Julian Sage:                         00:00                     In this episode we’re talking about building out multiple Airbnb and short term rental units at once. So stay tuned.

Julian Sage:                         00:06                     Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life, then subscribe to this podcast today, come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation where we’ll be talking about starting automating and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.

Julian Sage:                         00:33                     Hey, welcome back host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. I’m Julian Sage and I’m with Jon Bell and we are talking about building out multiple properties at the same time and how you can do this at scale. So John, when you’re working with apartment complexes and landlords and you’re structuring these deals so that you can get multiple properties all at once, what does that look like when you’re trying to build them out at the same time?

Jon Bell:                               00:54                     All right, hosts. First of all, you pretty much just introduced yourself to a certain level of craziness. How do you get through it? Follow these steps: So step one is definitely have your design together. You want to make sure that somebody has either went out, either you or your designer, preferably a designer has gone out taking a look at the unit and has put together your design selections for all of the apartments. Hopefully, if you’ve been following what we’ve been talking about, you’ve done this before you’ve taken acquisition of the actual apartment or home or whatever it is. That way you have some lag time to get items ready to go or to the property on the day of moving. This is crucial when you’re trying to do things with some speed. All right, so you got the designer stuff there. The second thing is to place the order about four days ahead of moving date.

Jon Bell:                               01:49                     Now some items will get there a little bit early and what I found out is if I just talk to the landlord, I can ask them just to say, Hey, I ordered this thing. It’s arriving a little bit early. Can I put it in the apartment? Can I put it in the home? I don’t even want access to it. You can do it yourself if you like. In some cases they actually just give me the keys. Sometimes they go move in the item themselves so that helps. Right? In this step you want to make this one your centralized hub. That way you have everything in one spot. One apartment is the one that’s going to have all the boxes, all the mess, and the other apartments are just a little bit neater while you move stuff over into it. You want to make sure that they are going to get set up first.

Jon Bell:                               02:32                     These are probably going to be your first units online. That last department that you’re storing everything is going to be your very last apartment that comes online, so you just want to make sure that you keep the other places as clean as possible so your photographer can get there as early as possible. Step four in this whole process is to actually finish each apartment. I prefer to go and finish apartments completely one by one and not necessarily all at the same time. If I’m working with only one crew, I just want to make sure, Hey, we knocked out apartment number one, it is done.

Jon Bell:                               03:07                     At number two it’s done, number three, it’s done. Number four, it’s done. That way we are completing things and we’re not just keeping everything at the same status just by going to say, Hey, put the bed together there, put to bed together at this apartment. We do this over at this department. That just seems to draw things out in my opinion. So for me, the next step is before it’s completely done, I have scheduled the cleaners to come clean the unit. It’s very important that they know that this is a moving clean. That means there’s just going to be some extra stuff in my case, right? There’s going to be some boxes that they might have to move out. There’s going to be like some little white things that had come out of the packages, styrofoam that’s going to be everywhere.

Jon Bell:                               03:51                     That stuff is hard to get out of a hardwood floor. So you want to make sure that you get couple of cleanings in right before it goes live. You want to make sure as soon as you scheduled the cleaning that you scheduled your photographer. I even forgot a step. You need to make sure that the Comcast or whoever your utility person has already turned on all this stuff beforehand so that’s step zero before you sign, you need to already have this stuff kinda lined up. You know your moving date so make sure that they arrive the same time you get there. Last step in this process is to make sure that your photographer comes out. Soon as you get the photos back, you either have started setting up the listing and you’re just waiting for photos or you’re going to do it as soon as you get them back from the photographer.

Jon Bell:                               04:36                     Keep in mind, the quicker you are at market in this scenario, the faster you are getting money. If you were able to pick up that apartment with some incentive, like a free month of rent, this time, when I know that it takes me four days for a buildout because I know the quicker I finish it, the faster I started making money and I get ahead of this whole thing. I got a free month of rent. That’s like an extra unit to me. That’s key. We’re talking about scalability. I just got the down payment and acquisition costs for another apartment in the first month of me actually having a new apartment. Hopefully you heard that and understand what that means.

Julian Sage:                         05:16                     Jon, what you just shared is really key because when you are working deals out with these apartment complexes and these landlords and you’re saying, Hey, I’m going to come up to you and I’m going to rent out a bunch of rooms, but let’s see if we can work out a deal where maybe you can get the first month’s rent because you are filling that occupancy.

Julian Sage:                         05:32                     What you said though was that if you do get, let’s say something like first month’s rent for free, then you’re trying to get that unit up in the first four days because after that you could essentially get another unit and you might even be able to say like, Hey, I can, I can pick another unit up, or you might’ve been already accounting for those five properties. Maybe you really only had the budget for four, but because you’re already counting how much growth you’re going to be doing in the future with that property, you’re already accounting those maybe two additional properties if, if that’s what I’m understanding, Jon.

Jon Bell:                               06:01                     You got it. I mean, you could use those funds for anything. It could even just be what you need to even buy the furniture. In some cases I rent furniture just to make sure that my cash flow is right, but I rent the furniture on my first couple of units. That way when I started getting in the revenue on that free month, I could buy the furniture for the rest of all of the other units. It just helps with things like that. It’s really important that if we’re operating and running this business and we’re scaling, that we run it in an efficient manner where we’re not going to cash for just to get the next deal, but we’re being wise with the projections of cash that are coming in.

Julian Sage:                         06:46                     So question of the day, how many properties are you going to be picking up at the same time? Leave it in the comments section down below, and until next time, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review because that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community.,and I, then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation. Talk to you hosts in the next step episode. Keep on hosting.