Tag: short term rental

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Lawyer Time – I Spoke With A Lawyer Over The Weekend, And Here Is What They Said

What a wild weekend capped off my a crazy afternoon on Sunday talking to many different people. I spoke with a lawyer over the weekend, and here is what they said.

Just a quick recap for those just tuning in to everything that has happened to this point. Below are the first three articles from this wild situation with my HOA. Check them out so this article makes a little more sense, links below.

Time For Part 4!

Here we go. So here is where we currently stand from yesterday. After I finished the conversations with Jose, I decided to go back to my place to do a couple of things. I proceeded to call the guests who were just turned away and apologize again for everything going on.

My guests let me know they were driving down to Miami because they weren’t allowed to check in. I could tell they were very frustrated and wanted to stay in Orlando, but they were already on the road. Luckily, this is a guy who I randomly got partnered with last week while I was golfing and he was understanding.

Quick sidebar from a text I received from the guest later last night. He sent me a snip of the law, the exact one that I have been showing the HOA every single day for the past week. Not going to lie, I kind of laughed when he sent it to me. I told him I know man, they aren’t abiding by my interpretation of the law.

Here were his direct words in the text after the picture:

“Either way im calling the GM who is Conrad and im giving him a piece of my mind… But no matter what I should be good after April 10th. Im definitely going to fax over a copy of the order to him and let him know I had to travel to Miami cause he doesn’t understand how to read an executive order…Have a good day and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

I love my boy Alfred. Not only was he understanding, but he has that NY fiery attitude that I miss sometimes.

Next Steps For Me – Find Someone To Speak With

Now, for my next steps. Yesterday, I did two things.

First, I reached out to my real estate agent and asked him if he had a good attorney that I could speak to. My real estate agent asked me to send him a synopsis of what is going on and he would get back to me. I sent him an email with all the details and he let me know that he will set me up with an attorney he has used and they should reach out this morning. So I am awaiting an introduction email and will talk to a local attorney who will sit down to review the case.

Second, I reached out to a good friend of mine I work with. His wife is a lawyer so I had one thing I really wanted her to look at. I reached out to my friend and asked if his wife could review the executive order by the governor and interpret Section A (i). For reference, this is a snip of that section and a link to the entire PDF.

Executive Order Why I Wanted An Opinion On The Executive Order

There was one reason why I wanted the opinion on the verbiage of the executive order. One, I am not a lawyer and don’t understand half of what was said in this document. Two, I want to make sure I can read properly and I am interpreting Section A (i) as stating rentals over 30 days are allowed. I also wanted to make sure it was an unbiased opinion. I have a dog in this fight, so I am biased to read the law how I want to interpret it.

Here Is Exactly What The Lawyer Said

An hour after sending everything over to my friend, his wife called me. She asked me to outline the situation of what was going on. I outlined everything for her and then she asked a few clarifying questions (bringing out that lawyer in her).

After 30 minutes of discussion, these are the exact words she said to me: “YRB, I want you to know one thing before I say what I am going to say. I hate giving the advice to sue someone. Mostly because it is very costly and most of the time not worth it. But, in this scenario, the law is so black and white that you should sue seek damages and sue as this has already impacted your business.”

There was one thing she asked me to do. Documentation is key in lawsuits. She told me to draft up an email to send to the HOA and board that details out everything going on along with the executive order and details of what happened at the gate. In my next post, I will show you the exact email I sent to the HOA and board last night. I put together the first draft, sent it to her, and she lawyered the shit out of it hahaha. If you don’t know what that means, it means she essentially made it 1000000000 times better by adding lawyer verbiage. So, if they thought I was joking previously about the lawsuit, now they should know I am talking to lawyers.

Here is the thing. I think deep down I wanted her to say that, but at the the same time I didn’t want to actually hear her say it. If that makes sense.

Time To Determine Path Forward

I now had one attorney’s interpretation of the law. It is now time to follow-up this morning with my real estate agent to get in touch with the attorney who live in Florida. He is going to do an introduction email and then I will hopefully get on the phone with them this afternoon.

By no means did I think I would want to be in a lawsuit at this point in my investing career, but there are a few reasons why I feel this is the right thing to do:

  1. The law is clear. And I received an interpretation from an attorney that I was reading it correctly.
  2. Financially, I have been impacted by this situation. I have had to cancel on three different guests and even had one guest arrive at the gate and be turned away.
  3. The HOA isn’t above the law. No matter how much they try to be. I have had multiple homeowners reach out letting me know this HOA has been extremely difficult and not representative of investors.  It sounds like it is time for an investor to be on the board…I might be the one nominated based off the passion I have shown in the facebook group.

Final Words

Time for some more fun. Here is the thing I am taking away from this entire situation. This is a learning opportunity for me. I am extremely happy to be going through what I am going through and think that I have learned a lot already to this point.

If you view everything as a learning opportunity, nothing sucks.

Want to see what I emailed the HOA and Board? Checkout the link below for the next post!

 

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3 Thing I Am Doing In My Short Term Rentals To Generate Revenue

It is a very tough time in the economy we are living in today. There are 3 things I am doing in my short term rentals to generate revenue. They are outlined below with each of my properties. These are by no means the only things hosts can be doing during these tough times, but I have found them to be successful for me.

Here is an update so you can see actual numbers from my account as of a few days ago:

Airbnb Earnings April

That is right, last month was impacted from close to $10k in revenue to just under $6k. To read more about last months impact, read this article where I talk about the impact Disney closing and the pandemic has had on Short Term Rentals in Orlando.

That is not a typo. My income for this month through Airbnb is $20.

What I Am Doing To Generate Income

Here is what I have done already to begin generating income from my properties.

Ol’ Faithful: I am currently going through arguments with my HOA to allow me to rent out the home. The HOA sent an email to all homeowners stating they would not be allowing any new guests for the foreseeable future. More updates to come.

Turquoise: I had a guest staying at my place for 14 days. He was scheduled to checkout this morning. Two days ago, I reached out to him and let him know if he wanted to extend his stay, I would be able to accommodate. He asked to extend his stay for 30 nights and I gave him an incredible price of $950 to do so. This will pay my mortgage for the month so I will only have to eat the utilities.

Triplex 1/1 Airbnb: For my triplex, I had guests check in 6 nights ago. They were originally staying for 11 nights and scheduled to checkout next week. When they had first arrived, I spoke with them a little to get a sense of what they were doing in Orlando. They mentioned they were between apartments and weren’t able to find anything just yet. I reached out to them this morning letting them know they were welcome to stay for more time if they wished to. They immediately jumped on the idea and booked my calendar out till the 26th of this month! Another $450 in revenue for the room! On the 27th, I have a guest checking in for 30 nights. He was actually a guest who stayed at my place a few weeks ago, and we agreed to $850 for a one month booking. At the time of speaking with him, I was more than happy to allow him to stay for a full month. A lot of things were still uncertain then, and I am glad I got him locked in for all of May.

Final Results

All in all, I have been able to take a $20 revenue month and I have turned it into $1,750. I am still working to get someone into Turquoise for the month to add an additional $1,600 to the revenue for the month. The goal this first month is to get the mortgages paid through people renting. By the middle of this month, I will re-evaluate what to do with Turquoise and Ol’ Faithful.

Key Takeaways:

  • When things change, always figure out what the right pivot is. For me, pivoting to 30 day rentals is perfect. I know the STR game will come back to Orlando in a matter of time. For now, pivoting to 30-60 day rentals will allow me to continue rocking and rolling. 
  • I have said it once and I will say it again. Focus on the things you control. I have 0 control of my HOA at Ol’ Faithful being a little ridiculous to not allow new guests in. I am continuing to fight them, but their decision is completely out of my control. 
  • Don’t forget to utilize asking your guests who are currently staying with you. If it weren’t for me making connections with them and keeping communication channels open, I wouldn’t have any of my places booked right now. 
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Pandemic Airbnb Guest From H E Double Hockey Sticks

Had a large number of responses for this past guest I had stay!

75%!of people said I should not give Kristi a refund.

For those who are getting caught up, this is what happened.

This guest Kristi booked after Disney and all the parks in Orlando shut down. Her booking was after things continued to spiral out where more and more non essential businesses were shutting down.

I had dropped my price per night at Turquoise by 50% to try and attract anyone who would still want to come to the area just to relax and get away.

Kristi booked. She was excited to come down for a four night stay.

Per my standard messaging process, I messaged Kristi the morning after her first night stay to check in to make sure they were having a five star experience.

The response I got was pretty shocking. “We have no interest staying here with the pool Closed!!” She continued on to say, “There is clearly nobody resurfacing the pool!”

The community this home is in has a pool for everyone to use. The HOA didn’t send out any notification to the homeowners that the pool would be closed for the foreseeable future.

Kristi was extremely upset as they only wanted to come down to have a pool to enjoy.

I understood her concern and got a little creative. I had just had someone checking out of Ol’ Faithful that same morning. Ol’ Faithful is another Airbnb property I have less than 5 minutes from Turquoise.

Ol’ Faithful has a private pool and is a $20-40 per night more expensive place than Turquoise.

At no additional charge, I immediately called Kristi and let her know I would upgrade her to Ol’ Faithful at no additional charge and they would then have their own pool.

They were less than thrilled. I let them know that I do not have any control of the community pool and that I am just trying to solve their problem so they can enjoy their stay.

They finally agreed to go over and stay there for the remainder of their stay. Here was the challenge for me. To not complicate things, I just decided to block the dates on the calendar for Ol’ Faithful while not changing their original reservation.

This caused me to eat two cleaning charges for this one couple and block two different bookings for their reservation at the same time.

I didn’t hear from Kristi for two days and then she all of a sudden sends me a message that they will be cutting there trip down by two days to go home. Not only that, but she requested a refund for the two days they would be cutting early.

So what did I do? I responded politely back to her letting her know that I would go ahead and refund her the two nights. This would end up costing me more money just in cleaning fees than their entire booking itself, but I felt it was the right thing to do.

I immediately sent over the alteration thinking she would accept it and the dates would then be open on my calendar for others to book. There are things that I need to schedule like my cleaner going to clean and opening the dates back up for others to potentially book.

Kristi didn’t accept the alteration. She still hasn’t even responded to the change I sent over to refund her for two nights they wouldn’t be staying so my calendar would open back up.

This morning I checked again just to make sure she didn’t accept it. She hadn’t. The original offer I made was a two night refund to her at the cost she paid. This would be roughly  a $94 refund to Kristi.

I was being overly generous to Kristi, but since she didn’t accept the alteration, my calendar was both booked and the night was past that I was giving her a refund for.

So, I decided to cancel the alteration request this morning and I updated the refund to a one night refund since she has not responded. The reality is that nobody is going to book for tonight, so this night is already a wash, but I will still leave the one night refund request out there for Kristi for her to accept.

If she doesn’t accept by tonight, I am going to remove the one night refund request as well.

On top of all this, I received a few bad pictures from my cleaner on how Kristi and her husband left the place. It was definitely a bummer to see as her husband told me on the phone that they were only using one room in each place. That was not the case. They also decided to set the thermostat to 68 degrees while opening multiple windows in the home. And this is Florida, where the temp has been over 90 degrees for the past few days.

Key Takeaways:

  • I always try to offer a great guest experience for all my Airbnb guests, even if they seem to be a pain. 
  • Try to go above and beyond to get good reviews in all situations. I am very interested to see if Kristi leaves me a review. I will for sure be leaving a review for her 🙂
  • Be fair in all things you are handling with guests and how you communicate with them. 

Don’t forget @TheYoungRetireeBy33’s 3 Core Principles:

1 – Your money should make money for you⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
2 – Start early to realize the power of compound interest⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
3 – Eliminate your largest expense by house hacking