All Forum Posts by: Ben Scarborough

I'd imagine the pool ROI would be much better, but, as others have said in here, focus on the numbers... Look at comps in the area with those amenities. ROI is everything (for most investors).

-Ben Scarborough

0 Votes

Jacksonville, Florida

Quote from @Joe Solari:

Hi I’m looking to buy my first time short term rental. I live in Massachusetts I’m open to any and all areas was wondering if any one could share some info or places you have had success in.

Thank you

If you are interested in a coastal short term rental, I would highly recommend checking out the gulf coast of AL and FL. I'm biased, but you will not find prettier beaches in America. I am originally from Atlanta and the combination between the nature parks, cleanliness, and the friendliness of locals quickly convinced me to make the move more permanent in the Gulf Shores and Orange Beach markets. More specifically, Alabama is a great option for STR investors in general due to being ranked the 2nd lowest state in the USA in property taxes. If you are looking for appreciation, the market still has significant amount of room to continue to develop and several new constructions are in the works. If you are looking to avoid seasonality, you can count on the snowbirds to swarm in from the midwest from January to March. Several more reasons I would be happy to discuss... Feel free to reach out!

-Ben Scarborough

0 Votes

Quote from @Ray Malave:

What are your thoughts on properties with HOA fees? I'm looking at a 4-plex that has a $37 per door HOA fee.

Depends on what your purpose is for buying, in my opinion... If you are planning on short term renting any of the 4 units, I think there is a bigger argument to maybe avoid investing in a property with an HOA. If you are simply planning to long term rent the units, look into the association bylaws and see if there is a limit in the community for how many rentals there can be. If there is a limit, be sure you could rent out all 4 units prior to your due diligence period ending. $37 per door HOA dues is a bargain, so it shouldn't have a deal altering effect on your bottom line numbers wise.. you just should be sure to see how rentals are written into the association docs. Hope this helps. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

-Ben Scarborough

0 Votes

Fayetteville, North Carolina

Quote from @Derek Fike:

@Ryan Thomson Thanks for the response! Yeah Colorado would be great to invest in for sure, but I think it makes sense to look at other markets for the time being. The southeast region is catching my eye (Texas, FL panhandle, and even MS & AL gulf coast). Could be good to get in those markets and generate some cash flow and use the equity on the property put a higher down payment on property in CO.

Hey Derek,

The AL Gulf Coast is a fantastic area. We are growing at a rapid pace here, and I could easily argue this area has one of the lower seasonality issues for beach markets because of the high demand from snowbirds (Midwest states) from January-April due to the access from I-65.

I-65 is a straight shot South for many of the midwestern states. It's insane to see the growth in attendees at our church from the first week of January to the first week of February. I would wager it quadruples. Please feel free to reach out if you would like to discuss the AL Gulf Coast more, I am happy to help!

-Ben Scarborough

0 Votes

Quote from @Sarah Kensinger:

It's all fun and games until there is a slip and fall, a car accident you're at fault with, or a car accident by a child that still lives at home, or as in my friend's case a freak dog bite to the wrong person (no lawsuit yet but it's hanging over their heads). Something can happen anywhere it doesn't have to be at the STR property, and if someone has the right lawyer or even insurance company all they have to do is look a person up and see what assets they have. If you're sitting pretty and it's out in the open it's going to be a fight, and sometimes a long hard one. If the LLC's, land trusts, and/or other trusts have not been set up right by an attorney that understands real estate then yes it doesn't work. Even if the owner has not followed the instructions of the attorney in how to operate or even mixes personal and business wrong it won't work. It can take a very small "mess-up" for a legal loophole to be found and everything was a waste of time.

Yes, insurance is a big deal because if you have protected your assets correctly and something happens, then the only option for the person seeking to sue is to walk away with the insurance money. Because when your name is looked up there is nothing on record and most lawyers won't dig into everything to find out what is really there. It takes a lot of time and money to do that. Anderson Advisors has been around I think 20 or so years and with all their clients they have only dealt with "digging" lawyers a handful of times. It's just not that common and walking away with insurance money is the better option to them.

I know there's some people like someone I recently heard of, that has been in the STR industry for almost 30 years and never been sued. While others have dealt with it and sometimes more than once. My husband and I are working very hard to build a STR co-hosting company and plan on purchasing a number of properties in the future. I am not working this hard to watch a freak accident happen and someone come in and take it all. So, to spend several thousand dollars to have our assets protected and an attorney pretty much on call to help us build and advise in our business and assets protection is worth the cost!

If anyone wants to look further into this Youtube has plenty of short videos that explains most everything. Check out channels Anderson Advisors, Clint Coons, and Toby Mathis. The Book "Asset Protection for Real Estate Investors" by Clint Coons is a jem as well!

I agree with this for sure. Within reason, no amount of protection is too much protection in my opinion. I want to avoid any possible headaches down the road that I can. Building a successful business is a lot of time and money, and in the early stages can even be sacrificing valuable time from loved ones. I'm not going to let all of that go to waste over being sued. Congrats on getting your STR biz started, please feel free to reach out if there is any other questions I can help you with!

-Ben Scarborough

2 Votes

Salt Lake City, Utah

Quote from @Zach Edelman:

@Ben Scarborough, I know a couple of members from my team, Easy Street Capital, are attending. We are an STR friendly lender located in Austin, TX. Looking forwards to seeing you there!

Sounds great!

0 Votes

Quote from @Brian Davis:

Hello,

I wanted to see if this was the best place to get assistance on how to start getting into short term rental property investments.

Basically, my family and I live in CT near New Haven, but every summer we go to Cape Cod as a family vacation for one week. My in laws usually rent a house for the week and spend between 2-3k for the week. Every time we go I look at the house online and see the amount we are spending basically can cover the property taxes alone for the year. I then wonder how much these landlords actually make on a weekly basis through the summer and realize it can be relatively profitable!

This whole idea got me curious and excited about the opportunity to try to do something similar. I realize I am pretty late to the “game” but knowing it is something we love doing every year (going to cape cod) it would be nice if I could be a landlord and have the ability to stay at my house for 1 or 2 weeks of the year and rent out the remainder of the summer and any other pockets of time that are valuable in the cape.

I know if I did this I would really only be able to get a place that is 300-400k and I really just want to break even at the very minimum to at least get some equity while having a “free” vacation spot. However I am having trouble finding any decent place for that price and found myself exploring properties on the internet in Florida because we are going down to Jacksonville/st Augustine for the summer and realize I can get so much more bang for my buck down there.

I am wondering if I should give up on cape cod and do more of a long distance approach (as I can also turn Florida into an annual spring break location for the family) or if someone can help me feel comfortable in the cape cod approach in my price range. Anything somewhat close to a beach and or nice area to walk around a neighborhood is just too pricey. Are prices expected to stay and climb in cape cod or where does the market look to be going? Any insight there is helpful!

Lastly, I opened up a small llc in hopes of buying a property under the llc but am realizing many lenders will not deal with lending to an llc w no equity or anything in it. Can someone advise on this approach and how to get good financing to start knowing I would put around 20% down or less if possible?

sorry know its a lot but just really trying to learn right now. Thank you in advance!

Another great coastal market you may want to look into some is the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach/Fort Morgan area. I could easily argue this area has one of the lower seasonality issues for beach markets because of the high demand from snowbirds (Midwest states) from January-April due to the access from I-65.

I-65 is a straight shot South for many of the midwestern states. It's insane to see the growth in attendees at our church from the first week of January to the first week of February. I would wager it quadruples. Please feel free to reach out if you would like to discuss more, I am happy to help!

-Ben Scarborough

1 Vote

Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Quote from @Bryan Breaux:

Hi BP Community!

Over the past 6-ish years, my family (me+wife & 3 kids) have taken yearly trips to the TN Smokies and Florida panhandle beaches. During those vacations my wife and I would joke about how nice it would be to have a vacation home. On the drive back to Louisiana from TN this year, something was different. I really felt it in my core to get serious about it, and possibly grow a vacation rental business. We love to travel, and we want others to enjoy the places we enjoy too! Plus it would be nice to leave the rat race sooner than the typical retirement age!

We have nearly zero experience with real estate investing other than owning our current house and renting out a previous residence for a couple years.

In the past month I've listened to so many podcasts, watched hours of YouTube videos, and lurked the BP forums looking for tips, pointers, and advice. Now I'm looking to network with others who are in similar situations and with similar real estate goals.

Looking forward to the pointers and guides that everyone has!

Bryan

Hey Bryan! Exciting you are interested in getting into the STR world!

To pick your market, I usually recommend that new STR investors begin in the mountains due to less seasonality issues. If you pick the wrong beach market and you don't have other people's money to work with, it is going to be hard to build a profitable business since majority of beach markets will only rent well March-October (some even less). Some big mountain markets I still like for first buys are Gatlinburg, Blue Ridge, and the Western NC Mountains. It is critical you are running conservative numbers in today's market though in bigger markets like the ones I mentioned, with a higher supply of Airbnb listings (Higher supply = lower demand). Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to help!

-Ben Scarborough

0 Votes

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Quote from @Rebecca Allan:

Hi everyone, I'm one of many newbies, it seems, and am looking for my first STR investment. Trying to keep it under $500k, preferably at least 2bed, 2bath although flexible for profitable numbers. We live near Atlanta and want something within 5-6 hours driving distance so are focused heavily on the gulf shore all the way from Fort Morgan to PCB. We love the fact that Fort Morgan seems to be smaller, less crowded and pet friendly! For those familiar with the area, are there specific condo buildings and/or areas that we should focus on, hopefully with lower HOA fees, if we want to offer a pet friendly STR in that area?

Hey Rebecca,

I am originally from Atlanta and fell in love with Gulf Shores when my wife and I visited and now we spend our weekdays in Fairhope, AL and our weekends in Fort Morgan, AL. Great to hear you are interested in investing in the Gulf Coast! I certainly agree it will be difficult to find a home on the beach here below $500k, but there are certainly still some good options worth looking into! I'd be happy to go through a general overview of running the numbers with you on my STR calculator I created and some beach home options that you may want to look into. Feel free to reach out!

-Ben Scarborough

0 Votes

Quote from @Julie Chai:

I just signed up for Booking.com and got my first reservation within a week and turned out they were a bad guest. The guest had brought additional guests than they listed on the reservation, doesn't respond to my messages/concerns, left my front door wide open when they left. I was trying to find host reviews about booking.com but couldn't find any. I guess only guests can leave reviews for the property but there's no option (that I see) for hosts to leave guest reviews like AirBnB. It also takes longer for me to receive my payment where AirBnb and Vrbo payout almost immediately.

Any pros/cons or advise/suggestions on booking.com??? Should I keep my listing on there? Or is this a bad platform for hosts?

Thanks!

Hey Julie!

I have one of my STRs listed on Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, and have a direct booking site for it. I honestly think it was just a bad coincidence that your first guest on booking.com was a bad one. I have been listed on there for about 8 months now and have had no issues really.

For pros/cons of booking.com I would say the following...

Pros:
-if you use guesty you can sync your airbnb info into your booking.com listing info to ease the set up process
-there are more options to check off in the amenities portion of the listing set up, so you can really display the uniqueness of your property
-I would wager 90% of self-managing str hosts only list on up to VRBO/Airbnb, which means there are not nearly as many options for people to choose between, which means more exposure for your listing
-rumor has it that booking.com just invested a large sum of money into building out their services to provide more vacation home listings rather than hotels.
-Booking.com is a very large and established company that has been around much longer than airbnb and vrbo

Cons:
-more listings to make sure are all staying maintained assuming you are also on airbnb and vrbo
-you have to pay them their commission back at the end of each month which is a pain in the a** and is an unnecessary extra step
-payouts can take longer as you mentioned
-it has been impossible for me to find anyway to contact customer service over the phone and instead you have to refer to their forums and FAQs for any answers you need.

Hope you found this helpful. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, happy to help!

-Ben Scarborough

1 Vote

Houston, Texas

All Forum Posts by: Ben Scarborough

Ben Scarborough has started 13 posts and replied 142 times.

Post: swimming pool vs 4-hole putt-putt golf in backyard

Post: Looking to buy my first time short term rental

Post: Buying Properties with HOA fees

Post: WHERE TO INVEST???

Post: LLC for STR?

Post: STR Summit in Austin (4/10-4/12)

Post: New to Short Term Rentals - Need some help

Post: Let the Journey Begin!

Post: Considering first time investment in Fort Morgan, AL area

Post: Is Booking.com a good platform to use for hosts?