Short Term Rental Success Stories

Today I had the special honor of speaking with Kieran O'Neill & Billy Crock, founders of Hometime, an Australia based property management company with over 1500 rentals that uses a very unique model. In this episode, Kieran and Billy share how they started their management company and the unique strategy they are using today to scale, provide jobs, and give out free management client leads.

I had the special honor of speaking with Brittany and Rudy Rudulph, owners of Rudulph Rents, a long term rental property management company that has 300+ properties in Birmingham Alabama, 11 of them being short term rentals. In this episode, Brittanny and Rudy share their experience having purchased a management company from their family, the reason they went from 500 to 300 rentals, the biggest mistakes investors make, what its like managing and master leasing properties in a rural market, and theirs reason why Birmingham may be the next hot market.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Tracey Northcott, founder of Tokyo Family Stays, a short term rental business in Tokyo Japan with 15 properties mixed between master lease, managed, and owned. In this episode, Tracey shares the ins and outs of running a business in a foreign country as a non-native such as Japan, how to find out regulations & deal with legal if you don't know or speak the language, how to build trust in a community, the importance of branding and how it helped grow her business, and how she was able to pivot her business when a country dependent on foreign travel gets locked down.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Heleena Sideris with Park City Lodging, a 37 year old vacation rental management company in Park City Utah that has 250 rentals under management. In this episode, Heleena shares how Park City Lodging founded and what it has seen over it's 37 year life in Park City Utah, what it's like operating a team of 75, the daily work flow during different seasons, how to include purpose driven work like sustainability into your business, and a secret strategy working with HOAs that doubled their rental count.

Today, I had the honor of speaking with Mike Quist, owner and operator of Kona Escape. Mike has 6 short term rental properties in Kona Hawaii that he's purchased & renovated and has been active in the space for about 30 days but has been able to fill his rentals and is seeing great success. In this episode, Mike shares the numbers on his properties, how he finds great deals on the Big Island of Kona, the lessons learned along the way, why he chose self management over hiring a property manager, how to please the OTA algorithms, and lessons to share from growing a YouTube channel to around 1 Million Subscribers.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Vince Perez, partner of Beach House Rentals, a vacation rental management company in Santa Cruz CA with 100 properties that are entirely booked through referrals and repeat guests without utilizing any OTAs. Vince is also the founder of fetch my guest, a marketing platform that gives independent vacation rental professionals complete control of their brand. In this episode Vince shares his story of moving from an Executive at Hyatt to becoming a partner and marketing strategist for Beach House Rentals, why it's so important to building brand equity, the pros and cons of Airbnb and OTAs on the industry, what it takes to build a 100% referral and repeat guest vacation rental business and more.

Today I had the special honor of speaking with Humza Zafar. A full-time Electrical Engineer and Canadian citizen operating out of Philadelphia. Humza has scaled from 0 to 15 master lease units in the past 3 months. In this episode, Humza shares his experience of BRRRR investing to student housing, how he discovered master leasing, what it's like operating one-bedroom and shared apartments, how he's scaled so quickly, and many lessons along the way.

Today I have the special honor of speaking with Na'ím Paymán, founder of Keezark, a short term rental company that started in 2015 and has scaled to around 400 units, a mix of managed, master leased, and owned, and the creator of Zeevou, a Short term rental PMS/Channel manager. In this episode, Na'im shares his journey of short term renting to basically survive and how that turned into a profitable business, how he scaled from 0 to 400 properties in a few short years, why he created Zeevou, as well as his strategic moves the hotel space.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Joey Mure and Russ Morgan, founders of Wealth Without Wallstreet, a financial coaching service that focuses on teaching strategies such as Infinite Banking for preserving and generating wealth. Joey and Russ currently have 11 short term rentals, 10 being master leases, and 1 owned, which they have invested in from the capital of infinite banking. In this episode, Joey and Russ talk about what is infinite banking, who infinite banking is and is not for, and how you can invest into short term rentals through infinite banking.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Brad Greiner, CEO of Open Air Homes, a short-term rental management company based out of LA & Palm Springs that has 80 properties under management. In this episode, Brad shares his experience of being a filmmaker on a in a tough financial situation having to rent his luxury estate only to discover that his property was able to make a significant income. Brad shares how he eventually turned from struggling filmmaker to profitable luxury short term rental management, how he scaled his business, the challenges of a city that changes its regulation, how to find the right management clients, and more.

In this episode I had the special honor of speaking with Dana Lubner. Dana helped scale her families Colorado based short term rental management company Effortless Rental Group as the director of sales and people ops. Dana has a lot of experience in marketing and branding and helped to take Effortless Rental past 100 properties under management. Dana is now working with Rent Responsibly a short term rental advocacy group. In this episode, Dana shares her experience of joining a growing management company during a booming time in Colorado, how she was able to speed past the competition, what it takes to market and brand your management company, as well as what it's like working in an advocacy group that is hired by companies like Airbnb, VRBO and other OTAs in their effort to work with local regulators.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Chris Maughan, founder and CEO of AES Group, a corporate housing and event manager located in Cannes which is South of France. AES currently manages 250 rentals during it's largest events being Cannes Film Festival, Cannes Lions, and Cannes MIPIM. AES works with many of the largest corporations such as Google, MTV, Twitter, Apple, Nike, Microsoft, Spotify and more providing housing, event space, and yachts for the companies. In this episode, Chris takes us behind the scenes of what its like working with and building a corporate housing company at scale, the unique STR Broker model, how large corporations work with vendors, and much more.

Today, I had the honor of speaking with Megan McCrea. Megan is a short term rental operator in Nashville Tennessee with 6 properties, all of which she owns. Megan has been in the short term rental space for 4.5 years and had no prior experience to real estate investing or management prior to. In 2.5 years she was able to replace her income from her W-2 and go full time into management. Megan is also the president of NASTRA, the Nashville Short Term Rental Association, which has been instrumental in bringing together hosts and helping to make changes to Nashville's turbulent regulation changes. Without Megan and the association Nashville would be a very different place for hosts so thank you for your work. In this episode, Megan shares her experience of falling into short term rentals, the challenges of leaving a well paid career to pursue full time management, how Nashville's regulations have been affected, and what it's like being the president of a short term rental association.

Today, I had the honor of speaking with Harold Lubberdink, CEO of Holiday.Rentals, a property management company with 1700 rentals out of Europe that currently covers: France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Croatia, and Lugano. In this episode, Harold shares his experience starting his short term rental management company back in 2006, his grassroots efforts of finding clients who did not even know that short term rentals were a thing, to scaling his business, building his own PMS, and eventually what led him to using a franchise model to scale his company.

Today, I had the honor of speaking with Greg Nanigian, a 34 year sales and sales management trainer that is affiliated with Sandler Training and author of the book Why People Buy. In this episode, Greg shares the Sandler Sales Methodology on how to sell without being "salesy", how to apply sales into growing your short term rental management business, why everyone is a salesperson, showing the technique of "negative reverse selling", and much more.

I had the special honor of speaking with Bob Garner, co-owner of Casal dei Fichi, an eco-friendly restored 6 unit farmhouse that overlooks the rolling hills of Le Marche in Italy. In this episode, Bob shares his experience of quitting the corporate rat race with his partner to pursue their dream of starting a traditional Bnb in the country side. Bob shares how he found this property, the process of restoring a farmhouse, and how he has made environmental consciousness and sustainability a key value in the property and guest experience.

I had the special honor of speaking with Terry Whyte from Anna Maria Beach Rentals, a vacation rental management company focused in Anna Maria Island Florida that currently has 30 properties under management, two of which are owned and 28 that are cohosted. In this episode, Terry shares his experience of 30 years of vacation rentals, how he has had to adapt from not having used any technology to becoming "The vacation rental software guy", and the common problems that he sees many vacation rental managers making.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Christina Thoreson from Chattanooga Vacation Rentals, a full service management company with 23 properties. In this episode, Christina shares her experience of scaling her vacation rental business, her system for onboarding the right clients, the screening process for hiring full time housekeepers and more.

I had the special honor of speaking with Kirby Atwell. Kirby is a real estate investor that has 6 short term rentals in Michigan City and has been switching his portfolio from long to short. In this episode, Kirby shares his reasons as to why he switched to short term, how he is able to find amazing deals that cashflow, and how he is able to short term rental properties in non "vacation destinations".

Today, I had the special honor of speaking with Dino Karic, CEO and founder of WalQinn, a short term rental management company based out of Croatia that has 130 properties total, 45 being master lease and 85 managed. Dino's portfolio ranges across Europe in locations like Brussels, Vienna, Zagreb, Porec, Sofia, a couple other countries I can't pronounce as well as Costa Rica. In this episode, Dino shares his experience of starting his company in 2018 and scaling to 130+ properties, his strategy for acquiring master lease and cohost units, how he has been able to scale operations across multiple borders, and what it's like scaling his business in Europe.

I had the honor of speaking with Steve Milo, founder and CEO of Vtrips, a full service vacation rental management company with over 1500 properties throughout the U.S. In this episode, Steve shares his journey from 0 to 1500 properties, how he grew his team, the strategy to increasing direct bookings, how Steve prices his properties, and the impact of advocacy on vacation and urban short term rental markets.

I had the honor of speaking with Zac Rushton, co-owner of Great Dwellings, a short term rental management company based in DC. Great Dwellings has 80 managed and 10 master leases. In this episode, Zac shares his experience of joining Great Dwellings when they had 20 properties and stuck being unable to grow, and how by joining their team they were able to take on an additional 80 properties in a few short years.

I had the honor of speaking with Darik Eaton, founder of Seattle Oasis Vacations, a management company that operates 30 units in the Seattle Washington area. Darik's portfolio currently consists of 28 managed and 2 master lease. In this episode, Darik shares his journey of starting his short term rental business using Craigslist, his battle and the outcome of fighting a condo association on their regulations, how he grew his portfolio inside of condos and HOAs, how he helped stop the city of Seattle from enforcing even stricter regulations, and much more.

I had the honor of speaking with Alice Horn, CEO of My Villa Key, a vacation rental management company in the Orlando Florida area. My Villa Key has 80 properties under management. In this episode, Alice shares her journey and struggles of entrepreneurship when starting a company, how she positions her management company to help children on the autism spectrum and other development disabilities, and how she has been able to compete in the highly competitive Orlando market.

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Ray Licardo. Ray is a short term rental operator based in the San Jose area. Ray has 10 total properties under management, 6 of them being master lease and 4 cohosted. In this episode, Ray shares his experience quitting his sales job to pursue short term rentals full time, how Ray pivoted his business to cater towards corporate rentals, and how he has been able to create a profitable business netting $700 - $1000 per property by only doing monthly rentals.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Jennifer Frankenstein-Harris, CEO and founder of Great Ocean Condos, a vacation rental management company located in New Smyrna Beach, FL. Jennifer's company has grown to 265 rentals since 2008 and is grossing $6 million a year. In this episode, Jennifer shares her experience of falling into vacation rental management, what it was like to scale, the obstacles along the way, and her unique approach to growing her management company.

I had the special honor of speaking with TJ Tijani. TJ is a BRRRR investor and a STR manager based out of Houston area who has 14 units total, 7 which are owned and 7 master leased. In this episode, TJ shares his journey of BRRRR investing to master lease investing, how to stand out in a crowded market, and the costs associated with buy and hold investing vs master lease.

In this episode, I have the special honor of speaking with Andrew LeBaron, founder of Buymoretime.com, a management service that charges as low as $99 a month for short term rentals as opposed to a revenue share model. In this episode, Andrew shares how he is able to keep costs so low for his services, his unique way of automating the business, his process for streamlining client onboarding, and how he has been able to outsource everything to virtual assistants.

I had the special honor of speaking with Tom and Sofia Sharkey. Tom and Sofia are the owners of Lemon Tree BnB, a short term rental management company in Kansas City, MO. Tom and Sofia got started after buying their first personal home in a trendy area of town in 2018 which was quickly turned into their first STR. A year later they got their second property in the same neighborhood using the rental arbitrage strategy. Tom left his speech therapy career to pursue his dream of building wealth through real estate and a short term rentals. Over a six month period their STR portfolio expanded from two to twelve listings using diverse strategies of buy and hold, partnering, rental arbitrage, and management. In this episode, Tom and Sofia share their journey on starting and then scaling to 12 units in a six month period, their unique strategy to finding true value add rental arbitrage properties, and how they have been able to scale through investor partners.

I had the special honor of speaking with Rich Munroe, founder of Diamond Edge Properties, a tax lien real estate investment company that has shifted it's focus to primarily short term rental management and master lease investing in the Atlanta, Georgia area. In this episode, Rich shares his experience of starting his real estate flipping company, how tax lien investing works, why the switch to focus on short term rental management, and why Rich's strategy involves acquiring the largest properties in the area to master lease.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Anurag Verma, the Co-founder of Pricelabs. Pricelabs is a dynamic pricing tool for professional short term rental operators helping over 3,000 properties around the world maximize their Airbnb income. In this episode, Anurag shares his backstory on starting Pricelabs, how dynamic pricing works, different markets and how they are responding, and how to analyze a market to see how it is recovering.

Today I had the honor of speaking with Mark Simpson, founder of Boostly.co.uk, the 'one-stop-shop' to helping you get direct bookings through website building and education. In this episode, Mark shares the most important aspects of increasing direct bookings and how to drive more traffic to your business.

In this episode, I had the special honor of speaking with Anthony Keen who is based in Western Cape South Africa. Anthony started his own short term rental property management business 7 months ago and has scaled up to 21 cohost properties. Anthony has been doing volunteer work full-time for 10 years. He managed his parents' apartment for about 4 years from a distance to help them with their income. He learned the ropes on that one listing and he maintained a Superhost status for 3 years. Anthony thought that since it worked pretty well, maybe he can manage other owners' properties too and that is when he and his wife started looking for owners. In this episode, Anthony talks about how important it is to take time and be thorough during the listing stage so that you don't work hard and have hassles at the reservation stage.

I had the special honor of speaking with Julie George who we had on episode 30. Julie is the author of the Million Dollar Host and the founder of Host My Home, a short term rental management company that she grew to over 100 properties in 3 years and then sold to Hometime, which is another management company that was looking to expand in the area. In this episode, Julie talks about how other people can build their short term rental business to be able to sell it to the right buyers. We discuss how to value a short term rental business as well. Julie shares what the process of building your business to sell entails and how to achieve what she calls the "ultimate payday".

In this episode, I had the special honor of speaking with Scott Shatford, founder and CEO of AirDNA.co which has over 10,000 active subscribers and analyzes 10+ million properties. With 15 years of experience as a data analyst, Scott realized he wanted to discuss data instead of buying properties. In this episode, Scott talks about what rental arbitrage looked like in 2012, and how AirDNA started. He also talked about how they are pulling information, what kind of information people can be expecting to see on the platform, and how they can utilize those data to successfully run a short term rental business.

In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Matt Landau. Matt is the Founder of VRMB, Vacation Rental Marketing Blog, and the Inner Circle which is an online training resource, where he’s been working with hosts and helping them generate more bookings. Matt entered the vacation rental space in the middle of 2006, pre-Airbnb, and owned and operated the only luxury accommodations in Casco Viejo, the historic district of Panama city where he lived. Without any hospitality training, educational resources, and guidance, Matt did everything wrong. Matt shares with us the things that owners and managers should do right now during this crisis and how they can take advantage of this time to be able to sustain their businesses.

I had the honor of speaking with Tim Touchette. Tim is the President and Owner of Stay Attache, a corporate housing company that has over 290 units in the DC area. When Tim and his wife first started in 2011, they placed $200-text only classified ads in the Washington Post. Back then, it was quite challenging to get businesses interested in a small company. Tim had gone through a couple of economic downturns; the 9/11, the 2008 recession, and now, the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode, Tim talks about what corporate housing is, how they are able to meet the expectations of both the property owners and business clients, and how their business is affected during this time.

In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Travers Xanthos. Travers has a portfolio of 24 properties, 22 of them are rental arbitrage and 2 he owns, all located in Nashville, TN. Travers had a high paying sales job for 6 years and in 8 months after finding out about Airbnb he already was ready to quit his job with the income he was making from his properties. In this episode, Travers talks about how he was able to grow his short term rental business in such a fast time period, how he was able to be completely hands-off while living in Bali, the secrets he used to get news reporters to promote your properties, and how to find good deals even during uncertain times.

In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Jack Forbes. Jack is co-founder of Kopa.co, a direct booking site that allows guests to find short and medium-term furnished apartments and hosts with business professionals. Jack talks about how Kopa started, how they find businesses that provide corporate clients, the challenges of scaling a direct booking site, and how they get hosts and renters to their platform.

In this episode, we have the special honors of speaking with David Krauss who had been in our Success Stories Ep 31. David founded Rent Responsibly which focuses on empowering local short-term rental advocates to build a sustainable future for short-term rentals in their community. They help us, people from the short term rental industry make our stories heard which is an opportunity for us to advocate for ourselves. In this episode, David talks about the importance of getting involved, telling your story, and making sure those stories are captured.

In this episode, we have the special honors of speaking with Karen and Scott Chenaille who have been in our Success Stories Podcast Ep 44. Karen and Scott inspire us with some of the lessons that they've learned during these difficult times.

In this episode, I have the honors of speaking with Anthony Gantt and Greg Rollins. Anthony is based on Texas and an active duty marine who founded At Ease, a booking site for the military, and Greg Rollins, located in California and a marine veteran who founded Righteous Rentals, a property management company for At Ease. They have 19 properties across 3 states. Greg got into short term rentals while he was still on active duty and ran his properties while he was deployed in Japan. Shortly after he got out of the Marine Corps, he met Anthony, and when they got on their first phone call, they knew they had to team up. In this episode, Anthony and Greg talk about how they went from 2 to 19 properties in 7 months just through word of mouth. Also, they share how they take their experience military experience to come up with creative ways to build their company and help military people invest and make money passively through short term rentals.

In this episode, we have the honors of speaking with Rick Carlson, who's been in our Success Stories Ep. 26. Rick talks about how crucial it is to diversify your revenue streams to get through whatever hiccup comes along such as this coronavirus pandemic.

In this episode, we have the special honors of speaking with Jeremy Schmitt. Jeremy shares the 7 steps that short term rental hosts can take to survive this Coronavirus crisis when most are struggling and others have already given up.

With everything that has been happening around the globe caused by Coronavirus, we decided to stop doing the Success Stories. Instead, we will be speaking with hosts where they will share their experiences on how they manage their short term rental businesses during these trying times. In this episode, Ray and Vanessa Vargas talk about the unusual activities and challenges that their business is encountering and how they are able to get their properties booked for several weeks and months.

In this episode, we have the special honors of speaking with John Bianchi. John is the owner of Jaunt Stays where he manages 10 properties, 7 are rental arbitrage and 3 are co-host units located in Chicago and Scottsdale. John talks about his entrepreneurial journey where he was hitting obstacles but still able to overcome those. He also talks about the risks involved in doing short term renting and shares some tips on how to avoid those. Want early bird access to our upcoming Rental Arbitrage & Cohosting training program? Join the waitlist at http://shorttermsage.com/earlybird   Register here for our next live training https://www.vacationrentalmachine.com/traininglive

In this episode, we have the special honors of speaking with Tom Lewis. Tom is a full-time professional tennis coach. Five years ago, he was looking for a way to get extra money for his pension, and that's how he got into short term rentals. Now, Tom manages 9 properties, three of which he owns, 4 rental arbitrage and 2 co-host units. Tom talks about how he was able to get 49% of his bookings with direct bookings, and how his job as a tennis coach has helped him in building a reliable team of cleaning and maintenance staff. ⌛Want early bird access to our upcoming Rental Arbitrage & Cohosting training program? Join the waitlist at http://shorttermsage.com/earlybird

In this episode, we have the special honors of speaking with Shannon Hyde. Shannon is the Head of Global Operations for GuestReady, which is one of the largest property management companies in Europe with over 1600 properties under management all around the globe. Shannon was one of the first employees in their London market and helped grow the company from 3 properties to 2000. Shannon shares some insights on building both a property management business and a PMS software to automate the running of their business which fueled their growth. Take a look at the new property management software Shannon talks about https://www.vacationrentalmachine.com/rentalready ⌛Want early bird access to our upcoming Rental Arbitrage & Cohosting training program? Join the waitlist at http://shorttermsage.com/earlybird

In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Stefan Pougatchev. Stefan went from 0 to 5 rental arbitrage units within 8 months of being in the short term rental space, all of those located in California, and is planning in going to 12 units in the next few months. In this episode, Stefan talks about how he and his business partner structured their partnership and why they decided to do the business together. He also shares his experience of getting denied for at least 30 times and how he got a Yes. ⌛Want early bird access to our upcoming Rental Arbitrage & Cohosting training program? Join the waitlist at http://shorttermsage.com/earlybird

In this episode, I have the special honor of speaking with Shiv Gettu. Shiv recently graduated from the University of California and fell into real estate and short term rentals by chance. He and his business partner, Kendrick, had their first unit in January 2019, and in the span of 14 months, they've scaled up to 32 properties in which 25 are rental arbitrage and 7 are co-host units. Shiv shares with us how they started their short term rental management company, what they did to raise money to scale their business and the opportunity that they found with multifamily and short term rentals syndication. He also shares the importance of setting up systems and utilizing technology to run your business efficiently. Download our FREE check-in messages and guides for Airbnb Hosts https://www.VacationRentalMachine.com

In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Kyle Stanley. Kyle is a real estate investor and a full-time Airbnb host in Fresno, CA. Five years ago, he started renting out rooms in his house which covered his mortgage, and it was in May 2019 when he went all in and rented out full houses. Kyle currently has 7 properties, 3 of which he owns, 2 are rental arbitrage, and 2 are cohost units. Kyle shares how a "Mother-in-law" hack is done and also talks about how he has slowly let go of complete control of his business and how that has really helped him scale his business. Download our FREE check-in messages and guides for Airbnb Hosts https://www.VacationRentalMachine.com