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I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

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Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be kidding! This is "disruption" we're talking about, after all. That means all precautions, regulations, contingencies, licensing, and everything else are out the window , full stop. What are you, some kind of last-century luddite who hates progress? What do you want, for the bad old pre-startup ways to contaminate things and spoil the party? "Insurance" is for non-entrepreneurial losers, and no one cases a…

The only way to buy insurance would be to lie and commit fraud. Home owners associations also require insurance.

Why would he need to lie? Landlord insurance is trivial to get and IIRC (it's been a few years) cheaper than regular homeowner's insurance.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#162

That's roughly a 25% annual return. nice. We're renting out our place in Buenos Aires. We're clearing 10% return and I use it when I go back there to meet with the team. Stays about 80% -90% full, great location. Guests love it. My wife (who doesn't work full time) manages it remotely. It's been a very positive experience and my takeaways are similar to the writer's. It's not passive income, but it's steady...

Do you rent to the same people for extended stays? I'm wondering about the amount of work it would take to clean up the room after each guest, and whether that would outweigh the profit.

Our maid runs it now (hands off keys/cleans up). It costs us about 15% of the rental money we get. We focus around 1 week stays.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#164

Could someone explain to my ignorant self why zoning a property as hotel and paying hotel tax is necessary? What is it for and why was it created? It seems like a lot of these new startups are the same old business model but skirt costly taxes and regulation (Uber for taxis, Airbnb for hotels, Bitcoin for money transfers)

While part of hotel taxes are simple politics (the best tax base is the one that can't vote for or against you), some of it is also rational: a large tourist population adds cost to running a city, so the cost should be borne by the tourists. For instance, Las Vegas has a population of 600,000, and receives 40 million visitors. If the tourists stay one night a piece, that's an average of 110,000 tourists at any given time -- an extra 18% to the city population which isn't paying most city taxes.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in London. I'm looking at >$600k for my first apartment. Jon's apartment in Vegas would be a small fraction of my deposit. Ugh, I feel sick. And need to move.

Aren't you guys in a bubble?

London has its own economy when it comes to property. Prices have soared to a new record high just in a month (+10%).

So yes, I think the capital is overheating.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#167

Sounds risky. Four years is a long time. The price of the property can fall sharply, cities might decide they don't want "commercial" one-room hotels, and finally a renter might wreck the place or sue you for something. Yeah, I know, reputation system, rare chance, but rare chances is the kind of thing you often don't want happening to 60K investment!

Four years is a ridiculously quick time to recover the entire cost of an apartment, and that limits the risk a lot. For example, if this gets stopped somehow in the next year or so, he would only lose out if property prices also fell more that 25-40% in that same year or so. The chances of both happening at once seems very, very small to me.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal hotels aka slums. There is a reason hotels are fairly highly regulated. My first (and only) stay at an Airbnb rental resulted in me getting bedbugs.

You won't be safe from bedbugs just because you're in a hotel.

the likelihood of you getting bedbugs in a hotel room is smaller than from a random room in all of NYC. Granted , the rooms up on airbnb for the moment probably don't represent a uniform cut of NYC, but considering the type of people who would start running unlicensed hotels, I'd imagine it being more likely.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#169

Was there anything specific when applying for insurance? Did you need to disclose it was being rented out or anything (I'm assuming if you had to this would affect premiums)?

I own two houses. I live in one and rent out the other (traditional, long-term lease style... not AirBnB style). My insurance company doesn't care that one is a rental. That is to say, I don't have to lie to them... they know one is a rental and accept it like any other property. The only real difference in my two policies is that the one for the rental is for structure only (possibly some liability too since I am the property owner... I don't recall) while my home has additional coverage for the contents of the house. The renters are advised to get renter's insurance to cover their stuff in my house... but that is completely optional to them.

There isn't really any ding to my premiums for it being a rental. I lived in the rental before it was a rental. The full insurance premium (when I lived there) was about twice as much as it is now as a just rental.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but from a quick scan of https://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-651.html (admittedly very quick) it appears all he has to do is post a rate card for his maximum daily rate and not discriminate against guests.

From a quick scan of what I think is likely the HOA rules ( http://valenciahoa.com/admin/uploads/r&r.pdf ), you can't have sub-30 day leases. I'm not sure this is the right HOA, but from the Google Street View, the logos are the same.

Hy HOA (not in Nevada) has this exact same clause, and when I read about this, I wondered what his HOA would say. If I were an HOA, I'd be pretty concerned about AirBNB.
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