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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

#181

Post by bradly »

geebee wrote: post #172
bradly wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently bought a condo in Maui to rent and those places are sent up for this sort of thing. They even call them Condotels. Being designed for short term rentals brings a lot of benefits like resort manages check-ins/outs for you. Also, there is an echo chamber in the tech community regarding AirBnB as the standard for short term rentals. From my experience, VRBO has been much better and provided significantly more…

Rather than saying "don't do this", it would probably be better to say "Step 1: make sure it is legal to do this". As you've pointed out, there are plenty of places where it is perfectly legal to do this. My guess is that it's harder to find a profit opportunity, though, because the more profitable use (legal use as a short term hotel) is already priced into the unit. I suspect that one reason airbnb is so profitable…

Because they can't be purchased as a second home, the down payment is the biggest hurdle in getting a unit (30-35%). The cash flow after that is quite nice if you can find the right property.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#182

Post by lucaspiller »

arethuza wrote: post #149
petercooper wrote: post #4

It’s possible to find a nice apartment in a major city for less than $50,000. The place I found was in Las Vegas and it cost $40,000. Wow, I had no idea things were that good/bad. Here in the UK, I deliberately choose to live in a cheap part of the country and you'd still be talking $120k or so for an equivalent 1 bed flat. This really illustrates to me why efforts to turn various areas in the US into "mini Silicon V…

Here's one for £65K in Brora - not the most attractive of properties but Brora is a pretty nice town (bit out of the way though): http://www.hspc.co.uk/details.asp?id=42481 [Brora is also home to my favourite whisky - Clynelish]

"bit out of the way" - I thought where I was living in West Dorset was remote :D

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#183

Post by philsnow »

candybar wrote: post #35

This has to be illegal, right? I can understand renting out your vacation home or apartment when you're not using it, but buying a home/apartment to run essentially a mini hotel has to run afoul of zoning/licensing/regulations in most places

wait, what's the functional difference between those two? intent?

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#184

Post by riggins »

rll wrote: post #13

If enough people do this it will be the end of Airbnb. This is one of the patterns the state of NY is using against Airbnb while Airbnb is arguing that the service is intended for people occasionally renting out their primary residence. If the state is able to prove a significant number of people used this model Airbnb is done in NY and I fear other states will follow.

this is definitely happening in NYC. A friend of mine just told me how he was considering getting in on it.

In NYC there's an enormous arbitrage. The cheapest hotel room in the city is $300/night. Meanwhile, you can rent a 1BR apt for $2,500 / month.

So you rent an apt for $2,500 / month and book it out on AirBnB for $200 / night ... and you're looking at a monthly arbitrage of $3,500.

The guy I know heard about it from a friend who's already doing this with 6 apartments ... so he was making something like $18K / month (less the cleaning expenses).

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#185

Post by jongold »

jcdavis wrote: post #139
jongold wrote: post #129

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.

If it makes you feel any better (I'm sure it won't), folks in San Francisco and New York face similar. Las Vegas is somewhat unique in having low housing prices coupled with a huge tourist market which makes such a setup workable.

Well, it makes me see the appeal of the Vegas tech scene ;)

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#187

Post by jongold »

spokenn wrote: post #140
jongold wrote: post #129

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?

Maybe - I can't see prices ever dropping significantly though. Maybe 20%, but they'll always be intimidatingly expensive for first-time buyers.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#188

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mbreese wrote: post #150
oijaf888 wrote: post #146

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.

HOA appears to be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association .

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#189

Post by zanny »

umsm wrote: post #178
JackFr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, travel agents were an obsolete industry. Hotels are not obsolete, AirBnB is 'disrupting' the industry by ignoring local laws and regulations. It may be that these regulations exist to protect an obsolete business model but it also might not. When your path is blocked by a fence before you tear it down, its a good idea to understand why it was put up in the first place.

In my personal experience, I love travel agents. They were able to: (1) Make valuable recommendations (2) Offer me a better price than any website (3) Save me hours upon hours of wasted time

(2) only because they are members of larger organizations that can strong arm prices down.

(1) I'd rather the aggregate recommendations of a million people than the personal opinion of just one in most of these situations - you want the statistical mean experience, because a travel agent can be given special treatment or just have had a lucky streak placing clients in an otherwise seedy place.

(3) Hopefully another thing tech can fix. I mean, yeah, you have the rare extremely special case circumstance you can't easily break down into a power search, so they have a niche, but as a general tool for people looking for places to stay, you really don't need another fleshy body directly involved with the seeker.

Re: I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

#190

Post by nilkn »

mathattack wrote: post #120

I think this is great. Vegas is the perfect spot. It was overbuilt, there is lots of extra supply, and lots of tourists. Great they made it happen. I would think there are two dangers: 1) It can take a lot of time, and time is money. If you make 200K/year, your time is worth ~100/hour. Spending 100 hours on this takes away a 10K profit. 2) You are the on the hook for big surprises: Theft, something breaks, etc. But a…

> If you make 200K/year, your time is worth ~100/hour. Spending 100 hours on this takes away a 10K profit.

Stuff like this doesn't make much sense if you're salaried. People like to break down salaries by the hour, but it's just not true. You can put in all the overtime you want and not see an extra penny of profit, at least not directly. You'll only benefit from it if you actually get a promotion or raise as a direct result of the extra work.

If you're contracting, though, and actually charge by the hour, then this calculation makes sense.

Also, this is tangential, but $200k is hardly an even remotely typical salary for a developer in the US.

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