All Forum Posts by: Jon Martin

As soon as I read "hired a property management company to handle the day-to-day" it was clear to me and anyone else with a basic understanding of the rules that he was likely SOL. It would be tough to make the case that you work more hours than your property manager, which is my best guess (for someone who is not a tax professional) as to what triggered the audit. 

A bigger concern is someone who clearly fits the rules as they are written and intentionally acts in good faith, only to have the IRS comb through their time logs and arbitrarily finds some of those time entries invalid and/or inflated. This is what I worry about. 

 IIRC someone noted this above that it will activate the code at your desired check in time. 

January was slow at ~40%. February was booked out for all but 10 nights (68%) and March already booked ahead for the same. I’ll take that any “winter” 

I highly doubt there are any at all outside of the LTR world where you are dealing with deposits of thousands of dollars that will likely be worth half of what they were after a multi-year rent period. 

The money paid in advance basically functions as a free line of credit, or it sits in a bank collecting interest, so it is a profit center no matter how you look at it. Considering the dollar volume it is significant. 

Like I said, in the "what you gonna do" category and I do agree that the OTAs are going to drive far more business than I ever could, even if I'm harvesting guest data diligently and have a good return guest base. 

Can you have it automatically set the code to the last 4 of their phone number, or does in generate a random code? 

I don't want to deal with random codes that nobody can remember. Never had a lock out issue sticking with the last 4. 

One of my mine gripes, aside from what has been already pointed out, is that the OTAs get to be the bank. They collect in full (or at least 50%? Not sure) at the time of booking and then get to sit on that cash until the guest checks in. At first I thought it was great that I got paid out immediately, until I realized that the OTAs get to use that cash for their own liquidity and interest gains. 

Falls into the "wadyagonnadoaboutit" category, but the fact that they are making money on the float off our properties and guests, in addition to high fees, is frustrating to say the least. 

I have a go daddy direct booking site on Houfy (get what you paid for lol) and have gotten 2 bookings from it. I had 3-4 repeat customers last year, so I think I could sway more of them over. With my next property that will have a much higher bed count I will probably start collecting phone numbers and doing follow up texts with a direct link. 

Long game approach but could pay off. 

Given the nuances between and within markets and listings I don't think there is a meaningful way to estimate this at a macro level. 

What you can do is filter for that specific amenity and see how well booked the calendars of those listings are. If it's a very average looking listing that is not in an A-grade location, and their calendar is well booked relative to other comps without that amenity, then you could reasonably assume that the amenity is making a difference. 

It doesn’t add any item aside from an extra minute per item, as the reverse image search takes you directly to the vendor who ships it to you if you were to order on Wayfair. The savings are significant. For example, a $135 dining table chair on Wayfair I found at a restaurant supply store for $65. That’s well over half off, and times 10-12 chairs plus other furnishings you are now talking real money. 

I do love the options and filters on Wayfair to optimize for assembly (as in none, as much as possible) and the money I save going directly to the source allows me to buy better quality and set up faster. 

In some ways all of us have already been paying the piper in the form of higher prices, especially groceries and other essentials. 

The baseline SFH price in coastal markets is much higher than it was pre-pandemic, with remote work making it that much easier to live in a "vacation" market. It used to be that if you found a 6-figure job in a college or resort town, instead of having to live in a big city, you had basically cracked the code of life and lived a very comfortably. The longer drive to urban job centers outside of commuter range kept those places from getting too crazy in price because the lower local wages kept it in check. Those checks and balances are no longer in place, and the free covid money, low interest and work flexibility is largely to blame.

Are there more consequences to come? I don't know. If I was confident one way or another I would place my investing "bets" accordingly, but for now I make decisions based on where the data and trends suggest the most reliable chance of producing a return. 

As for saturation, those who bought in too high will only be able to hang on for so long. Maybe some of the owners have high enough W2 salaries and/or other investments they can leverage to float it? Either way it will eventually it'll wash out. In the meantime I would look at other markets where the price to entry and quality bar is much lower. There are plenty of them out there, they just aren't talked about here on a daily basis. 

@Sarah Kensinger Wayfair is great for finding options but if you do a reverse google image search you can often find where it actually ships from at a steep discount. Wayfair is not a retailer, they are a drop shipper who scrapes most furniture retailers on the internet. 

Chrome browser makes this easier now when you right click, the “search image in google”