All Forum Posts by: Jon Martin

 That's fair. However Ikea furniture is optimized for shipping logistics, not longevity. I (or whoever is helping) can get a lot more setup work done when not assembling 6 nightstands with 50+ parts and terrible instructions. 

"If you can't put together an IKEA piece then you need to stay away from tools in general because everything you touch won't work. :)"

It's not that I can't, it's simply that I don't want to. Nor do I want to pay someone extra to do it when I can simply use that money to buy a better piece of furniture that's less of a headache. At this point in my life I am done with assembling stuff in general, especially when it's not designed with ease of assembly in mind. 

So much this!!! I cringe when I here people talking about ordering Ikea garbage for their STR and then complaining about how hard and long it takes to put together. Just stop, you made your bed. Especially items with drawers as you mentioned. What you save on ticket price you pay in assembly and replacement cost (and time) many times over.

I filter specifically for solid wood and minimal to no assembly. You have enough work setting up your place already even if everything is fully assembled. 

Also, I've shared this tip before: When using a drop ship site like Wayfair or Overstock, drag the photo into a reverse google image search and it will show you where else the product is being sold and often the original source. Sometimes it's half the price or less. The product photos from the original manufacturer are exactly the same as what wayfair uses and you will get a cheaper hit 98%+ of the time. 

I would do a frameless glass with a swinging door. They are a bit more expensive but worth it IMO. The number I've heard thrown around (and paid myself) is $1500 for frameless and ~$1000 for framed, installed, assuming standard size. If you go framed I would do black. There are some nice barn door style ones too. 

Shower tile looks OK, maybe scrape out a column on each end and add some nice mosaic to brighten it up. 

In general, look for small and inexpensive detail fixes where you can add some "pop" in the photos. 

If the cabinets look clean on the inside then I would just paint them and add some nice pulls. That faded blue jean or cornflower blue color is all the rage now. Nobody expects to see photos of the inside of your cabinets. Will save you a lot of time and money. 

Would probably do LVP over the floors. I wouldn't for a personal home but for a rental it's a no brainer. Counters look ok. New fixtures and shower door. 

Not sure about interior paint, tough to tell from photos. 

Trying to make booking for 2 nights business and 1 night pleasure next week. I was looking on VRBO so that I can burn up the last of my Hotels dot com rewards now that future accruals are at 20% of what they used to be. 

I've found a few places where the nightly rate are only $105 and $169, however the all in price is more than double the nightly rate. The lesser priced room has a total host fee that is over $400, and $169 has a host fee around $170. VRBO does not include a "?" icon next to it like it does for the service fee breakdown. Is the VRBO Host Fee basically the equivalent of the Cleaning Fee on Airbnb, and at the discretion of the host and for them to collect? 

Seems absurd to have a host fee that is higher than the cost of a 3 night booking and that most of that should be spread through the nightly rate. Or is this a way to get around VRBO charging their % markup and taxes? 

Hi All,

Found a property that would be a good fit. Any recommendations for 15% down investment loans that I will be able to refinance out of in a year or so without a penalty?

Thank you all in advance!

Agreed with suggestions above for HELOC with a quicker pay down. That way you only pay interest on what you borrow and only for how long whereas if you do a refi, you are stuck making larger interest payments up front for many years based on the entire balance.

Keep in mind that a lot of the cheaper hard furniture needs to be assembled. This is a huge time suck and what you think you save from the price you lose to your own time and headache, or what you pay someone else to build it for. This is especially true with nightstands and also drawers, bed frames etc. 

For my next STR I am specially selecting for easy to assemble furniture. You have enough to unbox already, don't make it harder on yourself.

I’m a big fan of used washers and dryers. All of the new electronics and keypads in newer units are solutions in search of a problem. Plus the water and energy saving features that end of hindering performance. I was trying to use my parents washer and there was no way to fill it up more if you wanted to give your clothes more space or let them soak, it had a sensor that decided how much water you can use. And this wasn’t even in California. 

There’s a character in my area (how could you not be if this is your business lol) who gets all the haulaways from a local appliance retailer and hooks them up for you. In 10 years I’ve replaced the Washer and Dryer from him one time each and spent around $1000 total, installed out the door. 

I do a front page AirBnb search for "flexible dates" and choose a random 2-3 day stretch for the city and with the same bedroom count. This should pull up basically everything because it will show all the listings that are normally booked.

Zoom in on the general area of the home you plan to buy. The home locations won't be exact because AirBnb offsets the exact location but it's close enough. Click on as many properties within a close radius as you can find. Then check their calendars and ADRs and note the quality of the listing. I also like to click on a few that are a bit further out away from the main attractions and use those as the conservative bottom end of the revenue scale. 

Should give you a good general idea.