All Forum Posts by: David Sanders

Quote from @Ivan Camilo Fernandez Bermudez:

Hello @David Sanders. Did you invested in any of this options? I am evaluating to invest in WorldQuest and I would like to hear about your experience. 

 I haven't moved forward with anything yet, but I did stop looking at the Condo Hotel options for a couple reasons. A big one for me is I just decided I needed more bedrooms than what I can typically find in a condo-hotel (I have 4 kids). Alos, I can't find the article, but I found one that really jumped into the numbers, and there's a lot of fees and taxes the hotel takes from your rentals that aren't shown up front. So my conclusion was that the condo-hotels are more so set up for personal use, with the ability to offset SOME of the costs by renting out the unit while you're not there. The units don't appreciate like normal real estate and resale can be difficult, and you will be hard pressed to make money renting out the unit. So in my opinion, they really aren't investments, but I didn't do THAT much looking into to make a truly educated claim like that. There were some, like Lake Buena Vista Resort that allows you to self manage and redecorate your unit, but once you do that, you lose the ability to use the hotels management services. 

Hope that helps!

Quote from @Alex F.:

We have a 4-bedroom home near Disney - the home is well-themed and very close to Disney.  It does very well and should end the year right between 60-70K gross rev with great occupancy.  But this IS a very competitive market....This is a good article on some of these markets with a huge supply:  https://www.adventuresinairbnbs.com/p/help-i-stopped-getting...

Here is our Disney home:

Last year, we primarily received guests from Airbnb and, this year, from Booking.com. This is our only property where we could never 'climb up' the rankings in VRBO, so we received 0 guests from VRBO. This still puzzling.....The direct bookings from repeat guests are slowly growing.

Booking.com is hard to deal with, but we seem to get good overseas guests that stay for longer.  

Well that is encouraging to hear. This is in Storey Lake? I thought they only had 5+ BR houses. Or is this one of their townhouses? 

Not trying to steal your ideas, but would you be willing to send me a couple example pictures of the extent of your theming? 

I appreciate all the insight and for the most part I do agree with you all on this being the typical experience with STR's. However it seems to me like the units that are themed really well do significantly better than others. From my research, a well themed unit can easily bring twice the nightly rent of a lower end, same size house and the occupancy is higher as well.

I know themeing is expensive, but I was planning on doing that myself (I own an artisan construction company). I'm not just talking matching bed spreads with a wall mural, but more like a castle bed that you can walk into with a slide, for example. That's what I refer to as more "functional" theming.

Honestly I'm not looking to buy this as just an investment, I want it as my own vacation place for my family, but I'd like the net costs to be as low as possible and I'd like for it to be a long term investment if possible. and if it could make money, that would be a super bonus.

Quote from @JD Martin:

Quote from @David Sanders:

I'd really like to hear from people who have a 4 bed pool house near Disney if $48K per year net revenue is realistic. By net I mean take home pay after direct booking fees, including cleaning. But not including utilities, HOA fees, etc.

I do plan on doing moderate, functional theming and a game/theater room. Looking at areas very close to Disney, like Windsor Hills, Emerald Island, or Indian Creek, etc. $4K per month is kinda my magic number for making this work for me, so I'd love to hear your specific numbers. Feel free to PM numbers to me if you would prefer.

 No. Not right now at least. I have a 4/3 3k SF pool home on a lake 10 minutes from Disney in 4 corners, and I would be in serious sense trouble right now if I needed this house to net anything, much less 4k per month. My gross monthly average since November is about $3k per month, and my net outside of my mortgage is about $2k per month. September and October were total duds and last summer was only about 50% booked. 

We have serious oversaturation here right now. If you pay all cash you might see $2k per month net for the year. If you have a note you will be subsidizing the house right now. Ok if you use it sometimes, like I do, but not very good as an investment. I am across from the new Windsor Cay resort in Cagans Crossing for reference, and I have a nice place with all 5 star reviews.

 Sorry, "net" was a poor choice of word. I meant net revenue, not net profit. But I think you still answered my question, I belive you're annual revenue is roughly $36K? 

$4K per month is what I anticipate my monthly expenses to be, with mortgage, utilities, etc. I'm just looking for a break even property.

I'd really like to hear from people who have a 4 bed pool house near Disney if $48K per year net revenue is realistic. By net I mean take home pay after direct booking fees, including cleaning. But not including utilities, HOA fees, etc.

I do plan on doing moderate, functional theming and a game/theater room. Looking at areas very close to Disney, like Windsor Hills, Emerald Island, or Indian Creek, etc. $4K per month is kinda my magic number for making this work for me, so I'd love to hear your specific numbers. Feel free to PM numbers to me if you would prefer.

Quote from @John Landskroener:

Quote from @Edward P.:

Location is huge! Closer to the parks the better. 

 right but do the prices and the amount per night equal out to a good investment or not?

 You hit the nail on the head as far as what I'm going through right now. A break even cash flow seems to be a pretty optimistic outlook. I will say though, almost every property I look at has either sat for a long time, or has dropped their asking price. Market definitely seems to be cooling down in the area. I'm just going to keep an eye out for a good deal somewhere. I'd like to theme/update the property anyway, so if I can find one that's been neglected and simply needs updating, I'd be all over that.

I had a previous post where I was looking for a 3BR place <$300K near the theme parks in Orlando. I'll be honest, my searches have been a little disappointing to find anything that will break even in terms of cash flow.

I came across a couple condo-hotel locations and looked into them. I've done a lot of research on the topic and am familiar with the cons of owning a condo-hotel type unit, but the numbers seem way in favor of that vs a more traditional condo or SFH. At least in my price range. Here are some numbers I crunched and my reasoning behind them:

3BR Condo in Windsor Hills ~$459K

~$38K projected STR income.

$365K mortgage at 7.5% - $2,550/Mo

HOA - $460/Mo

Taxes - $306/Mo

Insurance - $200/Mo?

Utilities - $250/Mo?

Misc (repairs, furnishings, etc) - $200/Mo?

So with that, I'm looking at putting out about $3,966 and bringing in $3,166, and that's if I self-manage. Does this all look right, or is there anything I'm missing? Just looking at this purely from a cash flow standpoint, I'm at -$800 to -$1,450 per month.

Condo-Hotel, Using WorldQuest as an example -~$260K

$180K HEL at 9% - $1,450/Mo

HOA - $550/Mo

Taxes - $166/Mo

Insurance - $200/Mo?

Utilities (only power paid by owner) - $120/Mo?

Misc - $200/Mo?

The income on this one is a little confusing, but from what I can gather, WorldQuest has a yearly average nightly rate of about $220 and they claim about 85% occupancy. They take 40% as a management fee and charge $30/cleaning. To be conservative, I'm rounding down occupancy to 70%, which for 3 cleanings per month, would mean rental income would be ($220*365*.7*.6)-($30*3*12) for a monthly income of $2,720. So this scenario is just about a break even, about a $40/month gain.

I realize the WH property is also more likely to appreciate than the WorldQuest property, but the rest of the numbers really seem to be heavily in favor of the condo-hotel type property. I'd love it if some of you much smarter people could look at my analysis and see if I'm missing anything? If I assume NO property value change, in 30 years, the WH property will have turned $383K (down payment plus $800 monthly negative loss of running the property) into $459K. The WorldQuest property will have turned $80K into $274K (price of unit plus $40 monthly gain).

That helps a lot, thanks for taking the time to respond. What property type/price range do you see as the most likely to cash flow? 

Mortgage interest rates right now definitely make it more difficult to make money, I realize I'm likely competing with people who are paying cash. 

If I could get a cheap property that was pretty break even in terms of cash flow when considering ALL expenses, as long as it was cheap enough I'd be happy with that. I just don't want an investment property that is going to be a financial "burden" with unrealized income. I would think long term it would pay off, maybe with a refinance several years down the road when interest rates drop, or when I sell the property if prices keep going up. 

I'm out of state, and largely unfamiliar with the disney area other than my family vacations and limited research. I'm looking to buy a family vacation property, but also make money on it. I've seen similar posts in the past, but they seem to all be around 2 years ago when the market was very different. I'm looking for a 3-4 BR property in the $300K range, maybe up to $350K. This will be a long term investment, so I'm looking for the best return long term, while hopefully generating enough cash flow to more than cover all related expenses and mortgage (figure 20% down). Couple specific questions:

1) condo/townhouse with HOA vs SFH with pool and no HOA? There's a lot of competition for both, so we would likely theme it and modernize it. But is one more profitable than the other? I see quite a few HOA fees in the $700-$1K/month range.

2) Any specific area recommendations? I see some nice houses with pools in my price range in the Poinciana area, but also seen some comments that this is a sketchy area? I would like to narrow my search down to a couple areas then visit these places in person. Other than General proximity to the theme parks, I'm not sure how much a specific location matters for prospective STR's?

I will be using a management company to handle everything (18-20% fee, correct?). The basic stats I got from my Realtor were STR's in the area for what I'm looking for typically generate about 65% occupancy (as a yearly average) and daily rates vary between $140-$180/night. Which works out to roughly $3K per month. Does that sound about right?