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 Ninette Crunkleton, who manages 11 listings in Roanoke, Virginia. In this episode, Ninette will share with us about her story and experience performing co-hosting and doing long-term rentals. 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! Hi, Ninette!
Hi, how are you?
I'm good. How are you?
I am well.
Can you please tell us how did you get started on Airbnb?
I heard about it from other friends and I had a couple of friends that were doing it. But they weren't really clear about how it worked and what they were doing. And at that time, I was a crash pad host and a crash pad host is for pilots that their home base is in your city, but they don't have a home there, so they need a place to crash while they're waiting on their planes. So I had three pilots that were staying with me for quite a long time. And they're plane stop flying here, so now all of a sudden, I needed to fill those places, you know, fill that lost income. So I tried first with the one room and it was a little haphazard at the beginning. But once I started seeing the flow and got it organised, I just started adding the rest of the rooms and other places.
Okay, and how did you get your first whole listing? Did you manage it yourself? Did you buy property?
It's in my house. The first four rooms are in the home, in my home and I felt safe with that because I could see if there was damage being done, I could get a read on the guests if they were happy or not. I also saw where the frustrations were with the guests. So I was able to adjust really quickly to make the stay more flowy for them and less hindrances. The things that people get stuck on where things you know, how do I get to places just hearing their frustrations and seeing the frustrations that was kind of nice and helped me learn really quickly.
I see that's great! So in the area you're hosting, in the areas, because you told me there was another one pretty far from you. How is the seasonality like there?
In my city now where I live?
Yes, where you manage your listings.
I first started doing short-term stays and I was surprised at how booked I was, I did not realise where I live was such a tourist Mecca, but it's a very outdoors located place. So people love to hike, there's some very famous hikes around here. Very famous marathons. Lots of different types of races, kayaking, just all types of outdoor sports. So people were coming for that I eventually had to switch to longer-term stays. So almost all my stays now are 30 days or longer. For those guests, it's a huge mix. A lot of travel nurses, or residency doctors and there is a training hospital here. So they come through here quite a bit. And there are a lot of people moving to the Roanoke area. It's really shocking how many people move here. So I would say over a third of my guests are people relocating. Then I have the travel nomads and then I just have people that are working for their company long-term and they don't know when they're moving on. So they just need a safe place to stay and leave all their things.
I see. Is there a particular listing? Or you do more short-term rentals than the other ones?
No, all the listings right now have are all longer-term rentals. So one month or longer? It's because is easier.
Okay, is that because of your convenience or are short-term rentals not allowed in your area?
Good question. A little bit about, so to do the short-term rentals you have to go through the city when you're in the city, and then you have to go through the process. And my house, my neighbours didn't like it, so it was too hard to make it happen.Then I found that doing a longer-term listing is so much less work. Not flipping the rooms all the time, not having the exact same conversation every day, you know, when I had four people, or four rooms rented and every day have new people and it was the exact same conversation every single day. So it was a little exhausting at times. So now with people being here longer, I can relax a little.
Okay, yeah, I see. So how is like your occupancy rates throughout the year?
I'm probably at I'd say 80 to 85% occupied. It's really rare for me to have more than two weeks empty in any room.
Okay, that's great to hear. So for these listings you're doing like for longer stays, how is your pricing strategy for that?
That's been a big learning curve for me. I started off really, really cheap, just trying to get the reviews plus I thought, you know, personally, I thought it was outrageous to ask for $600 for a room. And now I asked a whole lot more, and people are paying it, especially the travel nurses, they have a bigger budget, and they are able to do it and they want someplace safe and clean. So they're willing to pay for something that's safe and clean. So my strategy is, for the rooms that have shared bathrooms a little bit cheaper, with a discount of only 20% for a monthly stay. And I have an apartment and I have in suite rooms, those are a little bit more expensive. They run probably 300 or 400 more than, yeah, about 300 more than the ones with the shared bath. And so I play with it a lot. If I don't get a booking, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that hits panic button when it's like "oh my god, I've been empty for two weeks". So I'll go in and I'll add the discounts or the promos that Airbnb let you do just to get them more views. And it helps sometimes. I found that, especially with the travel nurses, it's a cycle. It's like a three month cycle. So all the requests come in within three weeks of each other. So I might be empty for two weeks, but also I'll have three requests, and then I wish I had more houses.
I see, I see. So regarding your pricing, do you get to use any tool? Or do you do all the pricing by yourself?
I do it by myself and I also allow the Airbnb smart pricing, which I don't think they're ever really increased that much more than I already have on there.
So your experience with the smart pricing on Airbnb is really good then? Because from our past guests in this podcast, and also other hosts that I've read about, they don't like the smart pricing feature at all.
I don't find it particularly useful because you put your base price in, and they always want the base price usually more than a third less is what they recommend and that's ridiculous. Like I said, I've seen maybe the price increase during the summer maybe a couple of times. But it's not a huge value add, that's for sure.
Okay, I'm glad it works for you then. So throughout your journey on doing Airbnb, what have been your top challenges?
My first challenge was finding the rhythm and learning how to automate it. I guess the first challenge was learning that every single person thinks differently than I do and how to accommodate. You're looking at things and thinking okay, how would that person that got frustrated, how would they like that done? And trying to flow the house and flow this process to be accommodating to everyone. There's so many people that will come in they're like "well of course that's natural" and I'm like no. If you see how these people act, it's not natural for them. So trying to put in rules, no I wouldn't say rules, but you know suggestions of how to do things and what the expectations are of the house, so that everyone can get along, I don't have a mess and they don't get nervous thinking that they're doing something wrong because the majority of the people don't want to do the wrong thing, they want to do the right thing. So learning to give all the suggestions that they want and need, so that they feel comfortable that they're not doing the wrong thing, this is the right thing to do, like opening all the cabinets or looking for pots and pans. So I have labels on all my drawers and cabinets and things, so they feel comfortable opening all those things. That was probably one of the bigger lessons at the beginning, automating the process, but the messaging, God that was one of the best things Airbnb did was the automated messaging. I love that, I hated writing those messages every time. And having the house guide and the rules at the beginning, so that the guests know, you know, no guests in the house. And I have the rule that if you have a guest in the house that, if you have anyone in the house that's not on the booking, you're immediately evicted. So it's clear, there's no grey area on that and learning that things like that do have to be that clear. I try to be more gentle in my approach. I don't want a whole list of rules. I don't want people to think, you know, they're uncomfortable that I break a rule, but there are some things that to the guests that's a no go zone. So yeah, those things were probably the hardest to get used to and that's where now I add value to anyone that I'm bringing in to Airbnb, is I've already learned all those things, so I can get them fast tracked on it and help them get set up.
Okay, so you talk about some issues you had with guests previously. Would you like to elaborate on that? Because many hosts right now are really scared to continue on Airbnb or get started in Airbnb because those nightmare guests, would you like to share us your experience with them?
Like my biggest nightmare one it was when I was first starting to, it was like on the first year. I'm a traveller and I travel a lot. And I just got a brand new co-host, you know, she was just learning to, she didn't know my house. And I was still doing short-term rentals then, but this particular guest, the girlfriend had booked the room and had booked it for almost two weeks. And I had still pilots, I still had two pilots in the house. So I had two rooms on Airbnb and the other two rooms were pilots. And in first I get a message from the co-host asking, do you normally put, I don't know I think was an earring, she was like "I found an earring in your living room. Is that supposed to be there? Was that there before?" and I thought "no, why would that earring be there?". Then I get a message from the guest saying "I'm trying to put everything back" and I thought "what in the world does that mean?". I'm in New Zealand, I forgot to mention that, I'm in New Zealand, so totally different timezone, totally different day when I'm getting these messages. So I asked her to elaborate and she doesn't elaborate, she doesn't answer anything else. And then one of my pilots messages me and says "Ninette, do you know this guy's going into everyone's room naked in the middle of the night?". I was about to lost my mind. So I immediately messaged her and I said what is going on? And I asked my co-host to go over to the house because the pilot also said I think he's moving your things around. So my co-host walks through the house with, you know, we were on video and shows me and there are just arbitrary weird things in weird places. He went through every single, I had a storage area in my basement with boxes with you know, photo albums where you know, just books stuff like that, right? He went through every single box, rearranged my photo albums, like took pictures out. He took my bike without permission, he was using my bike riding around everywhere. Even a year later, I was pulling out all my bakeware and I found a tube of Korean pot paste behind one of the pots or one of the pants. So I was so flabbergasted and I was so mortified. But by the time I sorted all the information out, she was on her last day of staying there. So that I think that was that was the first bad review I've ever left, I've only left a couple. But that was, I don't know how to guard against that. There's no rule, there's nothing you can do. I just had a ton of guests, they would pull to different houses, tried to walk into other people's houses, even though I have really explicit directions on how to get to my house, how to identify my house, they would think, well, the mailbox was on the other side of the road, so I went on that to that house. So it's, again, trying to figure out how to stop those things and realising a lot of people when they do get here, they're super tired. They're not thinking clearly. Yeah and I think there was another... The same timeframe, I had one guest. She was not very friendly. She was a travel nurse and she wouldn't answer anything. I kept asking her, how's the stay going? What's going on? And one of the pilots told me that she's always complaining. She left me a two star review, but never answered any of my questions and what was going on? And so I asked her, I said, "how can I do better?", that's always my follow ups like, okay, I want to be a better host, what can I do? She gave me two pages write up of things that she expected and almost all were OSHA standards. And some of that was, I was like, "okay, yeah, you're right, I should do this, I should do that" and so, I did make some changes, but the majority were just so over-the-top. So after the two star review, giving me all that feedback, two weeks later, she requested to stay again. I was like, you gotta be kidding me. And then the last nightmare was a young lady. She was a student here and she was also a stripper at a nightclub, which was fine, you know, no judgement. But she had probably a dozen wigs and it was during COVID and her hours got knocked back. I'm pretty sure my bedroom now is on one of those websites, I can't remember the name of it because she would keep coming down in different outfits and different styles of makeup, different wigs different things. And she left my room with all this weird things on the wall like cranes and the room had a smell to it that took me literally four months to get rid of. I couldn't rent the room out. I hired professional cleaners, I did every single tip trick, you know, every single thing I possibly could and painted the room and the only thing left was basically replace the carpet and the furniture, which I was not going to do. It took four months to get rid of it. I did charge her. Airbnb, you know being Airbnb, they didn't want to cover any of the costs. So they said, resolve it with her. And I added up all the fees all the time loss and she paid it. So at least I got paid for that time lost.
Yes, at least you get that and can you tell us how did you get to deal with these guests? Did you give them a bad review? Because many times hosts are kind of scared to give a bad review to the guests because they don't want their reputation or something to be ruined.
Yeah, that's a great question. I see that on the boards a lot. So the first two, yes, I gave the nurse, I think I gave her a three or four, the one that gave me the long critique. The people that had the walking around naked guy I gave them a two and said that they're not suitable for Airbnb, that they're better suited for hotel. The young lady at the end, I was her first Airbnb experience and I didn't realise, you know, you only get two weeks to review. So I did wait to see how long I was gonna get rid of the smell and I didn't know it was gonna take that long, but I felt bad. I thought she's brand new. She's very young. I don't want to start her off that way with a really bad review, so I chose not to review her. And then she chose to review me and gave me a bad review. Yeah, so I was really shocked because I was losing my super host status because of that review. One flipping review was gonna like make me lose my super host and there's no way I could recover the stars. I wasn't going to have enough bookings to make that number go up. So Airbnb sided with me, I was shocked and they removed her review because her review was not, it wasn't based on anything, there was so much communication I did. That's another lesson I learned to communicate, communicate, communicate every single thing on the Airbnb app. So they could see that I was trying and I did everything I could. And she never said anything and everything she listed as complaint wasn't communicated to me.
Okay, I see and did you received any other bad views in the past? Like previously to that girl or another type of guests? How do you deal with that?
If I get fours, anytime this the lowest I've ever gotten of them and that those two people. If I get a four I definitely follow up and I asked, you know, how can I do better? What went wrong? And I try to take that feedback to heart. And there are some people that that's what they're gonna give, that's how they're programmed, you know? They're like, well, I just thought that, they're like I had a good stay and I'm like, well, then why'd you give me a four?
Okay, I understand. You have already given us many great tips, but if you have any other tip that you would like to share for other Airbnb hosts or future Airbnb hosts, that will be great.
The other thing is, is there are those Facebook pages, which I only recently, the last year joined for Airbnb hosts. And while they can be overwhelming and a little scary, it's very diverse. I have learned a lot, so I've modified some things. We all know, we're on Airbnb, Airbnb changes its rules, changes its format, changes the website, changes its offerings almost weekly. So it's really hard to keep up sometimes with the page. So it's really nice to be on the Facebook pages and to see what other people are doing and how they're dealing with things to know that okay, now I need to go back in and I need to update my pages to say certain things or do certain things. So I think that's a great resource to have.
Right! So last thing I'd like to ask you about will be about co-hosting. I know many people wanting to get involved on Airbnb might like to start with something like that, or with rental arbitrage. How was your experience co-hosting so far?
As a co-host for my friend because she has four rooms, is overwhelming and she got a lot of lessons at the beginning, she had more problem guests or more problems at the very beginning than I had for, you know, for the past years. So she got a lot of trial by fire, which also meant that my messages blew up. So it was really a little bit overwhelming sometimes to see, between my Airbnbs and her Airbnbs, you know, keeping up with all that. But as a super host and her being a brand new host, when there was somebody that was being irrational or over-the-top with their requests or just, you know, there's some times where you just get this vibe from people, that's when I would tell her stop messaging them, let me step in and I can be the bad guy, you know and so then they can click on my profile and see that I have the experience, you're not going to push me around, versus a brand new host, that they're gonna feel like they can push around a little bit more. That's been cool. And on the opposite end, when I travel, finding a co-host is pretty difficult, somebody that you trust, the one that I had was amazing and super attentive. She would remind me, "hey, you didn't do this, hey, you didn't do that". She was all over it. I loved it. Trying to find someone like that, again, I don't know if I'll ever be able to. So that's my biggest challenge, it's to find another co-host so that I can travel and go do my things and do take care of those things. I know there's people trying to build businesses and bigger cities. I think there's one here in Roanoke that's trying to start. But yeah, it's having that too, having that backup person and I would suggest having a backup person.
And what are the filters you put in this kind of person? You ask them questions, get them interview, like face to face, things like that?
Yes. With the last one, we talked in-depth about what it was like, what the process was and she was very curious and really exuberant about it and kept coming over to the house and also was my next door neighbour, so that was even better. So it was really quick to be there and she could see everything that was happening. I'm trying to bring in a new one and he's really, really eager to do everything, but again, thinks differently. So it's building up that trust factor, you know, are you going to do it and so I'm home right now and I'm able to give simple things and see how those are being followed up on, and then know that if I can go into leaving the house to him or the rooms to him. So yeah, if I were to hire a company or bring in an outsider, yeah, there would be so many questions on "how would you deal with things? How would you handle it? What's your protocol? What's your procedure?" Because really, you need procedures and there would be a whole lot more and a lot more vetting. And I would want to see examples of what they've done in the past.
Yes, that's, that's great. Thanks for that. Actually, I'll like to make you one more question. You mentioned before that you had three listings being an LLC, right? Can you elaborate more on that? Because it's the first time we have a guest with that characteristic, so I'll like to hear about it.
So, when I started doing Airbnb, I didn't think it was gonna be long-term, I thought it would be short-term, and then my house, so I really didn't put a business structure around it. But I am so successful with this right now and I see this as being my cashflow income to where, if I get two or three more houses, if I get two, I'll hit the magic number where I don't need to worry about things. If I get three, I won't have to rent rooms in my house, and I can get my house back. To do this, though, I felt like I really needed a business structure around that, so I built a graded LLC. So then if things do go wrong in those other houses where I don't have that visibility like I do in my own house, where I can see when things are going wrong quickly, you know, but now they're in a different place. I don't have that hands on so much, that if something does go wrong, and they, you know, get to the point where they want to sue me or do something else, then my personal income, my personal life will not be affected only be the business and that house that they can take. Now when I buy the other houses that goes all together, that they can take those houses and sue me. So I still don't know if I'll set a separate LLC for each house or I'll just join them together. I'll talk to lawyers when I get to that point. But that was the reason why, I wanted to be under, if something went wrong that it couldn't ruin the rest of my life.
Okay, yeah, I understand. So that'd be it for today. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing lot of stories and tips with us. It has been very helpful, it's going to be very helpful.
Right. I look forward to hearing it and let me know when it goes live.
Thank you for your time and have a great day!
You're welcome and you too!
Bye bye!
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.
