Sailing around the world funded by property investing (Ep 611)

In this episode, Jasper Ribbers interviews Jordan Locke, the founder of RevParty Consulting, about revenue management strategies for short-term rentals. They discuss the importance of revenue management, understanding guest avatars, pricing strategies for special events, adjusting pricing for high-demand dates, and utilizing OTA promotions. They also cover practical tips for increasing revenue and the importance of scheduling time for revenue management. Jordan provides his contact information for those interested in learning more about his services.

Takeaways

Revenue management is the practice of maximizing revenue by constantly improving how much money you make.
Understanding guest avatars and their preferences can help you tailor your pricing strategy and attract the right guests.
Utilizing OTA promotions can increase visibility and attract more bookings.
Setting minimum night stays can help optimize your calendar and prevent undesirable bookings.
Scheduling dedicated time for revenue management is crucial for monitoring pricing, adjusting strategies, and staying on top of market trends.

Before we wrap up today's episode, remember to connect with us on Instagram @getpaidforyourpad for exclusive content and behind-the-scenes moments, and don't forget to hit that ‘Subscribe' button on our YouTube channel for even more great content. We appreciate your support, and can't wait to see you on our socials. Stay tuned, and keep being awesome!

Jasper Ribbers (00:01.068)
What's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of Get Paid for Your PAD. My guest today is Mike Stenhouse. He is the co -founder together with his wife of the Inside Property Investing podcast, a very popular podcast about property investing. And we are going to talk about the differences between long -term rentals, short -term rentals. And we're also going to talk about leaving the corporate world to go 100 % into property investing because that's what's…

Mike has done that we might even talk a little bit about sailing around the world as well. So Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Stenhouse (00:32.571)
Hmm.

Mike Stenhouse (00:36.251)
Thank you for having me, Esper. I'm thrilled to be here.

Jasper Ribbers (00:39.982)
Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to have a fellow podcast host on the show. I was on your show. I saw it. It just got published. So if anybody wants to check that out, go to insidepropertyinvesting .com and there you can find the episode that Mike and I did earlier for his podcast. But today let's talk about short -term rentals mainly. But before we dive into that, why don't you give us a quick background?

of your story and why did you get into property investing, why did you get into short -term rental as well.

Mike Stenhouse (01:12.987)
Sure. So I mean, we've been investing for a long time. I'm kind of mid to late thirties now. Started, I bought my first investment when I was 18. There were no big plans there. Didn't do anything for a number of years after that. Went to university, graduated, got a job with Procter & Gamble on their grad scheme. It was a good gig. They paid well.

I was young, didn't have any responsibilities. It was nice, it was a fairly easy time, but it kind of had something niggling me that I wanted to do. I wanted to do more. I'd always kind of played with businesses growing up. I figured there was something beyond the corporate world for me. Property, just had this draw in the UK growing up, watched a lot of the kind of renovation shows and that sort of stuff. I had this one rental.

I decided when I moved to Newcastle for my grad job that I would buy a place rather than rent something. And I lived in this renovation project for a while, did all the work, well, did a lot of the work myself and lived in amongst the contractors doing the rest of the work. That's always fun, right? Living on a building site is a unique experience, not something you really want to do too many times, but it's good fun.

And gradually just kind of got into like house flipping alongside the day job for a number of years and realized that I was kind of making more money from that than the day job. But it's lumpy, right? You flip houses, you sell one and you make some money, but then you kind of need to get back to work again. So gradually moved into the rental space, buying up some long -term rentals, left my job. And we've been focusing on that.

Jasper Ribbers (02:55.15)
Mm -hmm.

Mike Stenhouse (03:02.843)
I've been full time in property for, I don't know, 12 plus years now. I made the jump first, my wife stayed in the corporate world to kind of support us short term and keep us mortgageable. And then about three years after I left, she was able to leave as well. And that's, that's been our business ever since alongside the podcast as well, kind of talking about what we do and having fun interviewing other people as well.

Jasper Ribbers (03:29.582)
Talk to me a little bit more about the transition from corporate to, you know, to leaving the corporate world, essentially. I know there's a lot of people listening to this podcast who want to do that. And it's a pretty, a bit of a scary move to make, right? Like how did you describe that process? Like, did you, did you, like, did you save up a lot of money before you felt comfortable doing that? Or how, what was your emotional state throughout the process?

Mike Stenhouse (03:42.683)
For sure.

Mike Stenhouse (03:54.395)
Definitely not. I mean, like I say, I probably did it at the right time for me. I was young, no kids to worry about, nothing, no crazy fixed expenses that I needed to worry about. So when we decided that was what we were gonna do, I was fortunate that Victoria, she was in a good job as well. Her income could support both of us. So we knew that we had this runway where I could go and focus on that full time, build up the property business and then…

get to the stage where we could replace her income that way. So it was the right way for us to do it at that time. With hindsight, I think, we hear a lot of people saying, like, know, desperate to leave the day job, I want to be a full -time investor. Like, I don't think the skill that most people operate their investing business at is necessarily a full -time gig. Like, I think you can make a lot of progress while still working a job.

And that job security gives you an income so that you don't need to be spending your rental profits. You can reinvest them. It keeps you mortgageable, right? Like if you've got a day job, like a salaried income, I think lenders typically like that as well. So yeah, I jumped quickly. I think, you know, if you can extend that runway a little bit, like if you don't hate your job and you're okay to hang it out for a couple of years and work hard and get to a place where…

Jasper Ribbers (05:07.212)
Mm -hmm.

Mike Stenhouse (05:21.571)
you know, you can build up your income first, then I think that makes more sense. But for me, I jumped and then kind of figured it out as I went because I'm a bit impulsive like that, I guess.

Jasper Ribbers (05:30.99)
Right on. And so, you know, first you went into flipping, then you went into long -term rentals, and then when did you start looking into short -term rentals?

Mike Stenhouse (05:37.209)
Mm -hmm.

Mike Stenhouse (05:41.435)
Uh, so we've had our first short -term rentals for probably five years now, I guess, round about that amount of time. Um, it was something that I don't know if you find this one of the, uh, the downsides of being a podcast host is like, you kind of want to experience different things so that you can talk about them. And I heard everyone talking about like, we had our long -term portfolio. It was doing well.

Everyone's talking about coming on the podcast saying, Oh, you know, service accommodation, short -term rentals, they're great. The profit's great. Yada, yada, yada. And I, I was kind of, I bought into the hype. So I was like, well, you know, one of our next deals, if it's suitable, we'll consider it. And I had a couple of things in my head that were, were going on. I think I wanted to do something that if it didn't work out, it could switch back easily to a longer term rental. And I think most short -term rentals are, are good, right? But like, I didn't want to go and buy something in like a pure holiday desk, like vacation destination. I wanted something that.

there would be demand for long term if we wanted to switch it back. And the project that we did, it was two apartments above a retail unit. So like a shop on the ground floor and then two apartments above it. I didn't want to have like one short term rental in a building with other long term rentals. I knew if we were doing it in a block, I'd want the whole block to be short term or long term. So this project came up five years ago. It was two apartments, a two bedroom and a one bedroom.

The location I wasn't sure about. It's not a tourist place at all where we live and where we invest. But I hear people talking about corporate bookings and we've ended up having a lot of people with friends and family visiting them. They'll stay in our apartment versus stay with whoever they're visiting or people who are maybe getting some renovation work done on their own home. So the tourist thing was a concern at the back of my mind. It hasn't really been an issue since then.

But it was a case of, you know what, we want to diversify our portfolio a little bit. The income potential looks really strong. And actually, the risk, the downside is pretty low. If we don't like the short -term rental business, if the market isn't there, we'll run them out long term. And there's kind of like the downside. Do you know what mean? Like the downside just didn't really feel like it was a big risk for that potential upside.

Jasper Ribbers (08:03.982)
Yeah, yeah, makes sense. And how did it go? Are you still renting those homes as a short rental or did you switch it back?

Mike Stenhouse (08:13.691)
We are, yeah, no, they're still there. They've been short term since day one. We've added two more short term rentals to the portfolio as well. So not massive by any stretch, but they do well. I think the seasonality of it still makes me a little bit nervous. Like January, we probably had our quietest January on record this past, well, last month.

Um, and that's kind of nerve wracking. Like overall, they do well. We sit at probably 70 to 75 % occupancy throughout the year. And at that level, we make a good amount of money on them. Uh, but those slow months, you know, you feel it right. And it's, it's that roller coaster that is probably one of my biggest, um, negatives about the, the short -term market as a strategy or long -term rentals, slow and steady. They just sit there.

month in, month out, it's the same. The short -term market, it takes a bit more managing and effort to create a business there. It's not just something you can get. Well, certainly I haven't found that you can set and forget.

Jasper Ribbers (09:22.894)
Oh no, not anymore anyway. Let's talk a little bit more about the pros and cons of like long -term versus short -term. You mentioned the seasonality obviously, and I think you're not the only one who had a very slow January. I think, yeah, like most markets that I'm involved with have seen like a pretty slow January or February, but then the pacing for the summer is looking pretty good in most markets. So like, you know.

Mike Stenhouse (09:34.235)
Mm -hmm.

Okay, good. That's reassuring.

Mike Stenhouse (09:46.617)
Okay.

Mike Stenhouse (09:50.147)
Mm -hmm.

Jasper Ribbers (09:52.078)
2024 could still be a good year. But you touched on the seasonality. What are some of the pros and cons that you see between long -term rentals and short -term rentals?

Mike Stenhouse (09:54.139)
Good, okay.

Mike Stenhouse (10:03.099)
I mean, the biggest pro has to be the income, right? Versus the kind of long -term market. If you get it right, and I think that what has worked quite well for us is having kind of lower value, smaller units. It feels like it's a great way to really kind of enhance the income potential of that. I don't really get into like the political debates about…

Airbnb hollowing out communities or anything like that. I just, our approach thankfully has been in both cases we converted. So we, I say in both cases, we have two apartments in one building and we have two apartments in the other building. That's the four short term rentals that we have. Both of those were conversions from commercial buildings into residential apartments. So in terms of like the argument about taking homes away from.

longer term rentals or year round residents, we've created new housing that we've turned into short term rentals. I don't know how most people feel about that side of the argument, but for us, it hasn't really been something that we've had any negativity from, from the community. But yeah, the income potential is great. That has to be the biggest upside. And it's difficult to ignore that.

The downsides and I think the reality of a short -term rental business is that it is much more of a business than a longer -term investment portfolio. You could put a tenant into a long -term property and maybe you get the occasional maintenance issue. More often than not, they pay their rent on time. We can go for years without really hearing from them. Short -term, it's like every couple of days, you've got…

are the cleaners going to show up today? Are my guests going to show up? Are my guests going to look after the place? Or are they going to trash it? Are they going to get there? And you know, the, the bedding isn't as clean as we would hope, or, you know, there's something missing in the bathroom or the kitchen or like, it's just so much more involved than the long -term rental market. And I think going into it, we didn't really appreciate what that looked like. We've got better at it and we're still learning. We're still kind of.

Mike Stenhouse (12:23.355)
It's not what we focus on, right? So it's not what I specialize in at all. So I'm always kind of looking for ideas to make it easier. It has improved, but it still feels like much more work for that reward. It's not passive by any stretch.

Jasper Ribbers (12:33.454)
Right. And so, I mean, you're talking about the higher profits, right? Like, do you feel like the extra income is worth it given the additional work that you're putting in?

Mike Stenhouse (12:48.635)
I mean, I feel like on a short -term rental podcast, I kind of need to say yes. The reality is in January, I was nervous, right? Like I was honestly, there are times when I think, okay, yeah, the income is better. Obviously our gross revenue is great, but then we have all of our costs, our housekeeping and our laundry and you pay your commissions and all that sort of stuff. Like the net difference probably isn't as…

Jasper Ribbers (12:52.654)
Oh no, not at all.

Mike Stenhouse (13:16.155)
as big as it looks when you hear the kind of top line numbers, it's still enough to make it worthwhile. But when you have a month like January and then you're thinking, geez, if this continues, then we're going to… Yeah, it's not the most appealing. For the work that we do, do you really get that additional gain? I toy with that regularly. I think we're at the stage where…

with the short -term rental side of the portfolio, we either want to scale it and get to probably a minimum of maybe 10 units where we can have more robust systems in place, because we manage internally as well. We don't have an agent, so we do that in -house. So either get up to that stage where we can invest a little bit more in a support team and

maybe a bit more robust cleaning processes and there's some great apps out there that we can use to do that, but I just don't feel like we can really justify that at the moment. Or we go back to just the kind long -term rental market. It's a question that I can continue to battle with. I'm not about to pull the plug on them immediately, but it's either we need to find a deal relatively soon that gets us an extra few units and we continue to scale that, or we back out entirely. For me, it's not something that you do with one or two,

alongside another business. It's either your focus or it's not.

Jasper Ribbers (14:41.23)
Do you see any advantages with the flexibility that a short -term rental gives you where if you have some family members over, you could block out the calendar and have them stay there versus a long -term rental. You kind of don't have any control over it.

Mike Stenhouse (14:52.443)
for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's been great, right? Like we live, so I live probably like three, four hours away from where I was born. My family still live there. So if they come to visit, we've got young kids now. So it's nice to have somewhere to put them up. You mentioned as well, you know, maybe we'll talk about our traveling. We would come back to the UK for winter and to know that we had a place for three months of the year. You know, that was, that was awesome. So that if you are looking for that kind of lifestyle,

um, you know, something that fits in with more travel. We have friends that, you know, they'll go away in their RV or their camper van and they keep a place in the UK that the Airbnb then it can be, you know, I suppose that's a different argument to we're doing this purely for profit. There's an additional benefit there and that, that exists 100%. If, if that would like add value to your life, then it's definitely a really strong consideration.

Jasper Ribbers (15:41.004)
Mm -hmm.

Jasper Ribbers (15:48.942)
Yeah, for sure. Have you ever had any issues with your tenants? Because another reason that some people go into short -term rentals is because if you have a bad experience with a tenant one time who stops paying rent and then you can't just say, hey, if you're not paying rent, you get a leave. You got to get into court cases. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Mike Stenhouse (16:11.771)
So you mean with like our longer term tenants versus the short term ones? We've had, I mean, I think the rental market generally gets a lot of bad press. And I think the, of course there are horror stories, right? And everyone has probably had a few issues, but like on the whole, I think that the rental business is a lot.

a lot more straightforward than most people make it out to be. We've been doing this full time for 12 years, part time longer than that. We have had a lot of our houses, we have shared houses, so we have maybe a six bedroom home that we'll rent out to six individual professionals. So we've had a lot of tenants in that period of time. We've got a lot of property. As I say, we manage our properties and houses as well. So we're kind of really at the call phase to see what's going on.

And like tenant issues just isn't something that causes us much of a problem. I think we have a responsibility to create a nice place for people to live. So I see a lot of people moaning, oh, you know, my tenant, you know, the boiler keeps breaking. I'm like, we'll fix the damn boiler. Like, you know, if they're complaining about something on repeat, like, oh, you know, the windows are really like drafty. I'm like, okay, well, put new windows. Like I think we have a responsibility. If we're providing housing, we should provide a good quality of housing.

I think if we do that and you vet your tenants, you reference them, you take a deposit or a guarantee, in the main we've had such few issues that stand out in my mind as real headache moments that it's just not something, it's not part of the business that stresses me out at all.

Jasper Ribbers (17:55.502)
Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's always the horror stories that get the most press, right? I mean, that's the case in the long -term rentals market. That's the case in the short -term rental market as well, because you know,

Mike Stenhouse (18:05.083)
Well, exactly. Right. I think running away from that, like, oh, there could be problems in the long -term rental sector to short -term. Like, I mean, we've, you know, again, very few compared to you hear like mainstream press talk about like these parties and like we had, I think the worst, and it wasn't even that bad, but like the worst story that we have to tell was, um, we had three female prostitutes that ended up in one of our apartments and we find out about that.

There were people showing up there every like 30 minutes. I mean, these ladies were busy, so they had a good business going there. But obviously it wasn't what we wanted from a reputation point of view from our neighbors. We went around, we had a conversation with them. They left pretty willingly. So like, I mean, we've had a couple of noise complaints in five years, again, probably like a handful. We've had a few things damaged, but…

that's part of the business right like it's you you accept that these things might happen hopefully they don't happen to you too often and things can go really bad but touch wood so far we've been pretty lucky.

Jasper Ribbers (19:13.302)
Mm -hmm. So you touched on the, you know, the short term rentals giving you flexibility to live part -time at an apartment and then go travel around. Now I know the winter is a slower season for you. So I guess it makes sense to stay there in the winter and then go traveling in the, in, you know, when the demand is higher. I saw on your website that you actually lived on a boat.

Mike Stenhouse (19:41.625)
Mm -hmm.

Jasper Ribbers (19:42.862)
Can you tell us that story?

Mike Stenhouse (19:44.845)
Yeah, we decided we wanted to go traveling. And you know what? A lot of this was, so you mentioned you were on our podcast. It went live yesterday, but we spoke to you first like six or seven years ago, right? And your original situation at the time, really inspiring. I mentioned, I think maybe before we started recording, it was probably one of our most talked about podcasts ever, right? Everyone's like, oh yeah, who's that Dutch guy again?

What's he doing? Like his story is really cool. And like, so travel had always been something that we wanted to do. We heard stories like yours and that inspired us. I mentioned, you know, like property. I don't feel like it's a full -time business. We've got a great team on the ground. We've built up, you know, some, some systems and processes that mean that like, I found that we were doing 90 % of our work on a laptop. So although we were investing close to home, it wasn't like I was on site every day. I wasn't running around like with keys or like it was.

Jasper Ribbers (20:14.734)
Yeah

Mike Stenhouse (20:42.939)
basically a laptop job. So we said, well, again, we've got no responsibilities really. We want to go traveling. Let's maybe go on some, rather than just go on vacation, let's go and do something fun for a couple of years and then we'll come back and settle down and have kids. A couple of things that played into that, we have two dogs, so they had to come with us. We wanted a little bit of comfort.

Anyway, we got into sailing. My wife's been sailing since she was a kid, but kind of fell out of love with it. But we went, she sailed in Wales. Wales is like the wettest part of the UK. Sailing in rain, you know, bad weather, not really fun. Sailing in the sunshine, much more fun. So we went out to Europe, to the Med. We did some sailing around there. We came across some YouTube channels of people who were living on boats and thought, yeah, that sounds awesome.

So within the space of about 12 months, we had this idea, let's go traveling. And, uh, we went, we did our qualifications. We bought a boat. Uh, we, we kind of ramped up our team a little bit so that we had people on the ground back in the UK. And the plan was to go sailing around the world COVID hit. So we actually didn't leave Europe in the end. We did four years sailing around the Mediterranean. Um, we came back for a couple of months each winter. And then, uh, in the last year.

Victoria gave birth to our daughter. We did a summer on the boat with her when she was a baby, but by the end of that season, she was starting to move around a little bit. And we thought, yeah, if we come back next year, she's going to be like jumping off the boat. And we weren't ready for that level of drama in our lives. So at that point we sold, we moved back to the UK about 12 months ago. And yeah, we had a lot of fun. We continued to build the business and focus on that. And yeah.

Jasper Ribbers (22:35.466)
You were still able to record podcasts while you were on the boat? Did you have good internet?

Mike Stenhouse (22:43.131)
I mean, we, so running, running a business from a boat sounds awesome. It was awesome at times, but there are also like just living life on a boat takes a little bit of effort in terms of like your weather planning, your route planning. What you think is going to happen is, is rarely what actually happens. We also had friends and family that wanted to come visit us. So whilst we were trying to work, everyone else who was with us was on vacation and wanted to have fun.

And we wanted to have fun as well. So yeah, we were able to run the business. We would typically try to schedule it so that we'd spend a night or two each week in a marina close to a town or a city so we could connect to the wifi and we'd go and do the grocery shopping and that sort of stuff. But yeah, I mean, it had some challenges, but absolutely worth it. You figure these things out. Again, one of the things that you spoke about when you were in, I think Chiang Mai, right? You were like,

that was set up for Nomads. It had the best Wi -Fi you'd ever had and it wasn't quite that good on the boat. Starlink was just an idea. I think it's really now just becoming popular and a lot of people are relying on that. So it's one less thing to worry about, but you make it work. We were able to record podcasts. I switched to more solo episodes to kind of try and get around that a little bit, but yeah, it was good fun.

Jasper Ribbers (24:05.908)
Right on, right on. Any big challenges while you were living on the boat? Like storms or like, you know, the boat falling over?

Mike Stenhouse (24:14.415)
Yeah, we, we, we had a few, thankfully nobody falling overboard. We had a couple of big storms. We were super naive that first season. We'd look at like, we, like we had radar on the boat for, for weather. I didn't figure out how to use that until we'd been on the boat for about 12 months. We'd been through a couple of big storms and somebody who we were sailing with for a while said, well, didn't you see it on your radar? And what the heck is radar? I didn't know. Um, so.

Yeah, we had a couple of big storms. We lost our dinghy, our tender. We, I mean, nothing dramatic. We, we, we survived. We're still here. It was still a good experience. Um, I think honestly, the biggest, the biggest drama or concern was just trying to fit in too much. Like we wanted to have this adventure and be on vacation and be present and enjoy where we were.

at the same time, like living and managing a boat was a new job effectively. My wife was like the skipper. So she, you know, her day was full of like passage planning and looking at the weather when we figured out how to turn the radar on things break on boats. So I became like part -time engineer. And then we're also trying to run the business. We're trying to grow the business. Our business, it probably, you know,

we sustained it. I wouldn't say it was like phenomenal growth. So I was kind of excited by the time we were coming back to like enter a new phase of like, let's push this and see where we can get it to. So it took more time. It was more time consuming living on a boat and trying to balance everything than I thought it would be. But yeah, still an awesome experience.

Jasper Ribbers (26:00.782)
I saw on your website that you help people with something that's called HMO investing. Can you explain what that is?

Mike Stenhouse (26:07.003)
Yeah, yeah. I think it's like a UK specific industry or strategy. So it's what I mentioned where the best way and I don't know if there's an equivalent of this in the Netherlands, but it's whenever I'm speaking to anyone in the US, I tend to describe it as like a frat house for professionals like young professionals, graduates. So effectively, we will take

a single family home or in our case we often take kind of larger like commercial offices and things like that and we'll convert them into maybe six or eight or 10 bedroom HMOs which stands for a house of multiple occupancy. So rather than renting out the entire property to a single family we would rent out each individual bedroom and then there's going to be shared communal spaces so.

they have a kitchen and a lounge often in the larger houses they'll have a couple of different lounge spaces, dining rooms. So it's a nice place for people to live. It's kind of like student living post -graduation and it's not dissimilar from the short -term rental market in as much as the rent is like all -inclusive. So you pay for a nightly rate on Airbnb and that includes all of your utility costs and you've got cleaning and all that sort of stuff. They move into our house,

All of the utilities are covered. We pay for the electric and the water and the Wi -Fi, TV and cable. We pay a cleaner to go into that house every week. So it's kind of like a convenient, lower cost, but also kind of fun and sociable way for typically young professionals, people in their mid -20s up to early 30s is where our usual demographic is.

Jasper Ribbers (28:00.846)
Do these people sign a lease for the room and do they typically stay for a longer time if it's more like almost like a midterm like a one two month thing.

Mike Stenhouse (28:08.741)
It's definitely longer term. I mean, when we started, we would have like a six month lease agreement in place. Now it's 12 months. I mean, we'll still do six if somebody like was really adamant that that's all they need it for. But typically 12 months, the market here is crazy for room rentals. I think there's something similar in Australia. I mean, you know, models like this exist. I don't know what they're called elsewhere, but yeah, so typically kind of 12 months.

Like our longer term family homes, people will be in there for years. I would say our average tenancy length in an HMO is probably about somewhere between 12 and 18 months. So it's still, it's a reasonably long term solution. Often we find people are moving here for the first time. So we live in Manchester. They've maybe got a graduate job here. They're moving here. They've been to university, they're moving here for work and maybe they don't.

Jasper Ribbers (28:47.468)
Mm -hmm.

Mike Stenhouse (29:04.869)
want to buy, they can't afford to buy, they don't want to live on their own. So this is, you know, it's a kind of nice interim solution for them. And then they'll get familiar with the location. Maybe they fall in love, maybe they buy their own place and then they'll move out into an apartment or a house. But yeah, it's a good kind of entry level route for people who are relocating or looking to kind of move out of their family home for the first time.

Jasper Ribbers (29:26.958)
Right. Last question. Manchester United or Manchester City?

Mike Stenhouse (29:31.149)
Well, see, I am from Scotland originally, so I have no allegiance to any Manchester team. I'm not even going to take sides because if I pick the wrong side and anyone listens to this, I'll end up in trouble. We have our contractors on site. We do a lot of renovations and construction work, and there's a big allegiance to one or the other. So it causes a little bit of rivalry. If I had to pick, are you a big follower of football or soccer, I guess I need to call it? But.

Do you follow the English Premier League? If I had to pick I would say I was a Norwich fan. Norwich are not the most exciting team in the world. That's the team I chose to follow a few years back. For me, football is not the right sport.

Jasper Ribbers (30:03.054)
I do, yeah, I do.

Jasper Ribbers (30:19.182)
Gotcha. Okay, Mike, before I let you go, let people know where they can find you. I know you have your podcast at the insidepropertyinvesting .com. Who is this for and what can people learn from your podcast?

Mike Stenhouse (30:33.947)
So, I mean, our focus is the UK market. So we, you know, we talk about all different strategies within the UK, whether it's short term rentals, HMOs, singlets or commercial property, but it's predominantly focused on the UK market. And it's mainly interview based. We speak to a lot of cool people.

like yourself who've got tons of experience. We speak to a lot of people who have maybe just done their first deal and can share some lessons on what worked for them. So it's for aspiring investors who are interested in the UK market, maybe want to find out a bit more about how to get started or which strategy is right for them.

Jasper Ribbers (31:15.086)
Gotcha. Awesome, Mike. Well, appreciate you jumping on and excited to keep following your journey. I'm excited to hear in the future if you're continuing to do those short -term rentals or if you're eventually going to, if the rollercoaster seasonality is a little too much and you're going to go back to the safety of the long -term rental, if you will. And I appreciate you jumping on and sharing your story.

Mike Stenhouse (31:40.355)
No worries. Thanks for having me.

Jasper Ribbers (31:42.446)
Awesome. And to the listeners, hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll be back soon with another one. See you next time.