All Forum Posts by: Drew Smith

@Frank Barletta For my first, It would've been useful to pay for a service that would do it for me.  Especially if I am miles away and didn't have the contacts established.  Once you're established in a market, it may not be as useful.  But if I had a great experience, and was moving to a new market, then I might choose to use them again.  Hope that helps!

The biggest question for me was: What property type will get me started?

Now I primarily invest in STR. But I got started with a long-term that cost 70k and was about 30 minutes from where I live. That's where my comfort level was in the beginning.

It also wouldn't hurt to get in your listing daily to play around with verbiage, pictures, pricing, etc.  I've always heard this helps with the algorithm in showing that you are an active host and can get a little bump up in the rankings. 

Sourcing cleaners, handymen, roofers, etc. especially in a vacation rental market where I don't live.  Once I had boots on the ground, that I trusted and knew were doing a great job, it made life much easier!

 Well thought out response, I appreciate the feedback!

Using equity from the sale of my primary, it got us down payments on 2 LTRs that were both under $140k each. I kept those for a year-ish and sold at the height of the market, did 1031's into the beach market. My new primary also appreciated during this time so I took out a HELOC on it and used that to purchase the cabin in Pigeon Forge. I'm all about being creative!

Air filters :)

I'm a PriceLabs fan, we have all 3 properties linked to it.  Highly recommend dynamic pricing unless you're going to be manually tweaking your prices daily based on the season, competition, etc. 

Yes, they all 3 do. 

3 - Gulf Shores (AL), Orange Beach (AL), Pigeon Forge (TN)

Agree wholeheartedly with the above advice on just jumping in.  You will learn soooo much more once you get into the weeds on setting up your property, guest/cleaner communication, etc. 

A couple nuggets:

I'm glad we purchased a smaller cabin in the market that I didn't know (great smoky mountains) as it's occupancy is much higher and I have a pretty good idea of what income will be each month.

Our 2nd beach condo is across the street from the beach without beach access (you have to drive or walk .25 a mile).  I wish we would've saved up and bought directly on the beach.  Our 1st is directly on and it crushes.