KGCI: Real Estate on Air - 129. Are You Making These Costly Mistakes in Rental Properties? Discover the Truth!

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50 year work grind and accelerating our journey towards financial freedom. Join us every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes, ask questions, and keep the momentum going. Good evening, everyone. This is me, the Adwal, a host of the Akaba Home Financial Freedom Mastermind. mind group. And I'm excited to be joining you here on this Wednesday. We're only a week and a half away from the end of the year, which is crazy to me. You start the year with so many different goals and dreams and then you get to this point and it's really time for reflection. It's time for

starting to think through what you want to achieve in 2025 and also to celebrate your progress in 2024 because a lot of people, one, didn't make it through this year, which is one piece that we had to be grateful for, but two, didn't make it as far as you did. And so really, it's a chance to give yourself a pat in the back and see what you've achieved while setting goals for the future. And so kicking off this open session, and this is an open session. So feel free to join live and or send a message in the chat. But we're going to kick it off with our quote and then three questions.

And so the quote for today is find a way or make a way. And this is something that I think goes with the whole theme of even being a real estate investor, being considered a problem solver and truly being a part of the Akapahom family is finding a way to solve problems and get through different issues, but also finding a way to achieve your dreams. There's a lot of people that blame the world, blame circumstance, blame a lot of things outside of their control for where they are today. But if you truly want to be successful in life and kind of make it to that next level, you have to start looking at the things that you can control and control what you can control to get to that next spot. If there's not already a

a well-laid-out path, you have to find a way to get there. You've got to set your goals and start marching and taking one step at a time to go out and achieve those things. The other piece that we have, and this is a Clark Atlanta motto, apparently. So I like that. It's good. The other three questions that we have for today is, what is the most you've had to charge a short-term rental guest for damages? And this is a fun one. So I actually had a guest. The first guest that I ever had from VRBO standpoint, I had to charge them, and I'm going to mute over here. Okay, so I had to charge this guest from a VRBO standpoint, even taking a step back. I joined Airbnb back in the quote-unquote boom phase, which we didn't know it was a boom phase at that point, but in February 2021, and it was

just crazy. It was picking up like nuts. And so that's all I did for the first couple months. And then I heard about the VRBOs and the booking.com. I was like, okay, let me get on VRBO. And so I got on VRBO, and what I did not know, is that it was completely different system for even handling damage claims. And so I did not set it up correctly. I did not have that fee where people pay up front to cover X amount of damage. And so the very first people that stayed in the property were from VRBO. This was like my second Airbnb. And they completely trashed it.

I put a champagne bottle in there to welcome them. And they shook it up and sprayed it all over the walls. So we had to go wipe down the walls. They broke a brand new chair that we got from Georgia furniture mark that looking back was not the most well-consum. constructed chair, but it looked beautiful. And this whole thing was just cracked in the middle, broken down and a lot of other damage. And so we ended up having to charge these guys for, I want to say upwards of like $1,100, even more than their actual stay cost. And we were able to recoup about $770 or so of that, which was the cost of the couch, and avoid bad

reviews because we were messaging with them, talking to them, and they knew what they did. But that was the most I had to charge somebody. I'm definitely going to circle back with with those on the line to see how much you've had to charge somebody. The second question, how do you deal with buyer's remorse following a large purchase, especially a property? So this is something that can happen, right? You save up all these funds, and for a lot of people, this may be your whole savings to go out and get this house hack or this investment or this next deal.

And so how do you get over that buyer's remorse that can hit some people? For me, it's all about action, right? As soon as you close in that property, you've got to get busy. You can't be thinking about, oh, man, like, did I make the right move? I do this. The way you're going to know is by taking the actions to get this place up and running so that you can see those dollars coming in. Because once you start seeing income come in, it all makes sense. When I bought my first triplex, I talked about this a lot.

Two weeks beforehand and probably three weeks after, I didn't sleep. I was like, man, like this is going to ruin my whole life. I probably messed this whole thing up. But what I ended up doing was just putting in the work, focusing on getting one thing done, the next thing done. okay, let's figure out these lease agreements, okay, let's get moved in, all this stuff. And long story short, you fast forward a couple years, that's one of the best decisions I made. And it's put me on a path to be able to leave the W-2 and move into full-time real estate. And so I'd say just get busy.

The way you get over buyer's remorse is to stick to the numbers that you had and get busy and start taking action. And then the last question for today before we open it up is what is the Akaba Home approach to negotiating deals. And so the Akaba Home approach is to jab, jab, right hook. What I mean by that is there's three phases to negotiating a real estate deal that's on market, right? The first is the offer phase. And what we typically try to do is go after some form of credits during that offer phase.

Because if you're able to get those credits, you can do a lot with that. You can take off the cost, you can knock out your closing cost, or you can take it off the price at the end, or you can reallocate those two contractors to get work done so that you are paying for a lot less out of pocket. That's the first jab. The second jab is during due diligence. we get in there, we send in the inspectors, and we start to identify other potential issues, and we negotiate for credits to get those things taken care of. And then the right hook is the appraisal. If the appraisal comes in low, right, we have the opportunity roughly a week before closing to negotiate with the seller to get them to reduce the price to the appraised amount.

If it comes in high, that's a benefit. And maybe we increase the price and take more credits if we need that or we just leave it the same and you walk into equity. But definitely if it comes in low, we have a slight upper hand because we're a week away from closing and the seller is either going to say, hey, no, I'm not lowering the price, take it back to market and wait potentially 30, 45 days to get it under contract again, go through due diligence again, appraisals again, to potentially have the same thing happen, or they can work with us and collect a check in a week and a half. Nine times out of 10, we've been successful in getting that seller to kind of work with us. There's only like a handful of deals where they were like adamant about not doing that

But Justin, how are you holding that, man? I'm doing all right, man. I'm doing all right. Just trying to get busy and close out, close out the end of this year on a high note. Obviously, you're asking me how I'm doing because I had some things going on with one of our properties, had a flood, insurance that's coming in going to help us out. So now we're just lining up contractors, getting the scope of work together and getting them started tomorrow 9 a.m. So we're hoping to get this all taken care of before Christmas.

Got a good push before the holidays. Come on now. I love it. and you, you're not somebody that we have to remind about getting busy. I think more than most, when you set your mind to something, it's like, you blink and it's already done. It's like, wow, that was very quick. And so you have the game plan together.

You've got the quotes together. You've got the contractors lined up. And so once you get this thing done, are you going to add anything new in there or are you just going to get it back to status quo? We're just getting it back to status quo, but we're doing a couple of upgrades, I would say, because we're getting ready to paint anyway. So now we're going to get the whole property painted. We're going to get those floors replaced.

So we'll be a little bit better than we were when we came in. But just kind of getting them back to status quo. And then we're going to take a second, just kind of figure out where we're going to go from there. Nothing wrong with that. I love it. I think it's pretty cool. And this is one of the last times we're going to meet because next week is Christmas. So we're definitely going to cancel that one, right?

And the next week is New Year's Day. So we're probably going to cancel that one, too. So with this being the last time that we all get together before Christmas. Christmas and New Year's, how are you doing with goal setting, man? What's a major goal you got for 2025? My goal for 2025 is to acquire another property. We really want to lock in and focus on getting another property and taking care of another deal because we see the potential from having multiple property, you know, spreading out

that risk. The more income you got coming in, the easier it is when you have things like this that happen. For instance, we have the home indicator that we have the surrender property. It's been getting rented the whole time we've been dealing with this. So every time we see someone book, we know those dollars are going to help us float through these tough times. So just knowing that, it's kind of ironic that we have two rental properties and we're displaced and we can't even go to one of our own homes. But, you know, it's just kind of how it goes.

It's a good and a bad thing, right? You know, if we were vacant, we would be losing money and we'd also be displaced, but at least we're making money while we're displaced. So it's just one of those things. Come on now. That is the key. And I'm pumped for you. And with that in mind, this is the million dollar question with this new target, are you targeting another house act or is it, hey, we just need a single. What are you going for?

Oh, we're going for another house hack. Once you get started on that journey, me personally, I don't know if I'd ever want to float my own mortgage on my own. Even if I'm living in a single family, I hope it's on a property that has an additional single family on the property as well, that where we're drawing some type of rental income. honestly, it's hard to stop once you get going. And what gives me solace is that I look at somebody like a Brandon Turner who owns literally thousands upon thousands of units, right? Use one of the goats or the godfathers of bigger pockets. And he's still house hacks.

Like he has like a house in Hawaii that's multiple million dollars with like a Lanai or whatever. And he's renting that piece out. I'm like, okay, if he could do that, I think we're going to be fine. A hundred percent. I'm 100%. That's cool. That's cool.

One of my major goals for next year. And I tried to simplify it this time. Last year, and I think in previous years, I've gotten kind of goal happy to where I've had a whole page of goals for the Acaba Home Realty, whole page of goals for like personal life, whole page of goals for Acaba Home short-term rental management. Now I've got it condensed down to just one page of what we're looking to do. And so when you look at even like one of the personal goals is to double net worth, right? And that's kind of how we, I play this game now, is double net worth by the end of next year. And that's a couple ways that can happen.

One is knocking out debt, right? So like he lock, mortgages, credit cards from doing fix and flips, things that nature. That's one way to grow that piece. The other way is to have the equity go within your property or to buy other properties, whether that be cash, doing another house hack, doing it subject to, things that nature. And so one of our goals next year is to double that the net income for our family. And so we're going to do that in a myriad other ways. One, we're going to require a couple more properties.

Two, we're going to pay down some of the debt that we use for some flips in the past. And we're going to get into doing more flips ourselves to generate additional cash flow. We actually have our eyes of one right now where we've got the seller locked in on the price. We literally sold the house right next door to him so we know the cop, the exact cop that it would go for. And so now he's just working through like some legal battle because he didn't pay the HOA fees for like two years. So he's got to pay that piece off. You definitely don't want to do that because now he owes all these fees. But long story short, once he gets through that piece, hopefully this month will be able to actually secure it under contract and get moving on this.

So those are some of the goals for next year. So, man, hopefully you get them knocked out. And I also have a goal for you. We talked about it in the past, but you know, you got to hit 60. The goal is 60 next year, right? Come on. I'm going to hold you to that. Yep.

And this is true for the team, right? We want to hit minimum 60 deals closed. to help people get closer to financial freedom. And I think we're going to eclipse that. Next year is going to be a pretty incredible year. We're definitely trying to keep just and busy with these closing videos. I know you've got the new equipment. So I'm pumped to actually test it out on Monday.

Yeah, yeah. It's going to be nice, man. I think you'll enjoy it. It's going to streamline things a bit, you know, very similar to how when we added the mics in the past. It's like it's all about streamlining in that process now, just making things more efficient. Absolutely. Absolutely. And work-wise, how are things coming?

Is it kind of scaling down a little bit toward the end of the year or picking up with all, like, college football and all stuff coming? Picking up, man. I was up in state college last week. Did some interviews with Abdul Carter, stud, defensive end linebacker from Penn State. So we got their game versus SMU on our air. So I did some interviews with those guys. It was a great campus. Very cold.

Don't recommend living there. Pennsylvania, I flew into Harrisburg. Harrisburg. You had to drive two hours, so it was quite the height to get up there. But it was a nice campus. Other than that, it was all good, though. Hey, happy Valley. I've spent plenty of time up there, both playing against Penn State and also just hang out my guys there, right?

And it's cool. It's a cool campus, but there's literally nothing around there. That's the reason, like, all the students stay on campus and hang out and stuff. Dude, I went to a bar, I guess it's a campus bar, whatever you want to call it. I got wings, a drink, and fries for like 10 bucks. The wings were 50 cents apiece. I was like, I don't know how I'm making any money in here, but I'll take it. Hey, come on now.

Hey, it's those college days, right? We don't ask any questions. Exactly. No, to that point, and this is a complete side note, I saw something pop through ESPN. Is their quarterback not going to play? Did he just transfer? Penn State's quarterback?

Yes. Or they got their full team for this playoffs. As far as I know, I interviewed their quarterback. I didn't hear anything about that unless that just came down after the days since I left. You're talking about Drew Allen, right? Yeah. Okay, maybe it was a different name. Okay, hopefully it was a different name.

We'll skip over that piece. Let me look at that. I was just like, what the heck with the transfer portal. A lot of people are like, hey, I had to leave because you got to make it happen now, so you still have a spot to go play. Yeah. But again, this is an open session. Feel free to join live and or throw any questions.

you have into the chat. One of the things I'm excited for for 2025 as well is just the continual team growth. We're meeting with a couple more people that want to join the team. We now have a director of operations who is like exceeding far and above what I was expecting, you know, in the initial phases, even just putting together different power points and materials that we're using now in our day to day. And then also just setting up our system for retention and recruitment and and how do we continue to grow this thing in a way where we don't lose out on the values? And so I'm just pumped for what we're going to do next year. And this year, we're going to finish as a top 15 team within EXP in Georgia.

Next year, we're shooting for top 10. And in the upcoming years, we're going to be competing for that number one spot. But we've got to ramp up to make it there. And so it's going to be all hands on deck. Awesome, man. Super pumped for you guys. Like, I've seen this thing grow. I was funny enough, I was talking to our AC contract that we share.

He was like, man, the guy's knees is growing and growing and growing. It's like, yeah, he's pushing it and he's pushing the limits. And I think as long as you continue doing what you're doing, the team is going to continue to grow. And I think with the leader like you, they're all rallying behind you. And that allows you guys to grow at the level that you're growing. So I say just keep doing what you're doing, making sure that you're leading people the right way. And things will always be looking good for you gaps. Come on now.

I'm excited for it. And I truly appreciate the kind words and the support. And I'm pumped for you. I love that you're starting to expand the team from a video and a shoot standpoint to have people that can do some of that. And people that can, hey, if you've got to be in two places at once, you're able to cover that. And so how's that journey been expanding your team? It's been good, man. It's definitely been a lot off of my plate.

You know, being a new father, having an eight-month-year-old or nine-month-year-old now, it's a blessing to be able to offload some of that work and still continue to have the quality of work at the end of the day, right? you know, in this life, people always talk about we can't do the things that we want to do on our own. So I think tapping into other people and extending that help is going to allow me to grow. 100% agree. 100% agree. It's all about how can we win through others and continue to build this thing to where it's not a question of, hey, I can't do something. It's, you know, sky's the limit, right?

Because if it's just you, there's going to be a limitation. If it was just me trying to do this thing, there's no way we'd be competing for any of this stuff. but because we got a solid team, everybody's starting to learn, we can make it happen. Sir. What you got top of mind, man? Anything real estate related, anything life related, what you got? What do you feel about the market as we move forward in Atlanta, man? I see a lot of growth around the city, but I see homes are sitting a little bit.

And I'm excited to get back into the market. Like I said, we're looking at person as a new home, but the interest rates are high. It's hard to find things that cash flow. You know, when you're house hacking, it makes it a little bit. to be easier. My rate on my current house hack is pretty high. And then we got hit with an increase in taxes. So that made I note a little bit higher. So, you know, we're going to be pretty tight on cash flowing on that property, but we're not stopping. We're still moving forward. I just want to know, what are you advising to your clients as they're looking for new real estate in this tough market?

We're getting aggressive. So in this market, one, the fact that it's wintertime, there's a lot less buyers out there to begin with. And so if a property's been sitting for 30 plus days, which are the ones we're targeting right now, we're coming in pretty aggressive, right? Whether that be just on price, whether that be for a significant amount of credits that a lot of people would question. And we're actually getting these deals under contract. We just put a deal under contract that's going to be a short-term rental out in Augusta three days ago. And we were able to, go ahead. You said Augusta? Yeah, Augusta, Georgia. Home with a Masters. They're going to, one week, they're going to cover their mortgage. Exactly. Exactly. And so this, this home is dope. Like,

it's, it was built in 2021. So it's brand new. I think it's like six bedrooms, something like that, huge backyard that's fenced. And these individuals are going to put a lot into it to make sure they're filling that need of like the larger luxury house. And long story short, we negotiated to have, I want to say about 40K in seller credits, right? The house we put under contract for 650, 40K and seller credit is a significant amount. It's going to allow us to come with just the 10% toward the down payment, cover all the closing costs, and then also put a portion toward the designer who's going to come in and deck this whole thing out. And so those are type of deals that we're seeing. And the cool thing about the higher interest rates plus being in the wintertime is that they are here for

the picking. It's up to us to be able to figure out a way to make the numbers work and then hang on to it because what I look at this is like a mini period where we have an opportunity to go out there and make these type of deals happen before we get into the full throw of, okay, World Cup is less than a year away. Now we're kind of around the corner and now they're starting to ramp up with more people putting eyes on the city. Yeah, yeah, totally agree and totally understand that. I'm just hoping for more inventory to come on market for multifamilies because that's kind of, that's my niche. That's what we've been targeting. I really like the multi-family space because it just, I feel like it's a bit risk adverse. You know, when you can spread it out

amongst two, three, maybe four units, you have a lot more wugger room to make things work, like you said, when you're running the numbers. Whether it's two running as a short term or one running as a long term or midterm, you just got a little more wiggle room there other than just doing a single family. I hope those two. I hope they come back too because it still is really tight, right? You have to have a pretty big budget when it comes to some of those. We were recently helping a client, and we must have been searching for at least three months before we could find one that fit his pre-approval. And the one that we found is a triplex, but it's not an actual triplex.

We're going to have to figure out a way to work around this piece with the appraisal and all that stuff. It's essentially a single family with two 80s in the back. The whole thing's renovated. It's dope. It's all fully rented out. The 80s are one bed, one bass, and tenants are paying $1,000. and like $800 respectively.

And then the front unit is a rental as well. And so we just got to figure out how to get past the appraisal piece. But people are getting creative in the ways that they're building out these multi-unit properties as well. So there's other ways to get it done. Speaking of that, man, speaking of having a property with ADUs in the back, I got that land in the back of my duplex. If I could come up with enough capital instead of buying, that could also be an option

to try to add two or maybe one ADU back there. to just increase the cash flow on that property before we move forward as well. I'm glad you just mentioned that. Absolutely. And I actually have a guy that does ADUs that I was looking at doing in the back of one of our properties that we sold. But for DeKalb, you essentially just need to have 15 feet. This one's in Atlanta.

Food and County. Okay, okay. Never mind. So please check the regulations on that. But I know DeKalb was 15 feet from the sides in the back and you're good to go. And they have some free disposed designs. I think they got like seven or so on their site where if you choose one of those designs, you don't have to go through a lengthy permitting processes.

And so with the guy that we were talking to, it's going to cost roughly, you know, 115, 130, depending on the finishes that you have in there, to get a two bed, two bath with, you know, 750 square feet. So, yeah, the 80s of the route. That's brought to the site, septic and everything ran. Yep. Yep. Nice.

And typically they plug in. the home. So if you got plumbing and all stuff, they'll just plug into the home and then they got to run electric out there and its own like 220 volt to power that whole house, that many house. Nice, but I mean, one 15 for a brand new house. It's like, where are you ever going to get that? Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. The only piece that's a little bit tough with that is that you got to bring cash, right? Because typically you can't finance that. Nobody wants to have a second lead on the home. Or if you take out like a helock in the house, you could use that. But it may be. be a little more expensive doing Helock.

And you're tying this to the land or are you doing Tiny House on Wheels? I would tie it to the land. For that example, it's tied to the land. What were you thinking? Were you thinking tied to the land or on wheels? Either or just trying to figure out, you know, which one may make more sense. If you're not, please. I just know I read at some point to where like once you start tying so much to the land,

it can make it hard to sell the property in the future. Yes. The one piece, one caveat I would say is that bigger pockets has done an excellent job of, like, getting the word out there about house hacks and things that nature. What up, Kenyon? She's moving. Getting the word out about that piece. And so the ADUs, we're finding more and more is actually adding value to your property because now a lot more people get it. Like, okay, I can rent this out.

If I have family, they can stay in the back. It just gives you that addition. Like this house that we're looking at, other houses in that neighborhood are appraising for maybe, like, like 350, but because this has two 80s in the back that are rented and occupied, I want to say we're doing this one for about 450. So it's added that value. And these ADUs are small. These aren't even like the bigger ones.

So, yeah. And I'm seeing AJ throwing in his Bitcoin 100K. Yes, that was a major milestone. Unfortunately, I own as much Bitcoin as I used to. I sold most of that stuff. So I've kind of disappointed because I bought at the top and I sold when that thing was crashing. like, man, forget this. Let me focus on what I know. But yeah, Bitcoin is up and I have started putting just minimal, minimal amounts into some crypto so that I can be there for the next rush

and celebrate alongside you. Jess, what are your thoughts on that? I'm doing $10 a week. I got an auto draft that goes $10 a week, you know, slow and steady wins to race. That's how I look at the market. I'm already invested into ETS and other things of that nature on the other side of it. So I was like, all right, let me just put $10 in. to this thing week. If it works, it works. If not, that's just a trip to Starbucks that I didn't take. Come on now. And it's slightly better than going to go play the lotto. You know, let's just go ahead and listen to Bitcoin and keep it moving. You know, in our community, how many people we see buying cash, three, quick picks, all that stuff all the time, and you never win.

Plan the numbers. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, that is cool. That is cool. anybody in the chat got any questions, any comments, any topics they want to cover. Feel free to throw it in. It's crazy. This is the last Wednesday. We're going to have this before the end of the year. Man, it just worked out that way. Yeah, man, everybody's already taking off for the holidays.

But, you know, the proud of the few still here grounded it out. Come on now. Okay, we got a question in here. Thoughts and strategies for the slow season, which is right now in Atlanta short-term rental. Justin, after the sip, what do you got? Dude, I'm slashing prices like no other. You're the one. Oh, yeah.

I cut prices so early that I've actually been really good. I had a 28-day stay in my downtown property. They booked Thanksgiving and they stayed all the way to the day after Christmas. So I'm like, you know, you can't ask for anything better than that. I got some linemen that, some power linemen that came into my Decatur property. They were there for a week right off of a five-day-stays. stay from a family that came in for a win. Like, I'm trying to book families and business people in my five vet room.

And then in my three bedroom, I'm trying to get whoever in there I can because that's my house hat. Like, I got great eyes on that property. So if anything crazy is going on, I'm only an earshall away. So I will slash those prices because for me, any dollar is better than no dollar. Come on now. I like that. And it does work, especially if you have the reviews and things behind that, you will get

people in because some people are just looking for that cost conscious piece. We have it set up to where our price does get lower as you get closer to those dates, but it really depends on the property. So for some properties, go ahead. I was going to ask, are you doing it through price labs or are you slashing those prices on Airbnb? Because I've noticed that if I do it on Airbnb with those promotions, I can get pushed to the top of the algorithm and I'm kind of already hitting it before my price lab algorithm comes in. So it's not affecting that in any way. It's just pushing me to the top of algorithm on Airbnb, so I'm making sure that I'm top of mind for all those customers. Because once they push you out enough, you'll get one of those people, right? Because it's all

about being seen, and they're pushing you out to their top preferred guests that are constantly shopping with them is what I've noticed. No, you're spot on. And any platform's going to push you up more if you use that platform, right? Even switching gears, talking about social media. Like, you got to, if you record on there and kind of use their filters, things at nature. It's going to push it more. But to your point, no, I'm not doing it on the Airbnb app. I probably should at some point. We got a lot more properties, though. But still, you're the one that convinced me to do the whole price labs thing, and it's paid dividends. So I take this as true that it would work. But we've just optimized our price labs really well to where we give up to a 45% discount if you're booking day off. Right. So it just

it kind of ramps up over that time period. And then the other thing that we're doing is for certain properties that needed work that just had stays back to back to back. We're blocking off a week or two and we're getting it done. I can think of one that we have in Marietta, not the art house, a different one that we manage where the flooring got messed up because there was like a plumbing issue where we had to replace some cast and they had the drill and they put the same flooring back, but it's uneven. And we just had so many stays, but people have been commented on them. We just put like a rug and things that nature. But now we're getting it fixed. Okay, let's rip this flooring out, put the new flooring down.

Let's get some, you know, refresh paint, get some refreshed furniture and kind of make it go from there. So we're doing the things like the maintenance items that you've been pushing off. Now's the time to do it during the slow season so that when we hit spring and summer, you're off to the races. And you're getting those write-offs for the end of the year, right? You know, it's very easy to keep up with something for your tax year if it happened in December. Absolutely. That's another benefit. And then unfortunately struggling with Airbnb at their assessment.

seven-month midterm rental, seems like Alperim is pushing me down in the list. What are your thoughts on that, Justin? I haven't had a stay like that long, and all of my midterm has come through Airbnb. I'm kind of pro Airbnb and just looking through them, because when I look at the fees, right, their fees associated, no doubt, but I'm going to have to pay those taxes anyway, so the fees don't scare me that much or don't affect me that much because I like, like the fact that you get the the assurances of the air cover for when you have those guests that will damage your property. So I look at it like this. It's like, hmm, can I keep, obviously I'm going to hold insurance on my property, but I don't have to have a lot of insurance on all

these things in the home if I'm booking most of my stays through Airbnb because they're already charged me 3% for that anyway, right? So I'm kind of trying to pass that cost onto the guest. And anytime I have damages, I'm documenting everything and I'm making those claims, man. So I'm a lot of time getting back when I'm paying in those fees over time from guest damages. I'm talking about I'm ticky-tack. Little things. You're staying a bed sheet. You're paying $15.

Come on now. Are you nervous that people are going to hit you with a review when you're doing that? I wait. So the same way we do the bad reviews on hospitable, when they send that review, you send in that air cover request. because you have 14 days to do an air cover request. You have, it's like what you have one more day to do a request for money than you have to do for a review. I want to say the review may be 13 days and air cover is 14 days, but however it is, you have one more day. That's all right.

I'm just doing it right. And it's crazy because I was talking to a guy, he asked him the same thing about those reviews. And I told him the same thing. It's like the same way hospital was sending it out at the last minute, I'm sending out that request at the last minute. I'm drafting everything up. I got all my photos, kind of just in a documents photo on my phone. As soon as that time comes when they send that review, I'm hitting them with the air cover claim.

So, yeah, they're responding to the air cover claim, like saying like, oh, man, this property was this, this property was that. But it's like, you know, Airbnb has the documentation. They have the messes thread. You had no complaints about the property the whole time you stayed there. And now you're bringing all these things up. Sounds like false information. So literally I had to combat one the other day.

So, you know, we have the property up in Snellville, and we had somebody stay for 60 days. And this person destroyed, like, all the, like, the microwave wasn't working, all the pots and pans. There was, like, a lot of trash left over. And so we had pictures, all the evidence, everything. And the whole time, the whole messaging, it was all great. He's like, I love this place. It's awesome. Once we submitted that request, it was before he did the review.

He gave us a one star and said, hey, we hate this place, da-da-da-da. We were able to get removed the same day because we, we had that whole chat. I said Airbnb, listen, he did this retaliation because we submitted this request, but I like your way a lot better.

My way was a little bit risky because they could have said no, and now we got a one-star review and nobody's going to look through the messages. But we did get removed because we had solid messaging, though 60 days, no issues.

He didn't say anything, so it was good. And I guess the only time it would pose the issue is it's like some damages to where you need to make those repairs and you don't have that cash, right? Luckily, I'm charging all of repairs that I have to make. So if it takes 14 days for Airbnb, and Airbnb is actually taking a

pretty long time on this last request that I have. I don't know why they're taking so long and dragging their feet. But it's like, it could take about 30 days for you to get paid out for those claims. So if you're one of those hosts where you need that cash immediately, I understand that. But just like you said, you run the risk of getting that bad review or the retaliation review. True, true. And one other piece, just going back to the question of how do you kickstart an Airbnb after a seven-month hiatus, I would go back to the basics. One of the things that we always recommend when you first launch a B&B is have a friend book it. Have a friend book it.

Give a five-star review and a lot of notes in there. I can tell you that we had a B&B that we launched out in Stone Mountain over the summer. No, really it was maybe like two months ago. And there was like a plumbing issue initially. And just taking a side step, anytime you launch a new property, whether it's a long-term rental or a short-term rental, the first 30 days expect there to be cakes. There's going to be stuff that needs to get worked out. This is normal.

Don't freak out. Just problems solve. Find a way or make away, right? But long story short, with this house, there was something with the plumbing that was still, like, incorrect, right? And so it kept backing up in one of the toilets. And so we were getting reviews on this. We got like two, three-star reviews. So we shut it down, brought the plumber in, got it fixed.

And it was getting slow on Airbnb. And so what we did was we had the person have a friend book it, five-star review. hey, I love this place, all that stuff. And now we've got the guests coming back in. It's booked out throughout this month. We got our first booking for middle of January as well for that property. And now we're actually getting the adequate reviews because we kind of solve that issue. But that's a little way.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea, kickstarting that list. And just getting back in Airbnb's algorithm, right? They're using bots. They're not maintaining it and monitoring all these listings. If somebody says, oh, this is a great profit. And you're like, oh, this seems like a great property. They're pushing it up. So like you said, if you can get somebody in there or if you can get somebody in there through deep discounts, just getting that review, leaving a bottle of wine, trying to make sure you get those reviews very similar to like you said, you did when you first launched that property. You got to get that thing going.

Come on now. And last piece, I will say, before we kind of wrap up for the night, is luxury is the way to go when it comes to these ATLSTRs now. There's a lot of changes coming, right? They're going to soon stop going for. from a proposed ordinance to having it actually in place. Thankfully, if you already have an Airbnb and you go through the process, once they officially launch it, you're going to get grandfathered in. I need to finish that. Yeah, you should. You should. It's not like urgent, urgent, but they're sending out messages to say, hey, we got the new

proposed one. And long story short, after they grandfather people in, you're not going to be allowed to have an Airbnb within a thousand feet of another Airbnb, right? And so in Louisville, Kentucky, when I saw this ordinance come in for there, they made it to where you can't have it within 250 feet. And that essentially locks down a whole street. There's one Airbnb on the street. You can't have one in that same street.

And so a thousand feet may lock down a whole block after the grandfathered in, right? So it's going to be good to have these and hang on to them because they're going to become scarcer and scarcer and more valuable and more valuable. Yeah. So it sounds like we need to be acquiring as many SCRs in Atlanta as we can as we get closer. Yeah, because I foresee them having this all wrapped up and fully implemented at some point next year because they want to get the tax revenue ahead of, you know, 26. It'd be weird if this dragged into 2026. I think they'll get it done next year

and have the official ordinance released. I'm just happy that the new proposal kept in place not having to live here, right? Not having a limit of two. You can have as many as you want as long as you don't have X amount of violations. And then being able to be grandfathered in as a plus as well. Awesome. All right. Justin, it was good to see you, man. I'm happy to see you. I'm happy to see that you're you're still pushing through and in good spirits. I'll definitely catch up with you a little bit later. AJ, thank you for the comments. And we will catch you guys next, well, not next week. We'll catch you next year. Next year. Man, that's crazy. That's crazy to say. Yeah, Merry Christmas to everybody celebrating. Happy holidays and also happy New Year. I'll catch you

later. All right, man, take you. See ya. Join us every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. Thank you.