All Forum Posts by: Ken Boone

Well as of right now.. i am booked solid in the Pigeon Forge market with new bookings coming in every day.  Currently I am not seeing  any signs of a slow down here.  I hope that doesn't change.

Killing it in Pigeon Forge, TN.

I did this and it worked great.  Basically once I set up my listing, pre-closing, the seller contacted all of their future guests and let them know they were selling their cabin and that we were buying it.  They also gave them our listing number and contact information and let them know that we would continue to honor whatever prices they booked at.  These guests were given 2 weeks, to cancel and then re-book with us.  The seller provided us with a list of all of their bookings so we knew the who and when for each future booking.  We then blocked those dates on the calendar to ensure no one else could book those dates for those first 2 weeks.  Once the guests would contact us, we would unblock the calendar and let them book with us.  I can't remember how many bookings we had but they spanned over several months.  We only lost 2 of those bookings and that was because the one thing we did change was to not allow pets.  The previous owner allowed pets and we don't.  Everything worked very smoothly for us - mainly because the seller was helpful and did not want to disrupt the future guests' vacation.  Now if you purchase a cabin that is in a rental program with a management company forget it.  They will not work with you on this, they will simply try to offer a different cabin in their program to the affected guests.

The one thing we learned after the fact - is if you follow VRBO's process on this - which you will have to talk to them - you can have all of their reviews moved to your listing.  

Hope that helps.

So I have 3 cabins in the Pigeon Forge market.  Once is just outside of the PF city limits, when we started that cabin, we had bookings within 24 hours on both platforms.  It took off and it still fluctuates anywhere between 60/40 and 40/60 between both platforms.  The second cabin is in the PF city limits, again, had bookings on both platforms in 24 hours and performs the  same.  The 3rd cabin is actually in Wears Valley - a little further down the road but only 15 mins.  When we listed that one it took 6 months to get an organic VRBO booking.   We had many conversations with VRBO about this.  Basically our cabin was not coming up in search listings.  Whereas my other 2 cabins had 30,000 + search results over 28 days, this one had like less than a 1000.. That is not views, that is just showing up in search results.  And we did pay the $499/yr subscription based on my other cabin's bookings so that didn't seem to help with the initial bookings.

VRBO was just not listing it.  It is a 3 bedroom cabin basically in that same market just a little further out.  We told VRBO.  Look if you don't show the cabin in a search result, then I can't get a booking on your platform.  And they told me that I have to get more bookings and get more reviews to come up in the search results.  I again told them how do I do that when you don't list my cabin in the search results??? and round and round it went.  We escalated the issue a few times and it was very frustrating.

Finally we were able to get some bookings in there and get a few reviews and then it finally picked up on VRBO.  Whereas the other 2 cabins, were immediate - this was like an 8 month ramp up to get anywhere on VRBO with the 3rd cabin.

Good luck to you!

@Collin Hays That would be nice.  I would love one on the river.  I just went Kayaking down the Little Pigeon River through PF on Wednesday and was checking out the cabins along that river as I went ;)  I saw one listed today on the river near the parkway and I think they wanted 500k for it - 2 bed cabin.  Are your cabins on stilts?  Have you ever had any issues with flooding?

@Collin Hays You hit it right on the head with your comment about something unique about the property.  I think to maximize your return that is the absolute key.  There are thousands and thousands of cabins up there all with a nice king suite, a hot tub and arcade cabinet.  To rise above the crowd and get the higher incomes you need something more

@Dustin Turner My STRs are performing beyond my initial expectations so yes they are performing very much the way I would like them to. If there are deals to be had in the Smokies they are all off market and you would have to have some connections I assume. As far as the rents and occupancy rates justifying the increased sales prices - I dunno. That depends on what you want. My first two cabins gave me a 30% CoC return the first year, my 3rd I haven't had a full year yet to know, but I guarantee that it won't be near 30% CoC and that one costs me the most since prices were continually going up. I doubt you can get a return like that in the current market but that might be possible in larger cabins which I have not looked into. That 3rd cabin is doing well though and is making me money. Occupancy rates are outstanding in all of my cabins. You just have to analyze the property you are interested in and determined your costs and projected income and make a determination if the return is one you will be happy with. You just have to remember this is not passive investing like LTRs so for me that means I want a much higher return to compensate for the work involved.

Sean - it really depends on your goals.  If your goals are to have a vacation rental that you can use and have other folks help pay for it then thats great.  If your goals are to make a lot of cash flow, then I would say at 40% occupancy that is not a good vacation rental market.  Of course this all depends on a lot factors such as purchase price, expected costs, etc etc..

@Stacey Lancaster So are you saying the seller did not disclose that this cabin was burnt down in the 2016 fire and rebuilt or are you saying they did not disclose that the plumbing lines were clogged?  It may be possible they didn't know the lines were clogged - just saying - so that will be hard to prove.

On the other hand something that I have learned is that home inspections are mostly a waste of time.  They find small issues or glaring obvious issues but they never find the stuff that hurts.  And when you purchase and find it, they are covered in their clauses - and there is so much they don't find.  So going in to a cabin purchase you have to be prepared for unknown expenses.

The unfortunate thing is that with these used cabins there are generally always things that need to be done and that is just how it is.  I always expect to put in another 12 - 20k after I purchase a cabin.

If this is your first cabin, I definitely understand the apprehension with the expenses but once you start cash flowing, you won't worry about these issues too much anymore.  You will just see that as a cost of doing business.  

@Jeremy Mortimore Jeremy, as of 2 weeks ago this was working on all of my Roku TVs at my cabins that have xfinity service. You have to have already activated the Xfinity internet service and the Xfinity TV service in order to use the beta xfinity streaming app on roku.   

Here is a link to xfinity describing this:

https://www.xfinity.com/suppor...

Now in that link it does not list all of the available Roku devices.  Like I said all my devices are TCL Roku TVs and they all work great with the streaming app.