Welcome back to another episode of into the Airbnb, where we talk with Airbnb hosts about their short term rental experience. Today's guest is Vivian Yip Keller from Austin, Texas, who has been an Airbnb host since 2019. Managing five rentals of her own Vivian will tell us how is it to perform corporate rentals and will share some of her tips with us. This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, the only one analytics dashboard for short term rental investors and managers, where you can find precise Airbnb data such as occupancy rate, revenue, average daily rate and so on. So, without further ado, let's get into it.
Can you please tell me how did you get started on Airbnb?
Well, I'm actually a real estate investor. So I sort of started Airbnb on accident, I came across a property in Round Rock, Texas in 2019, which I don't own anymore. But, you know, when I saw the location, and I saw that it didn't have an HOA, and I saw how many people were coming to visit Austin and I thought, wow, you know, this could be a really good opportunity to try Airbnb considering, you know, I love hospitality. So I basically just kind of hopped into it, I found a house that it needed renovation, it was off market and I had the chance to, you know, renovate it to however I wanted to and make it really nice. And that's when I decided to put it, make it as Airbnb.
That's great. So in your area in Austin, Texas, how is this seasonality like?
Austin has pretty mild weather throughout the year. But definitely, really popular place from spring through fall. So it might slow down a little bit during the winter season, but people are coming here to visit family anyways. So I would say that it is a higher season in the summertime because there's just so much to do. All around it's a pretty good market for Airbnb.
Great to hear that. Comparing the high season to the low season, how is your average occupancy rate like?
Well, the one in Round Rock did really well. I sold that one just for personal reasons. The current ones that I have today, they're all, it's hard to say because the ones that I have today, three of them are more corporate rentals. So they're not really short term rentals like Airbnb, even though they're listed on Airbnb, they're more like midterm rentals. So I don't really have a seasonality there. I seem to be 100% booked all the time on those. However, the one in Leander, I just started that back in December. And so far, so good. Our occupancy is about 86%.
That's great. About the midterm rentals you mentioned before, do you also get them from Airbnb?
I have them through a mix of different sources. I just joined VRBO a month and a half ago and I'm currently hosting my first listing on VRBO. But Airbnb is my primary source, but I also because my husband is a realtor, I'm also able to list them on the MLS and furnish finder.
I see. So now that you talk about VRBO, can you tell us which platform do you prefer? like Airbnb or VRBO? What do you find the difference between them?
I find the Airbnb a lot easier to use than VRBO. VRBO just seems to be less intuitive. So but you know when you have to look at the data, when you look at the opening in Airbnb, you have to look at the data to understand if your market is booking more on VRBO or booking more on Airbnb. And for us. I think, you know, three out of four bookings come from Airbnb, which is why I chose to focus more on Airbnb. But you know, I had to put a leg into VRBO as well just so that I don't miss that 25% chance.
Okay, that sounds great. So can you tell us about your pricing strategy?
Pricing is, you know, definitely really important in Airbnb. There's a tool in Airbnb called smart pricing, which I don't recommend to anybody to use. There are at least three different pricing platforms. One is called Wheelhouse and the other one is called PriceLabs, and the third is called Beyond Pricing, I believe it is. All three of those have a special pricing structure where they use large data to figure out what your pricing in the surrounding market and in your neighbourhood should be. So I use one of those three and it's been very helpful to help me understand what kind of seasonality or what kind of things might increase or decrease the pricing for my listing. And finally, the most important tool that they have is that they basically zap your listing every single day with the new price and that helps you with your search engine optimization.
Oh, great. So you rather to use dynamic pricing solutions than to price yourself? I know you have five listings, right? It will be kind of hard to price according to just your knowledge or manually every day.
Correct.
That's right. So what has been your top challenges while running Airbnb?
For sure, the challenges, you know, with the corporate rentals, like the midterm rentals is, you know, trying to stay competitive to the pricing. I couldn't do a normal Airbnb short term rental because of the permit process here in Austin. And I didn't want to break any rules and risk any fine. So that's challenging there. The second one that's challenging is remote hosting, sort of, the one in Marble Falls, it's 45 minutes away from us and I finally was able to find a cleaner after searching for a year, that would be able to make the trek out that way. You know, the property location is at the end of a long, windy road and and some people get carsick or they can't handle the turnover, or it's just too difficult. So I finally found someone to partner with that can help me with the turnover there. So finding someone that's reliable and will care for the property as much as you will is probably the hardest thing.
How did you overcome that? What were your steps to find this reliable person to help you take care of your listing?
Yep. So the first step was, you know, obviously, Google trying to find, so first of all this, this town of Marble Falls is very far west of Austin and then there's another town to the east, is called Lago Vista. So my property is right smack in the middle, but it's 25 minutes one way, or 35 minutes on the other way. And so being in such a unique destination, it's hard to find someone in Marble Falls versus Lago Vista. So I tried using Google first to try and find a cleaning company, was unsuccessful there. Then I tried using my neighbor's cleaning company, but they only clean on Tuesdays, which made it very difficult for me, if I had, depending on the kind of bookings that I had. So I just dealt with that for a while and I did my own turnovers for a while. Then finally, I joined a neighbourhood Facebook page for Lago Vista and I was able to find a cleaner that was willing to drive 25 minutes to come in and do the turnover for me.
That's great. How do you know you can trust this person you're giving your listing to, because there are many people who are not sure how these cleaners or people who help them co-host are going to take care of their property as much as you will on your own?
Yes, that's a really great question and, you know, a lot of the times it's really important for me to meet the person and get a feel for them, in person. This particular person, she's wonderful, she's a school teacher, previously. So I know she's great with children, and she has to pass certain, you know, backgrounds. She's married to a cop, which also makes it very important that their, you know, criminal records are clean. Lastly, she's also a mother of five grown kids. So, you know, I have two kids and I know how difficult that is to manage sometimes I can't imagine managing five. So you know, you have to have a certain level organisational experience to be able to manage a household. So I take that into consideration. You know, she asked really great questions when I was working with her and walking her through the property and I just got a really good feel for her.
That's good, good to hear how did you find her. Also, on your guests, since you're doing midterm rentals, do you run background checks on them?
I do not actually, on the midterm rentals. I mean, I let Airbnb do ID verification number one, so that's really important to me is that I will only rent to them if they have ID verified through Airbnb. I do not collect any personal information myself. So I rely on on that a lot. If I do something off the Airbnb platform, usually it's a realtor that's bringing it to me and I will collect the security deposit.
Okay, okay, that sounds good. Have you ever had problems with your past guests, any kind of light or hard problems with them?
I've been very fortunate. I've only had one small problem where I had a group of young, maybe partiers, they were probably about 20 years old and, you know, I had a no pet listing and they brought their dog. But that was really the only bad problem I've ever had.
Well, that's good to hear that you had very good experiences because many hosts these days are really thinking through about that, about getting on Airbnb, because they hear a lot of stories of nightmare guests. And they don't want to go through that, of course.
Right. I think, you know, we hear about this all the time, in some of the Facebook host groups and I think a lot of the problems stem from pricing too low. Some people are so concerned about occupancy rate, rather than just pricing their property correctly, that they price too low, and they invite the wrong demographic of people to come in, you know, sometimes pricing at like $40 a night, you're probably inviting some trouble. So, you know, I would say that if you're at 100% occupancy, you're too cheap. I would even say that I'm almost too cheap at 86% occupancy, I would say the focus would be to aim for you know, 75 to 80% occupancy and then you'll know your price right with less work.
Right. that's right. So lastly, any tips that you'd like to share for other Airbnb hosts or future Airbnb hosts?
I actually have tonnes of tips. Quick tips are you know, use a great electronic lock. Number two is you're gonna come across, you know, bad guests that either smoke in your place cigarettes or marijuana or they're going to cook something really stinky. There's a really great product called an ozone machine that's really useful to have in the closet sometime and those are about $99 on Amazon. You have to make sure you follow the instructions properly on how to use those. But definitely something that would be a good item to have on hand because it'll help you clear out the smell.
You told me about a YouTube video. Do you have platforms where you teach about Airbnb that you'd like to share?
Well, my husband and I we actually flip homes, that's our primary bread and butter. So we do have a YouTube channel, it's "Austin House Flippers" and you can find us on YouTube and we love to share pro tips on how we do transformations, including Airbnb.
Okay, that's great. That would be it for today. Thank you a lot for your time and for your tips!
Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate you.
Thanks for listening to into the Airbnb. We're looking for hosts and other people in the short-term rental industry to interview. If you have what we need and would like to share your experience in this podcast. Please send us an email. All the info is at the end of the description.
