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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Here’s What Happened After I lost Airbnb Superhost Status
March 16, 2026 | 4 Minute Read As many of you know, we’ve been operating short-term rentals for four years now. We launched our first property in March 2022. At one point, we had 16 short-term rentals. But volume doesn’t always equal profitability. Seven of those properties didn’t meet our revenue targets, so we converted […]
Why We Added Another Short Term Rental After Downsizing
January 19, 2026 | 2.5 Minute Read It’s been about four years since we launched our first short-term rental on Airbnb and VRBO, and in that time, I’ve learned more than I ever expected. Short-term rentals are not passive income. They are operational businesses, and without strong systems, they will expose every weakness in your […]
How We Turned Five Rentals Into a Six Figure Profit Machine
January 12, 2026 | 3.5 Minute Read Last week, I broke down the performance of my two personally owned short-term rentals and how they generated $95,000 in gross income in 2025. In this article, I want to shift the focus to how our company-owned portfolio of five short-term rentals (STRs) performed over the same period. […]
Two Section 8 Rentals → Airbnb’s = $95,000
January 5, 2026 | 3 Minute Read As many of you know, we’ve been operating short-term rentals (Airbnb) since April 2022. At our peak, we scaled to 18 properties. Today, we operate eight, with a ninth set to launch hopefully later this week. The reasons we cut our portfolio in half deserve their own article, […]