If you grew up playing the Oregon Trail and always wanted to skip the dysentery and keep the wagon, this stay in Grants Pass is the answer. It’s located on an 11-acre farm called Rustic Sundance, and it’s one of the most charming glamping setups in the PNW.
The wagon, named "Stagecoach," is parked in a lush forest clearing right on the banks of the Applegate River. It’s the perfect mix of "frontier living" and modern luxury.
When we first set things up, we rushed onboarding just to get everything running quickly. That led to small errors that took weeks or months to fix later. It made operations more complicated than necessary. Definitely learned the hard way.
If you could redo onboarding, what would you do differently?
The kind that looks amazing online but just doesn’t deliver. Could be poor maintenance, bad layout, or just not as advertised. What went wrong? I want to know what people run into with these types of stays.
There are a lot of features that sound amazing when you first see them. But once you actually use them daily, they don’t always perform the way you expect. For us, fully automated communication still needs human oversight to avoid awkward or mistimed replies. It’s not as hands-off as it sounds.
What feature didn’t live up to the hype for you?
If you’re looking to escape the city without leaving the Hudson Valley, the Treecastle at the Roundhouse Homestead in Wallkill is the ultimate childhood dream brought to life.
It’s a massive, multi-story hexagon structure perched 11.5 feet off the ground, built entirely from local, rough-cut lumber milled in Hudson, NY. The attention to detail is wild, from the dormer windows on every side of the second floor to the fact that it’s partially supported by a single, living Pin Oak.
Hi!
We usually get many 5/5 star reviews but lately guests started to give lower reviews such as on value and accuracy. We didn’t change big things, just small improvements such as more comfortable chairs.
The weird thing is that everything is described (every machine etc.) and there are pictures from all angles.
When I ask these guests what we could have improved, they either don’t reply or give examples that were very clear in the listing or we have 0 influence on. Examples are: the 140cm bed could be bigger, the kitchen could be bigger or the view could be better.
Is there a kind way of asking for a review based on our service and the actual apartment? I don’t want to make it too pushy.
Edit: they always mention how much they loved the breakfast, how great I was with giving recommendations in their reviews.
does anyone experiencing this? whenever i use my uss i cant hear its reload sound and sometimes it auto reloads itself even if im not reloading.
Everything looks organized in one place, but underlying issues can still exist.
Visibility doesn’t always mean stability, it can hide problems until they surface.
Have you ever been caught off guard despite everything looking fine?
I’ve seen some really creative conversions lately, but I always wonder how functional they are. Like is it comfortable long-term or just cool for photos? Anyone here stayed in one?
What was your experience like?
If you’re visiting Hawaii and want your adventure to continue after you leave the National Park, this Volcano Dome in Mountain View is a masterclass in themed luxury.
It’s an earthen home built entirely of cindercrete using volcanic rock from a local quarry. The design is a literal interpretation of a volcano, from the fiery red walls to the 25-foot high ceilings that vent out of a crater skylight.
They’re great with data, but don’t always capture local nuances.
A lot of experienced hosts still override them regularly.
Do you rely fully on dynamic pricing, or adjust manually?
What I’ve built for myself
I own a small rental portfolio (mix of SFR and multifamily) and was annoyed by capex reserves. Not that they exist, just that the rules of thumb were better than nothing but also not really based on anything real either - using the same rule of thumb for a new construction single family and a 50 year old duplex is obviously going to be wrong on one or both counts.
So I built a tool for myself that tracks every major system (and a number of smaller but still capital level components) across my properties — what's installed, how old it is, what it'll cost to replace — and runs the math on what I should be setting aside each month so the money's actually there when something comes due. I can walk a property with my phone, snap photos of equipment, and it pulls component details off nameplates so I'm not hand-entering serial numbers. Upload an inspection report and it extracts the relevant data automatically.
The natural “follow on” scope I added that I expect to be valuable is on the acquisition side. When I'm looking at a property, I do the same walkthrough protocol and it basically shows me what the seller has been deferring — here's a 16-year-old HVAC and a water heater past its expected life, so here's what you're probably spending in the first few years. That should give me the ability to have more real numbers to bring to the negotiation and show the seller instead of just a gut feel on deferred maintenance. Of course, no guarantee the sellers will listen to reason but at least I’ll have tried. After a closing, the property moves into the normal portfolio status so unless I replaced any components as part of closing I don’t need to enter the data again.
Anyway, I've been building this over the past couple of weeks and I'm starting to populate my own properties. It is interesting to see how I was under-reserving for properties I had “recently” done gut renovations on…apparently time flies by as you get older.
Question for PMs
Now that I’ve described my thinking, I'm wondering if PMs deal with this differently. Do you track capital reserves per property for your owners, or is that their problem? When an owner asks "am I saving enough for future replacements," do you have a real answer or is it more of a feel thing?
I’d love to hear how the PM side handles this more broadly. In my experience as an owner (with property managers), nobody's ever proactively brought up capital planning with me. In my mind, helping to ensure your owners are adequately reserved would help smooth both operations and tenant relations, but I’m not actually in that side of the business so my feelings on it may not fit with the actual reality.
At some point, scaling solo starts to break down.
Delegation becomes necessary, but knowing when to make that shift isn’t always obvious.
When did you decide to start building a team?
Managing 45+ properties now, and I’ve realized the biggest difference between a smooth operation and a stressful one usually isn’t the guest, it’s often the owner. Curious how you all define a “great” owner. Is it trust? Responsiveness? Willingness to reinvest? Something else?
And on the flip side, what’s a small red flag early on that usually turns into a bigger headache later?