All Forum Posts by: Joey Morea

@Phil Wrigley

Bang for your buck you can get a lot of property. I own a 7bedroom 3600sq ft house in champions gate I purchased at the end of June for 440k. There is a lot of competition but it also is the most visited destination in the us with 80 million travelers and only getting better with the enchantments to Disney. 3rd universal park and speculation of a 5th Disney park at some point. It’s all about theming of your property and how well the pictures look. Give Keith Courtney a call if you need a realestate agent.

@John Underwood

That what I noticed when I was playing around with it. It seems you can boost a day with less points and get the same effect if you were trying to boost several days.

What’s your thoughts on using the powerboost feature? Any tips or tricks do you guys use with this tool. I have been playing around with it but not sure what the best way to use it to get the most bang for your points are?

@Brady Beshear

For the thermostats I find the ecobee the best vs nest or others as it has a few features that work great for a vacation rental that others do not. You can set the temp range and the guest cannot go outside that range. You can also adjust the temp variance range so instead of the unit kicking and off every time the temp raises 0.5 degrees you can set it to kick on at 1.5 degrees which give the hvac units a lot less wear and tear and saves a huge amount on electricity. Not sure how I feel about this feature but You can also adjust it say it 1 or 2 degree cooler or warmer then it really is. It has great reports and and when you lock it so guest can access your settings it does not look like it is in lockdown mode vs how the nest looks where you know you are in lockdown mode.

@Carolyn Fuller

You should be able to create a code in wink. The only issue with the wink when you create a code you can’t set the dates for it to work and to delete after the stay automatically. If you are ok remembering to create the code the day of stay and delete the day of ending I guess that should work. I would just spend the 60 and get a Vera hub that will allow you to do this from the app or if you want to pay the 6 a month connect it into the remote lock platform and integrate your Airbnb and Vrbo to auto send the codes so you don’t even have to think about it.

@Marcello Di Gerlando

From my research the best true vacation markets with the best ROI are going to be middle income drivable destinations. With a long season. Orlando, Gatlinburg, Panama City beach. For beach towns The best example for this would be compare Panama City beach vs rosemary and 30a they are 10 minutes from each other but the prices are around 3x more in 30a area. Totally different clientele. Personally I would rather be on 30a but the investment was so much better in PCB. I think the same is true with ski mountains out west. I would love to get a place in the mountains out west but it seems like it's hard to make the math work that's why my next vacation rental will most likely be in Gatlinburg area.

I think with vacation rental markets the best places that come to mind, aspen, jackson hole, Hawaii, 30a, Malibu etc those are all the elite places where the rich can buy and it doesn’t mater the price. It’s almost a status thing at that point. The investment and cash flow part of it is not in the equation when most of those people are buying.

As far as regulations go if it’s a true vacation rental designation most of those local economies are going to be set up to welcome that and be happy to take the tax money. They have been doing it for many years long before Airbnb, Vrbo and the internet was a thing. That’s what I worry about with all the investing outside of a true vacation market. Airbnb can be a fad and city’s can crackdown on it at any time and now you have a property you can’t rent out. But ask the mayor of Panama City beach or Gatlinburg about cracking down on short term rentals that would destroy those local economies that would never happen in my opinion. Just make sure the place you are looking at are zoned for short term rental.

@Debbie Bone

Before I switched over to self managing I did use vacasa as a pm. This is what I found they did which I did not like and thought was sneaky. They would charge rent which they say is dynamic to optimize your profit but what they do is also add booking fees the guest pay on top of rent for another 10-20 percent they say this is for credit card fees and other admin charges but then what is the commission for? This raises the total cost Which is what people are looking at when they book. The rent they did charge seemed to be really low so they still could put all their fees in there and be competitive with the normal listings they did keep the place booked but that is how they did it.

I have done extensive research on the best locks for a vacation rental. I am big about the security part of it and did not like the idea of guest having codes that lasted Longer then their stay or having a key with the possibility of making a new one. Plus I wanted something to work as I do not want unwanted calls from guest. Here are my recommendations.

If you need a deadbolt style The York yrd216 with the Vera edge hub is the way to go. The lock is around $180 and the hub is $60. Connect it with the remote lock app $6 a month it integrates it into Vrbo and Airbnb and it automatically sends out codes to your guest based on the dates of reservation. You also can set it up to give you an alert when you guest first check in.

Or if u need something really heavy duty for the beach get the CG 7i by remote lock that’s a lever lock commercial grade and doesn’t need a hub just connects to WiFi. Also works with the remote lock app to automatically send out codes from Vrbo and Airbnb. This cost around $480

If you don’t care about getting alerts and just want something to work even without WiFi the KABA orecode 660 is a beast that are rated the best for heavy duty commercial use. I actually had this on my condo before I switched for the Cg model. It’s a great lock just did not like the fact you didn’t have an Audit trail of who used the codes and such. It works on weird algarithims so it has all these codes already saved based on dates and the computer tells u which code works for the dates you select. For a big property mgmt company I think those are best for them. all the big property mgmt companys use them on the beach on the coast. It’s also 14 per month for the software to use it. That lock will cost around 500. You do not need a hub. It does not need WiFi connection.

@Helen Chen

I own a 7bedroom house next to Disney. Contact chris with prestige Florida villas. He is more like a hybrid pm. I do self manage and handle all of the guest contact and bookings but I do pay him a flat fee monthly to take care of the pool, pest service etc, he and his wife organize the cleaners and does file the monthly taxes to the city for me. He also takes care of issue and concern when someone is in my house and needs something looked at or a question. It’s nice having boots on the ground when needed.

@Jennifer Bryan

It’s a pain I had to do this on my last purchase. The only way it can be done is previous owner has to cancel and then you can request to rebook. I had people with flights booked so imagine the worry when they saw your house was just canceled the day before their trip after 10 months of having it reserved. The prior owner actually gave me his login and I canceled on his side and request to rebook from my account. All of them rebooked. It was a bit scary for some of them with the refunds of credit cards taking a few days to process to trust the process. It made sense to keep the bookings as we closed in June and all of Summer calendar was already full vs hoping to get last minute bookings, plus I also thought it was the right thing to do. People plan for a while to do a big trip to Disney in a 7br home. I also honored all the prior booking prices.