All Forum Posts by: Bonnie Low

 One more thing to love about Nevada!

 Hi, Jake. I'm curious about your comment that taxes do not reassess on sale. Is this on the CA or on the NV side of Lake Tahoe? I'm assuming NV.

If you're going to take on someone else's property before having any prior experience, I'd suggest you take a management course of some sorts because there is a lot to know. I'd be willing to wing it with my own property, but not with someone else's - just my 2 cents. The Short Term Shop has some coaching programs, I believe. You can also read Short Term Rental Long Term Wealth to get you started. I do self manage my units, including my STR from out of state so it's definitely do-able. There's just so much to learn! As for bookkeeping, I use Baselane for all of my properties and it has definitely made my life easier. It's very user-friendly and does everything from banking for my properties to rent collection and everything in between. Definitely check it out before you make any decisions - it's always easier to set up your bookkeeping right to begin with rather than having to change programs later on.

 Great advice and I second the video walkthrough. 

 You probably dodged a bullet!

I would not send them anything! I buy in Dayton so I was curious and looked at their website. Not only are there typos all over it, there's weird terminology that sounds like it was either built overseas or by AI. There's even a statement on one page that says "on the other hand I denounce with righteous indignation men who are so beguiled." I have no idea what that's supposed to mean but no legitimate lender would have a statement like that on their website. Protect your personal information and don't share it. There are plenty of other legitimate lenders available.

It sounds like you may be looking for a property manager or co-host. If so, you'll want to post the city you're operating in to help narrow it down and find someone working and accepting new clients in your area.

 Hi, Eric. Expenses are going to vary based on the unit size and configuration, how many people are staying there and what their usage of the property is. For example, a 1/1 occupied by a travel nurse who is gone 12+ hours/day will have much lower utility expenses than a 3/2 occupied by a family with one WFH spouse who is there all day. This might be pointing out the obvious, but MTRs vary so broadly that it seems worth pointing out. You're going to have a fixed cost for WiFi. A fixed cost for landscaping if you have a yard. Fixed costs for trash service. Water and sewer will vary a little by usage in most jurisdictions. And then you have all the expenses of stocking your place. I wish I had kept track of my initial costs to fully stock my units. I just wasn't experienced enough at the time to know I'd need that. I mean, it's there in my receipts for taxes but I've never had the time to look backwards and assemble it. That said, I spend about $80 on each turn re-stocking items like paper towels, dish soap, shampoo and the welcome basket I put out. Not everything has to be restocked every time. These re-stocking costs also vary based on how you operate your place and what you provide. These are all of the operating costs I deal with regularly. The biggest driver of operational expenses is always utilities. You can put a cap on utility expenses in your lease agreement so you can turn that into a fixed cost rather than a variable - more and more people are doing that to discourage the guest who runs the heater with the windows open because you're paying the utilities. Also, I no longer include utilities in my longer leases. For a 3 month or less lease, I will include utilities. 6+ months and I want them to put the utilities in their own name. (It's rare for me to get someone who wants to book for 4-5 months. That scenario is almost always a lease extension from an initial 3-month lease). Anyway, at 6 months it's worth it for the tenant to open a utility account. Less than that and it's probably more hassle for them than it's worth. 

Just some things to think about. Hope this helps!

I have to agree with this - there are well known, established PM companies in the STR space that are just awful. So experience isn't everything, but it sure helps! Go into it with a hospitality mindset. And yes, it's a 24-hour business. My advice to you is to make sure you have a rock solid team available to you because the things that will really trip you up are the service calls whether they come in during the day or the middle of the night. Make sure you have established team members to call on so you don't have to scramble for that resource when the time comes. This is where having little to no experience makes it difficult because you probably won't have a track record with trades like plumbers and maintenance people so I'd work on building out those relationships as quickly as possible.

I didn't see anyone mention Baselane yet, so I will. Baselane is a banking and bookkeeping platform designed by real estate investors for real estate investors. I just switched to it last year. Previously, we were using Quickbooks for our rental business and felt it was just to clunky and overkill. We ended up paying a bookkeeper to manage it for us and that was very costly. I was really impressed with what I saw in Baselane. It's very easy to set up, provides all the capabilities we were using in QB but in a much more intuitive, user-friendly way, plus it integrates other features you need if you self-manage your properties like tenant vetting, lease agreements, rent collection and more. And it is very easy to tag each transaction so that it aligns with your Schedule E and to identify the particular property that expense or revenue is related to. You can even split expenses. So, for example, when I pay my business credit card in a lump sum, I can allocate that payment appropriately across properties and categories. It's been a game changer for me and I highly recommend it.