Seeing Greene: Making $300K Per Year On ONE Short-Term Rental

David:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast show 727. When I saw the house, it wasn’t just like most investments that I buy and I’m like “This is a good investment what’s it look like on a spreadsheet?” It’s just fun. The architecture is really amazing. There’s so many different places within the house where you can gather and have a conversation or have a different experience. Whether you’re sitting by a fire inside, sitting next to the 85-inch TV at the pool table, at the kitchen. Where I think somebody said it’s the largest countertop they’ve ever seen in a property.
What’s going on everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast. Here today with a seeing green episode. And guess what? I brought some backup. I’m joined today with my co-host Rob Abasolo on this special seeing green episode because by popular demand you have all insisted that you want to hear more about the property that we bought together. But you don’t just want to hear about the property you want to hear the deets, you want the juicy details. What goes on behind the scenes? What’s the story? What have you guys had to encounter? What’s it been like? And we are going to share it all with you here today. Rob, good morning to you.

Rob:
Hola, how’s it going? It is definitely the morning here not 4:30 PM. I’m excited for 2023 because I think this is the year for more experimentation in the real estate world. Because in 2022 we bought this massive behemoth Scottsdale mansion. I just closed on a sub2 deal on a beach house here in Crystal Beach, Texas, which if anybody wants to hear about that deal and how I got into this $850,000 house for only $50,000 let us know in the comments down below and maybe we’ll do a little deep dive on that. I’m just excited for 2023. I’m really jazzed and excited to try more things, buy more luxury properties, build weirder homes, get into more creative deals, maybe try wholesaling, maybe to try more arbitrage. I want to do everything because I just love learning and I love teaching people from … I like to struggle and show people all right, here’s where I messed up, hopefully, this helps you, right? That’s our job here on the podcast.

David:
Absolutely. I’ve heard them called mushroom eaters. They’re the person you send out there. “Hey, eat that mushroom see if you die.” “Oh, Tommy didn’t die I guess we can eat that thing now,” right? That’s our job is to go out there and make all the mistakes, and make the moves, and learn as much as we can. Take the battle scars and then come and put it in a book so that you don’t have to do that anymore.

Rob:
Hey, Tommy didn’t die but he’s waving his hand in front of his face a lot and he’s saying, “Whoa, dude, I’m freaking out over your man.”

David:
That’s a different mushroom but yet the effect is the same. Don’t go out there and make a bunch of mistakes just let Rob and I make them. Listen to this podcast for free learn everything that you can, and all we ask for in return is a five-star review. If you could just go to wherever you listen to podcasts and let them know that you love the show and give us a good review we’d appreciate it. That could be on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, whatever that is. If we don’t get those we will not be the number one real estate-related show and that would crush my soul because we deserve to be. In today’s episode, like I said, we’re going to pull back the curtains and we’re going to share exactly what is going on with this property and as well share some funny stories of things that have gone wrong. On that token, Rob, why don’t you bring us today’s quick tip?

Rob:
Today’s quick tip is don’t give discounts stick to your price. I don’t know. There must’ve been an article that came out lately that was like “Hey, everything’s negotiable. Did you know you can negotiate with your Airbnb host?” Don’t do it. Airbnb hosts put a lot of time, effort, and energy into getting the Airbnb up to its best condition, and so asking them to discount it is basically asking you to discount your job. It’s the same thing, right? If you’re a, I don’t know, lawn care professional, for example, I’m usually going to pay you what you say you are going to charge me. I’m not going to be like “Hey, how about half of that just because it’s slow?” That person has to make a living too, right?
If you’re a host, on the flip side of this, don’t give the discount because A, those types of guests are typically the more high-maintenance people. They’ll eventually get their discount in the end when they ask you for a refund over all the small minute things. It’s probably very obvious that I’ve been hurt badly and I’ve been scarred from all my discount experiences which you’ll hear a little bit more in today’s episode. Stick to your guns. You have a quality product, you’re going to charge a quality price, don’t give the discounts. Know your worth and add tax, David,

David:
Yes, king, yes. Know your worth Airbnb investors out there. It’s actually a well-documented sales technique to slowly get someone to agree with you over small things because you can leverage that into bigger things. So this was something I learned and I started using when I became an agent. If you walk into an open house and I say, “Hey, can I be your agent?” The answer’s going to be “No weirdo I don’t know you and now you freaked me out.”
But if I say, “Hey, would you mind coming over here? And would you mind answering this question? And can I show you something in the backyard? Would you mind holding this thing for me? And hey, could you go say something to that person over there for a quick second? Now that you’ve said yes to me six times in a row hey, do you mind coming to my office tomorrow for an appointment on what I do to help buyers?” It’s super hard to say no and people learn that. They’re going to say, ‘Can I have a discount?” If you say yes, it’s not going to be like “Oh, yay I got a discount. What else can I get a discount on?” And if you don’t know what I’m talking about go read the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, it will explain it much better than Rob or I can right now. Do you know that book, Rob?

Rob:
Of course, I read it before I go to bed every night. Not to my daughter I just … I think it’s a great read.

David:
Yes, it is, and it’s part of how you learn to say no to these investors. So everybody please DM Rob the phrase who hurt you. All right, let’s get to today’s show. All right, Rob, let’s talk Scottsdale, the property we bought. How it went when we bought it? What are some of the challenges we faced? How did we overcome those obstacles? We’re going to talk about what went the way we thought it would go, what went worse than we thought it would go, what went better than we thought it would go, where we are today. To recap here, let’s talk about why we chose to buy in the city of Scottsdale. What do you remember about that?

Rob:
Well, I think it was a few things, right? We wanted to find property. We wanted to find a luxury property in a place where people were naturally migrating towards. And so, obviously, there’s the big exodus of California, been a very big popular headline alarmism thing in the last couple of years I feel like. Californians are moving to Arizona. They’re moving to places like Tennessee, Texas, Florida. Arizona’s a really big hotspot for where people are migrating to as well. And also, Scottsdale is just really one of those dream destinations. It’s the bachelor destination where if you’re going to throw a bachelor party or a bachelorette party it’s top of the list for so many cities, right? I think just naturally people were moving there, and the tourism market was booming there, and that seemed to be what attracted us. What about you?

David:
That’s a big part of it. I look at the advantages you described as short-term benefits. It’s not that they’re good or bad. In the short term, in creating revenue and making sure that this property stayed profitable. That’s exactly what we’re looking at, that’s where the revenue’s going to come from. The long-term wealth building, which is probably going to be equity in the property. And the defensive element, which I don’t talk about as often but it’s a very big part of the decision-making that I put into real estate investing is I’m always thinking about well, how do I protect against the downside? Scottsdale, Arizona is where a lot of money’s going. A lot of people that do well in life retire into Scottsdale. A lot of snowbirds visit there to get away from the cold area that they’re in. It’s growing very fast. It is a area that wealth is sort of drawn to. I don’t know this for sure but I’m sure they have more golf courses per capita than almost anywhere else they can choose.

Rob:
Probably. Right.

David:
Wealthy type stuff is happening out there. If you have a kid in cheerleading or some high expensive sports club, those groups all go to Scottsdale to have their football games or their soccer games or basketball or whatever it is. There’s also this element where that area’s going to continue to increase in price we believe when other areas of the country may stall or even go down. Long term, we felt it was a safe bet, and short term we felt it was a profitable bet. And ultimately we said that’s where we want to look for the property,

Rob:
Agree with all of that. And also, there’s just a lot of happening stuff in Scottsdale like the Waste Management golf tours there, this year the Super Bowl is there. So we just felt like we were also going to get some pretty juicy Airbnb bookings this year in particular.

David:
Now, I remember when we were looking at properties we started at some pretty amazing things in Paradise Valley that we really liked. And then our first realtor that we reached out to Billy, shout out to Billy … If you guys want to get connected with him let me know I’d be happy to connect you. He’s one of my first Arizona guys that helped me build a portfolio there. He came back and he was like “Actually, you can only rent this thing out six months out of the year,” which is a bit of a deal killer when you start looking at the revenue HOA laws, or maybe it was city government laws. I don’t remember what it was but we had some regulation. So we got out of Paradise Valley, which we really liked, and we started looking in Scottsdale. We had a couple that we were looking at but this one was just something different about it. Do you remember your first feeling when you saw the property? The website for the property, the pictures of it?

Rob:
Yeah. My first inclination when I saw it was that I was not qualified to purchase or own a property like that because it was 3.8-

David:
The same way you felt when you saw your wife, right?

Rob:
Exact. I overshot my coverage on that and the same thing on this property too, right? I out-kicked my coverage, there we go. See, I know some things. This property was $3.4 million I think initially and it was just majestic. It was like oh me, little ole’ Rob Bill here, I don’t deserve this house. I think that was a really big intimidating thing for me at the time because it was just like … I mean, it’s going from me buying these three to four to $500,000 houses to really going from zero to 10 pretty quickly there, right, but you were there coaching me saying, “Well, you want to buy 10 houses this year right?” And I was like “Well, yeah.” And you’re like “Why not just buy one?” And I was like “That’s fair.”

David:
We didn’t just come to that decision right off the bat. I wouldn’t say we argued but we definitely had a healthy dialogue would be a good way where you brought forth your objections and then there was answers to those and then I brought forth objections and you had answers to those. What it boiled down to is if we buy 10 $400,000 properties or $300,000 properties it’s way more work. It’s going to cost us money in other areas of life because that time and energy that we have to put into these 10 properties is not just free you got to take it away from somewhere else. So we could’ve been making money doing other stuff that we wouldn’t be. We probably wouldn’t be able to buy them in nearly as good of a market. So we didn’t think that the upside appreciation was as valuable to put $3 million into Indianapolis real estate or Wichita, Kansas real estate but to put it in Scottsdale real estate we thought we had the higher upside.
And then there was also the element of we’ve got some options we can do with this place. We can host retreats there, we can bring other investors out there to teach them. We can learn how to work in the luxury space which has a higher upside overall. Sort of that putting our fears, and our objections, and our questions on the table led to a cool experience where I got to know you better you got to know me better, and we actually ended up both agreeing this was the right move. Because do you remember anything differently?

Rob:
No, that’s about right. It wasn’t even just running the 10 properties that was making us nervous but setting up 10 properties is a real bear, right? Setting up one Airbnb property it’s not like rocket science, it’s not hard, I always say this, but it is hard work. And it’s a lot of hard work to get it up and running. To unbox things, to break down the boxes, to argue about where the couch should go versus the TV. And doing that 10 times. I mean, just think about all the discussions and all the things that we had even just in that video that we shot.

David:
Mosquito bites that just never stopped.

Rob:
That’s right. We had so many of those just with one house, imagine doing that 10 times for really the same amount of overall equity, and revenue, and things like that. I think it really did start to make sense. Because I think every week we were meeting and I was presenting you with 10 properties I was like “All right, this one’s 300, this one’s 500, this one’s 800.” And then you’re like “Okay. All right. 800,000, $100,000 revenue. Good but it’s not going to really move the needle towards our ultimate goals, right?” And so I think that’s where we started to re-strategize a bit.

David:
And the other thing I want to highlight when you’re making decisions like this … Because not everybody’s in a position to buy a $3 million property, we are aware of that, right, but at some point in your career you probably will be. Some point in your career you’re probably going to 1031 stuff and you’re going to be having the option. When you own 10 properties, let’s assume that one significant thing happens with your property that takes a lot of your time every year. There’s a issue with a guest, there’s a thing that breaks, there’s some capital expenditures that need to be done, and you’re going to have to do some research and some logistical operational work to get this thing fixed.
Well, if we went and bought 10 properties we would almost be guaranteeing that once a month we’d be dealing with a headache like that versus once a year when you’ve got the one property. It really does start to compound. At one point, my portfolio grew to over 50 single-family homes and it was every single day some problem. It just made me hate the real estate versus if you scale that down, the emotional toll it takes on you is much less.

Rob:
And I think it is fair to say, we bought a $3.25 million house but it’s really like you and I each bought a $1.6 million house, right? There is a little bit of you brought borrowing power and capital, I brought borrowing power and capital. $1.6 million as a purchase makes sense for someone where I am in my portfolio having owned 14 short-term rentals and then I had bought a hotel as well. It wasn’t that crazy, but it’s still this sticker shock of “Well, are we really doing this because this isn’t a” … “It’s not a tee-ball or a softball here, this is” … “We’re getting thrown a curveball, right?” But it was really fun. I think our expectations going in we’re like “Okay, this is going to be a crazy one.” But as soon as we saw the house we were also like “Oh, this house is special.”

David:
Now let’s talk about how we ended up finding the realtor that we use for the house. You were sort of the one who was put in charge with … Originally we were going to use Billy, and Billy was good, and he helped us to identify a couple properties that weren’t good. And then you started calling around looking for realtors I think to help with the specific house you had questions with which led you on a rabbit trail. So can you tell that story a little bit?

Rob:
So Billy was helping us out in Phoenix, and then I was like “Well, the Scottsdale Airbnb market’s just going to have its own special nuances” so talked with you about it and you were like “Go find the biggest, baddest broker, and find their biggest, baddest realtor in the short-term rental space.” I called Sotheby’s or something like that and I was like “Hey, I need to talk to the top dog in the short-term rental space.” And they’re like “All right, let me get you connected with” … I think his name was Frank. Talked to him very quickly. It was clear that he didn’t know much about short-term rentals, which is fine, but he was like “Dude, you got to talk to Michael [inaudible 00:15:12] who’s a really good friend of mine, this is what he does, this is his specialty.” And I was like “This was very nice of you. You’re basically giving away a $50,000 commission.” He’s like “Oh, what goes around comes around, it’s going to be great.” And I was like “All right, thanks, man.”
So he got connected with Michael. And Michael owned 20 luxury properties in Scottsdale, could help me comp out deals, was looking at revenue projections, could tell me what amenities we needed, what amenities we didn’t needed, and sort of just knew the short-term rental game front and back for that specific market. And it really just made that entire process a lot easier for us because it could sort of corroborate the comps that we were making when we were buying the property.

David:
That was a big reason that we ended up enjoying that experience because this was a person who … Michael was a realtor who helped people buy these properties. He also owned a property management company, he also managed his own properties that he owned so he had a ton of experience with knowing what to look out for, connections within the industry of people that we would need to fix things when they broke or service the property. Having that right person on our team I think made a really big difference. Now, do you remember any of the hurdles that we ran into in the escrow?

Rob:
Not really. We had the inspection, but the inspection actually was relatively ideal. There was a couple of sub $2,000 fixes that we weren’t even going to ask for any concessions on. The only real hurdle that I remember was that we were going to put down 15% initially and then we ended up having to do 20%. That was really like “Okay, well, 5% of 100,000 no big deal, 5% of three million is 150 grand or something like that.” We were having to remodel out the deal and be like all right, does it still make sense from a cash-on-cash perspective? And it did and we still went forward with it.

David:
That was a big piece. It’s actually on five acres of land and so we learned the hard way. That was one of the reasons we couldn’t get the 15%, they wouldn’t underwrite something on five acres of land. And the rationale is lenders only want to land on improved land, they don’t want to foreclose on raw land that they can’t sell. So the thoughts are if it’s more than two million or $2.5 million their assumption is there’s too much value in the land for us to get our money back that we let you borrow. We had to pull some strings through the one brokerage to be able to get the deal funded, which we could, we just couldn’t get the sweetheart 15% that we were getting at the time.
And in hindsight, now we know, this is why this property was available for the price we got it. After we bought it I went back out there to Scottsdale to buy more and there was nothing even close to this. It was by far the best deal. In fact, I found out that the five acres of land, if you just bought the land with nothing on it, would cost more than we paid for the entire property. Sometimes those hurdles actually end up being the reason you get a good deal.

Rob:
It’s really interesting. Scottsdale and Phoenix as a whole have seen a dip in the housing market from a pricing standpoint. And I know that you can’t really put a lot of merit into Redfin or Zillow, those estimates and stuff like that, but they’ve actually gone up substantially to 3.8 million or something like that. Which again, I’m not really putting that much stock in it, but I thought it was interesting that Zillow and Redfin weren’t really tracking with the downward correction on that specific property. That land is really valuable. And it’s all pretty much used up, there really isn’t any unused land on that property. They have a lot of really nice landscaping. They have barns. I think it used to be an equestrian farm or something like that. Really just majestic from top to bottom from an architectural standpoint.

David:
And then this specific property had a couple other things we really liked. The neighbors are very far away. This is probably the best neighborhood in all of Scottsdale. The other homes are very, very, very far. It’s not likely that our neighbors are going to … Or the guests are going to be causing any complaints to the neighbors. It’s zoned to allow for horses, which not a lot of areas are out there, so that gives it inherent value over time as it grows. And then it’s on these five acres of manicured, amazing, right? The views are incredible.

Rob:
Expensively manicured.

David:
Yes, absolutely. We saw some upside here. And since we bought it I haven’t seen anything pop up in that neighborhood for any price at all. I think there was one for 12 million which isn’t realistic.

Rob:
I’ll take 12 million.

David:
You want to go buy that one?

Rob:
I mean, honestly, if someone offered us 3.8 I’d be like “I mean, that’s pretty good for a eight-month profit.”

David:
When they hear the rest of the story of what we’ve been going through they might understand why that’s the case. Moving on. Let’s talk what we invested into the property. So the first thing we did upon buying it was fly out there, check it out, we made a little bit of content, and we put our heads together to go over the renovation plan as well as the furniture. Explain what we did for the renovation.

Rob:
Right, right. We actually made a parody HGTV show pilot, me and David, it’s on the Robuilt YouTube channel. It’s very, I think, pretty entertaining of us just messing around and just going through these decision processes of what it actually takes to set up an Airbnb at this size. Because we came into it with a furnishing budget of $30,000 because we bought the place fully furnished thinking that was going to be a … Do us justice. But really once we got in there we realized that most of the furniture was not super usable because a lot of the furniture was this aqua teal blue.
So we actually ended up getting rid of a lot of furniture but we kept things like couches, beds, side tables, accent chairs. But really we did some minor renovations going into this. I don’t think those cost us really much more than $10,000. And those renovations were things like painting walls. There was this media console that was built into the wall in the master bedroom that we had them remove the top half and then we put a granite countertop on that to make it a really nice dresser basically with the TV on it.
There was this purple tile in all of the bathrooms and we hired the handyman to come in and paint over that with black Rust-Oleum paint that’s tile paint. So it was a lot of really small things from a cosmetic standpoint, from what we planned on doing. And then, obviously, it sort of escalated from there. But then we also spent a decent amount on furnishings as well. I think we probably ended up spending I want to say 45, maybe 50,000 overall on new furnishings, which is not terrible for a 6,000-square-foot home.

David:
Do you know what the total budget was for the rehab, and the furnishings, and the repairs that were made so far?

Rob:
I want to say it was in the neighborhood of maybe 130,000 something like that, maybe 140. We did a lot, right? We did things like we changed out the barbecue pit, right? And the barbecue pit was facing a mountain and it was beautiful but it didn’t work. And you can’t just buy a $300 barbecue pit from Lowe’s. The inserts that actually go into countertops those are really expensive, those are two or three grand. We also added a pool table because I thought that it would have a nice, I don’t know, aesthetic in that big open space and it would be really great for bachelor parties.

David:
We hired a personal design person, right?

Rob:
We did. And that was about-

David:
We had to pay for that.

Rob:
Maybe 5,000 bucks something like that. And she was great. And then we also added a pool heater. And that pool heater was 24 grand for not just the pool heater but the excavation to run a propane line to and from the pool all the way outside the home to a big propane tank. It was just really expensive. We got a bunch of quotes and that was just an expensive quote. I don’t think pool heaters usually cost that much, I think they’re usually in that 12 to $15,000 range, but at a property this size, a pool that size, the Scottsdale tax, right, adding up on top of it too we just couldn’t get anything cheaper.

David:
We definitely put some money into the property. And the last piece on this segment I want to make sure we cover is you and I knew when we bought it, we’re not going to come out the gates crushing it. This is not a property that you buy and on month one you’re profitable. We knew there’s going to be stuff that goes wrong we don’t know about, it’s going to take a little bit of time to get going, we’re going to have to dump a lot of money into the property to get it where we want it to go. This is definitely something that we are buying for the long term, and we sort of gave ourselves an 18 to 24-month window before we even expect it to be profitable. Now I know this is something different than what you’re normally doing in the other deals you buy. So with hindsight, are you willing to share? Did you think I was crazy? Were you listening to this with a pit in the middle of your stomach? What were your thoughts when we came to that conclusion?

Rob:
No, I think it was fine. I mean, I don’t really depend on cash flow anyway I just stock it away and reinvest. So I think for this one there’s a lot of things that came into it, right? A, we were comping out our deal with 2021 numbers and 2020 numbers which is really hard to do because our comps on this we’re saying, “Oh, we’re going to make half a million dollars in revenue every single year.” But I was just like “I don’t have the data points for 2017, 2018, 2019 before this crazy Airbnb run,” right? So we came into it with all right, if we could gross 500 to 550 that’d be amazing, it’d be an amazing return, but all we really need is to gross 300K. And if we could do that we’ll at least cover all of our expenses. I kept telling you this whole time when we were setting it up I was like “I want to invest more into it” because I felt like we had a Ferrari, right, and we were putting hubcaps on the Ferrari.
And so there’s a really big component to this that we haven’t done yet which is that sports court which was going to cost $25,000 to basically redo. I think we ultimately decided to wait until we have money coming in before we invest it. But it’s hard because I think this property still needs at least another … I mean, just basics, 50K just to get a sports court, and a little mini putt putt, and stuff like that. And then new outdoor furnishings. There’s a lot that I would do if I could, but I think for now it’s serving its purpose and it’s doing its job within the portfolio.

David:
We knew going into it we were going to need to redo the sport court, we got the bid for 25,000. It’s got a basketball hoop, and a tennis court set up out there, and it’s surrounded by chain link fence, it’s really nice. Then the pool heater issue came up which we weren’t expecting. Walk me through why you believe that it was better to put the money towards the pool heater than the sport court.

Rob:
Talking to Michael who’s a expert in this market, he basically said that people will choose your property over another solely based on the pool heating. The pool heating is the number one amenity that people want, which is honestly just … I don’t understand it, dude, it’s crazy to me it really is because it’s so cold out there right now. All right, just for a frame of reference. I have a pool, it’s a small pool, at my house it’s probably eight feet by 10 feet. We get that thing up to 98 all the way up to 100 degrees. It can go to 104, right? And we can do that when it’s like 20, 30 degrees outside because it’s a hot tub temperature.
In Scottsdale, when you heat up a pool you’re not heating it up to hot tub temperatures you’re heating it up to 85 which is a little less than lukewarm. It’s not hot it’s not cold but in 20-degree weather it’s freezing. It’s crazy to me that people even want the heated pool but they charge … They’ll pay it, right, we charge $150 a day. It’s an expensive thing to add on but they all want it. I just felt if we are even going to compete with anybody in this space, and any of the luxury places that offer pool heating, we will just get looked over if we don’t have it. It was just one of those things where we sort of had to bite the bullet I feel like.

David:
As opposed to the sport court where it’s not advertised as part of the property so any deficiencies with it no one’s walking in like “Oh, what the heck? This isn’t in nice condition” because it’s not even mentioned in the list of things that they’re getting when they rent the property.

Rob:
I mean, we’ve had one person that they got a little nosy and they went walking around and they’re like “What’s this?” And then they sent us a message and they’re like “Where are the rackets?” And we’re like “If you’re looking at the tennis court you know that it’s not in any condition to play.” It was funny to me. But we were like “It’s not in use.” And they were a little bummed about it but I was also like “Well, we didn’t offer this so you can’t be mad about it.” But that is one of those annoying things where if you show an amenity and you tell them it doesn’t work or that it’s not included, people still want the amenity because they want what they can’t have oftentimes.

David:
Now, when we were choosing properties to look at we were sort of analyzing several of them every week that we met. And we had a five-point system, we called it the five point-matrix, and I’ll share that briefly before we move on to what the actual process was like buying it. We were looking at revenue, obviously, like what’s the ROIs? One of the first things we looked at. Then we looked at the capacity for appreciation or equity. How much is it going to go up the area, the property itself? We looked at debt meaning how much money can we borrow? At the time we were seeing debt as a positive thing. So if we could borrow more money with as much inflation is happening we liked that. We looked at the time that the property would actually take from our lives. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t want to buy 10 $300,000 properties. Let’s try to find something that’s going to take less of our time. And then we evaluated risk. Of all the properties we could buy, how much risk is associated with this one versus that one?
Every time we had a property that we looked at the first thing we would do is say, “What’s the ROI? If it was below a certain number we would throw it out. Then we would look at the appreciation. We sort of made our way down this list and these were the five things that we took into consideration. And ultimately this property ended up looking the best to us so that’s the one we closed on. Moving into part two here, let’s talk about the timing of closing on the property. We closed on it just as springtime was ending and summer was starting. And in hindsight that probably wasn’t the most ideal way to go about it.

Rob:
I mean, there’s some pluses and minus here, right? So this goes into portfolio architecture, something that we talk about often, right, and that’s constructing your short-term rental portfolio in a way that’s complimentary to all the seasons that your entire portfolio’s going to face, right? If you have a beach property, you’re only going to make money really on that property from May to September we’ll call it, right, everything else is going to be crickets. So if you’re the person that is not good at budgeting and you’re just not used to that, if you buy another beach property you now have two properties in your portfolio that won’t bring you money nine months out of the year so you need to start finding properties within your portfolio that counteract that, right, that are busy the other nine months of the year so that you’re not hurting one specific time of the year.
Because if you buy a long-term rental, for example, you’re going to have a 12-month lease in place. If you have that 12-month lease in place you never have to worry about how much money you’re going to get every month because it’s set. But short-term rentals are the ebbs and flows with seasonality. Sometimes you make 5,000, sometimes you make 2,500, sometimes you make 10,000, and you really can’t predict it all that much, especially right now, right? For us, we bought this really expensive place, 3.25 million home, $17,500 mortgage, right at the tail end of May when nobody is traveling to Scottsdale. I’m not going to say it’s a dead zone, but from June to December it is a dead zone. And then from January to May, that’s when you make most of your money out there. So we had closed on the tail end of that, but that’s also probably a reason that we got the property, right, because maybe a lot of people know that and they don’t want to buy an expensive property when they know they have to foot the mortgage bill on it for six months.

David:
That’s exactly right. The timing hurt us a little bit, we weren’t able to charge as much per month, nobody’s traveling to Scottsdale like you said. So what we did was we just lowered the price per night. And the plan wasn’t to make money we just understood it’s not going to happen, we’re not going to be profitable, let’s just try to get reviews playing the long game. Let’s try to get as many positive reviews as we can, let’s get people to stay in the property, let’s build it up so it’s higher in the Airbnb algorithm. And for three months that’s what we did. We’re going to get into the numbers of what it rents for per night later, but we are probably what 25% of what it would normally rent for during those summer months.

Rob:
Summer months we were looking at 500 to 700 bucks a night depending on if it was a weekday or weekend. And then moving into the busy season it goes up to about 1000 to 1500. And then prime time is like 1700 to $2,200 a night which I think that … Let me see I’ll tell you right now. We got a juicy booking in January for 7,200 bucks and that was $965 a night which is on the low end. But once you hit February that’s when it really jumps up pretty significantly for us.

David:
All right. Now, a couple things also broke on the property after we bought it that we weren’t expecting because the inspection report was super clean, it was one of the better inspection reports that I’d ever seen. Tell me more about what broke and what you had to do to fix those.

Rob:
Big one was a water heater. And this was really frustrating because it was a brand new water heater and it was a $100 part that needed to be replaced. But because we had a guest in place and their reservation was like 3000 bucks, it made more sense to buy a whole new water heater which cost us like $2,000 to install. That was a bummer. That’s really the biggest one that we’ve dealt with. Other than that, we got that pool heater installed and that has been working for the most part. But we had one guest that was telling us that it wasn’t heating up and we’re like “Well, we’re looking at the thermometer and it says it’s 85 degrees.” So homegirl goes and buys a thermometer from Walmart and is sticking it in the pool and she’s like “See, it’s not 85 it’s 83.” We sent out our pool tech, and our pool tech’s like “I don’t know what to tell you guys, it’s 85.” We had a lot of back and forths with this guest. We ended up just refunding her half of her propane bill.
For the most part, the pool heater’s been another one where it’s like people don’t understand what I just told you about the hot tub thing. They assume that it’s going to be hot tub hot when they get there and we tell them “Hey, it’s 85 degrees” which it’s not scolding hot or anything like that. It’s bearable to swim if you want that but it’s not super, super hot. And people are always like “Okay, no problem, give it to me.” 300 bucks a day or 200 bucks a day, whatever we charge I don’t remember. And then they get there and they’re like “It’s not hot.” And we’re like “We know. We tried to tell you this and now you’re mad at us because we tried to tell you this.” You know what I mean? It’s just one of those back and forth that we have pretty much every single week.

David:
I probably would’ve related to on this a lot more until I went to Cabo with you and sat in a hot tub and watched you cry at the dipping a toe.

Rob:
It was so hot. And there was five of us at that hot tub and four of us were like “Dude, it literally hurts to stand in here.” And you’re like “I don’t feel it, guys, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And then five minutes later who’s sitting outside of the tub? Big dog David Greene.

David:
And it was because my whole body got hot not because the water was too … But that was very funny. You, Clint, Kyle were all like “This is” … Like it was waterboarding to you guys. This is torture.

Rob:
I am a hot tub fanatic. I get in my hot tub as often as I can. We will put that thing up at 104, I’ve never been like cry uncle. Putting my foot in that I was like “I could boil an egg in this hot tub.”

David:
If you want to learn how to be more of a man sign up for one of my retreats at the Scottsdale house we’re talking about, you’ll learn. So that is frustrating, right, because the key to a happy life is having your expectations met. When you say it’s 85 degrees who knows what that even means in their own head? They might think 85 is what a hot tub feels like they probably don’t know. You’ve had to deal with a lot of those type of issues. And more than just that. So tell about some of the other crazy guests that we’ve had in the short time we’ve owned this property.

Rob:
Oh my goodness this is like Karen level 5,000, man. It’s been pretty crazy. Okay, well, before we even get to the Karen scenario. There’s this one time where our cleaner showed up, they were knocking on the door because it was 10:00 AM and the guests weren’t answering. And they’re like “Hello, we’re here to clean. Housekeeping,” whatever. And then the guest pull a gun on him. They come out and they pull a gun on him they’re like “Get out of here I’ll kill you.” I honestly don’t even remember. Our cleaners call us and they’re like “Hey, this just happened. They pulled a gun on me and you should know.” And then we’re like “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. We’re going to call the cops.” Cops get out there.
And then we accost the guest and I’m like “Hey, did you pull a gun on our cleaner? That’s absolutely unacceptable.” And then they lied and they were like “No, we didn’t. No, they were helping us look for our cell phone I don’t know why they would say that.” And we were like “All right.” Well, one star I guess, whatever. So that was pretty interesting. Oh, I always forget, that’s not even the gun story you’re talking about. The other gun store-

David:
One of them. That’s funny, this property had several of these.

Rob:
Right. When we bought the house, we had just closed, we went out there to shoot content, and Caleb went out there, my videographer editor and good friend. He went out there before us to start getting footage of the property so he goes into the house. He gets a knock on the door and it’s like “Hello.” And he’s like “Yes.” And he’s like “Hey, I’m the previous owner of the house. I left I something in the house can I go get it?” And Caleb was like “I mean, I don’t know you. What is it?” He’s like “It’s a gun, it’s under the mattress. I’ll be fast.” And so Caleb’s like “I guess.” And so the guy goes. Under his mattress pulls out, I don’t know, a Glock or something and then he leaves. That was one of two gun stories that have happened in that specific property.

David:
Which is funny because one of the reasons we wanted to invest there was it’s one of the safest areas in the entire country and then we’ve had these two incidents that are just crazy. We had that one. The one with the cleaners was pretty serious. What the heck is going on? I’m guessing it was a thing where the cleaners probably banged on the door, “It’s past checkout time.” And the people were like let’s teach them a lesson. Who knows how that gets translated as it makes its way back to us, right? Both sides are like “I don’t know what they’re talking about.” Were like “Well, there’s a gun so somebody here has to be leaving something out of this story.”

Rob:
Objectively speaking, was a gun pulled on the cleaner, right?

David:
How did that part come up if they were helping you find a cell phone and you just nicely knocked on the door for no reason at all? W had that. Then we had the lady that was upset because the sprinklers came on when she wasn’t expecting them to, right? What’s that story?

Rob:
We’ll call her Jamie. Jamie’s always the name that I use for these scenarios. It was a $5,000 reservation. She calls us and she’s like “Hey, the sprinklers are going off.” And we’re like “I’m sorry they do that. They’re automated we can’t do anything.” She’s like “I was having a meditation retreat, and my guests came from all over the world, and you ruined it with your water.” And we’re like “I’m sorry, bylaw.” Well, first of all, we didn’t know you were having a paid meditation retreat, you got to tell us these things. Right, right. Second of all, the city of Scottsdale has a law that basically mandates that we water the property at a certain time, we can’t be outside of it. Or at least I’m told anyway.

David:
Because it’s the desert, they’re careful about water out there.

Rob:
And we’re like “We have to water it at this time. Sorry about that though but that is the law.” And so she was like “All right, whatever.” So anyways. She can’t figure out how to hook her laptop up to the TV with an HDMI cord which was like “Okay,” and we’re walking her through it. And she was like “You don’t have the manuals to your TV like all the other Airbnbs I’ve been to.” Me, and Clint, and Brenda were like “What the” … No one keeps a TV manual at their Airbnb, first of all. And then to this lady we’re like “Oh, we’re so sorry, it’s just a TV, you just plug it into your laptop.”
Mind you, David, you were at this property literally the week before presenting on the TV from your laptop so it’s not like the TV didn’t work. So she was really angry about that. Insanity, David, in case you don’t know is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So the next day homegirl goes to meditate again and the sprinklers go off again at the same time. And she’s so angry and we’re like “We tried to tell you, we have to water at 2:00.”

David:
So there’s a time that you say the sprinklers can only come on at this time and she chooses that time to be when she does the outside meditation, right?

Rob:
Oh my God, yes.

David:
On a five-acre property mind you, it’s not like there’s only one place that you could possibly go. It’s a huge, huge tract of land.

Rob:
So she’s just like “I’ve been in so many Airbnbs and I’ve never been treated this way.” Of course, I mean, we’re nice hosts so we’re like “Oh, we’re so sorry, what can we do for you?” Blah, blah, this and that. And so she was just like “All right, I want to be compensated for this because this is just outrageous.” And so we’re like “Well, what did you have in mind?” She’s like “I want 4,000 out of my $5,000 returned to me immediately.” And we’re like “Well, we’ll do 500 bucks because we’re sorry but that’s really all you’re going to get from us.” She didn’t have it. We’re just trying to work it out with her and to do everything we can. And the Airbnb reaches out to us, and then we reach out to Airbnb for our own rep, and it’s a whole thing. Basically, at the end of the day, she forgot to leave a review so we ended up not getting a one-star from her.

David:
But we did learn from our lessons. So now if you visit this house you will find on the dining room coffee table Car and Driver Magazine, Home and Garden magazine, and the TV manual right out there for your viewing pleasure.

Rob:
And I will say, that is just one of the Karen scenarios that we’ve had at this property. The week before that or two weeks before that we had the worst guest I’d ever dealt with from a high-maintenance standpoint at that property. And I was like oh man, now I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen a lot, I’ve hosted tens of thousands of people. And I was like “Oh, Jamie 1.0 that’s it. I’ve arrived, everything else from here is going to be easier. Then Jamie number two comes and she’s even worse. And we’re just like “Oh man.” It’s just crazy, dude. These people treat you like you’re nothing sometimes and we’re all just trying to be nice and resolve the situation. That’s hospitality. Customers always right kind of to a certain degree. We’re not going to give them a $4,000 refund.

David:
And not every single guest is this bad. We’re not trying to give the impression that 100% of your guests are like this, but we also don’t want to give the impression that this never happens, that all of your guests are great.

Rob:
Dude, I really have dealt with very little problems in my portfolio when it came to the high-maintenance, needy, entitled guests. It’s something that comes along that I’m learning with the luxury property, right? If someone pays 1000 bucks a night, they have a certain expectation and it is on us to fulfill that expectation. But there’s also a level of, I don’t know, realism that they don’t understand. Not realism, but they don’t really understand-

David:
Common sense.

Rob:
Common sense, right? They expect it to be … There to be a butler on the property serving them food and that’s not what it is, it’s still just a house.

David:
All right. Now we also had a couple issues with unreliable vendors that we had to work through. Can you share some of that?

Rob:
Unreliable. I mean, we had a handyman that just touch and go, you never know when you’re going to hear from them. The same thing with our pool cleaner. Our pool cleaner was one of those people that would always come through when we really needed them to, and then when we really didn’t need them to come through, we just needed a small thing, was always ghosted, was always late, was always just super touchy and stuff with us. For the most part, we’ve just had some pretty flaky vendors that we’ve had to cycle in and out. It hasn’t been too bad but it is one of those things where it’s like … When you’re building your dream team for an Airbnb, you’re really thinking about your cleaner, your handyman, and those are the prime people that are running your property.
In this instance, because it’s five acres and it’s on an equestrian farm with lush landscaping it’s like you really need the best lawn care possible, you need the best pool care possible to get all the leaves out because of the amount of landscaping we have. You need the best pest control because there are a lot of bugs out in the desert, and there are a lot of rats out in the desert, and there are a lot of iguanas out in the desert. So it’s like you need probably twice the size of your dream team than you would with a typical Airbnb. So that’s been interesting building our team because we just have 10 points of contact whereas we would typically have three.

David:
And you also have to be aware of the fact that in some of these more expensive areas, you’re going to pay more for the same labor, and that’s frustrating, but it’s something you got to do. If you’re willing to be-

Rob:
That’s a big one.

David:
Very industrious … That’s what Rob meant by the Scottsdale tax. If you’re going to be industrious, sometimes you can find people in neighboring cities that are not as expensive and get them to drive out there. But that’s a little bit of a quick tip for you is, from now on when we’re looking for something that we need to be fixed in Scottsdale we look in Phoenix or we look in the areas around there, not Scottsdale itself.

Rob:
Well, I always thought that there was the Robuilt tax, right, where I’ll get a quote from someone in the audience and it always ends up being like “Oh, that’s more expensive than I thought.” But that really pails in comparison to the Scottsdale tax where they roll up on a 6,000-square-foot property that’s beautiful and they’re like “Oh, we’re going to triple this quote.” Dude, we got a quote to change out a toilet … I don’t know maybe I’m just overly hyperbolic about this. Labor, David, to just get rid of the toilet and put a new one in, a $200 toilet, right, 800 bucks for the manpower to swap out a toilet.

David:
And not to run plumbing, not a roughing job in a bathroom?

Rob:
No.

David:
Just take out a toilet and put another one in?

Rob:
Yes.

David:
And then they were trying to charge us $700 for the toilet and I was like “I’ve always bought $150 toilets from Home Depot.” And they’re like “Oh, you can’t trust the Kohler’s, those will break down on you real fast.” And I’m like “I’ve never had a toilet break down on me other than this one that came with the house.”

David:
That’s true. You don’t hear about toilets breaking down.

Rob:
It’s like it’s a very simple function it’s not like anything.

David:
I thought you were going to do your typical Rob thing and be like “David, it’s a Ferrari, you can’t put hubcaps on it. All the toilets need bidets, they need to be the French model 3000 that costs seven grand each.” But no, in this case, you’re actually not wanting to pay the money.

Rob:
Listen, I’ve bought a lot of toilets for all of my properties, a lot of toilets, and they all work the same. If you’re going to buy a toilet make sure it’s got the two buttons, one for the pee and one for the poo, and it’s 150 bucks, maybe 200 bucks if you want to get the more modern version of it, and that’s it. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it. You don’t need to buy a $700 toilet. And then they make you feel dumb because they’re like “Oh, all right, all right. Well, if you want to get the $200 toilet, I guess.” And you’re just like I don’t know why you’re saying it like that. I’ll buy it and you go pick it up all right, John. You just go pick up the dang toilet.

David:
Oh, that’s good. All right, moving into the last segment here. Let’s talk about how things are looking moving forward. We had the first three months that were, obviously, difficult, we knew that was going to be the case. We had low expectations so we got through that just fine. You and I are not at each other’s throats which is nice because can’t say that about every partnership I’ve been a part of, it’s often very difficult to make it work. How are the bookings looking at this point?

Rob:
At this point, they are finally picking up. Honestly, they started picking up in October. We were pretty slow August. I mean, we were making, I don’t know, five to 8,000 bucks, nothing that I was too bummed about. But then in October, I think we had a break-even month. November was a little bit slower. December finally picked up. We got, I want to say, $20,000 in bookings or something like that. And then January really picked up where we were really starting to charge some serious money. We got a $7,200 booking, a $4,900 booking, a $5,700 booking, and then we still have more days to book in January. So I’m starting to feel like oh, okay, good, we’re hitting the shoulder season of when it gets really, really busy. And I’m excited to finally see some of that money come in and be like all right, cool.
The bank account is padding we don’t have to subsidize it as much. I think what I’m learning now is our hunt, which was like all right, the 2021 numbers were a tough way to comp because we sort of knew that it wasn’t going to probably always be a gravy-like that so we needed 500K to have a crazy good return. I think a 350K gross for us was going to be a 10 to 15% return if I remember correctly I’d have to look at my spreadsheet. We were fine with the 10% return simply because the cost segregation and the depreciation on this property was going to be really, really, really good come tax time. So I still think we we’ll probably be around that $350,000 mark, but it’s really too early to tell because we haven’t hit any … We’ve grossed 100K so far, and then we need to gross another 250 basically from now to May and I think we’ll do that.

David:
I believe when we bought the property we used the pictures from the listing. Is that the case or did we get pictures taken when we first bought it?

Rob:
Right. So we did use some of the listing photos and then we had a photographer come in and he took really good photos. I was like “Okay.” They’re good I was happy with them. They weren’t bangers as the cool kid say. I actually had my buddy Eric Barkers from Barkers Studios, he specializes in Southern California, and I was like … He takes all of my photos for all of my California properties and I was just like “Dude, I need better photos, I’m not really happy with the ones that I got. Are you willing to come out and shoot my property? I know it’s like six hours away.” And he’s like “For you, bud, let’s do it.” So he comes out, he shoots the property, and oh my God, the cover photo was crazy good. We’ll put it on screen for the YouTube audience at home. It was so good, it was so amazing. And literally the day I reposted that photo we got $18,500 in bookings. Within 24 hours. It’s crazy.

David:
It looks like a desert oasis paradise when you see it.

Rob:
Yes, for sure, man. I always say that you need professional photography, and most people will spend the three to 400 bucks to get that. But if those photos come out bad they won’t respend the money and reinvest in new photos because everyone’s pinching pennies on their first or second rental. You and I spent 800 bucks on our other photos, which are good they’re not bad, but they weren’t what I wanted, right? We spent money to have Eric come back out, and literally, the ROI on that was thousands, right? Thousands of percent. $18,500, that’s a pretty good ROI. And he didn’t even charge me that much. It’s just really cool to see that concept really click and actually work because I say this and I really got to experience it firsthand even as someone who really gets on a soapbox about this stuff.

David:
In addition to the typical online travel agencies, we have some plans in 2023 to launch a direct booking site to cater to corporate retreats. More than just your typical Airbnb user who is now looking to … Is it just me or does it seem like Airbnb is sort of going the way of Craigslist? You just know if you try to sell something on Craigslist there’s a 90% chance they’re going to beat you up on the price before, if they even show up at all. It develops that bad reputation where it’s becoming normal to go in and ask for big discounts. Do you feel like that’s starting to happen more on Airbnb and Vrbo than it used to?

Rob:
More than ever before people that will ask for discounts and I’m just like … I’ll say no, or I just won’t even accept the booking. Because if someone asks for a discount and you say no, and they say, “All right, I’ll book anyways.” Guess what? They always still get their discount because they’ll find something wrong because they’re the people that ask for a discount and then you end up having to refund them because it wasn’t perfect, right? This happens every time, every time. Can I have a discount? No. “Hey, there’s a hair outside one mile away, I want $500 back.” And you’re just like “I knew this was going to happen.” I really am so anti-discounts really across the board. When people ask me for a discount I’m like “No, I’m not going to do it, I’m sorry.” Don’t say-

David:
Next time they say there’s a hair one mile away I want you to say, “Great, go grab it, collect it, bring it back, we’re going to save them for David and make him a tope. Thank you for caring.”

Rob:
So basically that is one of the things that’s more popular now. It’s like “Can I get a discount?” It’s like “No.” And it’s a game of chicken, right, because it’s like … If they ask me for a discount they probably asked five other hosts, and then probably one of those hosts said yes. And now they go stay at that place and it’s like all right, well that host just made it worse for the entire community. And so I don’t know I’m just so anti … I would love to hear people’s comments on this in the YouTube comments. Because anytime I get on this and I bash the discount askers, they always show up in the comments and they’re always like “How dare you. How dare you get mad at me for asking you to discount your product that you worked so hard on Rob?

David:
Well, it’s a matter of expectation, right? When you’re looking at booking a property you’re like “$2,000 a night, that’s outrageous that they would charge that much.” And sometimes you hear people get on YouTube and talk about their … This property may be $15,000 in a month and it gets all the clicks and the views, and then, unfortunately, people that are staying at Airbnbs see that and then they start to think that everyone’s like that. And sometimes you do have a month where you make $15,000, and then your sport court needs to be fixed, and you go dump 50 grand into getting it ready. Or the pool heater costs 26,000 or $24,000. So there’s a lot more expenses that go into these properties than people are aware of when they’re asking for those discounts. They’re coming right off the profit margin they’re not coming off the gross. It’s coming off the net which is a much smaller number. In order to try to combat this we are looking to try to get some corporate retreats. Can you share a little bit about how you’re hoping that works out?

Rob:
Definitely. I’m going the way of direct bookings in a big way for 2023 so I’m going to have a direct booking website. I’m actually working with Mark Simpson, the Boostly owner, he actually … We interviewed him a couple months ago. He’s actually making me a whole website with all of my different listings and everything like that so I can control my own bookings. You and I have really big social platforms so why not push people to that? I’m partnering up with Blue Gems, a property management company, and I’m acquiring them. It just makes a lot of sense for me to have a direct booking website if that makes sense. You know what I mean? Because now I can just have all of my listings, send people my links, and not have to worry about all the fees that people get mad at with Airbnb. That’s a big thing right now in all the articles, and on Reddit, and on TikTok.
I can cut out all those fees, give people a better basically experience through … Or hopefully, a more affordable experience, and I can be the direct person handling that person. I don’t have to be strong-armed by the whole review system, which is really the big bummer with a lot of OTAs, online travel agencies. I would really like the Scottsdale mansion to really primarily be a corporate retreat place versus a short-term rental place. The concept has actually been proven, from what I can tell, because you’ve had a couple events out there with your investor retreats, right?

David:
That’s right. Those are a blast. I mean, part of it’s just because this is such a fun property. You might’ve had the same experience. I’ve been in real estate a little bit longer than you, but when I saw the house it wasn’t just … Like most investments that I buy and I’m like “This is a good investment, what’s it look like on a spreadsheet?” It’s just fun. The architecture is really amazing. There’s so many different places within the house where you can gather and have a conversation or have a different experience. Whether you’re sitting by a fire inside, sitting next to the 85-inch TV at the pool table, at the kitchen. Where I think somebody said it’s the largest countertop they’ve ever seen in a property, right?

Rob:
Oh my God, it really is.

David:
That’s just inside. Then you go outside and there’s an outdoor fire pit, an outdoor kitchen, several areas that you can sit at around the pool, different little grass areas. Almost every single bedroom has its own deck, a wraparound deck, from the property. The views are incredible. It’s fun to be there. It’s just sort of a inspiring scene I guess you would say that prompts really good conversation. We’ve had events out there where other investors come out there and I teach them different things on that big TV that the lady said doesn’t work. It definitely does, right? We put-

Rob:
Can you corroborate that in a court of law?

David:
Yes, that’s exactly right, I’ll be there as your first witness. You’ll have to pay me a little bit.

Rob:
Thank you.

David:
But it’s a blast. We’re hoping we do more of that. I think actually we’re looking at planning the next one in early March so Kyle was just talking with me about that. He might’ve hit up your team to find out what times it’s free. And we’re thinking about doing maybe a goal-setting event. But I’m planning on doing things throughout the year just different topics. What do people want to learn? Do they want to learn long-distance investing, luxury rentals, overall wealth building, budgeting money, building businesses, whatever the case would be? I’m trying to figure out how I can get people that will be interested to sign up and come hang out. And then get you out there at some point too because it was a blast.
The last time we went out there I probably taught for eight to 10 hours out of the day. It was just an absolute drinking from a fire hose from the people, getting to see what I’m buying, how I’m buying, how I negotiate it. You got to see a little bit of that when I was giving advice to you to give to our agent for this is what you should do to get the deal. Having dinners brought to the house or catered. And then we went to Topgolf one night. One night we went to the backyard and we all hung out. Another night we made ice cream sundaes. It’s just a blast. You get a property this big that can sleep that many people, there’s so many ways you can make memories there. Which is different than when you’re just buying a typical two-bedroom condo or a three-bedroom house that’s practical, but you’re not going to make memories at a place like that.

Rob:
Well, I got to say, I got a lot of respect for you because I just … We’re so close. For HostCon, my short-term rental event, it’s more of a conference, but that’s a big event that we’ve been planning for three months, and dude, planning an event is hard. BP Con, that was 2000 people. A lot of respect for the event planners of BP Con, but even at your level that’s like that small, intimate experience you know have a lot of people that you need to make happy. It’s crazy, man. People are hard to please at large numbers like that.

David:
Oh, it’s so true. I say all the time if Notorious B.I.G. were still around his next song would be more people, more problems. It’s not Mo Money Mo Problems. People make everything difficult which is why we got to be better as humans. Because now that ChatGPT or GTP … What’s it called this new AI that’s scaring everybody?

Rob:
GPT.

David:
We’re going to find out that AI doesn’t have these problems people do and we’re all going to be out of a job if we don’t ship up and shape out.

Rob:
That’s right.

David:
If you want to attend one of these events or just learn more about what I have going on go to DavidGreene24.com/retreat. Or sorry, retreats with an S at the end and you can see about what we have going on. Maybe Rob and I will put one together. You guys can come hang out with us, get to know us a little bit better, see how good Rob is at shooting pool, watch Interstellar with us, and see his dance moves. That’s a night made in heaven for you.

Rob:
And watch me freeze in a 85-degree loosely heated pool.

David:
Watch you say how hot it is. We’re going to pour you a glass of ice water you’re like “Oh, it’s scalding hot, I didn’t want hot tea.” All right, Rob, anything else you want to add about this property or what the experience was like for our listeners before we let you get out of here?

Rob:
No. Well, I guess I can’t say no and then tell you something so yeah I have something. What I always tell people sort of in their journey for short-term rentals, and really just real estate in general, is to scale up accordingly, right? I’ve earned my rite of passage to buy a house like this and so have you, right? This is not a property that I would tell people to buy as their first swing, right? This is not a good one for you to really learn real estate on, right? You have to be very good and master short-term rentals before you really bet the farm on something like this.
For me, there’s a lot of stuff that happened, we talked about a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of stuff we didn’t talk about that probably to me is not a big deal, but to a lot of people listening would be like “Whoa, we got to hear about that, that sounds crazy.” And I’m like “Well, I’ve just seen so much at this point that I can pretty much handle everything but it’s because I have five years of experience dealing with tens of thousands of guests, right?” When you’re scaling up just make sure that you can handle it.

David:
You don’t go to the gym and you don’t put 500 pounds on the bar for your first time it’ll crush you. You build up to it, right? So as long as you take consistent action over time you will get to the point you can handle this stuff Rob handles, but don’t try to skip ahead to the point he’s at, that’s how you get crushed.

Rob:
I maxed out. This was my max. I’m like “That’s good. That feels good I got to do it again. I got to see what my next max is. I got to max out again.”

David:
If people want to learn more about where you’re maxing where can they find out more about you?

Rob:
Oh, you could find me on YouTube at Robuilt. Go watch the R-O-B-U-I-L-T. Go watch the pilot concept parody that David and I shot about this property. You can see the before and after of us staging it, of us putting it together, a couple arguments we had, a brawl that we had on the sports court. A little bit of everything.

David:
What I look like when I was 20 pounds heavier, I’ve lost weight since we … And plus the camera adds like 10 pounds. See how the magic of film has us looking. It’s a pretty good video though and it’s very fun. Thank you for having me out there to make that, and go check out the video yourselves. You can catch me at DavidGreene24, or you can go to DavidGreene24.com. And if you just put slash retreats you can learn about events. And you can come see this house for yourself if you’re curious about how it works out. All right, Rob, I’m going to let you get out of here, this was great. Thank you for all the work that you’ve done on this property and more importantly for sharing it with our listeners so that they can learn a little bit better and build a little more wealth for themself. This is David Greene for Rob, our defender against the nasty Karens, Abasolo, signing off.