We explored the difference between a 3% mortgage and a 6% mortgage, highlighting the significant financial implications over a 30-year time horizon. While transferring an existing mortgage to a new buyer is not straightforward, Avery mentioned that distressed sellers might consider such arrangements. She also recommended reading Pace's book, Wealth Without Cash, for more detailed information on this topic.
We delved into alternative financing methods, such as management contracts and partnerships. Avery emphasized the importance of strategic partnerships, cautioning against taking on too many partners without considering long-term implications. She advised aspiring investors to focus on quality over quantity, emphasizing the need for thorough research and due diligence.
As the conversation shifted to the future outlook, we discussed the impact of high interest rates, slow economic growth, rising house prices, and booking slowdowns. While Avery acknowledged her limited expertise in economics, she expressed optimism that interest rates may come down as the pressure eases, potentially leading to a resurgence in buying activity.
She also highlighted the growing recognition of short-term rentals as an established asset class, recommending operators to focus on delivering a world-class guest experience and addressing potential concerns proactively.
Throughout the discussion, Avery stressed the importance of clear communication and anticipating guest needs. She highlighted the value of comprehensive digital guidebooks and detailed property listings in fostering trust and positive guest experiences. Creating a top-performing short-term rental involves attention to decor, answering guest questions proactively, and providing comprehensive information.
To connect with Avery Carl and explore her services, listeners can find her on all social media platforms at the Short Term Shop. Additionally, if interested in buying properties in any of the 20 markets she covers, the Short Term Shop offers free property management training. Further details and the opportunity to sign up for their live Q&A sessions can be found at strquestions.com.
Overall, this episode provided valuable insights into financing options, market trends, and strategies for success in the short-term rental industry. Listeners gained a deeper understanding of the current real estate landscape and valuable tips to optimize their investments.
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Read The Script Here
Jasper Ribbers:
Welcome back to Get Paid for Your Pet. My today's guest is Avery Call. She is the founder of the Short-Term Rental Shop and she's also the offer of the Short-Term Rental Long-Term Wealth Book, a book that you can find on Amazon that's done really, really well. And she is the Short-Term Rental Shop is the leading, I would say the leading real estate brokerage that focuses on short-term rentals. She manages an owns and manages a total of 250 doors herself. So I'm super excited to have you on the show, Avery. Welcome.
Avery Carl:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, I feel like I have a little bit of a celebrity on the show today, at least a celebrity in the short term mental space.
Avery Carl:
No, I feel like you're the celebrity and I'm going to be a little sentimental for a minute. Before I had any real estate, before I even was a licensed real estate agent and I was making $35,000 a year, I used to listen to your podcast on my runs every day trying to figure out what I could do to get out of my corporate job. So I really owe a lot of my success as a real estate a very, very long time and I'm a super fan and I really appreciate all of your content because you were first. There was no other education on short-term rentals other than this podcast for a really long time and I really appreciate it.
Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome. Well, that's amazing to hear. I really
Avery Carl:
Thank you.
Jasper Ribbers:
appreciate that. That's amazing. Well, I mean, you've done a pretty incredible job with everything. I was doing a little bit of research and the success that you've seen is really amazing. So congratulations on that. There's a lot that I want to dive into, but let me, obviously we're going to start, we're going to talk about investing in shorter rentals, right? That's what you specialize in. So before we dive into the specifics, I wanted to shape the current climate, the current environment that we're in, because I feel like we're in a very interesting environment. So what I've actually done is I've collected a couple data points that I just want to quickly go through before we dive into it. So I'm going to share my screen for the people that are watching this on YouTube. They'll be able to see that. And I'll do my best to. kind of explain what we're looking at on the screen. But essentially I looked up four data points. I wanna start off with the 30 year US fixed mortgage rate. If we look at a graph of the last 24 years, we can see that at the start of this century, interest rates were slightly above 7.5%. Then they started coming down, they kind of hovered between five and six and a half for let's say 2000. free all the way to 2009, 2010 when the financial crisis hit. Then they started coming down all the way to three and a half around 2013. And then they've been kind of going up and down in the three and a half to 5% range until it came down to below 3% in 2021. Started going up a little bit, but then really started taking off in 2022. And now we're back pretty much at the level where we started at this century. close to seven and a half percent. So it's been a pretty strong straight line to the top here in the last couple of years. So that's one data point. I'm sure everybody who's listening is aware that the interest rates are pretty high. The second graph that we're looking at here is the S&P K. Schiller US National Home Price Index, one of the major index indices to kind of get an idea of where home prices are. And what we can see is that Home prices have pretty much tripled. Of course, there's a lot of inflation there that we have to take into account. But what's really interesting to see is that the prices kind of topped out in 2022. And as interest rates have gone up from below 3% to now above 7%, you would expect a bit of a downward pressure on the house prices, but we're not really seeing that. We do see a slight dip, but it's nothing. It's nothing major really. The third data point is real GDP. So gross domestic product, which is a measure that's often used to kind of get a gauge of like what the economy is doing. For 2023, the government is projecting a increase of 0.1%, which is pretty much flat. Compare that to, I think, average GDP growth for the last 100 years or so, is probably somewhere around like three or 4%. So, We're not expecting a lot of growth in the economy. And then the last chart that I pulled up is USF rental performance for the last six months. This is data provided by Keydata. And what we're seeing is that the currency so far this year has been slightly below 2021, 2022 levels. Not a huge, huge difference. So definitely don't want to. Pretend that there's an Airbnb bust or anything like that, but there is a little bit of a slowdown. Notably, we're still considerably above 2019 levels. So those four data points, right? We have kind of not record high interest rates, but at least like for the last 20, 25 years, we have slowing GDP growth. We see that house prices have not come down very much. And we see that demand. for short-term rentals or at least occupancy is kind of cooling off a little bit. So with that in mind, my first question is, is right now a good time to invest in short-term rentals?
Avery Carl:
It's a really good question and kind of a nuanced one. So it really depends on the market, what exactly, because real estate as a whole, whether it's prices, whether it's the amount of people buying is really more market or regional specific than you really can go off of like a national average. Like what's happening in Los Angeles, California right now is not what's happening in Chattanooga, Tennessee. So you kind of have to look at it on a market by market basis and see. what that particular market is doing, really drill into the data of that market. Now, that being said, in terms of interest rate and prices, so there's always going to be a reason not to buy. In 2020, we saw some of our clients saying, I'm gonna wait until prices go down before I buy. And then now prices have gone down some. but the interest rates have gone up so far that the payment is actually higher on the lower priced property. So they've been waiting now for over three years and not have bought anything. So there's always gonna be a reason not to buy. The thing about now, what's good about the higher interest rates is that, two years ago, we would have to tell our clients, yeah, you're gonna have to offer $100,000 over asking on every single property because there are… 50 people offering on every single property, the interest rates were so low that everybody could get one of these things. Now, the good thing is we can tell our clients, hey, you can actually be a real estate investor now. You can negotiate, you can offer under asking, you can ask for seller credits, you have time to breathe and think about, okay, let me analyze this property. Is this a good buy before you have to offer? because everything was going under contract in 30 seconds, two years ago. Now you have time to figure all those things out before you offer. So the weaker hands, the weaker investor hands have kind of been shaken out of the market in that sense. So you can get a lower purchase price. You can get a better deal on a lot of things more so than you could a few years ago. So the actual asking prices haven't come down a whole lot, but in terms of closing percent of the asking price that it's closing for, it is going down just a little bit. But the interest rates are also affecting the sales inventory because sellers don't really want to sell their properties that they have a low interest rate on that they will then either have to 1031 exchange or buy something else at a higher interest rate. So it's causing this kind of a stalemate in the market where buyers don't want to pay the same prices as a few years ago or just slightly lower at these over double interest rates because it doesn't really make sense. And then the sellers don't really wanna sell anything because they don't wanna become those buyers that are now having to pay a higher interest rate. So it's caused what a lot of the real estate publications are calling a shadow demand. So it's different than 2008 because there's a lot of people that have plenty of money to finance these properties just sitting on the sidelines, waiting for one thing to tweak, whether that's interest rates or purchase prices. And we actually did a little experiment on this with a… a property a few weeks ago. So we had a client who's bought a lot of stuff with us. He just finished building a million dollar property and he found something else he wanted to buy really quick and he said, I wanna list this kind of low just cause I wanna get it out the door cause I really wanna buy this other opportunity at the beach. And we said, okay, we'll do that. So we listed it for about 5% lower than the comps. And normally, you know, things are sitting on the market for about a month now, maybe a little bit longer. We had at listing at just 5% under market, 13 offers the first day, three of them were cash over asking. So all those buyers that have all this money that are just waiting to buy swooped in and appeared when we listed 5% below comps. So I think a lot of people are just waiting for one thing to tip in their direction. Now there are a lot of opportunities to buy right now from people who… unfortunately got in the game at the height of everything. Interest rates were really low right after COVID and maybe they weren't looking at owning a short-term rental as the business that it actually is. They were like, oh cool, I can afford this. Let me tell my friends I got this cool house on the beach. I'll just throw it up on Airbnb when I'm not using it. Now that the market is kind of normalizing and we are having to run it as a business again, a lot of those people who just kind of had it as like a fun hobby thing, Those are the ones who are seeing like the biggest decline and having the hardest time and wanting to sell. So there's a lot of opportunity with those types of sellers to be able to swoop in and grab a few of those properties that it just wasn't for them.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, I think there's two points that you made that I want to go back to. Number one is, if we go back to that graph that I was showing on the development of real estate prices over the last, let's take the last 10 years or so. Right. Because since, let's say since 2012, prices have been going up. So if you in 2012, if you would… had the mentality of like, okay, well, you know what? Like, I feel like prices should be coming down. I'm gonna wait a little bit. You would have been waiting 13 years, you know, before you get into it because prices have just been going up, right? So I think that's a good point. Like my philosophy is that I think it's wise for people to get to own real estate as early as possible in your life because yes, things can go up and down, but over, if you look at the history, Real estate has pretty much in every case have been a wealth generator for anybody. If you look at my parents, I look at my grandparents and real estate is just always a big driver of wealth. So that's a good point. It's like you don't want to wait forever. You want to just find something that makes sense and just get… get involved in real estate investing as early as you can, cause it's going to pay off in the longterm, right? And then the second point that you made is yeah, it's the it's definitely from what I see as well. It's like, when, when I, Eric and I bought our, our property in Idlewild, that was two years ago. And like you mentioned, it was like everything that we would look at. I mean, if, if you could find it on LoopNet or Zillow or something like that, it was probably already gone. You know what I mean? Like you just had to get in like right when even before it was listed or, you know, almost like before the seller even thought about selling to really like find these deals. And now it's like, yeah, you see things have been on the market for a couple of months. There's some negotiation room. There's some, you know, creative financing options that you could explore. So I think those are some really good points. So. You already mentioned a little bit, like a big question that people have asked and have is like, why are prices not coming down? Now you, you already mentioned, um, it's, you know, one reason is that there's just not a lot of people who are motivated to sell right now, right? If you have a 3% mortgage, like why, why would you sell, uh, why would you sell your home? Right. Um, and also there's, is there also a case of that? there's just a shortage of housing in general and that kind of keeps the prices up as well.
Avery Carl:
It does, it does. And I don't see as much in my personal business because we don't do, we don't really operate in any, we do, well, we do operate in some like metro-ish markets, but most of our markets are true vacation markets. So for example, I live in 30A, which is near Panama City Beach, Florida, near Destin, Florida. And there's only 10,000 of us who live here full time. And if short term rentals just disappeared, there would not be enough primary homeowners to fill. all of the houses, all the vacation rentals that we need, all these tourists to come stay in for the community to survive. So, you know, we don't deal in mini markets where there are a lot of primary homeowners, but in terms of just general supply, it is very low because like you said, people aren't really motivated to sell right this second. I think everybody's in kind of like a wait and see mode. So there's, since there's not really much motivation, there's not a lot of supply, which is keeping the prices high.
Jasper Ribbers:
Now you mentioned that, you know, obviously there's huge differences between markets, right? Like one market might be doing really well. One market might not be doing really well. Do you, when you look at like your, your personal investments, right? Are there certain markets that you're looking at, or is it really like any market you can find a great deal?
Avery Carl:
I think any market where you can find a great deal is worth looking at. I do for my personal short-term investments, I've got long-terms and multifamily also, but for my short-terms I do like to keep them in vacation markets because again, not a lot of primary homeowners, not a lot of hotel competition, areas where it's been the normal thing for guests to go stay in a short-term rental, whether it's a beach house, lake house, cabin, anything like that. where that's been the thing that tourists have done for decades instead of hotels. Those are the areas that I like to focus on. I don't like areas like we did have an office in Nashville for a little while because I used to live there. And the problem with Nashville is that up until 10 years ago, all the tourism that came into Nashville was staying in hotels. And then short term rentals started happening. People started making a lot of money on them. And then it started taking more market share and taking more market share. Hotel conglomerates. start to notice this, they start to get irritated, and then they start plugging themselves into city council meetings and things like that. And then what ends up between primary homeowners and hotel conglomerates, those are the two biggest drivers of anti-short-term rental regulation. So we try to stick to those true vacation markets. Although there are true vacation markets that have anti-short-term rental regulation, we just try to stay out of metro markets with a few exceptions.
Jasper Ribbers:
Sure. Now, restrictive short rental regulations is an interesting topic because on the one hand, initially you would say, OK, well, I want to market where there are not a lot of restrictions when it comes to short rentals. But at the same time, once you're in there, it also offers some protection against an ever increasing supply.
Avery Carl:
Mm-hmm.
Jasper Ribbers:
So I guess there's a pro and a con when it comes to regulations, like what are your thoughts on that?
Avery Carl:
Yeah, so I think regulations are overall a good thing because, you know, there has to be some kind of organization. Like who is somebody going to call if there's a neighbor is going to call if there's like a problem or somebody's parked in their parking space, there has to be a process for that and people have to know how to do that. Um, I think that it is good. Like, I mean, I live, I'm a good example. I live in a vacation market. I make most of my income off of vacation rentals, but I still don't want one opening next door to me. I'm trying to raise my kids. I don't want a bunch of people in and out. Like I want it quiet and the same neighbor forever. So I think it is important to kind of keep primary home owner housing and vacation rentals separate as best you can in those big markets where it's not dependent on tourism, like in Nashville, for example. So, you know, I think that regulations overall are a good thing because they can protect you against saturation. What I don't like, about Nashville, for example, is that they will change them after, like, you'll get under contract on something that is legal. And now the city council members will go, they'll go in, they passed a regulation a while back where they can go into a zone and just change it and down zone it to where it can't allow short term rentals. And then everybody who owns a short term rental there. is kind of screwed. They may grandfather it, but then they can't sell it as a short-term rental. They
Jasper Ribbers:
Thanks
Avery Carl:
probably
Jasper Ribbers:
for watching!
Avery Carl:
paid for it as a short-term rental, so it was more expensive. So it's just, I don't want to get into all those politics with mine.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah.
Avery Carl:
So regulations overall, a good thing. You just kind of have to know what they are and what the city's or county's appetite is in terms of being, them finding short-term rentals to be a good thing, like a tax revenue driver, or if they find them to be a nuisance. You kind of just have to vibe check it a little bit.
Jasper Ribbers:
So it's almost like you kind of have to kind of predict the future a little bit.
Avery Carl:
Thank
Jasper Ribbers:
It's
Avery Carl:
you.
Jasper Ribbers:
not so much about like, what are the regulations right now? It's more like, how are they going to change in the future? Cause to your point, if you, you buy a short rental and then, you know, six months later, uh, it's, uh, there's a new regulation and you're not allowed to do it anymore, or, you know, even if you're grandfathered in, that's going to affect you. Um, so I guess you have to look a little bit into the future and get, really get to know the, the community and really get to know the the people who are in charge a little bit and kind of read their brain of like, okay, what are these people going to do in the next like, you know, five years or so? So that's, I guess that's the tricky part. Huh? Um, so what, what are some advice for people who are looking, uh, to invest in short rentals, uh, in the current climate to, with high interest rates and with the market cooling down a little bit, like if we still want to get like a good, our return on investment, like what, what are some tips? for those who are looking.
Avery Carl:
to look for properties where you can add amenities or add extra bedrooms or anything where you can add revenue drivers. So for example, I bought a beach house in Cape Sandblast at the height of everything. And I was able to get a really good deal on it because I paid 75,000 under asking at the height of 50 offers on everything because the listing agent took really terrible pictures. They were dark. He only posted like three of them. So most investors were just scrolling past. I actually opened the listing and saw, man, this was only built in 2019. It's 2021. This is only a two-year-old house. Let me go look at this. This is probably actually cute. These pictures are terrible though. And it was. I bought it as a three bedroom, but the listing agent also didn't disclose that there was a utility room that had a bathroom off of it, that all we had to do was finish, put flooring, paint it. and finish out the bathroom and make it nice. And now we have a four bedroom rather than a three. So finding any areas where you can add not only appraisal value, but where you can add revenue driving factor. So whether that's another bedroom, whether that's a little putt-putt course, whether, you know, depending on where you are, it might be something different. It doesn't have to be a really expensive thing. One of our agents in Panama City Beach, Florida, she
Jasper Ribbers:
Okay.
Avery Carl:
just recently added a snow cone bar to her house. So that and it's actually improved her revenue. So when I say you need to do things to set yourself apart in terms of decor and revenue drivers and adding amenities, it doesn't have to be thousands and thousands of dollars. It can just be small things that guests will go, oh, that's cool, I wanna stay there. Whether it's a mural wall or something like that. So, you know, maybe buying a property, you're looking more for the potential now than the deal that's just laying around, it's already got this amazing cashflow. You're more now since short-term rentals have really established themselves as an asset class, you're looking for opportunities more so than existing cashflow.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, that's a good point. That's what makes short-term rentals so fascinating, in my opinion, because if you compare it to a long-term rental, for example, in your market, if I tell you, okay, a two-bedroom, 1,000 square feet, one bathroom, little backyard, you could probably guess the long-term uh, sense of accuracy, right? But if I would tell you the same thing for a short-term rental, then you know, that there's much of a wider range of what that place could do as a short-term rental, because it depends on so much more than just the size of the home and the amount of bedrooms, right? It's really like the experience that you're bringing what, uh, what the guests will, will pay for. So that's, that's why I feel like, you know, maybe right now is. actually a really good time to invest in short term rentals. Cause if what's, what's the alternative, right? Cause longterm rental, yeah, you could do a couple of things to maybe increase the monthly rent a little bit, but there's not really that much you can do. Right.
Avery Carl:
Right, right. And I mean, I'm shopping for, I mean, we're always looking to add more properties to our portfolio, whether short-term or single-family, long-term or multi-family. And they're talking about, oh, you know, there's gonna be this big multi-family crash and we are not seeing it. Like there are no deals out there that make any sense for multi-family and there's nothing you can do. Like you said, I can buy an apartment building, but the rent is gonna be… what the rent is every month until those people move out and then I can redo it. Whereas short term, the rent's gonna be different dependent on how you manage it, what you change about it, amenities you offer. So there's a way to immediately boost income instead of having to wait six months a year, two years for somebody to move out of a unit.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, makes sense. When it comes to financing, let's talk about financing, right? Because with interest rates being like seven and a half, close to seven and a half percent now, what are some other ways that we can finance the deals?
Avery Carl:
So I have always been a fan, and I know a lot of people will listen to a lot of real estate investing podcasts, and they hear all these buzzwords like private money, hard money, all these things. The easiest and lowest interest way to finance a property is usually with a conventional investment loan. A lot of people don't realize that the minimum amount down on a conventional investment loan is 15%. A lot of people think it's 20 or 25, but it's actually 15. So you can make that go pretty far. Other ways to get the interest rate down, you can do a 15 year loan instead of a 30. If you ask a seller to contribute towards your closing costs, rather than using that money to pay your closing costs, you can actually contribute it to buying down your interest rate some, which depending on the math on that, which I don't have any numbers in front of me to just give an example. but a lot of times like a $5,000 credit towards buying down your interest rate will actually give you a lower monthly payment than if you'd gotten $5,000 off the purchase price. So those are some other ways. You wanna get really creative. The whole pace morby subject to financing movement is really big right now, where you're basically kind of taking over someone's existing loan. A lot of people are really into that in the investing world right now because A lot of people that they're buying from have these 2%, 3% loans. Now the interest rate is in this high sixes, lower sevens. And so they want to take that over so they're not having to get this high interest debt. But there are some things you have to be really careful with on that because you're not actually there. You as the seller are signing over the title of the property with, but you're still holding, technically holding the note. So, I mean, holding the debt on that note. So. A little tricky. A lot of people are super into that. I personally am probably not doing that myself, but I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't mention because that is a big movement going on right now. Pace is a super smart guy. I haven't like gotten into the details on that, but if you guys are interested in learning about that, he just had a book come out recently that's pretty good.
Jasper Ribbers:
What's the name of the book?
Avery Carl:
You know, I can't remember, but I can find it.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, cause that's going to be my next question actually is somebody has a 3% mortgage and I can imagine, cause that's the mortgage is the asset is such an asset right now. Right. I mean,
Avery Carl:
Yes.
Jasper Ribbers:
if you calculate, if you just, let's just say like compare a 3% mortgage to a 6% mortgage. Well, the difference is only 3%, but the mortgage payments are double. Right. So if you look at that over a 30 year,
Avery Carl:
I'm gonna go.
Jasper Ribbers:
time horizon that's like a huge amount of money, right? So you kind of answered my next question of like, how can we do that? Like, is it possible if I own a 3% mortgage, right? On the home and you want to buy my home, can I just give you that mortgage and say, okay, you know, you're going to pay what I'm asking, but you know what? Like you don't have to get a new mortgage. Like I'll transfer my mortgage to you. Like, so that's actually possible.
Avery Carl:
Well, not in so many words. So the name of Pace's book is called Wealth Without Cash and it'll answer these questions better than I can. So you're not actually able to transfer the mortgage to the new person. The mortgage is still in your name and they're making the payment. So that's where it's a little hairy on it. But I've seen a few people be able to get out of like some of these people who get distressed, who bought at the height. did not run numbers correctly and now just really wanna get out at any cost. I've seen that be a good solution for distressed sellers, but it's not, I mean, if you can get regular financing and the numbers make sense at the interest rate on that, that you're able to get it to, I recommend doing that. I mean, and most sellers aren't gonna agree to it unless they are distressed. So if I'm going to just sell something that I own, I do not wanna be wrapped up with you for the rest of my life because I'm holding this note and you have to call me and ask me tax questions or whatever. I just want to take my money and go. So it takes a very specific type of seller for that subject to financing to work, but they're out there, but definitely check out Pace's book because I don't know nearly
Jasper Ribbers:
Mm-hmm.
Avery Carl:
enough about it to be able to answer any questions on it, but he definitely does.
Jasper Ribbers:
What are some other options? Like, you know, I'm trying to think when it comes to set up financing, I can imagine some people might say, Hey, you know what? I'd love to buy your home. Um, right now the interest rates are so high, like I'm not going to be able to afford what you are asking for, but you know, is there a way that we can figure out a deal, like let's say, maybe I say, Hey, you know what, like, let me, let me manage it for you, um, for the next two years or so, and then as interest rates. If interest rates come down, then we'll agree that I will purchase it from you or let me give you some cash and then you'll get the profit that I'm making as I'm taking it over. Are there any kind of constructions that you see that work?
Avery Carl:
I have seen a few people try the management contract, managed to purchase type deal. Haven't seen, obviously, since it's only been something that's really popped up in the last few months, last year, haven't seen any of that actually come to fruition. But I mean, that's definitely an option. Again, it's gonna take, I wanna set the expectation that it will take more nos. before you get a yes on something like that. So it's definitely gonna be a volume game if that's the route you wanna go and asking sellers about this, but eventually you might find one. So it's worth doing if you're not able to get just conventional, or I mean, there's also commercial, there's always commercial financing. So DSCR loans where they're not qualifying you based on your income or your debt to income ratio. They're basing the approval of the loan on how much the property will make. So those are pretty cool options too. They typically will have a higher interest rate than conventional will, but in some cases that makes sense. Most of them, not all of them, will have a prepayment penalty. So you have to be planning to hold it for a few years at least. So that's an option too. So it just kind of depends on what your personal financial profile looks like and what you want your next three to five years to look like.
Jasper Ribbers:
Hmm. One other question that comes to mind is if we look like two years ago when interest ratio was like 3%, right? It didn't make any sense to buy a home with cash, right? Because you're competing with people who can get a 3% mortgage. Like, they're going to, you know, you're just not, it's hard to compete against those people with your cash, right? Whereas now, It might actually make more sense to purchase a home just with full cash down. Is that something that you see as well?
Avery Carl:
Yeah, yeah. So if you're able to buy a house cash and then just wait for the rates to go down before you finance it, that can be a good option. And you're just gonna make more cashflow in the meantime, but your cash is gonna be tied up. Or maybe you can only pull out, maybe you go ahead and refinance it, but you only pull out a quarter of your money or half rather than that full 65 or 75%. So that can be an option too, if you have the cash to do that, that would keep your… mortgage low and your interest rate be a lower percentage of a lower number. So, um, that's definitely an option, but then, you know, the problem there is your cash is tied up, so there's only so many times you can do that.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, I'm also thinking, does it make sense versus getting a mortgage? Does it make sense to go out and find investors who have cash on the sideline that they need to apply?
Avery Carl:
Yeah, partnerships are always a good way to go if you don't, if you're not able to do it yourself. I did one partnership and our first, our third and fourth deal, we had a partnership because we were out, we couldn't qualify for any more loans because we were out of debt to income ratio. And he put the down payment down and we did all the management, et cetera, and we split it 50-50. So that can be a really great way to go. I will say, I see a lot of new investors get a little carried away with that and they're just going on Facebook groups, looking for partners. They'll take, I'll take on as many partners as y'all can throw at me. And then all of a sudden you've got a hundred partners and you've got a hundred people to answer to and don't actually own anything yourself. So be strategic about how many partners you take on and how many properties you do. It's not about how many and how fast, it's about the quality. We eventually had our partner buy us out just because we were like, okay, we're doing all the work on these two properties. We have enough money now that we can go buy our own property. So it doesn't make sense to be putting in the time on these two when we could put them into two that we own outright or not outright, but by ourselves. So we just said, Hey, do you want to buy us out? And he said, yep. So he bought us out. We went and bought our own two. Everything was amicable and wonderful and our partnership went perfectly, but sometimes that's not the case. So you want to make sure again, strategic quality of partners, not quantity. It's not a race. It is get rich slow. not fast,
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah.
Avery Carl:
and just make good decisions is all.
Jasper Ribbers:
What do you think about what's your vision of the future when it comes to the climate? Let's go back to those four data points that we started the podcast with. With high interest rates, we have slow economic growth, we have high house prices, and we have slowdown in bookings. What are your expectations over the next three to five years?
Avery Carl:
Well, I'm certainly no economist. I made a C in macroeconomics at University of Texas. So I did pass though. So I can't really comment too much on that other than the fact that like the interest rates are as high as they are because the economy is in a high pressure situation. They've got to fix the inflation stuff. They've got to fix a lot of things that were a result of loosening everything up so everybody could get through COVID. So, you know, if… If everything was kind of at equilibrium and we didn't have this high pressure situation and the rates were this high, I might say something different. I think they're going to start to come down next year as the pressure releases. And hopefully they will achieve that soft landing that they're looking for. Um, but I do think they're going to come down. It's also an election year. And I think that, uh, that will open up buying again. I think it might be a little bit of a frenzy at first because of I'm because I'm of that shadow demand that I mentioned, but I think it'll even out. And I think that what we're seeing with the short-term rental industry as a whole on the booking side is like, we're seeing a settling in of short-term rentals as an actual asset class. So up until I would say COVID, it was still looked at as like, this is kind of a weird kind of crazy thing to do in the real estate investing world. You know, I remember going to local real estate investor meetups in 2015 and saying short-term rental or Airbnb. And they would laugh at me and say, because they were like, that's for like kids renting couches in college and stuff like that. Um, but now those same people are buying and have bought short-term rentals because they're like, Oh, wait a minute. I've seen a lot of other people do really well with this. Maybe there's something to this. So now we're an actual asset class and not this weird thing that college kids do. And. years ago, the early adopters like, yeah, there were every single deal, thousands of deals just laying around on the MLS, just waiting to do 80% cash on cash return. Now that it's caught on, it's an actual asset class. I really liken it to buying multifamily apartment buildings. So when you're buying apartment buildings, which have been around for a long time, nobody's ever said apartment buildings are saturated. No, they're just an asset class and they've been around for a really long time. and short-term rentals are becoming that. But when you're buying an apartment building, you're not really ever looking for one that has great cashflow already, because they don't exist. They're not laying around on LoopNet or Crexie with great cashflow. What you're looking for is an apartment building that needs some updates, that as people move out, you can update each unit and raise that rent, two, three, $400, however much it is to get it up to market rent for a nice unit. and then you're increasing that income, which then increases the cap rate, which then increases the price of the property. So now it's kind of the same thing with short-terms. Those deals with the crazy cashflow aren't just laying around, but you're looking for the opportunity. Just like in the established asset class of multifamily, you're looking for the opportunity. Same thing now, established asset class of short-term rentals, you're looking for opportunity because those major crazy cashflow deals, they're not just laying around anymore. So you do have to actually be an investor now and do the work to get it to where it needs to be to get the cashflow to where you want it to be.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah. Well, I just read, I think it was yesterday or two days ago or something that the inflation has actually fallen now to 3%, which is the lowest level that we've seen in two years. And 3% is a bit more, that's a bit more manageable, I would say, right, than like a year ago when it was like 7%, 8%. We do see the inflation coming down. The question is, is it going to stay here or is it going to go back up? But it could be a sign that the pressure for the Federal Reserve to keep those interest rate highs is coming off a little bit, right? So it's going to be interesting to see because as you mentioned, it's going to be interesting to see when those prices are coming down or those interest rates are coming down, if that's going to cause another like… frenzy, if you will, and we go back to those two years ago and you see a property and it's like within a day it's gone. So I think either way, it's going to be a very interesting time. The next three to five years, it's always hard to predict, of course, but you know what, I always think versus waiting on the sidelines and waiting for the perfect environment to you know, to make your move, I think it's better to just focus on like, how do I, where can I bring the most value and how can I create, uh, especially in the short rental space, like how can I create a world-class experience? Cause regardless what the circumstances are, if you focus on that, you know, is my belief that you're, you're going to see, you're going to see a good return on investment if you aim to be like a top 10% operator and really, uh, focus on. you know, understanding who's your, who's your customer, who's your guest avatar and like, how do we create a world-class experience for this person? So I want to finish up this podcast with picking your brain a little bit on, you know, how do you actually create a top performing short-term rental? Like, what do we need to focus on?
Avery Carl:
Well, you definitely have to focus on decor a lot more than you used to. You wanna make sure that your property is updated. But the main thing I think with making sure that you are a really great operator is answering the questions before the guests can ask them. So whether that's having a really nice digital guidebook or just having a really, really thorough, or combination of both, really thorough listing to where they don't even, you've already answered all these questions that they can't even think of anything they need to. because the communication is the most important. Like, I don't love when I'm coming into a place, it's like eight or nine o'clock, I've got two little kids. I'm not thinking about, oh crap, do they have a Keurig coffee maker or do they have a drip coffee maker? And then I wake up in the morning and I'm like, crap, I didn't even think about this, the kids were freaking out, it was late. So I wanna know these things upfront. So I know, okay, I've got the right kind of coffee, which is very important for mom in the morning. You know, so making sure that you that there's not even a thing that they could ask you because you have given them so much information. Your photos are great. They know they're coming into it. It really they know it creates a feeling of trust and likeability when you've already covered all of those bases for them when they're checking into your property. Like, oh, well, they've already told me everything I need to know. I feel really good about checking into this place. And, you know, the vibe when they check in is going to end up affecting your review. So you wanna keep that vibe good and make them feel very taken care of. And I think that starts with good communication.
Jasper Ribbers:
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. You know, there's a saying in, uh, in sales, like, uh, any, any unknowns, like any question marks that the buyer has like leads to not purchasing. Right. So to your point, like, uh, and I love that you mentioned the coffee machine, um, because, you know, one thing that I've always done is whenever a question, whenever I get a question from an Airbnb guest, I'll answer the question. But then the very next thing that I do is I go, I go look at my listing and go look at my guidebook. And I ask myself, like, where am I providing this information? Because it's much better to prevent the question because then the person might just book like, to your point, the coffee machine. We've actually had that question come up in the past of like, what kind of coffee machine do you have? And I never thought of that. It's like, well, I have a coffee machine. I mean, coffee is the same. Right. But no, it's not. the case, right? So having to having, you know, answering these questions before they are answered is very important when it comes to conversion. But to your point as well, it's like it saves time, right? If we don't have to answer a question that saves time on our end as well. So love that. Every thanks so much for joining this super interesting to get your thoughts on all this stuff. Let, let everybody know where they can, they can find you if they if they want to work with you.
Avery Carl:
Yeah, we would love to have you. You can find us on all social media at the Short Term Shop, or if you wanna buy with us in any of our 20 markets, we'll teach you how to manage it for free. And you can sign up, we've got a Q&A every Thursday, live Q&A, you can sign up for that at strquestions.com. Anything else, you can find us on our website, it's theshorttermshop.com.
Jasper Ribbers:
Awesome. Thank you so much. And that is the end of today's podcast, episode number 579. So thanks everybody for listening. I hope you enjoyed this. And again, if you want to see the graphs that we're going to going through, you can, you can watch all of the podcasts on YouTube, right? Just go to YouTube, get paid for your pad. If you'll find that and then you can, when you can actually watch the episodes instead of just listening. So. With that said, thanks for listening and have a great weekend. We'll be back next week.
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