[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the Short Term Show. The show about short term rentals and long term wealth with real property owners hosting real properties who are crushing it in the vacation and short term rental space.
And here's your host, Avery Carle.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Hey, y'.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: All. Welcome back to another episode of the Short Term Show. I'm your host, Avery Carl. I don't have many announcements today, so we're going to jump right into it. We have an incredible guest today, very excited to interview her. She is going to answer all of your burning law questions as it relates to short term rentals, which I love asking legal questions. So I'll go ahead and introduce my guest, Katie Johnson. She's the founder of strlaw.com hey, Avery.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: So great to be here. Been an avid listener, so it's so cool to be on.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: Thank you so much for coming on.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Well, let's start off by you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up focusing on short term rental law.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: For sure. Yeah. So like you said, my name is Katie Johnson. I'm based in Michigan, so I have a boutique law firm here in Michigan and I focus on short term rental law, real estate law, business law, but a lot of short term rental law. And so I got started in that because I too own short term rentals.
So I've been hosting since 2015. One of the original hosts, I suppose we first started kind of like half of our house, the traditional sort of Airbnb way in Chicago. We rented out half of our house, kind of turned into a duplex, did that for a couple years and then we started expanding to Michigan and started buying whole houses because when we did half our house, really, Holy moly. This, this could be a thing. What if we bought like a whole house and did this? And that's what we did. And yeah, from there we've just continued to expand in the Michigan market and we relocated here a couple of years ago as well to continue expanding purchasing properties. Then we also do some management for others as well.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Love that.
So let's just start at the beginning here.
What are the most common mistakes that you see investors making when it comes to. Let's just say I'm not going to go into one specific thing. What are the most legal mistakes that you see happening?
[00:02:31] Speaker B: There's a bunch, I would say.
Well, you know, we're also excited, you know, just get your property. Sometimes you don't think about the law or getting an attorney involved. You know, it could be expensive, all those different things. But I think it's One of those things where you spend money up front, you save money in the long run. Right.
So particularly in Michigan, I've seen a couple mistakes with like, deed restrictions. So deed restrictions are really common in Michigan. They don't apply in every state. I know Texas has them and a couple other states as well. But in Michigan, they're separate than hoa. So a deed restriction, something that's recorded on the deed, you know, you'd have to go in the title work to see.
And so people miss them, so they think, okay, I have a property without an hoa, I'm fine. Not realizing they have a deed restriction.
And in Michigan, if your deed restriction says something like for residential use only or single family home only or something like that, it means that short term rentals are not allowed.
And so it might not come up. You know, your neighbors might not even know they have a deed restriction because they're kind of buried in like the paperwork.
But if they do know and they don't like short term rentals, then they can sue you and stop you from renting your house as a short term rental. And I've had a couple clients who've had that situation one just resolved and not in favor of them.
So it's, it's a hot issue here in Michigan and it's something that I've seen missed time and time again.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: Yeah, that, that is a big one. There's a certain area in one of the markets that we work in, in the Smokies up by the lake, which we don't recommend buying up up there anyway. It's too far away from everything.
But every now and then we'll get somebody who insists on being up there. And the only time. Well, there's been one other time. But of the handful of times that I've seen this happen, it is always up by the lake. They have a lot of deed restrictions that are separate from the hoa, and that is something to definitely keep in mind. And there's no one to blame but yourself. For. Not. When you're investing in real estate. For. For not reading everything.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Not.
[00:04:41] Speaker C: I mean, you want your agent to. You want the title company to. Should they be? Yes. But at the end of the day, you're responsible for your investment and it is up to you to make sure that everything is read and that you ask everybody questions and that you consult attorneys if you need to.
I've seen people think, oh, I'm gonna. We actually listed one few years ago that had a deed restriction, and my attorney made us, as agents, have the buyer sign a waiver that said I real that the deed restriction says, and that one just came back up for sale again.
And they've already dropped the price. It's been on the market for less than 30 days and they've already dropped the price several times. So I think they said, oh, that's fine, we'll sign it, we don't care. And I, I want to say I have no way of knowing this, but it seems like because it came back up so quick for sale that they didn't move into it, they thought they could beat the deed restrictions. And it did not go well would be my guess.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, so they're sneaky. You gotta watch out for them. You know, they're not as prominent as like an HOA because you'll see HOA fees. You know, I feel like agents are more familiar with hoas.
Even here in Michigan, some agents aren't all that familiar with the deed restrictions. And, you know, so it'll show up in your title work. Like refer to, you know, Libra 7000, this page 54, you know, that's. And then you have to go to that page. You have to request those documents from your title company, get those, and then read them. So that's why maybe having an attorney help you on such an investment purchase, you know, might be helpful. So, yeah, so deed restrictions are common now. If they're not in your title work, you can have a title claim. And I've had, I've seen that with a couple clients, like the title work just didn't have them. And so they made a title claim. And when you make a title claim, you can get an attorney for free from your title company because that's your title insurance. Assuming you know a bunch of other factors, but doesn't mean you're going to win. But you know, you at least can have representation for that lawsuit, you know, as part of your title insurance. Right.
[00:06:42] Speaker C: And guys, if you don't know where to find an attorney, a lot of times in a lot of states, there's attorney states and there's title states. So you'll have an attorney if it's an attorney state already, but if it's a title state, a lot of times those are owned by attorneys. So you can start with them and just ask.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so I'm in a title state.
Michigan is a title state, but yeah, like Georgia is an attorney state.
I don't know about Tennessee, but yeah, it's real estate.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Yeah, the real estate market is always changing.
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[00:07:36] Speaker C: Well, something that I want to ask about is I see a lot of people posting about all these cool amenities that they're adding and all these things. And one that I've seen coming up lately concerns me and I think it's cool. It's super cool. I totally use it. If I was renting, the house is a full weight room and exercise room and that concerns me a lot. And maybe I'm traumatized because there was a story in, I'm from Starkville, Mississippi. There's a story in Jackson, Mississippi when I was in junior high or high school and they were having a lock in at the church which if y' all don't know what that is, just Google it. It's a very like Southern Baptist thing to do. Anyway, they were having a youth lock in at one of the churches that had, I think it had like a school attached to it and they had a weight room and people were playing around in the weight room. A girl went in there and was bench pressing and she was by herself and nobody really knows what happened, but she dropped the barbell on her throat and died.
So that's immediately what I think of when unsupervised people are in weight rooms. But you know, maybe I'm, I'm traumatized, but you tell me what the league, like, what do you need if you're going to do something like this? What do you need to do if anything like. Or should we probably not do this?
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I would think a pool is probably riskier than a weight room, but maybe not. You know, you have a good point with the barbell. But I think when you have a weight room like that, I hadn't seen that trend. That's kind of an interesting trend.
You know, you're going to want to have a rental agreement and then or license agreement, I call it a license agreement because I want to avoid the, that the tenancy, you know, landlord, tenant relation there. But you're going to have a rental agreement where you're having folks, you know, sign a waiver holding you harmless for the use of that equipment. Kind of like a gym. You go to a gym, you're. You're signing a waiver before you go to a gym. So similar concept and then maybe being thoughtful about what you put in there. So maybe you don't put those heavy, you know, something you need a spotter for. Like I would say that you don't put that in there. There's no need for that. And a short term rental, right. But maybe some free, you know, some dumbbells. And then, you know, if you're hosting children, I'd be concerned about children too, right? Grabbing, trying to like play with those and making sure it's in a safe spot that can be locked or like closed away from children. So children, you know, it's not a hazard for children.
[00:09:58] Speaker C: Well, you brought up pools. So more people have pools than they have weight rooms. So what do we need to do to cover ourselves legally in the event that we have a pool? Because I think, you know, if you own something in Florida, chances are you have a pool. I've got a few pools. What do we do here?
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think of a pool and your rental and all that as sort of like a trifecta. Right. You're going to want to have your home and the llc, you're going to want to have insurance, like really good insurance. So making sure that you have commercial insurance or that just you have a really solid policy. So working with a really good insurance broker on telling them what you're doing, tell them what amenities you have. Say like, hey, I have this pool, I have this weight room, I'm adding a sauna, I'm adding a hot tub, like anything like that. You just want to really be transparent with your insurance agent.
If you're, you know, on a cliff or something like that, you know, all those different things that are risk, you're going to want to let your insurance agent know to make sure you're fully covered. And then having adequate coverage, typically 1 million is enough I think is what most insurance agents will tell you. But if you have a higher net worth, you might want to bump that up a little bit.
And then with the pools you're going to want to again have that, that rental agreement as well. So we've got the insurance as number one, we've got our LLC as number two, and then we have our rental agreement or license agreement. And so in there you're going to want to have something specifically about the pool holding harmless you for anything that happens there.
Now you're also going to want to do stuff around the pool like make sure you have some signage up and also some life saving things like trying to think what those are called. The Shepherd's Hook I think that's what it's called. You might consider doing like the water watcher tag. You might consider having breezeway or something like that or some sort of safety inspection.
I know breezeway does it, so that's why I say breezeway.
So there's just, I think, a bunch of different things that you can help mitigate your liability if something terrible were to happen. Because the thing is, we're in the United States, we're a litigious society. If something terrible happened at your pool or even your weight room, it's someone's probably going to sue you. Right. It's like kind of unavoidable, but it's like creating these different processes to help yourself when that happens. Where the lawyer on the other side sees that, okay, your home's in the llc, you have this rental agreement, you have the signs, you have the training, you've been doing inspections, you know you weren't negligent in any way, this was purely an accident, then you know they're going to keep it in that insurance limit. So you just really want to try to stay with your insurance limits and those sort of things so you don't have to deal with coming out of pocket or anything like that.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: Okay, so pretty basic, you want to make sure that you have enough insurance. Insurance is aware you're not negligent, so you're doing checks. Breezeway is a good option for that. Make sure you have signage, life saving devices, all the things. I think that's pretty straightforward. But you know, a lot of people get ahead of themselves and don't think about these things. So it's good to talk about.
Another one that I think I see so many people in our Facebook group ask about or complain about is a service animal versus an emotional support animal.
I mean, I see so many and it's, I don't know, I'm not a, a dog or of a service animal breed expert, but I see some like Chihuahuas with service animal tags. And like my Chihuahua is most definitely not performing any sort of, like, I love her, I want to cuddle her. And she does provide me some, some, some emotional support, but she's not performing anything. So I'd love to hear an attorney's take on how to deal with this
[00:13:40] Speaker B: kind of a thing.
Yeah, no, for sure. So it's going to vary state by state in terms of whether you have to accept both an emotional support animal and service animal. A lot of states you only have to accept a service animal. So if someone says they're bringing a service animal, you are going to have to accept them under the American Disabilities Act.
But you can ask them two questions. So you can ask them, is the animal required because of a disability and what task has that animal been trained to perform to help you with? So you can ask those two questions. You're really not supposed to ask anything else you're not supposed to ask about, like, hey, can you provide proof that this is for your disability or anything like that?
I think if some is, you know, you could also clarify like this is a service animal, not an emotional support animal. And then truly you have to welcome them and if not, they could potentially report you and you could be investigated. I have heard of Airbnb making rare exceptions to this if there's some, maybe if you're owner occupied and there's some allergy or something like that.
So you could look into that if it's real concern for you. But I've had, I think a couple service dogs come and they were legit service dogs. Like they had the, I don't know, the service, what's it called, the harness and stuff like that because they accidentally left it and I had to mail it back to them.
So I mean, there are people who legitimately need service dogs for legitimate reasons and you really can't say no to those. Emotional support, on the other hand, you can say no those, no to those in a lot of states.
So you just want to kind of clarify on that.
And then in terms of a pet fee, you can't charge a pet fee for a service animal is my understanding. And then emotional support, I believe you could, depending on the state.
And then you also, like, if someone's asking you this and then you kind of, you want to be careful too about creating like, you know, we're in hospitality, right. We don't want to create a hostile relationship with someone who's going to end up coming with a service animal.
And then, you know, you start off on that wrong foot. So it's kind of like a delicate bance, in my opinion, from dealing with that myself.
[00:15:40] Speaker C: Yeah. And this isn't something that I've really even dealt with in our short term rental business maybe once. But it was, you know, looked to me to be very clear that it was a service animal. But I think where people's fear is is that people abuse the service animal title and they want to and they lie and they say, yeah, my chiweenie is a service animal, not an emotional support animal. And then is there any way to establish the difference without potentially asking a question that puts you at some sort of legal liability?
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Not that I know of. You know, I'm not like an ADA expert, you know, that's not what I am. I do, you know, on my podcast I, I want to have like an ADA expert because I want to ask a few of these questions that you're asking too.
You know, an ADA attorney who does this. But I, I think I would just be real cautious about it, you know, because if you, let's say you do ask these questions, you go beyond those two questions I've talked about. And now that person's mad they have a legit service animal, they're mad they decide to report you and they report you to some sort of federal agency. I mean, you could become under investigation for that. I've seen like small businesses get under investigation for potentially not allowing a service animal. So you just don't want to be on the wrong side of it.
[00:16:56] Speaker C: Yeah. So it's probably best to just not ask a lot of questions in that scenario. And to be honest, like it has not come up really in our business and we've been doing it over 10 years now and 10, 10 short term rentals. So just kind of have to grin and bear it, I guess.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: When it comes to buying and selling your first or next vacation home, you need to work with the best.
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[email protected] all right, so I have
[00:17:42] Speaker C: one more question before we get into what I think a lot of people want to hear about too, which is LLC and entity set up. But my question before that is raising capital and taking money from other people in order to buy a big short term rental or a hotel or something like that. Because I see a lot of people doing this and sometimes I'm like, I don't think you can just post on Facebook and ask strangers to invest in this. But I'm not sure. So what do you say?
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to be real cautious on that without triggering securities regulations and blue sky laws, which will vary state to state. But the SEC does cover this nationwide. And if you are asking strangers for money, that's going to trigger a security and so you're going to have to file stuff with the SEC in that scenario.
Likely depending on how you're advertising it, you might be limited to accredited investors only.
So you really, you're not supposed to crowdfund the way you're talking about without Doing, you know, some serious securities law. Now the way you can kind of go around this is if it's only friends and family, then you're not going to be triggering securities laws. But if you're publicly, you know, advertising for it, you know, you're going to want to have to make sure you're complying with all the blue sky laws and that you are giving investors proper disclosures and that sort of thing. I think that's, that was another mistake I was going to mention is the way people raise money seems to be likely not in compliance with law. Now can you get away with that? Sure. But like, I think the problem comes up is when something goes wrong. Right. Everything's fine when everything's going dandy, but if something goes wrong with the deal, I think that's where you could get into some trouble.
[00:19:35] Speaker C: Yeah, totally agree with that. So you should, if you're planning to raise money or get money from other people to buy a property, you really do need to hire an attorney who specializes in this type of law. Don't get your uncle who does divorce law to set this up for you. So, and, and make sure that you have the guidelines so that you don't make any mistakes.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Yes, that's definitely what I would recommend. And so you'd be looking for like a securities attorney or you know, an, a business attorney, something like that would be who you'd be looking for.
[00:20:09] Speaker C: Got it.
All right, now onto the thing that's a little more applicable to most people and that is setting up your LLCs and your asset protection, basically. So can you kind of give us a primer on if, if I'm a new short term rental investor and okay, so I bought this, maybe I bought it in my personal name so that I could use a conventional loan, but now I want to make sure that I'm protected. What should be my first steps and what should I do?
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that you should definitely do this early on because I mean, depending on your state, it can trigger transfer taxes or property uncapping if there's not an exception. There's some exceptions in Michigan, but you'd want to transfer your property into an llc. And then there's also concerns potentially depending on how you financed your loan with the due on sale clause.
But I mean, in that scenario, let's say it's you and your husband who bought the house and you're transferring into an LLC owned by you husband, then you're fine. For Fannie Freddie, like they have an exception that as long as it's the same ownership that you'd be fine. But it's going to vary depending on the loan product you got.
So you are going to want to check on that too with whoever you, you did the lending and just be straightforward and telling them what you're going to be doing.
Now. I mean, if you did it and you transfer it, and let's say they did, it did trigger the due on sale clause, meaning that your loan would be called due and that they want you to pay everything off, then you could potentially transfer it back. Right? You could transfer it back to your names and then, you know, take away that triggering.
So, but yeah, so when you, let's say you buy this house, you would, I definitely would recommend that you put it in llc. And I don't recommend that you just have like a management company be an LLC and then you still personally own it because I know people talk about doing it that way, but you really need your house and the LLC to make it separate from you and your assets. And so you're doing that to separate from you personally. So if something happened at the property, the person would be limited to coming after you for the assets in the llc. As long as you have it properly set up and you have separate bank accounts and you're really treating this LLC as a separate entity. You're not treating it as like, you know, the Avery Carle llc. Like, it's just a name only. It's not really an llc. It's just a name only because you haven't separated your bank accounts. You use the same email address. You know, you are not, whenever you're getting a contract, you're doing it as Avery Carl, you're not doing it as the llc.
You know, those would be ways that you could set up an LLC and have sort of a failure with it. But I definitely recommend this because, you know, I talk about this on one episode of my podcast about an $11.6 million verdict that happened and it was against someone for a diving off of a, a, a dock and on their property there's a little bit of water and they dived into 11 inches of water and they became quadripedal. And so they kind of, yeah, it's terrible. 11.6 million dollar verdict there. And that person did not have their house in an llc. And so it was them personally being sued. And so, you know, with most, you know, insurance policy limits like 1 million. I mean, this was several years ago too, so it's probably 1 million, you know, know they're exceeding their insurance policy So I don't know what happened there, like, ultimately, because they ultimately ended up settling post jury verdict.
But I imagine that, you know, there was some devastation. Could be that they had to file for bankruptcy or something like that. I didn't look into it. But anyway, that's. That's sort of the cautionary tale of why you really want to have it separate. Because if something, you know, horrible happens, then you at least know that your liability is limited to what's in that LLC.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: Geez. 11 inches of water.
Yes.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: It was like a horrible scenario. Like the guy allegedly, you know, what happened is the guy arrived late. He didn't see the water in the daylight, so it was dark when he arrived. So it looked deep to him. There was, of course, drinking involved.
[00:24:02] Speaker C: I was about to say, was he hammered?
Yeah, I'm too scared to get in dark, to get in open dark water anyway, even slowly.
So he had to have some substances involved to even want to do that.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So. But yeah, that's what happened in the jury side. You know, there was all sorts of different arguments on both sides, but the jury sided with the guy. And I think it. I mean, he. Sometimes those cases where someone lives but they're like severely injured or even, you know, higher value in terms of the litigation amount versus if someone passed away, because now they have to live with that injury for the rest of their life.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Yeah, that's terrifying. So, you know, make sure that you have it in a separate LLC with a separate bank account. Make sure that you're not commingling people, trolls. Favorite comments on Instagram. I found anytime anybody posts anything about LLCs and real estate, they're like, all you have to do is ask a judge to pierce the veil. What does that mean?
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Do they?
[00:25:01] Speaker C: Yeah, all they have to do is it really. All you have to do is say, judge, will you pierce the veil?
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Well, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Right.
You know, you'd have to show that, like you're talking about with having this commingling, that kind of. What I was just mentioning that you and the LLC are like the same and that the LLC is just a name only. That when you go and do a contract with someone, it's with you and not the llc, you know, for your house. Like, so anything you're doing with your house, you just want to make sure that it's all your using that llc. You're not just setting it up and not using it.
So keeping those separate bank accounts, I say separate email address helps as well. So you email from a different account. I mean, you can just create a Gmail one. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. You don't need a domain.
You know, just really trying to think of yourself as separate from this LLC as best you can.
[00:25:52] Speaker C: Gotcha.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Gotcha.
Because otherwise then, yeah, they would say pierce the corporate veil. And it's like your LLC isn't real, it's just you. And now everything's at stake again.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: And how would they prove that? So let's say you are doing everything right and they're like, pierce the corporate veil, judge, and you are, you're not co mingling and all these things, then what?
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Well, I would, you know, hope that that would be denied by the judge. Right. There'd be discovery. So discovery is like when you. I don't know if you've ever been involved in a lawsuit, Avery, but it's like where you have like requests to you for documents. So they might request your bank account documents to make sure that's true. They might request email documents and records. You know, anything they can try to do to establish that you and the LLC are one and the same.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: Got it. And I guess my question here, now I'm probably getting a little too technical. So is there a difference in whoops. I accidentally used my personal card one time to get something for this property. And just blatant, it is just a in name only llc and there's so much commingling. Like, does it only take one mistake to pierce that veil?
[00:27:04] Speaker B: No, I think, you know, obviously it's gonna be very factual based. Right.
So, you know, I think as long as you're documenting when that mistake happens, it's like, oh, shoot, I just did that. And you're emailing your bookkeeper, your accountant, or if you are, your bookkeeper, account accountant, you're keeping track of that. I think that's totally fine, like an occasional thing. But we're really talking about the, you know, there's no separation situation, no separate bank accounts ever opened. Would be the very, very obvious not to do that a lot. Maybe, maybe there could be an argument made. Right.
But it's all factual based. But I would say the one timer is not going to. Not going to get you there.
I'm sure it happens. You know, oops, I forgot my business card. Oops, you know, whatever the case may be.
[00:27:46] Speaker C: Okay, and what's your opinion on people using services like Legal Zoom to set up an LLC for their properties?
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Well, I don't know about Legal Zoom. I've heard bad experiences from people, I guess they could. I mean, I haven't personally ever used it because, I mean, I just set up my own, of course, but I have heard bad experiences from folks. I'd say you're better off just finding a local attorney, you know, and having them do it for you. Or maybe if there's some training out there to show you how to do it yourself, that could be a possibility. But a local attorney is not going to charge you ideally that much for setting up an LLC. Like, I would think somewhere between the 500 to 1000 range is how much it should cost you with a local attorney. And in legalzoom, I want to say it's not that far off from the 500 range once you add in all the fees and like, extras that you end up having to do. So I'd say it's worth it to just try to find someone local.
[00:28:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree. And then especially if you end up buying a bunch of properties and you don't have stuff set up right, I think it's worth it to have a professional do it on the front end. Even if it's a little more expensive than having to try and unwind it later.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:29:01] Speaker C: Do you think people should have a different LLC for each property?
[00:29:05] Speaker B: You know, it really depends on your risk tolerance. I think the best practice, of course, is to have a separate LLC for each property. For like example, that 11.6 million dollar verdict. Even if they had an LLC set up, let's just say they did. But then they had like, let's say 10 properties and they were all in the same LLC. Well, now all 10 properties are subject to that $11.6 million verdict.
So, you know, best practice is to have them separate. But I do understand the cost associated. You know, it kind of depends on your state too. Like in Michigan, it's, you know, 50 or bucks to form an LLC. You know, plus, of course, whatever you're paying someone to do for you versus California, it's $800 to form an LLC. Oh, wow. And then you're also talking about potentially, you know, some additional tax forms you have to file. So I understand there's. You kind of have to weigh those, like annual cost, but best practice is definitely to have them all in a separate llc. And then of course, you can do a holding company, which can help with your tax costs because then they can all become disregarded entities. But you can talk to a tax person, you know, more on that specifically.
[00:30:11] Speaker C: Okay, I think that is it for my questions. What have I not asked that you feel like our listeners could really benefit from hearing.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: I'm trying to think.
I think you've hit a lot of the big, big things. I would just say, you know, we've talked about it, but it's just definitely worth it to have a nice local attorney, someone to help you through all these things, ask all these questions and be your guidance through this. As you, you know, you're making sometimes like, you know, big, big purchases, you know, half a million, million dollars. So you, you just want to make sure you're not, you know, being penny pound, I don't know, whatever that expression is, you know, pound foolish, you know, by not spending a little bit on attorney on the front end and then ending up with a larger legal consequence.
[00:30:57] Speaker C: Okay, I think that's really great advice. So now we're to the last three questions of the show. First question, what advice would you give 20 year old Katie if you knew then what you know now?
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Buy a house, right? You know, start buying houses right away. I think I bought my first house when I was like 28, so it'd be awesome if I had started a little bit earlier.
And you know, it, it's just like an amazing growth strategy, you know, wealth building strategy and for generational wealth and all that. So I'm happy I got into it when I did. But I definitely would tell 20 year old Katie, go buy a house.
[00:31:36] Speaker C: Yeah, me too.
What advice would you give a new investor who's looking to get started in short term rentals today?
[00:31:46] Speaker B: I would say, you know, surround yourself with the right people, you know, get Avery Carl to help you, get her, her crew to help you find a house, you know, the short term shop, get an agent that knows short term rentals, you know, find the right attorney, find the right lender, find the right cpa. So just surround yourself with the right experts and that's going to help you move faster, quicker and also make less mistakes.
[00:32:11] Speaker C: All right, also great advice. And last question, what's your favorite book that's impacted your mindset?
[00:32:18] Speaker B: I would definitely say the Miracle Morning. I don't know if you've read that one, but I love really is a favorite of mine. Really. You know, when you take that dedicated time to do the steps in the Miracle Morning, which is just sort of having like a really rigorous, a good morning routine, you know, where you're journaling, visualizing, exercising and all those sort of things. It's really when I'm doing that I really feel like I'm excelling in terms of my, you know, career and Rentals, everything like that. So I just love that book. I always recommend it to folks.
[00:32:50] Speaker C: That is a great one. And you have an entire podcast on short term rental law. So if our listeners want to come listen to you, subscribe or follow you on all the social media. How do they do that?
[00:33:03] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I'd love to have folks come listen. It's called STR Law.
And then I also have a legal template shop. So if folks needed any templates or anything like that, I've got, you know, rental agreements on there.
I also have terms and conditions for your website if you're doing direct bookings, privacy policy, that sort of thing. We didn't really touch on any of that, but you might want those up there if you are doing those direct bookings.
So I have a bunch of different legal templates on there and for any of your listeners, I'm happy to offer a 20% discount.
So, Avery, 20 would be the code and also a bonus session with me to answer any legal questions they might have for legal, educational purposes, a 30 minute one on one.
So I'm happy to do that for the next 30 days after this episode airs. So really, really excited to have launched that. And so if people want to find more information about that, that's on Strlaw do.
Awesome.
[00:34:03] Speaker C: Love that. I think that is so worth it, guys. You really should take advantage of that one on one with an attorney. Love that.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Avery. What? What a pleasure. Always have listened, been a listener, so how cool to be a guest.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for coming on and listeners, we'll catch you next week.
Sam.
