All Forum Posts by: Conner Olsen

@Heather Rummel Like Jordan said I have a monthly rental by the Domain. I have seen that you can make this strategy work in Austin and the immediate suburbs. I'd make sure the property manager is familiar with monthly rentals. Many property managers charge 20%+ for anything short-term rental related and at that point you probably wouldn't cashflow. 

For 400k-500k you can expect $3,000-$4,500 in gross revenue depending on the area. Airbnb will take 3% of revenue as a platform fee. For a 3/2 you might have $400-$550/month for utilities and $10k-$15k in furnishings. Hope that helps!

@Kate Jones I would have an agent and a lender at least. They can recommend everyone else to you. You do not need an LLC, business website or anything else. You can do those things later.

@David Colthart I live in Austin which is very similar to Denver in that it has seen high appreciation with lagging rents. I changed my strategy for my house hack and decided to rent monthly instead of renting on a yearly lease. I live in one side of the duplex and furnished the other side and listed it on Airbnb, VRBO, and Furnished Finders. I spent around 5k to furnish the 2/1 and increased the rent revenue from $1,200/month to $2,750/month. It is now covering my mortgage and I'm making around $200/month after accounting for vacancy, capex, and maintenance. I'm sure there's a high demand for monthly rentals in Denver just like there is in Austin!

@Kam Ajani I had a similar question and I decided to back into my capex projections. I took the age of my roof, AC, furnace, and water heater and googled each of them to see their expected life. Then I accounted for their age and looked up replacement cost and divided that out monthly.

For example: Water heater: $1,800
Water heaters can last 10-12 years
Water heater is currently 3 years old
Remaining life: 7 years or 84 months
$1800/74 = water heater monthly capex

Do this with every capex item and you have a rough idea of what you should set aside. Take that number to your 7% of gross revenue and see if it is more or less.

@Scott Ehmer I would consider your goals, do you want cashflow or appreciation? What do you want to accomplish with this property? What do you want with your overall portfolio? Is there a way to have higher cashflow or appreciation in this specific market? Is this a good market to flip properties or BRRRR? Do you want a brand new turnkey build? Do you want a fixer upper? Is this market going to appreciate faster than other markets? Are people moving here? What's the job growth? All of these things will influence whether or not this is a good market for you.

@Matt Muchmore if you need cash I would consider refinancing the properties. I don't know what returns you are expecting but I've seen that it takes a long time to get enough cashflow saved up to buy another property.

@Jennifer Borkenhagen I'd consider your end goal. Where do you want to be in 10/15/20 years. From there you can work backwards and decide what makes the most sense for you to purchase. If a deal makes sense today it'll make sense in a few years. Don't wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait.

@Yuxi Li I don't write any of my own leases. I use Airbnb and VRBO and let them handle the tenants. They also have a $1 million insurance policy that has paid me out for damaged items in the past.

@Brandon Wallace In my experience, 203k loans have been difficult to work with. If that's your only option then do it but if you can source the money elsewhere or save up for the repairs that would be my personal preference.

@Brad Hassett I'm in a similar position. If I end up doing a HELOC and not replacing the balance quickly I will have a higher emergency fund to cover the interest payments in case rates rise too much. That is how I plan to mitigate the risk.