The Secret to Boosting Your Income: Thrive in a Regulated World!

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Airbnb has changed, and if you don’t change with it, you could see your income start to dwindle. The good news? If you get ahead of the curve, you could make SUBSTANTIALLY more money from every short-term rental you own, EVEN if you’re not in a vacation destination. So, what do you need to do NOW to get more guests, bookings, and money from your short-term rental investment in 2024 and 2025? Experienced short-term rental investor and CEO of Rent to Retirement, Zach Lemaster, is here to help.You may know Zach as the turnkey rental guy, but his skills go FAR beyond long-term rentals. Zach owns the highest-grossing short-term rental in the ever-popular Breckenridge, Colorado. This is a HOT short-term rental market with fierce competition, but even so, Zach’s vacation rental stands out from the rest. How did he do it, and what changes can YOU make to your Airbnb experience to become the best in your area?Today, Zach gives a masterclass on Airbnb and short-term rental hosting. He covers market trends he’s seen in 2024 and into 2025, dodging regulations, and what to look at BEFORE you buy. Zach even shares easy ways to stand out and the amenities that will wow your guests so they keep coming back for more. Plus, he’ll give tips on what you can do NOW with your current Airbnb to quickly increase bookings! 
Henry:What is going on in the short-term rental space and how can you optimize yours? Are the new regulations coming going to kill off short-term rentals? And how much of my portfolio should be short-term rentals? Today we have an insider chat with a seasoned investor who isn’t Rob Abasolo or Tony Robinson, and he’s going to answer all of these questions for us on today’s episode.Hello Investors. I’m your host Henry Washington, and today I’m doing a solo show as our other podcast hosts are taking some long needed PTO. Today we’re gonna be talking to a fan favorite guest, Zach Lemaster. Zach’s last appearance on the BiggerPockets podcast has over 100,000 YouTube views. So this is a must listen. Today we’re gonna be discussing the state of the short-term rental market, and we’ll talk about market trends. We’re gonna talk about Zach’s actual short-term rental portfolio and the specific strategies he uses to make the most profit on these properties. We’ll discuss regulation and how it is changing the STR landscape, but we’ll also talk about how Zach looks at this and uses it to mitigate his risk. We’ll discuss how much of our portfolios should be short-term rentals in comparison to the rest of our portfolio at large. And then lastly, we’ll talk about what does the short-term rental market look like beyond 2025? We also wanted to mention that BiggerPockets host a conference every year, and this year it’s in Mexico. So if you wanna learn real estate strategies and get tools to grow as an investor, make sure to visit www.biggerpockets.com/mexico to learn more. All right, let’s bring on Zach Lemaster. Zach Lemaster, welcome to the show.
Zach:Henry Washington, the man, the myth, the legend. I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Henry:It’s good. I’m glad I get to finally like officially meet you and have a conversation. ’cause we have some, we have some ties going back apparently.
Zach:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Where she just learned about. That’s great.
Henry:Awesome. So before we jump into this conversation, I have to tell you, I had the pleasure of getting to stay at one of your short term rentals out in Breckenridge. And wow, it was an amazing experience. And I wanna say thank you because I heard you were the one who got us this amazing cater or not catered. It was you brought in a private chef and cooked us dinner and I am trying to lose weight and you made it very difficult for me, but I had an amazing, fantastic experience. So thank you so much for that.
Zach:Yeah, man, for sure. And uh, that was not something that was planned. Uh, you know, the BP Host retreat was, was booked just naturally by you guys. It just so happened to be one of our houses and yeah. Yeah. I think we can talk about some of the things that we do at that house in particular that allow us to be successful in today’s short term market, but things like really the amenities and that the personal touches, hopefully you were able to feel that, you know, and, and see some of those things when you were there,
Henry:You had everything on the head, like what you were trying to accomplish, you did accomplish. And is this something that you’ve always done or is this in response to kind of what’s going on in the short term rental market today? So maybe you can provide some color as to what you see, kind of what’s going on in the short term rental market today and how you guys are adapting to that.
Zach:Yeah, absolutely. And I came prepared with probably 15 bullet points of like, perfect, hey, these are, these are the key things that if you want to be successful in today’s short term market, regardless of where you’re investing or if you haven’t invested yet, if you’re just getting started, like these are the key takeaways. So stay tuned for that. But general market trends that we’re seeing right now, and this was this will am mirror a little bit of just the real estate market in general, is that, you know, we saw, if you look back from like 2019 to 2020 through, through the pandemic, right, there’s this huge spike in short-term rental bookings and domestic travel in general as people weren’t traveling internationally. And so there’s just this huge increase in, in all the stats, right? All the, your, your rev par, which is your revenue per variable room, your a DR average daily rate, your occupancy time, like all these things, your overall revenue shot up and people, there’s this huge boom for short term rentals.And then interest rates, you know, we get post pandemic, international travel opens back up, um, people start to, you know, look at, uh, different locations for, for traveling and there’s the, there’s drop off interest rates increase as well. And so really if you look at a line graph from 2020 through 2022, it’s just up into the, up into the right, similar to the real estate market for pricing, right? And, and rents. And then we saw a kind of a dip down in a normalization in 23 and then 24 we’re starting to go back up, uh, you know, back up to a normal, normal market. And we’re starting to see upward trends again. So generally supply, you know, there’s about 1.75 million available short-term rentals in the US at any given point in time. Supplies slowly increasing a little bit that that’s been dampened somewhat because of still interest rates and people not selling their houses.It’s a, I mean, that matches the real estate market. Occupancy timeframe is backed down to about average, which is about 55%. Uh, your a DR, your average daily rate from 23 to 24 is up about 2% as well as your revenue per available room. So all that being said, we’re starting to see an upward trend, but we’ve normalized, we’ve normalized in short-term rentals. There’s a lot of people wondering that got on the short-term rental train in, uh, during covid times ’cause they’re like, ah, man, I can buy any property and make a cash flow, right? Because occupancy times are, or occupancy percentages are way up and revenue’s way up. And then things crashed a a little bit in a lot of areas. Actually the coastal and the mountain areas saw the biggest decrease, but they also saw the biggest boom during the pandemic. So all, again, all this being said, I think we’re starting to see some normalcy and from 23 to 24 we’re already on upward trends and it’s more of a normal market. So I think that’s a, that’s a good thing
Henry:Really with short term rentals. It’s almost like any new industry, like when it first gets started, it’s like the wild west out there and people are figuring out this gold rush and then they’ve found the gold rush. Everybody rushes to the gold, right? And then regulation starts to happen and things start to come in and things kind of take a dip down. And then once all that kind of settles, then you start to see kind of what this market’s really gonna look like. So now in 2024, you don’t have the massive amount of people like rushing to either be short-term rental operators or staying in short-term rental operators. What are you learning about your clients or customers that are coming to stay? Is it the same people that were coming when it was a gold rush and how are you catering to these people?
Zach:Some general trends that we’re seeing from, uh, our, not we, we don’t call ’em our at tenant, more our guests ’cause we’re really truly in the hospitality business. That’s the way that I view the, the short term business. Um, one people because we’re squeezed a little bit economically, right? With, with inflation and with travel expenses and everything else. Um, people are looking for better, better deals. Uh, this means lower, lower price points, more competitive pricing. Um, they are booking. One big trend we’ve seen that is just consistently changing is the booking lead time. And we call this booking pace, but like the booking lead time of how far out do people book. And that’s really, really important on understanding dynamic pricing. That is one thing that you, you have to, you have to dial in as dynamic pricing and probably not do it yourself. Do use a resource.Um, some of the resources we, we use would be like beyond pricing wheelhouse. Uh, price Labs is another, all those are pricing software where it actually looks out and compares data points and actually changes prices for you. That’s really, really important. But people are starting to book very close. Uh, and so at kind of our, our trend in pricing is far out. We usually book, uh, the rates are pretty high as people book their, you know, especially the larger groups, they’ll book out, you know, a year in advance for certain things. And then you see this dip down, but actually you see quite a bit of increase as you get much closer. You would think it’s the opposite as counterintuitive where this pricing keeps going lower right until you just book it out. ’cause you’re desperate to get someone in there. But because people are booking so close to when their travel is, and this is a trend that’s consistently regardless, you know, that it hasn’t ever extended, um, this is a trend that we, we wanna be paying attention to.Um, we also see that people want to be more conscious about like what can they do. Environmentally friendly options are, are important to people as well. Those things are more, uh, more relevant today than they previously were. But also amenities, one thing that’s really helped us be successful is what we call, uh, focusing on experiential travel. Doing things like lifestyle shoots where you actually have actors come in and then showing that on your listing, you’re, you’re showing people that what they’re doing right in, in not only in the house, sitting down at dinner with, with a group of people, but also in the local amenities so they can actually visualize themselves if there’s a river, people walking along the river, if there’s a, if there’s a golf course, people golfing, you know, if you’re skiing, obviously you wanna do that stuff or snowmobiling like you guys did. So I mean, experiential travel, I think showcasing that, that’s been one thing that’s allowed us to kind of separate ourselves from the norm.
Henry:What you’re saying is after 2023 going into 2024, now you have to be a better business operator, right? Yeah. It’s just like anything, if you’ve got, if you’ve got less clients than you had during this covid gold rush, then you need to maximize the clients that you have. And the best way to do that is to look at the data, understand who your customers are, understand why they’re coming to see you, understand what they’re doing while they’re there. Understand how to dynamically price your property so that you are optimizing the people who are wanting to stay. And so dynamic pricing for those who don’t understand it, is, it’s essentially using a tool to help optimize your pricing during different times. So the price will automatically raise and lower during different times in order to best benefit you the business. So you don’t have to manually sit there and watch all day long and change the pricing to the best interest. It’s using data to help you maximize your price. And so what I’m hearing is you, the people who are the best operators understand the data and understand their customers and then they make changes to their business model related to those customers. Is that what I’m hearing?
Zach:A hundred percent Henry. And you hit the nail on the head. It’s, it’s approaching this like a business, right? Because to your earlier point in the wild West Days, anyone could be really successful in short-term rentals, right? Throw it on Airbnb VRBO and you, you’re likely gonna be successful. Well, well times have changed because people have caught on, right? There’s a lot of people jumping into, uh, the industry. There’s like something along the lines like 50% more short-term rentals during covid where yeah. You know, brought to the market. It’s just crazy. And so now, now you have to separate yourself out from the crowd. You have to approach this like a business. You have to look at the data. Um, and yeah, those are important key things to be successful today.
Henry:100%. I have four short-term rentals. Well, yeah, I have four short-term rentals and two of them are catered to more of the everyday person coming to the area who’s probably gonna work while they’re here. Uh, maybe at the corporate office or maybe doing some sort of other, uh, maybe doing some sort of other work, but they’re not really geared toward travelers coming in for an experience. And then I have another Airbnb that is very geared toward the traveler coming in to experience what the area has to offer. But both of those have required me to understand who wants to stay in that property because of where it’s located and what’s around it. And that has helped me maintain a level of success during what a lot of people said is a tough time for Airbnb or Airbnb is dead. Alright, we have to take one quick break, but when we come back we’ll hear about how Zack LeMaster is managing to stand out in the short-term rental space. Hey investors, we have Zack LeMaster on the show today talking about the viability of short-term rentals in a postulation world. Let’s jump back in. What are you guys doing specifically to understand like who’s coming to stay at your different properties? Well,
Zach:I’ll talk about what we are doing, but I also, I think if you’re someone thinking about getting into the Airbnb space, I think you made an extremely relevant point that I wanna make sure people didn’t miss. Um, so what we’re doing, uh, is, is focusing on, as I mentioned, we we focus on travel destinations, right? These are ski towns, Colorado, these are large houses. That’s also something I think if you’re looking at like a saturation level for a location. Look, if you’re buying a three bedroom condo and there’s a hundred other three bedroom condos, , yes. Your pricing is like you’re in this box, right? Yes. There’s not much you can do to stand outside of that box. But if you have a unique property, if you have unique amenities, if you have a larger property where there’s less inventory, like that allows you to have more flexibility.’cause for us, like example, we don’t have a ceiling on our pricing because there’s just not that much inventory. But I think the point that you brought up was really, really relevant, Henry, is that focusing on areas that there maybe the non-conforming areas for travel and, and looking at, just if you read Air DNA, that’s a great resource for just a lot of stats and about just market trends and to look at saturation for locations and things like that. They just brought out an article that was pointing out that exact point, is that where the best opportunities that they feel for short-term rentals right now are some of these locations that are not travel locations? Yes. Military installations, yes. College towns. College towns are huge. You know, with rent retirement, we do some new construction in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. That’s where the U of A is. Uh, and we do short-term rentals there. That’s, I mean, that’s gonna,
Henry:Well it’s, well it’s uh, it’s where the other U of A is . So I live in northwest Arkansas and we have the University of Arkansas Razorback. So we are, we are the U of A and then the University of Alabama is the other U of a I just wanted to make sure that we’re
Zach:All right. Roll tide, but, uh, let’s, let’s go. But yeah, I mean, looking at those locations, I think, you know, that’s, that’s I think where the opportunity is and that’s what the statistics are showing is that you can actually be successful in a short-term rental because also there’s a lot of, still, there’s still traveling occupations, right? There’s still, um, success and people operating short-term rentals during travel season, midterm rental, like having a hybrid approach. Um, I mean, you know, things to think about there. And
Henry:One of the things that people are very concerned about when they think about short-term rentals or operating short-term rentals is going into a market and then having regulation. And as we were just talking about, understanding where you’re going and, and what is there and what potentially may be coming to that area is a big deal. Like, for example, where I have my Airbnbs, and if you think about my market specifically, there’s about four cities right on top of each other. I only do Airbnb in one of those cities, and I only do it in that city because we did the research and we understood a, there are not enough hotels to accommodate the amount of travelers that come to the area that makes the city more open to short-term rentals because they definitely want the travelers and the travelers dollars that come with it. And the travelers need a place to stay. And so there may be less regulation in that area than in a place that has more of a hotel saturation and wants the dollars to go into the hotel industry. So are you researching those types of things before you buy a property in an area
Zach:That’s essential, absolutely mean. Just look at what happened with, with Hawaii and some of these areas like Honolulu, right? And some of the, just the deep regulation that’s, that’s coming into these areas, hopefully, uh, if you’re already in an area, you get grandfathered in, um, if they’re reducing, you know, short-term rental licensing or not allowing it. Same thing happened in Breckenridge, Colorado, uh, the entire town. There’s no more short-term licenses except for like your s skis ski out resort zone one properties. Um, that was, it’s, it’s tough for those people. Right? So, um, to your point though, researching ahead of time regulation is really important. We like areas that have established regulation. So there’s, there’s no uncertainty because if you’re, if you’re solely relying on a short-term rental income and something changes in that market or regulation changes, hopefully you can operate it like as a midterm rental or a long-term rental, but you don’t want that, you know, your, your knees cut out from underneath it, right. For your income.
Henry:How are you breaking into markets that already have established regulation? What does that look like?
Zach:It’s focusing on the areas that you can still, you can still buy properties. So for, we’ll use my, uh, area that we’re, we’re investing in where you guys, you know, recently traveled to, to Breckenridge. So the town of Breckenridge, no more short-term rentals for anybody. Um, you sell your property, and this is difficult for people that own property. They’re trying to sell it because you can’t, you know, you limits your buyers. Now, uh, people can’t have that ancillary income. Uh, there’s one small area which are ski and ski out luxury houses, like $10 million homes or, you know, those can still be short term rentals and you can transfer licensing. Um, so a couple different strategies we’ve applied there is that looking at adjacent towns, for example, we invest in Blue River, which is five miles from downtown Breckenridge, but it’s a different district. So being conscious about things like that, you can still operate short-term rentals there and receive licensing.Um, another thing that we’ve looked at in areas that may be restrictive, there’s some sellers, we’ve done some sellers, some creative finance deals on some of the properties we’ve acquired. Uh, and we’ve had to get creative with them. So yes, um, some things that we’ve done would be things like taking over an LLC, you know, take taking ownership or partnering of that LLC where the licensing can transfer. Um, and we’re making sure we’re speaking with the county about that to, to ensure we’re not, you know, crossing any red tape or anything like that. So just certain things like that. But just knowing the regulation going in here. Here’s another key thing too that I, I learned the hard way. Even if the town allows short-term rentals, if you’re in an area that has an HOA an HOA can restrict short-term rentals outta nowhere. Um, you know, so I mean that’s, that’s something to be conscious of and understanding what are, what are all the challenges potentially to prohibit you from being a successful short-term operator. But it goes down to, like you said, research and data, like know that going in.
Henry:So on that note, you have existing properties in markets, you’ve researched, how are you protecting yourself or, or how might you pivot if you have regulation or additional regulation come in that stops you from operating your property how you want to? Yeah,
Zach:I would say that if that changes, hopefully we would be that we’re, we’re grandfathered in because we’re, we have an existing presence there. But if that doesn’t happen, kind of worst case scenario, uh, yeah, there’s, there’s some properties that we would be in a tough position because like the property that you guys stayed at, you know, that’s a 10,000 square foot house, likely no one’s gonna rent that for near the amount that we could on a long-term basis, right? Yeah. Um, so that would, that would be a tough challenge. But I think what we’re doing is mitigating our risk. Not all my, actually a small portion of my portfolio is in short-term rentals. For someone that’s just breaking into the game, I would say look at other potential exit, exit strategies. And this is great advice just for real estate in general, have contingency plans.You guys have contingency plans? Yes. If the short-term rental doesn’t go, what are the midterm rental rates? What are long-term rental rates? You know, we have some people that will come in and intentionally buy a new construction property with us. They’ll furnish it, they’ll operate as a short-term rental, and they’re mainly doing this for tax purposes, so they can do the accelerated depreciation and cost ag studies, and then they’ll turn it over as a furnished long-term rental and actually be very successful renting a furnished long-term rental at much higher rates than they would an unfurnished long-term rental. Uh, but just being conscious of, you know, your, your other options for us though, like that’s not a hundred percent of our portfolio. If that was taken away from us, we would probably, probably liquidate the property. Yep. Um, you know, and, and, uh, not be in a real terrible position because we still have other assets that are producing income in, in other areas.
Henry:Totally agree with you. On my short term rent, like I said, I’ve got four short-term rentals and probably about a portfolio of 130 rentals total. Right? So very small percentage. What would you say your, your percentage of short-term to other asset types?
Zach:Um, the, the value wise, it is much higher value wise than it is, uh, because we, we own these larger properties. Yeah. Uh, number wise, it’s, it’s much smaller. I mean, we, we have, you know, half a dozen short-term rentals as well. Um, but it’s, it’s probably about 20%, 15 to 20% of, of overall,
Henry:I think it’s smart and I think it’s just something people need to be aware of. Like this is part of the risk. Like there is no investing in real estate of any capacity or any investing in general that comes, that does not come with some level of risk. Right. You just need to understand what that is going into it and understand if you can mitigate it. That’s why I think having a plan where you’re taking some of your revenue and paying down some of these assets as you’re operating them and building income off of them helps limit your risk. Obviously if you have to convert that property into some other type of asset that brings in income, that may be less income if that property’s paid off, right, you can still make money. So you just have to understand what’s my level of risk? Where am I looking to invest?What happens if the worst case scenario comes and can I weather that storm, right? It’s just like any other business operation. But I think people get so scared when they think about short term rentals because of regulation that they think they can’t make money. No, you can, you just have to do the research on the front side, invest in areas where you think it’s possible for you to operate and then be prepared to pivot in the short term. It shouldn’t be a surprise to you if one of these risks comes, you should have known that this was a risk on the front side. You get into that,
Zach:And that’s, that’s real estate in general, right? Yes. Like stuff changes. The world is dynamic. That’s investing in general. So just knowing how to navigate those, those issues if and when they come up, not putting all your eggs in one basket and, you know, figuring it out as you go and, and having those contingency plans on the front end. I mean, that’s, that’s the journey of investing, right? So,
Henry:So let’s talk fun stuff, right? You say you operate these larger properties in vacation destinations. And so when I hear large properties and vacation destinations, I think amenities, right? Like if I am shopping, you are obviously gonna have competition on the market. And so how are you getting the eyeballs of the shoppers to want to come to your property versus some of your competition? What experiences or amenities are you seeing working in some of these markets?
Zach:For us, a lot of, uh, first goes to what I mentioned previously about separating yourself out from the norm, right? So we’re, we have large properties that can accommodate large groups, small weddings, you know, conferences, things like that. So we’re catering specifically before even buying the property, we’re, we have our guests in mind that we’re going to cater to. Marketing is huge, right? Putting your property out there with the things like the, the lifestyle shoots and things I talked about, here’s a little pro tip for everyone is that you can increase your revenue on your short term rentals and add tons of five star reviews from having a concierge service that is third party, for example, you know, there can be booking services for things like travel and even even airfare for local amenities, for ski tickets, for booking, you know, travel plans for guided tours, things like this.There are companies out there that do these things in all these large metro areas that you can get upwards of a 20% revenue share from them. Um, and they can be part of your concierge team where they book for people and then you can showcase that, you know, but I think it’s really important to look at, um, look at the local minis and tie, tie that into your listing and then have people talk about it. We all know reviews, like you live and die by your reviews. Typically when you bring a new short-term rental to the market, it takes about two or three years to really be at optimal performance because you need to build up your presence, you need to have those repeat guests coming. You need all those reviews where people feel confidence in booking and then you get better like listing profiles on all the sites.Um, so it, that’s important to understand too. Your first year is probably going to be painful , or it’s not going to be optimal, but that’s normal. You have to build that presence to it. Really, year three is like your optimal performance. Um, but actually showcasing those, those booking agents and the kind of your concierge ser service that can handle that can increase your revenue. And it shows like, man, this is really a comprehensive type of vacation that I’m taking where someone can book all these things for me and it just opens up the door to like a higher level of travel. You know? So those are the types of things I think that really have allowed us to be kinda stand apart. If you five star reviews are so important on that property where you guys stayed at, we only have five star reviews, no other, nothing below that.And we, we specifically ask for five star reviews. If you want five star reviews, you gotta ask for ’em, right? Give people a reason to leave you a five star review, but ask them specifically for a five star review and then incentivize them to come back as repeat guests, right? 30% of our business is repeat clients. Mm-Hmm. that are coming back year after year or maybe every other year or referring people and we’re, we’re marketing to them. I don’t know if you remember this Henry, but when you guys went to the house to access the wifi, you had to enter in your information, right? Yes. So you were,
Henry:I saw that
Zach:You’re on our email dispo list, right? Yes. Like you were collecting your information and we’re not bombarding you with emails, but we’re operating like a business, right? And so you’re gonna be hit up for future travel Henry Washington when you wanna bring out your family to Keystone and it’s key stuff like that. I
Henry:Just wanna highlight how important that is, right? ’cause most people would hear that and think, well, I already had, you already have the email, I booked the place. No, you got the email of the one person booking the place. But if you have a large property with 10 plus people coming to stay there, they’re all gonna want to access the wifi, right? And so now you have the email address of the other 10 people who stayed at your property who may not have even paid to stay there ’cause somebody else might have covered the expenses, right? So you’ve just increased your marketing list by 10 just by doing that. I think that’s a great, great tip and trick for people. Okay, time for one last quick break, but when we come back, we’ll talk about the changes you can start making immediately to start bringing in more revenue from your short term rental. Welcome back to the show. We’re here with Zach la master talking everything, short term rentals. Let’s jump back in. Alright, so I wanna play a little game you down. Let’s
Zach:Go
Henry:You down. Alright. I’m a struggling Airbnb operator in a market that you already have an Airbnb in that you understand that market dynamics. What changes could I make to my Airbnb to increase my revenue to become more successful?
Zach:Uh, I’m gonna throw it back at you, Henry. You’re gonna have to gimme some answers on these things. Yep. Okay. Yep. So, um, what sites are you booking on?
Henry:I am booking on Airbnb and VRBO.
Zach:Okay. Do you have a website established for your, for your product? I assume not,
Henry:Right? No, no website.
Zach:That’s something that you can, you can certainly do. Build your own website. Well there’s, there’s all sorts of like affiliate, uh, or or synergistic type of booking things that tie into all all the things, right? Um, for example, we partner with, with Marriott, uh, Bonvoy and, you know, tie into their, but putting it on your own web, building a website around operating like a business and marketing out outside of just Airbnb and VRBO can give you a broader, a broader exposure. Uh, do you, this is one of the first things I ask people, do you allow pets and do you have cribs for babies? And show that to people,
Henry:No, I don’t want to allow pets, pets are pets would destroy my property, right?
Zach:Of course you would, you would think that, you know, Airbnb travel guests, they are very respectful of, of the property. They have a security deposit in case there is damage, right? Uh, but about 50% Henry of the bookings that we get, people bring pets. If you are not allowing for pets, uh, you are limiting your guests significantly. That can drive revenue a lot. And we know that there’s younger families traveling now with even, even very young children. So having your pack and play or a couple of them, you know, that’s really important to, to have available and have those type of minis and show that to people so they know because a lot of Airbnb operators are missing out on that. Let’s see, what else? What are you doing to separate yourself out from, from all the other competition in the area?
Henry:Um, I just want to make sure that I have some sort of outdoor amenities like pools, pool, or a hot tub. And I wanna make sure that it’s easy for my guests to book, but I, I, I really don’t know what else I need to be paying attention to.
Zach:And we covered a lot of this already, but showing the amenities recently, like if you, if you have a pool, take a picture of the kids jumping in the pool, right? And, and show that to people. Have the tubes, have the things, uh, you know, for, for us, like we have golf, golf clubs. People don’t have to rent golf clubs, they can use ours. There’s bikes to bike around the neighborhood. You know, there’s, there’s all sorts of amenities that they can have and show that to people you key.co is, I’ll give them a shout out. Uh, and Thomas from Hosting with the Heart, they do the amenity booking and share a 20% revenue on these types of things. So those are things that you can give to people, um, as access. And given that high level concierge service, how many five star reviews do you have, Henry?
Henry:Oh gosh, man, I think we do a good job of getting five star reviews, but we don’t, I mean, we, we don’t specifically ask for five star reviews. So I think that that was a great tip saying that you should specifically ask for what you want. I think sometimes people feel like they’re leading people down a path, but people are gonna leave you the review that they wanna leave. If somebody doesn’t wanna leave you a five star review, you asking for one isn’t gonna change that. So I think it’s a great idea to just ask for it. Yeah, but one thing you said right here, I, I don’t know if you saw me, but I went and turned to start to take notes providing golf clubs. Brilliant idea. A lot of people come and either want to play golf or they don’t think about it until they get there.So providing that saves people money and helps you get some of those reviews. So took that note, gonna be adding that to my Airbnb list today. But what I want people to understand is that like amenities win and convenience wins and you talked about partnering with other local businesses to be able to get some of that and you know, we typically call it like affiliate income, but if somebody spends money at a local business that they found through you, then you get some revenue share. So you’re increasing your revenue by doing that. That’s easier to do than a lot of people think. And you can literally call local businesses and just talk to them about the service that they provide and see how you can partner with them. There is, um, here in my local market, there is a guy essentially who has a golf cart and he started giving golf cart tours to people. And it’s this thing that’s kind of blown up where people who come to town want to go on a golf cart and go and see some of the local uh, sites. ’cause Walmart was headquartered here and people wanna kind of take a tour and see some of those things. And so you can literally call places like that. This guy comes and he will come and give a golf cart tour and you can make it easy for your guests to schedule those things. And so I think that’s a great way to increase revenue as well.
Zach:Yeah, locally sourced products are really important to people. If there’s, you know, ’cause people like that, they’re, they’re traveling to location, they want to try everything, the foods, the wines, everything. So, you know, we always have local wines, um, you know, if there’s chocolate, local honey, those, those things matter and those are the things that stick in people’s memory. It doesn’t cost a significant amount, but it means a lot when traveling. Same thing when I, there’s the little things like when I’m traveling right? And I see things like that. It’s like, oh this is nice. It could be a $5 thing of honey, but it’s from that local area. I mean, yes, those things really really matter. Some other, uh, thoughts I had that potentially could help you increase revenue, um, ’cause these are things that we’re doing. If you’re buying a property or you already have a property and it has an office or a space that you’re not using, it’s all about bedroom count.Yes. Because you can, you’re limited both by county regulations and these online, you know, listing sites. Um, how, what’s your occupancy rate now you can, you can sleep more people, you can have more beds than you can house, but you’re only allowed to list. And when people are searching, they’re searching for their guest amount, right? And then you have to search through and see how many people can stay. Um, one thing that we do is we just, we have a closet system from Wayfair, 300 bucks. We put it in and we screw it into the wall. And now an office is, is a, is a bedroom, right? Because you have to, at least in our areas, you have to, and we actually apply for permitting and it’s a, not an overly complicated process, but now we’ve increased the bedroom count on the house, arguably increasing the value of the house.But now you can actually market out more bedroom people also, just like with a star mountain house that you guys stayed at. Um, if you, if you have arguably a larger, a larger space that you can accommodate more people in, you can do things like apply for conditional use permits and many people don’t even know what those are, how to apply for those. But those allow you to be able to market publicly for a larger amount of people than say if you’re limited to two people, like in our area it’s two people, P per bedroom plus two and then Breckenridge it’s like two people per 400 square feet or something like that. That can be very limiting. Even if you have an eight bedroom house or a six bedroom house, you may not even be able to market to, you know, 12 or 16 people or whatever the case is. So you can apply for additional permits but if you didn’t know that that was an option, um, you know, think about that. But it’s about bedroom counts, putting in the bunk beds for the kids, those type of things. People love seeing that. So being able to sleep more people, you gotta have at least one room dedicated. I think this is where you and David Green stayed at our house, but it was a kids’ room, right? Yeah. With a PlayStation and the the bunk beds. But like you gotta have the kids’ room, right? Those things matter.
Henry:That’s super smart man. Well I think we’ve reached a point in the show where I’m gonna ask you to put on your crystal ball magic hat and predict the future. So with everything that you’ve seen in the short term rental market, from the boom to what people called the bus to where we are today, do you think the outlook is for short-term rentals in 2025?
Zach:I think we’ll continue to see normal trends stabilizing and increasing. I think we’ll have a modest supply increase and a modest demand increase as well. So I don’t think we’re gonna be on either end of the spectrum. I think we’re in a very healthy market. Like just overall for short-term rentals. We’ll continue to see more regulations. Actually just a couple weeks ago New York changed a lot of their regulations on short-term rentals and it’s like that was a dramatic change. Um, so the surrounding areas, you know, there’s a lot of opportunity and increase there, but barring big regulation changes, um, you know, I think we’re in a very healthy market where you can still make, you know, consistent returns. Prices are still high, you know, price. And this is for all real estate in general. Prices haven’t bottomed out like people anticipated. Interest rates are still high.Um, and I think that they’ll start to come down whenever that is, but it’s going to be a modest decrease. And so there’s going to be slightly more inventory hitting the market as people, more people sell, there’s gonna be more buyers. But I think this is like what we’re seeing right now. I think this is going to be more or less the same. This is the market we’re in. And so all the things that we talked about to be really conscious of separating yourself out from the norm, looking at locations you otherwise wouldn’t really think about. Mm-hmm that could be really successful. Short-term rentals, like run data on those and see if those even converting a rental you already have. I know how many people have, you know, we’ve talked to so many people that have a long-term rental and it’s in a location where they can just furnish it and operate it as a midterm or a long-term or a short-term rental and just make double or triple the income on it. So things like that to think about. But I think this is pretty much the norm Henry, of what we’re going to experience. Rates will probably come down and add a little bit more competition to the, to the market. But it’s all the little things that can separate yourself out is what’s gonna make you successful.
Henry:Yep. I agree with you. And I think the good business operators are gonna be in a position to really do well. I think what this, you know what people call the, the Airbnb bust, I think what it did was it weeded out the poor operators and when you weed out the poor operators, the people who got into it, ’cause they thought they could make a bunch of money without doing a lot of work, well they go outta business. But what does that do for the consumer? It increases the experience of the consumer because now the people who are still on the platform are good operators. And if you have good operators providing good experiences, then you get customers who are having good experiences and that’s gonna increase the demand. You’re gonna have more customers that come to Airbnb, which is a great opportunity for the good business operators.
Zach:That’s a beautiful thing. I love short-term rental. You like most of our portfolio is not in short-term rentals. We like especially rent to retirement and us in general, we focus on residential, single family, small multi, um, and that’s bread and butter real estate. But I will say short-term rentals, they’re, they’re like fun. It’s like fun real estate fun. Yeah, right. It’s fun to, it’s fun to talk about them, it’s fun to show them to people. It’s fun to occasionally visit them and stay there. Yeah. Um, to hear about people’s experiences, that’s like real estate gets a little bit more fun with short term rentals and that’s why we love it.
Henry:I agree. Most of my portfolio is long-term rentals. It’s, it’s super boring. Nobody wants to hear about your one bed, one bath bringing in $900 a month every month. Right. But they want to hear about your cool short-term rental. So it is, it’s fun to get that experience. I have one last question for you. Will you be attending BP Con this year?
Zach:I will be attending and so will our entire team at Rent to Retirement Cancun in 2024. It’s gonna be a blast. Henry, you’re gonna be speaking, we’re gonna be there front row. Yes. It’s gonna be an awesome time. So if you’re on the fence guys, book your tickets before before it sells out for
Henry:Sure. I was at a real estate meetup this past week with a guy and he was like, man, we’ve been wanting to go to a BP Con, but I think we’re gonna, I think we’re gonna wait till next year. I think next year will be the time. And I’m like, why wouldn’t you go this year? And he was like, what do you mean? Look, it’s in Mexico, this is the year to go. And he literally got up and called his wife so that they could decide to go this year because why wouldn’t you go to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico and Oh yeah. Learn real estate
Zach:For sure. So we’re excited to be there and it’s gonna be an an awesome event as it as it always is for sure.
Henry:Alright, if you want to go to BP Con, make sure you check out www.biggerpockets.com/mexico and get your tickets to attend BP Con. Come hang out with me and Zach and have a fantastic time learning about real estate and having a little bit of a vacation. Zach, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of BiggerPockets
Zach:Henry. It’s a pleasure as always. Thanks for having me.
Henry:Take care bud.
 
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