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Podcast Michelle: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

Podcast Michelle

Jae Seok An34min

Delia

00:02

Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we chat with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience. Today's guest is Michelle Roehl, an Airbnb host who owns and manages a listing in Bowling Green, Ohio. She bought a house next to hers and launched her Airbnb on April 2021. In this episode, she'll share with us about her journey and experience so far, how she decided to start on Airbnb and also some key insights of her listing and market. This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, short-term rental analytics for high return investments, comprehensive data for insights, ideas and inspiration. Go to app.airbtics.com to 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 with Airbnb and short-term rentals?

Michelle Roehl

01:17

Yeah, so we had the opportunity come up that our neighbor decided that she wanted to move out after recently getting married and wanted to sell the house and we had been wanting to get into having real estate for quite a few years, my husband and I both, it just wasn't the right time and then all of a sudden, this opportunity came up. We had been through something ourself where our particular town doesn't offer a lot of short-term rentals because it's a college town. So it's really interesting that this all came up, it was just the right time and we really fell in love with the idea of being able to host people and bring people in and even though COVID, we were kind of coming out of COVID, but we had that opportunity to meet a lot of new people and host them and really provide a safe and clean environment for them and their families.

Delia

02:07

That's amazing! And did it cost a lot to acquire that property right next door? Did you have to do a lot of financing and stuff?

Michelle Roehl

02:15

Yeah, we did finance it. We did a traditional conventional loan and we did get a fixed rate and we got a pretty good rate last year right before the race started going up a little bit, so it was quite a blessing and the way that it came about, we really are just so fortunate to have the opportunity.

Delia

02:35

Did you get a low interest rate for that one?

Michelle Roehl

02:37

Yeah, yes. Yeah, we were able to secure under 3%, which is, yeah, pretty good. Yeah.

Delia

02:46

Wow, that's amazing! Do you take a long time to be approved, you know, the loan? Or it was done immediately?

Michelle Roehl

02:55

Yeah, we actually work with a small town loan or excuse me, a bank and the loan company on this part of that is amazing. We have a relationship with them. We've done business with them between myself and my husband, even before we got married for probably over 30 years. So when we walked in and presented the opportunity, they were very excited for us and the approval process actually was pretty quick and easy and we were a little bit shocked to be honest, just because of everything and with COVID. We just weren't sure you know how economics and how it was going to work out, but it all worked out absolutely wonderful. I can't highly, I can't stress enough working with a small Hometown Bank and having that type of relationship. It just really made the process really easy.

Delia

03:45

That's amazing. And can I ask you if you want to share with us how much was the property price?

Michelle Roehl

03:50

It was right around 200K. But the best part is, you know, with the rates right now, we really see this as a long term investment. So our goal is to keep the house and maybe one day retire it, we're not really sure. But we truly love the house, it's right next door to our own and the property is really beautiful. So it's kind of exciting to be able to offer all of this and it's a really great home. It's a typical home value for our area, so it's not on the low end, it's not on the high end and it's been a well maintained and we know the builder because it's the same builder that built our own home, so we're really familiar with it.

Delia

04:33

And from the very beginning, were you thinking about doing Airbnb on that property?

Michelle Roehl

04:38

So initially, we thought if we purchased the home that it might be a place for my mom or my husband's parents of one day, they wanted to move in if they needed a little extra care for us, you know, to be closer to them and when that kind of didn't happen and my mom in particular didn't have that interest, she likes where she's living. We immediately, I don't know how but my husband, I were on that same track and we looked at each other and said, "Yeah, this would be a perfect opportunity for an Airbnb or short-term rental". There's so many neat qualities about the house and the property that just make it perfect for that type of rental and it's been, I would say that based on our success in just such a short period of time that we were right about that piece of it, so.

Delia

05:23

What are the special things that the house has that makes it, you know, special for short-term rentals?

Michelle Roehl

05:28

So for us, what we found with most of the competitors in the area, lots of places in Northwest Ohio, you know, we're not really a traditional vacation rental spot, you know, we're not on the beach, we're not in a big tourist trap area. So for us, we really thought that this is going to attract families, it's going to be bringing people in for the small university that's here, maybe some events in a larger town close to us or larger city, but we really weren't 100% Sure. So the best parts of the house is we have recreation area in the basement. A lot of our competitors don't have that I know these are things that maybe some other larger cities might have available in their area as far as amenities, but in our area we don't. So the backyard is fully fenced in and we have gardens and flowers that we maintain. I know last year in particular, I planted at least 60 varieties of different plants and things to really make it beautiful, you know, a nice serene setting, we offer a fire pit, we provide all the firewood, we offer a couple of hammocks, there's a deck in the back on the ground with seating outside and a table to eat. We also decided that between the house and the garage, there's a breezeway, it's kind of an interesting space and we were trying to decide what we wanted to do with that and very quickly, we came up with the idea of putting a hot tub in there, so that's kind of become our hot tub room. We designed and installed a custom garage door, so that garage door can open up into the backyard and not only provided a really nice way for ventilation, for it to be able to see into the backyard, but it also allowed us to get that hot tub into that space. It keeps it cleaner than if it were in the backyard itself and it also allowed us to add a heater in the wintertime so that we can keep our hot tub running year round even with our cold weather here in Northwest Ohio.

Michelle Roehl

05:30

Wow, it has a lot of cool amenities! What's the recreation area you said that was in the basement?

Michelle Roehl

07:31

So we have currently, so the theme of our house is mid-century modern. So I've tried to incorporate a lot of unique and fun games and things like that, that would have been a little closer to the turn of century or at least available on the turn of century along with some new items and games. We have a board game table that is originally from, I think we dated it to the 70s, early 70s. There's a foosball table that's older and we have a lot of families that really like that, kids that walk in are surprised how much they really enjoy that. Then there's a little area in the basement, right off of the rec room, that actually was set up as a little exercise room for the previous owner, so we decided to put in a mat that could be your yoga mat, we have a yoga ball, some other amenities and it has a balance bar on the wall as well as full length mirrors in the entire space. So it's a little space that you could do yoga, meditation, do a little bit of exercise, etc.

Delia

08:33

You really have everything, right?

Michelle Roehl

08:39

We're trying, we're really trying. We add games and we're trying to upgrade the space every moment that we get. It's not something that we feel that, you know, we can just start it up and say "Here you go, this is what we have" and that's it. We really try to listen to our guests and try to offer things that will really attract the type of guests that we want and we've been very blessed with getting some amazing people to come and stay and just being able to meet those people.

Delia

09:06

Yeah and with all those, you know, incredible and fun amenities, you must be the busiest Airbnb your town, right?

Michelle Roehl

09:16

Well, you know, we would like to think so but I, you know, I hope so. We definitely offer more amenities in that way than some of the other local competitors. There are only a few really in Northwest Ohio in general that offer a hot tub and I don't know of any that are in an indoor type space, so.

Delia

09:35

Now that you talked about the competitors, how's the market like right now, in your area?

Michelle Roehl

09:42

So the market in the last year since we've been in business has actually been pretty good. We typically are booked almost every single weekend even in what some people might consider the off-season. I don't really know that I would call or say that we have a traditional off-season or on-season in this area. It could very well be the fact that we have a hot tub inside, we seem to during what I would consider the winter months or what I would have assumed would be the off months and the off-season, we had a lot of people come from all over the state of Ohio, even as far as 6-7 hours away from West Virginia because they wanted to spend some time in a hot tub, they love the idea of it being inside and having a little bit of heat in a nice clean area. So we've actually attracted people from quite a distance just because of the hot tub during those winter months, which typically, I would think would not be, you know, more of a traveling type of month. We also have a number of families that come in for the university, so we're able to kind of accommodate a lot of those families that would normally have to get two or three hotel rooms, they can stay in our one house, a full house with three bedrooms and be able to enjoy those amenities on top of it.

Delia

10:56

So it's not very busy, basically?

Michelle Roehl

11:00

Well, we didn't figure that our particular area again, because we're not in a traditional tourist area, we really planned on weekends and occupancy partially during weekdays. So what some people might see say, if I were in, you know, Myrtle Beach or in a beach town, I would think that our occupancy levels are low. But considering the fact that you know, we're price right, you know, we figured all of those kinds of things out number wise and we base our pricing on occupancy of about 40%. So we know what we need to cover cost wise and anything above and beyond that goes back into maintenance, etc. So we're not doing this as our salary, we're not trying to replace our salary at this time with this particular rental. So it's giving us a really great opportunity to keep, you know, we've still only had this property for about a year. So we're trying to make sure that we're continually doing maintenance and making it better and one of the really important things too is because we're in a family neighborhood, we're not on the commercial side of town or even on the side of town with all the college rentals, we really want to maintain the house and have it be, you know, as high quality as it can be both visually and you know, as far as value for the neighbors as well.

Delia

12:21

Yeah, I completely understand. Now that you told me about the type of guests you usually get, what's the demographic that you have seen more getting into your rental?

Michelle Roehl

12:33

So there's really kind of two that I would say are pretty even. So broad majority of our winter guests are those traveling in the wintertime, which again, is usually you know, this area of Ohio can be really icy, really cold, really windy, etc. or it could be 60, this is Northwest Ohio. Typically, you know, what I would say is that during those winter months, we have mostly couples that come to spend time, we've had a number of anniversaries, couples just getting together getting away from the kids for a weekend, etc. During the rest of the year, I would say that there's kind of a balance between some families wanting a getaway, just want to go somewhere new and different and again, even though this isn't a traditional vacation spot, we do have some really great things to see, the Toledo zoo is amazing, it's only about a 25 minute drive from here. There's some really great venues that have artists, music artists, etc. We've already had in the last six weeks, I would say we've had two guests that came during the middle of the week to stay because they were going to go see either a country artist or a Christian artist up in Toledo, which is again, it's only about a 30-35 minute drive to that venue. We've even had people come for Cedar Point, that's about an hour drive, but it was still, they found that our amenities were worth a little bit of a drive.

Delia

13:51

Okay, I see! And you talked before about the occupancy rate, you said you keep it out 40 and 50?

Michelle Roehl

14:00

It's between 50% and 60% most of the time. Almost every weekend is booked, we have a two night minimum, so it's typically Friday, Saturday and then check out on Sunday, we have a number of people that stay longer than that, but that's kind of the standard. We base that what we need to make and all of the finances when we did our cost of doing business, to really be a 40% occupancy, to be able to cover all of our bills to do everything that we need to do. It still seems to say it sounds like it's low, but we actually are doing quite well for the area, looking at some of the competition, etc. Without some of the amenities, their occupancy rates are considerably lower. So we're pretty happy with where we're at right now and we're constantly trying to improve and add things that will, you know, attract more people and make it even more comfortable.

Delia

14:53

And how's the rentals doing on weekdays?

Michelle Roehl

14:56

So our weekdays, it really varies on the month. Last month, we had quite a few weekday rentals and this month, we don't not quite seen a rationale, I don't have a rationale for why, you know, I think it really just depends on events going on. It's interesting to see, you know, with Airbnb in particular has a new search engine, you know, those kinds of things, you know, we'll see how that goes. Right now it hasn't been as generous to us, but I think the economy is having a lot to do with that as well. So you know, we're quite comfortable with where we're at and we know that we can, you know, quite easily be booked one month or excuse me, one week a month and pretty much all of our expenses are covered. So it's a comfortable place to be.

Delia

15:42

But about the new search engine, I've heard from other hosts, like from all around the country and other countries as well, that is not working for them, right?

Michelle Roehl

15:53

Yes. So I can say confidently on our end, that we have not had a booking since they changed that. So I haven't even had a request and inquiry. A little concerning so, you know, hopefully, Airbnb is listening to what the hosts and even some of the guests are saying about how that's working or not working for them. You know, I can't say for sure, if it's that, I can't say if it's just the economy, I'm assuming it's a combination of both. But really, in the grand scheme of things we took on this house and the rental and the short-term rental idea with a lot of faith and we know that, you know, we have the numbers right for what we need and we're pretty comfortable for the next six, eight months, so we'll see how it goes. I think things change, you know, everything's cyclical I'll say, the same with the economy, you know, granted, it's we're going into a rough time right now and I certainly hope that that transitions pretty quickly, but eventually it will. So, you know, we just have to make smart business decisions now to get us through until that time.

Delia

16:54

Yeah and about the algorithm is like question of time, I think hosts should learn about it. The think about Airbnb is they drop like this and they don't teach you how to use it in order to, you know, take advantage of it, so nobody really knows how to use it and everyone is kind of lost, right?

Michelle Roehl

17:14

Yeah, I agree. There was definitely some interesting with the rollout, there was just a lack of information I think for a lot of people, even as a guest, I've logged in and used Airbnb, sent the rollout as a guest and as a guest, even searching for what I wanted was a little more cumbersome than what it used to be or what I remember it being. I don't use it all the time, so what I remember, it was a bit more cumbersome and I didn't quite find what I thought I would find. But you know, it's again, I think that Airbnb is a smart company, I think VRBO is a smart company, I think all of these other companies out there that provide this type of service for hosts to host their homes, do short-term rentals, they're really smart and you know, they're gonna get it right. They just need to, you know, listen to what the feedback is right now and, you know, make those adjustments and we'll better for it.

Delia

18:08

Yeah, that's right. Now that you mentioned about VRBO, do you use other channels like VRBO, booking, private website?

Michelle Roehl

18:15

Yeah, currently, I'm on both Airbnb and VRBO. I also am on Houfy. I'm looking at adding a website right now and waiting just a little bit of time to kind of see how things are gonna pan out in the next couple months, you know, with the search engines, with everything going on, I feel like I mentioned, you know, kind of making smart business decisions at the moment. This might not be the best time to put a large chunk of money into somebody building a website for us, but it's definitely on the backburner and I'm excited to get that going once I'm a little more confident in what the economy's gonna do.

Delia

18:53

Yeah, that's right! I've heard that most hosts are trying to open their private website, you know, for bookings because of this whole Airbnb thing and we'll see how it goes because we don't know if it's going to be beneficial for the short-term rental market or not.

Michelle Roehl

19:11

Yeah, exactly. And the biggest challenge with having your own website, I've had my own website for another business for a lot of years is, you know, the SEO is always difficult, especially if you have a lot of competition. So you know, there's a lot of time and money that you can really sink into doing a website and again, I know that it's absolutely necessary, it will be something that I do, you know, for us, Airbnb and VRBO and Houfy so far have been really great to us. But again, it's definitely in the works and I think that as a small business owner, we're small, we have one property right now, eventually we'd like to have more, but we really want to just get this right and make those best decisions and then decide later on and move forward. But you know, it really want to kind of build a presence and get some social media going as well. So until that time I'm then, you know, for right now, this is what works for us, so.

Delia

20:04

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense! And how is VRBO going for you?

Michelle Roehl

20:08

VRBO is a really good platform, it really depends on the time of year for us so far. Initially, we had a lot of bookings through Airbnb and then it kind of switched and for some reason, it was almost all VRBO. So I would say that probably about 60% booked through Airbnb and about 40% through VRBO. Houfy so far isn't as well known, but as that gets out there, there are no hosting fees, so it's kind of similar to having your own website without having your own website. So it's a nice option for guests to be able to book. Right now, I don't push anybody to go to that particular site, unless they've already stayed with us at least once and that way we, you know, we've had a good experience with them.

Delia

20:52

Oh, that's great! And what's the general experience with both of them like, VRBO and Houfy? What's the quality of the guests that you get there? The fees? How much do you change your price on those?

Michelle Roehl

21:06

So we've tried to keep things simple. So I understand that there are a lot of pricing mechanisms out there, there's a lot of different things that you can use to do that. I basically set up two seasons and I use OwnerRez to connect both or all three of those platforms and I'm integrated on all three. So I really haven't changed the pricing on any of them, my pricing is the same flat for all three, the difference with, you know, how fees, you're not paying those fees for the hosting site, so they're not having to pay though. So if a guest wants to go through Houfy, they do save some money } on the tail end of that. As far as, you know, Airbnb or VRBO, I haven't had any issues with either one of them per se. As far as guests, I think we have similar quality of guests, if I really had to kind of nitpick, I think that Airbnb, we tend to get more couples or more small groups like this last weekend, we had 5 or 6 alumni come that graduated 15 or 16 years ago from the university here in our town and they were great, they're fantastic. They took great care of our house, they left it really clean. And I would say that on VRBO, we tend to have maybe a few more families, but not always, you know, that's not always, it's not really an exact science, I guess, because we kind of have a little bit of both on each platform, but I think that that's probably a fair assessment though, as to the type of guests that we get. But I can't think of one that we've had a problem with. I mean, we've had absolutely amazing guests.

Delia

22:35

That's amazing and also it's amazing that every, you know, site works well for you because there are some hosts that don't like VRBO because, you know, the quality of the guests and stuff like that, right?

Michelle Roehl

22:46

I have heard that. I've heard that about some other platforms as well that I've looked into, you know, I can't specifically and I don't want to call anybody out or any particular site out, but, you know, I've heard, they're less than quality guests on other platforms and so I proceed with caution. You know, I've been looking into some other platforms right now, I just haven't seen the benefit of some of the smaller hosting sites, it's very difficult to deny, you know, some hosts don't like Airbnb and I get it and that's fine. I've seen some some really interesting, you know, information coming from people complaints, etc. But it's really hard to deny when most short-term rentals, it's kind of like Kleenex, you know, when everybody talks about facial tissue, they say give me a Kleenex, it doesn't matter if that's the brand or not, you know, so Airbnb has kind of taken on that general short-term rental name. So it's very difficult to deny Airbnb and VRBO in the amount of advertising that they put in for their hosts to get the sites out there. So, you know, for now, at the moment, we're doing quite well, I think you have to be smart about anything you do, any decision you make and understand that these are just hosting sites, you know, ultimately, this is my home that we're sharing. Ultimately, I have to, you know, set my own roles and do what I think is right for our business and not expect too much to be honest from some of the hosting sites, you know. I do have amazing insurance and if there's something I could say to any host or anybody getting ready to host is getting good, excellent quality insurance company and make sure that you get a really good plan that covers just about anything. It's difficult to find in some areas in particular, but we've been very blessed with Travelers' insurance, they have a great short-term rental policy that we were able to purchase and put some additions on, we have an umbrella policy for liability, etc. So we make sure that we're covered, you know, Airbnb and VRBO their reimbursement for damages etc. I mean, they're great for small things if that's what it comes down to, but that really shouldn't be what we rely on as a business. I don't think this is, that's just my personal opinion, so.

Michelle Roehl

22:46

Yeah makes a lot of sense! You shouldn't rely on any platform, you know, every platform can have nightmare guests, it's not just for VRBO all this stuff. So I think is very true what you said. So one thing that I would like to ask you about is what's your average daily rate that you have?

Michelle Roehl

25:17

So during the on-season or the, you know, the busy season, I guess, if you want to call it that, if I really have one, we're right around $300 a night and during the off-season, I believe I'm somewhere down around 250.

Delia

25:32

So you don't lower it too much? It's just 50.

Michelle Roehl

25:35

No, I haven't lowered it too much. I haven't noticed that there's, as I mentioned before, there really isn't a true honor off-season per se in this area because we having a university here. We do bring in people for, you know, there's a big hockey program here, basketball, etc. So during those winter months, we still have a fair amount of families, etc, that come into town to attend events at the university. So we've done quite well with where we're at and I like to keep things simple. I was a photographer for 25 years and every other photographer around me would have 15 different price lists, depending on what the customer was. I've always felt that that's confusing, I don't think that that makes a lot of sense to the customer and I've always tried to keep things simple for myself and for them. So I kind of take the same theory, I know that I could probably use PriceLabs or a number of any of the other things out there that go in and make sure that they, you know, update pricing almost daily, depending on what hotel rates etc. are, I don't feel that's necessary for us. We're not in this just for the money, we truly, truly love hosting. I mean, I can't tell you, the joy that we get when we meet our guests. We greet them to check-in and we just have a quick conversation, we show them around if they want to, show them where, you know, it's important to me that they know where safety items are, fire extinguishers, first aid kits, etc. Yeah and that they know how to operate and they're comfortable with the hot tub and even the garage door, the custom garage door, so opening it up and down. We just want to make sure people are comfortable and have the best time they can and aren't searching around the house for something if they really need it, so.

Delia

27:11

Yeah and you're right next door, so that must be really helpful for them.

Michelle Roehl

27:14

It's going on a year and a half and I would say that I think we've only had maybe one person that's even needed us to come over and it was really because, you know, there was a small storm and a limb came down in the backyard and we just went over and removed it from the backyard, so it wasn't in their way. Otherwise, we try to make sure that we're pretty thorough that the guests are set up and ready to go with all the extras that they need.

Delia

27:36

Okay, that's great. Can you tell me a little bit about your revenue, you know, during the busiest months and slower months? So it only goes down by $50, you know, your rates, but still, I'd like to know about revenue in those months.

Michelle Roehl

27:51

Revenue, we had just about half a year last year and we brought in around $26K for just over half of the year, not knowing kind of what we were doing. The first few months, price was a little bit lower, our hot tub we had to order and it wasn't installed until August, so I didn't increase prices until then. So I was closer to $150 to $200 a night before we added the hot tub and just to kind of generate some business initially for that first month or two. Then we increased prices a bit to be a little bit more in line with what you'd pay for a couple of hotel rooms and to cover those costs of course. We knew where we needed to be, but we certainly needed to generate that business and get some reviews too, so we could get some people in the door. We were very blessed with being able to, you know, pretty much book almost immediately and get people in the door. You know, I've made some connections to networking on Facebook and some groups for parents and people that attend the university, so that really helped kind of give us a jumpstart and I definitely recommend that for anybody that's looking to get a short-term rental going, to make sure that they get networking before they get open.

Michelle Roehl

27:52

That's right! And do you have like an estimate numbers of how much you made the first year?

Michelle Roehl

29:10

Yeah, it was about that 26K and then, you know, that was only for about what, seven and a half, eight months and again, that might not seem like a lot to a lot of people, but considering what we purchased the house for, what the economy is like where we're at in our area, not being a tourist area, actually is pretty good. I was very excited about those numbers considering that most of that money is. The first few months at least was considerably lower, you know, nightly rate than where we're at now and having the hot tub of course made a huge difference, but we're on track. I think we've already made that much this year so far and it's you know, just now the beginning of June. We're certainly on track to do considerably more this year. We're very happy with what we know that we have in it and our expenses etc. So we're putting a lot back into it, we've done some remodeling, a minor remodeling in the basement to make a space available for guests to use the washer and dryer, we put in a brand new Electrolux washer and dryer. So there's a quality down there both for our use and turning because I literally wash everything, every turn, every single blanket sheet, etc, gets washed between comforters, everything. So we wanted to have something that was nice and efficient, both for ourselves and for the guests.

Delia

30:30

Oh, so it's going really well for, you know, last year and this year, it's going pretty well.

Michelle Roehl

30:37

Yeah, yeah, for us and for our market absolutely. Every market is different, so, you know, there are times where I see people post on Facebook in these host groups about, you know, they made $300K last year, that's fantastic. But then you ask them where they are, they're in a really high, you know, economic area, the prices of everything are, you know, maybe 10 times what we have, it's pretty amazing, you know, people are able to do that. This is an area, we never planned on that, we never figured that was going to be the case and I think that there's probably a lot of, you know, short-term rental owners that that's the case, they're in places, you know, such as that small town, etc. You know, when you see those numbers, you may see other people post those numbers, you know, don't let that intimidate you because it can be very easy to look at that and say "Wow" and then compare what you're doing. You know, for us in our market, we're actually kind of killing it and I'm super excited, you know about that. So we kind of lead the area with our pricing, so.

Delia

31:33

Oh, that's really amazing, so congratulations for that!

Michelle Roehl

31:36

Thank you!

Delia

31:36

And one last thing that I would like to ask you about is if there are any tips that you'd like to give out for Airbnb hosts?

Michelle Roehl

31:42

One of the best tips that I received, you know, when before I even started is I joined a lot of these Facebook groups for hosts, some of the stuff that's in there is really great, you kind of have to weed through it, you know, there's some maybe not so great information. But there's some really good information in there and I was able to hook up with a superhost for Airbnb and I think she is a premier host on VRBO as well and we were able to hook up and she was able to walk me through some of the setups, there's some little nuances in the websites when you first set it up. She shared with me some information on how she runs it and it absolutely made sense for me. So I recommend as far as a tip, connect with someone, connect with another host, superhost that has been at it for at least a year or two, that you can really get some some good information and it is in a similar type of market, right? So I would never, it's not going to help me to connect with somebody who has, you know, 10 huge condominiums, you know, in Myrtle Beach or Miami Beach, whatever, you know, I really want to connect with somebody who has a similar type of market and so for me, it worked out really well. We personally, I mean, there's so many different ways you can do a short-term rental, we meet our guests, I have a conversation with them, I do not do instant book and you know, we actually meet and we have a conversation. Some people don't like that and that's fine, but we make it known that, you know, we have a quick conversation and then we leave them alone while they're in the rental unless they need something. But for me that the biggest tip is really just to connect, find somebody that you can, it looks like you can respect and that they have a similar type of market and just connect with that person and let them kind of help guide you through some of those basics and you know, ask questions and bounce ideas off of.

Delia

33:27

Yeah, that's a great tip. Thank you a lot. So that'd be it for today. Thank you a lot for your time and thank you very much as well!

Michelle Roehl

33:34

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on!

Delia

33:39

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.

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