All Forum Posts by: Nancy Bachety

Ha, bid more, waive contingencies, said the real estate agent. Don’t do that without fully understanding your specific market.

It’s schedule E unless you provide services like cooking breakfasts ( think old school b and b’s). It’s not really open to interpretation, it’s pretty cut and dry. Most of us use schedule E, don’t provide substantial services, and qualify for material participation. Whether hosts know it or not, this is how a cpa would process it.
But I’m not a cpa, I just trust and verify. No doubt your savvy CPA will understand it once he reads up on it. No need to replace her/him. 

This is why listing on VRBO also is essential. It has happened to us for inexplicable reasons too. It’s not you, it’s them. 

Leave instructions to text a no reply phone number that you assign to your cleaners.

Trust but verify. What @Michael Baum said first, to ask your CPA was good but actually, we do know a lot and can help answer your question.
You’re wondering if you increase your chances of getting audited because you’re qualifying for the short term rental loophole. It’s a fairly knew concept to the irs and they all don’t know everything about it, and sometimes a good CPA doesn’t either.

We got called out on it but I armed myself with tax code law and cited them in my rebuttal. The agent actually told me he read my answer, looked it up, and, as long as I send him my guest lists indicating less than 7 night stays, I win. He was thinking I needed to meet the rep status but no way was I because I had a w2 that year.

So, track your hours for material participation and work your w2 without fear.

If you only want to visit once or twice a year, I agree with @Brian Barch 100%. We have several homes in three markets that we use ourselves year round. Rental income finances everything in all of them including all the custom upgrades and upkeep done mostly by hired hands. That said, tomorrow morning we’re flying to Hawaii for a two week “true” vacation. Staying in Hilton’s. 
Smokey Mountains for the win.

Quote from @Andrew Steffens:

 We are a PM co who partnered with Marriot Homes and Villas, so our guests coming from HVMI can use Amex (or other) transferrable points to book our houses.  Its pretty cool

Funny you say this. We just enjoyed a stay in the heart of West Palm Beach in a Marriott, thanks to our Amex Platinum card. Outstanding service, breakfast, gym, location and service all around. Even had a kitchen. Out of curiosity we checked out both Airbnb and the Marriott Homes platforms for the same location and found an abundance of rooms, similar in size and capacity to a hotel room, in a particular location/building that was managed by a host, probably a PM like you. The reviews were critical and the total costs were about the same if not higher than a room at a hotel. 

More and more, we choose to stay in hotels ourselves. With all the things hosts pay for on credit cards, there’s a ton of benefits that come with the credit card rewards and we’ve found we like the experience better. 

Got it, thanks.

For direct bookings I just block the dates on Vrbo and take a check or zelle.

 John,

When you get a booking request from VRBO, you always collect the guest payments on your own? Isn’t that like taking the bookings off-platform and how do you talk to the guests about payments? I like the idea of saving the credit card fee that VRBO charges too.

If cabin owners are under water, they’ll either keep drowning or fit in the death or divorce category.