All Forum Posts by: JD Martin

If the delta between what you can make on your current house and what you would replace it with is that high, then financially there's no question you should do it. You need to know if your mortgage permits it on your current house, and be sure you can both rent that cheap for yourself and rent your place out for that much money before you do anything.

Quote from @Orlando Ferreira:

Hi everyone,
 I’m 19 years old, and I’ve been learning about real estate for several months. I’ve read around 20 books about real estate in the past few months, and I’ve watched many YouTube videos, podcasts, and other content to deepen my knowledge. I don’t have much practical experience yet, but I analyze properties every day and try to understand how the market works.

I'm at a point where I want to start investing, but I have limited resources and many possible paths wholesaling, get a w2 job for a DSCR loans or fha, flips, etc.).

I’d love to hear advice from experienced investors: if you were in my position at 19, what would you do to start building a real estate portfolio or gaining real experience?

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

1. Earn money.

2. Save money.

3. Invest in a house hack flip or hold, or a duplex/triplex/quadplex.

4. Repeat 1-3.

If you want to be an investor you need money. Don't minimize the accumulation of capital, because that's where you need to start. All the knowledge in the world is useless if you don't have anything to invest. Live as cheap as possible, make as much as possible, put the accumulated capital to work in something that can provide your roof and your investment at the same time. 

Quote from @Account Closed:

Is the $50.00 negotiable?  My time, like most others here, is worth more than $50.00.  :) 

 And yet you posted here for free 😂😜

People will steal anything. Last time I was down a few weeks ago to do some general maintenance:

- Someone stole the serrated scissors we leave in the drawer so people can cut open things that require cutting open.

- The tablespoon measuring spoon was gone. Likely tossed in the trash.

- One of the measuring cups was gone. Also likely tossed in the trash.

- 2 more beach towels gone. These I assume make their way to Disney and get left there.

- Someone broke the couch frame either by being morbidly obese or by letting their rugrats use it as a trampoline. Unknown which guest, not caught by cleaners.

That's just the things off the top of my head. Forget about leaving out extra toilet paper, dishwasher pods, laundry pods, paper towels, trash bags - all of that gets stolen so you can only provide a starter pack. 

It all makes me laugh when VRBO contacts me and bugs me to be a great host by providing even more discounts off my already too-cheap price. 

On an aside, @John Underwood, I was shocked to see you had bad guests since I thought you only rented to angels 😜😂

Quote from @Becca F.:

Quote from @Ken M.:

Quote from @Becca F.:

That's what I thought. I emailed Help Support to ask them or if they can delete my posts (which contain a lot of personal info, good thing I didn't post my last name on here) and they said no. BP won't let us self delete posts unlike other social media (Facebook, Instagram). 

I'm very likely to delete my account soon

If you want to be "erased" post something they think is controversial and I can attest "it all goes away".

 I replied back to Help Support because they said they don't delete posts. This isn't true. I've seen Moderators delete people's posts or comments. 

On the flip side, I've seen controversial comments that are related to politics not get removed 

Here are my controversial comments "Pizza Hut is better than Domino's"  and "Coca Cola is better than Pepsi" hahaha

Posts that meet certain criteria are edited or deleted as necessary. In general, however, your body of work on the site is permanent. If your account is closed, then all of your posts issued from forever will show "Account Closed" as the author. That's the closest you can get to deleting yourself from the site. Your posts will still be there but they won't be attributed to anyone. Getting banned from the site for egregious conduct would not change anything other than just getting you banned from the site, so if you want to delete your account contact [email protected]

Quote from @Becca F.:

I receive mostly messages from new investors from California. When I first joined BP in 2022, I received over 50% DMs from agents or someone in the real estate industry, including CPAs. I rarely receive solicitations now. 

Two of the weird DMs: a scammer who tried to get me to loan him money in a double close who wound up getting arrested. @Jay Hinrichs read through this guy's documents and knew it was a scam. 

 The other one was this guy trying to pretend to be interested in real estate, looking to buy rental property in the Bay Area - said he was a physician with a real estate business (investment company??) talked to him on the phone but it was difficult because English wasn't his first language. Google searched him and could find no record of this person's name as a practicing physician in the USA. I even referred him to a Bay Area agent. He starts asking personal questions and telling me he would marry me and we could move to his home country and how he was grieving because his wife died...weird. He deleted his account before I could report him to BP. 

I'd say recently someone asked me if I needed private lending and to get on a call with CPA. My answer was no on the private lending. 

I'm not clear but are solicitations allowed in DMs? I know blatantly trying to sell something in the forums or self promotions isn't. 

 Unsolicited, out of the blue ones - no, they're not allowed. You can report them to moderators/staff and they will be dealt with. 

Flat out VRBO sucks. They are a sorry company. Yes, they have captured a lot of market share so if you are doing STR you are somewhat stuck with them (unless you're in a heavy agent booking market like some beach places) but their day is coming. It is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while, and I haven't even figured out how they're going to implement it other than kicking you off the platform until you pay - because how are they going to get the several thousand dollars from the host? They're not going to be able to access $5 from me as I bounce funds to another account.

I've never had the issue come up - I always track when the guest is coming and for the most part am available instantly - but I can't swear a guest will never have an issue, ever, in the future, whether it's their fault (most likely), an Act of God (possibility) or my fault (unlikely but possible). 

It's just like all of their policies - one sided against the host. I've been on both sides of things - I've rented places through VRBO/AirBnb, and I've been a host - and there's far less "bad apple" owners than there are stupid guests. Even in the places I've stayed that weren't necessarily up to snuff, the owners/management was responsive to whatever came up, even if they couldn't solve it. Meanwhile I've had guests steal things, sneak animals in, and just act like plain bums and liars. 

Quote from @Monique P.:

Okay the saga continues. LOL.  Did you guys also get this e-mail today from VRBO titled:

"Temporary Suppression of Host Review Responses"

Dear Partner, To comply with applicable privacy laws, we're updating how your responses to traveler reviews will appear on Expedia Group platforms. Moving forward, host responses to reviews that contain traveler personal information—including first names, last names, or initials—will be hidden from view. At Expedia Group, we take Privacy and Security very seriously. As such, we are improving our content moderation tools to ensure better detection and prevention of travelers’ personal information in reviews. The temporary changes are as follows: Since July 10, 2025, we started making updates to our moderation tools and processes to ensure that any partner response containing personal information about travelers are automatically rejected. As a result, your review responses submitted via the Vrbo dash will be temporarily hidden from traveler facing product details pages. You may continue to retrieve reviews, respond to them, and rate travelers as usual. However, your responses will not be visible to travelers on any Expedia Group platform during this period. This temporary measure is necessary while we update our moderation tools and processes. We are working diligently to resolve the situation as a priority and will provide updates on restoring response visibility as soon as possible. We also take this opportunity to kindly remind you that we are each responsible for protecting our travelers’ personal information and ensuring compliance with applicable privacy laws. If you have any questions, please contact our support team. We appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Best regards, Expedia Group

 Yup, got it today. Glad to know it wasn't just my imagination. One of the sorriest companies I have ever worked with, in any capacity. I am dying for someone to eat their lunch and get us a new platform from which to work, preferably one cheaper for the guest & the host and fairer to both sides instead of a middle man leach. 

I would cut him loose. And skip the 2 year leases, they only benefit the tenant. 

You don't need an attorney in our state (I'm in TN also) but Davidson County, like a few other high population counties, has some specific things that apply in the Landlord Tenant Act, which you should really be intimately familiar with before renting out anyway. As far as the tenants, they sound like professional tenants and are snowing you. I would get them gone ASAP.