[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'.
[00:00:30] Speaker C: All.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of the Short Term Show. As always, I am your host, Avery. Carl got a really interesting guest today. He's not new, he's been on before. You're all familiar with him. But I know y' all love to talk about data. Some of you love to incorrectly talk about data.
Sometimes I incorrectly talk about data. So we've got Kenny Bedwell from STR Insights so that we can all not incorrectly talk about short term rental data. Kind of look at, you know, what, what went on the past few years in short term rentals in terms of income and what we're looking at for 2026. So how's it going, Kenny?
[00:01:08] Speaker C: It's, it's going well. Thanks for having me on the show. I love, I love your. Like, some of you like to talk about data, some of you like to incorrectly talk and that's so true.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it just seems like every time I post anything about income or just personal experience about what happened with my properties this year, they're like income's down, incomes down, and it's like income is down from 2021. But in my experience at least the past few years have been decently predictable. We haven't seen, at least in my experience, any wild upward or downward swings. Just kind of, you know, your basic fluctuations. So I'm interested to hear what the data says about that.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Yeah, and I think it's important to understand for people that like, just if we just take a step back, like a macro and look at it from like the lens of macroeconomics, any type of investment, it doesn't matter what it is, any type of investment where there's abnormal amount of returns, you're going to have like this mass adoption in lots of people in turn to the space which basically forces returns down. Does it make that investment a bad investment? Does it mean you can't find. No, it doesn't. It just means that like there has to be some like stability at some point in time. And so, and that that's what's going on in the short term rental market. I mean, we saw crazy highs back in, you know, 2020, 2021. I mean, arguably 2022 as well was doing very well. And so, and then as things have, you know, stabilize, I like to say stabilize. It's not saturated per se, it's stabilization.
You know that this is the natural maturity of the short term rental market and an investment in general. So.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which is what you want at the end of the day? Like. Yes. Did all a lot of us who bought before COVID do really, really well?
Yeah, but that like you said in any investment type that was the early adopter phase. And just because we are no longer in the early adopter phase doesn't mean that it's not a good investment anymore. As a matter of fact, I think that, I think we're better off now than back then because there's so much, the industry has matured so much the infrastructure and in every market has matured so much in terms of there being vendors and companies to help you be a successful short term rental investor. That did not exist back then in the early adopter phase. In my early adopter phase there was I think air DNA started the same year or the year after we started. So there was no, there was no doing research on income.
It was, you just had to say okay, well this, this looks like something people would rent. I'm going to do this. And there wasn't breezeway. There wasn't. A lot of the property management softwares didn't really exist yet. So I mean back then we had to uphill in the snow both ways.
At the beginning of every month I had to look at my calendar and send an email to my cleaner and I would send it in two different formats so that she could not possibly miss one.
And I had to watch my notifications on my phone every day and make sure nobody booked anything. It's so much easier now to be successful in terms of just running it. I don't think I would go back even for those prices.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a, that's a. Yeah, that's a really good point. I agree.
It's so much. There, there's two ways we're successful in the short term rental space. Number one, we have to buy correctly and then number two, we have to operate it right. So it's not just buying the right property. We have to operate it and market the property and all those other things. And today more than ever, like you're saying it's, it's so much easier to do that. There's so much more technology, you can manage so much more properties without the effort and the energy that you had to pre pandemic time. In my opinion. I think the pandemic time really shot up with a lot of companies and stuff and the technology. And so yeah, it's definitely changing. And then with AI, and I'm sure you've talked about that, we don't have to get into this, but like we just AI advancements, I mean that's going to take it to the next level too. So the future is bright and exciting for the short term rental space. If you're willing to, if you're willing to take the time to stay ahead and innovate and think smartly about the investment, which is what smart investors do, right?
[00:05:41] Speaker B: One would think.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: One would think. Okay, well, you know.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: This episode of the Short Term show is brought to you by the Short Term Shop. If you're interested in buying a short term rental in one of the top vacation markets in America, just go to the Shorttermshop.com and click get connected with an agent. If you purchase a home with the shop, you'll have access to all of our client only benefits such as training on how to manage your short term rental. So we'll teach you everything you need to know from how to set up your Airbnb and VRBO listings to how to use the property management software that you'll need to streamline your business all the way down to helping you source your local boots on the ground like cleaners, handy people, et cetera. We've taught thousands of people just like you how to buy and manage their vacation homes from anywhere in the world. So head on over to the ShortTermshop.com and click Get Connected with an Agent to get started. I do have to mention that we're brokered by XP or else I get in trouble. We'll see you guys over there.
Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, when people come to me and they're like, hey, look at my property, I'm not doing well, I'm going to have to sell it. You know, any, any number of things, I'm losing money, blah, blah, blah. The number one thing that people that I find or that the, the next sentence that I always ask is, okay, let's look at your prices. What are you doing with your revenue management? And they say I don't do my revenue management. Price labs does my revenue management. No, you manage your price labs to effectively do your revenue management. So what kind of speaking to what you just said? You have to manage right? You have to buy right, you have to finance right? And you have to manage right? And if you are not managing your systems, if you think you're just going to hook it up to price labs and Hospitable, or host away or something and then sit on the couch and eat donuts the rest of your life. It's not going to make money.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: No, no.
We have to think about this as it's a maturing industry and maturing industries require you think about like, for example, like hotels. Hotels have been around forever.
I mean, arguably short term rentals have been around forever. But in this sense, like an established set of an industry that people invest in. And we're even seeing private equity. So private equity, they buy hotels, they understand hotels trade at a cap rate. We're even seeing some private equity and some institutions and banks even lending. We've seen the DSCR product. I mean, that's been out for I think 2017 or 18, but how much more widely adopted that's become. And it's because the industry is becoming more professionalized and it's maturing, which is a good sign for people who are doing it the right way because then they can sell eventually sell at cap rates and trade it as a true investment.
And that's eventually, I think, where things are going to go down. Not this year, not next year, but down the road where we're going to be at. But you have to be willing to take ownership of the investment. You have to be willing to understand and stay on top of, you know, new technology that's coming out that's going to give you the edge beyond just, you know, oh, my property's not performing, I need to sell it, you know.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: So you said something interesting that I kind of want to go back to. You said, I mean, hotels have been around forever. Well, actually short term rentals have been around forever. And I want to point that out that short term rentals have been around forever. So, you know, I've seen people say, like, I'm finding the next untapped market. And it's like what the Smokies were before everybody discovered it or it's what Gulf Shores were before everybody was before everybody discovered it. Guys like I started buying the Smokies in 2015 and there were already tens of thousands of short term rentals and had been forever. They just weren't necessarily on a platform that was measurable like Airbnb where, where you can, you have access to data. They were just on random property management companies and everything was very disjointed.
And like Gulf Shores, I'm from Mississippi, we've been going to Gulf Shores since forever. None of that stuff like is new as of 2015 or 2021. And I would say as of now like there's nothing that's undiscovered. Everything is discovered, everything everyone is aware of, short term rentals and markets, et cetera. It's just you making good decisions in terms instead of like trying to get out there and trailblaze and it's all discovered, it's all saturated. Just you got to make good investment decisions and stop trying to like just find something that hasn't been done because it's all been done. Everything's always been done, in my opinion.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I mean, yes, that, that is correct. Like every market, like you shouldn't buy in a market where there are no short term rentals because that also means there's going to be no cleaners, no handyman, no resources. You're not going to be successful from that standpoint. You're going to have a hard time. So you should always buy in a market where there are and therefore it's been discovered. Right.
I think what I look for and what I see are markets that are when, when I, if I ever say, I don't say untapped, but if I were to say untapped, what I think of is a market where the barrier of entry, meaning like the competition is extremely poor or low.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: And you know, like people, so one of the properties that I have in a market, people just like most of them don't do dynamic pricing. I mean they do flat. It's a, it's a traditional vacation market and it's a lake market and they do flat pricing during the weekday and then on the weekend it's slightly higher. And then if it's summer season, it's this price. If it's winter season, it's that price. That's it.
And, and, and if you're looking, and here's the interesting thing about this, if you're looking at the data, that market isn't going to wow anybody from a data standpoint because people have been pricing it wrong. People have been doing the wrong like, and they're just not taking advantage of the technology and things out there. And so I look for those places because I think that's where there's good opportunity.
But that doesn't mean you can't find opportunity in even the established markets as well because not everybody is doing the stuff that you talk about and the stuff that, you know, like taking advantage of the, the tools and resources out there. Even in the popular vacation markets.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean you can go in like just down here on 38 in the 1 mile between my house and my office, I pass at least 15 properties that are probably, you know, some of them are Gulf Front, some of these are 5 million properties minimum that are still on the rinky dinkiest property management company, which I don't want to name names, but I really do want to name it because they're not ever going to hear this. And it's called Dune Island Vacation Rentals. And if you go, if you go, if you go look at their website, it is like a 1995 Angel Fire website that like these properties are losing so much money and I'm sure the owners don't care, they've owned them forever and whatever. But there's still in a very saturated market like this. There's still a ton of properties, good properties that are on management companies are being managed in ways that are, are shitty.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: No, it's so true. I mean, and if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't, you know, take our word for it or you're like, you don't believe us, whatever, like, you're like, I don't know about that. Go, go from a guest perspective, go pick a popular market. I literally just went through this. I went and we're trying to plan a vacation. So my family just moved to Raleigh, North Carolina and we're trying all the beach markets in to find our like beach, you know, because it's only like two to three hours away. And so last year we did the Outer Banks. This year we're going to try like near Myrtle, North Myrtle up there. Ocean Isle is the area we targeted near Wilmington. And you know, we, I started looking for short term rentals on Airbnb and I, you know, I, I don't super focus on price. I'm not a, that, that type of consumer anymore. I'm looking for amenities, I'm looking for things that my children can do and enjoy and the stuff that, you know, like we should add to the properties and there's just nothing. And I found one and that I was like, okay, this is it. This is the only place. And I mean I went through, I combed through the, all the places and I mean so many places you had to rent, pack and plays, you had to have toddlers. So it's a big deal for me. You know, there's like, the places aren't kid friendly. They're, you know, there's just a lot of like things to it and you're like, man, like just whittling all of these properties out and there's hundreds if not thousands of potential short term Rentals there, they're just all doing it a set way that's in my opinion, ancient and not updated. And I found one that I really liked and we ended up booking it. And the guy reached out to me. He actually knew who I was because he follows all the podcasts and he listens to everything and he, and he does the research and he knows he, and it just like, it was like, yep, he understood who I was as a guest avatar, what I was looking for, and it was an obvious choice in a quote unquote saturated market.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And before I ask you a few more questions about like what you think about 2026 and what we can expect from the market, the other thing, the other big mistake that I see people make is aside from, okay, I'm not managing my systems, I just thought I could sit on the couch and, and chill the rest of the of my life and throw my phone in the Gulf and, and my properties are gonna make money and I'm gonna quit my job.
The other piece that I think you can do that, right?
The other piece, the SEC number two thing that I, I see when people say, hey, I'm not making money or I'm losing money. Can you look at this, is they have some kind of usually enormous heloc, like several hundred thousand dollars that they used to make the down payment on their property. And they didn't, they didn't factor in that. If you get like I've, I have seen more than one person buy a property with a half a million dollar heloc and they don't factor in that. That he lock is basically another mortgage on like a half a million dollar house. It's as if you went and bought a second house and they don't factor that HELOC payment into their numbers. And then I'm like, man, you're, you've got a great property, your gross income looks great. Why aren't you making any money? And then we go through their expenses and there's this huge HELOC payment. I'm like, guys, well that's, that's why.
So you also have to make sure that you finance right and don't over leverage yourself. There is no shame in buying a one bedroom place. There are lots of market markets where that works.
I own a few.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: I think most markets it actually works quite well.
I mean, I'm serious. I think the one bedrooms have, tend to have the highest, just general roi even compared to large properties. If I didn't have a, if, if I wasn't like, oh, I'm buying a, you know, I could buy a big property. I would buy a one bedroom because that's the number one. That's the largest group size or sorry, not group size, that's the largest demand size out of any bedroom count, which is couples, right, getaways.
And also they have less seasonality than other types of properties, higher occupancy, so it's an easier win. And you're absolutely right. I mean, and in 2026, like kind of tying it into everything, like we need to be thinking about.
If you're over leveraging on all the, you know, just the down payment, you're thinking about it wrong. You need to be thinking about how to invest into the property. Are the goal isn't just to buy the property. You have to set it up right, you have to furnish it right. You have to monetize it, you have to do all these things to it to be a top performing property. That should be the goal. Don't, don't set out to be the average.
I think the people who are trying to set out to be the average, they're the ones who are hurting the most and they're treating it as such and they'll continue to hurt. So you have to be prepared in 2026 to invest into your property and there's nothing wrong with that at all. And if you don't have a big budget, then just go down. Your budget isn't determined by what the bank says. It's really determined about what you can afford to do to invest into the property.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: So yeah, yeah, anything you can do to kind of stand out. And a lot of times that comes through management. And actually this reminded me. So my one bedroom property that we bought years ago, not because we were trying to be strategic, but because it was all we could afford at the time.
Luke, my husband, for those who are not aware, for Christmas, part of my Christmas present, he gave me an envelope and I was like, what is this?
And it was, it was a statement from the mortgage company on that little one bedroom property that he paid it off.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Paid off the little one bedroom. So we're working on paying off, you know, a good amount of our portfolio just because it's like, at this point, do we want more doors and more work for the same amount of cash flow or should we just pay things off and have the same amount of work for more cash flow? So that's, that's a conversation for another time. But our little one bedroom that we've had for almost 10 years. I'll never sell it because it does, it crushes it. It does great. I love one bedrooms.
[00:19:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, there's some. Yeah, you can see some, some great things in one bedrooms.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Are you looking for a change?
Well, the Short Term Shop is hiring realtors.
If you live in or want to move to one of the best vacation markets in the United States, we want you to join the team.
We are a small family owned business but we are one of the biggest real estate teams in the world.
We are looking for new team members.
Please contact us at theshortermshop.com careers theshortermshop.com Careers we have live one on one coaching sessions available with our wonderful top notch coaches at Short Term Shop plus. And we would love to help you in your vacation rental journey.
The mission remains constant to provide amazing homes so that our guests can create awesome memories with their families.
If you need help to set up your systems and processes, how to communicate with guests, how to improve your skill systems, how to find and hire housekeepers and all of the above, you are looking for short term shop plus.
You can find
[email protected] and the best part is the price is right, reasonably priced and if you are a Short Term Shop client, please use the code client at checkout for an even better deal on SDS plus.com all right, so.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Kenny, I want to hear what your analysis is, what your experience with the data. And I kind of said what mine was at the beginning of the, of the episode. So we had a big, big wild swing up, pretty significant swing down. Everything's kind of been rocking, you know, pretty steady for the past two or three years. You know, everything fluctuates. There's no, you know, you're always going to. Last year one of two things will happen. You will have made more money than you make this year, will have made less money. 50% of the time. It's going to be less. That's not necessarily a reason to sell. So don't freak out. If you made more money last year than this year. Things go up and down. But what, what have you seen across the board data wise for the last few years and what do you forecast for this year?
[00:21:38] Speaker C: Yeah, so going back to the beginning and once again, and this isn't a doom and gloom thing, but like it's, it's, it's called stabilization. Right. So we saw a period of like frankly, just on unrealistic returns, there was a huge amount of demand because Covid wiped out essentially. Like not wiped out, but Just depleted demand for hotels. Right. Everybody wanted to stay in Airbnb and there was no supply. So we had, like. We weren't at equilibrium. And so as time has gone on, so we. We've hit this, like, high of. In 2022 of revenue. And as time gone has gone on, what do we see? An increase in supply. Demand is still increasing every single year, too, but it's not increasing at the same rate the supply is. So it brings it back to equilib.
So what that means is that every single year since 2023, we've seen a decline in revenue by an average of 10% for the average. And I'm going to focus on that in a second. So each year, 2023, 2024, 2025, the average across the entire market. This isn't individual markets or new markets or any of this other stuff. It's the average. Right? All across the board is down 10% every single year. Okay, so number one, 2026, what do I see?
It might be down 10, could be down 5%. It'll tick. It's just the stabilization. Like, I don't. I think it's going to eventually kind of flatten at a certain point, but.
And maybe it's this year, maybe it's next year, but we're going to see the same thing. However, here's the kicker. So the average is going down. Does that mean everybody run and sell? No, it doesn't, because that's the average.
When we look at the top 10th percentile, the 90th percentile, or the top 10% of performers year over year since 2023, they're actually up 10% almost every single year. 2023 was actually a bigger year for them than 2024. They're still up. So the, so what's happening? It's like this. I call it the. The income gap of performance of properties are, are. So the, the top. The. The top producers are making more money and the bottom producers are making less money. And that's a sign of maturing and stabilization in a market, meaning people who are treating this like a professional investment, like it is, they're actually doing very well and they're making money year over year, whereas the average performer and people who are not treating it like they should be are performing less and less every single year as supply increases. And, and so really, it's a tale of two types of investors. So what? And I challenge people. I say, like, well, what type of investor do you want to be? And they're like, well, I want to be in the top 10%, then you have to think like the top 10%. You have to operate like the top 10%. If you can't afford to be in a particular market or that particular size of property count, you got to go down. You have to be willing to invest into your property. And so it all comes down to how you're going to treat this type of investment and be the, you know, professional operator or the, you know, the mom and pop Joe Schmo who's going to get wiped out eventually and make a bad investment because you're treating it as, you know, something. I could just throw it up on Airbnb and make income, and those people are the ones who are hurting every single year in the data.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I would totally agree with that. I think you do have to treat it as a business. And a lot, I think a lot of, you know, I know we've talked so much about COVID income on this, but let's talk about the COVID real estate market side of things.
So many people jumped into this that should not, you know, they're not real estate investors. They saw 2% mortgages and said, man, I've always wanted that beach house. I'm gonna get it. I'll just. And then it was kind of the perfect storm of Airbnb kind of not blowing up because it had been around for, I don't know, a long time at that point, but becoming much more mainstream and a lot of everyday people just buying things and putting them on Airbnb.
So it's kind of the perfect storm of being able to buy things for.
At the time, we didn't know they were cheap, but now they seem cheap. 2%, 3% mortgages and, oh, well, there's this new way to do things. I can just buy this and I can have it, and then I'll just put it on Airbnb when I'm not using it, but not treating it like a business, not treating it like an investment.
And a lot of those people have had to turn around and sell, and some of them at a loss because of the time in the market that they bought.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I, I think that, or not even. I think I've just seen the, it was, it was just so easy. It was easy to get in, it was easy to set up, it was easy to, to, to, to make money in this. And then with increased competition in the market and supply and people just professionalizing what they're doing, I, I, it's just, it's, it's Gotten harder. And then the bounce back too of the hotel industry. And frankly, I, I mean, I don't know.
I'm, I'm sure you've stayed at a hotel recently, but if you're not like, I, I've just seen in the last few years hotels have stepped up their game to compete with short term rentals. From a regulatory standpoint, we've seen them banning short term rental, like lobbying together and banning, but also just from like a quality standpoint too. And, and I think that as short term rental operators we could learn some things from some of the hotels and what they're doing to improve and compete in this space.
But I mean, it is, I just keep going back to this, the professionalization, the stabilization of the industry that we're seeing and we're going to continue to see it in 2026.
I don't, I don't project this, this, this downswing at all. I mean, it's literally going to be very similar to what we saw last year. It's not going to change that much.
You know, some people have thoughts about the economy.
No, not, it's not really going to have that big of an impact on vacations this year. The economy isn't down overall like some people want to bring it out to make it out to be.
But the reality is we are seeing, we're going to see a lot of the same that we saw year over year. And the people who are treating this the right way, they're going to be up, you know, and so what do you want to be? Do you want to be up or down? If you want to be up, then you really got to think about how you operate and how your property is and make those investments. And I'm seeing more people today instead of just go out and try to buy another property in another property like you. They're paying off their debt service or they're making improvements to their property which improve cash flow because they can get a better return by investing in their current properties today than just trying to go get another door like you said. So I, there's just multiple ways to be successful in this and it might just be doubling down in your current property without trying to just sell it and offload and 1031 into something else.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: So, yeah, I found 1031s to be much more annoying than actually worth doing. So I just came real close to doing one. And I'm like, no, I'm just going to keep, I'm just going to keep those. I'm just going to buy this One just, she's gonna buy this. Right. Because it just becomes such a pain.
And they do work really, really well. But, like, I already know what property I want. I'm not trying to get, like, forced to buy something because I'm under a timeline that I don't necessarily want.
So it's just, yeah, 1031s are great.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: You got it. You got to really plan them out.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:04] Speaker C: Like, if you do it right, like, you. You can really give yourself 60 days instead of 45, like based on, you know, like when your buyers get through their due dilig.
But if you're not planning it outright, it can be extremely stressful if you don't know where you're going to be looking. Like, you got to have all your kind of your ducks in a row before you just go. And then also, how quickly does your property sell? You don't know that. So there's a lot of unknown variables with 10, 30 ones that make them challenging on top of the time pressure. So I totally agree what you're saying.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Yes. And sellers don't want to negotiate, but then when they turn around to go buy something, they are pissed off when their seller doesn't want to negotiate. Like this one I got under contract on, and they made it contingent on if the seller could get under contract on the other property that they wanted. Otherwise they could terminate our contract. And so this thing had been on the market for a while. I offered cash. They're like, not. Will not negotiate with me, period.
And then they said, okay, well, actually we're going to take this offer, but we can terminate if we can't get the property that we want. And. And then their agent made a comment to me after they terminated our agreement because they couldn't get the seller to negotiate. I'm like, yeah, it's funny how that works when there's so much inventory on the market and it's all sitting there and none of y' all want to negotiate, so.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah, you just get properties by making a bunch of offers right now.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: Yeah, Yeah, I think that's. That's so true. I mean, when me like, we help people find properties too. And it's.
It's funny how many, like we will have people offer on multiple deals and trying to do multiple things. And, you know, it. It's just kind of what you have to do today because somebody will be like, oh, I really like this one. I want to buy this one. And it just for whatever reason doesn't. Sellers won't negotiate or there's, you know, Some problem with it and then you're like back to square one. It's like, just be prepared. Don't get married to a property that you offer in, you know, you offer on.
Because it's really all about the numbers if this is truly an investment.
So. Yeah.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Right.
So I'm going to ask you in a minute what your top piece of advice is for investors in 2026. But first, let's talk about your event that you have coming up.
[00:31:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
So I'm really excited about this event. It's going to be live in person in New Orleans. It's called the STR Scale Summit. So what I wanted to do is everyone, I, I see a lot of events going on and there's nothing wrong with them, but they're very like focused on, you know, boutique hotels or micro resorts or short term rentals or, you know, whatever. And I wanted to create an event where people got an opportunity to learn about the different options that they could scale into without feeling like it's just one way or the other. Like I, I, for example, I hear all the time like boutique hotels, like that's the next thing you have to do. And like that's one thing you can do in our space to scale, but that's not the next thing to do.
And it actually doesn't make sense for a lot of people to do either. And that's. And so what I wanted to do is create an event, a smaller event where we have people get together, experts in the space like yourself. So a surprise spoiler alert. Avery is going to be there and Luke, I wrangled them in and we talk about different avenues of how to scale that might fit what your journey is.
And it's because it's going to be smaller. We're going to do some more hand, hands on things together. You obviously get to network and, and talk to people, but you're, we're going to have lenders who lend on these specific type of commercial investments, not just for short term rentals.
Who else I'm having, I've got my contracting team there, so I recently did a hotel in New Orleans.
We're actually going to tour the hotel as well. If that's, if people are like, I really want to do boutique hotels, check it out, check out the journey and the experience.
And we're going to talk about buying.
We've got Han and Kim, she buys micro resorts. She's going to come and speak on micro resorts. I'm going to talk about larger short term rental properties and then boutique Hotels. And so we've got like a really good, it's smaller, intimate, but a really good lineup of experts and people you can surround yourself with who are focused on, who have experience with scaling in the direction that worked for them. And that's what I want people to take away from. It is cool. I've come in and maybe and we're going to talk about how to raise money, how to get like, I mean there's going to be commercial lending and regular lending, like all these different options. You'll kind of know what you can do and you're going to see what's most comfortable for you and the route you want to take with scaling. So it's not just, you're not just boxed into a certain option option.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: So yeah, I love that, I love that you're bringing together a bunch of different asset classes because it really is one of my pet peeves in the real estate investing industry in general when the influencers are like this strategy. This one strategy does not work. It's dead. Do this other one that I'm selling. You like shut up. Just shut up. You can be successful in any type of real estate that you want to. You just have to lock in and learn it. Learn the numbers lear, learn the strategies to be successful. I don't care if it's multifamily long term, like commercial boutique hotels, short term rentals, you can be successful at any kind of real estate that you take the time to learn and understand the strategy and the numbers on. So I love that you're bringing together more than one asset class.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it, and, and I just, I, I feel like everybody, I, I, I feel a lot of you know, like tug from like everyone wanting to know more about boutique hotels because it sounds sexy.
But I find when I talk to a lot of people I find that it's just not really a good fit for them and they end up finding something else that's bigger like that they want to move into that. It might just be buying bigger single family homes or maybe micro resorts or moving into different types of asset classes within the real estate world that fit their goals. And I think that's really important is understanding what our goals are. Not letting other people online or YouTube videos dictate like what we should be going after.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Those YouTube videos dictate the doom porn real estate market influencers. All of those guys are like the market is going to crash tomorrow, it's going to be worse. In 2008, every single one of those guys has like a zillion followers and they're just, it's garbage.
[00:35:51] Speaker C: So, you know, it's really funny. I saw a stat, it was like over the last, like, like 60 years or 50 years of the real estate market, and it was like only 4/4 quarters. So it was every single quarter over the last 50 years, and only four quarters of the real estate market actually had significant drops, like losses.
So like, those guys, like the probability of that happening, it's not zero, but it's, it's all, it's incredibly low, you know, of them being right. And so, you know, a blind squirrel will find a nut every once in a while, but it's going to be a while before they find that nut, and it's not going to be anytime soon. And so I, I think it's just important that people take a step back and look at, you know, maybe, maybe there are other options that are more attractive for me and my lifestyle and my goals of what I'm trying to achieve that I didn't even think about that are, that are options out there and, and then how do I connect with the right folks folks to do that? That's, that's the other element of the, the event that we're trying to do. So the event is February 20th. It starts February 27th, the evening of February 27th to March 1st in New Orleans. And it's the str scale summit.com and since Avery's going to be there, she's a speaker. And if you're listening to this, you're obviously an Avery fan. We have a code you can use to get 20 off. It's just Avery 20, so a V E R Y and then 20 and you'll get 20% off of any ticket you choose. Tickets are relatively inexpensive.
I think they're like $400 right now for the, the, the entire event. The point's not to make money on the event. It's to network, build people and get people connect to the right folks. I'm really excited to meet people. I, I, there's people that are going to be there who have actually a ton of experience just attending and just the opportunity to sit down with them and network with them is going to be super valuable even for myself. Who's, who's going to be a part of the event. So I'm really, really, really looking forward to it. And it's in New Orleans, not in the middle of summertime, so it's a good time of the year to be there. So I think like Jazz Fest and something else is going on that Weekend too. So. Yeah.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: End of February. Yeah, end of February.
I'm not sure.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: I got Mardi Gras, so it's like a week after Mardi Gras so the city will be clean and, and there's gonna be like, it's like all the, the festivals start in that time of year and so anyway, it'll be fun.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: Yeah, my favorite place. I actually just got back from New Orleans last night.
[00:38:21] Speaker C: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Yeah, did a little girls trip with my daughter and my mom and it was awesome.
[00:38:26] Speaker C: Awesome. It is, it is a very unique city. I, I, I've come to enjoy it. Wouldn't personally live there, but it's fun to visit.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we, we love it.
We go probably once a month and just because there's not 30A is awesome but there's like not a lot to do. So we go to football games and kids get in like sports stuff and all the things. But anyway, last question of the show. It's going to be awesome. I'm really excited about, about going about being there. I'm going to learn some things, I'm going to talk about some things. But last question that I promised the viewers. What is your number one piece of advice for short term rental investors in 2026?
[00:39:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I think so. I, I touched on it earlier. I'm just going to re, emphasize again. Hopefully that's okay.
Just because I, I just think it has to be, it has to be like said again and again.
You have to think like the top 10%.
You, I, I remember when I started out and I was looking at data and even purchases like even, even after Covid I was always like well what is the 75th percentile or what is the average doing? I'll underwrite based off that. And I was never like under the mindset of like I'm going to be a top producing property. But when we look at the data, the top producing properties are the ones that are successful year in and year out. They're making more money is what I'm trying to say. And so when you're buying and acquiring and thinking about how to, or even if you have a property today, you need to be thinking about how can I be the best in my market? And that there, there's a, there's a whole lot of layers to that. There's the operation size, the marketing, the, the, even just the acquisition side or improvements you can do to the property. Like there's so much that that can involve that you can attack.
But that needs to be the mindset in 2026. How can I be in the top 10% this year? What do I need to do to do that? And a lot of you guys have great properties. You have fantastic properties. You're just not tapping into the full potential of that. And that might be just doing direct bookings and marketing on social media or whatever that one extra thing is that's going to get you up in revenue. But you have to think about that rather than just like, oh, panic, sell and try to buy something that's better.
I really do think you need to double down on thinking about how do I be in the top 10%, how do I invest in my current properties to be successful?
[00:40:55] Speaker B: So totally agree. Totally agree with that. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And if our listeners want to follow you on social media, how can they do that?
[00:41:05] Speaker C: So if you want to watch my embarrassing reels on social media, you can go follow me at. At Kenny Underscore Bedwell. I've got some funny ones. I've got some good, serious ones, too, educational ones, but the funny ones do really well. But yeah, that's the best place to do it at Kenny Underscore Bedwell.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: All right, Kenny Bedwell. We're going to be in New Orleans February 27 through March 1, talking about all kinds of things and hope to see y' all there. And I will catch you listeners next.
