STR hotel house hack with creative financing

[Craig Jones]

Yes, it's BP buzzword bingo -- but also a real deal. We're closing in a couple weeks on a 5-room motel in the Tahoe area that also has a 4 bed / 2.5 bath / 3000 sqft SFR "manager's unit" that will be our primary residence. Year round tourist demand in Tahoe creates lots of opportunity for the guest rooms. The town treats it as a commercial lodging property so it's exempt from heavy-handed local STR restrictions.

The sellers have been open for biz only part time in their retirement.  Which created historical financials that made commercial financing pretty much impossible.  And no lender was willing to look at financing it as a residential property.  In the end we pitched seller financing, which I thought they'd never go for, but we ended up working something out on pretty favorable terms.

I'm interested to connect with others who are doing boutique hotels / STR hotels, whatever you want to call it. Especially on the software stack you are using. We use OwnerRez + PriceLabs for a traditional STR we own which I've been very happy with. But not sure it's the right fit for this property. And wondering if I should be looking at platforms like CloudBeds, ReservationKey, ResNexus, etc.

[Sarah Kensinger]

Rich Sommers has lots of great content on boutique hotels and so does Micheal Sjogren, so make sure to check them out. I know most boutique hotel operators use Pricelabs with Cloudbeds and have been pretty happy with that set-up.  

Congrats on getting the deal worked out! Your story of "bad" financials that banks laugh at is all too common. Many many deals fall through because the owners are not willing to go the seller financing route and believe they're sitting on a gold mine.