All Forum Posts by: Jason Bogert

Thanks for the replies. I understand your points. I guess the main reason they would want a site is for something that will consolidate all their properties under 1 brand name that they can post on face book and other sites or give to friends and family. My assumption would be this site can be an easier way to view their available properties and their rates. I guess from there I could just list links to the airbnb site for booking purposes for now, while looking into payment options directly for the site. It will be a wordpress site and there are some plugins for this I'm sure. The only cost so far is the hosting which was $150 for 4 years (plus domain name which was negligible). I would be maintaining and designing the site for free. However, looking at some payment processing options like stripe it seems there is close to a 3 percent fee for utilizing the service. So for processing payments on the site (if airbnb is indeed 3 percent) then it seems the benefit of that would be negligible unless there are other airbnb fees I'm not realizing

Hi,

I'm pretty new to the real estate space. I recently got engaged and my fiance's family own a few real estate properties that they are renting out (majority are condos in Columbia, SC and 1 in Florida). She mentioned they would like to have their own website where they have full control and can list all their properties available and potentially have them booked through this site to avoid fees associated with other platforms such as airbnb. Obviously the exposure on this site won't be as great but we can list it as a link to friends and family to book through maybe. I'm wondering if others have gone this route and what their experience has been with doing things this way vs traditional booking sites? Also what platform(s) are you using to create and host your website (wix, wordpress, squarespace, etc)?

Hi Shawn, thank you for your quick reply. You've given me some more things to think about and ask my girlfriend. From my understanding she isn't opposed to either STR or LTR and the family vacation stuff is secondary to the financial gain. So I guess it depends on the property/area and what makes the most sense. I will talk more with her tonight and let you know if/when I can reach out.

So my girlfriend and I have been tasked to locate a property in Florida to purchase. Background info is my girlfriend and her family have done some smaller real estate deals in Columbia, SC (They own 5 or 6 rooms in an apartment/condo) and now her dad wants her to try and find an investment property in Florida. My girlfriend is eyeing Orlando because of Disney. Part of the reason for this choice is her and her family love Disney and would like to use this property every so often for trips there (though I think this is more of a secondary concern).

I kinda fell into this scenario so I have no prior experience in real estate but I'm trying to help out in anyway I can. I believe the total amount for investment is 600,000 but the girlfriend wants to look for places 400 and below. She has been speaking with a realtor in Florida who has been sending us potential properties around the area. Some of them are condos, some of them are condo-hotels and some are a mix of individual properties/condos. I'm not too sold on the condo-hotel idea as the ones we looked at have a 40-45% revenue split which I don't think offset the benefits (property maintenance, advertising, etc.). There was another area we looked into which seemed to have both condos to rent as well as individual properties so you seem to have more flexibility on what exactly you want to purchase and how you want to use it. Basically, I'm trying to to find out exactly what questions we should be asking and if anyone has any experience with real estate properties in Florida in general. Here are some of the questions we've sent to the realtor already, mainly concerning the condo-hotels:


1.) Any information on vacancy rates? Is there seasonal trend? What has the trend been the last 5-10 years?

2.) What are the current rental rates? How has this price fluctuated in the past 5-10 years?

3.) Does there seem to be any preference in the rental market towards a certain area on the resort? Maybe properties closer to certain activities/restaurants/etc.?

4.) What do we need to know about property taxes in Florida? What's the rate?

5.) Can we get access to the condo's profit and loss statement, buget and balance sheet? In particular what has the cost of insurance been and how it is being budgeted going forward?

6.) Are there any new or proposed buildings that would be comparable/competitive with this building?


She answered with sort of general answers for a lot of them, so wasn't super helpful initially so want to have good follow up questions.
Any advice would help. Thank you.