BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 57: An Introduction to Investing in Vacation Rental Properties with Matt Landau

Episode Date: February 13, 2014

The sand between your toes, the soft roar of the waves crashing on the beach, the beautiful people sunbathing on the shore. If this is your vision of a vacation rental… it’s about to change! In today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we chat with vacation rental expert Matt Landauabout getting started as a vacation rental investor and building a scalable (and profitable) business around leasing rental properties to nightly guests in great vacation areas. Matt shares a ton of great tips, tricks, and skills to help you learn more about this fascinating – and largely misunderstood – niche of the real estate space. Additionally, Matt shares some really great tips for any landlord to decrease vacancy rates and increase profits in your real estate business, so no matter what kind of investing you currently engage in, this episode is bound to help your business improve! So grab a beach chair, make yourself a piña colada, and  sit back and relax… it’s time to take a vacation! In This Show, We Cover: What is a vacation rental – and why should you consider one? The legalities of vacation rentals Screening for the tenants who won’t destroy your property Marketing for great tenants The first steps in buying a vacation rental property Expenses when dealing with a vacation property Using Adwords to fill vacancies The secret to getting national press for your properties And a lot more! Books Mentioned in the Show The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt Links from the Show BiggerPockets.com/pro BiggerPockets.com/biz – Using BiggerPockets to Grow Your Business VRBO HomeAway FlipKey.com Vacation Rental Automatic Door Lock (via Amazon) Pat Flynn and the “Be Everywhere” Philosophy. Pancho- The Sea Lion Turns THIEF?! Tweetable Topics We’re at the beginning of a very massive trend: vacation rentals. (Tweet This!) Be generous in having faith in people. (Tweet This!) Create a bulletproof reputation of being the industry expert. (Tweet This!) Connect with Matt Matt’s BiggerPockets Blog Posts Matt’s Website: VacationRentalMarketingBlog.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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those fundamentals, pairing tax efficiency with disciplined operators and a long-term approach. This isn't about chasing hype or guessing market timing. It's about building durable, tax-aware wealth over time. Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash bam. This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 57. 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, everybody? This is Josh Dork and host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with the freshly tanned Brandon Turner. What up, Brandon? What's up, Josh? I don't know if they call this tan and you're part of the world, but here they call it sunburned. Yeah, yeah. You're one of those translucent guys who gets red when you. you go out in the sun, aren't you?

That's it. Well, here's what I did. So I was on vacation last week. I went and took a cruise down to the Bahamas and Aruba and it was amazing. And it was good weather, right? Hot, sunny. And I'm like, I'm going to go out and get a tan. So I took my spray sunscreen, that new fancy spray stuff and I sprayed it all over. And then I went out in the sun for like nine hours. And then like the next day, I went up. Yeah, if you read the directions, by the way, it says reapply every X hours. No, that wasn't even it. Here's what happened. The spray, Apparently, I, like, sprayed it across my body, but I didn't rub it in. And so I woke up the next morning with bright red stripes followed by white stripes.

I look like a candy cane across my entire body. I am a giant candy cane. Yeah. Apparently, you're supposed to rub that stuff in. It's not just spray lines on your body and it magically covers. Anyway, moving on. That's awesome. Candy cane, man.

I love it. I love it. Welcome back. It's good to have you, man. we're excited you're back in the motherland. Thank you. It's good to be back. I left 85 degree weather for rain in 45 and indie music.

And I was like, I'm back in Seattle. Nice. That's awesome. Oh, cool, man. That's great. So all's well here at bigger pockets. We are fully, we're staffed up. We just brought in on a new team member.

Her name is Caitlin. You'll see her on the forums. You'll see her around the site. If you need help with stuff, she's there to help you out. And so I'm super excited to have a little bit of assistance for Brandon and I. So that's kind of a cool thing. But yeah, man, well, let's kind of start moving into this thing. Why don't we start with our quick tip?

Quick tip. Today's quick tip. If you've got a company, some kind of business, you know, you're a real estate investor. You've got a company name. go and set up, or even if you're a company in the industry, go ahead and set up a company profile in BiggerPockets. You can do that really easy at biggerpockets.com slash companies. Set up one of these company profiles so people can find out about your business. And the cool thing is it's actually linked to your personal profile.

So on the top right of your personal profile, there'll be a company logo there. And it'll point people to that company page, which is kind of like your calling card for your business. So definitely do that. One of the other really cool benefits of the company profile actually comes only if you're a pro member. But for those pro guys, what's awesome is you can actually add your company logo below every one of your foreign posts in your signature and it'll link to that profile. So essentially, as you participate on the site, you're getting all this great brand awareness.

So, you know, it's definitely something to look at. You can find out more about it at biggerpockets.com slash pro, where we talk about all the pro benefits. And if you want to learn more about building your business, building your name, your brand, your company on our site, definitely check out biggerpockets.com slash biz, which has got this kind of cool tutorial for you. With that said, this as Show 57, in honor of Brandon's return from vacation, we're actually going to be talking about the topic of vacation rentals. So our guest today is Matt Landau. And Matt specializes in vacation rentals and has been featured in places like CNN Money, US News, and World Report, Business Week.

And of course, he's a blogger on our very own Bigger Pockets blog. Matt knows a ton about marketing, filling vacancies, dealing with vacation tenants, and a whole lot more. So we're definitely excited to have him here. And with that, why don't we jump into the show? before we do that, if you've got questions, definitely jump on the show notes at BiggerPockets.com slash show 57. All right, Matt, welcome to the show, man. Good to have you here. It is a pleasure to be here, Josh, or there wherever we are. Where are we, by the way? I think we're meeting somewhere over the Pacific Ocean at this point.

Damn. I'm in Panama. You're in Panama. All right, well, let's get Brandon in on this. Brandon, you're going to welcome him or what? Matt, welcome to the show, man. How are you? Thank you so much, Brandon. I was a pleasure to be here. Awesome, awesome. Did you like how my introduction was much better than Josh's? Way more refined.

Very much so. Clearly, clearly. All right. Well, yeah, you said you're in Panama. So before we get to why you're in Panama, why don't we get kind of the backstory? I mean, how did that happen? Why are you there? Where'd you come from, etc.? Yeah, I'm originally a New Jersey native, Princeton, New Jersey.

was not... East Coast. That's right. It was not smart enough to actually go to Princeton. I was deported down to the University of Richmond in Virginia. After graduation, I made my way to Costa Rica at the time I was doing some travel writing. And in that southern trend, I made my way down to Panama next, which according to all my colleagues in Costa Rica was the perfect destination at the time for someone like me, who was not only looking to invest in some projects, but also just for a very high quality lifestyle. And I found myself here in the historic district of Panama City, which is sort of a mixture of New Orleans about 100 years ago, if you can envision that down in the tropics, found more or less a neighborhood that I fell in love with, stayed in a fleet of vacation

rentals that I now own. And the rest is history. Seven years later, we're now the top ranked lodging here in Panama City. And we have more five-star reviews than almost any other hotel in the country, apart from the Panama Canal, of course. Fascinating. Fascinating. So, well, that's awesome, man. So you decided you weren't going to take the traditional path and, you know, found your way down. And now you're, now you're a vacation rental landlord. Yeah, I can't say it was planned at all. It sounds, it sounds romantically organized, but in reality it was all just sort of off-the-cup decisions that brought me down here. And time really does fly when you're having fun.

Nice. Nice. That's awesome. Oh, very, very cool. Well, as I said in our intro, I just got off of a, you know, long vacation and it was wonderful. And the whole time I kept thinking, how could I incorporate my, you know, real estate investing into my vacation life? and so I thought I need to talk to Matt and get him on the show. Wow. Your vacation life. Yeah. Wow. Sounds good to me. I don't know. Yeah. You must have a pretty good boss.

I must. I don't know. Yeah, you'll have to meet him someday. So I guess what I'm wondering is I mean, I got like a thousand questions we're going to try to cover today in the next hour. But why don't we start out with just a really, really, really basic one. What is the vacation rental? I mean, for those people who are brand new at this, what are we even talking about here? A vacation rental can be any property, really. I mean, it started off as kind of second homes that were used only part-time. And in searching for a new source of income, the owner decided to rent it out short-term. In my part of the world, short-term means under 30 days. I think the actual logistics change depending on where you're based. But in general, the vacation rental targets a tourist, typically a group of family, in some cases couples. that are looking for a more private and in a lot of cases, much more affordable place to stay than a

traditional hotel. Got it. So what's the difference between a hotel and a vacation rental then? There's massive differences. The idea behind a vacation rental being that you can live a little bit more like a local, have a little bit more of an authentic locals experience as opposed to the generic hotel confines of a traditional tour bus, for instance. This is more an experience of immersing yourself in the local community, cooking your own meals, making friends, inviting them over for drinks, if you're lucky.

Ah, there you go. Nice. I was going to say, I just went to a vacation. I did my first vacation rental. I went to Miami, and I stayed in one. And I found out, the lady had asked us, she said, don't mention that you found this, you know, this is a vacation rental if you see the neighbors. And I didn't know why. And later I found out that's because Florida has some really strict rules and laws about vacation rentals.

So I guess what can you what can you kind of tell us about that? Are they legal, illegal? I mean, what are we looking at? Yeah. Again, it's specific to each state and in some cases county. But as vacation rentals have emerged as such a powerful trend in the travel sector, according to a recent Google study, vacation rentals are going to comprise 30% of all U.S. travel by the end of this year, which is massive.

With that giant boom and more and more travelers staying in rentals and more owners deciding to rent out their properties, you can imagine that a lot of the more traditional hotel owners are sensing some unfair competition. So most of those destinations that have vacation rental bans, or at least rumors of vacation rental bans are those those bands are driven by the hotel lobbyists but there's also some legitimate you know components to those complaints in that vacation rentals are not standardized they're not operated in the same way that a traditional hotel would be in terms of security and safety and insurance and all that kind of stuff so there are some very fair and legitimate concerns about that

movement as well but in general it's it really does depend on your local legislature i would recommend anyone who's considering investing in a vacation rental go directly to their local tourism board and ask if it's an okay thing to do, unlike your Florida host. Yeah, nice. Nice. Yeah, you know, it's, I've got a buddy in New York who has, has a bunch of property, and he does the Airbnb, VRBO thing. And it's, at least from what he's told me, it's, it's not 100% kosher in New York City to do that in the hotel lobby in New York City is stanchly, staunchly against allowing vacation rentals to be operated through these sites because it's not in their interest. It's killing them. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a, again, a very legitimate

concern. If it's being monitored and sort of enforced in a fair and safe way, I think there's everyone can win, you know. So there's several reports out of San Francisco. in Cisco that vacation rental guests are generating more per capita than hotel guests, which from a tourism perspective should make the government very happy. Is it, oh, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was going to ask about the tax implications. It would seem the government doesn't like vacation rentals, maybe because it's a lot easier to go under the table.

Like, I'm sure this lady that I paid my $65 to each night, you know, in Miami, I'm sure she didn't go and immediately report that to the government. Is that a concern? That is a concern, but there's a very simple way around that, and that is to run your vacation rental like a business and report all of your income and obviously write off your various marketing expenses in the same way that Uber or a number of the shared economy applications

that have sort of made these services available at much less expensive prices have organized it in a very formal and business-like sort of way. vacation rental owners need to be doing the exact same thing. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So, so, I mean, how easy is this? You know, am I just going to go open the doors and have people rushing in to rent my, my condo in Miami, assuming, of course, I've got one? We could talk about that another time, but, you know, he doesn't. I don't. But, you know, I mean, what kind of challenges to do new vacation rental owners face? Obviously, you had talked about, you know, you want to go out and check, look into local legislation so you're not running.

I think they call it what a boarding house, right? Is that kind of the term that folks? Yeah, down here they call it Hoteles clandestinos, which would be clandestine hotels. Oh, sounds sexy. Whipping out a little Spanish on you. But beyond that, I mean, what are the things do you really need to do? Are these, things. Obviously, I'm assuming they're furnished. Yeah, you know, we're very fortunate right now to be at the very, very beginning of a massive trend. And a funny thing has happened in that over the past 10 years, vacation rentals have become so much more popular than they once were. And with that,

boom, comes a couple of interesting dynamics. So if you, Josh, were to have your quote-unquote Miami condo 10 years ago, you probably would have had no trouble filling it up more or less at any price that you chose on a regular basis. Because more and more competition has come to the market, because, for instance, Brandon has bought the condo next to you in Miami and priced his a little bit lower than yours or maybe given a little bit of better service than you did, Josh, because we all know, you know, your customer service. Wait, hold on.

Let's stop. I think my headset was not working for a second there. Did you just like, really? Oh, that's off. The stories have got around, John. Hey, Brandon, guess what? We're getting a new guest on the show today. Matt Landau couldn't be here.

He was struggling through fighting off shark bites in Panama. No, but in all seriousness, the amount of competition has increased exponentially. So what used to be a very easy gig of putting your property on one of these large websites like Airbnb or Home Away or Flipkey, which is the tree. trip advisor branch has become a lot more difficult than it once was. So no longer can you just open your doors, put up a listing, and expect to be full year-round. And that's changing more and more every single day. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And I know we'll get into that here a little bit later when we talk about marketing,

which is one of your big emphasizes in the vacation rental world. But before we do that, let's talk more about investing in vacation rental properties. The people listening to the show are either real estate investors or soon-to-be real-estate investors. So I guess my first question would be why would somebody buy a vacation rental and not just, you know, a duplex down the street from their house? The short answer to that question is the return on your investment can be, you know, exponentially higher. Let's say you do buy that condo down the road that is in a tourism district and you can typically get $2,000 a month. from a long-term renter. Let's say we were to use very, very conservative numbers and say you were to book 15 nights out of the month at an average of $250 or $300.

That's already 2000. You've already increased your income by about 100%. Of course it does require a lot more maintenance and it does require a little bit more of a marketing sense to keep those 15 nights filled every month. But when you put it side by side alongside a long-term rental, the numbers can be staggeringly higher. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Which leads me to think about the turnover. You know, obviously on a traditional rental, you're not, your goal is to minimize turnover and to keep it to, you know, as little as possible. On a vacation rental, it's part of the game, right?

You're going to get people who come for one day, two days, five days, a week, two weeks, whatever. but nobody's there for six months. So, you know, I think of life as a landlord and dealing with the just nightmare scenario of people destroying crap. How much of that have you experienced in terms of your properties? Do you have a lot of people destroying them, or is that part of screening? Can you even screen for vacation renters? Yeah, it's a great question, Josh.

And because this industry is so new, we've seen a lot of the, those kind of disasters happen. I don't know if you guys followed that disaster in New York City where an Airbnb renter totally trashed and ruined a nice condo. And in that case, I believe Airbnb covered the damages. But as a lot of these vacation rental owners and or managers are new to the game, they're not quite as well-versed as maybe a hotel would be in handling those kind of challenging situations. So in my particular case, because I've now been doing this for about eight years, I have a really good idea of what type of clients we like. What are the telltale signs of potential crazy folks, which I'm sure we've all stayed next to once or twice.

And in my particular case, it's a combination of the right price point. Obviously, if you're renting something out at 500 bucks a night, chances are, you know, there's not going to be quite as much damages, ideally, as if it was 50 bucks a night. That makes sense. The same goes for what kind of clients you're targeting. If you're hosting a family with kids, you'd expect the care to be slightly more familiar with than, say, a group of spring breakers. So a lot of that does go. So a lot of that does into the marketing. And a lot of new owners do find that it takes about a year to hash out their ideal guest profile before they can really hit a sweet spot. Hey, Matt, you just said something that got my brain turning. So as a landlord, I have fair housing laws that I have to follow. I can't

discriminate based on family, based on any, you know, origins, whatever. But, you know, you're talking about marketing these vacation rentals to families. Is there, any kind of fair housing laws that oversee this industry, or are you kind of free to say, this is perfect for families, you know, something that you could never say, obviously, in a typical rental? I can't really speak for the United States because I've kind of made my living down here in the third world where we can discriminate as much as we want. And I do. And I do. Be very thoughtful in who you rent to.

be generous in having faith in folks because a lot of people are concerned right up front that someone's going to trash their house and it never happens. There are those unusual scenarios, in which case I would recommend home insurance, this kind of home insurance that a lot of owners have been using that covers that sort of thing, but in general, have faith in humanity. Can you really quickly, last question on this line, is there any kind of screening that you can do or if you're using one of these third-party sites like an Airbnb, do they have screening processes where the actual renters are screened or is it only the reverse?

Not yet. And I think that's coming. A lot of the screening that's taking place right now is to weed out scammers because so much money is flowing in such a new industry. There's a bunch of sort of sketchy folks that are taking advantage of the weaknesses and the holes in the system. but beyond that, the way that I've seen most owners vetting their potential guests, a big one is talking on the phone. It's not the most streamlined or efficient way to start generating bookings, but you get a much better sense of who someone is and what they're looking for on the phone than you do

from some anonymous email. And I noticed on Airbnb when I booked mine that I had to connect. I don't know if I had to, but I think I had to connect my Facebook page to it. So, and I assume that was so that the person could see that I was a real person and that I wasn't, you know, just a scammer. Is that true? Is that why I had to do that? Yeah, most likely. And a lot of the new security measures that are being put in place are designed to do just that, verify that you are someone real.

And actually, the reverse is happening as well right now. There's a lot of scammers who are posing as owners, stealing photos off Craigslist or off VRBO. saying come stay at my rental, you know, a family pays them three grand for a vacation and that shows up at someone's door totally unexpected. Well, that's, that's, you know, we're laughing, but like, that's the thing I'm petrified of. I'm really, you know, I, I have yet to do one. I haven't taken the leap of faith. But man, I, you know, that would really destroy a trip. Absolutely just devastate a trip. Well, that's where the reviews come in handy, though, right? Like, I looked at my place and there was 197 reviews of a place. So I think a lot of it would depend on that, right?

Yeah, these are just, I think, natural hitches in a new industry. And if these hitches didn't exist, everyone would be renting and everyone would be staying in vacation rentals. So it's kind of the drawback of getting in early on a new opportunity. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And hey, you mentioned earlier, you said you've been doing this for eight years and you've kind of learned what type of guest that you're looking for and what kind of you don't. So what are some of those things that you're looking for when you get a good guest? A lot of our guests are coming on vacation. A lot of them are coming to experience Panama City in tandem with another one of the destinations in the interior of the country.

So Panama, if you guys haven't been here, is an amazing country. I'll give Panama a plug right there. It's not like Detroit. It's not quite like Detroit. Slightly sunnier. Equal amount of ghettos. But again, a lot of our guests are coming to. to stay with us in Panama City for several days, and then they're going to the interior for the beaches or the mountains, and then they'll stay with us at the end. So in terms of a profile, we really like people who like experiencing the authentic side of a destination. People who would stay in a resort or who would stay in a marriott is not necessarily our typical type of client. And there's plenty of times that a guest will arrive and have entirely inappropriate expectations

of what a vacation rental is. They'll be looking for valet parking or room service or a jacuzzi inside of their bathroom. And in that case, we very simply send them to a chain hotel because we're not in the business of trying to convince people to stay in rentals as opposed to hotels. That being said, there's an increasingly large demographic of folks that really do want to live like a local. So that's kind of our ideal client as someone who's coming to look and immerse themselves

in the local community. Gotcha. Gotcha. So what's the first step in buying one? Brandon went away on his little jaunt to paradise while I was here in 10 below Denver. And he's cruising around and it's like, wow, this is a great place to be. I would love to have a place there. I mean, is it just buy where you like?

Surprisingly, that is a great first step. Because in the end, this is a piece of real estate that you own. So it doesn't make sense to be investing in a property where you're not comfortable going on vacation. That's the added perk is that you can use your own property when it's not rented. So as simple as it sounds, that is a really good first step, choosing a destination that you really enjoy. Maybe it's a place that your family has traveled to for summers on end. Maybe it's a place you grew up. There's any number of reasons that people choose destinations.

But apart from that, the amount of tourism is. in said destination is also extremely important. It's way easier to rent a condo in Miami than it is in Detroit. I didn't do it that time. You know, if you want to jump right into a competitive environment that has a lot of tourism already flowing through, it's going to be a little bit easier than trying to build your own niche in a internet place that's, you know, just starting up. In my particular case, when I opened up shop in the historic district of Panama City, it was more or less a ghetto back then. And we were

the only nice place to stay. So I kind of had to build this entire thing from scratch. Interesting. But I would say to someone who doesn't have that marketing hand or background, choosing a place that already hasn't established tourism sort of flow is a very easy way to get started. Gotcha. That's great. So, you know, it would say I'm not from an area. I go. I visit once. I mean, do you think it's a good idea to, you know, I don't know, I go down to New Orleans and I find it pretty amazing. You know, I think of it kind of like just, again, buying a rental. You really want to know the area that you're in, you know, is as a vacational rental. I mean, are you kind of cruising up and down the blocks, you know, finding out the crime-ridden areas?

Are you doing a lot of scouting as a typical person would? or is it pretty self-evident like, hey, this is, you know, all the tourists are down in Orlando, so anywhere in Orlando close to Disney is going to work. So here's a really good, easy way to go about doing it. Go to one of the large websites, whether it's VRBO or Home Away or Flipkey, and just peek at the amount of properties and the prices and the amount of reviews, and you can even see their live calendar availability. Take a peek at how everyone's doing.

So chances are that's going to be a pretty good reflection of how you could potentially do if you were to insert your property into that market. That's good, yeah, that's great. So what kind of expenses? What are the costs that are associated with vacation rentals? It's, you know, again, turnover is obviously going to be very high and like a hotel. Well, hotels have maids and staff for that. I think most vacation rentals, you're paying a third-party service to kind of handle the

turnaround and the renters pay a fee to housekeeping. Is that right? There's a number of different ways that it can be done. And that's kind of the beauty of this industry is that it's incredibly flexible in terms of how much work you want to put in and how much you're expecting to get back. So let's start at the beginning of the spectrum, someone who buys a property and basically never wants to visit the destination in their life. You hire a property manager. Let's say the same person doesn't even feel like doing any marketing, that same property manager or another marketing sort of branch will take care of the marketing. Typically, those kind of agencies collect a fee on commissions, which can be anywhere from 10 to 45% of nightly rates. The other end of the spectrum is

the owner who wants to do everything themselves. And there are plenty of those folks who might live next door to their vacation rental or they might live in the same town or even a town over. And they love going and doing the flower gardens and they love doing the maintenance themselves and they like doing the marketing on their own. And in which case you have very few expenses. But in terms of the basic things that you should be expecting to pay for when you're renting out your property to travelers, the turnaround like you mentioned, Josh, is important. So there's a little more wear and tear on typical portions of the rental. You also are typically looking at a little bit of a higher-end furnishings and finishings.

So higher-end linens, you know, indestructible pots and pans, that kind of thing. There's the additional check-in procedure. Some owners are using these techniques where you don't even really have to be there to do the check-in. You can use an automatic lockbox or in some cases a cell phone app that allows the guests to enter using a barcode. That's great. A lot of these kind of services are just starting to emerge in what is, again, a very, very, very green industry. But apart from that, you also need to add into your business, because this is a business, the cost of marketing. And like I said, it's not as easy as just buying a $300 listing and filling up your rental on the spot.

There's a lot of time and there's a lot of sort of know-how and money that needs to go into generating a reliable following. So what does that entail? You know, my thought was now that you've got all these portals and they all collect a fee, you basically go take some really nice pictures or in the case of like an Airbnb, they'll take it for you. Put the listing up and they'll collect their X percent at the end. And it costs you just that percentage that you're paying to the company. What other marketing fees do you have? How do you market outside of these portals?

Yeah, those portals on their own are great if they can fill up your rental. But there is also that feeling of dependence of being reliant on this third-party portal, which might increase their prices, which might require me to log into the system to get the email address. And there's any number of sort of these dependencies that owners aren't too keen on. So kind of what I preach in my marketing work is building your own reputation online, building your own website, harnessing your reviews, establishing really basic online marketing techniques like email marketing and press releases and some basic search engine optimization. We're not talking about rocket science, but it does require putting together some pieces of the puzzle.

And a lot of owners who are not ready for that, a lot of the owners in this industry are 60, 70, even in some cases 80 years old and don't even know what the heck a URL is. So there's in some cases a daunting learning curve that is presented to some of these owners. But those who are ready to jump in and start learning, it's actually an incredibly gratifying process. A lot of subscribers who start from literally nothing and just take great pleasure in learning these new really simple techniques and generating more trust with their guests and ultimately a much better bottom line. Yeah. You know, I think that's true in the, you know, the long-term rental field, too, like that we're in, that most, I mean, most landlords are 60, 70 years old and don't know how to use a computer. And so by being the landlord who can actually do that, it puts you at an advantage above everyone else. Be able to put a good Craigslist posting versus just, you know, some wall of text, you know, you're definitely going to stand out a lot for more than the competition. So I, I, I would even go as, far as to say that the next generation, those who grew up as babies using iPads, they're going

to be way beyond us. So each generation kind of has its slight advantage on the previous. But I would say stuff like video and mobile, these are online marketing components that even my generation is very new to. Anyone who's slightly ahead of the curve in that sense, I think is going to take their own particular market by storm. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. that's a really good idea. And that's why, like, I don't know, those are some of my favorite posts that we see on bigger pockets or things like how to do this or how to do that with technology and the new things. So that's very cool. Here's the truth about passive investing.

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So why don't we actually go more onto the marketing now that we're talking about marketing. And you mentioned the portals. There was, you know, Homeaway.com, Airbnb, Flipkey.com. Is that what you said? Yeah, that's the TripAdvisor branch. Okay, cool. So what else is there? I mean, you throw your listings there.

What else? You said website. What about Craigslist? Is that a big thing for you? I don't like to recommend owners or managers rely on Craigslist. It's good for a promotion here or there, but it's not necessarily a sustainable marketing effort that can feed you inquiries over the span of time. More of what I preach is creating a bulletproof reputation as the industry expert. A lot of owners and managers, when they go in and buy their property, they buy it for a reason because they love the neighborhood, they love the area, they have great memories from their vacations there.

So it's a skill in turning that local expertise into useful information that potential guests can use. It's a much more subtle form of marketing in providing that kind of useful content. But ultimately, what vacation rental travelers are looking for is two things. One is trust that their host is actually a person and actually has a rental that's actually going to host them in their family, as opposed to someone who's trying to scam them. And two, someone who really does know a lot of insider information that can give them the absolute best vacation possible. So are you basically advocating that vacation rental owners

should become quasi travel writers slash like travel bloggers essentially about the areas that they've got rentals in to attract folks? Yes. And in a sense, they already are. So a lot of these folks, if you were to go visit your friend who has a condo in, let's say, Miami, you go to visit and let's say he's not there for the weekend, he'll send you an email saying, this is the restaurant you need to eat at, this is the dish you need to order. This is the bartender at the local club that you need to connect with. This is the tour guide who gives the best undercover tours, yada, yada, yada. So providing that insider information from a vacationer's perspective is pretty much, you know, priceless. That's awesome.

And you threw down the yada, yada, yada, which is even more awesome. You know, I actually wonder if he couldn't translate that into the long-term rental market, like that, you know, landlording. You know, if you're, I'm in a small area, but maybe an area like Denver. Like if Josh started a Denver, you know, I don't know, blog about the different places and different activities and things, I wonder if you couldn't use that in the same way to try to find, you know, tenants eventually and just kind of build yourself up as a reputable landlord. a reputable property manager. Well, so realtors are doing that. I mean, that's how a lot of them are attracting folks. I don't know that I know any landlords who do that.

So it's an interesting thought. It is in a greater marketing sense the way things are heading instead of selling and pushing, pushing, pushing your product, helping people, you know, providing useful information. And that, you know, goes no better industry than vacation rentals. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. So then there's, what about like YouTube? Are you, I mean, obviously YouTube or Flickr, you know, kind of a more, or Facebook, any of the more social channels, are you using stuff like that? Yeah, it's all relatively new to the industry as well.

And I can't say that any of the social media networks will generate bookings for you off the bat. A lot of people think that they're going to put up a fan page on Facebook and generate 20 bookings in a week. It's just not going to happen. what those social media networks are good for is developing a trustworthy following. So people who like to follow the stuff that's going on in Detroit. Maybe we should start using another city example. Gotham City. Yeah.

Folks who like to follow the new restaurants and bars in Gotham City, they like to follow your lead. And ultimately, when they do decide that it's time for a vacation, where do you think they're going to look? Yep, that's smart. That's smart. And then I read on your actual blog, you talked about AdWords. And that's something that fascinates me because, you know, I've dabbled in it in the past, but I've never really actually done it for rentals. So can you kind of explain, like, how do you use, what is AdWords and how do you use

something like that to try to generate listings? Yeah, AdWords is sort of the most straightforward black and white way to see if people are interested in what you're offering. So on a very basic scale, AdWords is pay per click, which is represented by the ads you'll see on the side of anywhere from an organic search. If you type into Google Gotham City vacation rental, you'll see a column of various ads posted by owners and managers in Gotham City. From the penguin, I think. Yeah, the penguin has one, I'm pretty sure. Batman has another.

It's also populated in things like Gmail and various other websites that are hosting Google Ads. So on a very, very simple level, you as the vacation rental owner or manager are paying per click, which is to say you're paying every time a user clicks on your advertisement. And that price can be anywhere from 10 cents to $10 depending on the competition in your own particular environment. So if you have a vacation rental somewhere that's not quite popular yet, the price per click is going to be way lower than somewhere extremely popular. And from there, it's an amazing way to test out whether those users are actually interested in what you're offering. So when they do click, you can decide where they're landing.

And that could be anywhere from a home page of your website to a specific landing page of your website to a listing that you have on one of these major listing sites. And in driving all that traffic, you can see pretty clearly if it's working or not. So if you, Brandon, were to go out and spend $50 attracting traffic to your VRBO listing and you got one inquiry, it might be a pretty good sign that you need to improve either your title or your photos or your description or your pricing. And then, you know, several weeks down the line after implementing all those tweaks, you might spend that same $50 and see 10 inquiries.

So it's a nice sort of form of A, B, testing that allows owners of any skill level and really any budget to see if what they're offering is what people are looking for. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, yeah, there's a guy, a marketer. His name's Pat Flynn, and his whole thing is B everywhere. And it seems like, you know, these days with the vacation rentals, that's probably the path that you really want to be to make sure you get everybody. You know, you want to be on YouTube. You want to have the blog. You want to be on AdSense and do some Facebook ads.

You want to be anywhere and everywhere that people might be where they're looking for vacation rentals. And in that same breath, that's a great point. And in that same breath, because the industry is so new. And because in two or three years from now, I'm going to have 10 times as many competitors as I do today. Another huge component of today's vacation rental marketing is keeping in touch with your former guests. Yeah. Once a guest has stayed in your vacation rental, most likely they had an amazing experience. You were a great host.

The property itself was stellar. They had a wonderful vacation. Keeping that same guest coming back year after year is far less expensive than going out and trying to convince a new guest. that again, you're a real person, you have a real property, and you're the real deal. Yeah, that's great advice. And I think traditional landlords could heed that in a similar way by taking their happy tenants. You know, those tenants who re-up and stay at their properties, you know, presumably you're taking care of your tenants.

And, you know, use those guys as your best refers for new tenants when vacancies come in. Yeah. If TripAdvisor is any indication of the way this travel means. movement is going, which is to say reviews. There's nothing better that a vacation rental owner or manager can do than to not only start collecting very, very, very high, high quality reviews, but to learn to leverage them. Definitely, definitely. Good advice. All right. So one final, I guess, topic on the marketing, and that's something that fascinates me. I read that your listings have been featured in places like the New York Times, Vanity Fair, National Geographic,

and I've never even featured in like my local newspaper. So how did that, how did that, how did that happen? I mean, how do you get your listings like national press as a vacation rental owner? Well, I will say this. After you get the first one or two, they really do tend to domino. So once a writer from the New York Times comes, chances are any writer from the New York Times, in the future is going to come back to me. Any writer from GQ is going to do a Google search and see that I was in the New York Times and then come back to me. So the big trick is getting

that first one or two. For me it was a large-scale publication like the New York Times. For you, it might be your local newspaper. So how do you reach out to those journalists and publications? There's a couple different ways that I like to recommend. The first is coming up with really interesting stories that are happening in your local area. So a perfect example is an owner who's based in, I believe, San Pedro. And I don't know if you guys saw, but there was a sea lion who went and snatched a prize-winning fish right out of a fisherman's hand. You guys happen to see that video that went viral? No. There's a sea lion whose name is like Pablo and everyone in town knows him. But Pablo's the sea lion. Yes, Pablo's the seaman. Not the fisherman. No, no one cares about the

fisherman. And the fisherman was holding up his prize-winning catch for a photo and literally the sea lion snatched it out of his hand. Anyway, it went kind of viral and a vacation rental owner in the area wrote an article about Pablo because everyone in the area knows Pablo. He always does that. This was not new to any of the neighbors. Pablo is just the sea line that steals fit. So in writing that article, she was then approached immediately by, I believe, National Geographic, who wanted to learn more about Pablo so they could do a show. She was also approached by a couple of bloggers, a couple of journalists who wanted to learn more about Pablo. And in quoting this woman whose name I can't quite remember,

they also gave her a wonderful little plug for her vacation rental at the end of the story. So providing funny or interesting or new updates about your local areas, it is a great way to do it. Learning how to pitch journalists is a science in itself. Anyone who comes off sounding as too salesy or too greedy is barking up the wrong tree. So I really would encourage an entirely selfless perspective on this, really just try to provide as useful and interesting information as possible. And in truth, I'm friends with a lot of the journalists who have now featured my properties and they like that kind of stuff. They like hearing from locals about interesting stories because the story about Pablo went on to generate

a ton of traffic for their own newspaper. So reaching out and presenting helpful stuff without sounding too salesy, you might get a couple of singles or doubles. Like Brendan, that might be a good place for you to start to get into your local newspaper. But then again, you might hit that home run where you get featured in The New York Times. Yeah, now that's great advice and a good way to market. So, you know, we kind of glazed over the economics. You know, we talked about the fact that you can rent these properties out. And if you were to get X number of days, you know, you're in a good way. What's the typical vacation rental, vacancy rate?

You know, are we, is a typical rental owner getting, you know, 20 days a month of vacancy? Are there any statistics on what's going on there? Not really. I mean, it varies so much across the board, and so many owners are so bad at keeping track of these things. A lot of owners starting off don't even keep track of their occupancy. So unlike hotels or B&Bs or anything like that, there is not a lot of data to go on just yet.

Again, a good way to gauge a good litmus test to use is to look on one of these major listing sites at the availability calendars of something comparable to what you're considering investing in. That should give you a rough idea, barring the fact that they've probably been doing this for a couple years and have a very good reputation, should give you a rough idea of what to expect. And I should mention that as I was answering that last question, I remembered that the sea lion's name is actually poncho. It's not Pablo. Concho. Oh, man.

I didn't want to miss quote. Pachro is a better name for a sea lion. Yeah, indeed. Okay, so I don't know. I remember, Brandon, you said you went and you actually looked at some rentals, right? I mean, you guys were driving around when you were down on your trip. I did. Yeah, yeah.

I went and looked at, when I was in Fort Lauderdale, actually, I went and looked at a fourplex. And I thought, man, this would be just great to buy down here. And I could, you know, manage it from home. I could, you know, I just kind of started, like, dreaming of how I could make this happen, this nice little, like, fourplex and doing the numbers of my head. and they looked amazing. But I guess then I found out about all like the Florida laws and stuff like that. So I don't know if I'm going to go that route.

But I guess what do you recommend for somebody like me who wants to go by a vacation rental like that? Is that I mean, is that a stupid idea for me to be even thinking like that? It's incredibly stupid, Brandon. Why would you ever think about it? I love it when my guests call my co-host stupid. Thank you. It's not a stupid idea at all. No.

and I would recommend you first start staying in more vacation rentals so you can familiarize yourself with, you know, what's expected from a traveler's perspective, because a lot of owners need to know that information when they're either furnishing their unit or when they're describing their unit to potential guests. So all of us have rented an apartment at one point in our lives. That's why being a landlord for long-term rentals is comparatively much easier than, you know marketing these short-term rentals so once you get a good feel for what is expected of a high-end vacation rental experience and i'm not necessarily saying a high-end property but a high-end experience customer service you know the actual stay itself and then details after the stay once you have a good idea about that i would say start looking at some of the other pricing in your area You should get an idea really quick about what's an okay price to be asking.

I like to recommend that owners or managers slightly undercut most of the competition, especially when they're starting. So if you have the exact same condo in the same development as Josh, let's say, and Josh is asking $200 bucks a night, you have a giant upper hand if you're asking $175, let's say. You bastard. Don't tell Josh I told you that, though. Hey, so I know we're kind of jumping around here, so I apologize to our listeners, but, you know, as these things are coming to me, let's say I wanted to buy a condo in Panama City. I don't live in Panama City. I live up here, you know, near Seattle. Is that something that I could do? I could buy it and then kind of manage it via the internet and via the lockboxes and all that, like the electronic things and pretty much take care of it from 5,000 miles away?

or is that a stupid question? An incredibly stupid question. No, that's not a bad idea at all. And I would say 50% of owners out there do operate remotely. But it also means that you're going to be collecting a smaller amount at the end of every month. So you do have that property management fee that you have to add in there. You have to add in whoever's going to be cleaning your rental, if that's not included in the property management fee.

So there's a number of costs that do go into operating remotely, but is that to say that it can't be done? Definitely not a lot of people do that. Hey, so my final question here before we move on to the next section is on scale. Presumably renting out one unit is going to be a lot easier than having 20 vacation rentals that are turning over every day or two. And I personally could see that as a somewhat of a management nightmare. So my understanding is you've got a pretty decent portfolio at this point of vacation Reynolds. How has scaling been?

What have been the biggest challenges as you've scaled? The biggest scaling challenges for me personally have been proximity. And I think this would probably apply to most owners and managers wherever they are in the world. If you're managing or, you know, operating 10 different rentals that are located 10 miles apart, it's going to be much more challenging than 10 different rentals in the exact same complex. So in terms of proximity, the closer and more similar of a product that you can get, the better. It's much easier to, A, streamline the actual booking process and your customer service and your actually in-stay customer service. It's also easier.

from actually no that's pretty much the only reason it's easier nice all right so now that listen that's great it's really good information and I think I think it'll help a lot of folks out so let's let's move on to the next section of the show here our

it's time for the fire round all right the bigger pockets fire round these are questions we ask everyone let me redo that all right the bigger pockets all right the fire round these are questions direct out of the Bigger Pockets Forum that we're just going to fire at you and you can

fire right back at us. So number one, multifamily property or single units. What makes a better vacation rental? Multi-family property just because the large bulk of vacation rental travelers are groups that are looking to avoid hotels, whether it's because more privacy, more economical, any number of reasons. There's a larger amount of group demand. than there is for singles or couples. Nice, nice. All right. Well, single family or condo,

which is a better vacation rental? Really hard to say. It depends on where you're located. If it's a corporate-type metropolitan environment, you have a lot of business travelers, for instance, who want their own space. The smaller-scale properties are much more sensible compared to, say, a beach,

a more vacation-y destination where I would opt in the other direction. Okay. What do you think? Is it a bad idea to do a rehab into a vacation rental or is it better just to buy it turnkey and all finished? You know, you guys are the sort of experts on rehab, so I'm not going to try to pretend like I know what I'm talking about there. But I will say that in the large scale of operating a vacation rental business, the more of a finished product that you can start with, the better. you know, if you're rehabbing and it's an entirely different industry getting to that beginning point than if you were to buy something that's ready to roll. Yeah, for sure, for sure. All right, this last question, I'm not quite sure why I'm asking it, but because I have got my own

answer. But the question is, I want to buy a vacation rental with family members. Is that a good idea or bad? The answer is bad, but let's see what you have to say about it. I guess the next question is, do you like your family members? It's not all that uncommon. I'll say that. A lot of investors go in on a vacation runner with family just because they're all using the property anyways.

So if you look at a five-bedroom home on the beach, a lot of cases it's exorbitably expensive for one particular investor. So if it's going to be a group thing, you know, might as well go with the people you trust most or in some cases you trust least your family. There you go. No, and my, my big thing is, you know, ultimately, you know, you want to minimize squabbles. And I think sharing times and having to fight over who gets to have the vacation rental on Christmas and holidays can be damaging. I know I've heard a lot of folks who own these types of properties who've dealt with that stuff. And it's just, it's always a disaster. At least what I've heard. Yeah, I definitely agree. The reason I picked that from the forms is because I know a lot of family members have said that to me like, hey, Brandon, we should go buy a condo in Hawaii on the beach or we should go buy a condo down in, you know, I don't know, a ruba. And then we'll just use it, you know, whenever we want to and we'll vacation rental it all the rest of the time. And I haven't done it, obviously. But, you know, it's been a conversation. Yeah. The only tip I would give is make sure everyone's duties are very clear. clearly outlined to start with. There is a lot more work that goes into operating a successful vacation rental than

there might seem. So if that kind of stuff is not outlined to begin with, you might have some squabbles. And along with that, along with responsibilities, the costs associated with running the business probably need to be discussed upfront as well. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Cool, man. All right.

Well, let's crank out to the final section of the show here. our famous for all right these are the last four questions we ask everyone and uh yeah let's let's get to them first one do you have a favorite or what is your favorite real estate related book i know this might be a little bit different approach to you because you're doing the vacation rentals but do you have a book that you would recommend as your favorite kind of vacation rental book or real estate book there's not a lot of vacation rental literature period because it's such a new industry. The stuff that's out there is very limited and in most cases outdated. So I do not have a favorite vacation rental investment book.

All right. That's all right. Wow. You know, 50, 56 shows, Matt, and you're the first to not have a favorite book. How does that make you feel? Especially. We had somebody early on, one of our early shows that they couldn't think of one. Yeah. All right. All right. So, you know, forget favorite real estate, a vacation rental book. Who reads that anyway? I mean, I don't know what kind of question that was. Let's ask a real question here. What about your favorite business book? My favorite business book. I just finished a book about a year ago, and it was not exclusively about business, but there's a ton of business ties, and it's called The Happiness Hypothesis. Are you guys ever heard of that? No, but I want you to say it's six times fast.

This is a book that really did change my perspective, not only on business, but just on sort of gratifying way to live my life. And it kind of breaks down the world's civilizations and understands how everyone describes happiness and defines it and then kind of helps you define your own version of it as it applies to any number of components. And that book itself kind of changed the way I was operating my business. It changed the kind of investments I was making both in time and money. And in the end, I found it to be one of the more sort of gratifying transitions in my professional career. Nice, nice, awesome. And we'll point to that in the show notes, which is going to be at biggerpockets.com slash show 57. Finally, for me, I guess, what do you do for fun besides vacation?

Life is a vacation. I mean, like, what do you do for fun? I live, I breathe. That's fun. I do live in the tropics. I have both the Pacific and the Caribbean Ocean within about 45 minutes from my house. So any kind of outdoor activity, whether it's swimming, I'm a huge swimmer. so I can swim in the Caribbean and the Pacific in the same morning.

I love biking into the rainforest. That's kind of one of the more fulfilling things they do down here. Apart from that, I'm a big foodie, any kind of interesting or new food that tastes delicious. I'm a big fan of that. And soccer. I'm a gigantic soccer fan. And when I'm down here, I have to call it football, but I really do eat. Nice, nice.

Very cool. Very cool. All right. Final question for me. What do you believe sets apart successful vacation rental owners from those who fail? That's a great question. I think the difference is those who are in it for the long haul. There's a number of people who are just looking for a short return, looking to make a quick buck. And if that's what you're looking for, you know, rehab a home and sell it. But vacation rental hosting is all about building a, you know, a reputable. reputation over a long period of time. And as you, as you go along, each year kind of adds on to that that credibility. So the owners and managers that I see that are investing, you know, not in tomorrow, but in a year from now or in two years from now, those are ultimately the ones that win the end of the race. Nice. Now that's great. Great. It's great. Well, so an interesting topic. Some might think it's not directly related to our traditional mission here at bigger pockets to kind of talk

about flipping houses and renting a traditional rental. But I think it's part of the industry. And we wanted to make sure to at least start covering it a little bit because so many people go and travel and think about doing this. And hopefully we bring a little bit of insight. You know, if you had one last piece of advice for folks who were thinking to themselves, hey, you know what, I'm going to do this. I'm here and in wherever Brandon Turner just was on his vacation, his around the world. Let me do this. What one piece of advice do you think is probably the most important that you could give? I would say do it immediately.

I would say don't hesitate. decide you're going to do it and do it. This is such a burgeoning industry, and those who have gotten on it early are going to be the winners in the end of this marathon. So I would say, if you are going to do it, the tiny sliver of vacation rental buzz that you guys have heard as quote-unquote outsiders in the industry is just going to multiply over the coming years. And I think in very, very short period of time, vacation rentals are going to start to sort of compete very, seriously with hotels. So if 10 years from now, you know, our kids are looking back and saying, you mean you had the opportunity to get in on the first, you know, the ground floor, the vacation

rental boom and you didn't? Or are you thinking, Papa? You know, you don't take yourself in the foot. And on top of that, you know, you mentioned earlier that, you know, the competition is heating up more and more and more. But by getting in now, you establish your reputation now and you start building that now. So in five years when the competition is crazy, you've had five years of a solid track record versus the guy who just bought five years from now and overpaid because it's... Well, that's the big thing, right? If it's getting that hot, you know, presumably real estate in those markets are going to continue to climb to exorbitant levels. And, you know, it's actually interesting. I'd be very curious to see what market rents are, typical market

rents for long-term renters are in some of these areas, you know, how bad vacation rentals are affecting rates for those renters. Because presumably, if I could go and take an apartment that I'm running for two grand and rent it out, you know, make three, four thousand bucks a month as a vacation rental, well, the value of that property is going to increase. And is that going to force out traditional renters? That's already starting to happen, Josh. And I would say in places like New York and San Francisco, where the biggest sort of hype around this industry is, you can't stop this movement. It's a very, very organic movement that is happening because vacation rentals are an amazing product.

And I know you haven't stayed in one yet, Josh, but 10 years from now, I think you will have. And Matt, whenever you give me free access to your plaza account in time, I'll be there, buddy. Consider it done. Just bring me a really nice podcast microphone. Oh, there you go. That's awesome. That's awesome. Great, great stuff. You know, hopefully people stayed to the end because I think we nailed some of the really interesting stuff here. But Matt, thank you so much. We really appreciate you taking the time. Before we let you go, where can people find out more information about you?

One place. My website is VacationrentalmarketingBlog.com, which is as long and annoying as it sounds. is where I put my entire host of advice and it's all free. So check it out. Fabulous. Awesome. Hey, thanks again for being on the show. And thanks for being one of our Bigger Pockets bloggers as well. Folks can find posts from Matt on the Bigger Pockets blog.

Matt, we will see around it. Of course, for everybody listening. If you've got any questions for Matt, definitely jump on the show notes at at BiggerPockets.com slash show 57, show 57. And Matt will be there to answer those questions for you. Thanks again, Matt. All right. Adios.

Thanks, Matt. All right, everybody. That was Show 57 on the Bigger Pockets podcast with Matt Landau. Big thanks to Matt. Makes me want to go down to the Bahamas or Panama or anywhere else other than freezing cold, Denver. And go pick up some vacation property. What do you think, Brandon? I think that sounds like an amazing idea.

Let's do it right now. Should we go in together, like family? We should like family. Yeah. I don't think it'll work. I think it's a bad idea. You're not my family. You don't know me.

Yeah. All right. So now a great show. Lots of cool insight. So big thanks again to Matt. With that said, a big reminder to anybody who's listening. If you guys are not connecting with us, please be sure to do that on the big typical social channels, places like Facebook, Twitter, Gplus, LinkedIn. in Pinterest. We're all over the place. We're multimedia global. YouTube. We're not on Tumblr yet.

Well, you know, I don't know. We'll get there. But yeah, like, you know, we do focus a lot of our efforts and things on Facebook. So if you're not already following us, check us out. Facebook.com slash bigger pockets. Also, cool thing. We just got our name finally from Gplus. So if you go to Google Plus, I think it's like plus.com. com you go slash the little plus sign and then bigger pockets so we have our new own name on g plus which is kind of cool. Look at you. Fancy Josh. Yeah.

There you go. Was that your little mayor of. Is that the candy cane voice now that you're striped from your vision? Yes. That is my candy cane voice. Yeah. Oh, look at you. Yeah.

Can we finish? Let's end this. People are bored. All right, guys. If you're not on bigger pockets, if you're not connecting, participating, please do so. introduce yourself. Most people join and jump in and introduce themselves. Get a lot more out of the site than those who just join and do nothing. So get involved. Be part of the community. And thanks so much. We'll see you next week. Show 58 of the Bigger Pockets podcast coming up.

And if you haven't checked out all our previous ones, definitely jump in. We've got a lot of amazing, amazing content. Thank you so much. I'm Josh Dorkin, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast, 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 hype, 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.

My dog's barking, I'm burping. You know, it's all going to hell. And don't put that in the outtakes. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calicoe content, and editing is by Exodus Media.

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