All Forum Posts by: John Litz

Good Morning Garrett, love your podcast and watch all the time. I had a question for you about the Airbnb views on the algorithm. I listen to a lot of pod casts while I am doing other things so not always paying attention to which podcast it is. However I think I heard that there was a change the if your not doing insta book with easy cancelations that Airbnb recommends the algorithm will keep your property lower in the views than somebody else that does have the recommended settings. When I looked at my views I am down by about half what my normal is. Now there have been other times when this has happened so not sure if this is a real thing or some BS for a fear style pod cast. This year my occupancy is at 80% so doing pretty decent being as the average for the area is closer to 65%. However I have noticed a little higher percentage of the booking coming from VRBO.

Bradley are you local to Reno? I live in Reno and watch the market daily. Many listing have price drops, however they aren’t significant and the original price was wish pricing. Everything your showing is correct but I am still seeing plenty get sold but at a slower rate and usually the turn key stuff or anything fixer that is priced pretty low. Higher priced stuff still sells but it’s taking much longer. Completely agree if you want to buy now is the time. If interest rates drop the flood gates will open and pricing will explode again. 

I charge $100 per dog. I list in house rules to keep dogs off beds and furniture but they never do. They also rarely clean up the dog crap in the yard that has to be handled and the furniture ends up with lots of hair and extra cleaning to return it to the same excellent condition for the next guest. I love the dogs but they do take quite a bit of extra time and labor. 

I always suggest to start with a good foundation. That means your budget, DTI and credit score. You have to be disciplined enough to manage your own finances so you can manage a business. You're already an agent so you will be putting in the work on the RE side of things. BTW yes house hacking is a great step on that foundation and can be done with as simple as having roommates. Whatever you can do to lower your largest expense- housing. This will super charge your budget and savings.

A PMS makes it so much easier to have one place to handle all your bookings from Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking, Google vacation rentals, Expedia, Mariots, etc. typically a single fee for multiple properties and comes with a generic booking site. It makes auto messaging a breeze. Controlling expenses is important but it is also important to spend money on improving guest experience or reducing your management time. 

Your mixing strategies up. Residential lending is not the same as commercial lending. Commercial is going to be very difficult to find a 3.5% down. It's not an FHA loan. Commercial sure you could live there it just reduces the cash flow from the property but allows you to reduce or eliminate your biggest expense. But the lender will want to see all units performing not you living in one for free. House hacking doesn't fit into their analysis. House hacking has many flavors but commercial isn't typically one of them.

Regardless of the LTV you can pull. The more important factor is will the rent make the PITI, 15% for vacancy, maintenance, and cap X, plus cash flow. If it doesn't then it's an alligator eating away at your personal finances to provide housing for somebody else. Sure pulling money is great but the servicing of that payment is thing most don't look at on the pod casts. No alligators ever!!!

I would suggest patience, get your budget, credit score and DTI under control before adding to it with more debt. Reduce expenses and increase income to set yourself up with the discipline to succeed.

Seeing exactly what you are saying, plenty of price drop notifications but they are small just to boost eyes on the listing. Lots of relists because inventory isn’t moving much. Plenty of deals falling thru and getting relisted. New inventory seems more popular because of the better interest rates and turn key. Rents are being very resilient. 

This is a hard NO for me. Tenants typically do terrible work. I keep the same color in all my rentals for ease of repainting and I only have extra paint for the one style. At scale this becomes so much harder. I also use a semi gloss throughout the entire home so it is easier to clean kid finger prints everywhere. If the want colors they can hang decorations and floor coverings. Last thing you want to deal with is trying to cover up different colors and having to do multiple coats because colors bleed thru. Sometimes bad things happen with evictions and such, now you’re stuck dealing with the repaint regardless of addendums. Just been doing this way to long with my own units, my parents units and my cousins units. Steam lining turnovers is extremely important.