Shampoo and Booze

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg We live in a part of the country where people like to go on vacation. The big attractions are hiking in the Shenandoah National Park and floating down the Shenandoah River. The popular season starts around March when Spring is creeping in and ends around November when the beautiful Fall leaves finally all disappear. December, January, and February are usually pretty quiet. In this episode, we brainstorm ways to attract people to our rental during these quiet months. While we can't imagine being fully booked, our goal is to at least attract the people who want to escape the city and have a quiet winter weekend. We will take advantage of the quiet time to do maintenance and some heavy cleaning, but letting our asset go empty for any length of time just feels wrong! Please share any suggestions if you also live in an area where bookings drop during a certain period of the year. By the way, here's the link to that article we mention about ocean front property on the East Coast being a dangerous bargain because of future flooding from Climate Change. (Or a great deal if you don't believe in it.) Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg We are almost done with stage one of our renovation project on our second rental. This means we have gutted the house, built out and added almost 400 square feet of new space, and put it under a roof. It only took us a month to do this. Stage two is doing the electric, plumbing, HVAC, and insulation. Stage three is sheet rock, laying down the floors, and finish work. Can we finish and get it rented by Springtime? Let's see! Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg April lives and hosts in beautiful Lake Tahoe, California. She moved there when she was young so she could ski all winter. Being smart, she bought a duplex where she could live on one side and rent the other half. Add being a bartender and she created a pretty great life. But recently when her long time tenant moved out, April decided to try Airbnb. Very quickly she was making much more money. Her duplex was an even better idea than she could have dreamed of when she bought it years ago. We enjoyed listening to April share how she updated her interior design to attract Airbnb guests, how she does check-ins, and her experience living right next to her renters. Plus, her plans for the future. Check out the super cute duplex in the photos below. We would love to buy a dulpex as well because it's often the price of a single home, but has two  units. If you live in a beautiful place, it's a great investment for renting to vacationers. Just ask questions in the comments. We'd love to hear your experience. Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg We're into our second week of renovating our second rental AKA the River House. The video and photos below show how we're gutting the house and adding on an additional room. We're uncovering everything to make sure we fix any issues and do it right the first time. The job will last at least twelve more weeks (maybe longer!?) This is our third house that we've fully renovated, so we're not amateurs. But it doesn't make it any less stressful. Handfuls of money are flying out the door each day. Even if when we plan all the details, some things remain out of our control. The good news? We know that this project will end, the house will be awesome, and we'll make money from it for years to come. It's that gap between now and then that's painful. Some people invest in 401k's. We invest in rental property. We'd love to hear other people's stories on renovations. Was it worth it? Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg After a month in Ireland, our Airbnb experiment was a success. It was fun to rent a car and simply drive around the country, spontaneously renting places to stay every couple days. I hope more people get hip to this style of travel. The fact that we could stay in our own little home (vs a stuffy hotel) and meet local people made the experience super enjoyable. We're already talking about taking another month long trip next year. That being said, staying in other people's rentals helps us know what works and what doesn't work. Here's a short list of things we didn't like: --Don’t charge people for extras. Just add essentials into your price. One guy wanted us to heat the cabin with wood, but make us pay 5 Euro for each basket of wood we used. --Hooks hooks hooks! In every room, bedroom and bathroom. Don't make your guests drape their clothes, coats etc over chairs. --Have nice, matching hangers (wood or bamboo). They're cheap! Too many places had just a handful of bent metal hangers with torn paper from the dry cleaners. --Provide liquid soap & shampoo. One guy had used bar soap in the shower and sink. That’s gross. --In this day and age, it's easy to give guests GPS coordinates to your place. That will take us right to your house when using Google Maps. You should even check that Google has your address correct. If not, it's easy to send Google a note to correct the map. Anyway, now that we're home, the renovation work on our second rental has started in earnest. We're waking up at 5:30am each morning to meet with our contractors. The goal is to get this second rental on Airbnb by March. Can we do it? Tune in to find out. Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg We recently met Daniel Rusteen in San Francisco. He used to work at Airbnb before he left to start his own business called Optimizemyairbnb.com that helps hosts show up higher in the search ranking and get more bookings. Though he didn't have any secrets to share, he was able to tell us some smart best practices when it comes to presenting your place on Airbnb. Some of the advice was common sense (or should be), but he also had good insights on what guests (and thus the Airbnb search engine) look for. We especially were paying attention to his thoughts on the three most important sections of your Airbnb listing. Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg Every year we take two long trips for about a month each time. We're usually doing some work on these trips, but we also love traveling because it keeps us feeling fresh and motivated when we get back home. When you work for yourself, burnout is the biggest pitfall. Travel is the great burnout antidote. For the next couple weeks, we'll be in Ireland. Several years ago when we were renovating our farmhouse, we dreamed of having our future Airbnb rental pay for our travel. Fast forward to the present and we can say this actually happening now! We've rented a car and will be driving around Ireland with really no plan. We're staying in little houses every two or three nights that we find on Airbnb. The money we spend on lodging is being paid for by the people renting our Airbnb back home where we have a friend acting as our manager. We're actually making money because we're staying in smaller, more inexpensive places. It's a dream come true. While we're on this Irish adventure, we're also busy planning our renovation for the river house. As soon as we get back, the big project begins. Contractors will be hired. Building material will be bought. Money will be spent (and spent and spent). Pressure will build. Stress will happen. So any planning, schedules, and cost predictions we do now will at least give us the illusion that we're on top of this big project. We just keep reminding ourselves that all the time and investment will be worth it when we get this second place rented and making money. Our October rental schedule is almost full booked as people come to our area to enjoy the cool weather and watch the leaves turn. But winter is coming so we know slow times are coming. Hope things are good with you. Here are link we discussed on the podcast: Airbnb has a simple tool to give you an idea of how much your place is worth if you rented it. We find it to be showing you top market value.Airbnb announced their anti-discrimination policy after there was evidence that some hosts were racial profiling. Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp4 Download .ogv After many months of construction and lots of crazy weather delays, the driveway is done. It feels glorious and triumphant to be able to drive up directly to the house, rather than climb 40 stairs to get there. We are so excited, we had to make a video to show it off! Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg As summer comes to a close, we're going to miss our back-to-back bookings. We'll do well in the Fall as people come to hike in the cool weather and enjoy the changing leaves. Winter will be slow except for the holidays and occasional weekend. Spring will open back up with people wanting to get into nature after the long cold. Then it's back to Summer again. It's important we get to know the patterns. We had a huge week as our driveway to the River House was completed. It felt like it would never get finished...until it was. We've put in our building application to do the house renovations which is becoming more and more ambitious. That's the next big job. Our goal is to finish by the Spring so we can get it rented, but we also know that it's going to take the time it's going to take, so timelines can and will get amended. Hope your rentals are going well! Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host!

iTunes   YouTube   Download .mp3  Download .ogg We're going to Ireland next month where we will be staying for about three weeks. Our plan is to rent a car and stay with Airbnb hosts around the country. We've already rented our first stay in Dublin. We rented places on Airbnb long before we were hosts. It's a great experience to go through the process of choosing a place, seeing the reality of the listing and the host's hospitality. Both good and bad experiences have taught us how to run our own rental. If you are an Airbnb host in Ireland. Email us! We'd love to check out your place and learn about your area. We have a almost full booked August with 27 of 31 nights booked. And our Fall is starting to get filled up too.  This is the link we mentioned about the study that shows that 30% of Airbnb listings in London are run by "professional landlords". This is the same argument in urban areas around the world. Hope you guys are having a good month! Thinking of becoming an Airbnb host or guest? Use our referral code and get $20 off your next stay or $80 credit if you become a host! P.S. Check out some of our driveway progress--