All Forum Posts by: Carolyn Fuller

@Celena Lathrop I would look over this Austin, TX tenant rights website (https://www.housing-rights.org) and determine what your rights are and where you can find support. I can't imagine that "entering without giving notice" is legal. 

@Grant Rothenburger We have 2 units that we rent fully furnished short term but we primarily rent to visiting scholars / professors via Sabbatical Homes and the local colleges. I assume the visiting nurse market would be similar but haven't tried it. 

@Joseph Kotey I would be hesitant to rely on the Airbnb dollars when making your investment decisions. Income from an Airbnb can shift substantially, as new hosts enter the market in your area and / or your locale regulates the industry. New laws can easily go on the books after you purchase that make your Airbnb illegal. It has happened in my city and I have watched hosts scramble to deal. Also, I have watched as many new hosts enter the local market and drive down the rates. 

I think it would be more prudent to base your investment decisions on an assumption of passive rental income.

We have 2 fully furnished units which we rent by the semester mostly to visiting professors/scholars. We advertise on Sabbatical Homes, as well as the local college web sites. But this might not work so well for a 6 bedroom house because it does not lean itself well to a single lease. You can check out the listings on Sabbatical Homes to get a flavor for how large the listed houses are and how much the rent is in your local area. 

The nice thing about renting to visiting professors / scholars is that schools rarely, if ever, offer housing to these visitors and they are much more mature than students.

@Anita Muhammad We also own a two-family, living in one unit and renting the other. I was very nervous about becoming a landlord because of prior bad experiences. This time around has been very, very different and very positive. Instead of nightmarish conflicts with our tenants, they give us presents and fabulous reviews. There are a number of things we did differently this time around but probably the the most effective was to learn as much as possible about how to be a good landlord and how to avoid problems with tenants before their arise. Our resource was http://www.attorneyross.com/landlord.pdf. This is a Massachusetts centric document. Try to find something similar for your state and locale. And it never hurts to actually talk to a lawyer. Basically knowing the tenant / landlord laws for your area and staying strictly within those laws is a formula for having a great relationship with your tenants.

I love the Yale Assure Lock which we use in our home with the Amazon Key app to allow for remote access and easy management of guest codes. Since the Amazon Key is not designed to be used in rentals, you would want another app for the remote piece. I don't have any experience with the other apps. As much as I love our smart lock, figuring out which lock and wifi app are best for your needs is a daunting task. 

We have had mini splits in our home and our 2 rentals for over 4 years. Initially, we had 4 indoor units running off of 1 outdoor unit. We didn't need to add a 2nd outdoor unit until we decided to install a 5th indoor unit. 

We LOVE them and our tenants love them. We use them primarily for air conditioning and backup heat when there is an issue with the central furnace. 

We provide free wifi for both of our rentals. It is an advertised perk. One of our rentals is an apartment in our two-family home. Our tenants use the _Guest network and we've never run into any problems. Since it is an advertised perk that we provide, we do handle any issues that arise. The only issues that have arisen have been with the wifi in our home so it impacted us, as well. Yes, it can be a pain but it does mean we can charge more for the rentals than we otherwise could.

@Patrick M. Your suggestion is very helpful because it allows me to determine what my comps are. We rent fully furnished apartments for extended stay visitors who are in town for anywhere from 3 months to 9 months. This market is radically different from regular long term rentals for unfurnished apartments so none of the other methods work for us. 

I've been getting the impression that renting our 2 apartments this year has been much harder than in recent years. This method of weekly checking our comps will be extremely useful to me in figuring out whether we should reduce the rent and, if so, when.

Thank you!

@Alec McGinn Personally, I think there is a difference between a vacation rental in an urban setting versus a typical vacation setting such as lake or ocean fronts. When I vacation at a lake or ocean front, I'm not expecting to experience as much perfection in an Airbnb as I expect in an urban setting. I expect the place to be clean but I don't expect the extras (chocolates, flowers, wine if permitted by law, etc). 

I would focus on making your vacation rental the perfect spot for you and your fiancé and chances are, it will be perfect for other visitors, as well. 

If you want to charge top dollar, look at other vacation listings in the area to see which ones seem to be able to charge more than other places. What makes them stand apart from other listings with similar amenities? 

Here in my urban market, it is the uniquely designed places that can demand and get higher prices. On the other hand, you can make a healthy profit by pricing your rental just a bit lower than others, especially when breaking into the market. Airbnb will suggest offering a 20% discount for the first few rentals just to get your started. We did that and we had 4 bookings in the first 24 hours of advertising the unit. And we still made a healthy profit.