All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

Quote from @V.G Jason:

Quote from @Michael Alexander:

Quote from @V.G Jason:

Quote from @Michael Alexander:

There’s a new startup in Boise providing an online real estate marketplace for investors, buyers and sellers to list or shop for short-term vacation rental properties.

Similar to the MLS, Revnest displays detailed information about properties, including the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, lot size, and year built.

Traditional listing sites like Realtor.com and Zillow are sufficient for selling traditional homes, but are not the best option for selling and buying vacation rental properties. It was a struggle to find investment properties on these platforms, and it was from this first-hand experience that there was a market need to create Revnest where real estate sales are simplified for vacation rentals.

Detailed historical data on vacation homes, including financials, operating expenses, revenue, occupancy rates, and average daily rates are also provided on Revnest. A link to the vacation rental on VRBO/Airbnb is also provided so that potential buyers can see past reviews, rates, and other information.

“Revnest is ideal for buyers and sellers of short-term vacation rentals; seasoned or looking to get started,” co-founder St. Marie said. “Listing on a marketplace like Revnest ensures that your property is seen by the right people, increasing the chances of a successful sale and fewer days on market.”

The platform is free for buyers and sellers to use worldwide.

“This is just the beginning for Revnest. Our mission is to shape the future of short-term real estate,” Co-founder and CEO Keith Breon said. “We are proud to be the first in the industry to offer this marketplace and network, and are excited to witness how it can transform the buying and selling experience.”

Would you use this new platform to buy your next vacation rental property? 

OK so whose the customer?

There would be 2 customers. Those both buying and selling vacation rental properties. Think of it as a Zillow for STR properties. I found the concept interesting but as @Ryan Moyer said, if there is pickup in both buyers and sellers that is where this website would solidify its value. 

Zillow makes it's money from loan origination, the whole premier agent, ads, etc. I don't see how revnest does any of that or maybe i am missing it. How are they making their money?

 I'm assuming eventually once they have enough traffic to justify it they would start charging to list.

Reads like an advertisement, but it's a good looking website.  Of course the trick will be getting enough traffic on there in both directions to make it worthwhile for people to use.  Because programmatically it's something anyone can throw up with a wordpress template.

But if it had that traffic, I would use it.  Not sure if "startup" is a real term here or if this is just a couple bros throwing together a quick easy website.  But if "startup" is for real and there's a sales team out there traveling around to find inventory and convince people to put it on the site, could have a shot I suppose.

Unscrupulous management rife with mismanagement and fraud, complete with a totally bungled IPO leaving them stuck with going public via the super sleezy SPAC route.

Can't really draw conclusions on anything from this "company".  Just an executive cash grab with never a soul thought for the future or anything outside of short term executive payouts. 

I believe Pricelabs market dashboard will give you the rate of BOOKED dates as well, which can help with the issue of only seeing unbooked pricing when looking at Airbnb/VRBO directly.

The market is part of it, but even within the same market you'll see huge variation from host to host.

My experience has been that VRBO's algorithm is EXTREMELY momentum driven compared to Airbnb's.  When it's quiet, it's dead quiet.  But if you get it rolling, it gets ROLLING.

You can try committing to it.  Shut the other stuff down for a bit.  Or lower the prices lower on VRBO.  Anything to get a few VRBO listings rolling, then there's a decent chance they'll start pouring in.

I have a 9br in Champions Gate.

Electric runs $500-$800/mo depending on the month

Water $210/mo or so

Supplies are going to vary bigtime on whether you're supplying all supplies or just a "starter kit".  People expect all supplies in this market, and stocking a 9br house can get pricey for sure. 

Also note that towels disappear and get stained at an ALARMING rate in this market, compared to any other market I've been in.  Combination of lots of towels, kids, etc.  But they go fast.  So you've gotta choose between risking your reviews confronting guests over towels or just plan to replace them often.

Pricing software pushes to PMS, then PMS pushes to OTA.

Link pricelabs to hospitable and let hospitable push that through to Airbnb.

Same thing with Turno.

People will argue whether you need Hospitable if you only have 1 property, but if you are using it, then Pricelabs/Turno should both be hooked to it rather than the OTAs directly.

These days it's more about finding the right deal than the right market.  It's not like it was a few years ago where you can just waltz into a market with a $500k pre-approval and guarantee yourself $100k income.  Any market where you can do that nowadays likely has some major risk looming overhead regarding potential future regulations or something that is scaring investors away (which I hear people worrying about sometimes regarding the Poconos, where one of the houses you linked was).

What IS still possible is finding a specific deal that will meet those metrics, or CREATING a deal that will meet those metrics (through value-add, etc). This is more in line with typical/traditional real estate investing that likely brought most of us to BP in the first place. In real estate, it's not as easy as just pulling up the MLS, clicking a random link, and getting an awesome property that cash flows amazingly. Deals are out there, they just have to be found. STR was an exception to that for a while when it was unknown and considered risky, but now that it's a legit asset class like LTR SFH or Multifamily etc and the secret is out, it's much more in line with traditional real estate where it's more about the deal than the market.

All imo, of course.

Quote from @Ruth Lyons:

Thanks for this discussion. It makes me so angry that these legislators sit in their offices and try to figure out more ways to tax us. What are the unintended/intended consequences of this? Why do they want to tax this? Let's see -- force the small investors out by making it unaffordable. Another example of big government over-reach through unneeded regulation and taxation. 

This isn't really a new tax though.  It's properly classifying a commercial business as a commercial business.  Just closing a loophole where people were operating commercial businesses without the squeeze.  Fun while it lasted, where we've gotten to have our cake and eat it too, but we'll see this everywhere eventually.

I agree with Shawn.  I manage a handful in the area and at current prices/rates I would not expect to cash flow most months, even with extra marketing, especially if you're paying a manager.  If you want feel free to PM me and I can give you some numbers on how the homes we manage have been performing over the last few months/year and you can plug it in to see how it would work with your underwriting.

To cash flow right now in this market you really need to be theming, imo.  And even then returns can still be tight depending on how good the theming is.

The instant fast cash flow was fun while it lasted, but we're moving into a more typical real estate cycle right now in this market where success is going to be determined by those with patience, looking at it as more of a long-term investment (as real estate has historically been).