In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Travers Xanthos. Travers has a portfolio of 24 properties, 22 of them are rental arbitrage and 2 he owns, all located in Nashville, TN.
Travers had a high paying sales job for 6 years and in 8 months after finding out about Airbnb he already was ready to quit his job with the income he was making from his properties.
In this episode, Travers talks about how he was able to grow his short term rental business in such a fast time period, how he was able to be completely hands-off while living in Bali, the secrets he used to get news reporters to promote your properties, and how to find good deals even during uncertain times.
Video Transcript
00:00:00
So, what I’m doing is I’m taking these people. They’re looking for a 12 month place that want to maybe be fully furnished. Maybe not. I’m getting them to sign a sublease with me. And then I turn around to the apartment complex, sign, a lease for that property because they recently went outta business with the other company. So then I put that person there for nine to 12 months, and then next year I take that place back over once things are back normal. So I’ve been able to actually grow and improve the quality of my properties during the pandemic.
00:00:30
This is episode number six, the shorter Rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed, go to cohost it.com for more information, welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host, Julian Sage. This is a show where I talk to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short term rental business. My goal is that you’ll be able to walk away with practical information. That’ll help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business. Like any exceptional host. We all strive for five star reviews. So please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy this. It really helped support the show if you haven’t done so already going over to our Facebook group, the host nation to connect with the community. Hey, what is going on? Host nation?
00:01:10
I am super excited to be back again with you this week. Thank you to everybody that has picked up our new book. Airbnb secrets revealed. It’s something that we have been giving away for free just because we were planning on printing them out and doing it that way. But because of everything that’s been happening, we’ve decided to make it digital. So that one, we can update the book, but two, so that we can just give it to you for free. So if you go to Short Term Sage dot com slash book, you can pick up your free copy of our newest book. Airbnb secrets revealed where Jon and I talk about Rental arbitrage. Cohosting our stories. And just all of the exciting potential of short term rental investing. It’s still something that I am super excited and passionate about every day. I’m excited to wake up, to be able to engage and create new content for host nation, but also because of the potential of the short-term Rental space.
00:02:02
There’s so much opportunity out there. And I don’t want anybody to feel like because of these difficult times that you really just have to fold your hand. There are so many hosts that are hurting right now, and my heart goes out to every single person that hasn’t been able to get the bookings that they were expecting during this time. But right now, more than ever, it’s most important to keep positive, keep your head up and remember that this too shall pass. I’m excited to be able to share with y’all some of the stuff that we’re gonna be doing in our business, because we are also pivoting as well. Don’t worry, guys. It’s still all gonna be about short rentals, but we are trying to make some strategic moves to best position ourselves. And I hope that everybody else is making those types of moves, whether that is upgrading your PMS or even just doing a little thing.
00:02:45
One of the things that our guests actually said was as long as you wake up every morning and ask yourself, what did I do to move the needle forward every single day, I look for the needle movers. I try to see what’s the biggest thing that I can be doing right now to be able to get me closer to where my goal is. Sometimes that just means, you know, decluttering things or, you know, just trying to do a little bit of something other days, they are big moves and I can feel really good, but whether it’s a small move or a big move, as long as you’re making moves forward, you are gonna be okay. Someone that I’m super excited to bring on the show is Z. Travis has a portfolio of 24 properties. 22 of them are Rental arbitrage and two, which he owns all located in Nashville, Tennessee, Travis had a high paying sales job for six years, and then eight months after finding about Airbnb and short-term rentals, he was already ready to quit his job from the amount that he was making from his properties.
00:03:41
In this episode, Travis shares how he was able to grow his short Rental business in such a fast time period, how he was able to be completely hands off while living in Bali and the secrets he used to getting news reporters to actually promote his properties and how to find good deals. Even during uncertain times. This is a really exciting episode. And Travis is really skilled at using media to be able to get his message or to get his properties in front. I actually saw tra on the most recent CNBC episode where he was actually featured as one of the hosts talking, some of the tips in this episode are really practical and that you can definitely be using right away. So you want to go ahead and save this episode, make sure that it is one of your favorites because it is jam packed. Of course, if you like my show notes for this episode, go to shorttermsage.com slash STR six zero. Or if you like my show notes sent directly to inbox every week, then go to shorttermsage.com slash show notes with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Hey, welcome back. Host nation to another episode of short term rental success stories. In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with traverse Z Zen.
00:04:49
I get it. Zant that’s it. When I read the name, I was like, I was like, is it like Thanos or XUS?
00:05:01
No, I get all, I mean, my name’s tra Demetri Zant so
00:05:06
Holy what’s what’s your nationality
00:05:08
It’s
00:05:10
So that’s a, that’s a traditional Greek name,
00:05:13
The two, the Demetrius. And are yes.
00:05:17
Awesome. Well, now that I just completely butchered your name. If you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself, let the host nation know who you are and what inspired you to get into short Rental?
00:05:26
Yeah. So my name’s Trevor Z. I have about 24 Rental Rental arbitrage properties in Nashville. I got started doing this about three years trying to find something corporate world that’s years old. So, so yeah, it’s been an awesome ride so far, but, but that’s how I got started.
00:05:53
Awesome. Can you give a little bit more, so like, how did, how did you even know about this? You know, the, the arbitrage model, cause prior to this, you said that you were in healthcare sales for about six years or so.
00:06:05
Yeah, so I was working in healthcare sales. I had a, I had a really good sales job selling to hospitals. Everything was going great. I had a nice commission check and I wanted to try to invest that. I, I really had no idea of how to invest. I wanna get into real estate. I loved traveling. I’ve been traveling for a long time and, and Airbnb was something that seemed really cool. Something that was exciting to me. And I had a friend of mine who was doing Airbnb. That’s told that I knew it was that he had an Airbnb Airbnb business. And I asked him if I could buy him a beer to tell me how to do it. Cause I wanted to go and just buy another house. So I wanted to buy a second house. I could rent an Airbnb Airbnb. So I went and met him for a beer on music row at an old country bar.
00:06:48
And you know, right when I walked in, he was like, tra you know, I don’t buy a house anymore. And he explained to me that all he does is goes and pitches to landlords and apartment complex is to rent their apartments to him. And then he turns them into Airbnb, turns them into Airbnb and rent. ’em like a regular tenant. He told me about all the, the regulations in Nashville. There’s, you know, if you were to ask someone in Nashville, if Airbnb is legal, they would probably say that it’s not, but there’s a lot of loopholes. You just, you have to know how those work and if you know how those work, then there’s a lot of opportunity. So anyway, we sat there and I had my little notepad and I was writing stuff down. He was just talking all night, you know, a couple hours, explain to me how I needed to talk the to landlord, to get them to say yes, how I could manage the places.
00:07:33
Just basically just an overview of everything. And the next morning I woke up and, you know, was feeling a little rough from the night before and was like, man, that, that stuff Ricky was talking about. Sounds really cool, but you know, I’m probably not gonna do that. And then, you know, I’m in sales. So I just, I started looking at on Craigslist for apartments and was like, oh, this one looks like it would be good. And you know, with a sales background, I started to make a, a cold call list. So I had my Excel spreadsheet. I just started making this list. And then I have a list of like 10, 15 places. And I was like, you know what, screw it. Like, why don’t I just start calling these places? And I texted Ricky and asked him like, Hey, what are the points to say again, making the phone calls first day calls a and got really excited downhill from there picked first two.
00:08:26
picked I yeah, So my up first two properties a couple weeks later and you know, yeah. So I so picked up those first two properties. I kept on, you know, growing, I furnished. Those was managing those myself and I, I was under contract for two more and I went down to Cancun for my, I think it was my 30th birthday. And I was with my girlfriend at the time and was just kind of like sitting there daydreaming and running numbers through my head and realized that I was covering my, my expenses right then from the two properties that I had. And I was about to get two more. And I was like, holy crap. Like, this is actually real. Like I just started this and I can cover my living expenses. What if I continue to grow this? And you know, when I graduated college and I traveled around the world for two years by myself and experienced a lot of things.
00:09:15
And one of the big things that I saw was that, you know, life doesn’t have to be part of the corporate America rat race, but as soon as you get into it, it’s hard to kind of realize that every time I go outta the country, I would kind of fall back into that thought of like, gosh, like this is my two week Vacation. I’m like stuck the rest of the year. So that was what was going through my head while we were in Cancun for my birthday. And I was like, you know what, like, Bali’s my favorite place in the world. I spent some time there and I turned to my, my girlfriend was like, Hey, what do you say? We quit our jobs and move to Bali. You know, that’s what we decided we were gonna do. So I left a very high paying sales job. We gave it kinda eight months and just continued to grow throughout that time. And by the time that I put in my two weeks notice, I was making as much money with my Airbnb Airbnb business as I was from my corporate sales job and was able to go live in Bali as long as I wanted to and, you know, continue growing my business from there. So it’s been pretty sweet.
01:10:17
Can you share, how, how much were you making and how many properties was that to be able to replace your, your corporate sales job?
01:10:24
Well, it was a really high paying sales job, you know, way over six figures. So I think I had like eight or 10 properties at the time. I was probably doing about 150, a hundred, maybe 150 to 200,000 a year, once they’re fully running. So I hadn’t made that up to that point, but once they all started going for a full year, that’s what they would’ve done.
01:10:50
So you were, you were bringing in, so around seven to eight, eight properties is, is what we typically hear on the show is, is kind of like that, that financially free number or that at least that financial independence. So you were clearing, how about what? Between one to 2000 per property?
01:11:06
Yeah, on average I’d do about 1500 per property. OK. So yeah, just depends on, you know, first of all, what your, your living expenses are. So do you live in a huge house that you have to cover and have a car that you have, you know, have to make payments on and all that, or, you know, are you living in Bali and just kind of, you know,
01:11:27
Living, living the ball life.
01:11:28
Exactly. So that’s, that’s a lot easier to do with, with two or three properties and the rest it’s just saving. So
01:11:35
About how, how long did it take you to get to that point where you, you quit your job?
01:11:40
Well, I gave myself eight months, so I guess it was, you know, about 10 months or so
01:11:46
10 months from the time that you, you first found out about yeah. The short rentals and the mass release Rental arbitrage model to the time that you quit your
01:11:52
Job. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it was, it was two months since I found out about it that I decided I was gonna leave my job. Wow. Cause that’s, that’s when I was in Mexico and realized that I was covering my living expenses, you know, this is my escape, so,
01:12:07
Mm. And, and so you, you, you, you actually moved to Bali and you lived there for some time or was that just more like a Vacation?
01:12:13
Yeah, no. The plan was go to Bali and live there for a year. We were there for about three months. It was kind of a weird transition, I mean, going from the corporate world to not having to work anymore. So it was kind of a timeline where I got there. It was great. It was like a Vacation for a week. The second week I felt really guilty cause I wasn’t working every day. You know, after that, I slowly transitioned into enjoying it about month and a half in started to really bored. And, you know, that’s when I decided I gotta be moving something and I don’t have an online business. The things that I know require me to be at least in a similar time zone. So, you know, it kind of transitioned to just being based in the us and traveling whenever I want to.
01:13:02
So how, how did you, you know, that that’s that maybe a lot, a big fear for a lot of people is, you know, being able to step away from their business that they’ve built, you know, you don’t, a lot of people, they try to leave their corporate world so that they can have more freedom, but then a lot of people maybe even host end up getting stuck, still hosting. How are you able to step away even from your properties?
01:13:25
Yeah. I mean, you just have to structure it on a way to do that. I don’t know if you’ve read four hour work week by Tim Ferris. You know, that was kinda a big motivator when I decided I was gonna leave my job, you know, I had a lot of people like kind of, you know, hating on it, not really hating on it, but just like warning me, like, is this what you wanna do? And so I had a lot of anxiety about it. So I think I read that book twice and that was kinda like gave me some motivation to continue on with the, the plan. But, but yeah, you just have to set it up in a way where, you know, honestly I’m not need in the business. I pay a property manager to run everything. She she’s amazing, you know, she does everything, how I want her to she’s incentivized to do a great job, to get good reviews, to get high dollar bookings and high occupancy. So it’s just a matter of finding the right structure for your business so that you can step out it. And it’s the good thing with me moving to Bali is that, you know, I didn’t have a choice. Like I, I had to leave and I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t really help out. So it’s kind like I had to get someone prepared to take, take over the management before I left. And when I left, you know, I just needed to make sure that they were someone that could figure out on their own.
01:14:39
I think you’re one of the first people maybe on the show that, that I can recall that actually went the property manager route to be able to have them basically manage their business. When did you, when did you realize like, okay, I don’t wanna be the one that’s handling all the, you know, the nuances of hosting and rather outsource that to a manager
01:15:04
From the very beginning. That was my plan. So at the very beginning, it was my girlfriend at the time and I were managing the properties. I think that’s really important to do so that you understand what goes into it. You understand how to set up the properties, how to set up the, the structure and, you know, the processes that you’re gonna be using once you’ve experience and know how to the property, then you, what you next, you hire a assistant. Do you wanna hire someone that’s gonna be your onsite help and you can still do the guest communication, or you wanna hire a fulltime property manager. I’ve all, you know, obviously evaluated all those different routes. I like the route that I have, the structure that I have because it’s, I don’t have to worry. You know, I don’t have to deal with anything. I trust the person that’s, that’s managing my properties very, very much.
01:15:53
She’s been with me for three years since I, she was my first cleaner that I hired. So she knows these places way better than I had to, to be honest. And so if you look at reviews, I mean, having someone local that’s there that knows the area that’s, that knows the properties like the back of their hands, it’s gonna get you really good reviews. If you have someone, a virtual assistant over in India or in, in the Philippines, you know, they’re gonna be able to handle basic questions, but, you know, just like if you were to pick up the phone and call at T’s, you know, helpline, and you’re really frustrated with something, and you talk to someone that, that you can’t communicate with, it’s not gonna rub you the right way. And if you’re leaving a review for someone that’s very review, that’s very important to them. You know, you wanna make sure that, that they’re getting the service that they need. And I feel like a local person is, is the best, the best route for that.
01:16:47
You know, that, that, that is, that is so cool to see, you know, the, the first person that you hire being your cleaner and then them eventually turn it into your property manager. I was thinking maybe like you hired like another, you know, another host as a manager, but you, you took someone that, you know, didn’t have any experience in hosting and then train them up so that they’re able to fully operate your business. Now, this person they’re, they’re full-time with you. Like you pay them a salary.
01:17:11
They’re, full-time, they’re a WD employee. She did have some experience though. She was managing her own Airbnb, Airbnb, Airbnb, when I first hired her on a as cleaner, but yeah, she she’s grown with the company and, you know, I’m very lucky that I, that I have her. So,
01:17:27
And with, with that, when you’re paying someone to manage the properties full time for you to be able to still walk away from your job and have somebody manage your business, like how much of a, of a cut did having a manager, a full-time person take from like your, your, your net profit?
01:17:44
Well, there’s a lot of different ways to structure the salary or the pay for a property. And it’s something that I put a lot of thought and planning and, you know, and preparation into you, a straight up percentage model. I mean, if you were to pay property, probably depending where you or you, someone, I pay could you or know, you mean, someone. I mean, you know, I talked to some of the big competitors out there, some of the big corporate apartment multifamily style Rental arbitrage, you know, or they call mass lease companies and kinda talked to them about how they paid their employees by interviewing some of their ex employees and found out that they were paid very, very poorly. I mean, a property manager managing an entire city whose responsibility is not just handling all the onsite stuff, doing the quality assurance checks, but also growing, growing the business as well.
01:18:43
So finding new properties, responsible for furnishing those properties, all that stuff, you know, I think they were getting paid like 30,000 a year plus 500 per property. They found that’s it. So, you know, the way that I looked at it is if I had someone that I want, you know, I want their goals to align with mine, right? If you pay someone straight percentage based that can be, can get pretty expensive. I mean, if you have a business like mine, that’s doing, you know, well over seven figures a year, you know, you don’t wanna be paying this person $200,000 a year. So I have a hybrid model, which is a combination of a, you know, a low base amount plus quarterly incentive pay, which is a percentage of, of bookings.
01:19:29
Okay. And you took that, that kind of concept from interviewing what, some of the other managers, how did, how did you even find like all these people?
01:19:35
No, I, I came up with that myself. Actually, you came up the other, the other companies were paying a salary with, you know, salary, a finding bonus of $500. So when I just started thinking about doing that, I was like, oh, well, maybe I could, I could get my cost down a lot, but you know, these, she’s not gonna wanna work very hard, you know, especially if I’m planning on growing. So, I mean, say she starts out with 10 managing 10 properties, and then I have 20 and she’s still getting paid $30,000. That’s not fair. So,
02:20:06
And what, what would you say that your role in the business is now, once you found that manager and you, you were able to train them up to be able to handle your portfolio? Where, where did your position kind of fit in?
02:20:17
Just kind of, you know, moving forward? So I was finding properties. I mean, it it’s really gotten to the point where I find the properties and she, I tell her when we’re moving in and that’s it, I set up the bills, that sort of thing. And she’s pretty, pretty good after that. She does everything herself. So it’s, it’s really become passive. Now, things have changed recently with the, the pandemic, but up until that point, my time was spent on, on, you know, getting creatives, thinking about things I wanted to do in other businesses, how to grow this business, how to, you know, add onto this business, things like that, which is really ideal.
02:20:58
Yeah. You, you put yourself into the position of being the visionary for your company and I’m looking at, I’m looking at your places and man, like these, these are probably some of the most beautiful places that, you know, I’ve seen like an individual host like this, you know, some of these properties, they, they look like it would come outta like a, a Saunder lyric style place, even like the way that the photos are. Did you yeah. Were you studying what they were doing, trying to like copy the same thing or,
02:21:22
Oh, for sure. I think I told you, and I’m not gonna say what company this was, but you know, like I said, I’m a salesperson and I I’m used to kind of like researching people on LinkedIn, that sort of thing. So basically I was at a, at a point in the road where I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t know. Like, I, I, wasn’t a small, you know, I wasn’t three or five properties anymore. I was, I was growing. I needed to figure out to get place. You know, my management needed to out, I people to out strategy started all over you, Craigslist marketplace, getting a mattress on one side of town, getting the, the bed frame on the other side of town, then having to go pick up a, it was just chaotic. I’d start paying rent on the first and the property.
02:22:12
Wouldn’t be ready for guests for like two or three weeks later. And, you know, that’s with like working really hard in the meantime. So that was the biggest reason I did this. But what I, what I started doing was reaching out to ex employees from those big companies that you were just mentioning. I sent out probably 30 LinkedIn messages and I, I had a couple people reply. One of them was an ex employee that was a property manager. So that was kind of what I talked about earlier. The other one was a designer who I basically asked if they did freelance work. Cause I loved what they did when I, when I had coffee with this person, she, she told me their, their process for onboarding properties. She also told me where they buy their furniture and, and that’s really all I needed to know.
02:22:58
So basically I would sit there with, you know, a couple pictures from their properties on the, you know, Wayfair and Amazon find the same furniture, find the same pillows, find everything the same. I would do the same accent walls throw wallpaper up. And my process went from taking three weeks to, you know, I moved into a property within 36 hours. I’d be welcoming a guest, you know, just like the increase that I was spending on getting brand new furniture was almost justified by getting three weeks of booking. So yeah, it’s just amazing what she’ll learn when you have time and, and, and the want
02:23:41
That, that is, that is very cool. Very cool. That’s very unique and yeah, I love, I love the, the style and, you know, I can probably, I can probably even see maybe through some of the, the properties that you had, like when you really started upping, upping your style and upping your deal on there. There’s, there’s a big difference, like looking at, at one to the other, like, wow. Something, something definitely changed. So must have been.
02:24:02
Yeah. Yeah. There’s a difference in style. There’s also difference in, you know, some of the places are older buildings, some of who are new multifamily complexes. So, I mean,
02:24:11
So one thing that I wanted to hit on, you said you, you nearly fully auto automated it. So did you have your property manager going in and like designing the units for you once you already kind of had a layout or an idea,
02:24:25
Basically the way that it was going for a while was that I would order all the furniture. I would, I would sit down and use the same process that I learned from this designer where I would sit there and create a design map, like on PowerPoint. So I’d be like, okay, here’s the living room. I would take a picture from Amazon or wherever I got the couch, put that on there. So then I could coordinate all the colors and have the color of the wall and all that sort of stuff. Then I would go through and order everything at once and have it all shipped to somewhere where I could store it. So I would always give myself two weeks before, move in date, and then I would have everything shipped within those two weeks. And then the day that we’d move in, you know, I’d have the painters come, we’d follow up right after afterwards with some hired, you know, hands to help us put furniture together. And yeah. And so that’s kind of what the process is. She’s, she’s taken over. I, I told you a little bit before we started about how I have four storage units full of furniture now. So I don’t really have to worry about that. So now she just knows what we need in the places. And she just grabs it from there and, you know, has a couple helpers that, that help her and I’ll go help her sometimes too.
02:25:40
What a, what a good guy and going, going back to one of the things that you, you mentioned, I thought was really unique was that, you know, you, you, you’re playing within the rules in Nashville and one, you know, like even when I look in Nashville, I’m like, you know, there’s a lot of regulations. There’s, you know, it’s very strict, but you said that you were able to find out how to play within those rules. Did you know that going in, like what to look for or is it just not blatant to the, to the public? Like what type of properties you should be aiming for?
02:26:08
Yeah. I mean, that’s just something I figure out over time. I know that there, you know, you can go in any city and look up the short term rental regulations. And if you read them and, you know, go through them with a, with, you know, look at all the detail, you’re gonna realize what the loopholes are. Once you figure that out, then you can find properties that match what, what, what are allowed. So, you know, when I first started in Nashville, I was getting a lot of nos, you know, a lot, lot of nos, but now when I call properties, first of all, I know the right type of properties to call. I know who to call. I know the biggest thing is the pitch. So now I have a pitch that, you know, I’d say 85% of the phone calls I make now are, are yeses.
02:26:54
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And kind of, kind of going from, from there, you know, you’ve gotten a lot of experience and we we’re, you’re naming some of the companies that you, you worked with or that you were, you were talking to, there’s a lot of big players in the Nashville space. You know, one that you mentioned was like, doo, you said that there was like also stay Alfred. Saunder all these really big companies and you being, you know, an arbitrage or mass, you know, arbitrage host using the master release model. How has your business been impacted? I know a lot of people that are probably listening to this are probably like, you know, oh, arbitrage is dead. It’s not, not gonna work. What are your thoughts? You know, being heavily invested in this space.
02:27:34
Yeah. I mean, since the very beginning, I’ve always had kind of been hesitant, you know, in my head, I’ve always said this Rental arbitrage thing, it’s gonna last a couple years, so I need to figure out something else to do in the meantime. But right now I don’t see any reasons why it would go away. I think that right now we’re playing in the difference of short term rental prices and long term Rental prices. I think eventually those are gonna come closer and closer together, but you know, who knows how long that’s gonna be, especially with what’s going on right now with the pandemic. So multiple ways to look at this. I mean, Rental arbitrage compared to say owning a short term rental property, look at things like that’s going on right now with the pandemic. I have 24 properties. I only own two of them.
02:28:19
If I’d owned 24 of them, I would be in a lot of trouble right now. But what I’ve been able to do is, you know, I’ve been able to use this time to offload some of my low performing properties and take on more new properties from, from other competitors that are high performing. If I had, if I owned all these properties, that would be not possible for me to do unless I was able to sell them within a matter of days, which, which isn’t gonna happen. So, you know, it’s a lot safer of a bet to do Rental arbitrage. You know, landlords and leases are not as powerful as mortgages and banks. So the one downside is you aren’t getting equity, but the upside is that for the same price of getting one, one house that you buy, you can probably get about five properties with Rental arbitrage.
02:29:10
And then once you take that over time, five properties, then you get five more. I mean, it’s, it’s exponentially so much better as a cashflow business in terms of competitors with Saunder and, and lyric and, and stay Alfred and, and all those guys, you know, that’s something that’s worried me. I I’ve heard through the grapevine. I was always waiting for SA to get to Nashville. And they, they finally did. I heard that they had two or 3000 properties in the pipeline in Nashville, which, you know, if, if two or 3001 bedroom apartments come in to Nashville, that’s gonna completely, you know, turn, turn this whole Airbnb model on its head. But, you know, hopefully some of this shake up is, is gonna prevent that. But the good thing though, is, is a lot of those properties are really high dollar stay. Alfred was in a building called the 5 0 5.
03:30:00
That was right on Broadway in downtown. I mean, they’re paying like $3,000, like 2,500 a month for one bedroom. Whereas I’m half a mile away paying 1,012 hundred for rent a month. So my price point is totally different. My customers, you know, my clients are different because you know, not everyone can spend 800 on a one bedroom for a week and night in spring, you know? So if they’re around the three 50 mark then and come stay one of my places. So there’s that difference? You know, if you look at reviews and this is one of the reasons I was talking earlier about not going with kind of an outsource call center or, you know, virtual assistant is if you look at a lot of their reviews, like no one, no one wants to stay with this huge company headquartered in San Francisco, when they’re coming to Nashville, they wanna stay with someone’s from Nashville that has local tips for them that knows the neighborhoods, their apartments feel like they’re living as a local in the neighborhoods. So I, I think that that does help as well. And you can see it in the reviews.
03:31:09
Yeah. I’m, I’m looking at your reviews and, you know, it’s all five stars, a hundred hundred 50, you know, you’re really, really, really good. And, and like you said, what I, what I really liked what you said was that you’re differentiating yourself from, from these companies that are maybe overpriced and not personal, you know, you’re, you’re able to offer a competitive price and probably even the deals that you’re picking up, like can have you, have you run the numbers on the, on how much maybe they’re bringing in for their properties versus what you’re able to bring in on yours.
03:31:37
Yeah. So when you’re looking at the numbers, you you’d wanna think that their, their overhead is lower than someone like me, because they’re doing it at such a large scale. But then also if you look at someone like Saunder half of their employees are engineers, so that’s gotta be a pretty high cost to keep all those employees, which I know they, they let most of those go. But during normal times, I think our margins are probably around the same, which you know, and it, and really it’s, it’s about if you look at what’s going on right now with the COVID 19 and the whole pandemic thing. If I had two properties, I would be very comfortable handling this whole ordeal with 24 properties. It’s a little bit harder. I really had to keep myself positive and, and really work hard and create, you know, get creative, creating new ways to handle things and, and really adapt.
03:32:36
But my business is small enough for me to, you know, it’s nimble enough for me to make these changes to, to get through this. You know, if you look at someone with 2000 or 3000 properties across the whole world, it’s a little bit harder for them to do a lot of the same things that I’ve been able to do. And other hosts that, you know, are my size and smaller have been able to do. So all they’re really doing right now is, is lowering the prices on Airbnb, Airbnb, and on their direct booking platforms, which is gonna get you part of the way there, but it’s not gonna save your business. We’ll see. But I think a lot of them are gonna have a lot of
03:33:10
Trouble. I’ve heard, I’ve heard from, you know, one or two people now that this, the arbitrage model at scale is, is not really something that’s maybe sustainable. Do, do you, do you agree with that? Do you think that because of, you know, you being able to find these prop, these properties at a lower price point, you don’t have high overhead that, that the arbitrage master lease is only really good for maybe up to a certain amount.
03:33:36
So these guys have venture capitalists backing. I mean, all that they know what they’re supposed to be doing is growing, growing, growing. Whereas my model’s different. Like, all I want is financial freedom and, you know, semi or passive income. So I’m good with 10 properties. If I wanna stay at 10 properties for five years, there’s no boss. That’s telling me that we need to, you know, help our investors, which that’s, that’s what they have. So my biggest fear through all, through this whole business has been that I’ve continued to grow and dumped my money back into growing, growing, growing, and something like this happens, and I never end up making any money and I lose everything. So I’m very lucky to have a mentor named Brian Clayton, who last summer, you know, he told me, Travis, you need to slow down. You need to start getting, building your cash reserves, which I did.
03:34:29
It was a very boring six to eight months because I love growing the business. That’s what I, what I enjoy doing. And I wasn’t able to do that, but thankfully I did that and now I have the cash, you know, I, I haven’t had thankfully had to use any of the cash, but I’m able, you know, if I had 10 more properties right now, it would’ve been a lot harder, especially if I had just paid for them and onboarded them, where you look at these big, big dog companies who have probably doubled in size last year and planned on tripling in size this year. And now they just got a curve ball thrown at ’em. And you know, these companies aren’t made to these companies are made to grow. They aren’t made to figure out how to maintain. So I will be very surprised if, you know, say three of the big five, make it through this.
03:35:22
Yeah, man, you, you, you just dropped so much golden information right there. And I think, you know, like, like, like what you said, and, and you’re talking about that exponential growth, like this model it’s so cash heavy, you know, you could, you could, you could easily scale this business if you have the right systems in place and you know how to be able to, you know, take on more units and that’s what you were doing. And you, you were on the exponential growth, but you know, like what your mentor said, you have to, you know, be mindful, you know, that, you know, something could happen. So you saving your money, help prepare you for this type of event where companies like that, where we’ve seen them growing. And we’re all just kinda like ogling. And Oling like, man, like, I, I wanna get to that.
03:35:59
Like, I wanna have that type of growth, but like you said, they, they got caught with their pants down because they weren’t reserving their cash. And maybe they’re, they weren’t as concerned about, you know, the, the, the margins that, that you are, that you’ve been able to look at. So I think that there’s a lot of, for these smaller, you know, arbitrage hosts. And I think, I think you found that kind of that perfect sweet spot. And with that, though, a lot of hosts are feeling the burden of, you know, lack of bookings. Have you, have you found that, what are the things that you’re doing in your business to be able to generate occupancy? Cuz you said that you’re at about an 85% occupancy right now, which is, you know, really, really, really strong.
03:36:37
Yeah. So I’ll just kind of tell you how this all started for me. You know, I’d say like maybe March 12th, I kind of thought this, this whole pandemic wasn’t, you know, just like most people thought it wasn’t really gonna impact us that much. You know, someone asked me one of my, my students asked me if I thought it was that regrettably answer was, this is international. It won’t of mine. You know, he, he brought more to light than I than I didn’t know before. And I, I started to panic. I was like, holy crap, this isn’t on the news yet. Everyone’s booking like crazy on Airbnb right now. But like, if this is real, what this guy is saying, quarantining like that is, there’s no way that’s gonna happen. But if this true, like I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble. So what my first strategy was is, you know, right.
03:37:35
When I thought of that, I kind of freaked out and I decided I was gonna lower all of my, all of my rates for the next three months. So through June, wait. Yeah, I guess through June I lowered all my rates to basically my rock bottom rates, cuz you know, three months out, four months out, I have ’em at my highest, highest point as it gets closer, I lower them. So I basically put them at the same rate that if it was maybe three weeks away and it was crazy. I mean, people were booking like, like nothing was going on. I probably had $80,000 worth of bookings in the next four days. Then on day four, which was March 15th, I guess I flew down to Costa RAL. I was supposed to go down there to, to go paragliding for a couple days. And I was going down to wins for, you know, just kind of live there for a month and work remote or do whatever. And so, you know, this stuff kind of came to a head right. When I landed in Costa Rica for my flight, I, you know, I was well, cuz I was like, okay, I’m gonna be in good shape because I have all these bookings for the next couple months. Like no matter what happens, like my cancellation policy, like I’ll cover my and expenses, payroll.
03:38:46
I Costa Rica, I looked realized when the Airbnb, Airbnb refunds all sat there there sat had I and a for for about an hour and was like, I gotta go back. Like right now I gotta go back. I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I have to do something. And you know, I ended up staying for the rest of the trip in Costa Rica. But when I got back, I just, I really hit it hard. And, and just, you know, I came up with a strategy and a plane, a plan, and that plan has changed a lot since then. But luckily I just, you know, and I listened to one of your recent podcasts, UMD, how you, you were telling the truth and saying down and depressed for a while. And I was the same way. Like I didn’t wanna do anything. And then, you know, my mentor and just myself, I just kind of had to wake myself up and was like, dude, you know, this is your time to step up and prove that you deserve to have this business. And you know, you’ve worked so hard for it. It’s your chance to try to save it. So, so I put together a plan and luckily the plan has worked. I went from 92% occupancy for the month of I think either April or March. Yeah. It must have been April. Yeah. So I was around 90, 92% occupancy that dropped down to about 8% occupancy at one point. But through all the things that I’ve done, I’ve gotten it up to 85%, which I’m, I’m proud of.
04:40:13
Awesome. What, yeah, we, I wanna talk about some of the things that you’re doing, but one of the really cool things you said you, you made a website called med relief, housing.com. And during this time you got featured in up to like 20 news channels or, or news articles and you were featured in the, the, the, the Nashville times, was it, or
04:40:35
Tennessee times the T, which is like the big news paper, I guess, for the state of Tennessee also on CNBC and a couple other nationwide programs. But, but yeah, so it was on March 23rd. I, I probably had the idea on the 22nd, but March 23rd, I was like, you know, just kind of thinking about what was gonna happen and was like, there’s gonna be a lot of, of medical people that are coming to Nashville and bigger cities, especially Nashville, Nashville. It’s like a lot of huge, you know, healthcare companies and hospitals and medical centers. And so I was just thinking this stuffs really bad. There’s be a lot of traveling to town. I also started thinking about doctors and nurses that wanted to isolate themselves from their families to keep them safe and things like that. So no one was really doing this yet. So I called one of my friends’ fiances and was like, you know, running side, like this name by her Mele housing.com.
04:41:39
And I was like med relief. Is that like a term, like, it sounds good. Is that like an actual term to use? So I got her, her, you know, go ahead on the, the URL and the name of it and just made a website quickly on Squarespace. It took like an hour or two and, you know, just used a bunch of photos and my first time creating a website and, you know, once I got that up and I framed it as, you know, it’s discounted, discounted, fully furnish, furnished accommodation for medical providers and, and first responders. And, you know, there was over a hundred hosts. Airbnb hosts have come together to do our part in fighting this pandemic. The, the healthcare, you know, providers are on the front lines, they’re the real heroes of this country. And, and we don’t have the same skills that they do. But what we do have is fully furnished accommodations at lowered prices, basically just break even prices just enough to keep the lights on. So that’s kind of what the theme was with with it. And, and yeah, so I, I reached out to a bunch of reporters and, you know, I probably did 15 to 20 news reports throughout Tennessee and the rest of the country, which is pretty cool.
04:42:51
And, and how, how many bookings did you start getting coming through your site?
04:42:55
Well, I got an overwhelming amount of hosts reaching out, but I mean, I, I had some nurses reaching out. It really wasn’t as great as, as, as you’d think, but it’s, it’s been kind of cool. I’ve been able to help out some nurses, probably 20 or 30 nurses. And also I, if, if, if I didn’t have a property for, for these people, I was connecting them with other hosts. So I was able to help out some other hosts that were in desperate situations too. So it was kind of cool to be able to give back and do something for, for everyone as well. So,
04:43:29
So you were the Airbnb frontline before they, they were even a thing.
04:43:33
Yeah. So that was the thing is I made this website, I already had like a couple interviews set up and, and then like my property manager sent me a screenshot of Airbnb thing and I was like, oh my God, like, I can’t believe they are doing the exact same thing as me, but, you know, I decided to, to phrase it as more of like local Airbnb, Airbnb host, instead of, you know, just Airbnb, Airbnb as a company. And, and I think that local news stations are looking for a story right now and they would rather on focus something local. So
04:44:04
That is so cool, Travis, that, that, that is, that is really awesome. How, how did you, because a lot of hosts and that’s one of the things that we I’ve been getting a lot more on the show and we have more upcoming interviews is with corporate housing companies and how they’re able to, you know, find these types of corporate clients. How did you know who to reach out to, or what to say to them to be able to pitch your ideas? So like for all the hosts that do maybe want to create something locally, maybe there isn’t nothing local for them, like for schools or whoever it is, oil workers, construction, whatever, how can they reach out and be able to pitch their properties to the right people?
04:44:41
So before I tell you how to do this, I have him credit. So Brian, my mentor, his business partner, Jean, they have a company called my green pal. It’s your Uber it’s, it’s like Uber for lawn service. So that’s their little commercial right there because they’re the guys who been helping me with all this Gene’s sole job for this company, this startup it’s, it’s a pretty big company now, but his whole job is PR. So if they expand to a new city, all, he goes out there and tries to get as many interviews and spread the word as he like as possible. So that the word spreads and a lot of people sign up, you know, whether it’s like lawn maintenance, people that get on the app or the end users. So I knew that’s what he did. And so I reached out to him and he told me how to do it.
04:45:26
So basically he gave me a list of like probably a hundred reporters in Nashville and other cities, basically how you put that list together is you let’s say it’s like Fox seven news or something, just go on Google search Fox seven news reporters. It’ll take you page, you click on each reporter, they’ll have their name and their email address and their Twitter account or whatever, just, you know, start an Excel spreadsheet with their first name, their email address. And then you can do a merge. You know, you write one letter that plugs in their name, plugs in maybe their, their station and, you know, send that first email and then follow up a couple days later and then follow up a couple days later and, you know, see how many you get.
04:46:12
And, and how many, how many did you get from, from your list? Like how, how big was your list and how, how many responses did you get from that, that resulting in these articles?
04:46:19
Well, the first email that I sent out, and so this is what Brian and Jean were telling me is like, Travis, this is the easiest publicity you’re ever gonna get. Like, because it’s, it’s relevant. It’s like, feel good story, like I was saying. So I think I sent the first email out to maybe like 60 people. And like within five minutes I got three responses, which is crazy. They were like, yeah, that never happens. So yeah, I’ll definitely be using the same thing in the future for whatever other idea I come up with. So
04:46:46
Yeah, that, that’s, that’s so brilliant. I love, I love that. And you’re, you’re taking, you’re taking the, that sales knowledge, that skill, and then applying it to the short term rental space with the, with the PR and, and you gotta just right time in, you know, I, I don’t know how they would’ve, they probably still would. Would’ve supported you regardless, but like with the Airbnb timing and everything like that.
04:47:04
Well, yeah, I mean, that’s what I was worried about, but then when I, when I changed local Airbnb, not much, you might so give it a shot,
04:47:19
Worth, worth a try. Awesome. That, that is really golden nugget right there. And what, what were some of the other things that you were doing that, that wasn’t the only plan or idea that you had during this time?
04:47:29
Yeah, I mean, I’ve had the most luck. I mean, I tried to use Zillow. I didn’t really have much luck with that and now they’re charging for it and I don’t wanna pay, you know, $240 a week when I’m trying to figure how to pay my rent. Yeah. A lot of stuff. I mean, I’m like, I don’t know. I thought I literally thought I was gonna go bankrupt. Like I was like, look, I’m gonna lose my business and go bankrupt trying to keep it alive. Or should I just like lose my business and take my money now that those are the two options that I thought that I had. Luckily I to come up with something in between and utilize these things, I’m tell you right now, but also work my landlords to get flexible. I’ve subleased a couple of my properties to, you know, other people that wanna get into, to Rental arbitrage.
04:48:16
Right. Yeah. And yeah, just all the stuff coming together. I also got the, the PPP loan, cuz I have a WD employee, which that’s gonna help me keep her getting paid and stuff. But yeah. So the things I’ve had the most luck with were probably the number one thing was probably Facebook marketplace. Yeah. I just put my, you know, grab my photos from Airbnb. I mean, I have like 20 something listings on Facebook marketplace. It’s been a full time job and I’m not used to, to doing this kind of work. So it hasn’t been too much fun, but it’s definitely been worth it. So just creating listings on Facebook marketplace saying that they’re available for month to month or short term or long term can be furnished or unfurnished. Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve had good luck with that. I’ve probably have gotten about, I’d say 15 properties or more on either month to month, week to week or, you know, I have even some 12 month leases, you know, just to buy myself some time and you know, I won’t be making money from them yet. I have ’em all for basically break even prices. So save my rent. The place is 1200. I’ll list it on there for 1195 and then, you know, just pay, make ’em pay like $130 set fee for utilities and internet. So yeah, it’s a grind, but you know, it can, it can really help you. So
04:49:40
That that’s, that’s a really unique, unique tip. I, I don’t think I’ve heard anybody else share that. So I think a lot of hosts are listening to this episode. Definitely, definitely do that. I think I’m gonna go into the Facebook marketplace and put my places too. Are there, are there any other things that you were doing to be able to try to keep your business afloat?
04:49:58
Yeah, let’s see. So I mean obviously what, what most people are doing is still trying to get Airbnb booking. So what I’m doing is in each building, I’m leaving one or two properties open on Airbnb so that I can, so I don’t have to go and cancel on these guests. So all the people that I’ve gotten months, month tenants in basically what I’m doing is if anyone keeps the reservation in the next upcoming months, I have a place to put them into. And then with those properties, you know, I’ve done a lot of kind of creative things. You know, one of the big problems is, is the existing bookings that you’re pretty sure are gonna cancel, but if, if you cancel ’em, then you don’t get your 12 and half percent from Airbnb, Airbnb. So one of the things that I did is I have like four or five, one, basically identical apartments in this one complex.
05:50:46
I created one brand new listing with kind of the standard photos that are pretty much the same in all of them. I opened up the calendar for three months with a flexible cancellation policy and a two week minimum. So now it’s a wide open calendar and I’m getting like three, four week bookings for, for this property. And then I just take that clear out the, on another one and moves wide, potentially these people at 12, from Airbnb, while, Airbnb, while opening up a wide open calendar for, for you to, you know, get some bookings in long term bookings.
05:51:31
And, but the, these, this strategy really only applies if you have multiple units in the same building that are, are pretty similar.
05:51:38
I mean, you know, that’s ideal. It depends on what you wanna do. If you have like, you know, a couple of the same sides places you can do that. I mean, we’ve been shifting people around a lot and, and guests haven’t seemed to have a problem with it, you know, as long as you phrase it the right way and, and you’re thankful and communicate and communicate well with them, you’ll be good. So that’s one way. So another thing that we’ve been doing is, is making sure, I think every Sunday or so, we call all of our current guests. Cause we have, you know, the whole guests, the guests that are staying are different than normal, right? They’re not bachelorette parties. They’re people that are just kind of like stuck in Nashville or they’re nurses or construction workers or whatever, but we call all of them and ask them if they wanna extend.
05:52:26
And like literally like 80% of the time they do. So that’s really helped us out a lot. Another thing that I could suggest is calling your local trades unions. I have five properties that have construction workers that pay pay me week to week. And that was great. So I mean, construction in Tennessee is still going on. It’s not slowing down. And a lot of times these construction workers have stipends where, you know, they get a hundred dollars a day to spend on accommodation. And if they’re able to find something that’s $50 and then they can share it with someone else, then I marketplace, he helps me booked I’ll 30 week per from from his, from his rent cost. So he’s got me four other apartments filled.
05:53:21
I love, I love this, Travis, Travis, you, you you’re taking really like these, these sales techniques, probably something that you’ve like probably would’ve learned at your previous job and then applying it to the short term rental space. Did you think that you were gonna really gonna make it? Did, can you honestly say that you, you thought that you were gonna make it out of this and now to where you are right now?
05:53:38
I mean, I’m usually a really positive person. I’m big on mindset and all that sort of stuff, but no, I didn’t. I was in Costa Rica with my parading buddies and, and I was like, guys, like the life I’ve been living is over. Like, I’m gonna have to go, you know, close on my business and get a job again and, or figure something out because I, I didn’t think I was gonna make it. I thought that my, like I said before, I thought my choices were so either close down my business and, you know, impact my credit score by getting out of all these leases and, and keeping the money that I have or taking the money and lasting an extra three months and hoping that it’s good by then. So yeah, I didn’t think I was gonna make it, but after a few days of, you know, slapping myself in shape, I realized like, look, you can’t have this attitude.
05:54:28
And you know, it’s all about just trying to get creative and, and adapt. And, you know, I, I, I look at this whole thing as a big, this it’s a big shakeup, not just in the short term rental industry and, and just for entrepreneurs, small business owners, you know, all sorts of industries, it’s a shakeup where some people are gonna rise to the top and some people are gonna go to the bottom. And it’s really just about having the mindset and wanting to pursue and work hard and try new things. The people that are stuck in the old ways are, are not gonna make it through this. So,
05:55:00
And do you, do you think that with, with what you’ve set up right now, it’s gonna be able to last indefinitely into the future. And do you think that you’ll be maintaining some of the things that you did now such as basically making like a little corporate housing company, but moving into the future with, with your arbitrage units?
05:55:16
Y you know, I don’t know how long it’s gonna last. I think a couple more, you know, a couple years, five, 10 years, who knows. But the thing that I’ve learned now is that, you know, as an entrepreneur, I’m, we’re able to adapt and change and go with the flow. Like when things change, we change and you know, and it’s still gonna work out. So that’s, that’s one great thing I’ve learned through all this, you know? Yeah. I hope like I, I’m still caught trying to decide what I wanna do. Do I wanna get, you know, sometimes I’m like, man, it’d be nice if I just had all my places with nine months subleases and I don’t make any money for the next nine months, but when they all move out at springtime, and I know that the market me back to at least semi-normal and back to money again, or do I wanna take the chance and, you know, keep having to grind and, you know, respond to all these freaking Facebook marketplace messages that are driving me crazy. But yeah. So I’m just still taking it day by day. Really?
05:56:13
That was one of the things that you said that was pretty unique. You actually you’re actually subleasing your units, the people that wanna get into the arbitrage space themselves.
05:56:21
Yeah. I, I did that once. So
05:56:23
Just a one time thing. So it’s not, not a lot of properties.
05:56:26
That was a one time thing. How was that experience? Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t wanna talk about that part, but like, you know, whatever,
05:56:40
But, but, but for the host that are listening you, you don’t recommend that they allow units because that, that was an option. Like even, even my partner, John, like some of some people were reaching out to him and saying like, Hey, you know, would you, would you allow me to be able to reuse your place? You, you don’t recommend that host start doing that?
05:56:56
No, I think, I think that that’s totally a possibility. I mean, I have one person that’s, that’s gotten mine for four months. You know, he started sub leasing these places before everything kind hit the fan. So that’s a little bit different. I have another, you know, good friend of mine. That’s an entrepreneur as well. That’s trying to make a little bit of a change in his business model. And, you know, he he’s wanted to create a software for the industry, but he wants to get more experience on what it’s like to actually manage property. So we we’re talking about doing a deal where I would basically sublease four units to him for two years, they would come fully furnished, completely turnkey. All the hard work would be done by me. And I would basically just hand over the guy, the playbook and how to do it. Then he could get that experience. He could make some profit next year and the following year, and then two years would back to me, you have you trust. I mean, you just gotta be careful about it. It needs to stay in, in your, you know, in your name, but you have to trust him enough, not to just, you know, stop paying rent or things like that. So it’s definitely case by case basis,
05:58:12
Case by case. And one, one more thing that I wanted to hit on was that you said you were actually picking up some, some apartments or some units from some of these bigger players that were letting them go. Can you, can you, can I explain how that came about how you even found out about that and your, your mindset and strategy with, with that play?
05:58:32
Yeah. So, I mean, like I said before, I went from a place where I thought that I was done for, and I was gonna have to find another business or a job to been able to really just take advantage of this as an opportunity. So yeah, what I’ve been able to do during this time is I’ve been able to offload my least profitable properties. So my five least profitable properties I’m out of the lease. Both of those worked out very smoothly. All my landlords have been very great. Honestly, these ones worked out very smoothly. One of them, I founded long-term tenant to take my place. The other one, I had three units with this guy and he’s a really nice guy. He’s a doctor and his wife was looking for something to do. And so when I told him that I, I was thinking about leaving, leaving the properties, you know, we made a deal where basically no more money was gonna exchange hands.
05:59:27
I haven’t paid March or April rent to him yet. And I, he had my deposit for next month. And basically he was gonna buy all the furniture off of me. I’m gonna give him my, my training and teach him, teach his wife how to manage the properties. So she’s gonna start Airbnb, Airbnb them herself, and I’ll get them set up with the permits and, and all that stuff. So it was really a win-win. And I think, you know, it was good for me because I was able to get out on properties and it’s gonna be good for them because you know, their mortgages lower than what I was paying in rent. And, and, you know, they’re gonna be making money off of them or more money than they were pretty soon.
06:00:04
That’s awesome. So you basically made like a little turnkey property for them. They, they get everything, the training, all that, and you get to walk away, Scott, Scott free without, without it impacting you.
06:00:14
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, I was so worried about, you know, cause I was gonna be asked my landlords for some sort of flexibility and when coming up to April 1st and I sat there and wrote a really well written, very thought out email, you know, all sorts of stuff in there. And I sent it out to all my landlords and, and all of them. But one, I think there was probably eight emails I sent out seven of them responded with very understanding emails, like, like this is so cuz I basically told them like, Hey, this is the initiative that I started. That here’s the news articles, all this sort of stuff. And some people were like, this is so great. I’m, that’s so amazing. You’re able to do this. Some people were like, I completely understand, like let’s touch base in a couple weeks about rent. And like that’s basically how all them went. So I was, I was pretty, I went from being really nervous like, wow, this, these people are great. So humanity is, is still overall. Good. I think.
06:01:09
And, and what was this about picking up? You said bought around 20 apartments, worth 20 apartments from another company that was going under. What, what was that whole situation about?
06:01:22
Yeah, so I guess I’ll, I’ll just tell the story from that. And this goes back to why I love my property manager so much. I had a meeting at a bank. We, we had a couple pro I think we had four properties that we were moving into in two weeks. So we were looking for furniture. I had a I’m Rental houses in Nashville, told my property I’m I? And while I was this one hour meeting, this is what she did. She found an ad on Craigslist that was selling furniture. She reached out to the person, found out it was one of our competitors that was bought out, going out business. Some of the properties got bought out by a larger company that’ll to later. And the of, they were just closing down shop because they couldn’t transfer the leases over to the bigger company’s name. So there was about 20
06:02:15
What’s the what’s the timeframe around this? When was this?
06:02:18
This was like maybe December of last year. Okay.
06:02:22
So, so not, not current, not current.
06:02:24
So, so yeah, so she found this person on Facebook marketplace found out that they had 20 properties that they had to get rid of all the furniture and by midnight that night and she already pre-negotiated the deal for me. So, oh. And she already got two U-Haul and rounded up about 12 helpers to come, help move stuff before midnight. What? And so she tells me all this stuff and she’s like, I’m just waiting for the go ahead from you. And I was like, hell yeah, let’s do it. So, you know, the rest of the day we, we started just moving stuff until like two or three in the morning. But yeah, so like I was saying earlier at this point I was probably spending about $4,500 to furnish and onboard a one bedroom apartment and I bought 20 apartments worth of furniture for $10,000.
06:03:12
Can you, are you allowed to disclose like where and how that whole situation was? Like what type of properties were these? Was it just like any rent?
06:03:19
Yeah, there were, there were a bunch of apartments and multi-family complexes. So, you know, not only did I take the property, did I take the furniture, you know, everything from the TVs to the sheets and towels to the coded door locks. But yeah, I also made a really hard push to take over the properties and unfortunately I didn’t get any of them, but I was pretty close.
06:03:39
That, that, that is so cool. So now, so you picked up those, those, those 20. So is that something that, that you’ll be looking for looking for in the future? Like how do you even find like something as golden opportunity is, is that,
06:03:51
Well, I don’t need any anymore furniture for a while, so I’m not really looking for that. I’m I might even be getting rid, rid of some of it, but yeah, since I have like four storage units full of it, but I do have some other opportunities that I was telling you about before we started, you know, it was kind of crazy how I thought I was gonna go out of business. And then all of a sudden I was able to offload my, my lowest performing properties and I’m gonna be able to pick up more properties and, and complexes that I know are highly profitable. Some of the most profitable properties that I have, I’m probably gonna be able to get, you know, four to 10 more units from, because like I said before, a lot of the big companies are going outta business. One of them for sure has going outta business.
06:04:34
I’m not gonna mention who it is, but I have a close relationship with the, the property manager that runs the complex. And basically we’re gonna set up a deal where I’ve had a lot of success in that same building for break and evening for 12 month Rental or month, month rentals. I already have like a ton of people on Facebook marketplaces on Facebook marketplace that are waiting for me to get back to them, but I don’t have anywhere to put ’em at this point. So what I’m, what I’m doing is I’m taking these people. That’re looking for a 12 month place that want to maybe be fully furnished. Maybe not. I’m getting them to sign a sublease with me. And then I turn around to the apartment complex, sign, a lease for that property because they recently went out business with the other company. So then I put that person there for nine to 12 months, and then next year I take that place back over once things are back normal. So I’ve been able to actually grow and improve the quality of my properties during the pandemic.
06:05:33
You, you are a wild entre that that is so freaking cool that that you’re able. And so, so for the hosts that are listening and, and kind of thinking like, how can you make, you know, how can you turn lemons and turn them into lemonade? You know, look at what everybody else in the space is doing. You know, those people that, or those properties that you thought maybe I couldn’t get into because there’s other competitors, you know, there’s like Y hotels, Doos, Saunders, all these places where they’re in these like awesome, awesome properties. And you might be able to actually have an opportunity where, where the numbers though, because you said that a lot of these properties that they are in, they’re paying over market rent, was this a property that they just got a really good deal and you were able to just move on that one.
06:06:18
Yeah. I mean, a lot of the complexes or multi-family places that they’re in, don’t make them pay extra. So I mean, a lot of the places in Nashville and other cities, you know, it’s an apartment complex, that’ll have maybe like eight units with one company, you know, four units with my company and like eight units with another company or something like that. So when it’s staged like that, there’s not really, you know, usually it’s pay regular rent. If it’s one of the Saunder for example, coming into like an apartment complex that’s being built and they wanna take over like 50 units, the whole like bottom four floors or something, then they’re gonna set up a deal with them. That’s a little bit different, you know, it’ll probably five could be five or 10 years long with some sort of guaranteed payout to the owners of the building, which is why they’re in a little bit more trouble as well. So, but yeah, these smaller apartment complexes where they only have a handful of places, this company, these properties that I’m talking about was the bigger company that bought out the company that I got all that furniture from.
06:07:21
Got it, got it.
06:07:23
So they’ve only been in there for a few months
06:07:25
And the, this, this corporate housing company, more the traditional corporate housing company, they would you say that they just, they weren’t able to pay for the, for the property and they were just letting them go or how, how do you, how do you even acquire
06:07:37
Yeah. Corporate housing? I mean, I would call it master lease company. I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, one of the big companies that does exactly what, what we do just on a larger scale. Like I was saying before, man, they they’ve just completely over leveraged. They’ve just grow, grow, grow, and then this happened and they’re, they’re in trouble. So it’s either they cut their losses and just, you know, they’re in so deep that it’s, they’re not gonna work through it. So they just said, we’re going bankrupt.
06:08:06
Awesome. Well, and not, not awesome for them, but that’s, you know, I think, I think it’s really cool, you know, Travis, to, to get you on here. I think it’s such a unique episode. I highly recommend, you know, and we, we didn’t even get to some of the traditional questions that I ask on this show, just cuz your, your story’s been so interesting. So definitely we gotta get you back on here in, in the future to be able to talk about, you know, some of the ways that you’re, you’re pivoting your business or that you’re growing and I’m sure, you know, things are gonna change after this maybe where you end up or what you’re gonna be doing. But I think what you’re, what you’re doing right now is, is just so cool, really inspiring for the host nation community. And so thank, thank you so much for coming on here. What’s what’s the, the best way for someone to be able to reach out to you if they have any other questions or they wanna be able to find out more about you?
06:08:51
Yeah. They can go to my Instagram. It’s at tra Zant reach out to me there or follow me on there.
06:08:57
I’ll I’ll make sure to include, include a link, cuz it might be a little bit difficult for them to be able to spell this out over the podcast.
06:09:03
It’s kinda difficult,
06:09:05
But yeah, I’ll, I’ll include all the, all the links down below your, your website stay commo. Really cool. I love, love the love, your, your, your site, your, your properties. And I think it’s really cool what you’re doing. Do you have anything else that you wanted to share? Any, any last words before we sign off?
06:09:20
Yeah, I’d say for the other host out there, like just stay positive and you know, you’re gonna get through this, get creative and adapt and it’s, it’s a lot of fun. So, you know, as long as you wake up every morning and say, what can I do to move this you’re progress? That’s
06:09:41
Well, to see the other side
06:09:44
A for
06:09:47
Next time, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you host benefited from the show. If you found value, please going over to iTunes, leave us a review and let us know what you enjoy about the show. If you’d like to talk to hosts that have been featured in these episodes, as well as the community, going over to our Facebook group, the host nation.
