STRSS 66 – Turning 17 Long Term Rentals Into Short Term Rentals w/ Brian Tibbs

Video Transcript

 

00:00:00

But I think there’s something else too. That is an advantage for short term that that maybe people are missing is some people don’t want to be in mass groups. And so they’re not gonna go to hotels. I mean, imagine going down to the lobby in the morning and eating breakfast at those little waffle stations where 50 people touch the handles, no, nobody wants to do that. Right. So what are you gonna do instead? Are you just gonna stay at home for the next 12 months? No, we’ll drive somewhere where we can go enjoy and we’ll book an Airbnb. It’s our own house. It’s been cleaned and sanitized. There’s not a bunch of people walking and out of the lobby. And so I think even in this COVID time properties who position themselves smartly could see at least the same, or maybe even see some increase in business.

  

00:00:43

This is episode number six, six. So 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. That’ll help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business. Like any exceptional host. We all strive for five star reviews. So please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy is it 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, hear what is going on, host nation.

  

00:01:24

I’m super excited to be back again with you this week. So this has been a really exciting week because there’s been a lot more interest in the short term rental space. You know, it’s interesting from a podcaster content creator, seeing just the amount of engagement and being able to keep an eye on what the market is as far as interest, right? When we hit COVID 19, we saw a significant drop in the amount of listenership and just engagement. It was also kind of poor timing because we had just released our program, the Vacation Rental machine Formula, which is our premium course, teaching you how to be able to grow a short Rental business using master lease, investing cohosting and buy and hold. We call this concept, the RCB model of investing. And I have a lot of really good feedback from the people that have gone through as early adopters, but we’ve been seeing a lot more downloads even in the past week, as well as people getting our free book, Airbnb secrets revealed and attending our masterclass on the 10 steps for building a short term rental business.

  

00:02:21

More confidence in the short term rental space is good, especially for an investor standpoint, more people are purchasing properties. More people are interested in acquiring Vacation rentals and shorter rentals as well as our turnkey master lease program. So having co-hosted our shorter Rental company get a lot more interest is definitely a boost to the spirits. So I wanna encourage everybody that is feeling a little shaken from this whole COVID 19 pandemic, but please know that there’s a lot more exciting things coming in the future. One of the exciting things that we’re gonna be doing is I’m actually going to be helping my good friend, Erica Mueller, who is the founder of Vrolio for those of you that don’t know I’m licensed agent and a lot of the content. And a lot of the people that listen to the show are very investor focused. If you’re interested in either purchasing a Vacation Rental or short term rental, cohost it or management company will be sending out emails in regards to properties that do become available really excited to be able to work with Erica and her team as Vrolio is an amazing tool that I highly recommend anybody that is interested in the Vacation Rental Rental space.

  

00:03:25

Definitely check out as a professional operator. I recommend also going to Vrolio dot com slash zone watch. And this is a really cool tool because you can actually see a map of all of the areas that are either light heavily or not allowed for short-term rentals. So definitely be on the lookout. If you are interested in any aspect of short Rental Vacation, Rental investing, we’re gonna be putting out a lot more amazing content. In regards this week, I have the special owner of speaking with Brian TIS, the owner and CEO of my short term home located in Meridian and Boise, Idaho. In this episode, Brian shares how he was able to acquire 19 rentals through buy and hold the vest thing, how he manages his properties while living in south America and how he’s been able to survive the COVID 19 pandemic. If you like my show notes for this episode, go to Short Term Sage dot com slash SDR 66.

  

00:04:13

Or if you like my show notes sent directly Sierra max every week, then go to shorttermsage.com slash show notes with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of short term rental success stories. In this episode, I have the special honor of speaking with Brian Ts. Brian is currently back from Brazil. He lives in the Boise Meridian, Idaho area, and he’s gonna be sharing with us his story. So Brian, would you please introduce yourself to the host nation, let them know who you are and what inspired you to get into short term rentals?

  

00:04:42

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Brian Ts and I have been in short term rental since 2016, and it’s actually a fun story. I was back living here in the us just for a few weeks and the house I was staying in flooded. And so in the middle of the night, I’m scrambling trying to find a solution. And there were only three properties in all of Boise of available on Airbnb, Airbnb, Airbnb. So as soon as I solved my crisis, my mind started to spin. Like, why am I renting my apartment out for 12 months when I could be renting it for a hundred bucks a night on Airbnb? So that was the beginning of that story.

  

00:05:21

And so you said there was only three properties back in 2016, cuz right now I, I, wow. I just checked the air DNA. It says that there’s like 950 something. So that’s quite the increase.

  

00:05:33

Yeah. That was just the ones that were available on a search. Right. So I’m sure there were quite a few more, but yeah, the, the supply has increased over the years for sure.

  

00:05:42

Wow. Well, we’ll definitely be talking about that, but if you wouldn’t mind telling a little bit about your backstory, you said that you actually got started in real estate in 96. So that’s nearly 20 years after the fact of just getting into real estate that you transitioned over to being full-time for short-term rentals, your whole portfolio, just transitioning those over. So could you kind of talk about your first experience in real estate and then what led you to where you are today?

  

00:06:07

Yeah, so I was actually 19. I was in college and I wanted to, I didn’t wanna pay rent and I didn’t wanna have to pay a mortgage. So I bought a duplex and I rented out one side and then had a couple of guys living with me on my side and actually made money. So I didn’t have to pay any rent or mortgage. And that was just the beginning of my interest in, in real estate. And every year after that, I continued to invest and grow my portfolio

  

00:06:34

And and you seven 17 properties you have in your portfolio right now. And those you all, you own every single one of those properties did that all start. So what was the trajectory of you acquiring these properties? Cause that’s, that’s, that’s a lot to own.

  

00:06:49

Yeah, so, I mean, I was just, I mean, I, every time I had an opportunity to buy another property, I would, and you know, thankfully through the 2008, 9, 10, 11, 12 crisis, things had to slow down, but I was able to survive and, and come outta that. Okay. And I just have always had the philosophy that I wanted to own my own properties to plan for, you know, the future for my family. So that was just happened organically naturally.

  

00:07:16

And you don’t, you’re not a full-time manager, you actually have another job. Do you mind kinda sharing what you do?

  

00:07:24

Yeah. So I’m the CEO of Dale global and it’s a, it’s a non-profit that I co-founded back in 2006. And that was when I moved with my wife, from the us, from the Boise area, moved to Guatemala and have lived in Latin America ever since. So going on 15 years. And so what we do is we find train and send missionaries to go all around the world.

  

00:07:51

Wow. You, so you’ve been, you’ve been working in south America for the past 15 years with your family, but you’ve acquired 17 properties all in the, the Boise, Meridian, Idaho area.

  

00:08:05

Yeah. And you know, that number has gone up and down. I’ve bought and sold. And the activity, obviously when I moved from the United States and we started a nonprofit, I didn’t have a lot of income coming in. So things slowed down. And then the 2000 8, 9, 10 crash things slowed down. But you know, over the last few years, the real estate market in Boise and in the most of the United States has been really good. And so it’s been, it’s enabled us to continue to, to reinvest and acquire a few more properties.

  

00:08:34

So you’ve been, you’ve been acquiring these properties overseas. How, how are you, why this particular market was, was so of interest to you from the long-term Rental perspective?

  

00:08:44

Yeah. I know that I kind of, my whole life is just bloom where you’re planted. I I’m just from here. And that’s why I, you know, I, I needed a place to stay when I was in college. And so that’s why I started in this valley and just have stayed here. And, you know, I constantly look at the top 10 cities to invest and Boise’s usually on the list somewhere. And so it just happens that I was planted in a, in a great fertile soil. So I’ve just decided to stuck stick here. Now I have researched other markets that are also on that top 10 list. And I always end up coming back to Boise cuz I know the market. And, and while there might be a city that edges it out one year or whatever, it’s still a great market to be in.

  

00:09:26

And, and what, what makes Boise such a great market? Because like you said, in, in 2016, you know, there’s only about three, you know, when you, when you looked online, there’s only about three Airbnb on there, but now there’s, you know, 950 plus looks like it’s definitely grown. What about this particular market was, was so attractive other than just, you know, residing there.

  

00:09:50

Yeah. Well, good question. I mean, anybody who does property management knows that having handyman and, and cleaners and plumbers and electricians and all those things that you need to make your properties function is not easy to acquire. And so if, if I were to go into another market, I’d have to recreate all that stuff. So there’s a barrier to me going into another market. So that’s one factor. The other factor, I think the reason why Boise particularly and other cities like it that are attractive is that we’re not kind of the, any of the coastal cities where there’s super high regulations, property values are still relatively low, although they are, they are rising and we’re just, you know, it’s a high quality of life. We have some of the best whitewater rapids here in the Boise area out just outside of Boise. We have a ski hill, 16 miles away, lot of outdoor activities. And so it’s a place that people just like to come to once it’s discovered

  

01:10:47

And from, yeah, because for the past, you know, 15, 20 years you’ve been acquiring all of this real estate from the long-term Rental per landlord perspective, what, what was the, what was the profit for those long-term rentals and what were you trying to look for in that particular deal

  

01:11:07

In long term rentals? You know, there’s three factors really that I look at whenever I’m considering a property, the one is, yeah. Is it gonna cash flow? Is it gonna generate positive cash flow from the rents? But number two, what’s my financing look like? How much am I gonna be paying down on the financing every month? But probably the most important factor is the appreciation. How much is this property gonna go up in value? Cause I wasn’t really in the long term landlord business, I was in the real estate appreciation business that’s so that’s what I was going for. And I need the tenants to, to, to pay the rents. So, you know, really in the early days, if I could get it to cash flow and, and break, even I was happy.

  

01:11:45

So you, you were counting more on the appreciation back then when you were acquiring these properties. So these properties though, were you like fixing them up and, and or were you just taking out loans and then acquiring these properties?

  

01:11:58

Yeah. Good question. For the most part. And especially when I moved overseas, I was not acquiring properties that needed to be fixed up because I didn’t, I wasn’t here. I, that would’ve been a, a mess. So really I acquired properties that really fit, fit, where I wanted to be investing and, and the kinds of clientele that I thought I could get the maximum rents out of. So I didn’t really ever do those, you know, fixer upper deals.

  

01:12:20

So all of your properties right now, these are, these are all like remodeled homes that were, you know, ready to move in and you would just put a tenant in there.

  

01:12:29

I have bought several brand new homes just from the builder, just wanting to be ready to go. But yeah, for the most part, the rest were homes that are either didn’t have any deferred maintenance or had been remodeled and are ready to go.

  

01:12:42

Wow. You know, we we’ve had some other guests on the show that, you know, have acquired, you know, larger portfolios. I think one of the largest that like for single families they owned was about 12 or 13, but at, at a certain point, you know, you start to tap out as far as like how much the bank is willing to give you. How, how did you kinda circumvent that? You know, if they’re saying you own 17 properties and you’re a missionary, you know, CEO of a non-profit in Brazil, like how, how could you be held accountable for all of this?

  

01:13:09

Yeah, that’s a good question. Somehow. We always figured it out and I, you know, I’ve, I’ve always kept a very, very conservative strategy. I, I try not to acquire another property until I’ve gotten my debt to equity down to a, a certain level. That for two reasons, one, I don’t wanna be stuck. Like I could have been in 2008 or right now with COVID with massive leverage and, and lose everything. And so I’ve wanted to keep a more conservative strategy on that side, but also so that the banks will talk to me. So thankfully up until now, we haven’t had too much problem with that. There’s been a few loans that have been kind of touch and go for a while, but we’ve always seemed to figure it out.

  

01:13:49

And, and these are, these are just regular commercial loans that you’re able to take out. This isn’t like hard money or anything like that.

  

01:13:56

Actually, these are all residential loans. So I don’t own anything currently that’s more than four units. So it qualifies as a residential loan. So they’re just individual resident residential loans. You’re allowed to have up to 10 before you have to start doing commercial loans. And I’m under that just barely. So I’m still able to get commercial loans cuz if a building has four units in it, a fourplex, that’s just one residential loan, for example.

  

01:14:22

Got it. So you only own, you own less than 10 buildings, but these are all multi-family buildings that you own equaling 17.

  

01:14:29

Well, I, not, some of ’em are single family homes, but some of them are multifamily homes. So yeah. So got it. Two fourplex is a duplex and then some single family homes.

  

01:14:39

Got it. And alright, so, so all of these properties that you’ve been acquiring has this, when you were doing the, the long-term Rental strategy, was this able to, I mean, you said that you were breaking even, so this wasn’t really sustaining your lifestyle, was it?

  

01:14:53

No, I was, we were living off of my salary from the nonprofit, which obviously is not huge, but all along the real estate has really been just me preparing for the future for my family cuz you know, the nonprofit’s not going to provide us with a great big pension. So we needed to really think for our take care of ourselves for, for our future. So,

  

01:15:13

And can you talk about that transitionary period from, you know, because you’ve been a long-term real estate investor for a long time, but there was a particular moment when you said, okay, you know, I’m gonna change up my strategy, which is, you know, really, really big. Can you talk about that moment?

  

01:15:29

Yeah. So it literally, I’m, I’m trudging through two inches of water in my home. That’s been flooded in the middle of the night and just kind of thinking through what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? And, and Airbnb kept coming into my mind. I’d I’d heard of it. I’d never done it before, but so we decided to go ahead and book an Airbnb. And then when I had to pay 150 bucks a night, I was just like, this is outrageous. And that’s when it started to click, well, why can’t, why can’t I do this with my units? And I started to kind of go through the pros and cons and ah, I don’t want people banging their suitcases in my door every other day, you know, that kind of stuff. And I don’t wanna become a, a hotel concierge, but after I ran the numbers, I just said, listen, if I can build a team that can do all that stuff, why not? So that was, that was the direction we went and I decided to start with two units right away and put two units on and they booked immediately. And so I flipped all the rest of my units at that time. I think I had nine, nine units and I flipped the rest of ’em over within the next three months and the rest is history.

  

01:16:37

Wow. So, so it was just that experience of, you know, that 2016, you listed your place online, it got booked up right away. And you cuz you were paying $150 a night, have you, did you know like, were you doing like market research? Do, were you looking at the regulations or were you just kinda like, okay, well, I mean there’s, someone’s making money, so I’ll just jump in.

  

01:16:58

Well, in terms of regulations, I was really pretty ignorant on that, but there wasn’t a whole lot back in 2016, maybe in San Francisco, but in Boise there wasn’t any talk of, of, of this. It wasn’t, you know, the investors in town weren’t putting their homes on Airbnb in 2016. So I was, I guess I was early to market on that in terms of market research. There wasn’t really a lot to go on. I don’t know if our DNA was, was in existence at that time or if they had as, as good a tools as they have now, but I was really flying blind. So I was just looking at the, at the units that were available in Boise, what they were going for, trying to look, you know, in Airbnb, Airbnb, Airbnb on their availability calendar just and try to get a sense of what was going on.

  

01:17:40

And I kind of came to the conclusion, there’s one of two possibilities, one there’s huge demand and everything is getting snapped up right away or two there’s no demand. That’s why nobody’s listing their properties on Airbnb. It was one of those two things. And I thought, well, I mean, let’s give it a shot and see what happens. And that’s why I just put two units on just to test it. And when it, when it went so well, I said, okay, let’s flip it over cuz I’d run all the numbers. And, and it’s just was really hard to say that it wouldn’t be a, a good fit if people would actually book.

  

01:18:12

Right. So yeah, that, that’s one of the scary things. Like some people are in markets, you know, even, even some properties that people send to us and they want us to like, you know, check out their properties and like South Dakota, you know, there’s, there’s not that much competition. The, the people that are listing their properties there, it’s questionable. Whether, you know, it’s like, but you, you don’t know until you list it. And from what you said, like you listed it, you were trying to book right away, it got booked up. But then, you know, but the thing about you Brian, is, is that you are also not located primarily, you know, in the states you, you live outside. So trying to build a team and build a business remotely can be really scary for a lot of people. How did you, how did you start that? Were you present for the first few months or how did you handle that transitionary period?

  

01:19:02

Great question. We actually, we were, we left one week after that flood in my house, we went back to, I guess we were in Ecuador at the time. So we went back to Ecuador and I did, however, I hired the lady that rented my unit to me and I basically said, Hey, would you manage it? I’ll give you a percentage. And so she managed it for the first year and that, and in that time I began to develop my own team and, and really find the people that I wanted to have on my team. And, and by and large, the team that I built in 2017 is what I still have today.

  

01:19:38

What did that, that team, that, what does your team look like when it first started to where it is now?

  

01:19:44

Yeah, so I’ll give a shout out to Chris and Whitney Smith. So they own and manage a, a billing company, a payment processing company, and I’ve done some work with them in the past. And I asked them if they could do all my payment collection and handled accounting and, and take care of guests. And so they’ve basically created a division of their company to take care of of my stuff. And so I rely on them day in and day out for all the guest inquiries and toilet plugs and all this kind of stuff that they need to do every day to keep things going. And then beyond that, I’ve, I’ve hired business development person to, to really go out and seek corporate deals like from corporations that are in town or construction companies or traveling nurses and that kind of stuff. And, and then also hired an inspector that, that goes in after all the cleaners and just inspects the properties to make sure they’re up to the caliber that we want for our guests.

  

02:20:42

So you, you hired somebody that had a, a tax accounting business to, to manage your properties for you? Well,

  

02:20:50

It wasn’t tax per se. It was just a company that handles billing, processing payment collection, that kind of stuff. And, and they’d done some work well, they basically, they basically handled all my payment collection for my long-term tenants. I didn’t do a traditional property property additional manage management company. I know a lot of out outta town owners do that, but I’ve had such bad experiences with property managers that I’d asked this company crown to, to handle my long term tenants. And when I decided to switch over, I basically asked them, would you be able to evolve with me and, and, and take on this kind of new aspect? And so they, they agreed.

  

02:21:30

So, so you had a, a small business owner that you were working with and, you know, you had this relationship with them and you just said, Hey, you know, I’m, I’m going back overseas. I’ve got these properties that I just furnished and I’d like to list them as shorter mentals. Do you mind, would you like to take over this business? Was that basically, you know, in summary what the conversation was

  

02:21:51

Exactly. And we sat down and we didn’t really know, you know, this industry didn’t really exist. And so we didn’t really know what kind of a percentage would be fair. We didn’t know. So we just kind of guessed and we have modified that agreement along the, along through the, through the months and years, but, but yeah, and it’s worked out well, it enables me to be overseas and, and not have to worry about all the intricacies of, of being essentially a hotel type organization.

  

02:22:18

So this person that you, that you were working with, I mean, how, how do you, how did you even set up that relationship? Like, you know, like, like standard operating procedures or like anything like that, like, this is a person that has no experience in hospitality or short rentals, they just process payments and now you’re transitioning them over to really a, a full-time job. How, how did that, how did that work?

  

02:22:41

Yeah, so I’m, I’m more involved in that kind of stuff. Kinda the higher level stuff than maybe a lot of absentee landlords would be where they just handed over to a property manager and let them take care of it. And in the short term realm, you have companies likeso or VA Casa. I’m not sure how you say it, where they handle all the, all the management. So as we go along and we learn things, I update our operations manual. I also went out and found the customer management, the guest management software that we use. And I found several other little components that make that all work. And so I’ve done that rather than relying on a full service customer service, outsource agents. Rather what they do is they handle all the day to day stuff, the guest check-ins the cleanings, the maintenance and all that kind of stuff. And I kind of handle the business site.

  

02:23:35

Got it. So you, you basically set the foundation and then you allowed them to be able to be like the communications, the guest experience, check, and check out turnovers. And they handle all of, more of the daily operations while you’re handling more of the backend business infrastructure. Okay. And how, how did, how do you have a conversation with someone like that? What, what did that look like when you said, Hey, this is my idea. Do you wanna do this?

  

02:24:02

Yeah, it wasn’t, it wasn’t too hard because like I said, they were handling my, the management of my tenants. And so we just really had a discussion, okay, this, this is what’s different in a short term model versus a long term model. This is where you’re gonna have increased activity and work. Obviously there will be more revenue, so your cut will be bigger as well. So let’s just talk through the, the realities of that. And, and they were eager to do it and liked to create a new segment. And, and I know that they’ve picked up other properties too, from other people that they’re doing this for as well. And so they liked the challenge. They wanted to do stuff that wasn’t so dry, like payment processing, and kind of be out there in the world a little bit. And, and here we are.

  

02:24:42

Wow. Very interesting. And one of the people that you said that you also acquired was a business development manager, someone that is going out and trying to find corporate corporate clientele, that, which is pretty, pretty interesting. What, what’s the reason for that? How did that come about?

  

02:24:57

Yeah, good question. So the, the first person that I hired back in 2016 was really good at that was really good at finding deals that didn’t come through VRBO or VRBO or Airbnb, and they, and she just had connections with, with other people. And I didn’t wanna lose that aspect of it. And so I decided to hire somebody, their, their full-time job. Well, they weren’t full-time, they just worked from home, but their full responsibility was to go out and find deals. And I think at our peak about 60% of our nights were booked through him rather than through one of the channels. Wow. It’s not that high anymore. Now it’s probably 25 or 30%, but still is a significant part of our, of our portfolio or our, our occupancy, which is why we’re able to get it up to nearly 80% occupancy, average over the last four years.

  

02:25:48

Well, so what’s, what’s the average occupancy for this area, because this is, I believe the, the Midwest is this pretty seasonal, is it about six months on six months off?

  

02:25:59

So we’re considered Northwest. So we’re over by Washington and Oregon, but yeah, it’s, it, it is very seasonal December, January, February, or really rotten months. They’re very, very slow. June, July, August are gangbusters very, very busy and then everything else is kind of in between. So, but yeah, it’s very seasonal here.

  

02:26:22

And what I mean that that’s, that’s pretty, you know, was it foresight or hindsight of you forward thinking of you to acquire someone that would be, you know, strictly for corporate clients? He said, though, in 2016, there wasn’t that much competition. So usually when people start thinking of acquiring more direct bookings for short term rental business, it’s because like they, they see a lot more competition. They’re trying to diversify their, their, you know, their, their occupancy, their clientele. What, what made you wanna go that route versus just sticking with the OTAs?

  

02:26:54

Well, really, it was the person that I had hired out of the gate. She was just really strong in that area and had connections cuz she did, she has also managed other people’s properties. And so she was from San Francisco. So she kinda learned the game early, came to Boise, brought the concept here and, and really just watching how that affected my portfolio. I just knew we needed to have that aspect, especially for the winter. When, you know, just, if you just sit back and wait for Airbnb to send you business, it’s, it’s, it’s not enough to keep, to keep, to pay the bills through the winter. So what we try to do is we try to get longer. Short-term stays so a month or two or three or four months to sign up in October, November, give ’em a good rate and try just to, you know, let’s just ride the winner out.

  

02:27:42

One, one question that I forgot to ask was what, what was that? Cause when you got started, I mean, you had to purchase a lot of furniture. You had, you said you had about nine or seven units. How, how much did you have to spend for that initial upfront cost for all those units?

  

02:27:54

So actually I negotiated with the person that I had hired to that she put her furniture into my units and I don’t know where she got it all or how much she spent on it, but she put her furniture in the units and that was all negotiated in the rate that she got.

  

02:28:10

Wow. So the, you know, that that’s, that’s gotta be, that’s gotta be pretty, pretty scary. I mean, that’s a lot of units and in your places, you know, you have multi-families, you know, duplexes. So it’s like, you’ve got a lot of rooms, a lot of units. That’s a, that’s a lot, that’s a lot of furniture, but, but she, but she said that she would be willing to upfront that initial investment because she was gonna be getting a higher percentage based off, based off of that. So as soon as you did that transition though, did you, what, what was the, what, what did your income look like from when you were long term renting? Cause you, you said that you’re more breaking even to, when you decided to start short-term renting. Was it pretty significant?

 

02:28:49

Yeah. So I mean revenue more than doubled. I think that’s, I’ve, I’ve heard other people say the same thing, revenue more than double, just barely more than doubled. And we went from breaking even, or a little bit better than breaking even to profiting somewhere around $600 a month per unit on, you know, averaging it out over, over time. Summer’s better, the winter’s worse, but that’s basically what it came down to.

  

02:29:13

And, and that was, you were, you were doubling your revenue, but then you also, you know, you hired the, your, your property manager and then you also hired the business development manager. What was your take home after you started building at your team?

  

02:29:26

Yeah, that’s that’s net. So $600 a month per unit is the net amount.

  

02:29:31

Wow. That, so that’s after you’ve already paid for all your, your expenses, everything like that. And you all your people, you

  

02:29:37

Know, the revenue doubled. So there that increases the budget and gives you an ability to, to handle all those things. But for people who are looking at doing this for the first time, it’s not the same as long-term, there’s a lot more expense involved. So you hear the word double the revenue. Yeah. It, the revenue goes up, but there’s a lot more too taking care of a guest that thinks of you more as a hotel that a long-term tenant where you pay the money to get them in the door. And then they sit there for a year or two or three and you don’t really have to deal with much other than occasional things. It’s very different.

  

03:30:09

And did you start to scale up at that point when you saw that you’re, you know, it was basically kind of flipping a switch and then you started, you know, seeing all this revenue coming in, did you say like, okay, I gotta start scaling or how did you start handling that, that, that income coming in?

  

03:30:25

Yeah, I did. I, I, I saw how well it was working and I mean, I probably would’ve continued to invest anyway as, as cash became available, but I, I saw that opportunity. And so I leveraged some of my other properties refinanced and, and, and purchased. I went from nine to 17 in about two years. Wow. Yeah. Just trying to get, get more units on the system.

  

03:30:47

And so two, two year period, you, you doubled, you doubled your unit account, you know, doubling your revenue and were the, were the banks or, I mean, cuz you’re owning all these properties. Were the banks suspicious? Were they like, Hey, you know, we don’t, we don’t trust short term rental revenue. We only, you know, guarantee for long term tenants.

  

03:31:06

Yes. I, you know, it’s interesting. So on the residential loans, I didn’t have too much problem and I was honest, I, I told them what I was doing and they would be dubious like what in the world? And then I’d show ’em my numbers. And they’re like, okay, this is, this is legitimate. So yeah, I didn’t have too much problem. I did. I was trying to build an additional 17 units downtown Boise. And I abandoned that just a couple of months ago because of regulatory issues and permit issues and, and COVID as well. I was, I got a little bit spooked by the whole COVID problem. And that one was proving to be a little bit more tricky because I’m going now to commercial, a bigger commercial loan. And I, I did find a bank that was willing to work with me, but they were gonna make me sell another building. And I had to do all these crazy things to make it, make it fit. So it was getting harder as I got out of the residential loans. It, it is, it is more complicated cuz they just don’t have that mentality that this is a viable business cuz they get spooked because they say, well you could have 0% occupancy next month. Right? Well technically yes. But, but here’s my four years of history showing that that never happens. So, but that’s not good enough for the, the bean counters at the banks. So most of them, so,

  

03:32:24

So how do, how do you plan on, on growing your portfolio?

  

03:32:27

Well, good question honestly right now I wanna see, I wanna see the United States come out of the COVID recession before I make any moves, but my longer term vision or my mid-range vision is I wanna get into a, a larger unit count. Multi-property so more than four in the short term rental business, it’s, it’s much more efficient if you have all your units close by. Plus I’ve also found that it’s very advantageous to have multiple units that are the same layout in the same spot for calendar optimization. Cuz if I have somebody book five days this week in one unit and the next door unit five days next week, I could move that one guest over to the other unit and open my calendar up in the other unit. And there’s just lots of different configurations that you could do to optimize your calendar. When you have multiple units that are the same,

  

03:33:20

Hey, this is Julian and I wanted to be able to give you our newest book. Airbnb secrets revealed how to build a fortune on Airbnb without owning property. In this book, we talk about the concepts of Rental arbitrage investing as well as cohosting and how you can build a business, leveraging other people’s properties. This book is perfect for the new short term rental investor. And it’s something that I wish that I had when I first started as it would’ve saved me a lot of trouble and helped me to understand how to be able to leverage the power of short term rental investing in your own real estate portfolio. If you like to get our newest book completely for free go to Short Term Sage dot com slash free book. Now back to the show, how much time are you putting into this business? Cause I mean, you know, it sounds like you have a lot of moving pieces. I mean, you’re, you’re in, you know, you spend all your time outside of the us, you, you have all these different people that are on your team. You’re you have to learn all these, this different stuff. Like how much time are I actually spending on the business right now?

  

03:34:14

Yeah. Be because of my job in, in normal times I travel a ton. And so there are some weeks where I don’t put any time into it, but I would say an average is between two to 10 would be the average number of hours I put in every week into this business. I mostly just monitoring, you know, finances, statistics, guest, satisfaction, scores, you know, the star ratings. I just monitor that stuff. I have a team meeting once a month with my team just to go over all the reviews and just look at where we’re doing things right. What we need to improve and that kind of stuff. But the rest of it, I, I let them handle it. The exception to that is when we acquire a new property, then I put a lot of time into getting that up and running and making sure that it’s the right property for one. And then all the work that you have to do to get approved and to buy it and then to get it staged and all that kind of stuff. So, but that’s a, that’s not an everyday occurrence, obviously.

  

03:35:09

How long did it take you to be able to get to that, that system set in place that you could spend about five hours? Because you know, obviously there’s a learning curve to, to, to this business. And a lot of people when they just start off, they, you know, maybe they just use one tool or they, they just do one thing, but they’re still trying to do everything manually. When did it come to you? That was just like, okay, you know, now, now I can kind of kind of sit back.

  

03:35:33

Yeah. So I, I, I was forced to do this right because I wasn’t physically there. And I know a lot of owner operators have the tendency to try to do everything themselves. And my warning to other people out there would be really resist that if you’re, if your model is, if your model works, hire the people to do that day to day work, if you can’t generate enough revenue to hire other people, then maybe it’s not a viable business, if you wanna scale it. And so I’ve been forced to be disciplined, not to handle the day to day work and let my team do it. And that’s been a blessing it’s enabled me to really only focus on developing the business and making sure that our practices are, are going in the right direction. And to answer your question, I’m still not done developing the systems. I feel like I’m constantly tweaking and trying to find new software like pricing software or, or cleaner scheduling software, stuff like that to, to help us be more effective. And so that’s where I focus all almost all of my energy

  

03:36:34

Going back, I wanted to hit on your team cuz you, you have a pretty unique team layout. And so the, the business development manager, this person that’s going out and finding these corporate clients, what’s the reason for hiring a full-time person for this was this not part-time work. Is this really qualified for full time? Could, could it not have been like, you know, just messaging a few companies? Like what, what equals a full time?

  

03:36:58

I’m actually, I’m actually between business development managers at the very moment, but just a couple months ago before my first guy decided to go a different direction, he really was just part-time and I let him put as much energy and effort into it as he wanted to. And that’s how I advertise the position. I, I advertise that it could be as many hours as you want, but probably around 20 a week, 20 hours a week. And really the idea was just go out there and try to find, try to find deals, insurance companies and traveling nurses and all that kind of stuff to, to bring in those guests to fill in, to fill in the gaps. And so, yeah, that’s the, that’s the vision for us is now if we to grow to 30, 40, 50 units, then yeah, we, we may need to have one or multiple people doing this full time.

  

03:37:45

That’s that’s interesting. You know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve never, I’ve never heard, I’ve never spoken to somebody yet that has had like a full-time business development person. Like what, what are they doing? Because like when, when you, when you find that corporate client it’s like a stream and they keep on kind of pouring you more clients, what’s the reason why you need a full-time person to be able to contact somebody that would then, you know, basically just funnel you more, more clients.

  

03:38:10

Good question. Somebody who books on Airbnb just goes to the website, they fill out all the information, they hit hit reserv reserve, right. But a corporate client, they’re not gonna be that. It’s not that easy. And so while we do have a website that you can go and you can log on, I want the business development person to maximize the nightly revenue. And so if you’ve got an insurance client, you know how that insurance company works, you know, the kinds of rates that they’re willing to pay and you know how that works. And so I want that person, I want my business development manager interfacing with the guest and the insurance company. And it’s kind of another, one of those things that maybe a typical owner operator would do that themselves. I don’t have the luxury of doing that. I, I have a full-time job.

  

03:38:53

I can’t just in the middle of the day, take a lead and, and deal with it. So I need that development manager. That’s, that’s got, you know, sales experience that knows what it means to negotiate a deal and, and be able to work inside of our numbers. Like this is our minimum. You could go down to that, but that’s how it affects your commission, et cetera, but try to go for as high a nightly rate as you can get on, on all these corporate deals. So yeah, it just requires somebody that’s got a little bit more savvy and, and like I said, it’s a big chunk of our, of our business. And so I can’t imagine not having that on. I can’t imagine what it’s like in a drought to just sit and wait for VRBO and Airbnb to send you GU customers. I, I, I can’t imagine that

  

03:39:34

Typically, you know, the short, short term guests are the kind of the bread and butter of a short term rental business. You know, they provide the most, provide the most cash, you know, during that high season. It’s, it’s really, really good during those low seasons though. That’s when you’re kind of really looking, you know, you’re kind of really relying on those, those longer term, more medium term corporate clients, but it’s still not like the most profitable sometimes it’s break even sometimes it’s break even. So how does, how, how can you justify the cost of a business development manager when they, you know, when it’s, you know, it’s more like a break even cost to get those types of corporate clients?

  

04:40:14

Yeah. So my commission structure for my business development managers is based on solely on commission, right? So kind of like a real estate agent, whatever you bring in, you get a percentage of it. And I just make sure that the Formula is such that I’m covering my costs before they start getting the, the higher percentages. They could make a really good percentage, but they’d have to be a really high nightly rate.

  

04:40:38

How do you structure or what’s the structure for that type of relationship? I’ve never heard of something like this. How do you even approach someone that says like, Hey, if you help book my place, then you get, you get a cut of, of the bookings.

  

04:40:51

Yeah. So the way I’ve done it is kind of a two tier structure. So we have our break even number and, and I’ll give you 5% of that break, even number anything above that, I’m gonna split it 50 50 with you. And so, so their incentive is to not just get the minimum, cuz that’s a really small commission, but to, to, you know, if you can raise it 10 bucks, then you get $5 for every night that they’re in of those $10 that you go above the minimum and that’s set by every property. And we adjust it a little bit by season, but it’s, you know, I’ve got spreadsheets that they can plug the numbers in and it helps ’em figure out how they should be quoting things. And yeah.

  

04:41:28

How, how do, how do you, how do you handle that, that business development manager? When, you know, they’re, let’s say during high season you’re able to profit like from the OTAs really, really well, but then you have your, your BizDev guy who, you know, with a corporate client, they’re not gonna be paying the, as high of a premium as a short term get, and you’re not gonna be receiving as much if it’s coming through the business development manager one, because it’s a corporate client and two, because they’re getting a cut of all your revenue. How do you handle that, that balancing relationship?

  

04:41:58

That is a very astute question, cuz that is an issue. They, the business development guy always has better numbers in the, not June, July, August. Right? So September, all the way back through domain, they have better because our calendars more open that’s, that’s the main issue. But if you know, I I’m, I’m kinda, I kind of have the mindset. I’m not gonna turn away a booking. And so if, if, if the biz dev guy brings somebody to me, it’s not quite as high profit margin, but they’re, but they’re gonna lock in for 60 days. It’s really hard for me to say, no, you know, it’s just in the short term business, you know, you’re constantly panicking because you’re looking at your calendar 30 days down the road, you’re like, this isn’t gonna happen. I guess I should learn. Cause it always does happen. But, but to have that security of 60 days, and even if it’s at $70 a night instead of $80 a night, there’s a lot of security in that.

  

04:42:55

And, and your unit’s booked and you don’t have to worry about it for, for 60 days. So I, I just always try to accept him one. I want for my guy to get his return on his investment too, because I really need them in the winter. Right. And so I’m willing to, to play a little bit, but also yes, if you can get a hundred dollars a night instead of $80 a night, but you’re gonna be so on short term stays, let’s say you get a hundred dollars a night, but they only book four out of the seven days. Right? So my long term guy or my corporate guy, he’s booking people solid and I have zero vacancy. And so, you know, you look at the numbers, it’s not that much of a sacrifice even to have a lower nightly rate

  

04:43:38

That that’s, that’s super interesting, the way that you structured that the, the other person that you, you created another role as a solution manager. What, what is that?

  

04:43:46

Yeah, so well solution manager, that’s, that’s basically our person that just makes sure if a guest presents a problem or a question or something breaks, they’re going out there to solve the problem. Right. So I don’t wanna demean them and call them a handyman, but they’re doing some handyman type stuff, but they have to be more alert than that. They have to, you know, if there there’s, there’s things that you can do to turn a bag review into a five star review. So if somebody brings a pet and they won’t calm down because of the neighbor pet or something like that, and they can, and, and our guy can bring over doggy treats or something like that, just to really solve the problem for the guest. That’s key to that relationship with that guest and for them to help us to continue to get bookings by giving us a good review,

  

04:44:36

Is this, is this a, a full-time person or a part-time person?

  

04:44:41

No, they actually work for the, the management company that I hired. And so they do property management type stuff for the other properties that they manage as well. And I’m sure he’s got other duties as well. So he’s not full-time with me.

  

04:44:54

Got it. Got it. But that’s just his role in, in your company. So he’s do you know, like, is he inspecting messages or is it the, the role of the property manager to, you know, reach out to the solution engineer to go and resolve those problems?

  

04:45:09

Yeah, that’s the way it works. So if a, if a, if a guest contacts, my property manager that my property manager will decide, okay, this needs to go to, to Chris to go out to the property and take care of the situation.

  

04:45:20

Got it. And how, how do you handle these multi-unit buildings where, you know, the there’s a very thin wall between the rooms and you have multiple people there. How do you, how do you handle if one guest is maybe causing issues in a, in another place?

  

04:45:35

Yeah, thankfully we haven’t had too much of a problem with that a little bit. And honestly, I’m disconnected enough from the day to day that I don’t have any specific examples right off the bat. We did have a fourplex where we had a neighbor that wasn’t one of our tenants who was in another building next door that constantly caused problems. And my ultimate solution was I sold the building. I mean, it was that bad of a problem that I sold the building and reinvested somewhere else. So, I mean, you know, you just try to, you know, managing human relationships, you just try to accommodate and bring calm to the situation. But thankfully we really don’t have too many problems. I will say I have four town homes that are all in a row and they are connected, but we, we, we built those buildings and we designed them to have minimal number of walls that were shared. So like the BA or the, the garages connect to the living room. So that there’s that buffer of the garage. That’s not, doesn’t have a lot of noise in it very often. So we just try to get properties. That’s not gonna have that problem.

  

04:46:38

How have you been handling the, I mean, I mean the rapid growth, I mean, exponential growth in your market with people that are short-term renting, how, how has that affected revenue or your, your business?

  

04:46:49

I, I would say that in 2019, we definitely saw a reduction in demand and our, and we adjusted our prices down to get the occupancy back up and that hit our bottom line. However, 2020 started out better than 2019. And I actually think that COVID might end up being a positive by washing out some of those, you know, a lot of people came into the market that had one house, or it was their own house or, or a second home or something like that. That just kind of like jumping on the bandwagon. I think those will get washed out. And I think we’ll maybe we’ll get back to a more healthy supply and demand curve here in Boise

  

04:47:30

That that’s, yeah, that’s, that’s something that I, I, I, I believe as well, there’s, there’s a lot of excitement in during that time. And, you know, even from the podcast, like podcast views, people that are listening and trying to follow real estate content, like we’ve just seen like just a, a half a halfing of like all the, all the people that we’re like, you know, following the show, cuz it’s like, you know, there’s, there’s just so much fear on the market and people were getting really excited. So, you know, professionals like, like ourselves, you know, we’re gonna be able to weather that storm, but you know, having 17 units that you own and where we are right now, you know, we’re still, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re not, you know, different markets are gonna have different recovery, but how has the Boise market been recovering? And what were your, what were some of the things that you were doing to be able to handle the situation that you’re continuing to do right now?

  

04:48:16

Yeah, I still remember it was March 13th was the day that I realized everything’s going south, everything’s going really bad. You know, that little ding when Airbnb booking comes in on your phone, that became, that went from being a joyous sound to a terrible sound because I was having cancellations every two or three hours. And I think about 90% of my calendar, future calendar was gone in the course of a week. And so I was very nervous. I mean, I called my mortgages and said, are, is there any like loan forgiveness? Like I can skip a month or, or put it on the end of the loan or, or what can we do here? But thankfully, you know, I adjusted to the, to the deal. I immediately started contacting some of these corporate clients that we’d had. I put out, I put, I structured my, my rates so that it gave a steeper discount for longer term stays.

  

04:49:09

And within two or three weeks, we got back to kind of where we were before in terms of current occupancy. And strangely enough, April matched my number, my highest monthly occupancy ever at 96%. But it was at a low monthly rate, a low nightly rate and then may beat it at 97%. 97% of my nights were booked in may with just a slightly higher nightly rate. So, you know, it’s break even cuz it was really cheap in June. I’m at 91% so far for June and I’ve taken all of the discounts off we’re back to normal. Wow. And so I, you know, I think we’re okay. I think July is solids right now. August is a little bit light, but I think we’re co I think we’re okay. Idaho has been one of the lowest impacted states by COVID. We only have, you know, between 50 and 60 new cases a day and most days we don’t have anybody dying from the disease. And so it’s not as big of a deal here as it is in New York or San Francisco or these bigger cities.

  

05:50:18

I, I don’t know if you’ve, you’ve been listening to, to the news and, you know, there there’s a lot of, and, and all over the Facebook groups, there’s a lot of people that are, you know, very pessimistic they’re, they’re saying, you know, business is dead, shorter rentals are dead. And I mean, you’re, you’re, you know, you’re very, you know, you have a lot of properties that you, that you have these, these mortgages on. And, you know, for us, we talk a lot about master leasing, Rental arbitrage, which, you know, we’re not owning the property, but that’s, it’s still a lot of payments that you have to make. What was it about this situation that allowed you to come out of it, not unscathed, but you know, able to, to survive, having such a large portfolio properties that are all shorter rentals.

  

05:51:02

Yeah, it’s very good question. I wasn’t sure that I would. I mean, I was nervous. I, I, I was concerned for the first time in doing this really genuinely concerned, is this gonna all fall apart? I really hope that everybody thinks that the short term model is going to die so that I can have the market all to myself. So I, I’m not too sad about people dropping out of the dropping out of the deal. I, I think another thing that helps me is I’ve always kept this really conservative debt debt to equity ratio. And so, and that I had that before the 2008 crash, but when the 2008 crash came, I was very thankful to my mentors that, that gave me that advice. And, and I made that as a standard policy. I’m just not gonna go above a certain percentage. And if I’m not able to stay afloat with that conservative approach, the whole world is, is in trouble. So I will be okay. I think mostly because of that, because of that, but people who are leveraged to the hill, 80, 90% debt to equity, or the Rental arbitrage, if they’re paying high, higher than average rents yeah. They could get, they could get in trouble.

  

05:52:12

And so, so you, you think that this is you think that there’s a lot of still growth in the short term rental space. You’re, you’re still optimistic, positive about, about this, this business, even coming through this COVID 19 pandemic.

  

05:52:26

I think so. I, I think it very well could be 2020 is not going to be a banner year. There’s just not, and not for me either, but I think if we, as we come out of the disease, if we have an, an evacu vaccine, or if we have an effective treatment and we can get back to new real normal, get back to normal, I think yes. Then we’ll begin to see things go up. But I think there’s something else too. That is an advantage for short term that, that maybe people are missing is people don’t wanna be in mass. Some people don’t wanna be in mass groups. And so they’re not gonna go to hotels. I mean, imagine going down to the lobby in the morning and eating breakfast at those little pancake or the little waffle stations where 50 people touch the handle, no, nobody wants to do that. Right. So what are you gonna do instead? Are you just gonna stay at home for the next 12 months? No, we’ll drive somewhere where we can go enjoy and we’ll book an Airbnb, it’s our own house. It’s been cleaned and sanitized. There’s not a bunch of people walking and out of the lobby. And so I think even in this COVID time properties who position themselves smartly could see at least the same, or maybe even see some increase in business.

  

05:53:41

How, how do you, how did you handle because you have a, you have, you know, a couple people that are full time for you that are dependent on, you know, your business running. How did you handle having, you know, other responsibilities, other people that you had to be able to support during this time when you know, all of their business basically also got wiped.

  

05:54:01

Yeah, it was, it was concerning. And I, and I talked with the team and I just said, Hey, listen, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m talking to the mortgage companies, which at the time I was very concerned about that. We’re gonna freeze all capital spending. So we have a budget every month for replacing furniture and maintenance items that, you know, we’re trying to stay on top of things, preventative stuff, freeze, all of that. And, and let’s just keep functioning, taking care of our current guests, trying to get new guests booked in and we’re gonna keep functioning as normal as we possibly can. Some of the cleaners, you know, cuz in the, in the height of the problem in April, we booked some people for really long term. And so that means there’s no cleaning turns. And so we did lose a couple of cleaners because there just wasn’t enough work.

  

05:54:47

We lost two cleaners because they didn’t want to go into homes where other people were because of fear of the, of the virus. And so, so yeah, that did affect some people, but now we’re pretty much back to normal and our team is functioning normal and, and we just acquired another property. And so, so we’re, we’re back to pretty much basically back to normal, we have up increased cleaning standards and that kind of stuff. So we actually are, some of our cleaners have more hours now than they did before, but, but yeah, we’re pretty much back to normal.

  

05:55:20

Wow. And do, do you think, because during that time you said that, you know, you’re reaching out to the banks, but one of the people that you were also doing was you’re reaching out to past clients, past corporate clients. Do you think that, that the corporate clients made that big of a difference or helped keep you afloat? Or was it because, you know, the OTAs came back and you know, you’re starting to get more bookings through them that you’re able to, to kinda make it through

  

05:55:42

Yeah. In April and in may. It absolutely did make the difference. So for example, I had one corporate client book for six months and I offered to them a little bit more of a discount to pay upfront. So they paid six months upfront. Okay. All my mortgages are paid this month. Right. So that got us through April. And so, you know, just doing things like that to make the deal a little bit sweeter and, and get us through the Rocky period. So yeah, we made it through

  

05:56:12

How many months do you think, you know, owning 17 properties having to pay that many mortgages? How, how long could you have lasted without having any income coming in?

  

05:56:22

Yeah, that’s a good question. I, I mean you could TA tap all reserves and lines of credit and credit cards and last for a while, but I, I’m not willing to do that. I’m not willing to put my family at jeopardy. So that’s why I was calling the banks and saying, Hey, what are the options to, to have a, a one month holiday or something? Because I just, you know, I’m just not willing to do that. So I was seriously considering do I flip back to long term? Cause in the, at least in the Boise market, there’s still people moving here. There’s still people who need apartments. And I could just get out of this, sell the furniture somehow and, and go back. Thankfully I didn’t follow that, that line of thought, but, but I would’ve figured out a way to, to stay, stay afloat.

  

05:57:07

Wow. You know, Brian, I think, I, I just think that that’s that’s so it’s scary. What, what were some of your thoughts during that time and what are your thoughts now after coming out of this, are you still hesitant moving forward in the future? Or do you think that this whole situation was actually a positive for you, for the market and for your business?

  

05:57:31

Yeah, it was very scary. It was very alarming. I’d never experienced anything like it. In some ways it was worse than 2008 Boise property lost 40% of its value in 2008, 9, 10, 11. And that’s bad. I mean, as a real estate investor, that’s bad. In some ways it wasn’t that as bad as that, but in other ways it was worse because it happened literally from one week to the next. And so it was scary. And, and I was concerned about, about how we were going to pull out it. I’m not in the position right now to expand the portfolio any further. I, I just acquired this one property. I sold one and bought, bought something else partially because of COVID. I decided that the property that I sold was at its maximum value and, and I sold it and I bought something else that I believe will appreciate over time. And I’m selling my land where I was going to build my 17 additional units. And I’m just gonna hold, I’m just gonna sit back and wait. I do believe however that once the economy is back on the upswing, we have a vaccine and we’re back to normal that you can’t stop the American economy, not for very long. And so I will wanna be back in the game at that point.

  

05:58:53

What would you do differently if you had to start from scratch,

  

05:58:57

Like back in 20, 19 96 or 2016? Or what do you mean scratch?

  

05:59:03

Let’s let’s say, let’s say if you were to start the short, the shorter mental business from scratch, what would you do differently?

  

05:59:08

Well, what I’m doing now that, so I just had the portfolio that I had, and I don’t think I had bad properties, but I maybe didn’t have the properties that were ideal for short term. And so now that I have the experience that I have and the resources that I have, I really, my next step is I really wanna design and build my own structure that is built specifically for my business model that I know is going to be the, the most efficient on square footage and cost per square foot and the highest revenue possible for per square foot. And just designing the units to function for short term that have, don’t have some of the things that long term tenants need, like walk in closets and stuff like that, that take up square footage and that’s not necessary for short term for short-term model. So I’m looking at that as my next, that was gonna be my next gig. And it’ll be my next gig just a little bit further down the road.

  

06:00:01

Are, are you talking about purchasing property that fits those criteria or, or developing,

  

06:00:07

Designing and building? Yeah, developing, developing, but to start from scratch. If I were starting from scratch, I don’t know that I would change a whole lot, you know, things you have to learn, you have to learn as you go through the process and, and I’m thankful for every lesson that I’ve learned. And so I don’t know that I would change, change a whole lot, honestly.

  

06:00:29

And if you could go back to 95, when you first started in real estate, what, what would you do to do differently back then? Would you have gotten into the, the short term corporate housing game back then? Or, or do you think that right now is kind of the, the perfect blend perfect time?

  

06:00:42

You know, I think Airbnb made that possible and I know there was other players like VRBO that were out before them. And there were people doing executive rentals before that they were renting to pilots, or I don’t know who knows what. And I thought about it over the time. I thought, oh, I’d love to get $1,500 a month instead of seven 50 renting this out. But there wasn’t a vehicle like Airbnb that brought it to the masses and, and made it so simple for hosts. And so I give air Airbnb the credit you could, there’s a lot of things that I can say that I’m frustrated with Airbnb about, but I give them the credit for creating this, this opportunity for me. And a lot of people like me.

  

06:01:24

What’s, what’s another question that maybe someone for someone that is maybe one step ahead of you or someone that is where you wanna be, what, what’s a question that you would ask them?

  

06:01:35

Good question. On the design, on the development, building development side things. I, I don’t feel like I have a good grasp on exactly how to design the building. So I would love to hear things that they did to create the correct floor plan, the correct design, some of the amenities that like does a hot tub really matter. Does a pool really matter? Does a weight room really matter? All these different things that, that you think would be important or maybe don’t think would be important and, and just kind of see what their experience would be. So, yeah, that would be good stuff to hear.

  

06:02:16

All right. And yeah. Do, do you have anything else that like to, to share before we wrap up here, Brian?

  

06:02:24

Well, at first I’m, I’m just really thankful for the opportunity to share with you. It’s exciting to, to talk about these things and, and to kick around the idea of these, how this market is going to evolve in the age of COVID and beyond. I, I think the thing that I would share with people is, you know, the, the, the get rich quick guys out there that are, that are trying to convince you to leverage to the hilt. I would just say that my best advice is ignore that slow and steady and conservative is going to win the day and get you through the next COVID. Maybe it’s not a virus, maybe it’s some other crisis, but we’re gonna have it. And if you are maxed out on, in every way, and eeking out a profit in the good times, you’re gonna get squashed in the tough times. So that would be, my advice is take a more conservative long term approach. I’m in this 20 years, and that’s a, that’s a long time, 20 years ago. I didn’t hardly have two quarters rub together, but now I have the ability to make significant investments and, and really set my family up for success down the road.

  

06:03:35

Awesome, Brian, well, thank, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your story. You know, I’m excited to, you know, get you back on the show when, when you have grown and you start moving into the multi-family space and, you know, taking over Boise, Idaho, I think that’d be an exciting thing to get you back on when you’ve maximized your closet square footage space and, you know, figured out how much it is to the dollar for that, that square foot. I think, you know, I appreciate you coming on here, Brian,

  

06:03:59

Thank you so much for the opportunity. It was a lot of fun.

  

06:04:02

All right, take care.

  

06:04:03

You too.

  

06:04:04

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