BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 676: Rob's Real Talk: What Running Short-Term Rentals at Scale REALLY Looks Like

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

The short-term rental game is not one to enter lightly. Regular rental property investors shudder at the constant turnover, consistent guest complaints, and far more intensive upkeep that vacation rental property owners pride themselves on. But is a week in the life of a self-managing short-term rental empire owner that bad? Well, maybe we’ll just have Rob Abasolo AKA Robuilt, YouTube’s go-to authority on vacation rental investing, answer this. Rob has had a troubling week to put it lightly. From guests somehow deadbolting themselves out of their homes to ACs being frozen solid, sending vacationers to the wrong address, and almost obliterating a $20,000 pool, many things can go wrong in the realm of short-term rentals. But, is the profit worth the pain? Dave Meyer from On The Market joins along this episode to act as Rob’s therapist/cheerleader as we go through a week’s worth of almost unbelievable events in the life of a vacation rental property owner. This episode highlights lessons learned from each mistake that you can use to build a better rental property portfolio, have a more seamless customer experience, and maybe get a little more “me and my burrito” time. In This Episode We Cover: Setting up fail-safes around your short-term rental so guests always have a way in Why sticking to your guns isn’t always the best way to build a strong vacation destination brand Supply chain shortages and how it’s severely delaying short-term rental owners Why you should never fully drain a pool (unless you like paying $20,000+ in repairs!) Using speed to your advantage and making guests feel heard as soon as a problem arises Staying in contact with your team so you can solve problems smarter And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Youtube Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Dave's BiggerPockets Profile Dave's Instagram The Ultimate Guide to Short-Term Rental Properties How I Perfected the Process of Self-Managing My Rentals Vacation Rentals Are Popular, But Are They Profitable? Book Mentioned in the Show: Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth by Avery Carl Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-676 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Check out our sponsor page! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show, 676. This particular house didn't have a fridge. So we bought a fridge and that the wrong fridge was delivered to our house. Not one time, Dave. Not two times, Dave. Not three times, Dave. No. Not four times, Dave.

Not five times, Dave. Six times. six times in a week. What's up, everybody? You got Rob here. We're shaking it up today. I'm joined here by my co-host, Dave Meyer, as we go through the triumphs and tribulations and victories and downfalls of my short-term

rental portfolio, completely transparent and out there for the world to learn from. How's it going, Dave? Great. Thanks for having me. You know, I am very excited to be here because even though I come on and I do bigger news, you and I have never hosted a show together. This is the inaugural journey of Dave and Rob. I know, the beginning of a budding bromance, as they say.

I can't wait. Well, it was fun doing this interview. Yeah, so do you feel like, I know that you have some property management? I know you're kind of involved with some of your stuff, but after this episode, how do you feel? Do you have the appetite to get into self-management on the short-term rental side? You know, I don't just because it's not logistically really,

feasible for me because I live in Europe. But no, honestly, I self-managed my long-term rentals for the first eight years. And you just learn so much. And I think it would be very difficult for me to have hired a property manager without having self-managed, at least for a little bit. And you can. But I just feel like you learn, you know, sort of what to expect. And that way, You know, like when a property manager comes to you and they're like, this thing's broken. You don't blame the property manager. You know these things just kind of happen and you get used to it. And so that's what I loved about the show is that you really just sort of bear it all and explain to people how things go wrong, mistakes that you've made.

Honestly, a lot of them aren't even mistakes, just things that go wrong that you can't really control. But it's super helpful to learn and see that even experience successful short-term. rental investors like yourself still have these challenges. It sort of normalizes some of the challenges. And I think everyone listening to this will learn a lot from what you've been through just in the last week. All of these things that Rob's going to talk about are just things that happen in a single week. It's not always fun, but it's always awesome. I mean, all the things we're going to talk about today, 10 things. I actually had to cut out five out of the 10 just for keeping this podcast very nice and concise. But yeah, I cut out 10. We're going to be talking about basically my learning journey

in systems and everything that I've put in place to fix it. But before we get too far into today's episode, we're going to get to today's quick tip. I think I'm doing a good David impression on that. I hope he approves. I like that you're doing an impression of David doing an impression of Christian. Batman. That's right.

That's right. It's an impression of an impression. So I don't even know what that is at this point. Oh, you're nailing it. Impression squared. But yeah, today's quick tip is when you make a mistake or you have a failure in business, regardless of it short-term rentals, flipping, multifamily, anything like that, take that mistake and figure out how you can avoid ever making it again by creating a system

or a process. Today we talk about 10 different things that happened and all the different systems and processes that that has created for me, my workflow, and all the workflows of my different employees as well. And also, if you just want to connect with others and learn from their mistakes and learn how you can create processes through those, be sure to hit up the bigger pockets forums or people connecting there every day, networking, learning from each other, and sharing real-life experiences. If the new year means getting rentals back in order, listings are a good place to start. Avail. Part ofrealtor.com makes it simple to list a rental for free and get it in front of millions

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flips and your trust slips too. And most PMs don't hold themselves to performance standards. They focus on activity, not outcomes. Mind is different. They obsess over the metrics that actually grow your cash flow. Go to mind.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get a month of management for free. Because if you're going to hire a property manager, hire one that manages your investment like an investment. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship

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funds prospectus at funrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. All right, with that, let's get into today's episode. What's up, man? How's it going? I'm excited to talk short-term rental tragedies with you today. I am too, man. I mean, I have a little bit of experience with short-term rentals, but I'm sure the depth and drama of your tragedies are like nothing I've ever seen. Yeah, you know, it's very funny because I obviously talk a lot on YouTube about my short-term rental journey. And if you've followed along since the beginning, most people effectively saw my Airbnb journey go from one unit to 15. And then as of last month, I went from 15 to 35. And then if things continue to go the way they are, then I'll go from 35 to

58 here in the next couple of months. So scaling very quickly on my end of things. Yeah, you're going to have 58 times more problems over the next couple of the next couple months. So I guess it's good that you've had some training to give you the experience to deal with them better. For sure. And that's actually what I wanted to talk about specifically today because obviously I really do believe that all real estate is very accessible to the everyday person. And for me, I believe that wholeheartedly about short-term rentals. I think they're very scary to a lot of people. And it's the vice versa, right? Like I get a little scared thinking of long-term rentals and thinking of all the things that can go wrong with that. And then most long-term investors that I talk to are like, dude, are you kidding me? It's so easy. I'm scared to go into short-term rental because I'm scared of all the things that can go wrong there. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? It's so easy. So I think I wanted to give a little bit of context to my journey today and really just talk about how things do go wrong. Okay. This is just true. Like things go wrong when you're self-managing. This is going to be a self-management masterclass for anyone that just wants to understand the ebbs and flows, the highs and lows of short-term rentals. So I'm just going to talk about today 10 things, okay? Ten things that went wrong in my short-term rental portfolio last week. This is the crazy part. I actually just recorded a YouTube video on this, and it was actually 15 items, but for the sake of the pod, I decided to cut it down to 10 and just give you my 10 juiciest stories and hopefully some learning experiences that came from each one. Does that work? Yeah, man, I'm excited to hear about them.

Well, don't be too excited. I mean, I'll have a little bit of sweat and PTSD throughout this episode, but it's okay. We're going to take it. We're going to take it item by item here. So let's start with number one. Number one was a story of guests that lock themselves out of my property. Now, typically, when you're in the short-term rental game, you try to do your best to automate the idea of check-ins. You don't want to be there checking people in. I mean, obviously,

that's a very nice amenity if that's what you want to do, but when you have 15, I just can't hire 15 people to be there at the door. So we have a lot of different processes for this. One process is we take photos of all the different steps that you have, like the little little. steps that you have to take to get to the home, picture of the door, a picture of the keypad, and then you basically give them the keypad combination. And so for me, when I was getting started in short-term rentals, I actually did use to check people in on my very first apartment. And then I figured out the idea of a keypad or like a lockbox. And then I figured out that you can do an electric keypad. And I was like, man, this is awesome. And then now it even goes one step further,

Dave, where you can actually do a keypad that syncs up with your property management system. And every single time a guest checks in, it changes. It changes. the code for every single reservation to the last four digits of that guest's phone number. So it makes it very, very easy. What kind of self-checking stuff are you doing on your property? That's actually what I have. But I have a professional management company. I live in Europe and I have automated as much as physically possible.

And I pay for it. It definitely costs a lot. But one of the benefits is having that kind of technology. So, I mean, given that you know about all this stuff, how did they? lock themselves out. Right, right, right. So this is where it gets very interesting. I've done this for five years. I've never really been in this specific situation. So basically, even though I have an electronic keypad, there is a deadbolt on the handle under it. So the guest left and then they came back and they said, hey, the code isn't working. And I was like, well, that's probably not true because the code was working

over the whole stay. You know, it's been a week. And they're like, I don't know. And then they're like, I hear it. But it's not actually. doing it. We still can't get in. And then they're like, it's possible that we locked the deadbolt. And I was like, oh, well, yeah, I mean, if you mentioned it, then that you probably know that that's the case, right? So I'm like, oh, okay, it's no big deal. Like, let's just, you know, make sure it doesn't move. And they're like, no, it doesn't move. And I was like, all right. Well, good I actually have another lock downstairs. There's a back door entrance where you can get into the home. And so she's like, great, fantastic. Like, shoot me the codes over to that.

And I said, great. So all good. This is a Sunday. And let me just say, Dave, I really pride myself on managing my places like like one to two, sometimes three hours a week. Like it's very minimal. And that was not true for this last week. That'll probably be obvious as I move through every single one. But basically it's a Sunday. I'm trying to have dinner and like make lunch and all that type of stuff. And then basically she calls me and she says, hey, that code is not working either. And then I was like, well, I mean, I'm looking at my app and it actually says it's unlocked. And she's like, no, we hear it unlocking, but the door isn't unlocking. And they're like, come to think of bit. She's like, I actually think I left at a different time than the other people in my group. This was a 13 person group. And I think that they might have locked the deadbolt. And I was like, well, you're there with 13 people right now. Do you think, like, maybe just confirm. And she's like, yep, that's what happened. Do you have a key? And I was like, well, I don't. Because typically the other door is the fail safe. I was like, how did you leave? How did you lock yourself out? And she basically was like, oh, yeah, we left through the garage. We logged both the dead bolts and we left through the garage.

we weren't really thinking. And so she's like, I'm so sorry for the inconvenience. This is totally on us. And I was like, oh, okay, well, hey, let me get my handyman over. He's pretty good at getting into my house. Like, he always finds a way. He comes out there and he basically says, hey, man, yeah, confirmed. They did lock both of the dead bolts. And he's like, I can try to get into the garage, but it's probably going to break if I do. And then I was like, all right, well, give it a shot and let me know. So he called me back five minutes later. He's like, there is no way I can get in without breaking your garage. And I was like, oh, shoot. So at this point, it's been an hour. And these are 13 guests sitting outside of my home. And, you know, they're getting a little antsy. I'm like, I'm so sorry. Like, obviously, even though it's their fault, I'm like, you know, let me, let me help you. I'm going to get this taken care of. And I'm just going to above and beyond to help them as much as I can. So basically, I call locksmith, Dave. And the locksmith, Dave. And the locksmith. I call four of them and they're all going to be 250 to 300 bucks. And I was like, okay. Well, you know, that's that's the tax, right? The dummy tax for me. So I was like, okay. Better than. Better than. Better than.

breaking your garage. It is better than breaking my garage. It's cheaper. So here's where it gets really spicy, the plot that is. And so basically, I call one guy and then he's like, hey, actually, it's going to be $100. I can be out there in 45 minutes. Everyone else was going to be like two hours. I was like, oh, you are the greatest man known to all real estate investors in the world. And he's like, no problem, man, I got you. Well, he says he's going to be there in 45 minutes. He never shows up. He never shows up. And guests call me and they say, hey, we saw someone come about like, 25 minutes ago, and then you turned around and left. What?

And then I was like, well, that's not good. Yeah, I know. I was so, I was just like, I can't believe that. I just want to, I just want to eat my Chipotle burrito, Dave. That's all I want in life is just to eat my Chipotle burrito. And so. Me both, man. Do they have those in Europe?

No, but, yeah, man, the Mexican food is terrible in Amsterdam. But, no, I just, yeah, I sympathize, even if it's not a burrito. I just want to eat a good. Well, you know, they do have a, they do have a vapiano's over there, which is one of my favorite. What's that? Frantzes. It's kind of like, it's like European Pandera. Sorry, no, sorry. It's like European Panera. Pandera. Oh, okay. I don't need. Is that even a thing? I don't even know. No, I think you made that word up, but I like it. Hey, that's what we do here at bigger pockets.

So anyways, I call, listen, I call and I say, hey, what the heck? I heard that someone showed up, and then the lady on the phone was like, oh, yeah, he drove up to the property and he didn't see anybody, so he turned around and left. And I was like, that was like an hour and a half ago. You didn't think to call me and tell me that? And she's like, oh, yeah. sorry. And I was like, he didn't even drive to the house. He just drove to the beginning of the driveway, made the executive decision that 13 people weren't standing in front of the house and he left. So needless to say, that did not result in a happy guest. They actually ended up breaking into my house. They did the thing that the handyman didn't want to do and they like broke into

the garage. And, oh, dude, it was a big headache. So that one to me, that was a big L on my part for several reasons because it was the guest's fault, but it was also my fault. And I just got to take the L on that one, I think. Yeah, that's, that's a tough one. I mean, it's hard to control for every situation with your tenants, especially people who are, you know, in a short-term rental game, you have people who are new to your house by definition. So there's anything you, you learn from it that you think you, to help you try and avoid something like this in the future? Yes, I did. And it's also a very obvious one. Let me just be clear with that. But I usually have a backup to a system, right? And so the backup to the front door being locked is the back door being locked. And it's like, there's no way

that this will ever fail on me. And it did. So the learning is just to have an extra keypad with keys to the specific deadbolt. And so we now, we've done that. My handyman went out. He bought a little keypad, keeps it under the deck. And like I said, I mean, this has never really happened where the guests logged both of the doors. But just because it hasn't happened before, it doesn't mean I shouldn't have been prepared for it. And so, yeah, so I've learned to basically just keep the, just the original, the time-tested physical key on the property. This was not just the only occurrence that happened this week, Dave. I actually had another guest at a different property lock the screen door in front of the front door, and so they were locked out. Luckily on that one,

we basically had other doors that they could get into. It took a lot longer to figure out than they realized. It's the same code, and they, yeah, a lot of messages back and forth, but this one really sank me for a solid five or six hours probably. So on that one, we learned on screen doors, it's a force of habit for people. They just will lock it if they do that at their own house. So we've just now replaced that lock or we're about to replace that lock with a non-locking door knob, which is, again, very dead simple. It makes a lot of sense. If guests can lock themselves out, they will. That was the hard lesson for me. So yeah, let's move into the second thing here that happened this week. That really, again, lots of gray hairs that happened this week as a result.

But, you know, David and I just bought this really awesome 6,000 square foot apartment. Sorry, 6,000 square foot Spanish mansion in Scottsdale. And the water heater broke in it. And it's a luxury place, right? So theoretically, you know, obviously you need hot water with any luxury place, right? I think you need hot water with any place. Arguably. That's true. I think it's kind of important. Oh, man. So this was a $3,000 setback for me, and I'll tell you why. So basically, this was a gladiator.

I think the brand was like Ream Gladiator, which is like the Home Depot brand. And apparently it's just a very niche brand that no plumbers would really touch. I don't really know why. It didn't make a lot of sense to me. But we called 10 different plumbers, and they were like, oh, yeah, man, sorry, we don't service that. And so we were just trying to get someone to fix it, right? and we were hoping that maybe it was a user error. Sometimes you can just click the on-off button on the water heater.

It'll turn back on. So these guests were just like, hey, you know, we get it. It's not your fault. Water heaters go out. We even looked at the label at the front of it, and it says that it was manufactured in 2019. So it's a relatively new water heater. And so I was like, yeah, I'm sorry.

And so I really was just putting on my customer service hat, really trying to accommodate them because they did have kids and they were talking about they were all having to share basically. We have a little caseta at the back of it. So they were all having to share and do all that kind of stuff. So I basically was like, look, I will refund you the amount of days that you don't have hot water. So it basically ends up being a free stay. And she was really, I mean, honestly, she was so nice because she didn't have to be. She, when I called her on the phone, she was like, basically, she was like, what you've done

for us and how you've treated us and like how over and beyond you've gone just really goes to show how great of a host you are. We really appreciate it. And I was like, oh my God, that is so that really moves me and she's like but as mentioned do you think you could still refund us for the three nights i was like yeah of course of course i mean that's just one of those things like i i i've been there either both on short-term rentals and long-term rentals there are certain things you just can't make up for you know like locking yourself out that's you know there's some mutual there's a system there mutual fault there but like man you need hot water you need heat you do you know when these things happen there's almost nothing you could do i guess except

try and be a good person, you know, refund their money if they're not getting the experience that you intended. But man, is there anything else you think you could do to avoid something like that? No, but I think the lesson was really just, and this is a tough one because we have a home warranty, right? So typically home warranties do cover system faults like this, but the one really big issue with home warranties is that they're not super fast, right? They're really, the premise of them is to not serve you super fast so that you are sort of forced to go out and pay for the, repairs or the replacement without involving the home warranties, especially in the short-term rental world. So we have it for the really big systems. But in this instance, because I was trying to,

we thought it was going to be a very easy fix. But again, it was such a niche model that every plumber in town was like, even if we could get parts, we still can't get them for, you know, 10, 15 days. And so I just knew relatively early on that we just couldn't wait to get that fixed. And I think the thing that I could have done faster is just knowing that water heater, are not necessarily super expensive, right? And so I could have just replaced that right from the get-go. it's just not necessarily something you want to do. You don't want to always go straight to replacing an appliance, right? It's not the most financially responsible thing to do. But effectively, I ended up replacing it anyways, right? So I replaced the $600 heater. It was $1,000 in repairs. And then,

so that's $1,600. And then I had to refund $1,500 in nightly rates. So I ended up spending $3,000 for something that honestly probably would have cost $80 to fix if the parts were readily available. So for me at this level, at this level of my portfolio, I am always just trying to address problems as quickly as possible because refunds typically cost a lot more than the actual replacement cost of whatever you're trying to fix. Totally. Especially, man, with water heaters too. I don't usually like preemptively replace things.

You know, that's not a great move. But with water heaters, that might be like the one exception to the rule. Like if it's been, I think most of them last seven to ten years, like if you're, if you're getting up there. That's one of those things. You're going to have to replace it anyway. And rather than trying to squeak out another six months or a year, you know, just bite the bullet and avoid what you have what you had to do with with refunds. But like sometimes they flood, you know, they break. That's like one of those things. You just, you just want to be a bit ahead of. Well, yeah, and it's tough, right? Because I've got a, I've got a business partner on it, right? I got to think of their

best interest as well. And so in my personal portfolio, I may have just swapped it out. I'm not really sure. I think I would have. But usually it is you try to fix it if it's a simple thing. But because once you start having other partners and investors, you really have to start thinking of things a lot bigger than how you would personally handle it. And so that's something that comes to mind really often in my 15-unit portfolio and now 35-unit portfolio is speed actually does save you a lot of money a lot of the times in this game, especially for something like this, especially on a luxury property where now We're charging about, I mean, peak season coming up, $2,500 a night. So one night of a refund could really be quite detrimental to you.

Luckily, we were still in the slow season, so it was like a $5 to $700 a night reservation. But in a couple weeks from now, it would have been a multi-thousand-dollar event. Actually, it still was now, but I guess more than $3,000. So there's that. That's number two. Let's keep these moving because, yeah, I'm already, the sweat. is already beginning to form. You're having flashbacks from next last week.

Yes. Hot flashes, if you will. Number three, the AC went out at a different property. This was fun. Again, I've never had an AC problem ever up until this moment. But hey, that is why you have a Kappex account, right? So where is it? It's in Galenburg.

Okay, so it's hot. Yeah, it's hot. It's hot. But, okay, so here's kind of what. what happened. There's a misconception out there with most people that if you go to your thermostat and it's on 70 and it's kind of warm and it's cooling down, that if you go and you crank it down to 50, that it's going to make it colder. And that's not how it works. Effectively, the way air conditioners work from my understanding, not a tech, but basically it just shoots out the cool

air until it reaches the temperature that you want it to reach. So just because you put it at 50 doesn't mean that the actual air is coming out any colder. That's just, that's not how it works. It just will basically keep running continually until it reaches 50 degrees, which is effectively impossible for any old AC system in a house. I mean, maybe it is, but I doubt it. And so what do you think it happened? The guest goes in.

It's a little warm. I'm like, all right, yeah, just turn it down. And basically, they turned it down to like 50. And because it was already basically cool, they never turned it back up. So the AC basically ran for hours and hours and hours and it froze up. The coil froze up. And I was like, man. And so they were basically out of AC for that day until the coil melted.

It could actually start to function again. And so this, again, a very expensive repair for me because I had to get the AC guy to come out. And both times he's like, yep, here's the good news. There's not much I can do. Here's the bad news. It's going to take about six to eight hours for this to thaw out. And I was like, beautiful. Yeah.

So I think that one put me back around. around total, that AC system that week. I want to say it was about $2,600,000, man. Wow. It was a fatty. I mean, have you tried, like, Nest or EcoB or any of these smart thermostats? Because that's what I have.

And I can control my tenants what they're doing with the thermostat. And I pretty much let them do it. I mostly use it because I only have one short-term rental, but it's in the mountains in Colorado. And, you know, I don't need it heated in the winter or to, you know, if no one's at the place, so I can control it and turn it up. I wonder if that same thing would work for an AC.

It would. That's actually, that was my learning experience. And this is really what it comes down to is that I don't typically go out and replace things willy-nilly unless I really have to, right? So if a house has a functioning thermostat, I'm not really going to go in and spend 200 bucks and then whatever it might cost an AC tech to come out and swap it out because it works, right? There's no problem with that.

So when I actually moved into this house and like I was getting it ready for Airbnb and everything, one of the thermostats was faulty. And so I actually did upgrade that to the nest. However, Dave, I have three air conditioning units on this property. And so the other two thermostats were still kind of the more primitive, you know, thermostats, just your typical one, not controlled by Wi-Fi. But now knowing the ramifications of that and the fact, you know, the nest like you say, you can set a bottom out of like 70 degrees.

that way whenever, even if they try, they can't get it any colder. And it shouldn't really matter because you'll never really need it to be colder than 70 degrees. I mean, if you want it to be 68, I guess, you can still put that at your bottom. But it would at least block the people who try to, you know, do the whole hotel thing where they walk in, set it to 50 and leave so that it's freezing when they come back. All right. Yeah. I mean, they're not cheap, but they can be worthwhile. Kind of a pain in the butt to install to depending on your wiring. But they are very useful. So that's a good lesson. All right, what's number four?

Oh, man, this one is a, okay, this one was a flub. I will say I'm dumb, but also I have automations in place for this exact reason. All right, so a guest calls me, all right? And she says, hey, I'm coming to your house. I'm really excited. Can you shoot me the address? Now, or I think she texted me that. Now, I have automations in place that the day before you check in, I send you all that information.

I say, hey, all that information is in the trip details under your reservation. Also, here's your guest book, like it's a digital guide. And if you use this, it'll give you all the check-in instructions. So I rarely have people that call me for this type of thing. Actually, it's pretty much, I would say in the last year, maybe two people, maybe. And so, but there is one house, the house that I was just talking about, sometimes I might get that type of question because there's not a lot of service there. and so maybe they,

I figured maybe they weren't able to get the Airbnb app pulled up. And so I was like, you know what? Instead of being like mini passive aggressive and saying, as per the message I sent you literally two hours ago, here's the information. I was just like, you know, I'm going to help her out. So I shoot her the address via text and she calls me and she says, hey, this isn't the house.

And I was like, um, can you clarify? What exactly do you mean by that? And she's like, this looks completely different from the photos. And so sometimes you do have guests that are, you know, they're like, hey, these photos make the place look a lot more spacious than it is, or you use the filter on this, and this is actually, and so you might have that every so often. So I was really just trying to get to the heart of like the frustration or the issue. She's like, well, we booked a chalet, and the photo, or sorry, the house that we're at is like a house. It's like a cottage.

And so when she texted me and she said, I'm on the way to your house, I thought she meant the house, not my cabin slash chalet. So I texted her the wrong address. And I texted her the wrong address to the wrong house. Oh, yeah. And I was just like, man, I should have just done the passive aggressive thing and said, by the way, I sent this information to you yesterday. And this was like, oh, I was like, man, I was just so annoyed with myself because I just didn't ask. And so luckily, the house was only, I mean, I don't know. Now, I guess I'm not going to say luckily, but it was 45 minutes away. So luckily it was within reach. Yeah. Unluckily, it was, you know, pretty far away. So they weren't really happy about it. And I was like, hey,

I'm sorry. I always call. If there's something, if there's like a really big issue, I call. Text is not a really good place to work something out with a guest. So I call them like, hey, I'm so sorry. This has never happened before. You know, I have two houses and typically people call me about this one. This is on me. I'm sorry. She's like, no, no, it's okay. She was, I mean, her husband, you could hear him in the background. And he was like, ask him if he's sure. Is he sure that this new address is definitely it? And I'm like, it is. I'm so sorry. I'm the worst. It's a learning experience. here is just to double check, right? Like, she gave me the, she gave me her name. She's like,

my name is Megan. And I was like, I casually remembered that. And I didn't think to check. So I was like, oh, yeah, here it is. And if I had just taken like 10 more seconds, I could have saved them 45 minutes, right? So again, that one was a flub on my end. I have the automations in place, but you still can't automate flubs like that where you just don't check, right? Like, I should have double checked. That one's on me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as being on the receiving end of those passive aggressive host emails recently, I do think they do it for a reason. Like, I've asked that question that they've definitely sent me the answer to.

And they're like, just checked your housing book. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I should do that. And then when you read it, it's like, actually, the host put in a lot of time into this. And I should have probably read it like an adult instead of just sending the host questions. But yeah, man, I don't know how you avoid that one. That's just a moral human kind of thing. It just happens. Well, yeah, and I'm busy too, right?

So I'm like living my life and I automate this for the sole purpose of not having to deal with this kind of stuff. And my assistant helps me with all this too. And I think she was just busy. And I whenever I can, oh, you know what? My phone number's on the account. So she reached out to me and I was like, all right, I'm just going to make this super easy. Boom, boom, boom.

And then I get a call. And again, this is like a 30 minute conversation and me checking in and being kind of overbearing with hospitality at that point. I'm like, I'm so sorry. Okay. So let's move on to the next one. which is a bit juicier. This one, there was a learning experience that,

let me just say, for everyone listening at home, I do hate this one the most, probably, out of all the ones that I'm going to talk about. But I think if you hear me out, you can understand how it would have happened. So it's August, and August on the East Coast is not the coldest, you know, time, really. It's a pretty warm,

but we do have a cast iron stove in our cabins. And so I, you know, know, we allow people to use that. That's an amenity that people like. We had a guest who wanted to light a fire in the cast iron stove in the middle of August when it was like 95 degrees, maybe 98 degrees and completely humid. So already, that's just a weird scenario that isn't going to happen. But effectively, when they opened the cast iron stove, there was like a pair of blue jays in there. What? Like the birds.

Like living in there? No. Oh. No, they were dead. Dying in there. Yeah. Oh, no. They looked relatively fresh.

Like, they weren't, they weren't like, I don't know, rigor mortis or anything. Wait, how did they get in there? Well, because there's a flu that goes out to the roof. And so they made a nest. Yes, exactly. So they made a nest. And basically, I guess the nest fell through because you could see. And they couldn't, poor little things.

could not make their way out, which is, you know, that's how it works. So a little sad, honestly. Yeah, that's sad. So that one is just kind of like a, we had to apologize. I'm like, I'm so sorry. Like, please understand we typically people don't, well, A, typically people don't use this. So we don't open it. Like my guest, sorry, my cleaners, it is their job to check the cast iron stove literally between every stay whenever it's being used. But when it's not being used, it stays empty, right? This is, I've had many. cast iron stoves, I've had chimneys. This is not something that's really ever happened. And so learning experience for all of us, and it's, hey, just because the space isn't being used does not mean that you shouldn't check it. And for the most part, it is actually on our cleaning

list to check unused spaces like coffee makers, microwaves, cabinets, closets, garages, all that kind of stuff is checked. But a cast iron stove is really more of an aesthetic thing for that part of the year. And so my get, and also like I said, my cleaner, she's like effectively sweating when she's in there because it's hot outside and she doesn't like blast the AC on or anything to be respectful and everything. So she didn't check. So now our learning experience from this is, hey, literally every nook and cranny of the house must be checked. Very diligently, first thing before you ever leave the house. So that, that, now it is part of our cleaning routine to check for dead blue jays.

Wow. I mean, everyone out there, make sure, check for dead blue jays. Very important part of your checklist. Honestly, I have a similar kind of thing, like a woodburning stove. And I would never even think about that, especially in the summer. I don't think anyone's checking in there. I mean, who's starting a fire when it's already so hot? But, you know, people want to do it. It's tough.

It's a learning situation, though. Right. Well, and here's the deal. Regardless of whether it was hot or not, there were blue jays in there and so if we had gotten to october and no one would ever have opened it there still would have been blue jays in there right so at some point the other shoe was going to drop but again maybe at that point once we start cleaning it out and getting it ready for use then it would have been discovered but it doesn't really matter i take the l on that one too because i'm like well i it's such a

rare thing that it's like that's what processes and systems are all about right something happens that disrupts your day or your workflow significantly. And so you go back to your team and all of your employees or all of your vendors and you say, how can we prevent this from ever happening again? And so all of these things are a form of a system, right? I now have a manual lockbox outside of my house. I now have a nest thermostat in this house. I have the automations because people have always would call me and ask me for directions to my

house and I said, I'm going to put this automation in place. That one obviously failed on me that one time, but that has stopped this problem from happening. And then now there were Blue Jays in my wood burning stove. And so it disrupted my Sunday or my Saturday. And I'm like, this will never happen again. And here's what I'm going to do to make sure. So if you're listening to this at home, please don't judge. I mean, this really still happens at a large scale, especially with 35 units. This is just another week for us. Stuff like this goes wrong all the time. And then we just say, all right, this can never happen again. Let's fix it. Now, we'll say typically this week was a little bit probably the worst week I've had in a very long time. But all to say, I was never really freaking

out because I was like, well, I kind of laugh about these things at this point. I'm like, all right, that was dumb of me or that's a dumb situation. Let's fix it. Move on. Who's going to fix it? Because obviously it's not going to be me because I don't live in the same place as any of my rentals. So all of this is a learning experience and just understand this will happen to you at home. sorry, at your short-term rentals all the time. And you just have to keep your head cool and move on because, yeah, you can't, you can't, you can't shut down the business just because you failed one time or 10, like I did this week.

Oh, well, it's not all failure, but yeah, I get your point. I mean, you can't expect perfection. It's not like a personal failure. These things just happen. But your point is well taken. Thanks for the sympathy, man. I've been really down on my scale. I mean, if you, if you counted everything that was,

went wrong in real estate investing is a personal loss, man. That would be a depressing lifestyle. It just goes wrong. Yeah, but the good, you know, the good is really good, right? Like, you read the reviews and you're like, this, okay, I turn this one around. I think I'm always more proud of this kind of stuff happening. And then the guest leaves me a five-star review because of how out of my way I went to make it a great experience for them.

So in that, for I think 90% of these, I think that worked out. Like nine, like nine out of ten, I think everyone was. relatively happy by the end. Good. Okay. Moving on. Moving on to the second half of this list. Number six.

Oh, man. See, this one, not my fault. But we'll let the audience be the judge of it. Number six, the guests that stayed at my cabin lied about how clean this cabin was. Like when they got there? Yeah, yeah. They reached out and they're like, hey, we're super unhappy about the cleanliness of this place. And we're not comfortable saying here.

And so we want a refund. We're going to leave. So my first assumption when this happens all the time is like, oh man, my cleaner's going to have it. Let's have, you know, and I'm just like, all right, no, no, let's just think about it. So obviously, I don't ever come at my cleaners like that. But naturally, I'm like, how could this, how could it be so dirty that they would feel this way? And so we reach out and we're so confused because we had just hired these cleaners. We interviewed them. They were amazing. They're like, here's our process. Here's our list. We take photos of everything beforehand. We're going to send you time stamped photos. of every clean so you can see it. And they had actually done one clean for us. And it was really great. The guest was like an amazingly clean place. And so we were like, okay, they're great. And so when this guest reaches out and says that it was left dirty, our first thought is that they forgot to basically clean the place.

I mean, this has happened to me before in my career, my short-term rental journey. And so we reached out and we like, hey, I'm sorry to bring this up, but here's what the guest just said. And we sent them like photos, right? And the photos, mind you, weren't really, they weren't, okay, let me just, let me tell you what the photos were. The photos were, like, there was like a string of hair on the sink, and then there was like a used towel and like the bathtub, which is how we tell people, we're always like, we always say, hey, can you leave the towel in the bathtub so we know that it's dirty? And so we bring this up

to the attention of the cleaners, and the cleaners basically say, hey, listen, I don't want, I don't want to like get into this with your guests, but they are lying. Like, I can guarantee you they're lying. You've talked to us. You know how seriously we take our job. You know that we're very good. And so we're like, okay, maybe they're right. And so basically what happens is this guest is like, hey, we're going to leave. I'm sorry. Like, we're, we're not comfortable. And we're like, all right, let us, we're just, we're checking with our cleaner. Let us just get to the bottom of this. Because we want to, like, can we just send her back out so that she can clean this and make, make this right? because that's always my first thing. If someone's unhappy about something, I try to fix it as soon as

possible. And they're like, no, sorry, we're not comfortable with that. We're just going to leave. So I'm just like, okay, fine. So we send out the photos to the cleaner and she says, hey, that white towel, you don't even have white towels. And they said that the dishes were all dirty. When you called me earlier today, I was literally unloading the dishwasher. Like you, you know that I wash the dishes and you know that you don't even have white towels. And then she's like, wait a minute. Hold on one second. And so she sent me a photo of this one towel that they put in the bathtub, like at the very bottom of a stack of 10 towels in the laundry room that she took a photo of that was timestamped. And she's like, there you go. This was the photo that I sent you today of the laundry room of that towel that we

don't even put out for a guest. That's our personal cleaning towel. They took that towel because it's like, it's our cleaning towel. And they put it in the bathtub to make it look like, we left it there. We don't use that towel, you know? And so I was just like, oh. Yeah, so again, this is like a two or three hour conversation between me, my business partner, my assistant, the cleaners, and the guests. And yeah, I mean, it really, it really set us, you know, set us back that Sunday night.

This all happened on Sunday, I feel like. I mean, what? That's just mean. You think they just, like, had another place or like, what? That's weird. There's a couple things here. Dave. So basically, it is kind of, it's not really that secluded, but it is like, it is in the country. And it's not really that creepy. It's like there are houses in sight, but there's like a highway in front of it. And so there could be a multitude of reasons. They could have found out that it was just farther than they thought, which we advertise all that stuff very specifically. They could have been turned off by the somewhat seclusion of it. They could have been a little creeped out. Dude, this happens all the time. People get to a property and it really matches up to what we say it's going to be, from a seclusion standpoint, they get in their head and they're like, oh my God, like, I can't

stay here. And then they try to find a reason to basically, like, leave. And so that's kind of what happened to us, this round. All right. So, I mean, this one is weird to me, because I don't even know what you do about something like this. But is there anything you took away from this? Yes. And it's, it's that you're going to have the occasional guest that lies that is just trying to get out of things. You know, this is just a part of doing business, right? And so me and my partner were, like, talking this out. So it was my assistant. And then I'm just kind of like, oh, heck no, like, we're not, no, I won't stand for this. Like, I can't believe that they would throw our cleaners under the bus because we had verified, I mean, the cleaners flat out basically prove that

they were lying just to get a refund. And so I was like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to call Airbnb. We're going to get to the bottom of this. We're going to let them what happened. We're going to show them the proof. We're going to cancel this reservation. I'm not going to refund this guy because, like, you know, this is something that he's trying to basically pull one over on us. And I was like, I'm not going to have that in my business. And so my partner and my assistant, they're like, yeah, we agree. Like, I think you're, you're handling this very well considering, you know, what the circumstances. So I was like, give me some time. Let me put my daughter down and I'll let you know. So, you know the phrase, cooler heads prevail,

right? I think that's the phrase anyways. And so I put my daughter down and I, I don't know. It's just my daughter is like the joy of my life, right? So I was just like, I kind of left after I put her down and I walked out of a room and I was like, you know, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, it's 500 bucks. If this reservation was like 2,000 bucks, maybe I would have like been more adamant about it, but it's 500 bucks. And I was like, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't. On the scale of a 15 unit portfolio, and I say I flip flop from 15 to 35 a lot because I just, they're kind of two separate animals. And I'm, and the cash flow are different,

and there's like investors and all that stuff. But on my personal 15-unit portfolio, $500 is such a tiny, tiny sliver of the monthly income. And so it just was not worth the several out. When you value your time, right, and you have like an hourly rate assigned to your time, you kind of think about it. And you're like, is it worth $500 for me to spend the next two hours

dealing with Airbnb, and then the next 10 hours dealing with a disc ronald guest? And if they are disgruntled and they went to these lengths to basically lie and get a refund, what lengths would they go to to win this, right? They have the check-in information. They can come back. They can break in. They can sabotage us in some capacity.

My name is attached to this in some capacity, like the raw-built name. And I believe in that, right, from my brand perspective. And I'm just like, it's not worth the 500 bucks. And so I basically sent a long thing to my partner and my assistant. And I was like, hey, here's where I'm thinking, we just let it go. We just refund them and we just pretend like this didn't happen and we rebook it. How do you feel about that? Because I wanted to give my partner a chance to chime in.

And he was like, you know what? I think you're right. Every so often we're going to have a guess like this. And it doesn't happen really ever. And so because it's the first time this has ever happened, let's just take the L and move on. I was like, great. And you know what? I slept much better that night.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's such a good lesson because this happens in so many different things in real estate, just when you're dealing with tenants or just it's not even necessarily with tenants it's like you get yourself worked up about short-term things uh you know whether it's how a long-term rental guest leaves your place or a short-term rental place and honestly you got to just take a look at the long view man and you know of course you don't want to let people take advantage of you and you don't want to be sloppy with the way you handle your expenses but at the end of the day man you know You invest in real estate to make your life better, and if it's stressing you out, it's just not worth it.

So luckily, you know, like you said, cooler heads prevail and you just have to think about long-term view. Think about how you can avoid it in the, you know, avoid these situations in the long term, but not get yourself too worked up about any individual problem. Well, I'd be here on your side of thing, because I know you have a lot of rentals and I know you talked about how you have the, uh, this, a property manager on your short-term rental. What's that like? I mean, that's got to be pretty relaxing. right? Like, does everyone manage your properties or do you do any self-management? Well, for my rentals, I did self-management for eight years. So I was doing that for quite a while.

But when I moved to Europe, I've outsourced most of my management of my long-term rentals. I actually still do a lot of the leasing. I do a lot of the, yeah, like the legal stuff, like negotiating new leases, setting the prices, that kind of stuff. But I've, I've, someone do maintenance essentially for me and turning the properties. With the short-term rental, I'm pretty hands off. They come to me, you know, there's like certain dollar thresholds where it's basically like, you know, if the expense is going to be over 200 bucks, they need my verbal approval, so they'll call me or email me and that's super easy. But for the most part, I've never talked to a short-term rental tenant ever. I've had the place for four years. So,

So yeah, so that makes it a little bit easier. But you pay a lot for it. You know, it's definitely not efficient from a financial standpoint. But for me, just, you know, living abroad, I have chosen to sacrifice a bit of cash flow in exchange for peace of mind. Sort of like what you're just saying, you know, peace of mind's pretty valuable. I'm willing to pay for it. It is.

It is. And let me just be clear with people. I mean, for me, I don't want to like, I don't want to under, I don't know, I don't want to undermine how much 500 bucks can be for someone at home. Like, if this is your only rental and that $500 is like the difference between making your mortgage or breaking even or making a profit, fight for it. Like, if it's just your one and you got the time, like stick to your guns. Do it. There's no problem with that at all. Totally.

In this situation, it's just not worth it for me, like at this level, right? 500 bucks for the amount of time that because like the thing is I already know what was going to happen we're going to say no he's going to message me for the next 10 days like all mad and I'm going to respond and then he's going to get heated and then I'll probably be heated and then we never talk to it it's just not worth it so I think for anyone starting out stick to your guns choose your battles that's effectively what this whole list is about I'm very pro self-management and sometimes I have to choose all my battles and sometimes I have to walk away from all of them just because there's 15 units. So the show must go on regardless of emotion, right? And so if you can pull that

out of the equation and basically just focus on the objectivity of this, then you'll hopefully just look at the final tally at the end of the month versus like the profitability every single day. Because I think that's the trap that a lot of people fall into. It's like, oh, this is the reservation that makes me profitable or not. And so there's so much more at stake when you look at that way versus, you know, the monthly bird's eye view and the yearly bird's eye view. No, that's a great point. I'm glad you said that because that's definitely true. If it is your first property and it's $500 and you're really relying on that,

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you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. All right. Well, this next one, I can't make this up, Dave. I can't make this up. I really can't. I'm nervous now. Okay. So we were setting up a place here in Texas. a new Airbnb with an investor. And basically, we make this very easy for the investor. Investor comes in, they invest, they finance the property, we set it up, we're the operations, we furnish it, we do all that kind of stuff, right? Good and bad there. The bad is, we do everything, and we have to furnish everything. And that in and of itself is an adventure. However, this particular house didn't have a fridge. So we bought a fridge and that the wrong

fridge was delivered to our house. Not one time, Dave. Not two times, Dave. Not three times, Dave. No. No. Not four times, Dave. Not five times, Dave.

Six times. Six times in a week. Wait. Is it the same fridge that I keep trying to deliver, or did you have six different fridges delivered? Six different fridges. they were wrong. We had the right one at first.

That one came in. It was broken. They sent it back. They sent another one. That one wasn't counter-depth. So it stuck out like a foot because they were like, hey, this one should fit exactly the same specifications. We're out of the other one. Then they didn't show up.

And then they did show up. So six deliveries later, we finally have a fridge. Oh, my God. Oh, man. I felt so bad. I felt so bad for my business partner. He's like the operations guy. He was there handling.

it and man, I mean, we should have been done with this like in a week, but it took two weeks. He was there for a whole week. And then they would say, hey, we're going to deliver it tomorrow. And so he would drive an hour and a half the night before to go wait. And then the morning of, they would say, hey, just kidding. We're going to reschedule this to tomorrow. And so he'd be like, okay, well, I'm just going to stay the night. And he would stay the night and they still wouldn't like come and deliver the fridge.

And then they did. And then it was the wrong fridge. Dude, I cannot. I, dude, this is not an exaggeration. Like every day he would text me. He was like, all right, we're on fridge delivery number four now, number five. And then, oh, man, I felt so bad. So no learning experiences here.

This is just one of those. Just a really annoying situation. Yeah. Yep. I guess this is just part of the like appliance supply chain issue, right? It is. There's just, it's tough to get anything right now. So if it's, if anything goes wrong, I feel like it just cascades and sets off this

shade of events where it's like. super hard. It's not like you just drive to Home Depot anymore and just like snag a new fridge. It's just like you could be waiting another couple of weeks. That was, I mean, I can't say this is a learning experience because this isn't logical. It's just it was the perfect storm of stuff, right? The only thing that we could have done differently was rent our own truck, go to Home Depot or Lowe's, pick out the correct fridge, hope that it was in stock, put it in the truck, hire someone to help us unload it and install it in the house.

Like that's the only thing that we could have possibly done a little bit different, but it doesn't, logically you would have expected after like the second mishap that the fridge would have come. So it's like bad luck, just bad luck on this, especially since it happened on the same week as all this other stuff. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, honestly, I think that's actually a really interesting point because it's like we're talking about how to prevent these things and lessons learned, but sometimes you just got to say, like, I did the highest probability thing. and it didn't work out, and that's okay. Like, you're going to have to deal with these things.

Because, like, if you, like, what you did, what you're saying you could do as an alternative, it's just not really practical, like, to do that for everything. So it's just like, you got to be like, it stinks. It's annoying. But I'm not going to tie myself in knots to try and avoid this one because it probably won't happen again. No, no. Well, hold on, sir. Knock on wood.

Actively knock on wood. Oh, no. Let's move on to. number eight. No. All right. All right. So this one's funny.

This is a different property in California. My dishwasher went out and it wasn't working. Cleaner says, hey, it's not draining the correct way. And I was like, oh, well, you know, all right, let me, let me get someone out. So I hire a plumber that he's actually, his name is Richard, all right? He works at Home Depot. And him and I have always had like a, we're like spirit animals, right? I go him.

I talked to him about my problems. I'm like, hey, man, I need a faucet today. And he's like, yeah, but what else is new with Rob? And I'm like, I'm like, I'm so glad, Richard. So he's my guy. He's my go-to guy for plumbing stuff. And I'm like, hey, it's not draining. I think it's because the way you kind of install a hose from a dishwasher to a garbage disposal, it has to go up.

I don't really know the details. But basically, it wasn't like that. And so he goes in and he installs it. He's like, hey, you're good. It should work now. I was like, great. and so basically cleaner comes the next day to finish the job she's like hey it's still not draining and i was like dang it so i called him and he said oh it's probably a motherboard thing then and i was

like all right sounds good let me get a tech out there tech's like all right we'll come out it's going to be 150 bucks and i was like fantastic come and come and fix this thing he comes out and he basically says hey uh it is the motherboard uh we can fix this it will cost you about 750 bucks and i was like that's more than a dishwasher he's like yeah that's how it is on these appliances sometimes it costs more to fix them than to actually replace them. Oh, I get that all the time, man. And that happened to me one time with my, like the very first experience I had with the home warranty. I hit the jackpot, I thought, because the drum inside my dryer broke.

And so they were like, yeah, it's going to be $1,000 to replace. Here's $800. Go buy a new one. This is like the first week of living in my house. And I was like, home warranties are the greatest. And that's the only time it's ever worked out for me. The other 15 claims did not work out for me. Dude, I wonder if they do that on purpose.

They like, they like service your first claim really well. And they're like, yeah, we're going to get them. Now Rob's going to buy a home warranty for every property. And we're going to screw them over on each. Let me tell you, it worked because I am always like, I need a home warranty. And now I'm like, I don't even use it. It's annoying to use a home warranty. I know.

Yeah, they are really. And I still pay for it. I'm the dummy here. But basically, uh, okay. So here, there's like several, there's several stabs in the heart on this one. But basically they come out. They say it's going to cost $750. This is like, you know, the,

boys to them in like, how do I say goodbye? Because like, this dishwasher I got for a free. It's like a known thing. Oh, I don't know. We're not going to get into my singing voice now. I've got nothing prepared. I've got nothing prepared. I'm impressed. Yes. All right. So basically, I'm like real sad to say goodbye to this dishwasher because I got it for free off of Craigslist like five years ago, six years ago. It was a stainless steel one. I was like, oh my God, me and my wife were so broke. And we're like, we got a brand new stainless steel dishwasher. So, It really did live its life. It lived it full life, okay?

Like my final talk to this thing, I'm like, you wash dishes really well, and I'll always be thankful for the service you provided to this family. So this dishwasher is Nolan Void, and I was like, man, I should call my home warranty. I was like, oh, I don't have a home warranty on this. No big deal. So fast forward, I buy the dishwasher for this short-term rental because the guest is like, hey, your dishwasher. I was like, hey, it's broken, but are you cool to, like, hand-wash your dishes

until I get the dishwasher. Is that cool? And he's like, yeah, man, but definitely get it in here because I'm going to use it. And I was like, all right, cool. So I order it. They deliver the dishwasher, Dave.

The dishwasher is broken. It, like, won't open. So they call me. They say, hey, I'm so sorry, it's broken. We have to send you a new one. And I was like, put it on my tab. So they send it out. And then I'm like, all right,

they're going to deliver it. Several days go by. And I'm like, they still don't deliver it. And I call back. I'm like, hey, you didn't re-deliver it. And they're like, oh, yeah, sorry. Just a little live pro tip. We always tell you that we're going to re-deliver it,

but you have to call to do that to initiate it. And I was like, all right, fantastic. They send out the new dishwasher, the delivery guy. Basically, I don't really know what happens, but he gets into a screaming match with his manager, and the guest was like, I don't know, man, it was so weird. Like, he was on the phone with his manager, and his manager was like, do your job.

He's like, no, you do your job. And they were like fighting back and forth. So basically the guy leaves. He's like, I'm not going to install this dishwasher. And I was like, great. So I actually don't know if this dishwasher, I don't think it's been delivered yet. All to say, fast forward, I actually look into it. I do have a home warranty on this that would have covered this because the motherboard

was broken. And I would have just gotten this all handled. Like the one time that the home warranty would have worked for me actually was this time and I didn't even know. And I've been on the phone with Home Depot, trying to coordinate the delivery with the delivery guy and then this guy and then they say that they're going to schedule it and then they're going to reschedule it and then they call me and they're like just kidding. I don't know why he told you that. He doesn't even work for us. He's like some random guy that just plays

pranks. I'm just getting that. It's how it feels. It really, I mean, I'm just like, oh, appliances, appliances, supply chains, deliveries, leaving it in the hands of big box stores. Dave, just didn't work out for me. No lesson to be learned here other than like, don't buy new appliances. Get them for free on Craigslist. They last a lot longer. Yeah, for sure. Wow. I was going to say, not likely to happen again, but you proved me wrong in the course of one second. Oh, man. All right. Two more. Two more. And then I'll leave us with an encouraging word to inspire people back into self-management. I promise. All right. What do you got? Our pool at our motel was like days from ruin. What do you mean? I don't even know how to. Okay, so basically an inspector, we bought this motel.

Inspector comes out. He's like, hey, the chlorine you're using is like, legal. And we're like, oh, that's fun. Thank you. Thank you for letting us know. So we have to empty the pool. It wasn't in use. It was already shut down. It needed maintenance anyways. But basically, we have to empty out the pool, which is like a hard thing to do. The filter, the pumps that are broken. Like, like I said, it was already shut down. And basically, we empty out the pool. The previous, not the person who sold us the motel, but the person before that, like runs into the hotel and is like, hey, you can't have the pool empty and we're like, why? And they're like, the last, we just installed a new liner. The last time that we did this, like the liner tour and the walls caved in and it costs us $20,000

to fix, you have to fill it up with water as soon as possible. We're like, okay, okay, right, like hold on, we're going to do our best. And so basically we try to fill it up with water. The pumps are broken. So we have to go and get the water hauled in professionally from some random company like an hour and a half away to fill up this pool. And I think we were too late and there was already a tear the tear happened in the liner anyways the walls didn't collapse it's all fixable but it was all just one of those things where it's like we're all like trying to call pool companies no one in a one and a half mile radius from tupper lake will do that they're like sorry it's just we don't have a company nearby yeah so so that's it that's i mean that was kind of like a

oh okay so learning experience there i don't know pools i'm already finicky on i don't yeah like pools I don't like hot tubs. Watch my YouTube channel and you'll understand why. Really? So much maintenance. Yeah. It's true. Actually, I have a hot tub and it's probably the number one thing I have to pay for.

And it makes the electricity bill absolutely insane. But, you know, they do say that you get more bookings because of it. I think, you know, mine's in a ski town. People love going in a hot tub after they go skiing. You need it. I mean, hot tubs are like, they add up to $39, maybe it's $49 to your ADR, your average daily rate. Wow.

So it's a net positive. Worth it. Yeah. Worth it. Stuff goes wrong all the time, dude. All the time with my hot tubs. Actually, nothing went wrong last week, which is kind of weird to say that. Because that's always the one thing that goes wrong in my whole portfolio.

Don't say that out out. Now you're going to be cursed. No. Well, this doesn't come out for a while. So maybe I'll be okay until it comes out, until it's out in the ether. So yeah, that one was like, well, we were already budgeting like a $10,000 repair on that pool. We were over budgeting. We were really padding it.

looks like we're going to use pretty much every dollar of that now. Not anything that we could have prevented because of the circumstances, but learning experience there is don't keep a pool empty. Apparently it's really bad for a pool if it's got a liner. New knowledge for everyone at home. All right. Round it out. What's our last one?

Is this going to be positive? Are we going to get some uplifting news here? I think so. Okay. So this one was like definitely a customer service, not mishap. Like I guess save the day. All right. So guest reaches out and she says,

I just got to your cabin and listen, I'm not confrontational at all. I usually would let this go, but this and this and this was wrong. So basically there was like a hair on the ground. It's always just like a single hair. And I think there was like two spots in the house where there was a hair. The string lights were broken. Like they didn't turn on. And we don't really know why.

These string lights, they just, I don't know, they were like two years old at that point. And then the French doors in the living room wouldn't lock. they would just open. And so this is typically not a big deal because it's on the second story and like no one can actually break in. I mean, kudos to anyone who breaks in this way, I guess. However, we do have bears all the time on this property. And so I think they were really just like scared that a bear could break in because actually they do go up on that second story balcony all the time. So it is a plausible scenario that a bear could just be like and then like open the door, basically. So I'm like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Let me fix all this for you.

I'm the worst. Please forgive me. I'm going to make this up to you. Please, I need this five star. So anyway, you don't know what kind of week I've had lately. So basically, like, my cleaners are amazing, man. They really are. Anytime something like that happens, they're like, we're on it.

So I called them. They're like, we'll be right out. And so literally they show up like 15 minutes later. And the lady's like, oh, my God. Like, you are fast. And I'm like, I know. Look, if I have an unhappy guess, I'm going to make them happy. I get my handyman out there.

He says, hey, French doors. actually do work, but there's a lock at the top of it. Let them know. And they're like, oh, my God, I'm so dumb. I'm sorry. Like, you're right. It does lock. And I was like, oh, no big deal. Third thing, he comes out and he fixes all the string lights. And he replaces them all within a day. So basically, I will say, dude, like, I killed it on this one, all right? All of these, I try to kill it on, but you never, like, depending on how disgruntled a guest is, there's nothing you can do to make it right, even if you're, like, going over and beyond. But on this one, because I was able to fix all the problems like within basically an hour or two. Oh, oh, and there wasn't a power

cord. Oh, man, this is annoying. There wasn't a power cord on my Amazon Prime because the previous guests like stole it. So the actual TV, Netflix and stuff wasn't working. So I had my handyman go out and buy Rokos and replace it. So I'm just like, I'm like, all right, here's what's going to happen, lady, sit down because you're, you don't even understand how fast this is about to go. I just got Russell out there. He's going to Lowe's. He's snapping necks and cash and checks. He's getting you Roku's. I just ordered 48 feet, linear feet of string lights. They're LED. They will save me money on electricity and thus provide you the adequate lighting that you need around this hot tub. And my cleaners will be right there. So I'm like, you know, just putting it all that. And she's like,

oh my God, thank you so much. So she ends the, she was like, you're so, this is amazing. Like, I've never had service like this five stars. Like she leaves me like that in her like emojis and stuff. I'm like great. And then she checks out and she just says like, hey, I just wanted to reach out one more time. Like, this was so amazing. I got to see a bear with my daughter. She wrote, she took a photo of a note that she, um, that she basically like wrote. And it was really nice, dude. Like, I always get emotional when I read this stuff because I was like, that's, she was so nice, you know, and she basically, like wrote this whole little note that was like on a little, you know, like a sticky note with lines on it. And she filled out every inch of it. And she was basically like, I made new memories here. Like I,

I got to like bond with my daughter. We saw a bear. Like, your, your customer service. was so great. So that kind of rounds us all out to basically say that, look, there will be bad, there will be good. I just want everyone to know it's okay because the good truly, truly, truly, outweighs the bad. If you go down like my ratings on Airbnb, I've got ratings across the board, man. I've got 2,000 ratings, all right? I probably have like 10, one stars, usually stuff out of my control. I've got like 23 stars. I've got 54 stars, but I've got like 1,8005 stars, right? And so if we choose to live by the negative, you're going to hate this. You're not going to want to get into it. If that's something that you dwell on, it's just not something that you're going to be

fulfilled in doing. And this is something that I've had to realize as a content creator on TikTok, on YouTube, on Instagram. Dude, people like are mean all the time. I don't really care all that much. But, dude, the people that are that reach out and say nice things that say hey I quit my nine to five because of short term rentals because you got me into this or dude I just made eight grand like on my first short term rental because of a YouTube video that I saw on the algorithm like a year ago that you posted like that kind of stuff is what makes my life it's what makes my career is the satisfaction that comes from that and it's the same thing on short term rentals if I were to focus on the 200 bad ones I'd be so bummed dude I'd be very very very depressed about my whole portfolio but if you just

sat through and read the 1800 positive reviews. Like, it's very heartwarming. Like, I tear up all the time. I genuinely do. Not every single one, but there are some that it's just like, you know, when it's a dad talking about lighting, like teaching his little daughter how to light a fire in the chimney. And he got to do that with his daughter for the first time ever. And that's something that was meaningful for them. Like, that kind of stuff. I'm like, wow, I help someone create that memory forever. Like, they will always talk about that trip where they proposed, where they got married. where they celebrated something together. And that connection, that camaraderie and that bonding all happened under the roof of my

Airbnb's. Boom. How's that? That's awesome. I love it. That's a great way to end it, man. I love the positive message. And you're right, man, people, things go wrong and it happens, but you got to focus on the good

things. I definitely identify with what you're talking about with content creation. It's like, I probably get, you know, you probably get like 50 to one positive to negative comments, but that negative one, you're just like, it's, like, it's, like sticks it in your mind and you're just like thinking about it all day. It can. It's like, man, if you just think about all the nice things people say to your life's going to be a lot better. But you wrapped it up beautifully. Thank you for sharing this stuff, man. It's always helpful to learn from people's mistakes. And not always mistakes, just hard times. It's good to know. I mean,

a lot of these were. I'll be very honest about it. A lot of things were things that I could have implemented sooner and all that stuff. But that is the point of today's episode. And it's like, I'm not perfect. You know, I'm very successful. in this industry. Like, I teach people how to do this. And honestly, like, I just had something happened today on this list. Like, the lady finally left me the review. She called it an epic failure, all this stuff. And I posted it to my, my host camp Facebook group. And I'm like, guys, even Papa Bear fails sometimes. I failed this one, but I learned. And here's what I learned. Boom, boom, boom. And everyone's like, thank you. I appreciate it. So that's what I'm here

to do. I'm here to, like, learn the hard way. So people can learn the easy way. And I know that's something you could probably relate with. Yeah, absolutely. man. Well, thank you for sharing and thanks for having me on to follow your journey a little bit. We got to do more of these. I love it. I had a lot of fun. Same. I'm whenever you need me, I'll be around. Awesome, man. Well, Dave, if anyone wants to find out more about you, where can they connect with you? Where can they learn more about you? Yeah, I mean, you could do it in two places. One is I am the host of a Bigger Pockets podcast called On the Market where we talk about the data news and trends that investors should be following to make informed investing decisions.

And also, you can find me on Instagram where I'm at the Data Deli. Awesome. And everyone, you can find me over on YouTube at Rob Built. There's a lot of misinformation out there. People that think it's Ro Built, but it's Rob Built, R-O-B-U-I-L-T. You can find me on Instagram at Ro-Bilt. Just kidding, Rob-Bilt. And if you want to see me dance and get nerdy, follow me on the old TikTok at Rob Bilt-O.

Just add a no at the end because someone snapped. Raw built for me. And they wanted like 18 grand for it. What a jerk. I mean, I guess people do that all the time, but it's fine. It was my domain. It was my domain. They were like, hey, I see you. Oh, own raubbuilt.co. Would you like to buy robbilt.com for $18,000? And I was like dot co. It was $8.99. Well, thank you very much. Ooh, what's a good, what's a good call out for this? This is Rob for, I don't know, David's so much better at this.

Yeah, he is good at it, man. I don't know. All right. How about, how about this? This is Rob for Dave. We're all missing David Green, wherever he's at around the world. Meyer, signing out. Goodbye. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify,

or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave, buyer. The show is produced by E&K. Copywriting is by Calicoe Content. And editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk

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