This A-Frame Airbnb Makes $500k Per Year... Here's How | Checked In

you're probably wondering what i'm doing in waco texas the truth is i came all the way here just to stay in an a-frame and i'm not the only one this a-frame is booked out solid for the next two months you guys know i love airbnb and lately i've seen a lot of people hating on it and while it's true there are some pretty bad ones out there there are also hosts creating amazing experiences you would just never get at a hotel so on this series checked in we're checking into some of the best airbnbs and learning from the hosts that have created them this is isaac french an accountant turned airbnb host him and his wife helen have created what's called the live oak lake a five acre property with seven a-frame cabins i spent two nights here getting to know the property and the story behind it but before we really get into it i've got to thank our sponsor avail for making this series possible you see waco is actually located about an hour and 40 minutes outside of austin so i really needed a rental car to get over there and to get around the city once i was there and that's where avail comes in availa is a car sharing service making it easy to borrow cars or rent out your own car and earn some extra money picking up the car was really easy after my flight i just headed over to one of the airport shuttles it took me to a parking lot that had the car ready and waiting for me i didn't have to wait in a line or anything like that they just went over a few things about the car with me and then i was on my way in under 10 minutes it was a really fast and simple process i rented this suv to get over there and another cool thing about avail is the fact that you can rent out your own car and earn money while you're gone so you can rent your car out to a veil skip paying for airport parking and get 25 a day when they rent your car out and it's all covered by allstate they have their own insurance avail also allows you to add a second driver for free which most car rental companies charge more for so that's really nice for road tripping like we were and you just need a break from driving so thank you to avail for sponsoring this video i'll have a link down below where you guys can check it out and let's get into the live oak lake this is a really unique short-term rental because it's not just one rental it's actually seven rentals but when isaac found this piece of property it looked nothing like this how did you find this piece of land i found that short answer on zillow by checking one morning and it had been listed a couple hours previously and it just looked super promising so it came out an hour later loved it and made a cash offer and was accepted the same day the main feature that i just fell in love with was the live oak trees they're like two 300 year old trees and just beautiful beautiful trees so i felt like it had a ton of potential yeah and how much did it cost the land was 138 000 for 5.1 acres while the land did already have a bunch of trees and seemed like it had potential it wasn't in perfect condition what was the land like when you got it it was like a jungle there was just overgrown trees and plants and bushes everywhere it did have this really cute little pond or like i thought it could be cute it was just kind of a muddy little hole with overgrown trees i wanted to just like really create kind of a park feel and plant tons of trees and like design a commons area by the water and so just all the landscaping was a blast the pond was about half this size and it was full of like trees in the water that were dying so we cleared those trees out and then we dug out this whole end of the pond and built up the spillway so that the whole water level would rise it's also been a learning experience like keeping the pond clear was it like muddy too like did you have it it was like swampy so digging it out and making it deeper yeah you put aerators in it too to keep just the more oxygen in the water and it's healthier for the fish and keeps it clearer when you made it bigger did you have to put down any like i don't know like obviously yeah no uh if you use the right kind of soil which is clay then it holds the water so it won't leak so you kind of just do the clay add water yep just add water you just let it rain and it fills up really really fast the property itself is a 10 out of 10 but how about the interior it's just as important i was collecting ideas really for several years i used to live in the pacific northwest and was very influenced by some of the design there that's really the big reason we chose the modern scandinavian vibe because it was fairly unheard of here in texas the one that i stayed in is a two-bedroom a-frame with one lofted bedroom and one bathroom so when we enter this cabin has a bathroom this is the main only bathroom in this cabin and then we have this stunning galley kitchen the kitchen has a really minimal and modern design and what i love is that they used oak wood which really just goes on the theme of the live oak lake one thing i love that they did is put this picture window right here so we look out onto the lake it's just like so pretty when you're making your morning coffee and then right across from the kitchen is the first bedroom the bedroom has a really clean and minimal design that feels cohesive with the rest of the house this being an a-frame it's not a huge bedroom a lot of times a-frames don't have like massive bedrooms but that is perfectly fine for an airbnb i like this sage green color it feels just very like natural with the outdoors and then we walk into the main living room area [Music] has got to be my favorite part of the a-frame when i walked in here i was just blown away by the view the windows it is just gorgeous in here i was really impressed with the furnishings it felt like an interior designer had put together the space my wife and i did all the interior design and that was a really fun process just like spending a lot of time online but going through furnishing like furniture art from etsy um rights just all of the different elements we had kind of a theme in mind but we certainly hadn't like drawn it all up we were just going to kind of see what was available and what would go together and so that was a real kind of spontaneous creative process it has that warm minimalism some like mid-century furniture more oak love that they have that they have a guest book which obviously i have to sign one thing i think is kind of interesting is there's no tv in here this place is extremely booked out so maybe proof that airbnbs don't necessarily need tvs and now we can head up into the lofted bedroom they've got a spiral staircase to save space and these are also pretty cost effective usually under three thousand dollars for one of these all right now we're at the lofted second bedroom the lofted bedroom actually feels really spacious they were able to fit a queen bed up here with nightstands built in on the side and i love that they also added a skylight to brighten it up but if you don't want that necessarily like blaring into your eyes in the morning they did put a shade on that so obviously we all know that heat rises but no worries because there's another mini split up here if you need an extra boost of ac it's all good you've got it right here overall this living space feels like fairly large because we've got these huge windows and just like it's really bright and open and airy and here is inside the bathroom they did an awesome job with this bathroom i like that there's enough like counter space on the side if you need to put like your curling iron down or something like that beautiful shower this place is brand new and it just like feels brand new it feels so good i really like the black tile and everything it feels like natural stone i think it really complements the other finishes in this house and then outside the a-frame they just installed a brand new hot tub overlooking the pond and a small fire pit you can also grab one of the kayaks and take it out on the pond so it's really cool that you have some amenities like this kayak it's honestly so relaxing out here and fun to look at all the other a-frames and like cruise around here look at all the a-frames all the trees it's like 100 degrees out so the evening's kind of perfect for this in terms of location the live oak lake is just about 10 minutes from downtown waco so i was really glad that i had the avail rental car to get around and go check out some of the hot spots in waco go run a couple errands and grab food and most importantly get a bunch of b-roll shout out to avail because i was just very glad that i had the rental car because you can't really walk to anything from here so inside and out clearly this property is amazing but i was dying to know how much did this all cost and how much is it making now i was originally estimating 1.6 million total all-in it ended up costing us like 2.1 million so you can see our budget climb there but still that's still likely really good for what we got what was the cost to build each a-frame um unfurnished about 220 000 this wasn't isaac's first build so he was able to find ways to save on costs and because they were building in texas there wasn't as much red tape when it comes to permits so they were able to build all the cabins in just nine months i was the general contractor and the designer essentially so i cut probably 30 percent out 30 to 40 of the entire project out someone could expect to probably pay about 20 more if they're using a general contractor yeah that's fair yeah and maybe even a little more because you really know what you're doing i feel like if someone doesn't at all they might not know the best prices for things yes and the main thing is it's going to take longer so you've done a lot of improvements to the land what was the cost like for some of those so i think we put about 200 000 in on five acres between expanding the pond um clearing trees hiring an arborist to trim up all the good trees that we had dock was like eight thousand dollars and it's a floating dock and then probably another two thousand to install it so we have paved roads and fences how much does that cost the pavement was about 60 000 okay and there i mean there's a good amount yeah there's a big network it's totally worth it because you don't have hardly any upkeep and maintenance while the total cost of the project was 2.1 million isaac was able to finance most of it the way we were able to finance that i brought my dad and two brothers in as minority partners and they had access to a line of credit with their construction company so in between the line of credit which was about like 700 000 and then the construction loan was like 1.2 million we were able to pay for it the main thing to keep in mind is that the bank will usually loan 70 to 80 loan to value of the appraised value because when they were issuing a loan we didn't have a pro we didn't have like a property they could come look at so they were going off plans and projections and they appraised it way lower than it even cost us to build they appraised it like 1.4 million it was a good thing we had access to that line of credit we've only been open for six months now so we're only 18 months after we started the project and we've fully refinanced closed on that loan and pulled out all of our cash plus 400 000 because the appraisal came in so much higher once we had the project up and running so what has it been like since you launched on airbnb in your own booking platform in terms of revenue in general we've just blown past every projection that i had on average the cabins get between 250 to 500 per night and even more for holidays so when the property is fully booked up they usually get three to five thousand dollars per night but sometimes even more than that but overall we're on track to gross a million dollars this year from seven doors and um net about five hundred and fifty thousand that's important before dead service yeah yeah that's awesome not long into his airbnb journey though isaac did run into an issue we relied super heavily on airbnb initially but something kind of scary happened like two weeks after we launched we got suspended for no reason for like four days the whole property was just offline so i was kind of freaking out so isaac created his own booking platform where guests can book directly and started promoting it on instagram i knew direct bookings were going to be important from a business value perspective um there's several advantages the main ones are you can make like 10 to 15 more profit because you're not paying the host fees and pass like five percent savings to the guest yeah and you don't have a data wall with the customer like you actually can have their email and their phone number yeah that's really working to them actually for like the repeat growth that's really important we're at like 70 of all bookings are direct and maybe 25 percent of our airbnb and the other five percent are verbo um initially it was 100 airbnb though because that's all we were doing isaac has also found a couple of other revenue sources within his airbnb they now charge a pet fee you can pay for an early check-in and you can also buy firewood pellets you have some add-on purchases so like you can pay for early check-in four of the saving cabins are pet friendly we've never had an issue with pets like i was really leery going into it because i heard from a lot of other hosts that that was just a big no but we've never had it we've had more issues with people than we have with pets yeah um early check it was my favorite because it was truly like free money and it's a fee that they're actually happy to pay so i realized like a couple months into the hosting process that tons of people wanted early check-in and it was a lot of stress on us to like coordinate when to do that and how to do that and and i was like why don't we just monetize this and put this as an option when they book so they know up front this is what check-in is you can get two hours earlier if you'll just pay this and tons of people are more than happy to do that yeah i think we're gonna collect in total between all three of those fees uh like an additional fifty thousand dollars this year just talking to you about this i get the sense like you're really paying attention to every detail is this like a passion project that you really enjoy doing or is it something that you were like i think we could make a lot of money doing this like how did you view it going into it i am an accountant and so i i'm into numbers but no my passion i'm actually an artist as well and like the creative side of it was the fulfillment of so many different endeavors that i've been involved in over the years and just growing up this was by far the most fun thing i've ever done not just designing and building it but now implementing the management and the software to like make it run automated super well and the pricing and then the marketing i just love the whole being able to wear all these different hats at once so that is a look inside and out of the live oak lake driving back i felt so inspired after visiting this place and once again thank you to avail for getting me to and fro in comfort and convenience dropping off the car was just as easy as picking it up took like five to ten minutes and then i was headed home so i'll have a veil link down below if you guys want to check it out i'll also have the live oak lake and isaac's new youtube channel and thank you guys so much for watching be sure to subscribe so you can see the next episode of checked in

Channel: Shelby Church

Views: 1,449,526

Keywords: shelby, church, airbnb, property, million dollar property, waco texas, live oak lake, business, real estate, unique airbnbs, glamping, a frame

Id: zTdE6NYnAvM

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 06 2022