Finance Follow-Ups: Short-Term Rentals, Safety Reserves, & More Cash Flow

Mindy Jensen:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, show number 242, Finance Friday edition, where we check in with Sarah Wilson, Brian and Erik, and see what they’ve been up to since we last spoke with them.

Sarah Wilson:
I think it’s really important to challenge your beliefs sometimes and not necessarily just keep doing things the way you’ve been doing them, just because that’s the way you’ve always done them. Stop saying, like, hey, you’ve got 44 grand in cash, maybe don’t, was a bit of a wake up call. I did actually end up changing some of my saving habits.

Brian Blask:
It’s a four bedroom, two bath house with a hot tub, it’s beautiful. It came fully furnished. Again, it had only been rented on short term rental for about a year, so it wasn’t beat up too bad where I had to go in and do anything. Really, a couple of cosmetic things. But now we’ve already booked… I’ve only been live with it for a little over two weeks on Airbnb, and it’s already booked up like $12,000 for the rest of the year.

Erik:
My wife and I got so excited after our recording that we went and tried to do everything we could, as much as we could to get ourselves in an even better financial situation.

Mindy Jensen:
Hello, hello, hello, my name is Mindy Jensen and I am flying solo today. Scott couldn’t join me today, so I am flying solo when I recap, and catch up with Sarah Wilson, Erik and Brian. I am here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story, because I firmly believe that financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.
Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, or start your own business, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.
A couple of weeks ago, somebody posted in our Facebook group, hey, Mindy is always talking about catching up with somebody and checking back in, in a few months. Well, I have reached out to all of our Finance Friday guests, and over the next few months, we are going to check in and see what they’ve been up to. Today, we’re talking to Sarah Wilson, YouTube’s budget girl, and Erik and Brian to see what they have been up to since we last spoke.
We first interviewed Sarah Wilson, YouTube’s budget girl for episode six of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. Here’s a fun bit of trivia for you. Sarah was actually the very first person that Scott and I ever interviewed for the podcast. She shared her wonderful story of paying off $33,000 in debt in three years, while making only $26,000 a year. While debt payoff story of any kind is remarkable, Sarah’s really impressed me because she was making such little income and still managed to pay off about a third of her annual salary in debt every year. That’s really impressive.
She came back to the show for Episode 178 and shared an update from her first show. She was up to $100,000 in net worth, yay! House hacking a duplex she bought at the beginning of the pandemic that allowed her to live for free, meaning no out of pocket housing expenses, and actively saving up for her next real estate purchase. She had $44,000 in cash, which was mainly in emergency funds, and $3,000 in her next house purchase account.
Scott felt that this was an overwhelmingly conservative approach, but I can understand where she’s coming from, given her past experiences with debt. She was contributing to her employer retirement account and maxing out her Roth IRA and had a modest amount of after tax investments. Sarah Wilson, YouTube’s budget girl, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you and catch up today. What’s going on?

Sarah Wilson:
It is always a pleasure, Mindy. Thank you so much for having me.

Mindy Jensen:
Let’s jump right into it. It is always a pleasure to have you. I want to continue to keep up with your story because it’s so inspiring. I love your debt payoff story. I love that you found a smoking deal on a duplex that was in the path of progress. We talked about that a little bit, but not a lot on your last episode. Tell me what that means, in the path of progress.

Sarah Wilson:
When I was looking for property, I’ve been in this area for four years now, so I pretty much know the area. I looked for over a year before I made a purchase, and I ended up doing so right at the beginning of the pandemic. A lot of people told me I was really dumb for that. But it actually worked out really well, because the $230,000 property that appraised for $240,000 at closing is likely going to reappraise for about 300 grand very shortly.

Mindy Jensen:
$300,000 it just appraised for… Okay, let’s go to the numbers again. What did you pay for it?

Sarah Wilson:
$230,000.

Mindy Jensen:
$230,000. Then 10 months later when we talked to you last March you had just refied to $250,000 it appraised for?

Sarah Wilson:
No. Actually, when I bought it, it had already appraised at $240,000. I only paid $230,000.

Mindy Jensen:
Okay.

Sarah Wilson:
I did refi about 10 months later just to bring down the interest, the percentage point and it was an FHA streamline refi, so it didn’t actually cost me anything. I’m about to refi again hopefully to get out of the MIP and switch over to a conventional loan and also free up my FHA eligibility again.

Mindy Jensen:
Awesome. Okay, you have lived in this property for at least one year, which has satisfied your initial owner occupancy requirements. If you refinance you will reset your eligibility?

Sarah Wilson:
Supposedly not. They told me and they gave me paperwork that said as long as you lived in the property for one year total, because the new loan is only going to be for 29 years.

Mindy Jensen:
Oh, interesting.

Sarah Wilson:
Yeah.

Mindy Jensen:
Okay. I would say to anybody who is listening and considering refinancing, talk to your lender about your intentions. You do not want to claim you are going to be living in there and then have plans to move out and then get caught up in some sort of legal miscommunication.

Sarah Wilson:
I was very clear, I was like, I don’t know when I’m going to buy the next house. It might be next month, it might be next year. They were just like, “No, we’re good.”

Mindy Jensen:
Awesome. Okay, great. As long as you’re talking to your lender and they don’t care, that is all that matters. Okay, the Path of Progress is a great place to buy. Scott bought a house in the Path of Progress and it just gives you more opportunity to take advantage of appreciation that you’re not even forcing, it’s just happening without your consent.

Sarah Wilson:
Like I said, I knew the area and I also work for the university here, which is a huge part of College Station in Bryan, Texas, and it is growing in the direction of where my house is. In fact, they just built a Chick-fil-A near my house which screams money to me, which I’m pretty thrilled about, for a myriad of reasons, including chicken bites.

Mindy Jensen:
Let’s talk about that for a minute. When you’re a multinational… Are they multinational? Let’s just call them national. When you’re a national company and you’re expanding into an area, that means that you’ve done your research. You know that that’s where people are going to be. If you start to see Starbucks and I think at the time they just built a Walmart. Starbucks, Walmart, Chick-fil-A, those companies have people who analyze the market and they say this is a place that I want to build, because I know people are going to be there, that’s where you want to be too. The college is growing in that direction. That’s another really great, amazing influence in real estate values-

Sarah Wilson:
I also made sure to purchase not where the student housing generally is, because traffic is so bad there. That’s not the place I wanted to invest. So, I went in the other direction.

Mindy Jensen:
Good point. Okay. Lots of little tips here. Go back and listen to Episode 178 with Sarah because she has a lot of really great information in that episode about how she chose this property as well.
Okay, in our last episode you were looking for your next property. You said that’s your favorite pastime, is to go and see houses. Same. Did you find a new property?

Sarah Wilson:
Kind of. I’m still shopping for an actual property or piece of land and I’m very open to what that’s going to be. I’m open to a duplex, a triplex, quadplex, a piece of land I can put stuff on. I have to have good vibes from it, if we get real hippie dippie here. I have to know that it will work and it’s in a good place and that it has good vibes.
I really want to do Airbnb. I’ve actually spent 10 grand recently purchasing and working on renovating a vintage travel trailer. I bought a partially renovated, 1982 Holiday Rambler that was completely gutted and redone on the inside. I’m finishing the outside and doing some of the finishing touches and fixing some not great work and that I’m hoping to turn into a game day rental for Texas A&M people. It’s going to be Texas Ivy themed, and the plan currently is to put it to at an RV park and rent it out. It’s already got the hookups there and do short term renting, Airbnb or Vrbo and then eventually put it on a piece of land that I actually own and will set up all the hookups, build a roof over it, a deck, it’ll be darling.

Mindy Jensen:
Okay, I am a real estate agent and there was the house that came on the market. The house itself was mid century, modern, beautiful. It only had one bathroom, and my clients didn’t end up wanting to make an offer on it… No, it had two bathrooms, but it went to master bath. Anyway, in the backyard, they had an unfinished travel trailer that was available for purchase outside of the contract. I’m like, how are you going to get that out of here? It’s all fenced in, I don’t even know how you got that in there. But that’s not my problem, and a little studio, and it’s sold for $100,000 over asking. It just sold recently.
Our market is more of like a 10% over asking. So, for it to go for $100,000 over asking was pretty astonishing, and I don’t think it was that significantly underpriced. The travel trailer idea can be huge. You had a little bit of a yard in your duplex. Is there any room for the travel trailer on your spot?

Sarah Wilson:
No, there is not. I am currently renting a field near my house for 100 bucks a month to fix it up, because apparently you can’t fix it up at a storage unit or at an RV park. They don’t want you to do that there. Also, people are getting wise to ADUs and buying homes that have an accessory dwelling unit. I’ve toured several and always gotten significantly outbid.

Mindy Jensen:
The last time we talked, it was probably March or maybe even February of this year, that’s when the real estate market really started to just crank into overdrive. It was so hot that every house sold. It didn’t matter what the condition was, it didn’t matter that it backed up to a very active train track, it didn’t matter anything. In my area, if it was listed on the market, it was sold within 20 days or under contract within 20 days.

Sarah Wilson:
Yeah, for double what it would be worth any other time.

Mindy Jensen:
Insanity, absolutely.

Sarah Wilson:
Which is why I haven’t bought yet. I don’t necessarily think the market is going to cool off that much. But I still don’t want to just… The numbers have to work. The numbers have to work for me to be able to rent it out and for it to be worth.

Mindy Jensen:
Yes, do not get caught up in the hype, and the oh, I got to win this bid because I’ve lost six others. It doesn’t matter, make the offer that works with your numbers only. It doesn’t matter what other people are buying, your competition has different parameters that they’re working under.

Sarah Wilson:
It has to work for me. I put in 10 grand over on a property that was really cool, and it was really marked under rate and they ended up going like 20 grand over, at least according to my realtor. But I wasn’t sad about it because I priced exactly what I could afford, exactly what it would be worth to rent out, all the things I could do with the property, and that higher number went and worked. I would have been paying people to live there or just overpaying.

Mindy Jensen:
Listen, the next time you’re tempted to pay somebody to live someplace, you pay me, and I’ll live within my house. I will call you to fix anything. I’ll fix the roof myself, it’ll be great. I’m not going to give you the proceeds when I sell. But if you want to pay somebody… This goes for anybody, if you want to pay somebody to live somewhere, you go ahead and send me a check. Biggerpockets.com has our home address or our HQ address right on there. You just send it right to Mindy Jensen, I’ll cash it with a smile.
Okay, what else were we talking about when you were here last? You were contributing to your employer retirement fund, we had discussed the concept of the 457 plan, and you were looking into that. You had discovered that you did have that option. Are you now maxing out everything?

Sarah Wilson:
No. There is still only so much money to go around. As far as retirement, I am still maxing out my Teachers Retirement System, which I get an employer match for. I’m maxing that out. I’m also maxing out my Roth IRA and I have a few $100 a month that I put into just brokerage accounts that aren’t retirement centric, so I can pull them if I need to, and all the rest of the money is currently going towards property savings.

Mindy Jensen:
Great, and that is highlighting my comment that I always say, personal finance is personal, and what works for me might not work for you. But it doesn’t matter, all that your system has to work for, is you. I love that you’re still contributing enough to get your full match, and I love that you’re maxing out your Roth IRA. As we spoke to Kyle Mast on episode 200. He said that he can see the Roth option being removed as a way to help pay for all those stimulus checks that the government kept writing throughout the pandemic. It’s a… Well listen to Kyle say it, because he says it way better. He’s far more eloquent than I am. But it’s basically a really easy way to remove that loophole and start generating more… It’s not a loophole, it’s a real thing, but it’s, generate more income for the government who has to start paying for these checks.

Sarah Wilson:
I did add one thing when open enrollment came back around, I started a HSA account that I’m contributing a little bit to pre-tax on.

Mindy Jensen:
Okay, I need to find out who actually sent me this note, but somebody sent me a note that said, in almost every single instance, the money that you can save in your HSA and the reduction in premiums for the monthly insurance premiums, it is almost always better to have an HSA. Even if you have medical issues, even if you have chronic conditions, it’s almost always better to have an HSA.
I’m going to look for a link for this. He gave me a bunch of stuff. If you’re listening to this, and you are the one who sent that to me, I’m terribly sorry that I forgot, and please email me, [email protected], and I will get a link to the information that you sent me, because that was very helpful. He ran a spreadsheet and did a bunch of numbers and it was very, very great.
Glad you have an HSA. I still encourage you to look into the 457 plan. However, one of the biggest benefits of the 457 plan is that you can access those funds without fee when you separate from service and you really like your job. You are in saving up for the next rental property mode. So, maybe continuing to reduce your taxable income isn’t the best choice for you right now. It just really depends on what you’re looking for.
If you’re listening to this, you have a 457 option and just a bunch of extra cash lying around, maybe that’s an option for you. The Millionaire Educator was on our episode… Hold, while I look it up. He was 124. If you have the option, if you are a city, state or federal government employee, you may have the option to contribute to a 457 plan. So, look into your benefits and if you are interested in it, listen to Episode 124 with the Millionaire Educator, because he goes into great detail on why it’s so awesome.
But this is not his episode, this is your episode. When will your travel trailer be up and running?

Sarah Wilson:
I’m hoping in about a month. I’ve had it for about a month. I’ve been working on it, had to find some people to help me work on it for things like the electrical that I’m not necessarily comfortable doing myself, but I’ve been JV welding holes in it and getting ready to paint, and it’s going to be adorable. I really hope so.

Mindy Jensen:
That is exciting. Have you found the location to park it in yet?

Sarah Wilson:
I have two options. One, who has not quite gotten back to me yet on if they’ll allow me to Airbnb it, while having it there. They need to see all the photos and everything, so I need to finish making it cute. The other has said yes, that I could Airbnb it, while renting there. That would be about $450 a month that would be the lot rent.
One includes electricity, the other doesn’t, but I could hook it up there. I don’t have a truck so I’d have to get it towed there. Hook it up and then just use it as a regular rental and then eventually move it to a piece of property.

Mindy Jensen:
Okay. A couple of questions, as somebody who doesn’t own a travel trailer, but would be the one renting it, sometimes these RV parks can be really awesome and upscale and sometimes they can be less so. With this person saying that they wanted to see pictures, I’m guessing it leans more towards upscale?

Sarah Wilson:
Yes. I did a fun day long tour of every RV park in the College Station, Bryan area. Compared prices, got general like vibes upscale and looked at the rules for each one saying some only allow trailers after a certain date. But those sometimes allow vintage if they look nice. There’s the one that is my front runner, doesn’t allow anything older than 10 years old, but they have some vintage airstreams on the property. When I sent them some photos of another Holiday Rambler that had been renovated in the exact paint style I’m planning on doing, they were like, “Yeah, that would be fine.”
They want it to look very upscale and nice. Following the rules of that, making sure they’re all good with me being liable for everything, but also having different people on the property and keeping all of that aboveboard.

Mindy Jensen:
Good. I love it, I’m so excited that you did that research and I want to just highlight to anybody who’s listening, if you’re considering doing this, first of all, hit up Sarah because she’s super nice and will tell you all the things you want to know. Also, do some research, because people are going to not be kind if they go to rent your trailer and it is in a less so RV park. Also, I would-

Sarah Wilson:
Airbnb is very much, everything has to be nice, but getting there has to be nice. There was one place that was actually really cool and upscale, but you have to drive through some really shady areas, and you have to think about that.

Mindy Jensen:
Yeah, that’s absolutely really, really important, take the time to really do your research and plant your trailer in a good location. Also, I would give links to where the RV park actually is, in your Airbnb listing, so that when people are looking at it, they’re like, oh, an RV, I don’t know, it’s in some RV park. Or oh, it’s in Bob’s RV Park. That’s the nice one.
Because I’m assuming that people who are coming for game day, they went to the school and they know the area, including cross streets. Like it’s near 4th and Vine, or whatever, I think would be really helpful as well. Let’s see, what else did we talk about? We talked about-

Sarah Wilson:
We did a lot on savings, and how much I had in savings.

Mindy Jensen:
Yes. Well, Scott felt that you were rather conservative, he felt you were overly conservative. Whereas, I defended Your Honor, and said that your past experiences with debt has probably left you a little gun shy, and it’s okay to have more in your emergency funds. I want people, especially in the middle of the pandemic, I want people to keep hearing over and over again, emergency funds are the way to go.

Sarah Wilson:
Yeah. That said, I think it’s really important to challenge your beliefs sometimes, and not necessarily just keep doing things the way you’ve been doing them just because that’s what we’ve always done them. Scott kept saying, like, “Hey, you’ve got 44 grand in cash, maybe don’t.” Was a bit of a wake up call. I did actually end up changing some of my saving habits.
I had, as you mentioned about 44 grand in cash, I do still have my home emergency fund, I do still have my personal emergency fund. But I did end up actually shutting down five sinking fund accounts. I used to have a dedicated travel fund, pet fund, Christmas fund, medical fund, car repair, replacement. In addition to my emergency funds, personal account, YouTube tax savings and rental insurance sinking fund, I ended up just moving all of those files that I deleted to my new home savings account, and making one other short term savings, that will keep just about two grand in it. So, anything that happens that isn’t emergency that I want to tap my biggie fund for. So, travel, pet appointments, that kind of thing, that I can have a secondary place to pull money from, without having to tap my emergency fund. There might just be a mental block there.
But that freed up about 500 bucks a month that I then got to put towards my real estate efforts.

Mindy Jensen:
Well, I love that. I love the idea that you want to challenge your thinking, I think that’s really important to do. I love that you still have a good emergency fund. What’s the quote, 40% of Americans can’t put $1,000-

Sarah Wilson:
$1000 emergency, yeah.

Mindy Jensen:
… emergency. I had to get a new tire, and that’s, well, if you get one, and the rest of them are old, you got to replace them all, and that’s $1,000, and I can cover that. But if I couldn’t, what am I going to do? If they’re not going to put one new tire on my car and I have to buy four, I’m going to have to throw it on a credit card, and I can’t pay it off. So then I have to pay 17% interest or 27% interest or whatever.

Sarah Wilson:
One emergency can just really throw your entire month or a year off, if you don’t have any savings.

Mindy Jensen:
Yes. I am totally supportive of your emergency fund. I am totally supportive of the way that you’re saving, and I know that if the perfect house came up, and you had to jump on it, and you had to deplete most of your emergency savings, you still have options.

Sarah Wilson:
Yeah, I do. Like I said, I have just money in my personal account. There’s a little flush money there, and then I have a short term savings fund, and then I still get my YouTube tax savings. So, tax for my business, it gets deducted. My car and house insurance sinking fund, and I also still have my two emergency fund accounts, one for my duplex and one for myself.
Then I saved up about 25 grand into the new home savings account, which I only just recently tapped to spend about 10 grand on the travel trailer. It was only 4,200 bucks, the trailer itself, but it has cost more than that which I anticipated.

Mindy Jensen:
How much can you rent the travel trailer out per night?

Sarah Wilson:
It’s going to be about 80 to 100 bucks a night.

Mindy Jensen:
Okay. When you rent it out for a weekend, college games are on Saturday, that’s football. Are there other options besides football? Do people come in for basketball and baseball and all the other sports that I can’t remember?

Sarah Wilson:
There are all sorts of sports. There are also parent weekends, there are people touring. We have hospitals in the area. We have kids sports in the area, and this travel trailer will sleep up to three.

Mindy Jensen:
Three, okay. Well, that’s great. I’m super excited for your travel trailer. I can’t wait to see what happens at the end of the school year. I’d love to check back in again with you because I just love you so much, Sarah.

Sarah Wilson:
Thank you.

Mindy Jensen:
Well, thank you for coming back and sharing what’s been going on. I’m excited for your progress, and I’ll talk to you again in about six months.

Sarah Wilson:
Okay, that sounds great. Bring Scott, he can tell me I still have too much cash in savings.

Mindy Jensen:
I’ll bring Scott, but he’s not going to talk smack.

Sarah Wilson:
I might still have too much cash in savings. But I’m working on it. Willing to have my beliefs challenged.

Mindy Jensen:
I far agree with that versus the, oh, I don’t have anything in savings. I’ll figure it out.

Sarah Wilson:
That’s terrifying. I wouldn’t be able to take the chances I’m doing with this travel trailer, which could go up in flames. I wouldn’t be willing to take risks if I didn’t have a really conservative amount in savings. I think it allows me to take on ventures that maybe not everybody would.

Mindy Jensen:
I love that. I love that. Okay, Sarah, thank you so much again for joining us and we’ll talk to you soon.

Sarah Wilson:
Thank you, Mindy.

Mindy Jensen:
Huge thanks to Sarah for coming back and sharing with us her successes. Sarah, you are really crushing your financial journey. Up next is Brian. But first, let’s hear a note from today’s show sponsor.
Great big thanks to the sponsor of today’s show. Brian, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. Brian first joined us on episode 180, where we learned that he is essentially doing everything right. Brian earns a great income, diversified over both his W-2 job and his rental properties. He spends far less than he earns. He invests across both stocks and real estate and owns a rental property in the cash flowing market of upstate New York.
He’s in his late 30s and he and his wife just passed $1 million in net worth. They had sold their home and were renting while waiting to close on their next house. But selling their home netted them a brand new problem, a really great problem of what to do with the equity that they just cashed out. Brian was contemplating continuing to invest in a 401(k) that had a 5% company match, nice job, Brian, saving for more long term rentals in New York, jumping into short term rentals in his new state in North Carolina, or starting to invest in syndications, now that he is an accredited investor.
Scott and I encouraged him to run the numbers on both of the potential rental markets and to check out syndication pitches. I further encouraged him to continue to contribute to his 401(k) because I love funding your retirement with good old fashioned tax deferred money.
Brian, let’s jump right into this. Welcome back to the show. I’m so excited to catch up with you.

Brian Blask:
Yeah, it’s great to be back. Thanks, Mindy.

Mindy Jensen:
What have you been up to? You were going to have a baby back when we last talked to you. I’m assuming that you did have a baby or well, your wife did.

Brian Blask:
Yeah, a lot of action here in 2021. We moved down to North Carolina, we closed on a new house, we had a baby. That’s our third child. So, it’s been very exciting.

Mindy Jensen:
The $65,000 question, you’re not on [inaudible 00:28:35] for that either, the $65,000 question is, what did you do with your money?

Brian Blask:
That’s a good question. We purchased a short term rental property recently, just closed on that in the last couple of months, an Airbnb beach house here in North Carolina. That’s been going great. My wife and I have been managing that. Did a lot of the integrations into Airbnb to help manage that. That’s been going phenomenal.
Earlier in the summer, we purchased another five unit property up in upstate New York, which has been another good property. It’s cash flowing perfectly, and we had a little more repairs than I want it to do. But we had to get the five units up and running.

Mindy Jensen:
Spoiler alert, there’s always more repairs than you want to do. You get this great deal, and you’re like, oh, drywall isn’t see through. No worries, that happens to me every time I do a flip too. I’m like, oh, look at that, more… Good thing I put in my extra budget.
Let’s look at these numbers up. We were talking about, do I want to do a short term rental in North Carolina or do I want to do more cash flowing properties in New York? It sounds like you did both, which is awesome. I want to know what you paid for these.

Brian Blask:
The first one we bought was the five unit in upstate and that purchase price was $90,000, and I got financing on that, and then we put in another $15,000 in repairs.

Mindy Jensen:
You bought five units for $90,000?

Brian Blask:
I did, it was a great deal. It was an off market deal. So, it was-

Mindy Jensen:
I hate my market.

Brian Blask:
The cash flow, the gross rents are just over $3,000. So, it’s a great deal.

Mindy Jensen:
I really hate my market. Okay. Off market property, $90,000 for five units, not $90,000 per unit, $90,000 whole dollars for all five units?

Brian Blask:
Correct?

Mindy Jensen:
Okay, and it’s cash flowing, $3,000. That’s after repairs, after expenses, after… Not repairs, after all that or-

Brian Blask:
No, that’s gross rent, it brings in $3,000, and then we pay property management and mortgage, which is not very expensive considering-

Mindy Jensen:
On the $90,000 property. What is it like, 400 bucks?

Brian Blask:
Pretty much.

Mindy Jensen:
What kind of neighborhood is this in?

Brian Blask:
It’s the north part of the city. It’s a decent part of the city. We’ll have long term residents there. I’m happy with where we are.

Mindy Jensen:
You put $15,000 into it. You’re all in at $105,000, and what is that generating in cash flow after all of your expenses?

Brian Blask:
It’d be about 2000 bucks a month.

Mindy Jensen:
You say 2000, like that’s bad.

Brian Blask:
It’s great. I’m very happy.

Mindy Jensen:
That’s awesome. That’s fantastic. Okay, what did you put down on that property, because you said you got a mortgage.

Brian Blask:
Correct. We put down the 25%, and then you had our… We didn’t have to kick off all that much, however, it was over.

Mindy Jensen:
If it’s taking off $2,000 a month, and you’re $25,000 into it, $30,000 into it, you’re paying it off, all your cash, you’re paying off in 15 months, and then you’re not… I really hate my market after talking to you.

Brian Blask:
That was a good deal. Like I said, they come across every once in a while like that, and you want to jump on them. We jumped on that one.

Mindy Jensen:
You want to be able to jump on them. I want to point out to people who are listening, Brian was able to jump on this because he knew the market. He had been investing in this market already. You had, I believe nine units, over four properties, the last time we talked. You already know the market, you have a team in place, you have property management. Like I said at the beginning, you’ve done everything right, and that’s how you set yourself up for financial success is to put in the work at the beginning and do your research and know what you’re getting into, know what’s a good deal so that you can jump on it as soon as you see it.
Let’s move to North Carolina and look at that property. You said you just closed on that?

Brian Blask:
Correct. I just closed on that about a month ago. It was just turnkey. That place is great. I didn’t go to MLS for that either, I was just networking with somebody at my son’s baseball practice and he happened to know somebody that was looking to sell a beach house and that’s what I was looking at. I had looked at the market over the past six months, so I knew what it should cost, what should I be paying.
The only thing that I didn’t know entirely was how much were we going to make with Airbnb in short term rental? Because it is seasonal, I hadn’t been here and been in that market to monitor it over a course of period of time. But there’s different websites out there that you can use to do your homework on it and talking to multiple other BiggerPockets short term investors here, that are all over BiggerPockets forums, and they’re great people. Connecting with them, that’s what gave me the confidence to say, you can do this. This is a good deal. You should definitely do this.

Mindy Jensen:
Okay, let’s look at the numbers on this deal.

Brian Blask:
Yep. We bought this one for $550,000. It’s more than my primary residence. This is one where we said, we’ve even stopped and thought about it for a few days, my wife and I. But again, it wasn’t on the MLS, so I didn’t have to do it right away, because otherwise I would have had to make a decision literally that day after seeing it. That’s how hot the market is. But because of networking and being able to take it slower, we realized, yes, we should buy this.
We got it for 550. I got it as a second home mortgage, and I only put 10% down and I know I’ve heard on your show before about run the numbers on paying PMI and not paying PMI, and I only put 10% down because I didn’t want to actually pay an extra $55,000 because PMI is only 130 bucks a month.

Mindy Jensen:
Yeah, that is something that I never considered until I talked to my friend Jake and he said that he was putting down only 10% on his primary residence, because he didn’t want to sell stocks, and it was only going to be like $50 or $65 or something.
I was like, oh, I never even considered not putting 20% down because I hear stories of PMI is $200, or $300 a month. At that point, sometimes it doesn’t make any sense at all to pay it if you have the ability to put down the 20%. But when it’s 50 or 60 bucks, I can do better with that money invested than just sticking it into the home equity of my house. Because when you go to cash out refi, your bank is not going to give you a 90% loan to value cash out refi, they’re going to give you, I think 80% is the most that I’ve ever seen.

Brian Blask:
My thought process there was like, I think that if I only put 10% down, I would be having more… I didn’t want all that equity into the house, and I could do better with it outside it, at 3%. The rate is 3% for 30 years.

Mindy Jensen:
That money is stupid cheap right now.

Brian Blask:
Yeah, lock in that long term rate, pay an extra 100 bucks a month.

Mindy Jensen:
What are the stats on this rental property?

Brian Blask:
It’s a four bedroom, two bath house with a hot tub. It’s beautiful. It came fully furnished. Again, it had only been rented on short term rental for about a year, so it wasn’t beat up too bad, where I had to go in and do anything. Really done a couple of cosmetic things. But now we’ve already booked… I’ve only been live with it for a little over two weeks on Airbnb, and it’s already booked up like $12,000 for the rest of the year.

Mindy Jensen:
What is your monthly expenses for this property?

Brian Blask:
About $3,000 total, and this is the off season.

Mindy Jensen:
This is the off season. Is it available? Is the beach that it’s on, do people come throughout the whole year, or is it truly summer seasonal, like some of these other beach rentals?

Brian Blask:
No, because the winters are mild, they’re not obviously laying out, sunbathing all winter long, but the winters are mild enough where you will get some renters throughout the year. You’re not going to get it booked up week to week to week like you will from June through end of August, but you will have, and I’ve seen it already, like you’ll get people that’ll rent for a week over Thanksgiving. People that rent just random weekends here or a four day weekend there. It’s the beach, it doesn’t lose its value.

Mindy Jensen:
Exactly. I rented an Airbnb for over Thanksgiving and I’ll give you a little bit of advice, if you’re going to be renting this for when people are having big gatherings, have some actual big containers that people can cook in. I went to the store and bought disposable ones. Casserole pans and maybe a turkey pan or maybe not a turkey pan, that’s specific for one thing. But have a well stocked kitchen. Go to the kitchen and try to make a big meal and look oh, I don’t have a can opener, they didn’t have potholders, I told them in advance that I was going to be making Thanksgiving dinner and asked them if they could share what was in the kitchen, and they’re like, “Oh, you can cook in it.” I can’t, there’s no potholders.
Well, I can cook, I guess that’s on me, I didn’t ask if I would be able to remove things from the oven that would be cooking at 350 degrees. I guess that’s my fault. But put some oven mits in there, please.

Brian Blask:
Yeah, my wife and I and kids we’ve always traveled. We used to snowbird down to Florida. We’ve always been doing short term rental ourselves. So, it was nice to take notes over several years to say, okay, if we ever have one of these, this is what we want. You’re right, having it fully stocked like that, it makes your life so much easier.
As a traveler and we got the baby now, so we got baby stuff in there. The renter there is right now essentially booked it because of all the baby stuff. Just have a portable highchair and things like a porter crib, those little things that just help-

Mindy Jensen:
Plastic dishes for the kids so that they don’t drop your glass glasses on the ground, because they are going to drop it. I love it. I love it. I want to circle back because I didn’t mention this, I want to circle back to the beginning of this short term rental where you said, you got this lead from somebody at your son’s baseball practice.
I wrote an article a couple of years ago for the BiggerPockets Blog called Do Ask Do Tell. The whole gist of it is you don’t know what other people are doing until they tell you. They won’t know what you’re doing until you tell them. If you had never talked about real estate with this guy at Little League practice, would you have gotten this deal? Most likely not. Maybe it would have popped up on the MLS, but like you said, you would have been competing with other people. The market is super super hot. Tell everybody you know that you’re a real estate investor, because you never know where your next deal is going to come from.

Brian Blask:
That’s exactly it. Just network as much as you can. That’s what did this. I did not know the guy, I did not. But now he led me to a phenomenal deal that we love.

Mindy Jensen:
That’s awesome. A couple more things that Scott and I had talked to you about were real estate syndications and your 401(k). Let’s look into the syndication plan. Did you end up reviewing any syndication pitches? Did you end up investing in any syndications?

Brian Blask:
I have not. I am reading Brian Burke’s book from BiggerPockets. I’m in the middle of that right now. I don’t like to just jump right in. Like I said, I wanted to do my homework, I really wanted to just take it slow there because, again, I knew these other things, I didn’t necessarily know a ton about syndications as much. I knew this was what I wanted to do first. The money is not going anywhere, so let’s just learn it first, and then eventually, I probably, I see myself doing it. It’s just I wanted to jump into the short term rental market first, and then let’s pump the brakes a little bit on that.
The answer to that in a long winded way is I did not invest in syndications yet, and I’m keeping my 401(k) at 5% match.

Mindy Jensen:
At 5% match, okay. You’re getting the entire match that your company gives. You’re just not contributing anything extra, which is fine. Personal finance is personal, this is your choice, and you are doing this so that you can save up for more rental properties and investments as they come available.

Brian Blask:
Correct. I ran the numbers on just the compound interest calculator, stuff like that. I’m 38, so I can’t access that money for over 20 years. If I do nothing with that in the 401(k), it’s still going to compound for years. I’m still going to continue to contribute to it, but I didn’t want to max it out and lock it up. I wanted to have access to it, just to make sure that I could jump on other deals like the one that came across. I prefer real estate than I do-

Mindy Jensen:
That’s great. Well, look at what you’re getting a $90,000, five unit property that cash flows $2,000, I approve. That’s a really great deal. Okay, I want to give you an episode to listen to, Episode 219 of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. We interviewed Jay Scott on syndications and it is an epic, two hour infomercial about syndications and how to look at them, as opposed to just jumping in with both feet. I love that you want to do your research. I love that you want to make a smart decision. It can be really… Difficult is not the right word, but did you get caught up in the GameStop and what was the movie theater one?

Brian Blask:
AMC.

Mindy Jensen:
AMC. Yeah, you know about them, and it would be lovely to make a 219% profit. I would love that all the time. But I’m not willing to risk my money on the whims of investors who may or may not be making smart decisions. I want to make smart decisions based on solid information. You were nodding your head maybe you’ve already listened to Jay Scott, he’s rather smart when it comes to syndications and you’ve got the book too, which is awesome. Let’s see, your job, you moved to a different state. Are you still working at the same place?

Brian Blask:
Yeah, I’ve always been remote, so I’ve been able to work wherever I am for the past like seven years. Nothing changed there. I’m still on my laptop.

Mindy Jensen:
What is next for you, Brian?

Brian Blask:
Raise a family, enjoy life, go coach sports, and do those things, dad stuff.

Mindy Jensen:
When you get money out of the way you can live your best life. It sounds like you’ve gotten money out of the way. When we first talked to you, you had something like $5,000 in monthly expenses and $3,000 of that was covered from your rental properties. Now, you’ve got another $2,000 from the the five unit… One or two more rental properties are going to push you over the edge of replacing your W-2, and then it’s just… I don’t want to say it’s a game. I really don’t like when people say, “I want to get into the real estate game.” But then it’s like, what phenomenal deals can I find? You seem to be pretty good at finding these phenomenal deals.

Brian Blask:
I don’t know, I get lucky sometimes. I’m patient.

Mindy Jensen:
I don’t know, I think that $90,000 five unit is a sweet deal. What is the ARV on that?

Brian Blask:
Right now I could probably sell it for like 175.

Mindy Jensen:
I quit my market completely. I hate my market, it’s so hot.

Brian Blask:
Well, you bring up a good point, though. With the passive income, that’s obviously the goal. The timeline is to reach that financial independence. But I love my job, so I’m not doing anything different. I’m going to keep going with what we’re doing and enjoy it. Maybe we’ll find another beach place if we enjoy this. We’ll do this for a year. We still do some of the cleanings, we have a cleaner, but we still do them. I want to experience it, I want to go through it and see how it goes.

Mindy Jensen:
Yes. When you know how everything works, then you can hire it out with confidence, instead of just guessing, oh, I guess it takes 17 hours to clean this house. No, it takes three. Well, this was awesome. I’m so glad you came back on the show to recap with us. Because I was really curious what you were going to do, short term rentals, long term rentals, and it turns out you’re doing both, which is great. Did you spend all the money that you had from the sale of your house in New York, or are you still sitting on some and waiting for the next deal?

Brian Blask:
I wouldn’t be in this position, Mindy if I spent all the money, would I?

Mindy Jensen:
Well, you could have found a really fabulous, amazing property. But you’re right, you’re right. You are ready for more deals.

Brian Blask:
Yes.

Mindy Jensen:
As they present themselves. That is the best position to be in. Okay, Brian, thank you so much for joining us and coming back on the show to give us a recap. Maybe in another year, we can see how many more rentals you’ve bought and check in on that Airbnb and see how it’s going.

Brian Blask:
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Mindy Jensen:
Wow, Brian, thanks for that update. I’m super jealous of those deals that you’re finding and if you ever need somebody to take a test out on that beachfront property, you go ahead and give me a call. Up next we’re going to check in with Erik, but first, let’s hear a word from our sponsors.
Enormous thanks to today’s show sponsor. We originally spoke to Erik on episode 170. Erik and his wife are teachers in New Jersey, bringing in a little over $9,000 a month after pension and 403(b) contributions. He was in the process of refinancing his mortgage from 3.25% down to a frankly ridiculous, 1.875% and taking it from a 20 year loan down to a 15 year loan. Erik can also take out a HELOC against his personal residence for the down payment on his rental.
In an effort to be debt free, he was making additional mortgage payments on both properties and his car, but he only had a small emergency or reserve fund for his rental. Scott and I had recommended that Erik stop all the extra payments to his mortgages, and his car and aggressively pay off the HELOC. We also recommended that instead of taking out the refi that he was about to sign papers on, he contacted his bank and see if he could switch it up and do a cash out refi and pull some money out to completely clear out the HELOC.
We also pulled out our go to suggestion for just about everyone which is track your expenses. We had a bit of an update from Erik at the end of his original show, because we recorded it in early December and released it in early February. He had made the decision to change his refinance out to a cash out, pull out what he could and pay off the HELOC.
He and his wife have had a series of money dates and decided to start making extra payments to the mortgage, and were then able to save a whopping 40% of their income. Hooray, Erik, that’s so awesome. They also moved their 403(b) to a new provider and cut out an enormous 2.5% in fees. First of all, it should be criminal to charge so much for fees. But congratulations again on making such an amazing decision. Erik, welcome back to the show. I’m so excited to talk to you today.

Erik:
Mindy, thanks so much for having me back. It’s great to see you again.

Mindy Jensen:
It’s great to see you. What have you been up to after that? We’ve already had a recap, and now we’re going to do another recap, because I’m guessing you’ve done more.

Erik:
Oh my gosh, my wife and I got so excited after our recording that we went and tried to do everything we could, as much as we could to get ourselves in an even better financial situation. You brought up the refinance that we did. Where that stood was when we did our cash out refinance, we took out more than we had expected to be able to, as far as our equity. Our home had appreciated even more than we had expected. That allowed us to take out more.
We paid off our HELOC. We refied at 2.875% with no points for 30 years. That actually allowed us to purchase another rental property in northern New Jersey. Now, we’ve actually got two rentals that are cash flowing around $700 a month, and we’ve got a nice reserve. We’ve filled both condos with wonderful renters who are working with us really well.
So far, even in just this year, as far as the appreciation goes, our leveraged return has been 37.9% and that’s just appreciation, not the cash flow at all, and they’re condos. They’re really very low maintenance for us. We did a lot of work on our second rental property between my wife, myself, her dad and my dad. We probably had about 100 man hours in and woman hours in to the condo. But we got it in great shape, and we’re currently working on replenishing that maintenance fund.
We actually did end up with a little bit of a surprise with our first rental that we needed to put in a new HVAC system right before we close on our second rental. Isn’t that how it happens, all of a sudden?

Mindy Jensen:
Yeah, when it rains, it pours.

Erik:
It does. But because we had been in that great financial situation of doing the cash out refi, having that cushion, we were able to do that from a position of strength and not feel worried about it by taking on more debt. We were able to do it in a way that made sense and still be able to go through with the second condo. Like I said, now we’re just working on replenishing that maintenance fund, and then hopefully saving for our next property down the road, maybe in a year or two.

Mindy Jensen:
This is fantastic news. I feel like Scott and I don’t do enough to celebrate the wins. Congratulations on being able to buy a second property. Congratulations on the cash out refi, and now you were getting an absurd rate, 1.875% when we talked to you. To be able to refi into a 2.875% while pulling out cash is phenomenal. I’m getting ready to do a refi and I don’t think that’s even my rate.
I wish, I’m so jealous. Earlier, we talked to Brian and he found a smokin hot deal, and I’m like, I need to move. The problem is I don’t really want to move to the east coast. I really like Colorado-

Erik:
I understand.

Mindy Jensen:
Tell me about the details on this new condo.

Erik:
Well, the condo is a one bedroom, one bath in a more rural area of northern New Jersey, where prices are a little bit lower, as are rents. But the great thing about this condo was even though it’s technically a one bedroom, one bath, it has a finished basement, so we can rent it as a two bedroom. But we just can’t fill it with… Fire code only allows us with two occupants instead of four. But it’s great for somebody who wants an extra bedroom, either two roommates or somebody who wants an extra room for an office, which is actually the tenant that we found is using it for that.
We’re able to price it closer to a two bedroom, one bath, even though we only paid $87,000 for it, we’re getting $1,400 a month on that. We were able to put 25% down. Like I said, we put about 100 hours into redoing it. It had previously been a rental that they had let go. We were able to do a lot ourselves. I have a friend who is a contractor, he and I worked for a good, I don’t know, 15 hours straight to put in new bathroom fixtures, to put in new doors, to take care of a lot of work that needed to be done on the deck out back, and I learned a ton. I loved being able to work with Mike, my friend who’s a contractor, and learn about a lot of the ways that he does things, so that I feel more comfortable now as a landlord being able to go in and take a look and know what I’m doing.
That’s fantastic we were able to do that. Again, we put 25% down, and now we’re renting it out for $1,400 a month and that cash flows around, I want to say $400 a month for us, which is fantastic.

Mindy Jensen:
That is fantastic, and I am a huge proponent of learning how to do it yourself because when you don’t know how to do it yourself, you can have a contractor who may have nefarious intentions and come in and say, “Oh, you need a new flux capacitor that’s $150.” You’re like, okay, and it’s really a screw that needs to be tightened and he’s in there monkeying around for a few minutes.
Whereas if you know it, first of all, you could probably do it yourself if it’s just a screw that needs to be tightened, but also you can sift through the people who aren’t being super honest. I love that you spent some time working on your own property. You make a really good point that I want to highlight. You said that it is a one bedroom, one bath, but it has space for another living area, a finished basement, if you will.
On the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Episode 215, we talked to Ricky Beliveau about finding space and creating additional bedrooms. He took a condo and turned it into an additional… It was a two bedroom and he turned it into a third bedroom, because it had a dining room, a living room and a family room. He’s like, “I don’t need all this stuff, I need another bedroom.” He created space where somebody may not be really looking for a way to create space.
I wanted to highlight that that was really fantastic of you to see that, see the options and the opportunities and instead of just advertising a one bed, now you’ve got a one bed, plus office, or a two bed, and that is fantastic. What is next for you, Erik, Mr. just not stopping ever?

Erik:
Oh my goodness, well, not only that, I wanted to bring up something and I don’t know… This has probably been touched on at some point, maybe in an episode that I haven’t listened to. I’ve listened to, gosh, 100 episodes at least, but maybe not every single one. But this year, I was fortunate to be able to get a raise, because I had completed a good number of graduate courses, which were paid for by my employer.
I don’t know if it’s ever been talked about on the show, but if your employer pays for your grad courses, take them, because at least as a teacher, our raises are often dictated by the number of graduate credits that we’ve had. I was being covered for most of the costs, for the graduate work, and then that goes and increases my salary. My wife has done the same thing.
On top of having a better financial situation with our rentals and our mortgages, we also now just make more money, which is fantastic. The work was paid for by our employers. That’s another great thing that was really exciting this summer when we got our paychecks in September.

Mindy Jensen:
That is wonderful news. I love that you brought that up, and you’re right, there are a lot of things that your employer may offer for free, but you have to go in and ask them. If you’re listening to this, and you would like to get another degree, another course, you’d like to take a class or get a certificate, talk to HR, talk to your boss, talk to people in your company who would know about these things and ask if any of these programs are available. That is excellent advice.
Even if they only cover half of it, even if they only cover a small portion, every dollar that doesn’t come out of your pocket is a dollar you get to save. Just a dumb thing to say, but keep more dollars in your pocket. You’ve increased your income at work, you’ve increased your rental income, because you bought another rental property, and now you have… Did you say you have a new graduate degree or you just do graduate course… That was mean, you just took graduate courses. Do you have an additional degree on top of this?

Erik:
I’m working toward a second master’s degree. Luckily, with my school district, not all of them are this way, they offer you a pay bump at 16 graduate credits, and then the next degree.

Mindy Jensen:
Nice. Okay.

Erik:
I got to that 16 credit bump, and then now I’m working toward that second degree, which hopefully will be done this year, which means next year, there’s another move on the salary gun.

Mindy Jensen:
I love it. I love it. I love it. Okay, what does your reserve fund look like? We had talked about that, and in the original episode, Scott felt that you were a little undercapitalized in your investment business. What sort of reserve fund are you holding on to right now?

Erik:
Well, we have a personal safety net that we keep in a robo advisor; 75% bonds and 25% stocks, it just has about 5% or 6% growth every year. Right now, in that, we have about $30,000, which is about five or six months expenses for us. We’re okay with the fact that after we had to pay for that HVAC replacement for our first rental property, we’re down to about five grand on our reserves. It was about 11 or 12 grand before that.
But we also feel… And we’re working towards building that back up, but we also feel comfortable that if we had to, we could go and dip into that safety net if we needed to, for an emergency repair. We should be able to hopefully have that replenished within about six months to about 10 grand, which is where we’d like to be.

Mindy Jensen:
I love it. Okay, the overarching theme that I get from your story is that you are even more intentional than you were before. You are focused on the numbers, you’re focused on the plan, and you are working together with your wife to create your financial future.

Erik:
Absolutely. We love looking at it together, and imagining where we’re going to be, and just the different options that are hopefully going to be able to be available for us in the future.

Mindy Jensen:
Yeah, that is fantastic. I love to hear that, and I love to hear updates on your story. I want to circle back with you in another year and see how many more properties you’ve purchased and how much more money you’re making at work because of your finished graduate degree, and all of the things that your intentionality is going to bring you.

Erik:
I’d love to, and hopefully I’ll be able to share a lot of great news with you.

Mindy Jensen:
Awesome. Erik, thank you so much for taking the time to update us on your story, and I will talk to you soon.

Erik:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me back.

Mindy Jensen:
Okay, Erik, and I had finished recording, but then he gave me one more tip that I have to share with you. Erik, talk to us about escrow.

Erik:
Okay, I did not come up with this idea, but definitely made it happen, and it’s been great. That is we asked our mortgage company if we could waive our escrow, and they essentially sent back a long three page letter that said, yes. We did that immediately, we got back what they were holding on to for our escrow, which we just put in our savings account. Now, we’re able to pay our property taxes and our insurance off of our credit card and rack up points for some great vacations.
Now, they do charge a service fee to do this, but the service fee is less than those points are worth. We’re able still to come out on top and have that reserve. In a couple of months, we’re actually going to be traveling to Miami, and it’s costing us like nothing. So, it’s fantastic.

Mindy Jensen:
I love this tip, and I love the stacking, because you’re going to pay your taxes anyway, and stacking this up with a vacation that you now get for free, or whatever the service charge was, is a great tip. I do want to point out a couple of things. First of all, not every lender is going to let you do this, but you’re not going to know until you ask.
Second of all, you do need to actually pay your taxes, and I know that goes without saying, but make sure that you have the ability to pay your property tax bill before you ask your lender to allow you to do that. Most people who are listening are really good with money or want to become really good with money, they would be able to do this.
When I asked my lender, if I could just not escrow the property taxes and the insurance. They’re like, “It’ll cost extra.” I’m like well, I don’t want to pay to not pay, so I’ll just pay. Okay, for more amazing quotes like that, follow me on Instagram. Okay, Erik, thank you.

Erik:
The other thing to watch out for too is the service charge that they charge for you putting it on a credit card. If that service charge is more than those points are worth, then you’re losing money and it’s not worth it.

Mindy Jensen:
Good tip. Thank you for that as well. That’s a really good tip. But yeah, I’m so glad that you said this and I’m so glad that you jumped back on to record this bonus tip. So, thank you, Erik.

Erik:
Happy to.

Mindy Jensen:
This wraps up our episode today. If you’d like to be a guest on our show, go to www.biggerpockets.com/guest to apply to be on the Monday Money Story episode, or www.biggerpockets.com/financereview to share your finances and get some feedback from Scott and I on our Friday Finance Review episode. Scott’s back next week. So, this is Mindy Jensen saying, I hope you have a very lovely day.