All Forum Posts by: Jay Levy

@Mike Cumbie

This makes complete sense and if the appraiser would have used the square foot method it would have appraiser 10% higher but they used the per unit method, comparing all 2 unit properties regardless of size and only made minor adjustments

@Chris Mason

Every market is different. This is a college market in the off season so students rent and the going rate is 700 a bedroom. Whether the house be 2 bedrooms or 6 it is just a multiple of bedroom count and it’s linear.

In the summer str season a for bedroom house performs about 80% better than a 2 bedroom house.

Not disagreeing that it doesn’t decrease a bit with each bedroom but 5k is incredibly low

@Amy Canfield

I think it definitely depends on the average revenue per booking. If the average revenue is high than 30% is probably very high. 15-20% seems to be around market for local Str renters in the three markets we are in

Also I would pay the decorating as a flat fee one time and reimburse for supplies. Why pay that forever?

@Jeff Conn

We are in similar situation and I think right now there isn’t a great answer. I’m actually a software investor by day and I believe the industry is in a transformation. The old platforms are just that “old” with dated interfaces, scaling problems and a backlog of code to improve.

They newer players are still very early and immature from a scale perspective, systems are buggy, customer support not great.

I think the future is bright for some of the platforms but in the near term there is no great solutions just those that are ok.

@David VanWert

I have about a dozen short term rentals and we don’t do any off platform bookings for a few reasons

1) it tends to “break” process and makes scaling very difficult. The exception to this is if you use a guest Managment system that enables this via your own website

2) we believe having the channels involved in case of major issue is of value for dispute resolution

3) we don’t want to manage local occupancy taxes. Let the channels deal with that

4) there is value in the insurance coverage provided

5) bookings and reviews on platform lead to more bookings and reviews. Snowball effect on the platforms due to search rankings.

If you are building a business to scale I Believe the value of the channels far out ways the some costs of them. If you are managing one to two properties to maximize income I understand doing direct bookings.

@Charles D Cruz

Thanks Charles. Trying to avoid the headache of starting over with another lender. Our contact at the bank agrees the appraisal is nuts he just can’t get the appraiser to move.

@Bryan Devitt

Yup. And the adjustment per bedroom is 5k. Yet those bedrooms generate about 15k a year in rent each.

I'm currently in the process of refinancing a 2 family house which has two 4 bedroom 3 bath units in it.  There are a shortage of multifamily comps in my area and the comps that were used are all 2 bedroom 1 bath two family properties.  The appraiser has decided to use the unit value approach.  We can't use income approach as part of the income is Short Term Vacation rental and the appraiser / bank won't accept that.  With that said the properties typically rent for $800 a bedroom a month, so the bedroom count has a direct impact on the value since in off season its college rentals.

The issue I'm running into is the for the additional 4 bedrooms the appraiser is only giving me $20,000 in adjustments for, though the average per bedroom price of the comps is $175k.

Has anyone had any success in making a case the additional bedrooms should be valued at more than $5000 a bedroom?

For some additional content the property is worth somewhere around $950k - $1.1m.

Thank you for your thoughts and advice.

Hello - 

I'm looking for a platform that enables us to track properties we are looking at purchasing. Ideally this would have a some type of feed into the MLS to be able to pull down data. Does anyone use a system for tracking listings they maybe interested in purchasing?

Jay

Aaron 

I purchased a home from a family member to turn into a rental.  The key advice I got from our accountants / lawyers was to pay market value for it or atleast a justifiable price to what they would have received from the transaction (i.e. you can discount for lack of broker's fee's, quick sale, etc).  While I didn't go thru the appraisal (there was no loan) I did use some other tools to determine market price.

Jay