All Forum Posts by: Myka Artis

Yes, you legally can. As long as you're living in one of the units for a year you can rent the other units out. You're also not renting it out as an Airbnb. You're leasing it out to your LLC, your LLC then pays you market rent, and the LLC will, in turn, run a short-term rental operation. You're now running a legal operation and fitting all guidelines.

You would need to look into Host Financial or Kram Capital even though I'm not particularly sure that they would be willing to loan 30K over the appraisal but they specialize in short-term rental loans.

My personal suggestion would be to run long-term numbers on the property and if the long-term numbers don't work then walk away from the deal. Short-term rental numbers are safe to rely on in the arbitrage game but in the buy and hold game that's a setup for bad business unless you're in a vacation rental market. If those STR laws change and the long-term numbers don't work you'll be stuck holding the bag.

This is the biggest mistake I've seen on the buying side when it comes to short-term rental investments. Good luck in your investing but definitely reach out to Host Financial or Kram Capital. They will be able to guide you in the right direction.

First off I'm with @Jon Crosby here. You need to verify you're really netting 100K. 

If you are netting the 100K I'd say set your goals higher than two houses. If you're going to be doing STR's and you're capital heavy you should use the capital as leverage and BRRRR into like 10 STR properties. If you're leveraging your Airbnb income correctly you should have access to huge BLOC's so you should be able to get your hands on a bunch of BRRRR properties.

Aim for the stars and land on the moon my friend. Good luck on your journey!

The best way I've found to run numbers on an STR is by simply going on Airbnb/VRBO and run typical comps on places similar to yours. View their prices, calendar availability, and see what they aren't offering guests. Once you find what the highest rated hosts aren't offering you then offer it and the most important thing is to do market research to see what kind of travelers are coming to the area so you can create a target audience. Once you know who it is you're catering to and what to provide them you can't lose in the STR space.

You can use AirDNA but AirDNA doesn’t take into account value so their numbers are always off.

@David Li you can use AirDNA or run comps through Airbnb but I noticed you said a townhome. Have you verified the HOA allows for STR's? That would be the first thing I check when dealing with condos and townhomes.

@Bruce Woodruff Yes you should be on every site possible and more importantly you should have your own website. You can get one through a channel manager such as Yourporter or Hostfully. Airbnb is great but if you were hosting last March when Airbnb cancelled all reservations without guest or host approval then you should know they are not to be relied on to run an efficient short term rental business.

Arbitraging is when you rent someone's property, furnish it, and list it for short-term rent through OTA's such as Airbnb, VRBO, or your own direct booking website. You are then paying the property owner his monthly rent and utilities. You then pocket the difference. 

Co-hosting on the other hand is you are managing their Airbnb/STR. You take care of the day-to-day operations and take 20 - 30% of gross revenue. Day-to-day operations can include messaging the guest, taking care of cleanings, etc.

There are no downsides to being a co-host because you are getting paid. I don't use co-hosts because there are tools that can easily automate the day-to-day operations of an STR.

If you are looking from an investor side of things I would suggest doing short-term rentals through the BRRRR strategy. That in my opinion is the most powerful tool in the short-term rental space.

I just interviewed Rebecca Cramer from Mad Men Vacation Rentals and she's doing great on larger properties in the Orlando market. She's on the BP forums as well. She would be a good resource for you.

Co-hosting is simply managing someone's Airbnb/short-term rental property. The advantage of it is there's little to no cost to get started. I would suggest arbitraging to get started before co-hosting because I feel you would need to understand the processes of a short-term rental such as cleaning, restocks, messaging, etc. You can learn that with little money by starting off arbitraging. Good luck on your investing.

@Zahid Ali Yes sir I just did this. If the deed is in an LLC it's the same concept. You need a 2nd LLC that acts as your short-term rental LLC and you need to create a lease between the two. The advantage of doing two LLCs is you can use DNB to create a tradeline between the two LLC's but you will need to make sure you have a paper trail. This is a great way to get future financing.

Remember to have one LLC running all your short-term rental operations. The bank will look at this as your viable money source for future funding. This is literally how you can build a huge BLOC and get away from HML's on your BRRRR projects.