All Forum Posts by: Katie McCartney

Jacob, I had issues of lenders not understanding short term rentals by usinga second home loan. I would recommend finding a lender in the area if the rental and a insurance person who understands short term renting. I learned the hard way never to mention that I was going to rent out my second home AND that there are those who better understand the short term renting industry.

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I find that forums like Bigger Pockets are a good place to meet others and form relationships. It's a bit harder; but, it is there. I still like in person networking for what I do (residential sales) and do my own version of networking. Real Estate is still a relationship business and a lot of ways. People forget that in my opinion and try to looking for automated ways of doing real estate. It's burned some companies example: iBuyers is the most recent iteration. However, there is room for all sorts of ways of "doing" Real Estate. It just depends on persistence.

1 Vote

I use instant booking with VRBO and never had an issue with guests after 1 year of use. I have recently added AirBnB but don't have instant booking so there isn't a conflict between the two systems. It does take a moment to update between the two so I would be careful on the double booking issue. There are penalties for a VRBO host canceling. I have a policy that if the guest wants to cancel, they need to do through contacting VRBO and giving them the support number. I'm happy to move dates if they wish because that doesn't harm me but cancelations can be harmful on VRBO.

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@Billy Daniel Like everyone has been saying Ohio has been "dirt cheap" compared to other areas in the United States. In Central Ohio there has been an influx of jobs that everyone has been flocking to and the recent commitment of Intel building a facility in the Northeast section of Columbus, has all the investors hunting for the best deal. Being from Central Ohio, I know that they have a concerted effort on attracting jobs and have a entity called One Columbus to get us there. They have been working on this since 2010 and have been successful. This has driven up home prices, rental rates, etc.

2 Votes

Quote from @Joel Case:

Quote from @Katie McCartney:

Quote from @Gerald Pitts:

Quote from @Katie McCartney:

Thanks! I'll take it under consideration.

Any reason you've avoided them up to now? I mean it would seem like 100 reasons ha, but to me, none of them are good enough for me to avoid them altogether. Or at least for starting out. I have as many headache vrbo guests as airbnb. Thankfully, they're in the minority on both platforms. But i would definitely give it a shot. You can always take it back down after a few mos.

I wanted to "ease" into this environment. I like to learn before I go. I had some VRBO diehards that didn't like airbnbs persuade me not to do it for the first year. They had a lot of headache from AirBnB guests and double booking. Plus, I have to admit the VRBO has been lucrative for me. I'm at the higher price point on VRBO and well, I'm not sure if AirBnB will track. However, I am on AirBnB now so... I'll find out. Another "scary" thing has been double booking; but, I have been managing that by going and and manually updating the listing on AirBnB and have not turned on instant book. At some point I would like to add to the portfolio so I won't be ablet to manually "do" all this fiddling maneuvering myself. However, down the road concerns - right?

You can definitely do it manually. I use a channel manager which involves a fee, but you could import your calendar once you decide to go live on Airbnb.

To export your Vrbo calendar into Airbnb:

Go to your Vrbo account and select the listing you want
Click Calendars in the left navigation menu, then click Reservation
Click the Import/Export icon and click Export Calendar
In the Export calendar window, copy the link
Go to Listing and select the listing you want
Go to Pricing and availability > Calendar sync
Click Import calendar
Copy the link into the Calendar address field
Name the calendar (for example, Vrbo)
Click Import calendar

Thanks.

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Columbus, Ohio

Moving cross country is hard. Keeping friendships are harder! Columbus is an extremely friendly city (I'm a transplant from Cincinnati for 20 years now). You will make quick friends. Trust me. I'm sure there are meet up groups and the like. There is a lot of networking you can do in CBus. Hope to see you around.

2 Votes

Quote from @Cody Wageman:

@Katie McCartney thank you for your reply. I have been doing some of this research but it is good to hear that how it has worked for you. The tax professional is someone I am really digging into because I know there are a lot of potential tax benefits to making sure we do it right and have the right tracking and planning in place to not overpay on taxes where we could have saved. I will look into an insurance person though, that isn't a person I had very high on my list and that makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

My pleasure.

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Idaho Falls, Idaho

Quote from @Paul Sandhu:

I am surprised nobody has mentioned Craigs List. Probably 20% of my bookings come from there.

There is also direct marketing, but that is the subject of another post.

I'm not a big fan of Craigs List in general. I had to deal a lot back in the day as a Real Estate Agent with fake posts that were rental scams. I'm skeptical of Craigs List for me. Happy it works for you.

1 Vote

Columbus, Ohio