All Forum Posts by: Rob Duncan

@Michael King I hear you. Both Airbnb & VRBO give the exact address 30 days or so before the reservation date. They also give a bubble around the area of the house before that. What I am talking about is the person that books 13 months in advance. Then starts dripping requests on you. I have found that with these guest we have invested a lot of time for what becomes an unhappy stay when we could have had a guest that booked 30 days in advance and had a great review. 

But I am willing to change my mind if someone has a better idea how to handle this situation.

I agree with @Kevin Lefeuvre. It has been my experience that it is the first of a series of red flags. It has been followed up with "Can I see the back yard?" or "Can I see how much storage space there is?" I can get guest that are less problematic.

Would you give out the address to someone on VRBO before they book for a reservation over a year from now?

I'm a Mac user and was always frustrated with the lack of feature parity between the Mac and Windows versions of Quickbooks. And I absolutely didn't want my stuff in the cloud. My solution was to install VirtualBox and install Quickbooks on a virtualized Window (7) machine. I then put that VM on an fast external drive. I now can easily move that virtual machine to any Mac or Windows machine I happen to be working on. This has numerous advantages. I can easily back up and/or restore when I patch the operating system or the application. I can give my accountant either the QB file or the whole machine. My bookkeeper can bring in her laptop and work on the machine without needing to site at my Mac, etc.

Hi Laurie, are these events still being held? I'm new to the area and looking to network.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-housing-labo...

After reading this article on the construction labor shortage I'm thinking that we are approaching a peak in the market. I'm wondering of there is a contrary investment angle other than going to cash and waiting. How would one leverage for the market to go down?

Colin, thanks for the advice. I'm trying to figure out how to best use this new found freedom that working remote offers. Maybe I can get greedy and have buy a multi-family in the mountains and on the coast. I am eligible for a VA loan and am itching to use it.

I like your idea about the BRRRR. A couple of years ago I restored a house in a historical district in the North East. It required learning the building techniques or the mid-19th century. I loved the house but I don't want something that old ever again. Although that may be a niche to play in.....

I am a new investor with a full time job. I like my job and plan on investing part time. I work in the tech industry and can live pretty much anywhere as long as I have access to the Internet and an airport. I'm looking to do BRRR.

I could ask "If you could invest anywhere, where would you go?". But in the interest of teaching a man to fish what research should one do to determine what area to go to?

Off the top of my head I can think of regional economic trends, population movement, metro and state tax rates, Chamber of Commerce economic forecasts. What else should I look at?

Thanks,

Robert