Duplex in Elgin TX - Short Term Rental?

[Alan Frisk]

Hi all!

Currently in the process of closing on a duplex to house-hack in Elgin Texas, and was curious if anyone has any experience investing/renting out a short term rental in the area? If so, did you get a license to do so? And what is your vacancy like? (We're debating renting out one side as a STR vs LTR)

Thanks!

[Michael Baum]

Hey @Alan Frisk, have you checked with the city/county on the regs?

Neither Bastrop or Travis counties have much if any info on short term rental rules so you will have to call em up.

[Wale Lawal]

@Alan Frisk

Get in touch with local market agents and investors.

A local Investor-Agent can help shorten your learning curve and save you a lot of headaches as they tend to understand the market better.

You can also use Rentometer.com to have an idea of what the property will rent for.

If you don’t have access to that, then use 90% of whatever Zillow Rent Estimate is, this will give you a better insight.

Good luck!

[Alan Frisk]

@Michael Baum@Wale Lawal Thank you both! I looked up the city ordinances and didn't see anything mentioning licensing (only tax info) but will try calling city today and seeing what the situation is. I'll try rentometer/zillow as well for rental info and also just read about airdna.com Thank you both again!

[Carolyn Hodo]

Hi @Alan Frisk, I had a short-term rental in Bastrop for about a year in 2020-2021. I was just outside of city limits but within the ETJ, so I did have to pay taxes to both the county and city. No license was required, but the tax office did collect my info, and shared info about meetings, tax reminders, etc. Actually I think they offered to pay for STR owners to join the Texas Hotel Lodging Association. Fran Hunter in the bastrop county tourism office sent the emails and was very helpful and they seem to be genuinely interested in building the short-term rental market and making it a positive thing for both sides - if you're going to call someone to discuss, I would call her (you will have to look her up as it won't let me post the details). I got the impression they view STR as a positive from the tourism aspect. Elgin is in Bastrop county, but not sure if things are handled differently at all than closer to Bastrop. I was not trying to keep mine booked solid because I was managing it myself while still working full-time, but I generally had bookings at least every weekend and sometimes during the week. I had it set to allow a buffer day or two for cleaning and turnover, so that limited the number of short weekday stays. I was actually surprised how often it was booked and the variety of reasons people were coming to Bastrop. I found it hard to identify comps because there aren't that many other STRs in the area, prices and occupancy varies widely, and some definitely appear better-managed or more seriously managed than others, so I just played with pricing until I seemed to hit the sweet spot as far as quality of guest and occupancy. Overall it was successful and would have been more so if I'd had more time to devote to it - I ended up selling because it wasn't quite worth the stress to me not living close enough and working full time and with the market going wild it made more sense for me to sell last fall. Oh yeah and a bedbug scare (that probably wasn't even real) was the last straw. Let me know if you have more specific questions or feel free to PM me! 

[Alan Frisk]

@Carolyn Hodo Hi Carolyn! Thank you for the response! I just PM'd you with a few follow-up questions.