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 Daniel Bordeau, based in Golden, Colorado. He manages one specialist listing with a game room and today, he will share with us about his experience and the advantage of having the right amenities in your Airbnb listing. This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, the only one analytics dashboard for short-term rental investors 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! So can you tell me how did you get started on Airbnb?
Sure. So it all started with me getting a job at Google and in the Boulder office in Colorado. I was renting in Boulder and then the pandemic started and decided I was sick of renting and ended wanted to buy. So I bought a house out in the foothills near the office about 30 minutes, in a pretty wild place and unincorporated area, about 1000 feet. It ended up being a little too wild for my wife, given that there was mountain lion tracks and moose walking up to our house and bears and all that stuff. So I decided that why not realize my dream of launching as an Airbnb. So I spent about a year renovating the Mountain House and finally launched it before I even had another house. I just moved in, live with a family for a few months and then came back and bought a real place to move back into while it was a full time rental.
Can you repeat again what was the area a bit?
So it's in Golden Colorado. It's about 30 minutes to both Boulder and Golden and about 45 minutes to Denver, in the Front Range in Colorado.
Oh, so how is the seasonality like in there?
So it definitely has a summer seasonality although the winter months are not nearly as bad as a lot of places like lakes in upstate New York or places with really extreme seasonality. So it definitely has a pretty normal bell curve around June and July and August. But it has a really healthy slow season as well.
What's your average occupancy rate in the high seasons versus the low seasons?
I think I'm 90% to 100% in the high season depending on if I want to book small today windows that occur between longer reservations. In the slow season, I've been at about a 50% to 75%, depending on the month and the slow season typically runs from like November through April and the high season is May through October.
I see! And how many minimum days you got in the high season and in the low season?
Like minimal days that I rent out?
Yes, that's right.
That's a good question. I don't think I have it offhand. I started hosting last July, I hosted for last summer and then I launched it full time again in December. So I've only been hosting for about six months total. I sold out the summer that I booked ad then I've been at, like I mentioned, like 60% to 75% somewhere around there in the slow season. But I don't really have the number of days that I've booked you. Oh! What's our minimum stay requirements? Sorry.
Yes! That's right.
So I do my minimum stay by days out. So outside of 60 days, I do a three day minimum and within 60 days, I do a two day minimum, but I don't do it by season. I don't do like the summer is seven day only and like you can do lower in the winter. I just do if you're booking outside of 60 days, I want it to be the ideal kind of reservations, which are minimum three days, but if I'm trying to fill in the next two months, I'm willing to take smaller reservations.
I see, great! And what is your pricing strategy throughout the year?
My house is about at the 50th percentile of quality from analyzing all my competitors. So I use PriceLabs as a software subscription pricing tool. I try to set at about the 50th percentile of base price and then my max I set at about two three times that, maybe up to four times if I'm trying to really sell out the week of Christmas and for a minimun pricing I do about $200. So it's average like 325 min. to 200, max like 750. I'm just trying to optimize by hitting roughly 80% occupancy and if I'm selling more than that or booking out too far in advance, my prices are probably too low.
Have you found that you have a certain niche of demographic guests?
I think as a host, you should identify your niche and set up your property for them. So when I wrote my initial business plan for my property, I was trying to attract families vacationing in Colorado, you know, with kids ranging from early, like 2, 3, 4, all the way up to 18 and that's kind of what I am getting. There are some groups of adults that are doing bachelorette party stuff and other types of vacations. But I'm mainly just getting families and I set up the idea that house to try to get them such as building a large game room with arcade machines and shuffleboard and other fun stuff, which parents have been commenting that keeps their kids occupied very well in the house, which was kind of my goal, give parents a way to keep the kids occupied. I've started to move away from parents with kids. Kids tend to not respect your property as much, so I've removed my property as being listed as kid friendly and I'm trying to market more towards adults since those are the people that kind of do respect your property a bit more.
You're the first host that I interviewed that has a game room, how has been your experience with that? Does other hosts around the area also, is it a popular amenity?
I haven't seen it. I mean, a lot of hosts has elements that some people will put a foosball table in, a lot of like nicer cabins have a pool table, which is probably some of the one of the pinnacle of having in a game room. My goal was to just not be a commodity with my Airbnb rental, I wanted to have something unique, some unique draw, some marketing draw that could set you apart from other people. I had kind of an awkward loft in the house that seemed perfect for setting up a game room, which was kind of a pet project of mine setting up the house. I was not as interested as much in the interior design, which should maybe I should have focused on a little more as I was in getting this game room perfect and having it be something that, you know, people saw in the first five photos and book the house because of so. I've seen game rooms work a lot of places like the Smoky Mountains, like they're not certainly super rare in rentals. But I think if you do one really well, you're able to stand out and that's kind of my theory on doing Airbnb is come out with amenities that are like really unique, like really attempt to beat the competition with something that they don't have or one up them as some of them may do have, to try to create a little bit more of a lasting competitive advantage in the market you're going into.
And would you say the fact that you have our game room steps you up in your market?
I definitely see inquiries and people mentioning it in both the reviews and when they're looking to book. So I think as opposed to not having it, I think it definitely sets you up. I think anything you can do to set yourself apart from the competition, whether it's hot tub or game room or having a more unique or interesting design or architecture than them. You really need to figure out how to set yourself apart because in my opinion, you'd much rather be on the luxury scale of Airbnb than on the budget scale as a host, just a lot more margins to be made in the luxury category. So you need to turn a normal house into something that has something kind of luxury or things that people don't have in their own home is a good goal to go for.
Yeah, more like an experience than just the rental, right?
Exactly. Exactly.
And what about your market? Is it very competitive?
It's relatively competitive. I would say there's like a lot of markets, there is probably a lack of supply, especially during peak season where peak season is really easy to book out. You know, competition definitely increases a bit more during slow season, when there's much less reservations bookings to go around. It doesn't seem like a lot of people in my market are struggling, it was relatively difficult to get a short-term rental license where I am I've looked and analyzed a lot of markets and a lot of hosts in different markets and it took me about 10 months to get approved to a short-term rental license, given they were so backed up at the start of the pandemic with permits and applications. I had to go through a very extensive process by a board of adjustment to get a variance to operate a rental while I've seen a lot of competitors operate them without the variance of the permit. So that's kind of some of the challenge of doing it all by the books is your competition won't always and they can get, you know, some track record and some historical reviews faster than you can if they don't need to spend the money time getting set up legitimately. So I think legislation and regulation is kind of an impediment to more competitors coming on quickly, as well as lack of housing supply and how difficult it is to buy a home right now and anywhere around the area.
Oh! Can you please give us a little resume of what's the process of getting the permit?
Sure. So it's very different for every place, whether you're gonna city or in a county or if you're outside of the city and you fall on the county's rules and not the city. So I was in an unincorporated place where you need to be approved by a board of adjustment, which are seven unelected people that the planning commissioner has review permits for home expansions, short-term rentals, all that kind of stuff. So I had to submit an application that included tons of details and pictures about my listing, do a home site where they inspected my property, they determined I didn't have enough parking, they require one parking spot per bedroom plus one and being built on the side of a mountain, my driveway wasn't very extensive. So I had to spend a lot of money building out two extra parking spots to satisfy them. I also had to get a, what we call in Colorado, a defensible space permit, which is essentially wildfire mitigation done. My home is set in the middle of a dense forest of pine trees and they flagged about 30 of those pine trees to be removed before they would allow me to rent it out. So I had to jump through a significant number of hoops and pay a significant amount of money to satisfy the planning commission so that they would approve me for a variance. But ultimately, they did approve me.
Good to hear that you got approved, but it was pretty extensive, to be honest.
Yeah. It's, you know, some places overregulate, some places are like, where my house is have historically been rental areas, but they've just tried to make it very harder for new entrants to come in.
And is it strictly regulated? Because I heard you say before that there are people who are doing short-term rentals without the permit.
So while there is a strict regulation to get a permit, the county is severely understaffed and they're not doing enforcement, they do enforcement by complaint only, not active enforcement. So it is difficult to get one, but they're not exactly. That's why my competition often do it without a license because there's really not a lot of risk to being taught by them.
I see. I see. you mentioned way earlier that your area has bears and all the stuff, is kind of dangerous, right?
Yes. In terms of wildlife and animals, yes. I wouldn't say it's very dangerous, but it's a concern that most people in their homes don't really have if there's a mountain lion outside or if the bears gonna rip open all their trash.
And what measurements do you take? Or how do you guide your guests, so they don't have to encounter something like this?
I'd say the main one is protection against bears. I tell guests to freeze their food scraps and put it in the standing freezer before it goes in the trash can outside Because if you just put trash cans with, you know, meat scraps in a trash can, it's just gonna get ripped open by a bear, especially if it's put out any days early. So telling them not to leave any food in their car because, you know, a bear will open it and rip it apart is another one and just telling them not to leave like kids and dogs unattended outside by themselves for long periods is another good one.
I see! And are you currently based in the same area your listing is?
So when I launched, I actually moved cross country and manage it from across, from Massachusetts to Colorado. I since moved back into the house, finished some renovations and moved up to Silverthorne Colorado, which is about an hour and a half from the house. So I manage it from about an hour and a half away. I'm moving to Chicago soon, so I'll manage it from, you know, halfway across the US. As long as you have good systems and good people on the ground, remote management's is really not as scary as it sounds.
And how has been your previous experience with remote hosting?
I think you really need to have a good roster of cleaners and repair people that you can call, especially if anything happens, like a cleaners car breaks down or if the house breaks and you want a repair person to fix it immediately. You know, not a lot of hosts are actually the ones that do the cleaning that do the repair work. Maybe you might restock it yourself, but when you think about it, even as a host you're kind of just a coordinator. So coordinating from a distance isn't, for 30 minutes away is not very different from coordinating from, you know, six hours away or anything like that. So I think it's just about understanding what activities and roster type of people you have to have. Just automating 80% of communication, pricing management and listing management will put you in a position to make it pretty easy.
Can you share with us? What tools do you use for automation?
Sure. So as I mentioned, I use PriceLabs for pricing. I use Guesty for my property management software, including automation of messaging and unified inbox, that good stuff. I use TurnoverBnB for cleaner scheduling, payment and finding new cleaners. I'm a huge fan of the portal, although it can be harder to use in less dense areas where cleaners aren't easy to find. Those are the big three for me, we're using Stessa as an accounting tool to classify and track mortgage and you know, valuations and assets and stuff like that. I know, there's a ton of more automation tools out there, but those are really the suite that I'm using right now.
Great, thank you for sharing that with us. I wanted to ask you, since you told me you host adults that kind of do a small party your property, you know, because of the game room and stuff like that, have you got any bad experiences with that?
Bad experiences with hosting the game room or...?
With guests in general.
I'd say haven't had too many bad experiences. Some guests are more high maintenance than others. I've had guests left me less than ideal reviews, despite saying they'd never brought anything to my attention or complaining about cleaning after the fact. But I haven't really had any like true horror experiences, maybe I had some close calls, like a guest that left the propane on the grill running, you know, and they were smoking outside, like some potential bad things that could have happened. But overall, the most challenging things has probably been managing, like snow removal in the mountains with guests there has been like a little bit difficult. But, you know, I had about 25 to 30 stays over the past six months and a 4.8 star rating. So like no real horror stories, mostly just really good guests. But some people that are, you know, issues with contractors, people or contractors that kind of demand more payment after they've shown up and you've agreed and having to, you know, call and regenerate lists of who you trust the most is kind of been one of the biggest challenges of starting Airbnb is like really learning how to vet your contractors because they're the people you need, like the only way an Airbnb house can run is if you have good cleaners and someone that can come fix things if you're not going to do all that.
And beside of that, any other particular big challenges you went to while running Airbnb?
Scaling is really my main goal right now. You know, I'm building a property in south central Colorado, that's a small house in a geo dome on a deck with a hot tub. I'm buying a two unit property in Chicago and I'm starting to help other people like manage and launch Airbnbs themselves, like from my Google short-term rental club that I run and some of the newer investors that are trying to get in. So I'd say like time management while scaling and like identifying where to go because there's a million markets out there and it's really easy to just get analysis paralysis. So kind of one of the biggest challenges with scaling is making decisions on where you want to kind of put your focus into, what markets you want to spread yourself out too thin across many markets, you know, even going internationally or do you want to really focus within one city and get a really dense with the weather some operational efficiency. So that's kind of where I am is, you know, learn more about building and expanding properties, pick up other people's properties and build my own portfolio to like 5 to 10.
Are there any tips that you'd like to share for other Airbnb hosts?
Yeah, I would say just immerse yourself in some of the communities out there. Airbnb has, you know, forums as a subreddit, which I know you posted the interview in Airbnb hosts. You don't necessarily need to pay anyone to learn all what it takes to run an Airbnb. There's a million YouTubers out there, so my favorites are like Robuilt, you can look him up. But all the information you need to run an Airbnb is free and it's really intimidating trying to think of all the list of things you need to do to launch it without having experience or mentors to give you the information. So I would say just be coming sponge for all the different aspects of how to run an Airbnb, there's plenty of free information out there that can teach you everything you need to know to get it up and running and even do it from 5000 miles away if that's what you want to do.
Yeah, I agree with that. And please don't get scared because of other people experiences!
Right. I mean, there's always gonna be bad experiences as it's the hospitality industry. But just know that if you want to go into this, you're signing up for like one of two things, like lower returns, but still good with a property manager and being hands off or you're signing up to be an entrepreneur and to immerse yourself where you're like, you know, if you want to turn off when you go home to becoming an Airbnb host and it's not really for you, if you don't want to ever have to message anyone, I mean, you can pay people to do various aspects of that too. But I think if you want to go into Airbnb hosts, you should want to do a lot of the management yourself and you shouldn't want to just park a home with a with a property manager and accept lower returns. This is perfect for people that really want to get into startups entrepreneurship and it wants something like very physical. This kind of a business in a box, every Airbnb launch is like a little business in the box, you can just kind of stack them up. So if like that's something you're interested in and also working really hard. You have to have some money to get into it, obviously, but it can be a great place if that's what you're looking for.
That's right, I agree with you! So that'll be it for today. Thank you for your time and your tips.
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, I greatly appreciate it!
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.
