All Forum Posts by: Ken Boone

Yea it depends what you want to be doing and what your goals are.  I started with LTRs to get some experience and then switched to STRs as LTRs at my age was not going to get me where I wanted to go fast enough.  I have a mgmt company for my LTRs they charge 8% and that makes my LTR investments about 97% passive.  Passive is good.  They cash flow well but still not fast enough to get where I wanted to go.  I switched to STRs and they make a boat load of cash flow, but we manage those ourselves because mgmt companies for STRs charge a much higher rate.  Which is expected as there is a lot more work involved.  So since we manage ourselves there is work - it is not passive income.  In my case the time it takes for the work is easily worth the cash flow and we have the time available to do it.  Quite honestly I am now struggling with the idea of what I want to do next.  Keep rolling with more STRs or take the cash flow from the STRs and put them back into more LTRs since they are passive.  I don't think I can wrong either way.  Just trying to figure out what I want to do.

Al that is a great area there. If your main interest is having a second home and let the STR aspect help pay the mortgage, as long as there are not restrictions on STRs in that area I would go for it. Yes you will be competing with the cabins so you will just have to gauge the take rate in that area. I would scour airbnb and vrbo for other cabins/STRs and see how they are booking and what rates they have per season. Then I would try to see how you can make your place more attractive. i.e. amenities you can add to the mix. i.e. Large TVs, arcade games, you name it.

I don't know if your 10 nights a month is reasonable or not in that area.  I am sure you will have seasonal uptakes and then parts of the year pretty empty.  I don't know the area enough well enough to tell you on that, hopefully someone else that knows that area can pipe up.

It is totally overblown.  You have foreign governments giving stats you can't trust.  

Just compare with the flu.  You can get the stats from the  CDC here:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/...

The CDC flu estimates for the 2019-2020 flu season between October 1st 2019 through Feb 15, 2020 looks like this:

29 - 41 million flu illnesses

13 - 19 million flu medical visits

280k-500k flu hospitalizations

16k-41k flu deaths

So that is 16,000 - 41,000 flu deaths in just the USA in 4.5 months.

These stats fluctuate every year depending on how bad the flu strains are in any given year.  So the coronavirus doesn't even touch these flu numbers.  You don't hear the media freaking out about the flu and just look at those numbers.

All the main stream media seems to do these days is just report a bunch of hype over any given topic that pops up.

I am not letting it bother me at all.

So if the guest's mother did the booking...and the mother is not going to be there, this most likely violates airbnb policy.  I went through this with one of the platforms I just can't remember which one.  Had a sister who instant booked 60 days at one of my STRs in that area for her deadbeat brother, who has been arrested in other states for squatting on private property... yea no.  It was an expensive booking and payment actually was approved.  So anyway it was the platform's policy that the person that books has to be the guest.  So that was our easy way to cancel without a penalty.

My minimum is also 25, however I will make exceptions.  I had a similar experience with a group of teenagers we actually let stay at one of my pool cabins.  We had enough conversations with the mom that we felt comfortable and it actually worked out very well.  It was only 4 teens around the same age though.  7 to 19 is crazy!  

I agree with both of the above comments.

Here is the deal.  It's your cabin.  If you are not comfortable - decline the booking.  I have had to do that on occasion.  Probably everyone has.

I'm not sure about this but I read something somewhere that stated something to the effect, that if a stay is a certain length of time, then the guest under the law becomes a tenant - and you are now responsible under Landlord/Tenant laws.  This all depends on the area so I would check that out.

@Michael Baum - Thanks for the heads up.   My wife just stocked up for our cabins!   That was unbelievably great timing!

@John Underwood - I was at Sam's last night.  I can't compare quality but I can tell you this.  The price that Michael shared is probably more than 1/2 of what it was at Sam's and the bath towels are oversized at Sam's.  I know the cleaner doesn't like the oversized ones.

My wife is heading there now ;)  Those prices are incredibly cheap.  I know because I have been shopping for these things the last couple of days looking at prices at several different places.  

Reasonably priced.. I just purchased a new set of towels and such last night at Kohl's with a 30% coupon on top of the sale price and that still didn't come close to 18.99 for 6 towels.. Are these towels real thin? or see through even?  Those prices are dirt cheap!

@Jonathan Pacilio - No problem man.  Just hit me up with a PM and we can set something up.

@John Underwood - Yes the pools are heated year round.  Now I have seen some big pools in indoor cabins, but in most 2 bedroom cabins with pools, the pools are small.  We have to keep the heat going 24 x7 to maintain the temperature and guarantee that it stays consistent.  I don't ever want a guest to show up and its cold.  The electric bill will be significantly higher with a pool as you are heating and running the pool pump 24/7.  If the heater doesn't detect water flow, it stops heating, so you can't really cycle the pump on and off like a regular pool.

Yes it is worth the trouble, expense and maintenance.  My pool cabin rates are significantly higher than an average 2 bedroom cabin.  The thing is with 10 million+ visitors a year to that area, you get all kinds of folks.  So as far as pricing out of the budget goes, if someone is budgeting to stay in an average 2 bed cabin they won't book my cabin, except maybe in Jan-Feb when prices are lower, but I don't think I am really competing with those folks.