All Forum Posts by: Julie McCoy

Welcome to the family, @Reagen Natho!  @Luke Carl was my mentor and I highly recommend taking him up on his offer.  :)  

My advice: automate as much as possible!  I have security cameras (mostly so I can prove if a guest violates the no-pets rule or throws a party, etc) and wifi door locks.  No worries about changing codes or people sneaking in early/on days they haven't booked.  

Your cleaners will be your lifeline.  Get ones you trust and treat them well.

Honestly, I'd tell them if they don't like it, they're welcome to move out.  They probably won't actually do it, and it might shut up their complaining, since they know you don't care about it.

@Coleman Maher I use YourPorter from my desktop browser with no problems.  I prefer working on a computer vs. a phone when given the option.

Okay, so you specifically want arbitrage instead of to purchase something?  I'm doing that with my cabins in the Smokies, but I own those, you're not going to find one to rent long-term.

Moving furniture is expensive, especially long distance.  Why not look for another rental in your current city, since that did so well?

I have a couple of questions:

- Why won't your bank accept a (presumably long-term) rental contract as income?  Have you shopped around with different lenders?  From my understanding it's pretty standard practice to accept a long-term lease to offset a mortgage, so long as the rental amount is enough to actually cover it, of course.  You may need to look further afield for your financing.  If it's short-term income, however, it'll need to appear on your taxes (under Schedule E, or two years of Schedule C) before they'll consider it.

- Are there any regulations on short-term rentals in the area?  You'll need to know that before venturing further.

- While in general I think the scenario of having an additional structure on your property to use as an STR is an awesome one (way to house-hack!), it concerns me that you say you wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage unless it was rented at least 7-8 nights/month. What's the backup plan if, for whatever reason, the STR thing doesn't work out? Could you rent it as a LTR and still cover the mortgage? It sounds like you'd be sticking your neck out pretty far in order to make this work, and I'd hate to see a bump in the road derail the entire thing.

Talk to the zoning commission in Galveston and any other offices that may have jurisdiction (county, other municipality). And do some general searching for Galveston STR permits/regulations. This forum is a great resource, but not an authority on local laws. :)

@Tim Schroeder I definitely want to start direct booking, but it's one of the (many) things I can't do until I finish this all-consuming job I'm on at the moment (just a month left to go!!!).  I'll probably take another look at OR once I get to that point, because they seem to have all the features I want (ESPECIALLY the ability to integrate direct bookings) if I can only figure out how to use it :p :) 

@Tim Schroeder I'm interested in hearing more about your experience with OwnerRez.  I like the features they offer, but I found their interface to be very unintuitive (and I'm a tech-savvy person!).  I was experimenting with it during a time when I was very busy and wasn't able to focus on anything complicated, so maybe that's where I went wrong, but I got really frustrated trying to figure out how to make it do all the things it was supposed to do.  The support/dev team is great, though.

For the benefit of the thread, YourPorter is a simple app that handles message automation beautifully (natively through AirBNB as well as via email for VRBO/other platforms), and has some  other features I don't use as heavily.  OwnerRez is much more robust but I find the interface far more complicated.

I use ResortLock and YourPorter for the things you describe.  YourPorter is excellent for message automation - HOWEVER I recommend you do it manually for awhile until you feel comfortable with your messages and what guests want/expect with communication.  You want to know what you're doing before you hand it off to automation - I've been doing this since 2017 and it's still disconcerting to have a lot of communication happening when I'm not consciously aware of it!

Thanks for the shout out, @Paul Sandhu!  @Brad Johnson AirBNB will not allow you to transfer reservations.  There are any number of ways to handle your scenario - it depends on you and your buyer.  Some buyers won't want your reservations, they'll want to get their own.  Some will be happy to take them on.  If you had direct bookings, I'd encourage you to sell them - however, since you cannot transfer the reservations (or the listing itself) on AirBNB, that makes it more complicated.

Personally, I'd continue to take reservations, and assuming the buyer is interested in taking them over, once the property is under contract I would begin notifying the impacted guests of the situation.  Assuming the buyer would agree to these terms, I'd tell them the buyer is willing to honor the dates and price they booked at, they'll just have to cancel with me and rebook with them (and I'd provide them a link to the buyer's listing).  

Now, that scenario would require a decent amount of effort from me, and some good record keeping so the buyer would know what prices to honor, etc.  In return for that effort, I would expect some compensation.  However, I wouldn't expect that to be as valuable as turning over reservations, since there is no guarantee those guests will re-book with the new owner.

If the buyer wasn't agreeable to those terms, or if I was too busy/not inclined to mess with all that, I'd do exactly what @Myka Artis suggested. I love the idea of selling an STR as a "business" with added value from bookings, but that's a tough sell and only possible when you have full control over those bookings.