All Forum Posts by: Josiah Pisel

@Leslie Anne Morris that is a wonderful idea! Thank you so much!

Hello BP! I am looking for advice and recommendations. I own a vacation rental management company and have properties on both VRBO and Airbnb. I am using Guesty for Host as a property management platform and am mostly happy with it. However, I seem to be struggling with putting monthly statements together for owners in Guesty for Host due to the info that Guesty is "pulling" from VRBO. I charge a commission on the reservation only, while the owners get the remainder of the reservation + cleaning fee and I remit the sales tax on their behalf. The info Guesty is "pulling" from VRBO has the reservation amount + the sales tax in one number, which happens to be the same number that Guesty uses to base the commissions off of. This makes all the numbers wrong, rendering the Guesty for Host reports useless.  

Looking for any insight on how to remedy this (reached out to VRBO and Guesty with no solution yet)! Of course we can create a spreadsheet and manually enter everything but this is very time consuming and not scaleable.

Looking for something that is easy to use, time efficient and minimizes time spent on monthly accounting. What are other short term rental management platforms are people using? What are people using for accounting? QuickBooks Online? Wave? Excel?.... 

Thanks in advance!

@Corey Meyer Can you do a HELOC for the down payment and do a conventional loan? Do you need hard money? I assume that condo that you are looking at is a "Hill Condo"? If it is the Hill Condos, be sure to review the last few meeting minutes of the HOA as well as the HOA finances.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns...

@Alan Brown The median price of a SF home in Bozeman city limits have increased 78% since 2013 averaging approx. 10% a year. And 8.5% in the last year.

Big Sky as you know is a small primarily vacation town with some very high end sales that will severely skew the numbers, but the data shows a 130% increase in residential sales since 2013 or averaging 16.95% a year. And 27.8% over the last year.

@Stephen Conrad jr I PM'd you... I would agree with @Matt Conner on the STR in Bozeman, busy in the summer and intermittent (not dead) for the rest of the year, busy around the holidays, graduation, conferences, etc. Depending on the zoning it can be up to $1500 to get a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) if needed, plus a $250 a year annual registration fee, and a one time inspection fee of $250. If you are outside of the city limits you can avoid most of these costs...

Depending on what your investing goals are I would caution against the Big Sky market (or at least do your due diligence to make sure that it does what you want). I have clients up there that are doing STR and just barely breaking even (even though they are quite busy and were self managing and bought a few years ago). They are doing great on appreciation but might have to start putting money in on a regular basis to make ends meet. Also the town is struggling with having enough long term housing for the workers up there. I know a few of the HOA's are looking into getting rid of STR in their associations altogether. The spring/summer/fall market for STR's isn't great but summer is starting to get better with the Resort trying to push summer activities more and more (i.e. mountain biking).

@Jean Marx

I'll send you a PM. Im a realtor in Bozeman as well as an investor in the area and I will give you my two cents...

@Tyler De Young There is a lot of development going on here in the valley and people are making good money doing. There are also many investors that are buying for appreciation here (either negatively cash flowing or putting large percent down), and many of them are doing very well doing this, but it is speculating and could be very costly... All depends on your risk tolerance. 

@Mark DeLorenzo is correct about the short term rental inside city limits. Certain areas have more restrictions than others and some areas aren't allowed to add any short term rentals (for the time being). With that being said if get a place if you get a place just outside of city limits you can avoid the city of Bozeman's restrictions. If this is the route you decide to go there is definitely a little due diligence that needs to be done regarding the city and what they will and wont allow for short term rentals.

Let me know if you have any questions and I would be happy to help!

@Mark DeLorenzo Thats pretty exciting, MT is a pretty great place. I moved down south from AK and lived out on the East Coast (Portland, ME) for a short stint. Reach out if you are ever in the area!

@Mark DeLorenzo

Welcome to BP and congrats on closing on a house in Bozeman! Its a crazy market here in Bozeman...

@Michael Botha Welcome to BP and Big Sky! Its growing pretty rapidly up there!