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All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

Ryan Moyer has started 11 posts and replied 878 times.

Post: Where are Short Term Rentals Headed?

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293

Like others have said this gets asked all the time.  Actually just 2 posts down from this one is almost this same thread.  And then 3 posts down the same thread again!  So lots of good thoughts on this subject out there already.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

I'm not into the monthly rentals thing (MTR or whatever) but from what I've heard of people in that market the "traveling nurse" thing is even more oversaturated than STR, as tons of people bought monthly rental places just throwing around the term "traveling nurse" without really looking into that closely, and even as traveling nurses become less common. That's just hearsay on my part though.

Post: Our experience with the Zinus Mattresses

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293

I remember these being the most often recommended, go-to STR mattresses long before Robuilt's channel became popular. So it's not like he's going out on a limb here.

We have a bunch and they've worked well for us.  I can count the number of complaints we've had about them on one hand and we've had FAR more people comment that they loved them and asked where they could buy one.

The vast majority of guests don't mention them either way, which is all we were looking for.

I think mattresses are pretty subjective.  We've slept on them at our STRs and I honestly don't remember them much, which again is all we're looking for.  But we've never stayed at our place longer than a week consecutively.

Post: Second Home Vacation Loan in City I Already Own In (Possible?)

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293

It's unclear from the question whether the home you already own has a vacation home loan as well.

IE if home A is an investment property, then you can buy home B as a vacation home.

If home A is a vacation home, then you cannot buy home B as a vacation home.

If home A is a vacation home and you're desperate to buy home B as a vacation home, I would think you could refinance home A into a different loan product, and then the vacation home loan would be eligible for that area again.  But if you've got a good rate on home A already you may not want to re-finance it at current rates.

Post: Tax Implications: Paying Airbnb cleaner via Venmo

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293

If you have an android phone I believe you can look at all your travel for the year, by date, with google maps.  I can't remember if you have to opt into it or not.

Post: 10% dp vacation home loan requirements

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293
Quote from @Michael Baum:

We have seen this question from time to time but I haven't seen a 14 day minimum requirement from the lenders themselves. It is all about the IRS rules regarding deductions etc.


I believe that both the lenders and the IRS have rules regarding 14 days, but in opposite directions.

Lender wants you to use the property 14 days OR MORE for it to qualify as a vacation home.

IRS wants you to use property for 14 days OR LESS for it to qualify as an investment rather than a residence so you can still deduct expenses.

So technically, in order to satisfy both the lender and the IRS when buying a property via a vacation home loan and using it primarily as an STR you would need to visit EXACTLY 14 days. If you visit fewer than that you violate the lender guidelines. If you visit more than that you violate the IRS guidelines.

In practice, neither really follows up on either of those, especially the lender.  The lender is already qualifying you based on whether you can afford the property without any rental income from the property considered anyway, so it doesn't really change their risk profile much whether you're renting it out or not when not using it, and how often that is.

Post: Best towns in Utah for a STR/Vacation Home

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293

I live in Ogden, own an STR in Kanab, have explored just about every meter of Utah, and have looked into buying STRs in most places here.

Utah, sadly, is a tough area for STRs.

St George is an awesome place, but STR regulations are tough. You're limited to a few STR zoned areas, most of which require a city approved property manager (of which their are only a couple, each of which charge 30% for management given their monopolies), self management is not allowed in most of the few STR allowed areas. And oversupply barely begins to describe the area. Sadly, an area for people that like to vacation there and want to supplement the mortgage a bit. Not a place to cash flow.

I love Ogden Valley (Eden, Huntsville, etc) but property values are through the roof with legit 2nd home buyers and uber rich farmers buying up all the homes, and occupancy is low.  You're talking multi million dollar properties that are lucky to do $60k in revenue.  Obviously not anywhere close to cash flowing.

Park City has tourism, but prices are extremely high and, again, oversupply is nuts.  We recently spent the weekend at a nice property on main street for about $299 a night that was pretty empty even during high season and we were able to book it a week before the trip.  With that location, it had to be a $5M property.  We haven't explored the area for investments intimately because just at a high level glance it didn't really seem doable at current home values.  There's a POSSIBILITY you could make something work with a condo over at the Canyons or something like that.  Last time I underwrote that it worked for a little bit of cash flow (nothing to write home about).  But that was pre-pandemic when the condos were half the price they are now.

Hurricane is a fun area, but the waiting list for an STR permit is 10 years. The permit does transfer if you find someone selling a home that has one, but you can expect to pay double market value for that property and, again, totally wreck any chance of cashflow.

Toquerville (near Hurricane) requires you to be a resident of the city to run an STR.

La Verkin (same area) is one of the most doable spots. STR permits are broken down by areas of the city (each area has a limited number of permits available). When we looked 2 years ago there were still some areas with permits available. Not sure about now. Also new builds aren't eligible to be STRs. The property must have been used as a residency for at least 1 year (they're trying to prevent developers from building homes specifically for STR).

Kanab is just such a freaking cool area that I was initially drawn to as a fine art photographer (ryanmoyer.com plug!) and is where we bought, and it's been good to us.  But we bought before the big price run-up.  It would be much tougher at current prices.  Other headwinds are that the locals HATE tourism and will hate you, and vote against everything that helps tourism.  Last year they voted against a proposition by the NP service that would have had Zion shuttles run all the way into downtown Kanab, so instead of only the current south entrance visitors center shuttle stop, you also would have been able to catch a Zion shuttle direct from Kanab.  They voted that down by a lot.  Then they voted down a measure to add a golf course to the area as well.  Oversupply is an issue here as well, as STRs have exploded since Covid when everyone started temporarily making even more road trips to Zion.  That's only going to get worse as while everyone was up in arms fighting the golf course, the city slipped in a measure for a new development under everyone's noses that will add something like 300 new vacation homes to the area.  So things are decent now, if you can find a super great deal, but I'm not sure they'll stay that way for the future and there are a lot of headwinds for growth.  Locals are obsessed with "making sure Kanab does not become the next Moab".

And speaking of which, Moab is another awesome place, but STR restrictions are very tight. At this point you're looking at condos way out of town for $800k that might gross 1/12th of that or so annually is my impression. Haven't spent a ton of time on this area (in STR investor terms, I spend a ton of time there as an STR guest) but that's my impression.

Salt Lake City I have admittedly not spent as much time researching as I should given that it's right next door to me.  But my understanding is that it's technically illegal but unenforced.  So right now everyone operating there is operating illegally, but the city doesn't enforce it at all.  But that could change at any time.  It's also the same story of the supply blew up during the pandemic, and now the demand is receding back to normal while the supply stays high.

Bear Lake is beautiful, and I need to spend more time looking there as well, but again property values are up probably more than 100% in the last 2 years and it's VERY seasonal (pretty much only rentable in the summer), so I can't imagine returns are very good there.

I love Utah, but it's a tough STR area. The reality is that, unless you're looking for somewhere that your primary goal is your own usage, it's just too late. Over the last 10 years the state has transformed from "Utah, why would you go to Utah"? to the hip new beautiful place, and property values have exploded as people have moved here and bought legitimate second homes here that they intend to use for themselves. And alongside the soaring property values have been extremely tight restrictions all across the state as every area struggles with a shortage of affordable housing for low wage tourism workers.

I'm happy to answer any questions as best I can, but it's just a tough market unless you really want a place primarily for yourself. 

Post: Checking Account and Business Credit Card Recommendations

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293
Quote from @Mark S.:

@Ryan Moyer I’ve had the opposite experience with US Bank. I find their website very easy to navigate and have had zero issues. Also like the availability of staff at local offices for wires, notary services, etc. (I have no vested interest- just mentioning my perspective)

 This is what my header looks like on USBank currently.  No idea what "Couldn't load component" is supposed to be, but it's not something you expect to see on the website of a $66B company, and is the kind of thing that just pops up all over the place all the time.

Currently when I try to open the "Transfers" page to initiate an ACH transfer I get the error "The system is temporarily unavailable" which I've had for the last 3 days.

Just stuff like this, all the time, on the website.  I appreciate that they're trying to modernize it (and it looks much better now than it used to) but it's just constant stuff like this popping up.

Post: STR Proforma / Analysis with HELOC as downpayment financing

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293

Wouldn't it be pretty trivial to take an existing pro-forma and just add this one field to it?

Post: MTR reality. Is something that sounds so simple be so real?

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293

I think people have pretty well nailed it on the head here.

I don't have a problem with people terming it "MTR". Even if it's not a legal term it works fine as a distinction of something between STR and traditional true LTR in practice.

I'm not sure why you think there's something you have to be "missing" here or what sounds "too good to be true".  This isn't like the early days of STRs where people are buying a few and getting rich off of it.  MTR doesn't really promise too good to be true returns.  Maybe a little more than LTR, for a bit more work than LTR.

I think once you factor in the cost of furnishing and utilities (both of which would be paid by the tenant in traditional LTR) as well as vacancy (it's typically not nearly as easy to find MTR tenants as a lot of people imply) the returns are probably similar to LTR, maybe a little better.  One nice advantage is you'd have eyes (and cleaners) on the place more often than LTR, where you don't know what kind of disaster you're going to be walking into after a tenant has been in there for years.

So yeah, it's fine. Just because influencers have jumped on and started pumping it to make a quick buck doesn't mean it's bad. Perfectly fine strategy with reasonable expectations. If you're already buying the place you can try it out and let the rest of us know how it goes, as most of us don't really have much hands on experience with it to compare it to STR that we're very versed in.

Post: Checking Account and Business Credit Card Recommendations

Ryan Moyer
Posted
  • Property Manager
  • Orlando Kissimmee, Davenport
  • Posts 893
  • Votes 1,293
Quote from @Leslie Anne Morris:

US Bank is where I’ve got most of my business stuff. They have unique offerings for LLCs. Full disclosure I worked there for about 18 years. 


I've been using US Bank for the last year and am in the process of transitioning out of it now.  Their website is just a constant slew of issues.  It used to be really bad, they've finally updated it within the last couple years to upgrade from the 1998 style to about 2005 style, but technical issues are rampant.  Yesterday ACH transfers were down all day.  If you use any automatic reporting or wealth management (stessa, personal capital, mint.com, etc) its connection to them CONSTANTLY breaks, and all those sites note that issues with US Bank are constant and don't recommend connecting it.

Just my experience.  I only stuck with them because they also hold a few of my mortgages so it made it easy, but I decided to move on.