KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The Art of Short-Term Rentals for Real Estate Agents

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Summary:This episode is a tactical guide for real estate agents interested in the short-term rental market. The discussion covers key strategies for identifying profitable properties, understanding local regulations, and managing a successful listing. The episode provides actionable advice on how to use market data to price properties, create an attractive listing, and automate guest communication to save time. It's an excellent resource for agents who want to add a new revenue stream to their business and become experts in this niche.

Hello, guys. Welcome back to this episode of go-gopreneur. Today, I get to interview Avery Carl, and I'm so excited for multiple reasons, because besides the fact that she's an absolute badass in the real estate industry, she's the CEO of the short-term shops, excuse my accent here, and she left a $37,000 job behind to become an entrepreneur in the real estate world. Today, her team has been the number one team three times in a row at EXP, Realty. She has over 250 doors in 20 different markets. She teaches on short-term rentals, Airbnbs, anything investment real estate. And today we get to pick her brain.

We get to pick her brain on how do you do this, how do you specialize in something like Airbnbs and short-term rentals? How can you do that in 20 different markets? Like, you know, most realtors are lucky if they figure out the market that they are in. And then also how you do that as a woman. And then, you know, what gives you your superpower? Let's figure out who Avery is. How did she get to where she's at and then learn the lessons that she is sharing with us?

Let's get to know her. Welcome to Gogopreneur, where Gogo Bethke, your host, interviews badass, rock star entrepreneurs of the world, figuring out who they are, how they got to where they're at, and the lessons they learned along the way. So you can learn those lessons and turn it into money. Let's go get them. Well, it's so nice to meet you. You're an absolute badass. So I can't even, I cannot wait to dig in to see like, how did the madness start and who is angry? It's a lot of madness. So I'm looking forward to it too. Thanks for having me.

Awesome. So where are you originally from? I am from Starkville, Mississippi. Okay. And where do you live? I live in the Panhandle of Florida. So northwest Florida, the 30A area. Oh, I'm a Floridian now too. I saw you're in like around Tampa, right? Yeah, a little note of tempo, but I have a Florida idea. I'm very proud of it. So how did you end up? So today you are like the Airbnb queen, right? You have your book.

You have your podcast. You have what, 250 doors, if I remember correctly, reading it, but has helped yourself and others invest over $3 billion in short-term rentals, Airbnbs. How did you end up? Let's back it up a second. Before I ask you, how did you end up specializing in that? Where did you start and when in real estate?

And why? Okay, so I got my license in 2017. We were living in Nashville at the time. And I did not, I wasn't planning on becoming a full-time real estate agent. I got my license so that I could do, we were investing in real estate. We were buying our own properties. And so I got my license so I could do our deals. And it just kind of went from there. So only 2017, so only seven years in the business. Yeah. And then three of those seven years, you had the number one team at the XV? Yes.

I would say you're pretty good at what you do. Beginners love, maybe. Yeah, you just flew by everyone. So how did you, okay, so you started in Nashville, though. How did you end up in Florida? So, in a roundabout way. So the first property that I ever bought was a single family long-term rental. annual lease in Nashville. And that property, the cash flow from it ended up being about the same

as what my paycheck was at my corporate job in the music business in Nashville after all my deductions and things with a master's degree in the marketing music marketing business. So when we saw that, we said, oh, wow, this house is making as much money as me while we're sleeping and I have to go to work eight hours a day and drive an hour and a half each of way with Nashville traffic. We need to buy more of these. We need to figure out a way to buy more of these. And so we had just enough money for one more down payment on a single family home. And we said, well, what can we buy that's going to make us the most amount of money the fastest so that we can go buy more faster? And we said, oh, what about short-term rentals? And we knew we

didn't want to do that in Nashville because the regulations in Nashville, even back then were already, and this was before I was licensed. So this was probably 2015. And the regulations were just Nashville is not very short-term rental friendly and that has not changed. And so we thought, well, where can we buy something that it's just normal for people to stay in a property that's not a hotel? And where is that? And we just been on vacation to the Smoky Mountains, which is about three hours east of Nashville. And we had stayed in a cabin. All of our friends that came with us also stayed in cabins that they rented. And we said, well, somebody owns these cabins.

Why can't that be us? And again, back then, there were no courses. There were no YouTube channels on Airbnbs and short-term rentals. So we just bought one and we were going to use a property manager. But it turns out at the time, the average split that property managers took was 40% of your gross. And we were like, no, no, wait a minute. We need that 40%. We're going to go buy more properties.

We can't do this. So we figured out how to manage them remotely from Nashville. We hired a cleaner. handy person, everything else we did on the Airbnb and Verbo apps. There weren't cool property management software like there are now then, which we can talk about that later too if you want. So we just figured out how to do it. And we said, okay, this is great. It started making money right out of the gate. We ended up over the next 18 months buying another four cabins in the Smoky Mountains. And I ended up in Florida. I'm going to jump way ahead.

Yeah. The short term shop has offices in 20. 20 markets now. And during COVID, we moved down here because I'm a, I'm a beach girl. My husband, he runs the shop with me on the education side. But he was full-time a classic rock DJ on Sirius X-M. And he still does that just on the weekend, just kind of for fun now. But during COVID, Sirius said, okay, the DJs, as long as you've got X, Y, and Z in your home studio, set up, you can work from wherever you want, and we're not going to bring you guys back into the corporate offices ever again. So we said, well, we don't, why do we live in Nashville then? We live in this weird suburb of Nashville. We now have no business in Nashville. So let's move

to one of the markets that we have a real estate office in. And I'm a beach girl. So I won that. He is a mountain guy, but we moved to the beach down here 38. That's, that's kind of crazy. That's what we did during COVID. We were like, uh, we can come in on the beach, peace. So we left Michigan behind, right? And then when we came down here, we were like, we kind of like it. Yeah. We kind of want to stay down here. But I did learn from it, though, I don't, to be goddess on the beach.

And I didn't want that to be my own backyard. I just felt like it's going to take away from the magic. So we moved a little bit inland. So then I go to the beach to talk to that, right? But other than that, we are, you know, we are in Florida for the same reasons. So then how did you, okay, so you're starting so different than most. people, right? So you weren't in it for the next commission. You started just to kind of save that commission and the already existing book of business that you were doing for yourself.

Right. So I just wanted to, you know, I was thinking we'd buy two or three houses a year and that I would, I didn't actually do it for the commission. I did it because my husband is a New Yorker. And he's difficult when it comes to interpersonal communication and negotiations. So I was tired of apologizing to agents for my husband's behavior. So I said, I'll just, I'll get my license so we can cut that out of it. I'll deal with you and, uh, and I'll get paid to deal with you. So yeah, that's so funny because we built, we built this house that we live in down here in Florida. And I was not allowed to have the builder's foot number. Duane did not give it to me. The whole year that it took us to build the house, I was not allowed to communicate with anyone

because he knows I will eat them. Right. And so he's like, You're not talking to anybody. I got this. I'll handle it. So I have that, you know, he has the New York side. I have more of the Eastern European plan, which is the same thing, probably, right? I just don't have that cool accent that goes along with it. I have a different kind of accent.

So how did you, so you did the long-term rentals out of your 250 or how many doors do you have now? Because I read it from your bio, the 250 that probably changed. Yeah, we're at right about 250. We've added a few, sold a few things, but it hovers around that number. And all of them are Airbnbs or some of them long-term rentals? Like, do you have syndications? Like, how do you mix it up? So no syndications. It's a mix of short-term rentals. We have eight short-term rentals. Everything else is single-family long-term and apartment buildings long-term. So even though, like, I specialize in selling Airbnbs and that was the thing that kind of kick-started our success in real estate investing, I do think that it's a good idea to have a little bit of every year. in your portfolio.

Yeah. So we started backwards. We started with syndications just because I didn't have the time and I was like, just take the money, give me the text right off. You guys figure it out. Then we went into an Airbnb and then we started doing long-term rental. So we kind of did it backwards where people started long term, that short term, then syndications.

We did it a little bit backwards. And we are buying now one in South Carolina, another one. We bought one last year, a townhouse. And it just seems to us that the market there is still so affordable for a four bedroom three that brand new construction you can buy them for like 250. So for us like in Michigan in our area where we licensed up in Michigan, you don't, you won't find anything under 300. That's worth mentioning that long a brand new construction. So the number still makes sense. So that's what we are where we are buying. We are using a property management company up there, but we are managing

our own Airbnb. So learning, learning one step at a time. Would you recommend people to get into Airbnb today? Yeah, yeah. I would. And I guess, I should separate the type of Airbnb that I buy. So I think when people hear Airbnb's, they think, you know, just buying something that would have been a long-term rental and running it short-term on Airbnb to make more money. I only buy vacation rentals in vacation towns. So I own in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. I own down here in the Florida Panhandle, a Destin 30A, Cape Sandblast area. So these are only areas where people are going on vacation. There's not a lot of hotels in these areas. So, you know, these are not, I probably would not go by an Airbnb, like in the

town I grew up in in Mississippi or like in Houston or, you know, metro area just because of regulations and dealing with, you know, there's a lot of hotels in those types of markets, which are ultimately what ends up being in control of the regulations. So I focus only on vacation rentals sides of the Airbnb. So to answer your question, it depends on the market. So there's a lot of markets that had like no Airbnbs up until COVID. And then they got a ton of them, mostly metro markets. And then now they're dealing with saturation. They're dealing with anti-short-term rental regulations.

So for me, I only buy, and this is what I would recommend for other people, too, buying in true, mature vacation markets. So like here where I live in Destin, there's very few hotels. It's always been that way. Everybody that comes here has always stayed in vacation. rental, like my grandmother, who is 96 years old, has been coming here from Mississippi to stay in vacation rentals since 1937. And same thing with the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. They have been vacation rental, like a vacation rental market since the 50s. So these are areas where, you know,

a lot of people are like, oh, Airbnb is a new thing. It just popped up in the last four or five years, just popped up at COVID. No, didn't. No, didn't. It's actually a very mature asset class. It's just the way of doing it has changed with the inception of Airbnb and Verbo and a lot of different things. So I would recommend vacation rentals. I don't necessarily recommend a short-term rental in a metro market that is competing with hotels. And I'm assuming someone who's reading your book, which is short-term rental long-term world, would learn a whole lot about this, correct? Yes, they will, they will.

So when did you, when did you and why did you write a book? So I wrote the book in 2020, like in the middle of all of the COVID happenings. And I was actually approached by my publisher, Bigger Pockets Publishing. So I'm sure you're familiar, but maybe not all of your listeners are familiar with bigger pockets, which is like the real estate investing, not just short term rental, all types of real estate investing, kind of influencing authority out there. And so they approached me and asked if I would write. They didn't have a book on short-term rentals yet.

They had some other types of books on other asset classes. And so they asked me to write it. And I was like, well, hell, yeah, I'll write it. So did that actually working on another one. I have not mentioned that on any other podcasts yet, but it comes out in February. And I'll make sure to get you the info and the landing pages, et cetera, what it does. What is it going to be a book? It's going to be building on the previous book.

So it's going to be called Smarter Short-Term Rentals. And so whereas the last book was kind of like a beginner's guide to getting started, this is more of like the deeper strategies and operations and things like that. Got it. So let's talk about operations. Maybe just give us like the time, three tips for Airbnb recently, like your last three lessons running Airbnb's. Okay. Three lessons running Airbnb's. So there's a book that I'm going to recommend called Unreasonable Hospitality. and it was written by a guy who ran, I can't remember the name of the restaurant, a very famous restaurant in New York City. And it is about the hospitality business,

what the difference between service and hospitality is. So service is just black and white. Hospitality is color. So service, and this goes for real estate agents too, I'm making all my agents read this book right now. Service is just doing what's expected of you, and hospitality is everything above and beyond that. And I'd recommend reading that book if you're interested in investing in short-term rentals because while it is real estate investing, while it is a business, it's a hospitality business.

And so dealing with people can be difficult. Dealing with different types of personalities can be difficult. And so that's why that's why I'm not on it, Dwayneis. Yeah. I'm like, I can. I'm like there's like, let's just put in, put the emphasis on the unreasonable. portion of the title of this book. That's how I feel 95% of the time. I'm like, you're kidding, right? But no, it's unreasonable request at times, yes. Yes, totally unreasonable. So I'd

recommend reading that book to overcome any type of, you know, dealing with people. Because a lot of times when they're being jerks, they're not doing it specifically personally to you. They're just existing the way that they exist. So three three things I've learned. I would say definitely understand that it is a hospitality business. Understand that stuff is going to break and things are, things are going to go wrong. You can't prevent things from going wrong, but what you can control is how you handle those things. So, you know, if I've seen investors, you know, clients of ours, buyers of ours, that

when something goes wrong with their house instead of, let's say, I don't know, there's a leak in a pipe in the ceiling. And instead of making a phone call to. a plumber to come fix it, they want to go start. Why didn't the seller disclose this? Let's go sue the seller. And it's a lot cheaper to call a plumber and handle the problem than it is to hire an attorney to determine whose fault the problem was. Like, you know, when you own real estate, you just have to fix the problem and not worry about why it happened, whose fault it was, like, we got to fix it and move on. So that's definitely a big lesson. And if your personality,

type is not that, then don't invest in real estate. And that's okay. You know, there's a, you could do a syndication. You could do other things. But, you know, if you're somebody that can't, that is not, that's going to be really upset about why, then rather than just fix the problem, then it's probably not going to be for you. And last lesson, if there's anything, if anything happens more than three times, you need to create a standard operating procedure around that thing. So, if it's happened more than three times, this is something that is going to continue happening and you need to figure out how to get in front of it. There's another good book called upstream about that. You need to get upstream of that problem and fix the problem upstream before it happens.

So fix whatever you need to fix up here before it gets down here and the problem happens again. I wrote down both of them. And yeah, so Duane, Duane got it handled. I really enjoy making the money and then figure out where and how it should be invested, right? But to do the actual need of greedy when it comes, when it comes down to after they're rented, or we have the long-term rentals and the short-term rentals. After they're rented in the long-term rentals, Duane collects the checks and does, you know, whatever pays off loans if we have them, if not. And then in the short-term rentals, he does all of the communication and all of that stuff. I do not enjoy that. I do not have the patience for the needy-de-gritty.

I'd rather just put my head down, go make more money, so then we can invest it into further more things. And then when did you start a team? And how did you end up with 20 short-term shots? Well, so in 2019, it was kind of out of necessity. I was super pregnant with our first child. And the Smoky Mountains where I was selling most of the properties are three hours away. And so from where I lived, I didn't need to be three hours away from my hospital about having a baby. So, and I was starting to get really, really busy.

And looking back, looking back at like the complaints that I had and the things that I dealt with with clients around that time. I probably should have started a team a year earlier, but I had a lot of trust issues, which we can get into. Yeah. I had a lot of trust issues from the first hire that I made. And so I just didn't. I didn't trust anybody to help.

But really, I was overwhelmed and I wasn't communicating with clients well. And I was kind of leaving. I'm hanging and taking too long and things. But I started the team then out of necessity because I couldn't travel for work anymore. So I started out just like, okay, you're my show. assistant and then then you're like eventually moved up that first agent who's still with me to a full agent and then once i realized like okay if i train people right i can trust them to take my clients then we got a few more and a few more and i got out of production all together in 2020

and um and we ended up with with all the different markets because i found that you know investors they buy more than one property Usually, you know, with long term, they'll buy a lot of properties in one market. So if you get an investor client, you're going to, they're going to buy multiple properties with you. And when it comes to short term, especially vacation rentals, it's so much fun to own them. And so many people will say, okay, I want a mountain house. All right, next, I want a beach house. That when they buy multiple, it will typically be in different markets. And so they would say, they'd come to me and say, hey, do you know anybody in this market that's like you that could serve us the way you guys served us so that,

that we can be successful in this market. And I got several requests for Destin, where I live now. So if you get it three times, right, then you need us. No, SLP. Yes, exactly. So, and we were looking at investing down here in Destin as well at the time. And I said, oh, well, why don't I just get an agent there? And so it's kind of grown organically with where our clients are coming back and saying, hey, do you have anybody in this market? And, you know, I keep an eye and see where the trends are going and where the good places to invest might be. We're probably not opening any more markets this year, maybe next year.

But we're holding tight right now. So then I'm assuming you're also using that for agent attraction purposes. I don't even think we mentioned that you're at EXP yet. So I'm assuming as you are opening markets, you're searching for agents in those areas, they will end up being your partners at the EXP, correct? Correct. Yes, they do have to come. come over to EXP to join the short-term shop team.

Yeah, that's how I do it too, because, you know, I want to know that you're invested into our partnership as much of mine. I'm invested into ours, right? Yeah. So what did you join EXP? I joined the EXP in 2018 or 19. I hopped around. I started at Keller Williams. I started getting my own business, like pretty decently. I would have four or five deals going at any given time. I got recruited to join a team and they like dazzled me with all of their technology and things and I got on the team and I hated it. They wanted me to come to the office and make cold calls all day. And I was like, I did not quit my corporate job so I

come sit and make cold calls for you. So got off that team and it was a terrible experience and I left Keller Williams over it. And then I bounced around between a few. And that was very short. That was like my first six months in real estate. Then I went to a big local brokerage in Nashville. And I won rookie of the year in Nashville that year. And my brooky. broker after I won it, you know, they said, oh, we want to come to the office and have a meeting. And the first thing he said to me was, so how'd you do it? Is your husband a developer and gave you all his listings? And I was like, excuse me? No, I didn't like, I actually did this work on my own and it was not given to me by my husband. And so I left that brokerage over that. And then I was

with another local brokerage who was great. But the problem was, that all these brokerages were in Nashville because that was where I lived and there was a rule in Tennessee you had to live within 50 miles of your broker. And the problem was my, the MLS access that I needed was three hours away. And you had the, at the time the brokers had to go physically drive there and sit through their broker orientation to get MLS access. And so I couldn't keep going around asking these local brokers to get the MLS access that I needed for one angle. So then I got recruited to EXP, Cher Ross, who's a friend of mine. She was in a really huge 80s band called Vixen.

They opened for Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne and all these crazy people. No way. Yeah. It's so cool how you're mixing your previous career with your real estate career. Like you still keep the same, you know, group of people is just in a different, you know, caliber now. Yeah, absolutely. But anyway, she had me talk to EXP and they had the MLS. accesses that I needed. So I was like, all right, sign me up. And I've been with them ever since.

They've been good to us. Oh, that's awesome. So can I ask you what it's like? What is your organization of life at DXV? So we have a there's me. We have a team, a satellite team leader in each state. We're in eight states, but you know, several markets within the state. We have a VP of operations who handles like is over all of our transaction coordinators. I really am more of like a chief marketing officer role nowadays than anything else. We've got our education department, which is my husband. So we do a lot of training our clients on how to run their Airbnbs. We do all that for free, actually. If you buy with us, then we teach you how to manage it for free.

And who else do we have? And then a lot of VAs, two really, really good ones. That's awesome. Yeah, I couldn't do what I do without my VAs. My gosh. And Christy. I mean, Christy is my C.O. She's been with me now for 14 years. Everything that we have built, we have built together. So sometimes I joke and say, it was more than I do. And if I ever get back, it's the first person they're going to be knocking at Christy's door, right, because she has known everything. But I couldn't do what we do here either without help. I have a very specific personality. And for everything else, I know I need to hire it out or I wouldn't be enjoying what I do. Do you enjoy what you do? I do. I do enjoy what I do. And I'm one of those weird people. I really like work. I really like hard work. And I also really like school. So I enjoy what we do. I mean, it's hard. I'm not going to lie. Like it's hard sometimes. And we get ripped off a lot, which sucks. But at the end of the day, I do really enjoy what we do. Yeah. I always tell my husband that I think one of the reasons why most people don't end up. getting to a certain level is because it's so stressful. And if you don't learn to handle stress, if you take it home or if you allow it to, you know, hurt your health, right?

Mental health or physical health or get over weight over it because you're gonna eat yourself to happiness, right? There's so many parts to entrepreneurship that I feel like you just have to have such a good mind control to not allow people to get to you. Every time, buy it a dollar, every time people who's like, oh, you must have a sugar daddy. I was like, no, actually I retired my husband, right?

like and he's 40 something he's not 70 you know retired he's 40 something and I retired him a few years ago it is that there's just a certain what do they call it people look at you funny at times let's just put it that way they take your gender or your looks and they assume you don't have a brain because you know a blonde woman right um so what are you looking forward to I am looking forward to interest rates stabilizing. And what are you? Well, that should help. November is around the corner.

It should help you, right? It always comes down around that time. What about in your personal life? So how many kids do you have? I heard one pregnancy. Do you have more? Yes, a five-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. Oh, there's little.

Yes, they are. That's awesome. Yeah, they're super fun. we've got my daughter's birthday party this weekend. So looking forward to that. And I just, I am very happy with the amount of, with the freedom of time that building this business has allowed me and my husband. You know, we both, it's, it's like, yes, we both work, but we can also both give our kids like the experience of to stay at home parents. So I mean, he gets looked at funny. You know, like you and I might get looked at funny for one reason. But, you know, when he's,

the guy volunteering to go on a kid's field trip and it's all moms he gets looked at weird and they're like oh do you not work and he's like well actually i do i'm exactly i do this so um same same person i also think it requires a man to be able to do that right because i feel like for a little while and i don't want to put words in my husband's mouth but maybe for a little while he's struggled with his man card until uh realized that it's okay to you know there's there are downsides to this but then he can also which is go fishing on either of his boats, right? But he's lately the guy that shows up to drop off and pick up because I'm on never-ending Zoom calls. He's the one who ends up going to the doctor's appointment

because I'm never-ending Zoom calls or I'm not even in the stage, right, if I'm traveling. So it flipped for us too. He was the breadwinner and the man, right, for the longest time. And then as I started making more and more money, it was silly for him to keep his corporate job. And then he got a real estate license. And then it became silly for him to go sell another house

just so we can say that he has, a job, right? But I still feel like what he does on a day-to-day basis is very much a job, like just paying the bills and all of these and make sure you have automated payments and you pay the taxes and all the properties and, you know, the attorneys and the CPs and the, you know, I mean, I just feel like that's a never-ending job and then the kids and then the multiple households and it's just as much as a full-time job. Yes, it is all a full-time job. There's just so much all the time. So what is your guys'

everyday look like? So every day, we both wake up about 4 o'clock just because as you know, once the kids wake up, there's no getting anything. Your kids wake up that early? No, they don't wake up that early. We wake up betterly so we can get some things done

before they wake up. Got it. What he gets up and he goes and runs immediately. He's a marathon runner. He's run like, I think he's on like 30 marathons and two ultramarrales. marathons now. Wow. So he does that. I'll do a little work and drink my coffee in the peace and quiet. And then I'll get the kids up, get them ready for school. He takes them to school. So when he takes them to school, I'll go for a run or do whatever, you know, exercise in some way. And then hit the office and never ending Zoom calls. And then until about two. And then sometimes we'll both go ride together and pick the kids up and take them to whatever their activity is. Our kids are super into tennis, which I was a soccer player. So that's kind of warrant me, but they love it. They're into tennis. My daughter's in a little theater class that is so

cute. They're doing Shrek this year. They did troll last year. So they just have all these little activities that they like doing. And we just, you know. And isn't it beautiful that you have the freedom to do that? Yes. And that was part of the reason why we got into real estate investing to begin with. Because I knew, like we got married. We had our jobs. And I knew my boss was not, she was not, she was not the kind of boss that was ever going to understand. Oh, hey, you know, my daughter's got strep throat today. I'm going to need to stay home. There was no working from home, period. There was no anything. You know, if she was staying till 11 o'clock at night, even if I was done with all my work, I was also staying until 11 o'clock at night and sitting there making sure she didn't need anything.

And it just got, it felt stupid to me. It was like, why, why am I spending all this time? And I knew we wanted to have kids. And I was constantly like on Indeed.com. Like, I need to find something. I need to some kind of job where I can be home some with the kids and not have to put them in in daycare from seven in the morning to seven at night. And so real estate allowed that. And but I think you do have to have a certain kind of personality to have the discipline to be able to make that work and and not just let it fizzle and be successful at real estate. But real estate has really given us the ability to do that. And then both of you have, so I'm assuming now both work from home, do you have your own office or do you share a space? We do not share a space. We do not share a

space that is not going to work. We have found that out. So we actually have, we bought a mixed use building about a mile from our house. It's in this cute little area with lots of restaurants and stuff. So the first floor is an office space. It was an interior designer's office. And then upstairs is a three bedroom Airbnb of ours. So I kind of almost get like a free office. I pay rent. my company pays rent to my husband. And then we've got the Airbnb upstairs and makes money. So I've got this whole like, I haven't done a good job of it. I really only have two little backgrounds set up.

But I need to get all the furniture out of here and just make every single space like somewhere you could record again. So I've got my own office. He works from home. He likes it like that. But we can't work in the same office. That will be just too much togetherness. Yeah.

Yeah. We spent, we went from doing working full time, incorporate. of America or working eight hours and driving an hour there and back or traveling on top of it, so where we barely saw each other to all day, every day, everything together. So yeah, the same here. We enjoy, don't get me here. We absolutely, he's my favorite person on earth. But being all day, every day with someone, it will get old.

So I'm happy that you guys have recognized of like, you know, how you feel, how you feel comfortable doing your thing. So when it comes to investing into real estate, right, I feel like so many people, you know, so many people just don't know where to start. How did you, did you just happen to run into some money and then you bought your very first investment in the Smoky Mountains? Or where, how did it start?

Did you take out a loan? Did you take a risk? Did you, where did it start for you? So this is the part that a lot of real estate influencers don't want people to hear. Because there's no hack, there's no like proven 12 step process. No step was easy by then? Yeah, there is not.

So what we did was we had a little bit of money saved up and what do you call a what do you call a little bit of money so we had like maybe five or six thousand dollars saved up okay and um because so my husband used to host like the themed cruises like the monsters of rock cruise uh because he's he's a 70s and 80s classic rock classic metal DJ so they would hire him on these big cruises and he would get these chunks of money at a time like 2,500 bucks to go so we just saved up he did three of those in a year saved that up. And we went to a, we took, took our $5,000 and went to a financial planner and said, hey, we have some money. We don't really know what to do with it. We want to be smart with it.

How do we invest this? Can you help us? And they were like, you don't have enough money for us to work with you. And we were like, oh, cool. Great. So we started just like listening to podcasts and trying to figure out, well, there's got to be something we can do with this. And we decided to buy a house with it. Because when we moved, we moved from New York City to Nashville, a few, a few years earlier. And our agent at the time was really trying to get us to buy in this super hip, fast appreciating area of Nashville called East Nashville. And we said, no, we're moving from Brooklyn to Tennessee. We want to be out in the country. We are done with neighbors. So we kind of came back to that thought and thought of it because she had talked so much about how much the

houses were appreciating over the course of a few years. So we said, well, maybe we could buy one of these. And when our future kids go to college, it will have appreciated so much. We can sell it and then just pay for their college and we'll be these geniuses, these personal finance geniuses, we just don't do that. That was not the way to do it. We got lucky that it, that it cash flowed well. But that was how we started. And I just, we, I put us on a $20 a day budget each to save the rest of that five, from $5,000 to I think we needed a 15% down payment on $122,000 house. So whatever that works out to be. Nice. 17 grand or something like that.

like that yeah we budgeted just really hard for a year yeah 222 000 you said yeah 122 1 2 2 2 2 I can't type oh my gosh my nails are so long that I'm actually going to an appointment today I'm so excited I've never had look at like a slot one like one button at a time times 15 percent so 18 3 18,300. So you took your 5,000 and then someone told you through the process of the math that it's not going to cut it. It's not going to cut it. You're going to have to bring 18,300 plus closing cost, right? To the table. And then you said, okay, we're going to save it up. Yep. And we saved it up over about a year. Okay. And then from there, again, just kept just the, the key to scaling a real estate investment portfolio is not spending the money that you make on the real estate on anything

other than buying more real estate. So we just kept, we took the income from that property and kept saving. And then I got my license. So any of my commissions went into that pot to buy the next thing. And we just kept snowballing it until it ended up, you know, you get to the point where it's not a struggle to come up with a down payment anymore. And then it's not a struggle to come up with a down payment for a 36 unit apartment building. And then you just keep growing from there. So that's the, this, the way we did it was hard work and really really heavy budgeting my husband uh did he did extra jobs he built record cabinets and sold them he drove uber like we really did everything we could extra to save every little bit for that first house that's amazing and then what do you do so can i

ask you what is the value of the 250 doors they're probably right around 40 million okay so you went from $5,000 save to $40 million in seven years. Yeah. If we do the math, I want to say that's a, I don't even know what percentage of growth that is, right? Like internet times or 8,000 times or something. So how do you ever take equity out of your properties or do you really just take whatever you make from each property?

Put it in a pile and when you have it, you buy another one. So we, the very first, sorry, the second short term rental that we bought, we did do a home equity line of credit on our primary home. We pulled $20,000 out of that to make that down payment. But other than that, no. And I've seen a lot of investors get. And well, let me back up. So before I say that, our strategy is buy and hold. And if we buy something that's cash flowing really well, I don't ever want to pull the equity out of it.

and make it cash flow less. Now, that's not necessarily the right or wrong way to do things. Like, it also makes a lot of sense if you've got a lot of equity in your properties to refinance, pull some of that money out and go scale in other ways. Like that is also right. It's just a different way of doing things. So for me, I like to leave my equity where it is. Case of a rainy day.

Their cash flow the way I want them to. But it's super common to just tap that equity and go buy other stuff too. So where do you find these properties? Well, what would be your favorite? 95% of my portfolio has come right off the MLS. Right off or has led to off market sales. So for example, I bought a house in Chattanooga. It was a duplex.

And my agent said, oh, I know the guy who owns that duplex. He has seven other ones on the street. Let me just call and see if he wants to sell those too. And so he did. So a lot of our, like, there's probably been only four or five properties that we've gotten off market. And I know a lot of real estate investors, maybe a lot of agents feel like a lot of real estate investors avoid the MLS. And that's just not true. Like there's, there are deals on the MLS all the time.

At the height of the COVID craziness and the 2% interest rates, I bought a beach house for $800,000 that was listed for $875. it had been on the market for less than a week. And I got a $75,000 discount just because they had terrible pictures, like terrible. It's one row back from the beach. There was not one picture of the view from the windows of the Gulf of Mexico. It was like a weird picture of the garage and some blurry pictures of the inside that were terrible. But I saw that it was built in 2019. So like everybody, you know, everything back then was selling in a day or two.

but just because of bad pictures, I was able to get a great deal right off of MLS. So MLS, I love it. I love high days on market, bad pictures. I like high square footage, but low number of bedrooms, because that typically means

there's probably some other spaces that are used as bedrooms, but for some reason are not allowed to be called out on the MLS, whether they don't have a closet or septic system or whatever. That on Airbnb is a bedroom. As long as it's an actual bed, You can't have people like sitting in dining rooms and calling it a bedroom.

But are you afraid of work or do you prefer the property to be in good condition? I love work. I love an ugly property. I love a beat up property that other people don't want. I've bought turnkey stuff, but you know, all of our best ones really were properties that needed some love. Yeah. So you see, neither of me. I don't have the time or the patience.

Dwayne just doesn't want to fix anything. He's like, nope, I'm not. Not it, right? Somebody has somebody else's job. Notice he wants to manage a project, right? So by far, all the long-term properties, we have bought a brand new construction. So we are going directly to the builder. But recently, at least recently, they're giving discounts and all of these new construction.

So we're kind of getting a good deal on them. We are not, don't get me wrong, of course, I want to break even. But for me, the reasons why we are keep investing is the cost segregation. So I can use it in my taxable income deduction. and if the property pays for itself and it gains equity every year over year, we are happy with that. So we are taking, I guess, the time that we are not willing to invest, right? And the energy to invest is where it's shorter on the monthly return, right? We save a lot in our taxes.

We make equity, but not necessarily on the month-to-month income. But I guess I'm not looking for more income. Yeah. I mean, I don't get me wrong. I work for money and I always want to make more money, but it's just not if it's worth. Well, you know, there's a lot to be said about that too because I see a lot of new investors who are only focused on the cash flow. And I have made mistakes in my own portfolio by only focusing on the potential cash flow. So like the reason that if you're looking at a market level, the reason why cash flow might be higher or lower in certain markets, let's say it's higher across the board.

in a certain market is a lot of times because the real estate in that market is not desirable. So yes, you're going to see higher cash flow, higher cash on cash return, higher cap rates in markets like Memphis, Gary, Indiana, Detroit, those areas. And they're going to be lower across the board in a market like a coastal market. Like here, you know, anywhere in Florida is going to be more expensive because it's desirable. The thing that makes cash flow, cash on cash return and cap rate lower is per purchase price. So, you know, I back in the day, I was only about cash flow because I did not have any money. And the appreciation is really what makes people wealthy in real estate. Cash flow is great.

It can pay your bills. But, and I was only focused on that. And so we bought an apartment building in a Midwestern town. And we know that the Midwest does not typically appreciate. Why? Because it's just not that desirable. Great people. My husband's Midwestern, nothing against the Midwest. But, you know, it's not San Diego. It's not Austin. Doesn't have a lot of growth happening because, yeah, not that desirable. So anyway, we bought there and cash flow looks great. I'm a cash flow investor. I'm a buy and hold investor. That's all I care about is that it cash flows forever. Well, what happened was over the course of the last two years of owning it, the apartment building across the street, the guy who owned that let it completely fall apart. It's been condemned by the city. It's full

of drug dealers and crime and all kinds of things that's making its way over to our building, which is now we've got crime in our building. We've got people breaking in, punching holes and walls. and units we just fixed up that we're having to fix up again. So now finally, like, we're over it. We're done with the effort. We could, like, stick it out for a few more years and see. But it's just too much. Like, we're over it.

We don't have time for this anymore. So now we're selling it for a loss by the time we pay our agents. By the time you add in all of the rehab costs that we've done and redone, we're selling at a loss because we bought in a market that was cash flow only, that there was no appreciation. If we bought somewhere that even had a little bit of appreciation, we'd have a little bit of room. You know, even with the rehabs we did,

it's not like you're adding a whole lot of value, you know, maybe a few thousand bucks here and there. So I kind of learned my lesson on the cash flow thing that that can go away. Things outside factors can affect that. And then you're kind of stuck. If you ever need to sell it, you're stuck. You're going to lose money. So cash flow is important,

but you want to make sure that you're buying a desirable piece of real estate too. So if anything happens, you don't end up like I did with this apartment building. Yeah, I love it how we, you know, you don't, I really learn on my own skin best, right, like by actually being in the motion of doing something. And so we bought this three bedroom two bed last year and it cash flows. I mean, it pays for itself. Really where we made the money is we got about $49,000 tax break, right, by the cost segregation. And then it also went up about $40,000 in equity.

Right? So I was like, okay, there's $190,000, $100,000. I'm like, we're good. I'm happy with that. But then now, this pretty much almost the same complex is four bedroom three bat and it rents for almost $600 more because it has one extra bedroom and one extra bathroom. So now that is definite cash flow and I'm going to get the tax segregation and I'm going to get the equity in it hoping just, you know, it's going to go up in equity just as the other one did as a new construction. So we're learning, you know, everybody's learning as a, and I'm sure that you're never going to make that mistake again, right? This is the whole point of the lessons and going through that lesson is that now next time,

you're like, okay, let me just look at the area. Let me know what's going on. I might be willing to make a little bit less monthly, but then not have to have the headache of having to sell in a couple years, potentially at a loss. Well, thank you so much for being here today. What would be your closing statement? If someone would want to be able when they grow up, what do they need to do? So as a real estate agent, I would say to find your niche and don't copying someone else's

niche is not going to work. So if you heard me on this and you're like, oh yeah, I'm going to go sell short. I'm going to be the short term rental person. That's not authentic. You have to find the thing that's authentic to you. That just happened to be what I was doing at the time when I got licensed and that was where the business came easily. So for you, find that place where the business comes easily to you and focus on that as your niche. How about in person? personal relationship chance? In personal relationships, I would see, I was going to recommend a book, but then I couldn't remember the whole title. I think responsibility is key. It's very easy. Just like I was talking about earlier with you're not going to be good at investing if you're more

worried about whose fault it is that the problem is happening than fixing the problem. Same thing with interpersonal relationships, whether that's marriage, business, anything. real estate and business and life really is about relationships. And if you are, if you don't take responsibility for your own actions in any of those places, then you won't be successful at any of them. Love it. Well, thank you so much for your time. I believe that an hour of your time is an hour of your life.

So I appreciate it very much for spending with us. And then to share your knowledge with the world. On Instagram, they can find you at Dosh. short-term shop, correct? Correct. Yes. So the short-term shop is the brand. I actually started a new personal one also. It's the Avery Carl. You can follow me either place. Awesome. And would the website be the short-term shop.com? Yes, the short-term shop.com. If they want to work with you. And one more time, the book that you wrote is short-term rental, long-term wealth. And then soon there's going to be a new one. Did you say February of 25? Yep, February of 25. And then one more

thing I want to share with the world is your podcast, the short-term show. And I'm assuming they can find the podcast on every podcast platform, correct? Every podcast platform and YouTube. Awesome. But thank you so much for being here. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Avery. So nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Every episode, guys, when somebody is talking about a book they wrote or a service or a product, if there is a link to something that they're talking about, it is always included with every single episode. All you need to do is go to goagpreneur.com. Find that specific episode and all the links are in there, including today's episode. Are you enjoying the GoGopreneur podcast?

Subscribe to my channel for more. Thank you. Thanks for joining GoGipreneur. Keep that GoGetter spirit alive. Until next time, go get them.