All Forum Posts by: James Carlson

@Joan L. I include language that says the tenant shall not sublet, or attempt to sublet, on Craigslist, Airbnb, VRBO, Flipkey or any other short-term rental platform. I go a bit further and say that any finding that they have sublet or attempted to sublet (by listing the space on Airbnb or elsewhere) will result in forfeiture of a certain percent of their deposit. 

Hey @Matt Smith. Smart move looking for short-term rental insurance. A regular landlord-style policy won't cover anything if the carrier learns that the incident occurred during a short-term stay. 

I'll echo @William Leahy . CBIZ is a good provider and who I have used for multiple properties. All-State is also testing out an Airbnb insurance product. (Though, according to  this story, they're debuting it only in select states at first.)

About the cost ... in my experience, a short-term rental insurance policy could be up to 25% more expensive than a traditional homeowner's policy. That's not surprising as the liability risk is higher. If this is your primary residence or a place where you'll stay occasionally, the STR policy will also double as a regular homeowner's policy, so at least you don't have to buy two.

I'm surprised more insurance carriers haven't come out with a product for this. There's obviously a lot of money to be made in the industry, and why they're so behind on rolling out something is baffling.

@Account Closed Just read this myself. Wow, NYC really doesn't like Airbnb. I get the urge to curb massive takeovers of whole buildings. I get the desire to push back against commercialization of entire neighborhoods. But the Big Apple has always taken the most extreme approach. 

I don't understand why New York -- and why Denver, ahem, in their recent ordinance changes -- couldn't have restricted the number of Airbnb rentals each resident can have to one or two (or pick your number). Why the outright ban?

I've never been accused of being anti-government, but it of roils me to think of big brother using such a heavy hand to regulate what individuals do with their own property.

@Aaron Cooper. Great choice to go with a vacation rental. It's more work, but the returns can make up for that. 

Both VRBO and Airbnb have the functionality to take a security deposit. But for the life of me, I'm not sure why anyone uses VRBO. (It was the first, and you could make a case that the platform caters to families and bigger groups, but even that is going by the wayside in my opinion. Plus, the Airbnb platform is way more user-friendly, and their cut is considerably lower. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox. ... and no, I'm not paid by Airbnb.)

How you take a deposit in Airbnb, login>go to "Host">"Manage Listings">then "Pricing Settings" in the upper right>then "Additional Pricing Options" at the bottom. 

Now, should you take a deposit? As with so much when it comes to vacation rentals, or short-term rentals, it's a comfort factor thing. Some people just need to have it. Like @Quanda Allen said, a lot of people don't, and I never did for exactly why she said so. I thought it would be a deterrent. Maybe it's nice for small damage, but anything big you could make a claim under the short-term rental insurance policy.

On that note, be sure to obtain short-term rental insurance. Regular homeowners' policies don't cover incidents that happen during a short-term stay. Neither does a regular policy for a rental unit. You could try to get away with it another type of policy and hope they don't ask too many questions in the event of a claim. But for the extra few bucks a month, why take the risk.

@Nick Moser I'm still kind of new on BP and am wary of any kind of self-promotion in the forums. I'll PM you.

@Mindy Jensen. Thanks for your help. It's a townhouse. 11 units. All connected. No common area, no pool, nothing like that. I only mention condos to say that I have lived in condos, and I can see why their fees are higher. The condo I live in now has a few common areas, a pool, a gym and a roof garden ... all that need maintained. The place we're looking at is a townhome with none of that, so I assume the HOA dues will be less. It's just that $70 doesn't sound like much. Even if there's not much to be maintained.

@Mike Olson, good to have you here. We can always use more Denver people. 

No, no, we're looking to just buy one unit. (Somewhere between $389,000 and $425,000 depending on the unit). It's not a coop. It will have an HOA. I just don't see a history for one, and so I was trying to do some calculations myself to see if that advertised $70 HOA fee is high enough to cover whatever might come up in the future.

Hi @Account Closed . Thanks for the response. I should have been more clear. There's no history of an HOA here, as far as I can tell. It was bought a year or two ago -- likely an apartment building at the time? -- and was totally renovated. So there's nothing to review really. I did track down an offering memorandum that they have out there for an investor to buy the whole renovated building to make into apartments. Anything in there that would help me out?

Hi BP community. My wife and I are looking at a townhome in Denver's Five Points neighborhood. It's a 1913 building that developers bought and have redone all 11 units. 

I've lived in condos most of my time here, and the HOA fees are usually between $200 and $400. The HOA for this townhome is $70, and the agent I'm working with wondered aloud whether the developers were starting the HOA low and wondered whether we would find that that $70 doesn't cover capital costs as they arise.

The big expenses for the HOA would be the roof and maybe paint for the exterior? (Each unit has its own furnace.) I called the agent. He said the roof "is not new but has been totally repaired." Not sure what that means. Anyway, does anyone have insight on this? Maybe I should figure out how old the roof is, figure the cost of that new roof and work backwards to see if our dues will build a reserve big enough to cover that cost when it will come due?

Thoughts?