All Forum Posts by: Jon Martin

2 properties in Greenville SC. Thankfully both are undamaged but power is still out. Of course I had guests checking out and back in on Friday . . . Sigh. One in on standby in Clemson and ready to move in, was supposed to stay through the weekend but I will probably have to refund them everything or close to it. Getting lots of inquiries from neighbors and people from Asheville leading with "do you have power". 

Reminder that some geographic diversification in my portfolio would be a good thing. 

Microwave popcorn from Costco is the only food item I do. I applaud the efforts of others but I don't feel the need to supply a bunch of snacks, especially with a larger home where I would have to leave a lot for everyone. I don't like the idea of staging photos with flaming hot cheetos against my new penny tile backsplash, but then again I see other listings getting mentions in the reviews so who am I to question it?

There has to be a dominant website out there for wedding venues, just a matter of finding it. 

This . . . Setup your property so that emergencies are avoided in the first place. Be sure to have redundancies for lockouts. Place "how to" signs next to any complicated amenities and front load your messages to make guests aware of any quirks. 

Most issues will pop up in the first few months as guests use the place regularly, so have a good relationship with a handyman and maybe throw him some small jobs so that he will be on standby when needed. Beyond that, there is very little to worry about in terms of "off hours" emergencies so long as you are proactive with maintenance. 

I agree, especially somewhere that is barely habitable those other 6 months, which describes the UP of Michigan quite well. Unless you are near a ski hill, there are very few reasons to be there at that time. 

That said you certainly need to manage your cash well in order to cover the bills in the down season. 

That, and not taking the furnishing/decor and management aspects of it seriously. They put their old hand me down furniture and cheap plastic Dollar Tree kitchen utensils in there, pass off the management to Vacasa or Evolve, and expected to make a killing. Those days are done unless you have a property in an A+ location. 

"and understanding that not every location is still a goldmine for STRs"

IMO the goldmines are the places that you don't think would be goldmines. Everyday mid-sized cities with growing populations have people traveling to them for all sorts of reasons. Especially with a bigger home. I'm getting weddings and events on weekends booked well in advance and work crews working on new construction booking mid-week. 

Plenty of listings with cell phone pics showing basic interiors in my market have the top 10% trophy and well-populated calendars. Those are the markets I go after, because if I go a few notches about that I know I can easily be in the top 5%.  

The market is saturated if you don’t have the creativity to look beyond the top dozen or so markets. It’s a big country out there, plenty of potential. 

@James Hamling "Your a waste of my energies. You run wild with assumption, infer things I never inferred or stated, disregard facts,"

Um, really? How many times now have I pointed out in this very thread where you changed a few key words and then formulated an argument against it? That is the definition of a Strawman argument. 

""the us and Taiwan lead in....." no, it would just be Taiwan, the US produces diddly squat in contrast to Taiwan" 

The USA and Netherlands make the machinery that is required to make the make advanced semiconductors. 

"And BRICS is resource rich, more so than the US."

If you combine them all together, sure, but the US still has a vast natural and intellectual resource base. China is more dependent on natural resources from elsewhere than the US. 

"And yeah, the melt-down of our society does matter when were trying to convince the planet to use our USD as world reserve, it does matter that the society backing it is a dumpster fire, that = volatility"

Like I said, the culture wars stuff in the US is insane, but why don't you also take an honest look at the social and demographic issues that these countries are dealing with? I'd rather live in a country where there is confusion about what a woman is, than a country where women have minimal rights or where they are in short supply because of failed social engineering policies. 

"The US "democracy" is a faint, it's a perception of choice"

Again- is there a more democratic and less corrupt BRICS country that we can look to? 

You still haven't touched the trust issue in regards to how confident the rest of the world will be in this new currency. If the people of those countries don't even trust their own banks, and instead put USD under the mattress and buy real estate in Europe and the US to store their wealth, what makes you think there will be any trust in this new currency?

Nowhere did I say "superior" and nowhere did I limit what I said to the US. These are western society values. 

The difference is that you won't get arrested in San Francisco and potentially do years in prison for wearing a MAGA hat. 

"The #1 thing the "west" had over BRICS was a moral superiority."

LOL, no, not even close (but maybe also that). The west has far more democracies, better ability to depose of leaders, less dictators, more equal rights, greater transparency, more accessible property rights that are enforced in courts, more trustworthy banking systems. . . The list goes on. The countries in the East where this is also true tend to be more cozy with the US than they are with China. 

Try wearing a Ukraine flad in Russia or a Free Tibet or Uiygur shirt in China and let us know how that goes for you.

"not to mention the US going hard HARD Left with ultra lgbtqxrz15qqfsdb"

I agree that this is crap is absurd, but that has little to do with global currency trading and trust is foreign banks and currency markets. 

"And when you say China is dependent on west for resources, is resource poor..... Sorry, done right there because you obviously are clueless and just talking out your arse."

I said they were dependent on the world for resources, not the west. That's why they invest so heavily in Africa and other nations. If every country were cut off from each other, China would have a tougher go at going alone than many. 

"Tech is reliant on China. Do your research, real actual research, learn a thing or two on this"

More of your condescending garbage. Do I need to post photos of my passport stamps? Happy to do so. The US and Taiwan lead the world in semiconductor technology.

"I don't know what you mean when say it's easy to prop up countries from afar. Are you meaning me? Oh, sorry, last time I was in a BRICS nation was January, 2024.... Yuuup, so, you assumed wrong, yet again."

No, another one of your reading comprehension fails and false assumptions. I'm saying the grass is always greener. Autocratic governments tend to have even more issues because the issues are hidden from the public and nobody within those institutions wants to risk pushing them up the chain to get solved. 

"Look, your clearly not open to any facts so this is pointless. I have lent facts, you reply with opinions, this is just go on forever long as your locked into opinion bias. "

More projection. My point is that you are pointing out everything that is wrong with the US while saying that everything else in the rest of the world is rainbows and unicorns. My point is that we all have our problems, it's simply easier to notice our own because we live here and we have a free media that can talk about them openly.

"Me, personally, I am NOT a fan of BRICS, not in the least. But I am a realist, I accept things for what they are and move forward. I am results based. And those facts are the US is loosing, and we have idiots in charge because we select idiots, who's focus is there personal power, personal enrichment, not the job, the country, the long term ramifications."

And again- these countries are run by geniuses who do everything right? Many Latino immigrants in the US lived through bank appropriations in the 70-00s. China and Russia don't even pretend to have an honest banking system. Do you really think that the rest of the world is going to trust countries with that track record?