All Forum Posts by: Leigh Ann Smith

I've been reading all the IRS pubs about rentals in general and specifically about VR's.  We are a sole proprietorship. Since we plan to handle all of the management ourselves, we will be providing "substantial services", so it seems that it will be filed on Schedule C as business income rather than Schedule E as rental income.  When you do that, do you claim losses as ordinary business losses? Since we're just getting started, we will have a net loss for 2015, but I'm reading about passive losses with rental income, and how you can't use those losses to offset regular income.

I wish you'd gotten some answers!  We are preparing to put a tiny house on the market in the Houston area that is about 20 miles from the location of Super Bowl 51.  Were you able to rent your place out at all that weekend?

We have Sensi wi-fi thermostats in our home, and we love them.  I chose Sensi based on Amazon reviews, and they did not disappoint.

I'm really interested in automating the door locks, but the reviews are not stellar for any I have seen.  We stayed in a VR where they gave us a code to punch in to unlock the door, and that was very convenient.  There's lots to consider when choosing automated locks such as how many codes you get, whether you can change them easily (being able to do it through wi-fi would be amazing!), and how reliable they are.

Agreed, @Jonathan Casillas.  If they want to say that you can't get a federally subsidized loan unless your dwelling place meets certain regulations, then fine.  But they shouldn't be able to say that you can't live there.

HUD is proposing a regulation which could potentially make it illegal to take up permanent residence in a recreational vehicle. Regulations do not have the force of law, but laws are often made which comply with regulations. HUD is taking public comments until 4/11/2016. Good explanation here: http://youtu.be/So4CaP1sNOI

@Doug H., I was just reading something on another vacation rental website (can't remember which one) and someone said that bedbug proof mattress (and box springs) encasements are worth their weight in gold.

@Al Williamson, we are preparing a rustic tiny house in the country as a vacation rental.  Though we're in the country, we are only 20 miles from downtown Houston.  Do you think a business traveler would be interested in this type of rental?

Sounds like things are going great for you, @Annette A.!  It also sounds like adding a tiny house to one or more of your properties eventually might be a good fit.  We do plan to go the vacation rental route to start with.  If there isn't enough demand, then we'll look into other ideas.

We are kind of the same way with being torn between businesses.  We have a nice barn at our farm that we've used for a couple of family/friend weddings & parties.  We are adding a covered pavilion in a few weeks and are starting to realize that renting the barn & pavilion out could be pretty lucrative.....if we can figure out how to add bathrooms without putting in a $40K septic system.  People don't want to use porta-potties for nice events.  Those nice restroom trailers rent for $1200 per weekend.  😱  Talk about a cash flow killer!

I really appreciate how so much of the stuff I've learned from BP really applies to any kind of business.  I have honed my spreadsheet skills by analyzing properties, and it's helped me to understand better how to analyze profitability in general.

Keep us posted as your ventures get off the ground!

Hi @Annette A., sorry it's taken me 4 months to jump in here!  We bought a tiny house on wheels and are setting it up as a vacation rental.  We live on 35 acres where we operate a Christmas tree farm and the tiny house is here as well.

It's been quite a process because we had to run electric and water to the site and have a septic system installed.  Basically, we put in 3 RV hookups.  If the first house is a success, we can add 2 more.  

By my calculations, if we can net $700 per month, the return will be as good as any SFR we've see in our area. We paid $30K for the house + another $15k on electric, septic, & putting in a road. There will still be another couple of thousand to furnish the house.

The big unknown for us is occupancy.  There is nothing nearby that anyone would want to visit, except that we are only 30 min from the Texas Medical Center and from downtown Houston.  But, we're on a Christmas tree farm, so we hope that the ambiance of that will be appealing.

We do not want to rent to standard renters.  First of all, I think people believe that a tiny house should be super-cheap.  Secondly the tiny house is about 100 yds from our home, and we don't want renters to be junking up our place.

Are you still considering setting up some tiny houses?

@Neal Collins, great idea about Roku!  We have a tiny house on our farm that we are preparing to open as a vacation rental, and I still don't have a good setup for Internet/TV.  I have a wifi hotspot for Internet, but I don't want them using it to stream video since that will eat up so much data.  

Do you think it's reasonable to say that 500 mb of data per night is included and additional data will be charged to them upon departure?  That sounds like a setup for disgruntled guests to me, but I don't know what an alternative would be.  Putting in satellite TV would just be too costly.  Another alternative would be to hire someone to network the tiny house to our home wifi.  It's about 75 yards from the house.  I imagine that equipment and labor for that would be several hundred dollars.