Announcer:
Welcome to the Global Investor Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host Charles Carillo combines decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now, here’s your host, Charles Carillo.
Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Kirby Atwell. He served 11 years on active duty in the US military during the, which time he developed a strong interest in real estate entrepreneurship and bought his first rental property in 2006. In 2011, he started his first real estate investment company focused on buying distressed properties, renovating and selling them. And then in 2017, he found success with his short-term, first short-term rental, and realized that non-traditional short-term rentals could be the fastest path to, for him and his family achieving financial freedom. So thank you so much for being on the show today, Kirby.
Kirby:
It’s awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.
Charles:
So, please give us a little bit about your background, both personally and professionally prior to getting involved with your real estate investing career and short-term rentals.
Kirby:
Yeah, absolutely. So I had growing up a little bit of the rich dad poor dad experience in my household. So my dad was he, he was a director of a park district, which is a city role. You know, he was in charge of all the parks and sports programs and stuff. So very cookie cutter, you know, pension, nine to five job. And then my mom on the other hand was an, an, an independent insurance broker. So she owned her own insurance brokerage, which started with zero clients. She just built it from scratch, set her own hours, eat what she kill type of thing. And so they complimented each other really well. But I was always really drawn toward my mom’s business. And so growing up I kind of knew two things I wanted to serve in the military.
Kirby:
And then I also knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur eventually, and kind of choose my own destiny, you know? And so that’s, that’s what I did. I went to West Point got out or I served six years on active duty afterwards. Got out in 2011 like you mentioned, and started a flipping company. ’cause It seemed like that was how everyone gets rich with real estate, right? They buy ugly houses and make ’em sexy. And that was what all the shows were, were showing at the time. And and so we did that for, for five years and realized after we flipped about 70 properties, that it was a treadmill that we were never gonna get off of. And that’s when we kind of transitioned into this this this short term rental niche strategy.
Charles:
Yeah. It’s flipping properties is a, is a very difficult business. I mean, there’s some people I’ve met before that have like systems in place, but you’ve done 70 of ’em and you still are struggling with it. I mean, I’ve done ’em before and it was the hardest part for us was finding, just having good contractors that were consistent. I mean, the work was just a, just a nightmare. Every time you got a new project, it was like you had to rebuilt half your team of finding stuff. ’cause People would disappear.
Kirby:
Exactly. Yeah. And what I tell people is that I, I still flip. Like I think there’s a huge difference between flipping because you come across a great opportunity and building a flipping business where you have to do four to five flips a month to pay for your staff, your marketing, all the overhead because then you start to get into these deals that you shouldn’t be doing, but you have to do ’em because you know, that’s what your business it it depends on. So, so I think flipping as an opportune type business can, can work really well.
Charles:
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a, that’s a great point to make because there are people with multiple crews. And to get to avoid what I was just saying is my issue they have to keep on doing deals to keep everybody employed and everybody staying with them and not going somewhere else. Yeah. so it’s like you, it’s, it’s the same thing with like doing the people that do funds in real estate and they have to buy so many properties, you know what I mean? They’ve, they’ve allocated Yeah. Or there’s help somebody in February that they’re in, they have money left over in November and they gotta buy a property. So it’s a you know, it, it’s one of those things where when you’re forced to invest or forced to do something, you might not be getting the best deals in all those different times.
Charles:
So why did you choose real estate going in as since you weren’t really, you know, your family is involved, your mother had a, was working somewhere with passive income, which is my uncle ran a insurance agency and he built it up from what my grandfather gave to him. So I know exactly the independent agency. It’s a lot of work, but it is, there’s a lot of you know, there’s a lot of benefits to it. So how did you kind of transition? You had the same kind of residual mindset, but get into real estate instead?
Kirby:
Yeah, good question. So I at West Point, I studied business management kind of knew that I was gonna do that as a path once I got outta the military, but still didn’t know what kind of sector I wanted to be in. And then, like so many other people, I read the gateway drug into real estate investing, which is Rich Dad, poor Dad. And that was in 2006. And so that kind of got me in the mindset of, I I actually read that book, went across the street from where I was living with a couple buddies from college and bought the house that just, they just put a for sale sign in the yard. This was in 2006 when you had to buy it within 15 minutes or else it was gonna be gone. So, so luckily I was in El Paso, Texas where price points like never change. So very stable. It, it ended up working out well for me, even buying in 2006. But that was my first experience. And, and at that point I knew this is what I want to do this, it just makes a ton of sense to me and I’m gonna do this the rest of my life.
Charles:
That’s awesome. I, I bought my first rental property in 2006 at the end of it. And when I bought again in the end of oh eight, it was a completely different ball game. <Laugh> a lot of change. And you’re like, oh my God, how much much I overpaid for this. But yeah, no one knew that’s what, you know, it goes so many years and it becomes normal. So
Kirby:
Yeah, the funny thing is,
Charles:
It’s kind of what’s happening now, but
Kirby:
The, the, the funny thing for me is I got stationed in, in Hawaii after that, and that was like oh nine. So luckily if those had been switched, I wouldn’t have known, I would’ve bought in Hawaii at the peak in oh six and just lost everything. But instead, the same thing when I bought in oh nine in Hawaii, they were practically given away properties.
Charles:
Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s very market dependent. That was, that was crazy. ’cause Certain markets went way down, but, you know, then they came back like I bought, was buying in central Connecticut and it was pretty stable. It, you know, went up and it has really, I think some parts have hit those highs again, but if you’d bought in Florida, yes, it went way down, but it came way back up again too. So it was, you know, you just, it’s someone told me it only matters three times with real estate when you, the value of it, when you buy it, when you sell it, when you refinance it <laugh>. That’s a good point. Which is a good point.
Kirby:
Which
Charles:
Is an interesting strategy when you think about it. So let’s talk about you with your path from flipping homes to eventually, I think it was 2017, focusing exclusively on short-term rentals. I mean, how did you, how did you fall into this and how did you know that this is gonna be the better path for you?
Kirby:
Yeah so toward the end of 2015, 16, I decided flipping wasn’t gonna be the path. I was getting married and realized I wanted more passive income, more cash flow to support my family that I was gonna build. So so we started buying long-term rentals and we built up a portfolio of 24 long-term rentals. And while we were doing that, we moved from the Chicago area to northwest Indiana and we bought this 1970s all original wood paneling and green shag carpet house. But it was on Lake Michigan. And so the location was great and it had this walkout basement that was unfinished. So, you know, I said to my wife, I was like, I keep hearing all about this Airbnb thing and short term rentals. And I was like, what if we just try it? What if we, you know, spend an extra 30,000 ’cause we’re rehabbing the house anyway and finish the basement, turn it into a one bedroom apartment and just try it, you know, worst case scenario, we add the equity to the home, we can use it as a long-term rental.
Kirby:
So it seemed low risk. And we did that and we made $22,000 just the first summer on this dinky like one bedroom apartment in our basement with no windows and <laugh>. And so I was like, I am, I don’t make $22,000 on some of my rental unit long-term rentals the whole year. And we just made that in three months on this on this basement apartment. So I realized there’s something to this and so, you know, what if we could scale it? And so we started buying other properties in the area and didn’t know what we were doing at first, but then we eventually kind of came up with this thesis that if you can buy these most people when they think about short-term rentals, their mind immediately goes to the cabin in the woods, the million dollar, you know, luxury high-end vacation rental or the beachfront property.
Kirby:
You know, that’s what most people think of as, as short-term rentals with the Joshua Tree, you know, desert Oasis. And these can work right now, it’s very difficult to get something like that to cash flow. But for us we were like, you know what, if we buy something really affordable where it can still work as a long-term rental in a worst case scenario, but we’re getting three times or four times the cash flow as a short-term rental. And we looked at the surrounding comps in the area that we’re looking, which is an hour outside of Chicago, and we’re like, you know, if, if these comps are correct and these are really renting that much, then we’ll make substantially more as a short-term rental. But in a worst case scenario, we can always switch back to long-term rentals. And so that’s what we started doing and, and it just cash flowed like crazy.
Charles:
Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that strategy because it gives you a backup plan. And when I speak to most short-term rental people investors, they don’t have that backup plan. Yeah. And a business partner of mine who is a wholesaler, he would tell me that you know, he’d find properties and he’s like, you sell these all day long, either great locations down here in Florida, and you’d be like all day long and you can get like a retail or above retail to people that are short-term rental people. And obviously with that on their side, for the buyers short-term rental investors using that strategy, they’re not gonna be able to cash flow in the long term. It’s only gonna be if that short term and if something happens the economy, you know regulations in that town, whatever it might be, they are now have this property that probably has less value than when they bought it. So it becomes a difficult property to, you know, have to subsidize I guess, until you can get renters in there.
Kirby:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And you, you mentioned that, that that thing that you heard that there’s only three times that the value of the property matters. And I think that that is so true when it comes to this strategy. ’cause People ask me all the time, well, the market’s gone up, interest rates have gone up. Do, does it still make sense? Do you wanna just sit on the sideline and wait it out? And I tell ’em, if I’m buying a property that’s a three unit property, each unit’s gonna be a short term rental and I’m buying it for $300,000, even at 20% interest rates. The, the cash flow, it’s still several thousand dollars per month coming in net cash flow after all my expenses. I have one that makes around $6,000 per month on a $320,000 property. ’cause It’s a three unit. So in the summertime you can rent out the whole building and it makes almost 20 or over $20,000 in some months in the summer and then a lot less in the winter, but it averages to about $6,000 net cash flow. And so I tell people, I’m like, you can sit out if you want, but what do I, if it goes to zero tomorrow, the market goes to zero and interest rates are at 20%, the, the fundamentals still makes sense. If I’m collecting $6,000 of net cash flow, I know it’s gonna be worth probably double 20 years from now. So what do I care in the meantime if it’s just that’s, it’s making me financially free and not have to go get a nine to five?
Charles:
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s a great, I love that. That’s a, that’s a great strategy and I don’t think people think that way. And thank God you can’t log into like any type of website and get a really accurate picture. Not like, you know, I can log on and see what a mutual fund is or a stock can’t really do that with a property like yours is like an income property. You can’t just like log in, you can see what Zillow says about a residential property, but not, they don’t know what you’re making on property, you know, netting. So it’s something that, thank God, because overall those years of going through, you know, the great financial, you <laugh>, your, your property was so down so much I thought for mine. And I was like, you, I probably came back around like 2014 or 2015 and they became positive again. So thank god for that. ’cause If long-term debt, you don’t have to really worry about it. But you talked about how you, you look for buying markets and unique markets to invest in that you’re able to make long term as well and you’re kind of staying out of super vacation areas I guess is what you were saying, which is a great strategy. Is anything else that you would use when you’re looking at markets other than really where you can have a dual strategy approach?
Kirby:
Yeah, yeah, great question. So we have sort of a pro a narrowing down process. ’cause It, it can be overwhelming. You can, I mean if you Google where’s the best place to buy short-term rental, you’ll get probably a thousand different results. ’cause It can work for different reasons in a lot of different places. Some have great tax benefits, some, you know, maybe you want it personal usage, some are high appreciation. But for us, for financial freedom, which is was our number one goal, we start with the Midwest or southeast where the properties are on sale, you know, it’s just way cheaper than the rest of the country. And we go outside of all the cities. So you look, you know, down a map, the Midwest and southeast, there’s probably, you know, 50 or a hundred decent sized cities. And so you can look within an hour drive of those.
Kirby:
And what we’re looking for is where average purchase prices relatively affordable compared to in the city. A lot of times you can find it half a third or a fourth average purchase price of that same city. And then local draws. And if you find places like where we’re at Michigan City, Indiana, our outside of Chicago, we’ve got Lake Michigan in the summer, but then in the winter we’ve got an outlet mall, we’ve got wineries, we’ve got a casino that’s pretty big. We’ve got museums like there’s hiking trails. We’ve got the national park, the one the, I think it’s the second newest national park, the the dunes National Park. So these local draws draw people there regardless of the time of year. And then there’s all the reasons that people travel just regardless, like visiting family holidays, reunions death in a family, weddings, and they’ll book our place ’cause it’s cheaper than, than a hotel.
Kirby:
So we have so many reasons why people would wanna travel and stay with us. It’s not just a high-end vacation, which if you own a million dollar cabin in the woods, you’re fighting everyone else who does for this limited pool of people that can afford a, you know, $800 a night high-end vacation. And then if that goes away, I don’t know what option you have, but for us, there’s so many reasons our occupancy has stayed strong because people stay for so many different reasons. So I feel like those are the perfect places. And then if you can combine that with a multi-unit property so that you can, like I said, rent out the whole place, all three units say in the summertime when big groups travel, it’s like grandparents. They’re adult kids, they’re grandkids, they don’t wanna book four hotel rooms, they wanna stay in a big place. But you know, the options for a place that sleeps 18 people is typically a really high end, expensive place. Or they can stay in ours for even at 800 bucks a night. It’s still affordable if they’re splitting it three ways. So in 800 bucks a night, you know, you can do the math that, that adds up pretty quick on a relatively affordable property. So so you get the best of both worlds, in my opinion, when you combine all those factors together.
Charles:
Yeah. Another great strategy is, I love in the the small multi-family approach. That’s something as well, you don’t hear too much from short-term rentals. It’s usually buying a single property. And usually most people I think, are pushed into vacation because I think people, when they’re buying a vacation home, they want to buy, they kind to persuade themselves. It’s also gonna be a short term rental. So it’s a place for them. It’s not, I met, I, I doubt you’re staying at these three family houses and stuff that you’re, that you are buying. So it completely you know, you take a lot of emotion out of it at that point. Right? And you make sure that the numbers actually work.
Kirby:
Absolutely.
Charles:
Do you have money sitting in the stock market? And you’re worried about it or worse. You have money sitting at the bank, not keeping up with inflation. My name is Charles Carillo, founder and managing partner of Harborside Partners. And since 2006, I’ve been investing my money and my family’s money into income producing properties. These are real assets, real properties with real addresses that produce real cash flow. At Harborside Partners, we provide passive investors who love real estate with a turnkey investing solution. If you want to put your money to work in real estate, but can’t find deals, don’t have the time to get funding in. The last thing that productive people want to do is manage real estate. We find the deals. We fund the deals and we manage the tenants, the termites and the properties. Partner with us at investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com. Go to investwithharborside.com. If you love real estate, you like the idea of passive income and believe that income producing properties will appreciate over time. Go to investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com.
Charles:
So I’ve stayed in dozens of short term rentals over the years you know, and different websites, all different stuff. And you know, I know they, they have some sort of rating behind and, but how do you go through and like vet ’cause you’re gonna get, you’re gonna find bad tenants. I imagine you have horror stories you can tell us about it or people in your group have, and you know, how do you screen these tenants that are coming in? Maybe you don’t have that problem with someone that’s, you know, 18 people in a family like you were saying or something. But how do you screen people going through? Is there anything you do and how does that process work? Because I, a lot of it I see is automated when they’re doing these bookings.
Kirby:
Yeah, yeah, it’s a good question. We, we so talking to a lot of different short-term rental hosts, like if you’re a responsible short-term rental host, the consensus that I’ve found is it’s typically one to 5% of your guests are challenging <laugh>. So like one to five people out of a hundred that book are, are challenging. And and when I say challenging, the things you read about online are somebody rents it and they just have a thousand people show up and just destroy the house and burn it down. You know, like those are the extreme examples, which I could almost guarantee has some absentee owner that doesn’t screen at all, rents it for one night, doesn’t care, just wants heads in beds. You know, that’s the type of situation that sets those up. But if you’re a responsible host, then our fly, we have a whole bunch of checks and balances in place that kind of prevent that, you know?
Kirby:
And so if if somebody’s looking for that, they’re gonna go to the lowest hanging fruit, they’re gonna go to the easiest property. So if we have a two night minimum in place, well, I wanna have a rager. I don’t wanna rent it for two nights, I just want the to go for one night. So they’re gonna find the one with one night we, you can turn on to where people can’t automatically book with you unless they have previous stays and positive reviews. So that’s what we turn on. They can still request to book if they’re brand new to Airbnb, and then we can vet them. We can ask ’em why they’re coming. Well, you know, are you willing to put down a deposit? We collect deposits. So you can really get a good feel for who this person is. Does their story make sense?
Kirby:
You can even, you know, look ’em up on social media if you want, like, there’s a lot of vetting you can do to feel it out. And there’s a lot of times where we just say, no, it’s, you know, it’s not worth the risk or that you have a previous bad review or you know, but if, if they’re somebody who has previous positive reviews almost every single time they’ve been good guests. But the one to 5% that I talked about that we’ve had challenges with, it’s typically, you know, somebody smokes weed in the house or something, you know, or they just leave the place messy, like really messy for our cleaners, you know, and, and they don’t really cause damage. So you show up there and you’re like, this person was super disrespectful in the beginning. Like, your instinct is you wanna punish these people ’cause they’re just, they’re jerks. But you gotta get past that and say, okay, I’m gonna pay my cleaners a little bit more, apologize to them, and then never have to deal with this person again. And, and it, you know, you, you move on. And so so you get that rarely, most of the time it’s just great families that come and leave and everything’s works out well.
Charles:
Yeah. I imagine most people, that’s not an issue. The, do you ever speak to them on the phone?
Kirby:
We do rarely. We try to keep all the messaging within the messenger just so there’s a history of it, but sometimes they can call us, they get our phone number and we have a, a line set up with our team, so whoever’s on call, it rings on a Google Voice line. So we all have the app on our phone. Whoever’s on call answer can answer at that point.
Charles:
That’s great. Yeah, because when I used to rent apartments myself over many years of self-managing and you speaking to potential tenants on the phone, you can, within minutes you understand kind of what you’re dealing with, let’s just say that, you know what I
Kirby:
Mean? It’s a spidey sense, right? Yeah,
Charles:
Yeah. You just, you’re just, you know, you just how people deal with you and or just deal with anybody in general. It just tells you a lot pretty quickly on the phone. You can tell by, by messages too. But it’s something that when you’re on the phone, it’s, it’s kind of a dead giveaway. But going into your Google Voice, which is going into our next system here part is that about you with how you built systems and processes with your business to kind of streamline it and you know, have you utilized virtual assistants and any specific software to assist you?
Kirby:
Yeah, we’ve, we’ve done a lot of that over the years. And I think one of the biggest mistakes people make getting into this is they, they wanna over systematize too soon. Which I know sounds counterintuitive, but the, all the gurus will tell you, you know, you’re worth $500 an hour and you shouldn’t do any task that’s below you. And I think that’s a bunch of crap in the beginning because everybody starts with one. And how do you know that? Who to hire if you don’t, if you’ve never done it yourself? And how do you know if they’re doing a good job? So for us, with our basement one, I mean, we did everything. We cleaned it, we did all the bookings ourselves, all the communication, the pricing. And we learned so much from that, so much feedback, stuff that we, if we had just tried to outsource that from the start, would cost us 25% to a vacation rental manager, which would’ve been a huge chunk.
Kirby:
And then we wouldn’t have any clue what’s going on with our properties going forward. So for the first one, I recommend don’t use any external apps or anything do it yourself ’cause it’s not that much work. I mean, it’s a few messages a day, maybe you can share a, a Google calendar with your cleaners and then just put cleanings on as, as bookings come in. It’s really simple. And, and Airbnb, the app makes it super easy, user friendly. Once we got to four or five is when we felt like, okay, we have enough economies of scale, it’s taking up enough of our time that it’s worthwhile to bring on a team member. We brought on a backend software so that we wouldn’t just use Airbnb anymore. We, initially it was IGMS didn’t work out real well with them, a lot of tech issues.
Kirby:
So we switched over to owner res, which has been great. And that ties in everything. So now we’re on bookings.com, VRBO Airbnb, we make one change on owner res and it overrides everything. And then that links to our pricing software, which constantly adjusts pricing. I’m still in there every week tweaking stuff. I think you can’t just put it on autopilot. But it’s only once a week across 21 properties. If, if I was trying to do ’em all manually, that would be a full-time job there. So so all of it is linked together. And then turno is what we use to manage our cleaners now, which is free with the owner res software. So we pay, I think it’s $280 a month for our backend owner res software, which is pretty cheap for 21 properties. And then turn’s free to manage the, the cleaners.
Kirby:
And then it’s another 120 or so I think a month for Price Labs, which does all our pricing. And then we have a team of, it started with one military spouse. Now we’ve hired three military spouses through a company called powerhouse Planning. And they, they’re kind of a, a virtual team outsourcing, you know company. And they just hire military spouses that are super capable. And so it’s grown into three different girls. We’re actually gonna have a fourth one here soon. And they trade off and they handle all the day to day. So like today, you know, we might have 10 check-ins and they’re handling all the check-ins, lining up the cleaners, lining up the handyman so that we’re not involved in the day-to-day. And it, it, you know, gives us a lot of autonomy.
Charles:
That’s awesome. That’s a great system. You have in place, a great mix of, you know, software and also with VAs, which is an important part of it. And I love how everything put together and I, I definitely agree with the self-management part in the beginning, you know what I mean, of really learning the business. And I talk to people now that maybe have property managers or start into larger apartment buildings and they’ve never really owned or managed their own property, you know what I mean? Yeah. When they didn’t, and you’re like, well, how do you kind of know what’s happening between the property manager and the tenant if you’ve never really done that before? And you know, the same thing with you. If you’re dealing between the software, you know where the issues are. If someone brings a prompt to you, you can actually fix it. You don’t have to like kind of guess about it or let them make the decision. So yeah, a lot of great, a lot of great tips there.
Kirby:
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is too, people default, they just assume, well, short term rentals are so intensive that I just need to hire a pro vacation rental manager and their 25% of your gross revenue, typically we pay nowhere near 25% to our, our team and for our systems because they track their hours and we pay ’em a really nice hourly wage for a, a virtual team member, but it doesn’t add up to 25% of our gross revenue.
Charles:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. That’s, that’s a great way of going about it. So I hear a lot in the news about some municipalities are limiting short-term rentals, and you gave us one point earlier about having the ability of like a dual approach as you will of going long term, medium, probably medium term as well, and also short term whatever works best. So you can, if anything changed in that in that market. I mean, how else are you protecting your downside with this possibility? Do you do any kind of review of the neighborhoods or of the local government or miss municipalities before you start investing?
Kirby:
Yeah, I mean, not that the news would ever try to like mislead anyone <laugh>. But typically what you hear about in those stories, again, it’s like the extreme cases and it’s, and it’s almost always bigger cities or mainstream markets. And so then you start to get this impression that everyone’s against short-term rentals and that every municipality is like banning them. And that’s just not the case when you start to look at, especially the strategy that I just outlined. So we don’t buy in the city centers because you’re paying a, a premium there and because that’s where typically it’s most regulated. But if you go just outside, like where we’re at Michigan City, they met a couple years ago, the, the city council to talk about, you know, what type of regulations and they said, you know, this is good for our economy. You know, we’re a old industrial town and we want to draw in more visitors.
Kirby:
And you know, there’s parts of town that are really struggling. And so this, you know, when people get there, they go shopping, they spend money at local businesses, like it’s good for us, like we’re welcoming. So they’re, they made a rule of you just have to register who you are that owns one. There’s no fee, there’s no inspection. They make it real simple. And there’s towns like that, believe it or not, that have made those rules. So that’s where I recommend to target is a town that’s already established rules that you can live within. If, if they haven’t made rules yet, then it’s, I think it can be kind of risky because, you know, they, they could, the town council could just say, we don’t want it here. And then, you know, you kind of, they pull the rug out from under you, but if they’ve made rules, they don’t typically jump around a ton, you know, not every year they’re like, flip flopping. So, so I recommend targeting those. And then if you stay out of the larger cities and then you’re in more business friendly states in general, like in Indiana the, the, the state itself actually made a rule that the local municipalities can’t restrict short-term rentals. And there’s some caveats to it, but, but there’s like six states that have done that between Indiana, Florida, Tennessee that are, tend to be more business friendly states. And and so if you’re, if you choose those to start with, it makes things a lot easier as well.
Charles:
Yeah. Not a lot of great information. Yeah, that’s one thing is if I, people keep on saying, or I, I see in the news that rents are being, are going down, right? And long-term rentals. And I’ve since never this year sent out any kind of update to our investors showing that our rents have decreased <laugh>. So it’s just it’s, it’s all that click
Kirby:
You must be the anomaly. Yeah.
Charles:
<Laugh>. Yeah. so, you know, as we’re moving forward to our close here, I mean, what are some mistakes you see short-term rental investors make with all your coaching and with your properties?
Kirby:
Yeah. so I, I think the, the, the biggest thing is, is basing everything off of intuition. And I think this is the biggest challenge. I, I work with people to help ’em find and buy their first short-term rental. And the biggest hurdle is just getting them over the mindset of where do I want a vacation? Like where’s the, the nicest place that I can buy and that’s gonna perform the best they associate like, luxury with performance. And that’s just not how it works. If, if you’re after financial freedom, I mean, if you wanna buy it and hold it and have it appreciate, I’m sure it’ll appreciate well in those locations. But in the meantime, you’re going to your nine to five, you know, <laugh>. So if you want cash flow, then buying in these more affordable markets where there’s a lot of different utilitarian reasons that people travel and you’re just getting incredible ROI for every dollar that you invest, those are the best places. So almost everything about it is so counterintuitive that it’s, if you go into it and just kind of go off feeling it, you, I see a lot of people kind of reach out to me after they’ve owned one or two and they’re like, I’m not making any cash flow. It’s like killing me here. Can I, can you kind of share your strategy?
Charles:
Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah, it’s not, we do the same thing with our properties. They’re not sexy it, but it makes money and you’re not gonna, you know, they’re not gonna start a TV show after us, but it’s something that I mean, it, it makes money and it’s a consistent, and that’s what, you know, that’s what works. Absolutely.
Kirby:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Charles:
So over the years of you being a real estate investor for 17 plus years and being in the military, what are some main factors contributed to your success over the years?
Kirby:
I think, you know, the, the, the main thing is just continuing to, to move forward and self-educate. Like that’s, it’s incredible what that’s, I, I like, there was no reason that I should have got into West Point. It was kind of a backdoor situation where I, my foot high school football coach sent at the time VHS tapes of my highlights, and it was just good enough to like get me into prep school. And then if I played okay at prep school and passed all the requirements, then I’d get into West Point, even though my grades weren’t on par with, you know, half my class was valedictorians or salutatorian, you know, so, but I got in and then I kind of kept just like figuring it out one foot in front of the other, even though there was a lot of challenges that came up.
Kirby:
And so that’s been the, the biggest key to success for me is just keep going. When, when other people kind of are okay with, like, when I started my podcast, like, I’m sure you experience, maybe you didn’t, but for me it was my mom and one other guy who were my listeners for the first episode. And I was totally cool with that. A lot of people are like, well, that didn’t work. I’m gonna move on to the next thing. And I was okay with that for 20 episodes, and then it started to pick up and then it, you know, so everything I’ve done, it’s like, it did not work well in the beginning, but I just tested it and then kept going. And then over time, all of a sudden it’s like, well, that’s successful, but it was only successful because of all the mistakes I made along the way. Yeah,
Charles:
No, that’s so great information. I had a mentor years back that would tell me that when you are thinking of quitting, that’s when most other people are thinking as well. And if you push through that, you’re gonna be successful. And every time you think of that and you’re like, oh, that, you know, that makes perfect sense. So many times you’re, you’re doubting what you’re doing and you’re like, maybe I have to go somewhere else or change contact. And, you know, once you continue on it, that’s when you start seeing it. ’cause You’ve cut out a lot of the other people that have haven’t gone as far as you have. So how can our listeners learn more about you, your programs, your coaching and your business?
Kirby:
Yeah so there’s a a link if you go to Living Off Rentals, that’s the name of my pod podcast and platform. So living off rentals.com/start. That takes you to a masterclass that I recently did. That is a whole overview of my system. And you know, how to find, buy and finance these types of properties that can make several thousand dollars a month and they’re relatively affordable. So if you go there and check that out it’ll walk you through it. And I think that’s the, the best first place to start. And then there’s a link there too if you wanna schedule a call with me and we can talk through, you know, if it makes sense to work together. But but yeah, that’s, that’s the, the best place.
Charles:
Well, thank you so much for coming on today, Kirby, and looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future.
Kirby:
Thanks, Charles.
Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.
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