All Forum Posts by: J. Martin

 In Feb? 
I'll be not too far away in Kho Lanta for the whole month of Feb. Can probably pop in to southern Phuket, unless you want to come down to the island. 
Great snorkeling and scuba. Are you staying in Rawaii or Patong? (near the beach I assume..?) Unless you're staying in Phuket town...?
Happy to give recommendations, and I might be able to come up to show you around personally ;)

@Johnny Hoang, sorry haven't been checking my messages!! 
Send me a text at the number on my profile. 

@Jen L., the winter is always slower and lower pricing in the Bay. And summer is super busy with higher pricing. I don't do this in buildings with HOA's. I just think it will be too much hassle - even if there isn't currently a restriction in the CC&R's. But I don't like friction. So that's just me. Just put a minimum of 30 nights on Airbnb. That's how I get 90% of my business. Happy holidays, and good luck! :)

 I agree with the point regarding size/#of bedrooms, except that you can make some good spreads at 4+ bedrooms, and rent the bedrooms out to travel nurses, students, or other travelers.  I agree, 2 bedrooms don't seem to be quite as worth it. But the rents don't seem to increase as much per bedroom when you get to 4, 5, 6 bedrooms (kind of a weird size that is rarely needed, so the unfurnished market price can be less expensive on a per-bedroom basis). 

Congrats on all the success Ethan!
And yes, get a team!!! lol

I want to have 24hr coverage all through the week, but don't quite have the scale yet. Was considering including 1 or 2 more people with units to use VA's to do all their work, so we can all have 24hr coverage from trained staff. But I'm a little hesitant to have several different sets of procedures for different owners' preferences, etc.

I think I added 6-8 units in one year..? Maybe 9 or 10? I've furnished several at one time. (Let me add, I didn't actually do any of it lol. But I had someone do it...) And this was all while traveling remotely. So you can certainly do it if you want to. As long as you have the long-term financials penciled out and have a back-up plan, I don't think it's crazy to scale quickly. It has its risks. But I think they can be managed - a few ways which we've already discussed.. 

 Brian Burke,

An honor to be mentioned with these great investors, and I'll probably only do a tenth of what they do if I'm lucky! lol
I'm still not rich, but rich in life ;) 

2018 Goals
1) To live a life of experiences - not burdened by physical possessions (they all fit in my backpack), and not worrying about money (having it or growing it.)
2) Spend less and less time managing the manager my furnished rental businesses

3) Wholesale or wholetail one property for $100K-300K profit
4) Raise $30K+ for charity, and volunteer weekly
5) Continue traveling the world

2018 Actions to Accomplish goals
1) I spend my money on awesome experiences and places, and save the rest. Continue not buying physical possessions unless it brings a ton of happiness to my life, is useful, and fits in my backpack. Continue making enough money to not have to worry about how much I make. Not worry too much about my business goals or increasing my income. 

2) Streamline hiring processes, update processes and procedures for manager, and having manager cross-train everyone on their role, so we'll have more depth in the company

3) Hire a couple VA's to produce and screen leads electronically and by mail on high-end homes. I'll be reaching out to the people in the Bay Area that already do this successfully for advice, and maybe partner up when I land a deal. This goal is a tiny fraction of what people in the space I know are doing already.

4) Have my VA's find places to volunteer where we travel, and put google calendar reminders in w/ alerts to make sure we have the volunteer events in our calendar and our heads. (We'll be reading with/teaching English to local children in Koh Lanta weekly, in addition to beach cleanup, and helping out the local animal shelter)

5) I don't have a permanent home, and I enjoy traveling, so this one is the easiest!! lol I grew my businesses while riding a motorcycle from the Taj Mahal to the Pushkar Camel Fair, eating Xiao Long Bao in Taipei 101, cooking food and donating to orphans in Chiang Mai Thailand, snorkeling on the beaches of Phuket Thailand and El Nido Philippines, releasing lanterns for Loy Krathong, climbing waterfalls, snowboarding in Japan, playing ukulele, and doing exactly what I wanted to do when I quit my job :) I'll be spending a month in the southern Thai islands for Feb, a motorcycle trip through Vietnam w/ @Arlen Chou in March to visit orphanages we support, then stopping in Manila for a good friend's party before coming back to the US to speak at Dave Van Horn's Mid-Atlantic Real Estate Summit. Then on to South America I think. Or wherever I feel like!

 Jay, are you going to make it out to visit with @Brie 

@Brie Schmidt and I at the Summit in April? Hope all is well out in Oswego! :)
The weather in Chiang Mai is warm ;)

ahhhhh... many years later, the bitcoin talk comes back again. I sold a few bitcoin too early (and missed out on about $30K lol). But still made a nice chunk of change, and just received my Bitcoin Cash. Have a few of those now, along with some litecoin, ripple, and others I've had since my posts way back years ago. 

@Engelo Rumora,
Is it a bubble? Certainly. 
But I don't mind speculating on a bubble with a small portion of my net worth ;)  I think I have about $0 net invested since I sold some bitcoin earlier, so why not let the rest ride..? It can only go down to zero, but up who knows...?  Anyway, pure speculation in a bubble, but I encourage it for  the money you can afford to lose. Nothing else is this volatile to have the chance of producing phenomenally outsized returns for basically no effort. Or it goes to almost nothing, and laugh it off ;)

Just my 2 cents...

And anyone is still welcome to buy my 4plex for bitcoin at about $50-100K above market, as offered up several years ago. And the bitcoin price has gone down since last time!! - it'll only cost you a handful! ;)

 Really looking forward to your Summit Dave!!

Flying back from Asia to be there :)
For anyone else in the San Francisco Bay Area, come on out to have fun and learn in Philly! :)

@Dave Van Horn, 

Way to go!! I'm super excited to be joining this amazing group out on the East Coast :) Nice reunion!
I'll be flying back from Asia to join. 

When I first joined BP, I was broke, didn't know anyone in the real estate game, and was spinning my wheels. 

Now, I travel the world full-time, own several multi-units, 20+ Airbnb listings, have a team that runs my business remotely, and am doing exactly what I want to do (my flip flop tan is strong ;) You don't have to be hands-on and physically present, just because you own your own business. And you don't have to wait until "retirement" age to live your dreams.  Happy to share how I got there :) And excited to learn from the rest of the speakers, and more about notes from the man himself, Dave Van Horn! :)

To anyone in Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, or the rest of the Bay Area who want to make a trip out to the East Coast for a Summit, I will be there to have fun and learn with you! :)

@Paul Bryzek,

Yes, a bunch of people do this, including myself, as @Arlen Chou, @Craig Curelop, and @Chris Mason. It can be a good business at the right scale. Some growing pains and I didn't like being on-call/on-internet 24/7 for things that pop up while scaling. But better now that I have a team. 

Scott Shatford wrote a book on doing this. It's sold on Amazon for $5 I think for the ebook. He runs Airdna.co(m). They sell a lot of Airbnb data also. I only sublet for over 30 days, so the short-term rental regulations don't apply (all laws I've seen so far define short-term rentals as 28-30 days or less). 

I pay market rent. To be honest, the numbers in my biz wouldn't work paying above market. There are a lot of labor costs (implied or explicit, depending on how you run it.) You have depreciating furniture. Fixed overhead, combined with seasonal revenue, typically. Maybe with the right place doing short term, could afford to split revenue. 

But see what's going to make the landlords happy. A lot of them in the Bay are just tired of dealing with that occasional ******/combative tenant, and primarily do not want calls or headaches.