All Forum Posts by: Daniel Kauffman

You might want to check out the Airdna.co rentalizer. You plug in the property information and it gives you airbnb earnings estimates. I have personally found that the nightly rates are very accurate but the estimated occupancy was a lower than the actual occupancy. Might be because some people in my area only do Airbnb part time. Alternatively, I like to tell myself that my investment property is outperforming. The rentalizer can be found here: https://www.airdna.co/rentalizer

@Will Crayger, glad you are interested in real estate and a part of the BiggerPockets community. House hacking is one of the fastest and easiest ways to achieve financial success. I'm not familiar with the legality of your proposed idea. From a financial perspective, given your current situation and proposed idea, I think that you will have a hard time achieving your desired result. In order for your proposed deal to work you would have to find an amazing deal to be able to keep 1 unit vacant and still cover all of your expenses using the remaining rented units. You might be able to do this if you found a place that was in need of some serious repairs to the entire place or to the 1 unit that you plan to keep vacant. Then you could use that first year to make those repairs and save money by doing some of the work by yourselves. If you really don't want to live in the house hack, I think that it's more likely that you could take ownership of a small multi-family property by securing owner financing and avoiding the FHA loan process completely. One drawback of Airbnb is that you would have to fully furnish the property which can be expensive. Also, it can take a while before you get the short-term rental up to a reasonable occupancy level and nightly rate. Finally, the high turnover of an Airbnb property requires a lot of time and resources to maintain. Good luck.

Do you have enough equity in your current home to refinance and get some cash out?

Have you read this article? https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/6-house-hacking-strategies-you/

Since you are in the military you might qualify for a VA loan.

There are a couple different ways that you can house hack. Since you are considering house hacking I recommend you read this article: https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/6-house-hacking-strategies-you/

We've had success doing Airbnb with an investment property in downtown Baltimore, MD which is about 2 hours from our primary residence. I would say that the key is find a high quality property manager first. You can search the existing airbnb listings in the area you are considering to invest in and filter by "superhosts" and find some existing superhosts that already manage multiple properties. An experienced superhost can provide you with some great information and advice. We have done this to create a passive Airbnb investment that has higher returns that a comparable long-term rental. We pay our property managers between 15-20% of earnings to handle everything for us. The biggest disadvantage is that you will likely have to invest several thousand dollars upfront to fully furnish the property. It may take you 30 days to furnish the property, during which time you will receive $0 income. The income in the 60-90 days of ownership will likely be a little depressed because it takes some time to get a property up and running and people are less likely to book a property with 0 reviews. So, it will likely take you longer than 6 months to recover you initial incremental costs required to do a short-term rental. However, the incremental costs are insignificant in comparison to your purchase price. Once it's up and running you should get a much higher cash flow, and you will be very happy that you put in the extra effort. 

I believe that listing on multiple websites (Airbnb, VRBO, and HA) can prove helpful but it may prove detrimental. Your primary website or lead source can be like a circular snowball that grows over time. The more bookings you get with a particular source, the more reviews you get with that source, and the higher you appear in the search rankings for that source. Then your newly improved higher rankings and positive reviews lead to more bookings which restarts the circular cycle. In my opinion you might be better choosing 1 source and sticking with it. If you have 3 sources, none of them will be very great. If you already have 100 reviews with VRBO you will likely continue to get most of your bookings through that website even if you offer your property on other sources. However, if you are just starting off, I would recommend Airbnb. The website is very friendly and the fees are lower. www.airdna.co is a great source for data that can help you choose a city. Also, Airbnb provides some details on short term rental regulartions by city under the section entitled "Your City's Regulations" on this webpage: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1376/responsible-hosting-in-the-united-states

Currently a property in Pigtown sells for about 50-70% of what a comparable property commands in the Federal Hill area. The Pigtown area is only 1-2 miles from the inner harbor, but it's definitely on the border between nice and rough neighborhoods. I believe that the Pigtown area will get nicer over time, and that it's well positioned for improvement over the next few years. There are a lot of investments being made near the stadiums along the "entertainment corridor" like Hammerjacks, and Top Golf. I recently purchased a nicely updated 3 bedroom 2 bath property near M&T Stadium for $200K. My recommendation is to visit the area yourself and draw your own conclusions. 

Airbnb is good for Baltimore. There is a petition online to "Support Four Amendments to Bill 18-0189 (Short Term Rentals) & Baltimore Hosts Coalition".

https://click.mail.change.org/?qs=12c09ef69f54c69766187e00f25f51a9f40bf4bd608adaad46bf03199b01398d976ade99b535528879391a3d2b18e984294f5406ed7baee77927c54cbc362102

We bought a 3 bedroom property downtown for Airbnb and it has performed better than expected so far. A lot of our success is due to the help that we got from Matt and Jenna. You can see the 14 Baltimore properties that Matt and Jenna manage at goo.gl/UyFi6x and they can be contacted at baltimorebnbs.com. I also recommend contacting Mike Kane with re/max canton if you want to look at properties. He's a local realtor that understands the downtown Baltimore market very well. 

My wife and I live in Fairfax, Virgina and we plan to make a similar investment soon. If you are still contemplating an Airbnb investment property in Baltimore, we highly recommend contacting Jenna and Matt. We recently visited Baltimore City and met with "Jenna and Matt", who manage a number of Airbnb investment properties in the Baltimore area. This Sunday afternoon they showed us around to a few of their Baltimore properties, many of which are downtown near the Inner Harbor in Fells Point/Federal Hill/Camden Yards. We visited on a Sunday because many guests checkout on Sunday morning, so Sunday afternoon was a great time to visit a few of their properties in one day. Jenna and Matt have been hosting through Airbnb for about 4 years. Jenna and Matt are classified as "Airbnb Superhosts" which is a distinguished title that they have earned through their high response rate, exceptional hospitality, and hundreds of 5-star guest reviews. After meeting with them we much better understand the Baltimore area, and their airbnb business. We were particularly impressed with their professionalism, and the high cash on cash returns that their investors are currently achieving.