All Forum Posts by: Dale Bertrand

@Angela Persico Just sending you some encouragement to keep going and searching for a resolution. We've all had to learn important lessons the hard way. Congrats on getting started! You are WAY ahead of most people. If you stick it out the lessons you are learning will make you rich some day.

@Logan French I'm in Boston too. Highly recommend a house hack in Boston. You could get better cash on cash return elsewhere but everyone's situation is unique. You need a place to live in/near Boston and you are on the ground learning about different neighborhoods already. Get started learning real estate with a local deal. It's ok if it's a base hit and not a home run. The key is to get started so you start learning and then find better deals has you matured as an investor.

@Ling Lin I've got a 3 bed and 4 bed STR near Boston in the towns of Harwichport and Chatham on the Cape. It's working out well for me but it's VERY seasonal so not the best STR market for sure. I'm jealous of the returns folks are getting with STRs in other markets.

@James Choi, Great to meet you! I'm on Boston too and looking for my 3rd property. 

Great conversation! I'm curious how the financing affects your deal filtering rules. Assuming debt keeps getting more expensive, how does that affect your screening of properties?

- Dale

I would love to hire someone to review my STR listings and advise me on how to improve it. Do you know anyone who offers this type of one-time consulting service? Who would you recommend?

- Dale

@Marissa Biddle Don't be intimidated by the answers here directing you to other helpful resources ( and don't really answer your original question ). I've benefited greatly from masterminds in my non-real estate endeavors and highly recommend that you keep looking for an STR mastermind. If you don't find one, start your own! Seriously. And invite me :) There are many people in this forum who would enthusiastically participate. Hit me up if you are curious how I started and ran a mastermind in my life outside of real estate.

- Dale

@Robin Simon  I’m curious where you are investing in the northeast (NY and NJ). I’ve got two STRs in Massachusetts and it’s hard to make the numbers work around here.

I'm curious what you guys would do in our situation. We have an AirBnb renter for a STR who hosted a gathering at our house. We explicitly told him no parties or gatherings of any kind. We found 300 beer cans in 8 garbage bags in the side yard the day they left and it needed a deep cleaning.

I'm conflicted because they didn't do any damage to the house. The unexpected cost to us will be about $400 for a deep cleaning, trash removal, and some towels they destroyed. 

Since we just listed this house recently, all I care about is 5 star reviews. So I don't want jeopardize a 5 review rating by asking for compensation and I'm happy to eat the extra costs for a 5 star review. We rent this vacation house for $4,500/wk so the $400 isn't a huge hit. It just makes me mad, honestly.

What would you do in this situation? Should we request compensation through AirBnb?

My current plan is to leave a negative review, but I'm not going to try to recover the $400 to avoid getting a negative review from the renter.

- Dale