All Forum Posts by: Andrew Wong

I've been having pretty good success with a place called www.house-heroes.com. Tell them Dorsia Capital sent you :)

How short term are we talking about?

What interest rate would your loan be?

I echo what @Ariel Smith said, and probably what everyone else says. There's no point in doing furnished rentals if you're going to lose money. You should know what you will get for your property as a long term lease. 

Do a sample calculation (with taxes, some amount of vacancy, cleaning, furniture, etc) and determine what nightly/monthly rate you would need to make a profit. Then... compare that to a hotel nearby. 

Regarding how to reach out to families in transition, I don't know. That's not my target demographic.

As usual, look up your laws in SF. I've stopped keeping track for a while, but off the top of my head you need to get permits if you want to put it on AirBnB last I remembered. 

But wow, a 4BR home is pretty big. My main question is what kind of market do you think you'll be attracting with a 4BR furnished rental? Especially if you say you want to do > 30 days to avoid all the issues with STR.

Pay her and move on. Next cleaning person, don't give 10 chances.

Because software is hard. These are pretty complex systems that you'll end up hooking up and building. If you're not building it yourself, well then it's yet another expense that you'll have to pay and maintain. There's a reason these companies are million to billion dollar companies. 

I have a website that aggregates my postings across different sites. Playing SEO on that is one thing. Building a calendar with a payment system and keeping payments secure and calendar up to date and all that is a different beast.

Also, my trust in giving someone my financial information on a self powered website is a lot less than a well vetted one like AirBnB or VRBO. 

I don't think it's a simple "Of course".

So I dug this up: 1997 Uniform Housing Code Section 503(b), Health and Safety Code Section 17958.1

It states something along the lines of...

Every dwelling unit must have at least one room which must have at least 120 feet of floor area. Other habitable rooms must have an area of not less than 70 square feet. The code states that when more than two person occupy a room used for sleeping purposes, the square area must be increase by 50 square feet for each additional occupant.

1 person 70 square feet 

2 people 120 square feet

3 people 170 square feet

Is this a law? Are there ramifications if I decide to cram 20 people in a one bedroom? Confused!

Yeah a lot of people on this forum doing STRs are just doing a traditional "buy a house/apartment, and make short term rentals out of it".

There are a lot more creative ways to be able to do this stuff. @Angelo Wong referenced a popular strategy.

Another one off the top of my head that seems somewhat popular is convince someone to sublet one of their rooms and you do the management and split the profits. So you don't need to pay any rent, but you make less money.

 Sorry, I must be daft. I still don't understand what you mean. If I'm booking one night, how much am I paying you? What is my rate?

If I'm booking 20 nights, how much am I paying you? What is my rate?

If your cleaning fee is somehow in the rate, then your one night rate must be a lot more expensive since you cannot amortize your cleaning fee across multiple nights. Is that correct?

@Myka Artis, I'm confused how  you charge a cleaning fee in your rate? A one day stay requires the same cleaning for me as a seven day stay. You still gotta change the sheets out, launder them, vacuum, wash the bathroom etc.

Is your one day stay extremely expensive then?