All Forum Posts by: Leon Lee

 Lisa

Thank you for the info! One quick question: can you post smart pricing on your listings on the Houfy? I took a quick look and did not find a quick way to connect the smart pricing to the listing. Thought I might have missed something and it is the best to confirm. 

Thanks

Lee

 If you add your cleaners as teammates, they can just see the calendar like they do in Guesty

I used both Guesty (Pro) and Hospitable. Guesty is simply just too expensive. And you also need to be super careful about their 1-yr contract if switching to different a pay model (We are dealing with them for $27000 early cancellation penalty now) Although they have many functions such as generating one listing from Guesty and pushing them to all different platforms, we realize that pushing to multiple platforms is not necessarily generating more income. You may also have squatters sneak into your house from those platforms that don't screen guests well. Hospitable is the first PM software we used and we still love it today: it is intuitive to use. It currently does not integrate with any payment processing software such as Stripe, which can be a little inconvenient to charge guests from direct bookings. Also, their direct booking website looks too amateur too.  However, it is MUCH more affordable than Guesty. We decided to switch to Hospitable and use the saved money to hire additional VAs, which we can do a whole lot more with. 

We used to believe that more platforms mean more business, but recently we down sized to airbnb and VRBO only, even though we use Guesty Pro that can automatically push your listings to many platforms: the reason is that not all platforms screen guests equally well. It turned out that scammers/squatters tend to find these loopholes and book your listings using stolen credit cards and/or sell to someone who got evicted and had no other place to go but your airbnb. We realized that about 10% of this type of bookings really created 90% of our headaches. Besides, if they booked your place on a weekends, it means that good guests from other platforms can not take the spot anymore. Such issues are definitely more frequent in not so great part of the town. 

 George

Thank you for the info! One quick question: you mentioned that "1099 contractors can generally be excluded from participating in the plan as well". What does this exactly mean? For example, if I quit my W2 job and become a property manager for Company A, as a 1099 contractor. Will I be qualified to open solo 401K?

Thanks
Lee

 Nathan

Thank you for the inputs! Yes! After some search online, we decide to separate the finances for different hotels completely. There will be a little more setup related work upfront, but for financing and auditing, it will be much easier from the long run. 

Thanks again

Lee

Hi, BPers

I have a quick question on setting up accounts for managing two properties. They are two hotels with >30 rooms each and belong to different owners. Now, if I am asked to manage both of them, is it more efficient to have one operational account for all the properties that I manage (including other single family houses, short-term rentals, etc..) or it is the best to have two completely separate accounts for these two hotels?

I leaven slightly toward separating them for both incomes and expenses, given that we have significant budgets for renovations and each is of quite large size.   The downside seems to that I have to apply for debit cards, PayPal, CashApp for each property and we still can't completely separate expenses for two properties (like our PM software, our smart lock system,  costs, etc..). What's more, I can't imagine if one day we manage 5 hotels and the # of accounts and cards we will have. 

Any inputs on pros and cons will be greatly appreciated!

Lee

Hi, BPers

We have seven cabins in the north Georgia and so far they perform ok. One most annoying issue we constantly got from guests is "hey, for some reason, we could not turn on fireplace, could you help?". Many times it was because previous guests turned off pilot light although we had already double and triple taped the switch to control the pilot light and coupled that with instructions on "do NOT turn off pilot light". Other times, it is just that guests turn on fireplace several days in a row and the orifice was blocked. 

Although because of this sole reason, we are considering to keep our on-site property manager. But on the other hand, it is stupid to keep one person to just light fireplace for guests. I am sure that we are not the only cabin operators to experience this. My question is what is the best solution to solve this fireplace issue?

Many thanks in advance!

Lee

Hi, BPers

We recently purchased a rundown motel that had extremely poor management from the previous owner. It is a beachfront motel but let guests book for free. There are hundreds of bookings extending to the end of 2023. What's worse, they significantly undersold their dates, but allowing one night stay, and charges only $100/night. Now, the new cleaning team wants to charge us $100 per room per clean. Anyway, you got the idea :)

We have a big budget to renovate this place, but with so many (and undersold and possibly malicious) reservations, what will be a great way to cancel these bookings without being penalized by the booking channels. They are mainly from booking.com and Expedia.com.

We really wanted to re-list the motel from all platforms, as any ads and reviews online about the motel is a liability to us. Search from Google Map about the motel, you will see reviews containing keywords like "BED BUGS", "horrible", "bad business", etc..

We are truly determined to turn this rundown motel into a beautiful beachfront boutique motel/airbnb. So, any inputs will be greatly appreciated!

Lee

Hi, Fellow BPers

We recently acquired a 20-unit beachfront motel that is 7 hours of drive from us. Since the current on-site manager and cleaners (they are lovers) burned out and decided to leave upon closing, we are planning to find a new on-site manager. We are planning to provide him/her a very nice oceanview room to stay and with utilities included. As return, he/she only needs to occasionally help on some problems from guests and act as our eyes and ears for our renovations and operations. 

What are good sources to find people like this? Our experience from finding contractors seems to be that referral is generally more reliable than finding them online or applications from our job posts online. I wonder whether it is the same for on-site property manager.

Any inputs will be greatly appreciated!

Lee