My Short Term Rental Website Is Live
September 21 2026 | 5 Minute Read This is a follow-up to my September 7 post, “Why I’m Building a Direct Booking Website.” After about a month of building, testing and troubleshooting, I’m happy to report that BirminghamVacationHomes.com is now live. The goal was simple: create another avenue to increase occupancy and reduce our dependence […]
Why I’m Building A Direct Booking Web Site
September 7, 2026 | 7 Minute Read Over the past few months, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need a direct booking website for our short-term rentals. After four and a half years of owning and operating short-term rentals, I’ve become pretty comfortable with our systems and processes. At one point, we had as […]
The #1 Item That Stresses Me Out Operating Airbnbs
August 10, 2026 | 5 Minute Read Anyone who operates short-term rentals knows this is not a “set it and forget it” business. With long-term rentals, tenant communication is usually limited to two things: maintenance requests and late rent payments. Short-term rentals are completely different. You’re in the hospitality business. You’re essentially operating a small […]
How to Profit When Other Investors Fail
July 27, 2026 | 2 Minute Read I’ve been studying the new housing bill designed to limit large institutional investors from buying too many single-family homes. The bill was primarily aimed at hedge funds and large investors that entered the housing market after the 2008 downturn. During the crisis, these investors helped stabilize neighborhoods by […]
Mid-Term Rentals Are a Game Changer
July 20, 2026 | 2 Minute Read I have written extensively about the benefits of hosting mid-term guests at our furnished short-term rentals, and the results continue to reinforce my position that this strategy deserves more attention from real estate investors. Mid-term rentals—typically defined as stays of 28 days or longer—offer many of the financial […]
Hosting on Booking.com Sucks
June 1, 2026 | 6 Minute Read Most short-term rental operators rely on Airbnb and VRBO. If you’re new to STR hosting, you don’t have many alternatives. However, there is a third option that has been around for more than 30 years: Booking.com. Although traditionally focused on hotels, Booking.com began aggressively expanding into short-term rentals […]
The Mistake I Made With A Mid-Term Rental Opportunity
May 25, 2026 | 3.5 Minute Read I love mid-term rentals. These are guests who stay 30 days or longer at one of our properties, and they have become one of the best strategies for maximizing occupancy and reducing operational costs in our short-term rental business. With mid-term guests, we typically get: 100% occupancy for […]
How I Cut Risk and Boosted Cash Flow to $11K Monthly
May 4, 2026 | 3.5 Minute Read In May 2025, we hit a point where we had to make some clear, strategic decisions. The market felt uncertain. Interest rates were unpredictable. At the same time, we were dealing with multiple vacancies from tenant turnovers, and several of our short-term rentals weren’t producing the way we […]
Converting Rentals To Airbnb: Capital Paid Back
April 27, 2026 | 3 Minute Read Most investors purchase properties specifically to operate as short-term rentals (STRs). We took a different approach. We converted several of our long-term rentals (LTRs) into STRs. At one point, we operated as many as 16 STRs. However, not all of them performed as projected. The underperforming properties were […]
Stop Chasing Airbnb Superhost Status
April 20, 2026 | 2 Minute Read The past week brought several interesting developments with my short-term rental portfolio. One was positive and expected. The other was a painful reminder that operating short-term rentals comes with risks—even when bookings come through Airbnb. I regained Airbnb Superhost status, which I had lost earlier this year. Yay […]