All Forum Posts by: Kenneth Rolfe

Quote from @Curtis Porter:

Quote from @John Underwood:

I assume you’re doing flips or have other properties now since 22k is below the poverty level?

HA! No I live off of $22k, other house is a cardboard box. I have a cohost business and a STR maintenance business. It's been a whirlwind for sure.

Hey Curtis, congrats!  I love hearing stories like yours.  I’m curious what made you decide to start your cohosting and maintenance business?  What was the transition like from running your own STR to now 17+?

We have everything shipped to our cleaners.  They let us know when things start to run low, we place the order and ship to them, email them to let them know what to expect and then they take it and restock the closet on the next turnover.

If you don’t trust your cleaner to do this or they are not willing, you probably need to find another cleaner.

Good Luck when you go live in December!

Other than managing the property, is this person bringing anything else to the partnership?  If not, I would recommend you just find a property manager to run it as a short term rental for you.  They should charge between 20-30% so you should make more money that way.

Great question!  I think it can be challenging to leave the emotion out, especially early on in your investing journey.  You almost have to train yourself in this regard in my opinion, but this can be done.  Ultimately you have to ask yourself what your goals are and then do you best to align to those goals.

We just bought a STR a couple months ago. The numbers made sense and we were excited. The hesitation is that the house we were buying wasn't something we would want to stay in. But we moved forward because we trusted the numbers. The property is OOS and when we flew out to close on the house and set it up (seeing it in person for the first time) we were nervous. First night we stayed in the house and we were uncomfortable being there… by the end of the week we didn't want to leave.

Emotions are real, they will likely show up in the process.  It’s all about how we respond when they do.

Quote from @William Beck:

Make sure to check out the regulations. I remember Door County being super regulated when I was an analyst for STR Buyers.

This is a great point, and some of the villages are still evolving, so definitely do your homework and make sure the regulations in place work for what you’re trying to do.  Sevastopol in particular is a place we ended up staying away from due to their regulations.

I just closed on my first property in Door County back in June and so far everything has been going great!  We were worried with the timing of the closing and missing out on the peak season, but bookings started rolling in pretty quick and we should finish the summer pretty much right at our projections for July/August despite the late start.

The biggest challenge was finding a property.  Not much goes on the market and like many places we were competing with many other offers.  Ultimately our realtor found us a place off market.

My advice is to run your numbers and determine what you’re looking for in a property.  Get qualified with a lender so you know what you’re working with.  Then go to work looking for that property and be patient as it might take awhile.

If you have specific questions let me know.

@Adriana Rego congrats!  Assuming you used and agent to find you property, I would ask them for recommendations.  My realtor has been extremely helpful in this regard as she is well established and connected in the area, hopefully yours can help in a similar way.  Good luck!

I agree with @Christy Flora, just ask your cleaners how they would handle it during the interview process.  My cleaners take the used sheets to wash and return them the next time they come clean the house.

Good luck, I hope everything goes well!

Quote from @Kaylee Walterbach:

Hello BP forums—help us choose a book title! This is for the medium-term rental book coming out in November.

We don't have a forum exclusively for medium-term rentals (yet!) so I figured this would be a good place to post this question. For those of you curious to learn more about 30-plus-day rentals and/or traveling nurse housing, which book title/subtitle sounds the most compelling?

1. The Long-Short Rental: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide to Mastering 30-Day Stays

2. 30-Day Stay: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide to Mastering the Medium-Term Rental

Thanks for your input!

How to Ace Your Mid-Terms: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide to Mastering the Medium-Term Rental

Between the two original options listed, I would go with the second option.

@AaronFaith Riddering make sure you look into local regulations as well.  Even if the area draws people in, heavy regulation could be another reason you’re not seeing other properties on Airbnb and might make this a non-starter.