All Forum Posts by: Nathan Grabau

@John Underwood and @Nathan Gesner one of AirDNA's "darker" secrets is that it includes cleaning fees in its revenue estimate, so they need to be backed out if you are using their estimator. That is why I recommend people use pricelabs, which does not include cleaning fees. 

I would just use a 3.5% FHA or 5% down conventional loan. Because it is a primary, you can really crank down your down payment.

I would underwrite with Pricelabs so you can get a number that does not include cleaning fees, and go from there. 70 stays seems like it could be really high to me also, it could be your occupancy rate driving down revenue, which would drive down cleaning costs.

That being said, low population within a couple hundred miles and a high level of resorts around the area could be driving down your numbers too. Airbnb's really struggle to make money in CO ski resort towns because there are so many second residences being used as short term rentals, and there already is a high level of existing hospitality capacity.  

If the LLC's are wholly owned by you, you can do whatever you want with it. In an LLC, whether you pay yourself, take a "draw", etc. does not really impact you. Wholly owned LLC's that are owned by you are looked at as if they are you for tax purposes. Write an offer on a new property, say you want to take title with the new LLC, and write the check out of the old LLC or transfer the old LLC's money into the new LLC's bank account and buy it.

I would contact your insurance agent and see if you can get that pushed back by communicating it is actively being marketed, with showings, and should be rented soon. I had a similar warning to this on one of my properties, without a deadline, and this made the problem go away. 

If they don't make progress for you, I would start to call other companies. I would recommend going through a insurance agent so you have a point of contact. I would not mention the vacancy to the new company, as your unit should be filled promptly. 

I have been really really happy with Keller Williams. Each office is independently owned and has its own "vibe" so I would check out a few. I considered EXP as my next choice, but the model of revenue splits and the stock return model seemed really unsustainable. It did not make sense to me how to producers could earn more from the company than they provided in splits, and with the stock being down 70% in the last year, the market agrees. 

Profit share makes a lot more sense than revenue share. It is more complicated, but growing profit is much more important for an agent than growing revenue. It does not matter how much money you or your brokerage takes in in GCI if you and your brokerage pay more for that revenue than you make, hence are unprofitable. 

If I could go back to my younger self, I would say to start sooner and lean through experience. Why wait 6 month, especially after taking last year to learn? Find something this week and put it under contract and close it this month! Time is the most important variable in real estate, but tends to be the one people have the very least sense of urgency around. 

I am not a lawyer and this is not a legal advice, but it sounds like you should consider talking to a lawyer about this. As I understand it, you certainly have some claim to fraud here. At least in Colorado you do have to disclose issue like this and the fact that you had them fixed. 

Depending on the size of the house, how much you bought it for, and how much money the seller has, this might not be worth pursuing legally. 

You also potentially will have a hard time "dating" the fixes, so it could potentially not had been them that did them. 

You kind of have to ask yourself what you goal is here and whether this is worth your trouble. If its a 1200 sqft roof, it is probably in the range of 6k to replace. If it was already obviously old, you are going to have a hard time getting an award for the full replacement cost of the roof. 

One thing you want to be very careful with how you do this is how you handle threatening legal action. My understanding is you can threaten civil action, but if you start to say things like "fraud is a felony" and threaten that you will notify the DA here if they do not replace your roof, that is blackmail, which turns into a big legal problem for you. 

If you can use one of the sides as a short term rental(average under 7 days, couple other low threshold requirements), you can take depreciation against active income. My understanding is that investment activities do not count towards this 750. 

I would encourage her to get her real estate license. This is probably the pathway of least resistance and is as flexible as she wants it to be. 

One thing to keep in mind is that it has to be 750 hours and she cannot do anything else more than this job too. This is one of the most litigated parts of the tax code, and I have heard only one person has successfully defending their REP status while working another full time job. I realize she doesn't currently have a full time job, but if she gets one, defending REP status becomes very tricky. 

My property manager uses buildium and I have been really happy with it.