All Forum Posts by: Gerald Pitts
Gerald Pitts has started 11 posts and replied 460 times.
Post: Client asks for STR Discounts we said no and now he is complaining about everything
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
I would say out of the maybe 5 times folks have asked for a discount and I've given it, 3 of them were a pain. Same went for when I lowered my prices too much at the beginning of COVID. Life's too short.
Post: Is now a good time to invest in the Smokies?
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
This is true sometimes, but it can also get the investor in the game. Once they're in, they learn some hard knocks on the way, sell the "learning curve" property, and make a smarter purchase next time. Depends on how willing the investor is to learn.
Quote from @Ben Zimmerman:
Quote from @John Carbone:
Not really true. Anyone who bought anything the last decade has done well just by signing their name to a mortgage, especially a STR, an untrained monkey could have made money in real estate.
Past performance does not guarantee future success. It's easy to make money during a bull market and when this happens people often overinflate their sense of investing sophistication because they just made a ton of money. However it takes no skill to make money when everyone around you is also making money.
As you said, an untrained monkey could have made money in the last decade. These are the types of people who tend to get wiped out because they think that life will always be this easy and never develop any actual knowledge of investing.
Short term is also becoming very saturated in many areas making it difficult to achieve decent occupancy rates unless you have a super premium property. This can easily wipe someone out if they overpay for a property during the bull run hype, only to find out that so did everyone else and there is simply too much competition and rates don't support the mortgage payments.
Post: Experiences with large, high-end STRs
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
I'll tell you what a friend told me in my first year of real estate investing, and wondering whether, after a divorce, I should put up my bigger primary home for rent and move into my smaller rental.
"Try it for a year, and if you hate it, you can move back in."
Now this was a 750sf half of a duplex for me and my dog to live in, and not a big, nice luxury STR. But that Lake Tahoe 300k gross will help pay the luxury furniture bill very quickly. More importantly it will help get you out from behind that screen you don't seem to like.
Post: Does dynamic pricing work?
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
Pricelabs is considered the best by a ton of STR operators I know. And I agree. But definitely dynamic pricing is the way to go. I don't see it as a matter of should I use the pricing tool so much as which tool should I use? Unless you just want to spend your time manually figuring out pricing, and hoping you got it right. To me, life is too short.
Post: Looking for the best blog, youtube or influencers to follow
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
Avery Carl, Bill Faeth, Mike Sjodren (sp).
Post: Looking to branch into STR in the hill country, Texas
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
Yes, great market!
Post: MTR reality. Is something that sounds so simple be so real?
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
Check out Noble Crawford. He has a podcast about this, and a lot of good content. Also BP just published a book by Zeona McIntyre and Sara Weaver called 30 day stay. You can google their content too. When I ordered the book on BP, it came with a webinar, and an analysis tool for MTRs.
Post: Experience with STR Property Managers in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
Avada. Justin is an investor that started his own company, and is getting much higher returns than the shoddy big box options.
Post: Airbnb "All in pricing" discussion!
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
Quote from @Ryan Moyer:
I've always thought it was funny how much flack Airbnb took for this compared to other industries that do the same. Has no one shopped for a rental car recently? They're even worse. They don't show the total price on the next page, they make you flip through 5 pages and a lengthy checkout process before they finally plop the true total on you after showing you a different number throughout the whole process and hope you don't notice.
As I understand it, this is an American thing. It's common for upfront pricing in other countries. And as I understand it, in Europe, Airbnb has already been doing upfront pricing for a while (I could have misheard that).
Can't say that I hate it if we move in that direction, and maybe Airbnb will spur a change in all the other things as well so we can start getting upfront pricing on everything else too.
Oh I hate them all lol! It began for me with TicketMaster many moons ago.
Post: Boat Rental With Lake House
- Lender
- Asheville NC
- Posts 466
- Votes 317
Quote from @Nathan Gesner:
I would consider liability and how the foot traffic would impact my life. Will his guests be hanging out at your dock, drinking beer, fishing, etc? Do they walk past your house and look in the windows?
It's a possibility, but I wouldn't bother unless it's going to produce a decent return of a few hundred a month.