All Forum Posts by: Dave Homyak

Just noticed you are from Denver.  Great place to AirBnB, especially because competition is diminished with laws regarding must be owner occupied.  You could crush it by renting out your place when you aren't there.  Had an acquaintance that targeted the area to get a place in Denver solely by AirBnB data for where he would make the most money.  He also traveled a lot, with a flexible schedule, so he would leave his calendar open and do his work travel when people booked his place.  If your schedule isn't flexible, just leave when you are traveling open and incentivize a stay during that time by having day 2 be crazy cheap, so when people see your listing, they have to click.   Then have something like 3 day min or something.  

I am partnered on some rental arbitrage AirbnB deals.  I provide the money and a friend with much energy acquires and manages.  Safest way to get into real estate and throw off some serious money quickly, IMHO.  Agree that finding a landlord to allow you to str is the tough part.  We are rejected by about 6 out of 7.

The goal is to control the property for security deposit and first months rent (and furniture).  All future rent payments are paid out of money earned in the month before.  Then , when you get enough cash, you get a second unit.

Here is a great article on where buying works, versus rental arbitrage, and last graph is house hacking.   The last chart shows where you can live and make money, if you rent and are willing to AirBnB out the other bedroom.  If city didn't matter and I had no money, this is the chart I'd concentrate on.

http://blog.airdna.co/buy-vacation-home-properties...

Our experience has been to go with some funky furniture or decor.  Also, you want to get a rating on the property right away, so start with lower pricing until you get at least one review.  AirBnB will give your new listing a higher search position for the first week or two, so take advantage of it.

Also, you'll want to put a one year option into the lease, with a guaranteed rent raise of something like 5%.  Owner will be happy with that and you'll know if the property performs well by then.  And if it performs great, the landlord can't crank your rent through the roof.

Didn't Palm Springs recently say no new AirBnBs?  Great thread that I look forward to following.  

Not sure if everyone on here is aware of this article, so:

http://blog.airdna.co/buy-vacation-home-properties...

Really gets the ideas flowing.  

I ended up subscribing to AirDNA for a month.  A word of caution about their data.  They assume a house is always available for rent.  So, someone in a football town that only rents out their house on football weekends is shown with 99% occupancy with some crazy amount per night.  You can filter through the data by throwing out any house that is claimed to be rented alot (like 90%) that has 5 reviews.  If the amount of reviews doesn't match occupancy, it is a bad data point.

SEV is half of what the state thinks it's worth.  Taxable value is the value that the current owner pays taxes on.  Taxable value increases are capped at something like 3.2%  When you buy, the taxable value goes up to roughly half of what you paid.  You will pay significantly more taxes than the current owner.

Will be interesting to see if this is enforced. Would think Detroit has much more important things to target than AirBnB STR. The people that want to get around this can just list new ads on AirBnB with only internal pictures of their rooms and a rough idea of what area they are located in.

@John Bucknum, may be time to crunch your numbers and figure out what you would pay. Then ask the seller how firm he is. There was an apartment listed for a stupid amount in Ann Arbor, based on NOI. Like $50,xxx income and asking price of $5 million. People living there many years without a rent increase. I heard about it after it was under contract. But the person that put the deal together said they took whatever the current offer is because it came in greater than one million over what the last offer was more than a year ago. Due diligence ended this past week. Curious to hear what offer was accepted when it closes.

 Ben, what website did you use to pull these stats?

Thanks.

Here is a link that has data about the best places to buy property if the goal is making money from a purchase and then STR. They also have a rental arbitrage slide. These charts show where the easiest money was to be made last summer.

http://blog.airdna.co/buy-vacation-home-properties...

Who wants $40,000 to coach you?

In a similar situation as Hoa Nguyen and interested in seeing the answers posted in this thread.  I'm in Michigan and have a little more money to invest.  Also have read several of the David Lindahl books and the philosophy of why start small when for the same effort you can get into bigger multifamily appeals to me.