Do you want to buy an Airbnb and don’t even know where to begin? Do you wish there was a specific place to find short-term rentals for sale and compare them based on their potential earnings? Or are you an Airbnb owner or agent looking to attract short-term rental investors to a property you are selling?
If so, don’t miss this episode where Trent Hawthorn, the Chief Product Officer of Rabbu, shares how their free platform helps people find, calculate revenue, and buy Airbnbs that make their lives better, and how you can grow your real estate business with their tools.
After listening to Episode 52 of the Host Coach Airbnb Investing Podcast you will know how much data is available for you to dig into to find your perfect investment property, as well as the value of using Rabbu to sell a property to investors that can calculate its potential cash flow and pay you accordingly!
Read on to learn how Rabbu can help you go from “a total newbie” to a completely informed, and confident, Airbnb buyer!
Topics discussed in this episode:
- How to use Rabbu to find a STR property for sale and calculate its revenue potential
- Why data-driven analysis and decision making are imperative for successful Airbnb investing
- How the new era of Airbnb benefits both investors and guests
- The future of the short term rental industry
- How to grow your real estate business with Airbnb investor clients and/or attract investors to a property that you are selling
Host Coach Airbnb Podcast Episode 52 Show Notes:
Tell us, what is Rabbu? We simply describe ourselves as the Zillow for short term rentals. So just like Zillow has this estimate, a quick way of understanding how much your house is worth may not be perfect, but it's directionally correct - we have a revenue calculator that helps you understand how much a property can make in revenue, whether it's a property that you own or property you're looking at to buy. And we also have properties that you can browse to find a property to buy just like Zillow does.
How Rabbu Gets Its Data — Real Comparables from Airbnb
"Are you looking at comparables? Are you getting data from the short term rental platforms?"
One of the most difficult parts of the process is determining what comparables there are, right? I think that is the most challenging part of coming up with any kind of projections in short term rentals. What our product does is when you enter an address, we go grab all the relevant Airbnb listings, and we also have years worth of historical data from those Airbnb listings that are nearby of the same bedroom count and basically looking at their historical data but also their forward calendars we are able to come up with what their projected revenue is. Using that data, we give you an idea of how a property or your property, can perform. What we do is we give you all of that information, right? So you can go look at it and you can exclude certain listings if they aren't a fit with what you're looking to invest in. You can choose different percentiles, 75th or 90th percentile, and really look at all the data, which we think is one of the big value adds of our platform is that we show it to you so you can play.
I jhave to ask because I've tried to make anagrams, I'm would love to know where did the name Rabu come from?
We get this question a lot. What we tell people is that it stands for really awesome bed and breakfast units. But it doesn't really mean that. It was just a domain, that was bought by our founder, Amir Dukic, 15 years ago. Like a lot of entrepreneurs, he is obsessed with buying domains and shorter domains are more valuable.
The Mission — Helping People Find Life-Enhancing Investments
"What would you say the overall goal of Rabbu is?"
Help people to find investments that make their lives better, so whether they're looking to find an investment property that generates them a certain return, that helps them live other goals in their life, or they want to buy a property that they may use occasionally that enriches their life and their family's life -that's our goal.
That's very on point for this show, and the way we talk about finding financial freedom, whatever that looks like for you through short-term rental investing. I love the alignment there. Our listeners are a combination of newer individuals that are STR-curious as well as seasoned Airbnb investors.
Can you talk a little bit about how Raboo could help those two different segments , of our audience?
So I mentioned that we like to give the data to the user and let the user do with it what they will which I think goes really well for both the novice and the more seasoned investor because the novice can go on there, plug in an address, get a big revenue calculation back and stop there if they want to and just say, "I think this property can generate $25,000 in revenue next year." Or the newer investor can say, "I actually want to look at each one of these comparables. I want to plug this into a calculator. I want to forecast my expenses. I want to look at how I could finance it. I want to do all those things and get really deep into the numbers." and we provide that as well. Really what we try to do is give you the data and make the interface easy to use.
Pricing — 100% Free for Buyers
"How much does it cost?
This is an easy one to answer because Zillow if you're a buyer and you're just browsing properties - it's completely free. In the past we had a subscription model, but about a year and a half ago we decided to move away from that. It's part of our helping the industry have better transparency and just better access to data. It's completely free. So, you can use the site without having an account. The way we make money is that we generate leads for real estate agents and for lenders.
Many of our listeners are real estate agents. How can Rabbu help them grow their business?
Great question. There's two primary ways. One, if you're looking for leads of buyers that are trying to buy short term rentals, we can absolutely help with that. We have a program to generate leads for you and we're on a pay-per-lead basis. So that's one big way they can grow their businesses. The second way is we just recently launched a marketplace product givng you the ability to sell your short term rental on the platform, either as an owner or as an agent. So selling agents who want to market their property to short terminal buyers are using this tool to market.
So if I'm an agent and I get a listing and it's not necessarily currently used as a short term rental, but it's at the beach or it's near a lake, and I think that the way to maximize the sale price for this would be maybe to sell to an investor... in addition to just putting it on the MLS where perhaps the buyer is just going to be another vacation user I as the agent can list that with Rabbu for the specific intent of finding people that would use this as a profit generating investment property and therefore potentially get higher quality or higher dollar offers. Is that correct?
That's exactly right. Great use case that you mentioned. So we get people who are listing current Airbnbs for sale or properties that they think would be a great short terminal investment. We get a lot of agents that list properties, and they use our revenue calculator to figure out how much it could make as a full time investment property, and then they post the listing with that intent. And we have buyers looking for properties exactly like that. So why not market to this type of audience because you're going to find higher intent?!
We've been wanting to do this for years. We wanted to have a place where you could go, where you would know that you're finding high-quality properties that either are current short terminals and they have historical financials or there are properties that would be a great potential Airbnb, and you use our software to help you understand that. There's nowhere else in the market like you said, that you can get this. We wanted a dedicated place like a Zillow to go and to say I want to filter out for things that are either current Airbnbs or being marketed as it would be a great Airbnb.
I think that's crazy exciting! We're both entrepreneurs from past tech lives, so seeing different software evolve and platforms changing is exciting.
A Passion for Airbnb & Hosting
What has surprised and excited you the most about working at Raboo over the last six years?
One of the things that's excited me is I just love the industry. I'm just an Airbnb person and have been for 10 years or more. I'm not a hotel person. That's not to say hotels aren't great for certain times, but I love Airbnb. I think it's a great company. I think it's a great concept. It has surprised me how much I've developed a love for the industry. The other thing that surprised me is just how much hospitality matters. That sounds like a very basic thing, but you can have identical properties right next door to each other. You can have everything be the same and one can vastly outperform the other in revenue because hospitality matters. The experience matters for the guest, the host matters. People often ask us how accurate projections and we often write back: How good of a host are you? Because in this property, you could make $25,000 or you can make $50, 000 - it really depends on the experience you provided to the guest and what your reviews are like.
I think that's a great point. I was just working with an Airbnb coaching client and they were looking at a market and they were saying this market looks like the property is only going to make $40, 000 a year. And I'll point out to them that the average in that occupancy in that market is only 42%, but you're not setting out to be average, right?You're not setting out to be the average host in terms of hospitality or in terms of operations. We talk a lot on our Airbnb investing podcast about dynamic pricing and using Hospitable messaging tools, and how to be a five-star host. So that's a really accurate point, which is if people are using Rabbu and you see a number keep in mind that's based on the average host.
That's right. And even though we display it that way, we also tell people if you're going to buy a property for that purpose then you should go into it with the commitment to be a top tier host. Just like you said, because that's the experience you want to provide the guests. That's how you're going to make the most money. And why else would you want to do it? You're not getting into it to provide a very basic experience because the returns won't be worth it.
The Evolution of the Airbnb Industry
The industry has evolved. You can't set it and forget it and be successful as an Airbnb investor. There's been so much shifting in the industry post-COVID. Looking forward, how do you see the short term rental market unfolding?
I think the moonlighters with the "set and forget it" midset post COVID where there wasn't enough supply and there was a ton of demand and you could easily make outsized returns - that is over. I believe that's really good for the industry because I think it leaves the people who are actually committed to being great hosts and providing a great experience - the ones who really want to be in this industry are the ones that are still remaining. I think that's good for people looking to get into investing. I think it's good for guests. This is just my personal opinion, but I think Airbnb is going to continue to dominate the short term rental space. I see them getting bigger and better over time. I think they have an incredible business model, and I see them just continuing to take market share from the other OTAs.
The Future of Airbnb and STRs
Building off the bigger and better Airbnb, what do you think is the biggest value Rabbu offers short term rental investors?
I think it's understanding how nearby properties are performing so that you can make the better-informed decision. Soon though, it'll be having the best supply of short term rentals for sale anywhere. Having just launched that part of our platform, it's newish but a year from now, that'll be the primary thing that people come to our platform to find actual short terminals in the marketplace to buy.
That makes a lot of sense. And you beat me to that. I was going to say, what do you see in the future? But you've already told me what in the future. Who doesn't love a well curated marketplace where it's not sifting through Facebook, is this real or not real? It's a legitimate place that has statistics at your fingertips.
Advice for New Airbnb Investors
"What advice do you have for the new Airbnb investor just getting started?"
Provide the experience that you want yourself. If you want to stay at a place where the host is a great communicator and clean and has something unique to offer then provide that. And if you live up to that standard you'll do well.
Is there anything else you want to tell us about Rabbu, about tools, about functions, about new stuff that we haven't asked you about?
One of the things I would love to say is that for anybody who uses the product if you have suggestions about how to improve it - please reach out. There's a support email on the site. I read those emails. there's a very small team at Rabbu who's in charge of the product and we read these things. We react to them. We try to make the product better based on customer feedback.
We want a bunch of dear Trent letters. Exactly. Everybody message Trent, mention the Host Coach Podcast and let them know what you love because I love hearing good feedback, but also let them know your ideas or what you wish they had.
There's nothing like getting an email that says, "Hey, I love your product." That the love your product piece is just that's why we do it, and we send that all around our internal email or Slack chains.
So there you have it. You now know how Rabbu's platform can help you go from a total newbie to a completely informed and competent Airbnb buyer. You also learned how much data is available for you to dig into to find your perfect investment property, as well as the value of using Rabbu to sell a property to investors that can calculate its potential cash flow and pay you accordingly.
Should you need an Airbnb coach to help you find the right market, property, and help you set yourself up for success - feel free to book a free 30 minute coaching call with us. We LOVE helping new investors avoid pitfalls and find financial freedom through Airbnb investing!
