All Forum Posts by: Brian Barch

I simply just don't trust the news these days and have to look at my own markets and stats.

I think the part everyone is conscious of is we saw a post-covid peak that in theory will not return, and we made a gradual return to 2019 levels.

What I do think is true, per AirDNA, is that ocean and mountain markets saw the biggest increase, and now the biggest fall.... and now what's happening is many people, particularly older families who tried Airbnb for the first time, are realizing they never want to stay in a hotel again.  So now when they travel to Paducah KY for their kids traveling sports tournament, they are searching out Airbnb's instead of the Hampton Inn, in a town no one thinks of as an Airbnb hotspot.

For work travel I'll stay in a hotel, but for ANY and ALL family travel, there's no way I'm giving up having a separate room for each of my kids.

My mountain market revenue is flat-ish to up, but that's because I took over management from a PM and was able to do a much better job, so it's hard to get a pulse on my local market.

I use chatgpt. Works amazing honestly. Copy and paste reviews into the tool an ask it to summarize. 

I’m in the north GA mountains.

I would suggest the following:

1) better professional photos that highlight your listing

2) a persons photo as the host. People want to feel they are renting from a person and not a company

3) lower rates mid week. Use pricelabs with aggressive price drops close in.

4) some more color pops

A majority of PMs don’t treat the place as their own. Once it’s in their fold, they seldom monitor price, or respond to reviews, etc. if things are operational they consider that “good enough”. 

They also don’t know the little details, like where the wine opener is, and so you as the property owner still have to get involved.

and god forbid anything big happened like HVAC or plumbing, they will take 3 days just to get quotes. 

Hospitable integrated with pricelabs and my smart lock.

I find hospitable to be very easy to use and reliable. it’s not as robust as some, but does the basic tasks really well

I believe there is value in these online, in the sense that I would use them as one tool and not ignore them.  However, When I punch in my rental some of them are somewhat close, and some wildly off.  Rabbu has my market at about 50% of what it should be for instance.

But I think between using all the tools, talking to STR friendly realtors, the enemy method, etc.....one can get fairly close

I agree that this sounds like a pet project for you, which again is totally fine if you are okay with spending your money in that way.

To me, the STR market (and from what I hear about the smokies) is on a downward trend. This year might not be the best year to go all in with an investment if the sole goal is cash flow or appreciation (not personal use).

In a mature market such as the smokies, I think you can reasonably arrive at a fairly narrow occupancy rate.  For arguments sake, suppose it's 65-75% given the market occupancy, the smaller size, and the newness.  So that's 21 days/mo.

I'm NOT an expert on the smokies market, but lets say this thing costs you $600K all in, you put 20% down, and with utilities and OTA fees you are all in at $4,500 - $5,000/mo.  That means you need to average a nightly rate without the cleaning fees of $240 on a small cabin.  Sounds high to me unless you are able to really make this unique.

I realize I made of lot of back of the napkin assumptions above, but it sounds like a no go to me.

It 100% depends on your goals.

not to be facetious, but if you are asking because to watched a YouTube video, the answer is I would not get into STRs

if the purpose is you have long term goals of investing in real estate, you enjoy hosting, and you want a place near your daughters college for when you visit, the answer might be that it’s great.

it’s a mature market now. So creating value is the name of the game, as is long term buy and hold, assuming you enjoy the asset class.

Our north Georgia cabin is doing very well this year. We are on the smaller side, and we started accepting 1 night stays which have really done well TBH. Given our size and price point, we have never had a long booking lead time, so it’s tough to say our early summer is shaping up.

when I punched in my address, it estimated 47% occupancy, which is WAAAAAY low.  But then, my actual cabin was listed as a comp with 79% occupancy, which is very accurate, albeit the nightly rate was about 15% too high.

Like most of these services, they don't do a good job distinguishing between owner stays and guest stays, my property included