All Forum Posts by: Rick Dane

@John Underwood Ok thanks I can try that I guess I was thinking more in terms of emailing them, the counties / cities I'm looking at are relatively highly populated so wasn't sure if I could get someone on the phone easily but I will give that a shot. In the past I've been able to get some listing agents to reply to me and tell me whether STR is permitted as well but it's hit or miss as to whether they reply, I was wondering if anyone knows whether real estate agents have easy access to this info from the MLS system, like is there info in there that only agents can see that indicates whether short term rentals are legal for that property?

I'm looking at different areas in Florida, I have used apps like AirDNA but I'm finding there are a lot of listings that don't seem to show up there that I see when I use Airbnb itself to look at listings for full house short term rentals. When I compare what I see in Airbnb to what I see when I look for houses for sale on Zillow it has become really confusing to try to understand which houses for sale may be allowed to be short term rentals (ones that allow stays under one month). I wasn't sure if there is a way to check this efficiently? The only option I have in mind is contacting realtors to have them check as they seem to be able to figure this out, however, as I haven't narrowed down my search to one city yet I wanted to avoid having to contact many different realtors if possible. I have generally decided to focus on the west coast of Florida though, assuming I can find something in that region in my budget range, in case that matters as well. Any advice is appreciated.

I realize it's possible to contact each city / county and ask for this info but this seems really time consuming as I think they would be slow to respond and not sure how they would feel if I keep asking them about a bunch of different houses.

Mike, thanks for the detailed reply, awesome information that I'll dig into more. I've been to the DR and also a few parts of Mexico, what you're saying definitely seems to line up with what I've observed in those places. I think I would feel more comfortable doing business in Mexico so will look into some of the areas I'm familiar with there in more detail.

I've traveled a decent amount in Latin America and am starting to look into potentially investing in a short term rental in the region. I'm curious if anyone has suggestions for countries that may be a good fit, I haven't really looked into this before while traveling, although I've stayed in a lot of short term rentals while traveling in the region and I think I would like to try getting one that is fairly inexpensive, so I'm not looking for luxury type of real estate.

Basically what I'm looking for are the countries that would be the easiest to get started in, I'm not fluent in Spanish but I have basic proficiency and I'm comfortable enough I think with the cultures in the countries I've been to where I'm able to see myself doing this but I have never dealt with anything like this before in terms of investing in a country so I'm a little lost as to how to evaluate one country against another.

I've narrowed it down to Mexico, Central America, Caribbean or Colombia. I have this perception I guess I would say that Panama may be one of the most friendly toward foreign investors so I'm going to look into that more but was wondering if anyone has other suggestions.

I've been doing research on this but haven't found a clear answer yet that clarifies it for me. Basically, I am looking different options for doing a short term rental in an area that I think is ideal for this business climate (away from urban centers in more outdoors vacation type of area) and I'm thinking of possibly buying a primary residence for this and renting it out some of the time when I'm away. 

Let's say I would be living there at least half the year, would the only determining factor on how many nights I can rent out the property as a short term rental be the local regulations on short term rentals? I wasn't sure, though, if the lender would place restrictions on this or possibly some other kind of government restriction related to the fact that I have it as my primary residence (probably more federal in my case as I don't think the states I'm looking at would)? In my case I am looking at areas that I believe have few restrictions in terms of limiting short term rentals overall. I think I could get an insurance policy tailored for a short term rental even if the house was my primary residence without issue? 

Also, I'm not sure if I would need to tell the lender going in about my plan, I want to do this by the book and not have them think I'm going to be living there 100% of the time if I would be going against their terms by renting it out part of the time. Thanks for any info!

Thanks for the reply, well, I do have enough assets to where it makes me worry but what you're saying makes sense about insurance covering it and being more difficult to finance under a corporation. To me, it seems the cost of legal defense would be the same regardless of whether I own the house directly or through an entity unless I'm misunderstanding something.

One other thing that came to mind is whether it would be possible to own the home directly without an entity but still have an entity that I use for managing the short term rental aspect of it? This would be more a concern for if I were doing it as a short term rental, maybe it doesn't make sense to have an entity involved at all in this case but figured I would ask. Thanks!

So, this isn't a scheme to evade taxes, I'm considering two possible scenarios so just wanted to get a high level overview if this would make sense legally. I'm considering either buying a vacation rental property and renting it out on a regular basis but living there myself maybe half, or a bit more than half, of the year. I would like to buy the property using a corporation and then rent it out to myself as I think this makes more sense from a legal perspective since it would be rented out to others a good part of the year. The other scenario is buying a property with more than one house on it and renting one out as either a vacation rental or a regular rental and living in the other and then renting one of the houses to myself. My main concern around all this isn't taxation, it's liability as it seems to me it would be better, from a legal perspective, to not be renting out a home that I just own directly myself (not through a corporation). Any info is greatly appreciated!

I would love for stuff like this to become reality but I won't believe it til I see it. There are always these concept proposals, etc that people put out there to get a name for themselves but they often don't come to fruition. It would be cool though to see this happen.

I'm always interested to network, I am still pretty new to investment real estate but hopefully soon I will be an owner-occupant on a multi-family property and also be renting out my single family home. I'm planning to keep going from there, I have a background in software development so I feel I am strong in analysis and so far I am enjoying the experience of researching investment properties, etc.

I'm looking into buying a multi family property nearby to downtown and living in one of the unit (so, I think this would be considered house hacking). It looks like the possibility for fully covering my mortgage isn't there, however, I could possibly keep my monthly housing cost to $500-600 which is still quite a bit lower than what it is now.

To meet that $500-600 a month cost goal it seems I have two options, the areas of South Sacramento just south of downtown, which seems to be mainly Oak Park, and some areas north of downtown, which I think is considered "Old North Sacramento". I have been spending time in both areas lately to get a feel, so am curious of anyone else's opinions on these two areas.

On one hand, the South Sacramento area seems more connected to downtown, so I think is possibly a better longterm investment as more urban businesses, etc may open and make the area more desirable. On the other hand, the area seems a bit more run down, on average, and less safe, than some parts of Old North Sacramento.

For Old North Sacramento, I'm not sure this area will experience much growth in terms of businesses, etc, as it seems to have less commercial districts so I'm not sure if it has the same growth potential, however, it seems it may be a bit safer, etc to live in this area at the moment.

Would love to get feedback from anyone who knows more about this than I do tho