All Forum Posts by: Anthony Venturini

Hmm, touche. I would counter that if they were not a mess, they would not be for sale, or they would have an extremely high price tag.

I would look at it like flipping a house. I want a house that is a complete mess that no one is looking at, but has good bones and in a good neighborhood. In this scenario, I want the STR business that has solid clients, great vendors, and awful systems.

For example, I am looking at one now. The website is pretty awful. The owners go to the properties to make sure the houses are cleaned or repaired, prior to every check in. Communications are all handled by phone and email. Keys are given to renters.

I am a software engineer by trade and a realtor / real estate investor by addiction. I could see obvious areas where automation could help. I could easily boost the website or have some contractors do it for me. I could establish all communication through Slack. Develop practices like a video walkthrough after every property is complete, attaching a tape to the front door to notify that no one else was there. And add Airbnb locks that automated check in.

Also, the company is not even listed on Google (no marketing at all). They had a rule they turn away more than 25 properties, so they didn't want to market.

Is this the right deal? I am not sure. I am positively no expert, hence why I showed up here. Maybe you can help me analyze it for a fee?

@Sam P.

Build or buy is an economic decision that John was trying to give his perspective on my situation - that I should build vs. buy. However, he bought vs. built a product himself, because it was a clear economic decision with value consideration. 

I can understand the sentiment that buying a business achieves instant gratification, cuts corners, etc. Regardless, it's still just an A/B test. How is my time and money most wisely spent to achieve maximum value? 

So you bought a home that was already built? Or did you purchase homes that were built already? Why would you purchase a home that was already built when you could build the home yourself, one house at a time?

See what I did there.

Sigh. I will bite. Why buy a home when you can just build a home? 

It is much harder to get a bank loan and scale, starting your own venture from scratch vs. buying. 

However, with a bank loan, I could buy a business 5x the value at $500,000 and returning over $250,000 per year. It would be much harder to convince a bank to lend me $500,000 to start a property management business from scratch. I have already convinced a bank that my prior experience translates enough into purchasing one, so now I just have to find the right fit.

Loan terms = $100k down, 8% interest, 10 years. So on a $400k loan, I am paying out $32k a year in interest and $40k in principal. There are plenty of people trying to cash out their property management businesses that they owner operated on a solid salary. I will still be $160k net and paying down the note. 

If the company is older and hasn't adopted new technology, does little marketing, or has new pricing opportunity, then I could quickly add some value to that business.

I am also a realtor and getting my license in FL, so residuals can come from buyers / sellers.

As far as experience, I have managed properties for LTRs for many years and have done 6 successful house flips. I have a pretty good feeling that the learning curve is not that tremendous.

Over 10 years, my goal would be to purchase 5-10 of these businesses and scale via acquisition and get purchased by a larger fund at a much better multiple (3x+) than a mom and pop STR management company would get.

I can't imagine a scenario where starting a commoditized venture would ever be better off than buying one that is undervalued.

There is a social backend to that site that seemed useful. But yeah, the listing portion is like Pacaso.

I wonder how big the market is for fractional ownership of STRs - I am assuming it is extremely large because my brother's and my family are currently shopping and we have several relatives that do this as well.

Check out fractional.app.

There are actually several of these platforms. I can't find the others atm, but Google "fractional real estate ownership STR / rentals."

I have been on the lookout for a vacation rental management company to purchase for a few months now. I have been looking at listings on bizquest and bizbuysell, but have not found any that are super interesting yet.

One question that I have is, given that I am not a current Airbnb or VRBO host, what will happen to the reviews? I am assuming the companies for sale will be responsible for all of the host reviews on all of their properties. When these properties get transferred to me as the new host, I will have no history, so the properties will lose all of their reviews, right?

I was considering the options that I would have in this scenario. Is there a way for the sellers to add me as a co-host and stay on as a host for a monthly fee? And then later on, replace me as the host?

Also, if anyone knows of someone selling the vacation rental business, please let me know. I love Orlando / Disney, Tampa, Del Ray Beach, and Fort Meyers areas.

I am applying to Tech Stars Toronto this week. I will be looking for a couple of co-founders to join me in the coming months. Tech Stars Toronto is in September.

@Jason L. @Nettles Mason @Tony Zuanich @Carl Scott@Ramy Man @Christian Hubbs

Idiots on billboards still get super rich in this industry. And until that is solved, I will be using my extremely limited powers to battle that human behavior. There is too much corruption and a hefty monopoly behind the scenes that's gotta go.

I have been working on something for quite some time now. It's a fairly large project that will require significant time investment. However, I think the disruption potential is decently substantial. 

I never realized people interested in the real estate would understand tech. I had thought they were mutually exclusive, but here we are.

By the looks of it, most of you are far smarter than me. But +1 for combining forces. I am a realtor. I also am a full stack developer. And I have an idea. 

Anyone interested?