All Forum Posts by: Staton Jobe

Thank you all for the feedback. My CPA is telling me that because we used it for 14+ days for personal use then it is classified as a vacation/second home for the year and the expenses get prorated for only days that renters are actually in it. 

This should really be the only year where we break that 14+ day rule so in the future it doesn't sound like we will have to prorate at all. 

Thanks again. First time using this CPA so just double checking that they're accurate. 

So we did live in it for 71 days last year before moving from the state, so it was technically only available for rent for 294 days...and out of those days it actually had renters for 151 days. My CPA says that I can deduct the expenses for 151 days but not for the full 294. Is this because we did have 14+ days for personal use? 

Hey everyone - 

Wanted to confirm something before filing the taxes for my STR, which is located in Virginia.

Am I able to deduct all insurance, taxes, and mortgage interest for the year if my STR was available for rent the entire year but only had renters in it for 150 nights? My CPA is saying I have to pro rate those expenses for the number of nights that it was actually rented out, but I can't find anything online that confirms that. Any 3rd party insights would be helpful before I officially file, as it affects my write offs significantly.

Thank you

Staton

@Preston Forsberg I finally got on a video call with customer service from Guesty which was helpful. The solution is to email customer service and have them add the appropriate % tax onto your VRBO listing.  This will show up as a line item in the final price for customers.  They were finally able to do this for me as of today and it is now showing up when I go through the process of booking my property on VRBO. 

If they don't do this initially, keep on them. I was initially told that this was not possible but then another rep was able to do it.  

Hope this helps

@John Underwood @Zambricki Li

For those of you who do not use third party management software, are you able to have Airbnb/VRBO automatically alert your cleaners of new reservations or at least share a calendar with them? 

And what about auto-reviewing guests? I this something you can set up through Airbnb/VRBO? Those are really the only remaining things I can think of that the third party software does for me...

@Mark S. Thanks for the info. Seems like I need to integrate yet another piece of third party software!

@Kristi Miller With iGMS - for VRBO, do you have to use a 3rd party payment software to collect payments or does it still go through VRBO?

One problem I'm running into is that I have to use Stripe for my payment collection for VRBO bookings so it does not automatically collect and remit taxes...trying to set it up to do this through Stripe but it's not as straightforward as one would think 

@Ken Boone That's interesting - after doing a little more research it sounds like you have the "Standard" connection to VRBO and I have the "Upgraded". Guesty seems to steer users toward the upgraded connection but I wonder if the standard results in less issues...does anyone out there have experience using both? 

Listed our first STR property last month and started using Guesty for Hosts as my management software to consolidate across platforms. Everything was fine when just using Airbnb (though you could argue against needing 3rd party software for one platform) but have been very frustrated since integrating VRBO. A couple of my frustrations:

1. Once you integrate VRBO, you can no longer edit your listing on the platform and have to email customer support to make any changes to it.

2. 10-15min delay in messaging

3. Have 3 VRBO bookings so far and only 1 has successfully synched across all platforms, which had me almost double book dates on Airbnb...still can't block those dates b/c I have to do it on Guesty and they're blocked on there but it's not synching w/ Airbnb. One booking from 2 days ago shows on my Guesty calendar but is still not fully registered with the software as no automated messages have been sent to the guests.

4. Have to use 3rd party payment software which allowed a customer to book with an expired credit card. Also, by having to do this VRBO no longer remits my local taxes. So each month I will have to calculate out what was successfully remitted via Airbnb and what I'll need to do myself from my VRBO bookings.

5. Still have not found out how to speak with customer service on the phone...everything has had to been done via email...a big reason why I'm now venting on bigger pockets

I paid for the annual subscription for the year so I guess I'm stuck with it for now but unless they smooth out these integration issues I will probably switch. I'm using 3rd party software to try and automate as much as my operation as possible, but I find myself troubleshooting way more than if I were using no management software at all. Was considering putting my listing on Booking.com but I'm honestly terrified now to integrate another platform. 

Is anyone else having similar issues with Guesty? Anyone extremely pleased with the software they're currently using?

Yes, lesson learned for this novice investor…I think I'm going to go ahead and buy the new policy for my LLC…I'll feel better about it once I start getting some cash flow from this property