All Forum Posts by: Bonnie Low

Quote from @Michael M.:

Quote from @Bonnie Low:

Quote from @Michael M.:

Hello, I’m considering turning my primary residence into a rental and moving out of state. It’s a 3000 sf 5 bed 3.5 bath new build (2022) with really nice finishes. We bought at the peak of the market in 22, and can’t stomach the loss in equity + paying an agent to sell. Our plan is to hold the house 5 years + until the market comes back, or possibly just holding it long term. 

I'm considering either the STR or LTR strategy, but haven't quite decided which would be better / less of a headache.

Mortgage is roughly 3250 and I think we could rent for 3450 to 3600. Not sure on how much I could airbnb it. We're located in Buda which is a bit outside of Austin, but still only about 20 mins from downtown, so I think there's still good STR possibilities.

Im curious if anyone has any advice or things to keep in mind when doing something like this as it will be our first rental. Curious if anyone here has gone through something similar and could share their thoughts / advice. 

You're not going to cash flow as a LTR if you use a property management company. There's not enough spread between your mortgage and the LTR rates to leave much of anything after they take their cut. Are you prepared to self manage? If so, it's definitely doable but, again, it won't be cash flowing much and maybe you're ok with that. You're in a great area that will always be popular. I think Austin is pretty restrictive on STR regulations but that might not apply in your area. Use a tool like STR Insights to analyze STR potential in your area. Your property may have potential as an MTR. There's potentially a use case as an insurance placement as this is the type of home that can bring high dollar insurance contracts if done right. 

Hey Bonnie, where would you start looking to learn more about MTR? I haven't thought of that as a possibility.

And agreed, property management is out of the question. 

 A good place to start is to read the book 30 Day Stay by Sarah D Weaver and Zeona McIntyre. They've done a good job of describing the market and providing start up information. There are also some podcasts dedicated to midterm rentals which are helpful because they tend to profile people doing all kinds of different things with their MTRs so you get expose to a lot of possibilities. I like the WIIRE podcast - earlier episodes are primarily about MTRs although the hosts also provide a good deal of content relative to operating a successful real estate business. Furnished Finder has a podcast they sponsor called the Landlord Diaries so you might check there as well. I also co-host a weekly virtual meetup with my colleague Jamie Banks that you might find helpful called The MTR Connect. We have people who are just exploring MTRs as well as experienced MTR hosts with larger portfolios and years of experience so it's a good mix of levels. Let me know if you're interested and I can send you our application.

Although you live in one of the units, you are treating the other like a business presumably and will be reporting income and expenses for tax purposes so you really should have a separate bank account. And especially if you're going to create an LLC. In order for the LLC to protect your assets as intended, you'll absolutely need to keep business and personal expenses separate.

Quote from @Allen Duan:

Second for Waivo. They have different amounts of coverage and charge you per booking. MTR bookings are charged by the month, while STR bookings are one fee per booking. We charge tenants a fixed amount that covers the average length of our bookings.

I also considered Safely, but they're pricing becomes very expensive for MTRs

 So is Waivo more of an aircover-like insurance options rather than property insurance? I don't use Airbnb for MTR so I don't have Aircover as an option.

Definitely agree with #2. The raw numbers can be overwhelming. And it's easy to track too many things instead of focusing on some key metrics. 

Congratulations on getting started. I see you're interested in the MTR strategy. Atlanta is a great market that draws a lot of travelers and does well with insurance placements as well. What type of traveler are you targeting with your MTR strategy? 

Quote from @Juan Lizarazo:

Hi! So, I have 4 properties. What do you guys use for book keeping, to categorize transactions and generate Profit and Loss reports for your CPA? 

I am using stessa, but I am wondering if there is something better out there I should look at, easier to use. 

I used to use Quickbooks and found it overwhelming - from the setup to using it daily. In fact, we ended up paying a bookkeeper $450/month plus the $90 subscription to QB online to manage our relatively small portfolio. After I did some digging and realized how much it was costing us, I switched to Baselane and I am very glad I did. Baselane is very user friendly and was created by real estate investors FOR real estate investors and it shows. It has everything I need to manage the books and nothing I don't. Because it's a banking and bookkeeping platform I can set up individual bank accounts quickly and easily in Baselane and keep track of revenue and expenses for each property and easily run basic and customizable reports. My CPA was pretty impressed and the funny thing is that so was my bookkeeper when I showed her!


I used to use Quickbooks and found it overwhelming - from the setup to using it daily. In fact, we ended up paying a bookkeeper $450/month plus the $90 subscription to QB online to manage our relatively small portfolio. After I did some digging and realized how much it was costing us, I switched to Baselane and I am very glad I did. Baselane is very user friendly and was created by real estate investors FOR real estate investors and it shows. It has everything I need to manage the books and nothing I don't. Because it's a banking and bookkeeping platform I can set up individual bank accounts quickly and easily in Baselane and keep track of revenue and expenses for each property.

Co-living is one niche within the broader MTR segment. I absolutely would not recommend that you attempt to limit who you are renting to based on their level of education. That in and of itself is likely to spark some discrimination problems for you and level of education is no guarantee that people will get along anyway. They can have vastly different backgrounds, religions, political ideologies etc and still have the same level of degree. When you are renting to multiple people it is their responsibility to get along with one another, not yours. You can attempt to assure compatibility by interviewing them and taking into consideration your other tenants, but at the end of the day, they're adults and it's up to them to get along. Anyone who makes friction for other guests can have their lease terminated and that should be very clearly spelled out in the lease itself. This situation is why I don't like the rent by room model and wouldn't use it myself, but some people are very successful at running harmonious co-living arrangements. 

Quote from @Becca Pariser:

Does anyone have experience with using either Baseline (https://www.baselane.com/) or Relay (https://relayfi.com/) when it comes to managing rentals and banking? I've heard Baseline ads on the podcasts, but I've also heard promotions for Relay. I'm looking to set up a "Profit First" system and interested if folks have experience with either?

I looked at both Relay and Baselane and ended up going with Baselane. I experienced problems trying to set up my Relay bank account. Really simple things that should have been easily taken care of by customer service but I could not get them to understand the problem I was encountering and it would take days to get a response. I had heard about Baselane, too, so I decided to check it out. I liked all the features and it was super simple to set up. I'm really glad I chose Baselane. Previously, I had been spending a LOT of money each month using Quickbooks and paying a bookkeeper to manage it for me. Baselane is so easy to use I can do it all myself for my 5 properties, and believe me, I am no bookkeeping whiz! It's easy to set up an account for each property and sub-accounts under that, which is how I would integrate the profit first model if I were you. For example, each of my properties has a main account and the sub-accounts under that for CapEx and security deposits. You could easily have a sub-account for profit first and split incoming payments into whatever buckets you choose.

Hi, Katie. Congrats on getting your first property - that's very exciting! And it's good that you're already thinking about systems to manage it. I use Baselane. I've used other programs in the past (Quickbooks) and an old fashioned spreadsheet, but neither worked for me. I love the simplicity and user friendliness of Baselane. It's very thoughtfully designed specifically for real estate investors by real estate investors so it doesn't have features you don't need and won't use. I like that I can quickly set up bank accounts for each property and sub-accounts under those so I can keep my property finances in "buckets" as I like to think of it. The virtual credit card feature is also really slick. I have specific credit cards set up for my cleaners, handymen, etc. so when I see a charge come through for that card I know exactly what it's for and what property it's associated with. It makes categorizing expenses very easy. I also like having my tenant vetting, lease agreements and rent collection all in one place on my dashboard through Baselane's partners. I'm glad I switched. I just wish it was around when I started way back when! Hope this is helpful. 

Quote from @Aaron Breckenridge:

Quote from @Marcus Auerbach:

Same with the "vote down" button. Can't do that, but I often wish for one, when I see someone receiving horrible advice from someone with zero personal investments telling others what they should do..

Other social networks allow downvotes once you reach a particular karma threshold. I think that works pretty well and maybe something BP could incorporate here.

 Yessss - this is what we need!