KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Strategic Market Shifts: Leveraging Interest Rates, Dynamic Pricing, and Recession-Proof Investments in Real Estate

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50 year work ride 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 pad 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 NeNe Adder Waleigh host of the Akaba Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Group. and I'm excited to be joining you here on this Wednesday, August 14th. We are just all enrolling through the year, and it's been going by very quickly. And so today we're actually going to be having an open session.

And lastly, we had a very lively discussion around just working through real estate contracts and how you can get the upper hand. And today what we're going to focus on is where we are in the market right now and how you should be going about optimizing your portfolio and what we're actually doing with our portfolio to get the most out of it. But my co-host, Libon, is going to be joining shortly, and then we will check this thing off. But if you have any questions, any comments, again, this is an open session, so feel free to throw that into the chat.

And we will pause for a second. Lebon, how you doing, man? Doing good. How are you doing today? Super good. I see you coming through with the fresh cut. like it. You know, it's too hot.

It's too hot. Yeah, that Georgia heat really gets to you when you got a lot. So it was time. I joined the wave. So it's a lot of better. I get up and leave now. You might keep that. Hey, nothing wrong with that.

And to that point, all it took, was that rain to stop, the 15 days in a row that it rained, and for that heat to come back for change. For a change. I'm not going on. I'm cutting by him out. Ain't going to cut out. Join the wave, man. Join the wave, man.

I'm bad. And Justin, you got a bit of an echo. But, Justin, how you doing? Matt, it's been a minute. Give me one second. I'm trying to fix the echo. AJ, how are you? I'm solid, man.

I think I'm trying to figure out some technical difficulties myself to the once again, to get into my headphones. But they aren't working right now. But I'm solid, man. How you got, how are you doing? Hey, we're super good. And then while you got those technical, technical, difficult. And AJ, AJ, you know, let go with that. You said, how are that called?

Yeah, you're the one with that. You want to mute for a second in Libon? Yeah. Yeah, I don't. You're not framed. You got framed. Oh, man. I was like, how is my video guy?

Like, what I see you go. What I have an issue? Is that better, guys? No. Did you use? No. No. Is he used to use the headphones?

While AJ is doing that, there was one topic that we wanted to dive into today. and kind of going around a little session to understand what everybody's doing to optimize the portfolio, whether it's reducing expenses, whether that's increasing the income. But first and foremost, I think you've got to look at the market to understand why this is a need, right? And so Libon, I'll give it to you in a setting. But when I look at the market and talk to a lot of different clients than working personally with, I'm seeing the shift, right? A couple years ago, we were definitely in a seller's market where as a buyer, you could just submit your highest investment. and hopefully you can get something on the car check, and then it shifted to more of a neutral

and market where if properties can sit in for a while, or if you become an aggressive, you may have an opportunity to put a nice deal together. And now it's completely shifted to a buyer's market with those interest shirts staying high. And so we're putting some incredible deals together from a buyer perspective. But Levon, what are you seeing? A lot of the similar, especially with me, I work with primarily a lot of flippers. So I'm noticing now. Now, one thing that was rare is credits.

We're able to negotiate credits more so often, especially now, just do the amount of homes that are available. Another thing, too, I'm overall noticing is some markets are having an overage on properties that are falling out of contract. So, you know, things will go under contract, but they don't close. And we're seeing more of those overall than previously. And I think it's just more so due to the fact that buyers now have options. 100% agree. And so it's a time in the market where it's similar to what Warren Buffett says.

I think we talked about this before. But he says you always want to do the asset basically, right? So when there's blood in the water, right? That's when you want to be buying and things that nature. I'm butchering his whole quote. But long story short, you want to zig when everybody's acting. And so I can tell you that in the past week, I've had four separate conversations with different individuals, some within our network, some completely outside of our network that just found a number that are little. that are looking to sell their house, right? Like, hey, you know, da-da-da-da-da-down, trying to sell, things that nature. And so what we advise is exactly what we would do.

First and foremost, this is not the time to sell if you do not have to, right? Like most people would say, oh, yeah, you want to sell, we'll take the contract. Me, our investors are sells. And so it's like, hey, this is not the time to sell unless you have to. Now, flip, something where you buy it's super cheap and now you're selling it a bit higher, but it's still under, you know, there's still enough value there. That makes sense. But if it's something you just bought, you know, 18 months ago, right, as a long term,

and now you're looking to sell because the market shifted a bit, that is not ideal. That being said, we've had this conversations with a couple different individuals. And so when I'm looking at this market, it's one where if you're able to hang on to your properties and just buckle down, that's the ideal solution. And so that's why I wanted to talk about optimizing properties of what you're doing to reduce costs, what you're doing to make more money off those properties. And so kicking off the roundtable discussion, Justin, and then you've done an awesome job of really optimizing your properties over the past couple months. Any tips on how you're getting more than I am? Yeah, I'm just trying to get my ADR to the best possible fact that I can while I can actually high as well.

Okay, y'all being hit too much, my little girl is going crazy in the background. But I'm trying to optimize the best I can by basically keeping my overhead low and keeping my ADR and my OCP as high as I can. And they're working with the Fab Planner for a good little bit. So we start off the Great Foot and I made sure I kept going to a cough low. I think the biggest thing you alluded to it earlier, like the left come around with these bands, the less them to make it work. As long as you're keeping that thing net neutral, your cash flowing, you're always been in a good spot. So that's one of my main concerns right now.

August has actually been a tough month for me. He had two weekends back-to-back and didn't get booked. We're already booked for the third weekend, almost like a month out. So we made a pretty good spread on that. but we lost two weekends back to back on one of our property, but the other property had just finished up the 21-day stay. So, you know, with the good, you have the bad sometimes. So we're just kind of weathering the storm right now, but everything's looking up.

AJ, shifting gears, what about you? What are you doing to optimize your portfolio? Yeah. So, Justin and I, you know, we've been meeting pretty frequently and just kind of talking about, you know, our ups and downs with, you know, personal life and also our businesses. But one thing that I thought with that we had in common, which was kind of interesting, thing was August actually is kind of like to be a bit of a slower month and I'll probably

know just to selling that just to be the case of all at the school um you know families aren't traveling as much so one thing that I'm doing actually right now is just paying attention to my dynamic pricing on price labs um totally down just you know a little bit about five or ten bucks here and there um but really just trying to drive value because I don't want to have a property where, you know, the 90 rate is too high in a season where people aren't traveling as much, right? So I think for my property, I want, you know, my guests to make sure they're getting the value out of it. Just making sure I'm tweaking my dynamic pricing here and there and making sure I'm, you know, giving a customer a good value when they're going out traveling. That is a major tip, and it makes a lot of sense.

Just keep an eye on. It kind of goes in hand with what Justice is saying, right? If it's looking like it's a little lighter in the month, making those adjustments to try to get people in and get your property notice, not. What about you, man? What adjustments are you making in this season to optimize your portfolio, whether it's on the expense or the income side? So the one thing I'm looking at doing now, just moved out a long-term tenant. So I'm shifting that unit to an Airbnb.

And obviously with us leaving the summer months, I'm already anticipating not having it booked. out like, you know, like obviously like a summer night, a summer, a summer stay would be. So what I'm doing to kind of mitigate that is extending the nightly stay and reducing the cost. So at least I'm not taking as much overhead on the cleaning fees. So if I can get like four or five nights days, other than three nights, you know, then it, it kind of bounces back out. If I can stay a little lower on the market than other people, especially in the area of them in. The good thing is I'm next to the airport.

So I'm hoping to balance that out. Absolutely. Being close to the airport does help, right? Because then you get some of that business travel, people that need to stay just for, you know, just a couple of days, right, before bouncing out of town. And that's one of the unique benefits of the metro of Atlanta, right? It's not just a vacation destination. We're in a recession.

People stop vacationing. It's a spot where you have to go over work. But Lebon, I know one of the things that you talk about before is having that backup plan, even for some of the flippers you're working with, right? Knowing like, hey, if something happens with the market to where there's not enough buyers to get out there, being able to flip it to something else,

can you talk a little bit about that, that other strategy? Yeah, so, I mean, essentially, it's buying properties that, of course, when you come up to me, hey, I want to do a flip, we're going to do a flip, right? However, over the course,

just overall what we've seen in the market, the home's value that you think it is and what we think it is, and it might truly be, the issue might be because of where rates are, it's a tough time to buy right now. Especially, you know, with all the other factors that are coming up,

you know, with August 17, all of that stuff, where now buyers are going to have a little more costs. Until, you know, if you're in a position where you have a home that's priced correctly, but you're in a market where it takes a long time to sell,

that can affect your ability to hold. So one of the things we look at is other strategies, hey, if I Airbnb beat it, if I pad split it, those two primarily are where we look at because we don't want a situation where we have a long-term tenant in place. And even though we, okay, Mark, it's doing well.

Let's go ahead and put it on the back on market. We have to wait an extremely long time. So it's just kind of preparing for the worst cases. That way when those things happen, you're not in a state of panic. You're in a state of preparedness because you were aware of what was going to happen and you planned for this outcome already. Additionally, too, I mean, in real estate, you make all your money on the buy. So even when we are pricing it on the sales side,

I typically don't like to be top of the market because when you're top of the market, you have to justify why you're top of the market and in the market that we're in right now, it's very hard to be a premium product, specifically with just the amount of buyers that are available who will say, I'm not going to go for the 350, I'll go for the 300 that I can do a little bit of work to, right, especially if it's a long-term buyer. Let me make sure and say you correctly. you're advising some of your flitters to kind of just hold that a property as an abbey or SDR. I just want to make sure. No, no, no, no. I mean, we're not advising. We're saying, hey, we're going to plan to go on market.

But with the way the market is kind of in the last couple months, it's unpredictable, specifically with the days on market piece. We don't want a situation where we're on market. It's been three months. We haven't even got an offer. And we can't pivot into something else to wait for a quote unquote better time. Right. So it's just kind of building out that preparedness. And I think it's a good thing to do too because it helps you practice good fundamentals on buying right the first time. And to that point, piggybacking off of that, I can give a lot of example of just having a backup plan, right? So I think a lot of people on here know that I was selling my previous house and actually in my new house. And so we were under contract for about two months and we just kept extending and you never know it's going to have new redale. We made it all the way into the closing table.

and the last piece that was needed was for the driveway to get redone to allow essentially a car from Fast and Furious, right? Super low to the ground, four inches off the ground to park in a steep driveway. We really did the driveway twice and it was just like any other car

could fit in there. Trucks, cars, Tesla, all that stuff. But it's not going to fit a Porsche essentially, right? You can't even go over a speedboat with that. And so the guys cut it all the way down and he got stuck at that last bit And so unfortunately, you deal to go through.

On the last two weeks of that, and it was getting down to that, I said, you know what? Just in case, let me list this as a rental as well to see what we can hire because it is a single with an in-law suite. So I listed it separately, as well as the agent auction to rent the whole thing out together. And long story short, we were able to rent it out for $1,000 more than the mortgage, right? And I just handed over in the keys actually today. So that's going to give us another year so that we can reevaluate and be able to sell this thing for more. Anyway, we were giving a major deal to this individual to the tune of about 60K off of the appraised value.

And so with interest rates coming down, now a lease in place to where we don't got to worry about this thing, the extra thousand is going to be for any maintenance concerns over the year, keep that property solid. And then be able to come back to the market potentially higher if interest rates are lower, if the market settles down next year. That's what we're talking about. Going into it, eyes wide open, having a backup plan. We're actively doing this ourselves.

and so we're trying to help our clients. And that's one way to optimize, right? Another way to optimize that I've been looking into across the portfolio, I highly recommend, and we've actually started to build partnerships with other lenders that specialize in this. Let's talk to a lender that can get you down to as low as about a 6% without points on refinances.

And so I'm actively connecting with our network to let them know. But that's a piece. If your interest rate is, you know, seven plus percent over the last two years of buying real estate, refinance is something that you definitely want to look at, especially as these interest rates start coming down, because that could be the difference between, you know, a hundred extra dollars in your pocket covered from that standpoint. Yeah, I like that.

I think you're at an advantage to you have a unique situation because, you know, you didn't sell the home, but you're renting it out. And I don't know if they would be interested in the tenants, but at some point, you know, after renting, they could be potentially interested in just buying to cooperate from you. 100% agree. Actually, they got so much interest. It was like, okay, this is actually kind of cool. One of the individuals that apply, they just apply in a lake.

And these guys got approved. They were like, hey, we got a check rate now. And so I was like, all right, you guys got it. Wanted to be a rent-to-own situation, which is kind of cool. My partner, I'm Louisville, does that all day. Like, she has a couple of those running at all times. And so it's something I definitely want to look into. But you're right.

These individuals may love the house and say, hey, they've already postured and said that they lived in the previous house they're in for five years before that urs and slow it. That's why they're willing for another one. And they want to stay long term and wherever they're at. So who knows? We may be providing an update year in a couple months. And I always was a little question. The rent to own, the way that works is they put a deposit down and the rent that they're paying gets credited as, hey, you're kind of building in equity. at what point do then they buy you out and get a loan? Because that's what ends up happening, right? Once they

have a certain amount of equity, they go to a bank and then say, hey, I have rent-to-own situation here. This is how much I have, etc. Yeah, typically rent-to-own is not like a cash flow issue. The way I've seen it mostly, the people that I talk to, it's usually, hey, I run my own business. They have the cash. We could put all this down, but maybe the credit's not there, right? The credit's not there. The credit's not there or the bank's not lending because they would need to put down X amount or have X credit or X history. And so, yes, I put down the deposit amount and then the rent is actually going new. Now, if they pay above and beyond that rent, or you negotiate like, hey, the rent's going going to be, you know, X amount, right?

But if you pay, you know, $500 more, I'll credit this toward the actual non-fundable deposit. You can definitely do that. But that's kind of how my realtor department works out there as well in Louisville. So we kind of bummed out once you found out, like, you know, obviously you have the intent to sell, but, you know, if they didn't know the way it was intended, can you talk about that process, kind of like what you were thinking? I'm sure you're kind of bummed out, but it does sound like you found another way and just, you know, obviously finding a way to rent the property out. Hey, I was pissed. They had more than bummed out.

It was like, you know, like, you put so much time in end use. That's not sure you go to this is me coming back after every day he's like smoothed out, right? I think you notice what about these last. This real estate game is I think you know this, right? There's a lot of up in down. I appreciate these calls because we did talk about this stuff and it's kind of funny.

When you're in a group, it's like, all right, it's not that bad, right? But yeah, I mean, I already had plans for those funds to go here, here, here, and different investments that we're doing and to shore up different pieces as we had into a potential recession. And so I had to scramble a bit and move some other things around and kind of cancasses and stuff, which I didn't bite. But long story short, the main thing is when I look at this, this is a buyer's market. You want to stay in the game as many properties as you can with what we have coming down to pike. Because when you look at the overall

landscape of real estate, it's usually up into the right. And you look at the mess with the Atlanta, it's definitely up into the right over the next five to 10 years. And so, yes, I was pissed initially. But we figured it out and we started putting backup plans in just before the end to make sure like, hey, if this thing blows up at the end up working. Those pivots are crucial and keeping a positive mindset while you're going through it. It's honestly the best thing you can do in those situations. And then there's additional tax benefits from holding the property longer now. And as the market's about to open up, it puts you in a better position. So then hopefully the market shifts to be a seller's market. There's definitely added benefits. And just keeping that mindset,

when you worry about it. I have a quick. I have a quick question. And this is something I found from speaking with an older investor, and he owned a bunch of properties. And it was kind of interesting to talk to him because he has the complete opposite mindset of us. Because we're kind of all growth mindset, hey, we're trying to acquire more, acquire more. He had, you know, something along the lines of like 50 properties, right? And he told me, of the 50, 60% of the properties he has are like section 8. And he knows, like, hey, I might not be able to demand top of the market. But he's saying, and he said this to me, he's like, when you're buying, keep a percentage of your, you know, portfolio Section 8 or, you know, that or lower the market because in that position, he just cares about

maintaining and protecting. And with that Section 8 specifically, the strategy he utilized, because it's government back, he knows every month he's going to get his check. So he's saying, hey, as long as I have this minimum, which is what that 60% brings in, now that 40% is, can be my Airbnb's, my pad splits, you know, all that other stuff. I kind of just wanted to, you know, especially since you mentioned, hey, going to recession, he specifically said it's recession proof, right? And so is that a strategy that can you guys see yourselves of undertaking after the fact, you know, when we're old and gray?

Absolutely. Going into the Section 8 market is unique. And it's unique because you get all the same benefits that you get, if you go into a regular market, but the difference is you're never going to not have a tenant, right? Because that pipeline to feed Section 8, it's always somebody waiting and you're always going to get a check from the government. What makes it even more unique is the buy-in criteria is a lot less than what we traditionally pay, right? So if I'm cash flow on that property, I got two options.

I can build my nest egg backup to then go and buy another one in Section 8 or I can hold on it, right? put it in some interest-baring account, pay down my equity, and now I have a fully producing cash flow in house. Now I'm rolling in a note. And you kind of go to the Ram, what is it, Ramsey's mindset, right? Where it's like, pay it off and just let the money come in. I'm not generally a fan of that because, I mean, I grew up in, you know, this era. So I'm going to use the leverage so I can scale faster.

But it is nice to have that many properties and just let the cash roll in. Yeah, I'm not there yet, but once I get to 20 doors, yeah, for sure. Into all of his homes were not in Atlanta. They were like in some markets like Baldasta, Columbus, you know, Riverdale, you know, where, you know, we're not necessarily same equity growth, but the cash flow numbers worked really well because of the locations. And we just say it's key. Like when you talk about equity growth versus cash flow, like, for example, in Louisville, I had a bunch of Section 8 in, especially this one 12 unit that we bought that we were, like, turning it over from, say, D plus to a C minus.

And it took a while, a lot of headaches, a lot of different things happened. I think we talked about some of that stuff. But long story, sure we had a lot of housing individuals in there. And during the pandemic, it was amazing. That pandemic hit, we didn't miss anything. It was so boom, boom, boom, boom, all the payments are still coming through because it's the government. The government's not for the default, right? That being said, and you look at the values and how it was increased, that's the tradeoff.

And to Nause's point, if you're looking to like, hey, I just want to have a paid off portfolio and just have cash feel coming in, that's amazing. But if you're taking a look at the whole scope of things, like, okay, back in the day, you could buy a house in Atlanta for 100K. now, you know, you'd be happy to have land. You know what I mean? 400K. When you look at that and think 30 years from now, which is going to be more valuable, the cash flow or the equity,

I would argue the equity, but just enough of the equity off. I'm going to weigh that. I just want to know what I have to drive a situation. You just had to eat the cost of chains a mess less. That is it. We ate the cost. The cost of changing it twice was roughly $9,500,

which it turns, right? So the first time was $500,000. The second time coming back is $4 and $4.5,000. It looks beautiful. Literally, any car can get in there now, except a fast and inferiority. Four inches off the ground sports. So, right? That's what you get a car to get into it.

You go with the same company to redo it the second time? Because, I mean, could they not assure you? Did they not know I'm as clear as the Porsche has and know what kind of slow, and you put on the dry weight to figure it out because it says something bad. They did. It's too tight to actually, they cut it down as low as they can go. Like the second time, they were like, all right, we're cutting this thing down as low as we can go. Re-doing this whole pipe and drainage.

Like, it was a lot going on. And it got all the way down to the bottom, but there was still an orion that would not let it just make that clearance. And I don't know how he would get out, right? If you got to get in and then you got to get out. And so, yeah, we weren't able to make it happen, unfortunately, unless you don't take the whole rogson. Matthew. And so, so yeah.

Sounds like a Larry's the only issue. It took that. You got a very long as when he got a truck. Yeah. It's weird.

This year, we're buying a $600,000 home. We got to have a garage somewhere, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

And no, this was the person who was going to buy the houses. Tenant to Fawn. Then if they had, they've already, they're good.

Their cars were fine. This was, it was actually a Mercedes A&G. So if you know that car, super load them around. Okay, so that was kind of like a deal breaker for them. Like, they had to have that driveway, like, set up, let him get that car in.

Okay. Because the person travels a lot for work in their previous house. They weren't able to have a garage. So, like, with this, they were like, hey, we'll pay the price because we want a garage. And we need to get a car in it. And that was the piece. And we waited through all the stuff, right? Make sure we get through big dealings, negotiate that piece.

Frazil can and this came in. came in high, all that stuff. It was, uh, it was, because it was pretty solid. No, street is pretty welcome. No, there's street park. There's definitely a street park. Any point in nowhere.

But it's just getting into the garage and house in the bottom. Like, you can park any car. Just not, not one where you can bury the door with steam up. Yeah, nobody's going for parking an AMG on the street. And I just say, and look that. It's Atlanta. You know?

Yeah. So, does it. That's crazy. That thing you called it did it. Oh, shit. I'm on that. Put some thin tony, man. They'll have been a 10 gram right now and say,

let me get the 10 grand. You don't have to do anything to the front of way. I'll kill it as lower the corner of the house. Yeah, super low. It's super low. Yeah. He had a couple hours trying to figure out. He had mentioned a deal like,

hey, man, if he turned this thing all the way inside. He'll get it in. But we talked about two pieces, right? So we talked about a little bit of the optimization. I talked about refinancing. Another piece that I've been looking into is, insurance, right? So if this is something that you haven't changed for, say, two years or more, say you've gone two cycles for the insurance, but I highly recommend connecting with an insurance broker

and we can connect you with one that we used to get that when we did. I've been able to say significant over the years. I can tell you the first time I did this, and now I have a reminder of a year to like, hey, send all my properties to the insurance broker to see what you can do. But the first time I did this many years ago, I had just been acquiring properties, right? And each property I got, I would just go call, you know, my car insurance or call somebody and say, hey, I need to get the best insurance for this property. And then I look up and it's like, you got like five or six properties. And then I finally talked to an insurance program.

I was like, hey, you know, what can you do with this? They ended up taking me from paying, I want to say like $7 a year in insurance to like four grand by making a portfolio insurance covering all the properties and actually got a check in the mill for the remainder. And so this is one that can lead in the end of savings, especially if you're, you know, on the acquiring mode. And then also making sure that your previous home, if you moved out of one and turned the angel rental,

that's one of the things actually just sent to my insurance broker was the quickest home. Hey, put this for landlord insurance, because it's typically a little bit lower than homeowners insurance. Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't have anything to add to that because, like, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I didn't need to get that changed over myself. I don't know. I recently just. Okay. Right. Right. I was going to say I've recently just switched over this. in the landlord's policy and I think my biggest fear and like not really getting on it was just

the thought that it would always be more expensive than the homeowners policy. But I actually reached down that quote and I got a much better rate than I did on the homeowners policy. So when that happened, I was like, sign me up, done deal. I even do the cars on there. So we got a bundle package deal. This is something I do every six months. I set up a reminder to basically shop for it.

And I pretty much just, you know, put your car info in there, you know, they already have on your info anyway, it doesn't matter. But, you know, just go out of a shop. Let me see if you can get a better rate. In this situation, I were really glad I was able to actually switched from liberty mutual to allstate. And then, like I said, getting that landlord's policy was huge because I actually moved out of my three-bed, too bad, two-bats, single-filing home a little over a year now.

And the entire, like, it's not here baby now, but the entire time, it's not your baby now, But the entire time in the back of my head, I just had this nagging thing. Like, oh, my God, I have a home policy on a rental property. And it was just killing me because, you know, especially with the crazy weather that we get in Atlanta, the biggest thing that was on the top of my mind, I like to think like worst case and they prepare for it. So I'm just thinking like a tree is going to fall on it. And I'm just like, screw. I got Airbnb tennis in there.

It's not my primary residence. I'm just like, oh, my God. So being able to get that, I was like, huge for me and then on top of that to be able to get a lower rate in my homework. That was just like, you know, done deal, sign me up. Definitely makes me feel better about our situation and just how, like, that piece of mind, like moving forward. Hey, there, send your contact along, too.

I don't know. I need to check my car insurance. It's like seven or out of the month right now. It's insane. No, I mean, I understand. I got four calls. I understand what I'm still insane, bro. Oh, I mean, that for a car.

That's got a car. That's the affair. What should have? It's like this. It's way more than I'm used to, right? Like, I can remember it having four cars, well, cycling, and everything, and not paying that much.

Psych insurance is just been standing. I don't want to hear what I'm doing. That's too terrible. I mean, the numbers, well, one, seventy-five on average. I mean, the insurance game is, I think we talked about. I hate insurance.

I really, I truly did it. But, yeah. I mean, it's like a scam. You know, you'd be giving these people money, um,

in case something happens. And then when something does happen, like, actually we're not going to insure you anymore. Those, those girls. Um, I think,

uh, taken into, to, like, how Atlanta, like bad, how bad Atlanta traffic is, getting in the roughly 1,75,

a car isn't, like, terrible. Um, you know, I've seen worse people paying, like, to up to like $300 per car.

Obviously, like, you're older. So, you get, how? Yeah, but I mean, I was paying $300. And then I called them. And I was like, what if I added my mom? Now, my mom is in Egypt. No, no, but just by adding my mom, it went to $200. Yeah.

A driver. And, yeah, another driver, because she's a four-year-old. year old woman and I'm a 23 year old man. He balances out. Yeah. If you're 25, it was going to be cursing. Yeah. No, it's crazy.

When I got a new one, I was crazy. They kept saying, so I always heard that like, you know, once you get paid five me on, like, the rates will get better. I noticed that did, but it wasn't anything like too crazy. Like, I'm still feeling like I'm paying an arm in the leg for auto machines. You know what a strategy? I used to get my insurance lower. I sent them my grades.

I literally sent them. them my, I sent them my grades and they reduced it. Yeah. They got a bunch of programs for your kids. Yeah. I did a drive. My first quote was $450. And then I was like, no.

Guys, come on. And I had to, I sent him a transcript. I did a driver safety class. And then I shoved around. And then even still, I had to add my mom. You know, it was another thing that, like, they factor in. And I hate it. My first car was a,

Chevy Malibu, and my insurance was like, I don't know, it was like 60 bucks. It was low. And then I decided to trade up and get a BMW and it shot up to like 450. And I was like, I knew it was going to go up because obviously I'm getting a BMW and you have to insure more. But after talking to the insurance, it was like, no, to be honest, the main thing we're considering is that you're in Fort Hood and for your age demographic for this type of car, the amount of accidents that happened with that specific vehicle are through the roof. It made sense. I was next to an army installation, a bunch of people get there with foreign cars and they get back from deployment and go wrecked. And I was like, I did the same thing. Good job. No, no, no, no, I didn't wreck it,

but I went and got the exact, yeah, no, no, no, I still got my baby. It's still no for a now. And honestly, insurance companies are, but. Go ahead. Honestly, insurance companies are geniuses, right? Like, they have had, they have so many. They have so many models and systems that they're running numbers on to actually know to a T, this is how many we can expect and this is what we can charge from profitable. And so, like, can't even blame.

I wish I was in the way. Like that. No, what I was going to say was they even factor in location. So when I lived in Johns Creek, I was paying $180. I moved to Stone Mountain. It shot up to $2.50. Everybody's been in the hood. Guys, let's go.

on. But it just goes to show now. I'm debating whether or not I should go back. But, you know, each and a location, okay, literally. That is the key. And shifting gears back to the topic at hand, any other tips for optimizing your current portfolio, whether it's reducing expenses, or increasing the income. One of the things that Jeffin talked about earlier was optimizing the pricing. I think that in his whole, awesome. And I've also been looking at different galleries and optimizing the property itself, right, going in, putting an additional, you know, three to five K into, you know, re-painting, put some new furniture in there, new photos, things that nature to make it stand out. And then this latest B&B that we're getting ready to launch, it's going to be a much bigger place. And we've put a heck of a lot into it to make it a more luxury BNV because what we've seen across the

portfolios that when time hit tough, right, and you had like a B&B that's similar to others, that's when people start repeating on price. But if yours is huge, you know, five bedrooms, et cetera, and you put some luxury amenities in there, it's usually going to be able to stick. And it's something that large groups can rent out. But what do you guys got for optimizing? Man, you just hit the nail in the head. And honestly, I'm in that same process and I'm upset about it.

because I can't even, I mean, I'm doing it, right? I have to make the inside aesthetically pleasing. But in addition to doing the inside, I got to start with the outside. And what bothers me is the outside. For the deck area, I can advertise that. But I got to repave the entire drive one because it has the cracks and it's a little unsettled. So like I have to do that to create, you know, a good drive-in for my guest.

But that comes at a cost, right? So now I'm about to spend, you know, well over 9K on doing exterior. And then I still got to go on the inside and spend well above that as well. So this budget is turning into a pretty interesting task. But in considering all that, I should be postured to make it back. Obviously, it's not going to be fun in the first couple months. But like you said, you're still putting money into an asset. It's going to come back.

And that's just the way you got to kind of look at it, just power through it. and just know that, like, if you ran your numbers right, it's always going to work out. About it before, we're here. AJ, any last song to knock on my then? I think you guys do right on the little right on the head, you know, it isn't, you know, important topics. So I said, I'll go back to just, you know,

make sure you stay on top of pricing. You know, with the dynamic pricing, set it up, I use price lapse. You know, it's meant to be there to be in place, and so they don't have to constantly make updates, but, yeah, I remember, you know, short-term rental hosting, and they were being being verbal and things like that,

it's still an active game. So every now and then, you know, I like to just go in there looking at the occupancy. If everything is smooth and my occupancy is high, I'm getting booked out. Then, you know, typically I probably would just leave it as is. You know, if it's not broke, I'm trying to fix it. But so almost that always, you know,

when the kids are going like to school, people aren't traveling as much. Like, look at occupancy percentages and then also the competitor crises. So especially on the weekdays, I'm not to, I'm trying to know what you know, give a discont of the weekdays because that's typically a time frame. People don't book as often, right? So if I can get some of my discount or the weekdays, like percent, things like that, get the strike through pricing on Airbnb, make it attractive property. I can get a one-up on my competitors because they may also be using dynamic pricing, right?

they may not be as I am, you know, leaving the 20% discounts get distracted pricing, things like that. So that's just something. I'm just trying to, you know, keep the edge up on the competition and just tweaking the pricing. Just a little bit here and there. I haven't been able to use it yet because I'm about

to switch over to short-term rentals. But way back in the day, I used to have like multiple jobs. One of my side hustles was Uber. And so when I would look at the Uber app, it would tell me when big events were coming to town. And so I'm curious to see how predictive that is

where I can, you know, kind of foresee some of that dynamic pricing and utilize the Uber app to kind of generate how I think the market is going to fall for that week. And I say that because, you know, I'm not too far from the Mercedes Ben Stadium. And so if they're having a large event that I think would generate a lot of people coming to town, then I should consider, okay, well, what is everybody else doing? How are the prices fluctuated? And I'm sure Price Labs does most of that stuff, but I wonder how predictive it is at trying to really hone in on where that market's going

to fall for pricing. I would say just through experience, it is pretty solid with that. Like, I know, for example, Labor Day is coming up. So I'll be getting a lot of queries about that weekend, September, I think, second, end of August, first couple days of September. And then if I go and check on the pricing at Price Lab, you can tell us noticeably a bit higher than what, you know, it would typically fall from our property.

So I would say it's really good at that, especially in Atlanta. I think with all the different college bowlings in the fall season and the winter season, I know it's you get a pretty significant uptick in the pricing. And price flaps will, for the most part, take care of that. Now, if you feel like you can get a little bit more on top, then you can kind of tweak it a bit. but I will say from my experience, I've got just a great salad with that.

Good, good. Question for you guys. When it comes to these short-term rentals, right? How did you feel about like welcome gifts? Do you guys do that for your properties? So obviously I haven't implemented it yet, but from staying at an Airbnb, one of the things that I've found that I've found

I like a lot is getting there and they'll have like a what to do in the city. But the clever ones is when they break it down and they'll put like different genres of music. And that's saying something without saying something. Right. So whether you want to go out and have country music night or you want to have a hip-hop night or a jazz night, they give recommendations in line with that genre, right?

And so that helps out a lot when you're going to a town that you've never been to, but you want to go out and have a little bit fun. Well, if you want to go listen to jazz music, here's a restaurant that's going to play some slow jazz while you're eating. Here's the night out that you're looking for if you want to be. romantic. Those small ads, I was like, man, this is good. And obviously, I ended up doing one of them. And you said that to me. I have you said that because that's something that I'm not in probably about, there's been some time, probably about like five months ago. But in my messaging,

after the yes is checked in the first morning, I send the list of not just any generic ones, because I go out in Atlanta and I know what the food is like, but I specifically put some of my personal favorites. And guests really like that. So if you guys aren't already doing that, which I'm probably, you know, I'm assuming you guys probably do. If not, I highly recommend doing that because that's also been reflected in my reviews. Guests really like that. And I'm glad that you mentioned that because, you know, when you come in, especially because you've never been before, I eat, right? That's one of the first things you want to do, right? Oh, took a long flight flight. I'm going to drive for hours, how long a good bite to eat.

So if you recommend a good spot to eat, guests really do appreciate that. And like I said, it does reflect in the reviews. Just make sure you don't recommend any bad spots because they think probably we might say something. I don't know. I don't give you a dabri for you. I think the benefits far away the risks. The end of the day, it's just a recommendation, right? Just let the guess not.

Hey, these are my personal favorites. That doesn't mean like sheer complicate. You can't please everybody. So can we just be honest here. and admit that that is an issue. I feel like that it's specific to Atlanta. Dude. So one

one fear experience from this kind of Sunday is why I'm laughing. Has anybody ever eaten in an Lipp and Timor Shake? That's, uh, that's on, that's on, um, that's on a tech, right? It's in, uh, Kirkwood. That's, that's, dude, I love that spot. You know, I know everybody.

I go there probably, before I moved. I went there probably like two, three times a month. Nah, we ate there. That's where we, that's where we met up. I was way back when. I thought so. I thought I'd been there. I wasn't 100% sure.

That's like the small cafe spot, right? Yes. Okay. A little more there. Long story short, I was there on Sunday, Katie, my mom and my wife. And two weeks ago, I don't know what happened in management,

but like it's half the menu's gone. They don't serve drinks anymore. Now it's all plastic. It's like the takeout spot. It's not like it, like, it was a major disappointment. So to that point, Justin's saying that's definitely an issue.

So you definitely want to check back in those places. One of the things I'm thinking about doing, and we haven't done it for a while, and we used to do this back in a day, is for this new luxury one, I'm thinking about putting a skylight. You've got those skylight, digital frames where you can send

recommendations for those to it, and it just cite us through them. Thinking about putting one of those in the bookshelf again, and then you're able to delete recommendations so I can delete flip a few more say on there. and add them virtually without actually having to go back at the digital guide book and kind of go from there.

But I left this recommendation you get step on this. That's good. Wow. That was hurt, Justin. Yeah. We need to get a bell for this. That was a battle moment. Just like these contractors.

Hey, ring a bell. It hurt almost as much of the drive mode. And I was like, man, this is my spot. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, we don't get this. It's going to. It's not a menu anymore. What's the dangling it's taking off?

For Atlanta food scene, you know. Yeah, I still feel it's saying that's like a big issue in Atlanta. Atlanta's food market is terrible. It's terrible. You can find a good spot every town again. Yeah, Uber Highway. They need that for all the way out.

And it is. Instagram is deceiving. It's so deceiving. It'll pop up on Instagram. I'm like, oh, go check your file. this evening. Yeah. Yeah.

Also, my first couple weeks here, I tried out, STK. And I was like, well, it's terrible. It's terrible.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's all over the place. Yeah, and it was not worth it.

I know that because Pona and STK are owned by the same company. It's wild, though, because when I got there, the weight was ridiculous. And I'm like, oh,

this place really must be good. And it's like, no, you probably just got duped on Instagram, too. There's been so much, so many of restaurants to fly. Yeah. Yeah. If you guys cater to them, I really

highly recommend as the best of being a spot. Yes. They're the ones that gave us the food for. I went. Great. They're amazing. Was that the food for the catered event for the, um, yes. That was good. That was good.

I would have to snatch out of the Leebon's head and for you. Yeah. I'll take it. Like, I'll take them. I'm like, hey, what's he going? Hello. Guys, we completely derailed in the last few minutes. I don't know how. But it was good for national thought of leaving off.

I look forward to see you next week. Everybody, we say it. Yes. 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.