All Forum Posts by: Micah Starbuck

Hello all,

I'm in the process of acquiring my second rental home and am thinking I'd like to go with property management this time.

I already have a recommendation for Reeder Asset Management but an introduction email has gone unanswered.

I'm curious to see if anyone else is using property management in the Ogden area and whether you would recommend their services or if you had a terrible experience and would recommend to avoid.

Thanks.

Hello BP,

My wife and I are in the process of acquiring our second rental property and it's starting to dawn on me that if I should die, there would be a real possibility of my wife and future child could lose the properties we have.

With that in mind, I'm interested in what kinds of insurance policies people have.  I was thinking that maybe a Loan Protection insurance policy would be a good option in conjunction with a Life Insurance policy.  But I'm sure there's other options out there.

We haven't bothered setting up an LLC or S-Corp but now that we're expanding I'm open to doing so. Don't know if that changes anything but if it does I'd be interested to hear about it.

Tl;dr: What kind of insurance do people use to ensure their properties/loans are safe in the event of a death?

@Andrew Fielder Thank you for the information.  I was not aware of Highest and Best Use analysis/reports.  I will have to look into obtaining one (and if you have a recommendation on a provider I would appreciate being pointed in their direction).

The property is zoned RR so that limits what can be done with it.  Only single family dwellings with out buildings are allowed so that could rule out a series of tiny houses.  A B&B style house might be OK though.

There's also agricultural things you can use the land for like timber harvesting, growing fruits/vegetables and livestock grazing so even if a vacation rental wouldn't work it might be possible to rent the land for agricultural use. 

@Roger Vi Sounds like you and I have the same kind of ideas.  The low occupancy time is certainly a concern but people out there manage to do it somehow.  The idea of micro-cabins has certainly crossed my mind.  There's actually a place in Long Beach called Shakti Cove that's exactly like that.  Little studio log cabins people can rent with a kitchen, bedroom, bath and living room.  I stayed there years ago and really liked the idea.  A group of 5 or 6 "tiny houses" could do the exact same thing.

No real premium features to the property other than the proximity to the beach while being very private.  If someone wanted a quiet get-away to the ocean this would be a perfect area for it.  It's close to everything Long Beach has to offer without being directly in the heart of the tourist area.

@Timothy Daniels Regarding the zoning, I don't know the actual zone (will try to find out) but I do know that the parcel can't be subdivided or have a multi-unit home built on it.  Not sure if that excludes a B&B style home since it's just a standard home with more bathrooms than usual.

I do know that the property is not waterfront.  Wish it were but no dice.  The good news is that it is directly adjacent to the state park on the north side of the peninsula.  Also, being Long Beach, you're never more than 5 or 10 minutes from the water so while you can't walk it's not far away.

@John Underwood Thanks for the recommendation for Homeaway and VRBO.  Other than AirBnB I wasn't aware of other short-term rental listing sites.  I'll have to check them out.

@Timothy Daniels Yes, the Long Beach peninsula is primarily a tourist destination.

I'm still getting more info regarding the property itself. It turns out there might actually be an HOA but we're still sorting that out. Hopefully not though. Good call on the zoning. I'll have to find out about that as well.

It's in an unincorporated area and have no clue what impact that has on doing this type of deal.

Thought I should follow-up with what I ended up doing.

I decided to use Cozy.co as my payment processor/property management front end.  Through them I was able to post ads to Realtor.com and Doorsteps.  I also posted an ad on KSL.com manually.  I never got to the point of putting out a physical sign because I found a suitable tenant within a week of posting the ads.

I ended up getting a number of inquiries pretty quickly but I'm not sure where they found the ad since they all emailed directly.

Thanks for everyone's input.  I was incredibly concerned about finding tenant after reading all the horror stories but at least in my case it was an incredibly smooth/fast process.

I'm in a situation I haven't experienced before and looking for some input.

My father owns 5 undeveloped acres on Long Beach Washington.  He was originally looking to sell it but I approached him with the idea of dropping a house on it and using it as a vacation rental.

He's open to the idea but neither of us have done development of this type before.

I know the questions we need to answer are: 

1. Financially, Is this is a viable plan?
2. If it is possible, what type of building to do (BnB, single family home, multiple small cabins, RV park?) 
3. Property Management (He lives in Japan and I'm in Utah)

If anyone here has done this type of development before I would love to hear your input.  Or, if any of you know folks in the Long Beach/Astoria area who you could connect us with I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks everyone for your input.  I'll be giving Postlets a serious look as well as some of the other ideas regarding signs and flyers.

Hey all,

Getting ready to close on my first rental property and I'm trying to determine the best strategy for advertising the available unit.

Being in Utah, KSL is always the go-to for classified listings but I see that they're using a company called Rentler which is a landlord services company.  Other than the advertisement I'm not sure I'm interested in anything else they provide.

Craigslist is an obvious alternative but I'm curious what other listing agencies or strategies folks have or are using successfully.