[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.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the short term show, the first one of 2026. Looking forward to a really great year this year. I'm your host, Avery Carle. Before we get to our guest today, have a few announcements to make. We are still hiring for our managing broker slash director of operations role as well as agents in a few markets. Outer Banks, Park City, Angel Fire, New Mexico and the Smokies, as always.
So email us at careers at the short term shop.com if you're interested in any of those things. The managing broker position, you do have to have experience having managed a team of real estate agents before and of course know a little something about short term rentals. But that's full time remote. Anyway, big announcement Today on the first show of 2026, we have finally here at the Short Term shop launched a Poconos office. So now, in addition to all the other vacation markets that we offer for you guys to work with our agents in, we now offer the Poconos. And what better way to introduce our Poconos office into the world but to interview a Poconos investor. Almost said Poconos agent because we just hired a Poconos agent. So what better way to intro than to interview a Poconos investor. Also guys, we have launched in the past two weeks our five episode short term Shop Poconos only podcast. So five episodes on all things Poconos with myself, our Poconos agent, Tristan, and a few other really interesting folks. So be sure to check that out. We'll put the link in the show notes. And now we'll get get to today's episode interviewing a Poconos investor. Kira d', Annunzio, how's it going today?
[00:02:12] Speaker C: I am good. How are you?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: I'm doing awesome. Can't complain. Complain a little bit, A little tired. Had a kid with a stomach virus all night, but we got him through and he's good and just chilling and eating soup and watching prices right today. What about you?
Awesome. So Kira, tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate investing, who you are, all that background stuff before we get into a. Yeah.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: I have a really interesting story.
I my elevator pitch. I like to say I'm the quintessential millennial that has just kind of been railroaded by things that people Couldn't have seen coming.
College in 2008.
I'm kind of a Jane of all trades.
Graduate college in 2008 just at the peak of the recession. Same the best time to graduate college with a business degree. I have a marketing degree from Penn State University.
You know, thought I did everything right. I great grades, you know, I went to a good school, took co ops and all that kind of stuff. Graduated 2008 to a job market that had no jobs.
So, you know, finally got a job, was excited about six months, was laid off for my first job for budgetary reasons. Six months to finally get another job.
Super low pay, all of those things.
Learned really quickly that marketing is very replaceable because you are not specialized. So somebody who had a finance degree could do my job, but I couldn't do the finance job.
So I learned that lesson at like 23, 22, you know, real, real early.
Then kind of quarter life crisis at 25. Not being able to get a career started because of I decided to go back to school to get my doctorate in physical therapy.
So I'm actually Dr. Kira DiMenzio, but love it. Yep, went back to school, got my doctorate, started working 2017, started finally making good money.
But because I was struggling so early in my career, I taught myself personal finance because, you know, when you weren't getting paid in a W2, you had to learn how do you make money, make you money.
Rather than working 40 hours a week, three jobs, etc.
And one thread that continued to kind of go into my brain was real estate's the vehicle towards wealth that immediately learning about personal finance, it was real estate is the way to go.
So I always knew I wanted to own at least one investment property.
Finally making good money as a physical therapist, I bought my own primary residence in 2019. I happened to get in right at the perfect time and you know, thinking I have this super stable job in healthcare. And then Covid happened.
So my super stable job in health care, suddenly now it's not stable at all because I worked with geriatric populations.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Oh goodness.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: I was a home health physical therapist. So nobody wanted anybody coming into their homes during COVID So I got let go again. So I've been laid off four times. I'm not even 40. I've been let go four times in my career to this point.
Turning 40 next month.
So what ended up happening was I realized I'm done relying on other people for job security.
I cannot trust a W2 job.
I need to make my own thing to be able to Have a backup in case my job goes away, which 10 was my entire career.
So so obviously in 2020, Covid happened. I got let go from my job.
And that was right before the market went crazy. It was kind of when people were still in that, like, nobody knows what's going to happen in the real estate market. Is it going to tank? You know, is it going to go up?
So landlords were selling like crazy, especially the old retired landlords that kind of were like, I don't want to deal with this, just get rid of it.
So I thought, now's my time. At the time I was getting those stimulus checks.
So between unemployment and the stimulus checks, I was basically making a full time salary to not work.
So it was like, now's the time to take a look.
And I purchased my first duplex, was a tenant occupied duplex in my neighborhood in Philadelphia.
And I thought this was great because there's tenants in there. I have however much time to learn how to be a landlord with these existing tenants who were up to date on their payments. Everything equity build.
I knew it was a high value property. It's one bedroom apartments that each of them is very rare in the city to have one bedroom apartments way under market value. They were like renting, I think each for $800. And he could have been getting as is 1200 for each of them, which is what I ended up getting once we turned it over and then renovate it and then ended up getting more.
Luckily for me, the equity in my house as well as my investment Property skyrocketed in 20, 20, 2021.
So I tapped the equity from both of those and actually bought the Poconos property with the HELOC money from the equity from the other two.
So kind of did a burr strategy there.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
And the Poconos property was a wholesale property, so it was off market.
And again, it was a major equity build. The property had been vacant for about five years.
And then the backstory of the Poconos was the guy who owned it, he inherited from his mom. His mom used to live there. He lived in New York.
He unsuccessfully rented it to horrible tenants that like destroyed the property 10 years ago.
So he kind of was like, this isn't for me. I'm done. I don't want this property. It's too much of a burden.
So I ended up getting it for a pretty good deal.
And then same thing, renovated, refinanced, took the cash back out, and now it's a very successful five star Airbnb.
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[00:09:46] Speaker B: Amazing. So I love this whole story and have a lot of questions, but I'm going to start at the very beginning. And this has nothing to do with real estate, but as a fellow millennial who graduated in 2009 with major, I want to know what your parents feedback was on you not being able to get a job. Because mine to this day insist that I did not want a job and that I did not try hard enough. To quote my dad, you need to be out there pounding the pavement every day, taking your resumes in places.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: We're in the middle of the biggest crash that we've ever had. Yeah. And like, when you do get a job, it's like $22,000 a year. Like, like, I always tell people, I'm like, you were just l to have a job, so you took whatever bones or scraps they threw to you.
Yeah, my parents were a little bit more supportive about it because they knew that, like, I was trying and like, that in school, I did everything right. I was straight A's. I would, you know, all these things was in every club. I had internships, like, everything was right.
So they, they were very supportive. They let me stay at home for a year to try to get figured out, like, what I'm doing here.
But, yeah, they, they didn't understand it because my dad's been at the same company for his entire career. Like, he's been at the same company for 40 years.
So to them, they're not really supportive of how much I bounced around.
But again, millennials, we don't stay at one place. In order for us to have upward growth, we have to move horizontally and up or diagonally.
But for us to make money, we don't get pensions. We don't get guaranteed yearly raises.
And that was a huge impetus for me to get into real estate. Because the beauty of what I now own, five properties.
Only one is a short term rental. The rest are midterm rentals.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:11:49] Speaker C: That's kind of my sweet spot that I found.
I'm the type of person, I know you really focus on, like, focus on one strategy and get good at it before diversifying. I actually tried diversifying first, then finding out, like, okay, this is the one I like and then getting and focusing on it.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, that's cool though. I mean, and I love to hear that because there are so many ways you can be successful in real estate investing. And I never trust when people are like, no, this is the right and only way. The way I'm telling you that the $45,000 to tell you is it and it's not.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: Yeah, so many ways. There's so many nuances in each of the different ways you can do it. Right. And the beauty in real estate and what I love, love, love about being self employed, this is now my full time job. I own and manage the five rentals myself. I get to be a stay at home mom, you know, and it's not super time consuming.
But the biggest thing that I learned is you have control to pivot where necessary. Right. So when you're working for somebody else, you may see I have a huge opera. I. When I saw you're hiring for an operations, I was like, oh, but I'm not an agent and I don't have any experience managing or broker brokering.
I'm just an investor. But I'm an operations person. And in every job I ever had, you saw these operational inefficiencies and you saw how these companies could be improving.
But you're this person low on the totem pole. And they, I've been told many times, kind of just shut your mouth and know your role and just do your job you were hired for.
And it's so frustrating because you see how much better a company could be and you have no control in real estate when you see that a strategy isn't working, especially having a background like I do, that I have a long term, midterm and short term experience.
If a strategy is not working, I can quickly and easily pivot if the property is appropriate for it. Pivot to a different strategy.
And in fact, the Poconos, we actually pivoted to a hybrid midterm, short term strategy after operating for three years and seeing, you know, it's very seasonal in the Poconos.
A lot of people think being from Philadelphia, you, you associate the Poconos with skiing, right? Because in Philadelphia, we go to the shore in New Jersey for the summer.
So we think of Poconos as winter. We go skiing in the Poconos.
The Poconos high season is actually summertime.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:14:42] Speaker C: So a lot of people from New York come down to the Poconos for their summer vacations.
So it's backwards than what the Philadelphia market Thinks of.
So we actually sort of am starting to pivot into doing midterm strategy during the winters and then short term strategy during the summer.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Okay, so tell me about your Poconos deal. So what made you decide?
All right, I've got two long term rentals. I want to buy a short term in the Poconos. Let's start there.
[00:15:16] Speaker C: I didn't want to.
That's how.
Yeah.
So my biggest thing being laid off so many times in my life is when you see opportunity. Saying yes to opportunity. Right. So sometimes you have to be a little impulsive to be successful in life.
I had no desire to have a short term. I knew nothing about short term.
Excuse me. It's not local to me. I'm in Philadelphia, so it's an hour and a half away. I manage remotely.
But it was a killer deal. Like when you can analyze a deal quickly and see potential in the property.
And that's kind of what I want to talk about while I'm on is understanding who your specific avatar is and having the background that I do in marketing branding towards that target avatar.
So in this case, it was an off market opportunity, so not much competition to buy it. Even though the person who posted it had like 70 responses.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: It's lake adjacent in the Poconos.
So we're a block from a private neighborhood lake. It's tiny, very small.
There's no hoa in the neighborhood, which if you know anything about the Poconos, is huge.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's hard to find.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: Huge.
So off market, it is a block from a private lake and there's a little beach area. So it's like an actual usable, like go hang out with your family kind of like.
It's a mile from Kalahari water park, which is like one of the biggest water parks on the east coast.
Around it are tons of. There's like a Walmart a block away, which in the Poconos you can be very far away from shopping.
You know, same as I'm sure Tennessee is probably similar.
What was the other thing? That was a huge draw and then an equity build, so it was too good of a. Oh, and long term rents would have supported it as well. So if it failed as a short term rental, the long term rents would have supported the mortgage if we had to pivot as needed. And that's what I said. Like being able to.
I always evaluate a property that if it fails in one, it can always succeed in another if need be. So it needs to be able to be successful in two rental Strategies.
So it. It kind of was like, this opportunity is too good to pass up. I literally messaged the guy, drove up the next day to look at the house. It needed more work than I had anticipated by running the numbers, looking at the pictures, but the cash cow ness of it was there.
So I put in a much higher offer than I should have, which is dangerous territory. But again, the analysis was there. Right. So I did do my due diligence. It wasn't just star eye. Buy a property, and then the equity build was huge.
So I figured. I even said to my husband, I was like, well, we're going to own an Airbnb.
He was like, what? Like, he was like, what are you talking about? But it's all about learning, you know, like, I learned on the back and they listened to your podcast, like, religiously.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:18:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
And just learned and learned. But I'm an operations person, so, like, I can figure anything out and. And make it successful.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Okay, so I. I love this story. And what year did you buy that? Was that, like, in the height of.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: COVID That was 20, 21.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. So like, still kind of, like, covet was like, starting to sort of die off a little bit. So it was nice because it gave me time to renovate without, like, the pressure of needing to go live, needing to go active.
And at the time, it was only my second property besides my primary residence, so I had the ability to kind of, like, learn about renovating from a distance, not being local, making the connections up there.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: All right, so a couple questions here. So how much did you pay for this property and about how big is it and what is it gross?
[00:19:56] Speaker C: So It's. I paid 140 for it at the time, which in the Poconos, like I said, that was too much. It probably at the time for the work, and it should have been about 100,000, so I paid about 40 over.
But I had assessed that the ARV would have been around 225 after renovation.
So, of course, you know, with any property, as you know, your renovation costs always end up being more than you anticipate.
I ended up maybe putting a little too much into it than I should have as far as improvements that weren't 100% necessary. Right. So, like, it was. It was a.
And you'll see, once I start talking about kind of the idea and the branding behind it, I was in love with the property, and I. I wanted to make it this really special place.
So I put probably a little bit more detail than I needed to into it that, you know, didn't need to happen, but it cost me money that like in retrospect, as now looking back as an investor, you know, you kind of learn only put things in that are going to increase your roi, Right. So like some things are unnecessary.
So I put about 70,000 into the renovation.
So I bought for 140 and about 70,000. So that put me around 210. So there would have been a little bit of extra equity build at a cash out refi.
Ended up getting screwed during our appraisal.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
Again, learning, you know, a brand new investor. Figuring this out as I go.
It wasn't fully done when we got the appraisal, so I think that kind of messed us up a little bit.
Like the, the landscaping wasn't fully done, so it just still kind of looked like, I don't want to say it looked like a messy property, but it still kind of looked like on the lower end, only appraised at 184.
There was also all sorts of issues with the appraisal. Like he was using comps that didn't sell.
Like he was using comps that were still on the market.
He was using comps that were like 10 miles away.
Part of the issue with the Poconos, it's a rural property. It's considered rural.
So there's limited comparables. Right.
The property is only a thousand square feet. It's only a two bedroom, one bath.
The reason I bought that property was because I didn't want to deal with the headaches of parties. Party property.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:22:47] Speaker C: One bedroom, right?
Yeah.
Two bedroom, one bath.
Small.
But being from Philadelphia, the Poconos is a weekend destination, Right. We are a very short notice.
Hey, let's go to the Poconos. Right? That's like what we do for fun on the weekends in New York and Philadelphia and New Jersey. You say, hey, let's go to the Poconos for the weekend. Right.
So that's kind of what I want to get into with. What I wanted to talk about is that understanding who your avatar is and buying properties specifically to target those who's going to give you the most business, basically.
So the way that we built, literally built the house because it was a full, full renovation mostly was keeping that avatar in mind of this is who our target demographic is going to be.
How do we make this property fit that target demographic that's coming and that keeps us fed year round.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Okay, so what is out of curiosity, the demographic of people who are coming, I guess you like small families who want to get out of Philadelphia for the weekend.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: Yep. Yeah. So two bedroom house, Right. It's a small family. It's a family of five. Right? Family five. Family of six. We sleep six.
We're a mile from an indoor water park.
So when skiing is inconsistent. Right. Philadelphia, mind you think Poconos skiing. But we haven't had snow in, like, five years in the Poconos. We haven't had significant snow in years. Did not know that. Yeah.
And the other problem is you're competing with people who are right next to a ski resort. Now, where I'm located, I'm 15 minutes from a ski mountain, so that's great.
But the water park is what people are going to come to during the winter.
Indoor water.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Indoor water park, yeah.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: So in the winter, we have an indoor water park also during summer. And then we're a lake. We have a private, small, little lake that families are going to want to come and hang out on the beach.
Right.
So immediately, we're weekenders.
We're families with kids, specifically.
In addition, majority of Airbnb hosts strongly dislike kids.
So if you can target the kids, everybody else is telling you, we don't want kids. We don't want kids. And we're saying, bring them on.
Our. Our building is made for kids.
And that family experience, even though we're a small property, we. We are booked consistently.
Furthermore, I'll go on for hours and hours and hours about this. No, it's great.
We don't tout that. We're a luxury stay. Right. So we're not, you know, a dump either.
But we market it as, like, come, come play and explore. Right. Like, bring your kids. We are built for your kids, and you're not going to be spending luxury money and something where you don't want your kids touching anything. We want your kids to be able to go and play and you be able to enjoy your vacation without worrying about your kids.
So that spawned the idea of backtrack a little bit.
When I was a kid, we always rented at the Jersey shore every year. We didn't own a property, but we rented a new house every single year for like, a week at the shore in the summer. Very Philadelphian.
And there was a house that had a pool table in it.
Now, back then, they didn't have Airbnbs, so it wasn't, you know, it was in the 90s.
A pool table in a rental was like, like the coolest thing you could have. Right.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: I remember. I remember that age we did as kids In a rental with a pool table, like, do really uncool things like throwing the.
[00:27:15] Speaker C: The pool.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: The pool balls and like, sword fighting with the sticks, right?
[00:27:22] Speaker C: It's a no business in a rental with a pool table.
And, like, you know, we were kind of lower budget and all that stuff. So to have a pool table and it was like, crammed in this tiny little house that had no reason to have a pool table.
And to this day, we talk about the pool table house, right? So it was something that was unique, that cost them, like, not much money. That I remember for the rest of my life was that pool fable house and how I felt as a kid, like, that being so cool.
So that is what spawned.
Let's make this an experience that people remember when they're an adult. And they say, do you remember that house that we went to in the Poconos?
Right?
You don't do that with luxury houses. You don't go, remember that house that had nice furniture, you know?
So going into developing and renovating the property was like, how do I make this an experience rather than just a nice house? Like, all the other properties are just nice houses.
So the idea came up of being.
What if we called it Bigfoot's nook?
The idea, it's Bigfoot's house.
And he's your Airbnb host. He's Airbnb it while he's wandering the woods.
So now there's a story to the house, right?
So now Bigfoot is your host. And the idea was it's not kitschy Bigfoot. Right? So it's not like we have Bigfoot curtains and Bigfoot bedspread and Bigfoot pillows and Bigfoot everywhere.
It still is attractive because our two demographics that we would being a small house. Couples, right? Kidless couples and families, two bedroom house. Right?
We don't want to alienate the couples. If we make it too kitty.
You alienate this demographic.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Right?
[00:29:28] Speaker C: You make it too romantic couple. You alienate this.
So the idea was, let's, let's design it. And I keep saying, let's. I'm designing it.
Nothing to do with it. Yeah.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Luke, my husband, says, when I. When I'm telling him to do something, I always say, hey, let's try this thing when I really like you do this.
[00:29:51] Speaker C: Softens it a little bit. If we're doing it, it's better.
So the idea was we're not gonna go kitschy. It's not going to be Bigfoot themed. It's Bigfoot's house. And if you think about it from that sense he's not gonna have bigfoot stuff all over his house. His own house. Right. That's weird.
So we found a balance between a really attractive looking kind of what would Bigfoot relax in? So greens, cream colors, natural wood, like really naturey colors.
And then there's, you know, cute little bigfoot things around.
And what we did was we developed bigfoot games for the kids.
So like there's a. There's a whiteboard and it's a how to draw a bigfoot. And they can pretend to draw a bigfoot. It cost me no money.
I bought a five dollar whiteboard. Right.
There's a like a where's Waldo, but it's where's bigfoot? So they have to find bigfoot on a puzzle thing that I printed out for free.
Little stuff like that. There's little bigfoot puzzle, like a 3D Bigfoot puzzle. So the kids lose their minds at this house.
One thing that is huge is first of all, you're searching for our house with the color scheme. Everybody else are these like boring gray.
Right. Like luxury fancy. You scratch, scroll down and it's like white, white, white, white, white, greens, browns. Like we're so warm coloring compared to everybody else's cool coloring.
So we stand out on the front page.
Yeah.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: That's so important, really is just standing out on the front page. Everything is about getting clicks and then getting bookings. And you can't get bookings without getting clicks.
[00:32:03] Speaker C: Exactly. We ended up getting a from, I want to say it was like Alabama. It was actually cheaper to import it than it was to get somebody to do it.
We have a tree carving of a bigfoot. It's like a five foot bigfoot.
And it's kind of cartoony, you know, because everything's kind of cartoony.
That's our hero photo.
So we don't even market our property as the hero photo.
We have a big Bigfoot that says welcome to Bigfoot Snook.
And we get so many more clicks.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: Just by having a bigfoot.
[00:32:41] Speaker C: Yeah, you're scrolling down. Even if you have no interest in the property, you're gonna look at it. Yeah. And like you said, it's all about that initial click. Once you get that initial click, then you. You've got the people. Yeah.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: 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.
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[00:34:21] Speaker B: So how much does this make per year? Gross numbers?
[00:34:25] Speaker C: Yeah, so that's where it gets a little tricky. So the past we've been live three years, we've made about 30k gross.
The biggest issues we're finding, first of all, we're only on Airbnb. We don't market anywhere else and we're at about 85 to 90% occupancy just with Airbnb. Okay. So part of that's on me that I haven't expanded to verbo and you know, all these other platforms that I probably should be on.
Biggest issue with a small house that I've learned over this time is you're almost mitigating the damage party risk with income potential. Right.
So income potential and lower expenses.
Problem is when you have a two bedroom house, you're limited to one family, maybe 2,000.
Right.
So you hit a price ceiling. One family can't really pay more than 500, 600, $700 a weekend.
You have a big house now. You have four families each paying 500, $600 a weekend. Right, Right. Economies of scale. But at the same time, I've gone up and done cleanings myself. These families leave it meticulous.
You come in and it's like the turns. It's like nobody even lived there are. We've had zero damage in three years.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: That's nice. That's kind of like for the most part we in 10 years across 10 properties. Now most people leave our properties really, really nice. And every now and then you'll get somebody who leaves stuff like never really any damage. Knock on wood.
[00:36:15] Speaker C: But I know, I'm trying to find wood as we speak.
[00:36:18] Speaker B: Yeah, they might leave a little trash out or something but, you know, nothing major and that I feel like people really need to hear that because so many people don't want to buy a vacation rental because they're like, oh, people are going to tear my house up.
[00:36:29] Speaker C: But they really don't.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: Most people leave your house.
[00:36:32] Speaker C: Fine. And if you understand and you target those demographics right, like a lot of people are afraid of kids because they do damage and whatnot. But again, if you make it kid friendly that like they're not, you're giving them things to do beyond just a really nice looking house, they're not going to do damage. They're going to be playing in the yard. They're going to be.
So we have also a big, huge fenced in yard.
Nobody else in our neighborhood has a fenced in yard.
We did.
We made it so that it could be dog friendly if we decided we needed to pivot into dog friendly.
I myself have three dogs. I have four dogs.
Me too. Yeah.
So we also made it our vacation home. So when we take the dogs up that we can let the dogs operate in our vacation home as well.
To date, we haven't needed to go dog friendly and we're still booked and still making the money without having to do it on occasion. We'll allow it. Like if it's a big booking for a holiday or something like that. During the weekends, you know, we just put up the, the couch covers and call it a day, you know.
So. Yeah, so it's trying to remember what the second part of your question was.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: I don't remember myself.
[00:38:00] Speaker C: Yeah, sorry. I tend to talk like circles and then I no love it.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: The more info our listeners can get, the better.
[00:38:07] Speaker C: Yeah. So. Oh, where I was going is unfortunately you're kind of trading off size for ease. Right. Or profit for ease in that sense. Because you get limited by a single family can only afford so much.
The other limits that we're finding is we're very much weekend.
Right. So it's. We're booked every weekend solidly for the whole year.
The weekdays get trickier. Right.
We often don't get like a full week stay.
That's been a little odd. I feel like we should be getting more like week long stay days.
Excuse me, but we are priced high. Like we're. Our ADR is high compared to other people because we now have 58 solid five star reviews. We're the only house in the entire area that has all five star reviews. Oh, wow, that's great.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: Good for y'.
[00:39:03] Speaker C: All. And one thing I learned with that is twofold under promise over deliver.
Right, Right. So what I said to him like my husband was his cousin is like uber wealthy and lives out in California and his wife like Owns a military defense company. Like they're uber wealthy. They had this stunning, gorgeous wedding. They put us up in, in this gorgeous hotel that had so many defects that your eye is like for the price this hotel is, that should be cleaner. That should be like. You go in with this perception of value that they over promised and under delivered. And we were disappointed.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:39:53] Speaker C: In our property, we don't say we're luxury by any means. We're kind of an economy stay, but our price is really high.
Right.
Um, but what you're getting is place that feels like home and feels like if you do some damage, it's not that big a deal.
All of our furniture is thrifted.
All of it.
I think to furnish that apartment, I maybe spent $3,000 furnish the entire house.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:40:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
But it again comes with this very homey.
There's some scratches on the furniture, but they don't care because they're so blown away by the bigfoot experience that they're overlooking these little hiccups.
Right. So operationally when there's hiccups, like let's say the Internet goes down or let's say, you know, the lock didn't work or whatever, they don't even. They completely forget about it because they're so happy with the experience that you're given.
Whereas if, if you're giving them a luxury whatever, they want everything to be perfect and there's. They don't. They're less forgiving when things go down.
Yeah. You really.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: I feel like even if you do have a crazy expensive property, you kind of can't use the word luxury because it's so subjective.
[00:41:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Like there are people out there who complain about the Ritz Carlton. Right. And so it just is so different depending on who you are. Same thing with the word turnkey. I found people are buying properties. Like you could buy a fully furnished property that you could turn around and rent right now. Like turnkey. But what I consider turnkey and what that person considers turnkey might be two different things. So those are words that I like to stay away from personally.
[00:41:46] Speaker C: Depending on your avatar. Right. Every property has a different key demographic. Right. And it's, it's very hard to have a property that's going to appease everybody. Yes. We are not a party house. And we have people try to rent with like we have 10 people and it's like this is a two bedroom.
Like you're not going to be happy in our property even if we did rent to you for you to save X amount of money sleeping on the floor.
Right. You're not going to be happy. 10 people don't fit in this property.
Comfortable.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree with that. When people try to slam too many people into a small property, they're already going to be like pre annoyed with your property because they're having to, you know, adults are having to sleep in the same room with each other and listen to each other breathe and sleep on the floor and sleep on a pulled out couch that may be uncomfortable. So I feel like you're. By sleeping too many people and people being crowded and having to wait on bathrooms and showers and things, you're actually setting yourself up for a worse review and probably less money overall than if you do a really good stay for less people.
[00:42:51] Speaker C: Exactly. And like so when we have people reach out and they'll ask like, you know, it's, it's a group of friends coming to go skiing and I always write out to them. So also having the family now, having my own family. So I did all this before I had children. Now I have a one year old. So now I'm going in, changing some things. Right. That like I didn't know about before, that now would be like, oh God, I would love to have this when I go traveling. I didn't know before I had kids.
But we try to set up the beds to be bigger, family friendly. So for instance, it's it only we have a king bed in the one room and two twin beds in the other room. They're not huge rooms. But we put a toddler bed in with the king.
So now we can say we sleep one extra person. But the caveat is it's a child.
Right?
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: Well that makes sense. Yeah. We can say we sleep six when really adults, we comfortably sleep four.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:52] Speaker C: We also have a cot that folds out, but because we primarily rent to kids, an 8 year old is totally fine sleeping on a cot.
Right.
So now we have people sometimes reach out and say we have six adults. And you respond to them basically saying, you know, it's a toddler bed. Like it's not comfortable for six adults. You could sleep on the couch if you're willing to do that.
But just an FYI, some people are right. We had.
It's so funny because our two biggest, best reviews are kids and men.
Men love the Bigfoot thing. Like they geek out over this bigfoot thing for some reason because I guess they're children. They're probably the same.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Very similar, very similar.
[00:44:48] Speaker C: Easily entertained.
We get pictures of like groups of men like Posing in front of the bigfoot.
It's hilarious.
There's also a skirmish. Paintball is nearby, which is like a huge, big paintball, outdoor.
I don't know what you call arena, I guess.
So they have a lot of tournaments. So we get a lot of groups of men stay with us for this paintball tournament.
And they love it because they're kids.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:45:26] Speaker C: But one of the biggest, like ideas that I want to get across is you always hear like, you need, oh, we also don't have professional photos. I know that again, goes against your things. You, you promote.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: You gotta do that. Like today we don't.
[00:45:41] Speaker C: We're booked. We're booked so solidly it almost adds. It kind of again, makes you stay, stand out. Right. So like, you see these like picture perfect magazine pictures, they're all gray. And then you see one that looks like a normal house. It looks like a photo that somebody took. Now I, I do digital editing. I, you know, make sure the lighting is good. I make it look nice. It's not like, you know, corner photo.
I don't know if you have the listing up, but they look nice. The pictures, they're not, you know, crappy, but they're not professionally staged. Perfect. And honestly, I think that makes us stand out a little bit more from a homie perspective.
I also didn't spend any money on them. I took them, did them myself. And then even further, you know, you constantly hear like, the only way to be successful and beat competition is to have a hot tub and have all the operational expenses with that. In a mountain, mountain area, we don't have a hot tub. We don't have any special amenities beyond fun bigfoot games that I made that were free that keep us booked and a solid five star rental.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: So I want to do an experiment. Yeah, I want you to. So you're pretty much booked like 100, like super high occupancy, right?
[00:47:08] Speaker C: Pretty high, yeah. Okay. In, in the high season, we're 100% booked. In the low season, we're booked at least every weekend. Sometimes we're a little bit more like 85% in all season.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Okay.
So that level of occupancy, which is great, tells me that you're not charging enough.
And I want to do an experiment. I want to see if you get professional photos if you're able to get a higher price per night. I just want to see you always go back.
[00:47:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd be curious. No, I, I definitely have considered it. The other trick to part with the coconut, sort of. Because it's seasonal. We have four seasons.
So, you know, your advice is always to update your pictures. So every season I'm changing my pictures to be fall, to be spring, to be summer, to be winter, because there's different things that attract you.
So in the summer, it's our huge fenced in outdoor yard with games and a fire pit and grills.
But you're not using that in the winter because it's negative 10 degrees.
So that's when you show the indoor fireplace, the gas fireplace, the game room that's inside, those sorts of things.
So I have to get professional photos for all four seasons. So that's one thing. Just keeping in mind of like, why I'm not fully doing it. But yeah, it's definitely something. I need to get aerial photos too, like a drone shot to show how close to the lake we are.
That's something.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that would, that would really do it. And you don't even have to mess up any bookings. You don't have to interfere with any bookings to get some drone photos done.
[00:48:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I'm very curious to see as well.
But it's one of those things that's like, it's. It's one of the things I learned is again, not necessary to sometimes do an expense if the ROI isn't going to be there. I think pictures probably would help our roi. The problem with our listing price is again, you hit that ceiling, you know, over three years, I've learned kind of what that ceiling is, where if I'm priced a little too high, we stop getting bookings because you're only rent. Like I have price labs, so it runs, you know, for higher demand, weekends, etc.
Which by the way, price lab was a game changer after the first year. We were certainly underpriced. The ratings matter too. People are willing to spend more because again, we're the only five star rated in our radius in our area.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:49:45] Speaker C: Yeah. And again, because it's like they come and they get this magical.
Families told us their kids say, when are we going back to the Bigfoot house?
Right. So it's again, just that experience that cost me no money that people want to come back year after year after year.
[00:50:05] Speaker B: And that's so important too. What we're here to do is to kind of provide the backdrop for people to create memories with their family and the, the Bigfoot theme. I think it sounds like you really kind of done a good job of, of making that happen. And I think that that's a really important Takeaway from this episode for our listeners is make sure you know what your target demographic is and stick to that. Because if you're trying to make everything for everyone, then probably not going to be as successful as if you just know who you're going for and make sure that that is a wide enough demographic that there's enough of that type of tourism coming to your area and just kind of focus on that.
[00:50:49] Speaker C: Right. And where it can go. Sometimes too much is like I said with it's not kitschy Bigfoot, right? So if we went really kind of kitschy Bigfoot, then you're kind of like really limiting who's coming because you're limiting, like, oh, I'm a Bigfoot enthusiast.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:05] Speaker C: So sometimes you see some of these houses that are like, you know, Mario themed and the whole house is Mario.
Right. Well, it's like, well, if you're not really into Mario, yeah, maybe it's kid friendly, but like, what if the kid likes Bluey, right? So, like, you're. You're pigeonholing yourself.
And what's nice with how we.
So not to give my all my tips and tricks and ideas away, because nobody steal this in the Poconos.
But my next idea, if I were to do another Airbnb up there would be dog friendly, but a property that's made for dogs.
So the idea being.
And again, nobody steal my idea. This is trademark. Don't do this before I capability to do this.
But it would be called Rover Stay Over.
Oh, that's the other thing. Like kitschy names. Right. So Bigfoot's Nook. It rhymes. It's whimsical, it's fun.
It's the alliteration Nook Foots nook. Right. That sticks to people's minds, having a branded name for your property.
So it'd be called Rover Stay Over. And the idea is it's a dog sleepover theme.
The whole house is dogs. Right. So all the furnishing, all the pictures, I have three dogs. Right. Dog owners love dog properties and they treat them well. If you have multiple dogs, you're a good owner usually.
So again, renovating it so it's attracting dog people. That's your.
That's what other people don't want. That's going to make you stand out. And if you are dog centric, not even dog friendly, you're dog center centric and you have everything a dog owner could need, you're going to be booked solid.
[00:53:04] Speaker B: Totally agree with that.
[00:53:06] Speaker C: Yeah. And dog people don't care about dog hair. Right. So now, your operational expenses, you're, you're under offering over performing. Now you don't have to worry so much about dog hair being there because somebody who's not a dog owner is probably not going to rent your house. They're not your demographic, so who cares if somebody who doesn't have a dog own dog doesn't run your house, right?
[00:53:27] Speaker B: Yep. Gotta focus on, on your target avatar for sure.
Kira, we are coming to the end of the show. Thank you so much for coming on. But before we go, we have three questions that we ask every single guest.
And first question, what advice would you give 20 year old Kira if you knew then what you know now?
[00:53:46] Speaker C: Oh, God.
Never say no to opportunity.
Biggest thing you know you're going to have doors slammed in your face left and right of no fault of your own. Millennials. Yay.
But you know, there's always opportunity out there. If you keep your mind open to learning, if you keep your eyes open and just stay creative. Being able to see that opportunity and see what are the possibilities.
I wasn't open to an Airbnb and now I have a very successful Airbnb that I love to operate.
Awesome.
[00:54:26] Speaker B: What advice would you give a new short term rental investor who's looking to get started today?
[00:54:34] Speaker C: That's so much advice.
I think one of the things that kind of burned me that you don't realize the short term is the expenses are so high.
So sometimes you may see a property that has like really attractive revenue numbers, but unless you're looking at the profit that they're making, you know, like sometimes these six bedroom houses, their operational expenses are astronomical. Between utilities, you have to pay the cleaners.
You know, in a property or a word I'm looking for in a territory like the Poconos, cleaners are expensive. They're very expensive up there because they're limited. So it's a supply and demand issue.
So sometimes things look really, really attractive. From a revenue standpoint, you need to look at what are the operating expenses before you pull the trigger on something. Because one CapEx, one heater that blows could kill you. Right? Mortgage rates are high, you know, so it's, it's more than just how much money does it pull in, it's how much money does it take to operate it.
[00:55:58] Speaker B: Totally agree with that. And last question, what's your favorite book that's impacted your mindset?
[00:56:04] Speaker C: So boring with this? It's Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
It's. Everybody says it like the most cliche.
Going from being laid off four times and having that mindset of I need a paycheck in order to survive, that limited me from those opportunities. Right. And I still struggle with that. I still struggle with, like, I should go get a job just to have, like, some consistent. Even though I have five very successful properties that I'm making, you know, almost $80,000 a year in profit on just those properties, I still have that, like, ingrained in me that I need a job with consistent income because real estate fluctuates. Right, Right. I have two vacancies right now that I'm, like, kind of struggling to fill in my midterm rentals.
They'll get filled. I'll still make the money. But it's like that.
So the rich dad, poor dad of breaking out of that idea that you need to rely on somebody else for stability, I found way more success and way more happiness in relying on my own abilities to make money and support my family.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: All great advice. Thank you again so much, Kira, for coming on, sharing your story. And if our listeners want to find you, follow you, find your property and book it.
[00:57:32] Speaker C: How can they do that? Yeah, so I'm not really like social media, etc. You can find me on Facebook. I'm a millennial. I'm very much like that old lady that's just on Facebook.
Yeah, just Facebook. But Airbnb is airbnb.com h Bigfoots nook.
You could probably also, I think, just Google it and then it'll pop up in the Google business page that you can then pop over to Airbnb from there.
But we're open to bookings, so if anybody wants to stay, bring their family.
You know, we can always work out. If you say you saw me on Avery's show, we can work out a discount if you need it. So.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Love that.
[00:58:12] Speaker C: So, yeah.
But, yeah, so come see us, check out the page, get some ideas, see what we're doing.
Like I said, you don't need to spend a ton of money to be successful in this space.
[00:58:26] Speaker B: All right, well, thanks so much again for coming on and listeners, we'll catch.
[00:58:29] Speaker C: Y' all next week. Awesome. Thanks, Avery.
[00:58:32] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:58:40] Speaker C: Sam.
