BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 797: 7 Rentals in 3 Years by Breaking All the Real Estate Rules w/Jenni Vega

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Most people take YEARS to buy their first rental property, but most people aren’t Jenni Vega. Instead of waiting, Jenni bought seven rentals in just three years, with almost unbelievable cash flow on each using what she calls the “golden triangle” method of investing. With this simple framework, Jenni was able to buy undervalued properties in cities that most investors don’t even have on their radar. The properties are cheaper, the profits are bigger, and if you copy Jenni’s method, you, too, can build a six-figure side income stream in just a few years. Surprisingly, Jenni still keeps her day job as a Cutco closing gift saleswoman. In fact, it’s what got her into real estate. After working with dozens of realtors a week, Jenni learned about buy and hold rental property investing. It didn’t take long before she bought her first property in an area most investors would avoid. But, thanks to careful planning and intentional investing, Jenni turned this cheap property into a $50K/year revenue stream. And that was just the start. Now, breaking all the “real estate rules,” Jenni is out to prove that almost any property can become a profitable vacation rental. Whether she’s adding game rooms, "redneck mini golf" courses, or cowboy pools, Jenni has turned lackluster properties into top-performing short-term rentals. If you follow her advice, you can do it too! In This Episode We Cover: The “golden triangle” method that ensures your rental will always be full Breaking the “real estate rules” and why boring locations bring in BIG cash flow Quitting your nine-to-five and why keeping your active income stream may be a better idea Unique amenities that will make your vacation rental stand out in a saturated market  The short-term rental listing tip that could give you a boost in bookings  How to invest in short-term rentals in 2023 (and what to avoid before you start)  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Rob's YouTube Tony's BiggerPockets Profile Tony's Instagram Tony's YouTube Hear Tony on the “Real Estate Rookie” Podcast Subscribe to the “Real Estate Rookie” YouTube Channel Learn About Tony’s Recent Deal Gone Wrong Books Mentioned in the Show HOLD: How to Find, Buy, and Rent Houses for Wealth by Steve Chader and Jennice Doty Connect with Jenni: Jenni's BiggerPockets Profile Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-797 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets Podcast Show 797, and I'm your host, David Green. Wait, no. That was pretty good. I've got notes. Usually, David goes, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Podcast show. And then he does it. You didn't do the finger. You got to do seven.

I do the hand. It's okay. So we're workshopping. Yeah. If I had to do it over again, I would have probably just stuck to bigger and luxury properties and probably less, you know, maybe three to five luxury properties that would gross 100,000 a year. It should be quality, not quantity.

Rob, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, you know, I am excited to always share the mic with you, especially when we're talking about short-term rentals. And we are doing that today with our guest, Jenny Vega, who's absolutely crushing it. She's crushing it in the world of unique stays and adding amenities and supercharging her revenue with these unique stays.

And also buying cheap property and cheap homes and proving all the haters wrong that you actually can still make a lot of money on a $90,000 house. Wasn't that crazy? Yeah, she also talked about how she bought a house for $400,000 that grossed about $100,000. So just a really amazing conversation with Jenny. I'm excited to get into it. But Rob, I feel like maybe we should also just let people know who I am that I didn't just like hijack this podcast. That's right. Yeah. Terrible, terrible host. I'm a terrible hook. And let me say, I always get in trouble because people will come and talk to me and then my wife will stand there for like 10 minutes and then they'll leave. She's like, you're horrible at introducing

people. I'm like, I thought you knew them. I'm sorry. I forgot. That's just what, that's just what happened right now. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Tony. Yeah. So my name is Tony J. Robinson. I am the co-host of the other Bigger Pockets podcast, the Real Estate Riki podcast. And I'm stepping in today because like we said, we're talking short-term rentals and Rob and I are good buds. And we love talking all things Airbnb, especially when we can do it in front of the mic together. So I guess if you guys want to learn more about me, go over to the RealSat Rookie podcast. You guys don't follow me on Instagram. It's at Tony J. Robinson on YouTube. We're at the real estate robinson's. And yeah, I love, I love talking all things real estate. Wow. Do you got any affiliate leaks you want to plug to buddy? Dang. Yeah, man. You know, hey, if you want to sign up, no, I'm kidding. Well, yeah, so this is a good episode. What were some of your favorite parts? You know, I talked about this a little bit at the end, but I think Jenny's kind of got like this fearlessness to her, where she's, you know, eager to just kind of jump in and figure things out. And I really, I really love that part.

And she also gives like a little nugget at the end about listing optimization. And I wish we could have spent some more time on that. But we were so deep into the episode. We kind of breeze through it. But if you're looking for ways to optimize your listing as a short-term rental hosts, great topics on that. And then just market selection in general, Rob, I think that's one of the things that holds so many aspiring Airbnb investors back is their inability to select a market.

And I think just between the three of us, you have a really good discussion on kind of the framework you should be using when you're making that decision. Yeah. So before we bring Jenny on, like even if short-term rentals aren't your thing, there's a lot of discussion in this episode that just applies to real estate investing, period. And you'll pick up tactics and strategies and just a lot of mindset stuff too around being successful as a real estate investor. Love it, man. We got a lot to cover in today's episode. But before we cover it, today's quick, quick, quick tip is next time you're looking for a potential deal, see if it follows the Golden Triangle rule. And if you don't know what the Golden Triangle is, then you're going to want to listen to today's episode because we talk all about how this rule can make you a lot of money in the short-term rental game.

Okay, we're going to shift gears for a minute to cover something important, especially for new landlords. The shows often talk about getting stuck doing everything ourselves and the cost of sweat equity. The key question is simple. Is my time better spent elsewhere? I use a tool that cuts down on a lot of landlord hassles. And the wild part is, it's just $12 a month.

It handles rental screenings, rent collection, maintenance requests and accounting, all in one platform via a mobile app or desktop. It saves me time in tenant communication and keeps me organized for tax season. It's called Rent Ready, and you can sign up for a six-month plan

for just $1 with promo code BP 2025. Pro users get it for free because we believe in it. Just sign in through your pro account to get started. RentReady helps ensure on-time rent with auto reminders, keeps communication professional, and lets you post listings to multiple sites. Check it out at rentready.com slash bigger pockets. That's rent, r-e-di-i.com

slash bigger pockets. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund. Now, you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, start with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4,700, a single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt.

They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses.

of the Fundrise Flagship Fund. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at Fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. Real estate investors, the April 15th tax deadline is coming fast. If you own rental property and haven't done a cost segregation study yet, you could be handing thousands of dollars to the IRS that you don't have to. These studies let you write off as much as 25% of your building

and generate huge tax deductions. Costsegregation.com is an online self-guided software that makes cost segregation fast and affordable. So it finally makes sense for smaller rental properties purchased for as low as $100,000. With pricing under $500 and an average savings of over $25,000, it's just a no-brainer. What's more, audit support is included by the number one cost segregation company in the U.S., but you must complete it before the tax deadline. Go to costsegregation.com and use code tax deadline to get 10% off your first report.

Don't overpay the IRS. head to costsegregation.com before April 15th. A quick background about today's guest, Jenny Vega. She owns seven units in six markets, acquired all of these in just the last three years, and part of her edge in the short-term rental market is unique stays, partnering, and breaking the short-term rental rules. With all of that said, Jenny Vega, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How you doing?

Good. Thanks for having me. Before we get into your backstory, what is the way that you would summarize your buying strategy? Part of my buying strategy has been to go into some markets that most short-to-rential investors would never consider and also buying less expensive properties than a lot of other investors would look at and also diversifying a lot of investors by most of their properties in one area. We've actually spread out a little bit further. Yeah, okay. And how has that been assembling your teams?

Do you have a bunch of different teams and all of your different properties? or do you have like one big kind of overarching umbrella that sort of runs everything for you? So every area has a different team. And that actually hasn't been very bad. We've organically found our teams through word of mouth, Facebook groups. That process has been pretty seamless. And as far as the markets that we chose, every market has a totally different story. Right now, now that we have seven, I've gone really deep into Facebook groups and

mastermind groups. And it's funny because now, you know, I hear more and more buy in vacation markets, buy in vacation markets. But we didn't know anything three or four years ago when we started. And because we didn't know anything, we bought our first two rentals in totally non-traditional markets that if we knew better, we probably wouldn't have. And so sometimes I think if you go off your gut, it serves you well. And knowing what we know now, maybe we would have. And maybe we would have purchased those, but those first two purchases actually served us really well. And I think there's different strategies for different reasons. Our first purchase was actually in a Midwest city that I grew up near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is certainly not a tourist market by any means.

But it's done really well for us. And it was very inexpensive. And at the time, we couldn't really afford very much. And it's done well. It's cash on cash return has done. has done well. And going back, I would have, I would have done it again. And I think the Midwest in general is a market that you don't hear about much in short-term rental land. It's not very sexy. And there's nothing special about Milwaukee. You could insert Columbus or St. Louis or Kansas City. And I think most of these bigger Midwest cities are really the same. The numbers are similar. So we bought our Milwaukee home for $160,000 at the very end of 2019. And now it's worth a little over $200,000.

So very affordable numbers. And it's crazy. I see a lot of my friends spend $700,000 on their first short-term rental, these crazy number. Or more. People are spending seven figures, you know, it's insane. But Jenny, what I want to know, because I think it's interesting. And Rob, you've kind of gone with this kind of strategy also.

All of our active short-term rentals right now are split between two different markets. And I have some friends who have like, you know, 30, 40 units all in one city. And there's economies of scale that you get when you have, we've built out our cleaning team. We've built out our rehab crew and our maintenance team. And you can get really efficient with your operations when you stack kind of multiple units into one market. But there are some other benefits, I think, that come along with kind of spreading. things out. So what was your mindset? Like, why not go deep into this Milwaukee market if it works so well for you initially? Why continue to kind of spread yourself out? Yeah. So that actually was not a

conscious decision. And I think it is smart to do the economy as a scale. So we started in Milwaukee because we knew the area. At the time, we actually didn't know for sure if we wanted to do a long term or a short term. And we wanted a market that can pivot to either. And it's also a really good midterm market. So we like that rental because it has actually been a long term during COVID. We actually might make it long term again after the summer because it's very old home and guests are actually very rough with it. Our handyman bills are pretty high. So that market could do both. Our second rental is in the middle of Oklahoma and we actually, to be honest, we bought that for the wrong reasons. We've made so many mistakes and we still make a lot of

mistakes in this journey. And we bought that one just because I went to college there, which to be honest, is a really stupid reason to buy a rental. We bought that one the beginning of 2021. We pay $92,000, but the cash on cash return there is excellent. That one last year grossed $39,000. Whoa. And in 2021, you know, most investors were overpaying, you know, the situation in 2021. And so we buy this in the middle of Oklahoma, and we were short-term rental number three or four in this entire little city. And currently there's only, I think, nine or ten of us of that. And there is not very much tourism in this city. And there is actually not much numbers to prove either in this town.

So again, that's totally another rule that was broken. Now we're more savvy and you know if you're going to buy a short-term rental, you know you check air DNA and you check Raboo. and you do all these things. So we just went into it blind and we actually walked around like stores and just like little spots in the town. And I just actually walked up to people. And I said, hey, what do you think about a short-term rental in your town? And you're brave. That's a brave question to ask. I hate them. Yeah. Because you you never know what response you're going to get. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Like I think a lot of the markets that we've tried to move into, I've submitted offers like all across the country. And a lot of it is.

is just like relational, right? It's like I have some kind of relationship to this market. So I don't think it's a bad starting spot, but you still want to be able to go back and kind of validate that, okay, I have a connection here and I'll let me make sure that it makes sense. Because Rob, how many markets are you in right now? Yes, that's a lot. I want to say 10 or 12. Let's see. Yeah, 10 or 12, something like that. So I agree, Tony. Honestly, Jenny, I don't think it's a bad idea at all. If you went to college there, I think that gives you an advantage. I mean, obviously, there are so many ways that you can choose a market. I always say, find something in your backyard. I like giving that advice for anyone that's just getting started. But I also like the idea of finding

a market where you might have boots on the ground. So let's say you have family in that city that might be able to help you or maybe you can send packages to that family to hold while you're setting it up. I like finding markets that I have some familiarity with. You happen to know that city because you went to school there for roughly four years, I'm sure. I went to school in Austin. and I'm a UT. I'm a UT guy, so we might have some some rivalries here. But for me, I like, I always love the idea of investing in Austin because I knew that city like the back of my hand, even though I didn't necessarily, you know, have any boots on the ground. All my friends moved away. I was just like, I know this city and I know, I know what it could be. So I actually think

it's a pretty good strategy. Well, thank you. Jenny, tell us a little bit, paint us a picture of your life before you found real estate. Tell us about your job, what kind of income were you making, family, etc. Just give us the whole gambit here. Yeah. So actually, my job is still pretty much the same. You know, I know some investors, they quit their job and they, you know, ride on edicorns and everything after they find real estate. So I'm very fortunate. I have two great day jobs or day businesses. I've been with Cutco for many, many years, 21 years actually. And I sell closing gifts through that company to real estate agents, which actually is sort of indirectly how I found real estate investing. And then I also publish a magazine called

real producers. And so my income, you know, do very well, a couple hundred thousand a year. Wow. And I'm still very active with both businesses. And I actually found real estate investing through a friend I met through my Cutco business. He wrote a national bestselling book called Hold, H-O-L-D, and it's a yellow book. And what's interesting is in my my job selling closing gifts to real estate agents, in a given week, I have conversations with maybe 10 to 20 realtors. And I have for the past 13 years, I want to say. And so in 2019, Steve Chater and Janice Jody, my friends who wrote this book, they gave me this book and I read it. And the book is very easy and it's a very simple read. And it's all about just buying and holding real estate.

It's not about short-term rentals at all. It's about just traditional buy-and-hold long-term renting out a house. And the premise of the book is that just through like appreciation and tax savings, and even if you were just making a couple hundred dollars a month, renting out your house, that your average cash on cash return is about 28%. So as I was reading this book in my backyard in 2019, I had a mix of emotions. I was excited, but I was actually pissed because I thought to myself, I talked to so many realtors in a given a week. And how is it that no realtor had ever mentioned real estate investing to me?

And I thought to myself, I thought back to, you know, the first house I had bought in 2009 and the second house I bought in 2018. And I'm like, wait a minute, how come those two realtors didn't ask me If I was interested, my husband and I, why didn't they ask us if we would like to invest in real estate? Why didn't all the realtors I speak to you on a weekly basis on all the, my coffee days at Starbucks selling closing gifts? Why wasn't this ever brought up? I just don't understand. So there is the retail side of real estate and there's the investment side of real estate. And I just think, you know, realtors, I think is a huge disservice to their clients to not bring this up. the real estate, you know, why, hey, would you like to build wealth through real estate investing?

But I think the challenge there, Jenny, is that most real estate investors or most real estate agents are not investors themselves. Exactly. So if they're not educated on that process, it'll be difficult for them to educate their clients. But something I want to go back to you, just talking about kind of what you were doing or I guess even what you're still doing right now. If you can, tell people what Cutco is. And also, you know, like you said, for a lot of people, their goal is, I want to get out of my W2 as fast as humanely possible. And it seems like you've taken a slightly different approach where you've built this, you know, healthy W2 income. So I guess what is Cutco? And then why are you not as eager,

do you think, as others to kind of walk away from your day job? Yeah, yeah. So I'm actually, I'm not W2. I'm 1099. Right. I'm not eager to walk away for a lot of reasons. is why I truly enjoy what I do. I'm doing this for a long time. And also, when you're a real estate investor, you need to have income. If you want to buy properties, you can only buy. I think it's like maybe 10 properties or something like that with traditional financing before you have to look into like DSCR loans and other financing, which have higher interest rates. So we've been fortunate in that when we do buy property, we've never had a hard time because we're able to show a pretty healthy income. And I also know, you know, short-term rental, it is, you know, it might be, it might be a little

up and down. We've been very fortunate that we've been very consistent with all of our properties. But we, I like having that safety net of my, my two day jobs or day businesses, if you want to call them that. Because I am self-employed technically, but my income is pretty stable. There's a lot of benefits, too, from having that healthy kind of 1099 W2 income, whatever it is. But like Cutco specifically, there's a guy's name is Justin Donald. Yeah, I know Justin.

Yeah, he runs the lifestyle investor. And, you know, he talked about like the incredible alumni that have come from Cutco. And like multi, multi-million. I think even one of them was like a billionaire guy that started off working at Cutco. So just really quickly, not to get too like off track here, but like what were some of the things that you liked or like, I don't know, what are some of the skills when you developed working at Cutco? because it seems like there's just a consistent number of people who come out of that company just extremely successful. Oh, yeah. So definitely, you know, you have to, you have to make it happen. Nothing comes to you. You know, it's really like what you create. People skills, lots of phone calls.

So I reaching out to people. When I actually started with Cutco, I was a miserable failure. And I was one of the worst sales reps in my office of like 50 people. And I struggled a lot. I decided when I started with Cutville that I was going to make it work and I was going to hit the top promotion no matter what it took. And I didn't have any skill. And I actually still with short-term rental, I am not the smartest, you know, cookie out there. I'm in a mastermind group with about 15 people across the country called Faster. Huge shout out actually to Madd of them below. She's awesome. She's our leader. And I'm constantly asking, people probably laugh at me in our group because I'm asking like the dumbest questions. But, you know, with real estate investing, you just have to decide that you're

going to do it. And there's like no ifs, ends or butts. And you're just doing it. So when I started Cutco and when I started, you know, real producer, the magazine I run, you just, you make that decision and you just say there's no ifs ands or butts. You go into it knowing that it's going to be really hard. But you're just going to do it. And that's like the end of the story. It's more important to have mindset than skill because you can get the skill and you can get the training and listen to podcast, but you just have to have the tenacity. So with real estate, when we bought that first property in Milwaukee, we were extremely scared and extremely nervous, but I actually reached out to a realtor from the Bigger Pock's Forum, Marcus Aribuck in Milwaukee, and that relationship

with him and having a realtor that was an investor himself and part of the bigger pocket community, that was paramount to our success. So it's like the who, not how with real estate investing, masterminds, the right realtors to come alongside you, the right lenders, and making the right decisions is the key to success, not necessarily skill. Yeah, I think, I think that's the right mindset to have. And honestly, I really can appreciate you coming on here and saying, you know, first giving us numbers about how well you do at your cut code job. But it's also pretty amazing that you still want to do that. And I think this is a mistake that a lot of people get into is, you know, they might make six figures at their job and they're like, yeah, yeah, as soon as I make

that in real estate, I'm going to quit. But it's sort of like, why would you? Right? Because you still, you're not just replacing your income. You need the extra income to keep investing into your portfolio. So I think the way you're doing it is the best way because effectively your job is supercharging your portfolio. In 10, 15, 20 years from now, you're going to have a giant portfolio that can help you retire. So I think that's a great way to do it. You told us a little bit about this book that you read Hold and kind of sparked this whole like, why didn't anybody tell me about real estate? After reading Hold and now that you have the knowledge, what's your motivation and what's your why? So we have a four-year-old son and I know there's other ways to build wealth and, you know,

and there's like syndications and there's multifamily and there's other ways to do this. But what excites us is to one day when we pass on to leave him a bunch of cool properties that are going to be paid off. And what I really like about the hold book is just the whole, you know, using other people's money to pay down debt. And that's why I really like single family real estate investing, even though, let's just say, you know, worst case scenario, even if you're breaking even, right? Still, other people are still paying down your debt. We actually didn't intentionally set out to create this, but now our portfolio does happen to consist of some pretty cool properties across the country. So it is cool one day, you know, for him, you know, maybe he'll tell his friends, oh, I own a beach property. I own mountain

properties. I have a desert property, you know, and I have a lake property in Wisconsin. And that is kind of cool to think about. So, Jenny, you told us about your first short-term rental in Milwaukee. Tell us a little bit about some of the short-term rental rules that you broke with this property. So the Milwaukee property was our first one. And I guess the rule that was broke is we actually bought this property in like a B-minus C neighborhood because we were limited with what we could afford. I still would say it was in a golden triangle by my definition because it was five minutes to the biggest, one of the biggest hospitals in town. It was eight minutes to the airport and like eight minutes to downtown. And it was on a really nice street. So it actually worked out. And what's

interesting is to date, it's our highest rated property. Yeah. I mean, let's talk about that for a bit, Jenny, because I think that's an important topic that, you know, your ability to get highly rated as an Airbnb host. A lot of it depends on your property and your ability to be a good host. But a lot of it also depends on the expectations of your guest. And if you, you're your guest is planning their once a year vacation with their spouse and their kids, maybe even their grandchildren. And, you know, this is the one time of year where the entire family gets together. Their expectations of your property and the location are going to be pretty high, right? Because this is that one time a year. Maybe they took time off of work. They cash in some vacation time.

But if your guest is traveling for a week offsite working somewhere else and all they're doing, it's going back to that apartment after dark, you know, and grabbing some takeout, eating, going to sleep and waking up and doing that all over again, their expectation of your property is going to be completely different. So I think the traveler profile of your chosen market plays a huge role in your ability to get, I think, better reviews. Exactly. Yes. And so again, no one is really coming here to vacation. They're coming here because they're working here. They might be going to a wedding. We get some like bachelor at parties. There are some festivals in the summertime.

And the price is right, too. You know, we sleep 10 people, but it's a really good price. And the guest expectations are definitely met as well. So we've almost never had a less than five-star review ever at this property. Right. Yeah. It's really interesting. So when you can even compare that to our amazing storybook cabin that we have in the Smokies,

we have a lake property in Wisconsin, too, that's spectacular. we get more four-star reviews there than we do in my Milwaukee property, which is very interesting. Rob, so we talk a little bit about, like, breaking rules in the Airbnb short-term rental industry. Like, have you broken any rules recently that have worked in your favor? Because I can think of a rule that I broke that did not work in my favor. But I'm curious what's happened for you recently. Yeah, so I think beds are overrated. So I stopped putting them in my short-term rental.

No, I'm just kidding. Who needs beds? So I think for me, the biggest rule I ever broke was just being sort of like a pioneer in a market that didn't necessarily have comps. Now there are a lot of comps because, you know, I opened my mouth on YouTube. But yeah, you know, I often will just throw a dart out there, hope it lands and just hope that it books with the research knowing that the traffic goes through and the market is underserved. And that's a really, really scary thing. It's a really, really scary thing, not just when you're investing with your money, but when you're investing with, an investor's money, it really changes your parameters because you can't look an investor in the eye and say, hey, there are no comps. I think it's going to work, right? You have to be a little bit more

conservative when you're partnering up or working with someone else's money. Whereas when I just do my own things, I like to experiment and I like to just buy stuff. That's why I'm in so many markets. I like buying stuff in different markets. And sure, I might be the only one in that market, but at least it tells me that my hunches are correct. And I just like having a little bit of confirmation to know like if you set up a really nice, awesome, amazing short-term rental, will the people come to it? And I think the answer is most of the time, yes. What about what about you? Well, Rob, you bring up a really good point, man. And honestly, both you and Jenny are far braver and more courageous than I am because typically we don't go into a market if we don't see at least like

triple digits when it comes to the number of listings in that city. Like, I'm too afraid to be number four. Like you mentioned you were, Jenny. Because it, like you said, Rob, it is hard to really comp and kind of understand, I don't know, I guess, like, is it actually going to work? So I usually, I don't want to be like the pioneer in a market. I want to see some proven people go before me and then I just want to go in and do my best to outperform them. Yeah, yeah. The rise of the tech savvy investors here. You don't need a huge team or tons of overhead to manage rental properties.

Just the right tools. So I want to tell you about how I use rent ready to get ahead. For landlords who treat their time like capital and recognize the cost of sweat equity, this tool gives you everything you need to scale. Rent collection, tenant screening, maintenance accounting, so that you're organized come tax season, and you can run numbers in preparation for future deals. And more.

All in one platform via a mobile app or desktop. Modern landlords don't just own property. They optimize it. Rent ready will keep you organized, running leaner, and ready to grow. Start with RentReady. Visit rentready.com slash bigger pockets. That's rent-r-R-E-D-I-D-I. com slash bigger pockets and use code BP 2025 to get rent-ready's six-month plan for a dollar.

For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund. Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion dollar portfolio, of real estate, starting with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4,700

a single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio,

check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. All right, rental property investors, listen up. Our friends at Dominion Financial already have some of the best DSCR rates in the industry. Now, they're the fastest, too.

They just launched 10-day DSCR closing. That's right, 10 days. And they're still the only lender with the DSCR price beat guarantee. That means faster closing. the best terms, zero guesswork, that's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. If you think property management is expensive,

try mismanaging a vacancy or an eviction or a maintenance issue that turns into a five-figure problem because no one caught it early. That's expensive. A good property manager isn't overhead. Their protection against small mistakes turning into big losses. And that matters more than ever in this economy. That's why I like Mind.

Unlike other property managers, Mind manages your property like an investment. They obsessively measure the things that matter for your bottom line. Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. And they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is much cheaper than learning the hard way. So, Jenny, all right, so you mentioned you told us about this Milwaukee property,

and you told us that one of the rules you broke was buying in a beer in a C-class neighborhood. Now, I know that some of the other parameters that you've set when you're buying your properties as investing in the Golden Triangle. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is? Yeah. So just making sure that there's, like, in that area, you're close to a couple hot spots. So for that particular city, it's really close to a major regional hospital, really close to the airport, and really close to downtown. So it's like sort of being in the middle of like a culmination of things, right? Like being in between traffic.

Yeah, this is something that I talk about a lot. I like being in between two major hubs. Triangle is even better if you can be in the middle of three. But this is a reason why one of my properties works is because it is outside of three major cities. And you sort of have to drive through it to get to those other cities. So sometimes I think secluded and being out there and a little bit outside of the metropolitan areas is okay when you know that people are sort of a captive audience on their travels. They have to go through your city to make it to the other destination, right? And so you can

be that pit stop for them. I would say like an example of this would be in between Austin and Dallas, there's Waco. Waco is a very popular spot. Chipp and Joanna Gaines have made it popular. And it's like the mid midway point in between. And so I've always said that's a really great rental market because people like stopping in, you know? Yeah, exactly. Let me ask one follow of a question, since both of you are such pioneering trailblazers here, what do you guys need to see to make you feel comfortable to invest in some of these further out markets? Like, if I'm far enough, can I just throw in enough hot tubs and, you know, game rooms and all these cool amenities to make up for it? Or is there something else that you're looking for it outside of what you guys just said to really make you feel

confident? One thing I look for my buy box is I'm trying to look for homes under 400,000 that are going to gross over 100,000. Wow. So going on Price Labs market dashboards and seeing in that, you know, immediate area, seeing if homes are doing that, doesn't always have to be exactly that, but that's ideally what I'm looking for. I really look for like the overall home price is what I look for. I've never spent more than 400 grand on a house. Okay. Yeah. And if you ever find any of those $400,000 homes that gross $100,000 and you decide not to buy it. Please. Please. Send them our way. Well, pretty much all my homes are in that, in that ratio or similar to that ratio.

Not too far off from that or the projections are somewhat close to that. They don't have to be spot on, but they're in that ballpark or I don't do it. I think for me to answer your question, Tony, I don't think you can just like over amenity and, you know, overly design a place to be bookable in some markets, right? If you're like out in the middle of, you know, nowhere, there still has to be a compelling reason for people to go. I think what I'm always looking for is, I don't know, like for example, a college town, right? There's a lot of people in a college town. And if I look on Airbnb and there's only like 10 short term rentals on there and then those

10 short term rentals were the photos were taken with like a blackberry, like the first blackberry that ever came out and then like furnished with goodwill furniture, then I'm get really excited about that because I'm like, wow, like just one nice Airbnb can sort of scoop up the competition. And so for that reason, like you still have to be within reason. Like I don't think you can just buy a place in the middle of Kansas, right, where the nearest city is three hours away and expect people to go. But I'll give you an example of a place. Unfortunately, I did not end up closing on this property, but I was in escrow on this amazing dome home about 30 minutes south of Denver in Castle Rock. And I was so excited about it

because it was a destination for people, you know, that live in Denver and that are going to the national park and stuff, they would be willing to drive 30 minutes out. to get here. And it is in between two cities and it was super unique, had amazing views. And I just thought for me, that one really checked a lot of boxes. And that one, I was going to do a lot of stuff, design, hot tubs, game rooms, everything, because I knew that there was an immediate need in that market. Because all of the Airbnbs out there were sort of like travel destination type of Airbnb's, but they don't really have any amenities. And the views weren't as good. So I'm getting sad talking about it because I did end up not closing on it. But to me, that one did check.

the box because it was so close to Denver. Yeah, I think it's definitely a balance that you want to be able to strike. And that's basically what you both of y'all have kind of spoken to is like, how do you, how do you get close enough so that it's not inconvenient for your guests to get to where they're trying to go, but not so close that now you're, you're beating or breaking that ratio of being able to get 100K on a $400,000 purchase price. But I think one thing that does make it easier to kind of be on the outskirts is not just the amenities, but also just kind of the uniqueness of your property, right?

Like if you have something that's really cool, the people can't really book somewhere else, it makes them more willing to kind of make that drive. So, Jenny, I'm curious. You talked a little bit about having some of these unique properties. Can you walk us through? Like, when you say unique, what does that mean? Like, what are those property structures look like? What are you offering guests? Yeah.

I actually want to ask you guys about this, too. So it depends on the market. And this is what I want to get your thoughts on. So take the Smokies, for example. I have two properties there. And one is this Hansel and Gretel style cabin, storybook cabin, super cute. We don't have a view. We're about 20 minutes from Pitchin Borg and Gatlinburg, but it's very unique and very small, very cute.

But it has very antique feel. Guests feel like they walked into Snow White's cabin. There really is truly no other, the I've seen, no other cabin in the Smokies like it. So very rustic. A lot of cabins in the Smokies are going modern. And it does very well. Then we had land across from that cabin that we just completed a build on back in February. And I thought our build was pretty unique.

I still think it's pretty unique, you know, like floor and ceiling windows has a really cool look to it. So we put this on Airbnb. And, you know, then I look on Airbnb and I'm like, oh, man, it appears that everyone in the Smokies has just also completed a new build. What are your thoughts on on a market like the Smokies, you know, quote unquote saturated? Would you buy more property there in 2023? Would you advise anyone that you're mentoring to buy more property there? Would you build there? What would you do in a build there to make it stand out?

And I'm sure you get this question a lot. So what is your take on that? And also how do you make your properties stand out? markets like that in markets like Joshua Tree in those sort of markets. I'm not talking about, you know, I have properties too in, you know, central Wisconsin where the masses are not flocking to, but in a place like the Smoky is where you both own property and what's your take on that? Tony, you go first. Yeah. Yeah, this is a, yeah, there's a lot of layers to this. I think the first part that I'll answer is on like, okay, does it still make sense to kind of buy in a market like

the Smoky's that's quote unquote unsaturated or that's oversaturated? Or that's oversaturated. Just really quick on the whole saturation piece. I know, Rob, you talked about this before to you, that I think people throw around the word saturation kind of too loosely. There was a big fire in the smokies back in 2016. And even in 2023, we're still not up to the number of cabins that were present in that market in 2016. So demand has continued to increase in the Smoky Mountains, but supply still isn't where it was back in 2016. So I think we probably have some ways before we can call that market saturated. I do think that we've seen in the last 24 months a big run-up on prices in that market.

And I think that's where the challenges come. Like my cabin, the first cabin that I bought during COVID, it's doubled in value. But our revenue has not doubled, right? So what does that mean? It means if I'm paying double the amount of money for the same amount of revenue, I just cut my return in half. At a 7% interest rate. At a 7% interest rate, right?

So I think that's where the challenges are in that market where you've seen revenue kind of, you know, stay steady, which is a strong revenue in that market. If you buy a cap in there, you're probably going to do well from a revenue standpoint, but it's how do I get my purchase price low enough or my interest rate low enough for it still to make sense. So I think that's the bigger challenge in that market. However, if I was going into a market where there's heavy competition, I think your ability to compete.

First, it comes down to your ability to buy right, right? You want to make sure that you're not overpaying in that market. You're getting a good deal. but second, it comes down to your ability to give the guests something that they're not able to get at other properties. So I'll give you an example for our properties in Joshua Tree. A lot of people say that Josh Tree is oversaturated, right? And hey, I shouldn't go buy in this market. And it is true that supply has increased. But if you're a professional host, that's what you expect to happen. And it's on you to try and identify ways to increase your revenue. So what we did at one of our properties in Joshua Tree, we took our garage, which was just like a, It was locked to guest, and we just had like our washer and dryer inside of the garage. And Sarah, my wife and I, we had stayed at an Airbnb in Orlando. And Orlando, if you want inspiration for like really cool design and amenities, like go to Orlando.

And we stayed at this property that had this really cool, like, Mario themed game room in the garage. And we looked at Joshua Tree and like, man, there's not a lot of properties that have cool game rooms in Joshua Tree. Like most of them are like, there's like yoga studios and maybe a Pella. or maybe a pool table, but to do something really, really cool, it just wasn't happening out there at a high level. So we took one of our garages. We spent $12,000 to convert it into this really cool Mario-themed game room. And as soon as we did that, our revenue skyrocketed for that property. So I think what you want to identify in, and whatever market you're in, is what is the experience that's missing here? What's something that I've seen work well in other markets that isn't present

where I'm at right now. The last example for Joshua Tree, and I convinced Rob after like months and months of trying to get him to do this, but was like hot tubs. Initially in Joshua Tree, hot tubs weren't a big thing. And then I'd say like 2021, you start to see more properties doing that.

And now it's almost like par for course if you want to compete in Joshua Tree. So I think that's my approach. That was a mouthful. Rob, I'll shut up, man. What do you think? I agree with all of that. Next. No, just kidding.

Yeah. So Smoky Mountain. is a, I love hate relationship. I think that there is a run-up in prices with high interest rates. It makes it tough to get the good old days of like 93% cash on cash returns, right? Like, I got a property out there. I actually think it was probably like a 95%. I think we got all of our money back in that first year. Pretty close anyway. We would not be able to replicate that today. I think it would still be a good return. I just think it's probably a little bit more noise. I think it's probably a little bit more normalized in terms of like, yeah, I just don't think you can expect your initial down payment back

in the first year if you're doing like a second home loan or anything like that. But what I would say is I think that the Smoky Mountains is actually an excellent starter market simply because a lot of the markets or a lot of the houses for sale, I would say like 95% plus, if not more, already come fully furnished. And because they're fully furnished, it makes the job so much easier to get that up and running because you can buy the property, fly out there, change maybe some art, maybe change out a couch or an accent chair, maybe some linens. But for the most part, you can get a property up and running extremely quickly because you're just optimizing what's there versus having to figure out how to ship $15,000 to $25,000 worth of furniture to the Smoky Mountains

where all the driveways are super steep. And the only way you can get a hold of furniture is by going to local store. It's just like so hard out there to set something up from scratch. So I think it's a really great starter market for that reason. I just think that maybe it's a little bit, we've calibrated a little bit. Like you said, Tony, I think revenues are actually relatively consistent. Demand seems to be relatively consistent. So yeah, I don't, I wouldn't say yes or no. I honestly haven't even looked on Redfin in the Smoky Mountains, particularly in the last year.

Because I just got tired of losing on every bid because everyone was bidding like $50,000 to $100,000 over. And now we're seeing price cuts every single day. And now I think maybe we're starting to return to like normal times again. Would you agree with that, Tony? Or am I off base? No, no, I totally agree with you, man. I think in a lot of these big vacation destination markets, you know, our friend every caro calls them blue chip markets, the Destin's, the Jostro tree, the Smoky Mountains,

the Broken Bowes, you saw massive run up in prices over the last two years. And I think we're starting to see them kind of come back down to, reality a little bit. But Jenny, I'm curious for you, right? So you heard our perspective on it. So when you think about your own property, I guess what lessons did maybe you take away about your ability to try and compete in these markets that you're in with the unique experiences, at least? Yeah. Yeah. So my first two rentals are just to be honest, they're really not unique at all. They don't really have to be because they're not in markets that are flooded. So the third rental was the Hansel and Gretel style. And we, because it is a

smokies, we actually did acquire that fully furnished, but it wasn't living up to his potential. It was furnished, but it really needed a little bit of sprucing up. So we took the base that was already there, and then we spent about three or four grand, and we enhanced it a little bit more. So we really played up that more. So it doesn't have any extra amenities that other cabins don't have, but it has like this old world, rustic vibe, old woodwinds strove, this super like fairy tale-esque look. When's the Cole looked to? it. The new build across the road kind of has, it's not a treehouse, but parts of it do have like a treehouse look where you go upstairs. It has Florida wall windows where you look outside

and you're kind of like in a treehouse, big wrap around deck. It has a rustic meets modern look. We didn't want to go to modern, but we didn't want to go too rustic. We wanted to have like a smoky's look with a little bit of modern. And then we have another property in near the Grand Canyon where we actually built like a little custom golf course. But we actually had a really bad experience with our contractor and he made the golf course look really bad. It looks kind of like, kind of like homemade hodgepodge,

not really well put together. So what we did in our listing is we actually embrace that. And we kind of made fun of it and we called it the redneck golf course because we know that it looks bad. And we had some people look at that and say, oh my gosh, you cannot, you have to get rid of it. we're like, no, we're not getting rid of this. Like, let's just embrace it.

Let's make fun of it. And guests love it. Wait, that is, I just got, I love that. That's like so smart. It's like, let's just purposely do things like really poorly and inexpensively. And then we'll call it like, you know, the bootlakers version of whatever it is. That's super smart. See, now, and this is what we call marketing.

And you are an expert marketer. Congratulations. Well, I am a veteran salesperson. But actually, it was funny as a week ago. And then, so I actually, I, if I can plug someone else, I actually paste them. Her name is Kate Chalene. She's amazing. She is an Airbnb listing optimizer. And I just hired her for two of my properties. And she a few weeks ago, she goes, Jenny, are you doing lifestyle photos for your properties? And I'm like, what the heck is a lifestyle photo? I never heard of such a thing. So what she's recommending is that you hire a model to go to your properties and kind of take these cool pictures where. The picture isn't about them, but they're like enjoying your property. So we went up to my Grand Canyon property and we had a model set, but they had a canceled day of. Well, there is no one else to be in the picture.

So my four-year-old and I and my husband, we went up there and we kind of were, you know, we had to be in the picture. So we went on the red net golf course, me and my four-year-old. And the photographer got a picture of my son playing on the golf course. And I was in a distant background. You could barely see me, which is the point of it. So now we have pictures of our listing with my son on the Rednet Golf Course. So on the Airbnb listing, the caption is, you know, cheer on your kids.

You know, widely play on the Red Net Golf Course. And so we kind of embraced it even more, you know. It actually fits our listing because that's a manufacturer. Speaking of breaking the rules, that listing is a manufactured home remodeled. Wow. Okay. People told me not to do that. But the numbers work, and the guests absolutely love it.

And no one has ever said in their review, oh, my gosh, it was a manufactured home, what was a trailer. People don't even know their state in a trailer. But it does kind of fit. It's a rural, kind of like farm, you know, Redneck Golf. There's totally fit. And people love it. That's cool.

Yeah. You know, I've often considered asking Tony Robinson to come and model for all of my Airbnb. So I will take that tip and convince them to do that. I'm actually building a mini golf course in one of my properties too. So I'm glad to hear that you've gotten good traction from it. I'm going a little extra with it and it will be like a full on, well, man, now you actually, to be honest, you got me a little scared because I'm like, I'm pretty sure my contractor is going to pull this off. But now I'm like, uh-oh, whatever he doesn't get. It is somewhat more complex than it needs to be. But I don't think that there are really a lot of mini golf courses out there. And I think that's a really cool. I've never thought about the lifestyle photos either. I've considered it. I've considered it. but I just don't know anyone that's done it, and it sounds like it's working for you, right? So one helpful tip too for any listeners. Apparently, there are lifestyle photographers out there. They're extraordinarily expensive.

So we just found a local photographer, like a photographer that just, they take wedding photos, graduation photos, and he actually offered to bring the model himself. So that would be probably the easiest way to find the right photographer for this. So not a listing photographer, just a people photographer. Oh, and then a couple other listings, what we did to make them stand out, we bought an off-market house in Florida. We bought this house and there's apparently what we learned about this market is in Panama City Beach. You have to have a pool apparently. No one told me that. We can't put a pool in because of our yard. We have set. We're on septic. So we are getting a cowboy pool and we know that it's not ideal, but it is what it is.

So we're going to do a mini golf with a cowboy pool. And then we also turn our garage at that house into a really cool game room. And then we have another property in central Wisconsin. And we converted that garage into a game room. And then we made our yard at that property. At night, it turns into like this whimsical, almost like fairyland. We have solar lighting everywhere, hot tub, all that. So those are some ways that we kind of make, you know, make our properties stand out.

And moving forward, I really like themed Airbnbs. I think that's a really smart idea, too. Did you add all of those different like amenities after the Airbnb had been running or did you launch with those amenities? Yeah. So for the central Wisconsin one, we did add that a few months after like the game room and the hot tub. And we did see a pretty big difference in bookings. Yeah. Oh, really? Okay. Do you have any what else? The redneck mini golf or whatever. that you didn't launch with that either, right? I did launch with that, yes. Oh, you did launch with that one?

Okay. And then was there another property that you added the, I guess the Panama City Beach, did you add the cowboy pool, which is basically one of those horse troughs that are above ground? They're relatively small. They can be big. Yeah. Pretty cost and effective, I'd say.

But did you launch with that as well? Yeah. We're adding that next week, but we already started marketing that we were going to add it. So we put a picture of what it's going to look like. And we did see a pretty. big difference in bookings once we added that we're going to have it. And that one is actually pretty big. It's, it's, there's a company called Gypsy Pools in Florida that provides it and they have four different sizes. So hopefully it might attract more people with toddlers, you know, but,

but that's okay, you know. Cool. Yeah. I just, uh, I don't know if you know this, Tony, but I just added a pickleball court to my Scottsdale property. Oh, dude. You've been talking about that for a while, man. I know, I know. I finally convinced David to let me do it. Do it. Okay, so it increased the revenue for June so far, 25% from last year. And then, yeah, we already booked like so much more money, I would say, so much faster. Like last year, it just didn't launch as fast as we thought. It did fine. But like now, the bookings are rolling in like every single booking, basically every single weekend is going to be booked for us forever. And then we just found this other website called Swimply where you can like rent out your pool,

but they just added pickleball courts to the to the actual amenities that you can rent out individually outside of Airbnb. So we're going to try to actually rent out our pickleball court for $100 an hour during the weekdays. And then we'll have pretty massive like $2,000 a night bookings for our week, like Friday through Sunday, basically. Dude, congrats on the pickleball court. And like you said, it has a measurable impact on revenue, on profitability. So I guess that leads into our next question, Jenny. And in terms of your portfolio, when you look at kind of what you've seen so far, what do your,

what do your numbers look like? Like, give us some, give us the nitty gritty on what kind of revenue we can expect to generate with the portfolio like yours. Yeah. So Milwaukee grosses about 40 to 50,000 a year. Keep in mind, you know, your net. I think most short-term runs in the investors would say their net is about half of their gross.

That's pretty typical. So that's Milwaukee. I should say, though, had we spent a little bit of, bit more. There are properties that will gross like 100,000 a year, you know, there. The right property is like a five bedroom downtown, those types of things. And that I think can be achieved in, like I said, any Midwestern city. Then we have the central Oklahoma one. Again, that was 90,000 purchase price, 39,000 gross last year. The third property was storybook on the hill in the Smokies. and that's about 20 minutes from Gatlinburg and 20 minutes from Pigeon Forge.

That was purchased for 350,000 and it came with an extra lot. So that was a good buy. That was in 2021. That grossed 78,000 last year. And then the new build, all in across the road, that was launched last February. That with furniture, with landscaping, with, you know, my $10,000 kitchen that I had to get with all the extras, the build was 371,000, but with all the extras, it was 450 out the door. But that is projected.

I'm hoping that's going to gross 90,000 in 2023. We might get to 100,000, maybe. So maybe I say in the 90s is my best guess for that one. And then the fourth property was Grand Canyon. I think that was number four. We remodel this 1984 trailer. This all with the remodel. I believe was about

280. So 280 all in and 12-month cycle 50 to 60,000. And then Panama City, Florida, we just bought and launched it in April. We bought it because we found this

through a wholesaler and it was $100,000 under value. So it's worth $425. We bought it for $2.90. And then we put $25,000 into it to rehab it. So a little little over 300,000 and we're hoping that one grosses like 75,000. Oh, I'm missing something. I'm missing my favorite

one of my favorite properties is our central Wisconsin resort property out in the country. So this one was 371,000 before furniture and everything. And this one grosses a little over 100,000. So this is like my gold and standard property and any future properties, I would want to kind of have more look like this property that we have there. That's pretty good. So ballpark, you're going to do about 530, maybe 550, depending on where you're, where you're at in that range. Like you said, if you're, you know, holding an expense ratio about 50%, you'll net a little, little over 250,000 bucks, which is pretty good, you know, especially for that number of properties. So I guess it's a really good return, I think, for the cash you put into the business. So I'm curious, Jenny, what,

if anything, would you, you know, kind of looking back now, so you were starting over today, what if anything would you have done differently as you built out this portfolio? I would have bought a little bit less and done more properties like my favorite, the one, the one in central Wisconsin. And there's nothing special about this area. It's just, it's a little bit bigger. You know, we sleep eight people. It's just, I think, working, smarter, not harder. Again, I really like the Midwest. You know, I just, it's not talked about a lot in the, in the short-term rental space and you can get cheaper properties. Don't tell people. I also, I also like the, I heard a lot of good things about like the Northeast, like the mid,

like, you know, Pennsylvania, kind of like those, those areas to, Ohio, lots of good stuff in Ohio, places like that. Because you can, you know, you can get big, nice properties. for like, you know, in the 200s, the 300s, you know, in this particular property, we don't, we're not in a big city, like, you know, Milwaukee, so we don't deal with crazy property tax. I would have probably, if I had to do it over again, I would have, I would have probably just stuck to bigger and luxury properties and probably less, you know, maybe like three to five luxury properties that will, that would gross 100,000 a year. That would be my recommendation, definitely.

I think when we started for some reason, I think some investors think it's like a game of like how many, you know, like three, five, ten, whatever. Like, it's not a game of how many. It is not like a race. Like, you don't get a prize because you have how many, you know, it should be quality, not quantity. A hundred percent agree. So tell us, I mean, it seems like you've sort of figured this thing out. What would you say some of the keys to success are for the people that getting into the Airbnb's short-term rental game in 2023. And why are they different from what people think? Well, I've absolutely not figured this out. I'm still figuring this out. I think you're pretty close, though. Thanks, Rob. Some of the keys of success are joining mastermind groups,

you know, having friends in the space that can be pretty lonely. And actually, your friends that are not doing this will not understand you. It, uh, not everyone's going to be super happy for you. And and super thrilled for you. It's really going to be important to form friendships with other investors. That's going to be really key. Other big tips would be to really think about what you want the end to look like. A couple years ago, we just kind of took things that were thrown at us and came at us that we didn't really think enough about what is the end goal here. If we would have thought more about that, we would probably have, you know, three or four luxury properties, like our Lake property in Wisconsin

and just done things a little bit more strategically and a little bit smarter. So really, I would say, you know, anyone starting this journey or even if you're like a little bit, you know, a year in or two years in or no matter how experience you are,

I would recommend taking a set back and just ask yourself a year from now, five or 10 years to now, where do I really want to be at? Like, what is my strategy? And say no more often. And just realize that when you say no to things, you're actually saying yes to something else. Yeah, that's great. So have a vision for five to ten years. Find a community, find a mentor

in this space. And then one that you didn't list, but is obviously just a really great recurring theme of the episode. Break the rules. I think I think that's one that people should really digest. Because I think breaking the rules, when it comes down to it just means taking a bet on yourself that you can get through whatever rules you're breaking in that it's going to be a successful result. So I appreciate you sharing all that. Tony, anything else did I miss anything? I mean, I feel like we can both probably take a page out of Jenny's book here. Yeah. You've taught us. No, yeah. I mean, I'm going back and looking at my notes. I think the other thing to you, Jenny, and again, you didn't, I don't think you explicitly said this, but it's giving yourself grace to make mistakes because you said you made a lot of

mistakes at the beginning, but you're a better investor because of it. And I think for a lot of people who are starting, and I'm putting on my rookie hat here, I think for a lot of people that are starting, part of what holds them back is that fear of just royally messing things up. But I think we all have to remember that in order to be great, you have to be good. In order to be good, most people start off bad. In order to be bad, you at least got to try. And you've got to go through that, those steps to really get to a point where you're confident, you're comfortable. So I appreciate you sharing both the highs, obviously, you know, half a million bucks in revenue, but also the lows, the mistakes you made and how it made you a better investor. Yeah, totally. Well, thanks for having me. It was such an honor.

Yeah, of course. Well, tell us, where can people find out more about you if they want to connect? If they want to find you on the socials, on the interwebs, where can people reach out? So they can connect either right on BiggerPockets app. And my username is Jenny V1. So that's my name with an I, capital V, the number one, or on Instagram. My profile is Jenny Vega underscore AZ. A-Z stands for Arizona. And if you want to email me, you can reach me at Sharp Jenny Vega, sharp S-H-A-R-P, my full name, sharp Jenny Vega at Gmail.

Awesome. Okay. And what about you, Tony? Yeah, people can reach me on Instagram at Tony J. Robinson. Also, obviously, on the Bigger Pockets Real Estate Rookie Podcast, we put out episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. And if you're Ricky looking to get started in the world of real estate investing, come hang out with me and my co-host Ashley Care on on that side of things. Cool. And we will. And it's a good, I mean, you know, I'm waiting for the invite, but that's okay. It is one of the best. It is the one of the, one of the, it's the top five for me. I listen to that one more than I think every other podcast. So thank you, Tony, for for teaching me as well.

I appreciate that. And you can find me over on Rob, on YouTube and on Instagram as well. And you can also find me. on the Apple platform where you can leave us a five-star review. So please go and do that. We read all of them and we love your feedback and we love the five stars and it helps us get served up to new audience as well. So with that, thank you so much, Jenny. We appreciate you coming and sharing your knowledge with us. And we'll catch everyone on the next episode of Bigger Pockets. This is Robert for Tony the Airbnb model, Abyselo out. I'm pretty sure I did that wrong, but it sounded cool in my head. Not only did I mess that up by saying Tony's first name, but I had my last name to it. So yeah, it's just what happens with David Green has gone. Things go crazy.

Bye, everyone. 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. On the host, an executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer, the show is produced by Ian K, copyrighting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing, or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.w.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing.

You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.