All Forum Posts by: Eric Chiang

Hey @Chris U. thanks for the reply and congrats on your properties! Great points on the MTR, another option could be to utilize Matterport (virtual tour).

In terms of Padsplit, I've personally never used it since it's not offered in California, but I did meet a lender contact at a real estate meet up in California who has used Padsplit to manage his long-distance rent by room. If you'd like, you can message me your instagram and I can connect you? (IG is the only contact info I have for this individual).

Hey @Richard E., thanks for the follow up!

Learning a lot from managing the Riverside MTR by the bedroom, here are things I've learned since my latest post (my opinions):

1. The travel nurse leads I've gotten didn't pan out, since many of them didn't want to rent an individual room and wouldn't mind paying extra for the 1 BR private unit

2. For the leads you do get from FF, I would call them directly soon after the request comes in. Many of them would ignore my email outreach, but would pick up the phone quite readily. Great way to develop rapport.

3. When possible, I would try to advocate for a longer term stay, especially if it's a lead from a non-FF platform

4. Apartments.com/Zillow no longer offer listings for individual rooms, so many of my recent leads have come from Zumper/Hot Pads (by Zillow)

5. Still working through ways to manage the rent by room model once I move out. Some tenants expect to see a live showing, which has been easy while I've been living in the unit. My business partner lives about 25 mins away so it may be difficult for him to show it each time, especially when the prospective tenant decides to ghost.

Thanks for the opportunity to share! Feel free to check in again later on, and I might have more insights to provide for the group haha

@Nicholas Coulter it's a bit early to say for the overall property, but it looks pretty good from a househacking perspective. Current rents covers the mortgage, so just need to cover utilities and reserves (splitting with partner). 

Still taking a deeper look to see at what point the cost of the furnishing the unit is covered by the extra rents, but it's looking to be ~30% increase in rents by furnishing the rooms/bedrooms (vacant bedrooms in this area are quite inexpensive, some in poor condition), but more reserves required.

More to come!

Hey @Nicholas Coulter, great to hear from you again. I recently leased out all of my rooms, but happy to connect with any like-minded real estate investors

Hi @Doug Fluckiger, congratulations on getting into contract! Most of the discussions for this are posted in this thread, but happy to provide some additional notes:

1. Advertised for travel nurses for a while (via FB groups and FurnishedFinder.com), but had low traction. Some people in the FB groups noted that there's been decreased demand for travel nurses due to lower wages and a general lower demand from hospitals. If you ask different people, they may give you different answers though.

2. Had to pivot to working professionals as well, where I had more leads (75K+ leads in 18 days, 86 of which turned into inquiries via Apartments.com), but definitely had to do my due diligence to screen my tenants well. From the one tenant that I have that's a working professional, I would agree that having working professionals living with travel nurses may not be a great mix in general (albeit I have zero travel nurse tenants, so perhaps asking for additional opinions would be wise).

3. The university graduate student has also been a great tenant. He's been working on completing his PhD so he isn't home too often, and he's been respectful of the house thus far. The flexibility in my lease fits well for this group, as they may not have a definite timeline for completing their program. 

At the same time, it's still very new, so perhaps I'll have additional thoughts in a year haha.

Best of luck to you, and let me know how things go.

Happy investing!

Have you tried TurnoverBnB? 

I found a few cleaner contacts from them, albeit ended up going a different direction

Hi @Nicholas Coulter, I would also be interested in a House Hacking meet up in Redlands (I househack in Riverside).

If you would like any assistance with the logistics, feel free message me.

Hi @Steven P Daugherty, congrats on your first STR! I'm currently a buy and hold investor (utilizing various househacks), but I'm hoping to get into the STR space end of this year/early next year.

In terms of your financing options, here are some things that come to mind (albeit may or may not apply to your situation):

- Utilize second-home loan option (10% downpayment) if the property qualifies

- Utilize a small local bank to see what loan options they may offer (perhaps some may have experience lending on STR? You never know until you ask). For this one, BP podcasts suggests that you ask various banks open-ended questions, such as: "I'm looking at investment properties with (criteria, expected ROI, etc.), what loan options do you have available for my situation?"

- Find a private lender to fund the downpayment

- Find a partner to provide the capital, while you provide the knowledge and experience

Hope some of these helped.

Happy investing! 

 Hey @Nicholas Coulter, great to hear that you're interested! Would love to connect 

My partner and I recently got the place furnished (~1-2 weeks ago) and here are some of our learnings thus far:

1. @Bonnie Low mentioned that communication via the FF platform is low, and I have seen that with my listing. I've reached out to all the tenant leads via email (creating an email template helps with time savings), but have also had a low response rate. Following up with my initial email has helped.

2. Some ways I've tried to establish my credibility with my initial outreach include adding a picture to my gmail profile, including a link to my FF listing, and adding personalized information based on the inquiry (eg distance from my property to their assignment location). Too early to tell if these strategies have worked.

3. Despite the "high-demand" as indicated by the FF agent, I've only had one booking inquiry thus far (albeit the agent mentioned it usually takes 30-45 days for your listing to gain traction). I was able to post my listing on four travel nurse housing FB groups (low interest) and reach out to prospective tenants via FB who mentioned they had upcoming assignments in the area (few responses but better). 

4. Decided to expand to the university grad student listserv (have one incoming tenant from this) and post my listing on Apartments.com. The latter currently has 16K views and several leads/inquiries, though I'll be sure to screen the tenants thoroughly.

5. One of the things I do plan on trying is reaching out to the top 4 agencies that employ travel nurses (these data are included in the FF platform) to see if they would inform of their new travel nurses of my listing opportunity.

If anyone has any suggestions for additional things I can try to get more MTR tenants, I'm open to ideas. Would love to rent to/support the travel nurse tenant pool, but I just haven't received much interest yet. 

Happy Investing! 

Eric

Hi BP Community, REI rookie here!

I'll be closing on a SFH later this week, where my partner and I plan on renting by the room for medium term rentals (MTR) for travel nurses. There is one hospital within <10 min drive from our place, with several others within 20 mins. There's also a university nearby. I'll be househacking one room for at least one year, with plans to move out afterward.

Here are my questions:

- For those who have experience in MTRs, do you have any general advice for someone starting out in the MTR space?

- Our plan is to utilize furnishedfinder.com for our bookings (focuses mainly on travel nurses, traveling HCPs). In order to reduce vacancy, we plan on also listing on Airbnb with 30 day min. What issues do you foresee if we also list on Airbnb (if any)?

- Any advice on how to make our listing more desirable? We're utilizing professional photos, trying to optimize room accommodations (eg private bathroom for master bedroom, 2 garage spots for larger rooms), but looking for anything else that may make our listing more desirable

- Any issues if we also accept long-term leases (eg 1+ year) & university students/other young professionals? I plan on having house rules in place, but I'm a bit worried about the dynamic between travel nurses and university students/other young professionals if I open up the tenant pool. At the same time, I also don't want too many vacancies

- Any advice on how to systematize the process once I move out? I'm familiar with TurnoverBNB and Hospitable, but wondering what else I can consider

Any advice is much appreciated, as I am new to the space.

Happy investing!