All Forum Posts by: Daniel Murphy

thanks @Leslie Anne Morris, I appreciate the advice.  I'll add one more wrinkle to this & would love your opinion. 

We're also building a local area guide. www.capecoralforfamilies.com  

The purpose of this is to eventually rank in Google for people searching for activities in the area.  If we can get this to rank well (which I believe based on past experience we can), this alone should bring people to our direct booking site.  

@Dave Stokley, I partially agree & see your point. This will likely never replace airbnb & vrbo. But, the point is to build an extra leg of security. Plus, if any marketing efforts bring 1 extra booking per year, that can be hundreds if not thousands of dollars for us. I'm not looking to go crazy, but like most other things. Once you setup the initial framework of something, the maintenance is usually pretty easy. And with time, it should only help our listing... 

Hey all, I'd really like to work on a comprehensive marketing plan for our STR. I think we've done about as much as we can to rank well in the Airbnb & VRBO sites specifically. I'm thinking of total overall marketing.

Like having the name of our place be something that's easily searchable in google. an @tag in our listing to show how to find us on social media, linking in our direct booking site etc.  

Does anyone have good examples, blog posts or people I should talk to about how to best put all of these puzzle pieces together?  

Thanks in advance. 

For context, we built a local area guide (under construction) for our STR area. This also includes our direct booking page and every page of the website, has a link to our direct booking page. With time, we hope to build more articles & get this to rank in google which should bring more direct bookings.

1) If a guest asked for recommendations (through the Airbnb app) for local attractions, restaurants etc.   Currently, we have not sent the link to our website because it contains a direct booking link. 

2) We also send out a handful of links to private youtube videos we put together for various FAQ's (how to use door lock, pool cover, unlock interior doors etc.)  I'd like to add an outro to these videos with a link to our local area guide / direct booking site 

My question is, how closely does Airbnb monitor these links through their messaging app? IE - we don't want to get red flagged or kicked off of the platform because we are promoting our own direct bookings.  However, if it's a link at the END of a youtube FAQ video, will Airbnb ever see it?  
What are your thoughts on all of this? I want to tread carefully & stay below the radar... 

We'll see if this is helpful or not. Here's our breakdown.  

We pay for Owner Rez ($35) to manage between VRBO, Airbnb & our direct booking site. It also automatically sends out our legal agreement. 

Pricelabs ($35) for our pricing data.  Not a ton of monthly costs.  

When a guest books, I send a quick reply message. I do cut & paste the link to the legal agreement from owner rez in this message so it's not 100% automated.  This takes about 2 minutes even if I'm on my phone to go to owner rez, copy the link & then to Airbnb to paste it into the quick reply.  

I add the guest info to my cleaning calendar, 1 minute. We can integrate this into owner rez to happen automatically but I just haven't done this yet. 

Then I enter the guests door code into my Schlage app, about another 2 minutes. 

While the guest are staying in our home, they may have some questions. This is guest-dependent but most guests are pretty easy. For an average guest stay, I have maybe 5-10 minutes messaging back and forth. 

Our cleaner shows up & clean the property, we do not need to spend time arranging this. Occasionally we have to deal with an issue or a maintenance item.  On average, this is maybe 15-30 minutes per month.  

Once the guest leaves we review them, 2 minutes. 

All this is to say that self managing is not hard, costly or labor intensive. 

More importantly, you need to make the decision that's right for you. It's good to ask these questions to get different perspectives so that you can feel comfortable with your decision.  

For me, I love hospitality. I love guest feedback. I love ownership (of my home & my outcome). Real Estate, finances, interpersonal skills & handy maintenance skills are all in my wheelhouse so it's not hard for me.  Plus, I want the material participation for Cost Seg reasons... 

I can't imagine any reason why I would pay someone else ~ $1k per month to do all of this for me. 

Hopefully this helps a bit for perspective... 

We just had one of these requests (guest ended up not booking).  We asked them to allow our cleaner to come in twice during their stay to check on the property & also so they can get paid.  Just a thought.  

Another thing to consider is the tax effect of this.  If your average rental stay is less than 7 days, you fall under hotel rules & most of your things are deductible like normal.  If you average longer stays, you may run into having to pro-rate expenses.  As in, you may not be able to 100% deduct all of your expenses.  

This is a tough question to weigh.  Ideally, you have cash reserves to float your new purchase through the slow season. 

We just purchased our first STR in Jan. We were lucky enough to hit the end of the peak season & were booked for the first few months. Not only did it help financially, but very quickly we ramped up to 30+ five star reviews. I think that and a combination of other things really helps us to navigate our first slow season.

Starting out during the slow season would mean reviews come slower. This isn't necessarily horrible, it's just something to factor in.  We're a review society... 

The pro's > You'd have more time to get your place set up & dialed in.  There are also a lot of learning opportunities during those first few months of being a host. Any "mistakes" could be amplified during the peak season, but they could be relatively minor if you experience them during the slow season.  

Ultimately, if you have cash reserves to float you through your first slow season, I would be more focused on finding the right deal & the right property over the seasonality of the purchase... 

Real Estate is a long term game... 

One more thought, I bonds are great investments now in the current market environment. But if your kids are 2 & 4, you'll be much better off investing in the stock market for the long term.  

I'm interested in knowing the difference between co-hosting vs. being a property manager.  

A friend had 3 properties in Lee county of Florida that they STR. They started the idea of being a property manager for others in the area but found out that you need to be a licensed realtor in order to be a property manager. Could they co-host instead?

What are the tradeoffs, differences, pro/cons etc.  

Thanks in advance... 

My dad gave each of my kids $5k 2 years ago. 

I put the money into UGMA/UTMA (uniform gift to minors accounts) for each of them.  The money is in my kids name, but I am the custodian. Most states have an age of majority of 18, but I was able to make the age of majority on these accounts 21 through Charles Schwab.  The accounts are pretty easy to open up. They are non-qualified meaning they are not tax deferred. 

The nuance is that once your kids turn the age of majority, the money is theirs. No questions. You can't do anything with them.  In fact, no one can make changes (buy/sell/distributions etc) to the account until the paperwork is signed over into the kids names. BUT, that's not necessarily a bad thing.  My goal is for this money to buy my kids an ASSET when they're older, not a wedding or a car... So I plan to keep the funds invested into good diversified funds so there's no major "risk" in losing the investment.  

If my kids are smart financially, (they already want to buy real estate like us), I'll help them transfer the accounts into their names & buy an asset.  If my kids have questionable intentions, they don't actually know where the money is held.  So if they turn 21, are on the wrong path & tell me they want their money my response will be "it's yours once you find it." :) 

There are always ways to mitigate risk.  

Ashish is correct, bonus depreciation is not optional. If you do a cost seg study, you get bonus deprecation. How it flows through to your tax return is the next set of questions / situations. 

First, either you or your wife must materially participate, AND, your average rental day must be 7 days or less to have the deprecation go against your active income for the "str loophole."  

OR, like you say you're a mid term rental, you must provide substantial services.  IE- daily linens, food service etc. 
OR, you must be a real estate professional. My understanding is that if you have a regular job, it's almost impossible to sufficiently claim REPS.  

I'm not a CPA, but I have been digging into cost segs very deeply recently.  

My experience with CPA's, cost segs & interpretations: Tax code & tax forms are fairly formulaic.  "multiply line 6 by 50% & enter on line 7" type of thing.  However, when you get to forms 8582 & 4562, Passive Activity Losses & Deprecation, this is when the formula's tend to stop and tax professional interpretation steps in. As a result, you'll likely get a different answer from multiple CPA's on deprecation & active/passive rules.  
You may consider getting a second opinion (or third).