Ashley Kehr:
A group of out- of-town developers tried to box today’s guest out of her own desert backyard, buying up the land around her Joshua Tree property to put up McMansion vacation rentals on every acre in site. The pressure forced her into a high stakes bet she never planned to make, turn one short-term rental into something that could actually compete with the operators flooding the market.

Tony Robinson:
And five months later, that same property is in the top 1% of all Airbnbs in that market on the platform and every single guest review is a perfect five stars. Erin Robinson is going to break down exactly how she pulled it off, the renovation decisions, the amenity stack, the listening playbook that any rookie can use, no matter what.

Ashley Kehr:
This is The Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I’m Ashley Kerr.

Tony Robinson:
And I’m Tony J. Robinson. And let’s give a big, warm welcome to my long lost cousin Aaron Robinson. Aaron, thank you for joining us today.

Erin Robinson:
Thank you for having me. I’m always honored to be a part of anything that a Robinson is doing. So thanks for having me.

Ashley Kehr:
So Aaron, before we get into any of the real estate stuff, let’s start at the beginning of your long lost cousinship with Tony here. Who was Aaron Robinson before real estate? What kind of work were you doing and how did life look different before short-term rentals even crossed your mind?

Erin Robinson:
Yeah. Well, I found Tony and his lovely wife on YouTube because I’m also a Robinson and the Real Estate Robinsons was such a great name and I was like, “Oh, I have to figure out who these people are. ” And lo and behold, they were teaching me so much about how to prepare for our Airbnb journey, which I was completely a novice in and never done it before. So I think Tony and I just reached out. I reached out to him via Instagram and we just got on a call to chat. I don’t even know what we chatted about. It’s been a while, but they’re still such a great resource for us. I always try to stay in the loop of whatever Tony is saying because I’ve learned so much from him in this whole real estate Airbnb journey. Oh, and also I was a content creator.
So YouTube is where I go not only for my job, but also for my research. So I’ve been a content creator for over a decade. I helped build a brand called Clever and it did really, really well. I’ve been able to travel the world and work with brands and create amazing content. And I feel really lucky to have been a creator first and be able to document our Airbnb renovation and now my Airbnb hosting journey on social. So it is a fun mix of both my real estate investment journey and my content creator journey. Yeah.

Tony Robinson:
And Erin, I didn’t know that you’d been creating content for that long. I mean, 10 years. I mean, you’re one of maybe the more mature content creators that are on the platform because I feel like so many folks kind of come in, especially post COVID. But what was it that made you even consider real estate investing as a path forward for you? Why not just continue to kind of double down on what you were doing as a content creator? Why branch into real estate at all?

Erin Robinson:
Yeah, I still do both and I felt like there was room in my life to do both and especially creating content around the home and work with partners that I had always wanted to work with. I’ve worked with LG and Redwood Outdoors and SmartWings, which is a great motorized blind company. And so I felt like there was an opportunity to continue doing what I was doing while I was renovating the house, but we weren’t really looking for a real estate investment property when we started. The Airbnb journey started out of a moment of kind of sadness in our life. We had gone through a pretty difficult fertility journey. My husband and I, we’d spent a ton of money and spent so much time and it was so heartbreaking and years of going on and on and never feeling like at the end of it we would ever be able to have children.
And so after our second major loss, I just looked at my husband and I was like, “I need a new project where I’m going to spend all of my time and all of my money where at the end of it I have something to show for it that I love.” And so it was really this almost therapy journey to take on the property as like my passion project and it really did help heal me in a lot of ways. And so my husband was hesitant at first. We did have a good chunk of savings set aside and he’s like, “Are you sure you want to do this? You’ve never done this before. You’re about two and a half hours away from the house. We don’t know anyone up there. How are you going to do it? Are you sure you want to do it? ” And I just was in such a desperate mental place.
I was like, “I’ll do anything else. I need to take a break.” And so it really started in that mindset, which I don’t know if that’s everyone’s starting line, but it really did evolve into a huge love for both of us, my husband and I. We also are co-investors with my husband’s parents. So we have partners, but it became this lovely, wonderful, healing home journey for us, which sometimes renovating a house does not end that way, but for us it did.

Ashley Kehr:
Tony, you have to take the next question because I don’t know how to pronounce that name and people annihilate me online. Sorry, I wrote a note for you, but you must not have seen it. I

Tony Robinson:
Can see.

Ashley Kehr:
Is it Yuca? Yucca? Yucca.

Tony Robinson:
Yucca.

Ashley Kehr:
Yucca. See, I was going to say Yuka. Yeah.

Tony Robinson:
So Aaron, how did you end up planting your flag in Yucca Valley, which is the city right next to Joshua Tree National Park specifically? I think when most rookies here are desert short-term rentals, they think risks and seasonality, what made this the market that was the right choice for you?

Erin Robinson:
Well, I blame you because you have properties there and you’re like, “It’s so great here.” No, like I mentioned, it’s about two and a half hours outside of LA. It’s also a place when you live in LA, it’s noisy, it’s chaotic. There’s traffic. There’s crazy neighbors that are yelling all the time. You don’t really get a peaceable life. And so my husband and I wanted a place that we could also go and enjoy and take a deep breath and reset ourselves. I don’t know if you’ve ever been up there, Ashley, but it’s such a beautiful serene place and we got really lucky and I would recommend this to anyone right now who is looking to purchase an Airbnb. We found a property that has the most amazing views. Tony, you guys are going to have to come visit. It is like where we are, there really aren’t a ton of homes.
We’re at the end of a long dirt road. You can barely see my neighbor’s house from one window, but the rest of the home is fully unobstructed views. And so it was just a magical location, which I think in this very cluttered market, you really need to start picking properties that when you step outside there is an experience waiting for people so much so that what you do in your house almost really doesn’t matter. It’s what people experience when they step outside of your house. And so when we saw it, we knew immediately. I actually saw it gone on Redfin one day and within three hours I was already at the property and I was the second person to view it. And so by the time I got home, the people who were the first to view it had already put in an offer. So we were a backup offer on the property because I couldn’t get home in time to fill out the paperwork.
So I knew it was a high-end demand property just because of where it was located.

Ashley Kehr:
Now during this high-tensity time trying to get this property, what ended up happening that you went from the backup to getting it under contract?

Erin Robinson:
Yeah. I think it was sheer luck because the other couple really, really wanted it. I don’t know why they backed out. I’m very happy that they did. So we ended up getting the property. We had been a backup on another property that we lost prior to this home and that one really hurt because it also was an amazing viewed property. It was just unreal. So I thought, oh, we’re going to lose it again. But we got really, really lucky and for whatever reason, the couple who wanted to buy it decided to opt out. So we got it.

Ashley Kehr:
Now how long did you have this property and how long was it operating as a short-term rental before you find out that developers are basically surrounding you?

Erin Robinson:
So when we bought the property, it was operating as a short-term rental from the previous owner. I mean, it was not a great short-term rental and I wouldn’t really have paid even the prices he was charging to stay there. It was not quite up to my standards. I knew I was going to have a big renovation project on my hands, but we had started renovating the house. So we hadn’t had it on the market for too long actually. No, we didn’t have it on the market at all for renting. We just started renovations and I came out to monitor my contractors one day and I saw the sign for sale sign and I’m thinking, “Well, there’s not much back here. What could be for sale out here?” And I went online and saw that think of our property as like a quadrant. We’re in the lower left-hand quadrant.
The other three quadrants all around us were being sold together and there was one of them that had plans already designs in place to build another, I say McMansion. It looked like a big black box, which they’re very popular in the desert and I don’t mind them, but when your entire house is oriented with giant picture windows to face a giant black box, it really starts to freak you out and other parcels on the property were cleared. I don’t know if you know much about the Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley area, but Joshua trees are a protected species and you have to get permits to remove them and it’s very expensive. And so all of three of these properties were pretty cleared and available for other homes to be built. So we knew that this was not going to be a good thing if we didn’t buy this land.
Unfortunately, all of our money was supposed to be going towards our renovation and not towards buying land like Monopoly. We weren’t quite at that place in our portfolio yet, but I called my family, I called my husband, all panicked. I was like, “You know what? We don’t have an option.” And land, you can’t get a mortgage on land, right? So you have to have cash for that. And so we all just agreed we would put an offer, it was around Christmas, it was awful timing. My husband’s parents were also building a condo in Cabo at the time and so we were just like, “Let’s just do it. We’ll just not get Christmas presents this year, everyone.” And we were a backup offer and I was so bummed. Oh,

Tony Robinson:
You were a backup offer again on the land?

Erin Robinson:
Yeah, that’s like the story of my life I think with property. Maybe it’s a good thing. It’s a blessing, but we are a backup offer. So we just kind of gave it to God. We’re like, “If it’s meant to be, it’ll come back around.” And one day I was walking in Home Depot getting project or materials for a project at our Yaca Valley house and my realtor called, she goes, “Are you sitting down?” And I’m like, “Oh no, I’m actually in the cleaning aisle at Home Depot. What’s going on? ” She said, “Well, you guys got your offer accepted. The original investors backed out because they wanted a bigger house.” So we got the land and now the land is preserved. There is no McMansion on it, thank goodness. And it really does give us a peace of mind that we can really fully invest in our home and feel like the value of the views is going to be there.

Tony Robinson:
So how big now Aaron is the entire parcel with the one that you initially purchased plus the second?

Erin Robinson:
Yeah. The first parcel was about an acre and a half and then with all of it included, we have 10 acres now.

Tony Robinson:
Wow, that’s fantastic. That’s like a really private retreat. And even that in and of itself is a big selling point for folks who are coming from LA, from San Francisco, from San Diego, and that they want a litle bit of quiet from the hustle and bustle of those cities, being able to sell them on 10 acres. I mean, man, that’s a big selling point.

Erin Robinson:
Our guests can obviously explore and hike. It’s a very terrainy 10 acres as well. There’s some boulder areas and lots of places you can hike. We do have a lot of dirt bike riders out there. It’s their favorite place to ride. So it is a very amazing parcel, 10 acres.

Ashley Kehr:
Now, did you need to pivot at all to kind of make your deal make sense now with this basically an added expense of acquiring this property? Was there now any more pressure to get the renovation done sooner or to find ways to increase your nightly rate just to justify adding on this extra parcel?

Erin Robinson:
Yeah. So transparently we have plans in the future to really turn that property into something a little bit more, more of like a venue style space. So for us it was like a hold. We were going to hold on this for probably five, 10 years. So we knew what we were going to do with it and then we took a lot longer to renovate the house because we ran out of funds that we had to almost extend our renovation time by a lot because we had spent so much of our cash buying the property and that was a risk that we were willing to take for the value add of having that would be. So it did slow us down in getting the property on the market and we did think that we’d have to now really lean into the luxury angle of our property and raise our prices a little bit.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Erin, we’re going to take a quick break, but so far we’ve learned that you made a decision and now the real work has started on getting this property renovated and up and running. You weren’t the contractor, you weren’t the designer, you weren’t an experienced investor at the time, but you were a content creator with a vision and a budget and a property that had to perform fast. So we’re going to find out how Erin pulled off a top 1% renovation coming up right after a quick word from today’s show sponsors. Okay, welcome back. So Erin owns the property, the developers are offer back, but now she has a renovation she’s never tackled before and a short-term rental market full of operators who’ve been doing this for years. So let’s get into how Erin actually built it. So Erin, the day that you walked into that property knowing it had to perform as a short-term rental and not just a beautiful home, what was the first thing that you knew you had to change and had to renovate on this property?

Erin Robinson:
Is everything an acceptable answer? At first, because I’d never done this before I walked with a house, I was like, “We can just add a few things. We can paint the walls. We can put some new flooring in. ” And then before I know it, I’ve got new windows, a full kitchen remodel, two full bathroom remodels. I’m in their skim coating walls myself because I didn’t have $12,000 to pay someone to do it. I was like, “Oh my gosh, what have we done?” But once you start doing something and it looks good, everything else starts to look bad around it. And so I always recommend if you have an Airbnb and you’re going to do some renovations, just give yourself a little cushion because I guarantee you that you’re going to get in there, it’s going to look great and then you’re really going to want to do something else.

Tony Robinson:
Aaron, how did you decide what to renovate versus what to keep? Because there’s a thin line there, especially when we’re working with a fixed budget of making sure like, okay, well, how do we make sure we execute on things that are most important? So what would your decision making process to say leave it as is, or we probably need to replace this?

Erin Robinson:
Honestly, Tony, we did everything for the most part. I mean, we thought we were going to leave some things like our kitchen cabinets. I thought I was going to DIY and kind of paint them and they were oak and they were pretty. But when the contractors started redoing the floors, I realized the bottom of the cabinets were damaged and I really wanted do countertops and I knew that if I was going to do new countertops, I was probably going to damage them more. So it just became this decision of, look, we want to really elevate this property from top to bottom. If we piecemealed it, there are going to be aspects. It was a 1985 home. There were going to be aspects that felt like an oversight. So we just made the commitment that we’re just going to do this to the best of our ability in every way and we would definitely get the return in the long run, but we also wanted to renovate it in a way that we would enjoy it and that we would want to go spend our family vacations there.
And so it’s unlike a lot of other real estate investors who are just trying to obviously make profits off their property, this is our vacation home. This is where we go for birthdays and holidays and time off. We don’t really travel very much anymore and we wanted the mattresses to be amazing. We wanted to make sure that we had a microwave, that we had a kettle, that we had everything that we personally wanted. So I wish I could say that we were strategic, but we just did it all. We just ripped it all out and built it the way that we wanted it to be.

Ashley Kehr:
Was there anything that maybe you thought you wanted in the property as to like … I went to one of Tony’s short-term rental conferences before and everyone’s chanting hot tub, hot tub, a hot tub. And that was like a hot amenity you had to have in these certain markets or else you’re not even going to get a booking. So was there anything going into this that you thought I’m going to have? And then after you got into it, maybe it wasn’t in the budget anymore or you actually figured out a different amenity would be worth it.

Erin Robinson:
So in order to be competitive, I went on Airbnb and I checked all the boxes of a place that I would want to rent if I wanted to have the ultimate desert getaway. So I checked the pool, which is kind of rare in the desert. I checked hot tub, of course. I checked sauna, I checked outdoor shower, I checked fire pit, everything that I wanted and I also checked gym or some sort of workout room. When I did that, there were only like 10 properties that I would be competing against if I provided all of those amenities. And so I researched all of those 10 properties to see how they were doing it and how I could maybe do ours a little bit better and more efficiently. My biggest regret is we did not turn our garage into a gym. I wish we had because our mindset was, let’s get it on the market, let’s start making some money and then we’ll come back and then renovate.
This is part two. Once you start making money on a property, it is so hard to shut it down to go back in and spend more money to do something else. I did make that call. I do regret that even though it would’ve cost us probably another 15 grand to do that and we really didn’t have the money. I wish I would’ve just bit the bullet and done it because now that it’s up and running, I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.

Tony Robinson:
Well, on that note, right, what’s something that maybe went wrong or that you got wrong during this renovation? Because obviously we know it wasn’t all clean, right? So maybe what cost you money, time, or sleep that you do differently if you could start this renovation again tomorrow?

Erin Robinson:
Yeah, there are two things. The first one is hiring more vetted contractors. Tony, I’m sure you remember back kind of post COVID contractors in the high desert were really difficult to find and they were booking two, three years out. So there really wasn’t enough supply for the demand. So I ended up having to kind of piecemeal my contracting team and because of that, I didn’t do the proper vetting and I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but there were some things in our showers that had to be ripped out and redone because they were done incorrectly. So I’d always recommend vetting, vetting, vetting, vetting your contractors because you don’t want to mess around with water leaks or electrical issues. The second thing is I might do less amenities because what I did not realize everybody’s preaching, like do all of the amenities because that’s what people want.
And it’s true, but there’s a caveat and the caveat is amenities that don’t have a ton of maintenance and that piece of that advice was missing for me and I bought this amazing way. I partnered with Redwood Outdoors. They have the most amazing saunas. If anybody’s in the market for a sauna, even for their personal life, I highly recommend them, but with this beautiful cedar sauna and in the desert that UV light just destroys wood. So every almost six months now I have to pay someone to come out and sand it and reseal it with oil, which is another $1,500, $2,000 every time that happens. And so yes, it’s a great amenity. Yes, I add cost to our bookings, but there is a max that you can really add to the cost per night and you really have to weigh, is this a cool amenity that’s amazing with is it how much time and energy and cost is it going to cost me in keeping this up?
And guests complain if it’s not perfect. I had a guest message me and say, “Hey, inside your sauna, the seat, there was like a little splinter and I got it in my butt.” I’m like, “That’s a terrible thing. Thank you for not leaving that in the public reviews. I will make sure I have somebody come out and sand it. ” It’s just when you have amenities that are high maintenance, you really do have to account for the time and money that you have to spend to keep it going.

Ashley Kehr:
Now what about for a rookie listener who’s maybe renovating a $200,000 cabin in a different market, but it’s not a luxury build in the desert. What’s actually transferable from your renovation, your playbook that maybe you would recommend that they should do or what their process should be? What’s the principle and not necessarily the price tag? What are the standards that they should be doing?

Erin Robinson:
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but in this market it is so competitive right now. I feel like if you’re going to do a renovation, you do need to invest in three to five luxury items at your property. It doesn’t have to all be luxury. I’m a big believer in high low. I’ve got Amazon curtains, I’ve got Amazon rugs, but you do need to pick and choose places that are your show off standout moments. For instance, I think a lot of investors or short-term rental hosts are going to be mad about this. I hate memory foam mattresses. I know they’re a very popular item. They’re really inexpensive and some people do like them, but when you sleep on a luxury spring mattress, there is just something special about that. And we did invest a lot of money in our mattresses. Now they’re wrapped three or four times.
We’ve got good insurance, so God forbid anything ever happens, we’d be able to replace them. But I can’t tell you how often I get text messages from guests who left who are sleeping in their own bed and they’re like, “Wait, this is not going to cut it after sleeping your bed. Where do you buy the mattress?” People asking me about our bedding, our duvet comforters on both of our beds costs I think around $450 each. They’re not cheap. They’re more expensive than the comforter on my own bed, but I get tons of people requesting those. You can also affiliate link those items as well and make a commission off of it. But if you’ll read my reviews, the people will say they slept so well. And it is this one thing when you’re on vacation, you want to get rest, right? You’ve traveled, you’re on a plane, you’re sleeping in a new bed for the first time.
It really needs to be something that makes a huge impact. So while my dishes I bought on sale from Kirkland’s for like a dollar and 50 cents a plate, my bed is amazing. And so you just have to pick and choose a few things. I also would recommend people install something in their home that feels unique. So when people come and stay there, they’re like, “Oh, I don’t have this in my house.” So for us, that was heated floors in our bathrooms, not a super expensive add-on if you’re already doing a bathroom renovation and the square footage is pretty small in our bathroom. So it wasn’t something that was going to really break our budget, but it is something that I get mentioned in our reviews. I get mentioned in my DMs about it just because when you go walk on a warm, toasty floor, especially if you’re doing a cabin in the woods somewhere, it just changes you somehow.
You could even install something post renovation like a heated towel rack that just has just like a little Genesequoi that makes your property stand out and when people leave, they remember it. So my advice is you don’t have to do luxury all over the place, but I would pick a handful of things that really make your guest feel like they’re staying in a luxury place.

Ashley Kehr:
The Easter Bunny actually brought me one of those to keep my towels and I cannot go back now. We don’t have one at our lake house now and we went and got and stayed there. I’m like, “This is awful. I’m freezing.” Whereas my heated warm towel.

Tony Robinson:
You guys are teaching me something new. I don’t think I’ve ever had a warm towel when-

Ashley Kehr:
Don’t do it because then you’ll never be able to go back. Yeah.

Tony Robinson:
What are these cold towels that I’m dealing with? Well, Aaron, I mean, a great property is just a beautiful, empty house, but Erin’s in the top 1% of all Airbnbs just after five months fully booked, five stars across the board. So I’m curious, how does anyone actually find it? So up next, we’re going to talk about the booking engine she’s built after the renovation. All right, the property’s done. The photos look incredible, but now the real test is, can people actually book it? And Erin, before we even talk about what happened, you invest all of this capital into the property, then the additional capital to buy the land, then the additional capitals to do the renovation. Do you remember that night when you actually hit publish and how were you feeling? Because I can imagine there’s maybe a lot of tension about, is it actually going to work?
So maybe just take us back to that day. What were you thinking?

Erin Robinson:
I don’t want to go back there. That’s just such a scary day. I was like, oh my gosh, when you have renovated a property for two or three years, you’re kind of quasi living there. So you get really emotionally attached to your property and I was really struggling with the idea of having strangers sleep in my home. And I’m like, “Erin, that is not the right mindset. This is a vacation property. We’re going to make money off this. You have to get rid of that thought.” But it really did haunt me for a long time. So putting publish, because you’re opening your home up to strangers, you hope that they treat your home as delicately and amazingly as you do. So I hit publish and I panicked mostly because I was worried about the operations of … We have a pretty hardy contract. My husband’s an attorney, so we have a really strong rental agreement and we require guests to sign that.
We mentioned that in our listing. We also require guests to send us a photo ID. So the logistics of coordinating that was also very stressful for me. It’s very easy. I don’t know why I was so panicked about it, but it was really, really … And I also launched the property over basically the holidays, so mid-November. So we had our second guest check in on Thanksgiving Day while we were traveling in Texas, which also sent me into a panic because they couldn’t figure out how to work the hot tub because our hot tub is managed via an iPad. And so I’m troubleshooting with the guest on Thanksgiving Day. It ended up being amazing and not a big deal at all. But I was truly panicked, but I will say after about guest six, I started to really be very comfortable with it. So if you’re nervous, just give it six guests and then you’ll finally start to feel at peace about it.

Ashley Kehr:
So Erin, being in the top 1% of all Airbnbs is an amazing accomplishment and what does that actually look like in your numbers right now? Do you see a big difference in your occupancy, your average daily rate, your gross revenue with having that kind of badge on your profile?

Erin Robinson:
So we’re almost fully booked for the next three months. We’ve had multiple $10,000 plus months already. I don’t know if that badge helps me or not. I’m so new to Airbnb, you guys could probably speak to it more than I can, but we have been really booked and one thing that I did that I was a little scared to do that I would, I don’t know if I should recommend it because I feel like it’s a heck for me, but I went from having a two night minimum to having a three night minimum and I thought for sure that would decrease my bookings and it would push me down on the algorithm and I don’t think I’ve ever been busier since I made that change. I get a lot of guests who are coming from out of town with the two night minimum, you get a lot of guests who are local who are just going to come book the two days of the weekend.
But if you say, “Look, I’m only going to take a three night minimum or a four night minimum,” then you’re really going to get the Those people who are already coming out to want to stay for a week or more. I find my occupancy is greater because I did that and that was a scary change that has really paid off for us.

Tony Robinson:
I think one thing I’d add to that, Erin, is that part of the reason you’re probably able to command that longer minimum night stay is because you have a really, really strong product. And for the person who’s listening, who wants to replicate that, you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got as strong of a product as Aaron does because if you’re like a bottom 25% type listing, you probably need a lot of one night stays, honestly, to try and keep your calendar filled. But if you’ve got a strong product, that’s what allows you to not only charge higher daily rates, but also command longer minimum night’s days.

Erin Robinson:
That’s a good point. And also when we were putting all of these crazy amenities into the property, I did have this goal of I want people who stay here to never want to leave. We have three million visitors a year who come to the national park, which is amazing and I love that people love to hike and go there, but I wanted people to, when they checked in our home, and it actually has happened a lot of times, some guests are like, “We didn’t even leave the whole time.” I want them to feel like it’s an all inclusive resort home. So when you do offer that many amenities, people want to stay for longer days to enjoy all of the amenities. So that is a good point. If you want to increase your minimum booking, you do have to have a home that offers a lot.

Ashley Kehr:
Now, Erin, you also have a 200,000 plus follower audience on Instagram, but before your audience, what did you do at the listing level that any rookie could copy before even sharing it with your audience on Instagram?

Erin Robinson:
I did a lot of market research on who my competitors, and I hate saying that because I actually am friends with some of our competitors, but who our competitors were in the market. I was reading their captions and trying to figure out why they were so popular and what they were doing to get all of these amazing guests. And I just kind of put that in my own version. I use them a lot as inspiration. I actually haven’t touched my copy very much. It’s probably something I should do because I’m pretty sure there’s some things in there I’d like to tweak now that I’ve had guests come and stay and give feedback and have questions. But I actually put it on Airbnb for a few months before I ever actually opened up my calendar just because I wanted to toy around with tech copy, like what do I really want to promote?
What do I want to not promote in terms of amenities that maybe they were great amenities, but they caused me some issues. They might be something I take out eventually. So I really played around with copy, but in terms of growing the following through my own personal following, I’m not quite sure it translates just yet. I did build a few thousand followers on our home Instagram pages at the Juniper Yucca Valley if anybody wants to go follow it, but I feel like I got a lot of followers there who are looking for potential homes to book and not really my own personal following coming because my following is all over the country and a lot of them, they’ve bookmarked it that they want to come in the future, but I don’t think I’ve had a follower stay with us just yet. I’m actually nervous because they know me so intimately and personally.
If a follower stays, I’m going to be extra nervous because they’ve seen my journey and I want to give them the best experience imaginable. So I hope nobody stays for a while until I can fully get my feet underneath me.

Tony Robinson:
I mean, but Aaron, you’ve got basically all perfect five-star reviews and that doesn’t happen by accident. So what’s the system that you’ve built around guest experience from the second they book until the second they actually check out of your property? What does that experience look like and what are you doing to maintain those perfect five-star reviews?

Erin Robinson:
I’m going to tell you something that a lot of Airbnb gurus may not tell you. Everybody’s like, “Automate your systems. You can put in all these messages that you don’t have to pay attention to and it just sends.” I think that is not my approach. I know it works for some people, but when you’re starting out and you’re learning your property and you’re learning what your guest needs and wants, you really shouldn’t be automating anything. You should be very attentive. It will take at least in my POV six months or a year in order to really understand what messaging works, what your issues are. I am on my phone constantly. I’m babysitting my listing constantly, whether it is a holiday or a vacation, I’m always on it and I’m jumping within maybe four or five minutes if a guest responds I have my notifications on.
It panics me if I’m going to be on an airplane for a couple of hours because I may not be able to respond right away. I wish I could say I have some secret sauce, but it’s really babysitting the guest and not bugging them. I don’t chime in and bug them every day, but I just want to be available to them. I also worked in hospitality for a really long time, the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood and it was owned by Topson Hotels and hospitality was something that I just learned in that job. And so I’m just geared and oriented to want to curate an experience where people have a good time. So it’s easy for me to be on and ready to help in any way possible at all times.

Ashley Kehr:
Aaron, I was ready to be like, “I completely disagree. I love the automation. I never message a guest. They do it way better than I do the AI responding to it. I love it. But you made such a valid point. The reason my AI responds so good is because I have about five years of messages that have gone on where it was me or my co-host or my cleaner to actually train the AI how to answer things. So that I think is such a big difference. If this is the first time when you’re first listing a property, it really probably is so valuable to respond yourself to actually … And then the AI can go in and it can be trained after you’ve already had those messages. So that is a really great point that maybe starting off with automated mesaging is really not the best way to start your property.

Erin Robinson:
And I’m teaching myself about my own property through this journey too. And I think being present and really thinking through what the guest is telling me, how do I make that better in the future? Who do I need to call to coordinate to add some value to that? It really teaches me and trains me as a rookie to be able to bob and weave here in the beginning. I do think there’s a world in which I could automate it in the future, at least some parts of it. I’m a little bit of a micromanager, so I don’t know if I’d ever give the power over to AI fully, but while I’m learning, I’m in it to win it.

Tony Robinson:
There’s a study, I can’t remember who ran the study, but I saw this data point somewhere where there’s like an inverse relationship between the number of listings that a person or a company manages and their review score. So basically the more listings you start to take on, the lower your actual review score across those listings becomes. And I think part of that is exactly what you said. It’s what you’re doing does work if you’ve got one listing and you can really put a lot of care and attention, but that’s why when you look at the evolves or the Vacasas of the world that have 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,000 listings in a lot of markets, they are sometimes the worst when it comes to review scores because it is very, very hard to operationalize a very curated experience at scale. So there’s something to be said about being able to find your sweet spot like, “Hey, where is that sweet spot where I feel like I can continue to give this level of experience and catering to the guests in that way?” So I guess maybe my last question for you, Erin, is as you think about the future, are there now multiple Juniper houses and maybe different markets?
What’s the goal for you guys as you think about the next phase of your investing journey?

Erin Robinson:
So our investment journey is probably going to not be Airbnbs exactly. I think Airbnbs are great and we’ve loved having this property, but like you mentioned, scaling is you do start to lose a little bit of that human touch. And I think that’s part of why I love it so much. And so I think for us, like I mentioned, we’re going to probably venture into some venue spaces as our next endeavor. And it’s something my husband and I love businesses. We’ve built businesses, we run businesses. For us, Airbnb, while it is a good business for some, it is a challenging business right now. And so we really are looking for real estate in different ways where we can make a better ROI. And so I think this might be one of our few Airbnbs, although I’m not opposed to doing a few in some of my favorite places in the US so that it’s a personal, selfish reason to do them.
But I think that for us, this is just phase one of a larger goal and a larger real estate investment journey for us.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Erin, thank you so much for joining us today on Real Estate Rookie. Can you tell us where people can reach out to you and find out more information about your journey?

Erin Robinson:
Yeah. Anybody is welcome to come stay with us at our Yucca Valley place. It’s a very special, amazing, private getaway in Yucca Valley. You can follow us on Instagram at thejuniper Yucca Valley and you can follow me if you want on Instagram. I do a lot of lifestyle food content on my own personal channel. It’s @AaronRobinson.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Erin, thanks so much again for coming on and sharing your tips for hosting one of the top 1% Airbnbs in your market and for sharing your journey with our rookie listeners. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.