All Forum Posts by: Joshua Strickland

@Peter Amendola I’m somewhere in the middle when it comes to airdna. I typically do look at it to see seasonal trends and also like how you can filter the revenue properties generate by top 50%, 75%, 90%, etc. from there you just have to determine what percentile you think your property and management of said property will be.

Better to go on Airbnb and VRBO and stalk similar properties rates and availability.

@Peter Amendola It all depends on what your goals are with this. Personally I wouldn’t touch less than 20% if looking for a pure investment, but there are other factors that can come into play in which I can see this being a good purchase. For example… are you going to use it? Do you expect appreciation? Do you expect rates to climb in the upcoming years that will make the cash flow better while you get equity pay down? 

Make sure you have plenty reserves on the backend and can weather a storm if rates and occupancy drop. 

@Dave Carpenter I’m not sure how an entire building would appraise, but in the single family house str space the income has not been taken into consideration typically. What a house is appraising for is the same as if you were buying it as a primary residence from what I’ve seen. 

Triple check with the local planning and zoning department that you can run STRs in a business zoning district. Most will give you a zoning confirmation letter. STRs are a business but typically considered residential in my experience. 

@Zachary McDonough you are spot on with this. I own in the same vacation markets as my family vacations to, so we get the added bonus when we want to spend time there. We’ve also really come to like vacationing in the off-season due to less crowds and obviously we want to rent it during the high times.

For lenders check out Movement mortgage and Element funding. 

@Bruce Woodruff I send through the Airbnb/vrbo app because it is an automated message in my Smartbnb messaging software. If a guest has been overly communicative outside of the apps then I’ll do a quick copy and paste and send it via text or email as well.

It goes like this: Hi “guest name”, I hope you have got settled in on your trip. Just reaching out to confirm there were no issues and also offer some recommendations….I then list my favorite place to eat, favorite hike, and favorite dinner show with links to each.

I set at 25+ on both sites. Never heard a peep about it.

Also just curious… do you send a mid stay or day after check in message asking the guests to let you know of any issues? I don’t always get a response, but it has allowed me to circumvent a few issues in the past. To make it not weird I also send out my favorite restaurants and activities with that message.

Some of this is going to depend on your purchase price and how large of a property you are looking at. I personally go the self-management route and wouldn't look at anything under 20% CoC.
With that said whatever management company you are looking into should be able to give you a decent estimate of what they think it will gross. 

Do lower floor beach condos rent similar to higher floors? Specifically 2nd/3rd floors. First floor seems ok since you could walk straight out to a pool, beach, street, etc. so I see the value there, but on 2nd/3rd the that value is taken away and the view is limited. Anyone have experience with this?

I use Stessa. It’s free and easy to use. At the end of the year I just print the tax package it prepares for my CPA.

Will probably hire a book keeper soon though as with more properties comes more work on my end.