All Forum Posts by: Ken Boone

@Peter Amendola Wish you the best man!

@Kyler J Sloan Ok man. This is getting to be like the jeep thread now when all the details start coming out. Again, I still don't know if you already bought this property or are in the process. It would make a nice private cabin for someone. If you are trying to have a great cash flowing STR - not being mean here - just trying to give you advice - your plan stinks dude. Just trying to be blunt with you.

One of your big deals is privacy - Now we find out you will be there most weekends.  Well there goes the privacy factor cause you will need to disclose this info.  No way I am taking my wife and girls to a secluded cabin on a mountain top with not very good access and have someone else that I know nothing about there.  On the weekends no less which should be 100% booked through the year on a normal basis.  This type of airbnb scenario is not this market.  That strategy is one for the cities dude not the smokies.

Again not if there is an issue - when there is an issue would be the correct term - there will be issues.

Your intuition is flat wrong. This property with that road and you living there on the weekend makes this a BAD STR choice for the Smokies. Just about all the great views in that area will have steep roads and switchbacks. But there are plenty that are PAVED with guard rails and maintained - not one lane gravel that you have to maintain.

So again, if the main use is for your personal use and you just want to try and make a few extra bucks great.  But it is hard to tell what you are trying to accomplish.  Your heading says new to real estate and you started this post with not familiar with the roads in the TN mtns, yet you don't sound like you want to take seriously what anyone says.  I have helped a number of people with property up there and the thing is to mentor someone, someone has to be able to hear what others are saying.

It sounds like you want the property and jeep for yourself and you are trying to figure out a way to have someone else pay for those things and if that is the case - thats great more power to you.  You don't really sound like someone who is looking for investment advice.  I really do wish you the best with this property.  Just trying to provide you with good advice if you have not purchased the property yet.

@Peter Amendola So your question about what drives up daily rates - first of all you have to compare apples to apples here. So yes more beds brings the rates up.. i.e. typically a 3 bedroom STR will have a higher rate than a 2 bedroom STR. Now comparing say 2 bed STRs in your area - amenities is the main driver. In my location I have primary 2 bedroom cabins and I have them loaded with amenities. I perform as well or better than most 4 bedroom cabins in my area because of the amenities. You are in the keys man! So aside from the options I have thrown out as far as what to have in the property, you can also look at other things, providing fishing poles and tackle, providing snorkling gear, providing paddle boards, etc.. Now if you do the paddle board thing, may want to check with your insurance company just to be safe with that.

Yea this suddenly moved from real estate talk to personal matters... oooh.. Yea just personal opinion and you know what this is worth. I would not enter into an equity deal like others have said. Until there is a solid commitment you just never know and then you would be locked up into a bad scenario. Hopefully that is not what happens but ya never know. At this point I would not even do a profit split. Instead of a guaranteed profit split I would basically set up some type of contract to hire him for his services concerning the STR and that could be tied to a split of the profit, but it would be clear that it is a hiring situation, not an ownership or partnership situation. That way if things did go south, you can simply fire him and move on. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Hope this doesn't upset you in any way but this really moved into areas of the heart and beyond pure real estate dealings.

So.. my question is, if you are putting up all the money on a single STR... why do you want to split it? It is not that much work to manage a single STR. If you are going to give up that much cash, might as well pay it to a mgmt company and that way you don't risk hurting personal relationships when there are problems.

@Peter Amendola That number really depends on what you are happy with. You or your wife will be working for that 10% so is the benefit of having the STR, plus the 10% you will receive worth the work you put in. That is really up to you. Now having said that I have STRs in the Smoky Mtns. I have found that most places that are beach STRs are not set the same as the smokies. Load the place up with amenities - multiple video games, ping pong, pool table, xbox, projector with big screen etc.. then you can raise your rates and bump up your return compared to your competition possibly.

Yea and the reality is that the video does not show the actual steepness.  Videos never do.  So I guarantee it is steeper than it looks in the video.  I have taken videos trying to show the same thing at one of my cabins and they just don't do the steepness justice.

@Luke J Nelsen So the country is really divided on this just like many things right now. What they think they know or at least what they tell us they know seems to change every other week. Part of the country is however fed up with lockdowns and mandates and that part of the country is still going to travel to destination locations like the Smoky Mtns. I don't think we will see a lockdown like we saw before. However, when it happened last march/april - in the span of about 3 weeks I lost over 37k worth of bookings most of them for april/may. Lowered prices immediately - pretty much re-filled through the end of april, the demand was so great come May brought prices back to normal and since then I have had to constantly raise prices due to the high demand. Ended up with a record year across all my cabins. Even that part of the country that is nervous about being around others still wants to get away. They would rather stay at an STR with a bunch of amenities locked up with their families than a lot of other vacations they could take. So I am not concerned but I could be dead wrong too! ;)

@Kyler J Sloan I would personally rather invest my money into proven systems that cash flow well instead of spending my time trying to solve problems that have been around for decades.  It is a beautiful location and I am sure it will rent well for you.  My focus is on less work, less headaches, less time involvement and I know what you face with that property so just throwing my 2 cents out and that is about all its worth.  I wish you the best of luck with it.