I manage several STRs, and the biggest recurring issue we see is with dining chairs, sofas, and coffee tables, those tend to wear out or break the fastest, especially in high-traffic listings.

Your listing isn’t everywhere your tenants actually lookYou're on most majors, but in my experience managing volume in Memphis and other C-class/B-class areas, the platforms that drive the most applications are:Facebook Marketplace (but you must repost every 2–3 days)Zillow (make sure photos are bright + cover photo is strong)Apartments.comRentRedi or Avail (for syndication)Local Facebook rental groups (huge for blue-collar tenants)If you’re not posting in the local Facebook groups, you’re missing half the traffic.3.

Concessions can help, but only temporarily.Small incentives like “first month $100 off” or “$300 move-in credit” bring more traffic without permanently lowering rents.

Houston is a large city and the traffic can be terrible(especially during rush hours).If you do decide to house-hack, I would try to get a house near where you will be working(if possible).Saving 30 minutes or 1 hour everyday is huge.Houston does have a lot of multi-family homes but I find it that the ones that will cash flow are in the undesirable areas.The ones near Montrose or Hermann Park are harder to cash-flow.

Stockton / LodiStill affordable entry points compared to the Bay, multiple hospitals, a ton of traveling nurses, and steady corporate traffic.

We bought 50 expecting the price to "Double" since about 90% are made in China and with the Tariffs and reduced China US traffic, they should have gone up.

We were adamant that the concerned tenant was mistaken as the new tenant came back with zero criminal history (other than minor traffic).

My thoughts on that is you get a lot of traffic, but you also get a lot of bad traffic.

I’ve been working on a simple underwriting tool for small investors who don’t want to spend an hour in Excel every time they look at a property.Here’s how it works:Drop in the basics (price, rent, expenses, loan terms)In 30 seconds, it spits out NOI, Cap Rate, DSCR, Cash-on-Cash, and a simple traffic-light recommendation (Green / Yellow / Red)You get a clean one-page summary you can actually use to make a quick “go/no-go” callI’m testing it out with real investors now.

I gave it a shot last year, and the biggest hurdle was traffic and marketing, just having a store isn’t enough.