All Forum Posts by: Boris Mordkovich

Hi Kenneth,

Looks like you're on the right track.

Repairs — I’d budget more than $100/mo, as things come up. I’d also budget an extra $100-150/mo for capital expenditures fund.
Replacement of furnishings - I’d add a budget of $50/mo to replace things that get used up (linens, broken furnishing, etc)
Occupancy taxes - I’d check whether Airbnb automatically collects and remits occupancy taxes. If yes, great. If not, you would need to account for that.
STR Insurance - You're likely looking at $200-250/mo if you wanted STR-focused insurance with proper liability protection.
Virtual Assistant — it’s not a big issue with 1 property, but if you decide to get multiple, you'll find that it’s more work to communicate with guests and such than it is with long-term rentals. So if you don't want to do it yourself nor hire a management company, I’d budget about $150/mo per property for future virtual assistant help.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any further questions!

Hi Alex,

I'm happy to provide feedback and guide you in the right direction! Any particular questions you have about the process?

Hi Cody,
It’s true that it can cost some money to furnish it. Typically, it takes about $14K to furnish a 4-bedroom house from scratch in our experience. 

There are some tricks, however. For example, you can get an Amazon Store card, get 80-90% of what you need on Amazon and then pay it off over 24 months with 0% interest: https://www.amazon.com/gp/cobrandcard/marketing.html?pr=conplc 

Wayfair offers the same thing - 24 months with 0% interest - https://www.wayfair.com/wayfaircard 

Between Amazon and Wayfair, you can get 99% of what you need, pay everything off from higher cash flow, and then you’re left with a better performing asset afterward. Keep in mind that when fully furnished, you can even rent it to mid and long term renters at a premium + when you sell the property, it’ll show better too.

Let me know if you have any more questions, hope this helps!

Just saw this as well.

I don’t think that this “Occupancy and gatherings for reservations made on or after August 20 and until further notice are now capped at 16 people” will be helpful, however. In fact, the opposite.

1. Most people that book locally and throw parties do not accurately indicate the # of people who will attend. In fact, the opposite it usually true. They’ll put down a small # and exceed it. Also, if there’s a group of 17, 19 or 20 people -- they’ll just put down 16 and not give it another thought.

2. By capping the #, they actually make it more difficult for the hosts to pursue further claims against the party guests. Without a cap, a host can have an extra fee per person and can legitimately say that the guest indicated 12 people and had 24 people, so we want to file a claim for the extra people. With a cap, this becomes more hazy.

3. There are plenty of hosts that have properties that can accommodate over 16 people. So this policy just handcuffs them without actually solving any specific problem for them. That said, if I recall previously, there was already a cap of 16 people anyway when selecting the # of guests, no?

What the hosts need are better tools to monitor for local reservations and better ways to take action when rules are being broken.

Boris

Hey Sam!

So, we've used (and keep using) AirDNA pretty extensively over the years, as we have short-term rentals in 5 cities around the country.

I would suggest that you start off using their free data in the beginning and, when you narrow down to a specific set of cities, just pay for a subscription for those cities. 

The amount of info they display for free is enough to make an initial determination if the market is worth exploring further since what you're generally looking for is the level of competition (# of listings), average occupancy rates, and average earnings (simply for directional purposes).

Only after you have a short list of 4-5 cities, it makes sense to get a subscription for those particular cities. It'll be as effective and likely quite a bit cheaper.