Are you worried you don’t know the latest cutting edge tools for Airbnb investors? Do you wish you could attend a conference to learn more about the future of the industry, but simply don’t have the time?
If so, you need to listen to Episode 101 of the Host Coach Airbnb Investing Podcas where we’re sharing our six biggest takeaways from attending the STR Wealth Conference. These aren’t just cool ideas - they are the tools and takeaways we’ve actually implemented in our Airbnb business over the last month.
Read on to learn a new way to manage/elevate your guest communications, along with a new company that helps Airbnb investors save big bucks in taxes!
Topics discussed in this episode
- An AI messaging tool that outperforms us as hosts (seriously)
- Understanding cost segregation analysis and bonus Airbnb tax depreciation
- Exactly where you can find a VA already trained on Airbnb and its related plug ins
- A super cool tool to help you contact other Airbnb hosts
- The important success component overlooked by most Airbnb hosts
Host Coach Airbnb Podcast Episode 101 Show Notes:
Takeaway number one, are you feeling overwhelmed keeping up with guest messaging, but you really want your guests to have the concierge service and feeling of communicating with you?
Our big takeaway from the conference that helps with this is Hostbuddy AI. It is a game changer! This software reads through your last six months worth of guest messages to learn your tone of voice, the words you use, and the answers you give to your most frequently asked questions.
If you've listened to the Host Coach podcast in the past, you know that I am not a huge fan of AI. I call them the robots, and I will say that the last AI messaging tool that we used was terrible. It actually just made things worse. If it didn't know an answer, it made it up. And then I had to jump in and looked like a crazy person because it said it was me, and now I'm correcting myself. Anyway, I absolutely love Hostbuddy. It sounds like me talking down to saying, "no worries" and "well-behaved furry friends are welcome at our cabin."
An AI Messaging Bot That Sounds Just Like You
I also no longer have this Pavlovian response to the Airbnb message chime. I wait and let host buddy answer 99% of the time the answer is spot on and sounds just like me. And sometimes it sounds better because Host Buddy isn't hanging off a ladder painting and trying to respond to a guest. That happens to me, and if Host Buddy doesn't know the answer, it sends the guest a message saying, "I'm going to check with a team member and get right back to you." I can then jump in, answer the question correctly, and then type the answer into Host Buddy so it knows what to say the next time a guest asks that question.
My other favorite feature of Host Buddy, is that it makes a list of perceived action items - things that guests reported, like a loose bed frame or a missing item in the kitchen. Those are real examples from last week. Typically, we have to dig through our past guest messages, prioritize things, put them on a list, and dole them out to our various repair people/handymen.
Today, we just sat down, went through the action item list that Host Buddy created, and just checked them off as completed one at a time. So it's maintaining that list for you without you having to maintain it yourself. Typically, I will write an issue down in my notebook or take a note in my phone, or usually screen cap it. And then by the time we actually sit down, all of those recorded issues that aren't stuck in my brain are scattered everywhere. And it gets done, but it gets done in a less streamlined fashion. Host Buddy takes away a huge amount of overhead and it's really helping us stay on top of improvements and repairs. And I think it's going to increase the quality of our listings and especially as we're scaling. It's like we just went from 10 to 14 and that was a little bit of a breaking point for us. If you have just one, it may be easy to keep up with, little bits and pieces, but the larger your portfolio, the more helpful Hostbuddy AI.
So if you're curious or suspicious about that, you can go to Hostbuddy AI and test it out for yourself. They've got a little sample property there. It's called Meet Host Buddy, and you can go ask it questions about this sample property. I asked, "Is the hot tub going to be working?" And it responded. "I'm sorry we don't have a hot tub, but we have other wonderful amenities that you might enjoy." I asked it about what type of grill do you have? And it went on to say, we have got a charcoal grill and you might wanna bring this, and you might wanna bring that. So very friendly, very intuitive. It's doing a great job for us. It costs about $10 a month per property and it's saving us so much time.
Understanding Cost Segregation & Bonus Depreciation
Number two on the list is cost segregation and bonus depreciation. I know big words, eye roll. What does that all mean? Let's dig in a little bit. Depreciation is an invisible expense in a short-term rental. It means that we're able to take the value of the property itself, not the land, but the property. Divide it by 39 years, and that is an expense against our revenue. We don't pay out that expense, but depreciation means we know the place is gonna wear out, right? And so we're gonna give you credit as an expense towards that so for example a place we just did this on is $325,000 that divided by 40 years, $7,500 of that net income would be income tax free. It's a write off. Your tax accountant's going to put in depreciation line. That's great.
That's why a lot of people invest in real estate is for the depreciation... enter cost segregation studies. In a cost segregation study, we pull apart the pieces of the house: so we pull out the land, but we also pull out things like flooring, cabinets. HVAC. These things that aren't going to last 40 years, they're going to last five or seven or 15 years. Those are the typical buckets. So a cost segregation study is going to examine your property and put the pieces of the property into these different buckets of 5, 7, 15 years, so you can get additional depreciation.
Bonus Depreciation For Airbnbs
Alright, that's exciting. That's fun. However, we now have bonus depreciation. It took me a while to really figure out over the years what bonus depreciation really was all about, but this is where it really gets interesting. Signed into law in January of 2025 was what they call a hundred percent bonus depreciation. It means that those things that were under 20 years in service life can be written off right away. That sounds crazy exciting to me, but is it gonna be really complicated? Enter my new friend John from CSSI Services. They do these studies for you, provide you everything that you need to provide your accountant to get that bonus depreciation and cost segregation study.
I'm doing this right now with John, our $325,000 cabin, less $25,000 in land. The study is expected to allocate $50,000 in bonus depreciation, so that's a $50,000 invisible expense against income from that property which is basically going to offset all the taxable income for that property for this year. Note depreciation does need to be paid back, so if you are only going keep the property for a year or two consult your tax accountant. Consult CSSI Services on this, but this is a great game changer for particularly year one savings and tax on your property. If you're really excited about it and we just touched the surface, don't worry. We plan to do a deep dive in a future episode with John!
Hiring STR Super VAs (Airbnb Virtual Assistants)
Our third huge takeaway, really excited about this one is we found a company called STR Super VAs (super virtual assistants.) These are virtual assistants that have been hand-selected, vetted, and trained on Airbnb and Airbnb software like Hospitable and Price Labs. The cost is what really attracted me. A teammate that is going to work for you in your business 40 hours a week costs $700 a month. On the soft side. I was like, "Is that enough?" We're not the kind of people that like to take advantage of someone. And it turns out that the company that we're working with knows what the average salary is in that country. I went and looked it up. It's more like $350 a month. These are Philippine-based virtual assitants... so working for us as an assistant this person gets paid double the average of a working professional in their home country. And so that actually made me feel much better.
These asssitants understand our needs. We weren't just assigned a person. We were given three interviews, three resumes. We read the resumes, we Zoom nterviewed three potential teammates, and we hired one. And we're looking at this very much as a teammate, not a virtual assistant. This is somebody that we want to bring into the business, just like they were sitting in the same chair, they're just sitting in a chair a few hours away.
We hired our VA last week. We began training and delegating. We're having them start with updating our cleaning schedules with new reservations. with 14 properties we receive several new reservations every day. Danielle and I are busy, they're coming in all hours of the day, so our new team member is going to make sure that our cleaning calendars are completely up to date. If there's cancellations (we get about 20% cancellations across reservations) she makes sure to mark those as canceled. And this alleviates my internal fear of missing a cleaning. It doesn't happen often, but the worst feeling in the world is someone messaging saying, "Hey, we got here for our anniversary and the house hasn't been cleaned." and while we can fix it, I never want that to happen to guests. So, I'm forever fluttering about checking and re-checking like a nut. And now I don't have to do that anymore!!
Someone to Do All the Projects You Wish You Could Get To
We're also using this new teammate to do some research projects that we've never got the time to get around to. She'll be monitoring our guest communications, really keeping an eye on those robots, taking responsibility for ordering supplies from our cleaners, and tracking some of those maintenance issues. We may be moving into some assistance with social media. Again, there's things that we've always wantede to do but don't necessarily have the time for. So we're really excited about it It's working out great so far! But here's a word of caution: this is someone that I feel like you need to really take time training as an employee. Treat them like a teammate. Know that they're working on an off hour schedule and there may be some adjustment period to that, so in the Philippines it's about 12 hours reversed from here. Most of these people are used to working that schedule, but it's a little bit of adjustment.
Bottom line: for $700 a month, you can offload the majority of tasks that are taking your time so you can focus on doing the things you love. Whether that's spinning up another Airbnb property, reinvesting in the property, taking a trip with your family, just living life a little less attached to your devices, whatever it is!
CubiCasa: Creating 3D Layouts for Your Airbnb
The next tool, the fourth tool from the conference we learned about is CubiCasa. It's an app that measures rooms and creates layouts for Airbnb. So when Culin came home and told me about this, I was highly skeptical. I really thought that this would be technical and you must stand here and you must do this, and then you must do it in this way. And if you don't, it's gonna be really glitchy. And I know this because measuring is particularly difficult for me, this is spoken by someone who has a measuring tape in her desk drawer, truck, door, purse. I have probably 10 measuring tapes because measuring is important and something I struggle with.
But all you have to do with the CubiCasa app is open it as a video and walk slowly through your Airbnb property scanning room by room. And then automagically Cubi Casa transforms your video into a layout of your Airbnb. Each room and its measurements, the closets, and even outdoor spaces like decks or wine barns are shown in the rendition. And what I really like is there's three different options, that are given to you as layout so there's just like a flat one. My personal favorite is the 3D color layout that shows even where your furniture, like beds and couches are located. And this really has two main benefits. One, it makes your Airbnb listing "pop" and stand out. Who else has a 3D color layout of their Airbnb in their listing? No one! And it decreases the number of guest questions about where rooms, particularly bathrooms are located in your Airbnb. This morning I answered a guest who is traveling with elderly family members who is asking, "Hey, I just want to make sure there are bedrooms and bathrooms on the first floor of this cabin." As soon as I do this upload from CubiCasa, I no longer have to answer that question because the guests can see exactly what they're looking for.
Blue Box by Ventry: Finding Airbnb Owner Info
Next up is Blue Box by Ventry. This is a plugin for your browser and what happens once you've installed, this is when you go to Airbnb with this browser plugin, it will highlight which of the listings it has owner information for. So it costs about $5 to get that owner information. It tells you up front, do we have the owner email address what information it has. This is a great tool for co-hosts looking to find properties that they might want to co-host looking to grow. This is a great tool for identifying who owns an existing Airbnb that you might wanna reach out to, to purchase. This is the high tech version of me leaving notes and people's doors because I hundred percent have done that. And we actually ended up buying the house or just connecting with other hosts that you admire. There's always been a problem. You see a listing, I'd like to reach out to that host. You don't really want to do it on the Airbnb messaging platform that can be perceived, as against terms and conditions. So Blue Box by Ventry allows you to get the owner information and potentially email addresses for Airbnb listings that you'd like to be in contact with.
Building Your Tribe of Fellow Airbnb Investors
The last takeaway from the STR rental conference, and that was the importance of building a tribe of fellow investors. Some people we met elect to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to join mastermind groups. I'm a little more organic and a lot more budget conscious than that. So Culin ended up connecting with five people he met at the conference and he created a text tribe, and it's an intentional place for the five people he met that had multiple properties. They weren't brand new, they didn't have a hundred properties that were in a similar sphere to share new tools, discuss problems with people who are living the same investment life.
Are you anxious about how you can form your own tribe? We feel like Host Coach Show listeners are our tribe. We love receiving your emails and Instagram messages from you! Please let us know we're here for you. We'd be delighted to be part of your tribe. We're also curious if you would like us to form a private digital group that we can all interact in. Let us know!
So there you have it. You now know our six biggest tools and takeaways from the STR rental conference, and you didn't even have to fly to Nashville or buy a ticket. You can now use this knowledge to save yourself time, improve your guest communications and set your Airbnb listing apart from the competition.
If you love our advice and want some help on your Airbnb investing journey - we'd love to coach you! Set up a free 30-minute Airbnb coaching call here.
