All Forum Posts by: Cheryl Schlehuber

In the Daytona Beach Shores area, it is the HOA's not the city that has implemented the min. stays and from what I could tell, these 30-90 day min. requirements have been around well before Air B&B and VRBO combined ever existed.  In addition, I did look at a couple of properties that allowed weekly/nightly rentals, and none of those were attractive, mainly because of the wear and tear and very transient clientele.  We personally rent properties in Michigan that are weekly or min. 2 night stays so I know they can be awesome properties, just didn't find that appeal in the area I personally wanted to be on the FL coast.

I'm buying an ocean condo on the other side of that coast and many condos I looked at required 2-3 months as minimum occupancy.  I was thrilled to find a 1 month minimum.  I think it depends on your reason for buying too.  I wanted a place to go south, jump on a plane when I could and not have to haul golf clubs, recreational equipment and clothes, but rent it out when I couldn't use it (if I choose to).   There is a large market there for various reasons, snowbirds, professional remote workers and people from the interior of hot southern states who want the ocean in the summer as well. That market was also on fire this past year so felt lucky to get in. Many discouraged the shorter term rentals due to turnover in an area where many people call home and live there year-round. I own a real estate & property mgmt. company in Michigan so I get it and the 1 month min. works for me.  Life is short, do what works best for your situation!

We live in an area of Michigan where there are several types of leased land, one being areas on Mackinac Island (which is a state park) and values are extremely high whether owned or leased.....the other being Federal Forest land, located on some lakes where leases have been in place for over 100 years or so....the cost to lease on the Federal leased land is substantially less than the cost to own so in this case, a good value, however, it has restrictions on sub-leasing so geared more for personal use...

In recent years, it was pretty a pretty big news story when the Federal govt. called leases in on homes on the west coast of Michigan so you have to be careful and do your due-diligence.  

Same in Michigan....  Lot of people taking BIG hits in this business, I'm just grateful we still have semi winter and I've had to keep someone on full time just to handle cancellations through this spring and summer season and stay on the phone all day with Air B&B and VRBO issues to get cancellation fees back. It's not pretty.   Can imagine it's much worse in the south where they have summer weather now.

In Michigan, they shut down short term rentals so that solved any of that!  

You should get a kick out of this toilet paper story in Northern Michigan

https://www.9and10news.com/2020/03/16/great-lakes-tissue-company-to-host-toilet-paper-sale-wednesday/

They actually were offering 5 cases per person ($20 per 96 roll case) ...Because we manage quite a few rentals, I sent my husband down (25 minutes south) to take them up on the offer, the line was so many miles long on so many sides of this plant, he just laughed and came back home.  The ones that were diligent to wait (and had been for 5 hours before they were scheduled to open trading, got lucky and got their paper.  That's a hell of a lot of toilet paper.   

We've had two commercial real estate deals in the last two days...people getting out of the stock market.  We live in a big tourism area of Michigan.  I don't ultimately think it will have an negative impact on Michigan .....in our part of northern Michigan, tourism is our biggest industry, more people will travel in state and less out of the country.   Carry on as normal, be smart about it.....business is good....Michigan has had more than it's fair share of challenges ....this is just one more issue to deal with, I don't see that it will derail our forward progress.  We are a Great Lakes State, surrounded by the biggest fresh water bodies of water on earth...and a hearty population, we will be OK!

Real estate and property management

@Drew Brown  Sorry for the delay, busy season.....We do rent a few more remote properties (but not too far from office) and have turned down many....A main criteria that there would be some kind of phone service, land line or access...Many areas outside of the cities have shaky cell service so not being able to have someone contact us in an emergency, to me, is not workable.  Having a good cleaning/maintenance person that is close to property is a huge plus. Good Luck!

Michigan's Upper Peninsula around the St. Ignace area

Michael,  yes, you're right a wall of text for sure.  I am in the middle on this one.   Can see both sides.   The tenants right to rent, the neighbors right to peaceful existence.  I could easily drop this property from our mgmt. because of the foreseen future neighborhood hostility and the owner could rent direct (however, out of state a little more difficult).....the neighbors could end up with a much worse scenario with no onsite manager to put out the fires and try to accommodate all the needs that do arise.  In a small town, finding the right people to coordinate services can be tough at best.   I will continue to work with this situation and see if we can rectify in some way, if not....we do what we need to do while in care of this property and the guests that are lucky enough to use it.  Thanks for your comments.