Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast
A podcast for those who do not believe they were put on this earth to work 40 to 50 hours per week for 40 to 50 years, to hopefully retire at the age of 65.
Ekabo Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Podcast
106. Mastering the Voyage of Wealth: Finance Tracking, Real Estate Tactics, and Short-Term Rental Insights
Ever wondered how to keep your financial ship sailing smoothly through the choppy waters of investment trends and real estate? We've got your back with an arsenal of strategies for tracking net worth, managing assets, and liabilities, and setting smart annual goals. Join us as we pull back the curtain on our personal spreadsheet system, share insights into the bustling short-term rental market of Atlanta, and discuss how tools like PriceLabs are revolutionizing our approach. Whether you're looking to refine your financial acumen or curious about the opulent Adams Mansion networking events, this episode is brimming with actionable advice.
This week's discussion is a treasure trove for the savvy real estate investor. We navigate the nuances of optimal pricing, the potential goldmine of selling properties fully furnished, and how to stay ahead in a fluctuating interest rate landscape. From the excitement of life events like honeymoons to the practicality of building a supportive community through our Facebook group, we cover it all. Plus, don't miss out on our candid conversations about the importance of diversifying your rental listings and the art of managing property in the face of unexpected Airbnb challenges.
And because we're all about the real talk, we dive into the nitty-gritty of property management with a healthy dose of humor. We share personal experiences from setting up a property in Athens, tackling the logistics of furniture delivery, smart home technology, and the unforeseen trials of listing across various platforms. Then we wrap things up by addressing the balance between DIY and outsourcing in property management, all while sprinkling in tales of our own hair and fitness journeys. So, plug in, laugh along, and equip yourself with the tools you need to navigate the dynamic world of managing short-term rentals.
🗓️ Tune in every Wednesday at 7 PM Eastern! Don’t miss out on our journey toward financial freedom through smart investments.
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Our Links
➣ Financial Freedom Mastermind Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/53083...
➣ Peer Space Host Referral Link https://www.peerspace.com/referrals/g...
➣ AirBNB Host Referral Link https://www.airbnb.com/r/niyia41
➣ Ekabo Home Network (IG, Youtube, Email) https://linktr.ee/ekabohome
Niyi Adewole is a licensed realtor in Georgia, brokered by EXP Realty. Feel free to reach out at Niyi.Adewole@exprealty.com if you would like to work with an investor friendly real estate agent.
Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group Podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50 year work grind and accelerating our journey towards financial freedom. Join us every Wednesday at 7 pm Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes, ask questions and keep the momentum going, hey everyone.
Speaker 2:My name is Nii Adewale, host of the Acaba Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Group, and I'm excited to be joining you here in the middle of May, and this year is flying by fast. I hope that you guys are still attacking your goals with the same vigor that we kicked the year off with, and I'm excited to be joining you guys on an open session to talk about what's on your mind, different types of investments and how we can continue to move toward that goal of financial freedom. One of the things I wanted to talk about while we're waiting for individuals to join on this open session is how do you keep score and stay on track in this game of life, business and real estate, and one of the things that I picked up along the way is it's easy to always think, hey, I need to be putting my money toward buying more investments and buying more investments and, over time, start to not have anything in the account right. One of the ways that can make even paying off debt be viewed as a win is if you start to not have anything in the account right. One of the ways that can make even paying off debt be viewed as a win is if you start to calculate what your net worth is on a quarterly basis, and so quarter to quarter.
Speaker 2:What I do is I have this spreadsheet and I'm happy to send it to anybody that wants it, but it's an Excel file and it has three tabs. The first tab is a summary tab, where you can look at it and quickly see this is what your net worth is. It goes your assets and liabilities. The second tab is the assets tab, where you put in all the assets that you have and when it comes to properties, it's a good time to check in and see what the value is. And then the third tab is a liabilities tab and it all calculates together to let you know what your net worth is, and I found this extremely useful, especially in the times where I feel like man, am I dropping behind because I haven't bought an investment in a while? No, these investments are paying off and you can see that on that net worth calculator. And so I highly advise that, as you start to continue down this journey of investing and really building your wealth, that you start to track your net worth. It's not something you got to look at every day this is not a stock market right but it's something that I'll look at at least twice a year. I usually do it once a quarter. I find it kind of fun to see okay, have property values gone up? Have we paid down this? You know what does that net worth look like? And I usually, at the beginning of each year, we'll set actual net worth goal and that kind of encompasses everything that we're doing from an investing, debt, pay down and everything in the sleep.
Speaker 2:But again, this is going to be an open session. Feel free to throw any questions in the chat and or to join live. Looking forward to chatting with you guys. What do you got Any questions from the chat or anything? Anybody joining live?
Speaker 2:And I complete side note, while we wait, we had an awesome event a few weeks ago at the Adams Mansion. It was our second event of the year. We actually had Ricardo Carrillo, who is one of the lenders that we utilize a lot, who's a broker based out of California, lie out, and we were able to host upwards of about 50 people at the mansion, which was awesome. There was good networking and I've already gotten a couple of new contacts from that, including an electrician that did not have before. So it's awesome and I just want to give a shout out to Glenn Welcome, happy to have you here, and if you have any questions or anything, feel free to throw in the chat and or to join live. The way we do this is typically we'll either have a live session where we're having an open chat, like we are right now, or we'll have a guest on, and so right now it's a live and open session.
Speaker 2:And we have our first question what trends are you seeing in the STR space right now in ATL with the spring and summer season? And I'm going to take this as trends around occupancy. But what I've noticed this year and we started to see it a little bit last year, but this year people are booking much closer to the time. Last year, two years ago, right Two years and three years ago the trend was that people were booking well out in advance of the summer and things of that nature. What I'm seeing across the portfolio of 25 properties that we manage is they're booking a lot closer to the time and we're starting to see some more extended stay bookings that have nothing to do with traveling for fun or vacation. It's more for work and hey, I'm looking for a house and things of that nature and so that's kind of exciting. But we're starting to see people book closer to the time and you really got to have all your systems and your dollars and numbers dialed in. So what I've been doing is I've actually recently switched from beyond pricing over to price labs A shout out to Justin, justin Farham, for the suggestion because price labs is a lot cheaper at scale, right, and they allow you to do one-on-one sessions with consultants there. And so I've done a couple over the last two weeks with different people within price labs to optimize our pricing and get best practices in and really even try to dial it down for seasonality. Like, hey, we should be going up here In this season, we should be going down. If there's only two days left, it should be reducing to here. If there's a gap here, we should promote it. Like this hey, if it's the day before the booking, let's slash the prices by 30%, because we want to continue to boost that occupancy. So this has been time to really lean into your dynamic pricing software and optimize it.
Speaker 2:Good question, anybody else? What is top of mind? Yes, they do. You just got to reach out. I don't know if it's a numbers thing, but they definitely do? I'd reach out to the support to ask them. But yeah, we have like a person that's kind of dedicated to us. He emails every so often and say like, hey, how are you doing with it? And so we're utilizing that. I actually have another call set up for next Friday with them just to work through a couple more nuances that they showed me that I'm not entirely sure I get.
Speaker 2:So I do like PriceLab. It's pretty awesome, and also what I'm seeing is we do have individuals that are more people are becoming more common with selling properties fully furnished, and so, as those opportunities pop up, that's a major way to be able to get in with a lot less money, do a little bit of a refresh, revamp with the knowledge that you have and to be up and running, so much so that we actually have a listing that's coming up. We're going to start promoting it on Friday, but that's going to be a fully furnished one that's coming to market as well. Aj, that you may actually know, which is kind of cool. This individual is looking to buy a personal house and their debt to income needs this to be off of it, and so, yeah, there's some opportunities coming to market that I'm excited about from the SDR space?
Speaker 2:Anybody else? What questions do you have? What comments, what things are top of mind for you? One thing that I can't wait for while we wait is interest rates. Right, the Fed has been a lot tougher and a lot of people believed, including me for this first half of the year. I thought during this first half would be when they would be doing all these rate cuts. Now we're starting to get to election season. I think the first debates are going to take place for the end of next month and so the Fed historically has not cut rates once the election cycle starts. Historically, it doesn't mean they won't do it, but they have it because they don't want to rock the boat one way or the other for candidates and things of that nature. They usually would do it after, and so I'm starting to think it's going to be early next year that we can start to see some of these rate cuts.
Speaker 2:But I'm excited for when that time comes because I'm planning to refinance a lot of problems right now. Um, because I'm a 1099, a couple of properties to have are at 9% interest and things of that nature, and I got that subject to property. That's definitely got to be worth a bit more in the future, and so I'm looking forward to being able to refinance a couple of these properties and kind of get a lower payment. And I still look at this as an awesome opportunity to continue to acquire properties, because a lot of buyers are going to the sideline right, and so, as long as the numbers work for you and you can ride out the wave, you're going to come out on the other side ahead of a lot of people that are potentially getting out right now.
Speaker 2:Anything else, top of mind, anyone. Okay, a little bit of housekeeping. So we're going to be I'm actually going to be gone for a bit toward the end of August and into September my honeymoon. I got married last year A lot of people in here know that and we postponed the honeymoon to this year to not hit the bank account with a one-two punch all at once, which was awesome. It was a little bit of sales on my side.
Speaker 2:We're going on the honeymoon here toward the end of August and the beginning of September, so there's going to be a lag for a couple of these, but before we head out, planning to have a couple guests come on even some of the individuals that are on the Acaba home team that we may not have heard from before, want to bring them on to share their story and kind of get back into the flow of things from that standpoint and kind of go from there and if you haven't already, if you're not a part of the Facebook group, you may want to go ahead and join that, because now we're going to start to get a little more active in there as far as what events that we have going, different property opportunities that may be coming to market, and also this right Making sure that we keep you up to date on what guests are coming and when we're going to be joining live and things of that nature.
Speaker 2:But for those that are just now joining, this is an open session and so feel free to throw any questions that you have into the chat and or to join live and we can kick this thing off. Aj holding it down with the locks man. I like it. He got him out today. What's going on?
Speaker 3:brother, how you doing? Super good man. How are you? I'm solid man. Yeah, not too often I have them out, but I just got from the gym so I'm a little sweaty and you know, got to just air it out a bit. But you know how that goes, just a daily grind. You know, love, just keeping up with my body. I've been doing that my entire life so I've got the locks out today. I know too many people they don't see it too often but, yep, got them out today, slutting a bank.
Speaker 2:Come on now, I Come on now.
Speaker 3:I know you're just showing off because I'm bald out here. Guys, I can't grow lots. Go to AJ for that 13 years. I'm on 13 years actually. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. Yeah, I started losing mine toward that middle part of college and there was a Kobe period. You know, remember Kobe had the big throw and there was a period where it was like, hey, if you're seeing yet, is he going to go and do the LeBron thing out in Germany, or is he going to cut it off? I decided to go the Kobe route. But let's get off the hair thing, kareem. How you doing, man? I'm bringing back bad memories the first time with the clip.
Speaker 3:Hey, no, hold on just for a second, I don't. We can get off of it after this. So was it? Was it just by choice? Did you just kind of like want to just trim it off and just keep rolling with the the baldy?
Speaker 2:or how about one of those where it was like, okay, you go from getting fades to getting bald phase, so like, hey, man, like it's looking bad, all right, so me, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna hang on and have one of those weird like hey, it's, it's patchy in one area and the other area you have no hair? I was like, nah, man, I'm shaving this thing off. You know, I had tears in both eyes when I turned that clip wrong, but we made a hat.
Speaker 3:Respect it. Um, it does look good on you, so.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it, man Kareem, how you doing.
Speaker 4:I'm doing well, doing well, all good. I just launched that property last week, got my first five-star review. Yeah, we're off to the races. This is the property in Athens.
Speaker 2:right, athens, yeah, wow.
Speaker 4:Okay, and so you have the team cleaners, all that stuff set up, still using. I started working closer with the turnify team. I I'm not letting them run the show as much as they were before. Now I'm I'm more involved in the selection of the cleaner pod and the clearing team themselves, but they're they allowed me to to get closer because they're they're about to lose me too. So they're like, okay, what do you want us to do? I'm like I'll let you run the operation, but like I just need a little bit more oversight because this is the last straw. So I got to know the manager a little bit better and she gave me like a little bit oversight on what's going on and, uh, the operation itself. So, so far, so good.
Speaker 4:Um, but yeah, the initial setup a lot of lessons learned, a lot of lessons there, because, uh, this, this was my first setup, the initial setup. You did it for me. Still, this is the first time I did my own setup and, yeah, I think one of the like the biggest hurdles was the, the delivering the furniture piece, because it doesn't all come from the same place and they don't all come get shipped at the same time. So you need some kind of a depot to hold that furniture. Lucky for me because I'm in state, so I just use my garage to get everything, get all the boxes in, and then I hired someone to take all the boxes and take it to the unit, which is like an hour and a half away not that far. But I wonder how would this pan out for out-of-state investors and that there's a lot of logistics involved.
Speaker 2:Literally, that's probably the hardest part, right, is the logistics of hey, we've got all this stuff arriving, we've got all these people that need to be here, and lo and behold, like the package will say it's going to get here at three with everything else, and then it's not there until the next day or it gets delayed. You still need somebody to kind of put that in. And so, exactly what you've said, what we found, is it doesn't make sense to ship everything unless it's big furniture, right, couches, stuff like that and still ship it directly to the house, but everything else we ship it to a central location, right. And then we either rent a U-Haul truck or we have somebody take all that stuff, get it on site. That's one way. Another way because we do help a lot of out-of-state investors by short-term rentals and other types of rentals out here, and so they'll even pay, like a handyman or a project management fee, right, for somebody to be responsible for getting all those packages inside.
Speaker 2:And then one other thing that you can do is, if you do have that project manager that can do that stuff, just put the smart lights on. If you put the smart lights on, sometimes the delivery people, even the couch and things of that nature. If they ring like a doorbell, um, you'll be able to talk to them, say, hey guys, I'm just gonna unlock the door, please put it inside. But you can't depend on that. Some guys, especially like mattress people, they'll just leave it outside if you're not there, which, yeah, first thing I did with the.
Speaker 4:I went and did the smart locks and I did it myself and it was, uh, it was interesting, older building and some thought the door framed, like things like weren't working properly and like I couldn't figure out why the lock wasn't going into the frame. And uh, yeah, all I had to do was just get like a flat flathead, uh screwdriver, and just flattened that hole to make it clear so that the the bolt part like goes in. Probably took like two days to figure this out. So, imagine, hour and a half hour and a half each time. Yeah, um, I could share the listing with you guys. Now tell me please, what was your time do you want to check this out?
Speaker 3:now. Is this the one that we had done maybe a couple weeks ago as a team and kind of analyzed the numbers on yes, I said just stay okay.
Speaker 2:Listen, we're bested in this, and Kareem already promised that when Georgia is on their street, we can go out there and stay for free.
Speaker 4:Hey. You just let me know when was your closing date? This is an arbitrage deal. Got you. Now we're on. Everything happened last month. Like within the last 25 days, 30 days, I paid the first friends two weeks ago. Now? Is it on FergalBookingcom, or is it just Airbnb right now? For now, I did Airbnb in Bergo, did you? I haven't I should. I should put it on other platforms as well. I just haven't I should. I should put it on the arms as well.
Speaker 3:I just didn't get a chance, yeah, with that. I mean I think it's like why not? You know me personally, I still have yet to get a verbal or bookingcom booking. You know I've been doing this for almost a year now, so I can just maybe chalk that up to how my settings are for maybe Verbo or Bookingcom. But I don't complain too much because you know Airbnb does take off the brand but at the same time you know the exposure, yeah, but you know it definitely doesn't hurt. You know what I'm saying. So I definitely yeah.
Speaker 2:Honestly, the Bookingcom is going to be few and far between, and vrbo is even fewer. But when it does start to hit, it comes out of nowhere and it comes in waves like um, when I look across the board now you have, like this month, probably eight days that are bookingcom across 25 properties. Right, but eight days that are bookingcom and we usually put the premium a bit higher there because we want, you know, you got to. You got to the type of guests that come, may be trying to go far or things of that nature. You got to be careful of that.
Speaker 2:But one thing that they recently did and I'm not an expert in this I go through Desmond and I highly recommend anybody If you are looking to list them bookingcom. He does a bit of a consult and see, but he'll get everything set up. You literally just send him the pictures, send him the link to your Airbnb and he'll set it up exactly like the Airbnb. So I literally was on the phone with him earlier today because we just did another unit. So I reach out to Desmond how do you recommend it? But he sets it up and when you start to get bookings it actually makes sense because we are charging a premium. Do you mind if I share my screen and show? Let's just take a look, man, go here. Can you guys see my screen? Yep, check this bad boy out. Man, is this a pull out couch?
Speaker 4:no, it's a regular one. It's nice, it's a regular one. I was like at budget I couldn't spend any more dollars, so draining four bedroom countertops it has like an office area, it has like a separate dining. It has this is the dining um outside. Uh, the backyard got chairs and like games and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Dude, this is cool, this is solid. I'm pumped.
Speaker 3:Yeah Now. Did you get an interior designer for this, or did you just make this all yourself?
Speaker 4:I got consultants, consultants okay, I had already purchased furniture. I got consultants for like the artwork and like the wall decor and like that kind of stuff. Yeah, I got consultants for the artwork and the wall decor and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I got to figure that out. I just dropped off. All that equipment belongs to the landlord, that's not mine. I just cleaned it.
Speaker 2:Is the garage your stuff.
Speaker 4:The garage is a part of it. The dude just came in and dropped that piece of equipment, that multi I don't know what you call it that Bowflex looking thing Like smack dab in the middle of the garage and it's carrying like 300 pounds worth of plates on it. So I gotta figure out how to move it.
Speaker 2:Did he say you could use this stuff, though, Like, hey, you got it. No, he dropped it off for me. Oh nice.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it came in with the bike, I think, and I had like one piece of equipment and then he was like, hey wait, I got more, I got more. Do you want it? I'm like I guess, yeah, sure, why not, Dude?
Speaker 2:home gym. I mean, that's pretty solid Home gym, huge backyard Like this is. This is looking differentiate your spot and people can even come out here to hang out and things that nature.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, except the garage is not really a garage right now. Like it's, it'll fit one. It's big enough for like three cars, probably without the equipment, but for right now it'll probably just take one, uh, but then you have the, the driveway and that's honestly, here's a visiting.
Speaker 2:We never give the garage to people right from. From a parking standpoint, it's just another area that you can. You can make your Airbnb unique, interesting.
Speaker 4:Okay, so it didn't hurt a listing to not have an indoor garage.
Speaker 2:Not so much. Most people are good without it, With one caveat there's only one listing where we actually use the garage. But the reason we use it is because it's a single family with the in-laws that split, and so the upstairs they park outside and the downstairs you have to go through the garage to park. So we're like all right, downstairs parks in the garage, Everybody else parks outside. That's the only one. Everybody else is like, okay, cool, and we just turn the garage into something cool.
Speaker 4:Makes sense. I think that's my next plan for EasyPoint to clean up the garage and make it a game room, but like nothing electronics I don't think it has like any electricity going through there. Kind of figure that out. But oh, let me tell you. This happened, though, and that's pretty please.
Speaker 4:I list this property on airbnb. Two days later exactly, I get a. I get a message from air Airbnb saying like the listing will be shut down and like, basically, they just gave me like seven days to sort out like why, and I had to like get on the phone and speak to I mean, you know how it is Like when you speak to these representatives, like in India, or like you know they don't care. So it turns out that this property had been on Airbnb in the past and it had violations from the management, and you would have no way of knowing that until you actually list it, because if it's off the platform, it's off the platform. All the data is gone Once you put it back in. When you put that address back in and they, it triggers something like in their system and it just spits out that decision.
Speaker 2:So so was it deactivated or were you able to get ahead of it?
Speaker 4:No, I got ahead of it.
Speaker 4:But like I had three days of like holy shit, like what's going to happen now, like my biggest platform, like I might like if, if, if I can't put it on airbnb, then it's, it's a no-go, yeah. So I had like, uh, three days of anxiety. Spoke to them I, I explained that the the house has been sold to a new owner. The new owner hired me, I'm a new manager and I already have a track record with the company with with Airbnb, and this is my listing it's been gutted, it's been renovated, it's been refurnished.
Speaker 4:Like everything that happened basically in the past is irrelevant at this point. Everything has changed. But it took a few because the first time I emailed they were like, all right, send us the documents to prove what you're saying. So I send them the lease and I send them the addendum to the lease and it shows the dates and everything. And it still came back declined. They still denied it. They were like, sorry, no, and you can't. Yeah, what the email said we received the documentation after like a review and blah, blah, blah and all that. We were ready to tell you that you know you're still the client and you cannot appeal again. That was the language. So you cannot appeal again. But what I do, I appealed again, so yeah. So I got over somebody on the phone and I explained the situation and yeah, then I got that approval email and I was like, phew that was close Airbnb.
Speaker 2:They're starting to, I think, use AI and other software, like everybody is, but there's definitely a learning curve and they're missing some things, because what you're saying now, that you explain the whole thing, that literally happened to me as well, except mine actually got deactivated. I lost a bunch of bookings and then I had to fight the whole thing and call a bunch of times in a row to get it back up and running. But the subject to deal that I did right, and this was in a different way. It wasn't because of violations. They were saying that the previous is not deactivated, even though it was deactivated. Right, it was subject to, so we'll take it over, put it under our account and that, oh, you can't have two of the same address or whatever, right.
Speaker 2:And so I sent them all documents. They did the same thing. They actually went through and deactivated. We lost a bunch of bookings. I was so thankful to still be on all the other sites and to be able to use the direct so we're able to reach out to those people really quick and like, hey, come direct, right, and save a couple of bookings, but we still lost them. But yeah, whatever, looking so it was still awesome. But yeah, whatever airbnb is doing from an ai standpoint it's finicky, and so you definitely do have to be careful.
Speaker 3:That's a really good call out. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's insane. I'm hoping I don't run into that, those issues, at all with either of my properties if you're up and running like you should be good.
Speaker 2:I think it has to do with that change of ownership piece, right, right and then starting to make sure, hey, because a lot of people would deactivate a property and then reactivate it If they've had like bad review or things of that nature, and now they're trying to prevent that. Like, if you have a history with the property, it's the same owner. You got to just stick with that history and kind of go from there. But Kareem will pop for you, and this is just in time for training camp and football season, and so have you already set up all your pricing for summer and the season coming up.
Speaker 4:I just used the price labs. Basically I should just set it up for now. It's a little slow for right now, so I put it on Airbnb. I got it booking like the same day basically, and that was last weekend, Nothing this week. I try to play to make adjustments with the switch up. The pictures a little bit change like a dollar here, a dollar there, like in the days trying. Sometimes when you, when you go and mess with the numbers a little bit, somehow the algorithm senses that you're active and like I don't know, I heard it somewhere. I don't know, I heard it somewhere. I don't know if it's true or not, We'll see, but like yeah, just had that one booking last weekend and I haven't had anything this week yet, but we'll see. And for East Point it's been slow. I had a booking for three months and then that ended 10 days ago and I didn't get anything after that, which is very strange for that location.
Speaker 2:It may be one where you got into the same thing that you were doing with the Athens, one where you just play around with it a little bit. Literally, this is good feedback, because we have a booking at one of the properties that we manage out in Decatur. The people have been in there since September. Right, it was a construction company. They were paying $4,800 a month to stay there and do like construction. It's been amazing.
Speaker 2:But they're not going to be extending as they finish their work and they're getting out in 15 days, right End of this month, on the 31st and so now we just got the confirmation that they don't need to extend, so we just open up the calendar, and so now I think we do need to play around with it too, because we're out of practice. I don't even know if the pricing and all stuff is set right anymore. Right, it's been nine months, so so we need to adjust it and kind of play with the titles to get people back in there and also block off two days for deep, deep cleaning, because I have no idea where we're going to find them.
Speaker 3:These guys are on the platform like Airbnb or it's just like direct, maybe midterm, rental, like how did you handle that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was through Airbnb. They booked it for like two weeks, they really liked it and they extended to a month. Then they're like, hey, we're going to be here for a while and we tried to move them to direct, but they couldn't figure out how to get that approved through their system and they're like, hey, it might be easier to just do Airbnb. And so here goes a cool tip. What we did before we actually accepted the Airbnb, because money did not seem to be an issue is we just adjusted the pricing by like $8, right, like took the minimum up just a little bit, right. But over nine months, that's a heck of a lot, right. Eight times, however many days. And they booked it and it ended up equaling out to about 4,800 a month for a four bedroom death, which is not bad at all, with no cleaning costs.
Speaker 3:Man, you guys are lucky. Where are you finding these guests at? Because nine months on airbags, that's actually it.
Speaker 2:It is, it definitely is. We've got a couple of those and then we've had people that reach out on these different platforms and we'll just shift into direct and things of that nature. But what helps is, as you continue to build, just like Karim's doing, just like you're doing, you want to start to. You know it's going to cost a little bit to pay for that direct site so that you can start to move people to that and market it At all the properties that we have. We have marketing there saying, hey, next time book direct, save on fees, right. You have marketing there saying, hey, next time book direct, save on fees, right. And we try to get them within our network. And then you start to hit dig with some of these insurance companies, things of that nature, because they know they're not calling just for one property, they're calling and you can find a solution for them.
Speaker 3:I think. So the longest that I've had is nine months, but it wasn't Airbnb, so that's why I'm like that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2:Like I've never had anybody reach out and want to stay in my Airbnb for nine months. But I've done so with Furnished Finder and I've had success. And that's the piece. You're doing it in a harder platform. Airbnb is kind of just people coming to you, which I appreciate because it's day-to-day, but Furnished Finder, you've cracked the code for that. To be able to have somebody stay for nine months and then turn around somebody staying for three months. Things of that nature is amazing and like I'm assuming that these people may be able to refer you to others. Is that kind of how you're getting the next ones?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so anytime a guest leaves, especially for an extended period of time and you know we had a really good, solid relationship I always encourage them to, you know, reach out to other travel nurses or travel professionals if they have any contacts. But honestly, that's not how I've, you know, kind of continued to roll over those bookings. I think Furnace Finder as a platform right now, especially in particular right now, I'm seeing a lot of inquiries from different travel professionals, especially in the medical field, and they're just hitting up the listings. They're searching for places to stay. I think this is probably peak season for a lot of the contracts that are going out right now, so we've just luckily been able to rely directly on the platform, so, which is extremely, extremely expensive.
Speaker 2:I know we talked about this before, but are you like texting them or messaging them on the platform or calling them?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So how it works is they'll kind of submit a bid for whatever listing or property type they're looking for and if my property on Furnish Finder matches their criteria so, for example, I have a one bed, one bath, which is extremely popular because you have a lot of solo nurses or surgeons or technicians when they submit their bid for a property I'll get a notification directly on Furnish Finder that says, hey, this person is looking for this property type and your property matches that criteria. So then I can reach out to them or they can specifically reach out directly to my property if they like the photos and obviously I make sure I have nice property description, nice photos, things of that nature and they'll reach out to me directly, which I really like because that shows they have direct interest in that specific listing. So I'm a bit aggressive. Even if people don't reach out to me, I'm just sending them out.
Speaker 3:It is a manual process, but my thing is I think it's a small thing to sacrifice in the grand scheme of things because, yes, a little bit of manual work on the front end, but in the back end you know this guest is looking to stay, you know, two months, three months, you know, possibly extending. So it's like I feel like after I do the initial work is pretty much I just sit back and collect rent. So to me personally, uh, it's not that big of a deal. Um, just to you know, hey, you know, pull on the phone, send a quick message, and I actually have template messages to send out to all of my prospective tenants. Um, so they just get a message. It's not like I'm manually, you know, throwing out my phone and typing out a new message every single time. Right, they have templates that you can reuse in Furniture Finder, which is extremely helpful.
Speaker 2:Man, this is one I definitely want to start leaning into a bit more. We have VAs handling it, but we're not getting the production that we should out of there. I mean we've got a bunch of operators right Like we can literally just hop on the phone and just hey, okay, we got this one. That one doesn't work, but we got this one. So, yeah, definitely want to lean into it because it does give you some protection, desmond. How you doing man?
Speaker 5:What's up, man? I'm hanging out. How are you, how are y'all? I'm on that.
Speaker 2:Super good, super good I was getting.
Speaker 4:I know that I'm completely into it, so I think that would be a good contact to make that happen.
Speaker 2:Thank you, evan, thank you Evan. But how is your B&Bs coming, man? I know you've got everything listed.
Speaker 5:now up and running, yeah they're coming well and at this point I just want to keep them like that, like that's my biggest focus. I kind of got nervous a little bit in that things were just going like so well. I'm like man, like I, you know it kind of that can be a scary time, right when everything's going well. You know, it kind of seems like something has to hit the fan at some point. But yeah, it's going well. Um, things are set up and maintenance and slowing down, taking a deep breath, especially after the like that, that short-term mental setup can be a lot right. So I'm really just trying to take a deep breath and like refocus, realign and make sure I know where I'm going for the next move.
Speaker 2:Love it, love it. I don't know if you heard earlier, but Kareem was telling us about his recent setup of the short-term rental. This is the first one he set up and it was a FAR, and so any tips that you have on setup, desmond, especially when it comes to like the packages and making sure all that's coming around the same time.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's a good question. I would say, first and foremost, having like a shopping list. Having a shopping list, yeah, is like like, first and foremost, like number one knee shared his with mine or um, I feel like you know, sharing it is super helpful. And just knowing, like before you even jump in to order anything, what do you need to get right, and, I think, understanding that, hey, you can start doing the shopping before you even have the property, just depending on what it looks like for you to actually get that property. So, even before you've done the clothes and whatnot, and even you might not have your credit card or whatever ready, you can still be adding those items to a shopping cart, particularly an Amazon shopping cart, and seeing, hey, this item could come tomorrow, this item ain't going to come for another three weeks, I'm probably not going to get that Right. So that was super helpful for me, because I know I like to, once the close is done, get a zero percent APR card and then use that for the furnishing.
Speaker 5:But even before that I'm collecting my items, I'm keeping in mind what am I going to get, so that, ideally, when I do close, I want to get to the point where I can click one button. I've got everything I need in this one shopping cart. I click a button After that. I don't got to go to Ikea. I don't got to go to Target nowhere. And I think that's what hurts me sometimes during the setup is oh, we forgot this, we got to go to ikea. I don't got to go to target nowhere, and I think that's what hurts me sometimes during the setup is oh, we forgot this, we got to go get that. Or oh, we didn't account for this. Now we got to figure this piece out.
Speaker 2:Oh, so yeah plan in the head.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for the 0%. I think I got 15 or 18 months. I forgot.
Speaker 2:I love it. And Chase. I didn't know about Citi and Wells Fargo, but I'll definitely check those out. I got a bunch of AMACs and Chase that's typically who I go to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when I recently bought my house hack it's so crazy it's coming almost on the air Time flies. But July I went ahead and got that it was offered 0% APR for 15 months for the Wells Fargo and then turned around and did it again on my wife's profile. So we have that's the I love, you know partner, investing right, having somebody there to help you. You know you can do different strategies, so that's something that we did. Definitely. Take advantage of that, come on now.
Speaker 2:There's nothing like it, and that's a way to just continue to expand quickly. Plus, it helps if you're able to kind of separate the debt to income because you can buy more properties Right. So for as long as you can, if you can keep that thing separate, do that for as long as you can and then combine forces to continue growing from there.
Speaker 4:This is mainly for AJ and Desmond. How are you guys managing maintenance right now? I know we have less than like you can't hire. We don't have enough units to hire a full-time maintenance person or something like that. So how do you guys manage it right now With a fewer?
Speaker 2:did you want to take that one? You got. You got about 30 years, don't you?
Speaker 5:Nah, that's, that's big man over here man.
Speaker 4:I'm trying to get like bro. This is not quite smart to me, because once you guys are getting that level, I'm figured it out.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I would honestly say that's like that's been my biggest challenge. Right Is like finding, like building out your team Right, and I think it's trial and error and I found guys that have been the best are the guys I've gotten off of either referrals or oftentimes now, especially anytime I see somebody doing work I'm walking up to him, I'm walking up to him and I'm basically shooting my shot and you'd be surprised, literally in the past month I met like two or three like bigger time investors just in the area by literally I'll see them on a report. I'm approaching them. They looking kind of confused at first. You know, come up friendly.
Speaker 5:Hey, I'm Desmond, by the way, only a couple of properties. I met a guy named Merle. He does like ground up, he does all types of stuff you know he's doing like real investing in Atlanta. It feels, I think when you're starting out, you kind of have this what's the word? Fear, phobia, where you don't necessarily feel like you're. What's that word called? What's that phobia? You guys know what I'm talking about Imposter syndrome, that's it yeah.
Speaker 5:You kind of I felt weird having my first faculty calling myself an investor, and even with the second one I kind of stutter when I say it coming out of my mouth, um, but it has been the biggest success piece for me, talking to people and telling anybody under the sun, hey, like I got properties and I'm looking for work, so it could be like your grandma, but like they might know, you might know some folks that did some work on their house you would be surprised just who knows who. And I've found more success in that than anything, especially going to white pages, yellow pages. That's where I've not found as much success. So what's?
Speaker 4:our main job. Bigger jobs I tend to find because everyone wants to jump on a big job. That Bigger jobs I tend to find because everyone wants to jump on a big job. That's like $500 and up, but no one necessarily wants to come to your place for a stopped up toilet or a sink.
Speaker 3:So you're talking about kind of an instrument.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and for me it's been Go ahead JJ.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say I'm kind of my own handyman right now, but fortunately I don't have too many of those issues. I do rely on my cleaner a little bit. I don't expect her, I don't have. So her expectation is to clean the property, right. But what she also does and this kind of goes back to what I said previously you know, building a relationship with your cleaner, right, because you know, if you've built that rapport with her, she may be a little bit comfortable about, you know, fixing the toilet seat or maybe a slightly broken door handle and things like that.
Speaker 3:So that's one thing that I kind of lean on is just my relationship with my cleaner, because she's the one that sees the property. She sees the property more than I do, right, so I would recommend trying to do that if you have built that rapport. Now, if it's something that maybe I feel like she can't address, then I'll kind of go out and do it myself. But as you scale, I would highly recommend, and I'm not even in this position. So that's that's the reason why it works right now. But you know, if you have only you know two, three units, maybe you could do that by yourself. But once you start getting up there, I'll probably see myself. You know, definitely finding a dedicated person, but for right now it's a bit manageable. I just kind of I'm my own handyman in a way, and then I lean on you know the people that I already use.
Speaker 5:Yeah, Plus one of that, I'm my own handyman. I try to be as much as I can, you know, getting out, getting out of this a bit. I think now the second property, now that I definitely have more on my plate, trying to outsource a bit more. But like dude, I'll admit that shit's hard, Like it's tough, and I was telling you this earlier like you can be in a weird phase where, like you're not, like you don't have just one unit, Like you have a little bit more than that, Right, or you have some operations to be done and you know maintenance to be done, but it's not enough to pull someone in full time.
Speaker 5:And then when you're doing that, like part-time vendor relationship, it can be hard to consistently get guys to show up when you only got 20, 30, $40 jobs. So it's been something I've been like struggling with too and trying to balance as well. It's like what work do I do myself and what am I trying to learn, what is out of my scope and needs to be handed off? And usually that's when I'm calling me like hey, look, you got me like HVAC guy and to that point and there's you've been to work.
Speaker 2:I love it right, because everybody on this call if you just get to that point, desmond has like three, four units right. Kareem and AJ you both have two units respectively continue to grow. And this is the toughest part to Desmond's point. I think Brandon Turner said it best on a recent podcast. I've been listening to his new podcast. It's pretty awesome. If you haven't listened to it, it's pretty good. But he said that that in-between phase is the hardest point and it's almost easier to go big than it is to stay small, right. And so if you can just keep pushing through and for short-term rentals I'd say big is about five or more. If you can get to that five or more, that's when it starts to make sense to bring on other people and really expand that thing.
Speaker 2:That was part of the reason we started doing the management piece. I was like, hey, ben, I'm managing like four to six and it's taking up all my time, but if we can get this to 10, 12, 15, now it makes sense to be paying other people still making money, and then it just becomes its own system. Now we have two properties going live here soon and I don't even really think about it much because we have old team. Now it's like hey, okay, you want to sign an agreement? Sure, I put the little place, the little rabbiters, in place of hey, we want to have it done by this timeline. Here goes the punch list hand it off to the team and it all gets done so we can expand quickly. But you got to get through this point, and that goes for long-term rentals, short-term rentals. There's always that period of time where you're starting to grow, where it doesn't make sense to hire everything out, so it's okay to do it yourself a bit, if you can, until you get to that higher threshold.
Speaker 5:And I can say just I can attest you might have some long nights during them, long periods bro, because hey look, when you ain't got no staff, can you, the staff, look?
Speaker 2:It's crazy with one, one piece and then and then unfortunately but this is the story of bagged wolf, right. So I had started off with the triplex and I was the quote-unquote handyman. It wasn't handy at all, right. So I'd I'd find other guys that can kind of help you out and I'd just be alongside with them. And there was this one guy who was a former veteran, who was like cutting the grass across the street. I did exactly what Destin did. I was like, hey, man, you know, so you cut the grass, do you do landscaping? He's like, yeah, I do landscaping, also, do handyman work. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah Built a relationship and that became my guy to come and do a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 2:When I tell you those weird things with this old house man, there was times where not necessarily the safest, but like pipes would freeze right for one of the units and we'd have to bring a kerosene heat and light it and put it into the crawl space. There's barely any way to lay it. It's definitely not cold. There's a lot of stuff going on replacing toilet, all this stuff going on. But we made it through that point and we were able to continue growing the portfolio and eventually be able to bring guys on. That can do even more work. And so, long story short, yes, there's going to be some wrong bands. This is all perfectly normal.
Speaker 2:I would just try to niche down into certain areas, like Kareem. Now you've got two different areas. You've got Athens and you've got Georgia and Atlanta. I would try to focus on those two and build up enough units to where, now, you can have a team for both Right and kind of go from there. Yeah, aj, I hear you on the flooded crawl space. That was crazy. We got it taken care of, though, so that's all that matters. But, guys, I hope everybody has an awesome Wednesday. Kareem, we're pumped for you and the place looks amazing, and we will catch you next week, man Peace.
