All Forum Posts by: Mark Miles

Hello! Hubs and I are considering purchasing a vacation home to rent out and use ourselves occasionally. We’d like to stay within New England so that it’s driving distance from us (on the Cape). Can anyone recommend locations that have good potential?

Right now we have our eyes on Campton, NH. Close to skiing and hiking in the White Mountains and not too far from the lakes region. Seems to have good year-round (minus mud season!) appeal. But we’d love to hear other suggestions! Thanks :)

Just be sure to go into this with realistic expectations. It's REALLY TOUGH in the northeast to make a solid return on STR. But if your goal is to use the house & defray some costs, and you're realistic that it might not even pay for itself, go for it!

1 Vote

Originally posted by @Robert Tinker:

Getting ready to furnish our first STR. In your experience, both as a host and a guest, how much does the size of the bed impact the number of bookings you get? I know myself I usually look for king size bed. We have a 2/2 condo , bedrooms are 10x11, and 9x12. My first thought was 2 queens. But if I would get more bookings with a king maybe we should do that. Appreciate your thoughts and experience with this. Thanks and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I would go King if the room can comfortably hold it. Doesnt cost that much extra & it’s a nice perk

2 Votes

Originally posted by @Account Closed:

Hi everyone,

I've been researching potential markets for short term rental ROI and it seems like as far as tools go, it's mostly the two: AirDNA & Mashvisor.

I'm wondering if anyone else has had the need to research lots of markets (I live in the SF Bay Area and property prices are too expensive for me to do local investment, so I'm basically looking at any market in the US). And if so, do you find one tool more useful than the other? It seems like AirDNA is very expensive, and can only show you more detailed data after you decide on a specific market. MashVisor gives the free trial period, but doesn't show you the average nightly rate, occupancy rates, etc at one glance.

This led me to thinking more about potential tools that can help investors like myself. If there was a tool that showed you top level data (average nightly rate, occupancy rates, seasonality, etc) for $29.99 per month for ALL markets in the US, would you subscribe?

Thanks in advance for your input!

Helen

No advice on tools but, per the post I just wrote, definitely focus on the southern half of the US:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

1 Vote

Originally posted by @Katie Ferguson:

My goal is to build up to 50 properties. Where have you had the most success? I am open to any location. What is your best advice?

The most important thing you'll need to make a lot of money with Vacation Rentals is consistent year-round traffic. Look at a map of the continental US & focus on the lower half of the map - that's where the real STR money is made.

There’s hardly anywhere in the upper half of the US that will earn you the kind of annual revenue that you’ll earn in the lower half of the US - the weather simply doesn’t cooperate in the upper half of the country. No one wants to vacation in New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana or Nebraska in November. Yet those months are delightful in many southern locales.

If you live in the North, I’d strongly recommend you become comfortable with out of state investing. Otherwise you’ll be like that guy in Alaska asking why no one is renting your house

1 Vote

Originally posted by @Dan Edwards:

@Joey Morea- One of the deals I am looking at comes fully furnished and comes with their existing Airbnb page (decent amount of reviews and superhost), they are currently doing a little over 40k gross, but my understanding is the 40k includes the cleaning fees that they collected and the total for the cleaning for the year for them was around 8k, so their gross is 32k once the cleaning fees come out. So if I took the cleaning out of my expenses then the annual breakeven would be in the $38-42k range.

AirDNA has the two places I am currently looking at grossing an estimated 42 and 45k. I am also chatting with an existing host in Big Bear who is giving me some good info, I dont have his gross number yet though.

Overall from what I have found in my research (and unless my expense #s are way off, which I dont think they are going to be that off to make a meaningful difference), unless you REALLY hustle or get a steal of a deal on the property, its hard to cash flow and it would really be a renter subsidized vacation home either covering all the expenses or coming close, with the potential for appreciation upside long term. At the end of the day I think I just need to decide if its worth it to me to tie up 40k+ in capital to have a "free" vacation home (although it would be a lot of work to self manage) with the possibility of making money off a future sale or put my money elsewhere.

Electricity varies greatly by where you are. You need to figure that out for your location. Kansas power costs do not correlate to Big Bear.

Factor in the cost of furniture where necessary - it can be a lot. Don’t miss this in up front costs.

You can’t transfer an airbnb page so dont put any value in that

0 Votes

Originally posted by @Carolyn Fuller:

I use Google Forms (https://docs.google.com/forms/...) to collect information about my guests that the condo association requires. Unlike DocuSign, Google Forms are free.

DocuSign is a great tool for those times a legal signature is required. It does not sound like the retirement community requires a legal signature.

Yeah i was considering google forms. Do the guests actually fill it out? How often do you find yourself nagging the guests or threatening to cancel the reservation if they don’t fill it out?

0 Votes

Does anyone operate an STR in an area where you have to register all of the guests with the city, town, community, county, or neighborhood BEFORE their stay begins? If so, how do you go about getting all of the information that you need from the guests prior to their stay? Do you send them a form to fill out? If so, do they actually fill it out????

0 Votes

Originally posted by @Collin S.:

I have rented out my guest house on Airbnb for the past year with success. When I go to sell my house, I (obviously) would be selling my main house and guest house. Is there a quantitative way to add a premium to selling price for the income producing feature of the guest house? If so, how is that calculated?

I would add buzzwords to the listing such as “includes income producing Airbnb guesthouse” - knowledgable buyers will pick up on that & offer more. It’s kind of like buying a duplex. You might want to include a clause in the purchase contract that says if property under-appraises, buyer must come out of pocket to cover the difference & ask the buyer to prove they have an additional $30k in savings or whatever to come out of pocket & cover that difference. There’s ways to do it just depends how much extra effort you and your agent are willing to invest to reap top dollar.

I would make sure you get a top notch agent & be clear with them what you’re doing here & ensure they’re 100% onboard. They’ll get a higher commission with a higher selling price but they’ll also have to do more work screening prospective buyers etc

1 Vote

Originally posted by @Chris Gottshall:

Airbnb allows you to set both check-in AND check-out days. I have mine set to allow either on any day except Sunday. Works great. This should be editable on the "Availability" tab of your listing. You should be able to uncheck every day (to prevent) check-in and check-out, which should strictly limit Saturday to Saturday bookings for you.

The problem is I want to allow check in & check out on ANY day of the week except during summer. I don’t think Airbnb lets you control checkout days by season or by date, do they?

0 Votes

I try to restrict my rentals to Saturday to Saturday in the summer. I do this by enforcing Saturday check-in only and minimum 7 night stay. It mostly works fine. But sometimes people do things like booking from Saturday to the FOLLOWING Monday (9 days), then I'm screwed bc the entire next week is vacant bc no one wants to START a rental on a Monday. Any way to stop guests from being able to do this on Airbnb? I'm fine if they book 7 days or 14 days (Saturday to Saturday), just not 9 or 10 days!

0 Votes

All Forum Posts by: Mark Miles

Mark Miles has started 38 posts and replied 498 times.

Post: New England Short Term Rental

Post: King or queen, more bookings?

Post: AirDNA or MashVisor: What Data Tool Would You Use?

Post: First time investor - give me your best advice!

Post: Big Bear Lake Airbnb Breakeven Numbers

Post: Registering your guests

Post: Registering your guests

Post: Valuation of a STR property

Post: Saturday to Saturday in summer

Post: Saturday to Saturday in summer