All Forum Posts by: Avery Carl

@Luke Carl has #dadjokes 

 Well, what you do when the hot water heater or cable or washer/dryer etc. etc. breaks in the mountains is the same thing that you do when something breaks anywhere: you call someone to come look at it!  @Lucas Carl and I don't go driving 3 hours to the mountains every time something malfunctions.  That would be ridiculous.  We have a list of handymen we can call, that between the 5 of them, someone can get to it within in an hour.  If they can fix it, they do.  If not, then we have relationships with HVAC guys, etc, who will come fix it at that point.  We had an HVAC go out yesterday, the handyman was there in 10 minutes, and it needed replacing, and the HVAC guy is out there this morning, less than 24 hours later, replacing it.  Things will inevitably break, you just have to have a system in place for when those times come.

It's understandable to not want to manage the properties yourself, if you don't have the time or prefer not to. If you can hit your goals that way, fantastic! But we have managed to cash flow heavily and scale very quickly self-managing. You just have to develop a system and implement it. We enjoy managing our vacation properties, and the goal is to scale it to a point that we can use the heavy cash flow to buy more LTR's. (Currently at our max DTI but that is a topic for another thread). The one thing to note with STR's, is that 85% of guests are fantastic, but you will have to deal with that 15% of them that are idiots and/or jerks. That's really the only part of it that I don't like, but there are negative aspects to anything.

@Jon Crosby Just read your blog for the first time.  Love it!  Very good points.

@Brett Shoemaker sounds good!  Happy to help!

Hey Brett!  I have 5 vacation rentals in the PF/Gatlinburg area.  We manage them ourselves, and are consistently hitting a 3% monthly gross return on all of them.  Before we purchased our 3rd we looked into a beach condo in the Destin/Panama City area, but were quickly turned off because there were a lot of hangups with the condos that we didn't want to deal with, and there are also a lot more fees and taxes needed to pay to the city per booking that we just found it not to be as worth it (at this time) than the mountain cabins.  I have my real estate license and we are out in the Smokies all the time (will be this weekend), and we have worked for quite a few investors on acquiring high-rental potential properties out there quite a bit.  Let me know if you need any help!

@Amit Kal Off the MLS!! Crazy right?? We were under contract within 2 hours of it posting. We paid a lot of attention and did a lot of research as to where we thought the market was going location wise, but first and foremost we just wanted to spend as little as possible for maximum cashflow possible, which we achieved. The appreciation is just a large bonus.

Side bar: I used to live in Sunnyside off the 46-Bliss stop on the 7 train!  Small world.

I would also like to amend my previous comment with the fact that I did zero work to improve it.  That was pure appreciation.

It just depends on how much you want to spend.  Yes, Nashville is much cheaper than California, but Nashville is EXPONENTIALLY more expensive than it was even a few short years ago.  I bought a deal in April 2016 for 122k, and it just appraised for 225k, 1 year later.  Is 225k that expensive?  No.  However, it does beg the question on how close Nashville may (or may not be) getting to the top of its market.  That would be my only concern with it.

I have a Nashville property that has appreciated over $100k in a year and a half, which I find awesome and scary at the same time.  In the past year I have been priced out of investing in Nashville, so I have moved to other areas of Tennessee where I can cash flow the same for a lower purchase price.  I consider whether I should sell the Nashville property and 1031 exchange it into several properties that cash flow in another area on a daily basis.  Because it seems Nashville has appreciated so much so fast, I don't want to miss the boat on selling at the highest price point possible (if I were to make the decision to sell).  I think about when and if Nashville will hit its ceiling all the time!  The Nashville bubble is a daily conversation at my house.  Appreciate any insights!

@Jon Crosby good to know!  Maybe it's just the part of the country I am in.