All Forum Posts by: Mark Kappelman

Hi @Evangeline Hooie, this won't be online as of now, I'm sorry. Fly up to Chicago for it?? :)

We organized this meetup for those people seeking to learn more about short-term rental (STR) investing (think AirBnB, VRBO, Homeaway, Flipkey, etc) and/or those actively looking for STR investment opportunities. This meetup will be focused on Chicago and the surrounding areas, but the lessons learned can be applied to any other market. For example, my company currently has STR investments in both Chicago and Florida.

The meeting will offer great networking, but the goal is to have presentations from local industry influencers (e.g. property managers, government officials, realtors, lenders, cleaning crews, etc) so the group can develop the confidence to make STR investments. Or, if you are already an experienced STR investor, the meeting will provide an opportunity to 'sharpen the saw' and develop more relationships in the industry/find deals.

Still working on the agenda for this INAUGURAL meeting, but the meeting will be FREE with GREAT content, so please come join us!

Best,
Mark and team

@Paul Sandhu thanks Paul, sounds like you have a good thing going on at that building. Chicago limits STR units at 25% of total building units, so LT will always be the majority unless someone doesn’t follow the rules. Appreciate the reply!

@Sovat Chheang thanks! We were planning to do one ground floor and one garden unit for STR so similar to your guidance. We also planned to let our tenants know and to your point they ‘guest angle’ makes a lot of sense. Appreciate it!

Hello - We are considering doing short-term rental (STR) (e.g. AirBnB) in two of the units in an 8 unit building that we own. Does anyone have experience doing STR on a subset of units in a multi-family building with primarily long-term (LT) tenants? My gut is that the other tenants aren't going to like it, but I'm wondering if anyone in the community has experience with this that they would share (e.g. tips/tricks/best practices). Thanks!

@Sean Campbell OK, that makes sense. Assuming you rent and rooms and furnish them, can you rent the rooms furnished to corporate travelers in the offseason? That is what we are planning to try and do in Chicago on a couple new units we are brining online in early 2019. Having said all this, if your market is truly only in demand for 3 months a year, LT renting might be the way to do. Run your numbers both ways and let the data make the decision - that's probably my best advice.

@Sean Campbell Paying for utilities is a fee you need to factor into your proforma if you're going to pursue an STR strategy. If you are getting $2,000 (midpoint) renting rooms and $1,250 (midpoint) on a LT basis, even if you have to pay a $250 utility bill, you are still $500 ahead. Costs are always higher for an STR property but the revenue SHOULD more than offset it. Happy to answer any other questions you have.

@Ashley Wolfe Like anything in life, there are pros and cons to ST and LT rental investing. We do both and have a 3 unit STR property in Tampa that we 'manage' from Chicago, which means we use a third party property manager to handle guest communications and turnovers (e.g. cleanings). If you go on Google and search for 'AirBnB property manager', a number of different groups will come up, including (but not limited to) Evole and Turnkey. You can also look at each of your AirBnB 'comps' in your area and see if there is a commonality among the property 'hosts' or 'co-hosts', and if there is, I'd suggest you reach out to that person to learn more about your local market. We did this and ended up using a local property manager.

If you're interested in trying STR, I'd recommend you go for it. We've had great results in Tampa and are about to bring two units online in Chicago. The downside to trying is limited to the cost of furnishing the property, and even then, you may be able to rent it out furnished on a long-term basis if the ST stragtegy doesn't work out, or sell the furniture for that matter.

We started STRing back in January 2018 and are documenting our learnings (which are growing :) ) at our blog here (http://www.trihomestoday.com/blog/) if you're interested.

Good luck and feel free to reach out with any other questions!