All Forum Posts by: Jeff Langley

I’m about to go aggressively at this in the coming weeks. I’m optimistic 

Your team is only as good as your training and SOPs. 

I have 4 very talented VAs for multiple businesses and they’re amazing. 

I have parameters and never had complaints. Just be reasonable. 

Unreasonable is setting a thermostat to 80 in a remote location during winter that eats propane 24/7. Unnecessary and only took one occurrence. 

Quote from @Krishnan Iyer:

Thank you - will definitely give it a shot.

In the meantime, anyone with Hospitable Direct Premium experience, please chime in. Thank you!

I use their html booking code and embed it into a website. That allows the calendar to sync and direct bookings to be routed through the hospitable platform with ID verification, payment and hospitality taxes. That seemed easier than directly taking stripe or PayPal. 

So far, the integration has worked well. 

I’m fairly familiar with the area as i have nightly rentals across the way. It’s a very transient area with guests geared towards adventure(ski, hike, atv) or the two national parks. With that said, I’d be hesitant to offer some form of farm stay as i don’t know if the area supports that draw. When i think of unique farm stays, i think of places that generally don’t have any specific area draw. 

Got a negative review for not having a garage to use in the winter…. The guest stayed in the summer. 

Quote from @Sarah Kensinger:

So many answers that you're probably more confused than not. Boil it down to one thing...what are your goals for the property? Where do you want to be numbers wise, and how do you want the property to look one year from now. Once you have those answers and find out how Airbnb would penalize canceled bookings...that alone is huge deciding factor for some old/new STR homeowners....you can move forward with the best answers that would help you meet your 12-month goals!

Airbnb has never penalized bookings when the property is sold in my experience, just to provide documentation it was sold. 

I don’t like taking future bookings from a previous owner. I’m buying to improve the property, listing, service, etc so i do it right away. I also prefer to screen the guests and set my own price/stay restrictions. This also leads to the reviews based on my criteria and setup, not the previous owners. 

Quote from @NA NA:

Hello. New to the app & doing some research, I found this app might be a good resource. I'm looking to buy a house in the St Pete market & have read zoning regulations, articles about STR (anything less than 30 days) and have discussed with my realtor. I know that by law you can only do 3 STR (less than 30 days) per year. You must have the Business tax license & pay all the fees required. I read that you can only do unlimited STR in hotel/motel zones. I just don't want to buy that close to the water due to flooding concerns. My goal is to live in the home during the winters, maybe 3-4 additional weeks for vacation, then rent it out to help cover the mortgage the rest of the year. Overall goal being to retire in the home in 10-15 years. My ideal location is in the middle so I'm away from severe flood risk, but still 15-20 mins tops to downtown or the beach. My realtor told me that there's been happenings of neighbors turning in people who are doing STR's and getting investigated by authorities, resulting in fines & such. I'm trying to understand how frequent this is. Are there folks that are successfully doing STR in this market that aren't in the hotel zones? Has the policing gone up significantly? Are you just moving to 30-day+ rentals? How is the demand for that? Just wanting to understand opinions & ask some questions. I appreciate any & all feedback!

 @Andrew Steffens will be your guy

It's not exactly apples to apples. My vacation market we are around $800 per night so the clientele is more family oriented and tend to spend most days in national parks or out adventuring. Those groups typically research and know what to expect, which make them "easy" to host. My metro STR is much cheaper(180-280 nightly) and in the "burbs" which tends to be working class clientele, which is okay. I did have one near downtown that I sold as that crowd was a pain, lots of parties and difficult guests. It was much more stressful and not worth it IMO.

I will say, services are much easier to obtain in the metro vs vacation market.