All Forum Posts by: Jerry W.

@Marvin Herman, I have no way to gage the Branson market, but will disagree with your statement about paid managers making more net profit than self managers is not remotely true in my experience.  here have been a few management companies, including Evolve, in my market.  The folks who manage themselves vastly out perform them, especially the good ones.  They don't charge more and absolutely don't book more.  I would presume the biggest thing they do is spare you work.  I cannot imagine not being able to out perform a management company, but I cannot imagine being able to give the kind of service I give to more than  5 or 6 units.  I also cannot imagine companies with hundreds of units getting better than 4.9 out of a 5 star rating.  I also get lots of repeat customers, but most of them are from 1 week to one month stays and we all know each other by first names.  If you represent hundreds of owners each individual owner has to know they are not your first concern.  Now I can believe you may be best at managing for others, that is impressive.  What percentage of income do you take?  What is your average rating overall of all the units you manage?  Do you own any units yourself separate from the ones you manage?  I bet your systems are amazing, and you probably save a bunch in economies of scale.  I would imagine that you have multiple back up systems like mad.  I just find it hard to believe you can give up say 20 to 30 percent of gross and still make more than in the long run.

Anyway  Just my 2 cents

@Nathan Gesner, hey Bud!  Come over to Thermopolis and stay in my Air BnB and see how nice they can be.  It is funny, but I advertise on both platforms.  I actually make my VRBO fees a little higher because when I started VRBO would not take out and pay local taxes so I had to get a tax license for the sole purpose of paying the lodging/sales tax.  Next VRBO charges higher fees than AIR BnB does so I pass it on.  Very odd thing though, most of my one night stays are Air BnB, but almost half of my VRBO stays are for multiple days,  I get better than 85% of my bookings from Air BnB however.  Most of of Air BnB are much younger than VRBO guests, but not always.  They have a very different demographic for some reason.  Despite having VRs for 3 years now I have never stayed in one.  I have tried a few times, but they were usually with less than 24 hour notice and so were not accepted.  One very big difference is that Air BnB requires a government ID with picture to book, VRBO did not.  I have had at least 4 or 5 attempted scams from guests off of VRBO but never the other platform.  Despite hosting for 3 years they keep coming up and they are exactly the same each time, weird.

Just for the record.  It was a federal Judge in Texas who ruled the CDC eviction moratorium was unconstitutional.  He did NOT issue a cease and desist order , but stated he expects them to drop the Order.  The Biden Department of Justice has filed a notice of Appeal on the Order.

@Krista Goodrich, good luck at the meeting!

I started off buying the house we used to live in from my dad.  He had gotten behind in payments and we had all moved away.  I caught up the payments and kept them up.  I sold it a couple years later for a small profit.  I used that for college tuition and bought a trailer house in a bad trailer court.  When I graduated from Junior college I sold the trailer and used it to buy a parcel of land where I went to the university.  I bought the land and a trailer on payments, and had a well dug and installed the power and phone lines.  When I left the university I rented the trailer out and and was horrible at it, but kept making payments.  I graduated and moved to a small town to work and bought a cheap beat up house that was a repo from a bank.  I sold the rental in college town and payed off my entire mortgage.  Then me and an almost broke construction worker bought a house in exchange for paying off an IRS lien on it.  We partnered and slowly over the next 20 years added a property or so each year.  I bought that partner out in 2013 because he had moved away and I was running everything.  I got busy and tried to expand and made a lot of mistakes, but kept making progress.  I got serious after a few years and started reading everything I could lay my hands on, and in 2019 I buckled down and got serious about it.  Did I mention I was either a full time student or full time employed during this time?  Now my real estate investments are worth double my personal assets and pension.  My units are old and slightly lower class for the most, but I am over 40 units now.

@Shawn Patton it depends.  If the guy was single when he died, then his son would be an heir under the laws of intestate succession, so the son could sell you his share.  If there were multiple children you would need to contact and buy from all of them.  Have them sign the documents to pass the property to you under a simple estate.  It is a little complicated, but I have done it.

Hey @Katie Smith, welcome to BP.  I do real estate in Thermopolis WY, but did work in Lusk back in my oil field days.  Let me know if I can be of help.  Welcome @Jack Langfald and @David Cook too.  Of course it is always great to hear from @Nathan Gesner, he is the man.  Congratulations on the added rentals and storage units bud.  Excellent work.

Thanks for the update bud, the house looks great.

@Nicholas Aiola, really appreciate your help in answering my question. I am very impressed that you picked up on the inherent problem with Sub S Corporations. When the corporation was formed in the 1980s LLCs were available in WY, but the IRS had such stringent rules on them in order to get pass through taxing it was kind of scary. You might get pass through taxing one year, but not the next year. To make matters worse LLCs could only be in existence for 30 years back then, they could not be perpetual or risk losing pass through taxing. I initially bought into the corporation replacing one member, and later bought all of the other members out. What kind of entity do you recommend in order to get the free stepped up basis on death for investors? I know that if you own them personally you get stepped up basis, but will ownership in a single member or dual member LLC qualify? I know they are thinking about changing that, but would love to come up with a plan. It was not a big issue when I was investing in my 30s or 40s, but now I am worrying about it. I have over 20 properties in my Sub S, another half dozen in a single member LLC, and a few in my personal name. I also have a large former refinery property that is in a sub S that I cannot ever put in my name due to contamination issues. Any ideas on how to acquire property and give my heirs a free stepped up basis would be appreciated. The properties in the sub S will have to just pay their taxes and live with the consequences I suppose. I can always sell one if I have a bad year.

I do not understand what you mean by refinancing can lead to a taxable sale.  Could you elaborate on that?   

@Nicholas Aiola, I have a question.  I moved out of my personal residence in 2020, I had lived there 30 years.  I rented it for 4 months last year, and will rent it 5 months this year and I want to sell it.  I believe that I can claim all of the profit as exempt as it has gone up about $150K in value over the 30 years, even thought I rented it for 9 months.  Now can I buy the residence with my Sub S election corporation and still take the profit tax free?  I would like to turn it into a vacation rental as I fixed it up quite nicely and it will require very little work to get it ready.  Does the fact that I am the sole owner of the S Corp block my ability to claim the primary residence sale exemption?