How I Host: Mikel in Death Valley
Mikel Hubbard is the Co-Owner of x8 Property and Design who created the Designed to Death Airbnb in Beatty, NV near Death Valley.
WHAT’S YOUR STORY?
I was a reality television development executive in Los Angeles and by my mid-thirties, still had never owned property in my life. My title may have sounded fancy, but I couldn’t afford to buy in the city and had never wanted the expense and uncertainty of owning anything. Within six years, I owned three Airbnbs with my business partner and started remodeling homes into Airbnbs to sell to others. As corny as it may sound, short term rentals have completely changed my life.
HOW DID YOU DO IT?
I never set out to do this. While hiking the Lost Coast with a friend on vacation, we talked about flipping a house together. We used to work together in TV— I was a producer, she was the talent on an HGTV show. She found a house in Lake Tahoe, the cheapest one on the market, and I bought it sight unseen. When it was ready to sell, it was the first week of December, which is not exactly prime house shopping time, especially in snowy Tahoe. So, we decided to rent it out over the holidays as a test, while it was listed to be sold. Long story short, the bookings went nuts, and we decided if we kept it for one full year, we wouldn’t have to pay short term gain taxes on it. We never sold. Before I knew it, we had three rentals!
WHAT IS YOUR BEST HOSTING SECRET OR TIP?
Hosting multiple properties from afar is not necessarily easy, but it’s a lot easier than it looks. If you’ve got a good cleaner and good resources to help you in that town, you really don’t need a management company. The only thing that can be tricky is if your job is inflexible or you live in a different time zone that’s way off from the one your homes are in. Otherwise, you can pretty much do anything you need to over the phone or the internet. I’ve only been to Tahoe once in the last year! Caveat: we do have a house manager in Death Valley, because literally no one lives there.
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE DESIGNS?
I didn’t! My business partner Karen is a killer interior designer and she thinks a house should tell a story. For example, with our Joshua Tree property, she wanted it to be the house that a late 60’s/early 70’s British rock n’ roll couple owned in Morocco, where you get to spend the weekend!
WHAT’S THE GREATEST THING TO COME OUT OF HOSTING?
I was able to start my own company with my friend, Karen McAloon. Now we do interior design projects, flip houses and manage our rentals, as well as help others by property managing their homes. I really wonder if I’ll ever work a normal job again.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE DEATH VALLEY?
Deciding to do a house in Death Valley was a challenge because barely anyone lives there. We were told by our realtor there are no contractors in the town we wanted to do a house in, so we decided to bring a crew from out of town and have them live on site to do the renovations. With no real proven Airbnb market there, it’s been a giant leap of faith. It’s a National Park in California and far enough from a major city that it requires a place to stay (and the weather is generally not camping friendly). I wasn’t ecstatic about the lodging options in the park, so we jumped. So far, so good and if it works, we’ll definitely want to do more.
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