All Forum Posts by: Tim Schroeder

Hell no. Why should my taxpaying neighbors and countrymen bail me out because a bunch of my guests cancelled? There are risks to being in business. There are ups and downs. If there's going to be bailouts it needs to be at places where a systemic failure has widespread implications to the nation. Use my bailout to get the millions of blue-collar workers sitting home back to work once this crisis passes. AirBNB knows this is not going to happen. They are just showing off for us to make us feel warm and fuzzy and that they "care".

Here is the spreadsheet I put together last year when I was deciding whether to keep buying additional cabins. It makes a really good case for the area's resilience. The Lodging revenue is from the Pigeon Forge city website and encompasses ALL taxable lodging revenue, as such I think it's a pretty good indicator of overall rental income. A 14% drop in area income during the greatest recession this country has ever seen is getting off pretty damn lightly IMHO. Now, if your profit margin was 14% or less to begin with, then you would disagree with me, and the high number of foreclosures shows that many people were in that position. But I would argue you shouldn't be in vacation rentals with that little margin in the first place. Restaurant and National Park numbers with very modest drops shows that people still went to the Smokies, even during the recession. By comparison, a quick Google search told me that Hawaii lost 30% of visitor visits during the recession. So for me the takeaway is as long as your margin is comfortably high, the Smoky's can ride out any storm. And as a side note, if it's not higher than LTR, why are you doing it?

BP wouldn't let me post pics so here are links to the screenshots, and the underlying spreadsheet.

Link to Data      Link to Chart      Link to Spreadsheet

I had two cancellations worth over $2k each in the last two days for stays this month.

This is Real Estate community forum, not a VRBO support forum. VRBO *has* a support forum. I think it would be more appropriate to post about technical glitches there. Peace.

I read that article today too. AirBNB's are getting hit hard with cancellations (myself included) however I predict I will re-fill those dates once the hysteria dies down. But yes, vacation rentals in drive-to locations will clearly be more resilient. Nobody wants to fly to Maui on a plane with hundred's of potential infections all around but they won't mind driving 5-10 hours to the mountains.

Spectrum all day long. One system, no contract. It's not even a competition, unless you can't get Spectrum.

@Mark Miles I have been toying with this for a while. Thanks for the post! Can you recommend your favorite sites for finding assistants?