All Forum Posts by: Julie McCoy

@Eric Mcginn Glad to hear it went well for your first winter!  But you're correct, you'll need to adjust your prices for each season - your bookings might still slow down because of an overall drop in demand, but you need to make sure your pricing stays competitive so you can still get some of those bookings.  But nobody's going to pay peak prices in the off season if they have other options. @John Underwood is correct - look at what your more established competition is doing, and make sure you're staying in line with them.  

Take the season as a learning experience, make adjustments, and prepare for more success in the future!  The first year is always the toughest since you're getting yourself established, gathering reviews, etc.  Good luck!

Equity all the way!  

Why are you targeting corporate housing in tourist areas?  How would your corporate model differ from existing tourist accommodations?

 :)  The model there is definitely vacation rentals, vs. short-term rentals - there's a lot of overlap but the clientele is different.  The good thing is it makes the regulation very friendly (just pay your taxes), since the vacation rental industry has been thriving there for decades.  

As for living in an area, there's lots of gorgeous countryside, or just go ~30-45 minutes away to Knoxville/Knoxville suburbs.

My market is Sevierville/Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, TN - fantastic place that's very friendly to STRs with great ROI, but a house hack wouldn't work there. That market depends on individual units (cabins) that guests can rent, small multi-units don't exist and wouldn't be desirable for STRs.

@Reagen Natho I agree with @Jason Hendrickson that it won't matter so long as you're consistent about it.  However if you get fed up with all the nonsense of all the varying TN taxes, sign up with Avalara to do them for you.  So much more straightforward than 3% here, 9% there (for non-AirBNB bookings) every freaking month - but I have three properties in Sevierville so filing for all of them each month was a real PITA.  Now I just report my gross revenue to Avalara each month and they handle the rest, easy peasy.

@Carmela Zaragoza After I responded to your post I went on Realtor.com to poke around a little bit, I see what you're referring to.  Those maintenance fees are killer!!!  It'd be worthwhile to go on AirBNB/HomeAway and seeing what similar units are renting for and how full their calendars are.  Now is probably a good time to look, too, 'cause I imagine summer gets booked out reasonably far in advance, so hopefully that would give you a fairly decent idea of demand and price for those kinds of units.  (and of course you'd want to see what they're asking for in the winter months, though you won't be able to get as good an idea of occupancy right now)

I'm not familiar with the Hawaiian market, so take this with a shaker of salt, but if you're not grossing at least $2k a month the property isn't worth owning (as an STR). That's my rock-bottom cover-my-nut number in the slow season for my properties in the Smokies, and I hit it, no problem. That said, I'm not sure if you'll find anything worth owning (as an STR) in Waikiki for $185k.

Hopefully some of our Hawaii investors will chime in with some actual insight and tell me where to stuff my speculation. :) 

@Ernes Sahic I found my first property with a combination of happenstance and @John Underwood's method.  I was taking a long weekend just to get away from the city, drove through an adorable town by a national park and thought, "Wow, this is nice!  I wonder what property costs here?"  I already knew there were a lot of STRs because I'd considered/rejected it as a place to stay because the AirBNB prices were so high!  But when I looked at the cost of local property, it seemed reasonably priced.  I started crunching numbers, got a local agent who also owned STRs in the area, talked to a few local business owners about the tourism, and within a month I bought my first property.  It does awesome and I absolutely love spending time there.  

Careful @Paul Sandhu, do you really want competition?  Though, in all honesty, if any of us tried you'd probably put us out of business like that trailer park, LOL

(I *constantly* think about your model, btw, and wish I could do it, but I don't believe I have the personality/intangible talents to handle your particular clientele)