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Home Prices Hit Another Record: Are Americans Still Right About Real Estate?

On The Market Podcast Presented by Fundrise
27 min read
Home Prices Hit Another Record: Are Americans Still Right About Real Estate?

Home prices are still soaring as they hit a new record high, despite high mortgage rates and low inventory dampening demand. At some point, this unaffordable housing market must make Americans even a bit bearish on real estate, right? Well, maybe not, according to a new survey that shows what Americans view as the best investment in the long term. But these updates are just the tip of the iceberg on today’s headlines show!

We’re back to discuss the housing market’s most hard-hitting headlines and share our opinions on whether they’re fact, fiction, or pure hype. First, Americans give their take on the best long-term investment, and one asset in particular reigns supreme (sorry, it’s not crypto!). Next, will record-breaking home prices push demand down even further, forcing house flippers and home sellers to get desperate? Our experts share exactly what they’re seeing in their local markets.

Speaking of home sellers, are you selling right now? If so, there are five things you CAN control that’ll help you sell your home faster and for more, even in today’s tough housing market. Expert house flipper James Dainard gives even more tips on how he gets his flips sold at lightning speed, even during slow seasons. Finally, we touch on Airbnb’s latest party-pooping and how they’re putting hosts in the driver’s seat to protect their properties from ragers that could ruin their homes. Plus, an update on the end of endless shrimp (check out this episode for context).

Just getting into real estate investing? Catch a FREE investing webinar on how you can get in the game as a complete newbie. Ready to invest? Join BiggerPockets Pro and use code “NEWMARKET24” for 20% off, plus get access to elite investor tools to help you get more deals done!

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Dave:

Why do Americans by a pretty large margin, think that real estate is the best long-term investment? What can home sellers control in this chaotic market and how can they optimize their sale price? Why is Airbnb becoming a party? Pooper and canceling party reservations will cover all this on today’s episode of On the Market.

Hey, and welcome to On the Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer, and today we have our patented, it’s not actually patented, it’s just our common headline show. And for those of you who haven’t listened to it, we basically just pull four articles from the news cycle that are relevant to real estate investors and people who are involved in the real estate investing industry. And we discuss how our audience should consider thinking about them. And today we have some juicy headlines we’re gonna be talking about, first and foremost, why Americans think real estate is the best long-term investment, but some experts disagree with them. Second, we’ll talk about what’s going on with home prices, third ways in which sellers can control and optimize their home sale in this market. And lastly, we’re gonna be covering a new AI technology that Airbnb is using to kill parties.

And we have some updates on previous headlines before we bring on the panel. And Kathy, James, and Henry are all here with us today. But before we bring them on, I just wanted to let you guys know that I recently released a brand new, entirely free webinar for anyone who is new to real estate investing and wants to consider investing in this market. It’s about 30, 40 minutes, completely free. If you just want some tips on how to get into this market, check it out at biggerpockets.com/newbie webinar. And if you see some of the tools that I’m using in this webinar and you want access to them, you can become a BiggerPockets Pro member. If you’ve never heard of the pro membership, it’s basically a one stop shop to help you build and scale your portfolio. We have all sorts of tools, exclusive networking opportunities, exclusive education opportunities, and you can get all that by being a pro member. And again, if you want a discount on Pro, just use the code New Market two four for 20% off the pro membership. And with that, let’s bring on our panel and discuss today’s headlines.

Welcome to my esteemed panel, James Dainard, Henry Washington, Kathy Fettke. I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve all been here. It’s good to see you all. It’s good to catch up with you guys. Alright, so for our first headline today, it comes from NBC and it says that 36% of Americans say real estate is the best long term investment. And just for reference, that kind of blows all the other answers out of the water. So real estate came in at 36% by far the number one option here, followed by stocks, which came at 22% gold at 18% savings accounts and CDs at 13%. And then bonds really get no love at 4% cryptocurrency, even less love at just 3%. So Americans, despite, you know the other headlines we talk about on the show where everyone thinks it’s a terrible time to buy real estate, still think real estate is the best long term investment. Kathy, what do you make of this? I assume you agree here.

Kathy:

Well, I always think it’s funny when people do the comparison of the s and p versus real estate because they’re looking at the entire asset as if you paid cash. At least that’s the way I read it. And who pays cash? Not, not very many people. So if you really just took the amount of money that you put in the deal, which for people like Henry and James is zero, by the time that they refinance and get all their money back out, it’s infinite returns. It’s, it’s a totally different graph that you would see if it was just the amount of money you put in real estate and how that has grown. So I just, I I just never listened to those. I don’t look at those charts. ’cause to me they’re just, I mean, you’d have to take a group of people who either own their properties all cash or bought with all cash to, to be able to make that argument.

Dave:

Yeah, I think this is such an important point because if you actually do look at these charts where you consider Unleveraged real estate, so all cash deals and you do compare it to the stock market, honestly I probably wouldn’t buy that. Yeah. If it were me, I mean you could, they’re actually kind of comparable in terms of returns often. But real estate is obviously more work. So if you’re gonna do unlevered real estate, it’s not as good an investment as the stock market, at least for me, if it, if you’re considering both the financial return and the amount of time that you have to invest in it. Now, James, I know you’re, you’re famously just all real estate. So have you even heard of stocks or gold or any of these other asset classes?

James:

I mean, who doesn’t want some gold?

Dave:

You got some on your wrist right now. It looks pretty nice.

James:

It it, you know, it does actually <laugh>, you know, the, I had a brief run in the stock market. It was during the pandemic and I downloaded an app and I was like, I call it betting ’cause that’s exactly what I was doing. I was just buying and selling stocks ’cause the market had deflated. I was making some money, gave me false confidence. And then I got creamed massively by shorting Tesla. And uh, and I learned my lesson that I’m sticking with brick and mortar housing no matter what. As an investor, you gotta pick what you like. And some people love stocks. They’re really good at it. They’re growing. They don’t wanna have to manage a rental property or manage real estate. And I, I understand that too, because being a landlord can be a headache. But as far as a smarter investment or a better investment, I just can’t agree with it.

And, and the reason being is you in real estate, you can be so much more versatile by opinion. You can create your own profit by putting the right plan on it. You lever it the way you want to lever it and leave very little money in the deal. And a lot of what they were arguing was the compounding effect of the stock market. ’cause it just keeps growing. But I can compound real estate as well. When I do a 10 31 exchange and, and I’m rolling it and rolling it and increasing the equity position, I will smoke these guys on a return <laugh>,

Dave:

I believe

James:

It. That’s the beautiful thing about real estate and it, but I think it really comes down to what do you want to do? Stock market’s great for being passive, but you know, I wanna control my own assets. Um, and the leverage too. That’s what makes real estate so much better growth, in my opinion. Well,

Dave:

Yeah, I I think one of the things that they argue in this as well, and maybe considering, it’s hard to know the exact methodology in these analyses, but it’s like if you’re just comparing buying a home, your primary residence to the stock market, I actually don’t think that’s as cut and dry as a lot of people in our industry think it is. There are a lot of instances if you do the math where what’s actually better is to rent and to buy rental properties and not actually, uh, buy your own primary residence. And I think all of us here are probably thinking of this in terms of like tradition, what we all do, you know, buying rental properties. But I think for a lot of Americans they’re comparing, you know, I have a hundred grand, should I buy a primary residence or put that in the stock market? And that is actually sort of a more complex question, at least to me.

James:

You know, the one benefit though of the owner occupied, and I understand that ’cause you’re gonna get steady growth three to 4% typically on appreciation, but you get that tax free gain that you’re not gonna get with the stock market. And, you know, talk about a compounding effect like that owner occupied resale. We’ve done that now five times in our lives where we’ve been able to shelter from $500,000 per house every time we’ve done it. So that’s two and a half million dollars tax free, which I can’t do in the stock market. And so it really just depends on your strategy, what you’re trying to do and where the growth is. Um, but there is an argument to be said. I mean that’s why I rented in California for so long. It did not make math mathematical sense for me to buy.

Dave:

Yeah. And just for everyone’s reference, what James is talking about, there is a part of the tax code in the US that says if you live in a house for two outta the last five years, if you go to sell it, you can write off the, the gains up to $500,000. So, so one of the reasons why owner occupied strategies are so successful, or two 50 if you’re single, oh thank you.

Henry:

Two 50 if you’re single, 500 if you’re married. But there’s actually a bill right now that is looking to raise that because it hasn’t been raised in since like 1997. And so what actually raised to 500,000 for single and 1 million for married? Whoa.

James:

My wife’s gonna kill me ’cause that I told her we’re not doing it anymore. Oh. But if it we get a million dollar it is game on. I’m doing four more times. <laugh>, you just got me in trouble, Henry, tax free money. It’s pretty

Dave:

Sweet. You seem pretty excited about getting good trouble. James

James:

<laugh> a million dollars tax free.

Dave:

We just talked about how Americans think that real estate is the best investment after the break, we have three more headlines, so stay tuned.

Welcome back to on the Market. Moving on to our second headline today, which comes from Redfin. It reads Home prices hit another record high pushing pending sales down for percent. The key points you need to know here are that prices keep rising because spring inventory is lower than usual. There is a sliver of good news for buyers out there is that mortgage rates have come down a little bit over the course of late April and early May, which has improved affordability just a smidge. But the median US home sale price hit a record $387,000. And just so you guys know, you might hear that number differ from source to source for some reason there’s not a lot of consistency. This one comes from Redfin though, but that brings the median monthly housing payment to 28 50 a month, which is whopping. Henry, what are you seeing for inventory? Because I see this all the time, people are saying that it’s up a little bit, but somehow prices keep going up and there doesn’t seem to be anything on the market. So tell us what the boots on the ground are telling you.

Henry:

Yeah, and we gotta remember that this is gonna be very local. Every market’s gonna be a little bit different. And so, uh, when I was reading this article, I actually went and I looked at our inventory levels over the last two years. And we have been sitting just, I mean it’s like it was literally a flat line. We’re at right about 2000 homes on the market. And so if you look over the past, like I said, we looked over the past couple of years, it’s been staying consistently flat, but values have continued to rise year over year in our market. And to give a point of reference, we would need a supply of about 5,000 homes to satisfy the demand here. So we’re staying flat, we’re not necessarily seeing it increase or decrease. There’s been slight fluctuations month over month here or there plus seasonality built into that. And so even though people have lower interest rates and they, and, and, and we’re saying that people are staying in their homes because of there’s lower interest rates, I think that there’s some truth to that. But when we look at the numbers, we’ve got the same amount of homes listed month over month, regardless of what pricing is doing and regardless of what people’s interest rates are.

Dave:

Out of curiosity, Henry, you just listed a very cool stat. How do you come up with that number that you need 5,000, you know, homes for sale in terms of inventory to meet demand?

Henry:

Yeah, so a lot of that is based on pre pandemic numbers. So if we look pre pandemic and then going back in time from the pandemic, uh, we had, uh, that was about what was on the market and average days on market at that pri at that point was pretty healthy. And so when we say we need about 5,000 homes to satisfy the demand, we have the same amount or if not more demand now than we did back then, but there were 3000 more homes on the market.

Dave:

Wow. And I mean, from everything you tell me, demand may have actually gone up Yes. Uh, in, in recent years just ’cause how popular an area you live in. Yep. Uh, so thank you for sharing that. That’s, it’s seems like this is representative of a lot of the popular areas, but I’m always interested in contrasting what’s happening with Henry in Arkansas with what’s happening with James in Washington, which seems to be a little more, I don’t wanna say volatile, but it just seems to be like a little more up and down every couple of weeks, James, based on what you’re telling us. So what’s the most recent news?

James:

It’s weird. It’s like this rev and break market right now. We saw a huge run up on the median home sale price and in values alone, speaking of which, our flip off house sold for 10% above what we performed it at. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so we’re seeing these like revs going on, um, in, in like in Seattle’s market year over year, it is up 9.6% on meeting home pricing. And so we’ve seen this actually jump like 10% and we were ripping that first three months, four months in the market and then all of a sudden it’s like this buyer fatigue just sits in and we went from seeing 20, 30 people through houses. Now we’re back down to four to five and it happens in a very, very quick manner. And we’re going into the, the summertime. So we’re starting to see things kind of slow down a little bit, but it’s a little bit sooner than normal.

Usually we’re seeing this in June rather than May. What I will say is there is more inventory that sits for a second, but not the good inventory. If it is good housing priced well with what people need, it sells and it sells very quickly. And it is still very, very competitive. We just had multiple offers on a couple properties this weekend, and as long as you’re around this mul median home price or that affordable price range of any type of market, whether it’s Arkansas or Seattle, this stuff’s move. And, and what we are selling a little bit of slow down on is that top heavy luxury higher end pricing. We listed a really cool house for four and a half million. I thought it would sell in a second. Lot of showings, no offers yet. And so you just gotta kind of be patient with the market. But it definitely goes up and down. It’s weird like revs and then people get fomo, they jump in hard and then they pull back out. Um, and, and we’re seeing that right now. The market’s definitely changed the last two weeks.

Dave:

Well, I’m glad to hear you time. The, uh, flip off deal that we’re, we’re betting Kathy and Henry on together, <laugh> did well. But I also wanna just call out something James just mentioned. That’s important for everyone that affordability is relative. Um, and you know, we talk about the national median home price and what’s affordable, but obviously what’s affordable in Seattle is gonna be different than what’s affordable in Arkansas or in New York or Kansas or wherever. It’s just gonna be different. Uh, but I do generally hear quite a lot the same pattern that if you’re around the affordability level in your market or below it, that stuff is still really moving. Kathy, curious, do you think there’s any hope for a less competitive market, uh, in the next couple of months?

Kathy:

<laugh>

Dave:

<laugh> that says it all. You’re just laughing at me.

Kathy:

I mean, on the one hand what we will probably see is price growth slowed down in the sense that we’ve been comparing year over year, uh, and year over year, as you know, of all people that it’s very unreliable. And a year ago, uh, sales were low or um, prices were low. And so we’re comparing year over year to that. But as we go into the summer and fall, that’s when things kind of picked up last year. And so the year over year comparison isn’t gonna look as good in terms of price growth. So I think people will be panicking like, oh my gosh, our price is coming down. It’s like, no, it’s just, you just can’t rely on these year over year numbers. So that’s, that’s one thing that’s not an inventory issue so much, just kind of more of a data point. But in all of the markets that we’re in at Real Wealth, which is, you know, obviously Florida, Texas, Indianapolis, it is, um, super tight, super tight.

We’ve been able to kind of control that like we have for 20 years where we work with different groups and builders to set aside inventory for us. So it’s kind of like they’ve got a guaranteed sale. So we always have enough for our members, but um, you know, that’s build to rent is one way to increase inventory if you need it. And we do that. Uh, but in general, like our Texas fund, I mentioned to you guys this before, we were planning on refinancing all the properties and buying more and we’re just not gonna be able to get the kind of deals we were getting last year. They’re not out there. There’s more competition. The prices have gone up. So markets have definitely changed definitely in, in North Texas.

Dave:

All right, well thank you for sharing that with us. While you were talking Kathy, something I’ve never seen before just happened on this podcast. James took a drink of something that wasn’t rockstar energy. Whoa,

Kathy:

Whoa, what was it?

Dave:

What did, what did you just drink? And are you okay?

James:

It’s real estate juice, the hydrate, you gotta balance the caffeine. You gotta intake caffeine, balance it with water or hydration <laugh>, it gets you on the optimal jacked up playing field

Dave:

<laugh>. Alright, well for those of you who don’t listen to this podcast regularly or might be new to the show, James, I, I think just drinks one kind of liquid. It’s just rockstar energy. So this is a real, uh, this is a real, uh, novelty for us here, <laugh>. But I digress. Let’s move on to our third headline today, which comes from realtor.com. This is more of an opinion piece and uh, and I think it’s really interesting for, for anyone who’s considering selling a home in today’s market that’s for flippers or homeowners, the headline is Five Things Home Sellers can Still Control. Even in today’s chaotic real estate market. Chaotic is probably a very good word for it. The five things, if you haven’t read this article, we’ll cheat and tell you are number one, the price of home. I’m not sure how you control that, but let’s talk about that. Number two, negotiations. Number three, the timing of the sale. Fourth is what repairs are done. And fifth, what agent represents you. Henry, let’s start with you. You buy and sell a lot of homes. What do you think of this list of five things that you can control?

Henry:

This is the type of article that needs to be put out there more often. Like this is an education piece, right? This is what buyers and sellers both need to be seeing. And uh, this is true. So when I started, when I, when I was looking through this first was home price, right? And so yes, you don’t control the price necessarily, but you do control what you list it for, right? Like what it’s gonna sell for. And what you list it for are two different things, right? So if you come in and you list a, you can, you can list a home for a dollar, right? And that thing is gonna get bit up like crazy and it’s gonna sell for what the market is willing to pay for it. Or you can overprice a home because you’re shooting for the stars. And that thing will probably sit on the market and you will scare people away.

And so what this is saying is you need to price your home realistically. And I still think a lot of home sellers have 2020 and 2021 in their mind still because it was the golden age for shoot for the moon and see what you get. And people were overpaying for homes. And so what’s what you’re seeing is, uh, in a market where list price, you need to look at list price to sell price ratio. And so what I went and did was I pulled list price to sell price ratio here and looked at it. And we are consistently sitting right just under a hundred percent list price to sell price ratio. And what we’re seeing is that the homes that are listed for realistic prices based on the condition of that home are selling very fast. And for every penny that they’re asking for, and the homes that are overpriced for the condition of the home are sitting on the market and pushing up days on market.

And that’s just, that’s what you want, right? That’s like a healthy real estate market. That’s what should happen. Typically if a home’s not selling, it’s either due to price condition or marketing. And so if you look at homes right now that are priced appropriately to the condition, and I think that’s the big part is sometimes people just want price their home at what they think or feel like it should sell at, and then it sits on the market. But you need to price it according to the condition. So if your condition is bad, your price is lower. If your condition is good, you price at retail price. But that’s really what, uh, is most important when you’re looking at pricing your home to sell.

Dave:

Well, thank you for explaining that, Henry, because when I first read, Hey, sellers can control the price of their home, I thought, wow, I could just name whatever price that I want, <laugh>.

Henry:

You can,

Dave:

You

Henry:

Can, you can

Dave:

You actually, you can do that to your point. You can do that. It’s not gonna work for you, but you could try. Um, so thank you for for explaining that, James, you obviously are, uh, doing this all the time. So can you just give us some tactical advice here? Like what should a checklist or be for anyone who’s flipping a house and selling it or anyone who’s just selling a property, like how do you come up with the right answers for these questions? Like what repairs are done and the timing of the sale? What is the process you go through?

James:

You know, prepping your home for sale and once you put it to market is one of the most important things that you want to do when you’re delivering this product, right? When, when you’ve been renovating a house for 3, 6, 9, 12 months, you don’t wanna push it to market too soon. And I think, well, you know, what this article talked about had a lot of good points as far as like controlling your pricing, controlling your negotiations, but it was also kind of generic. It’s like, well, if you wanna sell your house, you can control your price. Well, that’s a given. Um, there’s other things that we like to do to make sure that buyers know that we’re handling with care when we’re selling this property. ’cause the better a buyer feels when they walk into your home, the the quicker they’re gonna make the decision. And right now rates are really high, payments are high, and you wanna make sure that people don’t create that objection inside your house.

So the things that we always do is we do a pre-inspection every time we do it at the two week mark as we’re getting ready with a punch list, and then we do it finalized and the buyers can see our notes, the time and care that we took on that property, addressing the issues. At that point, when a buyer pulls up, they’re looking for the reason not to buy the house. And if they find that reason, you’re gonna lose that buyer. Whereas, whereas if you can just spend a couple thousand dollars more, you can make a huge impact. And so it’s more about the product that we’re delivering, um, and then pricing it accordingly and having logic behind it. You know, like when we are selling right now, inventory’s low comps are difficult right now. You have to go back. It’s hard to find data points.

It’s hard to find those comps. And when we’re seeing a lot of dated homes getting, selling for big numbers right now, what we like to also do is make a list of all upgrades we did with a dollar amount so a buyer can really see the value. When they purchased that property for our flip off house in Kent, we sold that for the highest price in the market. It was 50 grand higher than the last sale, but the last sale had not as many upgrades. And so we had to explain that to the buyer of going, Hey, you’re getting a hundred thousand dollars in upgrades for 50 grand more. Um, and that’s a hundred thousand dollars in upgrades for us, not for the the end user. And so by explaining and taking the care of explaining what your product is, reducing those objections, you can make people fall in love. And when there’s low inventory, that’s where they’ll pull the trigger fast.

Kathy:

I just wanna say that this article is so important. Like Henry said, it’s educational and for all the people who have downplayed the, the value of a real estate agent because of the recent lawsuits, take a look at this list of things. If you’re gonna try to sell your house on your own, what in the world are you gonna list it for? How do you know, uh, what the market is really calling for? If you get that wrong, your house will sit on the market and it will lose value every single day that it sits there because people freak out when properties sit too long and then vultures come in and they know how to negotiate, which brings to the next stage. Like if you don’t know how to negotiate with a professional, you need a professional on your side. Uh, and negotiation is a huge part of the real estate transaction, whether you’re buying and selling and timing of, of the sale. Like all of these things are so important and I hope new buyers will understand the importance of having someone represent you. So I, I loved this article. It hopefully shows that there’s more to being an agent than driving a fancy car and having a pretty picture <laugh> really like, it’s so important to get it right.

Dave:

All right, great advice on selling homes for anyone who’s considering it. We do have to take one more quick break, but we have our final headline about a new Airbnb policy and we’ll actually have an update on a headline we covered a couple of weeks ago, what happened with Red Lobster? We’ll let you know after this.

Welcome back to the show. Let’s move on to our fourth headline for today, which comes from Airbnb. The headline reads, cracking down on holiday weekend parties with Anti-party technology. The point here is that Airbnb has a new anti-party system. So back in 2023, about 67,000 people were blocked from booking entire home listings over these weekends to prevent them from just booking them and using them for the express purposes of parties. This new technology, as they’re iterating on it, is basically trying to stop disruptive parties. You know, a lot of neighbors hate when this happens and they’re basically putting restrictions on one night and two night bookings. And guess who book local reservations will be required to attest that they understand Airbnb bans disruptive parties. Kathy, I know you are now a short-term rental operator, you have been for a while. What do you think of this, uh, policy Airbnb is implementing?

Kathy:

I think it’s pretty wise. I mean, I, I don’t know if you guys heard this story a few years ago where, uh, somebody, um, airbnbed their home, it was their home in Malibu and somebody threw a huge party. They all went out on the deck and the deck collapsed into the ocean. Nobody was killed, but they certainly could have been. Um, the, the landlord was actually on the call with the the person saying you can’t have a party. And they just didn’t pay attention. Um, we’ve kind of solved that problem a little bit in LA County because technically you are supposed to be living in your home in order to rent any of it. Uh, I don’t think a lot of people actually honor that or pay attention to it, but it’s, it’s pretty serious. And, and finally I’ll just say my daughter has grown up, uh, but when she was in college and was in a sorority, the frater, the fraternity guys would rent these Airbnbs and you know, she said there would just be massive parties, the homes would be destroyed.

And it was usually they had a very clear technique of how to do it. It had to be a house that’s kind of in the middle of nowhere and the owners weren’t around and they would verify that. Uh, but it, it’s not safe for the kids who are renting these homes. It’s obviously not great for the owner. So I think cracking down is good, but it’s also, you know, frustrating if you’re, if you’re the Airbnb owner and you’d like to be able to rent your property, you can’t. I’ve seen that. I’ve had people not be able to rent it. So bottom line, I’m actually for it because it, it’s a dangerous situation otherwise,

Henry:

You know, when I read this article, I actually went and chatted with, uh, one of the people in our office who actually manages short term rentals, uh, as a side business as well, and said, Hey, do you think this is valuable? How do you feel about what they’ve implemented here? And they actually said it would be incredibly valuable because they have had two situations where parties did happen at their Airbnbs. One of the parties was a one night booking that was booked at the last minute, which is one of the things hopefully that this would help prevent. And then the owner was actually screenshotted a, uh, social media post for a a party flyer, uh, that was happening at this Airbnb <laugh>. Oh. And so and so, oh boy. He made, he made her aware of that. She then reached out to them and said, Hey, you can’t have a party.

They obviously said, we don’t know what you’re talking about. Right? Drove by and saw that there actually was a party called the police had the police go out and the police couldn’t break it up until there was enough people that they could actually see it was a party. And so it took the police a couple of times driving by before they actually did break up this party. And by that time it was too late. There were damages to furniture, damages to appliances and Airbnb. She was difficult to reach out to. They said they tried to reach out to Airbnb, but it was hard to figure out who, who to talk to. She got bounced around several times, uh, because no one could really help her. And then when the guests did leave, they left her a three star review and they would not remove that review.

And so it was, you know, it was actually detrimental, more detrimental to the owner in that situation. And so this is actually something that, uh, she thinks would be phenomenal, which, uh, and I happen to agree. ’cause one of the things that they said they would do was have a place where not only a dedicated line where the owners can reach out to Airbnb, so you know, you have somebody to reach out to, but also a line where the neighbors, if they see something can happen, can reach out and report something to Airbnb, plus have response with the police so that the police are aware. So it sounds like they’re trying to make the right steps. ’cause these things are a problem. This is clearly happening and people are hurting properties and it’s the owner of the property who is then having to cover the expenses in the times that where the insurance isn’t covering it. And then if you get a bad review, it sticks. That’s tough, man. One

Kathy:

Of the things I say in my listings is that we live on site, um, because that will scare kids away.

James:

<laugh>, they’re looking for the grotto properties. The ones the big grottos.

Henry:

Yeah, the flyers that the owner was sent showed that they were charging a cover charge. So, you know, does that mean you know, you should get a piece? Yeah,

Dave:

Cut piece of pie, cut them in. I mean, you gotta do it. Get ’em a little piece. <laugh>. And I think

James:

Every, this is a good reminder of all investors need to vet their property manager and the people on their team correctly, right? Because I, I have had short term rentals, not many, but I did it myself back in the day. And this was in an area where lots of bachelorette parties, bachelor parties went. It was aggressive, uh, because I remember touring houses as I was looking to buy one, and I went in right after one of these parties and it was a disaster, but I had zero problems because I was vetting the people correctly. What are you trying to use the property for? And if, if these things are also happening, you need to talk to your property manager and really put them in check and put their expectations for what is their intention of running your property, why are they going? And will it be protected? So just make sure you put the right people on your team. Um, it’s just like being a landlord for anything. If I put a bad person in my property and I didn’t do a background check or find out what’s going on or verify past references, I could have issues. And so just because it’s short term doesn’t mean you should do short term checking. Find out why they’re renting it and you know, let them enjoy it. But they can’t, they can’t rage. This is, it’s not <laugh>, it’s not the time to

Dave:

Rage. All right, well those were our headlines for today, but we do have two quick updates for you before we get out of here. First, I know everyone has been on the edge of their seat, wondering for an update from one of our recent headlines about Red Lobster going bankrupt, potentially going bankrupt because of their endless shrimp deal. Well, red Lobster did in fact file for bankruptcy. The Orlando based seafood chain filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy last week citing $1 billion in debt, less than 30 million in cash on hand, and their shutting down 92 restaurant, 93 restaurants, excuse me. But they do have a plan to stay afloat. Hopefully everyone who is working at those 93 restaurants does find another job quickly.

Henry:

I guess Endless Shrimp does indeed have an end

Dave:

<laugh>. Thank you, Henry. Well actually, when I was reading up about this, I saw a follow-up article that said that now Buffalo Wild Wings didn’t learn their lesson. Now they’re doing an all you can eat wings. And like I, I am not interested personally in all you can eat shrimp, but all you can eat wings. Like I can make that a bad economic proposition for them. <laugh>, I feel very confident I can take them for some money. So maybe, maybe next time I’m in the US we’re gonna do that <laugh>. The second update is again to check out my new webinar, which is biggerpockets.com/newbie webinar. And the code if you want, 20% off Pro is new Market two four. Again, it is a great webinar teaching you if you are new to the real estate game, how to get in even in this type of market. James, Kathy Henry, thank you guys for joining us. We’ll see you guys all for another episode of On The Market Very Soon.

On The Market was created by me, Dave Meyer and Kaylin Bennett. The show is produced by Kaylin Bennett, with editing by Exodus Media. Copywriting is by Calico content and we wanna extend a big thank you to everyone at BiggerPockets for making this show possible.

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In This Episode We Cover

  • Why Americans think this asset is the best long-term investment 
  • Home price updates and what the effects could be with housing prices hitting record highs
  • Five tips to sell your home faster and for more money even in today’s housing market
  • What an expert house flipper does on EVERY home he sells to get the best price possible
  • Airbnb’s newest party ban and how hosts can protect their properties
  • An unfortunate update on one of America’s most beloved seafood restaurant chains
  • And So Much More!

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.