All Forum Posts by: Mark S.

Have you tried going through insurance yet?  If you sell, you'll take a bath on it.

It's hard to ignore a lot of the mindless BS on this thread but I'll do my best.

Yes, we've had everything cancel for the month of April, some of May and even one that stretched into June.  I did receive a notification from Airbnb that they are going to be covering 25% of rental revenue for us on a particular cancellation.  And they will be looking to retro apply to some.  However I think you have to be using a 'strict' cancellation policy.  It looks like their approach is evolving.

VRBO is as useless as ever.

I took no action and it looks like we'll be losing our pre-debit function that we've enjoyed the past few years that gave us the money sooner.  But I'm not about to give VRBO any more money to get that function back.  I'll just wait for it like we have to do with AirBnb.  I will look forward to the day where I can drop VRBO but right now we're about 50/50 in our area between the two vendors.

Take the $500 you were going to spend on it each year and put it into your capex savings budget.  Home warranties are sketchy at best.

@Patrick Clark  It will be fine.  I've been down this road with the chatty guests or the ones who overly share.  You handled the large group issue, so just put on a smile and aim for that 5-star review.  I do go with my gut as well in these circumstances and this one -- while certainly odd -- isn't screaming out to decline to me.

But yes, please share and let us know how it turns out :)

PS....I won't turn on instant book ever because I want that time to gut-check.  Maybe turn it off?

Wimberley, TX -- 10 acres in the scenic Texas Hill Country

@Danny Day We have a STR rental in Wimberley, north of Canyon Lake. Your 30% is too low. You should easily do north of 50% without trying. Make sure it is a nice property that people will want to stay at and there's no reason you aren't north of 75% occupancy

PS...when we were looking we found a lot of areas around Canyon Lake that had home/property owners associations that prohibited STRs.  So keep that in mind.

@Sid Jones  I love Houston.  Been here most of 10 years and have no plans to leave.  But I think you're wearing very rose colored glasses.  @Kevin Bazazzadeh is right.  

@David Taylor  There is really no way to guess what they did.  I would make sure to include some budget estimate for other things like:

Marketing  (even Airbnb/VRBO fees, etc can fall into this)

Mileage (you getting to and from)

Maintenance/Service Vendors (lawn, hot tub, firewood, etc)

I'm not an accountant so I'm sure others will chime in with better advice.  Best of luck.

@Ashley Wolfe Hi Ashley -- we have a fairly welly booked STR in Wimberley in the hill country and we find that most people don't look PAST the next vacation in front of their nose. So for example, until we pass spring break, we won't start getting the bulk of our summer bookings. It doesn't mean there aren't exceptions, but the big wave of summer bookings won't come in until late closer to April

We also noticed this a bit at our Galveston STR; though not as defined. Where is your property?