All Forum Posts by: Kris Markham

I live in San Diego and have significant equity tied up in a 4-unit multi family investment property. I'm looking for an investor friendly bank that will do a HELOC. Has anyone had success with this and willing to share their bank/experience? From my research is seems like majority of banks won't do this but there are a few that will.

@Dan Perd I use Lauras Cleaning - I wouldn't call them affordable (125 - 140 per turnover for a 3 bed 2 bath house) but they have been reliable.

@Kevin Yi I've only seen a couple new construction in Moonridge in the past year but they do exist.  I'm only familiar with the Moodridge area as far as VR's go.  One thing I did before I bought was reached out to owners on Airbnb in area's I was looking.  I reached out to 8 owners and almost all of them got back to me with their experience and recommendations almost all super positive and quality feedback.  Highly recommend taking the same approach.

@Kevin Yi for me, the numbers are for my second year.  The first year has substantial furnishing costs (for us about $15k to furnish a 3 bed 2.5 bath).  You can probably furnish for much less though depending on what style you are going for.

@Jonathan Whitmore we were booked 170 nights in 2017 but could have done better if I wasn't so stubborn on price the first half of the year.  We didn't have any bookings in April and only 2 nights in May because I refused to lower the price.  This year we should easily go over 200 with smarter pricing in the low months.

We use Laura's Cleaning Personel and have been happy with them.  They have been the key to self-management for us.  Even though they only charge us for cleaning, we can ship them supplies, ask them to do odd jobs, and they always let us know if anything is damaged by a guest.

Hot tub is really the only stress that the Cabin creates for us.  Whenever it needs to be cleaned and refilled it takes a couple days to heat back up which is obviously a big negative for guests expecting to use it.  I've refunded guests $100 here and there when the Hot Tub isn't hot enough to enjoy.

@Lauren Yiu we drop the price rather significantly during the week.  January is booked all but 2 days.  If we rent it for $650 on the weekends in peak season, we'll rent it for 275 during the week for example.  I used to use Wheelhouse to automate pricing when I used VRBO, Trip Advisor and Airbnb but managing 3 separate platforms was painful.  This past year we decided to only use AirBnB with smart pricing and my time to manage dropped to the 30 min per week and we ended up doing more revenue.

We purchased a 1,900 sq ft 3 bed/2.5 bath new construction in the Moonridge area of Big Bear in February, 2016 for $510k and have been renting it ever since. 2017 was our first full year of business and we did $53k in gross revenue. We self-manage and even then expenses are still very high. We had a net profit of $20k after mortgage interest (30 yr, 20% down), cleaning, hot tub services, utilities, supplies, etc. AND we spent 2 months at the cabin ourselves throughout the year (mostly when no one was booked during low season).

We didn't purchase this cabin just to create a vacation rental machine, we also wanted to enjoy it ourselves and so I'm sure you can see much better returns spending $100 - $150k less. The time required to self-manage the property using services like Airbnb, Airbnb Smart Pricing, and SmartBNB automated messaging is less than 30 minutes per week even in peak season.

Hope this helps!

We purchased a 1,900 sq ft 3 bed/2.5 bath new construction in the Moonridge area of Big Bear in February, 2016 for $510k and have been renting it ever since.  2017 was our first full year of business and we did $53k in gross revenue.  We self-manage and even then expenses are still very high.  We had a net profit of $20k after mortgage interest (30 yr, 20% down), cleaning, hot tub services, utilities, supplies, etc. AND we spent 2 months at the cabin ourselves throughout the year (mostly when no one was booked during low season).

We didn't purchase this cabin just to create a vacation rental machine, we also wanted to enjoy it ourselves and so I'm sure you can see much better numbers spending $100 - $150k less.  The time required to self-manage the property using services like Airbnb, Airbnb Smart Pricing, and SmartBNB automated messaging is less than 30 minutes per week even in peak season. 

The key, in my opinion, to a successful AirBnB in Big Bear is quality pictures and decor, competitive pricing, and solid customer service (i.e. 5 star reviews).  I've been able to automate most of the pricing and customer service (messaging) using the services described above, to the point where I only spend 30 minutes a week managing things (on my cell phone).

Hope this helps!