All Forum Posts by: Avery Carl

That's not to say it's not worth a  try, you never know!

Rather than 6 percent*** 5 was a typo sorry

This is exactly why I got my real estate license. So I can act as my own agent. There are many great answers here as far as the pros and cons go. The main takeaway for me is this: you may be able to ask the listing agent to take only 3 percent rather than 5 to act as a transaction broker. But, for every one of you that is smart enough to know to ask that, there are 10 buyers who find things on Zillow and call the listing agent directly who would never know to ask to cut the commission. Knowing that, who do you think the listing agent will take on?

I may be missing something, but why can't you rent your existing second home on VRBO or Airbnb when you aren't using it? As long as you occupy it 18 days a year it's totally legal to rent it on Airbnb and VRBO as long as you don't sign it over to a company. Might be beneficial to try that out first before purchasing a separate property.

Also, to add to @James Carlson's point, if you respond gently, most potential customers who are reading the reviews can infer for themselves if that customer was just being unsatisfiable or a jerk.  I'm pretty sure no one has read my reviews and said to themselves "No soy sauce?! I can't stay here!"

We do our best to lay EVERYTHING out in the listing.  That alleviates MOST problems.  We have never had a complaint about the general condition or cleanliness of our properties, but no matter how great your place is, there will always be complainers/those who cannot be pleased.  We have gotten complaints such as "this cabin did not stock soy sauce," and "we were expecting 2 rolls of toilet paper, and there was only 1.25."

We do our best to ask a lot of questions up front, and we do deny people if they ask weird questions.  For example "if I or one of my family members is injured or killed by a malfunction of one of the appliances in your home, will your insurance cover it?"  DENIED.  Even if the guest has no reviews, as long as you keep the lines of communication open and flowing, you are likely to get a good review, and/or weed out who is going to be a pain and make asinine complaints, but there will always be the occasional "will never be happy" guests who make it through.

@Lucas Carl and myself would love to get together/involved with something like that!

I don't know about flipkey but Airbnb and VRBO you can sync to each other's calendars to avoid double bookings.  Don't have to get a 3rd party program, it's built into both sites. You just import each' calendar into the other!

We use Airbnb and Homeaway/VRBO.  We get 95% of our bookings from Airbnb.  But other hosts with similar properties in the same area swear by VRBO and say they get no traffic from Airbnb.  As a matter of fact a lot of hosts in our area speak very negatively of Airbnb.  They turn their nose up at it, which makes no sense to me.  I have posted on here before asking for advice on getting more VRBO traffic, but if we are getting completely booked with Airbnb I suppose it doesn't matter.  Other than it just bothers me because I can't figure out why.

Also, we have a lot more technical difficulty with Homeaway/VRBO than Airbnb.  For instance we have had one guest trying to book a few days for about 3 days now.  Her dates are open, but when she goes to book it says they are blocked.  Everything is clear on our end.  We have called VRBO twice a day for 3 days to resolve this issue, and they can't figure it out.  Never had a tech problem with Airbnb.

@Lucas Carl and I have had our eye on a boutique hotel in Gatlinburg to add to our portfolio.  We have done partnerships on cabins in the past as well.

We would definitely love to chat with other like-minded investors on the possibility of a hotel or apartment building.