Transcript
Ashley Kerr (0:00)
Welcome to another episode of Rikki Reply. Today we're diving into the changing economic landscape from weighing the viability of the BRRRR strategy in today's tariff environment to navigating last minute purchase agreement surprises that could cost you thousands of dollars right before closing. Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Kerr. Thank you. Tony's out for the day, but Garrett Brown from Bigger Stays is here to help out. Thanks so much for joining us today, Garrett.
Garrett Brown (0:33)
Always excited to be here. I have some big shoes to fill with the man, the myth, the legend, Tony being gone. But I'm happy to be in this episode and talking about everything going on. Today's questions. We are highlighting the real challenges that are happening for real estate investors all over the US and we'll talk through how rising material costs are transforming real estate investing going forward and, and what to do if a seller wants to change the contract three days after it comes up for you. So it's going to be a good one today.
Ashley Kerr (1:01)
Yeah. So let's start with our first question and this is from Mark Young and this question was pulled from the Bigger Pockets forums. So Garrett, this is a great question for you as Bigger Pockets short term rental expert. His question is, I'm buying my first short term rental vacation home. Should I use raboo? Okay. So it says, goes on to say I'm looking to buy a short term rental vacation home around Destin 38. Has anyone had experience with using Rabu? What was your experience? Do the numbers work on their site? I have $100,000 to put down. Any advice would be appreciated. Okay, well, Garrett, coming from the world of long term rentals, what is raboo?
Garrett Brown (1:46)
Rabu is, you know, I'm sure there's quite a few of them out there, but there's pretty much three or four main short term rental data sites out there that you're able to, you know, see what kind of numbers some properties can make for you, what different markets and areas are doing. Rabu is one of the, the good and prominent ones that have been out there. There's also Air DNA, Price Labs is one that I particularly like a lot. And then there's mash, Pfizer as well. Those are probably the big Core four. But there's a lot of data out there and I highly recommend researching them. I think a few of the things to unpack there because there's, there's a lot to think about as you're doing that. I always Avery Carl, who is, you know, one of the, the queens of short term rentals out there. She loves the 30amarket. She's a great resource to probably learn a little more about that particular market because I don't know as much about it, but I, I have heard strong headwinds over there. It's something that you definitely need to be aware of your insurance costs before you even even consider that market. Because Florida is known to be kind of the insurance desert at times. Now you can use something like the Steadily insurance calculator that is on Bigger Pockets as well that you can type in your address and see what those potential insurance costs may be. That's a big factor in Florida. And then as you're kind of penciling out some of these numbers, I even helped create a Bigger Pockets STR calculator. It's essentially a, a, a very robust spreadsheet that's going to have all the expenses you could expect for different short term rentals. How to calculate your long term growth within it like 10 years from now, how that investment's going to play out for you. And you can get that at Bigger Pockets as well under their STR calculator section. Those are going to be two really good resources that live on bigger pockets to help you kind of refine some of these numbers. I've heard great things about 30a, but if you have 100k to put down, that's a pretty substantial chunk of money that you probably can find some good investments out there in a few different markets. So you have to think about your lifestyle and with this as well. Do you live near 30A? Is this going to be a completely remote rental that you're managing, you know, or is this like a market that you, you like to visit and you'll be able to get some value for that from your family as well while having an investment that is paying for itself and giving you that lifestyle benefit? It's kind of tough to say, but my rule, if you're, if you're thinking you have 100k, you probably should be looking for a market that you're probably going to be able to get into for about 300 to 400,000 because you're going to probably have to put about 20 to 25% down on that and you're still going to need some leftover to do some of the furnishings and things like that. So if you're not seeing anything in the 30Amarket, there's, there's a few other markets out there too that in a beach area might be able to, to, to suit your needs. So you you can dive into a lot of different ones. Things like Corpus Christi, Texas is a, is a, is a market that I'm a little bit bullish on for having, you know, an affordable place, but still having a lot of guests traveling there. Texas has some of the biggest feeder cities in the country. There's even other ones like Charlottesville, Virginia is another really good one that I've seen coming up a lot too. So I would just kind of weigh some different options and use those tools in bigger pockets and decide what your actual goals are. That's the cool thing about real estate is it really comes down to what you kind of desire and what you can make out of it and what works best for you.