All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

The worst part of it is all the "experts" and influencers and realtors and lenders and established personas that were screaming "buy buy buy" 8 months ago when things were starting to look sour that are now saying "boy I hope people didn't buy at the top, that was stupid!".

I referred someone around last August I believe.  A few months later I hadn't gotten the bonus, so I kept pestering them about it.  They kept dodging the question, until eventually the bonus showed up in one of my payouts.  It was grouped with a payout for a stay (IE I had a payout of $XXXX on whatever date, and I had to dig down to the itemized payout to see that $720 of that payout was the referral fee lumped in), so it wasn't immediately obvious I had gotten it. 

Evolve is a booking platform, Vacasa is a property manager.

The only thing that's equal about them is that they're equally sucky at what they do, but they offer very different things.  Evolve's entire business model is to take a lower commission and only handle the non-PITA part of management (getting the bookings and pre-checkin communication).

 One thing I've noticed when adding more properties is that the "personal use" perk is much nicer in markets that are more seasonal and have more vacancy.

IE a property that does 100k gross with 70% occupancy has a much better personal use perk than a property that does 100k with 95% occupancy, where any personal use is going to affect your gross rather than fill in gaps that were empty anyway.

Once you get to somewhere like Hawaii where occupancy rates are in the 95% range, using it personally is basically just as expensive as paying for a place to stay, nearby, as it has basically the same effect on your personal account.

With Stessa recently locking most of their features behind a paywall it is almost as expensive as QBO.  So I decided to check out QBO but am struggling to make it work with real estate.

I've been using tags for each property, so each transaction (and payout from Airbnb) gets tagged with the property it pertains to.  However, it seems tags are pretty limited in reporting.  You can use them in custom paper reports you create, but all the graphical interfaces that are easy to look at don't seem to have any way to separate things by tag, nor does the business overview or other things quickly accessible.  Whereas with Stessa I get a nice graphical representation of each property right on the homepage that makes it quick and easy to see how the businesses are doing.

Is there anything I'm missing with tags on this front?

What is the difference between classes and tags?  Is there any reason to pay for the higher plan to get access to classes?  It seems like they mostly accomplish the same exact thing as tags, and that they're kind of useless since QBO added tags.  Do they have more reporting options or anything?

Does QBO provide anything useful for STR RE investment that Stessa does not, now that they are similarly priced?

 Those neighborhoods in Orlando barely even allow full time residents.  They're all vacation rentals.  They don't even have a mailbox.

To each their own, of course, but the notion that a place needs to double as a primary residence or LTR is out dated, and just gets you into poor STR places (metro markets, etc) that won't have longevity.

Without the vacation rental aspect ANY cabin in the Smokies is only going to be worth like 30% of what it currently costs.  It's not a realistic fallback plan.  No one is buying a 4br cabin in the Smokies to live in themselves and no one is paying $8000/mo to LTR it.

My favorite part of this whole silly hotel push on social media is how quickly people have forgotten how much they hated staying at hotels sometimes

This idea that sometimes you get a bad host, but hotels are always great, is absurd.  Hotels are LITERRED with bad reviews and bad experiences.  At a far higher rate than STRs.

Last year we stayed a Hotel Del Coronado (one of the top Hilton properties in the world) for free on points, and it was an awful experience.  It was honestly not worth what we paid even just for the resort fee and parking fee.  I can't even imagine how livid I'd have been if I paid the $1000+ nightly rate too.

There is a place for both.  Some hotels are good, some are bad.  Some STRs are good, some are bad.  It's just comical to see this idea that hotels are some great mecca of consistently great travel experiences though.  I stay in STRs all the time and I've been staying in them since the 90's (back when you had to take your trash home with you when you left) and if I had to list my top 5 worst lodging experiences they would all be hotel experiences.

This reminds me of the referee strike in the NFL years ago when the optics convinced everyone that we desperately needed those particular refs back and everyone forgot that all they did all year long during football season was complain about how awful those particular guys are.  And all they do now that they're back is complain about how awful they still are.

I underwrote a few properties there last year and couldn't make the numbers work, but my tolerances are tight.

I love the area.  Skied there a lot when I lived back east.  But I just don't see how it can support the huge increase in property values unlike some areas that have been able to handle it (like Gatlinburg).  It's extremely seasonal, and while the rates are nice in high season just not high enough at the current property prices (not to mention interest rates), at least back when I underwrote them last year.  Maybe that's changed.  Would love to be wrong so I can buy one there.

Most posts I see in favor of it are general broad stuff like above.  "It's great, demand is strong!  People love to ski there!  Super popular!".  But no real data.  Didn't make sense once I dug into the numbers.

Projector will look better in your listing photos, but will be more of a headache to manage.  Up to your tolerances which you prefer.

I personally would try to make the theater room as "theatery" as possible as that really makes it stand out in the photos.  But it will be more of a headache.