Julian Sage:                       00:00                    In this video, we’re talking about the Coronavirus, the COVID-19 and its impact on the short term rental market. And what that’s going to look like after all of this kind of settles down. So stay tuned.

Julian Sage:                       00:10                    Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life, then subscribe to this podcast today, come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation, where we’ll be talking about starting automating and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.

Julian Sage:                       00:37                    Hey, welcome back host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. I’m Julian Sage and I’m with Jon Bell and we are in the midst of a great fallout of a lot of things, not just the short term rental market, but you know, all markets and really how is this going to impact us as operators? Is the short term rental market really just only able to profit during you these high times? I mean we’ve seen the last 12 years. It’s just been really green. A lot of people, you know, even just right before this whole pandemic, people were very positive. People were looking to invest more money, more properties into the space, but just like that, everything changed. So Jon, what are your thoughts on the impact on the short term rental market? Is this something that will be a sustainable business moving forward if there is a recession or depression?

Jon Bell:                              01:23                    Yes. I still believe this is still a very, very sustainable business. We just all have to evolve. When stuff gets thrown at us, we need to just recover and keep things moving. For some of us, this might be too much pressure and they’re looking to actually get out or their either rental arbitrage business or owners want to stop their cohostit properties just because they’re not pulling in any revenue as well. We just really need to rethink things and just either come up with new strategies on how to either market or capture guests. We can’t just keep doing the exact same thing over and over again expecting pretty much growth in that mindset. In my opinion, just as even an investor in the stock market, right? The stock market is going down, everything’s tanking, people are pulling money out left and right. For those of you that follow anybody that is either like a professional in the stock market like Warren Buffett or anybody like that, you’ll understand and know that this is when the millions are made right.

Jon Bell:                              02:27                    In a downturn, people are scared, frantic people either are getting rid of places. It creates a good entry point for anybody to still jump in. So things that might be broader than short term rentals, this possibly might affect mortgages. I mean, we’re going down to 0% right? 0%, that means the money doesn’t cost you anything to get in use. How could that really affect anybody’s business? That means I can go out and I can get something brand new, a brand new four unit building or whatever with 0% interest. That to me is a game changer, right? We’re not paying any extra money on money. So if we can get money, we can use it to still position ourselves to make a lot more money. That is the positive outlook that I have just on, “Hey, the effects of just this downturn.” I mean, it’s just like a curve. We all know things go down, they go up, everything can not be up at all times. If you’re a professional, you know how to handle that. We all should just kind of look at how we could still use this entire experience to better our businesses, to better our future growth.

Julian Sage:                       03:36                    Yeah. I think what you said, Joh, about, you know, during these times of uncertainty when people are really frantic that’s when really the winter starts shining. Like Warren buffet, it’s because of that volatility that the people that thought that they were doing well, they’re probably gonna start pulling out because they don’t have that experience in the market. But the people that are able to sustain the business and you know, just keep on operating and able to capitalize on the fear that is in the market, those are the people that are going to be able to shine. Do you think that there is still opportunity for rental arbitrage hosts and if you are building a cohosting business when people are really fearful and maybe people aren’t traveling as much and they’re trying to save their money and trying to just conserve everything because they don’t know what’s going to happen?

Jon Bell:                              04:23                    Well, I mean we got to think of it in multiple ways, right? If we really take the approach of “I’m not going to go out and get anything because this whole thing is going on,” then technically you won’t have anything when it’s all over with. So you’re not prepared to jump on the upside of the curve. If you have something, you just need to make sure that you have enough reserves to sustain or you have some other strategy that you’re using to help you. And if you are going to go out and get units, then you still might be taken advantage of multiple different things. There could be super specials at this point from some of the rental companies or rental management companies that have units available that people aren’t picking up because of the downturn. At the same time, you just need to make sure that you have enough to sustain for I would say a good few months of this whole thing to kind of just go on and evaporate. Now, you still want to make sure that you have a strategy for some type of revenue to just get it into the green. It doesn’t have to be super above like thousands of dollars in profit, but somewhere close to break even.

Julian Sage:                       05:32                    So Jon, where do you see the short term rental market going in the future? Because right now, March is supposed to be the high season for us. So for a lot of people that are going through probably November to around March is typically the lower season for a lot of the markets. And March is supposed to be the time where we are seeing a nice profit and that’s where you’re able to take that money and you’re either reinvesting into more units or maybe you’re taking that and you’re kind of paying some of the debts that maybe you accumulated during that time. But really, this is the time that we should be profiting, but since this is not going to be a high season for us, what do you expect moving forward how this might impact the short term rental market?

Jon Bell:                              06:13                    Well, I see it being more uncharted waters. Right. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. How I foresee it is really most of the events and things that were canceled, let’s just say in new Orleans, jazz Fest and some of the other Fests have been canceled. I’m sorry. They’ve been postponed. So them being postponed means technically they’re going to get new dates. These new dates could change seasonality that we would normally think wouldn’t be there. So for instance, let’s bring this back home in the DC market. Some other events and conferences and things that were planned will most likely get rescheduled within the same year as long as everything is resolved, maybe in the wintertime. So maybe my wintertime market won’t be as bad as it normally is. So I do see that things are still kind of influx. I think a lot of things will get rebooked there’s going to be some upside to some of the down time that we would normally think that we would have.

Julian Sage:                       07:17                    So you’re basically saying that there could be a reverse season. Basically that March doesn’t mean that because there’s no bookings that we just lost the whole month, but it could be just relocated to another month, maybe in a slower one or during the high season. It might just be extra demand in the area.

Jon Bell:                              07:35                    There you go. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. I think that that could happen at any location, not just here in my backyard, but any place that has events and things that were canceled or postponed, you should see an influx in different seasons because normally these things still have to happen.

Julian Sage:                       07:55                    So if you’re a rental arbitrage host and maybe you’re in a situation where you need to sell your business, maybe you just don’t want to continue doing this, maybe it’s just a little bit too much for you. Jon and I are actually interested in potentially purchasing your business from you. Go to a cohostit.com, there’s going to be a little button where you can put in your information for your property, fill out that information and then someone from our team will be reaching out to you if we are interested in potentially acquiring that. That’s if you have a lease, if it’s already furnished, you can put all your information in there. We’d love to be able to take a look at it and see if this is something that we could take on. We don’t want anybody in the host nation really going under and we are still interested in growing our own portfolios. So if you are interested in selling, go to cohostit.Com. Fill in the information and we can take a look and see if that’s something that we would acquire. With all that being said, host nation, keep on hosting.

Julian Sage:                       08:50                    Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review because that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community, and I, then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation, talk to you hosts in the next episode. Keep on hosting.