How to design a KILLER Airbnb listing

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What's up guys, it's James here and in today's video, we're gonna be talking about how to design a killer Airbnb listing specifically, I'm going to be talking about how to actually furnish a property, we're not gonna be talking too much about the listing itself moreso about the actual property from you know, what type of furniture should you put in? What size of beds, what kind of linens all these details, I find I get a lot of people ask me, how do you actually decide what kind of furniture what kind of amenities to add to your Airbnb listing, so I want to go through it. And we're actually going to jump onto the computer here as well and walk through an example listing, this is one of my listings. And I'm just gonna kind of walk through and highlight why we chose certain items that we chose the kind of the thought process behind them so that hopefully this will help you to make the right decisions when you're setting up and furnishing and decking out and designing your very own Airbnb. Now, if you want the short kind of fast track access to how to actually get that Airbnb How to Invest successfully in Airbnb ease, and all this different stuff, all the different elements of investing successfully in Airbnb, and doing so in a way that builds massive cash flow and long term wealth, then I highly recommend you check out the link in the description down below, I've got a training that is linked in the description down below on how to succeed investing in short term rentals. So definitely watch check that out. It's a free training that I put together highlighting the three core elements that are absolutely paramount to success with investing in short term rental properties. Now I put this together after speaking with hundreds, literally hundreds of people who are either investing in short term rentals or interested in investing in short term rentals. And just kind of aggregating all these commonly asked questions, all the common misconceptions that they had. And just putting this all together into a training that I think addresses all the elements that you need to succeed investing in short term rentals. So I highly recommend checking that training out as well again, link down in description below. So let's jump over the computer here now. And just quickly kind of run through this property, we'll kind of go through the different different elements this property, and I'm going to share why we designed it the way that we did. So let's start here, we're going to kind of walk through the property overall. And let's start with the living room. Now you want to really identify each area of your house, each room in the home and the property, you want to identify what is the ideal outcome for that area? So first and foremost, what are the things that you can do in that area that are going to make an attractive space for guests, you don't want to give them a place to relax, if they don't want a place to relax, you don't want to give them a place to play games if your ideal guest doesn't want to play games. So for example, you're better off turning that spare bedroom into an office if your ideal guest is a business traveler, whereas you're better off turning it into a games room, if ideal you're attracting families to your property. So you really need to understand what the goal is of the space now. So for us our goal here we've got you know, families and large groups of friends coming into the property. So you want to give them a place to just kind of hang out drink some wine drink, some beers have a good time. So the TV is there. But it's really not a focal point of the room, we've got the whole room oriented looking out the window and just a nice seating area here. And we've got it staged up, you can see with some nice one on it's honestly just a really nice open room, we've got another living area as well. So it's just kind of a main chill area. Not a whole lot going on here. But that's a benefit. That's by design. Now we picked furniture that was going to be durable and relatively inexpensive. Because now the goal here is not to go and spend a whole bunch of money on furniture to have it be stunning, really this stuff is going to get used, it's not going to be just looked at the goal is not to just look good. And so we want to make it really practical. So these chairs and everything, everything cost very little. It's quite durable. It's from Ikea, it's easy to replace, it is durable, you know, those are the key elements here. Now, if we ventured down into the next living area here, which is the basement room, we actually got these chairs, secondhand and this couch secondhand as well. Honestly, almost all the stuff we got secondhand with the exception is hanging swing. And so again, we're just focused on durability, longevity, these guys were built to last you know, we got these frightening $70 for the pair. And they're very, very old, very, very well built. So you know, people are roughing around down here, whatever, that's totally fine. And we've got a nice big comfy couch we will hang out on and watch movies. Because we've got our projection screen right here. We've got a nice little table there for them to put their popcorn on. Again, we staged that up. And then this, this hanging swing is just to add that element of fun and that element of kind of differentiation from other listings. You can see we also opted to keep the ceiling exposed down here to the exposed beams and add some really nice hanging lights, just some string lights because again, you know the benefit of having a drop down ceiling there would be that it would look a little bit nicer. But honestly for the guests, this looks really cool. We went and stained the beams up here. So it gives us a really cool cozy vibe. And it's just a lot more kind of photogenic than the drop down ceiling would be and you have more headroom so it's just more practical down there.
So there's a different elements that we had, that we decide to stick with for the renovation process as well, that were really important. Yeah, so this is going to be the game area here we've got all our games highlighting because again, we're catering towards those larger groups of people in the kitchen. Again, we're keeping things pretty simple, pretty minimalistic. You know, we don't need a whole bunch of room to store things in this kitchen because it is a short term rental people aren't staying for long and storing a whole bunch of junk in there. So we decided to go with just some open shelving on the uppers. And that meant it also just kept it really nice and open really nice and clean, easier for the cleaners to get in there and do the cleaning. We've got you know, pictures with everything staged up with all the different local wines, ciders, all our different amenities. And then we've also got just a nice kind of clean shot of the kitchen as well. So that's really important. Now going into that obviously isn't a lot of furniture going on in the kitchen or as as would be expected. Now here in the bedrooms, we decided that we were going to go with a split of some bedrooms having to two twin beds and other bedrooms having having double beds or short queen size beds. So we're either having one queen size bed, or two twin size beds in a bedroom. Now the reason that we opted not to go with king sized beds is because it makes it more efficient, easier for the cleaners to just have two different size of sheets. And those two different sizes be very easy to distinguish from one another to very, very easy to tell a twin size sheet from a queen size sheet harder, more challenging, just more pain to identify a queen size from a king sized set of sheets. And then there's also you can't interchange them. So if if one set of sheets wears out, you can't just swap out another pair of sheets very easily if there's king and queen there. Whereas with queen size and twin size, it just keeps it simple. And then the other thing is nice, as far as practicality why we didn't just go for queen size beds is because this way, if people don't want to sleep with a significant other, if it's just a group of friends, it opens it up more to that option. Or if there are kids staying in the property, then it opens it up for a bigger group. If there's just kids staying at the property. Now we've got you can see just some really basics, you know, you want to have a nice little nice little nightstand beside the bed, that's important. You also want to have a light there so that people can just you know some of those basic necessities they want to have at the property. We've got some bunk beds in this room just for sizing reasons. And again, just some of the basic necessities you'd want. And then from a design aspect, we're also just adding some of these nice little design elements like the fluff the little basket there just to make the property kind of come together and not feel barren, not feel like you just grabbed the bare necessities. I see a lot of people doing that where they don't spend that extra money on the carpet or the throw blankets, or you know the extra little design elements. You can see we've added just some nice little kind of faux plants on the on the nightstand. That stuff really brings the property together and makes it feel a lot more homey a lot more welcoming. Things like adding this accent wall do similar kind of thing. It's really nice custom paddle this nice, or that we've got in the background there, we've got mirrors. So those basics really, really important. And as far as the process for this, really, we're just going and grabbing photos off of Pinterest and we're grabbing kind of an inspiration photo and just trying to recreate it with a combination of IKEA and Amazon and then add a few little unique pieces throughout as well like the paddle up here just to kind of make the property not looks so much like it kind of had just IKEA throw up on it. So again, nice accent wall here, some
artwork on the wall, some decor stuff. Now, this stuff is not adding value to the guest. But it really is making the property look a lot better in the photos. So that's a really important element as well. And you just want to be mindful of that, add some workspaces where you can so a nice desk with a chair, and a lamp is gonna allow you to add that you have a nice workspace at the property, it's gonna allow people to work there. So again, it just makes it more multifunctional though doing that where you can is really important as well. Now again, just the bathrooms. And if we kind of scroll down here, we can see the dining area and the dining room. Really our priority here was just to add seating for as many people as possible. We didn't want to go with anything super expensive, because we don't want to be concerned if the guests do, you know, play something hard on here and it causes a burn mark, not a really big issue. It's not a huge issue. If someone scratches the table, not the end of the world. If someone breaks a chair, again, not the end of the world. So durability and low cost is really important there. And then kind of using this extra space, we're just kind of asking ourselves, Hey, how can we use this extra space, we've got a garage. Sure we could let people park in the garage but there's a huge driveway there's not a really big benefit to having he'll be able to park in the garage as opposed to just parking on the driveway. Well what if we added a ping pong table out there and we stored a kayak out there and some bikes well that adds a whole bunch of additional value because now there's just additional things they can do to keep busy. Given our ideal guests avatar that stuff is really important. And then same kind of thing with the backyard space. We just went hey, we've got all this space outside in the backyard, what amenities what features can be added they'll make the place even more valuable to guess so a hot tub was one of those things on this pad, we actually now have a sauna as well. So we've got a sauna, they got delivered after photography, we've got that there at the property, that's fantastic. We've got a barbecue up here, a bunch of game rooms, and I saw reading knockout here. So all this little stuff that just made better use of the space to make it more attractive to guests things like the fire pit out back here, you know, all this stuff just again, just makes the property more desirable to guests. And so really, if we jump out of here, really, that's what it comes down to, is it just comes down to constantly asking yourself, what would make this place as valuable as possible to prospective guests, and really spending the money there. So my main guidance that I like to give to people is, you know, if you're thinking about spending money on let's say, a really nice couch, well, let's say that you spent $2,000 on getting a nice couch, not even a really nice couch is $2,000 for a couch, versus if you buy a couch from Ikea, and you may be spent $800. Or even better yet you buy it secondhand from an Ikea couch and you get it for $500. Well, let's say that not case you're saving 1200 to $1,500, right? Well, if you take that 1200 $1,500 is putting that additional spend into the couch, going to generate additional bookings, versus if you put that 12 to $1,500. elsewhere. And so obviously, with most properties, if you put that extra money into a couch, it's not going to make you any more money, you're not going to have guests that are booking this place, because oh my gosh, that couch is just so beautiful. That's what's bringing them over the edge to book the property No, obviously not. And it's probably not really going to save you much money because a $2,000 couch isn't actually much more durable than an Ikea couch. So you're really not adding much value either way there. Whereas if you take that $1,500 at $1,200, and you invest in a projector downstairs, some board games, you know, a couple extra beds and then have money left over still well then now suddenly, you have a projector, a nice movie theater, like you can see we've got this property. And that's going to draw additional gas nice little additional feature for that we've got some board games that's going to draw additional guests make them want to book you've got additional beds. So that means that now you can sleep more people, which means that your nightly rate threshold can go up because people are gonna be splitting the cost more broadly amongst the group. So now that there's you've deployed that 1200, that $1,500 much more effectively to achieve the end goal of optimizing performance of the property. So you're going to get guests that are happier, you're going to get guests that want to book your property more want to pay more for it. And so that's really what you want to keep in mind when you're designing an Airbnb listing to make it successful. Again, if you want a more detailed overview about all this stuff, how we pick the right property to analyze, analyze properties, make sure they're going to perform well how we set up our listing how we optimize it, absolutely everything from A to Z on investing successfully in short term rental properties. Now again, check out the link in the description down below for that free training on how to be successful short term rental Airbnb investor,
I highly recommend that you check out that training as your first stop for getting started investing in property for Airbnb. Incredible training, I could do that myself, I spent a lot of time doing it. So I highly recommend that you check that out. It's there for you in the description completely free. And then also last but not least, if you like this video, if you got value from it, if you appreciate me going and taking the time to kind of walk through my thoughts on this, then just give me a quick like button just hit that like button, give me a quick like on the video, make sure that you show me that love that. So I can know what content to make more of. And so it also very importantly, we can help this challenge to grow. Were over 1800 that 1800 subscribers I want to say 200,000 That would be awesome. But we're over 1800 subscribers on the channel right now and I want to keep growing and even further. So I appreciate you for getting you to where I am and I would love your help in getting me even further. So if you could just really honestly just take a half a second to hit that like button, it would do me a big favor and I'd really really appreciate that. And then also if you are not one of those 1800 some odd people that have already subscribed to the channel, then make sure you become one of the subscribers. Make sure you hit that subscribe button to stay up to date with the two new videos we post every single week. I know some of you guys are probably watching these videos consistently and are not subscribed to the channel. So just make sure you hit that subscribe button so you can join the community be a part of this channel that we're growing. I hope you gain value from this hope a fantastic day and I will see you in the next.