All Forum Posts by: Kathy Cooper

So @Kathy Cooper, you are saying to believe that all STRs will go away and become longer stay STR or a LTR? I am not sure that is going to happen really.

I do see some folks making the switch over if necessary, but there are many performing STRs in many markets that will keep going on. Our place wouldn't make a good short stay long term rental. Maybe a decent LTR but it is a lake house that is quite rural. We are doing well in the STR market and I think we will keep on keepin' on.

I have a short term rental in the suburbs of San Antonio.  Cibolo, TX is close to Randolph AFB and 30 min drive to downtown San Antonio or New Braunfels.  We have been booked for a1.5 years straight with 90 percent occupancy rate until December 2022. Going into January, I had zero reservations.  Scary times but thankfully the home cash flowed well for a long time so while we were nervous, we didn't give up.  I made some changes and lowered my prices.  Then the next day I caught a 30-day reservation.   I have heard from other owners in more saturated areas of San Antonio have been having the same issue with minimal reservations.

I hope to continue to make adjustments to keep my occupancy rate up.  I am not in a vacation area but have found a niche in the suburbs with people transitioning to south Texas and waiting to close on a home.  

Yes, Airbnb's stock price has plummeted and guests are leaving the platform for hotels due to the "hidden fees" by Airbnb so with the winter release they had to do something to cater to both the host and the guest. The guest gets to see the total price while the host can now easily remove unfavorable reviews. Airbnb's algorithm took a major change and a lot of vacancies started to happen across the board. I personally took advantage of it and started running Google ads toward Airbnb's SEO to get direct bookings. Airbnb taking the brunt hit is actually a good thing for STR operators.

We have to start keeping short-term rentals separate from Airbnb. Airbnb is just a listing platform. If true STR operators wanted to protect short-term rentals they would be building a brand where customers can book direct. Just use Airbnb as a lead generation tool.

Howdy everyone wanted to get some feedback / opinions on mid term rentals! Looking to begin a potential development in downtown San Antonio that can be short or mid term rentals due to the area. Wondering what your experience has been with either? And if you have a preference which one and why?

I don't think the supply for downtown, fully furnished, in a great location mid term rentals is there so I'm definitely leaning more towards that option, but I'm open to feedback. Would love to connect with anyone in short / mid term rentals in the San Antonio / Austin area as I dive more into this area of real estate!

I have gotten a lot of traffic and traction off of Booking.com and filled a lot of empty dates that weren't coming in on the Airbnb/VRBO site. BUT - and this is a huge but - there are some serious caveats you need to keep in mind:

1. You need to have your own ability to take payment. We have our own portals - we have all the major stuff already because of our LTR company - Stripe, Square, Zelle, Paypal, etc - but if you don't have this, you will need to get it to use Booking.com. Eventually, I'm told, you get to be a gold star type host and they'll collect payment for you, but no one can tell me when or how this will work because...

2. They're a foreign company and not very easy to work with. Reps speak rudimentary english at best. You will spend some time on the front end waiting on long holds, and you'll do this because...

3. They don't charge the guest's credit cards, only take them to book on your calendar - so if the guest cancels during your "no cancellation" period, you are SOL because you don't have the CC number and can't see the CC number. Eventually, I'm told, you can see this once you're a gold-star type host, but until then the info is masked so you have no way of pre-authorizing or charging the card. You have to physically contact the guest yourself to get their credit card info to have them pay through an outside portal (like those I listed). And because they don't actually charge the CC and you have no way of charging the CC until they pay...

4. You get a decent number of scam and "lookey loo" bookers, because they know they haven't actually paid for anything. This ends up being a problem because once someone books, they've locked you into that booking according to booking.com's rules - you can't cancel until they day they don't contact you with a valid credit card. 

So I have had my battles with them. I've done a lot of traffic and stays with them so far - probably 50% compared to 50% total Airbnb/VRBO - but I have worked for that money for sure. 

If you use them, I would highly recommend blocking out high-value dates on their platform and leave them open on the other platforms, and either manually sync your calendars or just leave the booking calendar off of VRBO/AirBnb, because you don't want some BS booking clogging up Christmas, New Years, etc. 

Sorry but I think all of us should be in the guest / tenant-friendly business. At least those of us who want to be super successful. Even with my long term tenants, I try to maintain this attitude and it pays huge dividends.

As everyone is rushing to get into the Airbnb market, we have been in it long enough to want to get off of their platform altogether.

We still want to do short-term rentals just not on Airbnb due to their guest-friendly company policies.

We are not in a vacation area so VRBO produced next to nothing.  We actually cater to workers coming in and out of our area.  We love the aspect of the 30-90 day guest.  We have our units on Furnished Finder and it fills some of our calendars, just not all of them.  

Does anyone have experience with other sites or strategies doing short-term rentals....not on Airbnb?