All Forum Posts by: Sarah Kensinger

Rob Abasolo would be the perfect guy to check out! I believe he has done some tiny homes right in Gatlinburg also.

Several months ago, I said on here that Disney was headed down hill due to jumping in political moves that should be left to political people. Many disagreed with me, yet here we are months later and like I predicted numbers are falling. Airdna has Orlando listed as the top declined location for STR revenue at -10%.

No, I would not purchase a home there right now, unless you plan on personally using it a decent bit of the year. 

Someone just posted a question about Trip Advisor and mentioned they had STR in Mexico. You might want to connect since he would have some info you could benefit from.

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about TripAdvisor or know of anyone that uses it for a STR bookings. Would definitely be something to check into!

I'm not too sure how you got your numbers...seems like a mix of LTR with STR underwriting. Anyway, I did a loose run of numbers for the Pigeon Forge property and came up with the following using Airdna for STR approximate numbers.....

Purchase price of $530k, nightly rate of $250 ($380 seems a bit high), occupancy of 73%, annual revenue at $66,613, which then gives a COC of 14%. This would include your 10% down payment, 6% interest rate on a 30 year loan. 

Extra points.....You don't use vacancy on STR but just occupancy. Your 10% down payment helps get a higher COC return. Also, since the property is sold furnished, you probably don't need to spend that much on furnishing.

I'm surprised some thought you had your numbers right on! At least in this case the numbers were too low instead of too high, which can lead to disastrous results. I don't come across many properties in popular vacation areas, that have at least 20% COC return right now. It's just hard to get the numbers to pencil out! But if you look in the right places and have lots of patience they are still out there. I didn't take the time to loosely run numbers on the other two areas you had listed, but if you would like to go over those just reach out and I can do that for you!

Even with how things are in this market, I would stick to no less then 20% COC. It hard to find but they're still around.

These prices are way too low. For a 2/2 you're looking at around $10,000 for everything.

Don't just buy the cheapest stuff since you'll be replacing it all the time. And the days of Facebook marketplace or thrift stores/garage sales are over. Your property must look updated and eye-catching, not like your grandmother's home. :) Wayfair and Overstock have some good furniture that is affordable, and I love purchasing kitchen items and even some bigger things at HomeGoods. Pro tip on throw pillows.... purchase inserts from Ikea and then pillow covers from there or amazon. It's quite a bit cheaper and if a guest stains a pillow all you have to do is buy another cover. 

Hope that helps!

Schlage Encode seems to have the least amount of problems. But I think each one has its pros and cons depending on where they are used.