All Forum Posts by: Julie Williams

@Bob E. Thanks for being insistent. I looked up Massachusett's numbers, and 4th quarter 2021 had 7.8% growth and 1st quarter 2022 lost 1.4% which is a huge difference. I needed to know that. I wish this would translate in to real estate purchase prices, as the market is still insane here and probably at or near peak. 

@Conner Olsen I have been to Corpus Christi!!! My sister lived in Rockport and in Fulton. First, enter Corpus Christi in Furnished Finder online. Don't select a number of bedrooms and don't set a budget. Deselect hotels. All the rentals advertised on that site in your area will show in either a list or on a map. You can see whether they are booked, when they are available, how many there are, whether they are rooms in homes, apartments or houses, and the cost. Look at each listing individually because sometimes there is more than one unit under a listing. There are other travel nurse housing sites, including airbnb long term rentals, and there are Facebook pages for travel nurse housing. You could ask on the Facebook page. Then call travel nurse agencies and HR departments of hospitals and ask what the need is. At the hospitals ask if they are still using travel nurses a lot. Nursing homes and hospices and to a lesser extent assited livings use travel nurses too, and there are many nursing homes in Corpus Christi. Also, I had a friend buy a multi-family in Pittsfield, MA, right near the hospital, which happens to be in a high crime area. All the travel nurses have cars and none of them were willing to lessen their commute by living in a high crime area. He had not one taker and had to rent to long term tenants. So don't buy a multi-family in a high crime area if it is for nurses. 

@Dom Battezzato mainly the Upper Valley in Vermont. Starting to look in New Hampshire as well. 

@Nathan Gesner different reason for renting to travel nurses not necessarily being a home run- there is a severe rental housing shortage in Central Vermont, long term rents have gone way up, and the differential in what you were charging to a year long tenant and a travel nurse has become much smaller, if you factor in paying for their utilities. And yes, there is the risk of a much higher vacancy rate. In Vermont, the only vacancy rate you need have is the time to turn the apartment. 

@conner I had an apartment in Marble Falls, TX when the pandemic broke out. Long story...Love Austin. Miss the food. Hey, those numbers are amazing and I really appreciate you sharing them with me!!! How many bedrooms in the duplex apartments? Top travel nurse rent in Central Vermont for a 3 BR/1.5 (I would add half bath) is probably more like $3000? The numbers for the fixer upper I am considering putting in an offer on, a 3/1 house on 2.3 acres, four houses away from a smaller hospital, but would probably just live in myself, as the numbers aren't turning out great for renting, are $1800-$2000 as a long term rental, only paying the sewer bill (it has a well), insurance, taxes and repairs, or $2400, maybe $2600 at the outside to travel nurses. The town won't let me rent out to three unrelated people without a successful zoning change of use application, all neighbors will be notified and there would be a public hearing. (I guess I could buy it, go through that, and just live in it if I fail to get the change of use? Lot of hokey pokey though.) And for nurses I have to also pay for heat, electric, internet, Netflix, snow removal and lawn care, which wipes out all or most of the higher rent. If one can afford to buy in Lebanon, New Hampshire which has an excellent big hospital, or Hartford, Vermont which has a VA hospital, you can charge higher rents to nurses, but the rents are also much more for long term rentals. Buying in those towns has probably moved out of reach for me with the real estate bubble.

@Nicole Heasley Beitenman I would love to connect with you too. If I disappear soon, it means I am in Vermont looking at real estate and the internet is bad at my airbnb!!! Going up there either Saturday or Sunday. If you have no competition, you can set things up however you want. In New Hampshire and Vermont, all landlords provide the travel nurses with all utilities and internet, lawn care and snow removal, and often they provide an entertainment package of some kind as well! Did you mean you would pay the utilities and pass the costs on to them? Or that they would have their own accounts? The nurse work exhausting hours and they just want to arrive at the rental, unpack their things and hit the ground running with work, not make a bunch of phone calls and wait around for the cable guy or gal. 

@Colleen F. from talking to travel nurses and someone who rents to them, there appears to be no difference in demand for nurses' housing in Vermont seasonally, but perhaps that varies regionally in the US? I stay at a spacious 1 BR, 3 room airbnb with a kitchen when I go to Vermont. I have become friendly with the owner. She rents to travel nurses for $2400 a month. She rents on airbnb for $89 a night off season (which is low for the area) plus she gets to pocket the cleaning fee. Summer and ski season are high seasons, and October (foliage season) is off the charts. Mud season (mid to late March) and April and November, "stick season", the parts of the year where there are no leaves on the trees and no longer much snow, are slow. She tries not to take travel nurse contracts during the busiest times of the year, because then the short stays make more money,  and to get travel nurses the rest of the time, but she also takes them during ski season because she is far from the slopes. Sometimes she gets them, sometimes she doesn't, but she is in a remote rural area, a half hour drive to the nearest hospitals. There is a massive nursing shortage in the Upper Valley in Vermont and they may come at any time of year. Obviously the ones who hate Winter don't come then, but others love Winter. The one exception is that I know assignments were down in Vermont some during the Omicron surge, when other parts of the country were doing badly and Vermont had not been hit by it yet, presumably because the most lucrative assignments with huge signing bonuses were where they needed the most help. Please be aware that according to my friend who IS a travel nurse, contracts are down some, and Vermont is vigorously pursuing state policies that will increase the number of local nurses and perhaps even cap travel nurse pay! My nurse friend decided not to invest in renting to travel nurses. However I have called HR departments at three smaller regional hospitals, two in Vermont and one in New Hampshire, and although they said it is a goal to stop using travel nurses, they are nowhere near meeting that goal. Personally, with the percentage of nurses retiring in the next 10 years, and people leaving the field because of pandemic burn out, I don't think they will be able to eliminate using travel nurses. My bigger concern is that as nurses leave the field, perhaps there will be jobs left  vacant that will translate in to fewer travel nurse bookings. The HR people did each say, without me asking them, they have a frequent need for temporary housing for doctors and administrators coming in temporarily or permanently because inventory is so low for bath buying and renting homes. 

@Michael Dumont II that's why I wish I had bought in Burlington in 2019, LOL. Good for you! 

@Patrick Giblin I think you just have to look deal by deal. It takes a great deal of time. I have been looking for a while in the Upper Valley, which is a tough market, down to Springfield, over to Randolph and a little bit, over the river in New Hampshire. A great 7 unit property in two buildings sold on the village green in Royalton, VT which I seriously considered. It went for only $375,500 and it was beautiful. It needed work, but not a lot of work, and nothing that had to be done immediately. I didn't buy it because it felt like a lot to manage myself as a first purchase. I wanted to house hack and there was not a vacant unit for me to live in, and the first vacancy was in the best unit, the only one with a high rent and I wasn't going to give that income up. Most of all I didn't buy it because Hurricane Irene flooded the two basement apartments and the room with most of the mechanicals, which of course were all new after Irene. Personally, I have a flood allergy. Other buildings I have checked out that had good cash flow, needed a ton of work. The Pomfret post office, which I think had two commercial spaces and two apartments, was one of those. 

@Troy Zsofka "Significant cap rate compression even in tertiary markets". I know what a cap rate is but what does cap rate compression mean? What is a tertiary market? 

Thanks! 

Julie