How to Manage Your Property Like A Small Business

You have a property that you’re renting out and you want to make sure that you’re doing your best to have it filled up year-round.

If you’re looking for inspiration, look at some of the small businesses in the area. They have to be methodical in how they approach new purchases, new hires, and their time.

Managing your property like a small business will allow you to make the incremental changes that will help improve the number of bookings that you receive, along with added value to your property.

Be Selective When Adding New Products

Every major purchase or amenity that you add is going to be a long-term investment for your property. Whether it’s a painting, vegetation, or new appliances, it’s important to be mindful of the purchases you make. You want to make sure that you will see a return on your investment.

Let’s face it, adding something new to your property is an exciting task.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Does it add value to the property?
• Will guests use it frequently?
• Will it add any extra costs? Example: Insurance, taxes, fees
• If so, does the cost justify the purchase?
• Is there long-term value added?

Small businesses are careful when investing in new products to sell, solely because they understand that one bad move can lead to a quicksand effect, such as financial losses.

No matter how big or small, make sure that the investment in a new product has a high-upside and can somehow generate value for you.

Small Businesses Hire the Right Staff

When it comes to managing a vacation rental business, you’ll need to determine what kind of staff you’ll need to hire.

If you’re running a small hotel property, you’ll need people working full-time in order to make sure that everything runs smoothly. If you have one or more properties, a property management company may be the best viable option.

Types of Freelancers To Utilize For Your Property

Small businesses tend to hire freelancers to help get some of the hyper-specific tasks done. Specifically, the ones that will help their business. Here are some examples of such freelancers:

Professional Grade Photographer

Rentals that have high-quality, professional photos tend to land more bookings across every major listing channel.

This is a perfect example of a small investment that can go a long way. Hiring someone that truly understands how to capture all the best parts of your property, is worth the investment. The quality of photos you receive will speak for themselves!

Whatever service or photographer you’d go with, make sure to trust their judgment. You should take their recommendations for the best photos to use. These photos can positively impact your site, listing channels, and so on.

Property Management Service Companies

Having part-time property managers is ideal if you do not reside in the same location as your rental property. There are some property management companies (in the U.S. at least) that will overlook all aspects of your property for a percentage of the rental income.

Though it may seem costly, someone taking a 5-15% portion of rental earnings pays off, as they’ll manage all the tenant responsibilities, guest experiences, and making sure that the site is well-maintained.

Basically, they’re going to handle everything and make sure that the ‘small business’ that you own is sustainable.

Maintenance & Contractors

When it comes to upkeep, you may not need a full-time person. Leverage the internet to find the best prices, people, and services to meet your budget.

You can hire people to do the cleaning, installations, plumbing, and any other labor-inducing tasks at the price that bests fit your budget. You can post your jobs on sites like:

• TaskRabbit
• AngiesList
• Craigslist

The beauty of these sites is that they give you options. The more prices you have, the more you can leverage and negotiate with contractors/employees for a fair price.

Don’t Focus on Redundant Tasks

All great entrepreneurs want to be efficient. They know that time is the most valuable commodity. If you tend to focus on redundant tasks, you’ll begin to lose time. When you waste time you lose opportunities.

For example, small businesses often have an online tool handle their web presence, so that they can focus on the ‘boots-on-the-ground’ kind of work. A site like Main Street Hub will handle all the business marketing initiatives to help out local grocery shops, restaurants, art stores, etc. This creates more time for the business owners to focus on running their shop.

The best route is to automate the redundant online tasks that can take hours out of your day.  A couple examples of timewasters:

• Having to update all of your online calendars after a booking
• Updating pricing on online classifieds & listing channels
• Sending emails to guests after every booking
• Specifically, the ones containing house rules + instructions
• Having to update your listings and availability calendars on different outlets

Most of the online tasks can be handled by a vacation rental dashboard like Futurestay. We’ll handle all of the complex tasks, so you can grow your business.

How Do You Manage Your Property?

Do you like to treat your property like a small business? Do you utilize some of the methods mentioned above? We’d like to learn how you manage your property, interact with us in the comments below.