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[00:00:00] Sarah: Thanks for calling the–
[00:00:01] Both Sarah & Annette: Hosting Hotline.
[00:00:02] Sarah: I’m Sarah Karakaian.
Cain,
[00:00:03] Annette: I’m Annette Grant, and together we are–
[00:00:05] Both Sarah & Annette: Thanks for Visiting.
[00:00:06] Sarah: Wow.
[00:00:07] Annette: Oh, it just brings me joy. The nsync Hosting Hotline is my new fete. All right. Let’s get into this question.
[00:00:15] Questions: Good morning. This is Patty from Pennsylvania. I work in healthcare and recently took one of my three bedroom, one bath long-term homes and converted it, fully furnished for midterm rental. I saw that there was a need for comfortable, safe, and affordable housing for traveling nurses, and that was my goal.
So I am wondering if there is a way to kind of do that parent-child model that you guys had invented and was so clever. I want to know if there’s a way that I could list the entire house, that way if there’s a group of nurses traveling together, they could rent the entire thing versus doing individual rooms.
And if there’s a way to link the calendars that as soon as one gets booked, then the other will get shut off. I think it would be helpful for me to know as a newbie on which model would be Miller popular and I would love to hear any advice on this. Thank you so much, and thank you for all that you do. I love listening to your podcast and I look forward to it twice a week when it comes up.
[00:01:18] Sarah: Oh, sweet.
[00:01:19] Annette: That was so nice.
[00:01:20] Sarah: And she said safe.
Yes. Thank you for a, what you do for everyone, b, the housing that you’re providing for the nurses. Let’s first chat about what parent-child is–
[00:01:30] Annette: Yep. Let’s go to that.
[00:01:31] Sarah: Just in case.
[00:01:32] Annette: Full disclosure, although I really appreciate the credit–
Oh, right.
[00:01:35] Sarah: I did not invent this, but–
[00:01:37] Annette: But you have been giving it some shine and people are adapting, so it’s good It’s so funny, especially when you start a podcast and you talk about things that you do, I’ll be vulnerable. Sometimes you’re like, I wonder if people think these ideas are crazy. And sometimes the ideas stick. And you guys have given us great feedback that you also love this strategy. And it simply is– go ahead.
We will link to our YouTube video specifically about this also. So don’t worry about taking notes right now. We’ll have a follow up video. And if you are following us or subscribing to us on YouTube, what the heck are you doing? Come hang out with us.
[00:02:07] Sarah: Coming out. We are just as silly there as we are here. But also giving out solid, insight for you. So, parent-child, here’s how it first presented itself to me. I had a client come on, big, beautiful home, but I immediately, because we were in Columbus, I would just moved here and I wasn’t sure if we could really rent out an entire four bedroom home often.
And I wanted to make the home as accessible as possible. So I thought, what if we lock off two of the bedroom doors that are on the third floor, that’s all. That’s on the third floor, two bedrooms. Go up the top of the stairs, left, right bedroom. We lock them off and we sell the home two different ways on any OTA, but let’s just talk about Airbnb.
And what I did is, so I had a two bedroom product. I had a four bedroom product. I am offering different things, which is why it’s okay to do that on Airbnb and have two different listings. Connect the calendar. That was my first idea. And only the four bedroom was available on weekends. And the two bedroom– or four bedroom was available all the time.
The two bedroom was only available during the weekdays because they were the harder ones to book. And then I got even crazier with my strategy when it comes to pricing, when to get aggressive so that ideally I am booking it as a full home and getting this much value and revenue I can, as the house I can, but it’s not sitting empty. And people who are just searching two to four people could still stay there during the week.
[00:03:19] Annette: Still offer it up to them.
[00:03:20] Sarah: And then we went hog well with it. We have a fourplex. We have each apartment is its own thing, but you can also get two apartments as one unit. At the bottom too as one unit. We’re doing a duplex right now. We do the same thing. So you can get really creative. And I had actually never heard of this idea. I never thought about this idea that was presented for healthcare workers and I don’t see why you can’t do it.
[00:03:42] Annette: The other thing I want to mention, if you haven’t looked into it yet, I would advise you to look into Furnished Finder for your home since there are a lot of nurses specifically looking there or midterm rentals looking there.
And I do know that– exactly what you just said, there are multiple nurses that sometimes will pool their cash together and live together. So I would definitely, if you aren’t listing there, look into that. And then give it a try. This is what we say almost on every episode. It’s like, this is what we love about it. It’s flexible. You can give this a try and book it as the whole home or the individual rooms. And you might see maybe there’s nurses, but maybe there’s some other type of healthcare worker.
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[00:04:18] Sarah: Here’s some things to consider though. When doing a room situation, take into consideration the security of the traveling professionals. Gender might play a concern. And so be very open and upfront about that.
[00:04:33] Annette: Yeah, I know that you did mention just the one bathroom, so you want to reiterate that everywhere. And the one other thing, we will put a link in the show notes also. I would advise putting locks on each individual door so they can have their valuables locked away.
And we will put the exact lock that is used in the parent-child listings. That way you also don’t want the doors to lock on them automatically, or if someone’s in there. So you do need to probably make an investment there. We have some people in our membership, they’re working on this right now, and it’s one of those things– there is going to be a little bit of an investment upfront because you are going to have to put the locks on the doors.
And that’s a hot tip for everyone listening out there, putting a lock in your bedroom door, whether or not you offer shared home with the individual rooms or the home as a whole. Airbnb does allow that to be an amenity that you have security on the bedroom doors and someone can have privacy and lock themselves into their own bedroom should they want to. Back in the day when Airbnb plus was a thing, that was a requirement.
So whether or not you’re doing the parent-child or you just have a home, the ability to lock the door is a great feature for your guests. There’s something else I wanted to say. You want to be very upfront whether you just cater to a certain gender or what the security measures are going to be. You still cannot have cameras on the interior of your home. So you do have that concern.
Is there something you wanted to say about the calendar? Linking calendar?
[00:05:53] Sarah: Yes, I did want to tell– so you mentioned like Furnished Finder. And if you’re going to start doing multiple channel management there, I know that some property management softwares are going to be offering Furnished Finder as a OTA, essentially. But I do know that with Furnished Finder, they charge you upfront to list the property. So when you start doing it in multiple ways, it might be a financial investment there unlike Airbnb where they don’t charge you until it’s booked, it comes out of that booking. So that’s something to consider there too.
[00:06:25] Annette: Hot tip here is you’re in the healthcare profession. Please, I would directly go to the hospital that you think you’re going to pull the nurses in from. Go direct, meet with the HR person. It might take some time, but that might be such an amazing connection to have. You might have your place fully booked all the time. Who knows?
Maybe there’s other professionals within the healthcare system in your area that are looking to relocate. They need the full home for their family. I just think that the options are unlimited, if you really want to put some of the work in. It sounds like you’re motivated. So I would chat with some people, let them know what you’re doing and you might be able to get some bookings.
[00:07:00] Sarah: And I do want to make sure I’m being very clear about the whole gender comment. I am, of course, like– I am here for all the things. I just know that some people might be concerned, especially if they’re traveling alone. They’re going to want to know the security that’s available to them because things do happen when you have multiple different humans in the home. So I’m just saying that just explore that and think about that. I am not sharing any sort of opinion or position there other than I am for all the people hanging out all together. With that said, I am Sarah Karakaian.
[00:07:31] Annette: I’m Annette Grant, and together we are–
[00:07:33] Both Sarah & Annette: Thanks for Visiting.
[00:07:34] Sarah: We’ll talk to you next time.
