All Forum Posts by: Jon Martin

Can they be painted?

Been operating in Greenville SC for 2.5 years, slightly outside the city limits as mentioned above by @John Underwood

Have looked at a fair number of properties in #1, 3, 4, 13 & 15. Santa Fe has great numbers and I was close to putting in offers until I spoke with the city last fall. They were close to their STR permit limit at the time and were waiting until the spring to open up the application process, at which point they were likely to exhaust the remaining supply. Could still be a "outside the city limits" play.

Honolulu, NYC and Boston seem like a no go between regulations and entry prices. Nashville, Charleston and Austin seem tough as well. 

Agree with the above, although I would limit the number of dishes/utensils that you offer so your cleaner doesn't get stuck with a sink full of dishes. 

 You'd be surprised at the occupancy rates of some of these mid-sized cities. Could be #1 from a profitability standpoint

Yikes, sounds cringe. My guess was that it would’ve been less attended overall because of decreased interest in the space. In a sense I was somewhat right because it wasn’t well attended by those who were interested, more so out of desperation. 

All the coaching, design, tech stacks etc in the game won’t help you if the market fundamentals aren’t there. 

I have a property I am planning to sell but decided I would try Pricelabs first to see if I was leaving money on the table. When I download the recommended prices for the entire year, I get a total of $74K. If I multiply by 60% occupancy, I get $44K, which is closer to reality. Yet when I run their estimator, I get $25K. When I compared my July from this year to last, there was little change using their prices. 

Another strange item is that it is predicting ADRs that are $30-50 higher for weeknights in shoulder season months in 2026. Are they extrapolating based on market trends? 

Overall I think it's a good tool to be sure you are getting more on key dates for events you might not be aware of, but it seems like the numbers overall are a bit aspirational?

Curious to hear others experience here. 

Great story. I think where the “high earner” narrative comes from is that you can only get back what you have withheld and/or potentially owe. Even with a $150k salary you may only have $20k in federal withholding. Not small money, but not exactly huge either. The bigger your income, the more you potentially get back. 

Ordering anything from Wayfair. Wayfair is not a retailer with their own warehouse(s). They literally scrape the internet for anything that looks like furniture and homewares and make their own listing for it. While you think you are buying it from Wayfair, in reality they are the middle man who buys it for you from another site with a hefty markup. 

You can get around this by doing a reverse image search to see where they actually get the product from. 

On a related note- anything that requires assembly is a net loss. You still have to pay someone to put it together, or do it yourself, which either way will bottleneck your setup. By the time you figure in the cost of time/labor you could’ve bought a higher quality item with no/less assembly required. Buy something with zero or at best minimal assembly.

 Of course he does, especially if gets a percentage of your profile and/or a commission for the fund you purchase. 

You may not want to hear this, but I would not have bought a 2 bedroom property. They are the awkward middle between being too much space for a couple yet not enough space for a larger group/family. My 2 bedroom property is used by 1-2 people for 85% of the stays, therefore I spent/spend money to renovate, furnish, heat/cool and clean a 2nd room that isn't needed most of the the time. Given that, my pricing is basically on par with hotels. 

Not to say that there aren't markets that draw the type of guests who prefer 2 bedrooms and can demand a premium for it, although from what I've seen with market data tools this pattern repeats itself in lots of markets. Especially if you only have 1 bathroom. 

Other than that, agree with all the comments above!