All Forum Posts by: Nicole Heasley Beitenman

Quote from @Jeremy Jareckyj:

Right on! great move and great tip

 Thanks Jeremy!

Quote from @Wes D.:

Thanks, Nicole, that's great information, and congratulations on your second MTR! All the best, Wes

 Thanks Wes!

We're gearing up to launch our 2nd MTR. Furnishing our first was miserable. First, we tried Amazon, Wayfair, and Walmart furnishings. 50% of was particleboard garbage. Then we tried the FB Marketplace route. By the time we messaged folks about their furniture, haggled over price, scheduled the pickup, rented a truck, etc, we were tired. It wasn't worth the savings. 

Around Black Friday, I went to Ashley Furniture (we'll call this store A1) looking for a piece for my primary, which is an hour from my rentals. They were having a good sale; everything was 40% off the "original price" (which is always a number they make up so they can then "discount" it). I asked when the next sale would be, and they told me February. 

Week before the February sale, we went to the Ashley near our rentals (we'll call this store A2) or to pick out what we'd purchase at the sale. The sales rep put together a quote for us, which we put in our back pockets for later. When the sale rolled around, we let A1 put together their quote, which was lower than A2. So we took A1's quote to A2 to see if they'd beat it. My business partner/PM kept going back and forth until we settled on a deal with A2. We furnished a 1,050 SF house (dining room table and 4 chairs, sofa, loveseat, armchair, 2 end tables, 2 bedroom sets minus mattresses, and a desk) for $5,800, which was $1,600 less than where we started. It's all brand new, we got to touch and feel it all to check the quality before we purchased it, and we have good relationships with both stores. I'll never look for furniture online again. I hope this helps someone else looking to furnish their next STR or MTR!

As always, I concur with @Bonnie Low and @Jamie Banks. Padsplit may be a better resource for you to see if a by-the-room model is a better fit. I strongly suggest going to your local REI meetup. See if there are other MTR operators utilizing a by-the-room model and try to do some due diligence into the demand for that type of accommodation. It wouldn't work in my market, but my market is smaller.

I'm also in NEO. It may be that the market it already oversaturated; I imagine that point is coming soon. Furnished Finder has info on how many people are searching for MTRs in a given market. Have you looked into their landlord resources yet? And @Zachary Deal also gave you perfect advice.

Go to your local REI meetup. That's always the best place to find market-specific resources.

We have a 1 bd/1 ba SFH that operates primarily as an MTR. When we get awkward 2-3 week gaps and have to switch to an STR model, it's a PITA because we're cleaning ourselves. That's about 3-4 hours of work a week. Otherwise, I spend a few hours on bookkeeping each week, but that includes all my properties and business entities.

It's not THAT much more work than a traditional LTR and it's significantly more money, so we've found it to be worth it. 

I don't know where Allen Duan is located, but he's very knowledgeable on MTR PM's. He's a regular here on the MTR forums. BP won't let me tag him for some reason, so here's a link to his profile: https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/allenduan

This would be a huge factor for me. If they're a student, sure. If they're a professional with a solid work history who hit a bump in the road, is relocating, and needs some time in their new market to look for a new job, new housing, etc, that works for me. Basically, if their story makes sense and doesn't raise any red flags, I'd gladly consider them. 

We use Furnished Finder's landlord resources and also look through the listings in our market, both comparable and larger/smaller. We do the same with AirBnB. There really isn't anything that exists yet that tracks occupancy rates for MTRs (unless someone knows of something new I haven't heard about yet, in which case I certainly hope they mention it for us!)