676: Rob's Real Talk: What Running Short-Term Rentals at Scale REALLY Looks Like

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Investing, Business

4.8 • 16.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2022

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The short-term rental game is not one to enter lightly. Regular rental property investors shudder at the constant turnover, consistent guest complaints, and far more intensive upkeep that vacation rental property owners pride themselves on. But is a week in the life of a self-managing short-term rental empire owner that bad? Well, maybe we’ll just have Rob Abasolo AKA Robuilt, YouTube’s go-to authority on vacation rental investing, answer this. Rob has had a troubling week to put it lightly. From guests somehow deadbolting themselves out of their homes to ACs being frozen solid, sending vacationers to the wrong address, and almost obliterating a $20,000 pool, many things can go wrong in the realm of short-term rentals. But, is the profit worth the pain? Dave Meyer from On The Market joins along this episode to act as Rob’s therapist/cheerleader as we go through a week’s worth of almost unbelievable events in the life of a vacation rental property owner. This episode highlights lessons learned from each mistake that you can use to build a better rental property portfolio, have a more seamless customer experience, and maybe get a little more “me and my burrito” time. In This Episode We Cover: Setting up fail-safes around your short-term rental so guests always have a way in Why sticking to your guns isn’t always the best way to build a strong vacation destination brand Supply chain shortages and how it’s severely delaying short-term rental owners Why you should never fully drain a pool (unless you like paying $20,000+ in repairs!) Using speed to your advantage and making guests feel heard as soon as a problem arises Staying in contact with your team so you can solve problems smarter And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Youtube Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Dave's BiggerPockets Profile Dave's Instagram The Ultimate Guide to Short-Term Rental Properties How I Perfected the Process of Self-Managing My Rentals Vacation Rentals Are Popular, But Are They Profitable? Book Mentioned in the Show: Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth by Avery Carl Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-676 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Check out our sponsor page! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the bigger pockets podcast show, 6.76.
0:04.0	This particular house didn't have a fridge, so we bought a fridge and that the wrong fridge was delivered to our house.
0:14.0	Not one time, Dave. Not two times, Dave. Not three times, Dave.
0:21.0	No. Not four times, Dave. Not five times, Dave.
0:28.0	Six times. Six way.
0:31.0	Times. You know, we...
0:33.0	What's up everybody? You got Rob here. We're shaking it up today.
0:36.0	I'm joined here by my co-host Dave Meyer as we go through the triumphs and tribulations and victories and downfalls of my short term rental portfolio,
0:45.0	completely transparent and out there for the world to learn from. How's it going Dave?
0:50.0	Great. Thanks for having me. I am very excited to be here because even though I come on and I do bigger news,
0:57.0	you and I have never hosted a show together. This is the inaugural journey of Dave and Rob.
1:04.0	I know the beginning of a budding bromance, as they say.
1:07.0	I can't wait. Well, it was fun doing this interview.
1:10.0	Yeah, so do you feel like... I know that you have some property management. I know you're kind of involved with some of your stuff,
1:16.0	but after this episode, how do you feel? Do you have the appetite to get into self-management on the short term rental side?
1:23.0	I don't just because it's not logistically really feasible for me because I live in Europe,
1:30.0	but honestly, I self-manage my long term rentals for the first eight years and you just learn so much.
1:41.0	I think it would be very difficult for me to have hired a property manager without having self-managed for a little bit.
1:50.0	But I just feel like you learn what to expect. That way, when a property manager comes to you and they're like,
1:58.0	this thing's broken, you don't blame the property manager. You know these things just kind of happen. You get used to it.
2:03.0	That's what I loved about the show is that you really just bear it all and explain to people how things go wrong, mistakes that you've made.
2:14.0	Honestly, a lot of them aren't even mistakes. Just things that go wrong that you can't really control, but it's super helpful to learn and see that even experience successful short term rental investors like yourself still have these challenges,
	...

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