All Forum Posts by: Paul Sandhu

Black Friday would be a good day to purchase big ticket items like appliances, electronics and furniture.  If you are going to stock it via the economy route, you have about 2.5 months to hit estate auctions.  You might also look into your best options for cable/satellite/internet.

@Wadood Jumriani

Find yourself a cleaning person for the STRs that does the work for free, and will also sleep with you.

I did.

@Steven C. Suarez Having it on your property is a good idea. You could put an above ground pool there too, and even a kegorator. The tricky part would be how much to claim on your taxes for expenses such electric, water and sewer. The pool and kegorator would be business expenses, so don't use them for personal use.

There is an RV campground with about 20 mini cabins here in town.  On any given night, 1 to 3 of the cabins are rented out.  There are about 75 slots for RV's.  On any given day there are 5-10 campers there.  I have had at least 20 people stay in the cabins for exactly one week then move into one of my STRs.  Not a very profitable business, that campground, if you ask me.  The person that owned it sold the whole park last month to a group of people from TEXAS.

A few weeks after ownership changed hands, there are 7 more cabins sitting in the driveway of the park. Why are they putting in more cabins when they can't even occupy the first 20? I asked around and found out that the RV park is renting the cabins to FEMA, and FEMA brought in the additional cabins to temporarily house people from the hurricane that hit Houston.

Has anyone done STRs with FEMA? I poked around the website and it is possible to be a vendor to the agency, but part of me is a little leery about registering with the gov't.

@Kevin Lefeuvre You hit the nail right on the head with the above post.  

I might ad that doing STRs with 2, 3 or 4 houses is not going to cut it if you want a steady income.  I have 22 STRs with 82 bed in a town of 9000.  In the last 4 years, several other people tried doing the same thing I did.  They started with one house, and I'd throw them a bone when everything of mine is rented.  They got confident and bought a 2nd or 3rd house, and furnished it with a credit card.  I'd get full then I'd throw them another bone.  

The guy ended up telling me that the only time he rents out his houses is when all mine are full.  I stopped referring customers to him and actually had some people move out of one of his houses and into one of mine.  This guy is an in-law btw.

The guy ended up converting his STRs back into LTRs, and he sold me some of his furnishings.

To add to Kevins post:

5) Promote promote promote. I have 3 small billboards up in this town, and I distribute engraved pens and personalized calendars with my STR info on it.

6) Be flexible in your pricing.  My competition wasn't. That's why he lost customers to me.

7) You are more or less on call and be ready to rent 24/7.

8) If anything breaks, you should have the capacity to have it fixed the same day.  Do it yourself or pay someone else to do it.  Evenings, weekends and holidays included.

9) Someone else in your city is going to try harder and work smarter than you with their STRs.  I'm pretty fortunate that there are only 9000 people in my town.

10) If you have debts on your STRs and furnishings, an STR is probably not for you.

One of my STRs is a basic 2 bedroom 1 bath house.  There are 4 beds in it.  One in each bedroom and 2 in opposite corners of the living room. I normally rent it to 2, 3 or 4 guys for $350/week total. 

I came across a 5th wheel camper with 2 beds for $1500.  I parked it legally in the driveway BESIDE the house and had access to water, sewer, cable, wifi and electric from the house.  When the house was rented, another person with the group in the house could rent the camper for $100 per week and have his own space and bathroom.  For laundry, he would do it in the house.

I never was able to rent out the camper.  Ended up letting a tenant sell it for me and I got my money back.  

If there is a large construction project going on, you can rent it out to workers.  Charge a little less than a local motel.  You will have to figure out how to get electric, water and sewer service.  You will also need to calculate your propane consumption and have a method for refilling.

I have 22 STRs in this town.  They are not AirBnb, they are furnished houses for refinery contractors.

My biggest contractor house is a 3 story with 4 full baths and 9 beds in 6 sleeping areas.  Jacuzzi on the 3rd floor and exercise equipment in the basement. 

I charge $175 per week per person for the house.  I rent it out to groups.  I don't stick random people in there.  The group of people come to me as a group and rent it.  There might be 2 or 3 people initially renting the house but as the job at the refinery expands its scope more people move in.

If there are at least 6 people in the group that are paying rent and not tearing up the house, I buy the house a keg of their choice.  A keg of premium beer is about $160 (Modelo, Dos Equis, Michelob, etc.). A keg of crap (Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors Light, etc.) is around $115. 

I can get 8, 9 or 10 people in the house working full time. Full time is 12 hours a day, 13 days in a row, 1 day off, repeat.  84 hours/week. They say "could you substitute some home cooked meals instead of the keg?  We don't have time to drink beer when working 12 hours a day".

I can get 3, 4 or 5 people in the house but they work part time.  Part time is 8 to 10 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week.  48-70 hours a week. 

The people I rent to work in pressure vessels, on scaffolding, on towers, with cranes and other things generally associated in a refinery.  If they are safe enough to work in a deadly work environment, they are ok with me to have a kegorator in their house.

But an AirBnb, just put one in there and let it be a selling point.  Let the tenants be responsible for buying their own keg and returning it. I really doubt they will put forth the effort.  If they leave the keg behind, you have free beer and probably a $50 deposit. You need to clean out the beer lines between each use.  A 5 minute job. 

@Jeff Kehl Tyson plans to build a chicken raising and processing facility. Some of the landowners in the 1500 acres have already been told that they might be bought out. The vacant Amazon facility is about 160 acres. There is also a small municipal airport 1 mile away and a facility that incinerates hazardous waste. There are not many poultry farms in this part of the state. It's mostly cattle and grain crops.

Tyson Foods is looking for a location to build a 1500 acre 320 million dollar facility. My town is in the running to be chosen as the location. We have the land, and a vacant Amazon.com distribution center. I have 22 STRs that I normally rent to refinery contractors working at the refinery in town. People just need to bring their clothes and groceries, everything else to live like at home is in the STR.

Has anyone done business with Tyson or their employees?  Most companies give their workers a per diem and they are free to stay where they choose.  A few companies book rooms at motels and dictate that their employees stay there.  Does anyone know how Tyson does housing with their employees?

I also work at a medical clinic doing pre-employment drug screens for the refinery and other industry.  As my luck would have it, these are the people that end up renting from me instead of staying in a motel.  A few weeks ago we received a large box with 100 pre-employment drug screen kits from an industrial construction company out of Louisiana.  There were no other communications.  We just received 100 kits and the paperwork.

I have two types of Group 1, Type B security cameras.  

At our own house out in the country we have Zmodo outdoor cameras.  They run off batteries. They do what they should, bugs give them false alarms.

At our STRs we have Arlo indoor cameras.  They are powered by 110 alternating current.  The nice thing about them is that you can unplug it and take it to another location.  All my tenants know about the cameras and where they are located.  It's up to them to unplug the camera when they enter.  I also tell them that they can plug them in when they are at work, but no one ever does.

Both cameras will alert you when there is motion. Both have night vision.  Arlo also detects sound.  You can talk back and forth to the occupant/intruder with your phone.  My wife did that about a year ago, about 10 seconds before the police shined their flashlights into the house with Arlo.

I would suggest Arlo indoor cameras.