All Forum Posts by: Steve Puglisi

Steve

I've not use PMI but have used different PMs. 20% on the STR field is lower than most. From my PM I expect my houses to be operated relatively passively. I manage the utilities, but expect them to deal with bookings, maintenance, guests, routine inspections, pest control, landscaping, linens…. Items from 3rd parties they do a 10% markup on for their time. I feel it's well worth it if you've got multiple properties and scaling while maintaining a regular day job especially one that's beyond 50 hours a week. My properties are also out of state.

Hi Steve - congrats on your new investment. I recommend you follow your attorney's advice and hold it in an LLC. My recommendation is based on personal experience, and advice I have received from attorneys & accountants as well as other investors over the years.

And it is very easy to form an LLC so not making the process much more complicated.

Best of luck 

Hi @Sarah Hylander,

I would strongly recommend using an LLC to hold the property. The LLC can be incorporated post closing for most properties - I would recommend checking with your lender on when the property can be moved to an LLC.

Thanks,

-Megan

@Steve Puglisi I self-manage. If you can, you should consider it. As several others already said that is the best way to cashflow. However... I do understand that some people are too busy to self-manage and need to hire a manager. If you need to do that, I agree with those who said "beware of 10% STR managers". Unless you have a multimillion dollar property that rakes in $200K+ in gross annual rent, 10% provides very little to the mgmt company, so it's not worth their effort to try very hard OR what they do provide is a limited service with you still having to be very involve. One such example is Evolve (I'm not a fan!!!)

If you hire a manager, do your research, etc and pick a good one, they will select how to market your property and hopefully will be very successful at it.

If you decide to self-manage (again I strongly recommend!), here is my experience: I currently use VRBO, Airbnb and my own website for direct bookings. I use OwnerRez for my property management software and it does interphase with all sorts of platforms. There are other programs too. They all have API capabilities with most listing sites. I have tried Booking.com, TripAdviser, Flipkey and a few others. What I found out is that the 80/20 rule heavily applies. In other words, even if you list on 100 sites, most of your bookings will come from just a few sites. In your area those might be different from mine (I'm on the Panhandle of FL). The other sites basically just create confusion and "noise" and cannibalize bookings that you would have gotten anyway through your main sites. I don't find it helpful to waste my time tracking a bunch of listing sites. I didn't like Booking.com and they had awful customer service for property owners. (Personal opinion). TripAdvisor charged huge fees to the guests which artificially inflated the prices. I would get one or two bookings per year from there. I would have gotten those times booked anyway on VRBO or Airbnb.

Good luck!!! Hope it all works great for you!