Managing Short Term Rental Units Remotely

In this episode, Jon Bell and Julian Sage talk about building out short term rental units remotely, getting those set up, and managing them.

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Full Interview Transcript

Jon Bell:                               00:00                     In this episode we’re talking about managing remote units.

Julian Sage:                         00:04                     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.

Jon Bell:                               00:31                     All right, welcome back hosts. I’m Jon Bell. I’m here with Julian Sage and we’re talking about scalability and bringing up your unit count, but also adding in those remote locations. This might be the desirable locations that you want to be at. Maybe it is your part time vacation home, but you also want to short term rental while you’re not there. So how do you get those units up and going? That’s what we’re talking about today.

Julian Sage:                         00:55                     So when we were talking about the framework for your vacation rental machine, one of the things that we stressed was if it’s possible, you should always try to do this in your backyard because it’s going to be so much easier for you to be able to go and check on the place. You are probably going to be going back and forth. There is going to be more of a personal touch. A lot of people think that this is just some type of passive business where they will just get a property and then just start making money but this isn’t a passive business. There is a large learning curve and there is a lot of upfront work initially but let’s say you are in a situation, you’re in a place where managing properties remotely is not going to be possible but there are systems that you will be able to put in place to be able to do this but you are going to need to have all your T’s crossed and all your I’s dotted if you are going to be building out properties remotely and that might have to mean going out there and physically going to the property. So Jon, out of the 34 properties that you do manage currently, there are a few properties that are remote. What’s your process been like with building those out and getting those set up and how are you currently managing those?

Jon Bell:                               01:58                     You know, it does add a layer of complexity just to day to day management of things. One of the things, like you just said, if you’ve managed some units in your backyard pretty close to you, you know the pace and the rhythm of stuff. So you’re not really taken back when you start somewhere else in a remote location. Or maybe you have certain other things going on to where you can’t physically go there and actually do whatever you need to do yourself. So solving the build out piece of just a remote location is going to be your hardest point. The hardest thing you’re really going to have to do is just organize that because it’s really organizing probably multiple people, multiple vendors that might even have to come in and do certain things to the home. If you’re remote, you just need somebody there who is trusted enough to be around all this stuff that you trust to dictate where stuff needs to go, whether that means you’re installing a security system or something like that.

Jon Bell:                               02:56                     So you just need to make sure that you have somebody. An assistant is one of those people that actually can ease everyday life. For me, in my business, I have an assistant. She runs the day to day operations of everything. Without her running the day to day stuff, I really would have to just be quitting my other job, running this thing full time. It would probably have me running around just as I have her running around and that is not what I want to do, right? I’m an owner of a business. I want to make my business work for me, not me work for it. So this is very important that you have somebody, some boots on the ground that can go handle some of these little situations. Like for instance, maybe a lock needs batteries. Who wants to go leave their day job, go put batteries in the lock just to come back?

Jon Bell:                               03:44                     Or maybe had to take vacation, right? That doesn’t even work. If I was just off and even still just at home, I don’t want to go anywhere and put batteries in anywhere. I don’t even want to go deliver a blanket if I don’t have to. So you want to make sure one, your systems and standards are tight at the same time, you want somebody that can definitely couple and add things to your business that can actually run and do those things on the ground that needs to be solved just to make things efficient and operate smoothly

Julian Sage:                         04:14                     And for finding the people that might be able to act as an assistant or doing the build out remotely, you can use, like in some of the previous episodes where we were talking about building your a team. One of the things that you can use is a service like Thumbtack or task rabbit, one of these tools where there are people that are looking for work and you can use those people to see if maybe they can take the boxes in for you. Maybe they are interested in some different type of work, maybe they would even partner with you. That’s another option that you can do is if there is somebody remote, maybe you can partner on the deal where they’re setting it up and they do maybe more of the boots on the ground management and you are doing more of the operational behind the scenes management.

Julian Sage:                         04:54                     If you do have a family member or someone that is there that can do the build out for you, that’s another way too, but really the big part is getting the unit stood up because once you have the units stood up and you have the cleaner at the property that is able to make sure that your checklist that we were talking about in the previous episode is there, then everything really can at this point be handled remotely. So Jon, what’s the type of person that you would be looking for if you were going to be having someone remotely managing your property?

Jon Bell:                               05:21                     Well, more so just to have somebody as an assistant, right? You want to make sure that whoever you’re bringing onto your team they have to be almost like a person that you would find in a hotel. This is a hospitality business, right? So we need to make sure that one, they look presentable and pleasant in front of people. Just in case they have the rare chance of interacting with the guests. You want to make sure that they’re able to handle themselves and that tarnish whatever brand that you have. So that was really key when I was hiring an assistant for myself. I wanted to make sure, Hey, this person just has to kind of be a little upbeat. They got to kind of have a good outlook on life in general. Just be happy. Right? And that’s one of the things that my assistant brings to the table is that she is really just energetic and she’s really happy just to do her job.

Jon Bell:                               06:11                     When she runs into people, she’s very pleasant. Some people leave little comments saying, Hey, you know, I ran into the staff member and she was great. That’s the stuff that you want to add to your business. You want to make sure that each layer that you’re putting on top of this business, is going to compliment each other. You don’t want to disrupt it by just getting somebody that’s super cheap or getting somebody that doesn’t really fit. You can’t really help everybody out. Let’s make sure that you’re not just handing off a task to somebody just to help them out and they’re not really a compliment to what you’re trying to do.

Julian Sage:                         06:45                     So question of the day, do you have any properties that you’re managing remotely and how has that experience been for you? Leave it in the comment 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 episode, keep on hosting.

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