Short Term Rental Property

[Chris Terberg]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Lake Havasu City.

Purchase price: $343,000
Cash invested: $80,000

Purchased single family home in Lake Havasu City to use as a vacation rental in the summer, and a month to month snowbird rental during the winter months.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

I was drawn to Havasu for the potential to operate as a short term vacation rental during the summer with higher nightly rates, and also as a month to month rental during the winter for more consistent income.

What was the outcome?

The rental has been performing great! I've owned it for 2 years and both summers have been booking at nightly rates well above what I expected, and winter has been bringing guests for 1-3 months at a time reducing the turnover and putting the income on autopilot.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

This was my first rental, and not having anyone who had done it before I learned a lot of lessons along the way. From accidentally double booking nights on different apps, having the pool go stagnant for 2 weeks, house cleaners not meeting the expected standard. Luckily most of them have been caught before guests were affected so to date I have 29 5 star reviews and only one 4 star!

[Marc Rice]

@Chris Terberg

Great! Is this near Havasupai Falls in AZ?

[Tim Stuart]

Hey Chris,

Congrats on establishing a new cash flowing business. What systems did you develop that helped with the double booking?

Thanks,

Tim

[Michael Craven]

Congrats! That's awesome

[Dmitriy Fomichenko]

Congratulations!

[Chris Terberg]

Originally posted by @Marc Rice:

@Chris Terberg

Great! Is this near Havasupai Falls in AZ?

Thanks Marc! Lake Havasu is a couple hours south west of Havasupai Falls. It's a man made lake in the Colorado River on the border of California and Arizona.

[Chris Terberg]

Originally posted by @Tim Stuart:

Hey Chris,

Congrats on establishing a new cash flowing business. What systems did you develop that helped with the double booking?

Thanks,

Tim

Thanks Tim! So the double booking issue was actually a result of poor practices on my part and a simple fix. When I first got the house and was still in the process of furnishing it I didn't have it up on any rental apps yet and would rent it to friends and family, then once it was complete I started doing a mixture of both on and off app. But it finally caught up to me and I had someone book outside the app but I failed to keep the weekend blocked and another person booked on AirBnB. Unfortunately I had to cancel a friends vacation pretty last minute, but we were able to work something out for them. It was a lesson learned, from now on everyone will book through the apps so that the dates are automatically reserved and appropriately labeled! 

[Caleb Reits]

Congrats that is awesome, I am looking to purchase a Short Term Rental property out of state, anyone have any tips. I am currently in Grand Rapids MI, but looking in the South Florida Market, also the Hilton Head area as well.

[Chris Terberg]

Originally posted by @Caleb Reits:

Congrats that is awesome, I am looking to purchase a Short Term Rental property out of state, anyone have any tips. I am currently in Grand Rapids MI, but looking in the South Florida Market, also the Hilton Head area as well.

I'd say the biggest thing getting started from my experience was underestimating furnishing costs. The house I purchased was recently renovated so rehab wasn't a factor in this deal, but being a STR I wanted to go with higher quality furnishings that would stand up to more abuse. (2 years in and that has paid off so far) But I went about 20% over my estimated budget. Took a bit longer but it all worked out in the end. Good luck and feel free to ask me anything else along the way!