Craig Curelop:                    00:00                     It is a phenomenal way to build wealth with not a lot of money down, right? You don’t need a lot of money and for that reason you just get such high high returns, Oh, 100% or more after that first year. I just don’t know any other investment vehicle, even in real estate or outside of real estate where you can consistently get 100% plus return without throwing money at something super risky. That’s essentially gambling.

Julian Sage:                         00:22                     This is episode number 38 of the short term rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed good at cohostit.com for more information,

Julian Sage:                         00:33                     Welcome back to the 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 hosts. We all strive for five star reviews, so please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy. It really helps support the show if you haven’t done so already. Go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation, to connect with the community.

Julian Sage:                         01:00                     What is going on Host nation. I am super excited for this episode because it really hits home for me. For those of you that don’t know, I got started in the short term rental space by house hacking my basement unit and it was able to essentially cover for my mortgage where I was able to live for free. You can actually go back to some of the earlier episodes where I was talking about getting the space ready during that renovation process when I actually started the podcast. But house hacking for me was really a game changer because for those of you that don’t know, about five years ago, I really got started on this entrepreneurial journey because I was trying to reach financial independence, financial freedom. When my dad got sick with cancer. I just knew that I needed to be able to find a way out of just trading my time for money.

Julian Sage:                         01:41                     And I tried so many different businesses and tried so many different things like mobile home investing, Forex, Amazon, FBA, all these different things, thinking that this was going to be the way out of the rat race. And for nearly five years, I just tried and tried again and I was really at my wits on and I honestly felt like, okay, this is a, I’m going to just put everything down and I am going to purchase a house and just kind of work towards retirement. I got my college degree. I was just gonna, you know, try to work for another job. So when we decided to settle down and actually purchase a property, my wife was the one that came up with the idea of saying like, Hey, why don’t we list the basement on Airbnb? Maybe we can pay for a portion of the mortgage?

Julian Sage:                         02:21                     And honestly when I felt like all hope was lost in that I wasn’t going to be able to achieve things that I really wanted to achieve, just a light bulb went off and still it wasn’t easy because we were going through the renovations and dealing with bad contractors and it was a very big pain. But the pay off once we did get it listed was just a game changer and to be able to just instantly start making like a lot of money right off the bat was just like mind boggling because I had tried all these different things before and had just never seen anything come to fruition. So I know the power of house hacking, I know the power of short term renting and that really instilled a fire in me and it was because I was doing these podcasts and talking with all of you on a daily basis.

Julian Sage:                         02:59                     I just felt like I had to keep going. And even now as I’m still learning and still growing, it is very challenging to be able to learn all these new things. But every day it’s just one step at a time. And having this community to support and really all of this, starting with house hacking now I understand the power of community in the power of just taking that first step. So house hacking is appealing for many reasons. First it eliminates your largest expense, which is likely your rent or mortgage. And then second, it allows you to get into real estate without a lot of money. And lastly, it’s a great way to build wealth and achieve financial independence. I personally know this. In this episode I talked to Craig Curelop, author of the book the House Hacking Strategy, which is actually published through bigger pockets. And Craig also does work at bigger pockets.

Julian Sage:                         03:40                     I actually met Craig at first when we were at fin con in D C and then I ran into him again at the bigger pockets event in Nashville, Tennessee. So Craig is a really good friend and he talks about how he first got into house hacking and soon turn that into a short term rental which helped them pay off his student loans and mortgage, house hacking helped Craig achieve financial independence and now he’s able to do the things that he really wants to do and Craig has really taken the strategy to the next level as he’s picking up multiple properties and house hacking them and then basically moving out and doing. Again, it is such a brilliant thing. Craig is such a smart guy and you’re going to take away so much from this episode. I definitely recommend picking up Craig’s book, which you can get on the show notes page.

Julian Sage:                         04:16                     Just go to shorttermsage.com/str38 or if you like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week and get the success secrets which are really awesome, go to shorttermsage.com/shownotes. With all that being said, onto this week’s conversation.

Julian Sage:                         04:30                     Hey welcome back host nation to another episode of short term rental success stories. In this episode, I have the special special honor of speaking with the one, the only Craig Curelop. Is it Curelop?

Craig Curelop:                    04:42                     Yes, Curelop, you said it right.

Julian Sage:                         04:42                     Curelop. Okay, great. Nice.

Craig Curelop:                    04:44                     The one and the only,.

Julian Sage:                         04:45                     So Craig, would you please introduce yourself, let the host and they should know who you are and what inspired you to get into short term rentals.

Craig Curelop:                    04:52                     Yeah, so my name is Craig. I am kind of known as the house hacking guy. And actually my first property that I did was kind of a hybrid short term rental, long term rental. What I did was I bought a duplex that was an up-down duplex and a really good part of Denver. And I rented out the top full time, lived in the bottom, but that quite, that wasn’t quite covering my mortgage. So I decided I wanted to do a little bit more than that. And so what I did was I Airbnbed out my bedroom, put up a closet bedroom in the living room, which was basically like a room divider and a curtain. And I slept behind a curtain for a year on a futon while Airbnb-ing out my bedroom and just lift it up for a year, man. Bachelor life.

Julian Sage:                         05:32                     Oh man. That, that, that is the, the grind right there. But what, what got you to that point because you also have quite a bit of experience with some real estate you’re working at BiggerPockets. You’re, you’re, you’re a house hacker guy. You wrote a book on this. So you, you obviously have a lot of experience, but take us back to what, like what got you started into real estate and then what led you to short term renting?

Craig Curelop:                    05:56                     Yeah, so coming to real estate was back in California. I was in a job that I absolutely hated. And what happened was I was, I was basically on a little mini vacation with my girlfriend at the time down in big Sur where there’s no cell reception and we had this really wonderful weekend. And when I got back on Sunday night, I got an email from my boss saying that I had to get this memo out by Monday morning, 8:00 AM Eastern time, 5:00 AM Pacific. So I basically had to do it that night. And it was the last night that my girlfriend and I were going to spend together before we moved away. So I was really upset and she was really upset and I was just like, man, I don’t want to live my life like this. If this is going to be like a preview for the next 30 or 40 years, there’s gotta be a better way.

Craig Curelop:                    06:36                     So I started reading, started educating myself, thought of a bunch of startup ideas that didn’t really work out, obviously. And I just figured about real estate and I’m like, man, real estate, it’s tried and true. It works. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Let’s just do what works. And so I decided to start doing that and that’s when I moved to Denver. I will basically, I, I found my pockets. I was on BiggerPockets, I thought they were hiring. So then I moved. I applied for the job was lucky enough to get the job and now moved to Denver and started house acting out here.

Julian Sage:                         07:04                     Wow. So I mean you, you, you wrote the book on house hacking was that how you initially decided like this is how I’m going to get my foot into the game. Like why didn’t you go out and you know, do what everybody else is doing with like these subject to or the wholesaling and all these, all these different niches within real estate. What brought you to house hacking your first unit and then short term renting it?

Craig Curelop:                    07:24                     It was mainly because I actually got the job bigger pockets, which I thought was just kind of like a dream come true. And if I had not got that job, I probably would be wholesaling or doing subject two or whatever it is where I could basically build up a a nest egg so that I can then start house hacking. But because I have the bigger job, bigger pockets, I said, Hey, what the heck. Like I’ll just work at your pockets. Gaining much of knowledge of be around a bunch of people that to do real estate. And obviously I will learn a whole bunch about real estate in the process. And that’s how kind of like stumbled upon into it.

Julian Sage:                         07:53                     And you know, when, when I think like when, when I first started, house hacking and it, it was like, okay, I’m just going to rent out another room or I’m going to have someone going to get a bigger place, maybe rent out a portion. What brought you to listing this property on or this, this, this room on Airbnb?

Craig Curelop:                    08:10                     Well, it was because it was my personal space, like it was my bedroom. And so I figured I didn’t really want that long term because in the event that I didn’t like it, I’d like to easily be able to cancel it. So that was my first thought. And then I realized that Airbnb wakes me away more than a regular rental. And so I was like, Oh, Whoa. Like, you know, I’d probably be able to get six or $700 a month for that room at any other time. But with Airbnb I was making on average 1100 bucks a month, which is a significant difference. Yeah. Especially being your first one. So yeah. And I just thought it’d be cool to meet people from all around the world, meet travelers. I’m a big traveler, so I always like to meet other travelers and kind of just have a revolving door of friends coming in and out.

Julian Sage:                         08:49                     Now with renting out, cause you rented out just that, that one room on the unit, how much was that able to cover for your, your rent?

Craig Curelop:                    08:59                     I was not paying rent, so yeah, I was, I was, I was profiting like $700 a month and living for free at the time with between both units.

Julian Sage:                         09:08                     Oh wow. Okay. So from, from there you saw that this was working and you decided to scale that up. Can you talk a little bit about what, what led you to start taking on more, more units?

Craig Curelop:                    09:22                     Yeah, so again, I saw like the profit and stuff and how good it was and eventually how easy it got once I got my systems in place. In terms of having some automatic pricing, automatic messaging, automatic reviews. So I was very much so on the day to day. So when I got out of that I was like, Oh look, this is pretty scalable at this point. So I actually ended up converting my top unit to Airbnb as well. And I started making like even more, you know, I mean I think, I think last month in August the duplex, which would typically make about maybe three grand, maybe a little over three grand in regular rental was making closer to six grand. Justin, you know in the summer months, in the winter it’s closer to three. Either way you get that huge boost. So I realized that and said, Hey, let’s just do the short term rental.

Julian Sage:                         10:08                     So I mean realizing like how much you’re able to get on this return, what, why are, would you consider going other options in the real estate or would you kind of double down on the short term rental aspect and just kind of focus on that.

Craig Curelop:                    10:23                     So I’m actually kind of, it’s kind of funny. I’m kind of doing a high, I’m kind of like slowing down with speeding up, if that makes any sense. I kind of just do what makes sense. Right now Denver is really cracking down on short term rentals, especially if you don’t live there. So I’m actually working on probably converting at least one of my units to a, a longterm rental just to play it safe. But that one goes, I just closed on my third house hack, which I will be living in and it has like basically a separate basement and all that kind of stuff. Three bed, one bath, basement w with its own kitchen and Oh, separate entrance. So I’m going to end up converting that into an Airbnb, which I’m excited to him just about to furnish it as we speak. So

Julian Sage:                         11:05                     Can, can you talk a little bit about more like your, your strategy, your mindset when you’re going into these units? Because house hacking to me, like, like my first unit it was, was a house hack and it just seemed like very natural, very easy. But you know, it’s also easy to look at that like, this is maybe not like a legit business. The way that you’ve kind of approached this though, it sounds like you were setting up those systems in place while also living in the home. So what, what’s your, what’s your mindset with, with picking up units and also house hacking?

Craig Curelop:                    11:35                     Yeah, so I’m really just trying to do what works best. I, I can’t say that I go into a property, so anything, all right. I put my strategy to the property rather than get my property to the strategy. I think like I saw this house, it had an easy way to convert the basement into a separate entrance, bottom unit, Alto itself. And I’m in a good location basically, right where two highways meet. Whereas I know people are going to want to be, either they’re going to be in Denver, they can go up to Boulder or they can go out to the mountains pretty easily from my place. So that was kind of the biggest thing that I looked for, but really it’s just kind of what will make the most return.

Julian Sage:                         12:15                     So with, with, with with hassle, with house hacking, if you can kind of explain like what, what is it that you’re looking for when you are picking up a unit that you know that you are going to try and maybe turn that into a short term rental to be able to, you know, cover your mortgage. What are the things that you’re looking for in these units?

Craig Curelop:                    12:33                     If I’m doing this whole regular house hack, I just look for the most beds, two beds and baths per dollar. And that is how I’ll probably get the most amount of money for my mortgage payment. Right. The lower the price and the more the bedrooms and bathrooms are, the more profitable it will be. And what makes me decide whether I want to do a short term rental or a longterm rental is my default is actually probably longterm rental just because it’s a little bit less work upfront and a little bit less furnishing and all that kind of stuff. But with this property, I just saw that, Hey, it’s, it’s easily can be a short term rental. I’ll do it as a short term rental, basically extracts that X additional dollar value while I can and I can always scale back, right? I can always either rent it out as a furnished rental, sell the furniture to some staging company or someone else and basically converted back into a traditional rental and still be okay. So that was kind of my thinking there.

Julian Sage:                         13:25                     At which point did it become like a legit business that you could start like scaling because now you told me that you’re, you’re spending only about two hours a week on you know, managing your short term rentals and you’ve got all these systems in place. You, you have three units or five units, but three total Airbnbs. When, when did it start to click? Like this is a business that I can scale and put those systems into place.

Craig Curelop:                    13:50                     Why would I start implementing software and having computers take over my role, right. With, with the automatic pricing, I pay, I can’t remember, it’s maybe 20 bucks a month or something. And I mean it pays for itself to clean one booking at one point because he’ll just charge way more than I would charge. So there’s that. Then there’s automatic messaging, which is super clutch. It’s every time someone books, they send a message 24 hours before checking, they send the message, you know, 12 hours before checkout, they send a reminder message to check out because you’d be surprised, I’m sure you’re not surprised is having people forget when their checkout time is and all of these things. So once I had that set up, I was like, man, there’s really nothing else for me to do except answer the one off questions. And the best part about the software that is automatic messaging is that it can recognize frequently asked questions and you can set up like canned responses for them. So I do that. And every time I’ve got a question I’ve never heard of before, I go in and set up a canned response and then it automatically responds to it. Now occasionally the software doesn’t work a hundred percent of the time. So sometimes I have to go in and send a text message, but it’s, you know, maybe once a week that I’m actually texting someone from Airbnb.

Julian Sage:                         14:55                     So you’ve written the book on house hacking and you’re really into this year, you’re picking up more properties live in them. Why do you think that this is such a strong method for getting into real estate and then also pairing this with, you know, Airbnb, which, you know, has such a higher return. Could you kind of talk about your thoughts on that?

Craig Curelop:                    15:14                     Yeah. Well, so with how SAC is, is a great way to get into real estate because one is a low down payment, right? The whole [inaudible] one of the biggest attractive features of house hacking is the fact that you only need three to 5% down, right? So you don’t need to save 20% it’s three to 5%, which you can save in a year or two if you don’t already have that saved up. And then I think at first you want to really get the most out of your dollar is kind of how I look at it. It’s like when you’re starting out, you don’t have a huge nest egg, so you need to get the highest possible return to build that nest egg as quickly as possible. So then you can then have that large nest egg, you can scale back at a lesser return but still kind of make the same amount of money so that you can do less work.

Craig Curelop:                    15:55                     Right? So I thought, Hey, I want to get the most out of my dollar, I’m going to do the short term rental. And that was kind of how I did that. And yeah, I mean you look at the returns in house hacking and you’re looking at, you know, I talked about in the book, how much your net worth increases in relation to the down payment you have, I call it the net worth return on investment. And it’s always 100% or more after the first year because you put down such little down and when you, after you factor in all the cashflow, you get the loan, pay down, the appreciation on the property and the tax benefits. You’re looking at well over a hundred percent most of the time.

Julian Sage:                         16:30                     Do you think that moving forward lean and now knowing what you know now with like short term renting, would you do like traditional longterm? House hacking because that’s typically the mindset when people think of house hacking, like I get a duplex and then I’ll rent out one side of the duplex to a longterm renter and then I break even. But now it’s like you kind of realize like I can actually make more off of short term renting. Would do you like advise people just moving forward to go that route or or what? What’s your thoughts on that?

Craig Curelop:                    16:57                     So whatever works for you, if you don’t mind managing short term rental, ultimately it will be in the hospitality business for a little bit and you have to be able to recognize that. You know, I do recommend that you send the messages yourself for the first few months you do the cleanings yourself for the first few months. You kind of know your own processes and know you can actually explain to someone what they want to do or tell a computer what you want it to do. So yeah, I mean it depends, totally depends. I really like this strategy using Airbnb for families and people that don’t necessarily want to live behind a curtain or live in a room with five other roommates. You know, in in the house you can have a house that has a separate entrance basement like I do or you can get an additional dwelling unit I’ll back and you can kind of live in the house that you want to live in while also renting out some other area that you don’t use very much on Airbnb. So that is always strategy that I like to recommend for families.

Julian Sage:                         17:48                     And what has been the most challenging part of scaling this short term rental business?

Craig Curelop:                    17:54                     I guess maybe the hardest thing is just like getting the systems in place and [inaudible] going in and actually setting up the furniture and stuff there. I’m sure I could outsource that if I wanted to like get a handyman to come in and set it up in a day. But I don’t know. I guess the inside of me is still a little bit cheap, so if I can do something I usually do it. But yeah. Okay. I dunno. Sorry. Yeah, not a good answer I guess. But yeah, it just hasn’t, I haven’t had too many hiccups with it.

Julian Sage:                         18:17                     Okay. And what do you, what are you doing to be able to set such a unit apart?

Craig Curelop:                    18:22                     So I, have you ever heard of Brian Page? He does this like Airbnb, I think his name was Brian Page. Yeah. So I actually took his class and that actually, and he talks about really scaling, actually building a business, which I was going to do at one point. And he helps me actually basically figure out like how do, how do you set up the listing, right. You want to have, we’re really good pictures, right? I paid the $150 for someone to come in and take professional pictures. I try to make the place really bright. Lots of lights. I try to do some decorations, all that kind of stuff. I always make sure, almost all my listings, I always say I’m a great responder because my automatic messaging basically messages them right away. And it’s so funny when they had to leave that leave that review because it’s like, I literally never said a word to you.

Craig Curelop:                    19:06                     So it’s great. Yeah. But you know, again, the using the price labs, which is the, you know, the dynamic pricing that actually helps you set the price, right? So people are looking to get the right thing. Another tip that a lot of people use is, is you actually, for the first few months you maybe set the price a little bit lower. That’s when people will say great value and all that stuff in your reviews. So people will think it’s a great value even after you’ve raised the price. So yeah, a bunch of things like that.

Julian Sage:                         19:33                     And w is there anything that you’re putting in your, in your units or, cause I imagine, you know, Denver, that there’s a lot of people that are short term renting. What, what is it that maybe you’re doing that helps your units stay fully booked? Cause you said that you’re, you’re occupied around 95%. I mean that, that’s what’s Craig’s secret to get 95% occupancy. Are you just going really cheap or are you doing something that’s attracting these people?

Craig Curelop:                    19:59                     I don’t think I’m doing anything too special. Again, I think the, I set the minimum for $40 a night for my one bedroom and I’ve got a $55 cleaning fee. So no matter what, I’m getting like 90, $95 a night. And if they just say for one night and I, yeah, I mean it’s just booked every time. Like I don’t really, I don’t, again, I rug and pictures, I’ve got really good description. I tried to fill out everything I can on every beat and make it have a complete profile. I have a nice picture of me and Airbnb and I tell in my personal profile and tell him all about me and my bio. I’ve got the Superhost badge. So that probably helps. Like over time, you just kind of just continue to fill it out and be able to rank and list your listing and you get a lot of bookings. Like I just, I feel like I’m booked every time I look on booked so I don’t, I can’t remember last vacancy I had honestly.

Julian Sage:                         20:47                     So you

Craig Curelop:                    20:48                     Went, you went into this with the, with the house hacking mindset to to own a home to be able to short term rent it. What are some of the big things that maybe people don’t realize with house hacking that, that you could shed some light on? So one thing that people may or may not know is that it sounds like really sexy and stuff when you’re doing it, when you’re doing it, when you’re talking about it, and you can talk about your bank accounts. Not many people care about your bank accounts and they’re just going to see that you’re living behind the curtain or living in a room or having like renting out a part of your house where people are gonna think you’re poor or you’re broke and they’re going to ask you why you’re doing this. And what’s the point and all this kind of stuff.

Craig Curelop:                    21:20                     And that, especially for the first year, you’ll feel that way, but then once you get your second and third one, you’ll start having tens of thousands of dollars more than everybody else and you’ll start picking up properties every year when you start really accumulating wealth and then people will start to realize what you’re doing and that, Oh, it all makes sense. But you’re never going to be, you’re always going to be different. Right. At first you’re like the poor guy and then all of a sudden you become the rich guy. So you have to realize that you have to kind of get used to being different. There’s one thing that, and and for, for house hacking does, you know, typically when I think of house hacking, I’m just thinking like duplexes, but are, are there different ways that you can have sex? Yeah, so duplex is definitely like the traditional way.

Craig Curelop:                    22:01                     I say, the way I’ve been doing it recently is the rent by the room house hack where you buy all like a five bed, two bath or five bed, three bath. You live in one bedroom and you rent out the other four bedrooms, especially that, even on a longterm lease, right? You can do Airbnb or you can do long term lease, but even now in that long term lease, right, there’s still the rent is covering your mortgage and more and you’re living for free. So it’s, it works out great. Now with, with short term renting, typically a lot of, a lot of people like to consolidate all their, all their units, put them into like a single home. How is it managing single rooms and getting those filled and turning those over? Yeah. So I personally have not done the short term rental by the room, but I do know, I mean I’ve, I’ve stayed in a few and I do know what it does feel like a little bit, kind of like a hostel, but I’m sure it’s very profitable.

Craig Curelop:                    22:50                     You just have to charge a little bit less, right? Because you know, you got people you don’t know any. Now that’s almost different than having just you and the homeowner because at least you know, the homeowner is there all the time. She cares about her place and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a little bit different. But yeah, I stayed in both and usually there’s cool people all around. So if you don’t, if you don’t mind being social and meeting people, Airbnb is definitely a good way to go. Okay. And is there anything that you’ve, you’ve done in your house rules that has maybe helped save you before? Like, I mean, you’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. W what, what is, what is the big things that you’ve learned to implement in your systems that really help save you, especially when you’re living in the home because it’s a, you know, you’re dealing with, with guests and you’re, you’re, you’re you’re getting a lot more intimate, not intimate with them, but you’re in a space with them.

Craig Curelop:                    23:37                     So what, what have you been able to do to help separate your personal life and your, your business? I guess the biggest thing would probably be, like I say in the, in the house rules and also in the message, the welcome message that Hey, quiet hours are between 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM so if you’re going to be noisy during that time, this is not the place for you. Mmm. Yeah. Just try to really invite non-party people is kind of what I tried to do and just make the laws real strict. A lot of people don’t care about the utilities and they’re cranked AC up in the summer, crank the heat up in the winter. And I say, you know, if I catch the heat over a certain amount, like we’re going to have some problems. Mmm. Stuff like that. It’s kind of saved me, but yeah.

Julian Sage:                         24:20                     Do you ever have any issues with the guests that are in, in your units that you know, maybe are causing issues or being too loud or inviting too many people? How do you deal with stuff like that?

Craig Curelop:                    24:32                     Very rarely. You know, maybe once a year I’ve dealt with that and I would just text him and say, Hey, we’ve got, we’re getting complaints. Can you guys please just be sure to quiet it down. And usually they’re very respectful and I said, Oh, I’m so sorry, like we didn’t even realize or whatever. We have a BS comment. It is, but usually they’re very respectful about it because they also want a good review. You know, they want to be able to do everything be again. So you have that against them. But yeah, I mean it’s been, most people are very reasonable, especially if it says a few days. And that’s the best part about Airbnb is that like, it’s a few days, so you just have to kind of wait it out a couple of days until they leave.

Julian Sage:                         25:05                     And have you, have you found a difference from like renting from like house hacking and dealing with guests versus having a, a unit that, or a separate home or separate unit that is dedicated to a short term renting?

Craig Curelop:                    25:19                     Yeah. So when you have guests coming in and out versus tenants, guests are way more guests are way more respectful, right? Because they’re not comfortable with you yet. They still want to show you that respect. It’s, you know, three to five days. You’re not going to destroy someone’s house in three to five days. However, after you live with someone for a year and more a longer term stay, then you’re saying you comfortable, you kind of become friendly, you remain friends with them, they get more comfortable, they got a little more of a mass, they start inviting people over. It can kind of escalate quickly. So if you do decide to do that longterm Michael type thing, you would just have to make sure that you lay the rules. And when things start to kind of go South, you stopped it quick.

Julian Sage:                         25:54                     Hmm. And w w what would you do differently if you had to start from scratch?

Craig Curelop:                    26:00                     I honestly would probably not buy the duplex on my first one. I’d probably try to get a single family and do that rent by the room because I just think it does work a little bit better. But with that being said, this duplex is definitely gonna be my highest appreciating asset and yeah, I think it’ll be, it’ll, it’ll be a good player either way.

Julian Sage:                         26:20                     W w why do you feel that a single family home is a, is a better move than going duplex?

Craig Curelop:                    26:25                     It just cash flows a little bit better for the, for one to it. Well, it’s cheaper, so it, cashflow is better that way as well. And they’re a little bit more liquid. Right? You’ve got more people looking for single family homes than they do duplexes. So I think my duplex might be slightly harder to sell and typical single family home would.

Julian Sage:                         26:43                     So, so you’re, you’re, you’re looking at this more from the, from the exit strategy, if you’re, if you are going to be selling something, right? A single family is going to be easier to sell then than a duplex. That’s right. Okay. And if you could give one piece of advice to someone who’s trying to get started into real estate and, and maybe getting into short term rentals, what, what, what would that be?

Craig Curelop:                    27:06                     It would be just to get started and learn before you get started. But once you’re done learning, don’t be afraid to get started because you get, you hit this threshold where you can only listen to so many podcasts and read so many blogs and read so many books so you’re actually not really learning anything anymore and you just have to like learn through experience. And the quicker you can kind of realize and get to that, the better off you’ll be. Because once you can start, once you get your first house back, that timer starts for when you can start getting your next house hack. Right? So I always like, you know, people always ask me if there’s any like negotiation, like tactics and stuff. I use my, I buy a house and I say no. Like I usually just ask for asking price because I’d rather get into a house then save $10,000 which this is a buy and hold. It’s like maybe what, 20 bucks a month? It’s just not worth it. I’d rather get into a house decorating the rent sooner so I can go get the next property even sooner.

Julian Sage:                         27:58                     Why? Why do you think that that house hacking is so appealing to everybody and why, why do you think so many people they hesitate into getting into real estate in the first place?

Craig Curelop:                    28:08                     Well, I think it’s really appealing for many reasons. One, it eliminates your largest expense, which is likely your rent or your mortgage too. It allows you to get into real estate. So it just is that great kind of transition into real estate. Three, it is a phenomenal way to build wealth with not a lot of money down. Right? You don’t need a lot of money and for that reason you just get such high, high returns. Oh, 100% or more after that first year. And it’s just, I mean, it’s absurd. Like, I just don’t know any other investment vehicle, even in real estate or outside of real estate where you can consistently get 100% plus return without throwing money at Bitcoin and something super risky that’s essentially gambling. So

Julian Sage:                         28:51                     And, and when you’re, when you’re analyzing a property, are you looking at, are you looking at it from a different perspective now that you, you know, have experience with short term renting or are you looking at this like a traditional you know, a traditional real estate investment?

Craig Curelop:                    29:04                     I kind of go into it looking at it as if it would be a traditional real estate investment. I don’t like to assume that it will be short term rental forever because with all the regulations and everything that’s going aimless, short term rentals, you have to be careful to make sure that also works as a traditional rental because I don’t think those are going anywhere. So you just have to be careful and yeah. So I go into it thinking, okay, this is going to be traditional rental. I know that I can get a little more out of it from the short term. I will.

Julian Sage:                         29:31                     Are you analyzing how much you could potentially be making as a short term rental as well when you’re going into these properties?

Craig Curelop:                    29:37                     No, I actually, to be honest, I actually just calculate it as if it will be a a longterm rental. Make sure it’s a good longterm rental because anything from the short term and until it’s just gravy, can I look at it and we’re on buying, it’s like Denver Metro, so I know that they will pretty much always be some demand for Airbnb and at any point if Airbnb shuts down, I know that I can shut down my Airbnb and I can turn it into a traditional rental and it will still work. So you have to make sure it works both ways so you just, you don’t lose your shirt.

Julian Sage:                         30:05                     Now you said education is a really big part in that people spend a lot of time, you know, even even this podcast, I’m sure that there’s plenty of people that are just listening to the show without maybe taking the action and being, being a part of bigger pockets. You’re exposed to a lot of real estate, a lot of people that are all about this. What, what does maybe some of the big, I’m just curious, what are some of the big things that you’ve taken away working at BiggerPockets and being in that environment?

Craig Curelop:                    30:26                     Just being around everybody, right? Everyone’s doing deals. Not everyone is doing deals, but I’d say about a third of the company, which is significant, like 10 to 12 people are consistently buying real estate. And so when you say where you can see me buying real estate and talking about real estate and learning about it, it’s just like, okay, why am I not doing this? Like everyone else is saying it kind of thing. So it definitely helps to be surrounded by people that are also doing it. So I’ve definitely had that going for me. And if you don’t have that going for you and you’re stuck with a bunch of rats in the rat race, I highly recommend joining some real estate groups. Find the bigger pockets meetup in your area and join that. If there’s not one, create one and you’ll be, you’ll be good to go.

Julian Sage:                         31:08                     And now are, are you, because you’re coming into this and you have this, you know, this house hacking, short term rental kind of perspective is w w what’s the, you know, being in this, this space where there are so many people that are doing real estate, what, what, what is the general kind of thought and the general feeling towards short term renting at this time within the bigger pockets community?

Craig Curelop:                    31:30                     We have a few people here that do short term rental. I can think of, you count me for at the top of my head, but are doing short term rental, bigger pockets and they love it. I mean, one, one guy’s got a house up in the mountains and that does magnificently. Another woman here rents out her like a studio basement and she pretty much covers her mortgage with that. This other guys just bought a house. It’s just converting his to an Airbnb. I’m just bought, I’m doing Airbnb and I’m converting my engineering to me. So yeah, I mean the general sense consensus is it works. It’s really profitable, but if we did have to switch it, we could still switch it and still be profitable and still be able to hold on.

Julian Sage:                         32:09                     So it sounds, you know, from what you’re saying is that the big thing is that you can’t go into the steel with the sole intent to short term rent it, you have to go in there with a different, you know, a more traditional more conservative mindset.

Craig Curelop:                    32:22                     That’s right. That’s right.

Julian Sage:                         32:23                     Okay. And you know, you’re, you’re, you’re with a lot of, a lot of people that are asking a lot of good questions, but what, what would be a question that maybe you would ask another professional host, maybe someone that is at a similar level or maybe that next level from where you’re trying to be. If you could ask them anything, what would that be?

Craig Curelop:                    32:41                     Probably how do you find and manage good contractors, which is very hard, but someone who has systems and stuff probably does that. I don’t think there’s like a right answer to do it. I think it’s just a matter of getting as many contractors in your funnel. And, and just just ask them in that way and just trial and error counts kind of stuff and recommendations. But yeah, I just had a lot of problems with contractors in the past.

Julian Sage:                         33:06                     And that’s what the, the, the, the rehab rehab work that you’re doing.

Craig Curelop:                    33:10                     Yup.

Julian Sage:                         33:11                     Do you, do you think that there is maybe just like an ease, like if you, if you could kind of give like what’s the most easiest way for someone to get into because lots of people maybe that are getting into this and they think like, Oh, I want to find a property, I want to rehab it, I’m going to own it, then I’m going to short term rent. It if you could give, like is, do you have an idea in your mind of like the easiest way of getting into real estate and being profitable and turning it into a scalable business without like the most amount of friction?

Craig Curelop:                    33:39                     Yeah, I think if you want like the least amount of work, you know, with, with less work likely comes less money. So the first deal I did was that duplex that needed absolutely no work. It was just a complete move in ready and I was still making good money off of it. So yeah, just find a move in ready place, especially if you want to do the, if you’re into the short term rental strategy, find a place that already has the basement done right. Find a place that already has it, you’ll pay a little bit more for it, but you can just move in and get started right away. And I’d almost recommend that for the first one because they’re just such a learning curve for that first one. You know, my first one was I did, I’ve done incrementally larger rehabs on each property so far. So yeah,

Julian Sage:                         34:18                     Baby steps. Yeah, exactly. And do you, do you have a besides, besides your book Craig do you have a favorite book that you can recommend that has really kind of maybe changed your business or your life?

Craig Curelop:                    34:32                     I have a book. This is always such a tough question. I feel like I always want to get a different one every time. I answer it, you know, there’s always the ones that you hear, right. Rich dad, poor dad kind of changed my mindset to four hour work week by Tim Ferris is the one that actually got me thinking about passive income. Brandon Turner’s rental property book, the book on rental property investing. I read that before I ever came to BiggerPockets. It was the first real estate book I ever read and that got me hooked in real estate and I just dove down the rabbit hole from there.

Julian Sage:                         35:02                     Awesome. Yeah. And we’ll, we’ll include those those book links in the description as well. And just the, just to kind of wrap this up, what is a new new question that I’m going to start asking is what is short term renting allowed you to do in your life? Like how is short term renting and house hacking really kinda changed your life and then moving forward where do you, where do you see that?

Craig Curelop:                    35:22                     So it’s allowed me to just really have a way more comfortable financial position, right? Like I’ve done a whole lot of traveling in the past year. I went to Greece, I’ve been to Southeast Asia, I’ve traveled all around the U S just just, just in the past year. And so it’s allowed me to do that, which the things I love to do, it’s also given me a lot of comfort around, okay, if my job is in jeopardy, I’m not super scared. Right. I don’t have to do things that I hate to do. I can lasts for a very long time without a job, basically forever because now I think I’m actually technically financially independent now. So yeah, it just allows you to have way more confidence and way more ability to kind of take those chances in life.

Julian Sage:                         35:59                     Do you think that you would’ve been able to get to where you are as quickly had you not been then short term renting?

Craig Curelop:                    36:05                     Short term renting definitely helps out. Right. And I even did the we didn’t talk about this in the show at all yet, but I also did the whole Airbnb arbitrage thing where I rented my rent and my buddy’s place from him and put it on Airbnb and kept the difference. And that alone, we only did that for a year because we ended up getting caught by the HOA and just shut it down before we had any ramifications. But we did it for a year and I was able to pay like 10 $15,000 off my student loans. And I had, I had $85,000 of student loans like 18 months ago and they were paid off entirely. And this April, 2019 so like six months before this recording, I hated my loft. So yeah, I mean it felt good.

Julian Sage:                         36:45                     That was all because of, of using a rental arbitrage.

Craig Curelop:                    36:49                     Not all of the, not the 15,000 was rental arbitrage, but that was a huge, you know, that’s more than 10% of that 90,000 or the 85,000 that I had. So that played a huge factor that along with the, you know, I was putting some of the money from my rentals. It depends on my student loans, all my other savings and some side houses and stuff. I did all the also. So yeah. Interesting. It all, it all helps. It all helps.

Julian Sage:                         37:14                     Wow, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. And moving forward in the future you know, with, with your experience being, you know in, in real estate being part of the the community or where do you see moving forward and how you’re going to be incorporating short term rentals?

Craig Curelop:                    37:28                     I think I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing and kind of picking up properties as they go and basically analyzing them as longterm rentals and seeing if I can do a short term rental. I likely will at least at first just because you get that high return at first and yeah, just kind of go from there.

Julian Sage:                         37:46                     Awesome. Well thanks. Thanks so much Greg. A very, very short, very action packed in this episode. Lots of, lots of stuff that we did cover. But you, you just got the answers right there. So I thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. And of course I’m going to include all the, all the books and everything in the description below. Craig wrote the book on house hacking. So if you want to get into house hacking, definitely check it out. A really good, really good read. Good. Listen, you can get it on audio as well. I I’m going to thoroughly enjoy that once the audio version comes out listening to that cause I, I don’t, I don’t sit down to read books anymore. I just listen to everything. But so, so much good stuff. What, what, what, what would you say would be the kind of the big, big things that for a person that it would be purchasing this book? What would they be able to take away from, from from this,

Craig Curelop:                    38:30                     This book has everything I know about house hacking in like 250 pages or so you would get the whole, the whole gamut, right? It’s how, how’s hacking can help you achieve financial independence. It’ll go from how do you find a property, how do you analyze the property? How do you list it as a short term rental? Have you listed as a longterm rental? How do you manage tenants if you are doing a longterm rental? It’s got case studies of like 13 or 14 different people at the end of each chapter that tell you basically to show, tell you the story of what they did to house hack and why they are house hacking. And it just shows you that you can do it from so many different angles and so many have so many different strategies and it works out almost in any case. You just have to kind of start taking action and doing it.

Julian Sage:                         39:11                     Yeah. And, and, and, and this is, this is a legit look guys. This is coming published through bigger pockets and that, that’s kind of one of the benefits that, that I guess you kind of have Craig, is you were part of the community. You’re working in it and you’re house in and you’re like, Hey, you know, let me write the book on this. And they just let you,

Craig Curelop:                    39:28                     Yeah. I mean, it was, yeah, it was, it was, wasn’t that easy. But yeah. I mean, I had to, you know, he had to pitch it. I had to write it, outline, I had to do all the, they don’t treat me any differently than they would any other author, but I guess they may take it. I guess I take it easier, but they don’t like review. If someone else came in with a better offer, they wouldn’t take me. Take mine because it’s mine.

Julian Sage:                         39:52                     It’s because you’re providing, you’re providing the quality and that’s in the work. So that’s awesome. Well yeah, look, looking forward to listening to that book. When that does come out, that’s coming out by the time that this episode is out it should already be out. So that, that is so cool. So thank you so much, Craig again, and until next time, host nation,

Julian Sage:                         40:10                     Keep on hosting. Hope you hosts benefited from the show. If you found value, please go on 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, go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation.