All Forum Posts by: Carolyn Hodo

Hi @Alan Frisk, I had a short-term rental in Bastrop for about a year in 2020-2021. I was just outside of city limits but within the ETJ, so I did have to pay taxes to both the county and city. No license was required, but the tax office did collect my info, and shared info about meetings, tax reminders, etc. Actually I think they offered to pay for STR owners to join the Texas Hotel Lodging Association. Fran Hunter in the bastrop county tourism office sent the emails and was very helpful and they seem to be genuinely interested in building the short-term rental market and making it a positive thing for both sides - if you're going to call someone to discuss, I would call her (you will have to look her up as it won't let me post the details). I got the impression they view STR as a positive from the tourism aspect. Elgin is in Bastrop county, but not sure if things are handled differently at all than closer to Bastrop. I was not trying to keep mine booked solid because I was managing it myself while still working full-time, but I generally had bookings at least every weekend and sometimes during the week. I had it set to allow a buffer day or two for cleaning and turnover, so that limited the number of short weekday stays. I was actually surprised how often it was booked and the variety of reasons people were coming to Bastrop. I found it hard to identify comps because there aren't that many other STRs in the area, prices and occupancy varies widely, and some definitely appear better-managed or more seriously managed than others, so I just played with pricing until I seemed to hit the sweet spot as far as quality of guest and occupancy. Overall it was successful and would have been more so if I'd had more time to devote to it - I ended up selling because it wasn't quite worth the stress to me not living close enough and working full time and with the market going wild it made more sense for me to sell last fall. Oh yeah and a bedbug scare (that probably wasn't even real) was the last straw. Let me know if you have more specific questions or feel free to PM me! 

BTU (btutilities.com) is most likely the utility provider in Bryan. They combine electric, water, sewer, and trash into one bill (maybe this is actually different for MF, with the trash especially, I'm not sure). The biggest cause of fluctuation in the bill is likely to be electricity usage, which will vary predominantly depending on how much a/c use there is (and heat if electric heat). If there's gas, that's probably with Atmos.

Bryan still doesn't have that requirement, right?

Brenda Williams is the best!

@Mitch Hoefar nice work! Were you able to increase the rent to $850 on all the units, or just the totally remodeled one?

If you intend for the new home to be your primary residence, you should not have issues with having to bring a big down payment. But it will come down to your debt to income ratio (considering the debt on the current home). You may be able to get a broker to consider the potential income from renting the current house out, even though you don't yet have a lease - I think this is broker/bank dependent. We did this a couple years ago here in Texas with a local mortgage broker - she told us we could count the expected rent from the old house toward the DTI without having a lease signed (maybe because we are in a college town and it's easy to get tenants?). In the end I think our income was high enough and the old mortgage low enough that we would have qualified anyway, so we didn't exactly get to test this in practice. Anyway, perhaps some others with more detailed knowledge will chime in, but I'd suggest getting a local recommendation and talking to a mortgage broker (rather than the banks directly).

Hi @Matt Ekoti! I agree with Jim, the only way around the mortgage qualifying issue is to decrease the DTI (debt to income ratio). It is a simple calculation the mortgage lender will make (generally needs to be below 43%), so you will either have to increase income or decrease the amount you plan to borrow. What about family help - do you have any family members -with good credit and a steady job income - willing to cosign on a mortgage, and it that a reasonable situation for you? You put up the down payment and take care of the mortgage (with help from roommates), they would just share ultimate responsibility in the event of default (so not a commitment to be entered into lightly..). I know quite a few people who were able to get through college/grad school debt free with this type of arrangement. Good luck!

Awesome job! That's a similar look to what we're working on for our current live-in flip. Did you hire someone to do the interior trim/moulding work? If so I would love that contact info if you were happy with them and willing to share! Our previous paint/trim guy left town :(

@Keith A.

I started to look into this a couple years ago... you can't do a line of credit but can do an equity loan - so you get all the money at one time. The one bank I talked to (Wells Fargo I think) would do it at 50% LTV. That's as far as I got because I didn't have quite that much equity in the house yet.

@Micah Manor Well, I've been looking for a house hack in Bastrop because I'm starting a job there to which I'll be commuting from College Station so I want something there so I can stay a few nights a week and not have to drive every day, but I want it to be income producing or at least income-neutral. So far I haven't seen anything really promising on the MLS. Thinking about Airbnb route for when I'm not there but still haven't seen anything that looks right. There aren't even that many properties listed for rent! So I guess maybe I'd be one buyer, haha. Will keep an eye on this thread...