In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Karen and Scott Chenaille from Arlington, Vermont. Karen and Scott own 10 properties, cohost 1, and have 1 rental arbitrage unit all while working full-time jobs. Karen and Scott are a great team together and they complement each other. Scott has the construction know-how while Karen has decorating and business skills. They are definitely a powerful dynamic duo!
In this episode, Karen and Scott talk about how they got started into the short term rental space and how they were able to get funds to buy 10 properties within 3 years. They also share the unpleasant experience they had in doing rental arbitrage and cohosting and the lessons they got from it.
Video Transcript
00:00:00
When you have an Airbnb, it’s so easy to blow money and decorating. You know that, oh, I want that little pillow or that picture. This just really helps you control that urge a little bit. Cuz I found that’s where a lot of my money was going was just on stupid stuff that really doesn’t drive. Doesn’t move the needle. In terms of your nightly occupancy or your, the amount of money you’re getting for the properties.
00:00:19
This is Epson. Number four, four of the short term 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. Now 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 going over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy. This really helps support the show. If you haven’t done so already going over to our Facebook group, the host nation to connect with the community.
00:00:59
Hey, what is going on? Host nation? I am super excited to be back again with you in DC. I’m back in the us from my trip from Columbia and very glad to have my phone back. So if you guys didn’t know the last episode, I actually lost my phone. I went swimming. So I did everything that you’re not supposed to do. You’re not supposed to go farther than five meters under the water, which I went a little bit farther than five. You’re not supposed to be in saltwater, which I was in the ocean and you’re not supposed to have your phone in the water for more than 30 minutes. And I was in there for quite a long time. It was pretty unpleasant not having a phone. And then also with the wifi issues because being international, I only had my 4g whenever I restarted my phone for some reason.
00:01:41
So I was constantly having to restart to see and check on messages and stuff like that, people inquiring. So there’s a lot of things that I learned from this trip that I definitely want to start really focusing on the business and how we can better suit these types of things. Because I know that I’m not the only person that has had to deal with situations where maybe you don’t have internet access or that you’re away or something happens. So there’s a lot of things that I am implementing into my business to be able to correct these types of situations. One of them is being, making sure that all of my stuff is sinking to the cloud. Another is that I’m also gonna start looking into virtual assistance to be able to assist. There’s a lot of things with the business that really can be outsourcing such as invoicing and stuff like that.
00:02:23
So really moving forward, Jon and I are gonna start looking at ways to be able to remove ourselves from the business in aspects that they don’t really need us and allow us to be able to supervise from a different position. But I’m super excited for this new year. There’s so many things that I have planned for you all. If you got my email from last week, I was really starting to open up with you guys and share with you some of the things and some of the insecurities I personally feel because being in the space now for about a year, I really started to kind of feel some like imposter syndrome. Honestly, a good majority of my life is all about this show and all about Airbnb and short term rentals. So I honestly felt like I wasn’t where I should be. I talked to so many people and there’s such a demand to scale quickly.
00:03:05
And I, I honestly didn’t feel like I had scaled as quickly as I should have. You know, at this time I have my basement unit and a cohost client and I plan on taking on a Rental arbitrage unit very soon just to have a full diversified portfolio. But I honestly thought that I would’ve had so many more properties and that would’ve achieved these types of goals that I have in mind so much quicker. And one of the things that I love is just the community and talking with you all and building this relationship. That’s one of the reasons I decided to partner with John Bell because he has a skillset that I do not have and I have something that he doesn’t have. And that’s why we pair really well together. And we can provide such amazing content. I look at things that I’m able to break it down very easily and pull things out of people.
00:03:45
And John’s the type of person that keeps a lot of things to himself. But I think it’s actually a blessing in disguise that I don’t have the passion to work on the finer details of the business and that I’d rather much remove myself from a lot of the, these things and focus on more of the big picture stuff like the community, like the business as a whole, because if John and I were both working on the finer details of all these things, we’d be limiting ourselves on what we could focus on sharing with the community because we’d just be so focused on the operations. So I honestly believe that it would be a disservice to you all. If I was just focusing on the business, you know, my heart’s in education and teaching and helping support people. And that’s what we, you plan on doing Jon and I.
00:04:22
So I hope that you all are okay that I don’t have this crazy success story. I didn’t go from zero to 50 units in a year. I didn’t make enough money in my first six months that I could quit my job. I still work in the military full time and I’ve still got another couple years on my contract, but I do have a passion for helping you all. And I do hope that you can understand and see E that. But with all that being said, let’s jump into this week’s episode. And in this week’s episode, I have this special honor speaking with Karen and Scott who are coming from Arlington, Vermont, Karen and Scott, own 10 properties. They own 10 properties. They co-host one and they have one Rental arbitrage unit while working full-time jobs. Karen and Scott are a great team together as they compliment each other.
00:05:00
So well, Scott has this construction background and Karen has the decorating in business skills. This is such a powerful dynamic duo in this episode, Karen and Scott talk about how they got started into the short term rental space, how they were able to get funds to buy and purchase 10 properties within three years and their unpleasant experience doing Rental arbitrage and cohosting, and the lessons that they’ve received from that, what’s really amazing is that Karen and Scott prior to Airbnb didn’t have any real estate experience. And now they have purchased 10 properties, 10 properties. That’s crazy. What’s actually pretty interesting is that I actually met Karen and Scott at the bigger pockets event, but I actually messaged Karen before the event asking her to come on the show and she ignored me. So Karen I’m still hurt that you Nord me, but I’m super glad to have gotten you on the show because you are so powerful.
00:05:46
And this is such a great episode for all hosts. If you like my show notes for this episode, you go to shorttermsage.com slash STR 44, or if you like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week, as well as my own personal messages, 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, I have these special, special honor of speaking with Karen and Scott chanii. All right. Awesome. If you please wouldn’t mind introducing yourself and let the host nation know who you are and what inspired you to get into short-term rentals.
00:06:22
So we’re Karen at Scott and I, we live in Arlington Vermont. The thing that inspired us to get into short-term rentals was the fact that we couldn’t sell our house. So three years ago, really four years ago, we put it on the market, tried to sell it. It’s a beautiful, but it’s probably overpriced for the area that we’re in. We really didn’t have any buyers. We were trying to sell it ourselves. We didn’t enlist the assistance of a realtor. We were trying to save a little money and we went on a Vacation to Portmouth New Hampshire. And we were actually looking to stay in an Airbnb and there was nothing there. And, you know, we just had some time to sit back and reflect and talk. We were hanging out together and I was like, you know, we have all these empty rooms in our house because our kids had all grown and left.
00:07:05
And I said, well, why don’t we try Airbnb in them? And so at that point in time, it was like end of November, early December. So I went and I got a book, the get paid for your pad book. And we read that covered a cover and used it out to kinda give ourselves some tips and tricks to get going. I think we put our, our listing up like second week of December. And within a week we had our first booking for a room in our home. So we, right now we short term rent three rooms in our house and yeah, we got started there. It was really funny cuz I’ll never forget. We had a guest that was, who came up from New York city in this really cute little Porsche to go skiing. We’re about 35, 40 minutes from the ski slopes and we’re, we’re not gonna lie. We were scared.
00:07:50
Yeah, it’s weird. The first, the
00:07:52
First time we locked the bedroom door and we were like watching him in the window as he walked into the house, it was really funny, but it didn’t take us long. We get really comfortable with it. And then about six months later, we bought a condominium in Mount snow, which is, you know, this condominium we have is like walking distance to the magic carpet, which is one of the lifts there. And the idea there was, we were trying to teach ourselves in kind of a low risk manner, how to scale. So this thing, I was still gonna have to hire someone remote to clean it and learn how to do that part of Airbnb, how you get like the remote teams and things set up. But it wasn’t so far away to where if something went wrong or I made a horrible mistake, I couldn’t like jump in my car and went out there.
00:08:33
We went in and remodeled it because it’s close enough. It’s an hour away from us. We remodeled it. And Karen’s got it pretty good eye for design, you know, interior designing and stuff. So it came out, it came out good. And it took right off
00:08:50
That one does really well.
00:08:52
Of course, because it was the middle of the ski season.
00:08:55
Yeah. I mean, well, all in, we probably had about 65 total that was with the purchase of the real estate and then the renovations and I mean, in the winter on a busy holiday weekend, it can go for $300 a night and it’s a studio.
00:09:10
Wow,
00:09:11
It’s crazy. It doesn’t do so great in the summer. Obviously that’s the off, but it makes way, you know, enough in the winter to more than cover your expense load for the year. And then, so we also, at that point in time owned a convenience store and we sold our convenience store about two years ago and we had a pile of money from a 10 31 that we had to reinvest. And so at that point really had gotten the hang of remote management and we wound up buying three different properties down in Biloxi, Mississippi. We fell in love with Biloxi. We were on a cruise and we rented a bike one weekend before we were getting on the ship and we took a motorcycle ride out to Biloxi and I had never knew it existed. It has white sand, it’s got casinos, it’s got malls, it’s got a colos, a pretty big concert venue.
01:10:02
So we wound up, we went down there on a real estate shopping expedition in April because we knew our 10 31. We just wanted to have everything ready. So when the 10 31 came through, we could pull the trigger on that. So we had 10 30, 1 big pile of money we had to invest. So we three different properties in Biloxi ran those for about a year or so. And then my husband reached 59 and a half. So he was eligible to pull the money out of his IRA with no additional penalty. So we took that and went and bought some cabins, a cabin and Gatlinburg and, and hung onto that for a while. And then we just recently bought another cabin again, using the proceeds out of his IRA for down payments. So we’ve been really busy. And then there’s another one we picked up in April of this year, also in Mount snow.
01:10:52
But for that one, we used a self-directed IRA. And I haven’t heard a lot about people doing that, but you can do it. You just have to be super careful that you don’t, you can’t do any other renovations yourself. You really have to be hands off or else it’s considered self dealing. So we bought that and we paid other people to go in and do all the renovations. And I, I actually have that one listed through evolve because I just wanted to be very clean. I don’t want it under my personal account. So evolve manages that one for me. And I have a cleaning lady that takes care of the guest interaction and that one does really well as well. That one, that one kicks it. It’s Keyon ski off. It’s really good.
01:11:30
Wow. Karen Scott, you, you guys have just been rocking and rolling these these past three years. Did you have any prior real estate experience coming into short term rental or was it like short rentals, real estate all at the same time?
01:11:43
All at the same time. All at the same time. Yeah. It’s kind of funny. Some women like to buy shoes, I like to buy condos.
01:11:51
Oh, con condos can be, can be pretty scary. Have you, have you noticed with like regulations in the condos or how are you working around those?
01:11:58
A tip that I learned from my real estate agent down in Tennessee, Avery, Carl, she said that you generally should only buy in a market. That’s been really well established. That’s had short-term rentals even longer than like Airbnb and HomeAway have been around. So the, I will tell you that we did have some trouble in Biloxi. We bought a property there in the homeowners Association’s documents. It said you could short-term rent. There were loads of short-term rentals on the coast at the time Biloxi had a formal registration requirement, but they weren’t really enforcing it. And I said, well, I said, I’m kind of an outsider here. And I like to go really above, above, you know, on the books with things. So I applied for a permit for that property and started this massive controversy down there because the city didn’t really have their, their thoughts together.
01:12:53
They really well organized to accept all these permits, but they started saying it was weird. I put my application in and then we started hearing they were gonna start cracking down. And it really, it was about a nine or 10 month ordeal where the city was just trying to sort through, you know, how do they balance the, the economic impact of the short-term rentals, cuz it’s it with what the local residents and things wanted. So out of the three properties we bought, the third one I bought, I actually had to convert it to a long term. So it was furnished. I got to run into a short term for like maybe two and a half, three months. And then it looked like things at city hall were headed the other way. Meaning not in my faith, just for that one property because the, the people who lived in the condominium complex did not want it. Even though the homeowners association rule said, you could have it, it was gonna have to be rezoned. And that’s how they blocked
01:13:46
It. And, and how has, how has it been doing at converting? Because a lot of people maybe are afraid to purchase property and then regulations change or their HOA condo says you can’t do this. How, how is the performance from converting it from short term to long term?
01:14:00
You know, I will say that. So when you convert to long term, you also cut your expense load. Right? I stopped having the internet. I don’t pay the electric bill anymore. And if you look at, from an occupancy perspective, I think that it probably performed was about 80 to 85% as well, net revenue wise because you, you have a consistent renter in there all the time versus with like a short term rental, you do have some highs and lows and your rates go up and down quite a bit. So I, you know, I don’t think I’m performing quite as well as I could have if I kept it short term, but it, there’s also some benefit to having like a long-term runner in there every month. I know I’m gonna get that check and I don’t really have to worry about it. And again, like I said, I don’t pay for cable anymore and I don’t pay for electric cleaning, cleaning. You don’t have to pay a cleaner. All I really pay for is the homeowner’s association fees on it.
01:14:53
You know what, what I think is just super interesting. I mean, you you’ve scaled up to 12 properties, 10 of them, you own, you just dropped a cohost client and we’re gonna talk some more about that. And you’ve, you’ve had some bad experience with Rental arbitrage, but I wanna talk about the 10 that you do own, you, you picked up these 10 in the course of three years.
01:15:10
Yep.
01:15:11
Wow. And, and most of these majority of these properties are remote.
01:15:16
So when we’re, I’m counting listings, you’re counting properties. So three of the listings are at my house and then everything else is at least an hour or way more away. It’s either in Tennessee or Biloxi.
01:15:28
And a lot of people are afraid of may managing properties remotely. But I mean, you you’ve seem to found something that is working cuz you have different cleaners in different locations. How have you been able to build out these properties and, and hire the cleaners? Have you been doing everything remotely or are you physically going to the location, setting them up vetting cleaners and doing all of that on spot?
01:15:49
So the way we do it is I will. So when I’m prospecting for real estate, an area and learning, learning the area we go down and we stay. And in both instances, both in Biloxi and Gatlinburg, we went into the units and were really impressed with how clean they were and how nice they were. So we reached out to the, to the, in one case it was the guy he was hosting for somebody else, but he also organized all the cleaning and Biloxi and I just made contact with him and I said, Hey, I’m here, I’m a real estate investor. Would you be interested in taking care of my properties? And he’s like, sure. So that’s how I found him because I stayed in a property that he was cleaning and he, he really does an exceptional job and same thing in pigeon Ford, I reached out to the cleaning gal that was taking care of our unit and she, she was just doing, she was killing it, doing a really good job.
01:16:40
She’s full service. You know, they’ll go in and set. ’em up for you. The ones that I bought in Biloxi, we set up ourselves. I bought all the supplies. I stock the line cabinets and then I just transitioned him over to my, my he’s not even a cohost. He just runs the cleaning staff off. And then the properties in pigeon forge Gatlinburg, we bought them more. The one that I have, there is more turnkey. So it really, she just went in and she put the linens on the beds and did a deep clean. And then there was a few maintenance issues I had to address. But so that’s how we do it. We stay in the properties and if we like how clean they are, we, we call ’em up and get the hookup.
01:17:16
You’re, you’re staying in a property. The majority of the properties that you’ve been acquiring are already short-term rentals.
01:17:21
Yep.
01:17:22
Yep. And, and what’s, what’s the reasoning behind purchasing properties that are already short-term turnkey.
01:17:28
So we’ve learned that it from setting up the Biloxi properties, it just, it’s incredibly hard to work from a distance to set these things up and work full time. You know, there’s only so much time I can get off in a year, my preference cuz I love the staging and the designing and the decorating. That’s one of the reasons why I got into it. My preference is to be able to go down there and decorat and even play around, you know, but you also wanna some of these ones we’re buying with mortgages on ’em and you want ’em to be able to, to generate revenue very quickly. So we try to do more turnkey. It’s much easier because you’re getting money like right away. And then, you know, like the one in Gatlinburg, there’s some more things I wanna do to it. So as it makes money, I’m just kind of, I’ve got them laid into the meat and schedule things that we’re gonna do. It just makes you able to make money quicker.
01:18:13
Now, how, how does that work when you are acquiring a property that is already turnkey, are you, do they, they already have the data available. They know how much the property’s probably making. Do you just take those numbers and go with it? Or is there like an upcharge because it is a turnkey, is it, are you analyzing it like a business revenue or how do you, how do you analyze those types of properties?
01:18:35
So for the Galen Birtch property, for example, the realtor that I work with, all she sells is short-term rentals. So she has a pretty good understanding of like what the expense ratios are on it and stuff. She generally has a pretty good idea of what it’s gonna. So when I buy it, I just dump it all into a spreadsheet. I do risk it up a little bit just because when you’re a, I’m not a new host, but when you’re new in a market, you don’t get booked as quickly. You’re lower in the search rankings for Airbnb and it just takes you some time to build momentum. So I just use the data that’s already available on it and for, in part are in Gatlinburg. So the one I have there, I’ve got about six months of runtime on it right now and we just bought the other one. We’ll close on it in January. So now I have my own data and it, I don’t risk it up at all cuz it’s my own data. And then I, I have a very good idea of what the return’s gonna be.
01:19:27
What, what are your thoughts on people? Because a lot of people say, oh, don’t purchase a property. What at the sole intent to short term rental it. But there’s obviously there’s people that are selling turnkey properties that are for short term rentals. Are you, what, what are your thoughts on purchasing these types of properties versus purchasing a long-term Rental and then just, you know, optimizing it as a short term rental and kind of taking the cream, you know, taking as much as you can during that period.
01:19:53
I think you really have to know what the regulations are, right? Like you have to be sure you need it in writing. So like for Gatlinburg, for example, nobody runs a cabin long term in Gatlinburg. It’s the whole market, there is all short term rental. So, and it’s been around a long time. It’s been short Rental before HomeAway and Airbnb ever showed up. So for that one, I didn’t, I never worried about having the ability to convert it to long term. I mean the whole economy there is just driven by short term rentals. There’s even a special tax on them, which I think’s a good thing cuz it means the city realizes they’re making money and they’re not gonna shut you down anytime soon in Biloxi. I think that there’s so right now there’s two different complexes down there that for, that are zoned properly and now short term rental. So I think you could buy there and just assume right outta the gate, you’re gonna run short term, other areas of Biloxi. They’re really cracking down on the regs. And I think you need to be super careful there. That one I’m, I’m kind of with you, you, you kind of need to be able to flex it back and forth. Like I did
02:20:56
With, with purchasing a short term rental what’s what’s the return on invest or what’s the return on, that’s supposed to be like, like, let’s say if you to purchase a long term Rental and you were to get a tenant in there and you’re maybe making 200, $300 a month, you know, it’s gonna take you, you know, maybe 30 years to just to pay off the whole place. You’re not really going to be able to pay off the place in a rip period of time for when you’re purchasing a short term rental specifically for that intent. How, how soon should you be able to pay off the property?
02:21:23
You know, I have a little bit different philosophy on that. I don’t really try to pay ’em off. I, I big fan of inch dead port ad, other people’s money. So my goal is not necessarily ever to pay ’em down because I mean, we’re gonna pay the mortgages, but I for right now, because we’re trying to generate cash and eventually retire on this, we are not really in pay down while we’re trying to get cash so we can grow and buy more property. But I think what you’re asking me is like, what do you like? What’s that cash and cash return for like their short term rental? I don’t know. I usually look for anything over 25%, you know, I’m looking to really like kill it. And I mean, and then for that reason, we were actually looking at another property in Gatlinburg and we pulled out, we, we were gonna buy a duplex at the same time. And as we were buying this other property and I just got kind of nervous because I was worried about the cash and cash numbers on it, there were a couple of fees and the financing was gonna be a little different because it was a duplex. So the interest rate was gonna be higher. And it was just enough to the point where it, it didn’t, it didn’t meet my criteria because I was gonna have to tie too much in the deal. So yeah, we like 25 or 30% return on ’em
02:22:34
25 to 30% return. And what, what, what for your, your net profit per per month? What are you looking at for those types of properties?
02:22:43
So a cabin in Gatlinburg after all the expenses should bring you, this is an average, right? Cuz in the slow season, it’s not, not gonna be quite as much, but anywhere between a thousand to 2000 a month. And that’s like all in that’s everything, that’s like your mortgage, your interest, your taxes, and, and it’s paying it’s for itself, you know like, and you’re also building the appreciation and it, and you know, property values down there continue to rise. So
02:23:07
That is crazy.
02:23:08
It’s crazy. Berg’s an amazing market. It,
02:23:11
Why, why do you think not more people are jumping in on this? I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s crazy to be able to acquire a place that still has a mortgage and then you start, you know, just making a thousand dollars to $2,000 a month when everybody’s spending all this money on, you know, long-term rentals and they’re making, you know, not pennies, but it’s maybe 200, $300 a month. There’s big, big difference there.
02:23:32
I think people are intimidated by short term rentals. There’s a lot to it. You know, it’s not, you, you can get a long term Rental and you don’t have to, it doesn’t have to be like perfect on the inside and look like this show, show place. You know, you could get a long-term Rental and maybe not invest as much in the interior fixtures and furnishings and, and probably get a good tenant in there and do okay. I think you really have to try hard in short-term rentals if you’re gonna set yourself apart. And there’s, you know, also the hosting component of it, you really have to do a good on the hospitality side. You know, you can have a tenant and you don’t have to invest as much into, there’s a bare minimum things you have to provide. And you’re good when you’re hosting and you’re dealing with the public essentially, you really have to kind of kick it up a notch. And I think a lot of people just don’t wanna be bothered by that, but that’s that extra amount of effort you’re investing of your time to get that extra or a turn. And it, and it, it works. I mean, if you’re a good host, people come back and book with you over and over those five star reviews, you know, really drag in the, the guests.
02:24:37
If you were to, if you were to outsource all of this, cuz you’re doing all the, the majority of the management, you’re just doing yourself except that one evolved property. Yeah. If you were to outsource this to a manager, what, what would your returns look like at that point? Would it be more like a long-term Rental property?
02:24:53
I definitely think it would be closer to a long-term Rental property. I mean, the returns in the, of all property are still pretty good. They only take 10%, but I still like if something breaks, I’m responsible for getting someone in their, and for the maintenance, my cleaning lady is still the primary point of contact. So evolve is, that’s why I like them though. They’re not a full service management company and that’s why they only take 10%. So yeah, I think if you don’t self-manage it really does erode your returns. So that just means that you’ve gotta work even harder to get that better deal up front. And in some markets that’s pretty hard to do, especially in Gatlin, Birtch, new market’s really hot. Like if you go down there and you’re gonna buy something, you gotta bring your checkbook and like put your earnest money down that day and close the deal. And, and really you should work with a mortgage, a mortgage professional and get prequalified.
02:25:42
How do you both do this? I mean, this is, that’s crazy. You, you both work full-time jobs, you’re managing properties across the country and you still have super host status on your profile. I mean, you’re doing something right. What’s what’s, she’s amazing. What’s the secret? Is it Karen? It’s Karen’s the secret? Oh
02:25:58
Yeah, no, it’s not me. It’s him. He deals with my craziness. So I’m a big believer in the miracle morning by Hal Elrod, Jocko, willing to, you know, I just very disciplined. I get up three 30 every day and I meditate. I work out, I work on my business for 30 or 40 minutes a day. I’m really lucky because I have a job that allows me to take every other Friday off. So, and I use that time to, to do the different things in my business. I do a lot of goal planning. So I set out 30, 60, 90 day goals and I have this crazy planning system I use where I lay ’em out every week and check ’em off. Her commute
02:26:43
To work one way is an hour and 10 minutes. So she’s in the car, she’s in the car two hours and 30 minutes every day commuting.
02:26:53
But I listen to you and I get a lot smarter.
02:26:56
I was about to say that that’s a lot of time to listen to the success stories podcast.
02:27:00
I do. I listen to them all. I think.
02:27:02
So what, what are, what are the systems that you’re in your business? Like, do you have a system for when you’re acquiring properties? Because that that’s, you know, you’re, you’re picking up properties left and right. And you’re doing something, right. So what, what’s your process when you are analyzing these properties?
02:27:16
I have a spreadsheet that I use. And so I’ve gone through and set up all the metrics and you know, whether I’m buying. So the other thing I should let you know is I try to cluster or where I buy. So I’m not spread all over the country. I feel like once you get a system set up in one place and you learn the rules and you learn the regs, you should just continue to buy there as much as you can. Cause it’s a lot of work to scale out. You’ve gotta reestablish that, that system, the boots on the ground type of thing. So we really try to stay in the markets we’re already in for right now. I haven’t really seen any other ones that I really want to jump into, but I have a virtual assistant that I hired. And so there’s, there’s quite a bit of stuff.
02:27:55
I have like an onboarding checklist and system that we created and everything I have to do works off the, the projected closing date for the property. And you just drop the closing date in there and there’s all these tasks I have. And I just, just tells me what I gotta have done by when there’s a lot of stuff that I outsource to her. So she can make phone calls and things she uses, I think WhatsApp or one of those internet phone calling apps to make calls on my behalf. She has pretty good English. And then in terms of analyzing on, I think we went through, I have that, that, that spreadsheet where I’ll just dump the purchase price in. So I can know almost immediately, whether I think it’s a good deal, cause I’ve already got all the expense ratios for all the markets that I’m in. So it’s not, doesn’t take a lot to, to figure out, you know, what we’re buying. I mean, the cabin that we just we’re closing on January 3rd, we happen to be down there and see it. But if I, I would easily buy another property in Gatlinburg site unseen just because I know the market and I kind of know what, what does well, and I, I really trust my realtor.
02:28:57
Well, you gotta be careful too, because site unseen, we, we did, that’s true. We did sort of buy one site unseen, but we, we went down for the inspection. We do our own inspection because I’m I in the building business. So, and sure enough, there was a, there was a problem with the foundation on this one. And so, like I said to Kerry and I I’m, I’m nervous about this one. And so we, we pulled our, we pulled our offer back and at the same time, Avery said, well, while you’re here, you might as well look at some more. And we did. And we found this, the cabin that we’re closing on, on a third. So you gotta be careful, make sure you have an inspection done or do your own. If you know,
02:29:50
Are you running the numbers like using like DNA, Airbnb, are you coming up with occupancy and all this before you look pick up the property or are when you’re picking up on scene, do you not know what the numbers are
03:30:02
Because I was already? So the first one that I bought in Gatlinburg, I went the, I didn’t use their DNA because their subscription for the Gatlinburg area was way too much because they base it on like the demand in the market area. So Avery actually had a subscription. She gave me some preliminary numbers on occupancy rates and stuff, but really what I did was I just went out and on my calendar, surfing, comparable cabins in the same area and just got a feel for kind of what I thought the ACY rate was gonna be. And then I just dumped that in there in terms of the rates, this cabin I actually bought was on another Rental program. And I, I went in and I looked at their rates and downward adjusted them because I thought that the rates, this is other, I don’t know how they were getting those rates.
03:30:44
To be honest with you, if they were getting them, they weren’t gonna be booked much because the overall rate for the market was much lower than what they were getting. So I, I use very conservative rates going in. Yeah. But I try to project all that out. But when you’re in Callenburg and you’re buying, like you gotta move, you know, you gotta basically have a range of variables that you’re looking at and say, well, you know, I know if it falls into this kind of range and this is the occupancy rate, and this is what I’m buying it and this range I can, we’re probably good.
03:31:16
03:31:24
So the other guy I’m a big fan of is Mike Alz and his book profit first and clockwork clockwork kind of gave me the kick in the butt to go find the BA. He has this funny thing called the queen B role, but really it’s what is the things that you’re good at? And what are the things in your business that you’re investing your time into that you’re probably not so great at, and maybe you could outsource, and there was a ton of stuff. I really just kind of took, took a couple steps back and looked at like, how was I spending all my off Fridays? Cuz I was investing a ton of time in the business. But I, I still, before the beginning of this quarter I had no web site. I was still struggling a little bit with my books. Like there was just so much stuff.
03:32:09
I’m like, this is ridiculous. I’m putting like 20 and 30 hours a weekend and I’m not growing. I’m just barely keeping my head above water. So the things that I outsourced to the VA VA were listing maintenance tasks. So anything, you know, she had experience with Airbnb and stuff when I hired her on. So she did all of started doing all of that stuff for me. I wrote some processes and things for her to do. I use QuickBooks for my back office. And there’s, as you know, when you’re renting these things, you get a ton of Airbnb deposits, deposits coming in and you have to allocate ’em to the properties. So I wrote a process, gave her that more and more. There’s another piece of software I use called owner res. So that’s also another, they pull a lot of information out of Airbnb listing, but not all of it.
03:32:56
So I have her go in there and maintain that. And I also have her essentially sync the rates so that if you book my property through my website, you’re gonna get the same rate on Airbnb and HomeAway. So I have her do that. And there’s more stuff I’m looking all the time at different things that I can delegate to her. I’m always kind of looking at, okay, what am I doing? And is this something that I can delegate out to somebody else, always trying to look at that and make sure that I’m focused on acquiring the properties and figuring out what’s our, what is our next move
03:33:26
With? I, I wanna hit on one more thing before I, I ask about the cohosting cuz I just think it’s super interesting. You picked up all these properties and, and you own them is what what’s the upcharge or what’s the premium price that you’re, that you’re paying for these turnkey short term rental properties compared to if it was just a regular long term Rental property.
03:33:46
I think it’s a lot. So the cabin we bought in Gatlinburg, we paid 4 39 for that one and I had to pay full price. I got, there were some things in there that there was like a couple of nightstands that I wanted to replace. I asked for a thousand dollars in concessions and they were like, Nope. So I think that you’re paying a lot and I, I don’t know how to quantify it in Gallen Birtch cuz I don’t, I don’t know like what you don’t really buy in furnished cabins in Gatlinburg, everything comes furnished even if so we were looking at a duplex and we were gonna buy that brand new. It was a new, new cons and it came furnished with everything in it. So, you know, but if you figure like what’s the value of all those furnishings and what’s the value of your time to go out and get them and put them in there and hang the curtains and do all of that other stuff. It’s probably, and this cabin in gall, I would say it was 20 or 30,000. I mean it’s a lot, but I get, I do it cuz I’m like, I know how much time it is and how hard it is to go down there and do that. It’s to me, that’s what
03:34:47
We learned in Biloxi. We, we set all, we set those three up in Biloxi and it just took us forever back and forth to the supply house and unpacking all the furniture, putting it together. Took forever.
03:35:02
You, you realize turnkey is a lot easier
03:35:04
Right now. It is.
03:35:05
Yeah. Yeah. We figured out how to set ’em up in four days though, we had a condo in Biloxi. I bought everything on Amazon. I had a drop ship to my realtor down there. We had someone going and paint it and put new floors down and, and four days it was ready to go. It was crazy. The most stressful four days of my life, we worked like 18 hours a day and he’s right. The things you don’t think about, like, so you buy all that crap from Amazon and you think you’re gonna be good to go. You gotta unpack all of it. It takes forever. It took us a whole entire day just to unpack an inventory, everything we had ordered to make sure it was all accounted for
03:35:42
And then get rid of all the cardboard.
03:35:45
It was really funny. He was jumping around in the dumpster trying to pack it down, like physically got in the dumpster. It was not.
03:35:52
So you, you, you decided to go the own approach, but there are these different models, you know, cohosting were Rental arbitrage and you you’ve tried both. You’ve tried both of them now. So you’ve, you’ve gone all three. Can you talk a little bit about your co-host and Rental arbitrage experience?
03:36:05
Yeah. So there’s a, a town near here. It’s a college town, it’s a college town, there’s a college there. It’s called Williams college. It’s a very prestigious Ivy league school and it’s always busy there. And I drive through there every day on my way to work and it’s just a cute little town and, and we’re both like, you know, we think something would go really good there, but I didn’t really wanna buy anything be I didn’t just wanna tie my capital up into another piece of real estate in new England that wasn’t near a ski mountain. So we found this, this apartment from rent and went in and the apartment itself was pretty cute. But you know, the bathroom needed a lot of work. It was very dated. The li I mean, it was, you could tell the landlord was not investing a ton. He was one of those people. Let’s just invest the bare minimum and get a tenant in there.
03:36:53
That’s where I come in. That’s
03:36:55
Where he comes in. Yeah, he’s amazing. And that’s why we’re great team. I basically come up with a vision and I’m like, go do it. And he does it. So we, we put quite a bit into it. I would say I used some of the furnishings I had from my house and then that I was replacing. And then we put like new lights in some new cabinets, new bathroom stuff. So all in, I probably put about 10 or 11,000 into that one. And so now when you talk about trying to make your money back, not only do you gotta cover the monthly rent, but you also are trying to get back the money on your initial investment. And, and then the utility bills, it was rented as being very energy efficient. It was anything, but it was horrible. So thankfully the reason why I did it was I said, well, it’s only a year long lease if it doesn’t go well, we’re out in a year.
03:37:45
So right around midpoint. So I rented it starting in January of last year. So in June I was, you know, looking at the numbers and I didn’t think it was gonna make it, but summer is the busy time. So I still had a chance, but we really just never were. We, it barely covered its cost. And I never made back really the money that I tied up in it, you know? So when we moved out, we still left, like all the landlord got a great deal, cuz we left it 10 times better than it was when he rented it to us. It had like new
03:38:16
The vanity, the toilet, the toilet lights,
03:38:19
Beautiful stain glass lights in the
03:38:21
Walls. Yeah. I forget what else we did. We
03:38:23
Did a lot, those cabinets that you put in those retro
03:38:25
Cabinets. That’s right.
03:38:26
We did a ton of stuff.
03:38:27
This, this was a Rental arbitrage property that you thought would do well. So you decided to invest your own money into fixing it up. And then you, you paid for the furnishing. What, why didn’t you find something that was already like a turnkey, just need to put the furniture in there?
03:38:42
So the Rental market around here is pretty limited and most of the landlords run their properties the way he was running his. And so there was really there’s first of all, there wasn’t a ton on the market. And there at many landlords that were a lot of people here are still very fearful of Airbnb. So when you tell ’em what you wanna do, even if you try to say, Hey, I’m gonna make your place nicer, blah, blah, blah. They’re still so scared of Airbnb and the stigma that it has. That’s, you know, because of different things that have happened around other parts of the country, that a lot of them just weren’t willing. So, you know, to this particular landlord’s credit, he was, he took a chance and you know, we, we tried to make it work, but we just, the numbers didn’t work. And I, there was no way I was gonna continue to stay in there. It was sucking about $500 a month outta my portfolio. It was serious.
03:39:30
Why do you think that that particular property didn’t do as well? Did you just not run the numbers well enough or was it there wasn’t enough market data? What, what, what, what flopped about that one?
03:39:40
I think that first of all, I thought occupancy was gonna be greater. That was probably really the greatest impact really in like January and February, there was almost no demand March. It was like dead slow. So even once occupancy numbers picked up, I would say the, the revenue, I mean the most I could probably ever get forward at night was like one 30 or one 40 at night. And, and when I ran my numbers to make money, I needed to be rent it like probably 60, 70% occupancy at about 1 50, 1 60 at night. And I never saw those occupancy rates ever, or those rates. So I kind of knew probably about the middle of last year that it was kind of a dog and I was gonna have to get rid of it. So we moved out.
04:40:24
Do you think that you could do this in other markets let’s say in the Biloxi or pigeon forge or any of these other markets that Rental arbitrage would work? Cuz you’re, you’re investing a lot of money of your own capital into these properties, but you own them, which is, you know, the, the benefit. But do you think that you would still moving forward in corporate Rental arbitrage or was it just you you’ve tried it and you’re kind of done with it.
04:40:47
If I was gonna Rental arbitrage, it wouldn’t be in Biloxi or Gatlinburg because people who would be interested in Rental arbitrage would probably already just short term, they would find someone to manage it for ’em and they would just have someone else host it. I think if I was to run an arbitrage, I would go someplace. That was kind of like a, you know, someplace in Texas, like Austin or something like that, that I know there’s actually quite a bit of it going on in there. There’s quite a bit in San Diego. I would just pick a, a completely different market where there was a lot of Rental activity and a lot of local demand, you know, besides a college.
04:41:25
So what, what about all these different methods? Did you choose owning would be the, the one that you wanted to double down on?
04:41:32
Actually I started out owning, but I actually would like to get into more cohosting because if you think about it, anytime I buy one of these things, I’m tying up a lot of capital, right? And we’re kind of running out of our capital runway here. I’m gonna have to start to get pretty creative about how I find these properties. You can only have 10 mortgages in your own name and then you, you, you have to get more creative and the financing gets more expensive. So if you look at cohosting though, and you look at kind of where I am in my business, I have all the systems set up. I spent this last quarter really shoring myself up just so we could add on more properties and co-hosts, you know, building up my credibility, things like that. So I think moving forward, I would actually like get more cohosting properties because I have all of the automation and everything in place.
04:42:17
It’s super easy to add. ’em on, you know, write the listing description. The biggest challenge with cohosting though is you really need to find an owner that understands that they need to invest to be successful. And, and the one property that I co-host right now, I think that’s been, the challenge is they’re in a little bit of a, a hard time financially. And they’re asking me to co-host this big house and they don’t wanna put a lot of money into it. And so it gets kind of tricky because I have a super host rating and, and that’s the benefit. They get a listing with me. They’re listing instantly will get super host visibility and status and they get the benefit and benefit of all my automated pricing, things like that. But they, they don’t wanna invest. And so I really have a hard time with that because it’s putting my, my rating at risk on the platform. And I have a pretty significant portfolio. I, I have a lot of sales coming in off of Airbnb and I’m not willing to take that risk. So trying to exit that cohosting agreement.
04:43:23
Yeah. If you want, if you wanna talk a little bit more about, cause you, you, you said quote, nightmarish cohosting agreement. What, what would you do differently if you had to redo that one?
04:43:32
So let me just say why I took this one. This was my first co agreement I didn’t have to do. And the problem was we don’t have an agreement, right? So I put a cohosting proposal together. It was a, but there’s no like agreement and for me that’s good cuz I wanna get out of it, but there’s nothing legal that a obliges me or the owner to stay in the agreement. So that’s the, probably the first thing that I did wrong was I don’t have a, a written document that says who, who has to do what, who has to invest. You know, typically when you’re cohosting I went into it with the idea that I would be responsible for staging. I would get to pick the linens and things that we were putting in there because that’s what I do. That’s what I’m very good at.
04:44:15
And this particular owner thought that they could say some money by going to Ikea and buying things on their own, out of the bargain bin. So right away, I knew like nothing was matching in the rooms and, and all the stuff that I did buy, they gave me a very tight budget. You know, they said don’t spend more than $3,000. Like everything that was all the cleaning supplies I had to buy vacuums towels, wash cloths, a lot of miscellaneous things. And it took me a long time to get the listing ready. So they had been living in the house and we had to get it deep cleaned and the, and staged and, and they didn’t wanna buy anything. So we were trying to make due with some of the stuff they had. Every penny I spent was scrutinized. Plus there was someone living in the house. So there was an elderly person that lives in a separate apartment. So it’s completely separate quarters, but this person was in her nineties. And I was super panicked about having her there and having her not be comfortable with a guest coming and going and, or having maybe an unpleasant encounter with a guest. I mean, it was, I would never, ever, ever take something on like that again, especially not with someone living in the property no way.
04:45:29
So, so moving forward, you, you would, you would do what differently.
04:45:34
I’d get a formal agreement and the formal hosting agreement typically lay out like, you know, you give, you give the owner an estimate of what they, what they’re gonna have to invest upfront. And I would stick to that and I would make them if they don’t agree to investing and getting the property up to my cohosting or my hosting standard, I I’m just not gonna do it. It’s not worth it.
04:45:54
What does short-term renting allowed you to do? Because you, you, you both have full-time jobs. And prior to this, you didn’t have any real estate experience, but now you have over 12, 12, 12 listings that you, that you have is what’s, what’s the number that you’re trying to reach as far as you know, your financial independence, retirement, and where are you currently right now?
04:46:16
So we’re trying to reach 12,000 a month in passive income off of the short term rental portfolio. My husband’s a little bit older than I am. He’s building his last really big house right now. He’s, it’s a big house though. They won’t be done for three or four years. So the idea is that he’ll build that house and then retire. What, what we wanna do with it is have passive income so that we can, we wanna work in a business together. Like we are awesome together. We call ourselves the wonder twins. We just get along great. We’re a great team. We compliment each other super well. And I love working with him. Like we can work all day together and we just it’s great. I, we just get along so good. I really just love working with him. So we that’s, what we wanna do is have our own, our own business. Whether we’re doing short term rental, or maybe like flipping a house, our
04:47:08
House. Yeah. We’re going around to our, the ones we own now fixing ’em up. Something’s always gotta be done. So that’s, that’s our plan.
04:47:18
We’re gonna buy an RV and drive around to all our different properties, you know?
04:47:22
That’s awesome. That’s so cool. What are you doing to set your units apart in these different locations?
04:47:29
So the big things that I think that drive guests to my listings are number one, my rates always, it doesn’t matter. Like people are always enticed first. I think it’s the rate they look at. And then I think you start to compete on how is it decorated inside? What does it look like? What’s the presentation and then location. So I use automated pricing tools and I always make sure my rates are very competitive and that makes sure that even in the slow season, we’re pretty booked.
04:48:00
Do you, do you have a system when you are building out properties or is every, every property, a little bit different, cuz when you’re picking up a property, I imagine that there might be some things that are missing or some things that aren’t to your standard. Do you have like a vetting process that you do with every new turnkey property or with any property that does need get furnished?
04:48:19
I do. So typically when we buy ’em as part of the inspection process, because you gotta travel to these things, I at least try to see ’em before I list them. So I go down and I have a big set of checklists for every single room and I go through and I visually during the home inspection process, like as he said, we do our own inspections. So I do like all he does like structural exterior. And I do like, doesn’t have luggage racks, you know, is the couch a sleeper sofa? Are there sheets for it? Do I have can openers and stuff like that. So I have a whole massive list of check sheets that I use and I check everything off. And then off of that, a list is generated of things that I have to go out and buy and I buy ’em and ship ’em to the onsite staff, like my gal Gatlinburg. And she puts ’em in for me
04:49:06
And your, your onsite staff. These are people that were already at the property working there or are you for,
04:49:13
So I tend to use the same people over and over. So like in Gatlinburg, for example, I have a gal who she’s got expertise in staging and cleaning and she takes care of all the guest complaints. So I don’t try to go find new people unless there’s a problem. And so far there hasn’t been, we’ve been really lucky. Like everyone we’ve found has just been great.
04:49:32
And she also has connections. If, if something happens to the boiler, you know, she, she knows a guy or the needs, some painting done, stuff like that. She’s, she’s been great there too. Hooking us up with different people to do that maintenance work.
04:49:53
How much time would you say that you’re spending on your, your business? Cause if you have this many properties, you have full-time jobs and these properties are all remote. What, what, what are the systems that you have in place? How much time are you spending on your business?
05:50:05
I’m a huge fan of automation. I, I pay a lot for automation and I don’t mind, I don’t mind it a bit. So I use Smartbnb for all my best to Jing turnover, Airbnb to schedule all the CA cleaners for my bookkeeping, like QuickBooks. I have a lot of the transactions being automatically classified when they come in, I’ve trained my VA to process all the sales. So again, to keep myself focused on the growing and what I think my queen B role is I probably spend eight to 10 hours a week total on the business.
05:50:40
And, and all that other time is, is focused on analyzing properties and trying to grow your portfolio.
05:50:45
Yep. Trying to find new deals, money, or working on the infrastructure. Right. Cause I think before we started the podcast, we were talking a little bit about my infrastructure challenges and I’m still trying to shore that up and get it just perfect. So I’m still working on that a little bit.
05:51:04
And what, what has been the most challenging part of scaling, scaling this business?
05:51:08
Honestly, the time that it takes to find the properties and finding the time, like I’ll make an offer on one site on scene, but I have to go see it, right. Like I wanna know, like if we hadn’t gone to see this other one in gall, we would’ve made an offer on it and bought it. And it was a mess. Certainly not turnkey enough for me. So I think really it’s finding the time, the Vacation time to just hop in a, in an airplane and go somewhere for four days and, and you know, do some speed. We love to do it, but oh my God, it’s the best time ever. We’re like, we love to buy real estate. Love it, love it, love it.
05:51:43
What’s the best piece of advice that you can give to somebody that is planning on purchasing a turnkey property because that’s a, that’s a lot of money that, that you have to invest. And there’s probably a lot of fear that comes with that when you’re making that type of investment. What, what’s the biggest thing that you’ve been able to take away from, from all these investments
05:51:59
In terms of buy and turnkey, make sure it’s actually turnkey. If you’re gonna buy turnkey, you need to go down and look at it for sure. So use the inspection period that you have to go down there yourself. Cuz a, an inspector is only gonna tell you, you can get a home inspection done and you should, if you want it, but they’re not gonna go and count. How many forks do you have on the drawer? How many hangers are there in a closet? And these are all things that make a difference and they matter. So, you know, my advice would be if you’re buying turn key to go down there and do that inventory and, and just make sure it’s truly turnkey, ready to go, make sure you have check-in instructions from the existing owner, cuz you may not realize it, but it takes a long time to put all that stuff together. And if you’ve never stayed there, you have no idea. Like what’s the easiest way to get there or you know, what are the peculiarities about check-in cuz you’ve never stayed there, but you’re gonna wanna be of the list, that thing as fast as you can and all of those things take you time and effort to get your hands on and, and do them well.
05:52:57
And how do you find someone that has, because obviously you’re using a, a real estate agent that is very experienced in that, in that market. But what if you’re trying to go to a new market and you’re trying to find these types of properties, what are you looking for in a real estate agent?
05:53:12
I look for someone who knows short term rental, if they don’t know short term rental don’t work with them cuz they don’t, they just don’t understand the numbers. They don’t understand what drives guests. They don’t, they don’t get it. You really need someone who, who has quite a few short term rental sales under their belt.
05:53:29
Are, are you the one that’s actively going out there and looking for these deals or are you relying on the, on the agent to provide those?
05:53:35
It’s both. So I’ll go out and I’ll hunt around on Zillow or realtor.com. But right now, like for Gatlinburg, because I bought for this agent in the past, we’re getting a lot of off market deals, which is really cool cuz you don’t pay as much in real estate commissions and stuff cuz they’re off market. So, you know, once you establish a relationship with somebody and you’re working with ’em, you know, that’s also a possibility it’ll save you a couple grand in real estate fees.
05:54:00
Are there any sources that you’re using? You said a Zillow, but are there any specific to short term rental that, that you, you use to find properties?
05:54:08
No, just like either the, the real estate agent or like Zillow or realtor.com.
05:54:13
05:54:20
I would invest in education for myself. That is the biggest thing. And for there’s a lot of people that say you can go out and you can learn this stuff on like the forums in bigger pockets or you can Google it and you can but think about what’s your time worth. Right? Like I always judge an hour of my time, by what general dynamics my company pays me. It, it just think about the time it takes you to learn it all and figure out and make the mistakes. You know, you can get a course for about 2000 bucks. That’s gonna teach you how to do all this stuff right out of the gate. They’re gonna give you the tools and the templates and you’re gonna be off and running really fast. And you’ll be very, very confident in what you’re doing too. And plus typically with these courses, you get some kind of an online community, like a Facebook group. So you have a, the people to ask questions to, you’re not doing it alone. I didn’t figure that out until about four months ago until now I’ve kind of been lone Wolf. So
05:55:16
Then again, take, I think take baby steps with us, starting with our house. I think that was a big, you know, getting everything going here,
05:55:27
Getting comfort,
05:55:28
Getting comfortable. And then, you know, Karen got all the stuff rolling and that’s when we decided to try one fairly remote hour away. So yeah. Start and start small. Start with baby steps. Yep. And get your feet wet.
05:55:47
And is lastly, is there one house rule that you’ve decided to put in your house manual that has saved you before, out of, out of all these properties, different locations, is there something that you have to include in all of your house rules?
05:55:59
No parties,
05:56:00
No parties,
05:56:01
No parties. That’s my big one.
05:56:03
No pets,
05:56:04
No pets. Pets. What cost you a fortune? They do a lot of damage. No parties, no pets.
05:56:08
That’s but a lot of people allow that and they don’t have a problem.
05:56:14
Awesome. And you’re, you’re a big, you’re a big reader, big fan of learning. Karen, what, what are some of the books that you recommend for people that are just starting off? You mentioned profit first. Are there any others? You said rich dad, poor dad. What, what are some of your favorites?
05:56:28
I would have to tell you rich dad, poor dad is what taught me about the power of real estate and got me really excited about real estate. And then I ran into profit first. So I had I, six months ago I was running my business checking account. I couldn’t tell you like on the third week of the current month, if I could pay the mortgages the following month, that’s how badly I was doing with my money. I had no idea where it was going, what I was doing, how much was it costing me every month to run this business. And I got on profit first and it changed my life. I don’t know. My business account is never more, less than $10,000 right now. I, I went from having no money to all kinds of money because I understood suddenly like how much I was spending. And, and I put myself on a budget, really changed my life. I, I can’t, I recommend that book to everyone, man, profit first Airbnb really worked well to get other,
05:57:24
Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of money that’s coming in and out with this business. How, how difficult was that to get your businesses all set to the profit first model?
05:57:32
It took me about six to eight weeks, cuz it’s a little bit hard to learn. Like I started it out in my own personal accounts, my personal checking to kind of get the hang of it. And then I went in and I used a tool called YAB to lay it all out and, and yap just really helps you manage your cash on your budgets. It gets, it helps you understand, like to plan for big expenses. So let’s just say you, you know, you have property taxes are due in January and they’re a thousand dollars. Well this is gonna help you not have a surprise in January. You’re gonna be putting the money aside every month. So it, it just really kinda makes sure that you always have money for things you’re not stressed out. You don’t lose any sleep. It also keeps you when you have an Airbnb, it’s so easy to blow money and decorating. You know that, oh, I want that little pillow or that picture. And this just really helps you control that urge a little bit. Cuz I found that’s where a lot of my money was going was just on stupid stuff that really doesn’t drive. Doesn’t move the needle in terms of your nightly occupancy or your, the amount of money you’re getting for the property. So.
05:58:36
Awesome. Well thank, thank you so much. Karen Scott, you, you are just, I, I met you at the bigger pockets event and we ran into each other. I, I just, I love being able to see you guys. I hope to see more of you and you guys are killing it. You guys are killing it. Hopefully I can get you on the show once you’ve kind of grown your portfolio a little bit more and you can share some of the new secrets of your, your success story.
05:58:58
Cool. Thanks so much for letting us on. This has been so fun. This was one of my goals for 2020, and you helped me kill it in 19. So thank you
05:59:06
All. Awesome. Yeah. We’ll we’ll we’ll have you on again in 2020.
05:59:10
Cool.
05:59:10
Okay. All right. Take care everybody. And 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 like to talk to host that have been featured in these episodes, as well as the community, going over to our Facebook group, the host nation.
