How to Become an Airbnb Property Manager: 4 Essential Beginner Tips from Superhosts

Becoming an Airbnb property manager can be the best route for those who are looking to get into the vacation rental industry but don't have enough money to invest in a property. While it can be challenging, it’s definitely worth the effort once you get familiar with the ropes.

Our team currently manages 25 high-performing Airbnbs across three different states. However, we didn't start with 25. We started from the bottom and worked through the challenges to get to the portfolio we have today.

Through this experience and the skills we’ve earned through the years, we believe it puts us in an excellent position to provide beginners with advice that they’ll treasure as they embark on their journey. With that being said, here are 4 essential tips for how to become an Airbnb property manager.

Knowing Where To Find Airbnb Property Management Opportunities and Clients

Our first tip simply revolves around providing you with various sources of potential opportunities. You can be the best among short term rental property managers, but if you don't go out there and look for clients, then you won't be hired.

We know firsthand, the struggles of landing your first vacation rental management job. It can be a long and frustrating process, especially if you don't know where to start looking.

To help you find clients, here's a short list of techniques we used to connect with property owners and start landing gigs for our property management services:

• Check Your Connections: The easiest way is to look internally first and try to find someone you already know who's looking for a rental manager. You might not be aware that a friend, some family, or maybe even a co-worker has a short-term rental. This can be a fantastic opportunity to not only pitch your management services but maybe even ask if they know someone else who's looking for one, and extend your network even more.
• Online Platforms: There are plenty of online resources where Airbnb property owners post job offers looking for someone to manage their rental. Cohost Market is a platform where people can post and look for co-hosts or property management services. Other sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Craigslist, can also provide valuable leads to potential jobs as a vacation rental manager.
• Finding Airbnb Hosts on the Airbnb App: Do you know where many Airbnb property owners can easily be found? The platform itself. While most of the Airbnb listings will likely already have a decent short-term rental management system in place, it's still worth a shot. It's a quick way to get plenty of potential leads. You can create a template and start messaging all of these owners, pitching your services. Cool, right? Use Airbnb itself to find more leads.
• Cold-Calling Rental Property Owners: If your network is small or you simply don't know anyone who owns vacation rental properties, your best bet could be to simply go through online listings and start pitching your services. You'll need to have confidence, a well-laid-out business plan, and a catchy pitch to land gigs. This one can require a ton of work, but if you truly want to become a successful manager, you'll do whatever it takes to find clients.

No one said it was going to be easy to land a job as a vacation rental property manager. But once you get the first couple of gigs in, and you're starting to establish a name for yourself, we believe that you'll quickly become a successful Airbnb property manager in no time.

Build Up Your Arsenal of Tools and Software

One of our most important tips is to use the different tools available at your disposal. The short-term rental industry is filled with various platforms and pieces of rental management software that can make your life so much easier as a property manager.

You shouldn't shy away from automation and technology, instead you should embrace it with open arms. If you were to ask us, there are two things we simply couldn't live without; A property management software (PMS) and a dynamic pricing tool.

The PMS sits at the heart of your short term rental management process. From the name itself, it features a combination of different tools that make it easier to monitor and manage an Airbnb since you can do everything from a single place. It includes everything from channel management, task management, guest communication, price sync, and more.

Your PMS houses all of your listings and allows you to automate most of the operations of an Airbnb property. We won't go into full detail, but we advise you to check out our review of the best Airbnb management software if you'd like to learn more.

The other tool we highly recommend is what's called dynamic pricing tools. This is a more specialized software that focuses on analyzing the short-term rental market and optimizing your prices based on the current conditions. It makes it easy to keep up with the volatile rates within the vacation rental sector, and to come up with an effective rental pricing strategy, ensuring you don't miss out on revenue while maximizing your occupancy rate. We personally use Wheelhouse and PriceLabs, but we've also whipped up a review of the best dynamic pricing tools for an Airbnb business if you want to check out a couple of others.

We highly recommend that all property managers use vacation rental software to automate most of their daily processes. Handling day-to-day tasks is already hard enough, don't make it harder by doing them all manually. You won't know the amount of time savings you'll get until you start using at least a PMS and a dynamic pricing tool.

Establish Relationships With Suppliers

One mistake that a lot of people getting started as an Airbnb property manager makes is being too focused on bookings and guests. While this is obviously not a bad thing, it can make you forget about another crucial role of an Airbnb property manager; taking care of the property itself.

As a short-term rental property manager, you'll get a much higher number of guests than traditional long-term rentals. This can accelerate property wear and tear and increase the need for different services. This is why we recommend building strong relationships with different service suppliers related to the property.

Most of the services we've needed include the following:

• Cleaning and Deep Cleaning Services
• House Repairs
• Plumbing
• Electrical
• Property and Pool Maintenance
• Landscaping
• Garbage Disposal

If there's one thing we've learned about keeping a property in tip-top shape, it's to be proactive rather than reactive. Instead of waiting for guests to complain about issues, being proactive can allow you to catch them before they start being a problem.

Having these relationships in place allows you to regularly have a maintenance procedure in place. It also allows you to quickly have a go-to person whenever unexpected issues arise. You never want to keep your guests waiting to get things fixed.

Explore Other Channels

The final tip we're leaving with you today is establishing an online identity and marketing your Airbnb property management business across different platforms. This is an excellent way to increase overall listing visibility and promote your own service at the same time.

• Vacation Rental Website: If you don't already have one, we highly recommend creating a vacation rental website showcasing both your rental property management business, along with the different short-term rentals you're managing. This can also act as a great way to present your successful property management portfolio to potential clients.
• Social Media: I'm sure you're well aware of the reach that different social media platforms provide. Creating pages and accounts for your vacation rental management business can help drive bookings and visibility. We've found that Facebook and Instagram are among the best-performing ones within the Airbnb industry, but we've also found success on TikTok, especially if you often post videos showcasing your rental's features.
• Joining Facebook Groups: While Facebook groups exposes you to a way smaller audience, if you can find and be active in the right ones, you can easily set yourself up for success. People within these groups are often going to be low-hanging fruit. Whether they be Airbnb visitors for the listings you already manage or a new set of clients for your vacation rental property management business.
• Engaging in Forums and Threads: Finally, we suggest being active and engaging with the community in various forums and threads. Platforms like Airbnb, BiggerPockets, and Reddit could be great sources of knowledge or customers. Just don't be pushy and be all promotional. You aren't going to win people over with that. Just comment as you normally would, and only bring up your business or listings whenever they naturally come up.

Remember, your Airbnb management fees will be based on your agreed-upon percentage of the rental income each property earns. This means that more bookings and more Airbnb guests will result in more revenue for both you and the owner. Exploring all of these different channels opens you up to a whole new world outside of traditional short-term rental booking sites.

Wrapping Things Up

If you're considering becoming an Airbnb property manager, the biggest advice we could give you is to trust the process. Despite how cliche it may sound, it's the truth. You need to become dedicated and resilient. It's not as easy as most people think it is. It requires a lot of time and effort before you can get rental owners to be on board and trust you with their business.

Everyone's journey will be different, and there really aren't any surefire solutions for success, nothing is. However, as you develop your own understanding of the vacation rental industry, you'll be able to use these tips and apply your own strategies to lead your way to success.