All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

 Where in Southern Utah are you?

I've got a place in Kanab and we finally saw seasonality return this year.  July-Sept were a little slow when it was 100+ degrees out.  More of a normal year compared to last year where people still booked like crazy and at high rates even in the 100+ degree heat.

October has been good, as it's pretty much the high season here.  High occupancy but rates a bit lower than last year's outlier.  I'm expecting the winter to be slow this year which is more typical. 

 Shooting you a PM.

 Oh snap.  I am doing the same thing.  Have been working with a pre-fab home vendor for months getting things set up.  Hopefully we're not in the same market, lol.

Guests don't mind grabbing a package off the porch and leaving it in the foyer.  I typically let them know there is a possibility this will happen in their check in message.

You can also try to time it so packages arrive on turnover days when your cleaners are there.  But I got over that pretty quickly and just note to the guests that if any packages arrive they can just move them into the foyer or, if it's in their way, the closet in the master bedroom.

I understand what @Michael Baum, @John Underwood, and @Ken Boone are saying, but I will respectfully disagree a bit.

There are a LOT of people out there right now with more money than time. And plenty with more money than sense, for what it's worth too. I meet people all the time that own STR properties that know absolutely nothing about STRs. It's how companies like Evolve are able to exist.

I remember shopping for our first STR in St George. One of the laws there is that you have to use one of the small handful of PMs pre-selected by the city (the reason we didn't end up buying there). But I remember how surprised the PM companies were when we kept asking them for data about the rentals. Like it was not a common request at all. That city has an insane number of STRs and I'd be willing to bet that at LEAST 80% of them were purchased by people that never so much as opened an excel spreadsheet or punched a number into a calculator, much less had any idea how much revenue a place could generate before they bought it or how much profit or loss that turned into after expenses.

The people here are on BP are doing it right, but represent a small small small teeny tiny minority of STR owners. 99% of STR owners have never heard of Bigger Pockets and most don't have the capacity or desire to search a place like this out. By far the majority of people buying these homes are not DIY'ers that are looking to spend hours reading BP. They would rather pay for an expert to just explain it to them or, even better, just tell them what to buy.

This is true of almost any field, not just STR or real estate.

The bigger question is whether you're actually an expert and can provide them this info.  Do you own/manage STRs already? (EDIT: Just saw your post below that you currently manage 30 STRs)

I'm pretty sure there have been a lot of Tim's who have invested before.  I highly doubt this is the first Tim investor.

 There's a checkbox they can unclick to opt out and if they do it doesn't store any of their data.

Regardless, you've already collected that same personal data (email/name/phone) through your OTA.  And they haven't opted in to marketing communications with that, so like I mentioned if people are cold-calling or cold-emailing them with the email/phone they got from VRBO or their rental agreement then that's arguably worse than sending them an email with an email address collected through stayfi, where they had the option to opt-in or opt-out of those types of communications.

 Just make sure you create a separate throw-away Airbnb account if you do this, because technically I believe it is against Airbnb's terms and they can suspend your account for doing it, so you don't want to do it with an account you already have active listings on.

I'm not gonna hold back here because these childish complaints are really a pet peeve of mine. I say that as a guest that has been staying in STR's since the 90's as much as I do as a host.

Maybe some of the disconnect is big city condotels vs. full houses in the mountains or the beach.  I could maybe understand some of the whining about having to be a grown up adult for 5 minutes at the condotels that are more meant to be direct competitors to a hotel.  But at a full house at the beach or something like that, if you're comparing a few minutes to load the dishwasher in this full house that has to be turned over in a few hours to a 150sqft hotel room that doesn't even have dishes, you're being ridiculous.

Most of the people that complain about this stuff are 16 year olds on Tik Tok just hunting for clicks.  It's become popular in that circle to whine about it, so it's a great way to get clicks.  Seeing full grown adults on an investment forum acting like it's some great burden is frankly kind of sad. 

Why should I have to clean when I'm already paying a cleaning fee?

Throwing your dirty towels into a pile on the floor isn't "cleaning".  99% of hosts ask little more than to start the dishwasher and pile up dirty towels, and 99% of that 99% won't actually ding you in any way if you don't do it.  Maybe some hosts ask to strip the beds or take out the trash.  Plenty reasonable.  The nonsense about being asked to vacuum or mow the lawn is reductio ad absurdum.  A lame form of discussion where someone references the extreme outlier and creates their argument around it as if it is the norm.  "I'm tired of hosts asking me to mow the lawn and re-tar their roof for them!".  Please.

I don't have to do my dishes at a hotel

Well, duh.  Because you don't get dishes at a hotel.  Again, maybe this is a disconnect between tiny NYC condos in the hotel district and your typical vacation rental, but if you rent a 4br Marriott Vacation house in Hawaii you are expected to do your dishes.  If you rent a condo in Aspen through Whyndam they ask you to do your dishes.  If you stay in a timeshare they ask you to do your dishes.  It's been this way for 30 years.

I got a good chuckle out of someone above acting shocked about having to take the trash to the dump 6 miles away, while at the same time mentioning that the checkout list is getting harder, not easier.  I bet he'd be shocked to know that for 20 years prior to Airbnb that was actually the standard, rather than the outlier exception it is now.  I've been staying in cabins in Tennessee, NC, and Georgia since the 90's and it was always expected that you'd take your trash with you when you leave.  Often much further than 6 miles (I remember driving all the way home with it a few times because we couldn't find anywhere to take it.  There just wasn't the infrastructure in a lot of these vacation destinations back then like there is now.  Now, in 99% of cases, you don't have to do that anymore. 

If anything the checkout list has gotten easier and easier (not harder and harder) to the point where it's almost nothing now in most cases. 

Renting a house is just different than renting a little hotel room.  Maybe some people just aren't cut out to be trusted with other people's property.  If you want to check into a place and act like a toddler so some big corporation's $7/hr staff can fix your disaster, then go for it.  If you want to be an adult and stay in a nice place with a kitchen, private pool, and room for 4 families, then do that.

And yea, if you're family is getting into a huge fight because you had to load a dishwasher than that's definitely a "you" problem.  Every day all around the world millions of people manage to successfully load a dishwasher without breaking up their family.  Crazy, I know.

 Sorry I wasn't super clear on that.  I was just saying I wouldn't bother paying the extra money to close it in and add an HVAC if you're just planning on adding a couple of basic games like a foosball table and calling it a day.  I'd either do a few game tables and epoxy floor as cheaply as possible since that's not likely to help with bookings much anyway, or go all out and close in the garage and put together a full blown arcade (probably 20k all-in) that would actually help with bookings.