All Forum Posts by: Luke Carl

@Quinton Slay I would focus on getting your fiancee on board. Don't waste your time with the girlfriend. 

@Ben Leybovich I would love a referral. Someone who knows how VRs work and is ok with dealing wth a small guy like me. 

@Chris Watson  If you're looking for the best realtor in Sevier county contact @averycarl She specializes in out of state investors. 

@Chris Watson we have had maybe 3 bookings every that were 7 days or more. We do one night and ever since we switched to 1 night everything has been much better. We have no problems hitting 28+ days every month and generally hit 100% 

@Eric C. Great question but I would assume its property by property basis. Either way I'll still be below 7 days. I'm learning much more about it. Schedule C. Set up an S corp or a C corp and there are still plenty of tax shelters. 

I highly recommend "Loopholes of Real Estate by Garrett Sutton. I learned a lot. 

Talk to several CPAs before committing to one. If they don't have a short term rental of their own maybe it's best not to hire them. 

What is your check out procedure for guests?  (run dishwasher, take trash out, strip beds?) 

Do you have a vacuum in each property or does cleaner bring their own? (I never thought of this until bed bugs were brought to my attention. One vacuum for 5 properties = 5 properties with bed bugs should there be a problem)

Any other housekeeping tips or tricks would be great to share! 

Avery Carl Andrew Johnson Brett Shoemaker Avery is the real deal. Trust me I've seen her books ;) We have never been less than 90% occupancy and very often hit 100% year round. Our goal has always been 85% Do I want to manage your property? No way. Lol! There was an excellent point made here about management. In our market it's 40% of gross. Although lots of new companies like Vacasa and Evolve are popping up and they take 35% they aren't even in the area and know nothing about it. A marketing person for Vacasa called me 2 days ago (via BP so he's likely to read this) and in his sales pitch he pronounced the name of our county wrong! If you're a homeowner how could you possibly put your property with a company 12 states away that doesn't care? As far as I'm concerned, if you're not managing you're not making money. And management is a whole different ball game than LTRs. Just yesterday I fielded texts and phone calls about a broken HVAC and a Labor Day cancelation and a lunch recommendation in the same half hour. When an HVAC goes out at a vacation rental it's not as simple as telling your tenants they're going to be hot for a few days so "deal with it". Avery and I are approaching it as though if we scale enough, we can hire people to do certain parts of our own management for us. Co hosts in the area get 15% to answer messages and thank people. To me that's ridiculous. A college kid would do it for cheap. And they could do it from their couch. In Rhode Island. If, that is, you feel comfortable with that scenario. I personally care too much about my properties. That's why I'm up right now at 5am with a truck load of towels and toilet paper. For us the heavy return is worth it. And the real key is....We enjoy it!!!! I will point out one thing to the OP about the OP..... We got in to this because Nashville was too tough of a market. We bought one LTR SFH in Nashville and it does fantastic, but in the last 4 years it has become impossible to make a buck here, so we looked elsewhere. We were in the mountains all the time anyway. We're both avid runners and hikers. We thought we'd rent it out to help pay the mortgage. The brutal truth is.... if you're sleeping in your cabin (condo) it's not one penny cheaper than sleeping in someone else's cabin (condo) next door.

The biggest TVs you can fit on whatever wall you're putting it on and as many channels as your provider offers. Why get rid of directTV? You need cable AND netflix. BYONetflix login. 

 Raise your rates and give them more channels. It's unreal how many people go on "vacation" and do the exact same crap they do at home on someone else's nicer couch. 

Ask the company you're using now. cbiz and proper are pretty much the exact same policy. Just call whoever does your homeowners and ask them to give you a quote on an over night commercial policy. if they offer such a thing. 

Found great answers here also 

https://justaskbenwhy.com/2017/06/29/how-much-inco...

Thanks Ben! 

I've posted this question on the Tax forum and it seems to be a gray area. We've managed to scale the business pretty quickly this year to 5 STRs. Cabins in the Smoky Mountains. Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. I'm likely to get a 1099 bigger than my day job. 

I've asked 4 CPAs Schedule C or Schedule E. 

3 said C

1 said E because I'm not offering "daily services" such as maid service or breakfast.  I was told not to hire the guy that said E. 

My question is... since they're under 7 days per rental... am I subject to filing this income under Schedule C and does that mean I'm subject to self employment tax... therefore defeating the purpose of investing in real estate not to mention doing all this extra work communicating with guests and dealing with cleaning crews and scheduling??

Do I need to 1099 my cleaning crews? I'm pretty sure that would send them running. 

Someone on here has to be self managing AIrbnb and getting a healthy enough 1099 to be able to answer help me. 

If I am filing Schedule C is there some loophole to avoid self employment tax? What if wife is real estate professional? Which, in my case is the true, but is it worth it to make her a pro?  What does it mean to make her a pro? 

Currently reading loopholes of real estate but he does not cover STRs. Figures. 

 I have a meeting with a new CPA next week but I want to educate myself enough to know if he knows what he's talking about or not. 

Thanks!