BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 364: Snowballing 6-Figure Short-Term Rental Profits Into Passive Investments with Avery Carl

Episode Date: January 9, 2020

Ever been interested in making money with short-term rentals but feel there’s just too much you don’t know? Welcome to the club! On today’s show, Brandon and David interview Avery Carl, a short-term rental (STR) investor who opens up the playbook and shows us what she’s doing and how she’s doing it! Avery shares the apps, software, and systems she uses to manage five STRs in under 30 minutes a week! You’ll love her thoughts on self-management versus using a professional company, avoiding negative online reviews, and properly marketing your properties to maximize revenue. She also discusses how she diversifies risk in her portfolio, why she buys properties for 10% down, and what expenses she accounts for when analyzing deals that come across her desk. Avery shares some fantastic insight into how to run a STR business with minimum time and intrusion, as well as some overall advice for knowing your market and minimizing your risk. Download this episode of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast and see for yourself today! In This Episode We Cover: Where she’s currently buying How she balances running a real estate team with investing How she created systems to help manage her portfolio of vacation rental properties The difference between self-management and using a management company How she manages negative reviews online Her advice for marketing your STR The apps she uses to automate the STR business How she buys her STRs with 10% down What expenses she factors into her numbers for STRs How she protects her investments from a possible recession How she diversifies her risk between long-term and short-term rentals How she uses her first properties when buying additional properties And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast The Grey (movie) Airbnb iGMS Vacation Rental App BiggerPockets Podcast 245: Creating Wealth that Lasts Generations with Bestselling Author Ryan Holiday BiggerPockets Podcast 108: Building a $350 Million Real Estate Empire Using the 10X Rule with Grant Cardone Email Us for Pro Deals: [e-mail]   Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show364 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 364. There's going to be some things that you like better than other things, but there's no way you can make everyone happy all the time. You can have the most beautiful property in the world, and somebody is going to have a complaint. So as long as you're not trying to please everybody all the time, your mental health is going to be good and you're going to be making money. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio,

simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, Without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, David Green. David, what's up, man?

Not much, dude. It's a really good day. I got to see Switchfoot in concert the other night. That was pretty cool. Fancy. I saw them in concert once years ago. Wow, just one more thing we have in common. Wow, we're besties. This is great. Oh, man. Yeah, we also got a cool little interruption today on the show, which will be on the recording, but of your daughter, Rosie, with the reindeer she just bought. It was super cute. Very nice to see her again. Yeah, she's cute, man. And yeah, she is a talker now, which is a lot of fun. So anyway, speaking of talking, today, we have a phenomenal interview with a really, really great communicator. A woman named Avery Carl. Avery is a short-term rental.

specialist does a lot of vacation rental stuff, but also some traditional rental stuff as well. But she's got this phenomenal strategy where she's buying short-term rentals in vacation areas, like Airbnb stuff, and then generating tons of profit. Then what does you say earlier when your cash flow, when you're real estate? When your houses buy you houses and your cash flow makes you cash flow. Yeah, that's exactly what she's doing. And so she's building this empire, was able to quit her job just on her, I think it was our third deal with able to quit her job just from three deals.

You're going to love this stuff. Everybody's so she listened to this whole. interview, really, really good stuff. And without further ado, it's time for the quick tip. You didn't know where else going there. I don't know. You threw me off. I like it.

Keeping me on my toes. Usually the adieu line goes later on in the intro. But that's how we know who our loyal podcast listeners are because they would have thought the same thing as me. There's no quick tip. Oh, there is a quick tip. Yeah. Yeah.

There you go. What's your quick tip is when you feel afraid, when you're having a hard time taking action. When you get caught up in the what if blues, what if this happens? What if that happens? Here's your way out of it. Don't focus on what could go wrong only. You have to think about what could go wrong and how you're going to spread that risk, minimize that risk, diversify that risk, because that's what smart business people do. So today's guest, you're going to hear about how she buys short-term rentals to make more profit, and she buys long-term rentals that are typically public housing that reduces her risk a lot, but also lowers her profit margin. She has diversified the way she invests

in real estate. So she makes money in big chunks from short-term rentals and she gets safety in big chunks from long-term rentals. And what I've found is that people who do this well tend to take action more often. And as you know from Brandon talking all the time, people who take action are the ones who usually win. So rather than thinking, I'm afraid I can't take action, shift your thinking into what can I do so I will feel less afraid. Find yourself taking action and then you'll be building wealth. Wow. That was good. That was good and deep. Thank you. That's my nickname. Good indeed. Green.

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Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. All right, it's time to get to today's show. Are you ready for this? Let's do it. Bring her in. All right. Let's get to the interview with Avery, Carl.

All right, Avery, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Good to have you here. Thank you. Yeah, so let's talk about your real estate investing. and how you got into that? Because I heard you were, you were born and raised, what Mississippi, is that what I heard?

Yes, I'm actually here now visiting family. Oh, nice. All right. Well, how did you get from Mississippi and something about playing in a punk rock band? What's the story there? How much time do you have? I got unlimited time.

Awesome. So I grew up in Mississippi, went to University of Texas on a soccer scholarship, lived in L.A. for a little bit, lived in New York for a little bit, in Nashville now, which is where we got started in, real estate investing.

Had no idea. Absolutely nothing had not found bigger pockets when we bought our first deal. Luckily, that has been our highest performing long-term rental yet. But we started listening to the podcast religiously after that first deal. We decided, okay, this is something that we want to get into heavily. We want to scale this thing. Okay. That's cool.

By the way, what punk rock band did you play for? Oh, nobody. Nobody's famous. Okay. Well, I was hoping you were going to say, like, I don't know, Blink 182. but that's the only punk rock band apparently I can think of on short notice. Okay. So when you're not playing for Blink 182, you decided I'm going to get into real estate investing.

You started listening to the podcast. And then what happened next? You bought that one that you was kind of a, you didn't know what you're doing. But okay. What happened after that? So I was working in the music business in Nashville and had my real estate license for us to do our own deals because my husband is a terrible client. I felt sorry for everyone who worked for us.

So we kind of started there, started listening to the podcast, like I said, started reading the forums. And we realized that Nashville is going to be really hard to cash flow for us because, as everyone knows, it started getting really, really expensive. And so we had to think of a way that we could, rather than scraping together another 20% down payment, scaling really slowly with a few hundred dollars per deal per month. So we decided we wanted to buy something that we could Airbnb. And Nashville was kind of scary because the, the laws change all the time. It's kind of unfavorable for short-term rentals. So we said,

well, why don't we go down the street to the Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg Pigeon Forge? That's a market where people have been renting overnight in regular residences, not hotels, for decades. Let's try that. So we did that, again, not knowing anyone who had ever done that before, kind of just on our own research and a little bit of luck, got the first one, scaled that into five pretty quickly. And now we take the cash flow from all of those, which short-term rentals cash flow harder than long-term. But, you know, they require a little more work. So we scaled that into buying more long-term rentals. So now we've got just under 20 doors, hoping to have 20 by the end of the year. And all that is because we've used this short-term rental cash flow to go

buy more long-term. That's cool. So you're basically cash flowing off of this business of renting on like Airbnb or something like that and you're using that to buy more and more rental. So it's kind of like the snowball effect. Is that right? Exactly. Exactly. So we use Airbnb and VRBO and we just take all that cash flow and go put it into more rentals. That's cool. Okay. So let's go back to the beginning, kind of dig into your kind of journey as you got into this. First of all, are all of them in Gatlinburg? Did you start buying outside of that? They're all in Gatlinburg as of right now. We'll probably buy one in Panama City Beach in the next

few months. Now I run a real estate team that connects investors with short-term rentals in true vacation rental markets. We chose Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge because you don't have to worry about, well, there's, to back up a little bit. There's two kinds of markets when it comes to short-term rentals. There's metro markets like your Austin's, your Nashville's, and then there's vacation rental markets, which if you think about it, anybody can name a place that they've gone on vacation since they were a kid, no matter where they live in the country, where people have rented overnight, on an overnight basis in condos and single families and not hotels for decades. So that's why we felt really good about scaling in these true vacation rental markets, because they're what I

would call a mature market for that. So these cities and municipalities have figured out how to monetize that decades ago, whereas in the metro markets, now all of a sudden all these people renting Airbnbs instead of hotels and the city councils are like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. We can't be having this. So now it's just a safer investment from my perspective to do a true vacation rental market because you just don't have to worry about that. Yeah, because this terrifies me about some people get into the vacation rental or short-term rental market, right?

Because they're like, well, this is making a lot of money right now. So they jump in and they start buying these properties in Denver, Austin, Seattle, Nashville, whatever. And it does. It works really, really well right now. but because it's so early in that, I mean, one, eventually it's going to level out at some point where enough people get into the game

and the big corporations get in, which is what you're seeing in Nashville. I know that right now. Like a lot of these bigger companies are coming in. And so they drop rates and things end up just leveling out to a more normal amount. But also, yeah, the laws change constantly. And so I hear people like getting into the Airbnb thing

when they buy a property that would never cash flow otherwise. And they're like, yeah, it's going to make $1,000 a month in cash flow. And I'm just going to rent it, you know, to bachelor parties on the weekends. And that sounds awesome until you realize, well, what if the market does change? I mean, like, not the market, but the laws change.

So that's why you're saying you focus on, you focus on areas that have already had already been through that. They've already established what it can do and what it can't do. And so there's a lot more stability there. Right, right. So places where take Gallenberg, Cudgeon Forge, for example, there are about 10,000 short-term rentals on the market there. Those have been there since the same.

70s when it became a destination. It's really been a destination since the 30s, but everything that's been built in these markets, for the most part, has been specifically to be a short-term rental. So you don't really have to worry about that saturation like you would in a metro market. People aren't buying what used to be a primary home

or a long-term rental and converting it. They're just maybe taking one that was already a short-term rental off of a local property manager and putting it on Airbnb. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, but a lot of people that don't live. I mean, I live in a vacation area. I live in Maui, but like most people don't live in vacation area.

So that means they're out, right? They can't invest in that. Is that what you're saying? No. No. Okay. All right. I know.

I set you up for that one. So how do people invest in real estate at a long distance in that type? Because I mean, I've done, I've done the vacation rental thing once. And it was the worst thing I've ever done because I was getting middle of the night phone calls. And like, it was, it was hell. And so I quit it because having one was a lot of work. How do you do that at a distance? Absolutely.

So you do it roughly the same way you would if the property was down the street from you. So if I have a property down the street from me and the toilet breaks in the middle of the night, I'm not going over to fix it. I'm making a phone call. Same thing when it's far away from you. So when you have a vacation rental that's some distance away, not drivable, you really just need a good cleaner, a good handyman, and a smartphone. And that's about it.

The rest of it is kind of like answering text messages. You get a notification, you handle it, you move on. That's cool. that's cool how do you find i mean you need a cleaner you need a handyman you're right like that's really about it how do you find those people if you don't live in the area any suggestions yeah so what we did which worked out in some instances and didn't work out in others we went on the platforms on Airbnb and VRBO and went to other owners and said hey who do you know would you be willing to share with me and some of them are going to tell you to buzz off and some of them are

going to be nice and help you so that's how we started and the more yeah the more that we Once you know one person, you have a little bit more of a network. Like if our cleaner didn't work out or handyman knew somebody else. So it just kind of grew from there to where you eventually have enough of a network that you know enough people that you can call and ask and find people that way. Okay. Yeah, that's cool. And are you doing mostly, I know I'm just like drilling you with these questions now

because I'm super interested in this. I have a quick background of why I'm so interested in this is because I've got these two condos that I bought recently to flip here on Maui. but I'm starting to look at this thinking, you know, they're both zoned. Like, these are both in areas that have been, you know, 20, 30, 50 years ago already figured out the vacation rental thing because it's been happening for years here. So I'm thinking maybe I should turn these into instead of flipping them, like maybe I should just turn them into vacation rentals. So that's why I'm super interested. This is a good timing today.

Well, can you give us an idea of what an average profit would look like on one of these deals? It really depends on the market. And we're going to kind of get into. some tangents here with rental history and things like that. But for a two-bedroom property in my market, you're looking at a purchase price of $275 to $300 and you will probably gross $45,000 to $50,000 a year gross. We kind of have to go with short-term rentals. You kind of have to base everything on yearly measurements rather than monthly because it's not going to be the same every month because seasonality does play a part. So, you know, it's just going to look different every month. So you kind of

have to measure it annually. Okay. But when you're when you're analyzing a deal and you're trying to figure out if you should buy it, give me the idea what kind of numbers you're looking for. Okay. So a 20% cash on cash return would be ideal. It's, this is where short term rental investing kind of differs or significantly differs from long term rental investing because a lot of those numbers are going to be a little fuzzy depending on a number of factors. There's a lot of variables that go into investing in short terms that don't with long terms. Management is a big one. Rental history is going to be a big one. If you're going to buy an apartment building, the rent is going to be the same. The market rent's the market rent, right? But with these,

two people could have the exact same property and one person could be self-managing or in one person using a property manager or they could both be using two different property managers. They could be doing wildly different numbers. And that's why there's a lot of opportunity in these true vacation rental markets because at the end of the day when all the tourists leave, a lot of them are still kind of small towns with mom and pop businesses. And I know at least in my market, a lot of the property managers, you know, back in the 80s and 90s before there was the internet and Airbnb, anyone who owned a vacation rental in these markets, of which there were still tons of vacation rentals, it just wasn't necessarily an investment vehicle at that time. They were forced to use

these local property managers. And they didn't have to use these platforms like Airbnb and VRBO. But now, at least in the markets that I'm in, the local property managers, the vast majority, don't use those platforms because they didn't have to do that 20 years ago. Why should they have to do that now? And they're kind of sticking to that. So their numbers are significantly less than what you'd be able to do if you are putting these properties on Airbnb and VRBO. Because tourists aren't going and Googling property manager in that limit where I can rent. They're just going on Airbnb and clicking. So your variables when you're, there's like I said,

There's a lot of variables when you're looking at these things. Your control group cannot be what the rental history is. Your control group has to be how it's going to be managed. So, for example, I was looking at three different properties that were the exact same floor plan in the exact same neighborhood last month. And an investor said, well, I want to buy the one with the best rental history. And I said, okay, and they'd all been managed by three different rental companies. And one was self-managed.

And the self-managed one was making $75,000 a year. and the two other ones were making, one was making 55 a year, one was making 65 a year. And he said, well, that I want the one with the best rental history. But the one with the best rental history was the last one that I probably would have bought because it had a really steep driveway. That's what you deal with in mountain towns is the drive. But this one, normally that doesn't bother me. But this particular one, I have a Jeep Wrangler.

And going up that driveway with the top off, I was worried I was going to fall out of my roof. So all that to say, say you can't assume that all the properties have been managed the same. All you can control is how you will manage them. So rental history is not indicative of future potential is what I'm trying to say. It's funny how realtors can make those driveways look so much less steep in the pictures. I've looked at a couple short-term rentals in the mountains, just like you said, is an area called Pine Mountain Lake. And when I got there, I was shocked at how steep that driveway was. Like, I don't know if I could walk up it without slipping if it was like snowy.

I'd sound like rolling all the way down. And the pictures, it was like a gentle little slope. They do a really good job. That's funny that you mentioned that just reminded me. So how are you managing yours? Are you self-managing or are you using an assistant to kind of help you self-manage? We are currently self-managing all of ours. And there's definitely a time in place for property managers.

For the investor who's really trying to get started and to scale quickly, like we bought these at the beginning of our investment career. So we're really trying to bootstrap and save every penny to scale and scale and scale. You're going to maximize your cash flow by self-managing. And we're self-managing still. Maybe one day when we get to a point where we feel like, okay, we're happy with the number of investments we have. We're just going to chill. Maybe we'll put ours with a property manager. But for now, we're still bootstrapping. So that's what we do. That's cool. I want to hear some crazy stories you've had of the self-managing and short-term rentals that you probably never thought was going to happen.

Um, I had, we had a guest not that long ago who, uh, one of our properties, it's, it's in a neighborhood. It's not, you're not looking into other people's windows, but you can hear other people's car start and stuff. So it's not that remote. But he was from Miami, I think, and he was terrified. It's got a wall of windows, cathedral's windows like a lot of cabins have. And he was terrified that a bear was going to decide, wake up and walk over. over and bus through these windows and get them. And he left us a horrible one-star review because he said you would have no chance of survival if a bear decided to break through those windows.

So if a bear broke through a closed window and got into the house, at that point his chances of survival were slim because of the layout of your property? Yeah, because it's so remote, but it's five minutes from town. So did you put some like of that like bear? pepper spray or something in the house. We've since corrected this. Right. That review was able to be taken down because it did violate the VRBO policies because

he used profanity in it. So we were able to get that taken down. That's funny. Like break in case of bear with like a glass case and like an axe or something inside of it. I feel like if a bear breaks into the property you're staying in, the last thing you need, the layout of the house and where it is is not your concern. That's not what's going to make right.

I just think that's funny as I picture him laying there next to his wife. Like, you know, I just don't really feel safe here. The floor plan is not conducive to an escape in case of a bear attack. And we're really exposed with windows that are at groundline. Doesn't that sound like you're writing to Dwight Shrewt from the office here? That totally sounds like a Dwight thing. You're exactly right. I give it a five for decor.

A five for location and a one for bear safety. Yes. Oh, that's funny. I actually thought it goes to like Liam Neeson. Remember the movie the Grey? I think you mentioned that a couple weeks ago, David. I want to see the gray part too. And it's Liam Neeson just fighting bears that come into his vacation rental in Galenburg.

Yeah, they mix the gray with the purge. And like all these bears are converging on one cabin. I have no idea how this conversation took the turn. Sorry about that, Avery. But that was really funny. Well, I think I do have a question on this. And how do you deal with these negative reviews? Because I do with negative reviews because in vacation rentals, like negative reviews can kill your business.

That's one thing I didn't like about vacation rentals is that. I didn't have all the power anymore, that the power was shared. And I was like, no, I like to be in control. So how do you deal with those negative? That's definitely something that you have to deal with. We manage our negative reviews by up front. We turn people away if we feel like they're going to be obnoxious about things.

For example, you can tell by things that are clearly listed in the listing, clearly described in the listing, hey, no steep roads is what we have to deal with here. And if somebody's asking really nitpicky questions up front before, they even book, you can kind of tell, okay, this is going to be a high-maintenance guest. This is going to be the kind of person that's like moving furniture to look for dust. So maybe we'll just tell them that they'll be more comfortable elsewhere. Or tell them, yeah, the road is really steep. You're probably not going to like it.

So we manage out negative reviews before they happen by just kind of reading people, being a mind reader a little bit like Paul Sandhu on the short-term rental forums always says. You can tell if somebody's going to be high maintenance by the questions they ask up front. And we just tell you're not going to be comfortable. And that's worked for us really well. I guess I never did that when I had my short-term rental. I just kind of let anybody who came in come in. Let's talk about how you're attracting people then.

I mean, marketing-wise. I mean, you're not doing anything crazy like Facebook ads or anything like that? Or are you really just relying on the platforms? And which platforms do you rely on? We really just use the platforms. There's a big movement in short-term rental investors to try to get direct bookings. but we stay so booked on just Airbnb and VRBO that we don't bother with the other platforms

or doing anything extra. And that's another perk of it being a true vacation rental market is that there's documentable tourism for decades. People are coming. They're going to book you. It's something where you don't really have to work too hard to get booked. That makes sense. Okay.

And then what about specifically on the listings? Got any tips or tricks for people and make the listing stand out, make them pop, get more people wanting to book? Well, photos are everything. You would think that that would be common knowledge, but I see a lot of owners who just have iPhone pictures that are dark or grainy or just, you know, spend the extra a couple hundred bucks and get some nice photos,

some nice descriptions, make sure everything's spelled correctly. You would think that would go without saying. And it's really it. Okay, that's cool. There's no secret sauce, really. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance

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but you obviously know what you're doing here. What about like the property type? You're going to go in and buy a property. You're like, I'm in the market. I got a little bit of cash saved up now. What are you looking for? A house with tons of bedrooms or something that's unique or what catches your eye? So depending on which market you're in, you're going to want to go for what historically rents well.

Beach markets, obviously condos and big single families with pools. mountain towns, cabins are the way to go. So it just really, you'll have to do a little research on your market about what has historically been successful. But past that, sleeping capacity is always going to be the biggest driver of cash flow. In amenities, you don't have to go crazy. A lot of investors say, oh, I want my place to be an experience. I want it to be so special that everyone wants to come back.

Don't worry about that. Nobody cares. Nobody's going to thank you for your gift basket. They're just going to stay there. They're going to do what they're going to do. And they're going to leave. as long as it's a nice, cute place to stay and it fits the description of what people normally rent there, then you're going to be fine.

You don't want to go into a place where people normally want to stay in cabins and try to make a brick ranch homework. It might get rented here and there, but just you don't have to reinvent the wheel here. Okay. So you don't, are you saying you don't go the whole like, I'm going to a gift person, a gift basket and, you know, chocolates when they come in? Or do you? And what do you do then in a related question? and how do you get positive, how do you get people excited to leave your review?

Is there any tricks you know for that? Like, we talked about the negative ones, but how do you get the positive ones? Yeah, so I think every investor, when they get their first short-term rental, goes through that phase of wanting to really go above and beyond and do the gift-bask. I'm not saying don't do gift baskets.

I'm not anti-gift basket, but it's an extra step in your process. And if you end up with, you know, if you're not using your vacation rentals to go buy more long-term, if you just want to build a big vacation rental empire, that can really put a bottleneck in your process with having all these extras. And they're always going to complain if you put the wrong type of cookie or whatever,

they don't like that kind. So we just make sure our places are really nice and clean, that they smell good. We check in on guests. And it's automated. We use an app called IGMS that sends them an email or on the platform, an email during their stay that says, hey, it's Luke and Avery. How's your stay? Do you need anything?

Our favorite hike is Andrews's bald. Go check it out. So as long as they feel like you're, you care. then you're going to be in good shape, but you don't have to go crazy with that. That's cool. IGS. Is that what you said? IGMS. I'm looking at up. That's cool.

I'm going to look that up. That's cool. IGMS. And that's kind of an automation tool then? Yeah, yeah. So we have it set up to where it checks in on them. After they check in, it automatically sends them their door code and their directions and the address of the property the day before they check in, sends them check out instructions a day before they check out. So you can really automate a lot of this process to where people feel like they're talking directly to you.

but the only time you actually have to get on your phone and respond is if they ask something specific, like where your crock pot is or something. So for us, it takes maybe 30 minutes a week to manage all five with all the automations. Yeah. So what are what are some other systems other than the IGMS that you're using to make that efficient? IGMS is awesome. There's an app called Turnover B&B that helps manage your cleaner. So when somebody books on either app, it will send you both a notification, one to you, one to your cleaner that says you need to clean this day, then your cleaner will acknowledge the clean, and it will send you a notification saying,

hey, the cleaner saw this. So that way you don't have to go back and forth with the cleaner. Yeah. That's awesome. And there's a lot of automated pricing tools, too, that you can use. But we found that that's easy. It's better, at least for us, not to use the automated pricing,

because we found that we can get more money if we kind of work on that ourselves. Interesting. Why is that? I mean, because I've heard some people talk, really good about the automated pricing. You're one of the, you know, like, I don't talk about it that often, but why does it not seem to work as well? Just because you don't, they don't know the market.

Well, in some markets, in some instances, it probably does work better than doing it yourself. But with us, it just, it's, I don't know all the algorithms, but I know it's a lot of averages. And one of our properties is a studio and one is a one bedroom. And so there are some, it just averages properties that might not be the same caliber as are so it ends up, our price ends up being lower than what we probably could get because we have so many reviews. Okay.

That makes sense. You've kind of figured out the algorithm and how it works. Yeah. So here's a question. I like what you're describing here. Let's say that a guest books, walk us through what will happen automatically and what you have to do to ensure that everything goes smoothly all the way up to the end. Okay, sure.

So it depends on if the guest is a big question, ask her up front. Some people will just book. They'll check in. They'll check out. and you never hear from them, they never respond to you. And those are awesome guests usually. But say somebody books and says, hey, I see that you say the property has a little bit of a steep road.

How steep is it? We'll need to respond to that automatically. I mean, not automatically. So we'll say, oh, you know, you might need four-wheel drive in the wintertime. In the summer, you'll be fine. You could do it in a Prius. And then so they book. Then it'll automatically send them their check-in instructions two days before.

It'll automatically check in on them two days later. and then it'll automatically send them their checkout instructions the day before checkout. And if the only time we have to respond is maybe once or twice during their stay, they'll ask something specific that we'll need to respond to. We'll just get a notification on our smartphones, Airbnb, so-and-so has sent you a message. We just answer it and move on. It's a pretty streamlined process. I think there are a lot of limiting beliefs with investors out there who just feel like it's going to be too much work.

or it's, and it is, it's more work than long terms. Like, is it going to interrupt your dinner at some point? Probably. But to me, that extra cash flow is, is well worth it. What I kind of liken it to, and again, you're a lot more experience than I am with this, but what I've, I found it's like t-shirt printing. Like, if you go get a t-shirt printed, it costs you $20 to get a t-shirt printed. If you want to get 100 T-shirts printed, it's like $22.

Or a thousand T-shirts printed, it's like $23. You know, like, it's like there's a certain base price. And then from there it gets a lot cheaper because it's the setup time and the hassle and all the thing. But the actual print you have a t-shirt is pretty low. That's why, I mean, yeah, and that was an extreme example. But yeah, to print 10,000 T-shirts, not that much different price than printing a thousand T-shirts. It's the setup that costs a lot. The same seems to be true with time involved with vacation rents.

When I had one, it was a lot of work. And I didn't have the systems in the process and it was just a headache. But I probably could have managed 10 of them easier than managing the one, if that makes sense. Because I would have been forced to have the systems in place that I didn't. Right, right. It's not twice as much work to manage two properties as it is to manage one. Yeah. So that's a good indication of like, hey, if I'm going to jump into this and I'm going to jump into this and somebody can say, hey, I want financial freedom. I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to go and buy a bunch of a dozen or whatever. You know, if you were making $500 a month or $1,000 a month in cash flow on a property and you had 10 of them, I mean, that's like life changing, quit your job kind of money for a lot of people. And it doesn't take 100 units like it does maybe with traditional long term rentals.

Right. I was actually able to quit my corporate gig after our second short term. That's awesome. I know David asked earlier about the kind of profit. You said you're shooting for 20% cash on cash. Is there like a dollar amount in like profit per year you want to make on a product? Like this shouldn't like I have to pay the mortgage and tax and insurance and all the everything. Here's how much we want to walk away with at the end of the year in profit from one from one single property. Sure. Yeah. So a lot of that is going to depend on the size of the property. like in my market, a five-bedroom can easily gross 100,000, just a regular plain Jane, but nice place to stay. So a lot of it's going to depend on your financing and what you're

doing for management. So with us, we use a 10% vacation home loan on our first two. We did one in my husband's name and then one on my name after that separately. So that's a really good way to not have to come up with a full 20% like you would on a normal long-term rental. The stipulations for that are you just can't put a lease on it. So if you're self-managing on those platforms, then you're going to be in good shape. But that being said, so we put 10% down on our first two and then 15 to 20 on the last three. I don't love to give out net numbers just because, like I've said, two people can have the exact same property and have wildly different grosses. And people who have the exact same gross can have wildly different nets depending on a number of factors. But self-managing,

we net typically 40% of our gross after paying mortgages and everything. That's all of it. And that's, you know, with a fairly lean streamlined system, if you've got a property manager, it's going to be less. But if you pay cash or you finance, you leverage a little less, then you're going to make more. So it just depends. Okay.

Now that makes sense. And just to recap on that, that's so cool. I never thought about it. You can get a 10% down vacation house loan. So that's, I didn't like, I didn't know that was even a thing. Yeah, and that's a really, that's a cool thing about short-term rental investing because that's really the only area that you can utilize that.

If you're going to use a property manager, it gets a little hairy because then you're putting a contract similar to a lease on the property. But the 10% is a really good way to kind of get the ball rolling, which is what we did. We didn't have a lot of capital to invest at the time. So we did a 10% in my husband's name, then a 10% in my name, and then we're out of 10%. We actually, on the third one, you're only allowed to get one vacation home loan per market. Otherwise, it won't make it through underwriting. They're going to say, you want a vacation home loan on this, but you have income from another property in this market.

This is clearly not a vacation home. You can have an investment loan. But on our third one, my husband wrote a letter to underwriting and said, hey, there had actually been a fire in the area. And he said, hey, you know, I think I would like to convert my second home to a rental. and we did have some of the fire evacuees who lost their homes actually ran our place for a little while, but they allowed us to do a third 10% down vacation home loan because we converted one of ours to a traditional rental.

Interesting, okay. Yeah, it's some gray areas and definitely I'm not a lender, but there's some definite ways where you can get away with putting down less than you would on a traditional rental. That's cool. And just to throw this out there to people listening, like one of the strategies I'm a big fan, I talk about a lot of is the idea of partnering with people.

So I think there's a lot of opportunity for somebody who maybe has some cash, but they don't want to deal with the management and the bookkeeping and the smartphone stuff and respond. They don't want to deal with that stuff. So if you're somebody who's like, yeah, I want to deal with that stuff. I like that, but I don't have the cash. Go find a partner. Somebody like, you know, who's got a little bit of money that they can go get the 20% down payment

loan or the 25% or whatever the bank requires. And then you just manage the thing and just split it, JV it until you have enough money to do it on your own. Like, have you seen that work at all in your? Yeah, we did that on two of ours to start. Oh, awesome. Yeah, I don't know why more people don't think that way. And I think it's funny on both sides.

You have people who are like, well, I'm never going to find that person who's got money and just wants to split a deal of, you know, even like I'm not putting anything up. And then the other side, you have people who are like, man, I've got all this capital right now. I don't know what to do with it. I sure wish I had somebody I could trust. I could put it to work. And so, like, I talk to those people all the time on both sides of that. So I'm telling everybody out there.

like connect network talk to each other because both sides exist in mass right now in this market like in a tremendous way so get out there start talking with people and provide your value hey you're going to get awesome at vacation rentals and vacation rental areas and that's what you do so when you meet that person who's got an extra 30 or 40 grand line around you can be like hey let's work together and we'll just put profits 50 50 and boom now you're in the game with no money down so I love that idea. We met our partner on two of ours on an 80s rock cruise. No way. That's awesome.

So partners are everywhere. Partners are everywhere. What about if a recession happens? I mean, one thing that worries me a little bit is when a recession hits again, less people are traveling to Maui, less people are traveling to Gatlinburg. Do you worry about that? Do you do anything to prevent against that or is that not a concern? That's a great question.

And there is quantifiable data that you can look at. on most vacation rental market. So Gatlinburg, for example, our big draw is the Smoky Mountain National Park. We get 12 million visitors a year for that. You can go on the National Park website and see the data over time. And actually, if you look at the recession in 2008, our tourism continued on an upward trend. It didn't dip with the home prices. So any vacation rental market is going to have a department of tourism. Maybe you don't have a national park where you can go look, but they're going to have a department of tourism where you can kind of look into that. and that's another thing to think about is you don't have to go buy the biggest,

most expensive vacation home there is. You want to buy just a nice place with a little bit of class, nice, clean place to stay, but you don't have to buy the biggest and nicest. And I run into this with investors a lot that they get caught up in wanting to be impressive with their vacation home rather than making the decision based on what is going to make them be the best financial choice. that that happens in all areas of real estate, doesn't it? We just, we cut up.

It's almost always the person doing it for the first time. It's the person flipping the first house that wants to put courts and chandeliers and just, yeah, the person buying their hotel for the first time that wants it to be the best hotel that's ever been done. Yeah, it's dangerous. You mentioned earlier that sleeping capacity is one of the big metrics that will determine how profitable you are. Have you found a sweet spot with about how many people you should look for something that can,

how many it should be able to sleep? It's going to depend on. the short-term rental laws in each market on what the sleeping capacity rules are. With the big vacation rural markets, there's not as many rules and they're kind of loose. I would go with, from what I've seen, the four and five bedrooms and up tend to be the best return on investment. That being said, the smaller ones are still a great investment too. They still make great money. We own all smaller ones. And that's not because we did that on purpose. That's because we just had very little cash to start. So we bought what we could afford as soon as we could

afford it to get the cash flow rolling. But if I had it to do over, knowing what I know now, I would have gone with two, five bedrooms rather than five, one and two bedrooms. But five bedrooms and up in the data that I've looked at in most markets and then the experience that I have in the markets that I'm in, five bedrooms and up seems to be the best return on investment. That's cool. So where do you see yourself heading in the future? I mean, you're looking at, you know, you're buying these short-term rentals, but you mentioned that you're doing it to make cash flow so you can buy more. And some of those are long-term rentals, right? That's the plan to get into those? Yeah. So we have, we've got the five vacation rentals and then we have 12 long-term

doors and we're under contract on two, maybe three. I don't know if we fell out of contract on one actually right now. So the goal is, you know, with real estate investing, the goal is to not have to touch it, not have to deal with it. So our short-term rental goal is to get more long-term. And we've gotten nine doors in the past year because of that on long-term and another market. So, yeah, it's been awesome. And those we don't have to touch. So what this perfectly illustrates is this point that I've been making it a lot later. I need to make a video for bigger pockets or something about this. But like this idea of like in a crazy good economy like we find ourselves in today where like

unemployment's low and people have money and they're spending it. Like make money in business right now. Like that could be flipping houses. That could be wholesaling. It could be owning short term rentals. It doesn't matter. Make money now as much as you can possibly make because now is you could run a dog walking business.

I don't care. Like make money doing something that fires you up and you can generate a lot of income. keep your expenses low so you can take all of that good profit now and dump it into real estate. So you're taking active income at the best time in human history to make active income we've ever seen and dumping that in the passive income. So one, you can weather through a next recession when it does come. But two, you'll be prepared when the next recession comes to be able to jump in even more and do even more because you'll have all the experience that you're building up right now. So that's why David here is building his mortgage business and his real estate agent

thing so he can generate lots of cash. That's why I'm doing the same thing. I'm flipping houses in Maui so I can generate cash to dump into investments long term. So that sounds like exactly what you're doing as well. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Make haywall the sun shines. Yeah.

And then our long terms are, they're all low income. So somebody's always going to need a $500, $600 place to rent. So that's what our long terms are. Yeah. You've diversified your risk really good. Yeah. Oh, thank you. You've got, okay, these are my not going to make as much money, but I'm always going to

have a tenant. And then you've got your short terms, which you're like going to be a little bit more, work, maybe a little riskier, but I'm going to make a lot more money. And you've put them together. And really, that's the secret to what successful people do to be able to take action when they're afraid. You don't need to wait for your emotions to fall in line with what you're doing because you're diversifying the risk. You're spreading it out. And like what Brandon said is the same thing. If you're making really good money in a good economy and you're investing that money when the economy is bad and it goes further, you're never afraid. You're not worried when the economy goes bad

because you've got a bunch of cash to deploy. And you're not worried when there's no deals to be found because the economy is good because you're making a bunch of money in that economy. And you're really kind of handling thing from every perspective. So I think you guys both make very good arguments for why playing the cards that you're given is how you get ahead in wealth building and real estate and life in general. It's not waiting for the perfect pair of cards and then saying, okay, now I'm going to play the game. Yeah.

I have one last question for you, Avery. Something I've been wondering with a short-term rental specifically, can you give me a list of expenses that I should be aware of other than just property tax insurance and the mortgage. Okay. Yeah. So you're going to have, obviously with a short-term rental, you're paying your own utilities and not your tenant because you don't have a tenant. So you've got utilities. You've got your cable and internet, gas, water, things like that. In my market, we don't have a lot of city water properties. Most of ours are on wells. So you kind of have to budget for that kind of maintenance. But it evens out to roughly what a water bill would be. And then your cleaning fees are a big

when they're passed through to the guests. And a lot of people, when they're analyzing short-term rental deals, they say, oh, are these gross numbers including cleaning fees? They get really hung up on what gross numbers are. And a lot of people say that when you're quoting your gross, you should say not including cleaning fees. But I don't agree with that because the definition of gross is all money is coming in. And there is actually income in the cleaning fees.

So you don't, if you're clean or charged you $100 bucks a clean, charge your guests $120. There's income there. So you don't need to throw that away as a pass-through expense. There is a little income in there. All right. That's great. Great. All right.

Well, with that, I want to head over the next segment of our show. It's the deal, deal, deep dive. What's going on, everyone? It's Brandon. I want to take a quick break from this podcast to invite you to this week's webinar, how a newbie, meaning a new real estate investor, can start building wealth through real estate. Because look, when you're beginning to invest in real estate, it can feel overwhelming, right? Where do you go? What should you do? What should you buy? I don't want to make any mistakes, right?

That's why this is a must-attend event. Look, if you have fewer than five properties, do not miss this. You're going to learn the different strategies and niches you can take, some of the common mistakes that investors make, some of the best and worst strategies for new investors and a whole lot more. We're even going to be looking for a real-life deal on the market together. We're going to run the numbers and find out how much we should pay for it and how much we'll make if we buy it. It's going to be a ton of fun, super helpful. Again, if you have less than five properties, you better be there. bigger pockets.com slash newbie webinar. Again, biggerpockets.com slash newbie, N-E-W-B-I-E webinar. I'll see you there.

This is a part of the show where we dive deep into one of your deals that you've done. Avery, do you got something in mind that we can pick apart? I do. All right. So the first question I have is, what kind of property is this

and where is it located? It is a short-term rental in Gatlinburg. All right. And how did you find this property? It was on the MLS. And we just found it on the MLS. We were looking for it. This one was really important to me because it was the one that would determine if I could quit my short term.

I mean my short term, if I could quit my job or not. So this one is the one that really makes a difference for me in my mind. All right. What were they asking? How much was it? This is not a realistic number for the market now, but they were asking $159,000 for us, a one bedroom with a second loft bedroom. All right, cool.

And what price did you end up paying for it? Well, we were under contract on it for 165 because we wanted some closing costs and there had just been a really big fire in the area and the inventory was really low. And actually while we were standing there doing our inspection, a guy came up in a truck and offered us cash. He thought we were the owners already. So we got a really good deal. It ended up only appraising for 155 and we got the owner down to 155. Using the appraisal. That was good.

That was my question. How do you negotiate the price? That's cool. All right. How did you fund it then? We used a helock from our primary for the down payment on that one. And we did a 10% vacation loan on that. So basically a no money down thing because you use the helock for the down payment and then got the loan on the rest.

Pretty much. It's beautiful when your houses buy you houses and your cash flow buys you cash flow. Yeah. That's just like the best part of real estate. Okay. So I already know what you did with it was a short-term rental. Tell us what the outcome of this deal was. Sure. So this property, it's a really cute property. It had terrible rental history. It was doing 27,000 a year on the local property manager. It does 54,000 a year for us now. Wow. And I was very nervous about it. And this is a really good lesson for future short-term rental investors as well. So this property, the way that it is positioned on the mountain with trees, it can only get satellite and it cannot get internet whatsoever, not even satellite internet. And I was really nervous about it because I was worried that it wasn't going to.

rent. It is on a little bit of a steep road. It's not terrible, but it is something that needs to be mentioned to guests. And it doesn't have internet. So to me, I felt like this was a really big risk, even though it was a really cute property. I was very worried about it. I lost a lot of sleep over the no internet. My husband is the non-analysis paralysis guy. And he convinced me that it was going to be a good investment because it really was just such a good deal. That's such a low price for a nice property with a view like that. And we went through with it. And we found that, when something isn't perfect about a property, if the rest of the property makes sense,

then it can be okay. Like the no internet thing, we just make sure everybody's very aware that it doesn't have internet well before they book. Same thing with the steep road. Hey, the road's kind of steep. You're going to be scared the first time, but the second time you're going to be a total pro.

As long as everybody's aware of that several times before booking, we have not had one bad review on it, not having internet. It's our highest performer. Yeah. That's cool. That's a good lesson, too, is, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of good stuff in there. But it's interesting.

Sometimes I think that you're most afraid of as long as you, you know, compensate for it. Well, it's the expectations. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I found that as an agent, when we avoid difficult conversations, we almost guarantee that people will be upset. And when you do the thing you don't want to do, which feels wrong, I don't want to make this person think there's a problem by telling them about the steep road three times.

Because what if they weren't going to think about it? It's the opposite. The more you explain it to them, the more they're prepared for it. So when the steep road comes, they're not. they're not ticked. They're not cursing you out on the way up there thinking they got duped. They're like, oh, yeah, this is what she told us and this is how she said, we should navigate it. Okay, that worked.

That was fun. Now they're happy. The exact same scenario, if their expectations were that it was going to be not that bad, and then they felt some fear and some anxiety going up that road, they're cursing you out the whole time. They're planning that really bad online review. The gift basket is exactly what you said. Oh, of course they put oatmeal raisin. They couldn't give us chocolate chip, couldn't they?

Because they're steep, right? Like that's exactly like a good lesson just to learn in business is to have the very hard conversation upfront. Be clear, be direct, let people know what they're getting into. And nine times out of 10, it will go smooth. So good. So good. All right. Well, any other final lessons you learn from this deal?

Anything that you want to that you want to pull out? Or is that kind of the gist? As long as the numbers make sense, it's a good deal. As long as there's going to be some things that you like better than other things. but there's no way you can make everyone happy all the time. You can have the most beautiful property in the world and somebody is going to have a complaint. So as long as you're not trying to please everybody all the time,

your mental health is going to be good and you're going to be making money. All right. All right. Perfect. All right. Well, that is the end of the deal, deep dive. And now let's head over to the world famous Fire Round. It's time for the Fire Round.

All right. This is a part of the show where we're going to fire questions at you that come direct from the bigger pockets forums. So let's see what people got to ask. And most of these are related to short-term rentals and vacation rentals. So Daniela from Oak Park, Illinois, Illinois, if you don't know how to pronounce it right, said, have you compared the Airbnb earning estimate for your area with your actual? Do you earn significantly more or less than what they estimate?

If the Airbnb estimate is true, I would not be making any money, which doesn't make sense, as I know some house in the areas clearly are. Thank you. I don't look at that. There's a lot of ways when you're analyzing a deal that you can figure out what it might be able to make. Air DNA and Mashvisor are both really good tools. Their data is not perfect, but it's getting better all the time. And it is actually measuring properties that are on VRBO and Airbnb. So when you're looking at what you can make, those can be really good tools to utilize. Also, a lot of the big national property managers like VACASA and Evolve will give you estimates of what they think. think you can make on it. So all that to say, it's not even, I totally am not even answering the question. I don't look at that, but I'm pretty, I know what I can make on a property now. It's not

really a quantifiable thing. I can kind of just look at it. So I don't even look at that stuff anymore. You know, I just thought of one more point to bring up here. This is another reason why I like your strategy a lot, this idea of, you know, picking a market that's an actual vacation rental market and then going all into that market. So you like have a, you know, a number of them in that market. because now there's a lot less risk of like, you know, well, what if, you know, I don't know what that can rent for. I mean, if I go and do a vacation rental in, you know, some random city, like, I don't really know what the rental rates are. But when you've been, they've been renting there for the last 80 years houses, like you have a lot of history to go off on a lot of averages because there's just a lot of people going there. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

All right. Number two. Next question from Tato Corcoran. For those of you who operate Airbnbs, I'm curious what your cancellation policy. is. Is it strict or do you try to keep it moderate? Super strict. Especially if you have a smaller property. The larger properties where you have 20 people coming, it's a lot, that takes a lot more for them to coordinate to get everybody together to go on a vacation. So you have less of a chance of them canceling. But especially with the smaller properties, we were pretty strict on it.

If we can rebook their dates, then we'll give them a refund. But if we can't, and it's not a truly extenuating circumstance, which Airbnb and VRBO have just come out with all these new things about extenuating circumstances that we don't need to get into. But if they have a really legitimate reason, then we'll let them out. But what it says on our policies on both platforms is that we're super strict. All right. Number three, what do you think of the whole Airbnb arbitrage thing, where you like lease from a landlord, pay them that set rent, and then with their permission, you rent it out short term and make the money on the difference? What do you think of that? I think that's kind of to your point of making money while there's money to be made in a great economy.

I don't think that's real estate investing. I think that's creating a job for yourself and it's not creating long-term wealth, but it can be a good way to get some cash flow going in the meantime. Yeah, totally agreed. Love it. Okay, from Joe Kim in My Hood, the Bay Area. What do you think about niche marketing appealing to specific groups like couples, retirees, bachelor parties, etc?

I think that's overthinking it a little bit. There's going to be, if you're in a market where there's tons of tourists, there's going to be a lot of different kind of people who need the size property that you have. So there's no need to, in this instance, there's no need to market that way. All right. All right. Good answers. And now it is time for the famous four.

These are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. And Avery, we're going to throw my chew. Number one. Actually, before I get to that, let's hear from Jay Scott. What's going on this week over on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast? Hey there, Brandon and podcast listeners. This is Jay Scott, your co-host of the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast. And this week on the business podcast, we have David Meerman Scott, author of the new book,

Fanocracy, turning fans into customers and customers into fans. And he gives us tip after tip after tip of how we as business owners can create fans from our customers and create customers from our fans to expand our business and increase our sales. So check it out this week on The Bigger Pockets Business Podcast. Now, back to your famous four. All right. Thank you, Jay Scott. And now we can go to number one.

Avery, number one. What's your favorite real estate-related book? The one that has the most bearing on my business and then my business as an agent is the long-distance real estate investing book. Ah, look at that. Ooh, that might be the first time. We've had that one. David Green's own book.

This is great. Wait, you are talking about my book, right? There isn't another person that wrote another book at the same title, right?

No, I don't think so. You can see David's head just growing out. He feels really good about himself. This is great. I mean, you can't always live in the best place to invest. And in my agent business, none of my clients live in the market that they're investing in.

So it's a good one. It's funny you say that. I've heard a lot of agents in a similar position as you who are servicing clients, like in my marketing, in California, but they're in the market with the properties that are buying that book and giving it to their clients to say like, hey, look, this isn't crazy. People actually do this. Now the client knows what questions to ask and what they should do. The agent knows what's in the book that the

person's reading. So they say, well, the book says to do this, so you should do it this way. And it makes the whole relationship go a lot smoother. Have you found that to be the case at all? Well, I recommend it to my clients. I don't, maybe I should buy it for them. but yeah yeah there's a lot of a lot of the FAQs definitely help there's all almost everyone's going to have roughly the same questions about doing things remotely when they don't live there so it's definitely been a help awesome well you made my day thank you i finally got one for one of my books branding it's like every three guests somebody recommends one of his bestsellers i don't think that's sure i don't think i've had one in like a year but whatever that's because you're just humble

trust me that's not true he's so used to it he doesn't even recognize it anymore he's like oh yeah Yes, yes, I know. Best-selling real estate book in the market. Move on. Move on. What is your favorite business book? I am a Ryan Holiday superfan. I really love Obstacle is the way.

It's not necessarily a business book, but I apply it to my business quite often. And then on the other end of that spectrum, way on the other end, I'm also a Grant Cardone super fan. All right. Yeah, those are about as opposite of personalities as you can get. Yeah.

That's hilarious. That's great. Okay. So when you're not playing in a punk rock band, being a goalkeeper for a, was it a Big 12 championship team? Oh, yeah. When I was at Texas, we did win the Big 12 championship. Or buying a bunch of properties. What are some of your hobbies?

I collect guitars. I've got a lot of Gibson's. So I don't play so much anymore. Those days are done. But play guitar. and then I'm a runner as well. I'm trying to get, I was a marathoner before I had a baby last year, so I'm trying to get back into the swing of that.

Yeah, cool. You're going to get a lot of follows after today's show. There's a whole lot of people that are like, this chick is awesome. Thank you. That's so cool. All right, well, before we ask people where they can connect you with you at, I want to know, what do you think separate successful real estate investors

from those who give up, they fail, or they never get started? I know for a fact I'm not the first person that has said, this but analysis paralysis is a big one. Especially, I mean, I deal with hundreds of investors a year and getting caught up in what the other side of the transaction is doing or not doing can really can kill people. I've seen people walk away from fantastic deals because they are too caught up in what the seller paid for the property or what the seller, what they feel like the seller is doing to them psychologically or what games they're playing. You really just have to keep the emotions out of it and just look at the numbers. And the same thing goes for, I've seen people walk.

away from stuff because they didn't like the condition of the couch, which is not even real estate. But just look at the numbers, stay in the numbers area and not in the emotions area and not worry about what everybody else is doing. And then that's really what separates people as the analysis paralysis. That's a good a good throwback to another Ryan holiday book. Ego is the enemy because you're exactly right. I see this as a real estate agent you probably do too constantly where this deal is $25,000 less than anything else that they could possibly buy. It's going to rent for more than anything else they could get. And they're hung up on, well, the seller isn't going to change the door locks.

And I think that they should change the door locks. And they're willing to let it go on principle. And then all those people every time they step back later and they say, why did I do that? That was so done. But when you're in the moment, yeah, it feels real. Okay. Last question. This has been a fascinating interview.

And I thank you for doing such a good job. I love the amount of content you actually gave us in a short period of time. For those that want to use you as an agent or find out more about you, where can they find out more about you? So the name of my team is the short-term shop. And you can find me at the short-term shop.com. I'm also on bigger pockets several times throughout the day on the forum. So you can find me there too. Awesome.

Well, it's been fantastic, Avery. Thank you so much for joining us today. And yeah, this is cool. I'm going to definitely reach back to you. if I decided to go with this short-term rental thing here in Maui. So I appreciate letting me pick your brain today. Yeah, let me know. I'd be happy to help.

Thank you guys. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you. All right. Now was the interview with Avery Carl. Awesome show. Came at such a great time for me. And I know a lot of people who have been thinking,

should I try the whole short-term rental thing? Should I try some vacation rentals? Well, I think she had some phenomenal strategies. I think that's the most straightforward meat and potatoes information we've ever got from someone about short-term rentals. I mean, I was just fascinated with how much. content she gave us and how clear it was. I really feel like I could go start a business right now just off of what Avery shared. Let's do it. David, forget mobile home parks and mortgage companies

and let's just go start a short-term rental business together. Okay, there it is. You guys have heard it. If any of you have experience dealing with short-term rentals, message, Brandon or me, tell us that you want to start the business for us. We will take care of all of your needs. We'll supply everything you need. You do the work, and we'll see how that goes. That sounds like a great option right there. Good job, David. David, David likes to start businesses. It's great. I like to start businesses and Brandon likes to buy t-shirts at Target. He's wearing a $6 t-shirt on the recording today. And we were joking about how that's how you know he's married.

It doesn't look like a dad shirt. This looks like a, I just got back from the gym. And have you seen my beach bowl. When your shirt costs less than your coffee, that's a dad shirt. Don't bring the gym into this. I don't even know where to go from that. Let's get out of here. Before we do, before we do, this is where I want to go with that.

I want to give a shout out to Scott Pearson from Hunlick Creek. I don't know if I said that right. Hunlock Creek, Pennsylvania. He's a Bigger Pockets Pro member recently got his first deal done. It is a duplex. That's a lot of dees. He got a deal done. He's a duplex.

He bought it for about 60K. He makes like 500 bucks a month in cash flow off this deal. You know, we love, love to see all of our members doing deals and entering them into their profiles over on bigger pockets. It also helps other Bigger Pockets members see that you are like a local expert and it motivates all of us attention. So make sure you do that. Enter it under your profile. And nice job, Scott.

So, and everybody else, if you are a Bigger Pockets pro member and you want your deal featured here, email us podcast at biggerpockets.com. Put the word pro deal in the subject line. Tell us about one of your recent deals. And we might be talking about you next week. And with that, now, David, would you like to get us out of here? Yeah. Because I got a gym to get to, and I'm going to wear my $6 shirt to the gym right now. Thank you very much.

They're like disposable shirts, like disposable diapers. You wear it to the gym, and it gets sweaty, you throw it away on your way out. You grab another one out of like the 20 pack that you bought at Target. So true story. I actually bought several of these shirts, the $6 ones at Target. But I wore one the other day. And the reason you brought it sweaty. So this reminds me the story.

I want to brag about myself for a minute and pat myself in the back. So for the last few years for a long time, not like a year. I built the shed I live in. I'm in the shed. I had it built a year ago. So on Saturday I was going to go to the gym because I was like, I got to work out today a little bit. And then I was like, you know what I'm going to do instead?

I have not yet drywalled the ceiling to my shed. You need a drywall on the ceiling. So now, if you're not watching YouTube right now, you can't see this. But look who's got a drywalled ceiling now. And I wore my $6 target shirt, and it was like sopping wet. I mean, it was like wet from sweat. It was disgusting. but I single-handedly by myself drywall in my entire ceiling.

And I was pretty proud of myself. Congratulations. I'm saving $200 to drywall a shed when you could have made a video that would have enriched the masses and changed lives. No, it's not about the saving money. It's about the sense of accomplishment now. Every time I'm in this room, I look up and I go, I did that. And I worked out for basically three hours. I mean, you should have seen me.

I was like on a stool with one leg. with one hand holding the piece of eight foot drywall, my head holding another piece and a screw gun in the other one, screwing it up into studs and missing. It took me three hours to get four sheets of drywall up there. But it was awesome. Was it a stool that you put together yourself and a gun that you drove to targets and by yourself

and screws that you like handmade from Hawaiian coconut? Thank you very much. I love it. Well, hey, Jesus was a carpenter. There you worked in his hands too. He could have outsourced it to other people too, but he didn't. Thank you very much.

You know why? Because there is value in working with your hands, David Green. There it is. All right. This is David Green for Brandon, the humble, holy roller Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the height, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.

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