All Forum Posts by: Mike Shemp

We use booking.com and it has provided some bookings for us.  We have our house rules mentioned in our listing, as well that the guests must sign a rental agreement also.

Knock on wood, so far no issues.

Mike

You need to make sure that how the money is collected is 100% collected prior to them putting a single door in the door.  

If you have any concerns that payment won't be 100% collected prior, then go with 100% at time of booking.

Our checkout time is 10am and we communicate this to them in the House Rules, check-in message, day before checkout message, rental agreement, and on a list of rules on the back of the front door.

At 10:15am we send them an message asking if they have checked out because our cleaner contacted us and is waiting to get inside.  At 10:30am our cleaner will start knocking on the door.

One time we had a guest not leave until 11:00am and we charged him a $100 late fee that Airbnb paid us and we gave him a bad review.

Hope that helps!

Mike

Do you research with some areas in the Poconos as some of the areas in my opinion do not feel safe from a crime standpoint.

Mike

You might want to listen to some of the BP podcasts on some of the other ways that real estate "pays" you, outside of cashflow.

Keith Weinhold from Get Rich Education also has a good podcast and regularly discusses the 5 different ways that real estate pays you.  It's worth a listen just to have the perspective of the other ways to factor into the decision making process.

Hope that helps.

Mike

There are several interior decorating apps out now that are powered by AI.  You provide a picture of the room, and then select a theme, and the AI app will show you what the room might look like to give you some ideas and play with different themes.

Hope that helps.

Mike

You may want to think about Quickbooks or Quicken.  We use Quicken now with 3 rentals.

Hope that helps!

Mike

You need to watch out for the HOA fees, especially the ad-hoc/surprise ones.

For example if your condos are on the ocean on pilings, and it's time for the pilings to get replaced, you could get hit with a hefty HOA charge to cover the construction costs.

Hope that helps.

Mike

Heated towel racks always go over well.
Keurig coffee with coffee pods and condiments.
Gift upon arrival.

Hope that helps.
Mike

There are a lot of STR Poconos groups on Facebook. You might want to check them out to get some thoughts there also.