All Forum Posts by: Bruce C.

They will not be able to see your review until they post their own review or the 14 day period is up and they can no longer review you. 

I will say temper your reviews and stick to unemotional facts.  I don’t know what a “mess” is by your standards, but that could just as easily be your expectations being off or your communication of requirements not being good enough. Why should they know not to leave your thermostat on 80?  Did you communicate that at all?  Did you communicate it well?  Have you ever been running a little late at check out from a hotel?  Did that chain still rent rooms to you the next time you needed to stay somewhere?

Yeah, the gas thing was a horrible mistake that could have ended badly.  Doesn’t necessarily mean they were terrible people, idiots, or any other conclusion you can jump to. 

Do you think you should get a 1 star review and ripped in their review because of the fireplace? I don't. Maybe a 4 or 3 and the simple comment "fireplace wasn't working." Likewise, they probably warrant a 3 star and the simple comments "checked out late, left gas burner on and didn't pick up a mess." You also need to look at what and how you communicate requirements to guests, and if you're going to stick with STR, you got to learn to let a lot of small things go.

Echoing what @Charles Montgomery said, we knee jerked in March when we had just finished the rehab on our second STR, everything shut down, and all our bookings at our 2 houses disappeared (my day job is oil/gas related, I was concerned we were goi going to get hit there too, and I'm not optimistic about January at this point...). We put all 4 of our loans in forbearance. The lenders have already told me it will be as easy as requesting to have my loan extended (no lump payment). It has not impacted my credit score. It has prevented me from getting a loan, but HMLs are still willing to work with me.

In March and July here in Texas when things were shutdown, AirBnB automatically refunded 100% of the trip to the guests. It was out of our hands.  This was for guests that booked pre-shutdown. 

Hi @Timothy Church I’ll start coming to these if you’re still doing them in a few months. Gotta wait for Covid to die down a bit. Happy wife, (reasonably) happy life. 

I’d be interested in knowing as well if anyone has a rec.

I did find MobilOil credit union. They have a CC with a 1% balance transfer fee and ~6.9% rate. Was able to use it to pay off my Wells Fargo line of credit and then re-draw in my WF LOC. Essentially doubled my LOC amount. The monthly payback rate is high because you have to pay back 2% equity each month. But it can get you in a house until you ReFi

AirBnB is a lot of work. You have to worry about reviews and scheduling cleanings and be on call if there is an issue. You can probably make more, but I’m not sure it is going to be enough more to be worth your time if you’re traveling for work. 

Look for longer term professionals like some have mentioned. On my Airbnb’s, I’ve used furnishedfinder.com to fill the offseason gaps. They cater to traveling nurses that do 3-4 month rotations. High quality tenants making good money usually.

@Timothy Church

How’s it going over there?  I’ve stalked your rehab a bit and driven by when I’ve been in the area looking at other houses or doing something for one of ours. Our larger AirBnB has been limping along since September. I will say at least the traffic was nice getting down to the island pre/post June and July. 

Between Siri and BP’s autocorrects, that last post is terrible grammatically, but I’m not going to even try to correct it. 

Didn’t realize how long it has been since I posted. Hit a weird mental state by the end of May and then got really busy in the summer.

On the new larger AirBnB, June-mid Aug ended up being great, better than expected for year one in the middle of a pandemic when bars were still **** down and I think most of the other stuff was 50% occupancy. Gives me hope for when things get back to normal. 

Hey @Sam B. 

As in sure it has been for everyone, it's been kind of crazy. On the housing front, we've been looking but the prices are kind of crazy right now. To the point I'm almost tempted to sell the 3 properties we have (but I'm not, long game). The long term duplex fortunately the lower unit is HUD and auto paid, and the upstairs they been paying on time. The vacation rental was great until August but slowed down more than normal for the end of August through early September. So we found a couple of traveling nurses for a long term stay at the 2brdm until mid January. Tried the same for the 4bdrm, but not many people looking for that price/size combo.

I’ve been heading to the Galveston county auction, but there’s hardly anything for sell, and there are more people at the outside auctions than there were pre-pandemic. 

At my job, I can’t complain because I haven’t been laid off and I haven’t been asked to cut staff. We have had to cancel all capex and overtime though. We are still very busy, but it is mostly working off of backlog and sales cutting prices. Our output is probably going to be up 10% this year, but our CM will probably be 25% of what was expected. With all the refineries pushing turnarounds back or just flat out shutting down, I’m worried about end of December through early March. If we can just limp through until then, I think the flood gates will open. 

Kids (5 and 8) are doing OK, but they are ready to see other kids.  We’ve home schooled them through all this  

How’s it going for you?  Didn’t you get ~8-10 new rehabs going by the end of last year?  How have they held up through all this?

@Mark H. Porter

Agree on using it to buy a new property being a big no. It can be used for repairs though. If you purchased a fixer upper with your own money, wouldn’t replacing broken windows, rotted wood, etc be necessary repairs for continuing to run your business?