All Forum Posts by: Daniel Kauffman

I have experience hosting 5 lakefront luxury STR at Lake Anna and would be open to discussing this with you or connecting you with the premier local real estate group if you are still interested. Demand is definitely seasonal, so ~50% of the income is earned during the summer from June-August. However, there is good off peak season demand especially for weekend  and holiday rentals of luxury lakefront homes because many people from DC, Northern Virginia, and Richmond want a drivable weekend getaway. 

There are a lot of helpful youtube videos at STR University and Airbnb Automated.

You could add some photos of the nearby destination: 

-High Point Regional Hospital
-IHFC/Furniture Market
-High Point University
-Piedmont Triad International Airport
-downtown Greensboro

Setting an initial low price can be a great way to build up a lot of 5 star reviews. Place looks beautiful. Great job with the decorations and furnishing. I recommend shooting all photos in either landscape or portrait. I prefer landscape. Most people scroll through pictures quickly and can get annoyed if they have to switch back and forth between the two. We have found that a photo of  a living room does very well as the primary photo since the living area is very important to short-term guests. So, I would switch your 1st and 2nd photo. Picture #12 of the kitchen is also very nice and could be moved up to #2. You can add text to the pictures telling them additional details. Get a nice air mattresses or two for the common areas to increase your maximum occupancy. You might consider adding cable tv in the future. Do you have Netflix or Hulu on the Roku? 

@Bob Mueller Jr. I understand and definitely recommend getting a bed(s) for the other 6 months. It's easiest when you have multiple beds of the same size (for example: K, K, Q, Q). We got 2 Queen SoundAsleep Dream Series Air Mattresses for our common areas (living room) that our guests really like. Also, the Zinus Memory Foam 12 Inch Mattresses are really nice. You might find this excel file with a full list of typical furnishing helpful. Good luck!

I try to maximize heads-in-beds. I would use the 3rd Guest bedroom, as a bedroom, not an office.

Yes. You will most likely get a much higher return on Airbnb than you would through a long term rental. First check to make sure that short term rentals are allowed. Check with your HOA if you have one and look to see if your local government has any restrictions.

You will likely have to invest $10-20K in furniture before you can start renting your home out on Airbnb.

We have a property manager that takes care of almost everything for us. You can typically get a short term property manager to handle everything for 15-25% of booking revenue. I highly recommend reaching out to some local superhosts that already manage multiple properties in your area. They will likely be more successful than you can be, and free up your time and energy so that you can focus on finding and buying additional properties.

If you really want to take on this additional ongoing responsibly see below:

Great educational short term rental videos:

STR University – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXaGl7DGyzvVXDwyyBoE0Gw

Airbnb Automated - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvwmrPfn8ff-rTlc9YoH7Bg

Note: Heads in beds equals revenue. If you can fit 2 queens in a room, that room can sleep 4 people instead of 2. You will want to put beds in your finished basement.

Answers to your questions:

• 1.If you Airbnb your home, you should get additional coverage. I believe we have a $1M umbrella coverage as part of this short-term rental insurance. We went with CBIZ. I highly recommend getting multiple quotes. We got quotes from Proper Insurance and CBIZ. Both had competitive rates, but CBIZ allowed us to customize our insurance and choose a realistic building limit value. Proper Insurance was trying to over insure us at 223% of the tax assessed value of our home, which was significantly higher than the true replacement cost. While extra coverage sounds nice, it ended up being a lot more expensive.
• 2.If you charge a cleaning fee, then it will encourage lower turnover and longer stays. If someone is staying for 10 nights and only pays 1 cleaning fee, then their nightly rate will be lower than if they only stay for 1 night and pay a cleaning fee. We pay $99 to have our entire 3 bedroom home cleaned, and simply pass along the exact cleaning fee costs to our guests.
• 3.I agree and recommend that you price low initially to build up positive reviews. I would check out Airdna.co to get a better idea of what to charge per night. We typically see a higher demand on the weekends and get about 2-3x more per night for Friday and Saturday night. So for example: many homes will charge $100 for Sunday – Thursday nights, and $200-300 on Friday and Saturday. Everbooked is supposedly a good software product.
• 4.We have found that Airbnb is the best software and provides more bookings than any other platform. I would stick to just Airbnb. This will reduce complexity and help you get a lot of reviews quickly rather than spreading your reviews across multiple platforms. You could put in your listing description that the owner is retired military. 

@Luka Milicevic Sorry to hear that. Do you have any recommendations based on your experience? 

@Luke Carl

Thanks for all the feedback. We already have great insurance specifically designed for short-term rentals which should help reduce our liability. We would prefer to continue with short-term rentals because we enjoy sharing our home with others, we receive a higher return, and we can visit the property occasionally. At this point we are planning to transfer the property ownership to a natural person so that we are eligible for a short-term license. We jointly own this property, so we may end up putting one or both owners on the title. I wish that we didn't have to do this, or that there was a legal way to avoid this. 

@Luke Carl Thanks. We will definitely be looking at those places that you mentioned for our next STR property.

@John Underwood Adequate insurance is key. 

@John Oden Where can I find or how can I contact my local STR association? Sounds like we will have similar rules to Nashville. Did anything change for you after regulations were passed? Have the regulations impacted your business?

@Paul Sandhu We are open to accommodating all types of guests. Our home is ideal for large families. Occasionally we will get someone visiting for work or a nearby convention.

Has anyone had experience with issues resulting from their property being held in an LLC? Baltimore City has a final City Council meeting at 5:00 PM on Monday 11/19/18 to vote on the bill 18-0189 (Short-Term Residential Rentals - Regulation and Taxation). Investors who own their properties as an LLC will not be eligible for a Short Term Rental License. We currently have our property in an LLC and would prefer to keep it that way, primarily to limit liability but there are other benefits as well. However, it appears that we will have to transfer the ownership from the LLC to a person in order for that person to be eligible for a short-term rental license. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?