All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

If it passes it will likely be retroactive for this whole year anyway.  That is how it worked last time with the Trump tax plan.

OP wouldn't have to worry about it either way unless their income is over $1 million/year, as I understand it.

I think there is still too much unknown about this to make it a key factor in the decision.

I can't speak to questions #1 or #2, but on #3 you will find that most people here in this forum are managing out of state STRs remotely.  It is extremely doable.

Whoops forgot to mention.  For management I am planning to self manage mine.  I already manage two in another state and while I expect this one to be a little more difficult given the party crowds, it is really pretty easy.

I don't think resort amenities are where you're going to really stand out. You're still competing with thousands of homes that all have those same amenities. I also don't think it's worth stressing over picking which resort. Windsor Hills is a little closer, Champions Gate has a little better amenities, etc. It all probably cancels out in the end and the home itself is where you'll stand out.

We are doing the same as @Jefferson Brown and going full bore on the theming and whatnot. For us that meant drywall and A/C in the garage and turning it into a legit arcade room, and going big on two very nice theme rooms with custom beds, play area, paint job, etc.

As far as "turnkey" goes I think you'll find plenty of homes that are "turnkey" in the traditional sense (IE they have nice furniture, are nicely decorated, etc), but it is extremely unlikely that you'll find "turnkey" in terms of a standout home with big theme rooms and whatnot already done.

In my year+ of monitoring the Champions Gate market (I still look at it every day even though we've already bought ours) I've never seen one of those homes go up for sale. I am assuming/hoping that is because they are renting so well no one wants to sell them. 

Occasionally a home that already has a theater room will go up for sale but that was more common pre-covid boom. The closest I've seen to turnkey "standout" was pre covid boom there were a couple in CG that already had a theater room and had a couple of lightly themed rooms. IE framed frozen wall mural, some fancy looking princess furniture, and a nice purple paint job.  Something like this.

But for the big really fancy theme rooms like this one, I've never seen one go up for sale.  And post-covid I've never seen any of either type.  Pretty much only very traditionally decorated homes without any kind of real theming. 

I do think you can get creative and create a "big" experience without the custom fully built theme rooms if that's not in your budget. There is one house in CG that has a really nice looking Frozen room that looks like a custom built theme room, but when you really look at it you can tell they just put together a bunch of stuff you can buy off the shelf in a big way and it worked really well, and looking at their calendar it seems to rent pretty well. They were probably in $3-4k for that room compared to the $10k/$20k we are spending on each of our theme rooms, though I expect (hopefully!) ours to bring in a higher ADR.

It's worth noting though that all that research I did was based on one of the larger 8+ bedroom homes, so if you are looking at something different probably take it with a grain of salt.  It's possible that less theming will go further on the smaller homes, I'm not sure.

We have a place in Champions Gate that we are renovating and launching soon.

I was making the same choice between Champions Gate and Windsor Hills and from a strictly ROI standpoint I think your money goes further in Champions Gate, at least in the price range we were looking. A 9/5 in Champions Gate is around the same price as a 6/4 in Windsor Hills right now.

I will say that having stayed in the property while we've been working on it, with kids who we took to Disney, Windsor Hills is MUCH more convenient to Disney.  CG isn't that much further as the crow flies but from Windsor Hills you can get to Disney on a really quick backroad while Champions Gate requires going on I-4, which was way backed up every single day we used it and pretty much always is.

That said, I'm not sure how much the guests actually know/care about that.  As mentioned above the Champions Gate homes are much newer and hence will require less renovation to look and feel new.  The finishes are much more modern and what people are generally looking for today, and the photograph great for your airbnb/vrbo listing.  I do agree with the above though that the homes were built cheaply.  The house we bought in Champions Gate was built in 2017 and the carpet/paint look like they are from 1997 already.  And we've already had problems with the A/C and hot water heater.

I wouldn't worry at all about the long term rental thing. The whole reason people want a place that will do well as a LTR as a fall-back is in case regulations ban short term rentals. But that is not an issue here so there's no reason to care about being able to use it as a LTR. The STR will always make more money and it's not going to get regulated out in a community specifically built for STRs.

One thing I will note though is that, while everything is renting right now, I'm not sure how well units that don't stand out do in normal times.  We bought ours with the intention of doing heavily themed rooms, an arcade room, etc.  My research showed me that even in slow times these places that stand out still rent, but if the Covid boom does die off I'm not sure if a "normal house" in the middle of these giant communities of tens of thousands of the same house will get lost in the shuffle.

No personal experience with it but I've seen the North Carolina ski areas pop up a few times on some STR FB groups as renting pretty well for skiing in winter, while still having good summers.

The problem with the big western ski resorts is they're ALL pretty much priced to perfection (and then some).  The land is just so expensive.  I've toyed with the idea of Ogden Valley and Powder Mountain since the goal of the new ownership there is to build a village and turn it into a Park City style area, but it's already priced like it's Park City.

Even the mediocre western ski destinations have exorbitant real estate pricing.  And the really good ski destinations have some word beyond exorbitant that probably hasn't been invented yet.

A couple months ago I saw a $6 million home in Steamboat Springs where they advertised $80k in rental income over the last year. I'm sure most of the multi-million dollar homes are doing a lot better than that but I doubt many can compare to spending $6 million in one of the well known good STR markets.

How quickly were they able to get started?  Was there a wait list?

I have this exact setup on one of my places.  4br main cabin with 2br casita, so I have listings for...

1) 4br main cabin
2) 2br casita
3) Both cabins together for 6 total bedrooms

For bookings that originate on AirBnB it is relatively simple because they built in functionality for exactly this.  I'm guessing because they were originally focused on renting individual rooms, so people could list individual rooms within a house or list the entire house.  To accomplish it you want to LINK (not sync, it is different) each individual house to the listing with both houses.

https://www.airbnb.com/help/ar...

From there use whatever PMS of your choice or link to VRBO in iCal and it should copy those blocked dates to VRBO when something gets booked.

So now when someone books main cabin, it will block off the listing with both cabins but not the casita.  When someone books both cabins it will block off each of the other two, etc.

However I have NOT found a way to do this with bookings that originate on VRBO.  When I get a booking on VRBO for one of the 3 I need to quickly go in to my PMS and block off the relevant cabins manually.  I would love to find a way to automate it for bookings that originate on VRBO.

I listed both the 3br and 4br rates for condos. Whether you compare the 3br condo or 4br condo to the 4br houses the rates look much lower on the condos.

If any beachfront condo owners can chime in with their actual numbers this year though that may be helpful because the enemy method is not foolproof so it is certainly possible I am well underestimating their gross income post-covid.

What are 3br/4br oceanfront condos bringing in for gross rent?  I see nice oceanfront 3br/4br condos listed at $1.2M-1.8M right now.  Are these bringing in $150k-$250k like houses in that price range are?

Edit: whoops, posted in the wrong place.