Journal
What we have learned running it.
Notes on operating Texas property: short-term rentals, remote and off-grid stays, land, and the software we run it all on.
Nothing matches that.
Software
For owners
If you are weighing up a manager, or already have one.
What a short-term rental manager actually does
The work behind a management fee, listed honestly: what is daily, what is seasonal, what is invisible, and what you should not be paying anyone for.
Read itWhat an owner statement should show you
If you cannot tell what you earned, what it cost and why, from one page without asking, the statement is not doing its job. What to demand.
Read itShould you self-manage or hand it over?
An honest way to decide, from a manager who will tell you not to hire one. The four things that actually determine it, and the maths that does not.
Read itThe first thirty days after handover
What a competent handover looks like week by week, what should already be visible, and the signals that tell you early it is not going well.
Read itWhy your Airbnb and Vrbo calendars disagree
Listing one property on three channels means three calendars that only mostly agree. Here is why they drift, and what actually stops a double booking.
Read itWhy we built our own software
Not because the tools are bad. Because two of the four things we needed were things nobody sells, and the rest we could not check from outside.
Read itRunning a stay
What operating a remote property actually involves.
Write a listing that turns the wrong guest away
Every sentence that disqualifies someone costs a booking and saves a review. How to write the parts most listings quietly leave out, and why.
Read itPhotographing a remote property properly
Most rural listings are photographed at the wrong time of day, in the wrong order, and with the wrong thing in frame. What we do instead, and why.
Read itWhat running an off-grid rental actually takes
Solar, hauled water and an hour of dirt road change every part of running a short-term rental. What we learned operating one in Brewster County.
Read itTurnovers when nobody lives nearby
A clean is the easy part. On a remote property the turnover is a supply run, an inspection and a drive, and scheduling it tightly is how it breaks.
Read itDark sky is a feature you can actually sell
A genuinely dark sky fills midweek and shoulder-season nights that nothing else will. How to describe it honestly and price around the moon.
Read itBuying
What we look for, and what we pass on.
What we look for in a DFW short-term rental
The other half of what we buy: not remote land but Dallas–Fort Worth rentals, where demand is already provable and the upside is operational.
Read itWater is what decides a rural Texas parcel
A well, a haul or nothing at all changes what land can be used for and what it costs to hold. The questions to ask before you offer, and who to ask.
Read itBuying rural Texas land: what to check first
Access, water, minerals, dues and the road. The questions that decide whether a cheap parcel is a bargain or a thing you cannot use, and who to ask.
Read it