Hello! Welcome to episode 113 of I’d Rather Stay In. This week, we’re chatting with friend and realtor Monica Bullington all about being a successful Airbnb host.

Quick links

• Follow Monica on IG: https://www.instagram.com/monicabullington_realtor/
• Check out MeowKE
• Check out The Front Page

Episode transcript

Megan
Welcome to I’d rather staying with Megan Myers and Stephie Predmore. This week we’re chatting about vacation rentals with our special guest, Monica Bullington. Stay tuned.

Stephie
Do you love listening to I’d rather stay in and want to support the podcast? Well, now you can visit our website or the LinkedIn or Instagram profile and click Buy me a coffee or visit buy me a coffee.com/irssi podcast. For the price of a cup of coffee, you can help us cover the costs of creating this podcast. There are no monthly memberships and you could support us at whatever level you like, whenever you like, whether you buy us one coffee, many coffees or simply continue listening as always, we’re so grateful for your support.

Hello,

Megan
hi Stephie how’s it going? Megan? Ah, good, good. Good.

Stephie
Three, good three times good.

Megan
If you follow us on a schedule, you realize we were not recorded. Last week we missed a week, because last week was a hot mess. It was

Stephie
it was about it was just like, I not to be like, oh, like mercury was in retrograde. But like, apparently Mercury Retrograde did start last week. And boy, we all we were just feeling it. So every everything that could happen happens. So legitimately, that could happen. decided it would all happened within the span of like six days. And here we are. So also, I’m still cracking myself up over the fact that you texted me a couple days ago. And you were like, Have you watched any of the second season of bling empire on Netflix? And I was like, I haven’t watched season one. And you were like, that’s weird. I feel like you were the one that told me to watch it. I was like, Well, that sounds like me, but I don’t see why you would think that. And then last night. I was like, Okay, well, I’ll watch this so I can discuss it with Meghan. And I got to turn it on. And it was like start season two episode one. I was like, that’s weird. That must mean I did watch season one. And then I like watched the the like Season One recap. And I was like, oh, yeah, I definitely watched this weird show.

Megan
I mean, first of all, you should know better than to argue with a five Taurus about facts. But also I couldn’t think of a who else would it have been? That would have told me to watch it? There’s no one else in my life. Watch his track. No, I

Stephie
am the trash watcher in your life. So I don’t I don’t know why I doubted you. Like you’re the only person that’s right more often than I am. So I definitely should have defaulted to you. But I just couldn’t. It just didn’t ring any bells in my brain. And then I and then I started and I’m like, Oh, I 100% remember this show now. Oh, yeah. Can I forgotten this? I don’t know if it’s because it was like too long ago. Or I just had watched other things in between. Who knows? But I am now watching season two so that we can discuss properly. Also, if anyone was fascinated by like, if you’re fast if you’re fascinated by the movie Crazy Rich Asians like this is the real life Crazy Rich Asians. Yes, it is. Banana pants and excellent and well worth watching. So

Megan
I do very excited to be able to talk with you about it now.

Stephie
I stayed up way too late watching last night, as that should not surprise you. So anyway, this my forgot I was like, I can’t believe I forgot about hot Kevin and all of the crazy people on this show. Excellent. It’s an excellent show.

Megan
To be fair, there’s a lot of stuff on Netflix, that’s a mess.

Stephie
So there is a lot of stuff. You know, I do think that is like part of it. Because when Netflix like started doing all of their shows there just weren’t as many of them and so it was easier to keep up and now there’s stuff where I’ll be like scrolling and I’m like I don’t even remember hearing about this at all. How have I not heard about this because there’s just so much content they’re putting out which is great. I will I will say like, I do love having lots of new and old content to scroll through and watch but sometimes I’m like, Oh my gosh, it’s too much. You’re about this. Yeah, sometimes it is a little overwhelming. But yeah, whatever. First of all problems, it’s fine. Whatever is whatever

Megan
Stephie for both work and vacation you and I have stayed at a lot of Airbnbs over the past few years. I may not say you know in the past recent reviews, recent years, but we’re getting back to it. And sometimes they are wonderful and sometimes not so much. That is an

Stephie
understatement. We naturally have lots of questions about vacation rentals. So we haven’t vited, our friend, Monica Bullington to talk with us about them. Welcome, Monica.

Monica
Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

Megan
Thanks for joining us. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Monica
Sure, I am a Realtor at ReMax rising here in Bloomington Normal. And my husband and I own two two duplexes. And each of them, one is in Milwaukee. And once you’re in Bloomington, and each of them has a long term tenant and A and the other unit is an Airbnb.

Stephie
Love that. So you know, as a realtor, you certainly are going to have a certain insight when it comes to vacation rentals. So tell us about you know, deciding to become Airbnb hosts and how your particular expertise factored into that decision.

Monica
Sure. So ours started with the Milwaukee property. So this was actually the summer of 2020. My husband and I were discussing like, Wouldn’t it be great, because we just love Milwaukee and it was kind of this pipe dream of like, wouldn’t be great if we got like a house or like, we could go up to Milwaukee more. And we started looking into it. And we realize, so we wanted like he would only agree to it, if we could rent it out when we weren’t there. Like we’re not to the place in our lives where we can just own a second property that just like sits there and like. Yeah, so we were like, we’ll do this if we could, you know, run out? Well, we encountered issues right away. Because you so we were thinking something easy, like a condo, or like a really small like little house or something. And we started looking and I started talking to realtors up there. And they were like, oh, no, you Oh, and the other thing was we wanted to bring our cats, we are the people that want to vacation with their cats. So our two criteria were pet friendly and rentable, basically. And so we started talking to realtors up there and asking about condos and unconscious everywhere. And I knew this, some of them are not pet friendly. So you do have to check your guidelines with HOA for pets in general. So some of those were out for that reason. And then the second thing was not all of them allow rentals. And a lot of them. They do a lot of rentals, they allow long term like normal rentals, you know, a lot of them do not allow short term rentals. So that really just put the kibosh on that plan. So we had dependent pretty quickly. And we start exploring other areas, there really aren’t single family homes in Milwaukee. Like we’re kind of used to here. Most of the houses that are in Milwaukee proper, like in the areas that we wanted to be near downtown, were all multifamily. And so then it actually turned into well, this actually might be okay, because we could have somebody rent out the other unit, and then we can use ours and then we can even rent ours when we weren’t there. And we found this tiny little house is honestly the perfect location is really close to downtown. It’s got a long term tenant that he’s lived there for like six years. And the owner upstairs with his his unit, he was moving, he was retiring, and moving back to South America. So he was selling off his properties. And this one was just it was the perfect size. It’s not super big, it’s like 600 square feet per floor. And it really seemed like the right size for like a vacation rental and like easy to maintain. For us. There’s not really any outdoor space, which is important because you have to figure out what who’s going to take care of, you know, mowing the lawn and stuff. And then it does have an off street parking which in the lobby was super important. So we kind of learned some, you know, some ways that we had to pivot but actually ended up being perfect because we are able to have a long term tenant there that is in charge of the snow removal, which in the walk is definitely a thing that needs to happen. And then we go up about once a month and then our unit. We did remodel like a little bit we put some new carpet and everything was painted we redid the kitchen a little bit. It’s a pretty small kitchen. And then yeah, we’re there once about a month and then we’ve been Airbnb in it since May of last year. It did take a while to get it ready, because we were only there once a month and Then yeah, we rented out basically it’s booked during the summer. I mean, it’s pretty much booked nonstop throughout the summer, winter, you know, a little less because that’s my walk in winter.

Stephie
So that I but I do need you to tell everybody the name of it and oh, yeah, you completely skipped over this very important information. Yeah.

Monica
So because we love our cats, we came up and no Aki they abbreviate Milwaukee as MKE. And because we love cats, we came up with like, what we call that MeowKE. And we capitalized the end of the K and the E. So it’s Meow K E. And I honestly, it was just I don’t know if that was how I put all that together. Sometimes your brain just works in weird ways. And yeah, so it’s yucky. And it’s all cat themed. Basically, we went to Home Goods and bought every cat thing that they own, that they had. It’s, our reviews are like, be prepared to see more cat things than you have ever seen in your life. But most people are like, it’s actually done pretty well. Like,

Stephie
extremely tastefully. Yes, like I try to

Monica
edit it to a point where like, it’s fun and like quirky but not like you’re in like a cat hoarders house.

Stephie
Yeah, it’s not it’s not like being in like your great aunt Mildred house where there’s like cat wallpaper and cat hair. And no, it’s it is really cute and tasteful. Yes.

Monica
That was the goal was like, we still want other people like even dog themed people. You know, like, we, we get a lot of people that love the theme because they love cats. But I mean, we have plenty of people that you know, think it’s fun anyway. So we still get dog people though. I told trust that if our downstairs neighbor ever moved out that we might need to put turn that one into Milwaukee and have a dog

Megan
would be amazing. And you’re asked here is book themed, right?

Monica
Yes. So our two loves our cats and books. We’re not super creative. So we stuck with that. So our house here. It’s near downtown, and it’s actually on Front Street. And so, again, middle of the night thoughts, I’m thinking how can I you know, combine books and like the location. And I came up with the front page. So it kind of shows you it’s book themes, but also it’s on the front street. So it makes a lot of sense. So everything is booked themed, we have like a free little library type stand in there that you’re welcome to take a book or leave a book. We’ve got a lot of retro everything. And there’s really vintage, I think there’s like our dining room tables, the only thing that’s like not antique. Obviously, everything else is like I’ve got my grandmother’s headboard, we’ve got all sorts of like old furniture I got from neighborhood served and restore, so it has a more antiquey vibe to it. It’s much it’s a big space, it’s got the tall 10 foot ceilings, like everything you love about an old house. And we’d get a lot of people that are really, really into the theme on this one to

Stephie
love it. And we will will link both of these in the show notes and on our Instagram so that you guys can check them out. And also, you know, convert them if you want.

Megan
So obviously those themes would definitely make them stand out in the Airbnb listings. But what are some other things that you have to do when you’re setting up your Airbnb to like, get it ready for renters? And just in general, like setting up the system? It seems like it’d be kind of overwhelming to me.

Monica
Yes, so fortunately, our first one, you know, we did it. It took we bought it in October and it wasn’t rental ready until May. So I had time to kind of like learn it over those months. As opposed to front page. I did everything in a month. I got it ready in a month. And that’s it, but I knew I was doing by that point. So I was a lot easier. It’s weird because so with Airbnb, you have to like I forget who it was you have to like create a listing it but like you can’t really create a listing until you’re ready. And so like, there’s things that you can’t really figure out until you’re done. I kind of wish that there was a way that I could have like started the process before I was like really ready that like once you create a listing like it’s live and so then you want it to be like they start promoting it and so it’s like, I wish there was like a draft version of like, I’m getting it ready, you know and then like, you could kind of learn some of the functionality and stuff like what was going on and what to do before before it went out and like became public. So that was kind of hard just learning it like, okay, and I’m going live and like, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. And I gotta be ready, you know, the pictures and stuff. I did do professional photos on both of them. I think that was really important to making it feel less dingy and like somebody’s creepy house. It makes it feel like it’s well cared for. I think when you have the nice photos that go with it. It I mean, I could talk a lot about what goes into getting it ready. Exhausting.

Stephie
Yeah, I will say I will say as a person that like rents Airbnb, I am often like checking out the photos and seeing because like, I want to see a lot of photos. Like if you’re saying there’s like two bedrooms, I want to see pictures of both bedrooms, like, and I want to see, like, I do want to see nice photos, they don’t like you know, I don’t need to be like, professional quality. But I do want to see it nice. And like I want to see it like, you know, beautifully staged, which obviously, you are excellent at because you’re a realtor. So you’re an expert at staging something and like, making the bed look really nice and inviting. And like those are all things that I tend to look for. So it’s not just like, oh, yeah, this is just like, the corner bedroom and someone’s random ass house. And maybe they wash the sheets, and maybe they didn’t.

Monica
Yeah, I will say like, the fact that I’m a realtor, and I have a relationship with a professional photographer here. Like that was easy to hear. That was a no brainer for me. And it cost me like 100 bucks to do the photos. And it’s something that as a realtor I value and I have listings. Anyway. So like that was to me, and like you put all this work into getting it ready. Like I want it to obviously, you know, the pictures are like the cherry on top, like, I can do all this work, but nobody’s gonna rent it and see it then it doesn’t matter. For sure. But I would say like, yeah, we just with, like front page frontage is a lot bigger than yaki. And so it’s, I had a lot of people that just didn’t even realize like, how big the space was, like, I have pictures of everything. But like, you can’t really tell till you’re in it, you’re like, wow, like these 10 foot ceilings, like really make a difference in that kind of stuff. But yeah, the pictures I think were really important. And having a theme like, there’s, it’s important to have a theme or like, You got to have a direction where you’re going. And with Airbnb, you have to really think about where where is the property, like there’s metro areas like Milwaukee, and people that are coming there. I mean, we get people for all sorts of reasons, but the biggest people coming from Milwaukee are gonna be Summerfest. And like summer summary stuff, like most people aren’t coming to Milwaukee in the winter. So you have kind of a different market there versus Bloomington, we’ve actually had, I’ve it’s been booked every single weekend since we opened in. Because we had it available in December, with the exception of the one weekend, we had to cancel because of that giant snowstorm that people you know, couldn’t get here. But otherwise, it’s been booked. And so you had to kind of realize what market it is in and like who’s going to be staying there, and the purpose of their travel and then craft a space around that and picking out the right house for the people that are coming. They’re like, you know, Milwaukee, the small spaces fine, because most of the people going to Milwaukee are going there to do other, you know, things are not going to be spending as much time you know, in the house itself. I mean, so as you you’re just really have to think about who what market you’re in. I mean, you have places like Florida, you know, they’re gonna get books here round, or like the Smoky Mountains. And so you just want to think about what market you’re in. And then yeah, the type of house and space that you have. And make sure you’re catering it and passionate to the right. People too.

Stephie
Right? Yeah. Cuz I imagined like I imagined here in Bloomington like, like you said, like, yeah, there’s certainly like different like festivals and things like that. But I imagine you get a lot of people that are coming in like for family graduations or to visit family members or even like a couple of the larger businesses, you might get people that are coming in like on business trips or something. And so they are probably spending a little bit more time in that space and it is so close to downtown like yeah, I would say like really great point just thinking about like, why are people coming to town and yeah, need

Monica
well, and I didn’t really have a great idea with Bloomington like I kinda you know, had some ideas, but you’re right like it was a lot and a lot of people have family members. I mean graduation and weekend booked, you know, right away. Yeah, a lot of people come into this to do families but like we had cut your work close to the castle. So we have people that are, you know, coming to town to say it all or do something downtown. We do have some work people that came, you know that were coming here for work and didn’t need to be able to work in this space, but also go into their office here. Families come into for like gymnastics tournaments. And like, I mean, it is a really wide range, it seemed like there was always something going on. And this weekend is the first week I didn’t have anybody booked for front page. And then literally yesterday last night, somebody was like, oh, I want to come. And like they book more last minute, as opposed to Milwaukee, they book further out because they’re more like vacation times, you know, so people are planning a little bit further out for that. Whereas these people might decide a last minute trip to like go visit their aunt or something.

Stephie
Yeah, that makes sense. You know, it’s funny, because like, again, I’ve booked a lot of Airbnb ease and like there’s always as a person that’s booking there’s that question of like, tell your host why you’re in town like blah, blah, blah, and actually, like, Why do you care why I’m in town. But as a host, I can see why as a host, if you’re like trying to get a sense of why people are visiting and why they’re coming to your space and like what they might need in the future, like how you can better like how you can add more amenities to make the space. Even better for them, I could see how that could totally be helpful information for you guys to have,

Monica
oh, I we require it. Like if you try to book one of my places, and you’re really vague about why you’re there, we will ask you and be like, we want to know what you plan on doing here. And like, you just Yeah, you get such a feel for somebody, like if somebody’s coming at you and telling me like, Oh, I’m coming for work. That’s a totally different vibe for like, Oh, we’re coming to go to a concert, or we’re coming to, you know, a wedding or there’s just, I mean, I’ve got parents that say I’m coming to visit my son, you know, I’m like, Okay, well, I feel pretty good about that. You know, because it is like a hotel, like, I mean, this is a property that I own. And I think people forget, like the home part of it because it’s become so popular. And it’s become kind of less personal. I feel like over the last couple of years, because everyone can do it now, you know, it’s become more mainstream. But I’m like, No, this is my house. And I want to know, like, what are you gonna be doing and like, I have tenants that live in the unit. So I need to make sure that, you know, they’re being respectful of the people that you know, call them my property home and that kind of stuff. So yeah, I’m like, super, we will ask, like, what you’re doing there. And like, obviously, you don’t need like a whole itinerary. But you can usually get a feel for people like what you’re planning on doing. And obviously people can lie. But for the most part, I’ve gotten a pretty good sense of, you know, are they gonna take care of my place or not?

Stephie
Yeah, so like, so you know what, let’s just kind of that actually leads us right into our next question, which was how, how do you watch out for scammers and poor guests? Like, what are some obviously, you know, having them answer the question and kind of see getting a feel for like, how they’re answering why they’re there. What are some other things that you kind of look out for? And have you? And or have you ever had a situation where somebody got there and you like, were like, oh, no, I need you to leave, or I’m going to have to charge you a bunch of extra like, Yeah, so like,

Monica
it’s the first kind of read red flag as you know, in that floor, while they tell us why they’re here is grammar honestly, like if, if what you’re saying, like doesn’t even make sense to me and like, I can’t understand, like, you’d be surprised. Like, you just feel like I don’t even know what you’re trying to say or like you just get a feel for like, I feel like you’re not a real person and like you know, you so you get a sense from just that first text that basically says why they’re there. You get like a spidey sense with that. We obviously look at reviews. So we’re not instant book. So you do have like we blackout 48 hours in advance. So we do need like some advance notice because I’ve said I’m like cleaner and next year so I do have some control over like yes or no. And if you give me a weird vibe, like money’s not worth it, we’re gonna say yeah, the headache of dealing with somebody that sucks is not worth it. Or like they’ll answer they’ll ask weird questions about the space or like how many people it sleeps like super obvious stuff like dude, like, it says on their shade? Yeah. Yeah. Like, you should be able to read the listing and understand like, how many people sleeps and like I told you, it sleeps for and you’re asking about like, you know, five spaces izar, stuff like that, you kind of have a feel for the only, we have an experience last summer, we learned pretty quickly. So you know you can with Airbnb, you can charge more per guest. So like after two guests, you can charge an extra like $20 per person or something for like the extra cleaning fee. We learned pretty early on that that was a really easy invitation for people to lie to you about how many people are coming to try to save like 20 or 40 bucks. And so our Milwaukee property, we have a camera at the door on that one, it looks over like the driveway. And it allows us to check in with guests when they’re if they’re having trouble with a lock or something. And it’s just so far away from us that we feel good having a camera there that we can like check on things. And so and it says in the listing, like we have a camera on the premises. And she booked it was supposed to be a single person. And then she asked when she got there. Where’s I thought there was a second bedroom? And we’re like, yeah, it’s up the stairs. But why? You know, you said it was only one guest. And she said yep, that’s just me. And then like an hour later, three more people showed up. And we can see them on the camera. Like I know, and like those people did not leave until the next morning. And so this was our first like, Well, what do we do? And we didn’t get any complaints or anything from her, you know, downstairs neighbors was like, Okay, we can’t be like that bad. You know, he’s not telling us like something’s happening. But we weren’t really sure. Like, should we kick them out? Should we charge them more, we were still new, we’re still trying to get like good reviews and stuff. So I think we ended up I don’t think we ended up like confronting her or anything, I think we realized we needed to change our policy to to just cover the cleaning process, assuming all the beds and all the linens are going to be used. And if they’re not, then there’s a little bit of profit in there for us. But otherwise, we know that our costs are covered. And you don’t have to have this like sneaky game where you try to like live in the event who’s in my house.

Stephie
That makes sense. That totally makes sense.

Monica
Yeah, otherwise I haven’t had I would knock on wood. I don’t think guys, I haven’t had anybody where I’ve had to, you know, call the cops or like have any issues like that. So that was just the worst of you know, so I’ll take that, I guess.

Megan
What are some of the biggest struggles that you’ve had in owning these? Rentals?

Monica
Um, it? I mean, part of the heart, I think the hardest part is probably the cleaning. I’m having somebody that was thinking about

Megan
when I stay at one. I’m like, you have to clean it after every person stays. Right. Yeah,

Stephie
like on call, basically.

Monica
Yeah, so and that’s why we don’t do instant book because I need to I basically check with my cleaner, you know, to make sure that they can accommodate it in the walkie I have a professional cleaning service. She does like normal houses and stuff that she also does a few Airbnbs. And she’s a co host on my listing with me so she can see everything as they come in. And so she knows what the schedule is. And she had gotten enough people on staff that like, somebody can do the cleaning. I double check with her. If we have any same day turnarounds, those always make me nervous. Just because you really do have a small window of like, one stuff can get done. But then up here, I have a friend of mine that does it. I mean, but she has a full time job. So usually the cleans happen to be on Sundays. So it’s not really a big deal. But if they’re not on Sunday, I have to check with her and be like, hey, like, you know, can you do this and if not, like I’m the backup, I’ve only had to do it twice where she wasn’t available. But it is just that is the stress of like, making sure somebody is going to be able to get in there and turn it over quickly enough. Most of the time, you have like, three or four days because most people book weekends and stuff. So you know, maybe a Thursday to a Monday or something that’s the most that everyone’s gonna like you get the same day turnovers and those are the days that I stress just to make sure like, if somebody gets sick or something happens like to I have a backup, you know,

Stephie
right? Yeah, I can see how I can see how that would be.

Unknown Speaker
Definitely. Yeah.

Monica
Yeah, and the things that are like outside of your control. You know, if I were just like, if that was just my job is dealing with this, then, you know, I could be more readily prepared to just take on everybody but um, Yeah, that’s, that’s, you know, it’s a side thing, it’s meant to be a little bit more passive, even though long term rentals and short term rentals are very different in the amount of energy that they take. And there’s. So you have to be willing to, if you’re gonna do short term rental, there’s a lot more managing, you make more money, but it’s, it’s more touching, it’s checking in more, it’s the communications with guests and your cleaners and logistics and stuff like that. It’s not as set and forget it as a long term rental.

Stephie
Yeah, that absolutely makes sense.

Megan
So when my family moved to town, we stayed at a rental here, during the closing and everything. And our rental house left us a gigantic donut, when we came in, and my kids still talk about it, and ask to get another. Um, but that was like one little touch that they did. And they also had, like, you know, ice cream sandwiches in the freezer, and things like that. But do you do any special touches like that to kind of, like, give extra Welcome to your guests.

Monica
I have thought about it. The hard part is, it’s, it’s again, like the logistics of it. Like being able to have something that is like a fresh donut, like, that’s hard like that requires that like, every guest that comes in, like you are stopping by that property and like dropping that off. So my guess would be like, maybe they live, you know, close to the property or like, they’re maybe the ones that are cleaning it themselves. And so like, they’re, they’re more, but like, it’s hard to think of something that you can, you know, do on a consistent basis like that. So I don’t do anything Milwaukee. I mean, we’re there once a month. And so it’s really hard to like, you know, leave anything like that. We’ve had, you know, we’ve stayed at places and they’ve left like a bottle of wine and stuff. And we always get nervous about like leaving alcohol because we do have gasca you know, 18 or 20 that stay with us. And so it’s like a, you know, that makes you the attorney. You know, my husband is like that idea. So, yeah, I think we really focus

Stephie
I will say, like places like even just having like, where they’ve just put like some bottles of water on the fridge or I think I said one, like a year or two ago where they were like there’s a frozen pizza in the freezer. Like if you want it and it was just like it was just like a cheap frozen pizza. But we were like, yes. Frozen pizza. Yeah. Even like, yeah, it’s like that. Sometimes we’re like, Oh, that’s nice. Like,

Monica
I think we thought that like, I focus more on like, I’m like you forget you’re like you need a tampon or like you know some of those like things that you’re like, oh my typical like I need so like, I tend to focus more on like toiletry extras. You know, like Milwaukee I have like a little jar of like rubber bands, because you know, I hate it when I like oh my god I lost my rubber band I got from my hair up. This is driving me crazy. Like, stuff like that, but like irritates me. And so she looks like that and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, makeup remover. We do care. Like we keep an extra couple toothbrushes like just in case you forget it kind of thing. Those are easier to just kind of have on hand as like I just in case I would say for us like I stayed in Airbnb is like super generic, and you’re like, I’m never gonna remember this, you know. And so we tried to do more of like, a really memorable theme that like makes you remember the property and like your enjoy your stay. As opposed to you know, giant doughnuts. And that kind of

Stephie
there’s a there’s a few Airbnb is done in St. Louis, that my family stays at, like we’ve stayed with this host. I think every time we’ve had an air b&b in St. Louis, it’s in the Cherokee arts district. And she has a she has like, two or three different properties, and I think are like three or four or something. And we’ve stayed in most of them. And she has a young son. And she has his artwork and all of the properties like they’re the like, the style is like super, super eclectic, and which like really matches the neighborhood and stuff, but I always like like she has an you can tell this like by her son or whatever, because he signed all of them and it’s like, some of them are on the wall above the doors. And I always think that like stuff like that is cute. I’m like, Oh, her son did the art for the European. That’s really cute. You know? So I think like little things like that are, like you said like it just sort of stands out and helps you remember

Monica
this? Yeah, we actually And we did a paint your pet night at merlow and a masterpiece, and we reached several of the cats. And we we took them up to Milwaukee and we’re like, Well, clearly they need to live here. I mean, every wall of that house has a cat painting or something on it. But we just thought like, of course, like our little cats, you know, they should go up. It probably looks like some kid

Stephie
nephews did these how adorable

Monica
brown adult

Stephie
just what it would look like if I did it. That’s fine Monica.

Megan
But So it all started

Monica
with we were at home goods. And you know, if you’re a common home goods goer, you know, like they have all of that, like art and I say are like an air quotes because it’s like mass produced. And it’s like $8. And you’re like, really? But anyway, they had an Elvis cat. And it looks like it was the worst painting you’ve ever seen in the world of a cat as Elvis and it looks like somebody’s you know, Junior High kid or like elementary school, like painted a cat Elvis. And we were like, This is so bad. Like, we have to have it. And so that was hold it kept producing this stuff. Like they were like, Oh, the bulletins are gonna keep buying this crap, like. So we would give them all little like cat themed cat names. So we have new new lists as in like me, W Oh, yeah. Yes. And then we have a Marie Antoinette painting of a cat. And it’s me. How do you put them? Yeah. And so yeah, we have a couple different ones that we’ve changed their names. We have King MeowKE, which is a planter that’s in the shape of like a lion’s head with a crown on it, that we put like some ferns in. So you could you know, take your picture with King MeowKE and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we went hard on the cat.

Stephie
I love it. I love it.

Megan
I like that much better than like a doll theme. Oh, God.

Monica
That sounds like a nightmare. There’s actually one

Stephie
listings that are Yeah, well, and

Monica
like, there’s some that are like so generic, that you’re like, ah, you know, if you don’t care, and you’re just there for a year, you’re probably going to be there like, whenever, you know, and we’ve stayed in those. But like, if you’re like trying to create, like a real, like, special weekend, like, I just feel like more people are gonna say yes to a quirky like cat themed one. Because, you know, I’m not the only cat obsessed person, right? It’s like one of those things that people are like obsessive with. And like the same thing with the books. I mean, the amount of people that have said, we saw your place, I had a librarian who literally like, she was graduating with her master’s in like, library science, or whatever it is from Champaign, was coming to the area. And she’s stayed in Bloomington to stay at our book themed Airbnb, instead of like, staying in Champaign, because, you know, this was cuter and more like, you know, her thing. And we’ve had little kids that they want to sleep in the library. And so like the reviews, were just like, Oh my God, my son was so excited to sleep in the library. And he just thought it was the coolest thing. And I feel like you’d get like cooler reviews and stuff from people when it’s a little bit more

Stephie
interesting. Love that. All right, so I think, no, I think it’s adorable. What’s one thing you think all rental hosts should do?

Monica
I think they should stay in their properties like, like a guest, you know, stay the night there like you use the soap make a dinner there. We stayed at one we did the Bourbon Trail and Kentucky and one of the ones we stayed at. So we’re, we’re vegan. So like, we can’t eat out a lot of places. And we’re we’re just read cook a home a lot, because there’s just not a lot of restaurants in the middle of Kentucky that we can eat at. And so we make dinner one night, and you know, we’ve got a bunch of cans of beans and we’re gonna make chili. There wasn’t a can opener. Like they just they had thought of everything. This place was gorgeous, the most beautiful Airbnb has ever stayed in. But like, they didn’t have a can opener because like they, you know, they thought well, either who’s gonna actually cook here or you know, they just didn’t think about it, whatever. So I think it’s helpful to like, stay in the space. Things like is my air conditioner work? Okay, is there like a weird sound in the middle of the night like all those weird things that you just don’t know until you stay in the space and get a feel for it?

Megan
That’s really good advice. I know previous stayed at plenty of kitchens where like, definitely is not enough tools to do something. I don’t expect, like gourmet kitchen but a can opener should distribute. Yeah.

Monica
And like a walkie like, we live there, you know, once a month so like that one. I feel like it’s probably over. You know, we have a lot more stuff than probably most kitchens need. But you know, it’s not

Stephie
that many times. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times like there’s just like not even like a Oh, a corkscrewed open a bottle of wine. Yeah, that is. Glasses. There will be like wine glasses, but no corkscrew. And I, since I keep my waitressing apron in the car. Like I always have one in the car. But there’s so many times we’re like, Okay, what do we do? We like open it. Like, can we open this bottle of wine with a shoe? Like what? Like,

Monica
yeah, we literally like hammered a knife into those cans. I felt bad because they had like, like, they pop this really nice, like set of stuff. And we were just like hammering like we were like, probably messing that up. Because we were like, we can’t get into this.

Stephie
Yeah. Right. And you’re like, I don’t want to go back and like find a Walmart and buy a can opener for you people.

Monica
Yeah, well, yeah, it was a snow storm. It was a blink of Blizzard and happy. And it was like the roads were like, you know, Kentucky roads are very windy and like hilly and stuff. I was like, we’re not leaving this place. Like, we’re, we’re stuck here. So we need to get this open. Or we’re like, kind of

Megan
just wetting my beans.

Stephie
Yeah. Give me the beans.

Megan
So on the flip side, what’s one thing that you think all the guests should do?

Monica
Um, I think have a little bit of leeway with your, your host. It’s hard because like, I don’t always see the property, you know, between every cleaning, you know, like, that’s the whole point is like, I hire somebody to like, you know, clean it for me and that kind of stuff. So, there’s certain things that I just don’t know about. And so I really need like a guest or someone to tell me like if there’s a problem, but also not like, hold it against me, like, you know, it is my, you know, my home, right? Like, all these properties are? Well, I should say most properties are owned by real people. I mean, ever, everyone’s real people. But there’s a lot of corporations that are buying up a lot of these properties and doing like very mass produced Airbnb. So I feel like that’s a different level. But you know, a lot of Airbnb, the whole point is like, I’m a normal person trying to like, make a nice space for people to enjoy my community. And so remembering that this is somebody like real house, and you know, it’s not a hotel, so it’s not going to be quite as perfect as a hotel you might expect.

Stephie
Yeah, for sure. What are what’s the biggest mistake you see other hosts doing?

Monica
I would say accepting everybody. Like, I think you really want to get like, you want as many guests as possible. But I think you have to allow yourself to say no, sometimes because if you’re like, wow, I could probably get it cleaned by them. But like, maybe they don’t do as good of a job or like, Oh, I’ve got this turnover, you know, and then you make a bad experience. And then you get a bad review because you rushed it and maybe you shouldn’t have even like accepted that guest or you accept people that you maybe shouldn’t, because, you know, you want the bookings. But you know, you don’t have to say yes to everybody. And there’s just people that are out there to third parties and you know, don’t care about the house and stuff like that. So you have to be okay with turning down some business every once in a while. You just don’t get a good feel about it.

Stephie
Yeah, it’s more of a long game.

Monica
Yes. That’s the other difference while with Airbnb in general. You You have a lot more upfront costs with an Airbnb than you do a long term rental, you know, long term rentals aren’t furnished you stick your tenant in there, they bring their stuff. This I mean, it’s, it could cost you like, I mean, mine were like five to 10,000 to like, furnish and get going. But I mean, some of those other places in the really expensive like vacation rental markets, like they could spend 25 to $50,000, you know, furnishing and getting the house ready. So you make more money on Airbnb than you do. Usually long term tenants but you have to know that for the first year or so all that extra profit is going to paying off the additional furniture and the utilities and stuff that you pay for it. Um, so you do have to have, it can’t be like a fad or like, oh, let’s try this for a little bit. Because you’re gonna just waste a bunch of money, like furnishing it. So you do need kind of a longer term plan. And I’m getting into like, the super business side of things. You really have to think about if you’re going to actually start wine because I think it’s like a super trendy, like, Airbnb is like, there’s a lot of work. Yeah, yeah. So

Megan
what, for anyone who wants to get into owning a rental home? Like, what is your top piece of advice?

Monica
Um, I would say making sure you have a good backup plan. I mean, I, I’m a very risk adverse person. So the idea of the duplex for us was, we could stick a long term tenant in one and the short term the other and know that if things changed, we had an extra strategy. And I can turn the other one into the other type, you know, like, I had some flexibility knowing, okay, this Airbnb thing, like we start, you know, losing money, we could always just rent them out to a normal, you know, because, and you have to look at the property that way, when you’re buying it to make sure or like, not, I mean, not all your eggs in that one basket up, like it’s make or break, because, you know, the market could change, and there’s more and more Airbnb popping up all the time. So you’re gonna meet, you know, there’s gonna be a market saturation at some point that you might start losing money and you know, or maybe you lose your cleaner or something, you need to know that you can use the property for something else.

Stephie
For sure. Well, thank you so much for coming in and talking to us today. This was really interesting. And, you know, I know a couple people that are in the process of setting up Airbnbs. So hopefully, the stuff that you’ve shared will be helpful for folks like them or anyone that is thinking about this. And like I said, I’m I will make sure that we include links to both of your properties in our show notes as well as on our Instagram. So if anyone wants to check it out, if you want to go visit me Alki if you want to come visit the front page, come visit us in Bloomington, we would love to come hang out with you. We have I’m looking at you several of our friends who have talked about coming to visit us. So we like to end each episode by sharing something that’s bringing us joy this week. So Monica, what is making you feel joyful these days?

Monica
Getting to spend time out in the yard like planting and like being in the dirt and the sun. That has been the best part of my week. This this week.

Megan
has been really nice. Finally, I love

Monica
gardening.

Megan
Yeah. Are you planting anything really exciting?

Monica
I did are excited. I mean, yeah, objectively maybe not. But I’m doing a garden in a new spot. Since since we’re vegan, we a crazy amount of vegetables. So I took up a really large kind of perimeter around our fence and I’m trying out a lot of different stuff that I’ve never done before. So I obsessively watch it and I’m looking out the window right now like how are you doing out there little broccoli.

Stephie
Okay, hope I pick you before you get the little green worms in you

Monica
know, yeah, or just before the squirrels and the rabbits get to.

Stephie
We just had that Meghan and I just had that conversation before we started recording about her her raspberry bushes,

Monica
raspberry bushes, oh my gosh, those can be a pain in the road everywhere.

Megan
We I had them as a kid and my brother mowed them over multiple times until they died. But I planted a few last year and they don’t grow like the first year really. And so this year, I was actually kind of surprised that they came three I planted five and three of them came back and one of them actually has lots and lots of raspberries on it. So Whoa, rise. We’ll see what happens. I love raspberries. So I kind of don’t mind if they get all over my. But yeah,

Stephie
that would be heaven for her. It’s just it’ll be great yard if nothing. Also, my child would love that she would officially come live with that Meghan if it was rasberry. Oh my goodness

Megan
Stephie what is bringing you joy?

Stephie
So in big city doesn’t have daycare. Her daycares closed this week, so she asked And at birth mom came down last night and they were staying with us for a couple days this week, which is perfect because Eden didn’t have daycare today either. So it all worked out great. And this is our first time visiting since we’ve switched Eden’s room over to her big girl bed. And she has a full size twin day bed. And so last night before bed, we had both girls in their jammies and they were snuggled up under the blanket next to each other. And then us two moms were like book ending them on either side and in bed. And we were all watching puppy tiktoks. And it was just like one of those like core memory moments where like, this is just a perfect moment. We’ve got the girls that are giggling and getting all snuggly and sleepy. And us mamas snuggling in there with them and the cute puppy videos. It was just it made me so so happy. was so lovely. So those were those rows. Like we’re making a

Megan
core memory right here. That’s so sweet. Yeah, it

Stephie
was really it was really sweet. And then the girls tried to have a little slumber party and they made it like an hour and a half, which is pretty good for a two year old and a three year old. So you know we’ll see how that progresses. But they did play together quietly for like in the room for like an hour before they finally like started to crash. So I was there weren’t there were no fights, there was no, like arguing over toys they shared really well. So it was that was also delightful. But the two year old and three year old sister there’s a lot of Yeah, no. As it happens, Megan, what is bringing you joy.

Megan
Last night, we went to my teenagers school for their award ceremony for like Honor Society, stuff, and he was on the honor roll this year. And also he got some other award that’s related to like standardized testing and situation. But the thing that actually made me the happiest was so the way that they did it was that all the kids, they would call their they would go out on stage and say their name and they would get the thing and then all the kids would stay on stage. But all of the kids in his class, they like cheered for each other. When someone would come out they like all enthusiastically like wood root each other on stuff as they walked across the stage. And I thought that was just like the sweetest thing. And something that I would not expect like, you know, 14 year olds to be and it was just really heartening

Stephie
to see them support each other like that. That’s very great big British baking show of them.

Megan
And they had like a some award were like the only give out a couple of them to each grade and they were like announced the people who got it and they were like yeah, they were all very excited. It was it was great. It was really nice.

Stephie
I love that. Look at look at these teenagers given us hope for the next. Yeah, I love that so much. Oh, look at all the warm fuzzies all the way around. Well, until next time, leave us a review on Apple podcasts and listen to us on your favorite platform. You can also follow us on social media at IRSIpodcast or send us an email at I’d rather stay in podcast@gmail.com We’d love to hear from you.

Megan
Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai