All Forum Posts by: Darren Koenenn

@Imran Ahmed If you decide to house hack a duplex using STR, I'd advise getting a property as close to the beach as possible. Being in walking distance from the beach will be one of the greatest impacts on your STR rates. If you can't find a property in walking distance from the beach in your price range, then you need to make sure you can get a property that has an easy route to the beach using a golf cart. (You will need to get a golf cart and bikes for your property if you can't walk to the beach) You can find duplexes at all distances from the beach including beach front. Secondly if you want to take this to the next level of house hacking, I'd STR your unit when you travel. This is just one strategy though; I'm pretty sure you can find a way to make the other house hacking strategies work as well.

I can not speak with respect to St. Augustine and Daytona beach. I'm going to look more into this though. I'd be interested to see how the STR rentals compare to 30a/Walton County.

My project is a spec house in a new development. It involved researching the area for appreciation and what kind of properties were bringing in the most cash on cash return for STR's. My wife and I found a development that was in our price range with a developer that had a good reputation. No homes besides the model were fully completed at the time we signed our contract, but 25% of the development was under contract and currently being built. The developer had an array of homes to chose from, so we chose one that fit our plan, locked in a price, and signed a contract with 5% down to lock in our price. (The developer wanted 10% down with a pre-approval letter, but I negotiated to 5% with a pre-approval letter.) I'm targeting high in guest, but not the highest end guests. DM me if you want more specifics and a link to the neighborhood.

@Mason Richard Sherman is selling real estate your only goal or do you have real estate investing goals as well? Also, @Crystal Ball can most certainly point you in the right direction for agent advice. 

@Imran Ahmed Blake is your guy for the Panama City side. I live in the west end of Panama City Beach, and I'm building a luxury vacation rental in Inlet Beach that I will live in for at least a year. My plan is to airbnb the bottom two floors out while I'm living in it for the first year to put towards the mortgage. I highly doubt it covers the whole mortgage like @Blake Dailey is doing. However, the appreciation is insane in the area; I just found out yesterday that my home has appreciated 70k in 3 months.

Long story short, I wouldn't give up. FL has great opportunities. I have more knowledge in the luxury STR space; so, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. However, I think almost all the house hacking strategies will work in FL. If you can cover the mortgage with your job, I wouldn't wait for the market to crash.

I live in Panama City Beach, and I'm currently building a STR beach house in Inlet Beach which is next to Panama City Beach. There is money to be made, but there are many factors that come into play. I'm not the most experienced person to speak to, but I've done a lot of research on the subject. In addition my wife is a PM for luxury STR's; so, she gets a lot of hands on experience. I haven't invested in a condo in PCB, but for 250k that is probably what you are going to get. However, if you are looking for long term rentals. I believe the world is your oyster in Panama City Beach and you would just apply text book principles. People move to Florida every day. There is no state income tax, and Florida is almost always warm. Working from home continues to get easier with new technology; so, people will continue to move to Florida to avoid cold weather and state income taxes. HOA's have many different flavors. They can work to your favor in some cases and not in others. For example, you may have a place that bans STR. That could increase the value of your home, but make it harder to rent at the same time. Just make sure you know the HOA expectations going into an investment.

@Julie McCoy I've actually got professional rental projections rated from Good, Better, Best that cover the average weekly price for each week of the year. Good idea to interrupt a few of the top weeks with hurricanes. The demand is there. People are flocking to Florida these days.  Every local real estate person (investors/contractors/brokers) I've spoke to has said, "If you have the capital to invest in the West End (of Panama City Beach ) or Inlet Beach do it now." Problem is that most locals don't have the ability to front up large amounts of cash or know the creative ways to invest. 

Thanks for your advice on forced appreciation in a new development. I want to investigate appreciation in a new development further. 

When does a new housing development appreciate and when does it not? For example, I'm assuming there will be no appreciation if there is a market down turn or the housing development does not get completed. What are some of the other possibilities? 

- It is in Inlet Beach, FL. 

- Insurance companies give big discounts to newer built homes that's one of the reasons I started considering new builds. With hurricanes unfortunately there can always be weather dilemmas. They can take out just about anything.

- The HOA fully accepts weekly rentals, every owner that has purchased a house in the neighborhood plans to do weekly rentals for at least part of the year. The houses are designed to be high end vacation rentals.

- My wife will be a property manager for the same type of rental properties in the same area. So unless she decides to disown me, I should have that covered.

Question: Since we are buying while the housing development is a quarter built, will there be forced appreciation as the lots fill up? 

I wasn't originally intending on going down the path of investing in weekly rentals nor new constructions, but I found a new development that my wife and I see a lot of potential of appreciation with the ability to cash flow. I was wondering if you more experienced investors could let me know what you think.

Any building built after ~2005 will have significantly less insurance cost. They had hurricane building regulations passed around that time. My house was built in 2007 and insurance cost 1/3 the price after they applied the deductions for the hurricane damage prevention measures.