All Forum Posts by: Jon Martin

SLO County resident of many years here. Pismo is very pricey but guests expect that and you should be able to charge accordingly. You really can't go wrong anywhere in the Pismo city limits. More economical purchase prices in Grover Beach and Oceano, but also less revenue, and also not sure about the regs. 

There are very few true oceanfront properties in Pismo, and only a small area with flood risk  if during a heavy storm, so I don't think insurance will be a concern. If it's in a condo complex then there should be some kind of flood insurance for the building wrapped in, you would only need a "wall-to-wall" policy. 

Feel free to send me listings you have in mind (don't worry, not planning to buy) and I can give you an idea of the neighborhood and what's nearby. 

How exactly are you all collecting payments early from VRBO and AirBNB? Do the PMS systems allow you to do this? I've never seen this as an option and only collect the morning after the guest arrives. 

Given the audience I'm not surprised. If you've found your way to this forum and stayed for a while, you are probably in the upper tiers in terms of hosting savvy and have therefore learned how to automate the process while giving excellent service. Whereas the kind of hosts who don't post here are more likely to be in the "afraid of getting calls about flooding tolets at 2 am" camp and/or work long hours that make hosting a challenge. 

If I worked a true full time+ job where I couldn't pull my phone out or take a call whenever I please then I would gladly farm it out, but since I usually can I will gladly pay myself $60-100/hour to self manage from a smart phone. 

What kind of loss are you talking? Do you expect it to turn around, and/or is there anything you can do to help increase revenue? 

Sounds stressful. I would cash out if I didn't see a path to positive revenue. 

Probably a pricing issue. Try dropping it in increments of ~$20 until you see the action you want to see. If you start filling up to quickly then you might be too cheap. 

Place looks great and well appointed, although I would add some pops of color here and there. Nothing crazy because I think you have the right aesthetic for the setting, but maybe some fake plants with colored pebbles, bed scarfs, hand towels etc can go a long way to add some life. Your place reads dark with all of the ceiling wood- I don't think you had professional photos taken indoors? 

Also- fix the scuff on the stairs in photo 7

Overall well done, seems like you are off to a good start with your reviews and that you thought of all the small stuff

I have a 2/1 SFR and it does very well. Although from what I understand, 1 bedroom units profit more per bedroom.

If you know the game and are scaling up, I would go straight to a 4/5 bedroom. 2 and especially 3 bedroom homes are the doldrums in most markets. The marginal increase in revenue going from 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 is, well, marginal. The biggest gains are going from 3 to 4 and 4 to 5+ bedrooms. 

I may be in the minority among STR owners but I disagree, at least when it comes to my own strategy. I've found markets that have a good-to-great appreciation runway that also cash flow. My plan to scale up to around 10ish properties, let them grow a bit, sell off the slower cash flow properties and roll that equity into the 3-5 winners. I certainly would not the first to succeed from this strategy.

Lots of business owners buy the property that they operate in, and many failed businesses have come out on top because they sold the building on the backend. Also makes it easier to sell the business (and with greater value) because they have something to leverage in a buyout. 

My family has a place on the sand in Lake Huron. We measure the beach from a fixed point (driftwood stump) every year. Over the 3+ decades we've owned it the length of beach has changed wildly in both direction by 20-30+ feet. 

People use single data points of sea level change as a marker, while ignoring the multitude of geological and other human impacts (erosion, wetland destruction, coastal development etc) that have an impact on land level. In some areas the sea level has decreased. Mean sea level averaged across the entire world is around 2 mm/year, or 6-8 inches/100 years. 

I don't disagree that climate change is happening on some level, however the impacts are largely speculative and debatable. 

Pools generally don't raise property values but in general they do significantly increase STR revenue.