Ideas to scale up from a single vacation rental bringing over $26,000/month

[Anonymous]

I'm dying to see a link to your listing (just out of curiosity, not trying to start a short term rental business). Must be some concept.

[Anonymous]

8 people in 2 bedrooms on vacation? Sounds awful.

[Anonymous]

All of what you are doing is 100% compliant with all local codes, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you and/or your business partner own your primary residences? If you have enough equity, take out a heloc loan for the additional cash you need. Even with higher rates this will be cheaper than hard money.

No, we don't.

Anonymous wrote:8 people in 2 bedrooms on vacation? Sounds awful.

The market disagrees with you, since we're 100% booked Our average guest count is 5.2, and many times it's just 2 people.

Anonymous wrote:All of what you are doing is 100% compliant with all local codes, right?

yes, we purposefully placed the structure in that location

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you bring in others, they will want the majority of the profits.

No necessarily: they would want profits pro-rated relative their own investments. Conglomerates is how you make real money in real estate, bringing in investors. Majority cannot do it on their own

This is not how venture capital works.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP, just to clarify, you are 3 months into operation and based on your performance in the past 3 months, are ready to go big with your idea? Are you concerned at all about riding out the other 9 seasons of the year to map out seasonal trends before committing to a second structure?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, just to clarify, you are 3 months into operation and based on your performance in the past 3 months, are ready to go big with your idea? Are you concerned at all about riding out the other 9 seasons of the year to map out seasonal trends before committing to a second structure?

Other 9 months. Not seasons. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, just to clarify, you are 3 months into operation and based on your performance in the past 3 months, are ready to go big with your idea? Are you concerned at all about riding out the other 9 seasons of the year to map out seasonal trends before committing to a second structure?

Other 9 months. Not seasons. Sorry.

I think I figured out what your "structures" are. You are working with National Parks, right? Good idea, however seems pretty vulnerable to tourist demand and hard to market. What if airbnb website closes down tomorrow, who would know about these projects?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, just to clarify, you are 3 months into operation and based on your performance in the past 3 months, are ready to go big with your idea? Are you concerned at all about riding out the other 9 seasons of the year to map out seasonal trends before committing to a second structure?

The 3 months we had were the "slow" season. During summer and fall the neighborhood occupancy is over 70%.

Anonymous wrote:I think I figured out what your "structures" are. You are working with National Parks, right? Good idea, however seems pretty vulnerable to tourist demand and hard to market. What if airbnb website closes down tomorrow, who would know about these projects?

About a third of the reservations come from our website.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My business partner and I came up with a unique short-term vacation rental idea and hired a general contractor to build it from scratch. It took 10 months, and our all-in costs were $528,000. We used our personal cash, no loans. It only has 2 full bedrooms and 2 other sleeping areas for a total of 8 guests. We hoped our average rate would be $350/night, yet, three months after construction, we've been 100% booked, averaging over $860/night and its trending up. Our expenses are less than 20% of the revenue. Neighborhood occupancy 10miles around us is just 46%, which is very low compared to other locations where we could copy-paste the structure.

Since this is the most significant opportunity I've ever come up with, I want to scale this up all over the US. It seemed that the next best step was to cash-out refinance? So we did that. The property was appraised at 87% of our all-in-costs, and the refinancing gave us 75% out. After all the closing costs, we have the 60% of the funds needed ($316,000). And since construction takes about 10 months, the first property would provide $26,000*80% = $208,000. Adding both together = we have the exact amount to do the second property without using personal cash.

How can we scale this faster? I would love to quit my day job, and do 5-7 of those structures, each in a different state, in the next 12 months. This will prove the model even more. We thought about construction loans, but we don't have the 2-year business tax history that most lenders require.

You need to replicate this a few more times before you scale up. One hit wonders do not scale well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, just to clarify, you are 3 months into operation and based on your performance in the past 3 months, are ready to go big with your idea? Are you concerned at all about riding out the other 9 seasons of the year to map out seasonal trends before committing to a second structure?

The 3 months we had were the "slow" season. During summer and fall the neighborhood occupancy is over 70%.

Anonymous wrote:I think I figured out what your "structures" are. You are working with National Parks, right? Good idea, however seems pretty vulnerable to tourist demand and hard to market. What if airbnb website closes down tomorrow, who would know about these projects?

About a third of the reservations come from our website.

This last phrase is evidence you are lying. I have a website for my own rentals and at best 1-2 bookings a year come through google search or Facebook. Airbnb/vrbo is 95%. Unless you are Hilton you won’t attract much traffic to a new single vacation rental site.

[Anonymous]

I would also throw in that be careful not to assume $850/night average all over the US. Plan for the $350/night or lower and target all expectations there. I don't care how unique the property is, $850/night is not going to fly everywhere.

[Anonymous]

The author of this thread is lying. I am very familiar with vacation rentals business and annual reports from Airbnb most profitable types of listings. None are generating 800/day 80% of the year.
These are usually things with low entry costs like house boats, restored lighthouses etc. But for latter you really need to work with local authorities to make it work.

I don’t work with anything that’s too far from major metro centers and can’t be rented as a regular long term apartment with rental license. Rather have smaller returns than higher management costs or regulatory risks

[Anonymous]

These are tiny homes near national parks where there’s very little lodging. There are a few of these near Badlands/Mt Rushmore SD.

[Anonymous]

You could scale it by making it your full time job and bringing in trusted investors. Hands on help. Learn carpentry, plumbing etc.