Tim Hubbard: Should You Diversify Your Real Estate Portfolio? | Episode 9 | STR Data Lab™ by AirDNA

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Speaker 1

Hello. Hello, Tim. Tim Hubbard.

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Speaker 2

Hello, hello.

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Speaker 1

How are you? Welcome. Welcome to the STR Data Lab by AirDNA. Happy to have you.

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Speaker 2

Excited to be here. Excited to be here.

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Speaker 1

All the. All the way from Colombia. And what city in Colombia are you in right now?

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Speaker 2

In Medellín.

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Speaker 1

Yeah. You'd be surprised at how many people I talked to are actually and were in Medellín. I have an employee that lived there forever. It's crazy.

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Speaker 2

It's it has grown a lot and it's for good reason. It's a great place to be for a lot of reasons.

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Speaker 1

It's on my list. It's on my list for sure. Well, Tim, let's talk about a little bit about who you are. You are the founder and CEO of Midtown Stays, which of course, is a short term rental accommodation company. A few fun stats about you. I think you own 69 properties roughly. You manage 45 STR’s and this is my favorite fact about you, my friend.

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Speaker 1

27.5 average hours worked a month. We're going to talk about how you accomplished that because I'm going to confess, I work a lot more than 27.5 a month.

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Speaker 2

Yeah, we can get into that for sure.

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Speaker 1

Yeah. I need all of your pro tips, please.

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Speaker 2

That's why I'm here. That's why I'm here.

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Speaker 1

I know you've also parlayed into being a great mentor for folks that are looking to get into the business. A lot of people have great things to say about your advice and tutelage, but what else should our audience know about you before we get into some of some of my burning questions?

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Speaker 2

Oh, well, thanks for the introduction and thanks for having me too. I am excited. I'm always excited to talk about short term rentals because there's just so much opportunity and it's such a big part of a lot of people's lives now. But what else to know about me? I've been a real estate investor for the bulk of my career, although I did work for a software company for about eight years as I was building my my real estate portfolio.

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Speaker 2

And so I do really like using software programs as well as AirDNA. So that's kind of my background. And I've I have tried, you know, multiple types of real estate, too, and I still invest in multiple types. I just personally think there is the most opportunity I've found, with short term rentals. And I also like investing in short term rentals more than just other types of properties.

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Speaker 1

So oh my goodness. I definitely, I definitely need to know why, but I love what you bring up because I think that's a really interesting point. I always joke with Jamie Lane, our VP of Research, that I did not go to economy school. He's like giving me a crash course on some of these things occasionally. But that diversification, even just within your real estate portfolio.

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Speaker 1

Right. So it's interesting to hear that you're not just maybe not all of your eggs are in the STR basket. You had sort of different places and I think you're invested in different countries as well. Is that correct?

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Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. Brazil and Colombia, where I am right now, mainly in the US, though. Because of the ability to have bank loans, which really helps real estate investors not really available for foreigners living outside of their home country.

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Speaker 1

I was just about to ask about that.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. So it's definitely different. But there's there's a lot of opportunity outside of the outside of the U.S., too. And the really cool thing about short term rentals is that if we set up a way to manage them, we pretty much manage them the same way no matter where they are. We have, you know, maybe some different regulations and have to work with different housekeepers.

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Speaker 2

But the actual guest experience, I mean, there's pretty much, you know, one way to do it to make sure your guests have the best experience with a lot of little components in there. But that's really what it comes down to is the guest experience is short term rentals. And so that part is the same. No matter where your properties are or what type of properties you have, because there's so many different types of short term rentals now too, which is another thing we can talk about, because I think they all have their own unique risk profiles and they all have their own opportunities, they all have their own risks just based on the actual type

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Speaker 2

of short term rental that it is.

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Speaker 1

Right? Oh, my gosh. You're giving me so many good. You know, I you know, we just talked about setting an agenda, but now I'm like, we may turn the agenda a little bit on its head. I think I think we should we should go back and start real quick on, you know, why why short term rentals?

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Speaker 1

Like what was your “aha” moment? Because I know like you said, you've been doing this investment brokering thing for quite some time. What was that “aha” moment for you, Tim, where you were like short term rentals. That's a space I want to go into.

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Speaker 2

Well, I've always really liked residential real estate. People need a place to live, right? And that's not going away. Of course, every market's different so some have different opportunities. And I'm from California originally and I started investing in California. And when the numbers started to change and I wasn't seeing as good of returns as I was when I first started investing there, I started looking in other markets.

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Speaker 2

So I went to a handful of other states around the U.S. and visited with a lot of property managers and went to a lot of different markets and did a lot of research on long term rentals. So I wanted to get some passive long term rentals and just kind of. I had done pretty well already and so I was looking to invest some money and just let it work for me passively.

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Speaker 2

And while I was doing the research, I was staying in short term rentals and one of the markets that I found some opportunities in I was looking at the returns that the long term rental opportunities had. And then I just looked up the price of the property that I was actually staying in and I knew what I was paying because I was staying there and I'm like, Oh my gosh, this property is just making way more money than these other ones could.

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Speaker 2

So from then, from then on, I just started looking for properties that made sense as short term rentals, and that was quite a while ago now. So expanded quite a lot since then in multiple states and multiple countries now.

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Speaker 1

I love that. So a lot of it was driven by sort of that ability to just make more right to just increase your profitability.

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Speaker 2

Yeah. I mean, I'm a real estate investor and so I'm looking for the best returns, risk adjusted and rent right up until now. I mean, it's not to say that markets can't change and society can't change or regulations can't change. Those are all things we have to keep in consideration. But for me, at least, the last seven years, I guess I've been investing almost specifically in short term rentals.

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Speaker 2

I've just I've found the most opportunity with them. But I should add, Mariah, that I have a backup plan for most all the properties that I invest in, and that is to put a long term tenant in there. Right. So I was looking in these markets for long term rentals that also happen to be good for short term rentals with sometimes the same properties.

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Speaker 2

So I have that as a backup plan. I like finding a market that has good fundamentals just in general for a real estate investment. And then if I can put a short term, if I can change the long term rental in the short term rental, then the returns can go much higher. And if something changes in the future or whatever happens, I can always go back to that long term tenant.

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Speaker 2

So that's sort of my strategy in a nutshell.

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Speaker 1

That's a good nutshell and I love that. Sort of like your ability to have sort of a plan A, plan B and probably even a plan C for you know, your investment properties that you're doing. And also certainly the ability to have that flexibility. Right, like helps that you have experience both in long term rental and short term rental.

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Speaker 1

So you talked a little bit about the other thing. You unpack that I was like, well, we got to talk a little more about this was sort of how you've been able to achieve this process at scale, right? Like so that consistent experience, right now you have a property management company, Midtown Stays, they have obviously a brand associated with them and an experience that you're delivering.

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Speaker 1

So what is sort of been key to you? I know this is something Steve Milo, our friend at V Trips talks a lot about is right. Like, how do you deliver that consistent experience? What are some some tips and tricks you might have for people that are trying to scale up their business on that department?

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Speaker 2

Yeah, it's a good it's a good question. And I guess at first I would say that it depends depending on where we're at with our portfolio, we have like we can't hire a full team of ten people to help us manage our an individual short term rental, for example. And so as you scale and as you get bigger, you have to change your management style a little bit or at least have more people helping you out because we definitely can't do it all by ourselves so.

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Speaker 1

Well, not if you only want to work 27 hours a month.

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Speaker 2

Yep. So that is. But that number is based on actual management and operations, which I do hardly, hardly anything with the actual operations. But I think the first piece of that is, is outsourcing the operations and a big piece in the short term rental world are guest communications. Yeah, we have guests coming in and we have to communicate with them and we have to be available to communicate with them.

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Speaker 2

So that was the first piece that I outsourced and to a third party receptionist team. And so almost from the very beginning, maybe, maybe three months after I launched my first rental, short term rental, I started outsourcing that part. And so that allowed me to scale a lot. And then I also worked with found housekeepers. And as I grew, some of the housekeepers I worked with and still work with me today and have worked with me in various states and we've added a lot of management responsibilities.

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Speaker 2

So I guess I've tried to grow with, with the people that have been really good on my team and then just add in more people. I have a lot of teams virtual. Another cool thing about short term rental management is a lot of it's virtual and so I have a lot of my team in the Philippines and also Mexico.

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Speaker 2

So I think outsourcing and delegating.

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Speaker 1

Yeah, delegating is one of those things that always sounds logically good and then it's like, Yeah, how do I actually accomplish it? And, you know, make sure that we're confirming things. I love that thought process that you had and that you did it probably early on was probably a benefit to you because it wasn't like you'd been doing it all yourself and you felt like you had to like let go.

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Speaker 1

It was like, no, I know from the jump that this is something that I don't want to do myself and I want to bring in experts. Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2

Totally. Totally. And then. Yeah, I think.

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Speaker 1

Go ahead.

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Speaker 2

Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

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Speaker 1

No, no, you you first.

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Speaker 2

I was just going to say, I see a lot of people get intimidated when they may be out there. Third, fourth, short term rental, and they are doing it all themselves. And it's almost like it becomes so overwhelming that they don't want to think about scaling anymore. Whereas if yeah, if you start that in the very beginning and you take away a lot of those things that maybe you don't like doing anyways, it just makes it easier, easier in the long run.

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Speaker 2

That the cool thing about short term rentals too is that if we've chosen the right property and it's a good investment, we're earning a lot more than we are with other traditional real estate investments, long term rental, for example. And so we can afford to pay other people for all the additional help.

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Speaker 1

I love that. Yeah, right. You have a little bit more room in your margin to add in some overhead. And the other thing that I heard you say that I thought was really cool was that like as you grew, some of the people that you've hired were able to grow as well, right? So they were maybe they started out as housekeepers, but then they were able to sort of grow their own businesses and so there's a sort of all boats rise of the tide.

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Speaker 1

And of course, so much easier to reward. Like if, you know, you've got great housekeepers and they can scale their business up and you can keep that consistent guest experience.

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Speaker 2

Totally. Totally. Yeah, it takes a lot. You know, it can take a lot of work training someone, right. And so if we already have good people that we're working with, let's just make sure we take care of them and grow with them. Because, yeah, having someone leave your team and then having to retrain that can take a lot of time.

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Speaker 1

Oh, my gosh. Well, we have a thing around AirDNA. It's called snaps. I'm going to give you some snaps for that, because I think that's exactly what it's about in this business, is like taking care of the people that are taking care of your property and your guests not losing that component. I think that's such a wonderful thing.

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Speaker 1

And what I'm also getting from you, Tim, is just like the level of trust you've been able to put in others, which again, hard life skill to learn sometimes.

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Speaker 2

Yeah, I'm not saying it's always been easy. I mean, there's definitely been some challenges over the last seven years. COVID, for example, you know, you name it, there's, there's been a few challenges. But yeah, if you don't want to do all the work yourself, you have to trust someone else to do it. There's just not another way around that.

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Speaker 1

No, no. And I think that's like the only way, you know, it's like somebody wise smart once told me, like, if you want to go fast, go along. If you want to go alone. If you want to go far, go together, right? Like you have to bring others with you. That's so cool. Well, the other one that you talked about is just sort of the different types of STR’s and different ways to get into this business, which is another one of the reasons why I love this business to your point is like there are sort of a lower barrier to entry, right?

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Speaker 1

Like you don't always have to have huge amount of capital or, you know, you need to take out a huge loan. So have you dabbled in any of those sort of other types of ways to get into short term rental? What's your perspective on sort of like how people should consider that which types should people consider?

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Speaker 2

Well, so I guess I got started with small multifamily apartment buildings and those were what I was investing in as long term rentals too. And so it was a little more familiar with me, but not just any small multifamily property, right? To be a good short term rental. It has to attract someone that wants to stay there.

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Speaker 2

And so most all my properties are historic properties and they're in midtown areas. Hence the name of my company Midtown Stays. And these are areas that are between downtown and the suburbs. And so most of the time you could characterize a midtown area as an area that is near restaurants, it's near entertainment, it's walking distance to a lot of places.

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Speaker 2

You don't necessarily need a car. And now with Uber, you can just take a quick, quick Uber ride. So those are the kind of areas that I was looking at. Those are traditionally a little more expensive than maybe a suburb would be. And so you got to factor that in. But for me, I've been able to find really good returns there and also still have that backup plan that I can put long term tenants in there because most of the properties I acquired had long term tenants in there already.

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Speaker 2

But then you've got the all the other end of the spectrum, right? And what most people think about when they think about a short term rental and that is a vacation rental on the ocean or a cabin in the woods. And I do have I have a property in Brazil that's right near the ocean. Sign me up, sign me up!

00:17:08:20 - 00:17:32:27

Speaker 2

Yeah, I love I love it. I've been spending about half the year down there for the last the last few years. And it does really well as a vacation rental, but a vacation rental versus an urban short term rental, just totally different. There's the vacation rental, for example, very likely going to be more seasonal most of the time versus an urban area where it's in a bigger city.

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Speaker 2

I also like to be in slightly bigger cities because if the city is slightly bigger, there's more reasons people are going to go to that city, whether they're visiting family, whether they're there for work, whether they're exploring living in a new place, like maybe they're just moving to a new state or if it's for medical reasons. So there's the more reasons a person has to go stay and a specific market, the less risky.

00:18:01:16 - 00:18:28:25

Speaker 2

I think that that is as long as you have a good backup plan. I guess so, yeah. Caution and everything in between there. You've got yurts, you've got potatoes and all that stuff. So it's almost impossible to lump short term rentals just under one category and say, yes, they're risky or Yes, they're oversaturated, or a lot of that is is it's like it's almost to me, it's like I do have a background in commercial real estate.

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Speaker 2

So I used to be a broker, which is essentially commercial real estate. We call ourselves brokers versus or residential real estate, usually called an agent. Right. Okay.

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Speaker 1

Okay. I was going to ask break that down for me. I was like, help the lay-people such as myself understand.

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Speaker 2

That that's all it is. I mean, it's, it's basically just another name. But we're working with commercial property. So I work with apartment buildings and shopping centers and warehouses, and I learned a lot, a lot working on that team that was in Northern California. We just analyzed properties and right now it's a really, really good experience, but it's almost like, you know, all those different types of real estate investments.

00:19:09:24 - 00:19:23:12

Speaker 2

They're all real estate, but they're all different. Just like all short term rentals are all real estate, but they're all different based on, you know, a whole bunch of things. So I kind of just went on a rant there. I don't know if I answered the question.

00:19:23:27 - 00:19:50:27

Speaker 1

I love that rant. It absolutely answered my question. And again, I just love that you're sharing some of your wisdom because, of course, that's what the intent of the podcast is, is to give people some insider knowledge from people that have just done really innovative things in the space. And so this sort of midtown unlock for you, this ability to have real estate that's flexible, this ability for you to leverage sort of your background in real estate, commercial real estate and how you would analyze an area.

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Speaker 1

Sounds like that all sort of created a great trifecta for you. I know this this is always like the potentially a third rail topic. But just when you when you mentioned midtown, of course, the first thing that comes to mind for me is regulation. So I'd love to know how you're sort of weathering the regulation storm. What advice would you have to give somebody like me who's maybe like, Oh, Midtown?

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Speaker 1

That makes a lot of sense. I actually I have a property in Midtown and I could try to rent out right now, but do I want to deal with the regulation component?

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Speaker 2

Yeah. That’s a great question and a super important one right? If we're investing in a short term rental that we can't legally operate, then that’s not going to work out too well so that is a big one and every market is different, right? So every midtown area is going to be different based on the city or the state's regulations.

00:20:44:05 - 00:21:05:13

Speaker 2

But as we know, regulations usually come down almost to a neighborhood level or a lot of times they do on a neighborhood level. Some of the things I like about midtown areas in terms of regulation is that a lot of times they're sort of mixed zoning. So it's not fully suburban like a suburban neighborhood where everyone's just living there.

00:21:05:14 - 00:21:34:08

Speaker 2

You're not living next to a restaurant or liquor store or whatever happens to be. And it's also not downtown where it's super dense. And a lot of times the housing is so expensive or there's a shortage of housing in the urban area too, where the restrictions are quite as tight. So it's in a usually it's in like a mixed area where and again, also not being next to a lot of longtime neighbors or maybe a few.

00:21:34:08 - 00:21:59:20

Speaker 2

But, you know, it's kind of scattered. You have less neighbor issues and that can be a, you know, a dealbreaker out a neighborhood. If someone's lived there for a long time. So that's part of it. Yeah. So some of my properties have commercial zoning, which doesn't necessarily allow to allow me to rent them as a short term rental if it was regulated there.

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Speaker 2

But it does make it easier for me in the future to apply for a transit occupancy license if I wanted to.

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Speaker 1

Got it. Okay.

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Speaker 2

But I would say just you know, it really comes out of the market though. Like you don't want to go into market invest in short term rentals where you can't legally do it and you also I would say it's probably more risky to to go into a market that doesn't have any rules set up because you never know when they can change them.

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Speaker 2

So I think it's best to be in a place that's already got some rules set up. And a lot of times it found that those are areas that have less of a housing shortage supply issue like San Francisco, Manhattan, Seattle, all these types of places.

00:22:45:08 - 00:23:03:23

Speaker 1

Right now, that makes total sense. And I think that's something that like we certainly are galvanized around over here to a certain extent because it does help. Right? Like if if regulation is already in place, there are rules. I think we all just want a level playing field. Right. So like if we know what the rules are, we want to pay our taxes.

00:23:03:23 - 00:23:25:07

Speaker 1

We want to have consistency with hotels and other lodging avenues. Then it is nothing but, you know, a benefit to the entire community. So I think that's great wisdom. Well, what so so turning that sort of on the other side, I would love to know because you are giving me such great advice and giving our audience such great advice.

00:23:25:27 - 00:23:47:04

Speaker 1

If you had any advice for people that are, you know, have been operating for quite a few years now, they've sort of seen the business sort of grow like pretty extensively before COVID. You know, obviously COVID hit, we thought that was going to be a huge hiccup. It ended up not being a huge hiccup. Right. It almost ended up having the opposite effect.

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Speaker 2

Yeah.

00:23:48:04 - 00:24:15:26

Speaker 1

Listings have grown quite extensively. I think quite a few people have sort of jumped on the bandwagon, so to speak, of short term rental investments. I think you and I both were talking about hashtag Airbnb bust here a few minutes ago. So what? Yeah, what's what's your hot take for people that are, like, maybe a little tenured and wondering what the future of short term rental, you know, operating and investing looks like?

00:24:15:26 - 00:24:20:12

Speaker 2

Well, yeah, a lot of gosh, a lot of rabbit holes. We could go down here.

00:24:20:13 - 00:24:21:05

Speaker 1

Sorry!

00:24:22:03 - 00:24:48:18

Speaker 2

I think one of the most exciting things for me is that people are living in short term rentals now. So it's not just that we're traveling. I, I just mentioned I sold my property in Colombia and I'm staying in an Airbnb right now for a couple of months while I'm working on another investment here. So I'm living in this Airbnb and it's not just me, lots and lots of people are.

00:24:48:18 - 00:25:13:10

Speaker 2

And we've seen that the average reservation length grow just across the board right? So I think that's one of the most exciting pieces for me and I've been exploring that more. This act, this this midterm stay vs. a short term one. Also another way that most of the time you can get around regulations because most time regulations regulate you or your property.

00:25:13:10 - 00:25:38:11

Speaker 2

If it's a short term rental, which the definition, definition changes a little bit, but it's pretty much 30 days. So if you're renting more than 30 days, you could do that even in a city that doesn't allow short term rentals. Right, because it's not a short term rental anymore. And so that's there's some really good opportunity there. Gosh, I get so many ideas in my head.

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Speaker 2

I just I know.

00:25:39:27 - 00:25:45:10

Speaker 1

I was like, I just gave you the broadest topic in the world or just what advice.

00:25:45:15 - 00:26:06:20

Speaker 2

The Airbnb bust. So I would say if we go back to midterm rentals for a little bit, again, that's going to depend on the type of property you have. Someone, in my opinion, is not going to want to live in a large potato. We've seen that potato on Airbnb, right? Oh, I don't want to live there for three months.

00:26:06:21 - 00:26:06:26

Speaker 2

Yes.

00:26:07:16 - 00:26:11:19

Speaker 1

I don't think it has windows so, No.

00:26:12:09 - 00:26:46:27

Speaker 2

Yeah. So different types of properties are going to lend themselves to longer types of reservations. And while, you know, a lot of during COVID and a lot of people went out and they bought with short term rentals and vacation rentals and nice luxury properties and for me, in my opinion, we're in some rocky economic times here and during rocky economic times, especially with inflation high and a lot of the middle class getting squeezed and not having as much purchasing power.

00:26:47:13 - 00:27:20:25

Speaker 2

Now, I think it's it just makes sense that less people are going to be spending high, high amounts of money on on travel. So I could see I think that that sector of short term rentals will get hurt more than the urban type properties, for example, that someone might want to live in. But another side of that, too, you know, as interest rates go up and less people are able to afford to buy properties, every little point that the interest rate goes up, less people can buy properties.

00:27:20:25 - 00:27:51:01

Speaker 2

And it's they've gone up a lot. Right. And so all those people are renting or staying with family. Right. And so that that creates more demand on the rental side, which can be good for short term rentals as well. And if someone was hanging around waiting, waiting for the short term or for the interest rates to go down because they want to buy property, then maybe they are staying in a short term rental for three months or so, but they might not be staying in a luxury villa that costs $10,000 a night.

00:27:51:01 - 00:28:17:06

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think that's such a good takeaway. And again, I think it comes back to sort of the core component of what I'm seeing in your strategy, which is the diversification, right? Sort of like having a plan A, a plan B, like having that flexibility in your portfolio and what you're investing in so that if you need to pivot based on what's happening in the economy or what's happening with travel demand, you know, certainly makes it a little bit easier for you if you have that diversification.

00:28:17:06 - 00:28:18:25

Speaker 1

So I think that's great advice. Tim.

00:28:19:07 - 00:28:40:13

Speaker 2

If I could just add one thing, though, Mariah, for those of you, for those like when we're investing in property, we really need to know what it is that we want, right? We have to have our own investment philosophy. Is it to just make passive income so I can go travel the world and in the short term rental space a lot of short term rentals are second homes for people.

00:28:40:13 - 00:29:10:15

Speaker 2

And so for anyone out there that can fully afford their second home as a short term rental and maybe 60% of their decision to buy it was personally based, then that's great. They can buy us. They can buy a vacation home. They can also make money off of it. But for those out there that are looking to just find the the best returns and the most secure returns there, certain types of properties, I think they'll be less less risky.

00:29:11:13 - 00:29:24:16

Speaker 1

I love that. That's a great addition. Well Tim, I mean, first of all, I was listening to your podcast. You also have a podcast so big shout out to Short Term Rental riches. By Tim Hubbard

00:29:24:19 - 00:29:25:09

Speaker 2

Thank you very much.

00:29:26:06 - 00:29:36:28

Speaker 1

So. My loaded question for you, my friend, is what is the biggest fail you can make as an Airbnb host? You just covered this topic.

00:29:36:29 - 00:29:37:14

Speaker 2

Thats a good question.

00:29:38:00 - 00:29:40:11

Speaker 1

People need to know. People need to know.

00:29:40:23 - 00:30:00:13

Speaker 2

Yeah. So yeah. Thanks for bringing up the podcasts have been a lot of fun. This has been that this is the third year now and they're just bite size actionable episodes and yeah, if you just listen to one recently I talked about what I think is the biggest fail, an epic fail really. And it just happened to me as I was in Europe.

00:30:00:13 - 00:30:25:10

Speaker 2

Staying at another Airbnb is when an Airbnb host, when a guest going to an Airbnb can't get in. And that is that is the epic fail. If your guest cannot get into the property and no one is there to help you get in, that's a fail. So that happened to me, unfortunately, one night in Bulgaria, a couple of months ago, and it was middle of the night.

00:30:25:10 - 00:30:42:01

Speaker 2

I luckily had a good friend there, that live nearby and he had a spare bedroom, so it stayed with him. But that is the worse. That's the biggest fail in terms of hosting. But there's other things we can do in terms of actually investing that are very epic fails too.

00:30:42:03 - 00:30:55:21

Speaker 1

I like all these cheat codes. Yeah, that's a really good one. We do have somebody on our team from Bulgaria too, so that happens again. We'll just have Alex call his family. We'll figure it out. Don't worry. We got you.

00:30:55:21 - 00:30:59:00

Speaker 2

Covered. It's good to be connected. Good to be connected.

00:31:00:04 - 00:31:25:21

Speaker 1

It absolutely is. Well, Tim, I have so, so enjoyed getting to know you. I like to end these interviews with just a little game we play at the end so it’s Who, What and Where. The first question is, besides yourself, of course, who would you recommend new people that are new to this business listen to for advice.

00:31:27:06 - 00:31:42:05

Speaker 2

Good question and really important question. So but a hard one to answer because there are so many good resources now with YouTube and podcasts. So I would say if I can just give a few.

00:31:43:12 - 00:31:44:01

Speaker 1

Absolutely, I’ll let you give a few.

00:31:44:03 - 00:32:18:16

Speaker 2

The Real Estate Guys, radio, they have been around for over two decades and I love their podcast because they talk about all different types of real estate and they also bring in some macroeconomics and stuff like that. So it's a very well-rounded podcast and they're, they're solid guys, really good advice for macroeconomic advice, which I think is really important right now, is George Gammon is fantastic.

00:32:18:16 - 00:32:41:12

Speaker 2

He also happens to live here in Medellin most of the time. So he can go very deep on macroeconomics. So maybe not one of the channels you want to speed up to one and a half times. You know, but really good advice. I like when I was first getting started, I listened a lot to Jason Hartman. I also think he has really good advice.

00:32:41:18 - 00:33:02:23

Speaker 2

He doesn't talk so much about short term rentals, mainly focused on long term single family residences. But he talks a lot about markets and making sure you're in the right markets. So those are good advice. Couple couple books. There's one called Emerging Markets, which is a fantastic book that talks about markets because they're always changing. Right.

00:33:02:23 - 00:33:03:25

Speaker 1

Yes!

00:33:03:25 - 00:33:08:09

Speaker 2

That’s a good one. I'll stop there. I could go on forever.

00:33:08:09 - 00:33:10:26

Speaker 1

We can add some more to the show notes, we'll just we'll just.

00:33:11:14 - 00:33:11:24

Speaker 2

Beef-up

00:33:11:24 - 00:33:31:01

Speaker 1

The show notes with them. I love it. Thank you. Those are all great. Now I know what I'm listening to on the way home today. All right. The next one is a what question? So what do you wish you knew before you got started in this crazy short term rental business?

00:33:31:01 - 00:34:06:21

Speaker 2

What I wish I knew before I got started in the short term rental business. This is a tough one. I guess my very first few short term rentals were very I did a lot of renovations. And I guess I wish that I knew that I didn't necessarily you can add a lot of value to properties if you're doing the renovation, but it's a lot of work and be a lot of stress, and especially if you're in a market that you don't know anyone else and you're starting over.

00:34:07:05 - 00:34:39:14

Speaker 2

So I guess I would say that there are lots of opportunities that fit more with your specific investment philosophy. So if you don't want to spend a lot of work or do the construction or do anything like that, that there are other opportunities that are going to fit more in line with what you want. So I'd make sure if I was doing it over again, I would spend more time thinking about exactly what it was that I wanted out of it and look for opportunities that fit that better.

00:34:40:17 - 00:35:05:08

Speaker 1

I love I love that concept of coming up with an investment philosophy, right? Or an investment thesis like this is the intention. This is what I want to get out of this effort. And this is sort of how I will proceed from a from a tactical perspective. All right. All right. Just one more for you. What I love about real estate is like, we all wish we had the crystal ball to know where we should have invested.

00:35:06:25 - 00:35:18:12

Speaker 1

So where do you wish you had invested when you got started? That maybe you did it, you didn't invest it? It could be the place you did invest. Maybe you nailed it in the market.

00:35:18:12 - 00:35:42:01

Speaker 2

They've done you know, they've done pretty well up until now. But I guess I would probably just go back and look at where the biggest returns were, which which I could say pretty confidently or probably most them in either Florida or Texas. But again, it comes down to the individual market and then really the individual neighborhood, because you could have two neighborhoods right next to each other.

00:35:42:11 - 00:35:59:25

Speaker 2

And again, I don't like to invest for appreciation, but if I had this crystal ball, I like to invest just for cash flow, make sure things make sense when I buy them. But if I could go back to the crystal ball, I would look for the highest appreciation. And that's surely probably in certain parts of Texas and Florida.

00:35:59:25 - 00:36:06:18

Speaker 2

And, you know, like the Nashville's or Austin, those places are just really, really blown up.

00:36:07:10 - 00:36:29:24

Speaker 1

I love that. Yeah, that's where it's always like. So like I went to school in New York and I'm always like, why didn't I make my dad buy, like a loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn? Before Williamsburg, Brooklyn was a place that people wanted to live. Like just a warehouse. It would have been fine, anyways. Oh, my gosh, Tim, I've had so much fun getting to know more about you.

00:36:30:11 - 00:36:39:04

Speaker 1

I, you know, I'm sure I'm not the only one that wants to hear more from you, so where can folks find you if they'd like to get more of this great advice from you.

00:36:39:04 - 00:37:02:24

Speaker 2

It's been. Thanks for having me on it's been a lot of fun. Well, I have a podcast, Short Term Rental Riches and you can find in all the podcast outlets. And then I have a website with a lot of additional free resources software that I use and a free ebook on what I think makes the best market for investing in short term rentals and that website is restmethods.com.

00:37:04:04 - 00:37:04:17

Speaker 1

Love it.

00:37:05:03 - 00:37:05:28

Speaker 2

Either one.

00:37:07:01 - 00:37:24:24

Speaker 1

Awesome. All right well we'll definitely those in the show notes and just big congratulations to you it sounds like you've been able to sort of fulfill your dream of a life, lifetime of travel and getting to enjoy all the best parts of life. So I love that philosophy that you also have as part of your investment strategy.

00:37:25:28 - 00:37:36:08

Speaker 2

Well, and thanks again for everything you guys do because your data, you know, investing comes down to data and you guys do a really good job at making that data accessible. So thank you for that as well.

00:37:36:25 - 00:37:51:11

Speaker 1

I love that one thing that always makes me happy to hear because that is of course, our mission is to make that data accessible to everyone and really democratize the opportunity that short term rentals provides for folks. So appreciate the shout out, Tim. Thank you so much.

00:37:52:06 - 00:37:56:25

Speaker 2

Thank you. Until next time. Ciao.