All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

 The majority of the people in this forum take care of them from afar.  Being close is definitely helpful, but not at all necessary imo.

Like Alice mentioned, there are quite a few "themers" in the Orlando area that specialize in this as their full time business.  The hardest part is getting on their schedule as they usually stay very busy.  It took a couple months for us to get work started on ours.

You can also do a lot of it just piecing stuff together.  The princess room in our place we just did ourselves using all products that could be bought online.  The Star Wars room we hired a themer for.  If you do end up buying feel free to reach out and I can give you some contacts.

Thanks!  We had a blast doing it.  I want to buy another to do it all over again.  We have so many more ideas we didn't get to use.

I think there is a lot of truth to a lot of what you said.  I got lucky that I bought before the market really exploded so my properties have room for rates to fall quite a bit and still be okay.  If I were buying at today's prices I probably couldn't say the same.

I guess my follow-up question would be how the heck are you building that in to Smokies cabins at current prices?  I am active in that market and there is no way cabins there, at their current prices, would cash flow if the ADR were cut in half.  Or are your current builds there properties that you went under contract with and started building prior to prices really growing out of control?

I'd love to build a 5br pool cabin in the Smokies for $1.5m.  But that thing would be a disaster if rentals were cut in half and suddenly it were only doing $90k in gross income.

Disney I think still has meat on the bone.  I have a nicely themed place and if rates were cut in half I'd still be doing okay.  But I bought it back in the $500's.  Fully themed out like it is now I could probably sell it for near $1m.  About $500k less than the Gatlinburg cabin and I think rev will be somewhat comparable.  I am estimating $150-$160k for the Disney place and $180k-$200k for Gatlinburg pool cabin.  Though to be fair expenses are probably a good bit higher in Florida.

The nice thing about Disney is you do a lot with value add, and the upfront pricing (and long term liability) isn't bad.  You can buy a 9br in one of the resorts for $750k, which is a great entry for $150k gross annual, and unheard of in any other vacation destinations right now ($150k gross is going to cost you $1.5m and up in Destin or Gatlinburg).  Of course that requires $50k-$100k in extra cost for theming, but at least that's not as much of a liability if the market turns sour as an extra $750k on your mortgage like you'd have in Destin/Smokies/etc.

It sounds like you have the right idea.  If you have the budget for it, and it sounds like you do, Disney is easy IMO.  Buy big, and stand out.  There are almost 40,000 vacation rentals in the Disney area.  Nice houses with nice furniture are a dime a dozen and the only way to compete if you have those is by lowering prices.  If you're in the top 10% of those 40k you will stay very well booked, at high rates.  The path to that 10% you've already figured out.  Theming.

I have a well themed 9br in Champions Gate (link below) that I went live with in October that is doing very well.  If you want to connect via PM I can share numbers with you as well as expenses (which are fairly high in Florida).

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5...

From a personal use standpoint, you will be happier in Reunion.  It is simply a nicer neighborhood with less of a party atmosphere than some of the others.  However from an investment standpoint your returns will be worse there.  Home prices are higher and, as was mentioned above, you are stuck using their high priced PMs or not being allowed to let your guests use the amenities.

Self managing is extremely doable.  I manage mine (and several others) from Utah and it's no problem.  There are lots of good PM options if you want something more passive as well.  It's a balance between the desire to maximize returns or to have something that requires a little active work (though not a lot), and where you want to be on that spectrum.

I agree with the others, I preferred the old style by a lot.  Everything just seems too "busy" now.  Like every page is a giant wall of text and there's no separation.

I do understand having to make the change because the old forum or theme was no longer supported.  That is a bummer.  This has been a pain point in every forum I've ever run or been a part of.  We all miss the old look, but eventually get used to the new one.

Personally though my biggest gripe is the move to kind of make the whole forum like one giant facebook feed, rather than an actual forum separated by sub-categories.  I've noticed the last few days an overwhelming number of people in sub-categories giving answers not relevant to that sub-category, because they came to the thread via some giant jumbled feed and don't realize they're in that sub-category.

For instance I spend most of my time in the STR forum. Typically most people posting there were specifically in the STR forum, answering threads specific to STRs. IE if someone asked about property managers or markets everyone knew they were asking about STR property managers or STR markets.

That is no longer the case. Now if someone posts in the STR forums about property managers or markets 90% of the responses are people that have no knowledge of STRs giving info on buy and hold PMs or the best market for flipping homes. They don't realize they're in the STR forum, so they're giving info not relevant to STRs.

I didn't realize why it was happening until I saw this thread and someone mentioned the dropdown. Hovering over "forums" no longer brings down the subforums. Even clicking on "forums" just brings up a feed of recent posts rather than a list of forum categories, which is different than any other forum site. If I didn't already have the STR forum bookmarked I wouldn't even know how to get there.

It has made the experience significantly worse, to be honest.  It defeats the entire purpose of a forum IMO.  The baseline of a forum is to drill-down by sub-category into a specific subforum, and browse there.  Viewing a feed of new threads or popular threads should be a separate, intentional button click.  Not the baseline.

Whelp, I stand corrected to some degree, lol.

The problem with this thread isn't the OP, it's that most people replying 1) didn't read past the title, and 2) don't know anything about the subject the OP was asking about.

The OP didn't ask what he should do with $1M, like you're implying. He asked a handful of specific questions relative to STRs. Tons of people have gotten really great info about STR specific questions in this forum. Many of us learned how top do it in this forum and now make 6-7 figures annually with the knowledge we've gained here.

When he asked "what's the play?" he wasn't asking "what type of investment should I do?".  He was asking should he look at STRs out of state or focus on in-state.  Should he self-manage or can he use a property manager for his STRs, etc. 

The OP's mistake was mentioning "million" in his title, which brought in the wolves from the main forum feed, rather than the usual people that browse the STR forum. So rather than getting answers to his STR specific questions, he got a bunch of people that don't know anything about STRs, saw that he had $1mil in cash, and sent the thread all kinds of off topic by pitching their favorite investment type (which he wasn't asking for).

Out of state is not a problem for STRs.  Almost everyone here that runs STRs owns them out of state.

You don't need a management company.  The vast majority of people here self-manage.  If you are looking for truly passive income (self management is easy and doesn't take that much time, but it's not passive), it will cut into your returns for sure.  In the right market, you can certainly still cash flow well with a manager, but most people here prefer the few hours a week to save the $10's of thousands annually.

If you define "modest/light leverage" then we can give you a better idea of what kind of return you could potentially generate.  $1mil in cash is up to $10mil in buying power, so there is a huge difference depending on how much of that buying power/leverage you want to use.

Yes, most people around here heavily prefer fewer large properties to a bunch of little ones.  For starters, like you mentioned it is less work.  Additionally, while revenue generally scales with larger properties, maintenance expenses don't.  That is 10 properties is 10 roofs, 10+ HVAC's, 10 water heaters, 10 refrigerators, etc that can all break.  2 properties that generate the same revenue are likely to have lower overall maintenance costs since you have fewer of those things.  You're also looking a fewer listings/subscriptions (your PMS and pricing software will charge per property), etc.