All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

I'm glad to see someone track this with some actual data.  I feel like so many people have repeated the "VRBO guests are older and take better care of the place" trope that there is a lot of confirmation bias there, and people just kind of repeat it.  I don't doubt that it is true for some people, but I think sometimes people just repeat it because that's what's in their head, without actually tracking it.

I think part of it is market dependent as well.  In Orlando I would say it's 50/50 in terms of bad guest percentage for us.  In Southern Utah our VRBO guests have been FAR worse.  But that's a relatively low sample size there since we don't get many VRBO bookings there.  But even with less than 10% of our bookings there coming from VRBO, by far our 3 worst guests were from VRBO.

I find it interesting that some people say the customer service is better on VRBO.  That is the COMPLETE opposite of what I've found.  Despite the majority of our issues coming from VRBO, I'm not sure I can think of one single time where a VRBO service rep resolved anything.  They just talk and deflect and kick the can down the road with "we will for sure take care of this for you, I am here to help" before ultimately saying "there is nothing we can do about this".

The funniest part of the VRBO support is the online chat, where they intentionally try to get you to time out of the chat.  The chat window gives you a short time to respond (like 2-3 minutes) before it kicks you out for inactivity.  But it automatically kicks you out if you don't respond to the CSR's latest message, even if that message is a statement and not a question.  So I've found the CSR's will constantly say stuff that wouldn't require a reply to try and get the chat to time out so they don't have to tell me they either can't figure out the issue or can't do anything about it, hoping if I time out of the chat (there's no way to pick it up, no way to have them email you a transcript, etc) that I'll just give up.  They'll just say stuff like "thank for your patience" and "I'm looking into this" and even "I hope we are still connected" (as if they wouldn't know if we're connected or not) over and over again, and if you don't reply to each little statement, it'll kick you out of the chat.

Nevermind the god-awful website/interface, the forced AI descriptions they keep trying to implement, the lack of any kind of damage protection without forcing the guest to buy into it.  It's no wonder they've been losing market share to Airbnb at a massive pace.

 A big difference is that their season is year round (and if anything, this is the low season right now) whereas I'm assuming Galveston is a ~6 month season with only 2-3 months of really peak rates.

But I agree it's doubtful the properties are cash flowing at current prices/rates.  Seems like when Hawaii opened back up there was a huge temporary surge in demand which helped drive prices way up, and prices have stayed up even as demand has normalized.

I keep pretty close tabs on prices in Lahaina as we love it there and anecdotally it seems like prices have started coming down there a bit.  I'm not sure how much of that is insulated to that market because of the fires (the prices didn't drop at all right after the fires).

He's trying to list his property as a business via Google my Business.  It's a separate thing from search/SEO, though like most things google, they make it confusing.

This is accurate.  Disney area is not really a cash-flow market right now unless you invest a good amount of money into theming AND you knock it out of the park with that spend.

They've been building these large themed houses by the literal thousands the last few years and there are a lot of them.  Just go to Airbnb and search for a place to stay and you will see how decked out all the homes are and how many are available and hence, how startlingly low some of the rates are for such nice houses.

It can be done but if cash flow is a top priority it would not be my top choice right now. Though if personal use or long term safety are a concern it can make a lot of sense as Disney will always be a market (whereas places like Broken Bow I could see fading from popularity) and unlike many markets there is almost no regulation risk since these properties are built in tourist zones specifically for STR.

I own there and manage others so have real world revenue data if you want specifics.

AAA is reporting that it's looking like this Memorial Day weekend will be the busiest travel weekend in history.  So people are still traveling in spades, more than ever, maybe just not to the same places, making this likely a local thing.

More to @Jerry Calhoun's point on international travel being the hot trend now, the Booking.com CEO was just on CNBC giving an interview and he said that in the past two years their bookings revenue in the US has very much outpaced European bookings (which have lagged coming out of covid), but is seeing much larger growth in Europe bookings this year.

Travel spending continues to break through all time highs.  This is easy to see in earnings reports for credit card companies (that continue to blow out earnings, with travel as their lead category), hotel companies, and Airbnb itself.

I think a lot of it is just going overseas now as international travel continues to strengthen.  People will get their jollies out overseas for a couple years after not being able to go there for a bit, and then things rebalance, as they always do.

If I pull up my market in AirDNA, and scroll down in the comps to find my actual house, the revenue it says I'm making is not very accurate compared to the revenue I'm actually making.  On all of my properties.

Good.  Cutting rates now would be almost as foolish as cutting rates in 2019.

The fed always overcorrects.  I've been saying this for 2 years now since people thought they were going to cut in 2023.  The fed knows they screwed up by cutting when they shouldn't have last time, so they're going to be extra cautious this time, and if anything overdue it on the side of waiting.

 Do you know of any others?  I talked to Wister and they seem great but they won't cover pools.  All of our properties have pools and someone drowning or getting injured in the pool seems like the #1 most likely thing that we would need insurance for, so it's a pretty huge omission.  Are there any other options?

It just doesn't make sense to me that there are thousands of STR property management companies out there and apparently virtually no one offering insurance on STR property management.

I've compared some of my properties to the numbers that AirDNA, Rabbu, and STR Insights claim they're making. AirDNA is the closest, though still typically off by about 10%. Small sample, of course.

Property 1
Actual Rev: 155k
Airdna: 140.4k
Rabbu: 89.5k
STR Insights: 138k

Property 2
Actual Rev: 115k
Airdna: 105k
Rabbu: 78k
STR Insights: 91k

This is not the projections for each of these if I put in the address (those are even more inaccurate).  These are what each of those platforms believe the TRUE REVENUE of my homes is.  IE the amount they list them as making when using them as comps for nearby properties.