All Forum Posts by: Mark Miles

Quote from @Valentina Calla:

Hello everyone! I am an investor-friendly agent that works with a lot of clients that are looking for STRs near Disney. I usually recommend they pick homes that are themed but they are hard to come by. Does anyone have recommendations for good-quality theming companies? 

 Just go on fiverr or upwork - for around $100 there’s plenty of highly talented highly skilled interior designers who will mock up themed designs for you, complete with links to everything you’ll need to buy! 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Congrats! Off topic but I REALLY hope you call your business Gulliver's Travels

Quote from @Scott Schuhwerk:

Quote from @Mark Miles:

Quote from @Sean Bramble:

Quote from @Mark Miles:

Quote from @Patrick K.:

As a host my biggest fear when running an airbnb is some teens start a party. which is hard enough to prevent if all your listing is clustered in a city (you can hire someone to patrol during party hours). but his listings seem to spread out all over the place. he doesn't even have a management company and instead manages all of them himself. 

how did he do it?

 Not sure who Robuild is but I do the same thing thanks to an army of offshore assistants

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Hey @Mark Miles - I’ve seen some of your past posts about this and am really interested in offshore help. Question: can you give us a sense of what you pay for your virtual help relative to your gross revenue? Just trying to get a sense of it vs traditional property mgmt

I pay about 5 to 10% of my gross revenue for offshore virtual assistants. They literally handle everything, I do nothing. Way better than traditional property management which typically charges 20 to 40% of gross revenue and completely wipes out your profits.

Also better than managing everything myself. I happily give away 5 to 10% of gross revenue to my offshore assts to have a high earning business on total auto pilot, it is 99.99% passive income.

I know I’m gonna sound like a jerk when I say this, but in all honesty, the most amount of time I spend every month is transferring the profits from my business bank accounts into my personal bank account. Because of course I don’t give anyone else access to my bank accounts. I spend like an hour every month going into all my business bank accounts and transferring the profits to my personal accounts. But I usually have a good sports game on in the background so at least I can keep an eye on that while transferring money around.

As I’ve said before, my offshore assistants can:

- call someone to clear the road of snow leading up to your cabin

- call someone to remove a 50 year old tree that fell in your driveway last night and the guests can't depart.

- call someone to remove a snake from under the sofa

- call someone to remove the trash when it's piling up

- help guests find your cabin when it is 1am and they are completely lost

And much much more! They speak very good English and handle everything for me, I would highly recommend it as a method to try to make your STR business 99.99% passive

 Mark, @Mark Miles do you use a specific offshore VA team/company or did you hire individually off sites like Upwork, bestonlinejobs, etc?

 I don’t like working with offshore companies, I find that they tend to hire low quality people plus I am paying their management overhead. Plus they are constantly hiring and firing people that I need to retrain

I have hired everyone individually using those various websites that you mentioned. There were definitely some duds, I had to fire some along the way. But every time you fire someone you learn and improve your hiring process and now I am really good at finding good people and screening out the bad people.

I have even trained some of my offshore assistants to be skilled at interviewing new offshore assistants, so I don’t even have to get involved in hiring new assistants anymore 👍

Quote from @Sean Bramble:

Quote from @Mark Miles:

Quote from @Patrick K.:

As a host my biggest fear when running an airbnb is some teens start a party. which is hard enough to prevent if all your listing is clustered in a city (you can hire someone to patrol during party hours). but his listings seem to spread out all over the place. he doesn't even have a management company and instead manages all of them himself. 

how did he do it?

 Not sure who Robuild is but I do the same thing thanks to an army of offshore assistants

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Hey @Mark Miles - I’ve seen some of your past posts about this and am really interested in offshore help. Question: can you give us a sense of what you pay for your virtual help relative to your gross revenue? Just trying to get a sense of it vs traditional property mgmt

I pay about 5 to 10% of my gross revenue for offshore virtual assistants. They literally handle everything, I do nothing. Way better than traditional property management which typically charges 20 to 40% of gross revenue and completely wipes out your profits.

Also better than managing everything myself. I happily give away 5 to 10% of gross revenue to my offshore assts to have a high earning business on total auto pilot, it is 99.99% passive income.

I know I’m gonna sound like a jerk when I say this, but in all honesty, the most amount of time I spend every month is transferring the profits from my business bank accounts into my personal bank account. Because of course I don’t give anyone else access to my bank accounts. I spend like an hour every month going into all my business bank accounts and transferring the profits to my personal accounts. But I usually have a good sports game on in the background so at least I can keep an eye on that while transferring money around.

As I’ve said before, my offshore assistants can:

- call someone to clear the road of snow leading up to your cabin

- call someone to remove a 50 year old tree that fell in your driveway last night and the guests can't depart.

- call someone to remove a snake from under the sofa

- call someone to remove the trash when it's piling up

- help guests find your cabin when it is 1am and they are completely lost

And much much more! They speak very good English and handle everything for me, I would highly recommend it as a method to try to make your STR business 99.99% passive

Quote from @Patrick K.:

As a host my biggest fear when running an airbnb is some teens start a party. which is hard enough to prevent if all your listing is clustered in a city (you can hire someone to patrol during party hours). but his listings seem to spread out all over the place. he doesn't even have a management company and instead manages all of them himself. 

how did he do it?

 Not sure who Robuild is but I do the same thing thanks to an army of offshore assistants

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Quote from @Sean Bramble:

I’ve noticed a few markets I’m researching seem to have lower revenues looking forward compared to 2020/2021 … curious to see if that’s more of a nationwide trend or not. What are you seeing in your markets this year? 

(be sure to tell us which market you’re referring to)

 It seems to be highly market dependent so far. My places in Florida are still doing quite well. I have some friends who invest closer to home (in the Poconos) and they are seeing mega slow downs. A lot of them have wide open calendars in May, June, July, August (which is high season for the Poconos - they’re usually booked solid in the summer but very few bookings so far this year). They keep lowering prices and are getting very few bookings

Quote from @Robert Keeling:

Hello all, hoping you can point me in the right direction.

Me and my partner are looking to incest remotely outside of our local areas and one of the locations we are interested in, for various reasons, is San Antonio. We want to be pretty hands off in terms of "working" the STR, and were curious if anyone had suggestions on how to find a good STR property manager in the area.

Alternatively, are there are "name brand" companies that specialize in this (remote STR mangament)? If youce dealt with one; Who? How was teh experiences? Pros/Cons?

 You don’t need a property manager located in the local area of your properties - that’s the beauty of modern technology!!

It’s super easy. I use offshore assistants to manage everything, for pennies on the dollar. Works amazingly well & I rarely have to get involved. All without having to pay a hefty PM fee. My offshore assistants can:

- call someone to clear the road of snow leading up to your cabin

- call someone to remove a 50 year old tree that fell in your driveway last night and the guests can't depart.

- call someone to remove a snake from under the sofa

- call someone to remove the trash when it's piling up

- help guests find your cabin when it is 1am and they are completely lost

And much much more! You definitely don’t need to waste your money on local property management. This is a forum of highly skilled investors and very few people on here use a local property management firm, it’s just a waste of money.

Of course there are a few property managers on this forum, and they will of course tell you that you must have their services. They will tell you that they add tremendous value and that you could never operate without a local property manager. Up to you to decide.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Quote from @Mark Bills:

Hi @Scott K.

Out of curiosity what about the Poconos market makes it tough? 

In 2019 there were 10,000 homes for sale in the Poconos. In 2020 and 2021 during the Covid pandemic, folks from Nyc and Philly bought them all up. And they turned about 5,000 of them into Airbnbs. This has caused at least 3 major problems: 1) the market is now oversaturated with Airbnbs, 2) rental rates have come down bc of so much competition, 3) there's a dire shortage of workers available to service the huge increase in the # of Airbnbs.

Wait times are often a month or longer for service providers. I have a friend who needs an electrician & has been waiting a month. He had to cancel all of his reservations until he can get an electrician. Another friend's hot tub has been out of commission for over a month while he awaits a hot tub repairman. He has had to give refunds bc of a non-working hot tub. Another friend needs to renovate his house but can't get anyone to do it, it's brutal.

Plumbers, roofers, lawncare, there's no one available to do this work bc there's waaayyyy too many Airbnbs for the local labor market to support.

Not to mention the dire shortage of cleaners and handymen. Home prices have shot up in the Poconos, there's very few homes for sale, there's bidding wars on the few homes that are for sale, and there's a drastic shortage of available workers. Not an ideal place to run a business but good luck if you wanna try it!

Personally, as someone who lives near the Poconos, I would recommend the mountains of VA, NC, or TN. Or the beaches of NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, or TX. I’ve built quite a little nest egg investing in some of those markets 👍👍

Quote from @Kiran K.:

I have acquired an STR in Orlando, Florida and have a property management company handle the property, listing etc. Spent good amount to make it ready, that too handled by PM company, and after months of waiting to get the property ready and listed. My property got first review with rating 1.

I wasn't expecting this, having PM company is to avoid these, this is my first STR, and due to other obligations I have at present I can't handle the property myself remotely even though I want to manage it myself.

What options I have from here, is there a way out for me, I spent lot of money and still no cash flow yet after 3 months of closing the STR :|, Fellow members please help guide me out of this.
 

 You don’t need a property manager located in the local area of your properties - that’s the beauty of modern technology!!

It’s super easy. I use offshore assistants to manage everything, for pennies on the dollar. Works amazingly well & I rarely have to get involved. All without having to pay a hefty PM fee. My offshore assistants can:

- call someone to clear the road of snow leading up to your cabin

- call someone to remove a 50 year old tree that fell in your driveway last night and the guests can't depart.

- call someone to remove a snake from under the sofa

- call someone to remove the trash when it's piling up

- help guests find your cabin when it is 1am and they are completely lost

And much much more! You definitely don’t need to waste your money on local property management. This is a forum of highly skilled investors and very few people on here use a local property management firm, it’s just a waste of money.

Of course there are a few property managers on this forum, and they will of course tell you that you must have their services. They will tell you that they add tremendous value and that you could never operate without a local property manager. Up to you to decide.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Quote from @Andrew Daughtery:

Hello everyone! 

My partner and I are taking our first venture into the AirBNB/Short Term Rental world. We just closed on a property in Glendale AZ (looking forward to Super Bowl next year!!) 

We are looking to get any tips, tricks, and lessons that people have learned throughout their time hosting AirBNB, as well as guidance from CPA's on how to manage expenses and keep the IRS happy in general. 

Also if there is anyone in the area that knows of contractors, handymen, good people to know etc we are still building our team and would love introductions. 

Thanks! 

Andrew

Congrats and welcome to the party! Running a successful STR comes down to 3 Ps: pics, people & pricing.

1) Decorate your house nicely & pay a professional photographer to take some amazing pics

Also, be prepared to constantly reinvest some of your profits into your house in order to keep it in tiptop shape. I think a lot of new investors look at the allure of STR and see the big revenue numbers and forget how much damage your house and your furniture and your furnishings will take with guest after guest after guest staying in your house

If you let your house and the furniture and the furnishings fall into a state of decay, what originally started as a big moneymaker will instead become a constant source of guest complaints and bad reviews and headaches and sleepless nights (for you & your guests!) and refunds to guests

2) Hire amazing people - cleaners, handyman, recruit some neighbors to help fill in the gaps, & self-manage or hire an offshore VA to manage the property if you'd rather make yourself rich instead of making a local property manager rich (more on that here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/... )

And make sure that your cleaners and handyman are not only doing a top-notch job of keeping the house in pristine condition, but they are also reporting to you (or to your PM or to your offshore asst) every little thing that needs to be upgraded or replaced so that you can stay on top of it and take care of things before you hear it from your guests in the form of guest complaints and bad reviews. If your bath mats are getting nasty, you need to hear that from your cleaners not your guests!!

And keep your handyman on speed dial because there will be plenty of occasional electrical and plumbing and HVAC and hot tub issues, many of which will be minor but will still require your handyman to take a look. This business ain’t for the faint of heart!

3) Price fiercely to maximize profits not occupancy (they're not the same thing). If you set higher prices and rent fewer nights but make the same amount of money, you actually come out ahead. Less money spent on supplies, less wear and tear on your place, less money spent on utilities, fewer guest headaches, etc.

Bottom line: there’s a LOT of puzzle pieces you have to get right to make this work really well, but once you master it, it can be very rewarding

I preferred to invest in the year-round high revenue parts of the US where you can earn a lot of money year-round. I prefer that because it gives me a nice cushion so I always have extra profits to reinvest back into my houses as things need to be upgraded or repaired. Be careful if you’re considering an area with only seasonal revenues because you might be underestimating just how high your expenses can be in this business, I know I did before I started!!

Keep in mind that your expenses will occur year-round (whether your house is rented or not), so try to invest where you can earn lots of year-round income to offset those expenses (which is typically the southern US). Just my two cents based on my experience. Best of luck!