DGS 271: Evolution of Short Term Rental Platforms
Description
For those who manage short-term rentals, which tools and pieces of software do you use to keep things organized and running smoothly?
In today’s episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull brings on Jacob Mueller, founder of Renjoy to talk about using technology to help manage short-term rentals.
You’ll Learn
[01:36 ] The creation of Renjoy
[16:55 ] Software and systems for STR
[25:38 ] Building out systems using Airtable
[34:20 ] Strategic planning systems
Tweetables
“One of the things that's different about short term rentals is that it's constantly changing.”
“You have to be on top of your game. You can't just do the same thing you've been doing.”
“It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality.”
“The only thing I want to share with all the property managers out there is keep on doing the hard work.”
Resources
Transcript
[00:00:00 ] Jason: It's kind of like you've got a swiss army knife or one of those multi tools, and it's not the same as having a toolbox of high quality.
[00:00:08 ] Jacob: That's exactly right. To be able to have like specific specialized tools, you then have to know what you're doing to accumulate those tools and have them all talking and speaking to each other, but if you do it right, very powerful.
[00:00:21 ] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow.
[00:01:22 ] Now, let's get into the show. All right. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with Jacob Mueller from Renjoy. Jacob, welcome to the DoorGrow show.
[00:01:33 ] Jacob: Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Jason.
[00:01:36 ] Jason: Glad to have you. So Jacob, give us a little bit of your background in maybe entrepreneurism and how you eventually got connected maybe to rentals, property management, and and then we can get into Renjoy.
[00:01:51 ] Jacob: Sure. Well, I won't give you the full backstory. It goes all the way back to a college class I took, but I really started getting into real estate right at the perfect time, beginning of ZIRP, zero interest rate era. And I was actually a commercial broker for a little while. I did about six months of leasing and realized I did not enjoy that.
[00:02:09 ] And so then I transitioned to a residential property management firm based out of Denver that focused on investors. When I joined them, Atlas Real Estate, they're in, I don't know, five or six states now. But when I joined them, they were only in Colorado. They managed maybe 2, 500 doors and I was kind of their regional broker in Colorado Springs, which is where I am.
[00:02:30 ] And they are now, I think north of 10, 000 units under management and have grown tremendously on the management side. But I learned a ton from these folks. I learned how to flip property. I learned to invest in real estate. I learned a lot. And so that's kind of where my real estate investing career started.
[00:02:46 ] That was about four or five years ago. And since then I've acquired single family homes some small multi units. And then I've also diversified in my income streams from just long term tenants to also short term tenants. And that's kind of where the story of Renjoy begins. One of my clients and I worked with, as a broker, happened to have quite a few Airbnbs, short term rentals.
[00:03:09 ] And he was buying properties like every six months. And I was trying to figure out how is this guy, he's my age, how's this, you know, 28 year old buying so many properties so quickly back to back? So I started learning about his process and his insights into the industry. And I thought, man, this guy's got, a peg on this industry.
[00:03:25 ] And of course, during ZIRP, Airbnbs were easy, making money was easy, everybody was doing it. And so I saw this interesting opportunity, decided to partner with this client of mine, and another client actually. And we formed Renjoy together with our own portfolio to start.
[00:03:40 ] Jason: Nice. Okay. So what is Renjoy?
[00:03:45 ] Jacob: Yeah, so Renjoy is kind of an unintended consequence.
[00:03:48 ] It was not our plan. It's a short term rental property management business. But when we first started the company, it was just to manage our own portfolios. And people started asking us to manage theirs because short term rentals and long term rentals are complex and difficult and a lot of work. And so owners are constantly looking to handover management for these things.
[00:04:09 ] Jason: Yeah. And that can be a challenge. You know, with those short term rentals. I mean, everything has to move quick, right? You're having to check and adjust prices every day to make sure you're getting the, you know, the best rate possible. You need to communicate like immediately all the time with all the guests and then, you know, then like you're trying to figure out how to make sure you're getting as many people through this property as possible But not getting it damaged and then maintenance stuff hasn't dealt with like super fast Or people get really frustrated and upset and so it's a difficult game and then for you know for people managing short term rentals It's almost like a cleaning talent acquisition business more than it is a property management business And so, how does Renjoy help with this stuff?
[00:05:02 ] Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. There's so many ways we can go with this, Jason. A lot of what you were saying, you know, resonates with me. I think there's an increased complexity on the stakeholder relationships that we have as a manager. All property managers have this complexity where they have their tenant who is a stakeholder.
[00:05:18 ] They need a tenant to pay rent. And they also need to have properties with which to have a tenant pay rent on. And so all of the property managers have this balance they have to walk between these stakeholders. They have to serve their tenants and they have to serve their landlords, their property owners. We're the same, but one of the challenges is our tenants leave us reviews.
[00:05:38 ] Every single time they stay and so there's this increased out of, shall we say, accountability almost on how we manage our relationship with this key stakeholder, the guests that are coming to the properties, the tenants, but also the owners too. And then this all leads to the same challenges all property managers have, which is balancing meeting your tenant's requests for service, for maintenance, kind of meeting their expectations while also keeping costs as low as possible and trying to meet the owner's expectations. And you have to constantly balance that when you're thinking about maintenance and your service level agreements and how they can get impacted by the occupant versus the owner.
[00:06:16 ] So that's one thing that's really complex. But there's a lot of things we can get into with short term rentals. We are a full service short term rental management company. This is another pretty big distinction between long term rental property managers and short term is that the suite of services provided varies quite a bit from one short term rental manager to another.
[00:06:36 ] Not to say that long term rental managers are all the same, but generally speaking, there's a pretty similar core group of services that all long term property managers provide for their clients.
[00:06:47 ] Jason: Got it. So, Is Renjoy a service that those that listening that are running a property management business are you their competitor or is there a way that they can work with you or how does that work?
[00:07:00 ] Jacob: Great question. I do not believe we're competitors. We don't do long term rental property management and we refer out for that. And so we actually kind of have a lot of good relationships with our property managers, mutual referring re
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