All Forum Posts by: Levi Koskan

thanks all. 

@Christopher Price - reached out to Maggie's team. thanks for the recommendation. 

@Jason Luongo,@Jen LeViseur - Thanks for the offers, one piece of advise I've received that I'm admit about following is to have a PM that is Local. Someone I can walk the property with if need be and is plugged in to local trends. 

@Chris Allen - Yes, if you can provide me some contact info, or website, I'll be sure to follow up.

Love the discussion. 

@Michael Baum, really appreciate your strong opinion. 

I've sat down with a few local STR hosts and the ones who have used a service, hated it. One went so far as to say it was the worst financial mistake they've ever made (in the context of the rental).

@Aubrey Brendle, you mentioned using systems for automation for self-hosts. I do use those systems today. My stack includes Guesty, PriceLabs, Turno, and RemoteLock. They help A TON. I'm going to continue vetting PMs because something the Brandon Turner once said on the BP pod that sticks with me is "are you an investor or a contractor" or what Robert Kiyosaki says "you either work in your biz or on your biz". I know that in order to scale, I need to recapture my time capacity.

I can't afford to make a mistake hiring the wrong PM so I'll take my time with this. 

Much appreciation to those who took the time/effort to respond.

Howdy BP community, thank you in advance.

In addition to doing my own research, I'm also looking for STR Property Manager recommendations from this community. BP has provided so much value to me and my RE endeavors that a recommendation would go a long way in helping me find the right partner.

Why now?
I've been a house hacker the last 7 years. Started with LTR tenants, then bought my second house and I converted an ADU to an STR while I still lived there. Due to a growing family I've had to move into my LTR home recently. I've been managing the STR myself and I'm comfortable managing it myself but due to some of the unique aspects of the property, I feel that having a professional STR PM involved might lead to one of those situations where by me doing less I'll actually get more out of the property.

If anyone has experience with a well established STR PM that has the below assets, I'd love to hear about it!

The right kind of PM for me:
- Is established in the STR space and has a sizable team, including a handyman on staff.
- Can perform an audit of my property, it's unique attributes, and make data driven recommendations on optimal strategies to increase performance.
- With their portfolio, they have access to a property management software that will allow syndication to more channels then I can manage myself. Outside of Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com, I'd like to be listed on TripAdvisor, on Google's Vacation Rental Search results (only available to approved PMs, not individuals like myself, and potentially flipkey, fullyfurnished, and craigslist.
- I'd prefer they be local to ATX but I don't see that as a hard requirement if they are highly reputable and have access to locals.

I'm a willing partner, I can commit to:
- Super clear and reasonable on expectations 
- Being super responsive to requests. Be it unique guest requests or repair requests. 
- Open to suggestions on property amenity improvements and listing management
- Available to review reports and communicate openly.

If anyone in this community has first hand experience with a PM that you think I should meet with, I'd REALLY appreciate the recommendation.

Again, thank you for the attention and help!

Thanks for your response @Nathan Gesner, not sure what happened to the video link I posted. Looks like BP removed it after my post was live, maybe as a moderation safe guard of some sort... idk.

I really appreciate the response @Scott M.. The follow up and questions you're asking is the reason why this community is so valuable. A big part of posting on a forum is knowing how to ask your question and I just didn't do that very well in this case. I apologize. Next time I'll know the extent of details to include. 

Despite my lack of details, folks were able to give me the high level direction of where to look to see if the PM has liability. The answer -> Review the Property Management Agreement to determine what they promised to do and then use that to assess any potential negligence. 

ANND an update on that point. I've reviewed my Property Management Agreement and unfortunately for me, there isn't any language around guaranteeing inspections. The best I can produce are some notes I have for when I interviewed them and asked about inspections but that will only go so far. Additionally, the PM company offered me some sort of insurance plan for covering tenant damage that exceeded the deposit amount that I declined. So, contractually, strictly speaking, they did their duty I suppose. 

At this point best I can do is put in a request, work with the management team at my PM company, and see what they say. There's the real possibility that this situation might sour our relationship and at that point, I'll move on and find a new company but with this experience in mind. My fault, lesson learned.

Fair, I'll expand.

Home is in Austin, TX. Single family home in middle class neighborhood. Its in the B-B+ asset class range depending on how you want to define it. 

That room example is simply representative of the entire 2100 sqft single family home. EVERY room, including the garage is like that. Walls and carpets have organic material rubbed in (a mixture of food, and perhaps feces IDK but it is gross). Theres no way to save the carpets. The carpets weren't new but they were in good shape. I would expect a percentage of new carpets be billed to tenants not the entire bill. A moving/cleaning company has been to the dump 3 times! 3! and still has about 2-3 more trips to go! The tenants left so much junk, if you really want to see more pictures, I have them. 

But this is really besides the point. I'm not asking on how to figure out how much to charge the tenants. My ask is about the PMs responsibility. Not a specific number but level of blame.

I'll need to do quite a bit of work to get this property back and healthy. Things like carpets, blinds, doors, lights, fumigation, paint, cleaning and some landscaping. 

The brunt of my frustration is at the tenants who should be sent to collections and pay for not only the missed rent but the damages. They are the ones at fault here and I get that. But as I reflect on how this situation arose I started to wonder to what degree is the property management company responsible? Ultimately, they are the ones who created the tenant requirements, found and placed the tenant, managed the tenant, and lastly are the ones paid to be care takers of the property. 

COVID made home inspections harder and the tenant, knowing they were in trouble, refused to do virtual inspections so how was the PM to know? Although, repairs had happened on site, a microwave went out and a water heater was replaced so the handimen had access and didn't report anything? I'm left scratching my head. 

I'm just curious on what my expectations should be for the PM's responsibility in this case. Is there common concessions others have seen that I can ask for? Would the PM consider paying for the repairs and then as the tenant pays on collections those payments get routed to the PM instead of me? I'm not quite sure how to navigate this and what my asks should be. Should the "threat of leaving" card be played to gain leverage or is that a bit tacky considering they're not a cable company. 

In addition to the damages, I'll probably loose 1-2 months of rent while the repairs get underway so the financial side of things are looking grim.

Thanks for helping me understand what appropriate expectations should be.

At the end of the day it all comes back to supply and demand. Saying a "crash" is coming is saying that supply will exceed demand. A correction can happen, and will happen, which says supply comes closer to demand. Who knows when though? When I look at the Austin and surrounding areas, in combination with macro factors such as national migration patterns, I just don't see how supply surpasses demand to the point of a "crash". 

The argument that we're seeing a massive increase in new homes on the market as describe as a percentage is misleading. We've had such a limited inventory that anytime you combine percents with smaller numbers the effects are exaggerated. It's intuitive that folks who paused on selling while covid lockdown was a thing are now ready to list and thus a natural increase in supply. Even so, if the rate at which homes hit the market continued to increase, it would be good. We're miles away from 6 months of inventory and have been for some time. At that point, prices would flatten, but not crash.

What if interest rates go up? - Borrowers of the 2020's have been more qualified with higher down payments, credit scores, and DTI ratios so I predict that the amount of folks being qualified out of the market wont be as server as some project. Additionally, as rates go up, those folks that did buy will hold onto the homes. They will look at their 2.* or 3.* percent interest rate and emotionally not want to let go. It's not like we have a bunch of folks with ARM loans who now can't afford their mortgage.

I'm a long term holder so it doesn't make much difference to me really, just my thoughts. 

IDK I just don't see a crash happening - Famous Last Words :) 

A bit of a random question. I found a report that the city of Austin Commissioned in 2019 diving into the management and business viability of the muni golf courses. As some of us might know, damn hard to get a decent tee time on a muni right now and with talk of Lions or even Hancock going away... I was interested in what the report had to say. Anyways, one of the interesting bullets points of the report was the mention of a development going in on the NE side. Curious if anyone knows anything about it. Except below:

"Decker Lake - Several years ago, there was a proposal before City council for a private
developer to build two 18-hole PGA TOUR-level golf courses on 735 acres of city-owned
land by Decker Lake, which is currently a fenced in area of the 3,700-acre Walter E. Long
park near Highway 130. The plan involves private interests in control of the construction
and the operation of the facility, subject to a revenue share with the City. The City told
NGF that this proposed project is currently on hold."

Source material:
http://www.austintexas.gov/sit... pg.20

Im reaching out to a CPA but thought I would leave this here. I did just learn that I think what I was looking for was filing a schedule E or better yet a schedule C on my taxes. A LLC probably isn't necessary.

Schedule C is for a sole proprietorship business. For AirBnB, you have to provide services in addition to just the lodging to be considered a business. I do provide concierge services to guests as well as on-call maintenance so hopefully, the CPA tells me I qualify.
https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs...

source:
> https://sharedeconomycpa.com/b...

Thanks for the responses, shows how much I don't know. 

I agree @Michael Plaks, I think the correct move, only move, is to find a real estate specialist CPA and get a tax plan put together. If you know of a colleague in the Austin area I should consider, I would be very appreciative.

Due to the winter weather event we had in Texas, taxes aren't due till June so hopefully that provides sometime to find a good partner. 
Source:
> https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/i... 

Thanks again for the help!