Do you know any STR arbitrage horror stories?

[Paul Sandhu]

An inlaw of mine saw what I was doing with STRs.  I had about 10 of them at the time.  He decided to buy a house and furnish it, all paid for with a credit card.  His minimum monthly payment was more or less like a rental payment for the house.  The house he bought was across the street from one of mine.  He advertised on Craigslist, so did I.  Whenever he put an ad up on Craigslist I would bump my ad up to the top and change the title of my ad to match his.  So whenever a potential renter looked on Craigslist, they would see my ad first and assume the other ad was just a duplicate and not bother reading it.  6 months later he complained to another inlaw of mine that he never rents his places out until all of Paul's places are full.  He ended up selling that house and 2 others a few years later.  He gave me 3 old style televisions when they were actually worth something at the time.