Turning Your Long-Term Rentals Into a Short-Term Rentals: An Introduction

With its increase in popularity, the short-term rental boom seems to be becoming more and more attractive. The fact that you’re here may mean that you’re slowly sinking into this rabbit hole. Who knows? In ten minutes, you might just find yourself creating an Airbnb account! Before your inevitable drop into this world, it might be good to set up a good landing pad, so you don’t get hurt.

So how do you transition from your long-term rental into a short-term one?

Doing the Pre-Work

Before going to battle, it’s essential to know your enemy as much as possible. While you can’t prepare for everything, it doesn’t mean that you should charge in not knowing what to expect. Even if you’d be walking in the dark, you’d at least want to know what things are inside the room so you’d reduce the risk of bumping into things or stepping on lego bricks.

Try and see if the numbers make sense for you. While the people you see online are making loads of Airbnb cash, they might be in places where short-term rentals are in demand. It might not be a good idea for you if tourists don’t even know where you are! And, is it legal in the first place? Check the local guidelines to see what requirements, permits, taxes, or whatever issues you may be signing yourself up for. Ensure that you have confidence through diligent research prior to making your decision.

And because research is only theoretical, it might be a good idea to test the waters first. If you have two rental properties, why not just try one unit first? Will you really make three times as much or whatever percent your research said? Are the financial investments worth it? Are the results satisfactory for you? Are the numbers just coincidental? Or do you think it’s something you can replicate? These are some of the questions you want to address when you’re trying to get your feet wet.

You may also need some mental preparation to brace yourself for the relative increase of texts and calls from tenants. Your long-term tenants may occasionally call to get a few things fixed or talk to you about rent. But each round of new short-term tenants would need you to give them a brief of the property, explain how the shower turns on, what the wi-fi password is, and what number to call if they have other concerns. Unless you’re hiring a property manager, you’re pretty much on-call as long as you have tenants in your unit.

But even if you do have a property manager, you should still expect to do more work than usual, especially if you’re going into unfamiliar territory. Sure, things may become easier as you learn along the way, but thinking that other people will carry you through the desert isn’t ideal.

Utilize booking channels

Airbnb is not the only app to list your property in. There are loads of other booking channels like Vrbo, FlipKey, Booking.com, and many others! We’ve made another article explaining how different a few of these channels are from one another. As you list more properties in more places, people are more likely to see your listing, increasing the chances of booking. But with the increase in utilized channels comes the complexity of keeping them (and yourself) all in line.

[Consider Using] Software to Make Your Life Easier

These booking channels often already offer their own platforms to help you manage bookings on your own, but sometimes, they might not be “compatible” with the other channels or sites you plan to use. It might be possible to create a system to help you manage bookings, but it might become a nightmare to deal with if you need to watch over multiple units. What if you fail to see a double-booking? What if two excited tenants come to your unit on the same day? Things can get ugly pretty quickly with just one slip-up! That’s where software solutions like Guesty and Lodgify come in. Why not make your life easy by just using one tool to control and monitor them all?

Do understand that using these tools doesn’t come for free, so we would only recommend this if you’re already suffering from success or starting to lose your grip with the management side of things. Still, even you’re not in a position to spend a little extra on these; it’s good to know that modern wizardry exists at your disposal.

The Deal with Property Management

If you’re already employing third-party property managers for your long-term rental, don’t make the mistake of assuming they can handle short-term property management. These two are both similar but significantly different. Because of the higher turnover rate, managing short-term rentals requires more effort. If you let your current team (assuming they don’t have experience with short-term rentals) handle the new venture, they would likely ask for a higher rate later. Not only do you expect to pay more, but because they’re still learning the ropes, the mistakes they’ve made (which is expected) may lead to poor reviews that put you in an undesirable position.

There’s a reason why many turn to remote teams to manage short-term rentals. Besides its cost-effectiveness, there are plenty of other reasons why one might be more inclined to go with one. This is a broad topic, so we might have to get into this some other time.

We’ve glossed over many other variables to look at, but these would be some basic things to consider if you’re trying to get into short-term rentals. Just remember, you don’t want to overthink things. Being in the middle of yes and no can get stressful. If you think you want try short-term rentals out, it would be best to take action once you’ve done the research. If not, then you can just leave the idea until you want to explore it again.

These all sound good and all, but if you feel like just selling the property instead, you can try out working with real estate investors like Shorefront Investments! Sell unused properties with no hassles (and even in an “as-is” condition) in just a few days. If you feel like giving us a shot, you can call us at (850) 713-4866, send us an email, or fill a form on our front page.