Listing Optimization: Can This Airbnb be Saved?

Jeremiah: It's not all sunshine and five-star reviews. If you've realized being a short-term rental investor isn't that glamorous, then you're in the right place. It always surprises me how much money new investors can spend on furniture and upgrades and still have a pretty bland or average listing. Today we're going to look over a listing live, and I'll give my unfiltered, no feelings spared opinion on what this host needs to do. We get into it because this is the community where we talk about the gross, the awkward, and the operational messes. as well as the real strategies that keep you going instead of quitting. Anybody can win big in this industry, or you can ignore education and you can quit. My name is Jeremiah. I'm an investor with over a decade of experience, and I'm also a property manager with over 140 units under management. I talk about what rental investing looks like from the inside. Welcome to Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions. Today's email is actually really long, and most of it doesn't apply to this episode. So I'm going to be just summarizing this. Basically, this listener says, I'm considering selling my house because it's not what I was expecting from Airbnb. What do you think I should do in order to make it either more successful or to get it ready to sell for the highest price? Let's share. All right. So now I'm looking at my Airbnb profile. I'm looking at their listing. and the first thing I'm seeing is their hot tub in fact, there's two photos of their hot tub They're highlighting it and how it looks during the day with a septic system nearby. and they're highlighting it what it looks like at nighttime, which is actually a code violation because If you can see my cursor, they have lights above their hot tub. You can't have electrical lights above your hot tub unless it's like 10 feet high. I do know that you have to install those after you get your hot tub permit, because they won't give you your hot tub permit if you have lights above your hot tub. apparently it's a shocking hazard. Back to it. So in those first five photos, I'm also seeing two images of the fire pit. So this guy really likes his fire pit. and I mean, that's pretty clear. I also see a porch, a deck that has a pretty average grill and three chairs. Do these chairs even have a table with them? show all photos. I hate when they do this this tour. I just want to see that one picture. Come on, Airbnb. Let me see it. I don't want to go through your stupid tour. All right, here's the exterior. There's that photo. Nope. oh there's a tiny little like coffee table. Not even a coffee table. That looks like an end table. So with the exterior, we do have some cool, mood lighting. I'm looking at two images of my gosh, it's a by level. All right. So I've only ever seen a couple of buy levels do okay with rentals. This one I'm not anticipating it's going to be like earning that much because by levels and split levels, they oftentimes present the best value when you're purchasing, especially if you're looking like per square foot. I think that investors do themselves a disservice when they shop at a price per square foot. Or when they're even considering the price per square foot in determining if something is a good deal or a bad deal. I showed 98 Sky Drive a couple of days ago to one of my clients. and I think it's a great deal. It's only 1,600 square feet for a four bedroom, three and a half bath. So the living space is tight. But for the right audience, for the right people, that could be an incredible property. The thing is, if it was a by level, I would have said no. if that house, which was very small and tight, was compared to something like this, and somebody chose this one instead, I would say you're making a big mistake. this house is a bi-level. There's like a glass ceiling on how much money you can make from this. and I've never, ever seen an extraordinary rental listing where it was earning. 20% of the value or 15% of the value in gross rents. I just don't see that being remotely possible. and so because these houses exist up here, people are buying them, they're converting them into vacation rentals. and I feel like you're just spinning your tires. This is a property that you're going to invest a lot of money into because of its style. You're going to invest a lot of money into it and you're not going to get a good return on investment. Now, purchasing the property makes it much more affordable. Because you're not competing with as many buyers for a property like this. Why is that? bi-levels became popular in the 80s and in the 90s, and they kind of phased out in the early 2000s when people started building Center Hall Colonials instead. So when it comes to like new construction, like that's what was common and that's what everybody wanted, right? and it was built for a primary home. It was built for people to live in and so oftentimes we have a garage, we have no fireplace, we've got lots of square footage and a cool little layout, a full bathroom on either level. It's a very efficient way to build a home. It really, really is. It's just not attractive to your guests, to your vacation rental guests. This image that I'm looking at, it looks like it's straight out of the suburbs. Like there's nothing woodsy about this, there's nothing mountain about this. There's even a flagpole in the yard. I mean, how many chalets do you see with flagpoles out front? It's rare. this has a grassy yard and paved driveway. This screams, I want to live here. Like 12 months. I want to get a lease. I want to live here long term. understand by levels are a waste of money. Looking through anything else noteworthy about this house, I do like the hot tub. It looks like a brand new hot tub. and I like the pergola. That looks really good too. It's cool that there's these screens around it because you can probably keep a lot of bugs out, but it makes me wonder if bugs are a problem in this area. Now, in this image, looking to the bottom left, I'm seeing the lid for the septic system. it would be amazing. If you could just like cover that with dirt. A riser tank, it does have to stick up, but it doesn't have to be so prominent to be showing like one foot out of the ground, and a lot of people don't know what that is. Some people do. either way, I don't think it's attractive, and I don't think it should be in your photos or in your listing. The next one is this fire pit and the fire pit does look cool, but there's only four chairs and those four chairs are like enough for. A two-bedroom house. You know, this is a four-bedroom house. Why don't you have enough chairs for everybody to sit around the fire pit? So it's almost like you're making this like an attractive feature of your house, but you're not doing anything to make it attractive. This is like I think this is a $40 fire pit. They have this kit at Lowe's and this is really cheap and it doesn't look like it's ever been used before, so it's probably a new fire pit. But the Adirondack chairs look good. It's just that you only have half as many as you should. Like if this house is renting to well, let's see, what's the max? ten guests. If this house is renting to ten guests, then why do you only have four chairs around your fire pit? And on your deck, which is looking like a hangout spot, you've got three chairs. getting back to these photos, let's go and do the full tour. All right, so living room, I see a large sectional couch. It looks like there's space for one, two, three, four, five people. So you're renting to ten, but you can only seat five in the living room. Got it. not a great thing, you know. if somebody's renting for 10 people, like they want to be able to fit 10 people. Your living room looks extremely average. Your kitchen looks extremely average. I'm seeing a nice contrast between the wood and the backsplash and the counters and the flooring. So, like that's not a problem, but like this is very builder grade, very average. I like the stainless steel cabinets appliances and a couple other things, but like the ceiling fan I don't see the point of a ceiling fan in a kitchen. Is that to like cool off your food? is that because you don't have any AC? no I don't think so. So let me just highlight this photo right here. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you've probably already picked up on what I'm going to be putting down. We have flat ceilings, very flat ceilings. and that is one of those things about the style of a bi-level that you often see. I have seen a few bi-levels with vaulted ceilings. Those are a little bit better. I do not think that your guests are looking for a house with the suburban feel and look. This one, it has that. It's got that suburban look and feel. Now it's nice. Like I like the stone counters, but I wish you would have like painted your cabinets or taken some of those upper cabinets down and put in shelves, floating shelves, update this place, you know, make it look appealing. So far, I'm just focusing on what I would do to make this a more successful rental and I think that's probably what my listeners want to hear. So I'm gonna focus on that first. this dining table should be thrown away, your chairs as well. Get something that people like to sit at, get something that looks inviting. it's just dark and ugly. chandeliers, same thing. Why does this room have two ceiling fans? And why are they off? So the lighting is important when you're taking photographs. I'm not sure if you've caught on to that yet, but when I'm looking at this room, I'm seeing a very dark bedding, I'm seeing no lights on, and we've got Like four lights. We've got end tables with lamps and we've got the lights on the ceiling. and none of them are on. Like where's all the light coming from for this? I guess just through the windows and this is not a professional photo. If it was a professional photo, the windows wouldn't be so bright. So number one, let's get professional photos and let's fix some of our angles. yeah, let's see the rest of the room. Okay, now they've turned the lights on for the other direction, and they've covered the window, the back window, with its curtains. but the TV still looks a little bit too small. Again. Why do we have this furniture? I don't like this oh here's the same angle again, but now with the lights on and the curtains drawn. in my opinion, your betting should be white. Just white, stark white, maybe patterns. I've seen that done well. But like when you walk into a room and your bedding is white, it feels clean, it looks clean, and if there were any stains on it, you'd know. Where red, you really have to look for stains. and I know that some people put red bedding in their house in order to hide the stains, but that's the problem. is it doesn't feel clean because you don't know if there's stains there. So I would recommend replacing that as soon as possible. Now here's another bedroom with a small TV on the wall, another ceiling fan. this time all the lights are on. I don't like this bedroom set. If you bought this furniture, if this was part of the eighty thousand dollars that you spent, this was money poorly spent. I'm sorry. again, this is unfiltered. I'm not trying to save anybody's feelings here. this grate I think that's there so that children don't fall out. I think it's not supposed to be in a vacation rental listing. instead on your windows, just put those little tabs out so that it can only go so high. And that would save your kids because now there's only a three-inch opening and they can't fit out but people put these things out there and I think it looks bad. I think it looks like a jail. this bedroom has an attached bath. I thought the last bedroom was the primary suite. Here we have another. it looks like this one also has the gates on the windows. Again, not a good look. I think this bedroom sets a little better. I could deal with the headboard and the end tables. They look decent. The lamps look good. I like the lamps. We finally have white bedding here. So this one's done better. I still wouldn't get the dresser. I want a full-length mirror in my STRs, but I don't really care for dressers. Now, some people disagree with me on this. They like having dressers. If I'm staying somewhere for a weekend, I'm packing a couple of bags and I'm living out of the bags. I'm not taking time to put all my stuff away. some people do. I don't know, to each their own. I don't think that that dresser is justifying the real estate that it's taking up. I would rather have a table as big as the dresser, but dressers are maybe twelve hundred bucks and by comparison, a table would be more like three hundred bucks. So that's like $900 that you could spend somewhere else that you could do something else with. With $900, you could put an accent wall in each bedroom. You know, if it's $900 per swap, right? So I would rather save the money and get a table. That way people have a place to put their stuff down, like a dresser, but without the drawers, Because you can find stuff like that. I do it all the time. I'll take like a kitchen table in cut it in half. That way I have basically a dresser with two legs and I mount it to the wall so it will not move and it won't scuff the floor. Let's keep on going. oh I don't like this so still not professional photos. Our windows are washed out again, you can tell it's a professional's photo and it's been professionally edited when those windows are what they call window pull, meaning they're taking the outside light and underexposing. So in the mirror, we just have the closet doors and The closet doors are ugly. I don't want to highlight that with the mirror. I probably would have changed up the angle a little bit at least. Here is bedroom four. It doesn't look bad. Again, white bedding. Now, if I go back, it looks like we have white bedding everywhere but the primary suite. This is just such a weird dark room. I don't like the lamps. They're old. I bet you that this guy bought his house with this bedroom of furniture and decided this is nice. I'm going to keep this. I'm gonna keep the comforter. I'm gonna keep the curtains. And it's all a matching set. I don't think they even sell this stuff anymore. This looks like it's original for the house. Like they built the house in 1989, they put the furniture in there, they put the bedding and the curtains, and it's stayed that way, like a time capsule. All right, so much to say. moving on from bedroom four. Here's The bathroom. bathroom two, so this looks okay. You know, I'm not a big fan of the light blue, but that's just me. I don't think this will bother many guests. I don't really see any amenities here. Like I don't see shampoo, body wash, or anything else. I see towels that are folded up instead of being on the towel rack. What's the purpose of the towel rack? Flooring is okay, trim is original for the house, so not updated. oh my gosh. This is a bad picture. so is that even the same bathroom? I don't think so. This is a different bathroom, even though this one doesn't have a label. This looks like a half bath. and here we've got cords galore you want to make things look organized. Otherwise, it feels too small the second thing is you should always have your photographs in horizontal landscape orientation. This one is a picture of a doorway, believe it or not. What I'm seeing here is a doorway, and in the background is a vanity that is not impressive, a light that is not impressive, a mirror that is not impressive, and a toilet that is not impressive. This photo is adding zero value to your listing. Sorry. Not sorry. oh okay, so this seems like the same bathroom now and it still says bathroom two. but this says bathroom too. I'm getting like messed up with like the orientation of these images. But why in the world would you have so many photos of the same bathroom? So this image, if you're watching on YouTube, this image should go away. picture number twenty nine should just go away. I would probably keep one picture of that bathroom and it would be this one. Picture number 28. The rest of them are subtracting value from your listing. And I don't know how they did it, but there's a reflection here and they eliminated the photographer. That's gotta be AI. Anyway, this next one, again, this is not the right orientation for a photo, but I bet you they have like five pictures of this bathroom. There's a good one. This one looks nice. It matches the other bathroom. Cool. I think this is good. But it's again, it's very average. All right, getting to the exterior, we got that fire pit again. this fire pit should have lights above it. In fact, the whole exterior space, I think, should have some soft, warm light at night. So usually in the houses like this, you can get that from an exterior light, like a motion sensor light on a corner of a house. You can get electricity from that. It's on a switch. Put an outlet there instead of a light and then what you can do is run your hanging string lights Edison lights, whatever. You can hang those around your yard. I wouldn't do the whole yard in this case because most of it is a septic drain field, but I would include the fire pit, the hot tub, and that back upper and lower deck in those lights. Otherwise, it's just gonna be dark. I think that would make for a really nice twilight photo if you had the fire going, the lights for the hot tub and the exterior lights, that would be way more attractive for this one. Hmm. So they do have lights underneath the deck and a fire pit under there as well. So I feel like this was just taken at a different time. but they didn't open up the hot tub, and it looks like there's a flash. It looks like they have a flash for this image. Again, not professional photography. A photographer would set this up for available light with a tripod so they can take a long exposure and they can get all of that rich detail and image quality for nighttime photo. So that is a wasted picture. I do not see any reason why you need two pictures of your washer and dryer. These are the same washer and dryer. It's not like you updated them. One has terrible light. The other one has better light, but still not great. and the door's part way open for no reason. again, the exterior of the house, I already commented on it being a by level. I don't know how people are going to feel about. so many stairs, getting into the inside. I don't think that's going to affect your guests too much. But if I was the property manager for this house, I would not have any of these photos. Like this picture right here, the front of the house showing that it's a bi level, I would make that one of my last pictures, like all the way at the end, so that people can recognize it when they pull up. for no other reason. It shouldn't be in any other pictures because you want to hide the fact that it's bi level. oh my gosh. This, this, this pool table looks so depressing. oh my goodness. And there's a custom sign on the wall that says Pocono STR billiards bar now here's one thing to know is your short term rental guests do not know what STR stands for. For them, it's an Airbnb. Or a VRBO it is not an STR. So branding your property Pocono Str is basically just calling it a Pocono G R B Q R X W Y Z. Pick your random three letters. Your guests don't know and don't care. I know that we named this show STR Problems and Solutions in the beginning. I changed it to Short-Term Rental Problems and Solutions because people don't know what STR stands for. And I needed it to be clear. oh here's another thing. my gosh. We've got vertical blinds. Guys, I hate, hate vertical blinds. These vertical blinds likely were installed when the house was built back in the 80s or the 90s, and they are still there today. Update it. The window treatments, the window coverings, they make such a difference in a room, such a difference and how things look in the space. what? What am I looking at? This is another dining room table, but it's like in front of a TV. Like there's a humongous TV next to this table. What even is this? This is a dining room table. This is made for six people. Are you trying to play this off as a poker table? I think they are. This is their game room, and they're trying to play this up like it's. A gaming table. My goodness. Okay, so now with some context, I'm seeing that that billiard table also becomes a table tennis table. and what I have to say about that is I don't think it's good to have both. I think you should have a good pool table or a good table tennis table, and that it's kind of a waste to have both because you've got nothing specifically good about either one. It's not a good table tennis table and it's not a good billiards table. it's just not either. You're not gonna get like, you know, pool players, like the people who are gonna hang out with pool sharks. You're not gonna get people who are like excited to play pool at your house because of this. anyway, so what I can see in this photo from context is again, we've got all the lights off. We're just taking pictures with the available light. So these two ceiling fans, why are there so many ceiling fans? Anyway, so they have the shades open in this photo. Now we can see that other photo was taken at nighttime because they have the shades drawn. You know, it's closed. This fireplace is not doing you any favors. this brick fireplace, just paint it. Just do something. also instead of investing money in buying a pool table like this, you know, you can just like spend a hundred bucks. and get a used pool table, like a solid big slate pool table. and you can bring that in. If that's really what you want to use that real estate for is a pool table, then get a real pool table. Like they're available all over the place. It's just that you can't get them with delivery. And that's the real expense when it comes to pool tables. People will spend thousands of dollars to buy a pool table and it comes with delivery. It gets set up in their living room and then it never moved because the things like 2,000 pounds. I know I've tried to move these things before. I'm exaggerating a little bit. It's probably like five or six hundred pounds either way. I had to get four people myself plus three others in order to move this pool table out of a basement and into a trailer. The trailer tires were like looking flat because the sucker is so incredibly heavy. And then we got it to the garage that it was going into for this conversion and we moved it in Again, I needed the help of three other guys. And I can deadlift like 400 pounds. So I don't know how heavy this thing must have been, but like that is a that's a monster. But we got it for free. That's the thing. Is a used pool table is value less because of how expensive it is to move it. Nobody is gonna pay for it. So that's the thing about pool tables. If you really want to have a pool table, get a good one. Don't get one of these combination suckers. If you want a table tennis like this, then I recommend getting a bigger one, something that's more like competition size, like play up the fact that this is a table tennis, you know? But because your living room upstairs just has that gigantic sectional couch that can only fit five people, this might be a good spot for more seating instead of, you know, both of those things. I don't know who my demographic would be for this house, which we should probably get into that in a minute. But it does look like they're trying to use this table, this kitchen table, as like a cards kind of game table. Here, an image looks a little bit better, but I'm still wondering why there's a mini-split above the fireplace where it can get melted if they have a good roaring fire here. why there's not the image like you can easily Photoshop in a fire into that fireplace, and they're not doing it. They're decorating this mantle with an old clock. That reminds me of Beauty and the Beast. We have more vertical blinds. More. Why? Why do we have more vertical blinds? I hate these suckers. And it's it's the very worst spot for vertical blinds, is where you've got a sliding glass door. oh my gosh. They pissing me off, guys. get rid of the vertical blinds. Nobody likes these suckers. They're in the way, they're always getting damaged. Your property manager, if you're managing this property yourself, and By context listeners, yes, he is managing this property himself. But if you're managing a property like this yourself, you need to take those blinds down immediately. I have a feeling there's another kitchen down here because over here is an exhaust fan that you would normally see with an oven. Let's see. Let's go through some more photos and see what else we are looking at. Okay, it's a poker table. It just looks like they put some sort of a rollout kind of application on top so that you have place to put decks of cards and poker chips. Okay. So I see what they're doing there. What? What is that? is that a bronze nutcracker? Why? Is this leftover from your Christmas decor? What's the point of the nutcracker? And now we have the blinds in a third position. oh my goodness, why? So last time. They were closed. Well, the first time they were closed. Follow me here. Closed, bad photo, too dark, take it at night. Second photo, they're open, but they're not drawn back. So third photo, now they're drawn back and not open. This is so here's a second kitchen. The house has two kitchens. And this one kind of seems better. All right, so I've never ever ever seen a guest get excited about there being two kitchens. That's a lot of cabinets. This is a small kitchen and it doesn't have much counter space. And you've got expensive appliances in both kitchens. What are you thinking? Are you trying to rent this as like two separate units? Is that the reason for the second kitchen? Or did you just leave it because you bought it that way? oh my gosh, such a bad photo. Guys, listen to me. When you get professional photos, when you get better quality photos, delete your bad ones. Okay? This image is taking value away from this house, away from this listing. That was probably kept in because they said, from this angle. I can see the application on the table. It just looks bad. It looks really bad. All right. So here's a game table. And there's carpet in this room. This is a weird, like modern table that's glass. And we've got an arcade unit that looks lonely in the corner. why is it by itself? Why do we have three images of this room? I think that they probably have a vacation rental permit for four bedrooms, and so this fifth bedroom. They're turning into a game room. I would bet you it has its own door, has its own heat, has its own egress window, and would qualify as a bedroom. And they're not using it as a bedroom. They're instead using it as a sad little game room with two little games. what else could you do in here? Well, you could put an 85-inch screen TV from Walmart is like 700 bucks. and you could put a PlayStation 5 with it. and you could hardwire it into your internet and you could advertise this as a gaming room that people would want to game in Instead, you're turning it into something that's like going to get destroyed by little kids because there's a door, there's a way for parents to just kind of lock their kids in and say, occupy yourself, but there's not really enough to occupy the kids for very long. This is a mistake waiting to happen. You could put a loft in here and a slide that comes down. That would be cool. You can make it into like a ball pit. If I was to do that, I would add wains- coating. This room would look much better with the different light maybe like LEDs that go around the rim, like the top around the ceiling. Maybe some backlighting. I've seen this done with crown molding where it's set like two inches off the ceiling, and there's lights above the crown molding. That would look pretty cool here, too. There's multiple ways to play up this, and you are not doing either of those ways. No. All right. So we have an image here of the staircase. I don't know why. We have a bad image of one of the bathrooms. Don't know why. Another bad image of the staircase. It looks like we have an Atari setup. And a fake fireplace in this living room And this is image number 64. This is the last picture. That belongs in your game room, not in your living room. And these photos need to be deleted. And we have more vertical blinds. Why? Why so many vertical blinds? All right. So now that I'm finished with the pictures, let's go over the description. And guys, when your guests are looking through these houses, they're looking way faster than this. They're looking at your first five photos and saying, okay, there's a hot tub and a fire pit. Not only that, like, is there an inside to this house? Like there's a hot tub and a fire pit. Two images out of five. Two images of your hot tub, neither one of them's giving you any additional information, two images of your fire pit, neither one of them's giving you any additional information, and your porch. and your porch looks pathetic. So it's not a wonder that this property's not getting rented. All right. let's see this description. Pocono's retreat for families and groups. What are I mean, aren't those they're the same thing? You're wasting characters, families and groups. Four B R slash three B A. I get the abbreviation. Four bedroom, three bath house, home, sleeps up to ten guests, and features two kitchens, multiple living areas, a private hot tub, game room, kids play area, decks, and parking for up to six vehicles. Conveniently located near Kalahari Camelback, Mount Airy Casino, and other Pocono attractions. Guys. Hot tub game room family retreat near Kalahari. the game room's pretty pathetic. Honestly. there is a hot tub. It's actually a good looking hot tub. And this description is not good. Why is this description bad? Because it's giving you information that you're seeing elsewhere. Right up here underneath the title, 10 guests, 4 bedrooms, 4 beds, 3 baths. So why would you put that in your description as well? Have I been guilty of this in the past? Yes. Yes, I have. All right, let's look at dates. So I can see that the calendar is wide open. See what they're gonna charge for Friday to Monday. If I was to save for Columbus Day weekend, it'd be fourteen hundred dollars for me. And let's increase the number of guests and see if the price changes. Nope, still the same price. Wait, now that there's nine people, it's $14.82. Where when there was eight people, it's $13.95. Okay, so if I do put 10 guests in here, I'm paying an extra $100. Is that right? About an extra hundred dollars. $1,400 up to $1,570. So an extra $170, roughly. That is variable pricing. let's see. I'm not able to add pets. So this host is not allowing pets in their vacation rental, which is a big mistake. You need to listen to episode number two to understand why it's such a big mistake. The thumbnail image for the bedrooms for where you'll sleep. The worst photo of that bedroom. Do not use that. The thumbnail image for bedroom two, again, has the bars on the window. So not a great look there. And we've got that same thumbnail for bedroom four. All right. So let's show more, see more of this description. Maxupum occupancy is ten, no parties, events, or large gatherings. Primary booking guest must be twenty-two plus and present during the stay. All right. So you probably already picked up on this if you're a regular listener to this podcast, but putting in here that you must be twenty-two or older and present during the stay is a problem. No Don't do it. I know where this is located. It's in an HOA and a township that doesn't have an age limit. You don't have to put 22 plus to rent. I think that's a mistake. The space. If I was to read through this, which I'm not going to, but if I'm breezing through, I see words like relaxation, four three, four three, a golf course. Why are there no images of the golf course? Why are there no images of Kalahari? Why are there no images of what you're near? It's in the description. Ski resorts like Camelback, 20 to 30 minutes away, hiking trails and waterfalls. I'm seeing information here. I'm not seeing anything that when I'm just scrolling through is gonna make me say, I need to book this place. When you write a description for your Airbnb listing, it needs to be something where the main highlights stand out immediately. Okay. I do bullet points. Airbnb doesn't like when I make my descriptions that I put an actual bullet point or an emoji in there, but I do something to make it easy to read. Putting in here information that's elsewhere in the listing or information that the guests already used in their search. So if the guests put in there where they want to go, Tobyhanna, how many guests there's gonna be, maybe 10. And how many beds they need, or you know, if there's a hot tub or whatever. If they put that stuff in there, they're going to already know this information. So what I'm seeing here doesn't add any value at all. Your description is valuable real estate on your listing. Think of it like the front of the cereal box, right? The front of the cereal box is the only thing that is going to sell the cereal. Besides the experience, right? But that cereal if somebody's not tried it before and they're walking down the serial aisle, they see lots and lots of boxes. The box front is the only thing. So millions of dollars are spent on marketing and advertising for these brands. Take a page from their book. Note like the way your listing presents. is extremely important. It's extremely important. The first five photos that you choose need to be the first five selling points, the things that make your property either unique or special or comfortable or cozy or whatever you are trying to use that's going to make your listing win. Your description is going to be on that front. It's going to be there. So use it intentionally. Do not increase your price per person. Unless there's a justified reason for it. In this situation, not justified. Do not put a limit on the age range of people because that's just gonna hurt your conversion ratio. Do not like conveniently located near Kalahari, Camelback, Mount Pocono, like I would rather see you take an image and put it on Photoshop or PowerPoint or Microsoft Slides or Google Slides. I don't care. Get a screenshot of the map of the Poconos, put it on there, put an image or a description, some words for Kalahari is here. The house is here. This is Camelback. Like this is where everything's located. This is 20 minutes. This is 30 minutes. This is 10 minutes. This is how close we are. Doing stuff like that is going to be a selling point for your guests. And you can easily turn that into a picture. and you can put that picture in the front. 20 photos. Cause here's the thing, guys, and here's the issue. This property is just a comfortable place to relax. It's not anything special. I'm sorry. There's nothing special about this property. I would hope that it's clean, but according to the reviews, it's not that clean. there's nothing special. The furniture's not specifically good. It doesn't look all that comfortable. It doesn't look all that clean. It doesn't present as being a unique experience. This is just a bi-level house in the Poconos, near some attractions you might want to go to. If you really want to go gamble at Mount Airy Casino, you can stay at a house like this. And how is this house going to compete with other houses? How is it going to compete? Price. This is going to be the budget option. This is going to be cheaper. And I haven't seen this in person, but I bet you, I bet you, after one year of hosting guests at this property, I'm going to see scuffs on the walls, stains on the carpets, and dirt and filth inside the cabinets. I'm likely to see slow-flowing drains. I'm likely to see like all kinds of messed up stuff. Like, I bet you that that fire pit area already has weeds growing in it. And when guests arrive at a house that doesn't look like the photos, it's a problem. So my recommendations for this listing is number one, get a whole new set of photos. Get twilight images, set up the lights for the outdoor space, make it a really awesome outdoor space. Actually get enough chairs for your fire pit. And you only need one image of your fire pit. You only need one image of your hot tub. And you need some pictures of your indoor space. So I recommend your best bedroom photo is one of your top five to show that we've got nice bedrooms. I recommend that your open layout, that's your kitchen, dining room area, and your living room, that that be another one of your top five photos. Your outdoor play area, that's your hot tub, your fire pit, your decks, that Be another one of your top five photos. And then if there's some other selling point for your property that makes it particularly unique and beneficial to your guests, that should be your fifth image. So order them in the top five with whatever's your biggest selling point. If you're gonna focus in on the hot tub itself, then get a better picture of the hot tub itself by itself, but what I'm seeing here. is a property that's so bland and average. and to add context for my listeners, like this guy told me that he bought this property for $350,000 and put eighty thousand dollars of furniture into it. So maybe it came without any furniture, but how in the world, with what I'm seeing in here, how and the world did somebody spend eighty thousand dollars? The last time I heard somebody say that, they were actually talking about thirty thousand dollars of furniture. and then they put a value for putting that furniture together. and then they added in the hot tub and the installation for the hot tub and everything else. So the value that they put on their own time for putting all that furniture together was $20,000. Yeah. Yeah. Because of how many times they had to come to the Poconos and back and all their time and everything else. Like that is not how you value the money that you put into the property. Okay. This is, you know, a very average bland listing. and I don't like the style, I would actually recommend putting it up for sale, just the way it is. get your $375,000, $400,000 for it. probably more like $350,000, $375. it's probably $375. So get your money for it and put that money into an investment property that's actually going to perform. Or how about this? Convert it to a long-term rental. I had just said as a four-bedroom house, you'll make $2,000 to $2,400 a month from the property. That's going to be significantly more than this property is going to earn as a short-term rental set up the way it is, not allowing pets. So if you just put a long-term renter in there, it's meant to be a primary home. It's a bi level. Same thing is true for split levels, in my opinion. I've never seen them do well. I've always just seen them be like the budget option. That people rent because there's enough bedrooms, there's enough space, and it's a comfortable kitchen. They're coming to the Poconos for what's in the Poconos, they're not coming to the Poconos for what's in the house. Okay. My recommendation: make the house something unique and special and something that people are willing to come to for its own purpose, for its own sake. So, real quick, let's look at the calendar. It looks like there's one reservation in their future. They don't have anything coming up for Columbus Day weekend. They don't have anything coming up for any other weekend. It's not until Thanksgiving that they have a reservation. And then they've also got what looks like Christmas and New Year's booked. And then a couple in January. and nothing really after that. 4.85 stars. Looks like we have a one star review. That's what I was referencing earlier, by the way. Let's get to it. come on, lowest first. The water in the jacuzzi looks like it hadn't been changed in some time, but luckily we had passes to the lake and the pool. there's no photos of the lake or the pool. and that was the redeeming factor in this So the guest upon reading this is going to say, What's the lake and the pool like? You know, how nice are they? the grill was extremely filthy. and then the response from the host is it says in my listing about grill to be cleaned by guests if they're using it. So. defensive. Not the way it's supposed to be as far as a response goes. We had a lovely stay at this house, kid enjoys. The house was a bit dated, with small issues like closet doors and towel rack, but host was responsive. We suggested a little more stocked kitchen and extra blankets and pillows to host ten people. So you can rent it to ten people But you don't have enough pillows and blankets for 10 people. Again, it's this disconnect, right, between the max occupancy that you want to host and what you're actually equipped for. And we saw two kitchens. That's a nightmare. Now you've got to have two sets of pots and pans. You've got to have two coffee makers, two toasters, whatever. Because if you're advertising two kitchens, like the kitchen is very expensive and is difficult to maintain. And you get clogged drains and you get all kinds of issues. The only redeeming factor here is if somebody says, Hey, the dishwasher is backing up. It's it's not draining. Well, the dishwasher's clogged. But if you have a second kitchen, it's like, well, can you just use that other dishwasher? Okay, great. Sorry for the convenience. You know, like you've got a whole second kitchen. This happened to me recently at a house. I forgot there was a second refrigerator there. Until I called maintenance and they were like, oh yeah, there's another fridge. I was like, oh yeah. I don't need to get a mini fridge out there for them the refrigerator actually was working. You know how often that happens that a guest is like, hey, the refrigerator doesn't work and it's working just fine. It's just that they put a whole bunch of warm stuff in it from the grocery store and it's not making that stuff cold immediately. Now they're not used to this at home. Why? Because their fridge is packed with stuff at home. So all that stuff that's in there keeps the fridge cold. It's like a thermal battery, right? All that stuff was cold. You put warm things in there. The cold things are gonna warm up slightly. The air, which is staying cool because of the cold things, is gonna cool down the warm stuff. Like everything's gonna temperature equalize. But when you have an empty refrigerator and you put something warm in there, it's gonna warm up the whole space. And the only thing cooling down your 24 pack of water is the air that's coming out of the back. So if the air that's coming out of the back is still cold, guess what? The refrige still working. You just have to wait. So many times guests have this issue with refrigerators. How did I get so off topic? I don't know. It's time to wrap this one up, guys. So to all my listeners, I genuinely enjoy sharing messages like this. and it's why this is the show where we discuss the challenges as well as the stuff that no one talks about when they sell the dream of easy passive income. If you're a property manager, an owner, operator, a co-host, or just an investor, then email me. Info@galvanizedmanagement.com. I'd love to connect and learn more about your approach and if you have a question, ask it. Your question might be the next one we break down, and chances are you'll help a lot of other hosts in the process too. We win or we lose together. If this episode helped you, great. I'd appreciate a good rating and a share too, so we can keep growing organically. Together is how I believe we make this industry better. Until next time, stay steady, keep learning, and keep building something real. This is Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions.