All Forum Posts by: James Clifford

@Eric P. I would recommend going with option 2. A great resource to find a designer and one that I have used before is Houzz.com. The designer I used from this site was motivated to build their portfolio so they were more than happy to work for less than a typical interior designer (15-20% fee for total purchase + expenses). This young designer and their team also did stagging for SFH sales and had an inventory of furniture that they could "sell" to us at a significant discount. The deisgners team pulled off the design and installation of furniture in ~1.5 weeks.

Not sure how accurate this is across the market and different types of properties, but I have found $10-$12 a SF to be a good estimator of what it should cost to furnish and decorate an STR. You can do it for less of course by shopping around estate sales, craigslist, goodwill etc., but everyday the property is not listed you are losing revenue.

@Matt Ayoub I have seen many operators go with double listings on Airbnb and I recommend it. In line with what @Julie McCoy is doing, it works great for properties that have a "versitile" inventory and this is the reason for most double listings. The multiple listings allow you to maximize occupancy and accommodate both large and small groups. Make sure to keep your calendar's synced!

@Jake Miller great idea for using the double listing for A-B testing.

All in all a back up listing on Airbnb, even if it is not live, is a good idea. A bad review or getting flagged by Airbnb are two scenarios where implementing the back up profile would mitigate the damage.   

Awesome success story thus far @Zachary Kruse. As you scale up your airbnb (short term rental) business, look into tools like beyondpricing.com for revenue management and guesty.com for calendar/guest management. These tools will help keep the higher touch required of STR's to a minimum for you. Thanks for sharing your story!

@Joseph Weisenbloom cool to hear you are seeing success with Airbnb on 30+ day rentals. 

One thing to research is tenant-landlord law for Austin, TX as at some length of time the person occupying your unit gains the legal rights of a tenant. The length of time required to establish residency varies from city to city and state to state but you will want to nail down this length of time incase you have a renter who decides not to leave when their 30+ day stay is over. 

If they gain tenant rights you would have to go through the normal eviction process and Airbnb wouldn't be of any help on this. 

Hi @Mike Zipf, with your software back ground you may find this site helpful: 
http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html

Airdna is a good company but can be expensive depending on the tool you choose to use. Their Market Minder product is really cheap when you pruchase for only one zipcode, which is what I would suggest opposed to the 100 mile radius you mentioned. This can be purchased on a month to month basis so you will minimize your expense. The investment explorer tool @Jon Crosby mentioned is much pricier from my experience but I haven't used that product for over a year. 

Keep in mind this is only Airbnb data and some vacation rental markets are not as accurately represented by Airdna as VRBO/Homeaway can hold greater market share in these "vacation" markets. 

From my experience, arbitrage operators would love to own but lack the capital and are using arbitrage to get to ownership.

The lease arbitrage game in multifamily buildings has fierce competition in the best major markets. The biggest players in the lease arbitrage world (Stay Alfred, Sonder etc.) have already formed solid relationships with large multifamily management firms and developers and their relationsips usually include exclusivity clauses locking other operators out of that building. 

The combined risk of local regulation and the reality limited inventory opportunities make it difficult to scale a lease arbitrage model to a size that really cashflows. 

Hi @Jenessa NeSmith, Sorry to hear about your funding. Not sure if this will help but I wanted to share with you:

https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/airbnb-quicken-l...

Quicken Loans has partnered with Airbnb and you may be able to use this program. Best of luck

@Garan Kama take a look at this page when considering STR and Airbnb in Vegas: http://www.clarkcountynv.gov/administrative-servic...

Clark County (where most of the strip is) is outside of the actual city of Las Vegas and transient occupancy of residentially zoned properties has been illegal since the 90's. The City of Las Vegas does allow STR in residential zones but there are hoops to jump through. Hope this helps with your decision, good luck!

@Jim Ostler There are a few ways I have found useful, I will shoot you a PM.

@Jordan Moorhead Awesome Case Study, congratulations. Do you manage the Airbnb guests and operations yourself?