Digital Social Hour - How I Built a 13-Property Airbnb Empire in 1 Year | Brandon Meyer DSH #1088

Episode Date: January 11, 2025

🏠💰 Discover how to build a 13-property Airbnb empire in just one year! 🚀 Brandon shares his incredible journey from software engineer to Airbnb mogul, revealing insider secrets and strategies that can help you achieve financial freedom. 💼   Learn about: • Rental arbitrage and how to start with minimal capital 💡 • Maximizing profits with dynamic pricing software 📈 • Preventing parties and handling difficult situations 🎉🚫 • Creative financing techniques for real estate investing 💳   Brandon's story proves that anyone can build a successful Airbnb business, even while working a full-time job. From Pittsburgh to financial freedom, he shares valuable insights on market selection, property management, and scaling your portfolio. 📊   Ready to dive into the world of Airbnb investing? Watch now and subscribe for more game-changing tips from successful entrepreneurs! 🔔 Join the Digital Social Hour community and stay ahead of the curve in real estate and passive income strategies. 💪   #AirbnbInvesting #RealEstateStrategies #PassiveIncome #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly   #realestatewholesaling #makemoneyonline #airbnbarbitrage #propertymanagement #recessionproofincome   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:28 - Brandon's Airbnb Portfolio 02:12 - Understanding Airbnb Algorithm 06:37 - Preventing Parties in Airbnb 09:45 - Identifying Scammers in Airbnb 13:41 - Why Choose Pittsburgh for Airbnb 15:31 - Capital Investment in Airbnb 17:29 - Importance of Mentorship 22:03 - Bitcoin Overview 22:35 - Michael Saylor Insights 23:35 - Understanding Smart Contracts 27:23 - Creative Financing Strategies 29:25 - Tax Deed Auction Process 30:30 - Airbnb Cleaner Issues 34:00 - Where to Find Brandon   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: Brandon Meyer https://www.instagram.com/moneywithmeyer https://www.youtube.com/@moneywithmeyer   SPONSORS: Prolon: http://prolonlife.com/DSH   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/   Digital Social Hour works with participants in sponsored media and stays compliant with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding sponsored media. #ad

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Yep, yep, absolutely. Which is great for most people, that could be life-changing. Life-changing. Yeah, that's cool. And with Trump in office now, I'm assuming the real estate market's gonna be better, right? I hope so. I mean, crypto's already feeling it, god damn.

Yeah, yeah, we see it, we saw the boost there. Kicking up, it's like 20K jumped up. Yeah, It's at uh, Bitcoin's up 10% to the 10%. It's at almost $90,000 as we All right guys, we got Brandon here today. We're going to talk Airbnb real estate and uh, we'll see what else we talk about. Thanks for coming on man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, how's the Airbnb stuff doing? It's good. My portfolio is good. There's a lot of fear in the market with the Airbnb bust, but if you do Airbnb right, I found it to be very lucrative. So that bust, did it wipe out a lot of sellers? It's an oversaturated market right now. You have a lot of people jumping in the game and they are just throwing furniture in. They're not spending enough money to invest in a good home and advertise it well. So they'll buy a lot of stuff off Facebook marketplace.

They'll do IKEA furniture just really cheap. But with our properties, I found that you put in enough capital and market it well. And this is like accent walls, you know, doing wallpaper, paint, just making it a scroll stopping design. It kills it. It does really well. So yeah, we do really good. Yeah, because you got to separate yourself from everyone else. Exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of competition out there and you need to stand out.

And a lot of it too is Airbnb is a interest based algorithm. So if we try to optimize for that, we're setting up with the listings and we're picking certain photos. You can add a little bit of mystery, get people as they're scrolling through Airbnb to want to know more, see, see more of your photos, click can add a little bit of mystery, get people as they're scrolling through Airbnb to wanna know more, see more of your photos, click into it, play with the listing, and Airbnb, the algorithm picks that up.

And you get impressions, you get clicks and conversions, and that helps boost your ranking, put you on first page search on Airbnb. Nice. When did the algorithm start getting incorporated? The interest-based algorithm? Yeah. I'm not sure of the year.

I know it's, I think it's always been based on interest-based algorithm to kind of gauge people's interest in wanting to go stay at a place. And the more a listing gets played with, the more it appears on top of search. Airbnb wants to list the best listings first. They want people when they're coming to their platform to see that.

I mean, you can imagine if you were going there and you just saw a bunch of dumpy houses, you probably wouldn't book anything. So in this case, they're putting some of the best inventory first and, and they mix it in. I mean, if a part of the algorithm, if you have a new listing, they push you to the top for 30 days. And that's something with my portfolio, you know, we do property management as well for other people. We take advantage of that 30 day window.

That's when the algorithm is going to be kind of gauging the success of the listing. The first 30 days. Yeah, it's crucial. And that's not to say that, you know, down the line, you can't make some changes and bring it back. That's totally fine. But those 30 days are crucial for really driving up those bookings. That's good to know for people just getting started. Absolutely. So maybe they should lower their price the first 30 days. No, so that's a misconception. So I don't tend to do that. So with us, I want to, because you get that 30 day boost, you're likely to get more bookings to come in.

So we keep our prices competitive. We use a dynamic pricing software, something like price labs. And we, we, we use price labs to, sorry, I lost my train of thought there. No, I didn't even know there was a software that, so it changes the prices of the listing for you? Yeah, it changes the price of listing. So dynamic pricing is how it competitively prices amongst the competitors. So it takes into consideration things like events coming to town, similar like airline

tickets and hotels, and makes you competitive in market. For example, we have properties in Pittsburgh, Taylor Swift came to town in Pittsburgh and everything was like sold out. Well, all the prices went up that weekend. If you don't have dynamic pricing software, I mean, that does it automatically, right? Using software, a lot of people do it manually.

They just kind of set the same price for the same night and they're missing out on the chance of maximizing their revenue on Airbnb. That's good to know, man. Because yeah, they probably get booked right away and they could have made an extra couple hundred bucks, right? Absolutely. Wow. I did not know there was AI doing that with flights too.

Yeah. I mean, it makes sense in the hotel industry. I mean, concert tickets, right? We're all trying to buy concert tickets and you have a bunch of bots that come in and they buy stuff up and you knock the price up. As you get closer to an event, like, and... Looking for the ultimate online casino experience? Step into the BetMGM Casino app, where every deal, spin, and goal

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Use the code DSH at prolonlife.com slash dsh. Tickets don't get bought prices are going to drop to try to sell those tickets and that's kind of the same thing with Airbnb inventory. As you get closer to something if it doesn't sell you want to drop the price and you got to be careful with that too with Airbnb though because you can also invite parties in. So what we tend to do with our pricing strategy is try to get it booked in advance. There are certain zones or tiers. And if we can get booked in advance, the more bookings we can secure, we can actually raise prices as those dates come closer.

And that's a good party prevention tool, which parties are unfortunately a thing with Airbnb. And a lot of hosts that people come in, trash the home, and you've seen Airbnb in the news for shootings and parties and stuff. It's a bad rap. Yeah, in Philly, exactly. How common is parties? Like, has that happened to you?

Yeah, quite a bit. I love the honesty. Yeah, so we implement noise detection hardware in the houses. It just measures the decimal levels in the home. Smart. So I set like a thresholds around maybe 80 DB. If it goes over that threshold,

I get a notification maybe around 8 PM that that happens. Then we have security cameras, one at the front door, one at the back door, don't have any inside, right? You're just monitoring the outside of the building. Yeah. So we get those notifications, I check the cameras and you can always tell a lot by you read a listing, you know, I'll check to see who checked in. I'll see what the registered guest count is. They'll put down like, I got two

guests that are coming to stay. And then all of a sudden you look at the front doorbell camera and there's like six, seven people, you know, piling in the front door. So at that point, they're breaking our house rules. They're breaking Airbnb policy where you're only allowed to have registered guests at the home. That's actually one misconception a lot of people think is that you have to register for every single person at home. I didn't know that.

Yep. And you, yeah, you have to have those registered. And if not, you're in violation of Airbnb policy. And at that point, the host can kick you out if they want. Because you're breaking house rules. Interesting. Yeah. I never knew that because I've definitely stayed and not, um, is that a newer thing where you have to register all the guests?

Um, as far as I know, it's been around, I think it's a liability thing, right? You don't want like all these people come into your house that, that aren't registered. And, um, so Airbnb, you know, wants to keep track of everybody that's coming and so no lawsuits and things like that. Right. Yeah. That makes total sense.

So what happened when you found out there was a party at one of your spots? We, I mean, we've had a few, having that system in place, we're able to stop things before they get out of control. When that happens, get that notification to the phone, check the camera, see that there's some funny business, try to reach out to the guests. If they don't respond, which a lot of times they don't, music is really loud, depending on where they are. If they're in the backyard, like some of the cameras that I have actually have a two-way talk feature or they're really fun, they have a siren.

So we've had a property in Florida where they're blasting music, well we have this really cool siren that just blasts and they all get freaked out. They're like, they're looking up at the camera and then they turn the music down. I'm like, hey, I need to speak to so and so whoever's the host. Talk to them on the phone, just say, hey, like you guys, you know, can't be partying, gotta get everybody out. It really depends.

If they're being respectful, they're being friendly, if they're, you know, hey, we're so sorry we didn't know, like all these people are gonna leave, we'll monitor the situation. But of course, if we can't get ahold of them through the camera or from the phone, we'll send a boots on the ground person over. And I manage multiple properties in multiple states.

So we have teams of people where I'll just reach out to boots on the ground, they'll go knock on the door. Hey guys, like you can't be a party and you're breaking house rules. We're going to have to ask you to leave. Wow, you've had to do that? All the time. Damn. Yeah. I got some interesting stories on my social media. Yeah. Or some of the crazy things

that have happened. I think I saw one of your viral videos, right? Yep. Yep. So up there, we have the more, the one that went viral, that was really huge was the scammer video. So that one, we've been hit a few times by a couple scammers that they book the reservation with a fake credit card and then they come to the property and stay obviously free. And then we get a charge back later on down. Like a stolen card. Stolen card. Yeah.

So this is off Airbnb. Let me just say Airbnb has a great fraud detection. We haven't had any issues with fraud. These are more for like direct bookings through our website. So the Airbnb platform is, does their due diligence with really checking that out. Or if they don't and there's a problem, Airbnb still pays you as a host. So that's really nice. So in this case with that viral video, we had a couple of scammers that came.

They tried to, I caught it ahead of time. Luckily I had the person that had the stolen credit card. They saw that our company name was on the credit card bill. They reached out to us, they hit us. This wasn't me. I didn't book this. We think it's fake. And so I was like, perfect. And these people had hit us before they come into the home. They just completely trash it and then they leave. And then we have to pay for it, right? We missing out on the revenue and then we get the charge back from the credit card companies. So these, we caught it ahead of time and I was like, it's perfect opportunity. I want to, you know,

catch them in the act. We have that doorbell camera. So when they came to check in, just caught them on the doorbell camera. Just play with them really and try to get them to one of the things that like, cause I called the police ahead of time, I wanted to obviously get them arrested, you know, come in and pull in the scam multiple times and then the same city, we obviously don't want that to continue to happen. So when they came,

one of the things that the officer recommended was, if you try to get them to admit that they're the person that booked the home, then they can be held accountable. Unfortunately, they're more, they've done this multiple times. They know not to admit that they're the person on the reservation. So, you know, when I asked, Hey, uh, are you the name that they use was Montana. So like, are you Montana? Uh, there was two people, the girl almost admitted it, which at that point we could

potentially call the police and then have them try to pursue something. But there was a gentleman that she was with and he cut her off, didn't allow her to speak. And he was obviously a skilled and probably the leader in the whole scam. But he basically said, Oh, Montana's down the road. She's not here yet. She'll be here in about 10, 15 minutes. He ended up actually like I didn't allow him in the house. He went around the back, tried to break in the window. We caught him on camera. It's on the social media there. They just ended up leaving.

Funny enough though, I actually got a couple of messages recently with people that knew who they were. Really? Yeah. It was like, that's my cousin. I don't want to say his name, but he's like, that's my cousin so and so.

He's a real bad guy. Just not a good person. If you want to pursue anything, like here's his name. His own family ratted him out. Yeah. Wow. So obviously he's not doing something right, right? Yeah. Your own family's telling on you?

Damn. So it was the same guy that scammed you before though? How'd you know that? It wasn't the same guy. I think it was the same girl. So we had a follow-up video on there where It was like six months prior The this girl shows up in a ski mask and she looks like she had a similar body type to you got it

The girl that had showed up in the recent viral video And she showed up in a ski mask. She got out of the taxi in a ski mask went in the house every time She left the house. She had a ski mask on so So she, yeah, she was, she knew what she was doing. Uh, and, uh, yeah, there was no, no guy with her at that point in time, but, um, yeah, she just looked very similar. We can't for sure say it was her, but it's, it seems like the same people kind of know and they just keep hitting. I, I doubt it's multiple people knowing how to go about doing that in that area.

Crazy. And that's in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. crazy. And that's in Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh. Damn. Is that where most of your stuff is? Yeah. The largest part of our portfolio is in Pittsburgh. Why did you choose that spot specifically? Pittsburgh was a great opportunity for a couple of reasons when I got into Airbnb a few years back. It's a B-size upcoming city. And at the time I didn't, so I live in Denver

and it was very expensive to try to start an Airbnb in Denver. I had family in Pittsburgh. So I wanted to get into a place where there was less competition. And at the time it's gotten more competitive now, but at the time people were, and this is something, if you want to find a profitable Airbnb

and a profitable Airbnb market, you can look around at your competition. That's where we start, right? We want to take comps. We want to look to see what we're going to be competing with. How much money do we need to invest in the home to be competitive in that market? And in this case, the people in Pittsburgh,

the host in Pittsburgh, didn't invest a lot into the properties. Like we were talking about before, they had put in some Ikea furniture, some hand-me-downs, the walls were empty, and they took photos with their iPhone. And here, I know that if I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna put more investment to beat them out.

I'm gonna take professional listing photos using professional photography. I'm gonna list it very well, and we can be really competitive in that market. So when we came in, and still to this day, we've done really well. We've invested in quality listings and quality photos and market ourselves well in that type of market.

Yeah, sometimes it's not best to take the cheap route, right? Exactly. Like buy the cheapest things. Not with Airbnb. I wouldn't recommend it just because it's oversaturated. That was something you could potentially do maybe 2017 or earlier, because there wasn't a whole lot of inventory in the market. Yeah. But now it takes that extra level.

Absolutely. How capital intensive is it now? Because I'm assuming every year it gets harder and harder, right? Yeah. So it's not too bad. I mean, single family, so I'm in single family homes. A lot of people do apartments and I'd like single family, so I'm in single family homes. A lot of people do apartments and I like single family homes. I think they're more profitable. I think you can be more competitive

with single family homes because let's say if you get a larger bedroom count, which Airbnb right now is pushing for larger bedroom counts, like there's their properties, they wanna push larger. How tall? That's a good question. I don't know.

I would imagine because you're gonna get bigger homes, like hosting bigger groups. Airbnb, what makes Airbnb competitive is the fact that like against hotels is that they can host larger groups, larger parties. You're going to get more property. And there's just this common misconception with pricing is that we've had a few guests that come in and they're like, your prices are crazy. I'm going to go stay at a hotel. And it's like, say, dude, you paid $300 for like two nights for a single family home. That's like a five bedroom single family home. And you could, you know, I mean, hotel costs like 300

a night. Right. So why would you not go with the home? So there's that misconception with price. And yeah, we, uh, with, with the five bedroom homes, you can be more competitive because you can compete with everything below it, right? So you have five bedroom, four, three, two, one, you can compete with apartments and beat them out. Yeah. And a group setting is hard to compete on price when you compare to hotels. Absolutely. Yeah.

There's very few cities where I think the Airbnbs are actually more than hotels. Vegas is hard to beat just cause, uh, they make their money off gambling. So the hotels are super cheap here, but I feel like in most places, Airbnb is probably cheaper. Yeah. You know, are you seeing that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're with using the dynamic pricing software,

we're competitive with hotel pricing cause they take that neighborhood data into consideration. So our homes are priced competitively with that and then other hosts. That makes sense. Wow. Yeah, I guess there's a lot that goes into it, right? It's not like you could just start up and make money right away. You need the right mentorship and leadership. So yeah, let's real quick talk about the price thing because you had mentioned that,

how much capital does it take to get into it. So I didn't have a ton of capital when I got started. I didn't have a huge like savings account to just go and dump in. And I actually through YouTube and learning about real estate podcasts, just learned about OPM. Stands for other people's money. It's how the wealthy get wealthier, right? Is you go out and you borrow money to start your business. In this case, it was Airbnb. So I went and I opened a LLC to start your business. In this case, it was Airbnb. So I went and I opened a LLC, opened a business. I got a business loan and that funded my start to my Airbnb.

Uh, and for a single family home at the time, I think we, when we started, it was a three bedroom home and we put in about 25,000, I think it was well, and that was like with, uh, so I do rental arbitrage where you convince a landlord to Airbnb their property. So it doesn't, we're not talking about going and buying out a house and have a crazy down payment. It's a low cost of entry to get into a home. I approached a couple of landlords.

I got their permission to Airbnb the property. We put it in the lease and I put that $25,000. They part of that was some of the rent and deposits and then the rest was furniture. And then when we launched, $1,000 bookings rolling in, covered the rent and making profit each month. Wow. Yeah. So not that much. Not that much. That's interesting because usually when you think of Airbnb,

you got to put down all the money for the house and everything. Absolutely. Yeah. And in today's market with a high real estate prices, it really makes it hard for anybody to get into Airbnb. Uh, so when I started, I mean, I did all of this working a W2 job full time. And I was able to scale a portfolio of 10 properties in less than a year. Yeah.

So you've got 10 properties right now. I have 13. Holy crap. Yeah. In just a year. Yeah. That's impressive. 10 properties right now? I have 13. Holy crap. In just a year. Yeah. That's impressive.

Yep. 13 in one year. Say, if you can maintain that, you're going to be well off. Yeah. It's, you know, doing rental arbitrage, each unit, it's probably a couple thousand bucks. It depends on the area where you're investing, but it easily took over my W-2 job income and provided me an opportunity for reaching financial freedom. And that's ultimately what I'm seeking to do. There's a lot of cash that comes in and you really have like, you'll be rich, but you

won't be wealthy. And that's one of the advantages when you're buying a home first renting. So I take that cash and then I invest into long-term real estate or starting new businesses or going that route, try to grow that portfolio. What was your W2 job? Software engineer. Oh, sounds fun. It was brutal.

I worked for Lockheed Martin and I just hated it, man. Just commuting to work, sitting in a cube. I worked in a classified space. I'm working a skiff, no windows, just my body hurting. And you know, just all this time, man, you just sit there and you know, people, there's so much more that you can be doing to maximize your time. And then you're just waiting for work.

And so there's a lot of side conversations, stuff like that. I just, I wanted to utilize that time to grow my knowledge and grow my skills. And I didn't feel like I could really do that with, with the W2 job. So I ended up getting an unclassed job remote. And that's really where I started kind of transitioning over, uh, reach the turning point and just, I flew out of state, flew to Pittsburgh and just let's, let's do this. Let's go. Yeah. Sounds like you're a lot happier now.

Absolutely. A lot more fulfilled, right? More fulfilled, more freedom, like working towards that goal of financial freedom. And it's really crazy, man. So I've seen a bunch of people on podcasts, on your podcast recently. I just saw somebody the other day, it scaled a huge portfolio of properties, like over 200 properties. And that's amazing, man man when people can do that

I mean just the fact that that we did you know 10 to 13 in less than a year there Was was special to me, but I think it goes to show you that even if you're working at W2 You're working full-time you can still go out and do this you can still acquire these properties and you can go and reach financial freedom Yeah, I think your story is so like relatable. It's so realistic, right? Yeah. The amount of God I didn't like go secure 200 properties in a couple of years. And that's another level of doing it. But you know, anybody can go out and they can make, you know, passive income, extra few thousand dollars a month doing this. Yeah. If you could get a five to 10, you know, that's probably 50 to a hundred K a year passive,

right? Yep. Absolutely. Which is great for most people. That could be life-changing. Life-changing. You could get a five to 10, you know, that's probably 50 to 100 K a year passive, right? Yep. Absolutely. Which is great for most people. That could be life changing. Life changing. Yeah, that's cool. And with Trump in office now, I'm assuming the real estate market's going to be better, right? I hope so. I mean, crypto is already feeling it. God damn.

Yeah. Yeah, we see it. We saw the boost there. Kicking up. It's like 20 K jumped up. Yeah. It's at, Bitcoin's up 10% to the, it's at almost $90,000 as we're filming this. That's amazing. So it's going to hit 100 K. I remember when I know we talked before, like people thought you were crazy if you said Bitcoin would hit a hundred K. Absolutely. When you were mining in 17. Yeah, you know, people look down on it. And I'm fine with that because I know the potential of crypto and I'm buying into it.

I'm diversifying my portfolio. I don't even look at it, man. I'm just going to buy and hold and just invest that money in it. Like, like it's digital gold. What do you buy? Just one coin or spread it out? Um, I've spread it out over the years. I bought multiple, but right now I'm just investing in Bitcoin. Yeah.

I look at that as like the digital real estate. And I've heard that term used in the past. Uh, so I'm just going to continue to invest in that right now. I love it. I think Michael Saylor might go down as one of to invest in that right now. I love it. I think Michael Saylor might go down as one of the greatest investors of all time. Yeah, man. If this pans out and it hits foreign, okay, like you said.

Yep. Yeah. He's been in the game a long time. I remember him 2017. I mean, he went all in, everybody thought he was crazy. Obviously he lost a lot of money, but that's what happens with Bitcoin. Well, he didn't sell though. Yeah.

He didn't technically lose. Yeah. So I mean't technically lose. Yeah. So, I mean, in terms of, that's one of the things with investing is so many people, like I just, how I got here was I wrote it. I took a taxi from the hotel. I talked to the taxi driver and he's like, he's focusing on the ups and downs of crypto.

And the same thing with the stock market, but you got to think long-term. What's the long-term potential of this? And a lot of people don't think about that. So long-term, so like short-term, I think a lot of people looked at Michael and they're like, yeah, he long term potential of this? And a lot of people don't think about that. So long term, so like short term, I think a lot of people looked at Michael and they're like, yeah, he lost a bunch of money, but it's like, he hung onto it long term.

The guy's going to be super wealthy. Even last year he was buying the whole way down. People like this guy's an idiot. Like he was buying Bitcoin at like 20, 30, 40 K 50 K. And now it's, yeah, look at him. He knows what he's doing. He does. I think it's hard to go wrong with Bitcoin.

And I like Ethereum too, but some people don't like that one. But I think if you stick with the top couple, you're good. I think so too. Yeah. There are more proven use cases with smart contracts, for example, with Ethereum. Like when I learned what smart contracts were and how they could be applied, like actual use cases,

that really turned me more onto crypto. So the fact that like in real estate, for example, you can use those smart contracts to get somebody assigned and it basically like passes back and forth to one another. So waiting for the other party, it's all handled through technology. That to me is amazing.

And none of it can be tampered with. Yeah, I thought it was going to change the real estate game. It hasn't seemed to embrace it fully yet, but I bought my house without meeting the seller. So that's the first step, right? Amazing. Yeah. So that's the first step. And I feel like smart contracts is the next step where you'll be able to buy just online. Online. Right. That could be crazy. Everything's moving over to this digital world. And I really believe in this AI revolution that's coming up.

I think it's going to be the next industrial revolution with AI. It's going to take off. And, you know, we might see some market pain coming up. There's a lot of bad predictions about the market and financially and obviously real estate prices are crazy, inflation, everything like that. And we're overdue for an adjustment. And there could be a lot of pain, but what could pull us out of that pain potentially, or maybe not even make it as painful is an AI revolution.

This technology that takes off and a lot of people are making money and things can continue, but yeah. I've been hearing that we're due for a section for years now. I'm just waiting on them. You're ready, right? You got some cash on the sidelines. I got cash, but yeah, I've been hearing that for six years straight.

I know, right? All the fear. Yeah. I feel like it's supposed to happen every X amount of years and we're overdue. So I don't know what's going on, but I don't think it can continue. Something's got to give. It seems like they're artificially keeping it up, right? I think so.

I think with the election and even if something bad was to happen, I wouldn't blame Trump. I wouldn't, you know, look at like politics and blame that. It's been, you know, a long time where we've needed an adjustment. And it's honestly, it's a good thing. It's a healthy thing for that to happen with the market. So it's needed. It's the next move. Yeah. Yeah. I hope it comes like not in negative way But I just feel like it that's the opportunity where you can really run it up. Yep I've never experienced that as an adult because only recession I've been in I was a kid I didn't have any capital play with yeah, I

Kind of watch what big money's doing. I think we've seen Warren Buffett. He sold a lot of stuff He's got a lot of cash on the sidelines. He's been dumping. Yeah. Yeah. I see him every week dumping stock. Yep. I heard about that, you know, about 2016, 2017, where I really started getting my financial bearings on how these guys are moving their money around and making a lot of money. And, you know, just like the quote goes with Warren Buffett, it's sell when people are greedy, buy when people are fearful. Yep. That opportunity for real wealth and growing and making a lot of money is coming up. So have that cash ready and whatever,

look at what you're gonna invest in. Is it gonna be stocks? Like do your research now, just be ready to have that money on the sideline and be ready to go. Yeah, you need the right connections to the right people to listen to. Absolutely.

Whether it's stocks, crypto, real estate. Surround yourself with the right people. You're the average of who you hang out with the most. Absolutely. You got a good network out there in Pittsburgh? Um, I just got a good network overall. I feel like, um, I'm in a couple of masterminds, uh, which ones, um, I'm in a Airbnb group called Roebilt and, uh, that's really nice.

And it's a focus a lot. It's Airbnb in general, but it's a creative financing. Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with creative finance. I love creative financing. Pace Morby stuff. Pace Morby. Yeah. Yeah. It's Airbnb in general, but it's a creative financing. If you're familiar with creative finance. I love creative finance and pay smorby stuff. Pace Morby. Yeah. Yeah. It's super smart.

If you, if you can do it right. There's a lot of opportunity right now with a high real estate prices to capitalize on that. Yup. I like seller financing too. Seller financing. I was trying to do that from my house, but the guy wanted cash. So.

So you try to talk him into it. Yeah. But I started with subs or sub two. That didn't work. That's hard to pull off. It is. There's gotta be a lot of pain and that's when Pace Morbid talks about it. It's got a lot of motivation. So with your, the house that you bought, was it the guy owned it?

A hundred percent equity? She, uh, yeah, you own a hundred percent. So I was trying to do sub two. He didn't want to do that. Then I tried to do seller, but then all my money is in crypto actually. So it didn't work out. So in order for sub two, there has to be a balance on the mortgage still.

So he would have mortgage payments, but if he owned it a hundred percent, then he would be doing, you'd be doing seller financing. He would have that interest rate. You would just negotiate the terms on that. That's probably why he didn't. Yeah. That makes sense. There's a lot of people though, that are in that position where they just own, they own the homes and you could potentially,

as you're trying to do with seller financing, just have them act as the bank. With sub two though, there's got to be pain. There's got to be a reason. Like a late payment or something. Yeah. Arrears, they got to be caught up on arrears. They just late mortgage payments. They just, they want out. And a lot of times, you know, as people that own the houses outright, it's harder to convince them to say, hey, you know, take a risk and loan the property to me. But if you watch Pace's stuff, man,

I mean, he's a smooth talker, man. He's a beast. I get his ads every day and I just study the ads on it. So usually I skip the ads on YouTube, but no, I study his stuff. Yeah, him and Jamil, both of them. Yeah, Jamil, I've seen his stuff too. Jamil's great.

Yeah, they got a show too. I had a guy, have you heard of real estate deeds, tax deeds? No. Dude, he goes to auction, buys these deeds, it's crazy. Yeah, I've been interested in auctions. I haven't gotten into it. Yeah.

It's, you have to have cash from, from my understanding. You need a good amount of cash. A good amount of cash. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you're taking on the liability. So, but if they miss a payment on their mortgage, it goes to auction. Isn't that crazy?

It is. Yeah. And Hey, I mean, if pain happens in the market coming up, we might see more of those situations. Oh, you will. Good opportunities for people. He's bought houses for five, 10, 20 K. Really?

Isn't that nuts? Dude, that's crazy. I mean, even though it's not like the full equity, 10, 20K. Really? Isn't that nuts? I mean, even though it's not like the full equity, it's still crazy. You're getting a huge discount. There's all sorts of ways to make money in real estate. Section eight, I see those ads. Yep.

You got to be creative with it. Going out and finding deals or if you're doing rental arbitrage and you're trying to convince a landlord or being to the property, these are all creative ways to try to make money in real estate. You don't have to have this huge down payment to go in and do anything.

You just got to find the right knowledge, education, maybe mentors and groups and get support. Absolutely. I did see one funny thing on your Instagram. Did one of your cleaners run away? Airbnb cleaners? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we had a cleaner that got freaked out and she went into the home to clean. It was her and two other cleaners and she, she went into the back room, like the laundry room. She went to open the door and she said that there was something behind the door.

So she leaned in a little harder, she pushed a little harder, and she heard somebody like basically say like, really, really freaky. And so she screamed, she freaked out. I got out on camera. Oh my gosh. They ran out of the house screaming. And they called me, they're like, hey, we quit. We're not coming back to clean for you. I'm like, what?

I was like, we had a guest coming to check in that day. I was like, hang on a second. You know, it's like, we'll get the police out there. We'll figure out what's going on. I wasn't sure who it was. I know we had an AC tech that was supposed to be working on the AC. I wasn't sure if he was just playing a joke or what the deal was. So we ended up calling the police. But before they showed up, the cleaner's husband came back.

And this dude's a big guy. Yeah. He's like ready to confront whoever was behind the door. I don't blame him, man. He's like, who scared my wife? She was spooked. Yeah. So he went in before the police were there. And he, of course, well, the police came and what they found was when they opened

the door, it was a metal chair. No. She just got freaked out. She heard like a growling kind of with the metal chair just scraping across the floor. So yeah, they had a good sense of humor about it. You know, I felt bad. It happens, but yeah, it made for an interesting story. That is super funny.

Have you had any squatters or people try to just stay there randomly? No, thank God. We keep our listings under 30 days. So for a lot of legality purposes, if they're more than 30 days, they get tenant rights. So we try to mitigate that ahead of time. Oh, I didn't know that.

So if you rent out a house to someone for over 30 days, they get rights. Yeah, you gotta look at the laws depending on where you are, but yeah, over 30 days to switch to tenant rights. Otherwise it's like considered a short-term rental because you have the short-term rentals over, over 30, it's like midterm rentals. And then you have long-term rentals for long-term tenants.

Got it. So tenant rights, they can start requesting repairs and everything, right? Yep. Yep. And you got to comply. Yeah. And there's some horror stories out there for sure about that, you know, tenants obviously squat and stuff, but we keep our, our stay short.

We're most profitable with a short-term stay. So- Short of the better for you. Yeah. It's more of an exit strategy. Like if that's, that's something that's like, Oh man, I want to get an Airbnb. It's too scary. Like, you know, lose money. Well, there's always an exit out of these things. You know, if you rent the property from the landlord

and you're like, how, how can I get out? It's if short term doesn't work, switch to midterm. In Pittsburgh, there's, it's, there's a lot of hospitals. There's like things like over 38 hospitals. Traveling nurses are a thing. So you can rent out to traveling nurses coming around and staying at the home as a midterm rental. That could be profitable

or it could get you through difficult times and then switch back to short term. Or worst case scenario, you switched to long term, you rented out to a long term tenant. Maybe you make some cashflow on that or another strategy, just sell the furniture or you move it to another listing. So just being creative, once again, kind of going back. So it kind of, that was one thing that I had to go through before I got started. It was that you have all these kinds of fears and excuses why you shouldn't get in.

I did my research and I was like, yeah, like, you know, if it doesn't work out, it's like, I got these options I can turn to and, you know, work either way. Love it. Brandon, where can people find you man and learn from you? My website is strscience.com. I actually have a mentorship and coaching program for Airbnb arbitrage and basically doing everything that we talked about here. Also, you can check out my YouTube channels at strscience

and a lot of my other handles, Instagram at strscience. Awesome, we'll link below. Thanks for coming on man. Appreciate it. Thanks for watching guys. Check out the links. Peace. Casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for. When you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games and signature Bet MGM service, there is no better way to bring the excitement and ambience of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino.

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