All Forum Posts by: Eduardo Bilbao

I don’t understand when people have different accounts for different properties. Imagine having 20 checking accounts? Yeah, that sounds crazy to me. We use one separate account for our rentals. No confusion, super easy.

Thanks Eduardo! 

I actually just realize that they may qualify for a partial exclusion that would cover up to 333k in gains, meaning more than the gains that they have had since they bought, so we could just go ahead with a regular sale  (https://www.irs.gov/publicatio...):

You meet the requirements for a partial exclusion if any of the following health-related events occurred during your time of ownership and residence in the home.

• You moved to obtain, provide, or facilitate diagnosis, cure, mitigation, or treatment of disease, illness, or injury for yourself or a family member.
• You moved to obtain or provide medical or personal care for a family member suffering from a disease, illness, or injury. A family member includes your:
  1. Parent, grandparent, stepmother, stepfather;
  2. Child (including adopted child, eligible foster child, and stepchild), grandchild;
  3. Brother, sister, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, half sister;
  4. Mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law;
  5. Uncle, aunt, nephew, or niece.
• A doctor recommended a change in residence for you because you were experiencing a health problem.
• The above is true of your spouse, a co-owner of the home, or anyone else for whom the home was his or her residence.

Hi there,  My wife and I are looking into the idea of a vacation rental on the gulf coast side of Florida. Typically the Rotunda west, manasota key area.  We stayed there last spring and loved it. This town is a dead restricted community with some nice single family homes, and what seems to be a good vacation rental market. Our price range would be around the 200k range.

I am interested to see if anyone knows the vacancy rate in the summer months. I have talked with a realtor and property manager of the place we rented last year to get some #'s but I need yearly rent #s And was hoping I could find someone already in the market to discuss pros and cons. 

if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. 

thanks

It is a good practice to treat each of your properties as a business. This means protecting your liability from it and set up a separate bank account for it as well. You will end up making your life way easier when it comes to tax season, and it will be much easier to visualize the cash flow from month to month. 

Thanks @Felicia Lucco. Totally agree with you on pricing software. I tried two of them (before COVID) and was very disappointed with the results. Now I just do my own pricing strategy. 

The three most important reasons I've seen from operators that struggle to rent here are:
- Reviews (or lack of). In our area it takes 3-5 months to ramp up a STR. First 10 reviews are critical. One bad review at the beginning can do a lot of damage (bed bugs, stolen car, HVAC not working, rude host, rat swimming in the pool, etc)
- Pictures. I'm still surprised some hosts use their own pictures to advertise. It only costs like $200-300 to get a professional photographer and that could be the difference between not renting and renting at prime prices
- SEO - as mentioned earlier, it takes 3-5 months to ramp up the listing (and that includes the SEO). Title, description, details, house rules, calendar strategy, picture strategy, price changes, etc

Blockchain can't be hacked @Eric James - centralized exchanges on the hand, can be hacked. What's your definition of getting "ripped off"? Are you referring to investors making bad investments in meme coins?

 I don't know block chain. But I certainly know of people who have gotten ripped off when buying or selling. Impossible to hack?

@Bryan Campbell Your question assumes they will take over. Currently, they won't. But hey, if you believe it, I've got an amazing deal on tulips ;)