All Forum Posts by: Kim Durst

What do you do with the proceeds from sales when your done with property rentals? It’s time. We are on the way to retirement. We own several properties and are tired. We have sold all but two. One just hit the market this week. 

What do you all do when you sell everything and have large amounts of cash? Investing in the market scares us but letting cash sit in the bank isn’t good either?? Or so they say. 
our financial advisor is telling us to invest our cash in low risk/protected funds, etc. 

would appreciate feedback. Thank you! 

Kim

@Amanda Kessler yes! this is how I think at times....what are we doing? It's going to be too much work, what if it doesn't rent, what if we don't get the rent amount we expect to, did we forget anyhting in our calculations? On and on...almost talking myself out of it. Not backing out though. Here we go!

Dave and I are in contract on our third property. This will be our second purchase within a years time. Talk about being out of our comfort zones! Part of me wants to stay safe and not continue on but the other part says push on and get uncomfortable!

Would love to hear your stories.

@Rod Joseph against our association rules and city. 

@Michael Baum

Nice to hear from you. I agree. We did do well for our first season. We decided to keep the place and run it a few more years. In fact, our neighbors house just went up for sale and we snagged it! Inspections today. Now we decide.....Airbnb that one too or, do we move in to the new place (live next door to the other STR) and leave our high rise downtown condo and rent this long term? Number crunching a lot this weekend:)

Starting out with NO reviews is a risk for guests. Since then, we have ALL 5 star reviews on both Airbnb and Vrbo platforms. In terms of savings, not much we can do on that. We have crunched those numbers to death. These is other value in this property besides income. We also use it as a cottage in the off season. Here's some info for you.

We are open year round, close to skiing, snowmobile trails, ice fishing on the lake, farm markets, orchards, golf courses, and of course, all of the summer lake activities.

Our home if 4500 sq ft, 4 bed, 4.5 bath. Sleeps 8 or more, each bedroom has it's own full bath. A HUGE plus for guests. We also have a game room, smart tv's in every room, wifi, a full house generator, we supply coffee, laundry, trash bags, toiletries, toilet paper, kleenex, paper towel, games, and more.  Guests love this. We try to give them a five star hotel feel. We try to meet needs they didn't even know they had. 

Rates vary from $275-$340 depending on the season. We have competition, their rates are similar to ours but, we offer more. We manage the property but hire a cleaning crew. We charge $185 cleaning fee to guest and pay our girls $210. That's a tough one but, we don't want to charge guests a higher fee (ours is high enough) the house is huge, it takes 4 hours to clean. Dave and I were doing it for a while but that got old real quick! We both have full time jobs on top of that. 

I think we are priced a bit high and sometimes start to worry however, people are booking. The $325 range seems to be the sweet spot. We are pushing it a bit at $340 next year for June, July and August rates, but, we shall see.  I don't want to price us out of the market by any means. 

Would love to hear more about your place. What are your rates? What do you offer? 

Kim

@Colton Fairchild @Marcus Auerbach @Dennis Fernandez @Tim Herman I am wrong on our numbers. Completely Forgot to add figures from when we had our property manager! We are cash flowing 5k this year. We started late this year and started with low rates to get going. Next years projections are looking great so far. We are 50% booked for june, july and August at $340 per night. 

Tim, do you believe this to be true although we are projected to be higher next year? Overall plan would be to hold on to this property no more than 5 years (have had for 2 yrs now) or, get out now.

Scenerio:

We own a lakefront property and turned it into a short term rental THIS summer. Would you keep it or sell? Keep in mind....June, July, August this year was at $275-$325 Next year, our rates are $340 in the hot season.

Purchase price 2017 $ 324k

Currently worth approx $450-530k

Currently owe $284k

We sunk about 80k into improvements

This year we generated $20,659 in STR (may be more if we book rentals this fall)

Pontoon rental made $5700

Expenses are approx $29k per year

We are projecting a higher income next year, our first year was spent getting our feet off the ground, etc. Our thoughts are this....sell or keep? The house is large, 4500 sq ft. a ton to take care of. We are considering taking the profits from a sale an buying 2 more smaller lakefront properties as STR. (actually we are in contract for one now)

Or....would you keep on the STR track to help recoup some of the cash you put in? We also think, lakefront property appreciates more than traditional properties and feel "safer" holding on to it for a few more years than we would with anything else.

Is there something we may be missing here? Would love you thoughts.

Scenerio:

We own a lakefront property and turned it into a short term rental THIS summer. Would you keep it or sell? Keep in mind....June, July, August this year was at $275-$325 Next year, our rates are $340 in the hot season. 

Purchase price 2017 $ 324k

Currently worth approx $450-530k

Currently owe $284k

We sunk about 80k into improvements

This year we generated $20,659 in STR (may be more if we book rentals this fall)

Pontoon rental made $5700

Expenses are approx $29k per year

We are projecting a higher income next year, our first year was spent getting our feet off the ground, etc. Our thoughts are this....sell or keep? The house is large, 4500 sq ft. a ton to take care of. We are considering taking the profits from a sale an buying 2 more smaller lakefront properties as STR. (actually we are in contract for one now)

Or....would you keep on the STR track to help recoup some of the cash you put in? We also think, lakefront property appreciates more than traditional properties and feel "safer" holding on to it for a few more years than we would with anything else.

Is there something we may be missing here? Would love you thoughts.

thanks everyone. We have a salon/spa and a brand new Airbnb that is doing very well! 

I have an amazing cpa but have never handed over receipts!! It scares me. But, we just do t have the time to organize. We are so busy working in the businesses. 

Our cpa offered to do book keeping. We also have the salon as an s Corp and Airbnb as an LLC. That part is handled it's the back end stuff that is overwhelming.