Maddie and I own bought our first home together in Denver in 2021. At the peak of the home buying frenzy, at peak prices and with a rock bottom interest rate. We bought our home with no thought or intention of renting it out. We did not plan on leaving Denver or at least did not consider what we'd do with the house if we were to leave Denver.
This past year, we made the decision to move to New York and have been living in NYC since September. I've had a few friends ask about our experience renting our home and how we're doing it so I'm putting this blog together to share just that.
Initial Research & Rental Options
There are a few options for renting your home: short-term, mid-term and long-term rentals. As of now, we're trying short term rental. We wanted to do this to get more reviews on Airbnb and because we hoped this would generate the most income. In January, we're going to try a mid-term rental. Think travel nurses, people who are temporarily relocated due to work being done on their own home/apartment, etc. Demand for Airbnbs in Denver decreases which means a lower occupancy rate and lower Average Daily Rate. Mid-term also means less turnover which I'm hoping means a little less work. Overall, Airbnb hasn't been that much work but there is some stress or work when new guests check-in (questions around check-in and whatnot).
PMS
I did some light research on property management systems. I landed on OwnerRez. It's worked great for me and have not had any issues. I use it because it pulls in all the different reservation platforms like Airbnb and VRBO. This way everything speaks to eachother in real time so you don't have to manually block VRBO when you get a booking on Airbnb.
Airbnb has been our main driver of bookings. We've gotten 1 booking through VRBO vs 20+ on Airbnb. These are the only two I'm using as of right now. There are a ton of other platforms but it takes some time to get setup on each one.
Pricing
I tried setting pricing manually by comparing different Airbnbs in the neighborhood that looked similar. I initially priced us a little lower since we didn't have any reviews. I figured once we built up a few positive reviews, we could start raising the price. I had us a little too underpriced and we got quite a few bookings fairly quickly.
Instead, I'd recommend using PriceLabs. We have started using it and I really like it. It's an AI-driven pricing tool that pulls in data like demand, seasonality, events, etc and manages your pricing for you. You can look at your calendar in PriceLabs and it'll highlight nights with a high ADR and will tell you why, like Denver Broncos playing Sunday Night Football. I'm now hands off with pricing and rely fully on PriceLabs.
Schlage Smartlock
We installed this Schlage Smartlock which also syncs with OwnerRez. I think there's a $3 monthly fee or something to do this and it's very much worth it. You can have it generate unique codes for each guest that are only active during their stay. This has nearly automated the check-in process for us. I say nearly because this for me has been the highest touch point part of the process with guests. As I get questions, I update our messaging (more on this later) to try to address these. It's been working and I get fewer and fewer messages.
Cleaning
My friend, Jack recommended his cleaner. She was at capacity but knew someone else. She came, looked at the house and gave me a quote. She's amazing! OwnerRez can generate a .ics calendar file that you can then important into Google Calendar or iCal. She now has access to see when guests are checking in and out. She does it all. Laundry, dishes, ties the kitchen towels in little bows (I did not ask for this and I don't personally like it for my own aesthetic but it shows effort and thought that I think guests may appreciate), etc. I really like her. One thing that's been great (which I also didn't ask for but will for any future cleaners) is she sends me a ton of photos and videos after she's done cleaning. It's nice for two reasons. It confirms that she cleaned that day. Otherwise, I'd probably panic at like 2pm having to check our Ring camera to make sure she did and that the house was ready to go for guests showing up that day. The other reason is that you also then have documentation for if there's a dispute with a guest.
Ring Camera
We have a Ring camera on the front porch. We got this Spotlight Cam with the Solar attachment. It's great. It's mostly been helpful for checking to make sure a guest got in okay if I'm about to go to bed and haven't heard from them. (More on this later...).
Guest Communication
This is huge. From the get go I got setup with Happy Guest. I don't remember where I heard about it but quickly became excited because of its claims to streamline guest communications and ability to generate extra income through upsells. Early check-in, late check-out, add-ons, etc. Overall, my experience has been so-so.
Pro: Ability to offer upsells. I let people check-in at 3pm. But if it's cleaned and ready to go before then, the guest can pay $10/hour to check-in early. I have only had two guests do this and for $50 in total. Our cleaner scans a QR code in the locked cleaning closet when she's done and this triggers Happy Guest to know to offer this.
Pro: They helped a ton with setting up guest communications. Messages to guests via email and Airbnb/VRBO. This was super helpful. It does technically live in OwnerRez and I could have set it up myself but I wouldn't have known what types of messages to send, timing, etc.
Cons: There have been a few blips where the check-in code wasn't included in the Happy Guest platform. It was due to me changing a setting in OwnerRez and assuming this would update to Happy Guest (because these two systems also sync) and that is not the case. Happy Guest is a pretty new platform and I'm sure down the road will have a better API connection but this caused an issue or two. Not necessarily on Happy Guest's fault, it is new and they are adding more functionality often.
I continue to use it because I haven't found a better way to offer upsells without it. I will probably always use it because I think they'll keeping add more functionality. Their team is also very helpful.
We have a few different messages that go out to guests. Here they are. The last one is a reminder to the cleaner that goes out the day before a guest leaves. I tweak these often. Less now as I'm getting fewer and fewer questions but this is where I spent a lot of time these first 2 months of our Airbnb journey. I turned off the Evening of Arrival Check In but may turn this back on. At first, because the check-in's weren't smooth, I inevitably was interacting with guests already and an automated message that first night was unnecessary. I'm finding now that I usually don't hear anything (great!) but this could be nice because I now manually message sometimes just to check-in and make sure everything's alright. If it'd be helpful to see the content in any of these, reach out and I am happy to share them.
We've had a few hiccups. One was entirely my fault and was due to the issue mentioned above. The Happy Guest team recommended I update the door code lengths from 6 digits to 4 digits. This did not update the codes that had been generated for guests that had already booked but not stayed yet. A guest showed up, entered the outdated 6 digit code and they couldn't get in. It was later at night, I was asleep, I did not see their messages and they ended up having to have Airbnb put them up somewhere else that night. I woke up in the morning and saw this. I felt awful. I still feel bad. The guest was incredibly understanding and came back and stayed the rest of their stay with us.
The other two hiccups (so far and there will be more, it's part of the game) were guests unhappy with level of cleanliness. Everyone has different expectations. Our cleaner does a very good job. It was usually something minor, a hair on the bed (the cleaners most likely), a hair in the bathtub, etc. This is inevitable and part of being in hospitality. I mentally prepared myself for instances like these but they're still frustrating and cause me a lot of stress. It's my least favorite part of it. Your rating on Airbnb is very important and so I try to do everything I can to make the guest happy or at least satisfied with the outcome. I've offered to have our cleaner go back out and clean again while they're out of the house. I had one guest want to leave early and go find another place to stay and refunded the unstayed nights. As of right now, we have a 5 Star Rating and 18 reviews.
Add-Ons
I mentioned upsells earlier and that we offer early check-in. I also had the idea to offer bike rentals for guests. I thought this was genius. I bought two vintage but sturdy mountain bikes on Facebook Marketplace and a friend kindly tuned them up for me. Thanks Emma!!! I bought heavy duty locks that have pin codes on them to unlock. I offer this through Happy Guest at $50/stay/bike. No takers so far. I've been bummed about this. I'm optimistic that it may be more of a hit for mid-term rentals with people staying 3+ months but we'll see.
Photos
We had a friend come take photos of our home to use for the listing. Thanks Chase!!! After talking to the Happy Guest team, I was convinced to pay a professional. They explained that there are real estate photographers and there are Airbnb photographers and that these are different. Airbnb photographers are more specifically taking photos of it to show the experience, lifestyle, etc where a real estate agent is less "warm" and focused on showing size, layout, etc. I hired Robin Christman Photography and have only the most positive things to say. Quick turnaround, reasonable price and photos look incredible. I literally got two bookings the day after I updated our listings photos. It's worth it.
Superhost Status
We earned Superhost status on Airbnb. Honestly, it's changed my view of Superhost status because it was fairly easy and quick to get.
Self Manage vs Property Manager
Overall, we've not been profitable. We're down maybe $300 or so a month. With having solid reviews now, we'll be able to charge a bit more and should cut even or maybe turn a bit of a profit next year. I'm also optimistic that with Mid-Term, we can actually cut even or pretty close. Depending on how that goes, I may go back to short term when demand picks back up in May. All this to say, because property management companies usually charge around 20% of revenue and with it being just one property, we've chosen to self-manage for now. If it cash flowed well above and we could afford to lose that margin, I'd consider property management.
Summary
Overall, it's been a decent experience. Again, we didn't set out to rent our place out when we bought it. (We didn't really think ahead). Fortunately, we got a decent deal and this will eventually cash flow, hopefully sooner rather than later. Because of this and the fact that at time of writing, we intend to move back to Denver, we plan to hold it.
I'm happy to answer questions, feel free to reach out to me. You can text me at 816-807-9237.