All Forum Posts by: William M.

@Paul Sandhu You have a 1 in 16 chance of being a victim of a violent crime here.

@Ken Latchers Yeah Ken, you might not be able to see the numbers, but the average did come out to 3x the LTR expected income (guesstimated at $94/mo). I'm sure this is not an accross the board phenomoena, I only have 6 months of Data, and every area is defferent (I would not call Shreveport a popular tourist town - more like people are driven from the downtown hotels because of the high crime rates...no. 18 on the Murder Capital List of 2018 nbd), but if you're doing well with what you're doing then keep doing what you're doing, dude! 

UPDATE (October 22, 2019):

Ok probably the last update! I have all but locked in my final two months of STR for my house, been a great learning experience the last 6 months! I feel very confident that I can make this system work at my next location. Five key take-a-ways:

1. Find what I call the "Golden Zone" for your area/house. Aim to get into that golden zone every month, and if you do, you're golden! For me that was between 15-20 nights booked, but the most I got in one month was 18 nights. My average cleaning costs were $167/mo, but most of the time I cleaned it myself and it took 3-4hrs to do – this is the biggest expense for STR owners to overcome to make it work. If you're looking for a side hustle then cleaning your own place, isn't a bad option at all ($40/hr labor) and you're making around 3x on a STR set up than you would a LTR set up.

Table 6. “Golden Zone” of days occupied, objective for monthly targets.

Table 6. Actual Data for full time STR June-December 2019 and projected earnings with current reservations.

1. To increase your nights booked, set M-Wed as single night minimums and drop the prices to bring down your average nightly rate. This will help you get into the Golden Zone if you typically only have weekend bookings. HOWEVER, make sure you turn this setting off for holidays! I’ve got a guy blocking my Thanksgiving holiday because he booked when I forgot to set the holiday week to two-night minimums.
2. Put your STR on VRBO/HomeAway and AirBnB to get those people who use other forms of booking.
3. Avoid cancelling on someone at all costs! I lost my Super Host status even though I requested that the guests cancel if they were able to get another place and I would reimburse them in full. There really should be a better way to avoid this, but right now just leave your guests be and don’t make the same mistakes I made!
4. Read other AirBnB tips! There were a lot of good ideas I got off of Pinterest and Vacation rental owner blogs that helped me set my place up to be an optimal STR. There are too many tips to put in this post and they do a better job of explaining their situation than I could, so I'll leave them to it. Just google for AirBnB owner tips or look on Pinterest for articles and you'll spend many a happy hour learning how to make the best STR experience for your guests!

I wish you all good luck in your STR adventures! I'm happy to have done it for the last 6 months and gotten over a year of LTR revenue out of it!

Hey @Gina DiMasi I totally would if I was staying in the local area longer than 3months! Definitely an opportunity that I have been encouraging my Lieutenant's to take advantage of! Starting in December, I will be working for Private Industry and living with my Fiance, so my main goal is getting a Job post Air Force. 

I actually talked with my future Property Management company about that very same thing. They have been kicking around the idea of getting into STR but they recognize they will need full time in-house cleaning staff. I'm providing all my data to them so the can see if it will be a viable option.

UPDATE (September 2019):

Table 5. Actual Data for full time STR June-September 2019 and projected earnings with current reservations.

So my predictions were conservative, which is great! I am happy that I made the decision to AirBnB full time. Some struggles I’m facing include out sourcing Cleaning at a price point that doesn’t eat all my profits. As you can see the more bookings I get, the more cleaning’s I need to have. I have been cleaning mostly myself, but I did try to work with a local small cleaning business. Long story short, they were unable to provide the right type of cleaning service (they messed up bed sheets, couldn’t do laundry efficiently, and were too expensive). The current set up is great for me, since I can stop by the house after work and clean it a bit at a time and do laundry at two different houses. So I will continue to do that until December, but following my transition from Active Duty to the Civilian world, I will move the house into a LTR situation since it will be more easily managed by a local property management company.

Other lessons learned with the STR though: get the property on VRBO, HomeAway, and AirBnB to catch more travelers; have a 2-night minimum but set up a "Seasonal Requirement" to allow for a one night minimum to fill in the gaps; systematize responses/reviews to take more work off your plate (you can get requests to book at anytime and it helps to have these at the ready so you can keep getting 5 stars for your communication rankings!). Also, I had to cancel on a group back in April so that my roommates could move in. At the time it made sense to have them paying me $1200/mo while I was living there for 2 months, rather than a single weekend with $200 attached to it. Unfortunately this took away my ability to be a "Super Host" for a whole YEAR! I'm devastated because you don't show up on searches that filter out non-superhosts, takes away a lot of decent travelers. Luckily, in my area I get enough traffic to cover it.

Will re-update in December when I call it quits! Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Bossier City.

Purchase price: $157,000
Cash invested: $8,000

I bought this house using the VA loan, required minimal follow on investment (just added a back patio and new A/C) currently AirBnBing it with an average gross of $2000/mo.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

First Property

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

318 Real Estate (Shane Cheatham)

How did you finance this deal?

VA Loan

How did you add value to the deal?

Back Patio, Front Yard Landscaping

What was the outcome?

Currently listed on AirBnB and HomeAway/VRBO and produces an average of $250/mo in cashflow.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Learned how to build up an AirBnB reputation, advantages and disadvantages of STR over LTR, challenges relate to property management of a STR are currently non-existent in the area and will transition to a LTR once I leave the area.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Shane Cheatham with 318 Real Estate, knows the Bossier/Shreveport area extremely well and is motivated to provide you with the right house for you!

Hey Mindy! I say this: Check-in 12Noon (flexible) ; Check-out 12Noon (Less-Flexible) - that way if they already know that they have travel plans, or disruptions, that may break that check out time, they will need to coordinate it beforehand.

So a not so funny story: I had a group (of skin care product salesmen of the Eastern European variety) who broke every rule in the book. They extended their stay another night, which was fine, but I just asked that they put my uniform in the garage so that I could grab it Monday morning and change/shower at work. So I slept in my truck Sunday night. I drive home to get my uniform, not there. So, with all of them still in bed, and the lead dude that spoke the most english not responding over the AirBnB messenger, I had to go into my room with the dude sleeping in my bed, grab my flight suit and boots out of my closet, and hurry to work. If that is not awkward enough, he asked is one of his crew could stay until closer to his flight that afternoon, which I should have said no, but I was hunting for those 5 stars. I told him I would allow it but he had to be out by 5p when I got off duty. Well guess what, homeboy wasn't gone at 5p. And english speaking guy is still non-responsive. So I walked in the garage door with my pistol on my hip, and yelled "Hey!" after which I heard the front door open and slam shut. I quickly walked through the living room and kitchen and locked the door behind him so he couldn't get back in. He was standing out on the sidewalk, face glued to his cell phone, either calling an Uber, or pretending to call an Uber. Needless to say, I left a very condemning review for their group and they are not welcome back.

Hope you don't ever have an issue like that!

@Kyle Kaldor I had fewer 2019 booked nights because I only had it listed for 3 months versus the 5 months in 2018. I rented it out to a couple guys as roommates for two months. Got it back up now, full time, have 14 nights booked in July for $1400.

@Lynette D Nickleberry Shoot me your email and I'll send it to you!

 The short answer is I rely on the "Smart Pricing" tool on AirBnB with bounds of $100-$400/night (currently). Those bounds can change based on competition/seasons, which to fully answer that question will require more actual stays data. Right now I have a total of 8 months of AirBnB data, (thanks to a 6mo deployment) so not enough to get a full picture of the seasons. What type of Smart Pricing tools or Dynamic Pricing tools have you heard of or would recommend?

@Jennifer Creager yeah exactly! That's what I was hoping to do at least! Thanks for the positive input. And I am totally going to start using STR and LTR, get tired saying AirBnB and Long-Term Rental all the time...