All Forum Posts by: Allen Duan

 Hi Shannon! We ordered our furniture from HostGPO and our small household items from Amazon. I find that the small items from Amazon mostly arrive within 2 to 3 days, pretty consistently. Furniture has all sorts of delivery times. With HostGPO and the white glove delivery service, all of the furniture gets delivered to a local warehouse, and once it all arrives they schedule a time to bring all of it to the property at the same time. My designer pretty much waited for that notification before she scheduled her trip out to the property. Between the furniture and Amazon, all the items arrived the day before or during her few days on site. 

We also used Taskrabbit and one of the guys went to the property to bring packages inside that arrived a day too early. The owner had a lockbox on site to make it easy. 

Hope that helps! We've furnished and set up over 40 MTRs and STRs and have learned a thing or two :)

 Unfortunately there isn't much synchronization between the PMS and guidebooks. You would think. They don't seem to talk to each other much. Still a great PMS though.

If starting a business, as opposed to investing in purchasing real estate, is of interest to you, it looks like you already have the chops to start your own property management business. I own a MTR and STR management business in Los Angeles and I'm planning on creating a course this year teaching others how to get started. If you're interested, let's talk and maybe there's a way I can provide value :)

We use Hostfully for nearly 30 listings. I can't say how it compares to the other platforms since I haven't used them. But I'm happy to provide inside on Hostfully. It's worked great for us the past few years and I don't have any plans on changing systems.

If you're considering setting it up as a MTR, we are MTR property managers in Los Angeles managing 25+ MTRs throughout SoCal.

Hello! We've done this before for a client. My designer flew out for a few days and hired 2 locals to help. Everything was sourced or ordered ahead of time and the trip wasn't scheduled until everything was ready to be delivered. Managing the deliveries so they arrive just when you need them to is a trick. 

I'd say your options are to go yourself and manage a team to set it up or hire a company to do it. It's pricey because the alternative of doing it yourself is also pricey. Happy to share more about how we did it if you're interested.

There's no quick and easy way to get a demand or occupancy number for MTRs. Checking Furnished Finder's stats page and comps on Airbnb and Furnished Finder are my best methods. You can check reviews, the listing's future calendar, and other hints like that to gain insights into the demand. Also, connect with those in your market who are already doing MTRs and learn from them.

How would you to PM through rental arbitrage? It seems to me you have to do one or the other. You can be RA and be the renter on the lease. Or you can be a PM for the owner and charge a fee. If you're doing RA, like your last sentence describes, then you're not doing PM and I don't believe the brokerage requirement applies.

You're rocking it Jamie!

This year my big takeaways include:

-Hire overseas talent. Any modern business today should have some of their workforce overseas. The basic admin tasks that all of us have to do can take up a lot of our time, keeping us away from the high value work we should be focusing on. For me that's client acquisition, marketing our properties, and empowering my team.

-The need to keep my eyes on the right numbers and metrics to ensure I'm making the best decisions. I'm investing in accounting services with Ximplifi to do this as well as building out the reports I need to see daily. One immediate result, I've let go of some of our rental arbitrage properties that aren't worth it.

-My goal for 2023 was to network as much as I can. And it's paid off immensely. Not only have I met so many cool people and enjoyed the relationships I've built, it's also led me to clients, potential partners, and people I've learned so much from. I'm going to increase my networking next year as well as getting my branding and social media machine going.