Cold open

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Live Let Thrive, a podcast about the Airbnb life, the share economy, and everything in between. Here are your hosts, Micah and Steve.

SPEAKER_05 0:11

Hello, hello, hello.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Welcome back to another exciting episode of Live Let Thrive.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

What is up, Micah Man? I'm good, Stevie Stacks. Back to back to be back. Good to be back in the studio. How you doing?

SPEAKER_05 0:28

Back to be back to be back. Oh man, I'm doing good. I'm doing good. You know, you and I are always busy as hell doing our businesses and stuff. But I feel good to hop on this thing. And this is our Zen. This is our place, you know, sanctuary. So I'm happy to have a great show today with a special guest. This is episode 223 of your favorite Airbnb VRBO, home away. Homeaway? Who uses that anymore? VRBO, Lyft, all that share economy and short-term rental fund stuff in the world coming at you from Arlington and Fort Worth, Texas. And we have uh oh go ahead.

Dave Mencel's first legal Sedona Airbnb in 2018

SPEAKER_05 1:04

I was waiting for you. We have a special guest today, Micah Mann. We got very special guest. Uh his name is Dave Mensel. Uh, Dave, who's Dave? Dave has been managing vacation rental properties since 2018 when he purchased his first unit in Sedona, Arizona. Short-term rentals were fairly new to Arizona at the time. Hard to believe that. And Dave is one of the first in Sedona to set up a legal Airbnb, keyword legal. Dave found himself routinely helping others in his condominium community to establish their own rentals, which eventually evolved into a consulting business helping new owners establish and grow short-term rental businesses. In 2019, Dave decided to write a book on the topic. You might have heard of it, Micah. And uh in 2020, the Vacation Rental Bible was published. In 2022, Dave published Supercharge Your Airbnb, which contains 50 tips to improve your short-term rental business performance. And Dave is currently writing an STR financial management book and expects to publish it in 2023. Not a busy guy at all. Welcome to the show, Dave.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Hey, thank you. Thank you, Steve. Thank you guys for having me.

SPEAKER_05 2:17

Yeah, man. Michael's a big, big fan of yours, and I'm learning about you today.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Yeah, a huge fan. No, I'm a book nerd. So someone uh inboxed me and said, Hey man, you got to read this vacation rental Bible. So I added it to my list, and man, it was a really, really good book. Love the book. So, Dave, go into it. So, how did you get started in the short-term rental space in Sedona? How did you get into that?

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Oh man, it was to be honest, it was kind of on a whim. Uh, you know, my wife and I wanted to retire down to the southwest somewhere, someday, not anytime soon, but uh, we

Buying a condo on a whim after one 24-hour visit

SPEAKER_01 2:51

fast-tracked a couple of things. We said, you know what? Let's just buy a place, a little vacation place for ourselves. And if we can figure out how to rent it and maybe it pays for itself, then then awesome. Let's do it. Uh, we were actually looking in West Summerland, just outside of Vegas, and then uh, like four different people, four different friends and co-workers all said, no, no, no, forget Vegas, forget Vegas, go to Sedona. And I was kind of like, okay, well, where is that? What is Sedona? Let's go check it out. So we we half the flight, we flew down, and uh I think uh I don't think it was 24 hours later, we were sitting with a realtor writing closing papers on a condo. We're like, yep, this this place is for us, we love it. We weren't thinking anything about cash flow or financial metrics or anything. We were thinking like mountain biking and hiking and all that. And uh so we found a property manager, started working with the property manager. Um, you know, you guys mentioned short-term rentals were brand new in Arizona at that time, so no property manager was really well versed in short-term rentals at that point in time. So we were doing uh monthly rentals and then with the property manager, and then we said, well, you know, we we we could probably do this better. We could we could Airbnb this ourselves, we we could do it. We found a cleaner, um, just self-managed remotely from Wisconsin and and just started getting the Airbnb thing. Um, just kind of grew it from there.

SPEAKER_05 4:12

Wow, nice man, nice man. And so in your book, it says it's the vacation rental

Vacation rentals meet short-term rental platforms

SPEAKER_05 4:17

Bible. So you got your start in an actual vacation rental, not just a short-term rental, and so and those worlds ended up colliding, you know. And so that's that's what um that's what's so cool about it because this was like an old school concept, you know, renting someone's vacation home until they retire and it's paid for, you know, hopefully, or it just pays for itself, and then you have a place that's paid for when you retire. But then someone figured out, oh, we can add some short-term rental Airbnb sauce to this and really and really start making this a profit machine.

SPEAKER_04 4:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

And you say it's an old school concept, but today, I mean, you know, 20, 30 years ago, the tools that we have today just weren't available for somebody living in Wisconsin to manage a property in Arizona, it just didn't exist, but technology's caught up, and now it's um, you know, anybody could do it.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

Now, have now have have you expanded into other markets, like maybe your local market or other vacation rural markets?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Uh not our local market. No, uh, we actually we almost bought a almost bought a lake home nearby. Uh so we're in Milwaukee, and maybe 20 minutes away, there was a property went for sale. Tough market, didn't get it. Um, that's okay. But uh we also own properties up in Michigan, or a property in Michigan, three family.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Okay. Do you you don't do short-term rentals on those?

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Oh, oh, we do. Yep, yep. That's an Airbnb property. Um, that one's a little bit different. So the uh those that was our first multifamily. All three of them are uh active short-term rentals. Uh, there's some some local laws in that town that say we have to have it with a local contact. So we do have that one under management. We are not self-managing that property, which was again was a little bit different business model for us. I had to kind of come to terms with not managing my own property. Uh, but but it worked out okay. I think between writing a couple books, managing a couple properties, it was nice to be able to hand uh hand a piece of it off.

SPEAKER_05 6:11

Nice man. Um, so Sedona's a hotbed now, right? It is Sedona boomed. It yeah, it absolutely boomed. Because that's where all the movie stars have their like second and third houses, right? And Sedona.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a nice little area. It's uh it's a beautiful area, it's a good mix out there, and um uh you know it's interesting. Our place was the first place we bought was one of the cheaper properties in the market at that time. And a lot of the property managers and realtors that we were working with, like, no, don't buy this property, it's too small, nobody's gonna want to rent this. But again, they had long-term rentals, they had monthly rentals in mind, they didn't have Airbnb in mind, but the property is you know, it's it's a perfect little Airbnb unit. It's great for someone that comes in, you know, a week to 10 days, um, in and out. I mean, it's got everything you need, its location is just amazing. But you know, you don't have to spend a ton of money to get a good Airbnb property.

SPEAKER_05 7:05

Now, now, being that that that area was already kind of people were renting out places, you know, that they didn't live in, there's not really a fear for anti-str regulations hitting.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Uh you know, there's always that fear. Um, you know, down there specifically, there uh the the locals are really trying to push for a lot more regulation on the strs. Um, you know, a lot of the public officials have said if they do pass legislation, anyone that is legally operating an Airbnb will be grandfathered in. So TBD if that'll ever happen or not.

SPEAKER_05 7:41

Um, you know, it's at least it's it's politicians politicians never lie, so you gotta you can trust now.

SPEAKER_03 7:50

Your condo down there, like how big of a condo is it? And then, like, what's your target clientele for that condo? Because I I've never been to Sedona. I don't I don't even haven't really heard of Sedona.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

It's funny, I hadn't either, and like I said, I hadn't either until we bought there. The place is gorgeous, though. Uh the city is um, you know, it's a small city, it's only uh, you know, a few thousand people live there permanently. Uh, but our our condo, this is the complex is a 32-unit building. So now we own uh three units in the complex. Oh and uh each property is about 800 square foot. Um, for the two bedrooms, there's some one bedrooms that are a little bit smaller, but you know, 800 square foot in a two-bedroom unit isn't a ton of space. But again, if you're in and out in you know 10 days, two weeks, it's it's the perfect amount of space. Um actually, my you know, my wife and I go down there for a month, a year, and for us to be there for a month, it's like it's perfect. So now do you prefer owning over arbitraging? I do. And again, I think you know, not that there's I don't I don't have any issues with arbitraging. It's just for for my business model, like building the equity. Um I just I've to be honest, I haven't tried the arbitrage model. But for me, um for my wife personally, and kind of where our financial goals are and where our life goals are, we like building the equity. We do buy and hold, we want to have kind of control over the whole process, start to finish, when we buy, uh, how we rent, when we exit.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Yeah, I'm definitely on the same wavelength. I'm getting I'm not getting out of arbitrage, but I'm moving more towards the ownership side. One very, very interesting thing you said in your book that I actually made an Instagram reel about, and I was like, man, this is some really good information. You said uh you said when you go to a certain market, and like

Down season losses covered by summer profits

SPEAKER_03 9:32

if it's a vacation rental market, if you'll sometimes buy a property, but like during the down season, you'll make so much money during like the summer, it'll cover all your down season. And I was saying, like, hey, and like these vacation, like and you said that works because of your uh your investing strategy. And I was actually telling people during my reel, your way of thinking is what's now moving into the metro markets because what's happening is it's so much saturation. People are like, okay, well, I can take a hit because I own the property and I can take a hit on my income because, well, I can just make a little bit more than my cash flow. Where in the arbitrage model is a little bit different. You have to make that extreme amount. And if you don't, you might be broke that month. So I uh uh can you kind of go into your investment strategy whenever you're looking at these condos or what you're looking to really get out of it? Like, hey, if it cash flow, equity, appreciation, what is there that you're looking at?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm usually the one thing I'm not looking for is appreciation. So if I get appreciation, wonderful, I'm happy, I'll take it. Don't get me wrong, but I don't go into it looking for appreciation. It's again, you know, it can work, it's just not my personal strategy. Uh, I'm mainly going in looking for cash flow. And cash flow, and probably my most important financial metric I'll look at is return on cash. So if I have X amount to invest, what does it do for me? Now I'll I'll deviate from that model sometimes. I mentioned the three family up in Michigan. Uh that one, that one I bought honestly, just because I wanted a place in that town. And just the fact that I was able to get a place that uh was kind of three doors under one roof. So now you have kind of lower maintenance cost as a percentage of the total. Uh that one, um, kind of getting back to what you mentioned about seasonality, that one booms in the summer. You make all your money in the summer. Uh, March, April, October, November, December, it literally sits empty. And then you get a small spike in the winter for snowmobilers that come through. But it's uh, you know, you run around break-even in the winter. You basically you get nothing in the kind of that off season, and then you get your one season of boom. So for me, I can go up there in the winter, I can use it all winter, and I don't feel bad about taking it off the market for myself. I still have two units I can rent out the snowmobilers when I'm using one. Um, and for me, again, it's you know, it's still got to check those boxes on uh, you know, what's important financially to me. And again, I can get to that financial goal because I'm not using it, I'm not taking it off the market during that peak season.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

No, no, this is another because you talked about cash on cash, and I'm starting to hear a lot of people using just huge chunks of cash, just buying vacation rentals. What's what's the typical cash on cash that you're looking for when you're buying these? Like your cash return.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Uh, you know, that's changed a little bit in the last couple of years here. I used to look, you know, I I guess you know, quantitatively, I used to like a property if it was 20% or better cash on cash return. Uh, our our investment strategies change now. Property prices have gone up. Uh, Airbnb markets kind of slowed down a little bit at the moment. Um, I was telling Steve before we just closed on one unit just this week, another one down in Arizona. And uh that one we took, we we estimated about 8% return on cash on that one. Now, a little bit different. Again, mortgage rates are high. We ended up doing that as a cash deal. Um, so with a with an all-cash deal, you're gonna have a lower return on cash. You're just not leveraging up like you would if you're financing it. Um, but again, kind of for where we are right now with our strategy. Makes sense. To me, I think you know you know, Michael, that's probably the most important thing is it's you know, it doesn't matter what your strategy is. You can have a lot of winning strategies. You just need to know what it is you want out of that property.

SPEAKER_03 13:16

That's actually what I got from your book. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, you know, I I kind of got tired of hearing people know you have to do

Why vacation rentals over single-family suburban homes

SPEAKER_01 13:23

it this way, you have to do arbitrage, you have to buy and hold, you have to do whatever the strategy. It's like, no, you don't have to do anything. You you make your own decisions based on what fits your goals.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Yeah, and that's why I always I always tell people if you're you depending on each one, you just have to know the pros and cons and how to navigate the cons. If you can navigate the cons, you can survive in the short-term rental space. You know, it's just knowing every single thing you're doing. If you're sitting on Airbnb only, okay, there's gonna be cons with that. How do I navigate it? So you're you're absolutely right. It's so many ways to skin a cat, as Steve would say.

SPEAKER_05 13:56

So so it's like are vacation rental vacation rentals the only thing that you like. Um instead of just a single family home somewhere in the suburbs, you're you're mostly uh you're all about vacation rentals.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yeah, yeah. Right now we are only in only in vacation rentals. Yep. Okay, and why is that? Uh some of it's the lifestyle, it's a property that we can use. So if you're doing uh you know a year-long lease and a single family house, then um, you know, I I can't do anything with that property. It's a property I have to maintain. Yeah, I might produce some money. It's it's hands-off, it's a lot more passive than uh running a vacation rental. Um, but it's also a lot lower return for you know, substantially similar investment.

SPEAKER_05 14:39

And so, so what are some tips? I know that that you mentioned, like, you know, there's down season. So here's something funny that happened, you know. Um kind of funny, not if you're if you were doing it, like, but Scottsdale. I'll bring up Scottsdale. The word got out, like, oh, Scottsdale's the new hot market, right? And so everybody flooded to Scottsdale this year, like I guess in springtime and stuff, and just loading up on units left and right, and so it oversaturated the market quite quickly. And then there, but the people were making money, like oh, this is great. Scottsdale's the best, everybody get over here, and all of a sudden the summer hit. And I guess it's like 200 degrees over there in the summer, I don't know, but the bottom fell out, and then a lot of people were like, What are we doing? We can't make any money, I can't make the rents, I can't make the mortgage, I can't, you know, and so everybody freaked out and I guess hopped out of the game, but now it's picking up because we we managed some units for a client in Scottsdale, and now it's really picking up again. So, I mean, how do you I guess how do you um how do you set your business up to succeed knowing that there's these drastic swings?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

But you know, there's there's probably three key themes in my book, and and one of the key themes is build a reserve fund. So if you know, if if if you do nothing else on the finance side, build a reserve fund. So whether that repro you know, whether that reserve fund is for a new roof, a new air conditioner, a new whatever, or whether it's to weather a downturn in the economy, a slow season, an off season, uh, you know, that doesn't matter what it's for, right? You know, I'll teach you how to account for

Building reserve funds for the unexpected and expected

SPEAKER_01 16:09

those various things in the book. Um, a lot of things to account for, but I'm surprised how many people, like time and time again, it's like, oh, well, I can't afford that new roof right now. It's like, well, you've owned this property for five years. Weren't you planning for a new roof? Or, you know, weren't you planning for a downturn? Weren't you planning for a slow summer? I mean, it's, you know, these things they they they they can definitely be planned for mathematically. I mean, you can get it right down to like, you know, I need to save $257 a month to comp for my reserve. Um, so that's my goal is to get everybody to start planning for that. Um, you know, it's a little bit some of it, it's kind of a mix of the expected and the unexpected, but even the unexpected, you can sometimes expect and plan for.

SPEAKER_05 16:49

So, what's the best way to utilize that time of the down season where the place is empty? Do you go in there and like touch things up, remodel, put new furniture? What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yeah, we will. We spend a lot of time remodeling properties. We try to try to stay ahead of the curve. So, so another big uh big part of our strategy. We are more concerned on the top line and less concerned on the expense line. So we want to run nice rentals, we want to run higher-end rentals, uh, we want to furnish them nice, fix them up nice, paint them nice, decorate them nice, uh, treat our guests well. Um, you know, we found we could charge a lot more for it. That offsets that increase in expenses. So we do we spend a lot of time fixing up the properties, just you know, just continually reinvesting into them.

SPEAKER_05 17:33

Nice, nice. And so, how did you get into uh what made you want to write a book?

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Uh you know, I don't know, to be honest. I think uh my my wife and I were just drinking one day. We were hanging out in uh, I think we're down in Death Valley National Park camping, and I was like, you know, I should write a book on Airbnb. And I think she kind of like blew it off and she's like, I'm gonna write a book. And I'm like, I should. I'm like, you know, we've helped enough people, we've been doing this long enough, like we're we're doing okay with it. I'm like, I write a book. And literally that night I just started writing. I'm like, let me write like two chapters, see how it turns out. I'm like, oh, this is this is this is okay. I think this is workable. So I'm like, all right, let me throw that away and let me actually write a book for real. Let me build an outline and sketch it out, do all my research. So it's probably yeah, it was probably a six-month process to write it. Um, but but it was kind of birthed on a whim. Have you like?

SPEAKER_03 18:28

Have you always had like a passion for writing? Because that's like, man, because now you've grown into what three different books?

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah, three uh three different books. So two two published books on Airbnb, a third one in the making. Um, I wrote a little bit of the financial management book and then I was starting to get a little bit burned out. So I actually took uh took a little time off of writing that book um and actually just wrote a guidebook to Sedona. I wanted to try something a little bit different with uh you know graphics, photos, um, just kind of share some of the so I think I mentioned we spent like a month a year down there. So I wanted to share some of uh my experience with town in the book. So uh did that, wrote a Sedona guide book, and now I'm picking back up on the financial management book again, and that's why that one's uh gonna be next year.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Man, I'm going to see.

SPEAKER_05 19:16

I was gonna ask uh so how is how has uh writing a book helped your business? I think you get to put stuff on paper and look at it, it's gotta like affect you in some way.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Well, I I mean, I think for first there's the obvious if I'm doing my research to write a book, then it's gonna help me and how I manage and run my own rentals. It'll keep me on kind of on the forefront of what you have to do to run a successful rental property and a successful rental business. Um, another part of it is it it did kind of force me to put the three family under professional management to give me the time to write the book. So I'm doing that, it got me hooked up in a lot of the different tools that professional managers use. And it's interesting because uh um the lady that manages our Michigan rentals force and I have like we have a wonderful relationship because we have very different points of view on it. I have kind of the point of view of an owner-self-manager, and she has okay, I have a portfolio of you know 50 or 60 or whatever properties she manages. So we use different tools. And you know, I hadn't previously used some of the tools that she uses, and she hasn't managed and thought about property management in the way that I have as an owner manager. Um, so we learn from each other. Um, but yeah, it definitely keeps you on that cutting edge. I like that.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

With with your property manager, are you are you only on Airbnb with your properties?

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Uh Airbnb and Verbo.

SPEAKER_03 20:35

Okay, Airbnb and Verbo.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

So like and that's it.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

Okay, so like in the now I have a question because I know Virbo is real big on like vacation rental markets. What's your traction? Like, what's your ratio between Airbnb and Verbo and like Sedona?

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Uh, you know, it's different than I thought it was gonna be. I thought it was gonna be closer to 50-50 or heavy on the verbo side, but we do probably uh probably 80 plus percent on Airbnb.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

Okay. Do you do you know like due to the type of clientele that's coming to Sedona? Is that like families or younger people? What is it?

SPEAKER_01 21:07

It's well, demographic is a lot of families. A lot of families, a lot of uh we'll see a lot of events, we'll see weddings, we'll see um uh engagement parties, bridal uh, you know, bridal showers, things like that come in. Um we we try to cater to a lot of that as well. We we cater very strongly to families. So every you know, every every unit's gonna have a pack and play, a crib, that kind of stuff in it. We cater very heavily towards families. Um, and again, that's kind of who part of it's who we want to be in our unit. We want, you know, people with kids, we want people that are out doing the kind of things that we like to do. Um, you know, one of my hobbies is mountain biking. Every unit in Sedona is gonna have a bike pump, a place to lock your bike up, and just kind of some of those things that attract people that are kind of like us as owners.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

I love that. That's the Jay Massey uh thing right there. Find out who you are and then cater to those people. I was like, ah, smart. Yeah. Love that.

SPEAKER_05 22:00

Now now I hear the wine's pretty good over there. Do you leave a bottle of wine for your guests?

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Uh no, sometimes. Sometimes when something goes wrong, we do. It's like our peace offering.

SPEAKER_05 22:14

Have you tried like stuff like that and then just realized uh no one's drinking it or no one's, I don't know, it's not worth the price.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Not worth the yeah, we found it's not worth the price. We found it doesn't really differentiate you that

Advertise amenities or don't bother leaving them

SPEAKER_01 22:27

much. I some some owners down there do it, and some um some do it as a surprise. And that's actually something in my book. I caution you don't leave those nice surprises. They're nice, don't get me wrong, they're nice for your guests to find. But if you're doing something, if you're spending the money to leave a bottle of wine, advertise it. Advertise it, let people know you're doing it because then you can either get a slight premium for it, or you know, you can set that expectation that, yep, this is a high-end property, they're doing high-end uh, you know, features and details for us.

SPEAKER_05 22:56

I like that. That's a that's a good tip right there, Micah.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

Yeah, yeah. I always say like it's certain things like people add, but like you don't charge for it. I'm like, charge for it. You know, like uh people advertise like this happens a lot. Uh people advertise a pool, but they're priced next door to the same guy that don't have a pool. I'm like, you're not adding value, you're not charging for the pool. Charge for the pool.

SPEAKER_05 23:20

So don't even put it on the listing. T-da-h you have a pool.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

What the bring our swimming stuff, man?

SPEAKER_05 23:26

Yeah, I know, right? Swimming naked. Uh all right. So so here's here's one thing. Because you you you jumped, you got into this a lot, like I said, 2018. It seems so so long ago, right? Uh the world was different back in 2018 before the the whole COVID thing. Um, anyways, so you jumped into a market that really wasn't uh didn't didn't have a lot of short-term rentals, if they had any back then. And and then so I always bring it back to when I when

Arizona's statewide STR ban lifted by the governor

SPEAKER_05 23:55

I first started going to Podge, right? And going into these places and and like the it, you know, that you'd have to go to like to an office to pick up your towels, and and some places you bring your own sheets and you bring your own, you bring your own toilet paper, you bring your own everything, right? And so Airbnb kind of changed that. So when you got to Sedona, was it still old school like that?

SPEAKER_01 24:15

It well, um kind of just backing up from there a little bit. The reason there wasn't a lot of short-term rentals, uh, and the reason that that kind of that keyword in the bio was the first league, one of the first legal Airbnbs, there was actually a statewide ban. So the entire state of Arizona had a ban on uh rentals less than 30 days.

SPEAKER_04 24:36

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

And then the the the governor at the time stepped in and said, Well, this is crazy. Why do we have this? Let's let's get rid of this ban. We um uh first he said, Well, okay, we you know, we that that that's it. This ban is over with, it's done, nobody can regulate it, um, other than a private entity, it's like a homeowners association can still regulate it. But uh, like for example, the city of Sedona couldn't regulate it. And then they had a little bit of warring back and forth between the city and the state. And Sedona's like, well, hey, you know, okay, state, you can do whatever you want, but as a city, we aren't gonna allow it. And the state said, Well, okay, if you don't want to allow it, that's okay. Uh, we're gonna cut off your funding. So good luck paving your roads or funding your schools or whatever, but yeah, but yeah, you know, go go ahead, ban them. So that changed pretty quickly. And then uh you know, so so there's still a lot of homeowners associations that ban short-term rentals, but uh for the properties that aren't in an hoa, uh of course now it's it's fully legal to do you know anything as short as one night.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

Wow, no, no, man. Sounds like and this is you just actually put an idea in my head and that I've thought about it, but I'm like, maybe starting HOAs that are short-term rental friendly is the way to go in the future. Because I mean, yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Oh, I was just gonna say that's exactly what we were looking for. That was that was one of our check boxes. So we uh, you know, the the first condo complex that we bought into uh was one of only three in the area at the time that was short-term rental friendly.

SPEAKER_03 26:07

Hmm. Wow. So that that's really the way to go, man. And then if you keep owning, it sounds like you've already scaled up and owned multiple units there, the more control you can start to have. I like that.

COVID wipeout in March through May 2020

SPEAKER_03 26:18

So now you said you started in 2018 to donor. How did now you you said there's months where you just kind of break even. Now, how did COVID affect that? Was it a good thing, bad thing?

SPEAKER_01 26:27

How did that work? Oh man, when COVID uh when COVID first uh first became a thing, it was not a good thing. No, it was not a good thing. We lost uh a lot of bookings. Uh, I think that what was that? It was 2020 March, I think, give or take. And we lost uh probably the entire month of March, the entire month of April, May, and then we saw kind of a slow comeback in June. And then I think like July and August, it just it boomed. I think people were getting sick uh uh being home, you know, whether they were traveling for vacation or just wanted to escape their own house and go somewhere different and get away and work remote. Uh, you know, I don't know what the trigger was, but when it changed, it it boomed um significantly.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

Yeah, the same here in this market. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:15

The um not uh what were we talking about before that? I'm sorry. So it yeah, sorry, I got I got a whole list here. I'm gonna just grab something from the list. How about that? I'm stumbling over my words, yeah. Yeah, well, COVID. Okay, it seems like like like Micah said, it was a similar situation. People just got tired of sitting, you know, being pent up at home. And then, well, what better place to go than Sedona? Wide open spaces, right? You think you're not on top of everybody, and then you got the you can go hiking. This you can't catch COVID on a hike. Well, some politicians would say you can, but uh but uh what I thought going back to what you say, the state versus the city. Wow, that was that was interesting, man. Because, like here, you know, the state really is like, ah, the cities, y'all do what y'all do, man. We're not gonna get into this thing, you know, we're not gonna make a ruling. They're supposed to make a ruling years back, and it never happened. And um, so this they just left left it up to the cities to start banning Airbnbs over here. But man, y'all's y'all's state uh governor's pretty gangster, man. I want him, I want him to move to Texas and take over Texas and then and then open it up like that. That would be awesome. But um, so back to like here here's the thing, and and what's what's cool about the the hoe thing you talked about too, where I at first I was like, okay, yeah, the HOA allows it now, but and they allow Airbnb at their complex. But what happens if they start someone else takes over and then they and they end up banning it? But that I don't think that would happen because if you make a complex Airbnb or or short-term rental friendly, then people are gonna start, you know, utilizing that that thing and start making money. And then if someone does get in there, hey, uh, I'm gonna propose that we ban it, they're gonna like screw you, we're gonna vote you out, right? I mean, this it sounds like a a perfect thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Yeah, and that's what we found with our community. So um uh we're 32 units out of the 32. I think about 27 or 28 are Airbnb rental properties. Some are dedicated Airbnb rentals, and some are like a mixed um, you know, owners might come down for a month or two and then rent it for the rest of the year. Um, I actually ended up getting elected HOA president. Nice, and the entire HOA board is all dreams do come true.

SPEAKER_05 29:26

I made it. Um, but uh off with their heads, you get drunk with power.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Yeah, so so like in our case, the entire you know, we're just like chasing chasing people off our lawns. That's but but like all the decisions that we make now as a board, we're we're I think maybe one of those rare exceptions where we're a very well-functioning HOA board, and and a lot of the decisions that we make are for the benefit of um the rental owners because there's so many of them. You know, we we try to balance the needs as best as we can, but we we have a lot of nice little touches in the property. So we you know we have a um pretty sizable budget every year for putting flowers on the property and just you know, nice things to make nice touches for kind of everybody, but we really cater it towards you know, when a renter comes in and you know they spent good money to book your property, you want them to have that great experience from the moment they first not not walk into your unit, but walk onto the the property as a whole.

SPEAKER_03 30:23

Now, how often is stuff going up for sale in that condo complex? Yeah, like because like I'm like instead of always looking for these places to try to do this and that, hey, why don't you just go to a community that allows it? You know, so how often does stuff go up for sale in that complex?

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Not very often. Um we just closed on one this week. It was a first sale by owner. It was another guy that was a former board member, and uh he he owned a couple units in a different complex and he wanted to pick up a third there. So he did a first sale by owner on that one, and then sold his unit in in this complex to me just to kind of you know free up the money to get the one that he wanted. Uh, but that was the first sale that's happened in the community, I think, in probably a year and a half.

unknown 31:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 31:09

HOA president gets first dibs, Micah. I know. So Micah bribe him.

SPEAKER_03 31:16

No, no, and then I have a question. It's like since you're the HOA president, um, how much does your vote or how does the voting work, right? So, like kind of how Steve said, if people can come in like this, one few people want to say, hey, we don't want a uh Airbnbs anymore, how much power do you guys have to say no? Is it like a voting thing? Like you own three out of 32, so your votes count as three, or how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 31:40

It's uh well that's actually a lot of that just changed this year as well, too. So we are in in most uh most Arizona complex, I think probably most in the country, but at least in Arizona I can speak to, uh, most communities like that are governed by two sets of documents of rules and regulations and uh CCNRs. And the CCNR is a much deeper legal document. Uh and that's uh that takes now it's like an 80% or more, depending on your community, uh majority vote of the ownership to change anything that's in your C C N R documents. But uh within your rules and regulations, just a simple majority of the board can change those. Um so, like in our case, the ability to operate your unit as a short-term rental is written into our C C N Rs. So 80% of the community would have to vote um in favor of changing that. So that's you know, with with the ownership structure that we have, that vote will never happen. So it will be short-term rental legal forever.

SPEAKER_05 32:43

And what does CCR stand for?

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Um covenants. Uh oh man, now you're testing me. Sorry, I didn't know myself.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

I was gonna help you. I had it in my

80% vote required to change STR-friendly CCNRs

SPEAKER_03 32:56

head.

SPEAKER_05 32:56

Yeah, cleadance, credence clear water revival.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah, that works. We'll go with that one. Uh covenants, something and restrictions. I forget the the second C in it now. Yeah, maybe control. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 33:12

Here's something, here's something that I'm I'm gonna have you uh put to the board, put it to vote, put it to vote. You're the leader, you can you can make it pass. Um, electric car charging station. There you go. Add that to your complex. You know, we looked at that.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

We we looked at that. So so so kind of two things. So um uh a couple doors down from us, there's a little like strip mall with some restaurants, and they have a full row of uh free EV charging stations you can use when you're there. I don't think I've ever driven past it and seen a car plugged in. Okay, but we also looked at it as um maybe like a profit center for the HOA, not for an individual unit owner, but for the HOA, like should we put in uh you know maybe two or three charging stations on the property? Uh, there are companies out there that um uh basically it's like a like a cost-sharing model. You pay something up front, they install all the hardware, uh, they they manage and service all the hardware. Um, and then you get like a like a split of the charging cost. So you earn you know so much per kilowatt that per kilowatt hour that comes through the charging. When we looked at it, when we did the cost benefit, it just was not there for us. I think it was you know over fifteen thousand dollars to add one charging station. And with the usage that we had expected to see, it just there was no payback.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

Wow, that's interesting. Um, by the way, it's covenants, conditions, and restrictions. That's what it is.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Ah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

About those EV chargers, that's very it's funny that you said you don't see people sitting at them because last year, it might have been a year, year and a half ago, I started putting Tesla chargers in all my houses, right? So I was just like, let me put this in because of like the distance between like a Tesla charging station, it was so far in the area that I was in. But they just installed them down the street. I was like, ah crap. But when I go down the street, nobody's there. But when the there's a bunch of Tesla charger people that have Teslas that book my place, and I'm like, it's not look, it's like they don't want to, they don't want to sit at those places. They rather have it at their home. Like even my next door neighbor, they have the charging things coming out of their out of under from under their garage because they don't want to sit at those places. So I think there is like some definitely like benefactors of like having those, or guests are like, hey, I'm gonna, this place has a Tesla charger. I ain't gotta go sit at the Walmart or whatever and charge up. So yeah, that is that's very interesting that you said that. I've noticed that as well.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Yeah, and I think it'd be a lot different too in a you know, in a single family home or a small community, like in a in a larger complex like that. Then I can see you know, how how do you know who gets uh gets to use that spot and and how do you stop somebody from just parking there for you know overnight or two, three days at a time and blocking access for somebody else?

SPEAKER_04 35:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

We we started looking at it and you know, we wanted to, we wanted to do it, and it just it it and in the end for us just didn't make sense.

SPEAKER_03 36:02

Yeah, makes sense, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:04

So so you you're used to buying vacation rentals,

Do market research before buying the property

SPEAKER_05 36:08

that's great. I know I've tried it a long time ago in the past. I tried it uh to do it, and I just and and the process was a lot, it was a lot harder to buy a vacation rental than just to go buy a three-two house. And what are some tips and pointers to get the deal done?

SPEAKER_01 36:25

It you know, I feel like everyone gets a little bit harder, and I feel like and everyone gets a little bit more stressful, a little bit harder, a little bit tougher to get the financials that you want to hit. I think some of that is um, you know, again, just going back to um to the fact that Airbnb, I think, is much more mainstream now. And um I think investors are starting to understand the returns. And I think more people are getting into it, and as more people get into it, the returns are gonna drop. But um, you know, you're always gonna find someone that's willing to take a little bit less return, a little bit less return, a little bit less return. Um, so that's you know, it's not dropping revenue, right? That's increasing expenses. That means that house is getting a little bit more expensive. Um, people have seen the value of it. Um, yeah, I mean, you gotta look, you gotta know people. You get uh we found the Michigan place. I reached out to a property manager first. And again, something else I talk about a lot in my book, too. It's like, don't go buy a house and hope it's gonna be a good rental. Put together some kind of a strategy first. It's just like so my formal background is product development. And it's like if you're gonna build a new product, whatever, whatever that is, if you're gonna go build a new iPhone and you want to sell a new iPhone, it's like you can adopt the mentality, we'll build it in there. Come, you know, we'll build the best iPhone in the world. And and you know, maybe it'll sell, maybe not. But I guarantee you, you know, 99 times out of 100, if you go out, you do market research, uh, you understand what consumers want, you understand market trends, market pricing, and then you go back and design a product that fits that market, you're gonna be a lot more successful. So it's it's no different with vacation rental properties. Do your homework, do your research, um, understand, you know, what it is you're looking for, but then also understand, you know, who's who's gonna be on your team. So for me, like with the Michigan property, I reached out to a property manager up there right away. Um, she was also a realtor, so I was using her as my agent to help me find a place, but ended up picking up a pocket listing from her that I otherwise wouldn't have known about had I not reached out to somebody that specializes in um you know short-term rentals.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

And also it kind of piggyback off Steve's question with about vacation rental markets, right? So let's say in vacation rental markets, I know it's a little bit different, but like in high season, right? Are most people, like especially if you're in a complex where there's multiple two bedrooms, what are you doing to stand out?

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Well, a lot of that's how you furnish how you so so um I mentioned before we're only on Airbnb and verbal.

Cleanest Airbnb reviews drive premium bookings

SPEAKER_01 38:52

We don't do any direct marketing, we don't do any, you know, Google AdWords, anything like that. We found for us we're able to keep an occupancy rate that we like without having to do that. If we started seeing occupancy drop, then I think we would start turning to those tools. Um, but but kind of within those platforms, um, we like to run nicer rentals, higher-end rentals. We spend a lot more money, I think, than the average person on furnishings. Um we we really streamlined our check-in process. We all every single time we get compliments on our check-in process on how clean the property is. Um, you know, we've hired the best cleaner that we could find, and he scrubs everything in between every single rental. That place is spotless. Um, I feel like almost every single uh feedback we get on Airbnb is cleanest Airbnb I've ever stayed in. And that's like that's exactly what I want. And just stuff like that. Then people read it, they see it, they're like, yep, I want to book with this guy.

SPEAKER_03 39:45

I love that. So you've yeah, because I I try to bait, I'm happy you've said that too, because you have to find something you base your business on to where you get a five-star every time. Mine, I focus on is cleanliness and communication. Those two things go a long, long way. So, and also, so like, so you basically standing out due to like furniture, things of that nature. Now, do you see like someone, let's say they've owned their condo for 20 years, right? And they're doing short-term rentals. You've owned yours for five years. So, you know, that guy who was owned for 20 years, his operating expenses are a little bit lower. Do you see him kind of undercutting the market? Because like I'm in a market right now, that's what a lot of people are doing. They're just undercutting everyone because their expenses are low. Do you do you guys see that in vacation rental markets?

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Um, you know, I haven't a lot. No, a little bit. We we've seen it a little bit. Uh where we really saw it start to really kind of ramp up was when COVID first started and everything just kind of slowed down to nothing. Then I think that was the only trick people had to boost doccupancy was drop price, drop price, drop price. Um, you know, we were doing it too, and it's, you know, it's it was at the point I think everybody everybody was so panicked, and and nobody really knew what to do because COVID was so new and so unheard of. And you know, Airbnb came out and announced uh an unprecedented move of refunding everybody. You know, I think there was just this mass hysteria amongst hosts. Um, so that's I mean, that that was the one lever we all had left to pull was was lower the price, try to encourage more people, um, and maybe go to a longer-term uh rental to try to attract the work from home people, but um you know that was that was it. Other than that, yeah, I haven't really seen people racing to the bottom.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Gotcha. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_05 41:28

Do you ever buy units that need major renovations?

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Uh yes, I promised my wife I would not buy a project house, and then the three family was a project house. All three units were a project house.

SPEAKER_05 41:45

Uh like I was just wondering how that works because I know, like, for example, other other um beach communities or vacation reel communities, it's not as it's cut, it's easy to find good labor, good contractors to do the work on a timely fashion. I could imagine. Was it like that over there?

SPEAKER_01 42:05

Uh, it is not easy to find anybody to do anything in the place where we are. So it's it's a it's a tiny town. It's it's the town is less than 2,000 people, and the next nearest town is about 45 minutes away. Oh, wow. And it's uh the property is about a five-hour drive from my home in Wisconsin. And I've I've been little by little chipping off, chipping away at it. Oh, so it's not even done yet? No, uh, it's it's on the market. So it's it's it's all the units on the inside are done. When I bought it, there were a couple uh couple exterior flaws that needed some work. Um we did uh we spent 11 days there. And I did find somebody to help me for those 11 days. So we had it was myself, a couple friends, my wife, and then one uh hired handyman. And in like 11 days, we blew through a total, like like total gut job of one of the units, got everything done except for the bathroom. In um yeah, in under 11 days, it was amazing how fast it came together. Um, turned out beautiful. That was the one that needed it the worst. The other ones just needed more kind of paint and furnishings. Um, they sold it. It was uh kind of kind of using air quotes here, but a turnkey rental, but there was nothing really turnkey about it.

SPEAKER_05 43:19

The key turned, that's what they meant.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

But it but it was fun. I you know, I I love doing that kind of work myself. It's um, you know, it's something I legitimately enjoy, so I don't mind doing it. That's a property that I get to use all winter too. I'm an ice climber, so I get to go up there, it's a big ice climbing spot. Um, so I go up there with a big group of friends, and like we'll we'll go out climbing all day, come back and just drink beers and paint at night.

SPEAKER_05 43:44

So you know, drink beers and paint, huh? Okay. To each his own, man. I hate all that stuff. I mean, I've done it before in some of my houses, but oh my god, you don't hate drinking beer? I do the I like the drinking beer part. I'll I'll be a supervisor. All right. We we need that too. Keep us working. I'll buy the beers too. I don't give a shit. Y'all can do the work though.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Yeah, that one was interesting though. It's a hundred and well, at least a hundred and twenty-three-year-old house. They don't know for sure. I guess uh it I think they only keep records back to 1900. So they just listed 1900 on the sale, and that was that.

SPEAKER_03 44:24

Wow, that's I did not know that. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

It's it's a quirky little place, though. It's I mean it's a cool little house, it's unique. It's unique, it's a cool little city. Um, you know, so it's it's been fun, a lot of work, but but a lot of fun. See any ghosts there? No, you know, it's funny. We keep uh in all three units, we have a copy of I forget the title of the book. It's called like Haunted UP or UP Haunts, or UP is Upper Peninsula for Michigan. And uh each one has a copy of it. You know, we we're we're not a haunted spot, but not too far away. We got a couple.

SPEAKER_05 44:58

That's cool, man. Yeah, we have a friend, um Sarah, uh Sarah Glidewell, she's investing in Michigan too, upper Michigan. So she uh she's big on the she's big on the mid Midwest, and then um, you know, Wisconsin, Michigan. So she's she's doing some cool things over there. We might have to hop on the bandwagon with her.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Yeah, well, come on over, check it out.

SPEAKER_03 45:18

No, no, you I'm happy Steve brought up the Midwest because that was one one thing that always scared me about the Midwest with Midwest houses was like the brutal winters, you know, things that happen, snow plowing,

Heat lamps and remote sensors prevent frozen pipes

SPEAKER_03 45:29

freezing pipes and all that. Have you seen has that become a problem in like your vacation rentals? Or how do you or have you guys found a way to kind of you know do maintenance so that doesn't happen?

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Um it's it's tricky. That house, again, because of the age, is not well insulated, and it's had at least two or three additions put on it over the 120 plus years, and at least one of those additions is not insulated like at all. So, and that's something we've yet to fix. That'll probably be uh that might be a next year project. Um, so we we we keep a heat lamp running in one of the crawl spaces all winter and keep keep it from the pipes freeze. And so we have some pipe uh uh both supply and drain pipes are in one of our crawl spaces. You know, we there's there's some maintenance that goes in. You block up all the vents for the winter, throw some insulation up, throw a heat lamp in there. I do have remote temperature sensors so I can wash the temperature and I'll get an alert on my phone if it gets too cold in like in the crawl space areas, and I can call the property manager and she'll go over and take care of it. And again, that's kind of the benefit of having some boots on the ground up there. Um yeah, there's a lot of a lot of weird little quirks with the property. We had a city sewer main backup, and we had a basement that flooded with sewage. That was actually that's how I spent my fourth of July this year. Oh unexpectedly taking a trip to Michigan.

Fourth of July spent cleaning a sewage-flooded basement

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Oh man, right. Well, I mean, you know, these these things happen. Again, that's where you know if you have that reserve fund that comes in handy, prepare for the unexpected.

SPEAKER_05 47:04

Well, how on that note, reserve fund is this great, great idea. Do you do you believe in home warranty companies?

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Um I'm a DIY guy, so I personally don't. I think they can work well for some people, and again, depends on what your skill set and and you know, are are you looking to be hands-on with your property or not? You know, I like to be hands-on, so for me, if if if a furnace goes, I don't have a problem replacing it. If uh, you know, uh for me, no, no, I don't see a value, but again, that's just a pure personal statement for the right people. I think there's definitely a value to them.

SPEAKER_05 47:41

I'm starting to hate them too, man, because they're starting to deny everything now. And plus, not only they deny everything, you pay them to come out and then they'll deny it, right? And I started out great. I started out with one that worked out great, you know. They were they approved a few claims and saved a bunch of money, but then now man, they're just turning, they're changing, and um, I can never talk to anybody from this country. Nothing wrong with people from not from this country. I'm talking to you know, people from another specific country, and all they're doing is reading a script saying why they can't approve certain things. And and I'm like, I have good handymen that can fix things for a decent price, but I'm paying a monthly fee on like six different houses for to have these things that whenever I need to use them, they're getting denied now a lot. I mean, I mean, most like almost a hundred percent denied now. So I'm like, what is the point to having these things anymore? If you have a couple good handymen that could fix things, and plus you're not paying a monthly fee to you know to to have something that you can't use, you know. I don't know. I'm just I'm trying to change my tune on these things.

SPEAKER_01 48:42

Yeah, and I I I struggle with with just the concept of repairing a lot of that stuff in general. Um, I mean, today everything, you know, I mean, appliances aren't super expensive. If you buy something new, you don't have to buy something, you know, you don't you don't need to buy a you know $2,500 fridge for a rental, you can buy a $600 fridge for rental. And when it breaks, you can get rid of it and put a new fridge. And and to me, and again, I think maybe because all of our properties are remote, so it's a lot harder to get down to them when something breaks. So I'm I'm always reliant on others in that scenario. Like if you know if a stove dies, I gotta get a new stove in there. ASAP. Um, I would rather just have things that are newer. Uh, I don't always trust the trust something that's repaired. You know, if if one thing's failed on it, do I know another thing's not gonna fail tomorrow? I'd rather just replace it and move on.

SPEAKER_03 49:30

Man, that is I fully agree with you. I'd funny thing is, this week I just canceled five home warranties. I canceled five of them because they just were just horrible, man. You can't get them on the phone, but their customer retention department will keep you on the phone for three hours.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

All the incentives you'll get if you stay. I'm like, we have stuff that's been broke for three months, you haven't came in.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Yeah, you know, Mike, it's funny you mentioned five of them. It's it's a numbers game, too, right? If you if you own enough properties, if you have enough home warranties, you're you're you're gonna lose that bay, right? They're in business to make money. Um, if you know, where you can benefit if you it it like your primary residence, if if you're not in the rental business, if you own one home, if you live in it, maybe it's a good bet, um, you know, for the right person again. But um, you know, when you start scaling up, you get to the point that if you got one stove that fails in one of your 20, 30, 50, whatever properties, do you really need 50 different warranties to cover those 50 different properties, or do you just replace that stove and move on?

SPEAKER_03 50:35

Yeah, that by that time, once you scale up to that, you can have your handyman working for you full time.

SPEAKER_04 50:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:41

Yeah, my uh the banker up here at the bank, he's basically was saying, Hey, yeah, once you scale up, just get five hire a handyman to work for you full time. And I was like, Oh, that's a good idea. And you know, this is what his uncle did. So yeah, I I put my con basically what I did was I took my home warranty I was paying every month, and I was like, I asked my handyman, hey, can I pay you this every month just to be on retainer? And he was happy to take it. And I actually cut the cost in half.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Yeah, only works when your rentals are all in the same state, though.

SPEAKER_05 51:12

That's true, that is true. Man, this is this has been a good conversation right here. Um, I I um it's intriguing that that you wrote that you're able to write a book because I was I've always wanted to try that. And what what advice do you have to aspiring book writers?

SPEAKER_01 51:30

Just start. You know, it's like uh like what's the old saying, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Just just start, just write something, reread it. If you don't like it, throw it away, start again. If you don't like that, throw it away, start again, and eventually you'll have something you like. Um I I started I started writing first, and then I kind of wanted to see where it was gonna go. And then I stopped and then I went back, you know, made maybe only two or three chapters in, but then I stopped, went back, and then outlined and then made made the formal outline of what I wanted the book to be. Uh, then I went and did the research to support it, and then I went back and rewrote the whole thing. But for me, just kind of writing those first couple chapters, just top of mind, no, no research, no nothing, just no filter between the brain and the keys typing. Um, it was really able to just kind of let me engage more with the creative side. It kind of relaxed me into the process a little bit rather than starting with the kind of the heavy research and and maybe the less fun parts of putting pen to paper. But yeah, just just start. It's it's no different than than getting in anything else, getting into the STR business. How do you do it? Well, just just start.

SPEAKER_05 52:36

Did you do a good job, Micah?

SPEAKER_03 52:38

Oh, yeah, this is good. This is good. I love his book, his book was uh is pretty badass. Yeah, yeah. By the way, yeah, if y'all have not read the vacation rental Bible, definitely check it out. Uh, I gotta definitely check out your other books as well. But yeah, my uh a good friend of the podcast actually sent me a DM and was like, Hey, read this book. As soon as I read it, I was like, Oh man, this is good stuff, man. Good so good. I was making reels about some of the stuff in it. So, yeah, definitely uh check out his book, uh Vacation Rental Bible.

SPEAKER_05 53:04

Hey, can you I don't know who does these? This is really cool because I and I and now when I hear about a book, I look, I go to straight to YouTube and see if someone did uh one of those writing on the whiteboard synopsis of the book. I love those things, man. And then they you know, they did it for rich dad, poor dad, they did it for cash flow quadrant, all these different types of books. And he goes and he starts writing, draws a little character. This is what he's doing, this is what he's thinking, this is what is you know, his next step is to get to the bank and it draws a stack of money. I don't know, I don't know who does those, or just someone does it uh on their own because they like a book, and then of course they want to make money from this thing. But uh, I don't know, I don't know. That's that's a tip for you if you want to maybe hire someone to do that, then that that gets a lot of eyeballs on your on your book, too. Uh I don't know. I think they're really cool, those those things, those little snaps. I like it. Sounds good, yeah. And and and someone to uh uh what's it called? Uh audiobooks. I like audiobooks, so I don't know how you go about doing that. You can read your own book, right?

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Yeah, you know, to be honest, I don't know how you how you get started in the audiobooks. So I've I I self-published on Amazon, um, but I never went that so it's hardcover paperback or Kindle format, but I have not yet done the audiobook format, so that that should be the next evolution.

SPEAKER_05 54:16

It's self-published on Amazon. So you so you get to keep 90 and they keep 10, right? Oh, not quite that good. No, I wish. What is the split?

SPEAKER_01 54:28

Because we've heard stories about the split. Um man, I think for a paperback is 6040. But who gets who gets 60? Uh author gets 60, but that's net of a printing cost. Oh, so there's there's the retail, there's a printing cost, and then there's a 60-40 split, they take their 40 off the the very top, of course, and then you get the balance.

SPEAKER_05 54:50

So if it's audiobook, there's no printing involved, right?

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Uh no, that I'm not sure how it splits. Again, I haven't done the audiobooks, I'm not sure how they split it. And Kindle's a little bit different as well. Too Kindle is uh author keeps 70%, but then they charge you a uh delivery fee. So that's their cost to push it through the internet and onto your Kindle. Uh okay, they always get you. Yeah, oh yeah, hidden fees, a lot of hidden fees.

SPEAKER_05 55:19

That's cool, man. Well, well, thank you so much for hopping on. Where can folks find you?

SPEAKER_01 55:24

Uh, definitely check me out on Amazon, Vacation Rental Bible, and supercharge your Airbnb.

SPEAKER_05 55:30

Sweet, Dave Mentzel, everybody. Thank you, sir, for hopping on. We wish you all the luck and we hope to see you again in the future. Uh, thank you guys. Thank you guys for having me. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 55:40

Yeah, definitely. I'm looking forward to the third book. Yeah, and thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

All right, hey, thanks, guys.

SPEAKER_03 55:46

Later, all right. That was the author of the vacation rental Bible. That was, I think that was the no, no, no. The last short-term rental book I read was Julie's book, and I finished it. Yeah, so very good book, man. I love that book. That book was really good. A lot of good insights in there. That he he he dropped some insights in there that if you weren't in the short-term rental space, you would it kind of it doesn't go over your head, but once you get in, you'll be like, Oh man, I see what he means. So, yeah, very good book, man.

SPEAKER_05 56:18

Yeah, man, and and especially because I, you know, I've always wanted to have a vacation rental property, and I talk about it in Padre. And um, so I just I just I always I always feared the down season, you know. I always feared that, and I and I so many people bought them recently, right? Because of their the market was going crazy, everybody was flush with cash, and the banks were giving everybody money, and so after all the houses were snapped up, oh, we'll just go buy something at a vacation rental area, and now those people are freaking out because the down season's coming of the beach community. So, like, what do we do? I can't even cover my mortgage, man.

SPEAKER_03 56:51

And I ain't gonna lie, that's been my fear of the vacation rental market, too. I'm like, man, they have down seasons, but like in his book, that's what he was talking about. He was like, You'll have a down season, right? You'll just okay, I'm not gonna make any money, I'll just break even or just won't make money at all. And they're comfortable with that because of all the money they make during the high season. But it's like, you know, here in Dallas and Fort Worth, shit, we used to make money year round. We used to just having, I mean, we have a down season where it comes down a little bit, but you just ain't gonna have nobody in there at all. Like, oh shit.

SPEAKER_05 57:21

Our down season is September. That's it.

SPEAKER_03 57:23

Yeah, you know, like that. You know, it's just like, yeah, so it is it is kind of, but how he broke it down and explained it, it made me kind of ease up, like, okay, I could probably do this. Because you know how he said, Hey, he even has a whole spreadsheet of how to calculate your expenses for the whole year and you'll just make money. I was like, Oh, damn. But yeah, he he talks a lot about investment strategies as well. That's a really, really cool thing.

SPEAKER_05 57:46

Yeah, we had to we had to talk a client of ours off the ledge, and in a in a you know, figurative sense, not like really they were gonna jump off a building or nothing, but we had we had to tell her, um, and and and she has this house with a swimming pool here, you know, close by that freaking crushing it, dude, all the way from spring, summertime. Cause that's a swimming pool, it's really nice, right? And so crushing it, killing it, and then um, and it started slowing down, you know, recently because September, you know, kids go back to school, families, you know, stop traveling so much, they got to get all that stuff situated, then you know, pick like you said, picks up again October, November. Um, but so she's freaking out, having this chat with her. I'm like, listen, listen, listen, you can't just look at this one month. You gotta look at the whole body of work, the whole painting, you know, not just this little bad, rough spot right here. It's the whole thing. Look, you've been killing it, you've been making four or five a month, you know, in these up months, just because you have a down month and you're like, Oh, I you know, barely gonna cover my mortgage, blah blah blah. But look at all this other money you made. You gotta, you gotta, it's gotta be all one. This 12 months is all one, yeah, yeah. It's a whole 12-month thing, it's not just a three-month thing or a two-month thing or one month month by month, it's the whole you're paying the whole body of work you gotta look at.

SPEAKER_03 59:08

Yeah, you do, you do. I'm happy you brought that up because yeah, that would make people jump off the edge. It's like, dude, you gotta chill out. There's down season because it's funny. I you know, I haven't been on social media, but if you notice every time this time of the year, a bunch of people get on social media, those Facebook groups. Oh, I don't have no reservations, I don't have no res. It's like, dude, it's back to school seasons happens every year. I mean, once you've been in for a while, you know it's back to school season, it happens every year. But yeah, man, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 59:32

Great show again, episode 223 in the books. Uh, I'm Stevie Stacks. You got you know, look me up, uh Argistrentals.com, or just without the L. So it's not largest, it's Argist. But Argistrentals.com, it's the largest, man. Hit me up, I'll manage your place, I'll make you money even in September. You know, that's how we roll, Micah.

SPEAKER_02 59:52

You blately just said your client is memory.

SPEAKER_05 59:55

Yeah, I know. I didn't say she lost money. I didn't say she lost money. She didn't make as much as she was accustomed to.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:01

Yeah, that's gotta get over that. People gotta understand, man. Yeah, she's just yeah, stop tripping.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:06

I'm just kidding. I love you, client. I'm not talking about you, by the way. If you think I'm talking about you, I'm not talking about you. Okay, there you go. I cleared it up.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:14

Yeah, yeah. Thank y'all for continuing to listen. Definitely hit us up. Uh, live lethrive at gmail.com. Remember to hit the subscribe button, like the video. Uh, and if you're on iTunes, make sure to leave us a review, man. If you love us, been riding with us. And uh yeah, thank y'all for continuing to roll with us. And if you have any properties in the DFW area that you need to sell, hit me up, info at sharebnb.com, or just hit me up on Instagram or Facebook, wherever you know where to find me. So uh yeah, thank y'all to continue to listen. We are out. Peace later.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:47

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Live Let Thrive. Be sure to tune in next week for all the latest in the world of Airbnb and all that entails. Bye bye.