Welcome to another Ask Me Anything (Ask Us Anything?) episode! Each week we’ll answer your questions on STR, real estate, OTAs, and everything in between.

Jesse asks:

We just purchased property in another state, which is zoned residential upstairs and commercial/office space downstairs. What tips do you have for managing a rental property from long-distance? And do you have any ideas for leveraging the commercial space on the first floor?

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. To hear your voice on the show and send a question to Sarah & Annette, visit Speakpipe.com/ThanksforvisitingAMA

Resources:

• Courtney’s original question from Episode 190

Thanks for Visiting is produced by Crate Media.

Mentioned in this episode:

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[00:00:05] You are listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. We believe hosting with heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette's background in business operation--

[00:00:14] And Sarah's extensive hospitality management and interior design experience, we have welcomed thousands of guests from over 30 countries, earning us over a million dollars and garnering us thousands of five-star reviews. We love sharing creative ways for your listing to stand out, serve your guests and be profitable. Each episode, we will have knowledgeable guests who bring value to the short-term rental industry.

[00:00:39] Or we will share our stories of our own experiences so you can implement actual improvements to your rentals. Whether you're experienced, new, or nervous to start your own short-term rental, we promise you'll feel right at home. Before we dive into the content, let's hear a word from our sponsor.

[00:01:01] Hello, listeners. Welcome back for another great week. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:01:04] I am Annette Grant, and together we are--

[00:01:06] Thanks for Visiting.

[00:01:08] And this is an AMA episode, Ask Me Anything, although it's an Ask Us Anything. So there's that. If you head to thanksforvisiting.me, in the upper right hand corner you'll see a red button. And when you go to that red button, it'll give you the opportunity to record your voice, record your question. We'll review these questions, and if we select your question, we will air it here on the show and of course, answer it, start a discussion around it. And you guys have been emailing us, giving us your $0.02. Annette, a few episodes ago we talked about someone who had a question about their rental agreement not being signed by an Airbnb guest.

[00:01:44] Yes, we want to follow up on that really quick.

[00:01:45] Yeah.

[00:01:46] So we dug a little deeper and kept going back and forth a little bit just through email. But I want to make this really clear to everybody. I did get some more information and the host I will say--

[00:02:00] Do a quick recap, Annette, if you don't mind.

[00:02:01] What happened is she has some cabin, she has kayaks and firepit places that she just really wants to make sure are secure-- but you should do that no matter if you have these things or not-- and just really found it problematic that a guest wasn't signing the rental agreement. And I think it's kind of a line in the sand if they're going to keep hosting on the OTAs like Airbnb. Here's what I want to let you know because Airbnb wasn't really supporting them. It was like, "Hey, we know it's your house rules, but until they've actually checked in, they're not breaking the house rules." So what I really want to get across in this back and forth, I've asked her if she reached out to the guest via telephone because I don't think the guest was being defiant and not wanting to sign. Listeners, I want everybody know people when they book vacations, they book it and then they just put it on their calendar and wait. And they check the instructions maybe a day or-- a certain people, and that's myself included. So other people I know you're dialed in, you want to know all the instructions, all the things ahead of time. But I want to let you know, there are so many emails coming in on everybody's accounts. There are so many app alerts. There's a lot of things going on. Please, if there is something that is a necessity for you, information for you to get across to your guest, pick up the phone. People will pick up. Leave them a message. And you would be surprised how quickly you can get your question answered or take care of the issue if you do pick up the phone. So it's still around. It's still a way to communicate. And I'm just telling you, especially if it's something that important, like your rental agreement, make sure that you are reaching out to them because a lot of hosts don't do that. So it might be a new step for them in the process. So they might think, "Hey, I booked it, I got the confirmation, I'm good to go." So I would just encourage you, please pick up the phone, give them a call, walk them through that a little bit.

[00:03:51] And with Airbnb being around now for-- what, 14 years since it started in 2008, obviously VRBO has been around longer than that, but it really has been a long time since travelers have only relied on direct bookings and with vacation rental companies and calling them and getting their reservation booked and all that. And like Annette said, in case anyone's still confused, so this host wants the guest to sign an additional agreement above and beyond what Airbnb has you agree to when you start an account because of these liabilities. But I once learned too that a guest hadn't set up their text messaging feature on their app. And so when I was messaging back on the Messenger via Airbnb, they were getting it like an email. They were getting an email. It wasn't like an email. It was an email. And so they were very confused about why it was coming through that way. And I was saying things like scroll the top and like, look at the rest-- so just remember that or continue to listen to these episodes and we'll all learn together about these different variations of a guest experience. But anyway, we wanted to follow up with that because we didn't know if the guest was just being defiant, if they were saying, "No, I won't sign the rental agreement." We're thinking--

[00:05:00] They just weren't getting the messages.

[00:05:01] They didn't know. And because a lot of vacationers guests don't think that we as hosts have this additional liability and that Airbnb won't protect us, just like hosts don't know that, guests don't know that. So we have to start educating them on business platform brought us together, but now we have to go above and beyond that and sign an agreement. But we have a new question today, Annette.

[00:05:23] Yes, let's do it. Jesse, I like this question, not that I don't like all the questions, but--

[00:05:28] Hi, guys. My name is Jesse. I'm from Colorado and wanted to say I found you guys about two weeks ago and it's been a crazy little journey down the rabbit hole for your podcast. And I appreciate all the information you put out there. It's been really helpful. My wife and I just started a short-term rental at the back of our property in a tiny home, and it's been super helpful for what I've discovered in the last two weeks. So thank you for that. We just got under contract on a property in Missouri, so several states away, that is four apartments upstairs and four office spaces downstairs. Two of the apartments are rented long term, two are going to be vacant. And I plan to short-term rent those and wanted to see if you guys had any information or tips to stand up a property from another state. Obviously, I'll be traveling out there for some of it, but I won't be there for all of it. So I was thinking of knocking on one of the doors for the other long terms and seeing if they'd exist. Also, there's an office space downstairs that is vacant and wanted to see if you guys had any ideas or suggestions as far as how to monetize that or use that in the short-term rental. It can't be turned into residential. It needs to stay commercial office. But I thought you guys might have some creative ideas to get some cash flow coming from that vacant spot, too. Thanks so much. Really appreciate all the info. Thank you.

[00:06:50] You're welcome, Jesse.

[00:06:51] Great question and congrats on all the things, all the doors, all the properties. So we're going to riff on this because we listened to this and had a lot of ideas out of the gate. So we agree the two vacant ones, this is a great opportunity to test short-term rental there. We agree yes, the people that are already living in the building and they are there, to me, they are your number one allies. Those are the people you want to get to know. If you can get an idea of how long they've lived there previously too, I think that might be really juicy to know how much they know the neighborhood and know all the things that are going on in town. But yes, that would be my first point of contact for the people that are there on site and they can hopefully help you with that, plus give them transparency of what you plan on doing with those two doors.

[00:07:40] Adding on to what Annette said, I learned this the hard way. We inherited some tenants with one of our multi families. And at first I went and knocked the door and I said, "Hey, we're thinking of doing short-term rental on these units." And so they then had a lot of opinions on what we should do. You knock on the door and you say, "I will be turning these units into short-term rentals. And we are looking for an inspector or an innkeeper type situation." And then already have in mind too--

[00:08:13] A compensation model.

[00:08:15] Yes, how do you plan on-- because again, you want to incentivize them to help you out. That being said, I'm saying this out loud, it's like you do need to interview these people just like you would any other trusted resource. So if you have any background on these tenants and their payment history and maybe get to know them first and as you drive to the rental get set up, get to know them, and then offer them this opportunity because maybe they're not a good fit to be your number one ally. But I think Jesse did ask, what should you do since you're managing it from afar. And hands down, no matter what, whether it's your tenant or someone else, a third party boots on the ground is going to be life changing for you. And I guarantee you in your area, there's going to be someone who, if they're not already doing their own short-term rental, there's someone who's interested in short-term rentals. They might love the opportunity to get their foot in the door.

[00:09:08] You can Google "short-term rental management" and see who pops up in your area. The other thing we want to offer just really quick, since you are doing this in part, number one, get a device that can track noise. I would do that from day one, guest one, especially in that building. You do have long term tenants and you're going to have short term. So I would just right out of the gate let everybody know you're going to have those noise monitors so you can help with that and have a backup for your backup of your backup of your key. So hopefully you follow us on Instagram. We do a lot of videos there showing how we do the key backup. But let's get to this commercial space.

[00:09:46] One more idea. To find your boots on the ground, there's also a ton of Facebook groups that you could join or really if you have a realtor who helped you find this property, ask them who might be interested on the boots. The boots on ground is going to be important because they're going to help you verify the cleaner's work. You know what I mean? Be able to go to the property should anything go down. So anyway, Facebook groups and also asking a realtor if they know of anybody. But yes, we have tons of idea for your commercial property.

[00:10:11] And then the commercial space, similarly, you could obviously go to a broker and see if they could help you out, but we could do some of a rental version there too. So there are so many people that are looking for places to produce content. You could make it a content creation studio. You can make it a pure space for meetings. You could have podcasts recording in there. This is one of those things I would just get creative with. And again, that person, that boots on the ground, depending on what type of entrepreneurial spirit they have, they might be able to assist you with this. But I would definitely check out Purespace.com. I would check out podcasts recording, any sort of content creation in that area and see if you have any competition. There are a lot of places that do pop up, photo studios that can rent by the hour or by the day. So it could be some sort of event space.

[00:11:06] Yeah, just to give you some ideas, Jesse, and I'm sure our listeners also have some thoughts here, but there is a place in Columbus, Ohio, that is literally just white painted cinder blocks. It's empty space, cement ground. And I think they have a few property types of like a table and a backdrop on site. And I think they charge like 75 bucks an hour for photographers or Instagram or influencers to come in and use that white space as a place to, like Annette said, create content. But just to give you an idea of--, I mean, you don't have to, you could just paint the walls white, have a few things in there for people to use, and charge by the hour that way.

[00:11:42] And also, again, go to your neighbors that are already renting if you know how long they might have a friend or family member that wants to start a new business or they might want to expand, this is something I found with commercial space a lot, a lot of times some of the tenants want more space. So you might be able to offer them more space. You run the numbers on how long have they been there, have they been a great tenant for years and years and years, maybe just giving them a little extra space for a certain amount might be worth it to you too. So really take a look and dig in with what you're already working with there in the commercial space.

[00:12:19] But, Jesse, I think we're excited to answer this question because Annette and I want a space just like this one.

[00:12:21] Yes, we're jealous of your space.

[00:12:24] So congratulations. Keep us posted. Jesse, if you don't already follow us on Instagram, DM us how this is going for you @thanksforvisiting_ and keep us updated and we can also update our audience. I know they love to know what happens after these episodes.

[00:12:37] And, Jesse, leave us a review. Everyone listening, if you guys could leave us a review, we would love it. It helps us get our message out to more listeners. So if you listen to us on Apple, you can leave us a written review there, which would be wonderful. If you listen to us on Spotify, just give us a little five-star review there. We appreciate it.

[00:12:57] We really do. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:13:00] I'm Annette Grant. And together we are--

[00:13:02] Thanks for Visiting.