All Forum Posts by: Justin Knighten

Quote from @Lauren Kormylo:

If you're not going to stick to your cancellation policy, why have it?  

That's a fair question, and something I'm also weighing out.  I think the comment above about "frivolous" cancellations a few days out not sitting well.  I know you can't trust everyone, but I've refunded some for stories that seemed reasonable, I figure a few karma points won't hurt me when it's all said and done.  I suppose having it in place has "made" me a little money, as some folks cancel/don't show and have no expectation of getting their money back.   I also think having it there keeps people from tying the place up when they do not have full intentions of coming.  

I'd love to hear others thoughts on it.  I suppose this could also be a area/type of rental specific thing (i.e. strictly a vacation/beach house vs. a place that gets one night stays from traveller's etc...)

I'm working through my tax stuff currently.  I have 2 listings on Airbnb.  When adding up the host fees I've paid, it looks like one of them is at 3% and the other is being charged 5%.  From what I've been able to find, it appears that the cancelation policy that we have may lead to the higher host fee, is that correct? 

If it is, what are the different schools of thought on this?  This rental grosses around $60,000, the extra 2% would be costing me around $1200/year.  We've had a few cancelations over the past year, probably totaling in the $1-2000 range, but I have usually ended up refunding the money anyways (some dates were rebooked, others had a legitimate excuse, some appeared to be a problem waiting to happen and I figured it was better to lose a few hundred dollars).  Is it better to loosen the cancelation policy and pocket a little extra money with each booking?

Quote from @Quinn Olivarez:

Airbnb is a company, not a public utility. No one is entitled to doing business with them. Something tells me you wouldn't want your STR used for an antifa meeting, so why is it surprising that Airbnb would have similar instincts?

I think the problem is that if I refused to rent to a group of 2 Antifa members just because they were Antifa members, I'd be booted off as a host.  
Tell the folks that wouldn't make a wedding cake for a gay couple that no one is entitled to do business with them...

I feel like for me, Airbnb is a set of golden handcuffs.  I don't agree with a lot of stuff they do, but where else would I turn to get the revenue coming in that they provide?

I currently have 2 houses that I'm renting short-term on Airbnb.  They both have septic systems.  I'm fairly familiar with septic, I've had them in my personal residences for 10 + years now.  With my personal, we rarely have it pumped, but I also know how to treat it, and we don't put crazy things down the drain.  With the others, we have mostly city folk that are on vacation, I have no idea how many different things are being put in it, from grease to food to God only knows what.  How often do those of you with septics have them pumped?  

Originally posted by @John Underwood:

Excel

Very powerful and customizable. 

I track over 20 properties. Tab for every property. Summary tab that pulls in key data for all properties.

 John,

Is this something that you had to build out/have built, or is it something that comes with Excel or something different altogether?  My day job uses something very similar to this for our budgeting/tracking, and I can manipulate a built sheet.  However, for me to try to build that myself would likely take weeks, and even then it would probably be cumbersome and not friendly to use.

A week ago a tenant notified me that she thought she had mice in her townhouse.  I suggested she put out traps and/or poison as pest control is her responsibility after the first 30 days (per the lease).  She doesn't want to do that because "they aren't safe for her cat" and "doesn't want a dead mouse in the walls".  A few days later she said she now thinks its squirrels in the attic...I went out to check the attic, because I certainly don't want a squirrel living in there.  No squirrel.  I could hear mice in the walls of her bedroom.  

My assumption is that most leases have the tenant take care of pests to discourage poor housekeeping.  This tenant isn't bad, and she does keep the house fairly clean.  I'm torn on holding the line and making her deal with it and having a pest control company go out on my dime.  I have no idea how these things are getting in, they are in a 2nd floor wall in a townhouse in the city, there aren't huge fields nearby.  I don't think it's caused by her poor housekeeping.  I do not know how clean the neighbors unit it (owner occupant, I've talked to him and he says he doesn't hear/have anything).  My fear is that they'll either tear the walls up themselves to deal with it (unlikely, she seems genuinely terrified of mice), or learn to live with it and I'll have 9 months of mouse damage to deal with at the end of the lease.  I know it's a business, and I don't want to train the tenant to cry about every issue and then cave on it, but I also know that if the roles were reversed, and it was me, I'd have a hard time handing over a few hundred dollars to "fix" something that isn't my problem.  

Anyone have and words of advice or creative solutions?  

I'm not 100% sure this is the best area to post this, if it should be moved let me know.  I'll lay out the situation and if you need any more info, I'll try to provide it. 

I've (and my wife, who doesn't have much to do with it but is supportive of it) have been investing in real estate for about 3.5 years. We started with a townhouse, then added another 8 months later. Those are rented out long-term and are doing well. In late 2020 we bought a small cabin in the next county over by a river and started renting it out on Airbnb and it's doing incredible. Then in March, we purchased a single family home that is located directly in front of our primary home and started renting it out on Airbnb. The hope with that one was to both control the neighborhood and to make a little money, it's doing very well also. The down payment for all of these has came from a HELOC on our primary, all the money that is generated from any of the rentals goes back into paying that down. We have NO other debt outside of real estate and the HELOC. I work a W2 job as a fireman. I'm not dying to get out of that, but in 5 years, I will have locked in significant retirement benefits and my goal is to have the option of living off of real estate income at that point should I decide to. I'll be 41 and would need to completely cover my expenses, my pension will not start paying out until I'm 50.

I met with the loan officer at our local bank that we've worked with (they have the HELOC and are holding the mortgage on the last purchase) and talked about another purchase. He said that my debt to income is very close to being too high for another loan. He also said that the Airbnb's are somewhat difficult to count as income before we've gotten a tax return done that shows the profit off of them as well, that issue should be resolved by March of next year I suppose and I understand where he's coming from with that. None of the previous deals were BRRR's, we've paid close to market for them, with the exception of the one if front of us, we didn't do much work, but we knew the seller and I'm confident that we got it for $10,000 under market. I like the BRRR strategy, and I'm starting to see a few deals come up that would lend themselves to that. However, I feel like the perfect deal could drop in my lap and I wouldn't be able to take it down due to a lack of financing capability. I've thought about hard money, but I haven't looked into it. The thing that makes me nervous about that would be getting everything done and then finding out that I couldn't do the refinance and then being left in a bind at that point.

I"m not in a place where not buying something for the next year is going to put me behind in life, but with interest rates low, inflation coming, and the shortage of houses for the near future, I feel like I'm going to miss out on stuff.  We just had a tri-plex come up for sale (rare for this area), that needed updates that are in my wheelhouse that was priced fairly, and I'm not able to do anything...I don't like that and I'd like to set myself up to not be in that spot again.  I also don't want to overextend myself and have everything come crashing down on me.  I'd love to hear some thoughts, opinions, and any advice folks have.  

@Jefferson Brown

That's outstanding.  Sounds very similar to what I was thinking, just replacing a random person with family.  Even 10% for what I need sounds really high, the flat rate is appealing.  What kinds of stays are you getting in these properties?  We get a lot of 1 night stays, for around $150.  $20 per would be getting pretty pricy on those, but not so bad for the week long stays.  

@Steven Mcnutt

I have a lot of my messages (at booking, before check-in, morning after, and pre-check out) on a schedule through Airbnb.  That works fairly well, but I have had an issue with some of them not sending for one reason or another (no idea why).  Are these things better to have set up through something like Yourporter, or is that mostly valuable if your'e using multiple listing platforms? 

For the message templates, are they just pre written answers to common questions, i.e. "where can I rent a boat" that you have to select from a list to send, or does Airbnb pick out key words from a question and send the answer automatically? 

It also looks like Yourporter will automatically approve inquiries as well.  I'm a little apprehensive to do that, for example, if someone sends an inquiry asking "are you waterfront", and it automatically approves them, they book, then find out we aren't waterfront (or whatever the question is), am I setting myself up for disgruntled guests?  Maybe I'm reading too much into things, I'm still trying to feel this whole process out.  

Maintenance issues are minimal, the impetus for looking into this was a toilet problem on a Sunday a few weeks ago.  We aren't getting daily issues, but that one took a while to deal with while I was at work.  

I'm not incredibly tech savvy.  I do have a yourporter account and I'm trying out pricelabs for the pricing.  Is this one of the softwares to automate things that I should be using more of?  How so?