All Forum Posts by: Jason Stoltzfus

If you are managing a property remotely, and you want to have someone install a smart device for you, what are the logistics around that?

Meaning, they would need to log into an account to set it up (whether it's google, schlage, amazong, etc.), but ultimately it needs to be under *my* account, not theirs.

Wondering if anyone has had to do this and generally how you accomplished this.

Long-term rentals are in short supply in Lancaster. If you needed to place new tenants, I'm confident you could do so quickly. I listed my place last year in Lancaster and had a tenant in weeks. I've had the same experience in Columbia, which is nearby and a similar market. I think that's been the general trend.

I have no experience in this particular situation so I can't offer you advice on what to do.

Where in Lancaster is your rental?

@Kevin Scott Where is it? What makes you think that it will sit vacant for 3 seasons?

@Robert Tinker I *think* what you are looking for is a "DSCR loan", which are loans that are qualified based on the cash flow of a property. There's a number of lenders out there that do this, we used a company called Visio recently.

> However, playing devil's advocate if I was going to go to a resort, hotel, etc. They are obviously not drained and cleaned between each "user"..I don't even know if they do it every day? I would think it would be similar to a pool? There are chemicals to kill anything nasty and of course a pool isn't being drained after each guest.

So... I DO have a hot tub at my place and we DO drain it before every stay. But I won't deny wondering once or twice if it's necessary. Hence my question... anyway, this was my reasoning as well.

> Well living out here in Utah where we're not sure if we're going to have enough water to drink next summer we are very jealous of you all back east that have so much water you can just dump hot tubs full of it out every few days so people don't feel "icky". :P

So, do you think that's a thing for STR out west? Like I could imagine that if you're in a water conscious area of the country, you really can't drain in between stays.

> And then there's the other stuff that we don't even want to think about.....

Jellyfish.

Thanks for all of the points of view.

I don't have a comprehensive answer, just a data point... Avery Carl mentions one type of partnership in her book Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth.

The gist of it is that there are two partners; one brings the cash, and one brings "sweat". You get some sort of reasonable equity split (50/50?). The "sweat" partner essentially then "owes" the cash partner their share of the initial cost like a loan, and that gets paid down (out of STR profits?) until the cash partner recoups that money, at which point it's an equal partnership.

EDIT: In case it wasn't clear, the "sweat" partner is also doing the bulk of the management work in this scenario as well. It's kind of like saying "I don't have the money now, but I'll work hard to repay my portion of the investment over time if you can front 100% of the money now."

Something like that... I have no experience with this... just passing it along.

A quick search of the boards will uncover a number of other posts asking the same question as well.

Awesome thank you for the replies.

It sounds like most folks are advocating for a full drain and refill every time.

If there's someone who would could make a solid argument for cleaning, but not necessarily draining every time, I'd love to hear that POV.

Simple question, do you drain and refill your hot tub during each turnover, or only as needed?

If only as needed, what does cleaning consist of? Just skimming out debris and adjusting chemicals?

Anyone know if the Lancaster REI meetup is still active? Haven't seen any events since July.

Question, how did you arrive at $200 a month for cleaning? That seems like a really low estimate... unless you're cleaning it yourself?