Investing in Turnkey Real Estate Properties (Ep 620)

Zach Leimaster, founder and CEO of Rent to Retirement, discusses how he helps people retire early with turnkey rentals. He explains that turnkey rentals involve identifying the best markets based on cashflow and building teams in those areas to offer investment properties. Leimaster emphasizes that anyone can get started investing in rental real estate, and it doesn't necessarily require a large amount of money. He shares his own journey of retiring early through real estate investing and highlights the importance of consistency and having a strategy. Leimaster also discusses the process of determining the best markets to invest in and the different types of rentals available.

Takeaways

Turnkey rentals involve identifying the best markets for investment properties and building teams in those areas.
Anyone can get started investing in rental real estate, regardless of their financial situation.
Consistency and having a strategy are key to achieving financial independence and generational wealth through real estate investing.
Determining the best markets to invest in involves factors such as cashflow, legislation, taxes, population growth, and economic diversity.
Short-term rentals require attention to detail, marketing, and creating a unique guest experience to stand out in a competitive market.
Grow your short-term rental business OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

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Jasper Ribbers (00:01.223)
Welcome back to Get Paid for Your Pat. My special guest today is Zach Leimaster. He is the founder and CEO of Rent to Retirement, and he helps people retire early with turnkey rentals. We're going to learn all about what that means exactly. Zach has a portfolio of long -term rentals, midterm rentals, and short -term rentals. So I'm super excited to have him.

On the show fellow podcast host, he runs a podcast as well. So Zach, welcome to the show.

Zach Lemaster (00:31.63)
Jasper, thanks so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

Jasper Ribbers (00:35.015)
Awesome, awesome. Tell us about rent to retirement and how do you help people retire early and what are turnkey rentals?

Zach Lemaster (00:44.462)
Yeah, I'd love to turn key rentals. Uh, I mean, it's, it's a buzzword first and foremost. Some people may have heard of turnkey or maybe not, but you know, essentially what, what we talk about when we mean turnkey is we identify the best markets throughout the country based on cashflow, uh, based on legislation, taxes, population growth. And then we build our teams in those areas to offer investment properties to our investors where they have easy access to acquire those properties. So essentially.

Most of what we do is build to rent. So ground up construction, we're building single family and small multifamily properties and growing areas where we lease and manage them for investors and help them build a strategy around acquiring a, you know, their own portfolio to ultimately the idea of this is what they want to achieve is financial independence and generational wealth through scaling their portfolio. This obviously involves a lot of tax and you know, uh, financing discussions and going through how they scale their portfolio, but essentially we're selling.

You know, properties, our mission statement is to make the best deals across the country accessible to everyone and handle all the management for them. And we do short -term rentals as well as a midterm and long -term rental. So that's what we do.

Jasper Ribbers (01:46.247)
Mm -hmm.

Jasper Ribbers (01:53.191)
So retiring early through purchasing real estate and building generational wealth, I think that sounds like a dream to a lot of people. Is this something that's really attainable for everybody, or do you need to have some type of amount of money to invest to get started, or could anybody get started with this?

Zach Lemaster (02:16.654)
Yeah. Well, anyone can certainly get started investing in rental real estate, whether you're doing it on your own, going the turnkey route. Um, and, and you really have to get started to some degree, right? Depending on what level of investor you want to, to ultimately become the beautiful thing about real estate is it can fulfill whatever, whatever you want it to. Right. If you, if you want it to create, if you want to create a scenario where you replace your active income, um, and that means you have to be a little bit more aggressive on your investing. You can, you can do that and you can do that.

And this is why I'm so passionate about real estate. And this is a case for myself as well. You can build financial dependence and generational wealth within a few short years of dedicated and intentional investing. It doesn't happen overnight. It also does not take a lifetime as long as you have a strategy and a plan and you stay consistent. To that capital is the most limiting factor for everybody, right? Everyone runs out of money, um, to put his down payments.

Jasper Ribbers (03:00.487)
Mm -hmm. Mm.

Zach Lemaster (03:09.326)
You know, but you know, there's plenty of different things you can do to continue to scale your portfolio using a HELOC, a retirement account, partnering with people using creative financing options, like putting zero money down or 5 % down, like some of the lenders that we work with that offer those, you know, but basically my wife and I, we have a background in healthcare as optometrists. So we were healthcare professionals. I was an air force captain for seven years. I ran private practices after that in Colorado, which is where we live today.

Um, and we invested that entire time. I've the first house I bought was a duplex lives in half, rented out the other half. And then the next, next year bought another duplex, right? And so, um, but I've stayed consistent to investing every single year. And this has been about 15 years at this point to be where we were able to retire ourselves from our professional career path. Uh, and that happened in about year six or seven of, of investing, especially once we started to learn how to invest out of state to invest where there's better opportunities. So I do think that is very attainable.

For everyone, I don't think it's necessarily easy. It takes time and dedication, but it can be accomplished and it doesn't take a lifetime. Right. And that also means that you'll hit some obstacles along the way, but if you can stay consistent to investing in real estate, I'm such a firm believer that this is the shortest and most predictable path to wealth.

Jasper Ribbers (04:11.751)
Mm -hmm.

Jasper Ribbers (04:23.239)
Yeah, yeah, I 100 % agree. I would say I bought my first home when I was 30 years old. If the only regret I have is that I didn't buy real estate earlier. Cause I, I think the earlier that you, even if it's a, it's a, you know, like a small investment, like a studio or, you know, like whatever it is, like just to get started with it as early as possible in your life is, I think is very beneficial.

Zach Lemaster (04:48.046)
Time is on your side, right? Real estate, everyone says what's like, um, invest in real estate and wait, don't wait to invest in real estate or however the, the saying goes, but all of us can say that, right? Desperate, I wish we started earlier. I wish we were aggressive, more aggressive earlier on, but yeah, I mean, but it's also never too late, right? I mean, we have a lot of investors that are at retirement age and it's maybe a slightly different strategy for them on what they're trying to accomplish and different financing, but you know, you can, within a few short years of dedicated investing, you can make some big, some big moves.

Even if it seems even it seems unfathomable right now, you just got to get started.

Jasper Ribbers (05:18.087)
Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers (05:22.439)
How do you, what's your process to determine like what the best markets are to invest in?

Zach Lemaster (05:27.822)
We have a few key metrics. I mean, and this is kind of regardless if it's short or long -term rental, because, you know, we do offer both and operate in both capacities. So there's a lot more in a short -term rental market that we're evaluating, but on a long -term basis, just in general, we want to be in areas that have landlord friendly legislation, low taxes, population and economic growth, right? Areas that have a diversity of industries, areas that are below, we focus on houses below the median house price point.

Uh, which is around 400 ,000 give or take right now. So we want to be in areas in that two to $300 ,000 range for new, new construction, single family rentals, because that's going to allow us to have largest demographic of tenants and, and, and buyers retail buyers. Cause you know, more than likely you're going to sell this property after a period of time. Did you build equity and 1031 exchange it? Um, so we want to be in areas that are growing. I mean, we have a deficit of 7 .2 million houses in the U S this is mainly on a longterm basis. It were focusing on the short -term basis.

We want to be in areas, you know, that obviously the numbers make sense from a short term where there's demand. It's not oversaturated where there's legislation in place already. That's favorable of short -term rentals, not in a gray area where you may not be grandfathered in. If it changes some of the most successful markets we've been in have been in areas that are seasonal where, Hey, maybe peak season for short -term rental is three, three or four months out of the year. And for the rest of the year, you're maybe ringing it out on a midterm basis.

Um, you know, where you can really maximize your income. That's very location dependent in areas, you know, that are close to universities, hospitals. So it depends on the strategy, but in general, that's kind of like the baseline criteria of what we're looking for.

Jasper Ribbers (07:02.503)
Yeah. So when you, when you work with clients, like, do you determine first if it's going to be a longterm, midterm or short term rental before you built the home?

Zach Lemaster (07:14.51)
Well, we're building both consistently at all times in these markets. I will say, you know, probably the majority of what we do 70 % is more on the long -term basis, but we do have plenty of midterm and short -term options as well. These are also new construction houses. So we have consistent inventory at any point in time, you know, 50 to 60 houses for sale on any given month and we sell all of those. But it's really about the client themselves, the investor. And so the first thing we want to do with the investor is have a discussion to learn about.

You know, your investment goals, your criteria, your timeline, your resources, your experience level. Like what are you ultimately looking to achieve? If you're a short -term rental investor and that's all you want to do. Like, okay, that's obviously going to tailor us to just look at the short -term rental markets and things like that. But if you're more open and you want to diversify the asset class and you know, the location, then maybe that's something we focus on. So it's being very intentional about what your goals are and then matching that with the right property. Also matching it with the right legal structure, the right financing option, the right tax strategy, right?

I mean, we can be very creative with some investors right now. Like for example, we had, we had a high income earning doctor that was investing with us last year and he, this was, he's never invested in real estate previously, but his goal was he likes the idea of owning rentals real estate. He understands appreciation over time using leverage and you know, and rents go up over time. Like he understands he gets all that, but he's like, Hey, look, I need to maximize my tax benefits this year. And he's paying well into the six figures of taxes, never bought real estate before.

We couldn't qualify him as a real estate professional, his wife, because he doesn't own real estate. His wife is also working, you know, majority full time. So she couldn't qualify as real estate professional to do the accelerated depreciation. So we took him through the short -term loophole, which we have a program to do this where we, he bought five new construction properties with us in the Southeast. And was able to, we, we basically helped him furnish the house, got his maintenance person got lined up. He was self -managing them. But then he was able to take accelerated depreciation on all those properties.

to give them a six figure tax offset first year. And then the second year, he actually turned those properties over to our managerial team. Cause you only have to have it. You only have to self manage for the year that you go into service. So he managed them for three or four months. Next calendar year, turn them over to us. In addition to that, we helped him buy all those properties with 5 % down. And so he actually maintained the majority of his investment capital to go out and do his other projects while creating this huge tax benefit. So I just use that example because it's really, it's really important to understand what the goals are of the investor.

Zach Lemaster (09:41.901)
and then try to help them through all the different options, not only on the inventory and the market side, but like the strategy, right? From the tax and legal structure as well and financing on how they're going to accomplish their goal.

Jasper Ribbers (09:54.919)
Mm hmm. Would you, which I know you have long term, mid term and short term rentals. Like when you, when you speak to a new investor, how do you decide what would be the best type of rental for, for that person?

Zach Lemaster (10:09.678)
It again, it goes back to their, their, their goals, right? So if they're saying, if there's someone who's very interested in the hospitality space in short -term rentals, um, you know, or if they want to maximize their rental income, I mean, that's, that's something that maybe they could accomplish with the midterm rental, right? Where they're, they're housing people from one to three months. And often you can set up with, you know, companies where they're actually, you know, you have a corporate lease and they're leasing out like on an annual basis, but they're able to increase their rent. So if they want to be a little bit more aggressive on cashflow.

Then great. If they want, if they're appreciation based, uh, and they want to build more growth in their portfolio, you know, maybe, maybe a brand new construction house in an area that may not perform well as a short -term rental, but it has great long -term potential. That might be a good starting point for them, right? If they don't short -term rentals, as you know, Jasper sometimes has volatility and has changes. Um, and if they don't want seasonality to their investment portfolio, they just want consistency and they want it to be extremely passive. Maybe a long -term rental is best suited for them.

to own in that if they want to, if they want to self manage their property and they just are looking for an easy way to access a, you know, new construction property in a great area where everything's kind of set up for them, where they can just take over management. Maybe some people want to operate in that capacity and be their own manager. So it's really, it's just really dependent, but I would say the majority of our investors, they're either newer investors that maybe they have a small portfolio, but they're looking to scale diversified scale to that next level. Maybe their local real estate is too expensive or inaccessible for them.

Jasper Ribbers (11:23.623)
Mm -hmm.

Zach Lemaster (11:37.23)
Maybe they're a high income earner at their W2 job or self -employed and they don't really want to buy themselves another job with real estate. We provide a service where they can come in and easily expand their portfolio and scale where they can just tap into our team and do that easily. And I think they get the financial benefits of real estate ownership, but we're kind of helping them to map out that plan and handle and managing the portfolio for them.

Jasper Ribbers (11:59.463)
Is there right now, obviously the interest rates are a lot higher than a couple of years ago. I don't follow the real estate market and the prices on a day -to -day basis, but I'm sure you follow everything that's related to real estate. So what's the current state of the real estate market in terms of the level of the prices and interest rates? And what kind of ROI can people expect when they're investing right now?

Zach Lemaster (12:29.518)
Very good question and very relevant for right now. So yeah, as you mentioned over the past two years, we've just went through the highest interest rate increase that we've seen in 40 years, like the most aggressive interest rate increase in the shortest period of time. And that's really out of necessity. I wanna make that clear because that was coming from a time where we had like all time low interest rates that we'll probably never see again in our lifetime and probably shouldn't because that creates some economic turmoil. Many people expected that to cause a real estate market correction and crash to some degree.

And I would say it did in some areas. These are usually the more expensive areas that were overinflated to begin with. Um, and so there's been some correction, but in the markets that we really focus on again, below that median house price point in that, you know, below that 400 K like there, there really wasn't any dropping of prices. There wasn't any decrease in demand because we really try to be in like the necessity based housing type of scenario where we have a large group of people that need housing. Um, and.

they're going to need housing regardless of what's going on. So we haven't really seen a decrease in home prices. We've seen a little bit of flat line, a little bit of flat line in rents, but actually over towards the tail end of 2023. And even now we're starting to see dramatic increase in rents and home prices again. Maybe that's an anticipation for the rates, but there's a little bit of a stagnant market. You know, and that's mainly on the retail side. What I'm talking about is the retail side, retail buyers, you know, there was really kind of a stagnant market for quite some time.

which is not a lot of inventory, right? People aren't selling their houses either if they had a 3 % interest rate. So not a lot of movement in the market in general on the investor side, you know, we've seen investor sales increase every single year because we're investing for fundamentals in areas that make sense. Now, right now, to be specific, I think, you know, with the fed coming out, hopefully we'll see at least two interest rate drops this year. You know, that will probably move us a little bit more into seller's market and start juicing up the appreciation both in rents and home prices again.

So we'll probably be back into that trend that we saw pre, you know, interest rate increase here very shortly, especially with people sitting on the sidelines that are jumping back in. But right now is actually a very unique time where you have a lot of, a lot of creative options to make moves that probably won't be available towards the tail end of the year to be specific. I mean, there are banks that are offering a 3 .99 % interest rate where, you know, builders are self -included, will actually buy the rate down. So you can get a fixed interest rate at 3 .99%.

Zach Lemaster (14:55.15)
Um, where, you know, you're not paying any points for that, um, because builders are incentivized to do that. Um, there's also loan creative loan options, portfolio loans, where you can buy investment properties with as little as 0 % down in some cases or 5 % down. If you qualify for them, these are portfolio loans, not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac loans. So you could quite literally come in and buy a large portfolio with little to no money out of your pocket and go out and short -term rent those if you want, or use them as long -term loan, take the tax benefits.

Jasper Ribbers (15:20.359)
Hmm.

Zach Lemaster (15:22.67)
So these are all important things I think to be conscious of also buying properties below market value. There's a little bit of a surplus on the new construction inventory right now where maybe you can buy properties at five to 10 % below market value, you know, on a $400 ,000 house, that's 20 to $40 ,000 below market value where you come into immediate equity. So these are all things that like we're offering and we're seeing other builders offer these where you may not have access to those in a few, in a few months as the market changes. So.

I mean, I think it's important timing to be conscious of taking action and, um, you know, making moves that you may not have ability to soon.

Jasper Ribbers (16:00.775)
So you mentioned the market's kind of expecting a couple interest rate cuts this year. What are your thoughts on the next three to five years? What's your expectation?

Zach Lemaster (16:14.446)
I think it's going to be relatively about the same, quite frankly. So if you're someone that has been like waiting for rates to drop, I just think that's not the way to approach. Now, no doubt about it. If interest rates are double what they were three or five years ago, like, yes, it's harder to cashflow, right? Maybe you have to put more money down. That's just, that's just how it is. Right. Or, you know, maybe use one of these creative options to be a little bit more of a strategic investor to still acquire portfolios.

But I would imagine we're going to teeter around the same interest rates we are right now. We'll probably see a little bit of a drop maybe into 2025, but you know, the Fed, this is where interest rates need to be quite frankly, to keep us economically stable. And I don't think we're, we're going to expect a huge dip. I mean, what happened post COVID that was, that was a scenario that, that probably won't happen again, that we're all having to deal with now, but real estate is real estate, right? It's all about supply and demand. If you're buying in good areas that have an under supply of housing.

Jasper Ribbers (16:50.567)
Mm -hmm.

Zach Lemaster (17:09.518)
And there's a demand and you're buying below, you know, you're not buying overinflated prices. You're buying in, you know, reasonably priced homes that still cashflow like real estate will still appreciate over time. And, you know, you can still use leverage for the tenant to buy the loan down. Rents will appreciate over time, short or long -term rents. All rent goes up over time. That's tied to inflation. So inflation is a good thing from a real perspective. So I think we're probably going to see about what we've seen here, maybe a little bit lower rate and a little bit more of a seller's market over the next couple of years. That's probably what we're expecting.

Jasper Ribbers (17:27.687)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jasper Ribbers (17:36.935)
Yeah. Yeah. You brought up a good point, which is that, you know, I think younger people may not have, uh, may not remember where maybe alive when interest rates were really always around like five, six, seven, 8 % meant that's, that's historically, that's a normal rate, right? It was really like 2000, what is it? 2009 until 2023 was really in the nominee, right? Where interest rates were just so low. They were.

They've never been that low historically. So, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's, it went on for a long time, like 14 years. So it's almost like people kind of forgot that five, six, 7 % is a normal interest rate, right?

Zach Lemaster (18:18.254)
Well, there was times it is, and it's a necessary interest rate or like in relatively speaking, it's actually low. It just doesn't feel low because of what the, the, the recent history. But I mean, we interviewed Barbara Corcoran the other day and, um, you know, from, from Shark Tank, and she was talking about, uh, interest rates in the eighties that were at 18%. And the question we had for her was like, were you still buying real estate? Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. She's buying real estate all the time. And, uh, it's just goes to show like.

This is normal rates. I mean, this is what you really want for a stable real estate economy right now.

Jasper Ribbers (18:53.063)
Yeah, I remember when I was, I think I was like six or seven years old when I opened my first bank account. And I remember putting money in the bank account because I was getting like five or 6 % interest on it. And then I was calculating like, Hey, if I put like, you know, 10, not dollars, cause I didn't live in the U S but you know,

I was just say dollars like $10 every week in my bank account and I would calculate like, oh, then in three years, like I have X amount of money, you know? And it's funny and I could sounds crazy in the last like 15 years getting 5 % interest on the bank account. That sounds crazy, right? But that's how it used to be.

Zach Lemaster (19:32.526)
Yeah. And then, and then Jasper, you discovered real estate, right? And then you were able to run your math and compound it using, using leverage and all the other things. So, yeah.

Jasper Ribbers (19:38.951)
Hehehe

Jasper Ribbers (19:43.239)
Yeah, one thing that makes real estate, in my opinion, like really attractive in the States specifically is because you guys have that 30 year fixed mortgage rates. Like in my country that doesn't exist. Right. It's, and then I think in a lot of countries, like five or 10 years, the longest you can, you can really get. And so, you know, like that's just, I mean, people who have like a 30 year fixed at like 3 % or three and a half percent, man, that's that mortgage is, is an asset in itself. Right.

Zach Lemaster (20:10.542)
Yeah. And if you actually know how to calculate the time value of money and you run the numbers, like this is a hard thing to conceptualize, but might be interesting to do is practice to educate yourself is actually understand the future dollars, right? And what you're paying. If you have a 30 year fixed mortgage, the interest rate is kind of irrelevant to some degree, because if you let that mortgage run its course, you're just because of inflation alone, you're paying the bank back with future dollars that are worth significantly less.

Right. Then, then today, so just the time value of money is really important to understand and you're just using leverage to your, you know, to your benefit. And yeah, to your point, my wife's Canadian and we own some real estate in Canada as well. There's no such thing as a 30 year fixed mortgage. I've never heard of, you know, a fixed rate for that long. I mean, every year they're usually on three to five year terms. They're amortized over 20 to 30 years and there's prepayment penalties. Like you have to pay like,

Yeah. A 30 year fixed loan where you close it, you pay for it once. And then that loan never changes. Like your rents go up year after year. That's a huge advantage, right? That is, that is quite literally how a lot of people build wealth and real estate is just leverage appropriately. Uh, and then the tax benefits that come with that, right. Um, and writing off your, your mortgage, your depreciation. I mean, we were talking to some Australian investors the other day where they, like their sole investing strategy is called negative gearing.

Jasper Ribbers (21:23.911)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Zach Lemaster (21:35.406)
where they purposely buy negatively cash flowing properties to offset some of the tax. Like, could you imagine like you have to buy an asset, but also have reserves for a negatively cash flowing property, you know, just, just to offset your income, you know, and you still don't have a 30 year fixed mortgage. So anyways, it's very interesting, but there's a lot of advantages to investing in the U S.

Jasper Ribbers (21:53.415)
Now I know you operate a number of short -term rentals and you mentioned to me that your short -term rentals are some of the top performing properties. Can you tell us a little bit more about what your portfolio looks like, where it's located, what kind of short -term rentals are they?

Zach Lemaster (22:09.326)
Yeah. So on the short term aspect, and this is a newer asset class that we've gotten involved in personally, you know, about over the past five years. And so we own luxury high -end houses in summit County and that's in Colorado. So this would be like where the, these are true look destinations for vacations. You know, these are Breckenridge, Keystone, Copper Mountain. So these are well -known ski areas in Colorado. What we buy specifically is we buy like high -end homes that have seven bedrooms and above.

And these are kind of you very unique properties. And I really, we've done very well with those and we can talk all day about all the unique things that we cater to clients, creating an experience. We have a whole concierge team around, you know, picking them up from the airport. If they want a private chef, if they want, you know, making sure they, when they have the house, there's like bikes and skis and snow shoes and all the things for them to do to take full advantage of the area. And that's really allowed us to do, to do quite well. And I'm happy to share some examples on properties there as well. But one thing I think is really important is.

We are buying those specifically one because I like them. I think it's interesting. We own a lot of commercial retail centers too, and those are quite boring. No one wants to hear about those and we can't personally use them, but the, the high end short -term rentals, we are not your like three bedroom, two bath condo, which there's hundreds of those out there. And then you're in an income box, right? One, you're not catering to a specific demographic recating to anyone who wants to rent it. Um, but also, you know, you.

because there's so much competition near in this box, this buy box of, you know, who can, who can operate those. And so our strategy is to buy the unique properties, uh, where we can put a little bit more detail and attention into them. And there's really no ceiling on what we can charge for them because we're one of the few houses that actually, you know, can accommodate multiple large parties and offer unique things like that. So that's a, that's an area that we've really enjoyed, but same thing like all property, we buy them, we accelerate the depreciation, we offset the tax liability.

on them and other sources and we try to maximize the income on them.

Jasper Ribbers (24:10.119)
What are some of the top learning lessons for you from operating those short term rentals?

Zach Lemaster (24:19.118)
I think it starts even on the beginning of the negotiation phase. So when a lot of these, and I was even talking with our broker that scouts for deals for us this morning, and we're putting in some seller finance kind of creative, um, opportunities here, like the mountains, and this is just in general, like prices have just gotten so ridiculous, um, that it's, it's hard to cashflow on them. Um, so what's, what's allowed us to be unique is to kind of know how we can outperform, um, historical data and in a car. But usually these are like a year long negotiation for these. And so what we've done recently is we've.

identified all the properties that are, you know, seven bedroom and above, above 6 ,000 square feet. And that can be, can be short -term because there is licensing restrictions. Like the town of Breckenridge just removed all this a few years ago, but like, you can't even get a short -term license. You're not grandfathered in, you can't sell a property with one, uh, Keystone area is a little bit more open, um, with, with less regulation unless there's a local HOA. But one thing is just like the acquisition and the negotiation. So we've been.

very strategic on looking, being intentional and looking for properties off market or that expired listings that we can go in and negotiate either price or terms with someone on. And we've, we've acquired some with like seller financing or partial seller financing or subject to taking over the financing, um, for them. Um, but specifically finding those properties and understanding it's going to be a long negotiation timeframe. And then on the actual acquisition, man, it's a big, it's a big, uh, tasks to onboard those properties.

A lot of times we'll go through and we'll just remove all the junk in the house. We've found that a lot of people just operate their short -term rentals. Um, kind of, especially their self -managing or even some of the large management companies, like the attention to detail is just, it's just not there. And so we'll go through, we'll redo the furnishing, we'll redo the art. We'll paint. Um, we'll just make it just really pop. And like, we want people to have this wow factor when they come in and like, Hey, this is a really unique thing on the marketing side. That's been really huge. So actually marketing the experience, right? Airbnb really is.

move towards this direction of like highlighting experiential type of unique stays and things like that. And so we want to be showcased on some of those top ones where right now, if you go on Airbnb and look at, you know, like Keystone of Breckenridge, like our properties are the top of the first ones that come up. Reviews are obviously really important, right? Having guest reviews, we collect everyone's data when they come in. And so we can add them to our mailing list and send them future incentives and things like this. We operate it like a business and just really having those like above and beyond things.

Zach Lemaster (26:44.206)
where it's not just your run of the mill short -term rental. Like if people want to go fishing, we have fishing poles. We have all the amenities they need there. You know, we have different type of coffee makers, just down to the intricate details, QR codes where you can scan instead of just having your one book that gets lost about your instructions on the house, QR codes, check out instructions. Extremely easy. I could go on and on, but those are some key things that stand out.

Jasper Ribbers (26:57.351)
Mm -hmm.

Jasper Ribbers (27:06.759)
Yeah, that's what we're definitely seeing is that in this environment, like a couple of years ago, it was quite different where you could pretty much buy anything and put it on Airbnb and it would do fairly well.

And right now it's, that's not the case anymore. Right. We've seen that all over. So I feel like you kind of have to have that mentality of like, how do we create a unique experience for our guests and really having your marketing in place and really considering it like a professional business versus just kind of like a side gig. Right.

Zach Lemaster (27:41.006)
Oh my gosh. And photos are so important. It blows my mind how many people put photos up of just like taking it with their phone and we take photos. We have drone photos. Um, right. If we could showcase a video footage, we do, we photograph all the amenities that are nearby. Right? So there's a river that runs by and a snake river and it runs through, through Keystone and the blue river and Breckenridge. And we showcase that we showcase people there. Fishing we showcase, we have light, what we call lifestyle shoots in people in the house.

Jasper Ribbers (27:46.983)
Hmm.

Zach Lemaster (28:08.814)
So people can experience and see what it's like to be in there. We have photos of sunsets and people having a sitting out with a glass of wine for sunset. So, I mean, and that's the same thing that when we go and rent, like I look for a house and I just like quickly run, it's got to have, you know, the amenities like hot tub, sleep system, out of people location to this accessibility shuttle route or whatever. And then I go and I was just done through the photos. Right. And we're so, we're so visual today that like, if the photos catch your attention, they, they automatically captivate you and you want to see.

You want to see the experience you're having. So yeah, the things like that are really important and allow you to stand out versus the run of the mill.

Jasper Ribbers (28:44.423)
Yeah. And you mentioned the drone photos. That's something that I've noticed as I manage a number of portfolios throughout the States. And I always look at what are the top performing listings, right? And what do they look like? And I've noticed, especially if you're near the beach or you're near like something that people want to go, like having that drone footage and really showing like, look, here's the house and here's the beach. And people can really see like, oh, okay. It's like,

That looks like really close. That looks like a two minute walk, right? Like that really, really helps, right? Cause that's in the end of the day, what people want.

Zach Lemaster (29:20.014)
Yeah. And important stuff at the end of the day, it's, it comes down to marketing, right? Not only, and then fulfillment marketing and fulfillment, right? Show, show the opportunity, create the opportunity for them and then get that positive review. And you need to ask for five star reviews. You know, don't just ask for a review, ask for a five star review, incentivize people for a five star review, give them a five bucks, $5 gift card to Starbucks or invite them back. Like whatever the case is.

Ask for the review even before they leave, you know, on the, on the second night or something like that, you know, incentivize them, leave them a bottle of wine and say, here's QR code to go and leave us a review. That would mean that, you know, the world to us, like, cause people read those reviews. That's really important for your ranking and everything else. So just like, man, the little touches go a long way.

Jasper Ribbers (30:02.759)
Yeah, the details matter. That's a good way to wrap up this podcast. So, Zech, I appreciate you jumping on here and sharing your knowledge. Before we leave, can you let people know where they can find you if they want to learn more about you or the services you offer? I know you have some interesting educational resources. Of course, the podcast, the blog, tools and resources, video library on your site. So, yeah, let's let people know where they can…

where they can find you.

Zach Lemaster (30:33.422)
Yeah, absolutely. Want to drive all of our traffic to our website. That's renttoretirement .com. Renttoretirement .com. If you're listening to this in the car, you can text REI to 33777. That's REI to 33777 to get on our email list. If you want to learn about, you know, turnkey new construction properties, some of these creative financing options we talked about with like 3 .99 % rate, 0 % down, 5 % down, you know, how to buy properties below market value, some of the tax strategies, you know, we are…

short and midterm and longterm rentals. So if you're interested to learn just market data and things like that, our, our goal is to add value to every single person we speak with, but certainly would love to hear about you and you know, your investing goals. So feel free to reach out and you know, follow our podcast as well.

Jasper Ribbers (31:18.919)
Awesome, Zach. I appreciate you joining today and to the listeners. Hope you enjoyed this podcast and we will be back soon. Until then.