All Forum Posts by: Nathan M kiefer

I have been an landlord for 6 years and own 6 properties. All of my tenants are long term tenants and my property is managed by a property management company. So all the rental income is passive for tax purposes.
I also make W2 income. I would like to purchase short term rentals and be able to qualify as a real estate professional and deduct against by active income taxes. I am thinking of purchasing an airbnb/vrbo property and have several questions.

1. Can I hire a property management company to run my airbnb or can I at least hire a company for cleaning and maintaining?

2. How do I show that I have worked for at least 100 hours per year to qualify as real estate professional?

3. Where can I learn more about this topics on saving taxes using short term rentals?

Thank you,

Brad

It is very difficult to qualify as a rep without managing your own portfolio .

You may find someone to do it(cpa) but it's a good way to get audited.

0 Votes

We did a cost seg amended return for a sizeable refund on our two strs in Myrtle beach. Wondering what others have experienced once the amended return is filed with IRS as far as a timeline on when I will receive my return?

I know boiler plate response is 12-16 weeks but really want to know what people are ACTUALLY experiencing.

Thanks all

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Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Do what we did, give it a year and if it ends up being good keep it. If it does what ours does then you can make a decision.

our two houses are about 1.5mm together - maybe with a $2mm house you will have a little more responsible guests but I doubt it as there is always one person that screws it for everyone.

fortunately for us, the dip in income didn't impact us because we bought with cash but if they have that pressure it may make a difference

1 Vote

Tampa, Florida

Depending on the area. We have two strs both rented carts but the security in our area will remove your ability to have a cart for 5 years if you get two tickets.

the liability isnt much of anything - we use progressive or State farm. We had someone get a ticket and pulled the carts for the rentals, probably cost us between 5-10% of total revenue but it was more important for us to keep our carts than not have them for an extended period.

$2 mm house or not you will have headaches with carts regardless and in our experience it's just not worth the hassle.

my recommendation is work a deal with a local place you can refer them to and get a small referral fee from. In our resort the resort owns the golf cart company so you can read through the lines there

0 Votes

Tampa, Florida

Quote from @Cliff H.:

@Nathan M kiefer did I see you say your STR hosts 13 people and you've been running with 3-4 rolls of TP per stay? Holy smokes! Are you renting single night stays or just hoping guests BYOTP? As others have said, there's plenty of way to make up this marginal cost that saves your guests the embarrassment of asking upstairs to toss down a half used roll or make an unexpected run the gas station with a dirty bum. 😱

It's not about the money. We have done this for years and just this past few months I got some complaints. I couldnt care less about stocking it with tp, thats why we put this thread out is to see what others are doing. We plan to do 2 rolls per bath as others have mentioned.

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Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Quote from @Shannon Strickland:

Hi @Nathan M kiefer,

I'm currently only hosting my sixth guest in NMB, so my input is not as informative or deeply experienced as yours. While I don't supply paper towels, each of the three bathrooms is stocked with three rolls of toilet paper. But I don't provide any personal bathroom amenities (i.e. shampoo), and my guests are aware of that. So far, I haven't received any negative feedback about these choices. Since I purchased the 4/3 SFH this year and had to spend a significant amount on decorating and insurance, I've chosen to keep expenses to a minimum. My thought was one roll per person plus one extra—the house sleeps eight, so we supply nine rolls. I don't know why folks are complaining except that times and standards always change. Don't know if that helps!

Thanks for your response, we plan to do 2 rolls per bathroom. Our two strs hold 13 each- one roll per guest - interesting concept I'll have to think about that

1 Vote

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Quote from @Chris Watson:

Leave atleast two rolls per bathroom. For actual bottomline impact it will cost you at most $4 per guest if they used it all. With 60 guests a year you are out $240 additional. You could raise your rates by $1 a night if you don't want it to impact your cashflow.

As for linens not on beds: imagine a family packing for a vacation and cramming everything in a car, dealing with screaming kids on the trip, dealing with nightmare traffic and finally getting to the place and unpack all the crap. They had a hard day already but now before trying to go to sleep they have to work more and make their beds. They have been agitated all day and this will set them off. I know in NC/SC when I looked at STRs a few years ago I have seen some saying we would have to bring our own linens. What has happened is the consumer expectations has changed and now owners who are use to a different consumer must change or deal with complaints and/or low occupancy. I recommend changing your business practice to meet today's consumer.

We don't have vacancy issues and both are high end listings. Thanks for your response

0 Votes

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

We have been getting people complaining that we only leave 1 full roll of toilet paper on each of our bathroom toilet paper holders. We also leave one roll of paper towel and we have 4 bathrooms so there is 4 rolls and a roll of paper towel.

We are considering adding a roll under each sink to eliminate this request/complaint but thought it was odd after years of doing the same thing why we all the sudden had people complaining about only having one full roll to start?

We literally got a 4 star review overall because there wasn't "enough tp" in the house and because the linens are provided in sealed bags and not on the beds, but everything else " was great". I know some of you put linens on etc etc but we have done this since the start.

Wondering if there's something I'm missing here lol- apparently there's a 2 roll minimum in the marketplace right now.

0 Votes

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina