[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 back to another episode of the Short Term show. Thank you so much for joining us every week.
I've got a super cool guest today. But first, we are still hiring in Orlando, the Smokies, the Poconos, Branson and Myrtle Beach. We have more buyers than our agents in those markets can handle. So please reach out if you have if you think that you might be a good fit for that
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[email protected] now we will get into our guests. We've got Tony Bohr on the Bourbon Trail. How's it going, Tony?
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Hey, I'm doing good, thank you.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Awesome. So I've known Tony for few years now. We see each other at all the the meetups and conferences and all that. But I've never had her on the show so figured it was time to fix that. And she's had a few really interesting things happen over the past few years that I think you guys will find interesting. But first, Toni, will you just introduce yourself to our audience and give give us your backstory. How'd you get into real estate and short term rental investing?
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Yep. So I'm Tony Beware a lot of.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Oh, sorry. I totally have totally butchered your name.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Tony be most known for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail area helping clients invest in the area and and so anyhow I started back in Covid time frame was when we bought our first property ourself and at the same time I was getting my license during that fun period as well. So it was a whirlwind because my kids were home from school and I got thrown into being a parent teacher that I would have never signed up for.
And we had five kids at home at that time.
High school, down to early elementary, kindergarten, first grade age at that time. So it was a lot going on. And I talked my husband into buying a house that we could just. The goal was to buy a second home that we could use as our family. That wasn't a five hour drive or ten hour drive or something like that. We could just go for an hour drive and use the house and get away and things like that. That was the goal. And then I was like, okay, you know, if other people will rent it and pay half of our mortgage, that's great. We only have to pay half the mortgage. Or if they, if it ends up covering all the mortgage, that's great too. And so that first property was $200,000. It was a three bedroom, actually. It was a four bedroom, one and a half bathroom house. And we made it a three bedroom, two and a half bathroom house.
And that was our first cash cow. It ended up turning into be a cash cow. And my original goal to use it for our family didn't happen because it was rented all the time.
That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that triggered my infatuation, my passion at the time with this industry. It was like, holy crap. I fell in love with communicating with the guests, learning why they were coming to the area, introducing myself to the tourism directors in each county, city council members, just anything I could find to learn. I wanted to be in it and learn it and know it and help these guests have a better experience.
And so that is when I knew that when I got my license, that traditional real estate wasn't going to be exactly what I did, which was crazy even then at the time, because, you know, most real estate agents, they'll sell you a house, you know, you can live in it, your primary house, investment, whatever. And so I turned that completely off, which created a niche for me personally. But in the real estate industry, especially in Kentucky, it was kind of weird because people treated me like I had four heads. They were like, take a sale. You know, it's, you know, it's real estate. And I just knew that that wasn't my passion. To help Sally, you know, buy a house in this community, to go to that church with her sister and that school.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: As a matter of fact, it's actually horrible. I hate selling primary home real estate because people are completely unreasonable.
They'll like not buy stuff over the paint color and.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, just.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: They don't see the, oh, I can just paint this. I can just change this out. They're like waiting to walk into the world's most perfect place and I just, I can't deal with that. Yeah.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: And their budget is not what they're wanting. And so I never, I knew early on that once we got that first house that this was something that I felt like it was calling me to do. And it was, you know, as silly as it might sound, it just felt like it was in my soul. Like it was just a connection that I had never experienced before.
And I just kind of took it and rolled with it from there.
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[00:06:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it is fun. It's fun selling vacation rentals because I love walking around in real estate. Now I don't like selling primary homes, but I will go to all the open houses Luke and I went to.
We drug our kids around to like an open house tour in New Orleans a few weeks ago. And it's just so no intention of buying anything obviously. And it's just fun walking around in real estate. And vacation rental real estate is even more fun because it's beach houses and cabins and all these fun types of real estate.
[00:07:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And seeing what other people are doing with their house and. Yeah, I love that too. Yeah, totally.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I've loved walking around in house since I was a little kid. I never grew up. Said I want to grow up and be a real estate agent because most people don't. But I have always enjoyed walking around in houses.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: Yes, same. I have pictures of me like 10, 11, 12 years old. I don't know if you remember or not, but they used to have like these big thick MLS books that you would get at like the front of the grocery store and they would come out monthly and I remember like excited the first week of every month going to the grocery because I knew that new MLS book would be out again and it would have like sold across houses or like pending or new listing or whatever and it would only give you like a cover shot of the outside of the house.
And I love, I would look at those books like it was a novel. Yeah, yeah. And I remember like feeling excited for those people who I remember last month didn't, you know, wasn't sold or pending and I was like, oh my gosh, that house got, you know, and I'm like 11.
Yes, I would, I was a little.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Bit younger, I would read those like sitting in the cart while my mom shopped and then thinking now like my kids have been to a grocery store less than 10 times in their life because we just use Instacart so they don't have that whole experience of that. But yeah, I do remember those. And that was fun. Now we just can scroll Zillow on our phones all day. But anyway, let's hear about you. That's how you got started with your first short term rental. You just wanted to have a place for your family, but you've got a few more now. So tell me, tell me what all you got, where you got them.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: So the majority of our properties are in Kentucky. We've built a multi million dollar portfolio there in Kentucky alone. And just this year have I ventured out of Kentucky. I'm actually in Florida right now at our property that we bought in May and we are here kind of living here, setting it up and getting things a little bit renovated. We added a bathroom. There was an office here that we didn't want to use as an office and we've turned that into a bedroom and getting the permit for adding the bathroom has been a nightmare.
But so we have vacationed here forever and I've, you know, continued to push my husband Andrew to buy a property here and he had always said no, he didn't think the numbers worked and whatever. And so finally we decided this year was, was the year and we did that in May and here we are.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: So you just gotta, with the husband's man, you just have to make him think it was their idea.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Yes, yes. And now that we're here, he's in love. Like it's, you know, we think it's one of our best decisions ever and, and we both feel like we're on the same page. So I think that's really important through all of this is that initially I thought that I was going to be kind of pushing him to the ledge and we were going to go on this uphill battle with us being in separate mindsets of what this would look like. But so it's really peaceful feeling it being a mutual love for being here and enjoying it.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I love Florida. Not just for vacation rentals. I just love being in Florida.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: I need the heat and humidity to live.
Luke would disagree with me, but.
[00:10:39] Speaker C: So I would rather be 95 degrees outside or 100 than 10 degrees outside any day. So I was wet all day long versus be cold. Yeah.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: I will not be cold. So, okay, so you've got how many in Kentucky did you say?
[00:10:53] Speaker C: We have eight.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Eight in Kentucky and one in Florida.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Okay, and where in Kentucky? I know Bourbon Trail, but are these in different cities or are they all, like really close to each other? How does that work?
[00:11:07] Speaker C: Yep. So the Bourbon Trail is actually a huge area. It's probably 10 counties, cities. And so kind of spread out. And just like I tell my clients, it's never, you know, they ask me the number one question of, like, which town should I buy in? I know the Bourbon Trail is big, but which town is.
And so that's never really the focus that I focus on or would want them to. It's property specific. And so when I'm in the market for a home or helping a client look for their property, I tell them not to just look in one town because you could miss out on something one town over. And so the distilleries and things like that that are bringing our guests, you know, they're in clusters. Like there's five or six distilleries in this town, three or four distilleries in this town, and it's all within, you know, generally 30 to 45 minutes to each town. Maybe just 10 minutes. It could be just 10 minutes. So we are. We have one property in Indiana which is just across the bridge from Louisville. So we get the overflow from Louisville.
Yes, without investing in Louisville, because Louisville is a beast.
And. And then the rest of them are just outside of Louisville. Lawrenceburg, Shelbyville. The property that we lost in the flood in April was in Frankfurt.
So. Yeah. And then I host several properties for other clients.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, I want to hear about that, about the flood property. And Louisville does not allow short term rentals at all. Right.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: Or they do. It is just very, very restricted.
Zoning is.
It's just a nightmare. You could. You could do all the checkboxes and think you're going to go to your meeting and get your permit. And then that board is very moody, for lack of better word. And I have seen multiple people think that they're going to get their permit that night. And for whatever reason, based on someone's mood, it just gets denied. And it's weird because, like all the Boxes were checked. And it's just I don't invest in Louisville personally.
It's not that you can't. You can. It's just, you know, need to be prepared for what that looks like. And if it's zoned commercial, you're good to go. And that's with anywhere along the Bourbon Trail. If it's, if it's zone commercial, you don't need a permit or anything like that.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think that's most places. Most places.
[00:13:26] Speaker C: But yeah.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: So it's kind of like your typical big metro area.
All right, so you had a house flood, river house flood earlier this year, and it ended up being condemned by the city or county or what have you. So I think that is a lot of people's worst fear about short term rental investing. Especially if you're buying something unique that's like on a river or something cool, there's always, if you've got something cool pool, there is a, a risk there. Like if it's on water or has a view, you know, you're going to be up high, people falling off of things, whatever. So tell me all about that from start to finish.
[00:14:05] Speaker C: Okay. So last year we had what a property called the Tavern. It was in Lawrenceburg and it was a cash cow for us. And we had been talking about wanting a river property, but river properties don't come on the market very often. And so when they do come, they usually go f.
And there was this one particular property in Frankfurt that I had tried to sell to clients multiple times and it needed updating. It was, it was dated and no one would buy on it. And so then when Andrew and I started talking about selling the Tavern and looking for a river property, I was like, okay, well, there's this one that, you know, I've tried to sell to other people. No one's wanting it. We could go take a look at it. And so we did. And he was like, yes, absolutely, let's do this, let's go.
So we sold our Tavern to a client I actually had that was looking in the area and it was perfect fit for him, budget and all the things. So we 1031 that tavern into the river house.
We did an extensive renovation on the River House.
And the first week of April I was just about to order furniture for the River House. And that week was just. It was a really weird week because it's not that we get. We're not like a flood prone area. And this property set up kind of, you know, on a cliffside. And the people that we had bought it from. They had lived there for 25 years themselves, and only maybe like 8 inches had ever gotten in the basement of the property. And so they would just cut out like a foot of drywall and baseboards and, you know, clean it up and put it back together or whatever. And so we felt, you know, pretty comfortable that, like, the most it's ever gotten in 25 years was, you know, a few inches. So we closed on that property in October.
This past first week of April, the weather people were just like, they kept up in, like, this rain system that was coming in of, you know, like, how high the river was going to rise. And we had already had the hot tub there. It was sitting on the back patio. And that last day I told Andrew, I was like, I think we really need to move the hot tub. I don't know, my gut is just saying that we need to because he had it him and some guys had gone to put the hot tub up on cinder blocks, like 3 or 4ft high.
That was a task in itself. And so I just said, like, my gut just says we should go get the hot tub and move it to one of our other houses. And so he and some guys did that. They moved the hot tub. And then, you know, those last couple of days, it just kept. The weather people just kept saying, you know, it's going to rise. And the numbers just kept going up. So anyway, it started raining. It rained for days and days and days, and the river kept rising. And we had had ring cameras on the outside of the back of the house that, like, were over the river. And so it was eerie to watch the river rise and just get closer and closer to the house. And then we had some ring cameras that we put in the basement. So as the water came in the house, we were just like, watching as the water would come up. And so, you know, we had eight foot ceilings in our basement.
And then, you know, you would go upstairs or whatever. So a couple of days go by, and finally the water reached the ceiling of the basement and our cameras were underwater. And it was weird because. I'll shout out to ring. Our cameras worked underwater for like, two days? Yes. Our interior ring camera worked for, like, two days underwater. And we would just see, like, gurgles and I was just like, waiting for a big fish to go back and.
And it was just weird watching that. And then suddenly it was gone. Like, one day I went to go log in and it was gone, and I was like, crap. So anyway, our neighbors that lived next door that was their primary home. And we had, throughout our renovation, just gotten really close, friendship wise with them. And they left at the last minute. They literally canoed their. Themselves. Oh, my God. Yeah. When they got evacuated or when they finally decided to leave. But before he left, he canoed over to our house and went in upstairs. And the water had already gotten upstairs. And so it was like halfway up our kitchen cabinets upstairs.
And so.
And then it was another three or four days before we could get access, not even access to the house, because after the flood happened, it takes a few days for it to recede. And so we had never been through anything like this before. We didn't know really what to expect or what that looks like. And, you know, this is a newly renovated house, so I'm like freaking out. All of our hard work, you know, we just spent like 60 or 70 grand on this house. And it's just. And it's under. It's in the. It's in the river.
And so Andrew, finally we got back in the house probably four or five days later, and you start calling in the restoration company fans and all the stuff. You tear their. The basement drywall took itself off. And so it was just mush, for lack of better explanation.
And so then it was just shovels of cleaning that out. We had one day that we had access to the house before.
Not the neighbor who canoed over, but the other side of our neighbor of the house. They had a landslide.
And Andrew and some guys were there working at our house and they heard the noise. But Kentucky isn't known for landslides.
It was like, okay, boom.
The whole backside of the house, like the land fell in the river all the way back up to these people's house, like, foundation. Everything was exposed.
And so within hours, the county was at our house.
The state police, sheriffs, all these people were at our house and they condemned our house because then our backyard started to fall away too. So it was just kind of like a ripple effect.
And they gave Andrew and the guys 15 minutes to evacuate the house. They were throwing tools and everything out the front yard. He said, once I tape your house off, you can't go back in.
And so that was. I wasn't there that day, but so everybody was just hands on deck, throwing tools and everything we could out the front door, basically into the front yard. And so from that point on, I had never experienced what a condemned house meant or what the law was behind that. But you basically lose your property rights. And if you go behind the tape, you can be arrested and all sorts of things.
A neighbor down the street went in his house and he was arrested for. Because for probably a week, almost two weeks after the flood, they had sheriffs parked out in front of our house, state police, county officials, they were literally like 24 hour surveillance. Wow. Parked out front. And because they were also trying to protect looters or from looting. And while our house was pretty much empty, we didn't have it furnished or we didn't have too much stuff there. We had some things there, but not a whole house full of stuff. So I think that protection was mainly for them and against looting and things. So it was just an interesting process. We're still dealing with it with the county and they have. And with fema they. Because this was not our primary house, we could not get any assistance from FEMA and didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, I learned a whole lot.
So because it wasn't our first primary house, we couldn't get assistance and then. But there's other programs that are for businesses or secondary properties that we were able to get connected with. And so there were actually six houses that were condemned, us being one of them. And we're still working with the county. So what's going to happen is they're going to buy back our properties and they will, it's what we're being told, fair market value. They will send in appraisers at some point. They haven't done that yet. And we have pictures and receipts and things of what the house looks like when, you know, we were working on it, renovating it. Since we had just bought the house in October of last year, we do have that most current appraisal for what we bought the house for. And then we have, you know, a trail showing that we spent what we spent on the house during renovation. So they said that we won't get the purchase price plus the 60, 70,000 that we spent. It'll be somewhere in between.
But like we had to file our insurance claim. Insurance had to pay the maximum out that we had with that and then the balance would be paid through this county program. But we're still working through the weeds on that. We haven't been paid out on it. I don't know when we've heard anywhere from. It could be a month from now to 12 months from now. So it's, you know, it's, it sucks because we have to pay our mortgage on that house.
Our mortgage company did give us a three month forbearance but we're back to paying mortgage. So.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Okay, wow. So previous owners never had more than 8 inches of water in there. What flood zone was this property?
[00:23:27] Speaker C: I don't know.
I don't. I don't know exactly what flood zone it was in, but, I mean, like, we were pretty high up on a hillside, and so.
And this was considered what they call a 100 historic, 100 year historic flood. So once every 100 years, something like this happens. And it was pretty much right on from 100 years ago, the last time Frankfurt had seen a flood like this. So it's not something that, again, like, we see this all the time. We don't. And it just happened to happen.
Did they.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Did the mortgage servicer or the lender require you to have flood insurance on this?
Okay, so that's good.
Well, at least you had it.
[00:24:12] Speaker C: So. But what I want to tell people is we had a commercial policy because we owned the home in our llc, not our personal names. And so we had commercial policy. So loss of use, loss of income, all of that, that was on the commercial policy. But then we also had a secondary policy for flood insurance. What I learned and what I would love for anybody else to know is that you need to make sure that on your flood insurance policy, you also have loss of use and loss of income. Because they wanted to use only our flood insurance policy and not our commercial policy. And I thought initially, when the process first started, that one would kick in after the other and we could still claim our loss of use and loss of income from our commercial policy. But that wasn't the case. Our commercial policy was completely unused and they would not. Not use it. So technically, what I didn't know was while we had flood insurance and we recovered, you know, for that, but loss of use and loss of income, you're also. You also need on that policy as well.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't know. So that's like a. A box you can check to make sure on your flood insurance. Good to know.
[00:25:21] Speaker C: I had no idea until this happened. And I just, again, it was such a huge learning curve for us. And so now, even as we own our home here in Florida, we're on the Sarasota Bay and we're not in a flood zone, but I surely got flood insurance on this house, and I made sure that there's loss of income and loss of use and all the things that I learned from the Kentucky house.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it's always better to be overinsured than underinsured. For sure.
[00:25:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: This episode of the Short Term show is brought to you by the short term shop. 30 year fixed mortgages and tax benefits and Long distance management training made easy are just a few of the perks of owning a short term rental. The Short Term Shop can help you buy and learn how to manage your property from anywhere in the world. Just go to the shorttermshop.com and click get connected again. That's the shorttermshop.com and we are brokered by exp. See y' all over there.
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[00:27:15] Speaker B: All right, so we got where do we go from that? I'm not quite sure how to transition into the next so really good advice on an absolute worst case scenario. This is not something that's going to happen often or at all to you. It may never happen to you, but something can and will. The longer you own real estate and the more real estate you own, something will happen. I've had three fires. Only one was, you know, fully burned down, all kinds of things. So always make sure that you're keeping up to date on your insurance too. Like we saw this a lot in 2021 and 2022 was people who bought houses for, you know, 200, 300,000 ten years ago. Now they're worth close to a million. And they never went back and updated the value of their house with their insurance. I mean we have the absolute worst case scenario that I saw is we had a listing house that was listed a Cabin in the Smokies. We sold it to them prior to Covid 2018 for like 300 something. It was on the market. She listed it for 1.2 million.
[00:28:19] Speaker C: And.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: It was only insured for 300 and there was a wildfire and it burnt to the ground. Now to add insult to injury, we had two full price offers on this property that the seller did not accept because they had a 1. It was either that it wasn't all cash or that they were getting a loan or that they wanted to get an inspection. It was something ridiculous. That is totally standard.
And if she had accepted even the Second offer, it would have closed at 1.2 million two weeks before it burned down.
[00:28:54] Speaker C: Wow.
Wow.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: So that's another absolute worst case scenario. But guys, make sure that you're staying on top of that insurance. Because there's been times that Luke and I have gotten something in the mail and been like, oh, my God, we're three months out of insurance on this property. Like, it's something that you need to be checking, I would say monthly, have it on your spreadsheet of things to do, maybe your Trello board or whatever, depending on how many. Not if you have one property, you don't have to do it monthly. But if you've got a lot, you need to be making sure, because they're going to expire at different times, but make sure at least, you know, quarterly you're checking on that and making sure that you're not way off on what that value is, because you can really, really mess up. And everybody, if you're in a flood zone, go back and check that flood insurance and make sure you have those boxes checked that Tony talked about, because that's really good advice.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I had to. When that happened, I wanted to go back on all of our policies and just make sure that we had things checked off and values that were right. And one of them it actually wasn't. We have a barn on that property and the barn wasn't. The dwelling wasn't included on our insurance policy whatever reason. And we didn't find that out until we just went back and wanted to make sure that we were properly covered on the rest of our houses. And so, and lo and behold, this ginormous barn on one of our properties wasn't on there.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: So see, you always find something.
[00:30:18] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: All right, so enough with the worst case scenario. It's always good to be prepared for the worst case scenario. But 99.999 of the time you're in, not the worst case scenario. So let's talk about, you know, let's talk about some positives about your portfolio. I want to hear about this Florida place, your most recent one. So it's in the Sarasota area. So what do the numbers look like on that? Would you pay for it? What are you thinking it's going to make?
[00:30:45] Speaker C: So we paid 890,000 for this property. And this property is special to us in a way because the week that our Frankfurt house flooded was the same week that we also went under contract on this house. And so, yeah, or just like three or four days before the flood happened is when we went under contract on this house. And so initially up front, we did have to take some funds to go towards the river house cleanup, restoration, the fans, that company, they wanted to deposit. And there was some other things I don't remember. But anyway, so, you know, we, we were lined up, you know, to buy this property and then the flood happened. We had to use some funds for that. And it was. It turned into a crap show because the sellers of this house were not nice at all. It was a debacle.
They were the most mean, hateful people I've ever experienced in my life. And so we had to delay closing by like a week. It wasn't long. It was just, you know, maybe a week or 10 days.
And they were like threatening to cancel our deal, hold our earnest deposit, all these things. It was, it was wild.
But here we are. So, yeah, it was crazy.
So 890,000. We bought it as a 3 3.
And it has an office, as I mentioned before that we've since added the closet to make it a full bedroom. It's a large room, so it totally needs its own closet.
And then we are adding a bathroom. So now it's going to be a four. Four technically. But we also finish the garage because the garage is going to be the bunk room and so. And the garage has its own bathroom also, so it'll sleep 14.
The numbers should be close to 200,000 on it.
That's awesome.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: And you paid how much?
[00:32:39] Speaker C: We paid 890.
We've also added a pickle ball out back.
We've got a hot tub that we've added. We've got. And some other things that I can't disclose.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Not till it launches. Got it.
[00:32:54] Speaker C: We're jacking out the backyard.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:32:56] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Well, love that. So. And you're telling what you're telling me as a real estate agent who hears there are no. There's no deals left. There's short term rentals dead. Is that you just found a deal.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: And you.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: And you know what? You don't always.
You're not finding, you're not picking up deals off the ground that just make sense the way that they are. That's not how it works. That's 2015 talk where deals were just laying around. But if you are patient and persistent, you will find a deal that you can do things. Some things too, which maybe it's renovating it, maybe it's just managing it better in order to make the numbers be what you need them to be. I don't know if you're seeing this with your clients. But our new clients coming in this year are they really, really only care about actual rental history.
They don't want to really like I don't want to say they don't want to do any analysis or look at anything. But they or especially you know, maybe not our clients, but buyers on our listings, they only care about actual rental history. They're not interested in looking on air DNA or price labs or anything like that. They're just putting a lot more emphasis on rental history only rather than treating the rental history as one piece of a lot of data that you need to get guys, you need to get all the data. You can get subscriptions to all of the data companies, look at the rental history of course, but use all of these pieces of data because you never know if that that rental history is terrible or maybe that rental history is run by the absolute best manager there ever was and you're never going to get close to it. You need to be able to gauge where on that spectrum this property falls. So you can't just say oh yes, this rental history, yes or no. Thank you. You really do have to do the.
[00:34:47] Speaker C: The full and how you can improve it. And I use your strategy, the enemy method like it's going out of style.
So even here, you know, we have vacationed here for years and years but as a investment of our own now I'm looking at the next level up of short term rentals here and what those houses have like over on the island and you know, what can I add to my property here that I can afford and implement and things like that. And it's some of the things are as simple as like a cereal dispenser. Like it's got like those three containers of Fruit Loops and you know, whatever else. So Amazon sent me those cereal dispensers but like I'm not seeing that in a lot of houses here but I saw it on some of the higher end houses and I'm like gosh, that's you know, super cheap and easy thing to do. I could throw that in, no big deal.
And just looking at that over and over again and the same for Kentucky.
So for Kentucky that's a more it's still emerging, an emerging market. And so most people who have bought and are investing there, they're not selling because they're doing so well. And to, to buy an already income producing property in Kentucky is few and far between.
Several of my clients are now buying their second and third properties in, in Kentucky.
But it's hard to Find one that is going up for sale because they're, people are just hanging on them because they're, they do so well. And you know, and, and I tell people too for Kentucky to be careful with the data websites because even for my first property, the three, it's now a three bedroom two and a half bathroom. But when we first bought that, I think Air DNA said something like $34,000 that it was going to make is what Air DNA had said. And that covered our mortgage and lined our pockets a little bit at that time. And so. But that property has made 70, 75 000.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: Oh wow.
[00:36:48] Speaker C: So it's just, you know, and I, and I tell people, you know, just because you have a four bedroom house and you know five other people have a four bedroom house, you have to look at their amenities and then know who your competition is. If they look like grandma's house, that's not your competition. We're not looking at them. We're going to look at the ones that matter and go from there. So that's the revenue that you should be counting and moving towards and how you can do better than that.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: So yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean if you're, if, if you are being one of those people who only is looking at rental history and nothing else, make sure you know the house you're looking at, if you're looking at a mama Papa house, then it's not going to be doing as well as the same exact house that's been, has, you know, good decor, photos, amenities. So you, you do have to take that into consideration that short term rentals are so, so subjective. Like there's a guy in my inbox right now saying, well I, you know, the pictures of random homes on the Internet is not helpful for me. Like you know, sending links to listings. I need to be a full, you know, I, I would not. I've come from the apartment world and anytime somebody says I come from the apartment world, I'm like listen, you are going to have a real hard time with this because apartment rental income is the same when I'm owning it and selling it to you. It's the same until people move out, until those leases end up. This is not that. So when people are like oh yeah, I own a bunch of apartments, I'm like, okay, this is going to be.
[00:38:19] Speaker C: Tough to get you to, to switch.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: That mindset of how subjective analyzing a short term rental income is.
[00:38:27] Speaker C: Yep, totally agree. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Well Tony, this has been a great chat and we have three questions that we ask every almost A client that we ask every guest that comes on the show.
First question, what advice would you give 20 year old Tony if you knew then what you know now.
[00:38:47] Speaker C: Do it. 1. I would have loved to have had someone walk beside me through real estate stuff at 20.
I would have loved to have house hacked if I knew about that at that time. I would say that, you know, follow the destination and not speed to get to the destination. If you're going slow, just work at your own pace and and get to where you're going. The destination and the path is what's important, not how fast you get there.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: Very true. All right, similar question, but not advice for your past self. Advice for a current new investor who's looking to get started today.
[00:39:30] Speaker C: Don't get decision paralysis.
The best time to buy real estate was yesterday.
You know, I think don't get caught up in all of the shiny podcast and influencers, people who have 10, 20, 30 million dollar portfolios. Those people didn't start there, they started well below that.
Don't get in above your head. If you have never renovated a home, don't go and buy a house that needs a total gut. Buy something that across the country. Yeah, exactly.
Buy something that you can afford and that you can relatively get up and running quickly and get your cash flow coming in.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Yes, that is great advice. And a lot of the like general real estate podcasters and influencers talk about the BRRRR strategy and doing rehabs and then, you know, if you've never had to yell at a contractor, you do not need to be renovating across the country from where you live if you've never done that before. Because even with the best ones, communication can get sideways, expectations can be sideways. And unless you're very, I don't want to say very, a little bit experienced, somewhat experienced in having done some renovations. Like don't try to do that on your very first rental property. And across the country from you.
[00:40:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, like I said, our first house that we bought was 200,000. That was in 2020. We just bought this house for just below 900,000. I never would have bought a $900,000 house as my first house.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: All right, and last question. What's your favorite book that's impacted your mindset?
[00:41:06] Speaker C: This is going to be funny. This is going to shock the world.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: Harry Potter.
[00:41:11] Speaker C: No, it was actually a book. I think it came out last year. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Be useful.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: Oh, and read that one.
[00:41:19] Speaker C: He is a real estate guy and even before he was who he is. Now he did real estate investing. He started off in apartments and lived in the apartment that he bought. And he built his wealth through real estate, actually. And I didn't know that. Yeah. And then it, it transferred over into commercial space and things like that. But that book, he talks about, you know, having a vision and even if it's blurry, have your vision and focus on that and move towards that. And it just, it was a weird book because I'm not like Arnold Schwarzenegger's number one fan, but I was at an airport. Andrew and I were traveling, and when we get on an airplane, Andrew puts his earbuds in and I'm not that person. I need to be entertained.
And so he will ignore me or whatever. And so we were at the airport and I went into one of those little shops and I was looking for a book to read on the airplane.
The selection was slim. And I just picked that one up. And when I got on the airplane and for like two days, I could not put that book down. It was, it's. And this was like a year ago. This was probably last summer. And to this day, that's probably the best book I've ever read. And I still go back to it. I literally went through that book and highlighted and starred and underlined so much of that book. And I've shared it with people just because it was, I don't know, it just oddly influenced me. And especially knowing that, like, he's. He's a real estate investor and he talks about income producing properties.
And it just. I had no idea. So I didn't either.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Well, I'll have to check that out.
All right, Tony, so if our listeners.
[00:42:57] Speaker C: And of course your books.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: If our listeners want to find you and follow you, how can they do that?
[00:43:05] Speaker C: I am on Facebook the most. So my name, Tony Boyer on Facebook.
If you're on Instagram, it's bnb_ldy. So bn. Bnb.
And I'm on LinkedIn also as myself.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: All right, as myself.
I. I hate Facebook. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on. And guys, we will catch you on next week's episode. Thank you so much for listening, Sam.
