All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

I don't think your experience with your previous PM was normal.  There are a lot of people that use PMs and never do anything other than collect their checks.  You could always give the PM route another shot and see if you can find one that's more hands off.  You shouldn't have to manage your PM.  That's the whole point of a PM!

As far as arbitrage goes, you'll have a tough time getting an answer on that on these boards as almost everyone here is a real estate investor and not an arbitrager.  Personally I am not as against it as most on this forum are.  I know the STRs I manage with cleaners/handymen in there every week are in a lot better shape than most of my friends/family's LTR's when a tenant checks out after doing 2 years of who knows what in there.  But you'll run into the same problem with arbitragers as with PMs.  You need to find a good one.

What is the additional tenant insurance/protection?  I would think that would limit a majority of potential renters and make it less desirable to an arbitrager.

I just double checked mine and on my listing the percentage is the exact same as Airbnb.  Both 13.5% in Osceola county, FL.

 Were you able to get the booking.com messaging working on Hospitable?  I went through the setup process meticulously like 5 times, and it says everything is fine, support thinks everything is fine, but I don't get any booking.com messages in Hospitable, nor do the automated messages get sent out.

It seems like quite the hack/workaround they have set up with booking.com so I'm wondering if it really works reliably at all.

I disagree with this part, just because of the way Airbnb's review system is set up.

Airbnb will deplatform a listing that has a 4-star review average (actually, 4.2 or below).  By Airbnb's definition, a 5* review is "this place was acceptable" and anything below that is "this place is so bad it should be banned from being listed on Airbnb".

Historically, the way this would've been handled by a guest is a 5* review and then private feedback about those issues. Or maybe even mentioning them in the public review, but still 5*. Especially since mattresses are such a personal preference that can vary by person. It sounds like the host was using the Zinus memory foam mattresses that almost everyone in the STR space uses.

Airbnb has seen an influx of hotel travelers lately that are used to a hotel ratings system where 5* ratings are reserved for truly blown away expectations, 4* is pretty good, and 3* is average.  In any given market, around 80% of the hotels have a 4.2 rating or below, which by Airbnb's definition would mean 80% of hotels should be shut down.  But now so many hotel travelers are entering the STR space (especially with recent rate declines alongside oversupply) and rating similarly even though Airbnb's review system is set up such that an average stay is meant to be 5*.

If Airbnb is going to keep trying to capture the hotel market they really need to do something with the review system, either revamping it or making it more clear to guests.  I think I went 250 5* reviews in a row prior to recently where I've seen an uptick in 4*, often for things that are clearly hotel expectations, like the most recent one of a guest mentioning they loved their stay but were annoyed the communal pool area didn't provide towels and towel-drop and they had to take the towels back and forth from the house and dry them in between uses.

Been on there about 6 months, not one single booking.  On properties that stay pretty booked up too.  Maybe that's why, but surprising they're always booking elsewhere first.

I do price a little higher on booking.com to account for the fee, but it sounds like most people do that too, so not sure why my places are an afterthought there.

Read the county/city website, then call in if you have questions.  They're usually happy to help people that are trying to follow the rules.

In the case of selling a business you're not transferring the account, you're transferring ownership of the business.  The structure of the business is changing behind the scenes, but the ownership of the accounts by the business remains the same.

IE if the guy who created the "Vacasa" account on Airbnb/VRBO leaves Vacasa, they don't have to start over with a new account just because the guy that initially created the accounts left.  The account is "Vacasa"'s, not his.

Likewise, if Elon Musk decided to buy Vacasa and tomorrow, I'm pretty sure he would retain the accounts as they are assets of the business he's buying, not any particular person.

Just because you create it as a business account with an EIN instead of an SSN doesn't mean you have to use the business name on the listings instead of your personal name.  In fact, you have to go out of your way to get the business name in there (I actually had to reach out to support to figure out how to do it, and ended up changing it back to my personal name) by putting the business name in the first name field and leaving the last name field blank.

So in your example, "Lumen" would have put "Lumen" into their profile as their first name, and left the last name field blank.  They could have just as easily put "Eddie" into the first name field and have it show up the same as the "personal" example even if the account is registered as a business with an EIN.

AirDNA's revenue projection includes cleaning fees, while manually combining ADR * Occupancy does not.  So if you're using AirDNA's projected revenue then you will need to project cleaning expenses to subtract out.

Also note that AirDNA's data is based on trailing data for the last year.  So you're getting projections based on last year's market.  That may not matter in normal times, but when the market is in a period of fast change (as some would argue it is right now) it's worth factoring in.