All Forum Posts by: Garry C.

I've been using Moxie for almost 2 years now, after ditching CRM. Moxie is definitely better, but the communication is still lacking. They don't upcharge very much, unless things actually need attention, and they offer things like annual gutter cleaning, which you can agree to each year or pass on. They have recently had a hard time filling 2 of my units though, and I'm not sure what my current vacancy rate is, but the checks steadily roll in every month, and it's a better return that I'm getting in Denver these days, so still worth it.

I've not had a very good experience with CRM over the last year. I'll be looking at Moxie as well.
If anyone has other recommendations, I would love to hear them.

@Ruben Izgelov, PM me your email address and I'll be happy to send it over to you.

Thanks for the shoutout @Tim Emery.

Hey @Bo A Vanecko, welcome to the neighborhood. :)

First, I would say that you need to remember, just like a traditional rental, you make your money on an STR when you buy. Not when you rent or sell it. It's hard to do that these days (in Colorado), although throughout this summer prices have been dropping. People are starting to realize that they may have missed the boat or that they just priced too high when they put it on the market. In a resort area, demand and prices also fluctuate with the seasons. Regardless, with a 'newer townhome' in the WP area, I think it's going to take some real time and work to make it profitable. Personally, I like to make my STRs as close to passive income as possible, so I try to find off market fixer uppers and do my own remodels.

But, let's consider you've found something where you're confident that the numbers will work, and look at your other questions.

If you're adding up the fees associated with the different Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), consider that those costs will likely be passed on to you. So, hiring a property manager for this reason might not give you the benefit that you think. I also property manage for other STR owners, and if they choose the VRBO subscription over Pay Per Booking (PPB), they are responsible for the $499 annual subscription fee. PPB only makes sense for a property if VRBO brings you less than $10k per year, and in the WP area, you're likely going to see a lot more than this from VRBO, AirBNB, and BDC. At least until your direct booking strategy takes off and people begin finding you directly instead of through the OTAs.

As for management companies... there are several, some good, some terrible. Most of them will charge you at least 40% of your profits. I don't have the overhead that they do, and I streamline my processes with automated systems so that it really cuts back on the amount of work required to manage, so I'm able to do it for a lot less.

My overall thoughts on the area is that I LOVE Grand County. And guests do too. It's growing quite a bit too, and has been for the past few years. This has a lot of benefits, but also challenges. In Granby, they are introducing more STR laws at the beginning of 2020 that will further cut into profits, but hopefully shake out some of the competition that are contributing to the 'race to the bottom' on pricing, pushed mainly by AirBNB.

With that said, you need to be on at least AirBNB and VRBO/Homeaway, and probably BDC as well. My recommendation is the opposite of what you first stated. Instead of starting with a PM, start on your own if you have the time. Setup your accounts on AirBNB and VRBO, start accepting guests, and see how things go. Later, either work on your brand/direct bookings, or hire a PM to take advantage of their systems and brand, and give yourself more free time in exchange for less profit. The added benefit of this is that you will then have a good idea of how things should work, what you should expect to see in terms of occupancy rate and revenue, and you won't have to just believe the marketing info that the PM gives you. You can fact check it and make an informed decision before entering into a partnership with one.

Hi Todd,
Yes, I've used and tested a few other things in the past. OwnerRez beats them all, hands down. Give it a go, try your own demo of it, you'll see. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you want to discuss it further, I can give you some tips and tricks once you get it up and running.

@Alan Feldman, check out these threads as well:
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/61/topics/609121-everything-ive-learned-about-opportunity-zoneshttps://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/61/topics/626145-opportunity-zone-fund-ideas

@Mike Zupan, as @Dan Mackin stated, I don't have rentals in Summit County. All of mine are currently within Grand County. With that said, I was up at Copper 2 weeks ago to catch that foot of powder that fell on Friday, and on the way home stopped in Frisco for coffee. There was an open house at the condos right off the highway, I forget the name already, but I had rented one a few years prior. They are 2Br/2Ba, about 1100sqf, and they have a community hot tub and sauna on the bottom floor.

I stopped in to check it out and was a bit taken aback to see one of these listed at $595k. The agent informed me that it could bring in about $45k/year if the owner was not using it so often. The rental numbers they were sharing only showed about $35k/year in revenue.

The agent also mentioned that there were 2 studio units down the street, same owner, for sale for about $250k/each. No idea what the rental numbers on those looked like, but my studio unit does do slightly better than my 1 or 2 beds, comparatively (slightly lower price, but generally higher occupancy). 

I'll let you do the math on that and figure out if those numbers work for you. But I decided to grab my coffee and get back on the road rather quickly. That price/sqf is almost double anything I've seen in Grand County, and things are booming there right now. I guess I should add that I haven't purchased anything in GC in a while either (about a year). Even at almost half the price of Summit County, the current numbers don't work well enough for me to make new investments there either.

Craigslist 'flagging' is an automated process based on number of flags. So, you can get a post taken down rather quickly if enough people in the CL community agree that it is fraudulent or otherwise violates the CL ToS. If you're part of any local online groups that support STR hosts, ask your colleagues to go to the fraudulent listings and flag them. This should bring them down rather quickly. As stated before, you'll have to be on the lookout for new postings, but if the scammers find that every time they put up one of your properties, it's quickly flagged and brought down, they will move on to scamming someone else.

I'm doing this now, with 6 prime weeks in Winter Park, CO. This is in addition to my other properties that I own/manage full time year round, so I may not have a recipe for renting a single timeshare week. At least not a recipe that wouldn't be cost prohibitive if not subsidized by the other properties. But hit me up and I'll be happy to chat about what I do. 

I believe that Marc is incorrect. See the following post for more information on the legality of managing STR and licensing requirements in the state of CO: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/530/topics/469231-do-you-need-a-real-estate-license-to-manage-vacation-rentals

@Marc Cunningham, you responded to that post above, said you would check with the RE board here, and then came back and posted that it was legal. This was about a year ago. Has something changed since then?

@Christine N., even running 4-5 properties can be a task. You'll want to automate as much as possible. Fortunately, there are lots of different products available to help you do this. But they all cost money, which of course eats into your profits. My advice would be to look for the ones that charge a monthly fee, as opposed to a percentage of revenue.