All Forum Posts by: Andy Zapata

@Heshel Mangel I’ll get some pictures posted this weekend.

Our primary contractor was recommended through our real estate agent who had had work done on his own projects but I have friends in the area who recommended a great flooring guy. We have a good handyman for the small stuff too. All in all, we’ve found that rockstars know other rockstars. We were up front with everyone about our goals and found that responsiveness tended to be the best indicator as to what we could expect for the whole experience.

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $75,000
Cash invested: $10,000

Purchased a foreclosed condo as our primary residence. We fixed it up, loved there for 2 years, purchased another property and turned this into an LTR

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We fell into it when we realized we could lease it out.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

It was a HUD property on the MLS

How did you finance this deal?

FHA loan as a principle residence.

How did you add value to the deal?

Upgraded all flooring, new paint, and kitchen reno.

What was the outcome?

Beautiful 2 bed, one bath condo that is now worth more than double what we paid for it.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

We learned that we could force appreciation and that turning a principle residence into an LTR is a great acquisition strategy.

@Isaac Baron It depends on your portfolio, but I'd say you should analyze the deal and make sure it makes sense as an LTR if you're buying it and not considering master leasing. If you have good numbers as an LTR, the additional profits from the STR will be icing on the cake and if you ever get stuck holding in a downturn, you'll be fine with an LTR. That's what we did anyway. It would be terrible to have multiple STRs that become millstones in a recession.

We found AirDNA to be accurate in our case but it may depend on the market.

Hope that helps.

@Tim Schroeder After you've set up the hub, it will discover any ZWave devices in the vicinity. If you need more range, you can get a couple of smart outlets that work as repeaters as well as automatic outlets. Check out 

http://smartthings.rboyapps.com/

Rental Lock Automator is worth its weight in gold...well. you know what I mean...there's no weight in a download. It can be a little confusing setting it up because the instructions aren't simple but once you have it going, it will automate the codes according to your schedule and we also set it up to text our guest a message the day before with a custom-worded reminder of checkin/checkout time and their code. The only thing is when you should have a separate early check-in user code because you can't have two users have the same code and it's a pain to adjust the schedule for an early check-in. We just schedule our early check-in user for a couple of hours when we need it.

Our nest thermostats are pretty good at going Eco for us when no one is there but we have it set in a pretty acceptable range. You are right in thinking that it's not worth pissing them off. The one thing to remember if it gets too hot is you will sometimes end up with a musty smell because of the increased humidity...depending on where your property is of course. So we don't let it get too hot. Also, we have a couple of motion detectors that sync with smartthings but they have adhesive so...I don't want them melting. I also don't want our pipes freezing in the winter. I'd just set your eco range to something acceptable for your climate. The savings really aren't worth the hassle in my opinion. PM me if you need some help.

The beauty of finding a primary cleaner is that they will often offer to do so much more than a simple service would. They take ownership. Ours restocks supplies for us and we can order replacements shipped directly to her via Amazon Prime. Because she takes pride, she is also quick to point out things that may need attention on the property. 

We found her through TurnoverBNB which syncs with our calendar and automates the jobs. It also automates payment which makes life easier for us come tax time since we are paying the service and don't need to issue 1099s.

We have an STR in the Cincinnati area on a street that is gentrifying. There are 4 houses on our street that are currently being renovated but one of the houses immediately next door to ours is in poor repair.

We mention that our house is in a gentrifying neighborhood...most people will understand what that means and we've had no complaints. The biggest thing in a case like this is to provide good exterior lighting. People are more uneasy about what they can't see than what they can, so a well lit place makes all the difference. 

Visible cameras on the exterior of the house also help guests feel safe and deters any of the riffraff from trying anything interesting.

Just my two cents.

It's worth creating an account and posting your property on TurnoverBNB. You can collect bids there from cleaners and arrange meetings with them. We did this for our AirBNB and found an ALLSTAR who has made all the difference for us. 

I would treat them both as separate items and make sure you're competitive on both.

We use TurnoverBNB to get a cleaning quote and to automate our cleaning. From there, we pass on the fee along with the payment processing fee as our cleaning fee on AirBNB. 

We use Wheelhouse to automate our pricing and have seen a marked increase in revenue since we implemented it.

A lot of it depends on your area, but we provide Netflix and local TV through an antenna. We've had no complaints, but it's worth considering an Apple TV. We've had some trouble with smart TVs freezing up when using Netflix.

If you're in a supported major-metro area, the best value for all the major channels is YouTube TV. Netflix doesn't have options for tons of accounts, but we create a new email address for each property and set up any subscriptions through that address.

We also set up a separate credit card for each property to have all automated expenses use that card. This makes reconciling extremely quick as well.

We mention a security deposit in our AirBNB but like others have said, the guests aren't charged this. 

We had one incident of damage occur and filed a claim. I'm not sure whether AirBNB or the guest paid for the damage as they wouldn't say but we were reimbursed after filing the proper paperwork.