After seven years and three short-term rentals in the Myrtle Beach area, I’m starting to see what’s wearing out, what isn’t working, and what I’d do differently if I were starting over. In this video, I’m sharing my biggest short-term rental mistakes, from the metal bunk beds and extra decor I’m now paying to undo, to the operational lessons that cost far more: why short-term rentals are so hard to manage remotely, why a mediocre cleaner is never worth it, how fast oceanfront wear and tear adds up, and why owning a vacation rental rarely feels like a vacation. If you own a short-term rental or are thinking about buying one, these are the lessons I wish someone had shared with me first.
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Hey everyone, welcome back. I’m Adrienne Green, and today I am sharing my own short-term rental lessons learned so you can learn from my experience and not make the same mistakes. Here on the podcast, I focus on how real estate entrepreneurs can break free of the grind and create the freedom they wanted at the start. So let’s jump into it.
Today I am pulling back the curtain and sharing my top mistakes as a short-term rental owner. You can learn from the first few mistakes that I’m gonna share here, and they’ll save you thousands of dollars in terms of making better furniture choices or how you set up your rooms. And the last few that I’m gonna share could save you so much money, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands possibly, from making the wrong investment entirely when it comes to real estate investing.
I have been a short-term rental investor since 2019. I have three short-term rentals in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area. I’ve done other investments in other markets, but today we’re gonna talk about short-term rentals because I’m here in one of my short-term rentals right now, wrapping up a solid two weeks of work on them. And now that it’s been seven years on my longest property, and I think about five and four on the other two, I’m starting to see what’s not working. I’m starting to see what needs to be replaced. I’m starting to see what’s wearing out. And that’s what I’m gonna share with you here, along with some more meta, big-picture, portfolio-wide lessons learned. All of this could save you so much. So learn, and don’t make these same mistakes. Let’s go ahead and kick it off.
One of the first furnishing mistakes I wanna share is these metal bunk beds, and bunk beds in general. When I got the house I’m in right now, we went a little cray cray with the bunk beds. It is a four-bedroom, three-bath, oceanfront, beachfront house, and it wasn’t cheap. At the time, the conventional wisdom with short-term rentals was heads and beds. That’s what makes you money. So in this four-bedroom house, we did two different bunk rooms, and it had a total capacity of 16 people.
And that was a lot. The biggest issue, though, is to get these bunk beds, we went with a lot of the metal bunk beds, like the metal pyramid bunk: a full on the bottom, twin on the top. And metal bunk beds, they just suck. The screws come out, and people complain that they’re loose or wiggly or wobbly. And the metal breaks. The pieces that go around the top bunk, like the security bars, the guards to keep kids from falling out, they can bend, and you can’t buy a replacement piece. So then you have to get a whole new bed. And then you have to pay your handyman to assemble a whole new bed. You can’t just buy a replacement or jerry-rig a replacement because, odds are, you don’t just have metal and welding lying around. So do not get metal bunk beds.
And really, I would say avoid bunk beds if at all possible because they’re also a whole lot more difficult for the cleaner to make, which means the cleaner’s gonna charge you more for the turnovers if they’ve got to make bunk beds. They’re also gonna charge you more for every bed that they have to make. So think about that. Do we really need every bed? Because every bed is going to be an increased cost, especially if it is a bunk bed. And if you have a linen rental service, they’re gonna charge more for more beds. And if you’re providing your own linens, you’re gonna have to provide more linens if you have more beds. So think about all of that and really think: How many beds do I want? How many heads do I want? And do I need bunk beds?
If you are gonna go with a bunk bed, if that is the best choice, here are the ones I love the most. First, if you’re gonna do a twin-over-twin bunk bed, I like the ones where the bottom bunk is legitimately on the floor. It makes both bunks a lot lower. So they’re much easier to clean, they’re much sturdier, and they don’t shake as much. And the other thing is they read more as “this is for kids,” so you’re less likely to overpack the house with adults who are gonna be harder on the place. So I really like the twin-over-twins where the bottom bunk is on the ground if you need a twin-over-twin. I also like the pyramid bunks overall as a design, where you’ve got the full on the bottom and the twin on the top. It’s easier to make that top bunk because you can stand on the bottom one, and they’re a little sturdier because they have that wider base. Ideally, wood, not metal. I think you’ve got the point on the metal ones.
Now, related to bunk beds is the heads and beds. Like I said, when we first launched this house, I had 16 guests for four bedrooms and three bathrooms. In general, if I was going to make a rule, I would aim for a max of four people per bathroom. Now, with the fact that this has three bathrooms, you could add another one, maybe two people. That means I would really prefer this house at 12 to 14 people rather than 16. I think that would be more sustainable, and that’s what we’re doing. We actually have two houses that are right next door to each other. In the other one, I transitioned one of my metal pyramid bunks to just a full bed. So I did take away the capacity of one. I took away one of the bunk beds. So I am undoing this, which does take time and money. That’s why I’d say just do it right in the beginning.
And the other thing: I didn’t share an alternative to the bunk beds, and that would be a trundle bed, where you’ve got a bed underneath the bed that can wheel out. Trundle beds are much easier for cleaners. I think adults will sleep on the regular bed more readily than they would on the bottom of a bunk bed. The only thing is that trundle beds do require that you have the floor space to roll out that other bed. If you’ve got the floor space, look at a trundle bed if you do need more heads in your house.
Moving on from beds. Next, when I first got started, and I see it in every rental listing from a first-time short-term rental investor, is too much decor. We went too cutesy. We were trying to have it be a beach house vibe or mountain camping vibe, and got all this cool decor on all these shelves and things. Don’t. First off, it’s not gonna last through a season. It’s gonna get broken, it’s gonna get taken, it’s gonna get lost. People are here on vacation, they’ve got kids going crazy, the parents aren’t paying attention, people are drinking. All of that’s going to happen. So you want decor that’s gonna be sturdy, and you want minimal decor.
Also, people bring a ton of their own stuff. While I’m here at this house, I actually just had to drop off some stuff in an owner’s closet at another house. I never wanna interrupt the guests, but I kinda did. They had so much of their own stuff: their own blankets, bags and bags of stuff, clothes that weren’t in the dresser. They had a ton of stuff. So it’s better to really have clear space for them to use rather than have a whole bunch of your own tchotchkes and decor everywhere.
Also, in the listing photos, I’ve noticed simpler is better. I did too much art on the walls when I started, and now I’m actually going back, taking art off the walls, spackling, and touching up to have things that look simpler and read better in the photography than something that was a little more cluttered. So another thing: do not do too much decor, do not do too much wall art. Do the minimum you think it needs. One grouping of things. The pro tip for grouping items on decor is tall, medium, and short, one focal piece. That’s enough.
Similar but different, another thing with furnishing the house is that a mistake I made was choosing either fancy or cheap over sturdy. Let me give you a specific example: outdoor furniture. I’ve got these beach houses. They’re elevated because they’re right next to the beach and could flood, so they’re actually a level up. And we have a ground-level patio area with a grill and outdoor furniture. A fancy option, which some of my neighbors have done, is really nice patio sets with cushions and everything. That’s a fancy option that you could have. Expensive. Or a lot of people also have the cheap option. They’ve got those white plastic chairs, or maybe if they want to step up, the plastic Adirondack chairs. And then there’s the sturdy option: a wood picnic table. They’ve got rectangular ones, hexagonal, octagonal. There’s different types of wood picnic tables, but that is the sturdy option.
And honestly, our house came with a wood picnic table down there, and it’s lasted since 2021. It’s probably been there. Every house in the neighborhood has one. So I suspect they either came with the house in the early ’90s, or a couple decades ago the HOA got them, or something like that. But every house has these wooden picnic tables, and they have lasted, and we never had to do anything with it. It is sturdy, and even when there have been hurricanes going up the coast and that ground level is flooding, the picnic table stays there. It’s not getting washed away. Honestly, since we’ve been here, there were heavy winds, and the plastic Adirondack chairs that neighbors had went flying. And I don’t have to worry about guests taking care of cushions, putting them away, taking them out, anything like that, like I would if I went with the fancy route.
So if you’re thinking about what to do in a certain area, there’s gonna be the fancy choice, there’s gonna be the cheap choice, and I want you to think: What would be the sturdy choice? What would look solid? It wouldn’t look cheap or flimsy, but it’s not necessarily gonna be fancy or high maintenance. It’s just gonna be sturdy, safe, easy to take care of. That may be the best choice. I wish I had gone with the sturdy choice more from the beginning.
Now we’re gonna transition from things that are gonna save you a few thousand dollars, like furniture, to bigger operational mistakes that I made that could cost you thousands of dollars if you were to make them as well. And this first one, it pains me to say it, because if you know me, you know that my jam is leverage. My jam is leverage: your time, your money, and a team. You don’t have to do this basic work. Let’s have a team to do it for you.
But short-term rentals are really difficult to manage remotely. Whether you are a self-manager or you’re using a property manager, short-term rentals are so labor-intensive, there’s so much going on, that it’s really difficult to have things up to your standards if you are not laying eyes on the property yourself. If you’re self-managing, we have a great cleaner, we’ve got a pretty good handyman, we do that. If you’re self-managing, you’re gonna have a local team, a cleaner, handyman, something like that. If you’re managing long distance or remotely, they’re not the same as you. They’re not the same as you; they’re not gonna see things that you see. And if you are using a property manager or a co-host, I hope you have one where you feel like they do as good of a job as you do, and yet I know that a lot of owners do not.
And the reality of the situation is with short-term rentals, there are so many people coming in and out of this house. They’re there on vacation, they’re there having fun, and the house takes a beating. So it’s a very difficult strategy to manage remotely if you’re not going to the house. I would say a minimum of once a year, an annual visit of at least a couple of weeks, depending on the number of houses and the size.
So we’ve been here for two weeks and two days. I have three houses here: four-bedroom house, four-bedroom house, two-bedroom house. And I have been going nonstop. I literally have hurt my neck because I’ve been going nonstop doing so much on these houses. We were changing out the quilts. I was changing the decor or getting new photos taken.
To give you a quick glimpse of some of the work that we did, I changed a lot of the bedding, I replaced a lot of the pillows, I had to put new stuffing in the back of one of the couches, because couches are not made well nowadays, and you often have to put new stuffing in the back of the couch because it just gets flat super easily. Little odds and ends with other cleaning. Putting in those picnic tables that I told you about; I actually added a second picnic table to each one of those houses to supplement the first one that was there, to have more seating, because the first one did so well, and I’m loving the sturdy choice. So that’s just new decor.
And I actually am switching cleaners. So it was meeting with the new cleaner a few times, showing the houses to her, making sure everything’s prepped for that transition. Checking our backup lockboxes on the house, because we use smart locks on the front door, but we always have a backup lockbox with a key in case the smart lock doesn’t work. Checking those backup lockboxes, making sure the right key’s on there, making sure it works. Changing out some light bulbs that hadn’t been changed on the last handyman fix, organizing the kitchen cabinets again. The list goes on and on.
These are things that, odds are, do not happen by other people on your team. Other people are not gonna see these issues. And so you do wanna go lay eyes on a short-term rental for a bit of time. And so do you want to do that with this house? Do you want to have a lifestyle where the problems that you’re solving are short-term rental problems, where you are going there in person and checking on these properties? Is that a life you want? And we’ll get to the point I’m gonna talk about: if you get a short-term rental where you want a vacation, what that looks like. We’re gonna get to that as well.
Another operational mistake that I have made in the past is a mediocre cleaner. It’s tough again when you’re managing remotely. A mediocre cleaner, especially if you’re managing remotely, a mediocre cleaner is an operational mistake that you will pay for. Pay for the best cleaner you can find. Ask for recommendations from other property managers in your area, or ask for recommendations from other property owners in your area. Get a personal recommendation. Don’t just find somebody who’s advertising on Facebook or whatever the case may be. And get the best cleaner that you can afford. Because the thing is, once you get mediocre cleaning scores or bad reviews for bad cleaning on the OTAs like Airbnb or VRBO, they’re there forever. They’re there forever pulling down your score. And you really want to be getting these repeat guests. That’s gonna help you so much as a business, and you’re not gonna get it with a mediocre cleaner.
Another operational mistake, or investment mistake: I knew oceanfront houses would be expensive, but still, underestimating the wear and tear from being oceanfront. We had to replace all four HVACs at our two oceanfront houses this summer, and the oldest one was only eight years old. We have each of them serviced twice a year, and I have them rinsed off once a month in our handyman check. So we are on top of routine maintenance. The filters are replaced every month, and yet they still went out in eight years or less. That was the oldest one.
In prior experience, HVACs in other markets are gonna last us 10 to 15 years for something comparable to what we had here. We were lucky to get eight years. Also, everything rusts overnight, literally. I had metal canisters of water sealant downstairs for two days, out on our patio area, and they were rusty after two days. And guests who are not living oceanfront, which none of your guests are, or they wouldn’t be paying to rent your oceanfront house, they don’t understand and they’re not used to it. And then they’re critical, and they give you bad reviews, acting like you don’t take care of the house, when everything rusts super fast, inside and out.
So outside, literally the nails that hold onto my siding, onto my house, they rust. So I might not need new paint, but I have all these rusty holes, and I need to get those all treated and fixed and replaced as needed, or my nails are just rusting off and my siding isn’t gonna stay in place. We’ve literally had siding fall off. Our neighbors have siding that’s fallen off their house right now. Literally the nails that they make for outside the house rust and just wear out. On your deck, hinges, anything like that. Everything is rusting. And then even inside the house, door hinges inside the house, metal grates that you have on air returns or things like that, all of it rusts. Everything. Bedside lamps. We had a metal finish bedside table lamp. Those rusted. Everything rusts, and people act like you had this outdoor furniture that’s been there for a decade, and I’m like, “No, that was new six months ago.”
Similarly, we have beach supplies that we keep outside. Those rust like that as well. You can buy more expensive ones. Thing is, it’s hard to also keep track of beach supplies. So buying more expensive chairs and then having guests walk off with them, it adds up. So keep that in mind. Whatever you think oceanfront is going to be in terms of cost and work for wear and tear, it is multiple times more than that. I think you got the point on that one.
Now, the last thing that I want to touch on is, again, lifestyle. Are these the problems you want to have? Is this what you want things to be? A lot of people get a short-term rental in a place that they would like to vacation. They’re like, “I’m gonna save money.” I know this was something that was a huge bonus for us when we got started: instead of paying thousands to go on a beach vacation every year, I’m gonna have a beach house, and other people are gonna pay me thousands to go to my house every year. They do, and it costs thousands to own that house: to buy it in the first place, to pay the mortgage, to keep it up to date, to pay the cleaners, the handyman, all the things that go into maintaining it. And then when we go to the short-term rental, like the house we’re in now, it’s not a vacation. We’ve been here for over two weeks. And like I said, I literally have been working like crazy doing all of this work, to the point where I am in physical pain in my neck.
So just be mindful of that. If you are getting a short-term rental because you want to have it as a place that you’re going to vacation, maybe you only want to have one there. You don’t want to have a few. So then is that super efficient? Are you getting economies of scale? Is that really a business or an investment? Similarly, how much time are you gonna have to spend there to feel like you can get the work done and then also have fun? Would you be able to go to the house and ever turn off the idea that there’s another thing to fix, there’s another thing to fix, I could just paint that real quick, or I could clean that off? Could you turn it off? And how long would you have to be there for you to feel like you could turn it off, like the house was in a place where you could really relax and enjoy yourself?
That’s one thing I think people don’t think about. They’re just like, “I’m gonna get a short-term rental, and it’s gonna be my vacation house as well.” And they don’t think about, well, when I go there, is it gonna feel like a vacation? Now, I have three houses here, and like I said, it’s been crazy for about two weeks. I think if we came for a month, which, I am location independent, we do have that option, there would be some downtime. I’ve gone to the pool with the kids twice in the over two weeks we’ve been here. So I think there would be a few more times like that that could happen. Or the other choice would be to come more frequently, like come twice a year or something like that. But if we come once a year, a couple weeks is pretty much spent doing an entire year’s worth of extra maintenance, fix-ups, things like that between the three different houses. Even with monthly handyman checks and things like that, there’s extra stuff that, as an owner, ends up falling on us, or us seeing while we’re here.
Those are all the mistakes that I’ve made. If you are a current short-term rental investor or somebody thinking about it, I hope there are some lessons learned that you can take from that. And I’d love your thoughts. If you are a current short-term rental investor, what’s a mistake you made? Drop it in the comments below. I’d love to have a discussion and see what other things there are. And then next week, I’m gonna share my short-term rental wins. I want to share some stuff that I think killed it, knocked it out of the ballpark, that you can rinse and repeat and apply to your own short-term rentals. So make sure you’re subscribing wherever you’re listening to this, and join me again next week.