All Forum Posts by: Rachel Hughes

@Jon Crosby Smart! I'm thinking I should furnish it in the most economical way at first, find out who my customer is, then adjust as needed.

@Jon Crosby

@Julie Groth Thanks for the input! Maybe you and your friends can come stay at my place this year ;)

@Cliff H. Good info. Thank you!!

How would you furnish 3 bedrooms for sleeping? I am purchasing a 3 bedroom home with an ADU. My husband and I will be living in the ADU and using the main house as an STR.

The property is in a residential area and not really walk able to any restaurants/attractions. I am not sure what type of guest we will attract but I have a feeling it will be families. Looking at the numbers, being able to sleep 8-10 would be advantageous. 

Here is what I am thinking...

Bedroom 1: King bed

Bedroom 2: Queen bed

Bedroom 3: Two twin bunk beds? Two full beds? two twin XL beds?

Living room: Daybed with trundle (doubles as a couch)? Queen sleeper sofa?

I am worried that bunk beds are too child-ish and might turn off larger groups of adults. However, I'd rather cater to families than large groups of adults that might have bad intentions... In your experience, do families with lots of kids use Airbnb? Is it better to keep a more mature look?

Any insights from hosts would be appreciated!

@Curt Davis For purchasing. 

Looking for an agent in the Memphis, TN area that specializes in (or is at least knowledgeable of) STR investing.

Planning to acquire at least 2 properties in 2020. Hopefully even more in 2021.

I don’t have a big budget so I do not expect an agent to hand hold. I just need someone that can provide insights into specific areas.

Any recommendations would be appreciated!

Hi Helen,

I recently went through this process and also was unable to find a tool that gave high-level data at a reasonable price. I almost spent ~$600 on AirDNA's investment explorer but ultimately decided against it. 

Here's what I did do... Since I am a newbie investor and don't have tons of capital, I knew I wanted to be in a market with a low median home price ($200k or less). From there I made a short list of cities that met that requirement (focusing on larger metro-plex areas rather than vacation towns). With that short list I made spreadsheet and included the following for each city...

1) Annual visitors - really easy to look up on Google

2) Median home price - I think I used Zillow

3) Airbnb Revenue - I got this directly from Airbnb. You can go into the app and click "learn about hosting", enter the city name, and it will spit out a revenue estimate

Using the above, I narrowed the list to about 5 cities. From there, I did a deep dive on STR regulation in each city. This is super important and took some digging/follow up emails with local govts.

Ultimately I landed on Memphis, TN and my husband and I relocated here. We are closing on our first property in ~2 weeks and hope to buy 2 more in 2020.

P.S. AirDNA's investment explorer tool can be used for free in a demo version for the entire state of TN. Lots of solid STR markets in TN and regulation is not too strict in most cities!

Hope this helps...if you build a better tool for this type of research, let me know :)

This topic comes up semi-regularly on this forum. 

The best commentary I have found is on this discussion thread (2 years old): https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/530/topics/495067-brrrr-but-airbnb-instead-of-rent

I am also very interested in this topic and would love to hear if any others have had success refinancing based on projected STR income.

@Craig Curelop Thanks for the input. The map is a nice touch. Planning to do the same. 

P.S. I loved your BP podcast episode. Have listened to it several times! 

@Joseph McCrillis Thanks for the input. The property is in Memphis. We close on it mid-December. Planning to share my experience on this forum so stay tuned.