All Forum Posts by: Chad Hensel

A great starting point is the VRMA. They are the biggest association around. This spring they are hosting a 3 day event in Charlotte.  My team is attending. See you there.

@Bob Huggins There are new services coming online everyday in the STR ecosystem. It is difficult to keep up, and I go to several conferences a year for this specific reason.

For less than 15 units, BeyondPricing is a great dynamic pricing engine with the best user interface for that service. Syncs with your AirBnB or PMS account to make it dead simple. We like Guesty as a PMS becuase it is not very expensive, and you can automate a good amount of messaging, including check-in and check-out instructions based on several triggers. It takes work to set up, but you can do some very complex automations if you want to go that route. If your cleaners are using any of the modern apps, they can be integrated with your PMS as well. 

Hi BP, I'm Director of Operations for a STR Management company managing 90+ properties in the South. I can answer and help clarify some question on STRs, booking channels, and the STR ecosystem.

Each booking channel gives you slightly different information, and all in different formats. The easiest way to unify your reporting and cross market your listings is to use a PMS like Guesty, Jannis, Streamline, or one of many many other out there. They have already built the integrations and will give you a unified inbox for all the different booking channels. When we were smaller, we setup a relational database and email parsers from each booking channel, and used that to unify the reporting. It worked, but was not worth the effort to setup once we found out about how inexpensive some of the PMS systems can be.

@Bob Huggins More booking channels mean more exposure and ultimately more revenue, you are on the right path. I would also recommend using a dynamic pricing engine like BeyondPricing or PriceLabs. BeyondPricing looks at your STR and hotels in you market and compares the subject property, automatically adjusts your listing's price. PriceLabs does something similar, but they only look at STRs. One thing to be aware of with dynamic pricing, AirBnB's Smart Pricing will under price your property roughly 10%. That's a direct quote from several members of AirBnB's data science team.

@Jon Crosby You can also setup with Guesty as a channel manager. Their PMS and Guest Communications Service is less than half the price of Evolve. We use this setup plus two inhouse second level support members to manage 100 listings. I'm not trying to knock Evolve, but 13% is a super heavy fee. For some context, we charge 25%, but handle everything a normal PM handles, plus all the guest related issues, and cleaning.

@Robert Clifford AirBnB ranks based on just a few criteria. New PLUS listings get top tier, then normal new listings, then Superhosts, then everything else. In each tier, properties are ranked based on average reviews and occupancy rates and views. And these tiers stack. For example, as a Superhost, my new listings would show up higher than a non-Superhosts new listing, and we would both show up higher than a 3 year old listing with only 4 star reviews. A Superhost's 4 star listing would show up higher than a non-Superhosts 4 star listing. If two Superhosts have a 5 star listing, the one with more views will be ranked higher. 

Hi Sabrina, 

We have a pretty active investor group in the upstate. Maybe time your next visit to one of the UCREIA meetings.

Chad

Quads are very tough to find in Greenville. Before moving to Greenville, quads were my jam. I've been here four years and haven't found one that I like. You may have better luck in Clemson or Spartanburg.

2-4 units are tough to find in this market just because they weren't The Greenville MLS only shows 6 active right now, and they are not terribly attractive.

@mike dymski Thank you for the great info! This is why I love BP!!

I think CresCom does.

Hi Blair, Greenville has become a tough market over the last few years. I have a couple of properties I bought last year, that I would not invest in if they were on the market today. I'm not bragging, that's just the reality. Greenville has super low inventory and lots of institutional investor activity.  

The returns Brandon talks about are guidelines, and that's all. Every market is different and every investor has different goals and timelines. You have to figure out what investment profile works for your situation. 

$100 monthly profit per door doesn't allow much room for things to go wrong, and they do. One plumbing issue and your entire year is wiped out on that unit. You also have to look at WHEN Brandon was buying and writing articles/podcasts. It was not in today's market. 

Wait and get the right deal if possible. Houses are sold in every market condition. Would it be a disaster to wait 6 months or a year and build your savings? Would it be ruinous to buy the wing house because of impatience and lose $50,000 by the time you get out of it?

Always hold your reserves as reserves. This is a business and bad things happen. Ok, tenants are in place now. Will they be there next month? Will rent come through? Will you have to evict and pay court costs while not collecting rent in three months?  If you don't have those contingencies covered you will be in a world of hurt.

I'm not trying to discourage you. I've run into every problem I've discussed. My first property was bought in 2007 at the right of the bubble. My tenant lost his job when the bubble bursting and stopped paying rent. It took so months to finally get him out. If I didn't have the reserves, I would have lost the house. For to the bust I was underwater, so refinancing was out of the question. The next tenant cracked the toilet and didn't tell me, then he went on vacation. I found out when I was checking the house out and saw water slowly leaking down the siding. If I was only clearing $100 a month, I wouldn't have even been able to cover my insurance deductible.

Please learn from my mistakes.

Chad

There is a tiny house community in Greer. I can't remember the name off hand.