Mandy Konecki Interview OFC

Jae Seok An16min

Delia

00:01

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 Mandy Konecki, based in Jacksonville, Florida, who manages five live things in Jacksonville Beach, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and in Ellijay, Georgia. In this episode, Mandy will tell us about her hosting experience and also share some useful insights of her listings locations. This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, the only one analytics dashboard for short-term rental investors and managers, where you can find the 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 tell us how did you get started on Airbnb?

Mandy Konecki

00:58

Sure! In 2018, my husband and I decided to sell our primary home and move back to Ohio, we were both with our nine month old daughter. We had a lot of equity built up in our house because we were house hacking for several years. So we had a lot of equity to cash in and we knew that we were going to be visiting Florida frequently as my job is here and we have all of our friends as well. So we were going to be looking for a place that we could stay when we come to visit, sort of all of our things. So we didn't have to haul around beach toys and suitcases and pack and plays and all of those things and sleep on couches or hotels. So when we moved back, we started gradually looking and discussing opportunity and a condo came available in Jacksonville Beach that looked like something that we would definitely be interested in. We had our realtor go check it out and we actually bought that site on scene, which was caused a lot of sleepless nights, but it was definitely exciting. There was a lot of headaches that we entailed with that, especially being far away and it was going under a massive assessment that we were unaware of. So I'd say our first one was kind of disastrous, we definitely learned a lot. There were times that we wondered what we did, why did we do this, etc. But to this day, we would say that's definitely the best move that we've made so far as it got us into real estate. It definitely build a confidence. We learned tonnes of lessons and absolutely love the industry.

Delia

02:42

Good story! And can you tell us how did you overcome all of those problems you had with that one listing? And how do you plan to acquire more? Now you have five listings, right? How do you decide to make a step forward and acquire more properties?

Mandy Konecki

03:04

Yeah, it was very stressful because we didn't really know what was going on. The management company had zero communication and zero management of the construction project that was being seen. So we really didn't know what was going on until our guests told us the process. What they were working on the stage of that. I ended up being able to get in contact with a person on the construction crew that he gave me his number, so I got regular updates with that. And stayed in front of communicating with the guests that were booked prior too, we offered a lot of discounts, gave our guests the opportunity to cancel or help them rebook if they weren't up for staying there during the construction. So we did offer a lot of discounts and there was a lot of additional communication. We found some local people here that we knew through our network that were able to drive by drop things off check on the project, etc. when they came by. So finally when that was done and relieved and we got through all the renovations it was smooth sailing after that. We were excited to continue to come in because everybody loves a vacation. You're not dealing with people that are grumpy, stressed, etc. Most people that book, especially coming to the beach are looking forward to it, they're excited, they love the accommodations. So it's great working with people that are excited to be on vacation and enjoy what we call home.

Delia

04:43

Right and about your most popular listings, where are they located?

Mandy Konecki

04:51

So right now we have five active listings in Jacksonville Beach, in Cape Canaveral. We do have three to four other ones that are going to be going live here in the next three to four weeks one is in North Georgia in the mountain area and then the other one will be in St. Augustine, so both are touristic places. We picked the North Georgia location because we were there on vacation visiting a friend and absolutely fell in love with the atmosphere. That's really what got us into the industry was we absolutely love to travel, I travel for work and one of our biggest family hobbies is travelling. So we like to be able to have a place that we can also enjoy when we have time to get away and also be able to share with others, so they can enjoy the same experience that we have.

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