Jason Clements:               00:00                     Managing short term and long term is very similar. You need to have some kind of knowledge. You can’t just call a plumber every time there’s a drop of water on the floor or something. You need to know what’s causing that to manage the expenses.

Julian Sage:                         00:13                     This is episode number 41 of the short term rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed, cohostit.com 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 hosts. 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.

Julian Sage:                         00:53                     Hey, Merry Christmas Host nation! I am super excited to be able to give you guys your present today, which is another episode.

Julian Sage:                         00:59                     So I’m actually in Columbia at this time. I recorded this just a few days before I left, but if you are listening to this on Christmas day one, thank you for allowing me to be a part of your family. I do feel like everybody from the host nation is a part of my family, so that’s why, you know even say I’ll be going through and seeing everybody that’s a part of the community and sending my appreciation, my love to you all. So today I had the honor of speaking with Jason Clements. Even with 25 properties during the peak season, Jason only spends three to four hours per day checking the properties all in the off season. He only works during Friday and Sunday mornings. Typically when the guests check in and check out, Jason shares great insights on what it’s like having purchased someone else’s management company, how to work with traditional vacation rentals.

Julian Sage:                         01:42                     The learning curve of going from one 25 properties and what it takes to scale so quickly. If you like my show notes and the success secrets for this episode, you go to shorttermsage.com/str41. Or if you’d like my show to send directly to your inbox every week, then go to shorttermsage.com/shownotes. With all that being said onto this week’s conversation, welcome back to another episode of short term rental success stories. In this episode I have the special honor of speaking with Jason Clements. Jason, 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.

Jason Clements:               02:12                     Yeah. Hi everyone. I got into short term rentals. I’d actually been managing investing and managing longterm rentals for over 10 years. But just living in Ontario, just the, yeah. With the income I saw from short term rentals was far greater than the longterm rentals. But also, you know, if anyone’s familiar with investing and managing properties in Ontario, the residential tenancy act is very strict. So I’ve just found that managing torture, mementos one there, they’re kept know Mmm. Kept a lot, a lot better shape because you got cleaners and people going in there and maintaining them on a daily basis. Also the income is higher. And also you avoid the whole residential tenancy act. The nightmare. Trying to get rid of the bad tenants.

Julian Sage:                         03:00                     Yeah, no, it’s a, yeah, I, I think it’s pretty interesting. And I wanted to actually talk about, you know, what, how, how did you even get started into this, because you said in 2006, you purchased your first bed and breakfast. Was that coming into the mindset like like traditional, like when people think of Airbnb or is this more of a traditional bed and breakfast style home?

Jason Clements:               03:24                     Yeah, so the bed and breakfast is what actually moved us down here. But you know, my wife, like we’ve Niagara Lake as our, that’s our kind of destination of choice of running short term rentals. But you know, you’ve been traveling, you know, vacation here for 20 years and you know, my wife was working a corporate job. So she had decided she wanted to move down here buy a bed and breakfast, run that. But we’d already had a cottage that we’ve been, we bought in 2014 so it was our weekend get away. So we moved here permanently, you know, the cottage, it made perfect sense to turn that into a short term rental as I had been renting out long term. Yeah. You know, low rent. So converting that cottage to a short term rental, you know, made a lot of sense being here today, able to manage it hands on and the income from it was a lot greater than what I was getting from long term rental.

Julian Sage:                         04:19                     That’s awesome. You, you just love the area so much that you felt like you needed to settle down here and find some route and through that it was purchasing a bed and breakfast. And when I think of like moving somewhere that you love and starting a little bit in breakfast with your, with your significant other, I mean, that sounds like kind of a dream. Was it, was it as dreamy as, as it, as a, you imagine it to be or was it a little bit more challenging than that?

Jason Clements:               04:42                     Yeah, no, that was great. I mean it always been our plan, you know, when we’re retired to move down here, which is why we had bought the cottage a couple of years before. But, you know, just things, things came into place where we moved here a lot sooner and able to enjoy the area. And we’ve got a great, the bed and breakfast is a heritage home. It’s actually one of the longest operating bed and breakfast in, you know, so it already had established furniture and set up and guests in that. So that actually got us here, but it’s the cottage that kind of got us into the short term rental. Myself ended up property management and short term rentals. Yeah. I had properties in London that it was managing as longterm rentals. So just in the transition since 2016, I’ve got rid of those and gotten into full time short term rental.

Julian Sage:                         05:32                     No, I think your, your, your backstory is, is really interesting also how you got to 25 properties. So 2016, you, you, you started this bed and breakfast because he loved the area so much. But then in 2019, you actually purchased you acquired somebody else’s portfolio. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that came to be?

Jason Clements:               05:51                     Yeah. So yeah, so 2016, we had the one cottage that we owned, we managed and the bed and breakfast, you know, to short term rentals, a 2018, you know, just through different connections, I started managing someone else’s, you know, co-hosting, if you want to call it that way. And the other properties down here and just through, through being in the circles of short term rental, you know, yeah. I ran into a couple of, no, a few different times around town. They had a business called Niagara holiday rentals that had been operating for 10 years and they had actually bought it from someone else prior to that know 25 properties all, all in old town, which is like the tourist desired area of Niagara on the Lake. So yeah, we started talking, working with them and of 2018 and 2019 we became the owners of this corporation managing 25 properties.

Julian Sage:                         06:45                     That is something else. So you’re, you, you purchased a business that other people own these homes. These are just like their vacation homes and then you just took over the management for that business. How does that, how do you even bring that up or talk about that,

Jason Clements:               07:02                     Like bring it up to who?

Julian Sage:                         07:05                     That you’re like interested in taking over, purchasing the business.

Jason Clements:               07:12                     That was an interesting conversation. Because you know, as I say, just you’re running around town managing my own two properties. I would run into Eric, who knows when is he? Well, one of the owners of the previous business and we’d just be talking and no, and actually started when we first moved here, I talked to them about managing our cottage and they said, we’re moving to town, you know, we should build with ourselves. They were great just in helping, you know, provide information in that. And they actually referred one of their cleaners to us.

Jason Clements:               07:43                     So just in talking to people I found out they may have some extra properties and I thought, you know, maybe I could take on a few more properties and you know, they might build a person business. So out of the blue they said they wanted to come over and talk with my wife and I and I thought that was what the conversation was, was yeah, well here’s a couple properties you can, you can take on. They start talking about wanting to retire, looking for someone to find the, buy the business and they talk to a lot of corporate people, but they wanted someone on the ground, someone that was going to keep the cleaners and local and, and keep that local personal connections. So, and it went from there. We started working with them. I shadowed Eric for a couple of months. My wife shadowed Janet for a couple months learning the back end and well, he just kinda came to terms there and we took over the business with a service van, you know, with all the contracts, with the houses and with the cleaners.

Julian Sage:                         08:41                     What’s really interesting is this was more of an established older when, when you, when you picked up the business, did it have like all of these really old systems in place? Because you know, with, with Airbnb and hosting, there’s all these new tools, you know, dynamic pricing automated messages, PMS’s channel managers. All this different stuff was this business. Utilizing all of these things or was it more a little bit more labor intensive?

Jason Clements:               09:12                     Yeah. Yeah. So the business started over 10 years ago. It, what’s actually interesting is the women who started this business was actually owned a bed and breakfast that we own now. So it’s like, it’s come full circle, you know? But yeah, she started it 10 years ago, you know, I know what I mean. Thanks. You had a website, it was all, you know, word of mouth, print advertising, phone calls, you know, it wasn’t what it is today. So she started it. Jan and Eric took over the business 10 years ago and yeah, as things progressed, I think it was a few years ago that they started researching different products, probably property management systems, and they found one that that is a lot of the, the automated booking, the automated messaging and all that. And so they, when we bought the business, there was already listings for each property on VRBO and on Airbnb. And there was this property manage a website already in place for direct bookings. So, yeah, we just had everything in place when we started.

Julian Sage:                         10:13                     Wow. That is so interesting. So prior to prior to you picking up, but just a few years before that they were doing everything by hand and paper and probably scheduling things on the calendar.

Jason Clements:               10:23                     Yup. Yeah, the the property management system we have now, I think there’s only three or four years old. So prior to that, you know, things were well not as automated.

Julian Sage:                         10:34                     I think that’s super interesting. So, so you, you were managing a couple properties. You found someone just by being out in the market that you were actually looking on offloading some of your properties because they were managing them. And then the conversation comes up where it’s like, Hey, well we’re actually planning to retire. And you say, well, okay, I’d like to pick up this, pick up this business. How do you, how do you evaluate something that is so seasonal and where you don’t, they don’t actually own the properties. That’s just a management. So how do you, how do you even talk about that or structure that type of deal?

Jason Clements:               11:04                     Yeah, that was a challenge. I mean, I mean, they talked to a couple of different corporations that were throwing money. You know, a lot of numbers out there. I mean the business itself doesn’t have, you know, really any assets. There’s one van, we have a Nissan NV200 whatever it is, service van. Other than some some cleaning supplies. That’s the only inventory or property for the business. The rest of it is all, you know, the systems, the contracts. So, you know, it was kind of hard to bring a number in place, but ultimately what I really agreed on was what they had bought it for 10 years ago is what we made them. So they got the money on it.

Julian Sage:                         11:42                     That is so cool. And, and how does that conversation work with the people that are that, that own the properties? Because when you’re taking on a new property manager, there’s going to be obviously a different style of management and their income is dependent on the manager’s performance. So how does that conversation work?

Jason Clements:               11:58                     Yeah, so it was, we were very, you know, very cognizant of that when we took over. So basically, you know, back in the fall last year, we started talking to the owners. We basically, you know, the old previous owners of the business started talking to owners of the houses. Just said, you know, we’re looking at coming on and helping them out, you joining the business as it is and just kind of getting to know some of the owners that way. It was just kind of a slow transition. So even when we officially took on the business in January, yeah, Janet and Eric were still there and we told the owners that are still there. So it was, you know, a very smooth transition for everyone.

Julian Sage:                         12:38                     With picking up the multiple properties there. There’s a big difference from managing two properties to managing 25 properties. How, how, what, what was your business systems like prior to you picking them up? Was there a learning curve? What, what, what did that look like?

Jason Clements:               12:54                     Not really. I mean, when you’ve got 25 you’re managing 25 properties, you know, I mean, I had up to five, yeah, maybe 10 units over the years of longterm. So you’ve got, you still got furnaces, you still got house systems you need to maintain. So it’s the same thing for the short term rental and managing these properties. But you know, when it comes to short term rental, you know, I’d had two, three years experience of using VRBO using Airbnb. You know, I created my own spreadsheet, my own bookkeeping spreadsheet to keep track of everything, did all the calculations as far as you know, what money’s coming in, what expenses are going out. Oh, what the cleaning costs are. So, Oh, but I was familiar with the VRBO and Airbnb from those, those two properties. So scaling up to 25 wasn’t really that different. I mean, there was a learning curve learning the new property management system. I’m writing from my spreadsheet, but totally. Yeah. Apart from that, there wasn’t a lot of learning curve. I mean it’s, my wife has helped. She, she knows a lot more of the back end than I do. I’m the one that kind of the boots on the ground going to the properties, you know, making sure the cleaners have done the job. When guests have left. New guest comes

Julian Sage:                         14:08                     What is the difference looking back now would, would you, would you still acquire a business because a lot of people are going out there and you have, you have a marketing background. Could you have not gone out there? And I started just trying to build up business through like this co-host model going out there pitching a people or do you think that it’s, it was actually better to acquire a bunch of properties?

Jason Clements:               14:33                     Definitely better to acquire a bunch of properties. I mean, if I would have taken me, you know, I started in 2016 with one property, it was, I wasn’t really putting myself out there and then 2018, you know, I managed to find another property, but again, you know, I wasn’t, yeah, marketing takes lot of work. So being able to market yourself as a property manager and find someone that’s looking for that, you know, it’s hard to find that, find that fit. And even this past year with the business, we’ve talked to a few different people about bringing on new houses, but there’s always different things going on. You know, one person’s moving out of the country, some one, someone has the house up for sale and then you’re looking at managing it all so the house sells. So I think it’s, it’s a lot of work to bring on more properties. So definitely I would go the route of buying. So five contracts already in place. So definitely a lot easier.

Julian Sage:                         15:28                     And were you, were you working full time prior to you actually picking up all these properties?

Jason Clements:               15:32                     Yes, I was. So, so we moved down here in 2016 my wife was working, you know, the corporate corporate life. There’s a lot of traveling. She quit her job. I was luckily enough with the company I was working with to be able to work from home, you know, for the last few years I was just sitting working from home, you know, managing a couple properties at the same time. But buying the business gave me the opportunity to quit my job. So no, leave that job out of London and work full time with the properties. So I mean when I say full time, middle of summer, when we got 25 property is fully booked. Yeah. My, my work day might be three, four hours checking on properties. Now that we’re in the off season, no, I work Friday morning, you know, make sure how’s the ready for check-in work. Then they Sunday morning after making sure the house that I’ve been trashed when people checked out and that’s based on my work week. Yeah.

Julian Sage:                         16:29                     So you, you literally, you, you left your job and you purchased the job that you work a whole lot less.

Jason Clements:               16:35                     Yup. A lot more responsibility, but a lot less time.

Julian Sage:                         16:39                     That’s awesome. That, that is so cool. Did you, so when you purchased the business, you, you knew that it’s like, Oh, the income that it’s making, I’ll just be able to quit right there.

Jason Clements:               16:47                     Yeah, there was a bit of transition. I mean, we, we started the business as the owners in in end of January. I didn’t, I gave my notice that my business at the company I was working for, but I, but it for like April rates for the busy season, so it was kind of making double income there.

Julian Sage:                         17:05                     Awesome. And what else has short term renting allowed you to do compared to when you were working a full time job?

Jason Clements:               17:12                     Well, the skit, the flexible schedule is great. We’re, we’re kind of tied here. I mean, we used to do a lot of traveling before we moved here. I mean, ultimately, yeah. Why would you travel when you’re living in Niagara Lake, which is no wine country. We’ve always traveled here anyway. We are kind of tied to the town now. If we’ve got guests, no, I can’t go anywhere. It’s got a great, we’ve got great cleaners, but I need to rely on, you know, I need, if someone has something happens, I need to be available, you know, kind of 24, seven on call. No, if I have to go out after dinner and change a light bulb, that’s no, it’s not a huge each thing to do.

Julian Sage:                         17:54                     Now did when you acquire the business that, did it already have like full time on cleaner employees?

Jason Clements:               18:01                     Yup. Yeah, there we have contracts so we don’t have any employees, but we’ve got a team of five different high cleaners that do all the houses. So they, they’re, they’re assigned certain houses so they do all that.

Julian Sage:                         18:15                     What would you say, what is the most challenging part from transitioning from managing those, those couple properties to acquiring a 25

Jason Clements:               18:24                     I guess? I mean, the challenge most challenging would probably be learning the new property management system, but it’s, it automates everything. So, you know, we get bookings from our website or from, you know, HomeAway and it just, it processes everything. It automatically communicates with, with the guests. It’s automatically schedules the cleaning. So it’s actually made things a lot easier. You know, it’s all, all in that system.

Julian Sage:                         18:48                     And are you, are you doing things to modify the business or have you kind of left things the way that they were prior?

Jason Clements:               18:54                     We are we’re trying to make things more, more automated. What we’ve really noticed this year, you know, we’ve got four or five years worth of data and what we’ve really seen is that Airbnb has really taken over a lot of the bookings. Yeah. Whereas it may have been split if 2% direct from the website, 25 VRBO 25 Airbnb, you know, just throwing numbers out here. But it’s now Airbnb is really taking over the VRBO looking. So, you know, we’ve had to really scramble with, with how we managed the listings for, for Airbnb to make sure they were, they were optimized and just, you know, trying to grow the business, trying to get more direct bookings. My winter is going to be spent doing some online marketing, just no promoting Niagara on the Lake, promoting our houses and promoting our business.

Julian Sage:                         19:47                     Yeah, I was going to say what, what does that, what does a typical day look like for you and having a marketing background, are you a more aggressive with how you’re advertising the properties or what does that look like?

Jason Clements:               19:58                     Not so far. I mean we’ve been really busy in our October was really busy, so November I just kind of took the month off. You know, there was always, you know, changing furnace filters, change, checking the smoke detectors, you know, normal property management stuff that needs to be done. So November I just kind of took the month off and just at the minimum stuff I needed to do. And so now, now we’re in the Christmas holiday season, so you know, and I’ve, I’ve got my real estate license as well, which I don’t really work full time because no, the property management keeps me busy enough, pays the bills, but it’s a nice, yeah, it’s a nice pairing if I’m, if I can focus on real estate sales with bed and breakfasts and vacation rentals and I’m in that industry managing them, you know, it’s a nice pairing. But yeah, so I think January is going to be when I really focus. But again, no online marketing you’ll probably spend two or three hours a day just promoting the business and then they’ve got the rest of the day.

Julian Sage:                         20:58                     That’s a good, good life sense. Sounds pretty sweet. Yeah. Awesome. So with, with, with, because this has been an established business and these have been properties that have been with one pro, our company for over 10 years. I imagine that, that, that, I mean that’s a long relationship with one particular company. Are these, have you had to, how do you handle that relationship with property owners where you feel that, you know, times are changing, you know, Airbnb is taking over a lot of listings, people are, have a certain level of expectancy or they’re, they’re looking for maybe a certain levels of amenities or even more competition coming into the market. How are you communicating with these property owners to be able to help them boost their listings?

Jason Clements:               21:43                     Yeah. so yeah, so, well actually some of these owners, I don’t live in town. Some of them I’ve never even met face to face. So you know, it’s phone calls, it’s it’s emails. Just communicating with them, letting them know that Hey, Airbnb is getting a lot more bookings. You know, we’ve had to change some of the descriptions, you know, we may need some more photos. So each, I mean each owner is different. Some of them we may be phone call, phone calls, some of them may be texts, some of them maybe email that we have. Our property management system actually has, you know, a CMS, a client management system where all the owners are in there. So we can send a, a global email to them. You know, just what, letting them know. Yeah, I mean, so we basically got to to customers, we’ve got the guests that are coming to the houses.

Jason Clements:               22:31                     We also got the owners. So yeah, we have to make sure that the owners know that, you know, they can’t come to the house in the middle of summer if they want to make money or they can’t come when there’s guests. So sometimes we’ll send some and a bulk email. Everyone just reminding them that, you know, if you’re booked in the house, you still need to leave at 10 30 you can’t learn. I have until four. So yes, no, some of them need more, more individual communication. Some of them we can just, some of them we don’t want, never even hear from.

Julian Sage:                         23:00                     And what specifically are you, are you ha are you making changes to the home or asking or saying like recommendations, like, Hey, you know, there’s a lot more people that are coming here. We should be doing these things to be able to improve. Or are you doing everything yourself?

Jason Clements:               23:16                     Yeah. Again, 25 owners, you got 25 different people. Some of them are more hands on, you know, some of them, you know, if, if something breaks, you know, it’s like the lamp breaks. So the couch needs for your place. You know, I do that myself, you know, some of them I need to run that by them. Some of them, they want to have that decision. So it depends on the house. But yes. So we want to make sure that, you know, we’ve actually introduced a new coupon packs. So it’s, whereas there may have been just an envelope with some coupons in it before we’ve bought this design thing, which actually promotes ourselves and most of the town and it gives coupons and maps for the guests. We’ve just traded some postcards that we can end handout, you know, have a stack of them in the house that people will take with them.

Jason Clements:               24:02                     I’m looking at doing, starting some Google AdWords in the, in the new year. We were talking about SHA the Shaw festival is a big tourist attraction here. It’s like plays every summer. So we want to be a no advertising where we came with them. Oh yeah. There hasn’t been a lot of advertising spend over the years. So that’s something we’re going to start doing is just getting your name out there, getting in front of people so that when they come here they know too. How’s renting a whole house as an option annual. We’ve got 25. Right.

Julian Sage:                         24:38                     And what was, what was the management percentage when you purchased the business?

Jason Clements:               24:43                     We haven’t changed change that. It’s 21 21%.

Julian Sage:                         24:48                     21. What are you paying for? Like the amenities or what’s included with the 21%?

Jason Clements:               24:55                     It’s basically just us looking after the house. Someone books a house, there is an initial cleaning fee, like the guest pays. It’s not exactly, you know, one-to-one with the cleaner pays, but the cleaner has a set fee for each house. So one house may be a hundred bucks, you know, the guests may pay 75, the cleaner goes in and cleans the house. They charge 100 bucks and it’s basically a pass through. So the owner, the owner is paying for that know lawn maintenance. The owner pays for that. Well, we’ll actually coordinate all the relationships with like maybe the lawn and what the cleaners and the money, you know, the money just comes out of the, what we collect. So we collect the what the guest pays all comes through us. So we, some of the guests, some of the owners we pay monthly, most, you know, a lot of them we pay quarterly and they’ll just get, they have access to to the property management system as well. Limited access to see how much money is coming in going.

Julian Sage:                         25:53                     Was there a big difference from transitioning from longterm rentals to short term rentals as far as the, the scale, because now, you know, when you’re talking about managing 25 properties and Ontario Niagara, I’m sure that it gets a lot of snow. There’s probably a lot of things that you have to take care of, like, you know, ice on the pavements. These are also big houses that I, that I’m looking at that looks like a lot of space that has to be taken care of. Is there, was there a big difference from managing longterm to these?

Jason Clements:               26:21                     Not really. I mean, a house is a house. It’s whether it’s long term or short term. It’s got a driveway, it’s got, you know, it’s got a furnace. So, so that hasn’t changed. We’re actually lucky being a negative way that we’re, we’ve got the Lake effect and we’ve got the, the escarpment, so we don’t actually get a lot of snow. So we’ll have a contact with the snow. So company. Yeah. And we actually we have one of our cleaners actually goes to the house on the day of check in and does an outside clean. So in the winter, you know, she might do some, some minor snow shoveling, you know, some, some ice melt stuff. So, and then a longterm property you need to, you need to look after the driving the ice melt and shoving their idly as well. So the walkway, so it’s not, not really any different.

Julian Sage:                         27:10                     Do you think that anybody could just purchase a property management company and then just learn as you go? Or was it because of your experience prior to managing a couple and having that longterm rental experience as well that allowed you to be able to do this because 25 it’s a different level of systems and that that’s a lot of work.

Jason Clements:               27:30                     Well, yeah, I’ve got 25 different thermostats, 25 different furnaces. You know, 25 different, you know, light switches and things that I need to figure out. So but I mean I’ve, I think, I don’t think you can just walk, you know, walk out of an office building and walk into property management, need to, you need to have some property knowledge. I mean you can hire someone to do all this stuff, but that’s also going to cut into your income. So I mean I’m, I may be more hands on than a lot a lot of property managers, but yeah, if I’ve got the time, you know, I don’t mind going to diagnose a leaky faucet or something. And if I can tighten a screw and get it working, then you know, I might charge them 25 bucks for my time. Or if it’s beyond that, then I’ll call the plumber. And so managing short term and longterm, it’s, it’s fairly similar. I don’t think you need to have some kind of knowledge. You know, you can’t just call a plumber every time there’s a drop of water on the floor or something. You need to know what’s causing that to manage the expenses. And then as far as you know, managing guests, you need some kind of customer service, you know, communication. We can’t just, you don’t get upset when everyone calls you are trying to look at house.

Julian Sage:                         28:46                     Yeah. I was going to ask, did you, I mean you, you had, you had some experience managing those, those couple of properties. For those, those two or three years, but when you started managing over 25, was it like a, like a shell shock with the amount of messages and the amount of type of customer you know, situations that might, might happen?

Jason Clements:               29:07                     Mm. It’s, I mean it’s definitely, it’s greater scale. I mean, you know, one house you get to really know the systems, you know, but 25 houses, it takes a bit more time. So there’s a bit of a learning curve. I mean, now someone calls me, yeah, they start randomly calling and saying, you know, the light switch isn’t working or the doorknobs are not working, so I have to ask them, what house are you in? Whereas before, I would have known by the name what house it is, but I’ve actually gotten to know, you know, they say they’re at and street cottage. I can picture the thermostat in my mind or I can picture the doorknob and I can walk them through how does it gets into the house. So it just takes some time to learn each of the systems.

Julian Sage:                         29:50                     It sounds like you’ve gotten a really intimate relationship with every house and you know what it is that every house it’s like, Oh there’s, there’s the N home again. There she goes with those flickering lights.

Jason Clements:               30:04                     Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean that’s, if you hire all this stuff out, then you lose, lose that touch. So I’m, I’m hands on, I’m jumping in the service fan and driving around every day to, you know, for a house for a checking in or a checkout or something. So I get to know, you know, the houses in that way I can provide better customer service. If someone calls, you know, they’re late checking in and they can’t see that, figure out how the code works. On the door or you can’t figure out how to get the fireplace to come on, well, I can help them with that.

Julian Sage:                         30:32                     I know this is kind of early in the conversation, but what’s your goal with this? Is it to, are you planning on managing this you know, the kind of the, the rest of your retirement and then passing it off to somebody else? Or are you trying to create systems to or a way to be able to replace yourself and scale this? What’s your goal with this?

Jason Clements:               30:53                     Try and grow it with maybe a few more properties. I think with two of us running the business and with the cleaners we have now probably 30 properties is the next, no, I don’t, I don’t really want to overcomplicate it by, by expanding Niagara on the Lake. It’s a huge, it covers a huge area, but it’s a lot of farmland, a meetup of a lot of little villages. A Virgil old town is, so all our properties are all in old town and we live in old town. So if someone calls me with a problem, I can jump in the van. I can be there within a few minutes. So no, I don’t want to, you know, kind of dilute things by expanding beyond Niagara Lake and having to rely on someone else.

Jason Clements:               31:37                     And I don’t want to add more complications. I’ve managed more people and manage more locations. So, you know, I like it being just, just as it is, maybe a few more properties, but staying within, I don’t want a lot of employees. I don’t want a lot more red tape. All right.

Julian Sage:                         31:55                     If you could go back to you know, farther back before you even moved to the area, would you have purchased a portfolio of properties to be able to retire from your job earlier and, and, and do this, cause it sounds like you’re, you’re, you’re working a whole lot less with, with this new job, but it’s with a different set of challenges.

Jason Clements:               32:13                     Definitely. I mean, it was always my goal to continue buying properties. I mean it was longterm at the time, but you know, and just various different things that it isn’t, I mean, my heart, I’m actually a lazy person, you know, I don’t want to sit at a desk and work nine to five or, or be working a lot and doing a lot of running around. So, you know, I could have found this sooner. No, I definitely would have jump at it.

Julian Sage:                         32:38                     Do you think, you know, you haven’t purchased having managed and purchase longterm rentals, do you think that any real estate investor that is looking to get into the short term rental space can just go ahead and kind of do what you did and purchase a portfolio of properties if they wanted to get in on the space or, and or do they have to basically have a manager unless they plan on being a manager full time themselves?

Jason Clements:               33:02                     Yeah, I mean if you want to get into managing, managing more people, you know, you, you had a manager with the experience, you know, that would work as well. I mean I had 10 years experience managing properties longterm and then I had a couple of years of managing two property short term. So, you know, I had think I had the experience, you know, to be able to jump in and do it myself. But you know, if you had the money and you had a business and you had some experience that you wanted to pay them to manage it, no, that’d be obviously it cuts into your, it’s your income into your investment if you’re paying someone full time. Yeah. You basically have to, you need someone to be on call. They may not be working 20, like eight hours a day or even four hours a day, but they need to be on call 24, seven. So you need to,

Julian Sage:                         33:50                     Do you think that there would be enough margin for profit that would even potentially be greater than longterm rentals if you were to purchase a portfolio properties with and then just with maybe a manager already in place?

Jason Clements:               34:05                     Yeah. If you, I mean, if you had something already in place yeah, I mean, the income work we’re bringing in is basically, you know, my, my wife’s and my salary, so it’s two persons full time salaries. Yeah. Well the money is there. If someone’s got, someone buys that and we have a manager in place.

Julian Sage:                         34:25                     Yeah. Because I guess it’d be the same, like if somebody could own those 25 units and then they just decided to sell the 25 units to an investor and you would just be managing those as well. So I, I, I guess I, yeah, I guess for people that have a lot of money that can just pick up a bunch of properties that there’s potential,

Jason Clements:               34:42                     Yeah. It’d be great if I could buy another property myself and, you know, make more of the income from it. But so the cottage that we own, I’m actually funnel that through the corporation. You know, the, the business is managing it now, so I’m paying the corporation, no, 21% to manage it. But I mean, in our case, ultimately it’s just no money, no switching from one pocket to the other. But yeah, if you owned all the properties, it’s, it’s a lot of money to buy 25 properties. But you know, if I can find someone that wants to help, wants me to manage for them and they keep 80% Nike 20%, you know, that works for me.

Julian Sage:                         35:23                     That’s gotta be a really kind of a good positioning on your part because you’re, you’re in this area where you have over 10 years of history. People know who you are. They probably know the Niagara holiday rentals. When they’re in the area. It that have you found that, that, that people in the space in the area, if they are looking to rent, are to short term rent, that they would be more inclined to go with you or how, how are you how would you be able to position yourself so that you would be able to acquire more properties?

Jason Clements:               35:54                     Yeah, there, there is definitely is word of mouth. There’s a lot of regulations. Like Niagara Lake has actually had a short term rental licensing bylaw for almost 10 years. So we’re lucky in that we’re not like Toronto where there coming up with new laws and a lot of places across the country and you know, down in the States are coming up with new laws and their barrier restrictive and they’re saying it has to be your principle residence. So we’re lucky that we’ve had laws in place for 10 years. But yeah, so you’ve got to make sure that, you know, you can buy, get someplace that has regulations. No,

Julian Sage:                         36:28                     That’s gotta be, that’s gotta be a pretty scary thing to even think of that, that, that just made me think cause you’re, you’re purchasing a business that is dependent on, you know, good regulations. Was that a big concern or fear from you before getting into this business?

Jason Clements:               36:44                     We’re lucky this area or we had the regulations note, so there are going through, you know, there’s some problems in the area. There’s, there’s the odd house that has a pool and it’s, it’s the party house. So we, you know, those, the odd one or two house that has the negative reputation, you have to deal with that and the town is looking at, then you get a lot of neighbors complaining, the towns looking at redoing the current licensing. So you know, I’m here, the company has been around for 10 years. So you know, if someone, it’s thinking about getting a property and getting someone manage it, you know, hopefully we, one of the ones that they think of. But because I mean this, I mean, I mean the industry and you know, I’m listening, I’m hoping that I direct the town when they, when they go to update the bylaws to not make them too restrictive.

Julian Sage:                         37:33                     Have, have you noticed that there’s a lot more people coming into this market that are just listing their properties on Airbnb?

Jason Clements:               37:39                     Oh yeah, no, definitely. I mean, as I say that Airbnb is really taken over as far as far as the bookings. You know, and people, people use the word Airbnb is just regular noun or a verb or something, you know, they just think that they can just buy any old property and start Airbnb. They don’t realize that there is, there’s bylaws that you have to follow. So definitely there’s a lot out there and that’s what I keep pushing back with the town is you can’t add more rules if you’re not enforcing the ones that are already there. You know, there’s already, you know, noise bylaws, there’s a new pool bylaw. So just enforce the ones that are there and make sure people aren’t licensed are getting licensed rather than just trying to make it more complicated for someone that’s already following the rules. Well, in the summer we’d get maybe one call a week from someone calling us up saying, I’m going to buy this townhouse and I want to Airbnb it.

Jason Clements:               38:32                     Well you guys manage it for me and then we have to get into long discussion on exactly, you know, saying a townhouse doesn’t meet the town’s bylaws. This is what you need to buy to get those bylaws. So, yeah, at least one conversation a week. We ended up adding one property in the summer. But you know, it’s, it’s just trying to find, find the right property that will make money and the real estate prices in the Niagara Lake now skyrocketed. I mean, we were lucky to buy in 2014 and even 2016, you know, right after we bought it, prices skyrocketed. So you can’t even buy a property now and actually make money. But, you know, we moved from London a few years ago and I’m talking to all the investors and the people I know there telling them, buy a place here, you’re not going to make money, but it’s your weekend getaway and it’s, you know, that expenses are getting paid for by the guests. So it’s hard to find someone to move down here and buy a place, you know? Yes. I have to educate them on what they can and can’t do.

Julian Sage:                         39:35                     I think. I think that’s really cool. And that you positioned yourself because you got that license that now that, that when people are calling you, you can advise them and educate them on you know, where are the best plate type of places that you can purchase. I think, I think that’s, that’s a brilliant, brilliant marketing on your part.

Jason Clements:               39:51                     Yeah. I mean I, because now you’re in like such a big area and there’s all these little town, little hamlets, old town is the desire and spots like queen street is our main street. Whenever someone’s looking for a place to say to this book, they say, how close are you to Queen street? So all the properties we manage are, you know, at most 15 minute walk to queen street. So you can’t, you can’t buy in Virgil or in Saint David’s and expect to get the occupancy that you would if you had a place in old town.

Julian Sage:                         40:23                     And, and because you have that 10 years of, of data and experience, it’s got nothing to compete on, let’s say like, like air DNA or one of these tools where it’s just looking at the, you know, Airbnb and HomeAway, you, you have this, this data that goes back, you know you know, almost a decade now.

Jason Clements:               40:39                     Yeah. I mean, when you’re looking at real estate, anyone investing or buying properties, you know, you can’t just look at the, the Niagara region prices or even the Niagara falls or the st Catherine’s prices because [inaudible] Lake is its own market and old town is its own market. So whereas overall the average price in the Agora region might be five or 600. You know, the average price for a negative Lake might be eight 50, but when you’re looking at an old town, the average price is like million plus. So you really need to know that the area in the market before you even think about buying an investment property.

Julian Sage:                         41:14                     I’m just curious, has anybody gotten into the the subleasing rental rerent model in, in your area yet? Or is that still?

Jason Clements:               41:23                     Not that I know of. So you know, our, our company, we’re managing 25 properties. There are, there’s another company that’s know, probably managing about the same number. Oh, he’s a bit more, I’d say a bit more aggressive. He’s expanded from the Niagara region. I think he’s even managing properties in Toronto. There’s a couple of little people I know who, who are managing for brother other people. I’m not sure what kind of arrangement they have with them. One thing actually if you’re managing an interior is we have the travel industry council in Ontario has ruled that you either need to be a travel agent or real estate agent to manage properties for someone else in Ontario. So I’m, so our business is actually a registered travel agency. Yeah. I’m a registered real estate agent and a registered travel agents. So yeah, we’re in trouble. We’re following all the, all the rules. So yeah, mean people can get away with it if they want to manage two or three properties on their own, they can fly under the radar. I’m not sure exactly what agreements they have with the owners when they’re managing.

Julian Sage:                         42:31                     Yeah, I think that’s so cool. You’re, you’re following all the right, all the right things. You’re checking all your boxes across on all your T’s and you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re not looking at this business as just like a short term, you know, a cash engine quick gain. You’re looking at this as like, this is, this is where you love to be. You, you want it to retire here and now you’re invested into this, this area with these homes that have, you know, have been invested here for, you know, years. If you could do anything differently, if you had to start from scratch, what would you do?

Jason Clements:               43:01                     Well if I can go back three or four years, I buy five or 10 properties before the prices went up. So, I mean, if you, when you talk to any real estate investor, you know, you kind of figured what got them into it. I mean, if I go back 20 years ago, rich dad, poor dad was, was the book that got me into real estate. Yeah. But you know, it was I ever 10 years after I read that before I really got into doing it. So definitely I’d say no, read, educate yourself and just start moving if you don’t have the money or not, you can find the money from somewhere.

Julian Sage:                         43:33                     And if you could give one piece of advice to someone who’s trying to start their short term rental business, what would that be?

Jason Clements:               43:39                     Yeah. If you can’t, if you can’t buy a property, find someone that has a property. You know, I mean, so I talked to a lot of people in London that are doing the Airbnb cohost thing, but Niagara Lake has its own market. You know, we’re a tourist destination. No, Toronto may get a lot of business people and some tourists, but negatively is solely tourist industry. So, you know what I mean? I’m, you know, all my information is specific to, to the tourist industry. But you know, if you want to get into this, if you live in Niagara on the Lake, find someone who’s got a cottage here that’s sitting empty, you know, for a couple months in the winter for, you know, the weekdays during the summer and say, Hey, you know, you want to make some more money, pay your expenses, find someone that’s got a property and, you know, start listing on Airbnb and get some, yeah. Don’t get some extra income.

Julian Sage:                         44:37                     Do you think that you could really do this, like anywhere? Could you have like picked anywhere that that you wanted to be able to, let’s say, retire in and then just start kind of managing properties and be able to live there?

Jason Clements:               44:49                     Yeah, I mean, if you’re talking retirement destination, those are desire places. They’re normally tourist places. I mean, I know a lot of people are doing this in London and they seem to be having great success with no. Mmm. Kind of like people coming to work for a couple months, you know, at the hospital or, or students or something. So, yeah, I mean, it could work anywhere. It’s just what’s your occupancy rate can be like. Look at the hotel is what are the hotels make. Are they booked up? Yeah. You should be able to find some place. It has the way the numbers work.

Julian Sage:                         45:22                     And where, where do you see short term rentals going in the future?

Jason Clements:               45:27                     Well there’s, I mean I’m trying to, I keep following all the news. I mean, I read that there’s three or four companies that are competing with Airbnb now. I don’t know if Airbnb would ever disappear. You know, definitely regulation is gonna be, yeah, they a direction where things are going. But you know, there’s people, as long as you’ve got a place that people always want to travel, you know, especially the benefit our houses have over a hotel is the cost. You know, you can get like by people in house versus two for probably the same price. No, you can serve breakfast, you can bring your dog, you know, our bed and breakfast. We don’t allow kids or other pets. So you know, a house, you can bring your, you know, you bring your kids, you can ruin the whole family. So I see it. I mean, I see it growing. There’s going to be a lot of regulations that are, are going to know, especially if the, if the towns really start cutting back, you know, I see. I know some pounds, you know, don’t allow any short term rentals. You know, a lot of them are, they’re only your principle residence, which it makes it really hard for someone to expand. So I hope, yeah, we can kind of reach a happy meeting with regulations and with what people want to do. But I see it keep growing.

Julian Sage:                         46:43                     Awesome. And what, what question would you have for maybe another person that is maybe in a similar situation or maybe the next kind of step or progression in automation or, or their business? What, what would you ask them?

Jason Clements:               46:58                     Well, the property management system we use, you know, I think it’s great, but it, it also has some flaws. I mean, I guess I’d want to talk about what their systems are and what, what, what software they’re using, the scene, what challenges they have. We have a bed and breakfast association here. So we’re always having events where you can kind of throw ideas around with people. Yeah. You know, you get, you know, you get the odd question, you know, people are always asking, can I come early? Can I come late? So, you know, just able to again, network misery with people about what, but people can be like, is can be interesting. But yeah, I guess just talking about what systems are working for them and what, what tips they may have or

Julian Sage:                         47:41                     Awesome. And you mentioned rich dad, poor dad is being kind of one of those most influential books. Do you have any other books that have really influenced your business or changed your life?

Jason Clements:               47:52                     There’s a couple of different books. I’m Michael Masterson had some books. Robert ringer, Dale Carnegie’s how to win friends, influence people.

Julian Sage:                         48:04                     Awesome. Okay, great. Great. And yeah, I I love, I love your website. Did, was this already the way that it was when you when you acquired the business or did you

Jason Clements:               48:14                     Yeah, so that’s, that came with the business and it’s actually tied to the property management system. So I don’t think it’s the best website. I think it could be better, you know, that’s kind of one thing and your work on through the winter as well is yeah, what can I do to fix that? So when we bought the business, you know, it was January, we had a bit of learning curve trying to figure things out and then we were like right into the peak season, you know, running madly. So yeah, we haven’t really changed a lot in the business since we bought it, but now that the busy season is over, we’ve had a chance to catch your breath. Now we can really look at what we can do.

Julian Sage:                         48:51                     I love that because I’ve, I’ve been sharing actually in some of the emails is a, you know, a lot of people are, are kind of this, you know people that are just getting into this business. Maybe they were riding that high and they’re like, wow, this is so awesome. There’s just so much buddy and this is so cool. I can, I can throw anything up and people are booking it. But then you started hitting that low and it’s like, Oh, am I, am I a bad host? Am I doing something wrong? Like what am I doing? But I like what you said is now is the time to really start focusing on how can you best optimize your business? What are you doing to be able to, you know, maybe improve those websites where you didn’t have enough time to be able to do that or you know, maybe start marketing and reaching out.

Jason Clements:               49:28                     Yeah. Try and get some more of those off, more of those off season bookings.

Julian Sage:                         49:32                     Awesome. Well thank, thank you so much Jason. I think it is just so cool. Your, your story and your, your transition into managing over 25 properties. I’ll include all your links and everything in the show notes. If anybody is interested in purchasing in the Niagara area, I’m sure that they have, they have an expert in, in that market who can best advise them. So I thank you so much for coming on the show. Is there anything else that you want to pass to the audience?

Jason Clements:               49:56                     Nope. Thanks Julian. Thanks for having me on.

Julian Sage:                         49:58                     All right. Until next time, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you hosts benefit from the show. If you found value, please go on over to iTunes, leave us a review and let us know what you enjoy about the show. If you’d like to talk to hosts that have been featured in these episodes as well as the community, go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation.