All Forum Posts by: John Dean

@Nicholas Aja I have a few Airbnb’s in East Dallas. The staging/ photography / and furniture selection makes a huge difference in how much you earn so I’d definitely recommend having someone with that kind of experience guide you in setup. I used to furnish and manage myself but now use local company Perfect Tenant Dallas to handle the whole thing. I’ve realized my skills in staging are subpar and it can be tough to handle guest interactions / turnovers if you have other things going on.

@Gaby Liu if you could share what convinced you to out of state flip it might help others here from falling into the same flawed thinking. I personally think anyone recommending it either got very lucky or is dishonest. Local flippers are going to pick the best deals and have the best contractors, you don’t stand a chance being out of state. It’s sad to hear people loose this money money and then justify it as the “cost of learning”

@William Hughes the bigger pockets bookstore seems to have some pretty good guides. Pick your path

Scale itself doesn’t really mean anything in relation to costs, it’s the process you are using. You could have 100 units and use a general contractor for everything or have 5 units and have a part timer paid hourly who works for a builder full time. You could be handing everything over to third party management as well. I think it’s pretty dangerous to start generalizing these things due to the exponential nature of what a spreadsheet calculation mistake could cost you.

If you already have a process in place it’s pretty easy to see what it would look like at different scales but that needs to be defined from the beginning.

@Anna Hummer you should try SFH and renting out the bedrooms. Some have ADUs that can be rented. Not much multi family inventory on the market and if you don't have trade skills or subcontractors it's going to be tough to buy a good deal, hire out the work to a contractor, and still make a decent return if any at all.

@Anna Hummer Texas is considered landlord friendly and Dallas does not have separate landlord tenant ordinances per my quick google search. Therefore any city here will be exactly the same

@Melissa Bovee I’ve been hosting for years and it really depends on the length of stay and the type of property you offer. I think offering a discount does not solve the problem and when a guest comes to you with a problem you need to solve it, not send them money. This is something I started testing about 1 year into hosting and it works well. You are all on the same side of trying to provide a good guest experience and money should only play a part if it is directly solving their problem (ex they went to Walmart and picked up new sheets so you reimburse them and keep those new sheets)

@Steven McPherson research virtual real estate brokerage Texas for tons of options. 5th stream realty is $10/month

@Charlie Anne the problem with deals that cash flow $100/month or so are maintenance/turnovers/and repairs. If you have to replace the AC system you’ll loose 4-5 years of income, if you have 1 down month for turnover you lost 1 year of income, etc.

@David M. Good catch. I just did a quick google search and came up with that as a potential example of another BP user who went down this same path. Sounds like I should have found a better example.