How this L.A. property management company grew its listings by 185% in just one year

Realizing the Potential of Short-Term Rentals in L.A.

In the summer of 2019, MySuite, which branched out of NMS Residential—a privately owned real estate management firm specializing in the professional management of upscale multifamily and mixed-use properties throughout the Greater Los Angeles area—inaugurated its new short-term rental offering, listing its first fully-furnished properties on Airbnb. MySuite has been using Guesty to streamline and manage operations, which played an outsized role in their portfolio ballooning to 228 listings in L.A. in less than two years.

The Challenge

MySuite owns all of its properties, providing them complete control over pricing, design, vacancy, and inventory. As advantageous as this is, MySuite felt that they were still missing three crucial pieces to the puzzle for them to fully fulfill their potential: channel management, reporting and analytics, and revenue optimization.

As a company using a single major OTA, they found it difficult to publish their listings via several accounts, a practice they’ve been using to set apart their various offerings across a slew of different areas in L.A. Moreover, MySuite quickly understood that they were over-reliant on this one OTA’s data to measure their performance, with the platform’s reporting often glitching or retrieving incomplete information. Lastly, it became increasingly difficult to optimize their rate strategies and set pricing with their hyper-growing portfolio.

“It was incredibly hard to adjust pricing and block off dates because each time we had to go to an individual listing on several different accounts,” remarks Irina Ayrapetyan, MySuite’s Director of Furnished Housing, on their first days on the market.

The Solution

With a diverse inventory ranging from vacation rentals, multi-unit, corporate housing, urban city rentals, and aparthotels, MySuite needed a solution to streamline and centralize their operations under a single unified system.

That solution proved to be Guesty, and the timing couldn’t have been better. As COVID-19 struck, the property management company quickly learned that the platform enabled them to pivot and meet emerging traveler trends brought upon by the pandemic easily and seamlessly.

As travelers searched for flexible cancelation policies and booked last minute, MySuite harnessed Guesty’s Revenue Management feature to effortlessly offer additional pricing options and more flexible cancellation policies across their entire inventory. “Guesty allowed us to hone in on our pricing strategy and have tighter booking windows”, says Irina.

Guesty also provided MySuite with the visibility they were craving, giving a clear, ongoing picture of their performance and helping them make informed decisions on how to improve their operations. By harnessing Guesty’s Multi-Unit and Channel Manager features, MySuite was able to “divide and conquer” their different types of properties, grouping together similar listings to simplify management and optimize occupancy while simultaneously publishing and adjusting their hundreds of listings online. Signaling out the immediate impact the Multi-Unit feature has had on operations, Ayrapetyan said the following: “We have a lot of tiny apartments in the same building, and they are identical with furniture and amenities; their only difference is their score level. Now instead, of setting up pricing for each individual one, we can price out all of them at the same time.”

The Results

In just one year, MySuite increased its listings by 185%, growing from 80 properties in 2020 to 228 in 2021 and extending its footprint to new areas of L.A. Their annual revenue increased by 10% as a direct result of using Guesty, which is not surprising given that their occupancy rates never dip below 90%. Listing and updating their properties, typically taking them 4-5 hours, was cut down to a 30 minutes ordeal.

MySuite has been able to stay lean as they grow, with just eleven full-time team members orchestrating the company’s operations. With that said, Ayrapetyan stated that without Guesty, MySuite “would have had to hire at least 3-4 more full-time employees.”

With Guesty by their side, there’s no question MySuite are well on their way to achieving their vision of being the number one furnished housing provider in greater Los Angeles.