All Forum Posts by: Dominic Metzger

Hello all, 

I have a fairly interesting scenario that I'm wondering if anyone else has ever run into? So I do a mix of short and long term renting on a fully furnished corporate rental.  Often this simply means "normal leasing" as it's for your average year lease.

Anyway, my current tenant is paying the rent via an insurance payout due to their home being destroyed by fire.  The Insurance company, State Farm, is going to send me a check directly for the rent however they require the tenant to be reimbursed by them for utilities.  Since it's not possible due to various reasons to change the names on any utilities I'm wondering if anyone has experience doing a separate direct invoice to s tenant for only utilities every month, and then sending that to the insurance company? Specifically this seems to be an State Farm requirement. 

Thanks for any ideas!

Being from Pittsburgh, I'd be careful trying to rent out 1 BR apartments in Oakland for 1600 a month.  It is almost exclusively a college kid area and Pitt is a state school with lower tuition requirements.  The issue is that those 600k 4plexs were only 200k 10 years ago, yet probably bring in similar rent so it's mainly being sold at such a high price to make some fast money.  Maybe others have success at those price points but I just don't many non-college people living in oakland who can afford those prices.  Personally I'd then focus on supplying temporary housing to Doctors if thats the price I was going for. After all, Pittsburgh is a UPMC and PITT economy. 

Vast majority of salaries in Pittsburgh are low with a few stories of robotics engineers earning 250k a year.

The expensive properties are going to be in Shady Side/Squirrel Hill where you find CMU grads staying or a few blocks off bakery square in the nice parts of East Liberty (but you are assuming Amazon, Google, Uber, etc are going to invest a lot more which isn't a guarantee).

The older areas have very sturdy brick houses which can be gutted successfully without having to rebuild the whole thing, and in MANY areas you are not allowed to rebuild as you have to maintain the brick exterior look for cultural reasons. 

Anyway just my 2c from a Pittsburgh native

I run a corporate/business rental from my home and luckily I haven't had any issues with guests becoming such a problem.  The only time where a guest did stay over their limit was using AirBnB to fill a gap, when they forgot to ask for an extension, which resulted in me charging them an emergency booking fee (which I completely made up on the spot).   

When renting for longer than 1 month I make sure to put in writing that while they have right to use the property on a temporary basis, I have full rights to retain use of the property with 30 day notice.  However, this IS My primary residence as well so perhaps that makes it easier to resolve.  I also only give month to month leases that have to be renewed frequently with money up front.  Unlike a normal long-term lease I never include passive language such as a lease being assumed to be renewed if no one terminates it. 

I'd probably just cycle the alarm system off and on every 10 minutes until they left

Just a question for anyone that works with property managers in Pittsburgh.  Currently I'm overseas and I'm looking to lease my fully furnished home (primary residence) on a short term (3-6 month) basis. 

Has anyone worked with a local management company that may specialize in those kind of arrangements?

Thank you!

I think the east end rental rates are pretty insane for the average income of Pittsburgh, in general.   A very similar issue is happening on the North Side where you can't even buy a burned out crack house (Trust me, that is not hyperbole) for less than 150k, as two such homes recently sold for higher!.   Areas like those two have 0 parking and traffic in east end is a nightmare.  Google, etc may be creating some high end jobs but Pittsburgh is not designed for this much congestion.

@Marcia - thanks for the links, I have read about Allegheny county taxing short-term rentals now.  It may not be worth it to rent out only part of my house with all the additional regulations hitting these kind of deals now.  

So far it's a fun experiment and something new from normal leasing but it's already quite the hassle even only doing 2 customers a month for a total of 2 weeks.

Hello! I was wondering if anyone has some good advice on the difference in classifications and taxes when it comes to doing short-term rentals of *part* of the home vs the entire home?

Currently I'm away from my house but maintain a living area in the basement and only use airbnb to rent out the top floor of my residence.  From what I understand because I satisfy the requirements for my own occupancy (I've lived there about 4 months of the year so far) then the house isn't fully a commercial or investment property?

I'm curious then if short term rentals can be considered home sharing? even if its not using a lease agreement? This is all pretty new to me as I wasn't intending on being out of the country and decided to reduce the mortgage costs of my home by renting it out a few weeks a month.

Thank you for any help on this!

@Brandon Crumpton To me it's no different than any other risk assessment.   Identify the probability of a risk (such as vacancy) occurring and the mitigation steps required (cash reserves) to cover yourself.   As long as you don't over leverage yourself by keeping not enough cash on hand then it's a great way to build wealth.  

Personally I rather buy 3 100k houses by putting 30k down on each rather than buy 1 house at 100k.  Triple the rent for the same money and it's unlikely you'll suffer some catastrophe on all your properties at the same time.  

I am very much waiting for opportunities for non-accredited investors.  It's quite frustrating to be unable to invest in lucrative real estate equity market because of an arbitrary restriction of 200k.  I make slightly less than that yet have almost no liabilities and drastically reduced tax burdens due to overseas work which probably makes it so my take home pay is higher.  However, I still can't invest.  I hope companies like Patch of Land will open up their rules under the above Title IV (Reg A+) sooner rather than later.

Thank you for all the welcomes! It's been quite the learning experience reading all the content on BP and listening to the pod casts.  

@Elizabeth Colegrove How do you manage the tenants being so far away with no property manager? Being single and overseas I simply have no inclination to dealing with calls about problems.