City capped non owner occupied short term rental permits and unit two was the whole plan

Tasha Morgan· Short-term rental host turning it into a property management company· Named it, Real Estate·4d

Council voted Tuesday. New non owner occupied short term rental permits are capped, existing permits are grandfathered for two years and then get reviewed, and anything new basically has to be in a home you actually live in. I watched it on the stream at 9pm with a spreadsheet open that no longer means anything.

My second unit closes in three weeks. It was bought to be a short term rental and my whole model, the twenty percent management idea, the crew I was going to keep busy, was built on a permit I can no longer get.

What I am looking at now is mid term, thirty day plus furnished rentals. There is a hospital ten minutes away that runs travelling staff on thirteen week contracts, and furnished mid term does not trigger the lodging tax or the permit regime here as far as I can tell, though I am getting that confirmed rather than assuming it.

The numbers are worse and calmer. Nightly gross was going to be higher, but so were cleaning, the turnover crew, the platform fees and my own weekends.

Has anyone made the mid term pivot? I want to know what actually breaks, especially the furnishing budget and how you find tenants without a nightly platform doing the marketing for you.

4 replies

Rachel Goldstein· Registered·4d

Sorry, that is a rough way to find out, and your timing is the worst part. Three weeks to closing means you are deciding under pressure, which is exactly when people take the first idea that sounds workable.

On mid term, the ones I see doing well locally lean almost entirely on relationships rather than listings. Housing coordinators at the hospitals, the travel staffing companies themselves, and corporate relocation folks at the bigger employers. It is slower to build and much stickier once it exists. I would spend the first month making three of those calls a week instead of perfecting the listing photos.

Tasha Morgan· Named it·3d

Three calls a week is a real plan and I can start it before closing, which makes me feel less like I am just watching the calendar.

I did find out today that grandfathering here follows the permit and not the property, so a permitted unit sold during the two years does not carry the permit to the buyer. That materially changes what my first unit is worth if I ever sell it, which is a second thing to absorb this week. Anyone in a city that did this earlier, did the review at the end of the grandfather window actually happen?

Rob Mackenzie· Open·3d

I sold a business ahead of a zoning change once and I have regretted the timing ever since, so take this as scar tissue rather than wisdom. The thing I learned is that when the rules move, the operators who survive are the ones whose model was not a single permit away from zero.

Mid term is less exciting and much more durable, and the furnishing budget is where people blow it. You are furnishing for a professional adult who lives there for three months, not for photos. Sturdy, plain, a real desk chair, a mattress you would sleep on. Skip the mural.

Rachel Goldstein· Registered·2d

The desk chair thing is more important than it sounds. The travelling nurses and contract staff I have helped find housing all ask the same three questions, which are parking, laundry in the unit, and whether there is somewhere to sit and work that is not the bed.

Tasha, one more thing to confirm before you commit, because it varies wildly, is how your city and your insurer each define a lease that short. My carrier treats thirty days as a normal tenancy and a friend's treats anything under six months as a short term risk with different pricing.

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