All Forum Posts by: Wilson Hunter

Ditto Collin's post. You're not buying the whole market, you're buying one cabin, and I'm confident it's still an incredible area to find an awesome STR. From what I can see there's no easy mode market for STRs anywhere in the US right now unless you have a low bar for return.

@Bruce Woodruff in my opinion Airbnb "Smart Pricing" is complete trash, and you're right it seems biased toward tanking your rates so they can make their guest users happy, whereas PriceLabs is a totally different ballgame. I've found it's actually more common to have decreased occupancy but increased total revenue with PriceLabs, the opposite of Airbnb Smart Pricing.

With PriceLabs you still essentially set your own price, and unlike Airbnb Smart Pricing the goal isn't really to simplify things but rather to optimize - you set base price, min/max, any specific rules you want, date specific overrides, etc. 

It's only $20 for the first listing + $15 for additional listings + $1 for "child listings" (if you use both Airbnb and VRBO, for example, the VRBO pricing will be $1 extra per month). I think the price is worth it for the user experience of setting price rules alone.

I'm also a big fan of the $10 per month market dashboard because it's way cheaper than Airdna and still gives tons of helpful data. I can see why the agents or large operations might like Airdna, but PriceLabs Market Dashboard still has tremendous data.

All their services have free monthly trials, so the only cost is the time cost associated with setting up and learning a new technology.

@Mark Miles yes you could do something very close to that, however depending on your market you may find that PriceLabs sometimes suggests increasing price as the date gets closer, and it's weirdly effective. Still, you can certainly use PriceLabs for those sorts of rulesets if you'd like to. I'm recently finding that combining Airbnb last minute discounts with PriceLabs dynamic pricing helps Airbnb SEO, so I'm experimenting with a blended approach for the situation you are describing. 

And I'll repeat this is only my experience as a noob with one cabin looking for my second - Luke in this thread and others are way bigger pros at this. I just have a blast with PriceLabs - it's a fun toy for nerds.

 PriceLabs pricing is insane. I’m doing 20-30% better on my first cabin investment than I thought I would before buying it, and I attribute a large portion of that to PriceLabs. It’s mindblowing how affordable it is for the value it provides. It’s also a blast for nerds like myself, and I’m pretty sure if you’re asking about “tech stack” for STRs you’re going to have fun playing with PriceLabs.

The OP asked "is it worth it to use PriceLabs if you're already using Airdna," and with my newbie experience so far I'd argue the opposite - it seems not worth it to use Airdna if you have one STR and are already using PriceLabs. PriceLabs is the more impactful of the two.

Pricelabs Market Dashboard is sweet for the price.

I researched this market a lot, and it seems difficult for beginners with a limited budget. Charleston itself has detailed regulations that parse out the differences between the typical self-managed single family house Airbnb and a room share Airbnb. From my understanding it's quite possible to operate a room share or actual bed and breakfast on the property that you live on, but you probably can't do the typical STR thing.

The beaches are all INCREDIBLE but extremely expensive which hurts ROI. I could see someone being successful with a $4M property on Isle of Palms, but anything around $1M or less simply doesn't have the ROI. Kiawah is similar except there is an interesting class of villas in the sub-$1M range. Still, I talked to Vacasa and learned that the small Kiawah properties gross about the same as a Smoky Mountain cabin that costs 2-2.5x less. Folly Beach was traditionally the highest ROI beach and caters to younger beach goers, but prices have shot out of what I consider to be reasonable ROI range. Two years ago beachfront Folly would have been the way to go.

Sullivan's Island has heavy STR regulations and the 20 or so properties grandfathered are insanely expensive. Dewees is a beautiful and natural ferry-only access beach and has a heavy-handed "nature first" POA that currently disallows STRs, but even if they starting allowing them I would be very uncomfortable investing there with the amount of power that the collective residents have to turn on a dime.

I’ll repeat what others say here all the time - just because your local market isn’t ideal doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do STRs. I invest in a market that is a 6 hour drive from my primary residence, and not once have I felt like I could do better living closer. Everything is optimized for remote monitoring these days - I even learned about some cool phone app-operated mouse traps in another thread I posted.

I had no idea they were in that market but looking into it now, thanks!

@Aaron Akins you had me quite intrigued so I started digging deeper, and there are definitely some awesome possibilities there based on what I can see from past sales measured against projected rents. The only problem is that I have no idea how people are finding these properties. I'm going to follow the thread in case any Broken Bow investors or agents give any insights. I'm always open to exploring a vacation home in a new market that I might happen to self-manage and rent sometimes while I'm not there. It seems more appealing to me than Joshua Tree or Poconos.

Hey thanks for the constructive post, Joe. Makes a lot of sense to me and great to keep in mind for the future.

 Bob, read the posts. I have repeated multiple times that the seller is the one who offered me a price and I took it.

Jay, read the posts, no one changed their mind.

This is not a story of me hunting cheap off market deals. A neighboring Airbnb owner who happens to be a shark of a broker and agent gave me a price on buying his cabin, and I agreed to it. He then proceeded to do some sketchy things like pretending that we had a deal while I caught him simultaneously listing it on the MLS for a higher price. He didn't just tell me he was backing out because he got a better offer. The listing is still sitting on the MLS right now available for offers.

I swear I cannot tell if people are intentionally misrepresenting the situation in their responses or if people just can’t read. I’m probably going to log out of here for a while because I’ve made my assessment based on feedback (1) there are some guys exactly like me out there who know this is messed up, thanks for letting me vent (2) there are many honorable real estate agents saying “that’s awful that he lied, here’s some practical advice” (much appreciated) (3) there’s a handful of shark brokers with a couple decades of experience, thousands of posts, infinite BP resume boosters like podcast guest appearances or moderator status - and most of these guys very clearly have a different ethical standard than myself and seem to live life by a different playbook. Note to self: always remember this when listening to the podcast and being motivated by success stories on BP.

I’ve certainly learned a lot about people in your profession, Bob - way more than when I wrote the first post.

By the way I researched the guy a little bit and found disciplinary action by Real Estate Commission for “Substantial and willful misrepresentation, misleading or untruthful advertising, improper fraudulent or dishonest dealing” leading to a civil penalty in the state of Tennessee plus a pending lawsuit for something else unknown. My inspector told me last night “oh yeah he screwed over one of my friends, stay far away.”

I cannot fathom how someone reads my post and their first reaction is to defend the guy… Unless, of course, he represents your own behavior in the profession. Then it makes more sense.