All Forum Posts by: Alex Scattareggia

Hi Alex. I have 22 doors all in Mexico across a few markets and the majority of them are STR´s. What market are you in? Reach out and I am happy to help.

Thanks for the response Michael. 

We cross list on all of the platforms you mentioned above as well as direct book etc.  The appealing part about TripAdvisor is the fee structure which is significantly better than the big 3.  I would love to start pushing business there.  In one of my main markets, they do a significant amount of business, but it is a black box as far as the algorithm and what generates views. 

I always like 52 week destinations over seasonal ones.  Certain beach destinations (non east coast markets) truly do not have ¨slow seasons¨ vs a ski locale for example. Unfortunately when you remove California from the equation because of their regulatory environment you are not left with as many markets.  So short answer is beach depending on the local regulation.

This pushed me to Mexico where there is true 52 week demand from international tourism but also an incredibly lax regulatory environment.  There are of course additional headaches that come from investing out of country but those have been mitigated in the lasts ten years through more foreign investment friendly regulation. 

Good luck!

A couple of helpful metrics that you will want to use to determine if the deal is good bad or otherwise would be the following:

1. Local regulation, upcoming regulation and the general mood of that particular market towards STR.

2. Talk to a local property manager that manages similar properties (area, size and strategy) and get a feel for what this business is going to cost to run on a month by month basis. 

3. Look at comps on AirDna or a similar service and really try to define what a ¨good¨ rental looks like and how it performs comparatively to an underperforming one.  If you can start to categorize the characteristics of a high performing asset in that market vs the underperforming ones you will start to get a feel for what your analyzing a little bit better, basically see if your property is checking the right boxes to be a high performer in that market. 

4. ARV is less useful here because it sounds like this is essentially turnkey and ready to go. So instead, focus on the terms of the deal. Try to get a rough estimate of your expenses (including mortgage) so that you can begin to determine whether this deal will cash flow or not. When you add up estimated expenses you´ll get a ballpark number. When you add up the estimated income, using ultra conservative numbers you´ll have a ballpark number. And if it still looks like a solid cash flowing property you can dive in a little bit deeper to the nitty gritty details.

Those simple steps should be a good starting point.  Good luck!

Has anyone had any significant success using TripAdvisor as an OTA for their short term rentals? 

We recently started experimenting with it across all of our rentals and got one booking over the last 6 months but nothing beyond that.  There are some great features that I actually like over the major OTA´s (including a way better fee structure) but we are not generating any views, let alone bookings.  There isn´t much information out there and obviously I am aware that the renter base is much smaller compared to the big boys but, I am curious if anyone has some insight.  Thank you in advance! 

Would love to provide complementary few nights stay at one of our places in Cabo San Lucas, Oaxaca or Puerto Vallarta if anyone can really bring the heat on the Trip Advisor secrets! Thanks in advance,

Alex 

Firstly I would really have to vet any realtor before I trusted that data over any unbiased and available data out there. Look for someone who exclusively specializes in STR or is a successful STR investor themselves. Especially in the last few years in the markets where I invest I have seen a huge increase in properties being marketed as STRs that were most likely not going to be viable investments for an experienced operator.

 Yes, as has been stated a few times above every state is going to have different regulation around what constitutes a tenant.  

It seems like you are not all that interested in dealing with the headache and are trying to run an STR that happened to have a longer booking? Im sure you already know this but one way to avoid this in the future if you are not interested in hosting mid term guests is to restrict the amount of time guests can stay at your listing to 28 days. Every OTA has the option to set obviously min stays but also max stays. Good luck!