All Forum Posts by: Matthew Masoud

I think your best bet is going to be a combination of MTR and STR.

We operate all of our properties that way. We use STR reservations to cover the gap between two MTR reservations.

It's the balance we like between steady income while still collecting a premium.

I started out with managing my own property, The portfolio got big enough to hire a full-time person to help me out and a Virtual Assitant. 

After a while, I had operations DOWN and felt comfortable enough taking outside clients. All I had to do at that point was plug them into my existing system.

You need thick skin in this business but I think most of the money from it is made by creating a system that manages your own portfolio well, not other people's portfolios, especially in multifamily. 

I got one right away thinking it would solve all of my problems.

I had to fire them and the two after them before I just hired someone full-time + a VA, and trained them. Got the process down so I actually turned a business out of it.

If trained well things run pretty damn smoothly but I still have to jump in and take care of something a few times a week but we are still less than 100 units.

Very good questions.

Most properties have 50%-60% equity. We are refinancing only at 60%-65% to prepare for a potential increase in cap rates that will directly hurt property values.

Our portfolio is spread out over 6 properties. They all share a bank that can float any property for over 6 months (This is not an operating account, each property has its own operating account)

. Think of it as an umbrella policy over our actual umbrella policy over our regular insurance for each property.

We use this account for CapEx repairs and then fill it up with the following month's cashflow

Unfortunately because of how new the mid-term rental space is, there is no software that easily runs operations.

You'll have to get creative with the short term management softwares out there.

 Double the monthly rent is a good rule of thumb although some markets are more or less depending on demand.

Best areas are exactly what you said mid/large cities with hospitals, businesses, schools, etc.

Yeah I'd definitely furnish that second unit and give it a shot. I always like to think worst case scenario, it makes me less afraid to make big moves. Worse case scenario you sell the furniture and rent out that second unit as a regular rental. (make sure the numbers work long-term as well)

 Furnish Finder brings in quite a bit but it's a manual reservation so more work is involved (lease, deposit ect).

I like airbnb because they handle the payment side of things. Their strong review system has helped me say no to a lot of tenants. Plus it comes with insurance. Their fees are pretty hefty though.

Then I get surprise bookings from other platforms like booking.com, Expedia, and google travel. I put my units everywhere to make sure they stay booked.

 This is how we do it for our own mid-term portfolio and for the ones we manage.

1. $600 refundable deposit for anything over 31 days. In 3-years in the Mid-Term rental space and 100s of reservations, we've never had to use it.

2. We give them two options for screening. they can either provide documentation that they are traveling for their job or they can pay for tenant screening. You've got to find a cheaper platform though because $55 is fairly steep ours charges $35.

3. We use hostaway in combination with doorloop to manage mid-term rentals. Hostaway is a short term rental software but with enough finagling you can get it to work for mid-term as well. Doorloop is for maitaince requests, reporting, and overall operations. We are able to run pretty well with over 100 mid-term units on these platforms.

The mid-term space is super new so we are all kind of finding out footing together at the same time. 

 This is pretty much exactly what I did. I had a triplex back in 2020 that had a tenant leaving. I thought why not give this Mid-Term rental a chance? Worst case scenario I donate the furniture to the church and I'm back where I started.

The reservations came in fast and hard. Market rent for that apartment was $700, I was renting at $1,400 with near 100% occupancy. 

 I was not able to find one. It was either long-term property management or short-term property management so I actually started my own. 

We almost exclusively manage our own property but are not opposed to taking other properties and plugging them into our operations.