All Forum Posts by: Leigh Ann Smith

@Michael Greenberg, my husband is checking into getting the pond stocked.  We also thought of putting a little pedal boat out there.  As for other things to do....pretty much NOTHING.  :-)  So, I think we need to market to the "I want solitude" crowd.

@Laura Renner, we actually spotted the tiny house on Craigslist, and it turned out that it was built by a couple of guys just about 8 miles from us.  They built it as an RV.  It has RV hookups and can be pulled by a pickup truck, so no permits were needed.  We installed 3 RV hookups on our property in hopes of eventually putting in 3 tiny houses.  We live in an unincorporated part of our county, so the regulations are minimal.

@Aqeel Salim, I'm holding off on multiple sites because of the expense- $349/yr for VRBO and an additional $299 to add Homeaway.  That's a lot for a $79/night place.  Do you think it would be worth it for this type of listing?  We plan to see how we do with AirBNB alone, then start adding as we need to.  I'm getting the blinds and a couple of decor items in this week.  After I do that, I'll take new pictures and start doing some advertising of the listing.  

I do have the AirBNB app set up for notifications on my phone and my husband's, so we'll hopefully be able to get back to prospective guests quickly.  

@Michael Greenberg, if you insist. ☺️

https://airbnb.com/rooms/13248492?s=8&user_id=42430228&ref_device_id=fe82ed744cf0e2702a1b4b41a56970c3ed40782f

Thanks for your input, @Joel Beckman, and welcome to BiggerPockets!  There's a ton of valuable info here, and the podcasts are extremely helpful.

Thanks @Joel Owens!  I'm not wanting to advertise it to this crowd.  I really just would like to share what it looks like.  Maybe I'll just post the pics instead.....when we get our first reservation!

Yikes! The reason I was concerned is that this same attorney told us that an attorney friend of hers told her that he busts LLC's all the time. It will be challenging to keep that corporate veil properly managed, for sure.

Do you know anything about the irrevocable trust thing?  Let's leave XYZ out of it, and say that the trust is 10% owner of ABC.  Does that protect the husband at all?

Our tiny house is finally live on AirBnB!  There haven't been any inquiries yet, and I'm pretty sure the views are all from my Facebook friends.  :-)

The window coverings came in today, and I have a couple of other decorative items on order.  When we get all that in and I get new pictures taken, I plan to start advertising it.  I'm holding out posting in the Real Estate Success Stories forum until we get our first booking.

This vacation rental is a risky plan, because our tiny house is not in a desirable area.  It's on a farm about 20 miles south of Houston. We hope it will appeal to nature lovers, those who need a writer's retreat, or possibly those who are in town for treatment at Houston's medical center.  So, we'll see what happens!

I'm not sure if I can post the link here, because I don't want to run afoul of the rules about marketing.

An attorney told us that an LLC would be best protected if an irrevocable trust is a 10% owner of the LLC. We've decided not to retain the services of this attorney. I'm not asking for legal advice here, just your understanding of how we might want to set this up.

So, let's say we set up XYZ, llc with 45% owned by husband, 45% owned by wife, and 10% owned by irrevocable trust (with the couple's children as beneficiaries). Can they then nest ABC, llc (husband is the single owner) underneath that?  So, would there be a benefit if XYZ, llc were the owner of ABC, llc?  ABC, llc might lease property from the husband & wife, it might have a promissory note payable to the husband & wife, etc.  ABC, llc doesn't own anything; rather, it leases everything from the husband & wife.

Then, if ABC llc is sued, could they go after the husband as the single member, or could they not, because XYZ llc owns it?

And, if the husband and wife want to sell or dispose of ABC, llc, they could do that since they own the majority of XYZ, llc, correct?

@Benjamin Blackburn, we have actually modified our plan quite a bit. We live on a Christmas tree farm on 35 acres. We have installed 3 RV hook-ups near our pond and have purchased a tiny house on wheels and are setting it up on one of the hook-ups. We plan to rent it through AirBnB. If returns are decent, we'll purchase another tiny house for our mini-development. My spreadsheet says that if we rent it out 7 nights per month at $75 per night, our ROI will be 7.11%, which is better than what we were looking at for SFR's.

I would still love to hear a podcast on RV parks, though!

@Monika Haebich, I'm interested in referrals as well.

The tiny house and land might not be all that cheap.  Remember to consider utility hook-ups.  Does the land have them?  If not, it will be expensive to add.  We just bought a tiny house for $30K and then paid another $15K for electric and water lines, septic, and a road, so I know of what I speak.  In our case, we added 3 utility hook-ups so that we could add more tiny houses down the road, so hopefully that investment will pay off.  If the property you buy has utilities on it, there could still be a charge to tap in to the water/sewer system.  

Do you see this as a short-term situation or something more permanent?  Could you be happy living in a tiny house? It's not worth hating your life to earn $300/month.

Did you liquidate your IRA in 2016? If so, remember that you'll have to pay income tax on that money as well as a fine for drawing it out early (unless you are retirement age, of course!), so you'll want to add that into your financial calculations.