Last updated on August 26th, 2022
Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we talk with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience.
Today’s guest is Daniel Tisdale, based in Austin, Texas, who owns and manages a luxury Airbnb unit in West Palm Beach, Florida. Today he’ll share with us about his journey on Airbnb from how he decided to investment market to his current achievements as an Airbnb host, along with some useful tips for hosts who are interested in remote hosting.
This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, the only one analytics dashboard for short-term rental investors and managers, where you can find the precise Airbnb data such as occupancy rate, revenue, average daily rate and so on. So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Into The Airbnb Podcast S2 EP 24: $600 ADR during high season – Smart Investing in a Luxury Airbnb Unit in West Palm Beach, Florida
You can also listen to this Into The Airbnb Podcast Episode on Otter.
Delia:
So can you tell us how did you get started on Airbnb?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, absolutely. So the real estate has always been something that has been, you know, of interest to me. I purchased my first house when I was 26 years old. I live in Austin, Texas and if you’re familiar with the Austin market at all, you’ve probably heard how it’s just exploded over the last few years. So I purchased my first house, you know, four years ago, as I saw the value of owning real estate and through that first purchase I, you know, turn that property into a long-term rental. Then with the increase in property value, I did a cash out refinance and with that, I went and purchased an Airbnb, my first Airbnb property in South Florida, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Delia:
Great and how did you choose the market?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, so I chose the market after doing quite a bit of research. I used tools like AirDNA, PriceLabs. For me, personally, I look at Airbnb as kind of lifestyle investing. So I love to play golf and so I wanted a place that I could, you know, use leverage and use it myself as as kind of, you know, a place to go do golf trips, have vacations and, you know, I decided on West Palm Beach because of the great value that you get for properties as well as the fact that it’s surrounded by, you know, arguably the best golf community in the world. So you’ve got Palm Beach, you’ve got Jupiter, Florida, where a good chunk of PGA Tour professionals live and you know, a lot of retired golfers live in the area as well, so there’s, you know, a big golf community down there. So one of my goals, you know, as part of my brand of building my business is kind of focused around, you know, a golf centric vacation offering and so that was kind of the main reason in conjunction with the numbers being great. But also, you know, it’s going to attract a lot of golfers to come and I can also leverage that property myself.
Delia:
So can you tell me about the most like visible advantages of having your listings near the Golf centres?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, so I think you get kind of the best of both worlds when you’re in South Florida because you get a good chunk of people who are coming down for golf trips, I’ve had quite a few people who have booked my place and they’ve come solely to go play golf. And you know, I have a five bed three bath house can fit about 10 people. I’ve had college golf teams stay at my property. I’ve had, you know, just groups of friends who have come down to do a golf trip in the area. I’ve also had, you know, a good amount of families come for vacation and they’re coming to go to the beach. So you kind of get the best of both worlds because you’ve got amazing beaches and you also have amazing golf. So that was kind of my thinking, you know, in terms of how I wanted this property to play out and it’s been very successful so far.
Delia:
And according to your research, do you saw that over three bedroom houses works better for those areas?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, great question. So one of the reasons that I wanted to target a larger property, like a five bedroom house, is due to the fact that I can hold, you know, up to 10, maybe even 12 people in my property and with that, you know, I’m not necessarily kind of competing directly with hotels because I can support a large amount of people. And, you know, larger groups of people that want to be together in a shared space are not going to have to go and purchase five or six hotel rooms, they can just book my house and, you know, it’s a pretty spacious area. So it definitely affords me the opportunity to be able to not have to compete directly with hotels, due to the property being a little bit larger.
Delia:
So if there was, for example, a two bedroom house out there available on Airbnb, would it compete or compare with hotels around there also?
Daniel Tisdale:
So I would say, it depends, you know, I think some people would prefer to stay in hotels if they had a group of four to six people, maybe they booked three hotel rooms, though, I think when you start to get into the larger sized properties, wherever they require four to five or six hotel rooms, you know, it just becomes quite a bit more economical and just easier to book a single property, which is one of the main reasons. I think, three bedrooms are kind of on the cost, they obviously can hold, you know, six to eight, potentially even more people, depending on the bed setup. But some of those three bedrooms can’t be smaller and so they would likely be competing with hotels.
Delia:
Yeah, I understand completely. Now, I’d like to make you some questions about the area you’re hosting. Oh, no, sorry. Actually, my next question is, you’re currently based in Texas, right?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yes, I’m in Austin, Texas.
Delia:
So are you doing remote hosting?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yes, I am the owner and operator of my short-term rental business. So I heavily rely on having a great cleaning crew. I heavily rely on, you know, technology and software tools to help me to be able to manage my property successfully remotely. I’ve done a very good job of managing it remotely. It’s somewhat of a newer property, it’s been active for about six months and I just got super host status on Airbnb in April. So it’s kind of confirmed that what I’m doing is working out pretty well for managing it remotely.
Delia:
Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with remote hosting, especially in your area, South Florida?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you know, the main tools that I rely on to be successful with remote hosting are a couple different things. So of course like I mentioned, you have to have a great relationship with your cleaner because they’re really your eyes and ears and your boots on the ground, so they’ll let me know if I’m running low on supplies and I need to order more toilet paper or shampoo. They’ll let me know if a guest, you know, left anything. They’ll let me know if a towel was stained or really anything that’s that’s going on. I also leverage a cleaning management tool called Properly that allows me to set up an automated checklists for my cleaning crew to go through and they have to take verification photos of the property after and during each clean. So that allows me to remotely check to make sure that the property looks as it’s expected to and I can kind of verify, you know, from a distance that the property is set up and ready to go for the next guest. That’s the one tool that you know, from a cleaning perspective that I rely on and work with. From a management of the property itself, I leverage a platform called Gatsby for host, that’s my channel management tool and so this allows me to automate the process of listing my property on Airbnb, VRBO, booking.com, TripAdvisor and it’s a centralised tool that allows me to communicate with guests, regardless of what platform they’ve booked, as well as also, I can easily spin up a direct booking website. So I have a direct booking website, evenparproperties.com that I can easily set up so that people can book directly with me and not have to spend extra fees going through a platform like an Airbnb or VRBO. So that helps with listing management, guest communication, I set up a lot of automated messages to automate the process of guests check in, you know, checking in during the state to make sure things are going well check out instructions. I have messages that are set up so that if a day before check in is available or a day after check in is available, I will automatically send a message to the guest to let them know that they can either check in early or they could check in late. You know, this just kind of helps what kind of information around, you know, making sure that there is as much of the process automated as possible. Then the other tool that I, couple other things that I rely on, one is, I heavily rely on the automated lock setup that I have. So I have a Schlage on code lock and this allows me to remotely give access codes to guests. That access code process is automated through my channel management tool, so through guests ease for hosts that has a direct integrate integration with Schlage and that makes it really easy for guests to be able to check in and you know, not have to worry about giving out keys and anything like that. Then the last tool that I heavily rely on is PriceLabs for automated pricing, so I’ll use this to do dynamic pricing so my prices will change on a day to day basis you’re depending on occupancy in the area, demand in the area as well as you know if I’m getting close to the date and I don’t have a guest already booked my pricing tool will automatically reduce the price by a certain percentage to attract guests by giving them kind of a special offer lower than my base fee, you know, as it gets close to the check in date.
Delia:
So my next question is, something that remote hosts tend to be worried about is the quality of the guests, so do you run background checks on them or some kind of filter for the guest you’re going to accept in your listing?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, so that’s definitely our concern, but I think it is not exclusive to just remote hosts, I think even hosts that are local it’s a valid concern. So I’ll do things like I said, take pictures of the place before the guests has checked in so that I can verify how the place was set up, if there’s any issues with the guests during the process. I also have on my listing, the guest is required to have a photo ID. No parties or events, no smoking, no pets, as well as a filter set up so that they have to be at least 25 years old. To book the place. So those are kind of the main things that I rely on.
Delia:
That’s great. And you talked before about using a dynamic pricing solution, did you start to use that from the very beginning of your listing?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yes, I did start from the very beginning, you know, I do a lot of research into the short-term rental, industry, network with other investors. And I decided on PriceLabs after looking at a few different dynamic pricing tools vecause of, you know, it’s low cost, it’s easy integration with guests for hosts and it’s really been great for me because it’ll pull in events from, you know, just local things that are going on. So if I’m not as familiar with what’s specifically happening in West Palm Beach that weekend, but it knows that there’s some sort of event going on, it will automatically, you know, increase the price due to that fact. So it’s been amazing at helping me generate some extra revenue.
Delia:
That’s great, actually! And with that, have you seen any particular seasonality in the area you’re hosting?
Daniel Tisdale:
There’s definitely some seasonality, I would say, you know, I’ve been live since the end of December, January, February, March, and April have been phenomenal months for me. It’ll be interesting to see how May through the summer and fall time plays out. But I have, you know, I’m using tools like PriceLabs and AirDNA, I definitely expect there to be maybe a little bit of a drop of seasonality. But there’s not so much seasonality that I’m not expecting to get any bookings during those those times, it’s more about just making sure that if I need to drop my prices a little bit, I’m going to leverage my dynamic pricing tool to do that, so that I can still get a good amount of bookings if the demand is a little less.
Delia:
And in these high seasons, what was your average occupancy rate like?
Daniel Tisdale:
So during the high seasons, my occupancy was in the high 80% about 85% and my revenue was also or my average daily rate was pretty high as well. So it allowed me to get out of the gate, get off to a really, really good start. And, you know, as an Airbnb host, you always have to be conscious of expenses that will come up and potential drops in occupancy due to seasonality. So I was certainly lucky to have a pretty good high seasonal occupancy and average daily rate.
Delia:
If you don’t mind sharing, what was your average daily rate during that season?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, so average daily rate during that season was around a little over $600 per night and I was averaging about 83% to 85% occupancy per month.
Delia:
Those are great numbers to be honest! And what have been, you know, in this time being an Airbnb host, what have been your top challenges running Airbnb?
Daniel Tisdale:
I would say my biggest challenges have been making sure to you’ll be on top of guests communication because I am a self operator. Luckily I haven’t had too many big issues come up but because I am you know, a remote host I certainly have to rely on other people on the ground to make sure that they alert me if there’s any sort of issues with the property. So that’s probably the biggest thing is just being able to, you know, accurately rely on people that are kind of my boots on the ground while I’m remote.
Delia:
And how did you manage to get that reliable team for your listing?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, so you know that was just kind of a combination of networking. So my realtor had some contacts, you know, I found my cleaners through Properly, which is that cleaning management tool. Then I also heavily rely on an app called Thumbtack, for repair and just other things in the area and it’s great because I can look at people who have a significant amount of reviews and leverage those highly reviewed people to be able to communicate any issues and because I’ve got that remote lock, I can easily let them in remotely.
Delia:
Any tips that you’d like to share for other Airbnb hosts?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, you know, I would say, I think a lot of people are certainly fearful to jump in Airbnb with the uncertainty of not having a long-term tenant. You know, I would say, as long as you’ve done your research, you’ve ran your numbers and you have set up automation to make your life as easy as possible. It’s good to jump in and take a bit of a risk, assuming that you’ve done your due diligence on the numbers and that the area supports, you know, what kind of return you can get based off of your purchase price of the house down payment, expenses, things like that. So I would say, make sure to network with other hosts in the area, I’m part of a pretty active community of other hosts in the West Palm Beach area through our official Airbnb Facebook group, so I rely on them for things. Just make yourself open to, you know, accepting feedback from guests on things that you could change or improve and just always try to be curating and try to make the best experience that you can.
Delia:
Right. Thank you, those are really useful tips. So that’d be it for today. Thank you for your time.
Daniel Tisdale:
Thank you!
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