How we made $5000 on two weekends i.e. 4 nights on a $135k condo!

[Pancham G.]

First of all, I would like to thank BP and BP community because this deal has BP written all over it. This property was first mentioned in the post on BP here:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/223/topics/15...

After sometime, it was posted on BP marketplace for sale, here:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/517/topics/18...

After initial discussions, I decided to fly to Athens and check the property out and finally agreed on the price of $135k to buy it.

So, we are using this property as a weekly executive rental + weekend vacation rental as mentioned in the initial post. During the week, we rent it out the professionals who leave over the weekend. We have 5 rooms and we rent each room separately. Over the weekend, we rent it out using vacation rental sites. Since the close in July, we have been renting about 2 weekends on average a month (except for the month of August).

Since the college football season is in full swing and University of Georgia has been doing well, we rented two big home games with South Carolina and Alabama for $2k and $3k respectively. It is a big place and can accommodate 12 people comfortably. People like to come to big games in big groups. You may think that it’s a lot of money for a weekend but for big groups it comes out to be cheap and convenient. If you do the math, it’s only $125/night/person for a 3k weekend and ~$85/night/person for 2k weekend. These two weekends were exception and not the norm. But in general, we rent out our weekend for $400 to $500.

For the weekday rental, we rent out 350/month/room. If fully occupied, it can fetch $1750/month. As of this month, we are fully occupied. This makes the September revenue to be about $4750. That makes this a 3.5% property at least for September.

Now the road to this has not been fully rosy either. We have had fair share of problems. One of the guests, who visited for a weekend left us a terrible review. It was super exaggeration and some of the things were not true. We refunded all of the money to her. Also, the expenses to run a vacation rental are VERY high. We have to pay for the cleaning twice; entire condo has to be furnished, we have high utility bills plus cable/internet. We just put an expensive TV in the living room. We replaced the bedding, sheets, towels, bathroom stuff, comforters etc for 3 of the rooms. That stuff is not cheap either. We are learning along the way.

I would like to say a big THANKS to @Jack Tucker who made this deal possible and has been there all along. Creativity in top gear!!!

[Pancham G.]

@David Krulac Thanks!

@Daryl Williams: Here are some of the major differences that we have found so far:

1) High expenses compared to regular rental. You have to pay for utilities + cable/internet. You have to pay for the cleaning before and after. We pass this on to the guest but still. High property management costs.

2) Guests expect this to be like a hotel. So, you have to make sure that everything is in the right order and available. For example, one of the guests during the stay asked for an iron and an iron board. It sounds obvious that we should have it but we did not. We had to go and get it the same day and provide it to them.

3) Picky guests will complain about everything. But customer satisfaction is important.

4) More time consuming as you have to constantly get it cleaned.

5) Your reviews on vacation rental sites become really important. They define your future business.

6) You have to be very responsive when it comes to replying to inquiries or issues that come up during the stay.

I am sure that I am missing a lot more but this is a start.