All Forum Posts by: Wendy Schultz

You could use the garage as a game room which would add more value to your property from a vacation rental standpoint. A garage is little use to the guests unless there is no parking available elsewhere. A game room on the other hand will bring more guests to your place. 

I would not advise using Booking.com. We have had 2 fraudulent stays and damages with no recourse since Booking.com doesn't retain the credit card info so you're SOL. I've spoken with several others in the STR industry who have told me that Booking.com is trouble. Just a heads up

It's doable as long as you have a good team on the ground. In Florida, we hired a caretaker team who takes care of groundskeeping (including pool), any guest issues while they're there and the cleans between guests. They charge us about $185 a month plus a cleaning fee each time a guest stays. In Wisconsin, I haven't found a similar concept yet. As a vacation rental management company we centrally handle all the bookings, guest service, etc and then deploy the boots on the ground team who we find through referrals, Thumbtack, Care.com, etc. If you don't mind being on call 24/7/365 and coordinating the guest stays and boots on the ground team, it's doable. 

Join REIA in Milwaukee too! It's a great place to meet fellow investors, make deals and learn!

Welcome! Have you joined the WiscoREIA in Kenosha? If you haven't, it's a great group with a lot of good networking and learning opportunities. 

 It sounds like they have wisened up. We pay for permits and pay in room and sales taxes in Wisconsin and Florida so that's nothing new. It's small thinking on a municipality's part to outright ban them. There's lots of revenues to be made for them if they are smart and not overly cumbersome. 

There is some homework that needs to be done so it's a great place to start in the forum asking questions.

The first thing you need to do is to understand the regulations and what is coming down the pike in SD. I have heard that SD had outright banned short term rentals but then changed their minds. Keep up on what's going on there. You may find a different market a better place for your vision. 

The second thing I would advise you to do is to research Airbnb to see what individual rooms are going for. You can search by the location and then filter on private room. See what the going rate is for properties similar to what you'd like to do. 

Communal space doesn't pay as much as rooms do. 

Market it to people who are traveling solo. Students, interns, nurses, athletes, backpackers, etc

Airbnb sounds like your best marketing channel

I would think short term would do better in that area but as others have mentioned, they are definitely not passive. You can run some numbers by making a high level guess that the property should do about 10% gross annual rent of the property value (at least that's what they were telling me in Destin) so a $500,000 property would do about $50,000/year gross. Definitely validate that with the realtor you choose and also see the existing property rental history. In my eyes gross rental revenue is far more valuable than the occupancy rate. I would rather it's booked 50% of the time and getting $50,000 than 100% of the time getting $50,000. Catch my drift? Then factor in the expense of mortgage, taxes, short term rental insurance, cable and internet, lawncare and pool (and any other grounds maintenance), HOA fees, property management, utilities, furnishings, etc).

I would only do it if it's really subtle. People get inundated with R&F and other direct marketing in their social media but a sample and a where to buy this product card would be fine.  Anything beyond that would be a turn off for me. 

We had a guest we inherited from the previous owner who stole and pawned all our TVs which eventually we got back from the pawn shop. They left their Alexa behind though so that was small revenge and he also has a warrant out for his arrest if he ever decides to fly back to the US. Jerk.