All Forum Posts by: Brad Gibson

Nick and Nicole are offering great advice.  MTRs are not LTRs or STRs,but rather they are their own little hybrid. 

My take on this is to underwrite purchases based on expected LTR rents (I like rentometer and the BP's own rental estimator), but start charging 1.5x that rent for your MTR. Go up as you are able between tenants. Our experience has been that most tenants book about two weeks out from a vacancy, so don't slash the price of your MTR too soon to your next ecpected vacancy(you will get nervous, I promise). Respond to "unmatched housing requests" as well as other tenant leads. You may learn a lot of valuable information about what people are looking for in your area. Lastly, running an MTR is partially hospitality (like STR), but it is also a sales position (like all commerce). Anyone in sales knows, you are going to have to be prepared for a lot of "Nos" to get to the "Yes".

When I was starting, I found a resource in FF that suggested pricing $300-500 above LTR rates. I started at $500 over LTR rates and bumped it up $50 in between each tenant until I felt like I hit the ceiling.

For a small STR start up and easy to learn, check into Hospitable. I can't tell you how many hosts that have used multiple PMS said they are the easiest and switched back to Hospitable due to ease of use and low cost!

We use Hostfully for nearly 30 listings. I can't say how it compares to the other platforms since I haven't used them. But I'm happy to provide inside on Hostfully. It's worked great for us the past few years and I don't have any plans on changing systems.

We use Streamline but that is really built for Property Managers with larger portfolios.  We had Guest previously.  We liked it except they had some real issues with accounting but I heard they ironed that out.  They did have some very cool automations and other features.

 Hostfully is a solid choice, especially for listing on multiple channels and maintaining calendar accuracy. It supports dynamic pricing and syncs calendars to prevent double bookings. But I also recommend looking at the following software and seeing which one best suits your needs: Guesty, Avantio, Eviivo, Bookster, Hospitable, Hostaway, and Hosthub. I can't think of any others at the moment, but if anything comes to mind, I'll comment here.

Hi Brad, I use Guesty for Host with pricelabs(dynamic pricing tool), and have been very happy with it. It connects my airbnb and VRBO calendars, offers automated messaging, smart lock integration, cleaning calendar/reminders, and offers pretty good income reports. I don't have any experience with Hostfully, but If you have any questions about Guesty I am happy to try and help.

I suspect his numbers are accurate if not including leverage or tax advantages.  6% annual appreciation would be 80% return then add the equity pay down (~20% in 10 years) and you get a double in 10 years. 

However, 80% LTV would result in 5x the appreciation return or 400% in 10 tears. 20% equity pay down. 420%.

With current rules you can: You can depreciate the physical structures.  Extract equity via refi or heloc without paying taxes.  You can 1031 the gains into a different property.  own 2 of 5 years to exempt $250k/$500k of gains.  Die and heirs get step up basis.  With current rules I never expect to pay taxes on my gains.   Not paying taxes on the gains results in additional “return”.

As others have indicated, the financial advisor benefits from getting you to invest with him.  

I do believe in a diversified portfolio so I do not want to be too harsh on the financial advisor.  I also am leery of believing he is lying; I think the reality could be worse as I suspect the reality is that he does not have a full understanding of the benefits of RE investing. 

good luck

@Brad Gibson

If you invest in equities he gets fees from you - if you invest in real estate he gets no fees correct?