All Forum Posts by: Cam Bandstra

Thank you everyone for all of the replies, super helpful words and advice! Also, good to hear I am not the only one who has had this kind of experience. I will see what I can do about getting the review removed.

My wife and I purchased a house hack and have been renting the upstairs unit on Airbnb. We recently had a guest who booked our place for an entire week (total payout to us was ~$1K). However, the guest never stepped foot in the unit. Instead, he called Airbnb claiming the neighborhood was not a safe place for him and his family and requested a full refund.

For context, the neighborhood is very up-and-coming (flips and new construction happening). In fact, our home was fully remodeled before we purchased it. However, I would not refer to the neighborhood as dangerous. We have not had any issues since living here and there are numerous families (with kids) that live on our street. Despite the neighborhood being up-and-coming, there is still plenty of work to be done. For example, there are several homes in close proximity that have boarded up windows, etc, and the area is clearly lower income than many other neighborhoods in Atlanta. 

Long story short, we chose not to issue a refund for the following reasons:

- We have had ~6 or so bookings in our first month on Airbnb and have an average ~4.8 stars. Not one of our guests has commented on the area, feeling unsafe, etc.

- We live in the basement of the home and do not believe the neighborhood to be dangerous (otherwise we would not have bought here and would not live here).

- We have a firm refund policy on our Airbnb listing that guests agree to when booking. Part of the policy is that we do not issue any refunds if a guest decides to cancel within a certain timeframe of their reservation (I believe within 24 hours of their booking).

- The week the guest booked was during July which is a busy time for this area.

For additional context, the guest never canceled the reservation and never stepped foot in the unit (he is probably trying to get Airbnb to force a refund). The day this all happened, I told him that if he chose to cancel and we were able to fill any of the nights during his booking window we would reimburse him for those nights. He did not accept that offer. 

With all of this said, I have two questions...

1) Obviously, he is going to leave a very bad review (he even drove around the neighborhood and took pictures of several of the rundown homes)... however, given he never even stepped foot inside our Airbnb, is there any way that we can have the review removed?

2) What would you have done in this situation? Would you have given a refund or doubled down on your refund policy?

Thanks in advance for all the help and advice!

Hey @Josh Bowser I would be happy to share more. Yes, I would think a STR would be the only way to make those areas that you mentioned work.

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Atlanta.

Purchase price: $435,000
Cash invested: $39,312

Contributors:
Niyi Adewole

With a lot of help from our realtor, Niyi Adewole, this property has become our first investment! My wife and I are doing a househack by renting the upstairs out on AirBnB. The basement to the property has a separate entrance so we are able to have a living space completely private from where our AirBnB guests will be staying. The property also has great proximity to downtown Atlanta and is in an up-and-coming neighborhood.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

What made us interested in house hacking was the thought of lowering our monthly housing expense.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

We found this home on Realtor.com and our real estate agent, Niyi Adewole, did an incredible job negotiating with the seller. One thing in particular Niyi was able to do was negotiate with the seller to have a kitchenette installed in the basement prior to closing which saved us a hurdle on the backend of this deal. Can't thank Niyi enough for everything he did to make this investment happen.

How did you finance this deal?

We financed this deal with a 5% down conventional fixed rate 30-year mortgage.

How did you add value to the deal?

We added value to this deal by being willing to house hack and being willing to buy in up-and-coming neighborhoods of Atlanta as opposed to more expensive areas.

What was the outcome?

We will begin renting the upstairs on AirBnB towards the end of this month so we don't know exactly how much revenue the property will bring in. However, based on the due diligence we did via AirDNA and other data sites, we are confident that the property will perform in such a way that our monthly housing expense is dramatically reduced from what we paid renting an apartment. We may even be living for free when its all said and done.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

The number ONE lesson I learned was find a great realtor. The most IMPORTANT person on your team is your realtor. Once we found Niyi the rest was history. He referred us to everyone else... our lender, insurance agent, home inspector, etc.. If there is one thing I could tell you its find a great realtor. Do that and you will find success.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

We worked with Niyi Adewole and his team at Ekabo Home in Atlanta. We would absolutely recommend Niyi and Ekabo Home to any investor looking to purchase in Atlanta or the greater Atlanta area. We will definitely be using Niyi for all of our investments in the state of Georgia moving forward. We also worked with Ricardo Carrillo and Mackenzie Brown over at OneBrokerage. Again would recommend Ricardo and Mackenzie to anyone looking to purchase an investment. We will be using them moving forward.