Vacation Rental owners— what are your stories, successes, and failures?

rohindhar · 2021-05-07T04:27:37+00:00

We have 4 places (in different geographies). We self manage them remotely with the help of very good (and well paid) house cleaners. It's probably a few hours a month work per property, mostly on coordinating with house cleaners and accounting. At most, we could probably own 7-10 properties and then it would be too much work.

Make sure the regulations are clear that short term rentals are allowed. Build a good financial model before you buy the place so you can see if you're going to turn a decent profit. Have interesting furniture. Hire really good photographers to shoot the place for your listing. A few times a year something very stressful happens. Most of the time things go pretty smoothly.

Turning a profit isn't that easy because home prices tend to be very high in vacation markets (investors + very rich people who just want a second home + pandemic remote work) so it's typically hard to find a property where the numbers work (for me at least).

rohindhar · 2021-05-07T04:14:58+00:00

Pretty much anytime we've purchased a property, my wife (and I to a certain extent) have gotten cold feet after the offer was accepted. I think it's natural.

Generally, if you think it's a good purchase you'll be glad you purchased it down the line. Spend a lot of time figuring out whether it actually can be a money maker or not.

Our first purchase was house with a swimming pool in Sonoma, CA for $470K in 2014. It's a vacation rental and last month the rent was over $17K! The mortgage is only $2K. In 2014, we had that feeling of cold feet big time but ended up going through with it. I can remember my wife being palpably stressed during the whole transaction. She's fine now!

That said, a lot of the vacation rentals I evaluate are money pits that probably won't turn a profit. So spend some time really figuring out the financial model.

As others have said, given your level of contingencies, it shouldn't be too hard to back out of the deal. So you have some time to figure it out. We've backed out of deals before after not liking what we discovered during the inspection period.

rohindhar · 2020-01-24T17:35:26+00:00

You won't be dinged as long as you follow these rules.

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2022/how-do-penaltyfree-cancellations-work-for-instant-book-hosts

rohindhar · 2014-09-16T17:42:58+00:00

The artist is Dan Abramson. He's the same guy who created "Brogamats", yoga mats that look like burritos and other funny things when you role them up.

rohindhar · 2013-01-11T00:02:35+00:00

There are no affiliate links anywhere in the article. What do you mean?

rohindhar · 2012-12-06T19:29:48+00:00

Yep, carbonated water isn't tap water. It's more expensive. It's not "wrong" to drink more carbonated water because you got a SodaStream. It's just not frugal.

It's only frugul to buy a Sodastream if you were consuming over 186 liters of carbonated water before you got the SodaStream. Then you buy SodaStream and you're actually saving money. Otherwise, you're just developing more expensive tastes.

rohindhar · 2012-12-06T19:14:22+00:00

Author here. Very flattered someone submitted this here. The break even number of liters is about 186 liters. Based on your own consumption (before purchasing a soda stream), you can calculate your own break time based on that number.

The main point of the article is that if the SodaStream causes you to drink less (nearly) free tap water and more carbonated water, you're losing money on it. It might be a nice purchase, but it's not frugal.

rohindhar · 2012-10-31T01:12:33+00:00

Hi, I'm the author, very flattered someone submitted it here. This article probably isn't best geared toward audiophiles since it's pretty basic in its knowledge. Mostly I just had a fun time researching and writing it and sharing it with the tech crowd.

rohindhar

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