All Forum Posts by: Craig Jones

Thanks for your insight, and makes sense. A lot of the STR inventory in Tahoe are older 3/2 SFH and 2/1 condo units in 1970s/1980s buildings with no amenities. And for the most part there is nowhere for investors to outcompete by building bigger fancier places — except in new developments where HOAs prohibit STRs.

So my sense is that there are many hosts who would like to offer more amenities but have nowhere to put them.

Interestingly, properties with private pools are almost unheard of here — indoor or outdoor. I’m actually not sure how much of a draw an indoor pool would be. In the summer everyone wants to swim in the lake, and in the winter almost everyone is here to ski.

0 Votes

Reno, Nevada

Hey folks—

I'm in the early stages of launching a pilot in Tahoe and exploring potential expansion into other STR-heavy markets. I'd love some honest feedback from fellow hosts and investors as we fine-tune the offering.

The concept:
A regionally tailored, standalone "amenity club" that STR guests can access. Hosts subscribe monthly, with pricing based on their property's guest capacity. Guests then get unlimited access during their stay, no tracking or per-use billing.

Each location’s amenity mix is custom to the market. For example, the Tahoe pilot includes:

Swim-spa hot tubs
Saunas
Showers + changing area
Free espresso + hot chocolate lounge
Cozy movie nook
Small gym
Arcade corner

The idea:
Hosts increase booking conversion, get better reviews, and offer the kind of shared experiences most homes can’t provide. Guests get spa-level perks without the hotel setting. Lightly staffed, mostly self-service.

My ask:

Would you subscribe to something like this for your property?
What’s your max guest occupancy?
What monthly price would feel like a no-brainer?
At what price would you say no way?

Bonus Qs:

What amenities do guests ask about that your property doesn’t (or can't) offer?
What’s the max drive time (in minutes) before this starts to feel irrelevant to your guests?

Appreciate your time—and happy to DM the concept deck to anyone seriously curious or interested in bringing something like this to your market.

1 Vote

Reno, Nevada

Quote from @Anne-Marie Singer:

@Mike Grudzien We are thinking of moving out of our home and turning it into an investment property as a short term to mid-term rental. I am trying to understand how refinancing from a primary into an investment property mortgage affects the numbers. Assuming this is the correct thing to do if we’re planning to rent it liability wise because our insurance is so for a primary owner occupied and that would have to be changed as well. Are these assumptions correct?

No, not correct in most cases. But read your mortgage fine print to be sure. Typical primary residence mortgages only require owner occupancy for the first year. You should definitely get a different insurance policy if you're going to rent it STR or LTR, but that's independent of the mortgage.

We have a large SFH STR that was previously our primary residence. Bought with a 2.5% 30-year fixed mortgage in 2021. Which is a primary driver of the mega profitability on that property.

0 Votes

Quote from @Christina B.:

The problem with simplified pricing is that while it sounds good initially, in the end, it will most likely lead to higher prices as hosts increase their price per night to cover that simplification. For example, our cleaning costs in the mountains are (to me) crazy expensive and in some seasons, more than our nightly rate. I've tested baking it into the nightly rate and as guests rightly only look at bottom line (total cost), it tends to benefit shorter stays but penalizes longer stays. So I ended up adding it back in as a separate fee.

Also, I'm not yet sure if this would be a positive or a negative, but as most of my competitors have a separate cleaning fee, rolling it into the rate (and having zero as a cleaning fee, for example), creates chaos with the competitive data sets I'm looking at (and yes, I could write a simple formula to compensate for that in Excel, etc.) but we already know it's not true apples-to-apples.

I think this problem is solved with AirBnB's recent update. You can still set the cleaning fee separately on the host side, but AirBnB is no longer showing it as a separate line item during guest checkout. They divide it over the number of nights and bake it into the nightly rate that guests see.

0 Votes

The city council voted April 1 not to appeal to the court ruling that struck down the STR ban.

Last night they voted to reinstate STR permitting in residential areas. Cap of 900 permits, preference given to previous permit holders. Permits not transferable, 2 year moratorium after property sale. Cameras required on parking and trash, decibel meter required.

2 Votes

Reno, Nevada

Well, looks like the equity in our two properties alone creates an expected family contribution (EFC) higher than the annual cost of just about any school. Even with $0 income.

It was a fun idea to think about though 😊

0 Votes

Quote from @Michael Baum:

Yeah I don't know what you think you are going to get out of it. The FAFSA takes into account your actual income and not your after deduction income.

AGI I am pretty sure when I filled out the last FAFSA for 2023 before my son went on to grad school.

What I am saying is that depreciation-based losses brought our AGI pretty close to zero both years. If FAFSA is based primarily on that number, then things could work out well.

0 Votes

We had STR depreciation losses that wiped out most of our W-2 income in 2023 and 2024.

And also a kid applying to college this fall.

Anyone else been in that situation? I am very curious to see what the FAFSA formulas will make of it. Would love to hear others' experience.

0 Votes

Quote from @Sarah Kensinger:

@Andrew Steffens Is right on with how to use Airdna! Most people don't take the time to learn how to use the data correctly or they've only used it a handful of times and not hundreds/thousands of times. I don't know where the thought that Airdna isn't accurate came from, but they have a system and process for pulling the numbers they do. I just underwrote a house this week using Airdna, I also had the numbers from the owner that the property made last year. And wouldn't you know Airdna was spot on! Lenders use them to decide if a property is worth lending on, and so do many of the major STR PM. If it was that off those companies/banks would consider it a data point to avoid. Airdna is about to add a bunch of neat features soon, and they'll pretty much trump every STR data source. Can't wait to see and use what coming!

AirDNA can scrape the occupancy and ADR for that exact property directly from AirBnB. So it's always going to be spot-on for a property that's already in use as an STR.

0 Votes

Cleveland, Ohio

All Forum Posts by: Craig Jones

Craig Jones has started 17 posts and replied 101 times.

Post: Building a New STR Amenity Concept—Would You Offer This to Your Guests?

Post: Building a New STR Amenity Concept—Would You Offer This to Your Guests?

Post: Building a New STR Amenity Concept—Would You Offer This to Your Guests?

Post: Investment Property Mortgage Rates

Post: Airbnb Service Fee Options

Post: South Lake Tahoe’s STR ban overturned

Post: STR loophole + FAFSA

Post: STR loophole + FAFSA

Post: STR loophole + FAFSA

Post: PriceLabs VS AirDNA: Which site is more accurate for determining potential revenue?