All Forum Posts by: Scott K.

I try not to solve problems before they happen, so unless you've had customers complain about not finding their supplies, I wouldn't try to solve this problem by putting it all in plain view, I'd simply distribute it throughout the house like it should be ( as you mentioned, everything in its useable location )

But hey, if it saves you time to put it one location, why not. Probably no ones going to complain.

If I worked outside all day the last thing I'd want to do is stay outside more, but hey, try it for a week see if people appreciate it. 

The moment you quit your job, you will be unable to finance anything except through a hard money lender who will require much more than 10-20%. Usually 20-25%. Also conventional loans on investment properties I believe start at 15% and go to 20% usually.

Airbnb income takes 2 years of tax returns to qualify for a conventional loan. Keep in mind they will average it as well, they won't take the most recent income.

DTI must be about 50-55% ratio or under so do the calculations and it will at the very minimum take you 2 years, if not more, to begin getting conventional loans again.

Also note - lots of hard money lenders are not doing STR's right now due to the pandemic. I'd say keep your day job as long as you can possibly manage.

Originally posted by @Paul Sandhu:

Originally posted by @Scott K.:

 I've rented about 1800 people, and I can count the number of bookings that came from Airbnb on one hand.  And yes, I do it with pen and paper.

 That's pretty impressive! Can't say I envy that type of work, but whatever works for you

 Yeah good points. I've used zapier and gcal before for this sort of thing. I think my problem with that, is that even using gcal is too much to ask of some Handyman. Having a website they just type in, and use without any login, seems a simpler UI. But perhaps I could have them just enter the gcal link? Not a bad idea. 

Sure 3 properties isn't much but I plan on buying 2 per year. I also like to solve problems before they happen. Kind of a fun diversion to me with potential to sell the tool later. Thanks for the input

 Or I could develop a web app to more intelligently tackle this task? This would help me regardless of whether I switch to an assistant in the future or not. No reason not to automate or organize things using coding and the powers of the internet. You might as well argue that airbnb is useless and we should be using a pen and paper to take down bookings...

 Fair enough! I do work myself when I can. But I live 2 hours away and work on my other businesses. Not interested in living the rest of my life doing handyman jobs, tied to one location.

My problem isn't finding them on my phone... my problem is when I need a repair done, I first have to check when my STR's are empty. I then memorize those dates. I then reach out to all 3 handymen, who may, or may not have time for those dates to stop by and fix problems. The problem then gets kicked to next week. I have to repeat the process of finding new availability, reaching out to all 3. Then I'm lucky, one is available, they tell me they'll stop by!

The following week I check in, problem isn't solved, they got distracted. I then have to re-check all availabilities, reach out to all 3 handymen again. The process is maddening and a waste of my time. The market is overloaded with houses, and not enough handymen to fix the problems. And yes, I have tried finding more handymen, this is why I now have 3 I work with.

With 3 STR's I'm trying to start organizing and automating processes for myself. It's become a chore to organize my different handymen who all have different schedules, and I have to not only remind them of every single repair that is pending for each house, I have to make sure they know which dates the houses are available/free of guests to head over. In addition to that, they often don't report precisely what they did to fix a problem, or which problems they forgot to work on.

This leads me to needing a centralized system to track/manage their tasks.

I suppose before I get to my ideas - does anyone have this problem, and have a ready-to-go app or service they use to organize handymen, that they've found useful, especially given that handymen are often not technologically adept, and have very little interest in downloading a new app or learning a new system?

I'm thinking of coding my own web app. Basically, all a handyman has to do is go to a bookmarked website, where it lists all my houses. Under each house they would see pending repair tasks, and see the next available dates those houses are free of guests. They would then have a button to click to say 'working on', and they could enter their name. Once it's done, they would click 'finish', and it would require them to upload a photo to confirm. Once finished, a task disappears from the list.

They, as well as my cleaners, would be able to also add new repair tasks as they see them. On the backend, I would be able to see the finished tasks, a photo of the task, and who completed it. I would also be able to upload my iCal links to sync my booking availability automatically. I would be notified every time a handyman clicks 'working on' and also when they click 'finish' by email.

I could probably get this done for $400 or so with my developer, so it's quite cheap and easy to do. Just wanted to double check with everyone if they already have a solution for this, or any suggestions for how to improve it.

 Hmm. I charge up to $1200 a night but I don't give them cable at all. I just let them have access to the roku accounts where I pay for nothing. I've probably heard 2 people ask me how to use it after 100 bookings. No one has complained.

 If you're looking for an easier/cheaper alternative to having your cable box by using the roku tv it's not great. There are a bunch of subscription services but I believe the problem is you'd have to log into your personal roku account and keep the paid channels there. You'd have to instruct guests how to use those paid channels. The main problem is all these streaming services are separate. Every news channel has it's own app. Every sports channel is separate. It's a real PITA. If you want to provide a premium service, keep the cable. I'd suggest dropping it altogether and letting guests fend for themselves.

As a millennial myself, none of us watch tv anymore. We all have our own paid streaming services that we can just log into on a guest roku account. If your clientele is older, then perhaps keep the cable box.