Everyone is Sleeping on the Hidden Goldmine of Midterm Rental Properties with Jesse Vasquez

[0:00] Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Matthias, an agent and investor. And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist. Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing. Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors. Ready to level up? Let’s do it.

[0:23] Welcome back to the REI Agent. Today, we have a unique and special and fun episode for you. We have Jesse Vasquez. Jesse is in the midterm rental space. He is a mentor to people wanting to get into that space. He’s been doing it for a while, has gotten really good at it. And I was like, hey, man, I have a property that I’ve been thinking about doing this with. You want to do a live, like figuring out if it’ll work? Let’s run some numbers. Let’s crunch some numbers. So basically, he did that. He walks through the process of how he turns a property into or analyzes the market, analyzes a property to see if it would be suitable to get a rough idea for how much you could expect for a monthly income.

[1:09] Talks about strategies for booking these in relation to my local market. But it applies to anybody. So I think it’s a really fun way of hearing, A, first his story of how he kind of got into it and what he loves about the space. But then, B, hearing about how he actually goes through the process of figuring out if midterm rentals could be a good option for a property. So selfishly, I’m stoked and I want to now make this into a midterm rental. He sold me on it. But aside from that, I wanted to talk a little bit more about just kind of the way or the importance of kind of continuing that education process in being a real estate agent. So the more you understand about unique things in real estate, the better you’re going to be able to serve your clients.

[2:01] He gives an example of a couple of people that he mentored that were agents that then started understanding how midterm rentals functioned in their area. And they were able to then build a really good business with investor clients in that kind of niched space that maybe other people didn’t understand in their market. And if you look around your market, there probably are some midterm rentals. People are probably very familiar with short-term rentals and understand what midterm rentals are. But what he gets into is very nuanced as far as how to find a reoccurring business and not just putting it on Airbnb and hoping that people book it or furnished finders. So definitely stay tuned for that.

[2:39] But I wanted to get into that knowledge piece. When I first started to get fascinated into real estate, well, let’s just start from the beginning. I bought a house and had a lot of fun with the agent and had a lot of fun in the process and thought, man, this could be something that I could really see myself getting into. This has a lot of my skill sets. I could be a real estate agent. I could do this. And this was going to be a side hustle that I really wanted to make into a full-time hustle. But we were paying off debt at the time. So we wanted to do anything we could to keep the money as high as possible so we could pay off as much as possible. I wasn’t ready to just jump full into real estate sales, especially since it was in 2014 and the market was a lot slower.

[3:25] So anyway, got into real estate then. And then as I was trying to teach people with my blog to try to get some traction in my sales business, I would get into real estate investing. And that kind of started understanding what the terms were. I would have a blog post about what cash flow is, what cash on cash return is, things like that. And it was a way of, honestly, learning at the time some of those things. Some of them I was familiar with, but others were starting to learn. And as far as from there, I created a local real estate club where we just kind of hung out and had a guest speaker talk. My first idea was just let’s all have a beer at a brewery, hear a seasoned person talk about their experience, and we can ask them questions and we can all learn from it.

[4:19] And then I met another guy that made it a little bit more formal. He was familiar with kind of the traditional model of REI’s real estate investment groups. And so we made it a little more formalized. We had kind of a mix of how we both operated and had some bigger guests come in because of his connections, etc., which was really great. But the reason I’m saying all this is that this fascination was a little bit selfish. Because I wanted to learn about real estate investing. I wanted to invest in real estate and I wanted to build up my portfolio. But it also then started really benefiting my clients. The first people that were in my real estate group were really just people that were also my clients, that were also my friends, that were also in this kind of journey of wanting to build up their rental portfolio.

[5:07] And I think through this process, we have become close or just kind of share that bond over this. And I feel like I have a good… They’re going to ask me questions. I don’t necessarily need to get a paycheck every time they have a question about real estate investing. We keep up. Otherwise, we just have this good relationship, which is good for business, right? And then when I started getting into flipping houses, that kind of stuff, I started understanding houses in a more intimate way. Seeing the guts of it, if you will. And kind of understanding also the cost related to some of the renovations. And I started getting good connections with contractors and kind of seeing the transformation of a house was all just really, really good information that I could help give to my clients as well.

[5:59] Not related to investing, but just going to home inspections. Seeing if you are new, going to every home inspection you can. Even going to other people’s home inspections. If you can ask a really busy agent, hey, do you mind if I go to your home inspection for you? Or can I just tag along if you’re going to be there too? I don’t care. It’s really, really informative, especially if you find a home inspector that is kind of more of an educator that likes to kind of share their knowledge about houses. Sometimes they talk about things that aren’t really things that are going to be on the report, but just the best way to maintain a house. Good tips and tricks. That stuff is really, really informative and good for you to have this base so that you can build up yourself as more and more and more and more and more of an expert.

[6:41] That whenever somebody comes to you with a question, you have a really good experience, really good insight to whatever question they have about their house. Or you can help them see what the house could be if you put in $20,000. That kind of thing. So I think the more knowledge you have, the better. And with this midterm rental angle, I think it’s a really, really interesting piece of the puzzle that you could bring a lot of value to your clients. So this is a really fun episode for me. I hope it’s really fun for everybody else. I think it’s really informative. But if you’re an agent listening to this podcast, I think it is so good to hear all these different avenues. And some of the things you’re going to relate to more when we get into the investing side of things because we do investings and sales episodes.

[7:30] But some of the investing stuff you might feel more drawn to than others. But having a good understanding of it all is super important. And I don’t think a lot of agents focus on the sales. And real estate investing can be just kind of this other world altogether. And I think that understanding them and how you can kind of marry them. This is kind of the bridge between the two worlds, if you will. That’s what one of the goals of this podcast is. It just kind of makes you a more well-rounded professional that can give really, really good advice. If you’re working, if you’re investing in your own marketplace, you’re going to build connections. You’re going to have contractors. You’re going to have that local knowledge.

[8:11] You’re going to really understand what things that are just going to be really helpful for your clients. Okay, I’m done rambling. But without further ado, we have Jesse Vasquez. This is a really fun one. So make sure you leave a beautiful review on my platforms and also Jesse’s because he did a really good job explaining this stuff for our audience.

[8:38] Welcome back to the REI agent. We are here with Jesse Vasquez. Jesse, first of all, did I say your last name right? Vasquez. Yeah, you got it. You got it right. I usually try to ask just to make sure before we go on air. But, you know, we’ll do it here live for you. You can see behind the scenes. You’re good, man. I actually pronounced my last name wrong for like the first 17 years of my life. So if you do, it’s not going to hurt my feelings.

[9:05] Yeah, Jesse, thanks so much for being on here. It’s a lot of fun. We actually have a really kind of a unique show in store for you guys today. I asked Jesse if he’d be willing to. So Jesse is a midterm rental expert. And I actually have been chewing on a property that I’m working on now as to potentially being a going between long term and midterm rental options, thinking that maybe midterm rentals would make it pencil out a little bit better. The property just doesn’t cash flow super well with my projections. So the third option is to sell it. But our city does not allow short term rentals, midterm rentals, 30 days and longer are allowed. So we’re going to get into that a little bit. But before that, Jesse, tell me about, you know, what got you into this space?

[9:55] What got you into real estate in general? Tell me a little bit about your story. Yeah, man. First off, thanks for having me here, man. I really, really appreciate it. Yeah. So basically back in 2015, I worked in healthcare for 17 years. Back started in 2000, I don’t know, four, right around there. In the sales side of healthcare. So business development where basically I would go into hospitals and I would talk to what were considered case managers. And they basically, if somebody fell and broke their hip or had some kind of medical emergency and needed to go home and have nursing or therapy, like a nurse actually go into the house. My job was to go become friends with the case managers who are the nurses that discharge these patients to go home.

[10:42] So as I was doing that one day, I was actually in Modesto, California. And I was in a hospital called Doctors Medical Center. And I was walking down the hall and it was one of these like dimly lit hospital hallways. It’s like an older fluorescent light. You know what I’m talking about? It almost kind of looks like a yellow tint. And I was standing at this nursing station and there was this light that was like flickering up top. And it was just kind of like this surreal scenario. And this woman came up and she had this incredible accent. And she was saying things like, tell me if you know what this accent is. She was saying like, don’t you know? And isn’t he a doll? And do you know what accent that is?

[11:22] Is that like Minnesota, Michigan? Yeah, yeah. There you go. She was from Fargo, North Dakota. And I was instantly drawn to that because everybody says dude and bro and man just like, you know what I say all the time. Even the women and ladies do here in California. And so I was just drawn to her because of her accent. And I talked to her. Her name was Barbara. She’s at that nursing station. And we were just talking and she said, you know, I asked her, what are you doing here with that accent? And she said, I’m on assignment. I’m a travel nurse. And I was like, oh, that’s cool. I was like, well, where are you staying? And she told me she was staying at the crappiest motel. But she didn’t say that.

[11:57] She said, I’m staying at the Motel 6 on 9th Street. And for those of you that are familiar with Modesto, like that is the worst. It’s the worst freaking hotel to stay at in the Central Valley. Prostitutes, drugs, like it’s like it’s bad. And to think about a travel care clinician that’s actually serving the community, staying in a place like that. I’m just like, what is going on? And I asked her, why are you staying there? And she said, because there’s nowhere to stay here. There’s like not really any hotels. And at that time, there really wasn’t. The nicest hotel was a Red Lion Hotel, which was like 250 bucks a night. There’s no way a nurse is going to pay that. So I asked her, that was the next question.

[12:35] I was like, well, how much are you paying for that? She said she’s paying almost $3,000 a month to stay at Motel 6, which puts it right around 100 bucks a night. If you think about like 90 something bucks, right around there. And she said that with fees and all that stuff, she just was like, that’s what it equals out to. And at that time, man, I was able to buy… I wasn’t thinking about real estate. At that time, I realized that I could buy a property for $250,000 and have a $1,300 or $1,400 a month payment, mortgage payment. And I basically thought that was the first thing that I thought. I didn’t think about real estate. So I asked her, what are you doing here? How long are you on assignment?

[13:16] And she just said, there’s not enough housing. And I said, how do I find out? How do I actually connect to get people like you to stay at properties? And she said, go down and talk to… There was a woman down in the HR department. Go talk to her and see if you can connect with her. So I go downstairs. And if you’ve ever been in a hospital before, you have to have a badge to get in everywhere. I didn’t actually work as an official part of the hospital. So I sat there by the HR department door for like 10 minutes before a nurse came in. And it’s Matthias, right? Am I saying it? Matthias. Matthias. Matthias. So Matthias, basically what happened is this nurse put her badge up to a little kiosk kind of thing and beeped in.

[13:56] She opened the door. And it was one of those doors, it’s like a quiet close. You know how like in hospitals, how these doors will open right away, right away. And then they’ll just like kind of start to slowly close so that it’s not allowed. I sat there for a second. I’m like, should I do it? One decision right here. I wouldn’t actually be talking to you if I didn’t do this. And this is what I want everybody to realize, like full circle. Door was getting ready to close. I jammed over to it. I stuck my foot in the door like probably five inches before it shut. And I opened it and I walked in and there was a woman sitting right in front and her name was Misty. I remember she had these big giant letters that said Misty as her name, like people put it on their desks.

[14:34] And I was like, Misty, hey, I just talked to Barbara up on the third floor on the telemetry floor. And she told me that you actually help with housing clinicians. And she’s like, what are you doing in here? And I was like, well, I work in the whole thing. Anyway, we ended up talking and she said that they had so much difficulty finding housing for people that they were actually thinking about renting a house so they can have clinicians stay at these properties or doctors stay on rotation at this property while they were doing these things. In fact, that hospital used to actually own a bunch of doors back in the day and they ended up selling them like, I don’t know, 20 years prior to this whole situation.

[15:12] So that right there opened up the door for me to start to have a contract with an actual hospital with an actual company called AM in Healthcare, which was a recruiting agency for that Barbara, who was a clinician. And I worked in all these different hospitals from LA all the way up to San Francisco, actually worked in the Bay Area a lot too. And I just saw a bunch of barbers everywhere. It started to come to fruition where, you know, when you’re going to go buy a new car, you’re like, I want to get a Tesla or whatever. You start to see them literally everywhere. Yeah, right. Because your brain’s looking for that pattern, that recognition. And that’s exactly what started to happen with me. It’s like I started to see these clinicians everywhere.

[15:46] I started to see because I was looking for it. And I realized the more people that I talked to that they needed housing. And that’s essentially what opened the door for me is that, you know, me putting my foot in the door, going and asking questions. I had no business going in that room at all or asking, you know, Barbara what she was doing and how long she’s on assignment. And that’s what it took. Right after that, I went and bought a property within the next 60 days. I already had a contract. Everybody were like, yeah, you get a house. We’ll work with you. So that was it. I just was off to the races. And that’s how I got started. That’s awesome. I mean, what a great metaphor. You know, you literally were seeing the door, the opportunity closing in front of you.

[16:23] And you decided to act. And the other reason I brought that up too, Matias, is because I think there’s so many little small instances that people have in their life. And it’s just if they didn’t take that one little action of what you think might be super small, which in grand scheme of things is the pivotal moment of where you actually, where you were and then where you moved to. Like, you know, where I’m at now. If that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be here with you. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s kind of beautiful, too, that you probably didn’t have a time to, like, really overthink at that stage. Right. I think there’s definitely, you know, times where people might be able to convince themselves that it’s not smart.

[16:59] I could get arrested. I’m breaking and entering or whatever. Right. If they had more time. But I think, you know, just go ahead and taking that action and trusting you’ll figure it out. I mean, that’s a cool metaphor. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah. And I had no real estate experience. I was just, I saw the opportunity and I was like, okay, cool. How do I house these folks that are coming into these markets? And that’s where it started. Have you done any arbitrage in this journey or do you always buy? Nope. I’ve done plenty of arbitrage. I think it’s a great way to get involved in this type of, you know, environment without committing yourself to, like, you know, 50, 60, 70, $100,000 to buy, you know, a property and things like that.

[17:40] So I think it’s a great way, especially if you get a contract ahead of time, which is pretty cool. If you get a contract like I did, you get a contract, then you get the door. That’s a totally different feeling than going in blind and then just being like, okay, the numbers look like they might work and then we’ll try it. Because as everybody knows, when we go through this today with your property, like running the numbers is the most important thing. And there’s no software or anything out there that actually can show us how much the property can make. We have to, like, do a little bit of research and a little bit of work to figure that out. Yeah. No, that’s why I’m excited. This is a very selfish podcast, guys.

[18:14] I am here just, you know, taking advantage of Jesse’s knowledge. We had somebody else on that I think primarily did arbitrage and he went the same route. He kind of had those contracts lined up and then it was just a matter of, like, connecting the dots. He was facilitating the need, right? But he got into buying as well. And obviously, I think, you know, long-term buying is going to be great. I think, you know, if you have a property that could pencil out with a long-term rental, I mean, I think that’s like a grand slam. That might be a lot harder, especially, I would imagine, in, like, Southern California. That’s probably a very difficult prospect these days, especially. Yeah. And you know what’s crazy?

[19:00] Like, I’ve been talking about this a lot now and I should probably coin this phrase. I see this rise, Matthias, about these modern investors that are coming into real estate where it’s like, interest rates are too high for us to use traditional long-term rental investing techniques, which… Where’s the 1% rule now? Like, honestly, like, anybody out there, please put it in the chat box. Like, let us know where these 1% rule places still exist. And I’m sure they do somewhere in Kansas and maybe in Ohio somewhere and all that stuff. So I’d rather, you know, invest for appreciation. But man, there’s investors now that are looking at businesses that are attached to their actual tangible real estate.

[19:38] So like, you’re seeing a lot of residential care facilities that are turning from single-family homes. You’re seeing the sober living facilities or communities that are coming from single-family homes. You’re seeing midterm rental operators that are now turning their properties into businesses that are attached and they’re helping their communities by connecting with different referral sources. And certain markets. So it’s like, I’ve been seeing this kind of evolution of a modern investor that’s doing short, mid, looking at these different types of modes of, you know, different types of real estate. That necessarily wasn’t mainstream before. But the reason why is because we’re living in a different time.

[20:14] There’s a modern era of investing. And I’m seeing that like happen right now in real time. It’s pretty cool to be a part of it. Yeah, it’s a different time for sure. I think like, you know, when we were looking at two and a half percent interest rates or, you know, whatever crazy rates people were getting, it was, you know, you could kind of like throw a dart onto a map and like, you know, just make the numbers work. It wasn’t, you didn’t have to quite be as creative. But now, I mean, I think we’re really needing to, we have to kind of have a broad knowledge and to really understand, you know, lending products. That’s a huge one, you know, different DSCR loans. I mean, there’s all sorts of different things that you can get into that you may not have had to think about before.

[20:58] But having a broad knowledge of loan products, having a broad knowledge of, you know, how to make a property actually profitable for its unique situation. And, you know, that’s exactly what I’m facing here with this property. You know, two years ago, three years ago, I would have, you know, no question jumped on this property to keep long term. Now, I’m just, you know, not sure. I could reinvest that cash that I would get from selling it into something that would return much better. But then I might not have the appreciation, tax benefits, et cetera, depending on what I invest in. So, it’s, yeah, it’s an interesting time. And I think that, you know, it’s good to know these kind of strategies and to have an idea of how to look into them.

[21:42] And so, yeah, again, thank you for letting me pick your brain. Yeah, you know, this right here, we were talking about right now in 2020, probably two, a lot of investors were at the point where their hard money loans were like coming up. Yeah. And they had to keep stuff and they had to, they couldn’t sell it because they weren’t going to make profit on it. So, all these flippers were like, what the hell am I going to do? A lot of them called me and were just like, Jess, I need to turn this into a midterm rental. I need to figure stuff out with this. I need to, I can’t sell it. I’m going to be selling it at a loss. It’s been sitting on the market. So, we’re seeing, we’re seeing a lot of that.

[22:12] It’s even harder to flip now than it was before in the past. So, you got to get creative. And you’re right. I think the number one thing for anybody, if they’re getting involved with real estate today, you got to know what exit strategies you’re going to be potentially having to do before you even get involved with real estate. So, what we’re going to show today, this is just one piece of an exit strategy of multiple different types of exit strategies that you should have in your tool belt as you’re getting ready to invest in anything. Or if, again, just like you, where you have something, you’re just like, all right, well, what’s my exit going to be? Like, it’s way better to know ahead of time than like, wait to the moment where you’re just like, oh my God, I got to figure this stuff out.

[22:47] It’s been three months already. You know, I paid the mortgage for three months. And I see people that have that happen where it’s like they’re living paycheck to paycheck. And then like, all of a sudden now they’re like having to pay that extra mortgage or that hard money loan that’s continuing to add up. And they’re just like, I don’t know what to do with it. My property’s not selling. All right, well, here’s the next step. Like, it’s better to know it up front. So, that’s where we’re going to be teaching everybody today. Yeah, that’s cool. And yeah, I love it because, you know, when I bought this place, it was, you know, I had three different ideas in my head selling it. Exactly what we just talked about, selling it midterm rental and long-term rental if it could pencil out.

[23:22] But yeah, do you want me to go ahead and share the screen? We can dive into it. Yeah, let’s jump into it. So, I’m not going to give the full address here, but maybe it might. I don’t know if you guys can block that out. But this is going to be in, what is the city? Harrisburg, right? Harrisonburg, Virginia. Harrisonburg, Virginia. Okay, cool. So, long-term rental rates, it’s saying $2,232. Is that about average? About $2,300?

[23:46] That would probably be pushing it a little bit. That’s not too far off. With the finishes that we’re doing, I think that’s possible, but it might be a little bit higher. Oh, here we go. $1,800. So, you see how it says long-term and then long-term, $1,800. So, $1,800 to $2,800. Is that down a little bit more accurate? Yeah. Yeah, $1,800 is probably pretty safe. Okay, cool. So, here’s the thing. I’m using a website called Mashvisor right now. Mashvisor does not… It doesn’t actually give us mid-term rental rates. So, what we’re doing is we’re actually having to go in and see comps. That’s how you do it with the mid-term space. Already, what I’m looking at, you can’t use this as a short-term rental, right?

[24:27] This market doesn’t allow you to short-term rent? Correct. Yeah, it’s not allowed unless it’s a primary residency. Okay. So, even people now, their occupancy is 60% through Airbnb. So, people that are listing their properties for 30 days at a time are 60% occupied. That’s actually really good. Mm-hmm. So, and if you go back and looked at what I just saw earlier, if somebody was to list their property on Airbnb, they’re looking at about $183 a night, or excuse me, yeah, $183 a night, which is going to equal around $3,078, which would be pretty close to your mid-term numbers. Now, this is where we have to go in and do a little bit of the comps. We’re going to be looking at what is the… How many properties are out there?

[25:08] Mm-hmm. See, there’s not very many three bedrooms. You see this right here? So, we’re looking at occupancy rate by rental, but you also see how this, the occupancy rate goes down. You have a three, three bedroom. Goes up, you have a four. It’s highest with the one bedroom. So, this is always something that I pay attention to. This is another thing I pay attention to. Ask me questions as we’re moving along so that you can get a better. Yeah. So, I guess it’s kind of, if it is a three bedroom technically, but lives very well as a one bedroom, is that, do you think that plays into… We talked a little bit. So, what I did with this property was there was kind of a foyer room that didn’t make a lot of sense.

[25:45] It was too big to be a foyer. And I think it’s technically the third bedroom they’re talking about. I created that into a third bedroom, added a closet, added another front door, left the door there just in case somebody wanted to use it as a front door, depending on their purposes. Could make a great office. But I turned one of the bedrooms into… I added a huge walk-in closet. It’s right across from the one bathroom. Big enough for a king size bed. And just, it’s set up really well to be a great one bedroom kind of house with a guest room and an office. Okay. So, technically, it’s a three one, but it’s set up to be a one bedroom. But let’s dive into that for a minute. So, just for everybody listening out there, the more bedrooms you have, the higher your income is going to be.

[26:32] That’s just usually how it is. If one bedroom, this is what we’re going to look at here. Rental size distribution. You see how there’s a lot of studios and a lot of one bedrooms? Yeah. You see that right here? Yeah. There’s only 38 listings in this market. Like, that’s for me is like, I would dominate a market that had only 38 listings. So, like, when I look at this, I’m just like, I would own this all day. I do have another clarifying question, if I’m not going to interrupt. This would show all the Airbnbs listed, right? Mm-hmm. Because some of them will be like apartments of people’s houses. That’s allowed. That can be a short-term rental. So, I don’t know a ton of midterms that are out there, honestly.

[27:12] Those might be mostly that kind of scenario where it’s like two bedrooms in their basement that you’re renting out. Yeah. See, I’m looking at rental stats right now. Maybe you could tell me if I’m wrong on here, but now it’s showing me a totally different thing about, like, long-term rentals. It’s showing about $1,300 to $1,400 for long-term rentals. And again, this is just MASH Visor. It’s not like rent-to-view or anything. So, you have to go back and look at that. So, this is where we go in and we do the comps. The average property that you have that’s in the 80th percentile or higher, this is what I’m looking at. When I get into a market, I’m going to have one of the better design properties.

[27:46] Yeah. So, I’m looking at, I want to be in the 90th to 95th percentile. Okay. I’m going to add it 10 times. I can do that. So, with that alone, that says it’s going to put us around 4K. Now, this is where we have to go in and do a lot of work. What I love about MASH Visor, and keep in mind for everybody out there that’s listening to this, MASH Visor is expensive as heck. It is not cheap. But it allows me to see the entire year of what people are earning. You see that here, Matthias, where it shows our entire year of a property. So, I’m going to want to look for a three-bedroom, two-bath. And as you saw earlier, there’s not a whole lot of them. But we’ll take a look. So, this is saying somewhere downtown.

[28:21] We’ll see what size bedroom this is. This is a two-bedroom, three-bath. But what we’re trying to do here is we’re trying to find something that, A, is going to look like an actual comp. Something that’s comparable to what our units are going to look like after they’re refurbished. But the design, this is a pretty clean little design. This person did in this property right here. It looks like it’s downtown. It’s got a cute little backyard area. And you can see that. I know that property, yeah. You know this property? Yeah. Okay. So, this property alone right here, and we’re going to be calling out the numbers of whoever owns this. So, hopefully, they’re not listening here. And if they are, it’s all good.

[28:57] But yeah. So, we can see already what this, what was that property called? Spacious Downtown Home. All right. Spacious Downtown Home. Okay. So, we can see right here what they’re earning per month. It’s a little bit small on my screen. So, what I would do normally is that I’d put all these numbers in here. So, it goes from February of 2024 all the way up to January of 2025. Their numbers are, if we were to average these out, it probably would put us, the highest month is $3,180, which was last month in December. Okay. Yeah. And the lowest month earnings were about $2,300 or excuse me, $2,200 back in July, which isn’t very much money. I mean, I guess that is, it could be all right. But anyway, if we average these things out, it’d probably be right around about $2,800, $2,900 a month, I would assume.

[29:48] So, this one right here, we’re going to be looking for three comps that are same and similar. I would actually take this one, even though it is only a two-bedroom. It’s got three beds, it sleeps six guests, it’s got one bath. So, this is pretty comparable to where you’re at. But if you look, guest favorite, it’s 4.99 reviews. I’m trying to figure out why they are able to short-term rent in this place. It’s a duplex. Oh, is that a duplex? They live, I think they live in the half, other half, I would imagine. Dude, that’s pretty good. That’s some pretty good money for a duplex in there. Right. Yeah. It’s a cool property. It’s a nice one. Got you. Okay, here’s another one. This one is doing over $4,000.

[30:25] So, this is a three-bedroom right here. And this is a guest suite. It’s exactly what you’re talking about. The entire guest suite, three-bedroom. You’re right. It’s hosted by David. Another set of good reviews. The place looks pretty cool. It has a serene backyard, for those of you that cannot see it. Yeah. It looks a little dark inside. This is cluttered for me. I would not want you here. I agree. It just looks like grandma’s place. It’s just… The outside’s cool. The serene area. But the inside just looks… Just for everybody watching, it kind of… Or listening, it looks like a vintage… Not a cool vintage. Like a 1930s dark kind of setup. It’s also not professional photography. So, that doesn’t give it any favors.

[31:11] Like, they’re not using a flash. Or they don’t have HDR. It’s not… Exactly. Yeah. But let’s go back and look at how crazy these numbers are on this place. So, Friendly City Garden Sanctuary, three-bedroom. Can you see these numbers, dude? Not really. Not really? Okay. We’re looking at $2,400 a month for February, all the way up to $3,500 a month in October. And keep in mind, these are people… This is somebody renting part of their property, which is pretty awesome to think about. So, I mean, if we were to average these properties out, I mean, these numbers… And again, this would be just ballparking it. You’re probably looking at $2,700, $2,800 a month for this place. So, I would take that as a comp, too.

[31:51] Sure. So, we’ll take those two. And let’s find one more that is… That we can say is a comp. Here’s another two-bedroom. Let’s see if we can find a three.

[32:03] You know this market pretty well? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s not a huge market, so… You know this place? There’s even an address right here.

[32:14] That one I’m not familiar with, no. Got you. Okay. But I’m also wondering if that is maybe technically in the county as opposed to in the city. Got you. Yeah. It could be. It could be allowed to. Yeah, regulations. I’m going to put this one aside right now. And then let’s go back and see if we can find one more that might be… Anything that says downtown definitely is… It’s a similar area to where mine is. Okay. This one right here. Two-bedroom, two-bath… Or one-and-a-half bath. Hosted by Sarah. That’s probably a good comp. Yeah. Yeah. This one right here. This kind of looks like it still has that old-school look to it, but I like how clean… They’re not professional photos. This is…

[32:59] This could be way better. But it’s cool. That would be a good comp. Yeah. You think so? Yeah. We have an older house that we’re… It’s an older house that would have some of that old charm. Yeah. I love this right here. Yeah. That’s great. Let’s go look at this. So just for reference, this is like basically a 19… What would you say, Matias? Like a 1940s home? Yeah. Something like that. Original hardwood floors, probably redone kitchen, countertops are… What is that stuff called? Is that a butcher block? It looks like a butcher block. Yeah. Yeah. So it looks like modern and kind of boho and kind of cool looking. You know, like people like that kind of stuff now. So we’ll go back and we’ll use this one as a historic home.

[33:39] And I’m wondering if that is something that they live in and then actually leave when they rent it out. That could be, man. I mean, it looks like… That’s something some people do. It looks like… You’re probably right. It looks like somebody definitely lives here. I think it does. But again, again, there’s no professional photography, none of that stuff. Historic downtown home. Let’s find this again on here. Where the heck was that? Historic downtown. Okay. Here we go. All right. This one right here is freaking killing it, dude. Look at this. $5,800. $5,600. This is rented. This is what I would consider midterm rental numbers. Huh. You see how they’re consistent? 50, 58… Or excuse me. 5,600.

[34:18] 5,600. 6,000. 6,000. 6,000. 5,600. 6,200. 6,000. 5,800. This property right here is doing over $5,500 a month. That’s… Okay. That’s blowing my mind more because I wonder if they have an apartment somewhere on the property that they live in because to skirt the rules, man, that… This could not look like there’s… I don’t know, man. Unless this back unit back here or something. And even then, dude, like… I don’t know. The front of this place looks kind of busted up. But the inside looks… Like it looks nice inside. They don’t lead with the front shot. Nothing at all. But when you go inside, it has that vintage like charm that we’re talking about right now. I think is really cool with homes.

[35:01] So this right here, dude, this would be a comp that I’d be like, okay, I love this. We’re going to try to get there. Yeah. $5,600 a month. And we go back and we look at the place that was the five minutes to shops downtown. That was still around, what would we say, around $3,000. So that’s a big disparity between $3,000 and $5,600. I still think this might be the better comp that you have. But for the sake of this, we’re just going to say, this place, if you were to list it, because again, this is a two-bedroom, two-bath, sleeps only three guests. That’s freaking wild. They must live in one of the rooms then. That must be what it is. That’s crazy. I don’t think so, man. Century located home, less than five minutes downtown, 15 to 20-minute walk to JMU.

[35:46] This home features two bedrooms, one and a half baths, gorgeous indoor-outdoor spaces, fully stocked kitchen, absolutely no pet smoking parties on premises. I don’t think so, man. Does it have like an entire house? Don’t they often say that if it’s like the entire house? Yeah, it should. Somewhere. Yeah, entire home right here. I’m confused then. Yeah. Oh, okay. Anyway. Maybe they got it listed anyway. And they’ve been listing, they’ve been, they’ve had this for a while now, a couple of years. So I would look at this, again, regardless of the availability is on here.

[36:22] I mean, again, they could be doing the, if it’s a midterm, that would be another possibility, right? Yeah. And that’s where I’d be leaning right now. The only reason why I’m leaning that way is because if we go back and look at the yearly numbers, they’re so consistent. 56, 58, 58, 60, 6,000. You’re right. 56,000. When you see random numbers that skew real hard or then you’ll have a zero right there. Yeah. When I see zeros in months, that means that they’re doing exactly what you just said. Maybe living in it and then renting it out. Look at this. Renting it out. Living in the home during that time. So that could be what’s happening with this historic downtown home is that July they jammed out.

[36:58] September they jammed out. November they jammed out. Or the other option of that is that they’re renting it direct to a person rather than through Airbnb. And again, this is the problem with there’s no software out right now that can actually show us how much people are renting and all that stuff. So that’s what I’m doing right now. And after we looked at this, if we want to even be conservative and put all those three things together, I would say, this house, if you were to midterm rent it, even with 60% occupancy, you’re probably able to rent for $3,500 a month. And that’s us being generous. Okay. And the numbers at $3,000 a month become a lot more appealing to me. So I love the property, the location.

[37:37] And I was basically trying to justify a way to keep it. And so even $2,200, $2,500 a month, I’m getting a lot more interested. So you tell me $3,000 to $3,500, that makes it a lot better for sure. Yeah. Let’s go in and look at Furnish Finder 2 and see what is going on there. Harrison Berg. Yeah. Virginia. Virginia. There we go. All right. Cool. We’re going to check in. Let’s go out some months. Let’s say the first, our budget, we’re going to want to go, let’s just say $2,000. Let’s see what we got coming up here. So this is what else I do. I’ll go on Furnish Finder and look to see what, see how it shows us a map right here? Yeah. So I’ll go in here and look at what properties are same and similar on these markets.

[38:35] We’re just doing a budget from $500 to $2,000. I would actually stretch this out a little bit. Let’s just go to $5,000 like we saw with the other place. Maybe we’ll see it on here. What did we say? Traditional rent is in there about $1,700. Is that still? I would say $1,800. Yeah. $1,800 would be pretty. Well, let’s just go $1,800. The cheaper ones you’re seeing are probably townhouses that are like $1,300, $1,400, kind of not renovated. Got you. So we’re going back to search again. Where are you located on this map here? If you were to say, all right, Jess, your place or my place is. Right around where you’re up a little bit to the left. Where are that $3,000? Is that $3,000? Yeah. Roughly around there.

[39:11] Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. So these would be perfect components. So we’re going to go to this guy. A little bit further north, but that’s pretty close. Yeah. So both of these places are right around $3,000. So this is what we’re going to do too, exactly like what we did a minute ago. This place looks really cool. That’s cool. Yeah. $3,000 a month. This place looks really appealing from the outside for those of you that are got an orange door. It’s kind of like that new school plank siding. It’s gray with an orange door. So it really pops. This place looks cool. I would actually like to stay at this place. Yeah. That’s a really nice one. How big was it? $3,000. It doesn’t tell us. $1,000 square feet.

[39:49] How much is it? $1,000? Yeah. That’s what it says. It’s pretty tiny. That’s pretty small then. Yours is what? How many square feet is your plate? It says, the tax record says around $1,000, but I’m pretty sure it’s bigger. Or at least I saw that on whatever the records just showed. Got it. And what we’re doing right now, you guys, for everybody watching or listening to this, we’re on Furnish Finder. We’re just trying to find, again, we’re comping out a same and similar property, exact same thing. We’re verifying numbers from Mashvisor, which shows us exactly what these short-term rentals are doing in that market. Then we’re going back to Furnish Finder to see what people have them listed for.

[40:25] So that place that we just looked at is $3,000 a month, which is exactly what we talked about the numbers earlier. Yeah. Right. Here’s another place for $3,500. It seems to be really close to where your property’s at. Yeah. This place looks pretty cool. This is a two-bedroom. Oh, I have that one. Yeah. Two and a half bath. Four guests. This is 3,200 square feet. So it’s a pretty big-ass two-bedroom. Is that an entire house? It’s an entire house. Yeah. Only two bedrooms for that one? I remember when that one’s for sale. Really? That’s crazy. Okay. Yeah. Two-bedroom. Yeah. Two-bedroom, two-bath. This place looks cool. They did a really… That looks cool. That looks super dope. So for those of you that are listening to this, it’s a vintage house that has its complete vintage charm, and they just kind of cleaned it up a lot.

[41:09] It’s got a really cool design in it. In the kitchen, that’s really cool. Yeah. The kitchen looks like it was redone. It looks like it has quartz countertops. It looks like they did a pretty cool job with this house. So then we’re looking at… It still has… Is that wallpaper? It is. Yeah. It is. Yeah. I think it’s updated wallpaper though. Yeah. It doesn’t have that charm to it. It’s kind of like a Joanna Gaines-ish style. But this place right here is another comp. Like, you know, I would look at it and be like, okay, we looked at the numbers here. We saw… We looked on Mashvisor. We can now justify that our property at a 3,200 coming in at something similar to what this is going to look like is going to put us in that category of the 3,000 a month.

[41:51] That alone right there, that gives me enough confidence to be like, okay, cool. I feel comfortable with that. So now what I do, what I’ll also do, what’s in this market that’s favorable? Tell me about this market right here so we can talk about it a little bit. Absolutely. So we… Biggest driver of the whole economy is James Madison University. So we have a university that is close to downtown, which this property is. So we would be biking distance, that kind of stuff from it. I mean, you could walk, but it’s a little bit further depending where you’re going, which makes the downtown area be vibrant as well with restaurants and bars because of the students. And we have a unique downtown where they really focus in on local stuff and they don’t have chains so that it becomes like organically really good to be able to make it.

[42:44] All I have to say is that’s where we’re close to and that’s helpful. We also have… We have Sentara Hospital that is not downtown anymore. It’s a little bit further out, but a lot of nurses, traveling nurses and stuff could be coming from that hospital. We have a few plants. We have Walmart Distribution Center. We have Merck and we have Coors Plant. There are some other bigger industry stuff as well around, but those are kind of the bigger players. Got it. And the reason why I’m asking you that is because just like traditional long-term renting, that’s exactly what we’re going to be looking for in a market that’s growing, that has good schools, that has a hospital. And another thing about hospitals is you’ll have level one, level two hospitals, which are like your ER, Grey’s Anatomy kind of stuff where you have all these surgeons that can come in, a brain surgeon that’s available right away.

[43:39] And I’m thinking this is probably a little bit more rural. We have a stage three, stage four, stage five hospital, which are, excuse me, level three, level four, level five. They’re more of like a more rural type hospitals, but you’ll still have flying in nurses and travel nurses that will come to these markets. But that’s where we have to like, we have to do what I did, right? Either you can go in there yourself and knock on the HR department door and say, hey, do you guys have clinicians that are coming in here? Or what you do is you start just calling the hospital and saying, hey, I actually have housing for travel clinicians. Can you tell me what agency you guys are working with right now that is recruiting these types of folks to this market?

[44:13] So then I would go on LinkedIn and I would message those companies. If they’re like AMN Healthcare is who we work with, I’d go on LinkedIn. I would type in recruiter. I would type in Virginia. I would start to message the people or even more importantly, I would find out who the HR representative is in that hospital and then just look them up on LinkedIn or call them. Okay. I have available housing. The same play that I did, right? How I went in and did all, you could do that on the phone or you could go in in person. I believe going in in person, the old school way is a little bit better. But now at least we get a good real life understanding. What’s your mortgage on this place right now? There is none.

[44:48] Currently, I would be having to do a refinance. A refi. Okay, cool. So I mean, even at that, if you’re able to do 3K a month and you refi on that, hopefully your payment’s, I don’t know, 2,000 bucks or something like that? I’d probably be around 16, maybe even less if you’re just looking at the, not the vacancy and now the other things are supposed to factor in. No brainer for me then. Yeah. So I would be looking at this like, okay, cool. Well, here’s the other part of this where the problem starts to come in. You got to furnish these properties too. I think people don’t realize like once you buy these things, you have to furnish them. So you can go, there’s a couple different ways. I always usually average $10 a square foot for a property.

[45:31] So if you got a thousand square feet, you’re $10 a square foot, that’s going to put you at $10,000 to furnish that property. So you’re going to add that into your costs, right? You’re going to add that into your overall expenses. But even then, if I’m making $1,000 a month cashflow from one freaking door, which is totally possible, I think, maybe even more than that with this property, you’re going to make that back in 10 months. But in the first year, you’re already in the positive when it comes to that. So for me, my brain, again, does it cover these three things? Do I have job growth? Do I have assets that are community-based that are going to be bringing people in, which is a hospital, education, a college, those types of things?

[46:12] Is there job growth or any type of infrastructure that’s happening in this market where there’s people that are coming from outside the market to my specific city? Do we have a lot of hotels in my market? Do we have… How often are they occupied? Those are things I’d be looking at. The people that are staying in those hotels right now, those are your potential clients. And I do crazy stuff like this, Mateus. I’ll go drive by those extended stay hotels and take a picture of the work trucks that are out there. And I’ll call and say, hey, I saw a work truck out there. Are you guys on assignment? How long are you staying at these properties? Would you be willing to… If I’m willing to save you thousands of dollars a month, would you be willing to work with me?

[46:48] And then I’ll start talking to them about… I’ll find out about… Real quick story on this. There was a Dave & Buster that was being built in my market. Trucks were parked out front. And this was from the ground up. Louisiana trucks, Louisiana plates. I called the company and I said, hey, I see there’s a work truck out. I know that they’re building in Dave & Buster’s here. Do you mind telling me a little bit more about where your folks are staying? And the lady on the other end of the line, her name was Pam. She was like, oh, this is kind of weird for you calling me. And I’m just like, yeah, I know it’s weird, but this is what I do. I actually reached out to get their employees to save money and stay in a property that might be closer to the job site.

[47:23] In fact, my property is 0.2 miles away from the job site. I have a garage. I see there’s work trucks. There’s a space in the backyard where they can park through an alleyway in the back. So the trucks would be safe. And I started asking her, where are your guys staying? There was five engineers. They were staying in each in their own rooms at a Holiday Inn Express in my market. It was $165 a night for each one of those guys to stay, which equaled almost $200 a night. You know, $200 a night times five, that’s $1,000 a day times 30. That’s $30,000. They were actually paying $26,000, $25,000 with the discount. And I was like, I would not mind renting my five bedroom house to you guys. Three of the guys are going to have bathrooms.

[48:01] The two of your least favorite guys are going to have to go to the hallway down at the end of the hall and share that bathroom. But I’d be willing to rent this to you guys for 10K. And she was just like, sat there quiet on the phone. And she’s like, well, let me get back to you. I’m going to reach out to the guys. She wanted to see if they were all willing to stay in the place. We ended up getting that place booked for three months, saving that company $20,000 every month. That’s crazy to think about. But again, this is like the outside of the box, modern investor. That’s got more of a hustler mentality. I’m going to go find these clients rather than list on Airbnb and wait for somebody to book.

[48:40] And that’s how you get these relationships starting to build. You start to think differently in different ways. How can I actually get these clients to come work with me? Frito-Lay. We have those in my market. There’s these folks that come work on conveyor belts. They come from all over the US. Guess what? They’re in these markets for 30, 60 days at a time. I connected with Frito-Lay, found out about those guys that come and they actually work on the conveyor belts. They stay there usually for 45 days at a time while they’re working on new stuff. We house them and we’re charging 2x long-term rental rates. So again, there’s ways to make things happen. A lot of us have a lot of opportunities in our own backyard.

[49:14] Yeah. After this conversation and this podcast, people are able to see things in a different light. And there is ways to actually be a little operator, but still do corporate housing, which is exactly what a small operator like myself is doing and many other people across the US. They’re connecting with companies and doing these exact same things right now in their own markets, getting higher rents, but they’re just doing things a little bit different. I think again, in that framework of just how we talked about the car earlier, right? When you start to see things, you start to see that car because you want to buy it. After this conversation, after this podcast, I hope people start to frame the way they look at their markets, what the actual potential is there.

[49:52] And most of the time, people aren’t paying attention to this stuff. And that’s where I believe, like I said earlier, when I looked at this market and there’s only 38 listings in there, I’m just like, oh my God, I would dominate this market. Because I know that I’d be able to come in there with a different mindset. I’m going to be the 1% that comes in thinking like a business, not just listing on a platform. And that’s where you start to really start to build that foundation of being a business owner, not just an employee of Brian Chesky who lists their property on Airbnb and waits for booking. I’m actually creating my own house on my own land by going after these companies rather than waiting for somebody to book.

[50:25] And Airbnb is great because it gives you the ability to reach mass amount of people, but it’s just a marketing platform that allows you to book too. And we’re paying fees for that. So if you could do that on your own without having to necessarily rely on Airbnb solely and you’re able to create your own book of business, that puts you in a totally different class of investing in my mindset.

[50:47] I don’t, man, I’m over here speechless. I’ve got like a million ideas. We have a Buc-ee’s coming in right now. We have, you know, I know of the university put millions and millions and millions of dollars into infrastructure here recently. So we had a ton of out-of-state construction people coming through. There are definitely opportunities like you’re talking about. That’s really, really fun. I, I guess one really other quick question, because now I’m sold is where do you buy your furniture? Yeah. Furniture. Do you have an Ikea anywhere nearby? It’s like two hours from me. Okay. Don’t go there. So I was going to say, don’t, don’t buy anything from Ikea because you’ll buy it like four times.

[51:29] I, I like Wayfair, man. It gives you reviews. A lot of people buy stuff off there. They source stuff from different places. Um, I even like, if I was just starting right now in this market, I’d be going on a Facebook marketplace and looking for quality staple pieces like sofas, um, pretenzas, um, stuff that you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on. It’s still like really good quality. Um, I would, you know, Ikea is a great place to buy like silverware and essentials that the properties need. Um, but yeah, I would go on Wayfair. I’d be, you know, sourcing on those kinds of things. I’d be looking at, um, you know, Facebook marketplace or offer up or something like that for staple pieces and I’d be focusing really on the core spaces where people are going to be living.

[52:07] So living room and bedrooms, like really good beds, really cool living spaces, um, living room, a quality couch that actually feels good. Not necessarily doesn’t have to look the best, but actually is like a comfy couch. Sure. A lot of these Airbnbs like we’ll have really cool looking couches. In fact, the ones that we were looking at earlier, that Brown couch, uh, I have, I have this, it’s right behind me right there. Uh, it looks really freaking cool, but it’s not comfortable. So, um, and that’s the difference is that people are living in these properties. So they need to feel that comfort that you would have in your own home and not necessarily just like the super aesthetic house. And the cool thing about midterm rentals too, is you don’t have to like go crazy with pickle ball courts and freaking saunas and cold plungers and all this stuff that people are doing now to make money on the short-term side.

[52:49] Yeah. You just have a place, you have to have a place that looks like this. It’s comfortable. It’s inviting. Um, that has a full stock kitchen that has everything in it because people are going to be cooking and living in this property as if they were actually living there cause they are. Right. And, um, yeah, so it’s just different. You know what I mean? It’s just a totally different, uh, totally different type of mentality. This looks like a cool little town, man. Yeah. We, I, we like it. And I think that’s actually one of our major growth areas too, or one of a focus is people that come here for the university and don’t leave. Um, because they, they, it’s a smaller town, it’s near mountains.

[53:22] It’s, it’s not, it doesn’t have the hustle and bustle, the traffic that you experienced. Then we have really cool things like the, from the university, like sporting theater. Um, and then we have a really vibrant downtown with amazing, uh, food culture breweries, that kind of stuff. So I think that’s one of the areas where, where we definitely get some of the growth is just people kind of fall in love with, with the life of the year. Yeah. One of the reasons I haven’t left. Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, it looks like it, what’s the average price point of a property there? Uh, we’re around three 50 with the median sales income. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay, cool. That’s, that’s, uh, not too bad. We could get a little bit more depending on where and how big, of course.

[54:02] Yeah. So again, going back and looking at these numbers right here, I mean, there’s a place doing $10,000 a month in, in this market. We’ll look at this for, for, uh, for the heck of it. Um, yeah, this place is doing 10 K a month right now. Harrisonburg, Virginia. Yeah. 10 K a month, man. I’m trying to figure out where that is. And this is not even that cool. Like this is really bad. Oh my goodness. That’s bright colors. If people are listening, I definitely recommend guys go to YouTube or Spotify. You’ll see the video. Uh, yeah. Watch the video on this. This is in the share. What does that say? How do you say that? Pronounce it. You know, this market Valley. Yeah. You know that place? Yeah.

[54:43] I mean, Shenandoah Valley is, is where we’re at. You know, uh, John Denver saying a little bit about it. The river. Uh, it’s some people argue that, uh, he, West Virginia was not West Virginia, but Western Virginia. Cause really Shenandoah river is all where we’re at. Dude. Look at these numbers of this place. This is insane. 10,000, 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 in May of 2024. Um, that property is just insane on fire. I don’t understand why we’re going to have Jesse come buy houses here. I would be arbitraging a house out there. Just giving a year to see what happens, um, and see if it ends up. That’s crazy. That property is probably like 450 into probably not up to 600 or anything, but it’s probably a minimum of 450 if it was on the market.

[55:36] Yeah. They’re doing short. They’re short term renting this. Look, $530 for two nights. I, I’m, I’m, I’m curious about the exact location. Uh, if it is actually in the city, I don’t recognize the street. Yeah. It’s, um, but, um, people often say that one mile from the heart of downtown. Uh, it looks like it might be getting away with this. I wonder if that’s what it is. That people are just not getting reported or something. It could be man. Um, yeah, no smoking. 25 years old, the book photo ID upon check-in. Yeah. They’re super strict about like people staying here. So maybe the neighbors, they don’t want neighbors to get pissed off. And that’s typically what happens. Yeah. That’s where they’re reported.

[56:20] Yeah. Uh, family trips to James Madison university. So that’s who they’re catering to. It looks like is families coming into the university out there. That’s a huge for the, for a short term rental is huge because, uh, yeah, there’s, you know, there’s always parents weekends, that kind of stuff where, where we’re going to have people coming in to see graduation to homecoming, you know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I, I dude, 10 K. Are you serious? I’m going to, I’m looking at this now. I’m going to be black. Hey, I’m a realtor, so I can hook you up. Dude, this right here, like this is where I think realtors, uh, if you learn how to do this and now you connect with investors and you’re like, this is, I have a student that her name is Rebecca Lynn.

[56:58] She was an agent or still is an agent. And I, I, she came into the, to, to work with me in like 2021, 2022, um, trying to work with real estate. She was having a good year, 2021, 2022, she started sucking, 2023, she really sucked. Then she started actually doing running numbers and kind of doing this whole stuff. She started working with an investor clients and totally like changed her, her entire thing. So, um, yeah, I think there’s a lot of, a lot to learn with investors or excuse me, agents that learn how to run these numbers and actually can help their clients find cash flowing properties in certain markets. Man, there’s a lot to do there. That’s, that’s what we’re all about here, man. We’re, we’re kind of bridging the gap between, uh, real estate sales agents and, uh, investors.

[57:41] And, uh, yeah, you’re totally right. I, I, you know, bread and butter for, I’m not bread and butter, but I had a pretty big, uh, short-term rental. We have a, we have a resort close by. So there’s like a really hot spot for, for, you know, typical Airbnbs. Um, but yeah, dude, this has been awesome. I, this has been super fascinating. I think, uh, I’m glad I had the idea. I’m super, super thankful that you were agreeable to actually show us your process. Cause this, this has been really interesting. Yeah. Yeah, man. No problem. Again, I think it’s one thing to do it. It’s another thing to consistently do it and then get results from it. But like, I’ve done this long enough where I can piggyback off of different things and kind of get a good understanding.

[58:19] Cause that’s what you really need to have. And then you got to put your chips in the table. But again, what are three things that are most important? Is it going to work as a longterm rental? If it doesn’t work as a longterm rental, am I going to want to take a property that potentially I might have to fall back to that? That’s the thing I think. I personally would be okay. Um, investing two or $300 a month on something that was a longterm. Some people can’t do that. Right. Um, short term, you can’t do that. So that’s already out the window. Renting by the room. That’s another exit strategy. We look at how much a rental by the room costs, um, midterm rentals. Like, you know, that’s another exit strategy.

[58:52] So again, I think it’s so important to have these different, um, tools in the toolbox as you’re connecting and trying to buy a property and seeing where you can go, where you can move things around. If I need to fall back to traditional lending or traditional, uh, longterm, is it going to work for me? And again, for most people with even 20% down, it doesn’t necessarily always work unless you get a killer deer or a burr or something like that. That’s what this is. It’s a burr. Uh, and, and, and so that, that helps, that helps a lot. Cause I, I wouldn’t be able to buy this property, uh, market value, especially what we put into it and make it make a lot of sense probably, but this is a burr. So I have a little bit more flexibility.

[59:26] Uh, and to, when we’re talking about exit strategies to, uh, one of my fallbacks is like, if this falls on its face and I have this furnished house now, I spent 10 K on furniture. Well, now I just invested in my staging, you know, for, for listings and stuff going forward. Um, if I can’t get rid of it or whatever. But, uh, so that’s, that’s been my mindset. And, uh, if, if I were to explore this route and I, I mean, you’re kind of convincing me to do it. Yeah. Well, I think again, it’s like, what I would be doing is reaching out to some of the people that are in the markets that are actually doing it too. But again, just looking at that from just this quick general, uh, I feel like it’s a pretty strong market.

[1:00:04] Like it’ll probably do well. Um, you have 30 people that you’re competing with there. Um, dude, I think for me, it’s just a no brainer. And then you just said you’re an agent. I didn’t realize that until now, which obviously the podcast represents that. Um, but go to staging companies and say, Hey, what’s been, what do you guys have from last year that you’re going to get rid of? Like I’ll buy that stuff from you. Go check it out. You can actually, now you can actually stage your house for instead of $10 a square foot, it’s probably like five, you know, now you’re actually coming in for $5,000. You’re testing the market. You’re, you’re, you’re dipping your toe in, you’re seeing if it’s going to work or not.

[1:00:35] And then you’re actually like, you know, you can invest a little bit more later on once you start to see the return come through. But, um, that’s another little hack that you could do. That’s cool. Um, you know, just connect with the staging company that might have some stuff that’s left over that usually will work. Yeah, man, this is, this has been super fascinating. I, yeah, thank you so much. Uh, let’s get quickly into that book question. I mean, I feel like there’s so many more questions we could have about, about this process and I’m all fired up, but, um, for the sake of time, I know you’re a busy person. Um, what is your favorite book, uh, or a fundamental book that you’ve read? Do you think everybody should read or just one that you’re really currently enjoying?

[1:01:12] Um, I think one of my favorite books of all time is probably Atomic Habits by James Clear. Um, it’s pretty practical advice on, you know, forming habits. And, you know, I think those habits that people have on a daily basis are what actually going, it’s going to allow you to propel and move forward. Like we’re just talking about midterm rentals. If you created a habit of running numbers literally every day for yourself or other people for random, like those are habits that are going to allow you to, um, have exponential growth in the specific professional field that you’re wanting to get into. So I think habits are so important, man. So for me, Atomic Habits, it’s, um, it’s not too long to read.

[1:01:46] Download it on Spotify, check it out. Yeah. For anybody out there. It’s got a lot of different strategies in it. I think it’s, it’s good too. And one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is, uh, how everybody’s a little bit different with how they actually set goals or track or whatever. They have different personalities. They have different things they bring to the table and you kind of got to figure out what works well for you. But one of the things I like about Atomic Habits is it kind of outlines different strategies, um, and that you can kind of apply. Um, it’s not necessarily, and maybe I’m not remembering it perfectly. Right. But I don’t feel like it’s like a, you know, like this is a strict formula that only like, you know, step one, two, three, four, five, six will work and no other way around it.

[1:02:23] It’s like strategies to make your, your habits more atomic or automatic. And, and, and, yeah. You know, one more, can I give one more? Cause this one actually knows I’m thinking about it. But this, this book really reshaped the way I thought about business. It’s called the E-Myth. It’s an older book. It’s by a guy named, um, I think Michael Gerber. Um, check it out. I think they redid it. It’s called E-Myth, uh, revisited now. But basically he talks about removing yourself from your day-to-day operational aspects and only doing the things you’re uniquely qualified to do. Um, kind of like Dan Martell’s buy back your time principle, which would, you know, if you guys are familiar with Dan Martell, uh, but the E-Myth was kind of like that first book that really, uh, had that mindset of like, it talks about a baker.

[1:03:05] And this woman used to go in at like 4am, bake bread for the day. She would leave at freaking seven, eight o’clock at night, putting all these hours into her, you know, into her business. Um, and didn’t realize like she just needed to invest into people so that she can, you know, get more time back. But that alone, that, that, that book really helped me understand a little bit more on business, especially if you’re doing stuff on your own. It’s like, it feels daunting to hire somebody because you think you could do it better. And that’s one of the most difficult things it was for me to hire somebody and like relinquish control to somebody else. Um, I still struggle with it, but I think it’s a powerful book.

[1:03:38] If you are, if there’s people out there that are looking to, um, grow or scale or do more than they’re doing now, or, you know, get some help. I think it’s an important book to check out for sure. I agree completely. It is, is definitely a trap for a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of real estate agents. Um, definitely they might be in a market or an air and a, yeah, they might just be a solo agent that thinks they have to do everything and have to be good at everything. And they’re not going to be good at everything. They’re going to have strengths. And so play into your strengths. Um, I love it. Um, cool. Now, if people are interested, you mentioned, uh, you, you coach, is that correct? Yeah, I have a mentorship.

[1:04:12] I don’t call myself a coach. Yeah. Coaches are way too like a rigid. I’m just, I feel like more of a mentor. I’m more of like, Hey, this is, this is how we do stuff. This is how we put things together. Um, yeah, you can check me out. Um, hopefully, is it cool if I give my Instagrams? Okay, cool. Everything. Yeah. Whatever you want. Yeah. You guys can find me at, um, on Instagram at the real Jesse Vasquez. Cause I’m Hispanic and there’s like a billion other Jesse Vasquez is. So I had to be the real one. Um, and then you can find me on YouTube. If you just type in, uh, Jesse Vasquez, what we did today, I share a ton of midterm rental tips, ideas, tactics all for free on YouTube. Go check it out.

[1:04:46] Um, or the real Jesse Vasquez.com. You can check that out. All the stuff’s on there as well. So, um, Matthias, I appreciate you, man, for allowing me to be here sharing with your audience and hopefully you have some insight now on your property. If you’re going to move forward with it as a midterm rental. And if you are, please keep me updated. It’s pretty cool. Yeah. Awesome. I think you opened a door for me. So I really appreciate it, Jesse. Thank you so much for being on here. Yeah, no problem, man. Thanks for listening to the REI agent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week. Visit REIAgent.com for more content. Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[1:05:20] All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.