Since Jeff and Jim became “partners” in buying, renting, holding, selling and trading single family homes (SFH) for TheMonopolyProject in January we have bought two houses. We completed the purchase of the house on 29th Avenue in Apache Junction on the 16th of February. And in May, “TMP2 – We Bought Another One!”. Both are up about $25,000 in value from our purchase price. But we are on the sidelines now. The market is still too crazy:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/real-estate/in-phoenix-million-dollar-homes-cant-sell-fast-enough

The popularity has spawned a new trend across the Valley, where people are buying properties and turning them into vacation rentals.

Metro Phoenix real estate is at the top of the hill, with no end in sight

With home prices going through the roof right now, it’s hard not to get flashbacks of what happened in 2008,

One asset category we are seriously researching is AirBnB. What is AirBnB?

“An Airbnb is a residential property that hosts rent on a short term basis to travelers. It can be anything from a house, a single room, a boat or even a tree house. Think of it as pop-up accommodation – a market place where people rent out their properties.”

We’ve been discussing this with two experienced AirBnB operators. I’ll call them Roger and Zack. Roger is our current cat-in-residence. Zack is the founder of Zack Properties, LLC.

Zack currently owns three AirBnB properties, all out of state. Roger has one; in-state, but out of the Phoenix metro area. Both are relatively new to AirBnB. They are operating the properties as pure investments. You can buy an out-of-area AirBnB with 10% down, owner occupied financing as a ‘vacation’ house. I confirmed this with our TMP loan agent Brian Szabo. This makes getting into the deal much easier although the cash flow may be minimal. Zack self manages but with lots of automated tools to augment the basic AirBnB processes. Roger uses VACASA which offer full service, AirBnB management. They do everything. But at a cost. They charge up to 28% of the gross collections. That’s really going to cut into your cash flow.

Zack told me about AIRDNA. It’s a site that offers all sorts of statistics on the STR (short term rental) market. It includes listing from AirBnB and also its competitors: Vrbo, VaCasa, FlipKey, HomeAway, EastWest Hospitality, HouseTrip, and more.

We will continue to research the AirBnB option. Perhaps we will call it TMP_BnB.