All Forum Posts by: Rohin Dhar

Very cool @Brian Oney, thank you for the feedback! I'm leaning OwnerRez because of the Quickbooks integration, but good to know about all these other features you like.

Hi all, trying to automate our operations a bit as we scale! It seems like from my research OwnerRez has the best integration with Quickbooks so I'm leaning toward using it as our PMS for that reason alone for streamlining our accounting.

My question is does anyone have any direct experience with OwnerRez. Love it? Hate it? Most of the info on the forum is a bit dated in this regard so thought I'd check.

Where OwnerRez seems weakest to me is in terms of setting schedules and reminders for cleaners.

Also, is anyone uses a PMS that syncs the Airbnb and Vrbo booking/revenue data directly with Quickbooks, let me know. It seems like Hospitable and Your Porter don't do this as far as I know and OwnerRez really shines when it comes to accounting. Other than that those two options look pretty good.

Thank you all!

@Alex S. thank you for the recommendation. I spoke to a similar service this morning and the pricing was roughly in line with that.

Ha, @Luke Carl i saw an old post of yours on the topic that said "hire a bookkeeper" so was hoping that was the easy solution!

Relatedly, we will probably need to move on from our current accountant this year to one that's more real estate focused.

Hi all,

Have gone through prior posts on the topic and seems like as you scale your number of vacation rentals, having a bookkeeper + quickbooks online pro is the most common recommended accounting solution. Sometimes people use an integration like OwnerRez to get the revenue data from the platforms into quickbooks as well.

Seeing if anyone has a recommendation for a shop that can get us started with the right setup for accounting and bookkeeping and then ideally manage the bookkeeping for us on an ongoing basis? Ideally one that understands STRs and has some familiarity with extracting the revenue data from Airbnb & Vrbo.

We're currently up to 6 rentals and now our Google Sheets spreadsheet solution is getting a bit time consuming.

Thanks!

Rohin

@Luke Carl, California in general doesn't cashflow but Healdsburg, CA is in the heart of Sonoma wine country and a very very very good market. The problem with it is it's hard to find properties with the right zoning (they exist) and also where you can get the right kind of insurance (due to wildfire risk). So you have to really thread the needle, but if you find one you're golden.

We have one in Sonoma, CA but they no longer give out new STR permits in that area.

@Avery Carl I can't wait to read your book! Followed your knowledge for years on this forum and know book is going to be amazing already.

This original post was 11 months ago, but since some folks tagged me on it recently, here's my update. I ended up passing on Park City at the time because it didn't seem to have the occupancy rates I needed to make my strategy work. In the shoulder season, some of the nightly rates on condos were really quite low and still had low occupancy. Things could have changed since then, but I haven't really followed it.

Prices went up a ton since then though so Park City might fit someone else's strategy!

Not a lawyer (so please take any comments with a grain of sand), but probably an official letter from lawyer would do a lot to let the sellers of property #2 know you intend to enforce the signed contract.

Unless your state has some sort of period in which the sellers can change their minds, the pending threat of litigation should be enough to prevent them from selling the property to someone else. Then again, maybe not worth the aggravation.

So in short, consult a lawyer. They might be very helpful in this case and getting them to draft and send a letter probably isn't very expensive!

@Ryan Moyer thanks! Curious if you've found that places that target families stay booked during weekdays during the school year? I think during the summer you can't go wrong either way, but during off season places targeting couples might have better occupancy?

@Bruce Woodruff, thanks! 

Most of our other places are one bedroom cottages which stay busy year around since couples (or singles) without kids have a bit more flexibility in their travel schedules. I guess I'd even consider marketing it has a one-bedroom with an office, but my guess is renting it as a two bedroom would generate more revenue.

Hi all, we just closed on a two bedroom, 1 bathroom small cottage near Yosemite national park. I was wondering how people typically lay out the beds in their two bedroom cabins? A large bed in each (targeting two couples) or a large bed in one and twin beds in the other (targeting families)? 

The bedrooms are pretty small, so I was thinking a queen in both the bedrooms with a twin trundle under one of them. That we can can target either, but then it's an extra bed to worry about. I don't want to do a sleeper sofa in the living room because the place is small and i don't want it overloaded with guests. 

Curious how other folks have attacked this! Our other places are either smaller or larger, so a two-bedroom is new to me.