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All Forum Posts by: Rik Hunter

Rik Hunter has started 11 posts and replied 74 times.

Post: Book title thoughts: Medium-term rentals (30+ days)

Rik HunterPosted
  • Specialist
  • Chattanooga, TN
  • Posts 75
  • Votes 40
Quote from @Nathan Gesner:
Quote from @Kaylee Walterbach:

Hello BP forums—help us choose a book title! This is for the medium-term rental book coming out in November.

We don't have a forum exclusively for medium-term rentals (yet!) so I figured this would be a good place to post this question. For those of you curious to learn more about 30-plus-day rentals and/or traveling nurse housing, which book title/subtitle sounds the most compelling?

1. The Long-Short Rental: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide to Mastering 30-Day Stays

2. 30-Day Stay: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide to Mastering the Medium-Term Rental

    Thanks for your input!


    Where do people get this idea of "medium-term" rentals? As far as I know, it doesn't actually exist. Short-term rentals are less than 30 days. Long-term rentals are greater than 30 days. A 90-day rental is still a long-term rental.


    I had a "Mid-Term" rental, mostly for travel nurses. It's a hybrid because I don't use AirBnB for my long-term rentals. I do many STR things, however. It's more work because (1) it's furnished and (2) it gets cleaned every 30-90 days between tenants. I also call the tenants "guests", and I want good reviews on AirBnB (and FurnishedFinder).

    Post: Book title thoughts: Medium-term rentals (30+ days)

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40

    1. (Almost) Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mid-Term Rentals But Were Afraid to Ask. <-- Longest BP book title contender.

    2. Straddling the Fence: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide to Mastering the Mid-Term Rental

    3. 30-Day Stay: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide to Mastering the Mid-Term Rental

    Post: Mid-term rental start-up costs

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40

    Right. We're have mid to higher end furnishings, but we're about 15-20 minutes from the cluster of hospitals East of Downtown. That's worked fine for nurses willing to drive, working at Memorial-Hixson, and a couple working in Dunlap or Dayton (I forget which). So, our distance from the main area of medical services is hurting us, but the quality of our unit generates the interest. 

    Post: Mid-term rental start-up costs

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40

    @Bonnie Low and @Bonnie Griffin Kaake, I heard some talk on the podcasts about using cost segregation, but the costs of the study seem pretty high, especially if you don't have a high value property. Diminishing returns in this situation? In Chattanooga, this duplex would top-out at $300k. I'm also not in year one with this property. But, I pretty much know nothing about the process! 

    Post: Mid-term rental start-up costs

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40

    @Christina P., thanks for the tip! I've read her book and listened to her on the BP podcasts, but haven't gotten to her podcast. 

    By chance, we've had an engineer through AirBnb and a traveling high school basketball coach. We've also been contacted by a couple families looking for a place to live during house-hunting and remodeling, but they had pets, which we don't take. 

    Post: Mid-term rental start-up costs

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40

    @Josh Ledbetter, we're outside the overlay! And we're charging nearly as much as anyone else with an MTR list on FurnishedFinder. Being closer to the hospitals gives you a bit more leverage to charge more, but we're on of the farthest out from the hospitals. It was fine before LTR rents went up. 


    Post: Mid-term rental start-up costs

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40
    Quote from @Nathan Gesner:

    I once knew a guy who's wife worked full-time but they had to put two kids in daycare. After paying daycare expenses, she was only bringing home $800 a month and she was totally stressed. I convinced her to find a part-time job. She worked two days a week and brought home $500 a month, but the kids weren't in daycare and her stress levels were gone.

    Look at the whole picture: all expenses, time, effort, stress, etc.

    Exactly, @Nathan G., this is where we're at. 

    Post: Mid-term rental start-up costs

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40

    @Chris Allen, In our area in Chattanooga, we're about $50-100 below the next closest properties, and we're a few minutes farther from the majority of hospitals. 

    Using the FurnushedFinder map, you can get a full home with 2 beds for $2000, and a 3 bed is about $2,250-2,300. I found one 3 bed for $1,800 and a 2 bed in the hip Northshore for $2,000.

    Very few hit or exceed $2,500. 

    We've got two travel nurses right now, but they came with one lease. We could consider renting by the room, but the results on FurnishedFinders for rooms. They run from $800-1200. 

    Even at $1,200/rm, I'm not sure that the time and energy put into self-managing is worth it. 

    Post: Mid-term rental start-up costs

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40
    Quote from @Nathan Gesner:
    Quote from @Rik Hunter:

    Not accounting for the start-up costs (which we want to pay off in the first year), we cashflow about $200/mth on that door ($400 if we do the cleaning and lawncare). 

    It sounds to me like you're doing a lot of extra work and not making much more money. If you make an extra $200 but it takes you four hours a month to clean and mow the lawn (plus gas, travel, lawnmower maintenance, etc.), are you really making more money?

    Definitely not with the increases in LT rents over this year. I've added another $100 to the rent to see if we get any bites, but we're seriously ready to call the experiment "failed" and go back to an LTR starting in July-August.

    Average LTR rents for a comparable unit were $1,000/month, and the MTR is at $1,650, so we were making more, but now rents are at $1,200-1,300, and we can't go up that high on the MTR. 

    Luckily, we're rehabbing a SFH and can use some of the MTR furnishing for ourselves and store what we don't need for a future STR.

    Post: Mid-term rental start-up costs

    Rik HunterPosted
    • Specialist
    • Chattanooga, TN
    • Posts 75
    • Votes 40
    Quote from @Kelsey Maren:


    @Bob Evans Hi, where did you do your market/data analysis for the mid term rental?

    Thinking about switching over to that from LTR in Raleigh but unsure of demand and determining the monthly.

    We're still unsure after 7 months. We've only had a few days of vacancy (for us to clean), and we're rented through mid-June.

    1. Nurses seem to get (or lock-in) contracts just a few weeks before the contracts start, so we get leases signed a couple weeks before the move-in date. 

    2.  We don't see a ton of local demand for travel nurse housing. First, you won't see nurses contacting landlords directly on FurnishedFinder, but FurnishedFinder allows travelers to register and put in their needs. I get an alert and check to see if we're a good match. 

    3. We also use AirBnB, but without automation tools, I have to make sure that once dates are locked in on AirBnB or FF, then I have to black out the other site's calendar. 

    4. We chose a price in the same way you would with a STR. We checked out the competition, and it had to cashflow.
     

    Not accounting for the start-up costs (which we want to pay off in the first year), we cashflow about $200/mth on that door ($400 if we do the cleaning and lawncare). 

    1. Nurses seem to get contracts just a few weeks before the contracts start, so we and move


    https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/986433-mid-term-rental-start-up-costs?highlight_post=5894851&page=1#