All Forum Posts by: Matt Mertz

Sorry about your grandfather.

One thing that comes to mind is that this is an off-market deal.  No competitors gives you an advantage.  Maybe negotiate with the family for a lower price that covers you in case you need to list it later for sale.  Be mindful of your property taxes.

$5625/acre is a steal compared to TN land I've been looking at.  NY isn't TN so you need to do your research and check the comps.

If you acquire it, you'd have an option to flip it, develop it or live on it.  

I'll add one though it's not too bad.

We built a big cabin in the Smokies in 2021.  Great property, going strong today.

Decided to build again (small 1 bedroom). Spent all of last year with the builder and architect going back and forth to get the sqft cost down and finally threw in the towel. Spent a lot of money on a useless custom floorplan and various surveying costs. We couldn't justify the low ROI.

We're so thankful we built the big one first.  We couldn't afford it at today's construction prices.

On one hand I like how they're trying to improve their platform.  On the other, they have so many other fixes and features that should've taken priority.  I'd like to see VRBO have the same polish as Airbnb.

I guess we'll find out if these changes were worth it.

Gatlinburg city limits is different in my experience.  We had a new build that required a fire suppression system.

Every year the fire marshal comes out to inspect the system and fire extinguishers.

Last year they told us to put up a street number sign because the original was too obscure to see for the firetrucks.

Everyone involved was super nice and easy to work with.

Maybe the county is just going through growing pains and trying to figure it out.

@Collin Hays I'm trying to enjoy my weekend.  Stop it!  :)

Hang in there, Wilson.  We've also noticed more last minute bookings which is a surprise to us since we sleep 16.

We have a friend with 3 small condos in Gatlinburg.  She's only had 1 booking this entire year so far.  I suspect the lower budget places are suffering because those guests are pinching pennies.

Our big cabin is outperforming last year this quarter so we're incredibly thankful for that.

We've been dealing with this is in Gatlinburg city limits for a couple of years now.  We built our 16 person cabin with fire suppression in it because we didn't want to play games with the definition of bedrooms to skirt around the regulations.

While I don't disagree with the point your making, I will say that our interactions with the fire marshals and city officials have been way better than we expected.  Also we live in TX and property taxes in TN are nothing in comparison.

Maybe the county will use that money wisely. (ha)  :)

Congrats Brittany.  Your place looks nice, good listing and pictures.

We've been in the Smokies since Dec. 2021.  We started slow, too.  It took about a year for things to really pick up (got Superhost/Premier Host, reviews, min stay tweaks and listing improvements).

We use OwnerRez.  It solved one of our major headaches: security deposits.  OwnerRez integration allows real credit card security deposits on your direct booking site, VRBO and Airbnb.  It's made those decisions on whether to host a guest with no reviews a lot easier when you know you have recourse to deduct their deposit if they misbehave.

Get a good cleaner who communicates with you.  We're on our second one and I can't express how different our stress level is with the new one.  She's a total pro and keeps us posted all the time.

You're in a great market and you have the advantage of self hosting.  Good luck!

PriceLabs just rolled out their Revenue Estimator Pro tool.  Haven't used it yet but worth a look if you're already using PriceLabs.

We use StayFi because we have a big cabin that sleeps 16.  We've had it in place since launch (Dec 2021).

No one's complained to us and we have over 50 5 star reviews (5 overall).

I was nervous that it would turn off people and affect ratings but it hasn't.  We have a marketing opt-out button on the form.  And it redirects the guest to our digital guidebook after they sign in so that's convenient.

But, we haven't had much success in leveraging our email list.  That's mostly my fault.  I've tried doing it manually from our outlook.com account and that was too much work.  We tried free mailchimp using our hosted domain address but noticed that they were getting filtered to Junk mail on our tests.  We haven't gotten very far trying to do email marketing at this point.  This year I intend to work on it.

Basically StayFi is great in theory (if you hosts multiple guests per stay) but there's a lot of work on the marketing side.