Ep 67: If You Don't Own the Data, You Don't Have Anything, with Carlos Castillo

Ray (0:00)

Welcome to this week's episode of Superhosts Down Under. This week, we have Carlos on the show. Welcome to the show, Carlos.

Carlos Castillo (0:07)

Thank you so much for having me on. Glad to be here.

Ray (0:12)

Great.

Silvia (0:12)

Welcome, Carlos.

Ray (0:14)

And before we get into your story, we are gonna talk about our topic for the week. Silvia, what do we have as our topic this week?

Silvia (0:24)

Well, I thought we could discuss a common myth. And I've heard property management managers say that landlords think that they're just rent collectors. And anyone involved with property management, which is either in the short-term rental space or in the long-term in a lease, find that people don't understand how much work is involved in property management. And they think it can just run on autopilot. And anyone who's done property management knows that's not the case. There's a lot of work. You've got either landlords or clients. You've got the tenants or the guest. You've got maintenance, you've got repairs.

You've got cleaning.

There's a lot involved. It's not just rent collecting. So I thought we could talk about this subject and what your experiences are. What have you found, Ray?

Ray (1:33)

Well, I started in real estate way before Airbnb. That just dates how old I am. But I started in like long-term rentals in Canada when I was 21 years old. And I didn't have a property manager. I was the property manager. So I had to go collect rent because my tenant did not have a bank account, which should have been a red flag. But he was a tradie and he was a roofer. And so I remember having to collect rent and it was cash. And then some months he was short of cash and then it was challenging. And then eventually I hired a property manager. But then I knew exactly what I was looking for when I was hiring, because I would tell him all the problems I want to give to him instead. Like, oh, you're going to deal with rent collection. He doesn't have a bank account. He's going to be late. And hired this really big muscular property manager was quite intimidating. And he said, go collect rent for me, which is better than me doing it. But I think I knew how painful it was because I did it myself.

And then before I hired someone, because sometimes when you hire someone, you might not think they do anything because you haven't done it yourself. So I knew how hard it was to collect rent, to organize repairs, and then having to report on my property financials and all those, the trust accounting things that a property manager does, the bookkeeping. I did all myself first. And so I really appreciate the value of having one. And now into short-term rentals, I have a co-host and I appreciate the value that they bring because I, I used to host my home shared with guests on the Gold Coast. So I understand about linen service, about check-in, all the messages. I felt the pain of all the questions that, repeated questions across different guests. And so when I hired a co-host, I knew exactly what questions to ask them. How are you going to handle all these things? What systems do you have in place?

And then see their approach to things before I could choose them. Because otherwise, people may just focus on the price or the cost of having help. But it's really the quality that matters because the cost, if you're on a low cost, you can still be losing your reviews and your tenants might be moving out, and then you're stuck with a low cost provider, but you have no guests.

Silvia (4:04)

Yeah, it's actually a job that requires experience, I think. Even an understanding of buildings and materials and all of that, but also the people skills to be dealing with guests, to be dealing with tenants.

There's a lot of communication involved as well, which probably a client doesn't even see.

Ray (4:30)

What do you think, Carlos?

Carlos Castillo (4:33)

Autopilot usually means someone else is doing the labor. The labor hasn't gone away, it's still there.

You got your property managers, your co-hosts, your cleaners, like you guys mentioned, and the work still happens, it's just delegated. The myth, I think, is that no one has to do it, but someone does have to do it. Anyone can automate a check-in message, but nobody automates, is this guest a risk? Do we have last-minute bookings?

How do we handle the maintenance issue at 11 o'clock at night when you're trying to go to bed? So the judgment layer is the real job, in my opinion. Then on top of that, you have a full-time job. Just like I'm trying to run DirectBookMe, you guys are doing your podcast, life happens. So just building all these tools requires constant work, talking to hosts, pricing. There's no shortcut. There's no version that leads you to success right away. It's just like you said, gaining that experience as you go along, whether you're a host, property manager, it's all work.