so they ended up being there for maybe three days cleaning our place. The reason why I didn’t think it was a deep clean was that we’re basically emptying the whole place and I thought um, scrubs here and there. But it ended up being a lot of work
or wiping off like years of grease on the cabinets completely cleaning out the refrigerator looks brand new, every like toilet and surface area was sparkling clean by tender done as well.
So we paid $175 for that. At first, when she realizes deep clean, she’s like, it’s gonna be 175 for this, but in the future, it’ll be $300, which we totally understand. So in the future, that will be the cost,
nothing we want to do is you want to make sure the guests are responsible and not throw crazy ragers. So we had some cameras set up on the exterior of the property and also in the laundry room to make sure they weren’t touching our personal stuff course you have to disclose all of that before they move in and let them know, Hey, you have cameras in these specific areas. Now I installed a nest Hello doorbell right in the front of the house a long time ago to actually get it to work and record video, you have to sign up for the program, the nest aware program, which cost around $10 per month. So not a huge expense. But really cool because you can see people walking through paying you whenever someone walks by you can listen to their conversations while they’re outside your house. So that’s kind of cool, like seeing them walk up for the first time and going like the nicest houses. And I guess we
also forgot to mention a few other things. We had a white couch that we purchased and we thought it looked good with the aesthetics of the place but it means that the couch gets really dirty easily. There were a lot of stains on the couch before they moved in. And we’re like do we need to buy a couch cover? So initially, we bought a couch cover and then turns out it looked really weird on the couch and not pretty at all. So we returned that and then we’re like okay, maybe we can clean it instead of having to buy a whole new couch watched a bunch of these YouTube videos on how to clean catches and then we tried this formula which seemed to make the couch a horse. So we’re like, okay, maybe we need to look at another video. So I bought this Bissell spotclean Pro that actually cleaned the couch really well, you just put the little formula in there, spray it on the couch and it vacuums it out the vacuum portion makes it so that it actually like comes off of the couch. I really changed the game the couch looks a lot nicer now. And then our stove was really disgusting as well. So we had to buy a whole new stove. We also bought remotes because we had last one there’s little things that we had to fix up. So there’s a long long list as you guys can see in this video. That’s why I had to make these daily lists of Airbnb things. Yeah, okay, we need to get this done by September 17. And by this week, it was very stressful. A lot of things we had to do. I would just keep you know, crossing out each little line item when we finish them. Luckily, we got everything done in time in the future. Definitely make sure you move out everything sooner than later. So you start that gradual process earlier. But other than that, I think we did pretty well with how we managed you know creating this Airbnb. Do you have any thoughts?
Feel last minute, very last minute realize that the cleaners use all of our paper towels. And we had a coffee machine about that and no coffee, right? I went to Walmart very last minute baldauf stuff, set up everything, make sure everything was perfectly clean, took another video and then left it
Yeah, I was actually thinking about now that you’re bringing that up, there was a lot of others. You know, like last minute things I had to film videos, I was literally on a work meeting and filming videos while I was on the meeting like this, because we wanted to get that before we left that Airbnb is going to be rented out for 51 Nights, we weren’t going to be able to go in and fix up our Airbnb list. So we had to do it prior to them coming in. So I got pictures and videos while on work meetings. And the cleaner mentioned that we needed our soaps and you know shampoos and conditioners to be filled to the brim. So I had to make trips out to target to like get more of these supplies for the bathrooms and stuff like that super last minute, that’s again, another thing to not do in the future. Make sure you start on these things earlier, for sure we had a hallway closet where we could allow guests to go in to get extra toilet paper, extra soaps and stuff like that. But we also had a stash that we put in the downstairs room with a tarp over it so that the cleaners can come in and restock when they needed to. We didn’t want to put all the supplies available for the guests because they could just take all of them, we want to make sure for the next booking the cleaner can you know use the actual supplies and put them back in.
I think also what’s really cool is that we are actually here for this first wave. And we’re actually leaving till early January. So we can kind of see the whole process. And you know, if there’s anything that comes up, we can be there and fix our processes before we actually leave or we will still be here. By time these current tests move out, we can go and take more photos, it’ll be better for the actual listing in the future. Yeah, we can restock on all supplies and make sure things are even better. I would
definitely recommend like if you’re going to remotely manage you probably need to be there for the first few bookings to make sure everything goes smoothly. You also want to have someone who can manage the property while you’re away, I feel like created a strong relationship with a cleaner they actually went to the same high school as him. Now she’s super intelligent and she was like super down to you know, help with everything. So we’re gonna try to work things out with her when it comes to anything we need to fix up. And I guess worst case scenario, we do have friends and family here. So if anything needs to be looked at need to do a supply room, maybe they can help out but because we’re here still we’re gonna be able to think on that more and figure out how to build a systems correctly to create a remotely managed Airbnb. Last thing I did want to note was that with 30 Day rentals The problem is if people book on weird months and weird days, it’s going to block off the chance for the Airbnb to booked on, you know, prior or later type of thing. So you have to kind of plan how that’s going to go and we actually did get an inquiry from someone who wanted to book our place at kind of a weird time at a discount and we decided we wanted to wait closer to that date before we allow for bookings with discounts and stuff like that because we didn’t want it to affect the chances of bookings at regular pricing but also if they’re going to book weird dates, it’s going to affect the ability to book between the current booking and that booking. So that’s one thing also to keep in mind if you’re going to do a 30 plus day Airbnb is that you want to make sure you limit your gaps as much as possible finally,
you know we are looking at different marketing channels as well so Airbnb is obviously the most popular one but there are other ones like VRBO second address and of course all these other ones that we’re looking into Alright,
so that basically wraps up our first Airbnb I hope you guys enjoy this episode on how we were able to create this and if you guys have any comments, let us know below what you guys think about our new Airbnb. If you guys want to try doing it yourselves or not, make sure to smash the like button subscribe, hit the bell button to be notified on my latest videos and make sure to subscribe to Sean’s channel again where he talks all about real estate investing. And I’ll see you guys in the next one.Transcribed by https://otter.ai