Lazy Man and Money

We’re Selling a Condo!

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About a month ago, I wrote how our real estate empire was built. Now, I’m here to say that it’s going to be out of date very soon.

We’re selling the second property that I mentioned. It’s a 2 bed, 2 bath townhouse about a half-hour west of Boston. I had paid $278,000 for it in 2005 only to watch it climb for 18 months… and then fall dramatically to $178,000 (according to Zillow) in the 2009 crash. Now, 17 years later, I’ve accepted an offer of $385,000. There is a big difference between accepting an offer and having the process completed. For this article, let’s assume that everything goes according to plan.

That $100,000 gain turns out to be about 2% appreciation a year. I guess that’s the power of leverage. Refinancing the mortgage to 15-years helped us pay down the loan a lot. The end result is that we’ll have $300,000 after we pay the bank. From that $300,000 we’ll have to pay the realtor, lawyers, taxes, depreciation recapture, butcher, baker, and candlestick maker fees. I can’t do all the math to figure out what we’ll have left, but I think it will be more than $225,000.

Liquidity, Sweet Liquidity

Our net worth would lead most people to think we are rich. For years, I’ve written that we don’t feel like it. It’s the typical, millionaire next door story. For the last 15+ years, we’ve been doing our best to max out our retirement savings. We also have four mortgages at 15-year-fixed rates – three of them being rental properties. As a result, our net worth is 90% real estate and retirement savings – stuff that’s hard to get at. A large portion of the rest is in cars, 529 plans, and private equity – also hard to access. Overall, we have only about 4% of our net worth in cash that we can access. Even that cash is scattered in business accounts such as this blog or the real estate LLC.

In a lot of ways, we live paycheck to paycheck. However, we do so knowing that we can do several things to get some cash if necessary.

In January, I wrote that we were planning our first non-retirement asset allocation. We hadn’t decided on selling this property at the time, but we can use this to guide our investments. It’s almost like starting all over with saving and investing. It will be exciting to have all this cash available. I’m hoping that we can invest it conservatively and make 6% a year. Maybe we’ll be able to count on $15,000. We’ll try to reinvest as much as possible, but my wife is thinking of military retirement soon, so $15,000 in income plus her pension will help cover expenses until the rest of our mortgages are paid off.

The Power of Forced Savings

The most overlooked advantage of real estate investment is forced savings. You have to pay that mortgage every month. Most of the months it went smoothly because we had a tenant in place. Some months haven’t gone as smoothly. We rolled with the punches when there have been condo assessments or when the HOA fee has gone up.

There were certainly times when paying these expenses wasn’t easy. If we had a choice we would have skipped those months. Then we might have said, “Well the world didn’t fall apart, so maybe we can skip another month and use the money for a well-deserved treat.”

It really works great. I recommend that you give it a try if you can.

However, all that’s going away now. As my wife recently said, “We’re going to have to put this money somewhere. I’m afraid I’m going to spend this money on jet skis.” (“Jet skis” is our little code for a large, unnecessary expense that will probably sit around not being used.) I told her that I’m on it and I have a plan (well, at least part of the plan).

We thought about doing a 1031 exchange as we did with another property about 18 months ago. However, it seems to be the wrong time to buy into the market if you don’t have to. It feels like the housing bubble in the mid-2000s when we bought this property. I’d much rather invest in stocks and bonds and wait for another buying opportunity like in 2011. I feel that it will come in the next 3-5 years, but if it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

What are some ways that you’ve forced yourself to save money over the years? I can really use the tips. Leave me a message in the comments.

How our Real Estate Empire Was Built

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It’s been a long time since I’ve written about our real estate “empire”. (I put “empire” in quotes because it is tiny – only 3 properties). I wrote that article back in 2013. Wow! Time flies.

That’s far too long without an update. Now is as good a time as any. Actually, it’s a better time than any because I’ve been doing taxes. I have a lot more data to share. I’ll update this information annually and we’ll see how it progresses. It’s not too exciting to do this kind of overview every few months – things don’t change that much.

Introducing our Rental Properties

To make distinguishing the properties easier, I’ve decided to give them names. I could just name them A, B, and C, but that’s boring. To make it a bit fun, I’d settled on the Pokemon Kanto starters. (Don’t worry, you won’t be tested. I didn’t know what a Pokemon was four years ago.) All the properties are two-bedroom, two-bath condos, but their locations are different. Because they are condos, they have many comparables on the market, so Zillow’s Zestimate is generally very accurate.

Acquisition of the Properties

Property #1 – Bulbasaur

Purchase Date: 2002
Original Cost: $140,000
Current Value: $217,700
Mortgage Left: $49,074
Rented at: $1375 (Zillow Zestimate: $1,829)

My wife bought this property before I met her. It’s an hour west of Boston. It was perfect for her as it was near her work. She didn’t have the 20% down. When we were dating in 2004 and 2005 she was still paying off the private mortgage insurance (PMI).

It became a rental property in the fall of 2006 when my wife and I moved to San Francisco for her job.

Property #2 – Charmander

Purchase Date: 2005
Original Cost: $278,000
Current Value: $378,700
Mortgage Left: $86,246
Rented at: $1900 (Zillow Zestimate: $2,377)

I had been living with a friend for several years. We got a place with his wife for a bit, but I obviously needed to move on. It worked out well as I had started to date my future wife. My company moved about a half-hour west of Boston – which happened to be halfway to my wife’s Bulbasaur condo. I decided to buy there (we were still dating). Prices were really getting very expensive at the time, and there was a fear that we’d never be able to buy a home again. After a long search and pulling strings, I was able to nab an awesome interest rate of 5.875%.

It became a rental property at the same time as the Bulbasaur property.

Property #3 – Squirtle

Purchase Date: 2013
Original Cost: $95,000
Sold: $170,000 (2020)
Current Value: $215,900 (included for fun)
Mortgage Left: $0 (Sold)

We bought this property because it was such a great value. It was in the same condo complex as Bulbasaur and of a similar size but in better condition. I found this, but my wife wasn’t thrilled as we just had a newborn. However, I think I had a winning argument. If she liked buying her place for $140,000 in 2002, why not buy one in better condition for $95,000 ten years later.

When we sold this property, we did a 1031 exchange to buy the next property – 3b. Squirtle evolved into Wartortle.

Property #3b – Wartortle

Purchase Date: 2020
Original Cost: $204,000
Current Value: $303,000
Mortgage Left: $92,088
Rented at: $1600 (Zillow Zestimate: $2,499)

We had $115,000 of equity after selling Squirtle. We had about a $95,000 mortgage in 2020. It’s now about $92,000. This worked out better than we could have ever imagined. The Bulbasaur property went from 140K to 217K. The copycat property we bought in 2012 for 95K is now worth 303K (after the change of location). We have 30K extra in equity and we didn’t spend an extra 10 years paying down the mortgage.

Property #i – Pikachu

The house we live in now was originally bought as a real estate investment. We loved the cheap prices in 2011 and thought that we might retire in Newport (RI) someday. We rented it for one year and then my wife was able to get a job transfer back here. It’s appreciated most of all the properties, but I can’t count it since we need to live in it. That’s why I gave it the imaginary number “i”.

A Brief Timeline of our Rental Properties

Becoming an Accidental Landlord in 2006

We became accidental landlords in 2006. My fiancee/wife’s move was sudden. Her job opportunity had a narrow window. It would have been tough to sell both our condos (Bulbasaur and Charmander) while trying to move our lives across the country. We decided it was best to try to rent them out. Once the great recession came, we were locked into that decision because they were so far underwater. Charmander got to about $178,000 – $100K less than what I bought it for. Interestingly, it is now at $378,000, $100k more than what we bought it for.

The Double HARP of 2012

Do you remember the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP)? We were able to refinance Bulbasaur and Charmander in 2012 to interest rates of around 3.5%. We had that timed perfectly – it’s amazing to get a 3.5% mortgage on investment properties. We didn’t want to “start over” with another 30-year fixed mortgage, so we went with 15-year mortgages. Now that it’s ten years later, we have five years of mortgage payments left. With the low-interest rate, we’re not in any hurry to pay them off.

The 1031 Exchange of 2020

I covered the 1031 exchange of selling Squirtle and buying Wartortle above. The math on the last 9 years of the purchase is fairly amazing. We put $23K down and now have $211,000 in equity. That’s nearly a 9x gain in 9 years. Of course, a lot of that is due to the recent run-up, but even our similar Bulbasaur property didn’t perform like that.

What About Cashflow?

I don’t track cash flow as well as I should. It’s simply very difficult. It wasn’t until the last couple of years that we segregated them into their bank accounts. That was my wife’s idea because she wanted to see how much maintaining these places was costing us. It was a great idea and something we should have done long before.

Bulbasaur mostly breaks even. The 15-year mortgage means a higher payment. The property has had to do a complete overhaul that meant taking an additional loan for tens of thousands of dollars. Condo fees just keep going up.

Charmander loses about $500 a month. That’s way too much. Like Bulbasaur, there have been big property fixes with high bills. They had some fires recently and the insurance shot through the roof. Again the condo fees are high.

Squirtle and Wartortle are also the only two properties where we’ve consistently made some cash flow. However, Wartortle has cost a lot in maintenance over the last year. It was much closer to breaking even than it should be given the low mortgage payment and the rent. Recently the condo association changed the by-laws so that they don’t have the responsibility for the water pipes inside the walls. They keep failing and it’s costing the condo association too much money. We’ve been getting calls every 6 weeks about problems with the pipes, so this new law may be started just because of our unit. I’m not sure what to do, but it sounds like it might not be legal to me. We were on vacation when they sent the email, so we have to look into it now.

About Those Rents

The rents are way less than what they should be.

Bulbasaur had been at $1500 for a long time and we love the tenant, so we had been sticking at $1375. The market has moved a lot, but I don’t know if the Zillow Rental Zestimate is accurate. We’ll look to raise the rent, we’re going to need to if we are to cover renovations.

We’re going to look into selling Charmander and do another 1031 exchange. We’d rather manage a property that is closer to us in Rhode Island. Going 90 minutes to Massachusetts is a pain. It’s the perfect time to sell, but then buying is difficult and mortgage rates are sky-high now. Maybe we should sell, pay all the taxes and wait for a crash before getting back into the market?

The Zillow Zestimate of Wartortle of $2499 doesn’t seem right. It seems to have been stuck on that number for a long time. I think Zillow doesn’t really know and it is just putting a number out there with a link to a real estate agent for a finder’s fee. In any case, we should realistically be able to get $1900 a month. We need to start working our way there if it continues to have maintenance problems.

If we were able to rent all the property at Zillow Zestimates, we’d have an income of $6,705/mo., but we are only getting $4,875. That’s leaving more than $1800 a month on the table or $22,000 a year. Again, realistically the Zillow numbers are off, but we should be able to manage $10,000 more a year.

Cash flow of 2021

I almost forgot about the main reason why I started writing this article. We have the cash flow numbers from doing our taxes recently.

Bulbasaur’s income was $16,500 and expenses were $10,441. We made a little over $6,000 in cash flow! We were also lucky that we paid zero dollars in maintenance.

Charmander’s income was $22,800 and expenses were $15,483. We made $7,316 in cash flow! This was better than I thought. We only had $1,012 in maintenance.

Wartortle’s income was $16,355 and expenses were $15,142. We only made $1,200 in cash flow. The $5,200 in maintenance costs sunk us.

We did quite well earning $14,588 in cash flow in 2021. Wartortle’s maintenance problems were tough, but I guess it balances with the good fortune of the other properties. If we can raise rents to reasonable market rates, we should be able to get to $25,000 in rental income a year. That’s way better than I thought we’d be while we still have mortgage payments.

Three Top REITs For Passive Income

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I’m on vacation this week. Today, Josh Arnold of Sure Dividend is filling in for me with some insight on REITs and passive income. I’ll be back later this week with an article of my own.

For many, achieving sustainable passive income is the goal after a lifetime of saving and investing. After all, the measure of when one can stop working is often when their passive income can substitute for earned income. That makes it critical that investors are able to save and invest, but when the time comes to generate passive income, it is also critical to choose the right stocks for the highest chance of success.

Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs, are a group of stocks that either own physical property that is leased out, or financial instruments related to physical property, such as mortgage-backed securities. REITs exist mostly as pass-through vehicles where most of the earnings of the trust are distributed to shareholders, so dividend yields tend to be quite high for the sector. That is why they are so attractive as income, and why we like them for producing passive income.

In this article, we will examine 3 top REITs that offer investors safe, passive income.

Realty Income Corporation (O)

Our first stock is Realty Income, which bills itself as the Monthly Dividend Company. Realty is so named because it’s famous for having paid common stock monthly dividends throughout the past fifty years, an astounding feat. Realty Income sets itself apart from traditional stocks that pay quarterly dividends, because monthly dividends not only allow for faster compounding, but for those using dividends for income, monthly provides regular inflows rather than large lumps of dividends every three months. For passive income generation, monthly is far superior.

Realty Income owns more than 6,500 properties that it leases under long-term agreements to commercial clients. The trust focuses on standalone retail properties, not malls or shopping centers, as it has proven during its 50+ years of operating that it can generate superior returns via this strategy.

Realty Income has boosted its dividend more than 100 times since going public in 1994, as the trust tends to opt for a few, incremental boosts of the payout during the year, rather than one large increase annually. Realty Income has scale as well, generating more than $3 billion in annual revenue, and trading for a market capitalization of $40 billion.

Apart from paying the dividend monthly instead of quarterly, we like Realty Income for its current yield, its safe payout, and its dividend growth potential. The current yield is 4.4%, which is more than triple that of the S&P 500, so on a pure income basis, Realty Income checks the box. That’s even more so the case when you consider it’s paid monthly rather than quarterly. In addition, Realty Income has raised its dividend for 26 consecutive years.

Realty Income’s payout ratio is also quite reasonable, coming in at just 75% for this year. As REITs are required to pay out substantially all of their earnings as dividends, payout ratios in the sector tend to be quite high. Given that, we see Realty Income’s payout ratio as quite sustainable, and with good room for future growth. We forecast 4% annual growth in FFO-per-share and similar gains in the dividend as a result.

STAG Industrial, Inc. (STAG)

Our next stock is STAG Industrial, a REIT that is focused on the acquisition and operation of single-tenant industrial properties in the US. The trust targets properties that have wide moats by focusing on industrial properties that support e-commerce businesses, for instance. This strategy has generated a strong mix of income and growth for STAG’s history as a public company, and we believe it to be well-positioned for years to come through this strategy.

STAG produces about $650 million in annual revenue and trades with a market capitalization of $7.2 billion. The trust sports an 11-year dividend increase streak, as it has raised its dividend every year since going public.

STAG’s payout ratio is outstanding for a REIT, coming in at just 66% for this year. That leaves ample room for both safety and dividend increases, consistent with the trust’s past. The yield is also robust at 3.7%, about triple that of the broader market, and like Realty Income, it is paid monthly rather than quarterly.

We project 5% annual FFO-per-share growth for STAG, providing long-term dividend increase potential that is stronger than most REITs, which tend to be low-growth stocks.

Essex Property Trust, Inc. (ESS)

Our final stock is Essex Property Trust, a REIT that focuses on acquiring, developing, and managing multifamily residential properties in the West Coast markets of the US. The trust focuses on high-quality apartment communities it believes are in areas with strong growth, and currently owns about 250 different communities consisting of about 60,000 units.

Essex generates $1.5 billion in annual revenue and trades with a $23 billion market capitalization, so it is also quite sizable.

Essex has boosted its dividend for 27 years consecutively, making it a very strong income stock. It pays its dividends quarterly, and the current yield is 2.6%, about double that of the S&P 500. However, we like Essex because it owns properties in desirable markets with favorable long-term demographic trends and a very safe dividend.

The payout ratio for this year is expected to be just 60%, making Essex’s dividend safety top-tier among REITs. The trust has produced strong growth for most of its operating history, and we think that will continue in the years to come, particularly as the current housing market makes it less affordable to buy a home. That leads to rent price growth for Essex and other apartment owners.

We see 1.5% FFO-per-share growth as our base case, with upside potential depending upon housing market price growth.

Final Thoughts

While there are many ways to generate passive income in retirement, we find REITs to be a very attractive choice. Two of the stocks we’ve looked at here offer monthly dividends, rather than quarterly, providing shareholders more frequent income. In addition, they all offer market-beating yields and very strong dividend safety prospects. Finally, all three have good track records of raising their dividends, even during recessions, so overall, Realty, STAG, and Essex offer investors a great mix of yield, safety, and growth potential for passive income.

Can You Rely on Real Estate Investing’s 1% Rule

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You’d think that after 15 years of being a landlord and reading about personal finance, I’d know all the rules of thumb. However, I recently came across the 1% rule of real estate investing and had to look up the definition. Perhaps I knew in the past and just forgot about it. We’re accidental landlords, our rentals are homes that we already lived in. The exception was an investment property that was insanely cheap. It was in great condition – no repairs necessary. We didn’t have to do a single calculation on it, because we already had a condo in the same complex. We knew everything about the neighborhood already.

I love rules of thumb because they help me verify that I’m on track. So…

What is the 1% Rule in Real Estate Investing?

It’s a quick estimation of whether you are getting value when you buy a rental property. The monthly rent should be 1% of the purchase price plus any necessary repairs. For example, a $200,000 home (with no repairs) should rent at $2000 (or more) to cover the mortgage payments.

Similarly, you could do the reverse and multiple an expected rent by 100 to figure out how much you should pay for a property.

When to Use the One Percent Rule

The best time to use the rule is early in the search as a prescreening tool. That’s what the experts say at least.

I was looking at the properties we have and I thought, “What if we sold them to another investor?” Or if I were an investor today, would I buy the rentals all over again?

Property 1

Our oldest property currently has a Zillow estimate of $200,000. That makes figuring out the 1% rule very easy because we just finished that example. Zillow’s Rent Zestimate is a little less than $1800. The rent we’re making is $1350. We’ve kept it low for a long time because our tenant is an elderly widow living there on a fixed income and we don’t have to do anything. Keeping the vacancies minimal is also important to us.

We’re losing money on the property as condo fees keep going up. It’s starting to be an older property and the expenses will go up to maintain it.

It wasn’t bought to be a rental in the first place. However, if someone bought it now and got a tenant in it, perhaps it would be close to 1%.

Property 2

My old condo is worth $358,000 now according to Zillow. However, the rent Zestimate is a little less than $2300. For it to follow the 1% rule, we should be collecting $3,580 a month in rent. Zillow says we couldn’t get close to that. It’s true, we have it rented for only $1900. We’ll look to raise this rent too because the condo association has had a couple of fires and the insurance has gone up.

Fortunately, we bought the condo a long time ago, so the mortgage is lower. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to generate positive cash flow.

So far no investor should buy either of our properties.

Property 3

Our newest property was bought in 2013 and it was a great deal at $95,000. We sold it for nearly double at the end of 2019. We did a 1031 Exchange, which allows us to roll the money into a new property without paying taxes on the sale. We did all this because it is easier to manage property closer to where we live.

We paid about $200,000 for the new property and it jumped to $265,000 as prices have skyrocketed in the last year. We’ve only been able to get $1600 in rent though. Zillow says that we may have been able to get $1800, but the $1600 was fair for the market. In the last couple of months, Zillow has jumped the rent estimate to $2500.

If an investor about the property from us for $265,000 and tried to rent it out to someone new, I doubt it would get $2,500, much less $2,650.

Property 4

This is actually our primary residence instead of a rental property. However, it used to be rental property. We lived in California, but in 2011 we bought a house in Rhode Island. The real estate market was still down and we figured we could get a price and rent it out to a military family until we retire in it. We only rented it for one year.

We bought it for $400,000 and we were able to rent it for $2,600. That’s not near 1% either. Zillow says it is worth nearly $700,000 now, but the rent would be a little more than $3,400. That’s only about 0.05% – very far from 1%.

Throw out the 1% Rule?

I think our area of New England makes the 1% rule very difficult to do. There might be some properties that are 1%, but it’s very hard. Perhaps if we bought a 3-family house, we could get enough rent.

Another “problem” is that the housing market has exploded in the last year. Rents have gone up too, but it seems like that they haven’t gone up fast enough to make hitting the 1% rule easier.

One way to get to the 1% rule is to wait. Rents go up over time, but your mortgage should stay the same. Let’s review the first property again. The purchase price of the property was around $140,000, so the current rent of $1350 is very close. If we charged a market rate, we’d finally have over the 1% rule.

What’s better than the 1% Rule?

Many real estate investors prefer to use the rent multiplier over the 1% rule. It’s very similar, but rather than just giving you a decision to move forward or not, it can be used to quantify how good or how bad a deal is. You simply divide the price of the property by the rent. So, we can use the very first example above with the $200,000 price and $2000 rent to come out with a rent multiplier of 100. That means it will take 100 months of rent to break even. Of course, you wouldn’t really break even because there are other expenses such as property taxes and repair costs. It’s just a good guideline to compare properties.

If you have another property that costs $100,000 and the rent is $1,500 that’s a much better deal as it would pay off in 66 months or five and a half years. Again, it’s important to note that about half the rent will go to other things over the long term.

Even though both properties pass the 1% rule, you can see how much better the second property is. Or, in the case of my property examples above how much worse they are.

Some people use the Gross Rent Multiplier (GRM), which just means that it uses the gross rents or the rent for a whole year. The math isn’t different, it’s only a matter of whether you want the answer in terms of months or years.

Final Thoughts

The 1% rule works to show you if a property is a good investment. It isn’t perfect though. Some locations are expensive and the 1% rate may not be possible. When that happens you may have to look at investing in another location, which can create its own set of management headaches. Or, you may decide to get as close as you can by minimizing the GRM and counting on appreciation to add value.

For us, the toothpaste is already out of the tube. We’re far enough along where we may be able to pay off the mortgages soon and have a real monthly cash flow. If we can raise the rental rates to be a little competitive it will certainly help. However, this is a tough time due to COVID, so staying with lower rents for a while longer may make the most sense.

The Most Expensive Vacation Ever?

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I’m away on vacation this week (and it is expensive), but here’s frequent contributor Kosmo with an article about his last vacation.

No, we didn’t go to Disney World.

In 2017, we made our first trip to Door County, Wisconsin.  For those who aren’t familiar, it’s the “pinky finger” on the eastern border of Wisconsin – a peninsula with Lake Michigan to the east and Green Bay to the west.  After the initial trip, we decided that we’d definitely make a return trip.  We planned a trip in 2019, but it was derailed by a family health situation.  Last year, it was postponed because of COVID.  This year, we finally made a return trip.  Even with a somewhat limited set of activities (because our 11-year-old isn’t old enough to be vaccinated), it was great.  We’ll definitely be back.

A funny thing happened.  We started looking at homes on Realtor.com.  Just goofing around at first.  What would we do with a second house?  Especially a house that’s considerably more expensive (per square foot) than our primary residence.  That’s just crazy.

Maybe?

The idea percolated and eventually turned into a new idea.  Perhaps a rental property that we use for a couple of weeks per year, plus some sporadic weekends.

Financially, we’re in a position where we could try this.  I’m 46 years old.  We have about 75% equity in our house and have a bit of money in an investment account.  We would swing the down payment and setup, and even get through some lean years with limited rentals, if worst came to worst.  I actually don’t think we’d have trouble renting a place, because it’s a very high-demand area.

The hard part

The bigger factor is the fact that we live 400 miles away.  Even if we bought something that didn’t require a lot of maintenance, trying to get things set up on weekends would cause the setup to stretch longer than we’d like.  Setting up a short-term rental takes a bit more work than setting up a long-term rental.  You need to furnish virtually everything.  Not just beds, a couch, table, chairs, and TV, but things like spatulas, corkscrews, and frisbees.  And, of course, toilet paper.  Nobody wants to check into an Airbnb and realize there’s no Charmin.

We would also have to hire a local cleaning service, as well as have some sort of arrangement with a local maintenance person to handle any acute issues that arise.  If there’s a leaky pipe on a Wednesday, I wouldn’t be able to jump in the car and go fix it, since I have a day job.  Nor could I mow the lawn every week or clear snow in the winter.  Naturally, paying locals to assist would cut into the profitability of the venture.

Does it make sense?

Of course, the venture doesn’t actually need to make a profit.  We’d be getting some personal use out of the property, plus the likely appreciation in property values.  We could lose a bit of money every year and wouldn’t cry about it.  If we could simply defray a decent chunk of the costs, that would be great.

We’re going to dip our toes in the water.  My wife (a CPA) and I are both the type to plan things.  We’re putting together a list of the furnishings we’d need, so that we can get our arms around the potential cost.  Everything from bed frames to pizza cutters.

We have a local realtor that we’ve used to buy two houses and sell one.  We’ve always enjoyed working with him.  It seems like a longshot that he’d know some realtors 400 miles away, but we asked.  Yep, he knows a couple of people.  He’s going to get their information to us today, and we’ll engage with them very soon.

Your thoughts?

Do any of you own and remotely manage short-term rentals?  What has your experience?  Is it worth the cost and effort?  Are there potential pitfalls that I should be aware of?