Interview with an Airbnb Property Manager from Charlotte, NC - S2 EP38
Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we chat with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience.
Our guest for today is Chad Hensel from RentLyne, a luxury vacation home management service based in Charlotte, South Carolina. Join us in this episode to hear about his journey and experience as both Airbnb host and property manager, how the market has changed these past years, insights on his current markets and how much can you do in suburban vs warterfront areas.
This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, short-term rental analytics for high return investment, comprehensive data for insights, ideas and inspiration. Go to app.airbtics.com to find precise Airbnb data such as occupancy rate, revenue, average daily rate and so on. So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Into The Airbnb Podcast S2 EP 38: Get useful insights on properties acquisition, revenue and more – In conversation with Chad Hensel from RentLyne
You can also listen to this Into The Airbnb Podcast Episode on Otter.
Delia:
So can you start by telling us how did you get started with short-term rentals or with Airbnb?
Chad Hensel:
Sure, I came from a hospitality background. I was in restaurants for about 15 years and after that I got into real estate, it was an agent and a broker for roughly seven years. And when my time for that was coming to an end, I really kind of thought about those two careers that I had and try to figure out crossroads where those paths crossed. By chance I stumbled into a company here in Charlotte, that was doing short-term rentals and I thought it was a good overlap of the two things that I really enjoyed. So I reached out to them, they brought me on board, so that they could focus on their tech product, while I kind of built up their real estate portfolio and spun off to the races ever since.
Delia:
That’s great. And you told me you manage around 51 listings, is that including yours? I mean, the ones you own or you don’t own any of your listings?
Chad Hensel:
I do own seven of my own listings and it is included in that 51. The rest are managed for others.
Delia:
Okay, and do you still work for that company you talked about before?
Chad Hensel:
No, after I’d grown their portfolio from 26 properties up to about 72 by the time I left, it was just time for a new challenge kind of started over with a different company. And kind of taking them from 18 listings up to, I think we’re about 42 right now, so we’re still growing, we’re being much more intentional about it. So the nice I could learn from the COVID times is that we can’t just accept everything. We set out on a path that we all agreed on and are very intentional growth and we’re very happy with it.
Delia:
Okay, that’s great. Can you tell me how does your work as a property manager and as an Airbnb host is together? Like, how is the experience doing both at the same time? I know, it’s kind of related, like it’s almost the same thing. But I will choose like to hear about your experience like in general doing both.
Chad Hensel:
Sure. I mean, yeah, they’re very similar, but there are some differences, you know, when it’s your property and your listings, kind of take it a little bit more personally, when your guest writes in about something that’s not quite up to their expectations. But yeah, we kind of wrap it up all into one package and keep it as consistent across the board as we can. We host all the properties on the same platform, for example, we have the same remote customer service team that works for both sides. So we really try to, like I said, to make it as simple across the board as we can. But yeah, you do take a little bit more personally on your own personal properties.
Delia:
Yeah, that’s right. I completely understand. And you told me you own about seven listings, right?
Chad Hensel:
Yes.
Delia:
So did you get started with short-term rentals already with the seven properties? Or did you start it with just one and started acquiring more?
Chad Hensel:
Yeah, so when I first got into short-term rentals, I was working for prior company and during the course of growing their portfolio, I was looking at the properties that we already own. So we could purchase just as regular long-term investment properties. And so I can make so much more money doing it on the short-term market. So in between my private company, my present company, it took about a year off in between to really get my properties up to a level I was happy with and then kind of got back into the game of managing for others.
Delia:
Managing process for your properties?
Chad Hensel:
I’ve done a little bit of everything. The first one that we put up as a short-term rental had been our primary residents that we had just moved out and the property, we had it rented in a couple of months, so we kind of moved it into the short-term space. From there, we’ve done a couple of just regular investment property, mortgages. One of them was a failed flip that we turned into a short-term rental and that was with a hard money lender, we just got done closing with a company called Vizio and they have a short-term rental financing product available that’s just starting to pop up. So we’ve kind of done a little bit of everything, a couple of them we bought for cash when they were foreclosure. So we’ve really done one or two, just about every financing you can imagine.
Delia:
And out of your own financing experience, which one would you recommend? Which one was the easiest to do and the less expensive also?
Chad Hensel:
Obviously, if it’s a primary residence or your second home, those are much easier. And then as you get into the investment property, financing with your local banks, it’s most similar, it’s just much more stringent. You have to have the cash flow to back it up. Once you start getting into the more exotic programs, it takes much longer to get through underwriting and the rates are more expensive. So I was going to tell people to go with the traditional routes first. And then kind of once you’ve exhausted those and start looking for some of the newer products.
Delia:
Okay, thank you for your advice on financing them! And can you tell me all of your selling listings are currently located in the same market?
Chad Hensel:
All the ones that I own are in the Greenville market. And we do some of the listings for others down there. But the majority of our properties are in Charlotte. Neither of those markets has a terribly large seasonal adjustment, that there aren’t any gigantic weather changes. You know, it’s not like South Florida where it’s warm in the winter and so we don’t get that. It’s pretty steady all year round.
Delia:
Okay, great. So both of them are all year round markets, you don’t see a big revenue difference in any of them?
Chad Hensel:
Well, the area that we’ve chosen to grow either results out of Charlotte, there are a couple of very large freshwater lakes and so that’s where, as a company we’ve chosen to really put our efforts in. Those do have a bit of seasonality. But the more urban properties and the suburban properties, those ones hold steady.
Delia:
That’s great! And can you tell me how much monthly revenue or annual revenue can someone estimate in those markets?
Chad Hensel:
Sure, for kind of a more urban and suburban properties, you know, a three bedroom, two bathroom, can range anywhere between $35,000 a year and $55,000 a year, depending on the exact location. Then when you get out into the lakefront properties, that number jumps up pretty significantly to anywhere between 80,000 and 200,000.
Delia:
Wow, that’s a lot of difference between the lakefront and the suburban. I’ve heard about the benefits of doing lakefront or like going out, you know, the revenue is way higher. But is there any particular challenge that comes to rent a property that is lakefront?
Chad Hensel:
Sure, I mean, there are some regular logistical things like making sure that you have all of the rent water toys available, the floaties and all that kind of stuff and that they’re cleaned and always, you know, refresh. Yeah, we’ve worked with a local boat rental company, that we were not handling the boats ourselves. And so we’re kind of looking at the whole several different things. Yeah, there are some strange things that pop up being like houses that you won’t get with a normal house in the suburbs.
Delia:
So can you tell us if there is any seasonal change, how much would you say is the occupancy rate in those kind of big seasons if there’s any?
Chad Hensel:
Sure. We use kind of some pricing and marketing strategies, we always target between 65% and 75% occupancy. That’s kind of where we found to be our sweet spot. Here in Charlotte, the fall tends to be kind of be our higher season, especially now that the concert venues are reopened, the football stadium is opened. We do have more frequent large events in the fall. But even then the difference on our occupancy is only 5% to 10%. It’s not a wild difference, we’re not getting, you know, 30-40% differences.
Delia:
That’s still a good number of occupancy for all year round. So can you tell us a little bit about how much would be the revenue difference in Greenville and in Charlotte? I thought I heard some numbers before, but I’m not 100% sure.
Chad Hensel:
Yeah, the difference between the two markets, you know, a fairly normal house are very minimal. Both markets do a real, very good job of having year round events in the tourism industry that’s kind of outweighing the rest of the economy. So yeah, they’re very comparable.
Delia:
Okay, that’s great to hear. And how about how do you manage pricing? Both for your personal listings and also for the listings you manage?
Chad Hensel:
Sure, we use dynamic pricing tool to refer to the club PriceLabs, in the past, we used Wheelhouse, Beyond to talk to the folks that were rented for their version of the art. We use those to create a nice basis and to set up some programming. But then for our lake houses, it’s much more manual. We look at those individually about every week or two to make sure that we’re hitting our occupancy targets and earnings targets for those properties.
Delia:
And can you tell us, how much would be the price difference between a lakefront and suburban?
Chad Hensel:
Oh, yeah. That, do you mean on a daily rate or for the earnings potential?
Delia:
Yes, daily rate.
Chad Hensel:
Right now we’re coming into our summer season, so this is kind of prime time for the lakes. In the rates here can go anywhere between $700 a night and up to $1,300 a night. When you’re getting near like July 4th, Memorial Day, Labor Day. Versus there are properties that are in the more central markets. We’re looking at around a generally $150 to $200 a night. So it’s a pretty big difference.
Delia:
I understand the price difference. But in the specific events, like you said, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, how much do you raise the price for both of them?
Chad Hensel:
It tends to be somewhere around 30% for our market. Occasionally we do get kind of more unique events or one time events, like this year, as a good example, we have the Presidents Cup, which is a very large golf event. And we have several lake houses where that event is being held. So even though that one is in late September, we’re able to basically get our privacy’s and rates for that even though it’s out of season.
