All Forum Posts by: Wendy Fate

Coveted Large luxury 1 Bed/1 Bath condo in Stuart, FL.  Martin County borders Palm Beach county to the north and is a wealthy oasis with beautiful beaches, shops, restaurants, spas, services and Cleveland Clinic hospitals.

1,011sf  Upper, end unit with Full size kitchen, laundry room, vaulted ceilings, huge bedroom with large walk in closet.  Large climate controlled patio with roll out windows. Plantation shutters, tile, wood laminate flooring throughtout. Covered parking at your door. Lake view, near the pool.

Fully furnished for Airbnb longer term stays. 3 month minimum lease per association. Can be rented right away, no 2 year delay like many other communities. No age restrictions, all ages welcome. Pet friendly for owners and renters. HOA also allows trucks up to 3/4 ton. This is a hard to find, one of a kind property for investors in desirable Martin County. Operate everything from your phone using the Smart Thermostat, Yale Nest wifi keyless entry and Blink camera for easy self check in. Established cleaning professional handles guest turn overs and maintains the property.

Currently rents for $3,000 off season.  $4,800/mo for Jan/Feb/March/April

HOA $507/mo covers Water, Sewer, Trash, HD Cable, Maintenance of building exterior, pool, tennis courts, club house, landscape, grounds, building insurance, paving, parking, etc.

Total expenses average $1,000/mo for Taxes, Insurance, HOA, electric and wifi.

New HVAC, 1 year ago, with warranty.  New SS French Door Fridge with water and ice on the door. New Bosch dishwasher. Newly renovated bathroom and updated kitchen.

Indian Pines is centrally located in the heart of Stuart.  Walk to shops, restaurants and parks.  Bike to the beach. 

Snow birds book every year in advance.  Option to buy with or without upcoming bookings. Guests are aware of selling.

This property has been amazing. I truly have no issues or complaints witht the HOA, the building or the people. We used this property to vacation in it ourselves and have made it a truly gorgeous place. We manage it from TN and have never had an issue. We just need the cash for our next big project. It will be a great cashflowing property for another happy investor.

Call, text or email me directly with any questions.  I am the owner.

Wendy Fate 423-534-5017   [email protected] 

Property address: 3071 SE Aster Ln #204  Stuart, FL 34994    Located in Indian Pines.

I have been researching and trying to compare landlording sites, but it's not that simple.  I have been using Avail for 4 or so years.  Here are my issues and concerns.  I like some features that I don't want to lose, but would really love to find a better platform.

Things I like about Avail:

1. >>Syndicates my listing to 10 or 11 top rental sites.  
2. >>Basics like tenant screening, lease drafting and signing, rent collection, email reminders.

Things I'm hoping to find with another site:

1. >>An App on my phone, with notifications and direct messaging! (Instead of having to comb through my email inbox for Avail leads, then having to go to the website, sign in, then click through SIX more steps to reply to a message.)
2. >>Ability to return deposit money to the tenant.  Avail does not offer that through their platform and I have to send it through Venmo or mail a check, but most of my tenants are short term travelers and do not have a forwarding address. It makes it difficult at tax time to bring in the Venmo transaction and the Avail records are not really accurate. More extra work.
3. >>Ability for tenants to make same day payments.  At least have it withdraw same day.  I know it takes a few days for the funds to hit my account, but Avail greys out the date, plus 2 or 3 more days and says the tenants earliest withdraw date is 3 days out.  It's 2021.  People should be able to go online the day rent is due and make a payment.  My guests are often month to month and do not want to set up advance payments, in case they need to leave early.  
4. >>Flexibility with lease changes.  Avail will not let you delete a lease.  It is difficult to change the dates.  The only thing you can do is end the lease early.  So, if I need to delete a lease or start it sooner, there are no options for this.
5. >>Better LIVE customer service.  No one answers their customer service line.  You have to leave a voicemail or you can send an email. I often need a quicker resolution than that so I can send a new lease for signing that appears to overlap the dates they show for my lease.  No quick response.  Costs me time and aggravation.
6. All of these little things add up to extra time spent on unnecessary tasks that could be streamlined.
7. I am willing to pay for proficient automation.  I currently pay $25/mo with Avail.  
8. Just trying to see what else is out there.  I have been looking at other apps but wanted to see what the BP community experience has been before I make the switch.
9. Grateful for any feedback or personal experience.

When using a VA loan or other "owner occupied" lending products, is it really legal to move out and use it as an investment property after one year? What about when the lender goes to pay the homeowner's insurance policy and notices that the premium increased substantially because it is no longer a primary residence, but a rental investment. Are you now out of compliance? Can they call the note, or anything? Is this a fine line or is it "just fine", as long as you stay a full year?

Can anyone using this strategy confirm their success?  Or lenders, who know the law, please advise?

 I appreciate any input.

Looks amazing! Thank you for sharing your journey. We are looking to do this in Northeast Tennessee and will be going to the RAL convention in a few weeks. We have a lot of questions, but it looks like a fit for us. My husband is a builder and I have some background in medical. We are both good business builders/managers. And we love real estate! We mostly do STR to higher end clients and really just wanted to do the real estate side of RAL. After watching the videos, I think we could do the business side and build something great. If our adult children wanted to join us, we would have many suitable roles they could fulfill. We would not decide to do this based on them, but they would surely help us get it going. I have a daughter in the medical field (prepping for PA school), 2 sons that are talented chefs, another daughter who would make an awesome caregiver and a few more suited to manage. One son is in landscaping and irrigation, another in logistics. They all know hospitality and customer service very well. (We are a blended family with 8 kids ages 19-26) They have all worked for us in our construction business and the short term furnished rentals. Like I said, I won't do it based on them, but we are a family that actually works well together and have built challenging projects as a team, coordinating 14 cabin builds (7 at one time) and didn't kill each other. lol

I appreciate everyone on BP sharing their experiences with RAL (and other strategies).  It helps to vet the information out there and see if it has merit.

Thank you, @Sendhil Krishnan!  Congratulations!  It's beautiful!

Where's the experiment?  What are you "trying to do"?

@James Murphey  You're right!  I totally forgot about that!  

@Greg Junge  Thank you for your reply!  We'll be in touch!

@Alina Trigub  Yes, so right!  That is great advice and exactly what we would like to do.  

Sorry for posting in the wrong forum.  Oops.
 

@Heath Ryans  Thank you so much!  I will do that.

@Luke Carl Lol, I didn't realize that i posted it in STR. I guess it it kind of short term, but not the same. Thank you.

My husband, Joe, and I listened to a podcast this week with Gene Guarino and was very impressed with his Residential Assisted Living model. This makes so much sense. We were just told this week that the reason most of our offers (full price and above!) are getting beat, is because there are so many seniors moving here to retire. It's true, Tennessee rates as one of the top places to retire. In Johnson City, we have the Quillen School of Medicine, the VA and a large medical industry. The cost of living is reasonable and the weather is very tolerable. (average year round temperature is 65 degrees, never too hot or too cold) It's a beautiful place to live and visit. We never get crazy snow here because the mountains deflect the bigger storms.

I think it could be a good fit.  Anyone have any thoughts?  

We are builders and would love to do the real estate side, but also have interest in the business side.

We have actually encountered guests in this situation, scrambling to find housing.  We figured out a way to help.  You'll like this story, especially if you have kids and are trying to teach them the business.

We were contacted by a family, traveling from Australia, who had their Airbnb reservation cancelled just 2 weeks prior to their month long visit!  Plane tickets were booked for this summer vacation to visit family when they called us in desperation, even though our ad says 5 night maximum.  

This particular rental is actually part of our personal living space and why we limit it to 5 days.  We only make it available for Nascar Race weekends so that our other STFR is not tied up for those few dates and is available for longer term stays, like travel nurses.  This was a way for us to keep our race team happy and not miss out on long term revenue.   It sounds a little crazy, but we set up our master bed & bath suite with a coffee maker, mini fridge, toaster oven and microwave for those short term stays. Our master walk-in/walk-through closet has a stackable washer/dryer and now included a mini kitchenette, lol.  My husband installed an exterior door in our bedroom so we would have our own private entrance and not have to share any space with the guests. We do our dishes in the bathroom using a plastic bin and dish drain that we setup in our jacuzzi tub. We have a separate stand alone shower that we can still use for bathing, so this actually worked, but only short term for a few days. Until now!

We decided to give up our main living space for the month and stay in our master bedroom suite.  

We kicked our college kids out for the month of July and let this family of four occupy the 3 bedroom/1 bath main level of our home.  We locked off our office and our master suite, giving them the entire 1,000 sf living space with full kitchen, living and dining room all to themselves.  

We figured, the college kids stay gone at friends most of the time, anyway, so we just offered to buy the families' groceries if they could stay for the month. They are close friends and love having our kids over, so it was a good solution. They divided the time between two families and made sure to contribute to the household with cooking and cleaning. (Something they are expected to do at our house, anyway, and a huge help/surprise to these other parents.)  It was a fun experience and they had a story to tell, plus they are learning about rentals and good customer service.  They actually still had to take care of our lawn and wash the guest towels and linens when we were out of town.

The Australians were so impressed and very grateful.  We made some money, but mostly we problem solved a solution and helped the Airbnb community.  

You can do good and do well.  You don't have to choose between the two.