All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Keep trying. I found that 2-4 unit properties are tricky. Some banks are only set up to lend on one or two unit properties. Others are only set up to lend on commercial properties. While 2-4 unit properties sort of fall into single family lending guidelines, at least as far as FHA is concerned, banks often have their own rules.

I think your best bet would be to target the commercial players. Banks that lend on larger multifamily projects. I got my three unit deal financed by a local bank that only lends on non-owner occupied multifamily projects. If you mention you'll be residing in a unit once it's finished their lending guidelines prohibit them from working with you. You may just need to meet other players in your market and ask for a referral. Referrals make the world go 'round in this industry, I'm convinced of it.

I've been working in the modular construction space my entire career. It's all I do. Ideally modular is better built, more sustainable and faster. In some cases it can be cheaper. As manufacturing becomes more automated it should go that way. The challenges are that as in all manufacturing scale is king. Single family housing may not be the best application for modular building. Single family modular housing is much more prevalent on the East Coast than it is going further West.

The problem I see with deploying vast amounts of modular single family or 2-4 unit housing is that it doesn't make for quality built environment. Automating housing design isn't good architecture, and that's something that's already sorely missing from our communities. All building should respond to their specific locations, site conditions, views, breezes, daylighting, etc.

In multifamily housing, student housing, senior care, etc. modular is likely to become the dominating construction method in this country as long as manufacturing keeps improving.

Please check out a modular success story I posted a few years ago of a 3 unit project I completed in San Diego:
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/223/topics/473320-san-diego-prefab-housing-development-and-airbnb-success-story

I've been working in the modular construction space my entire career. It's all I do. Ideally modular is better built, more sustainable and faster. In some cases it can be cheaper. As manufacturing becomes more automated it should go that way. The challenges are that as in all manufacturing scale is king. Single family housing may not be the best application for modular building. Single family modular housing is much more prevalent on the East Coast than it is going further West. 

The problem I see with deploying vast amounts of modular single family or 2-4 unit housing is that it doesn't make for quality built environment. Automating housing design isn't good architecture, and that's something that's already sorely missing from our communities. All building should respond to their specific locations, site conditions, views, breezes, daylighting, etc. 

In multifamily housing, student housing, senior care, etc. modular is likely to become the dominating construction method in this country as long as manufacturing keeps improving.

Please check out a modular success story I posted a few years ago of a 3 unit project I completed in San Diego:
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/223/topics/473320-san-diego-prefab-housing-development-and-airbnb-success-story

@Jake Cohen I'm also using yourporter and looking to replace it with SmartBnB. I dropped other channels a while ago as 90% of my bookings were coming from AirBnB and it just became easier. AirBnB's ability to link listings made things a lot easier for me as I also split listings in the way you described but before that I was using Ownerrez to take care of it, which I still use and think is a really good channel manager. It also allows me to take bookings directly from my website and has integration with Pricelabs for my web widgets and will coordinate them with VRBO and BDC if I choose to go back to those in the future. You may want to look into it.  

How do you track your metrics with your split properties? I find it hard to track occupancy of the unit when I rent half of it at a time and the other half goes unbooked for instance.

@Jake Cohen

I've actually been thinking of switching to pricelabs and smartbnb so I'm glad you chimed in just now. Why are you looking to switch?

Outswitch has been good until recently. They still don't have an API connection with Airbnb which I think is unforgivable after all this time and there's no phone app for it, also unforgivable. Their whole back end uses flash so they'll need to update their entire system at some point soon and I don't want to tag along for the ride

I can't find any official policy but I found this discussion topic posted by AirBnB regarding it:

https://community.withairbnb.c...

I know that it's been implemented on my account. One other caveat is that this is for instant book hosts Ithink.

This happened to me. I host AirBnB's in San Diego and someone booked a year out for Comic Con right after the last one finished. I never had that far out a booking before and hadn't set pricing for the following year in my pricing tool yet. I let him know I wouldn't be able to honor it and he understood it was a too good to be true deal. He asked me what my rate would be and I wound up actually meeting him halfway.

I don't think it's necessarily a dirtbag move on the host's part what happened to your friend and I have a feeling your friend knew to an extent that they found a deal that seemed a little too good to be true themselves. There aren't that many businesses that honor price mistakes and these things do happen. 

What matters a lot here is how long the reservation is held in my opinion. How long a window was there between booking and being notified of the mistake? I think the 30 days the host allowed the reservation to stand is too long and I would have likely eaten the mistake.

In the same vein this occurs with guests when they make a simple mistake within my cancellation policy that won't entitle them to a full refund. I always look at how much time has lapsed. If they held my property up for being booked for a week or longer I'm a lot less inclined to refund them the rest of their reservation. If it's the next day it's a lot easier.

FWIW AirBnB has recently changed it host cancellation punishment at least for superhosts, not sure about non-superhosts to where we're now allowed to cancel up to 1% of our bookings per year before losing superhost status. A welcome change imo.

Modular homes are not mobile homes. Modular homes are built to local building codes while mobile homes are built to a federal HUD code. Many jurisdictions restrict placement of mobile homes, which are mobile or temporary, while Modular homes cannot be discriminated against as they're built to the same fire, life and safety building standards as any stick-built product and often permanently affixed to a foundation. Modular structures have always dealt with a stigma of being associated with Mobile homes because of information like what you've just posted. Modular, also known as Pre-Fab/Prefabricated is a different product than Mobile which is also often referred to as Manufactured or HUD

@Karen Margrave when I say prefab or modular I'm talking about 3D volumetric modules built off-site to a high level of finish and put in place by crane or some other method. I differentiate this from panelized construction which are things like SIPs or other wall panels that are flat packed onto a carrier and then assembled on-site. The prefab projects I work with come with windows, doors, electrical fixtures, plumbing fixtures, drywall, paint, casework, appliances, etc. 

I don't think the site is generally more costly than the structure build until you start getting into unstable soils, steep hillsides or other things of that nature. 

You can look at my profile at the prefab development project I completed a couple years ago and more about me and my company. All we do is prefab.

@Chris You

Those terms are not opposites. Pre Fab does not mean off the shelf. You can get custom prefab built. It gets more difficult on small projects.