Should I Use My Home Equity to Buy My Next Rental Property? (Rookie Reply)

Summary

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Real Estate Rookie Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Should I Use My Home Equity to Buy My Next Rental Property? (Rookie Reply)
Hosts: Ashley Kerrick & Tony J. Robinson
Aired: February 20, 2026
Podcast: Real Estate Rookie (BiggerPockets)

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Episode Overview

In this Rookie Reply episode, Ashley and Tony tackle three practical questions from the BiggerPockets forums, addressing frequent pain points for new real estate investors. The focus is on:

• Tapping home equity to expand your rental portfolio
• Accurately estimating rental prices
• Effectively hiring and managing short-term rental cleaning crews

The conversation is honest, tactical, and always approachable—tailored for investors on their first few deals.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Should You Use Home Equity to Buy Your Next Rental? (00:27–08:57)

Core Question:
A listener wants to leverage $110,000 in equity from a property they're still renovating—wondering about best practices, the wisdom of the BRRRR method, and choosing between cash-out refinancing and a HELOC.

Understanding and Accessing Equity (00:27–02:16)

• Definition of Equity:
  Tony clarifies that equity is the difference between your home's market value and the loan balance.
• Validation:
  Tony urges listeners to verify the equity calculation source: “Was that based on the Zillow Zestimate ... or did your neighbor's house sell for a certain amount?” (00:50)

Best Options for Accessing Equity (02:16–05:53)

• Rental Property Financing:
  Ashley notes that standard HELOCs and refinances may not apply if the property becomes a rental. Instead, she suggests:
  • Commercial Lines of Credit: Seek small, local banks and clarify if they offer second-lien HELOCs for rentals, as some only allow first-lien positions.
  • Commercial Refinances: These often come with shorter amortizations (15 or 20 years vs. the usual 30).
  • DSCR Loans:
    Helpful if your personal debt-to-income ratio is high; the loan assesses the property's rental income potential.
• Interest Rate Consideration:
  “If it’s like a 2.9%, then we’re probably not going to want to refinance...unless there is extreme value in that equity” (05:28—Ashley)

Equity Strategies and Portfolio Growth (05:53–08:57)

• Accessible Amount:
  Tony estimates you may only access $70–80K of the $110K without a sale.
• The BRRRR Method:
  • Tony: “I’m a fan of the BRRRR strategy because it allows you to recycle a portion of that capital.” (06:15)
  • He cautions it requires skills in finding under-market properties and managing renovations.
  • Ashley adds BRRRR isn’t only for long-term rentals—consider short- or mid-term as fallback strategies:
    “If you are worried about [feast or famine with STRs], what are your other strategies you can pivot to ... can you easily pivot to a midterm or long-term rental?” (07:28)
• Actionable Advice: Always run the numbers for each scenario, weigh opportunity costs, and plan for a backup strategy.

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2. Which Rent Estimator Tools Are Reliable? (12:14–17:09)

Core Question:
A listener asks which rent estimator, like BiggerPockets’ tool or PropStream, is most accurate and whether they use the same data.

Data Quality & Manual Research (12:14–15:34)

• Ashley’s Take:
  • She finds many tools unreliable, especially in small markets:
    “Every time I tried to use them, not enough data...in my small little tiny rural towns.” (12:33)
  • She prefers manual tracking—keep a spreadsheet of market listings, note when properties rent, and call property managers or landlords for comps.
  • Suggests using free rent estimators like TurboTenant, Rentometer, etc., for triangulation but not as sole sources.

Larger Markets & Blended Approaches (15:34–17:09)

• Tony’s Take:
  • He finds estimators more accurate in larger or urban markets.
  • Shares a personal example with BiggerPockets’ tool in Shreveport, LA—“It was almost spot on to what I was actually charging in rent” (16:16–16:55)
  • “Depending on how big of a market you are, the BiggerPockets Rental Estimator could be a good starting point...still...do a lot of that manual underwriting yourself.”

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3. Interviewing and Paying Short-Term Rental Cleaning Crews (20:40–30:08)

Core Question:
A new STR owner in DFW asks for a walkthrough on hiring, vetting, and managing STR-specific cleaning crews, payment practices, and how to handle laundry.

Vetting and Interviewing Cleaners (20:40–24:40)

• Tony’s Checklist:

  • Prefer Teams: Avoid one-person shops to reduce risks if the cleaner is unavailable.
    • “If they get sick, if they get a flat tire, if they have a kid who gets sick...all the things that happen in their life that would prevent them from getting to your property now becomes a fire...” (21:09)
  • Experience:
    • Prefer cleaners with STR experience and comfort with checklists/photos/processes (“very specific system that cleaners have to plug into”).
  • System Flexibility:
    • Cleaners must adopt his systems for scheduling, check-ins/outs, and documentation.
  • Same-Day Turns Required:
    • “Anyone who can’t do same-day turns is a hard no.” (23:57)

• Ashley:

  • Inherited her cleaner from a co-host, but shares insights on pay structure and management.

Pay Structure & Bookkeeping (24:40–29:04)

• Hourly vs. Per-Clean:
  • Ashley: Currently pays by the hour, previously by the job.
  • Tony:
    • Pays by the job for single-family, by the hour for hotels.
    • “It’s easier to control the cost and...make sure that we always have the margin built into the cleaning fee.” (27:08)
    • Suggests surveying local STRs’ cleaning fees to set baseline expected rates.
• Payment Frequency:
  • Bi-weekly or monthly, depending on the cleaner’s preference.
  • Payments via business platforms (Ashley uses Turno/Baselane; Tony uses Relay/ACH).
• Tax Documentation:
  • 1099s for contractors.
  • Ashley: “Do not pay them until you get the W9.” (29:04)
  • Relay can automate W9 collection before releasing payments.

Laundry Logistics (29:04–30:08)

• Cleaners either take laundry offsite (especially when in-property machines are unavailable or for high-volume linens) or do it onsite for smaller properties.

Notable Tony quote (21:09):
“If they get sick, if they get a flat tire, if they have a kid who gets sick...all the things that happen in their life that would prevent them from getting to your property now becomes a fire that you have to put out.”

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On Using Equity Wisely:
  Ashley (05:28): “If it’s like a 2.9%, then we’re probably not going to want to refinance...unless there is extreme value in that equity.”
• On Manual Rent Research:
  Ashley (12:33): “Every time I tried to use [rent estimators], not enough data...in my small little tiny rural towns.”
• On Cleaner Reliability:
  Tony (21:09): “If they get sick, if they get a flat tire...all the things that happen...now becomes a fire you have to put out.”
• On Payment Documentation:
  Ashley (29:04): “Do not pay them until you get the W9. Once you pay someone for a whole year and then you’re chasing them down...they’re less likely to comply.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:27 - Listener question: Using equity to scale
• 02:16 - Equity access methods (HELOCs, commercial lines, DSCR loans)
• 05:53 - Deploying capital & BRRRR method discussion
• 07:28 - STR “feast or famine” and backup strategies
• 12:14 - Rent estimator tools: strengths & limitations
• 15:34 - Combining tech tools and manual research
• 20:40 - Interviewing and hiring STR cleaners
• 24:40 - Cleaner pay structures, accounting, and taxes
• 29:04 - Laundry logistics and W9/1099 best practices

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Takeaways for New Investors

• Validate your actual equity; get appraisals or precise comps.
• Small bank commercial products and DSCR loans can help tap equity on future rentals.
• The BRRRR strategy is powerful but requires discipline, good deal-finding, and rehab management.
• Rent estimators are good for “ballpark” numbers—always supplement with manual, local research.
• For STRs, treat cleaner hiring as highly strategic—hire a team, vet for readiness and flexibility, and systematize payment and documentation from day one.

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For more in-depth scenarios and rookie-level advice, subscribe to Real Estate Rookie on YouTube or follow @BiggerPocketsRookie on Instagram.

Transcript

[Ashley Kerrick]

What if the hardest part of real estate isn't finding that first deal, but knowing what to do after you get it?

[Tony J. Robinson]

Today we're answering three real questions from the Bigger Pockets forums that hit the exact pain points that rookies like you are running into. Scaling the right way, pricing rentals correctly, and setting up a short term rental without all of those costly mistakes.

[Ashley Kerrick]

This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I'm Ashley Kerrick.

[Tony J. Robinson]

And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And with that, let's get into today's first first question. So our first question again comes from the Bigger Pockets forums and it says, I currently own a property that has around $110,000 in equity. While I do not have a renter in this property yet, my plan is to have one by the end of the year. Currently still renovating parts of the house with the amount of equity that I have, I've been thinking a lot about investing in a second property. I've always had the dream of owning vacation rentals. However, I don't have that much capital and I worry about the feast or famine aspect of short term rentals. I guess my main questions are what's the best next investment for someone who is relatively new to real estate investing? Is the Burr method smart for me and should I do a cash out refi to help fund the next investment? All right, so basically this person's just asking a, they've got some equity built up, what's the best way for them to deploy that? I think first let's just define for all the rookies that are out there, like equity and what does that actually mean? Right. So when we talk about equity, we're talking about the value of the home, what is the home currently worth and what is the loan balance on that house? And the difference between those two numbers is your equity. So I think my first question back to the person who asked this question is how did you come up with that $110,000 of equity? Was that based on like the Zillow Zestimate where it said that your house is worth, you know, X amount and you know what your loan balance is or did your neighbor's house sell for for a certain amount? But, but I think getting some clarity first on how you came to that equity figure would be important because that'll give you a better gauge on how you know how accurate and how much equity you actually have to work with. So that's the first part is just defining that. But for you, Ash, I think before we even get into what strategy or maybe what Move makes the most sense. This person also asked like, what's the best way to tap into that equity? Is it a cash out refinance or is it a heloc? What's your recommendation?

[Ashley Kerrick]

Yeah, so I would say for this one they own the property but it's going to be a rental. So you would have to do, you couldn't do, you know, a refinance or you couldn't get a home equity line of credit or do a residential refinance. You would have to go and get a commercial line of credit on the property. So look for a local lender that will do these commercial lines of credit. You want to talk to the commercial lender at the small local bank and see what options they have available for you. The two lines of credits that I have are commercial are first liens. So that means that there's no mortgage, no other debt on the property. So that is something you want to clarify and verify with the commercial department that the line of credit will actually be a second lien which is traditional for most home equity lines of credit. So you have your mortgage as your first lien and then the line of credit is the second lien on the property, meaning you don't pay your bills, goes into foreclosure, the mortgage getting paid first, then the line of credit. So it's that positioning and some banks don't offer a second position for a rental property. So that's where I would ask and get that clarification on that before you go ahead and start the whole process to get a line of credit. If you do refinance on the property and it's going to be a rental, you have a couple options there. You can go to the commercial side of lending for a small local lender. You can usually you're going to have to do like different amortization and fixed rate periods than you would see on the residential side. So for example, you're maybe looking at a 15 year amortization or a 20 year amortization instead of the 30 year amortization. Then you're going to see a fixed rate not for 30 years, but maybe for 5, 10. I've seen it for 7 years and then it goes into variable or you can refinance again to get another fixed rate. You can do a DSCR loan where this is looking at the debt you are going to put on the property and can the income so when you rent it out actually support the property and you don't have to rely on your own income to support the property and so because if you have a high debt to income on the personal side, this is always a great option where they're looking at the value of the property and the income potential of the property instead of you to making sure it can support itself. And a DSER loan, they do have that nice 30 year option amortization and 30 year fixed to look at. So something to take into consideration when you're looking at two of these options is what is the current interest rate on the mortgage that you have right now on the property? If it's like a 2.9%, then we're probably not going to want to refinance. The only reason I would refinance out of this property if you have a really low rate and you're going to refinance into a higher rate is if there is extreme value in that equity where you can put that money into something else and make such a large return that that interest rate and that increase in interest rate means nothing to you because it is very, very minimal compared to the amount of money that you're making in the new deal that you're putting that equity into. So look at that upside potential and kind of evaluate that and it goes back to running the numbers in each scenario. So that's where I would start is looking at those options that you have available for just doing a line of credit or for doing the refinance on the property.

[Tony J. Robinson]

Yeah, all great points, Ashley. And the next part of that question is what is the best next investment for someone in their position? And I really think that depends on you as an individual investor. First, I think if you have $110,000 in equity, let's just assume that aside from selling, you won't be able to access all of that. So maybe somewhere in the like 80 ish thousand, 70, 80 thousand dollar range, which you'll actually be able to access through a line of credit or potentially refinance. And with that amount of capital, you've got to ask yourself, okay, what is the best way for me to actually go deploy that? I think just generally speaking, I'm a fan of the BRRRR strategy because it allows you to recycle a portion of that capital. But obviously that does require you finding a deal you know, significantly below market value, which is a skill set in and of itself. It requires you to manage your rehab, which is another skill set in and of itself. Right. So there's some more complexity there. But I think if you have the desire to learn those skills or the ability to, to do that already A burr could be a great way to build your portfolio. And I've met so many investors who have taken one heloc. Combine that with the burst strategy and built a decently sized portfolio by just recycling that same capital deal after deal after deal. So it is a good way to, to build that momentum. So I think if you have the, the ability or the desire, a BRRRR would be a great way to, to move forward.

[Ashley Kerrick]

And also too like the BRRRR doesn't just mean a long term buy and hold rental. Like it could be your dream of doing a short term rental too. So that can give you an extra layer of protection. By doing rental property you can really have, you know, increase the value of the property so you have more equity in the property. When you go ahead and finish the rehab on it and pull your, your money back out and you have this equity sitting in there to give you like a little bit of cushion and security. That, okay, that feast and famine mindset that you had. One little tip on that. Like if you are worried about that, what are going to be your other strategies that you can pivot to with this property? So for example, could you easily pivot to a midterm rental? Can you easily pivot to a long term rental with this property? So if that does happen, I had a property listed before as a short term rental and a midterm rental and I would leave the midterm rental booking open and I would just change it and I would keep my short term rental window, you know, very minimal. I think like only 30 to 60 days to keep it open. So that way someone booked, you know, 60 plus days out for a midterm rental, I could go ahead and close off the short term rental bookings for that period because I'd would have rather have had the midterm rental bookings than the short term rental. So think about different ways that you can incorporate other strategies. If just doing the short term rental route doesn't, you know, make sense, maybe it's seasonality or you know, you just have, you know, periods of time where there's a lull that you're able to pivot when necessary coming up, even the best strategy falls apart if your rent numbers are wrong. We're going to break down which rent tools you can trust and which ones get investors in trouble. After a quick word from our sponsors.

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[Ashley Kerrick]

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[Ashley Kerrick]

up for free today okay, today's second question is between Biggerpockets Estimator and Propstream. Which rent estimator do you find most accurate or are they pulling from the same data source? I saw a two year old post on this. I almost read that as I saw a two year old post about this. But no, he said I saw a post that was 2 years old on this but wondering what's the most accurate today? Okay, this is a great question as to where are these rent estimators getting their data from? And I'm going to be honest, I do not like rent estimators. Every time I tried to use them, not enough data, not enough data in my small little tiny rural towns that I invested. So I have to say I I do like I use Turbo tenant and when you go ahead and list it they have a rent estimator for you that you can go ahead and plug it in and like so I always just do it and check and like sometimes it will work for me and there will be enough data in some of the areas I invest in. But I think looking at where their data is coming from and when it was last updated so you know if this data is from two years ago that they're pulling or the how are they getting their most recent data? This is a very old school way of doing it, but I really do believe it is accurate. And this is how I estimated rents for a very very long time was I had a spreadsheet. I would go in and look at the listings every single day for that market. I would put them into the spreadsheet and then I would update them every day. So if a listing was gone I would assume that that property was rent rented. Okay, that property was rented and if it was, you know, rented within a 30 day period I would assume that it was rented for the price that they were asking for. Very rarely have I, in my over 10 years of investing in the markets I choose, seen like price drops or decreases on rents. So usually you're getting what those people are asking for or if it's continuously sitting and sitting and sitting, I know that's not a good comp and I'm not going to use that, that property. And then I would just track it. I would track it and see what was going on. Then I would call property management companies. I would call, like if I saw our for rent sign in someone's yard, I would call that number and I would ask, what are you charging in rent? You know, I, most of the time I would just say, hey, I'm just interested in that apartment. What are, what are charging in rent for? And okay, thanks. Have a great day. You know, or maybe ask a little bit more, like how many bedrooms, things like that. And I could use that as a comp. Um, so you can always do that. But I think especially if you really want to niche down on an area, you can go ahead and do this heavy lifting or have a VA do it for you too. But Bigger Pockets rent Estimator, PropStream. I've never used Propstream. I love Propstream for a lot of things. I've never used their rent estimator, though. Turbo Tenant has a rent estimator. I think there's like a website called Rentometer that is out there too. And honestly, I would just use them all. I think they all are free to use.

[Tony J. Robinson]

I couldn't agree more. I think a lot of these estimating tools are good for a general baseline, but when it comes to actually sharpening the pencil on your underwriting, I do think that that level of manual work that you just talked through is, is beneficial. But I think the one point that I will disagree with you on is that I think your, your, your lack of trust, or maybe the, the lack of usefulness that you get from the estimator tools is probably because the market that you're in. But I, I pulled up the Bigger Pockets rental estimator tool for Shreveport, Louisiana, where I started my investing career back in 2018. And I typed in the address for the very first property that I, that I bought.

[Ashley Kerrick]

I.

[Tony J. Robinson]

And at the time in 2018, it was renting for about 1500 bucks per month. And I typed in that same address and right now it's showing that it would rent for about 1600 bucks per month, which feels about right. You know, that was 2018. Right. So what is that I can do that math fast of 8 years ago, give or take that we did that right. So it kind of makes sense now that the rents have gone up a little bit. And I remember doing this when I first bought that property as well and it was almost spot on to what I was actually charging in rent. So I think depending on how big of a market you are, the Bigger Pockets Rental Estimator could be a good starting point. But still, to Ashley's point, go back do a lot of that manual underwriting yourself to validate what you're seeing in these estimating tools. All right, we're going to take a quick break before our last question, but while we're going, be sure to subscribe to the real estate rookie YouTube channel. You can find us at realestate rickey and we'll be back with more right after this.

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[Tony J. Robinson]

Dominion all right guys, we are back and here is our Final question for today's rookie reply. Are we just closed on our first short term rental property in the DFW North Texas area and I'm excited to start setting this property up. A few questions here are regarding cleaning crews for short term rentals. Could you walk me through an example of your interview and hiring process for short term rental specific crews in your area? For example, what questions are you asking when interviewing? What qualifications slash traits are must haves? Do you pay by the job or each visit or by the hour? Do you issue W9s? What accounting software do you use and do you use your cleaning crews to do laundry or is that a separate service that you all have? Thanks so much. All right, lots of really good questions here and this is like a pretty tactical question and I don't think one that we've hit before out of all the rookie reply questions that we've had. But it is a super important question because your cleaners for your short term rental business are probably the most important people that you hire because they are the last eyes to see the property once a guest, before a guest checks in. And they're usually the first ones to see the property once a guest checks out. Right? So they're, they're the only people that have access to your property in between a guest checking in and checking out out. So it's on them to really be your eyes and ears and boots on the ground to make sure that everything's flowing smoothly. And, and if they aren't doing a good job, it usually has a pretty big impact on you as the host. Right. You'll see that show up in your cleaning fees or if they're not telling you about deferred maintenance issues, you'll see that show up in, in your reviews. So, so there, there's a lot that your cleaner does that's really, really important. So I appreciate this question. So let's kind of break it down. First he asked about the hiring process. Like what questions do we ask? What are some of the must haves? How do you pay? And then what services should you expect? So on the interviewing side, I'll kind of walk through my process and ask yours looks like. But for me, I'll usually want to get a sense of how big their operation is. I, I strongly, strongly advise against hiring a person who is a one woman or one man show because if you do that, you are now subject to all of the ebbs and flows of that person's life. If they get sick, if they get a flat tire, if they have a Kid who gets sick, if they need to go on vacation, if you know they have a death in the family and they need to take some time, like whatever it may be, all the things that happen in their life that would prevent them from getting to your property now becomes a fire that you have to put out. So my strong recommendation is to hire cleaners who have at least a few people that works together. That way if one person's out, there's someone else who can step in and kind of fill in the, fill in the gaps there. So that's the first piece for me is like we got to have someone that's got a team. Second, I do strongly prefer someone with cleaning experience already, right? Someone who's already cleaned short term rentals, they know the process, they have everything kind of dialed in. That will be a little trickier depending on what market you go into. If you're in a super small market, that might be tough to find someone who has that experience already. But if you're in a market that's decently sized, I would prioritize someone who has that experience. And then the other big one for us is being able to integrate into our systems and processes. We have specific software that we use for all of our cleaners where we can track what time they arrive to the property, what time they leave. We get checklists they have to submit, there are photos they have to submit. So we have a very specific system that cleaners have to plug into. And if a cleaner is not willing to do that, then right off the bat we don't hire them. So making sure they integrate with our systems and processes. And then the fourth piece is just making sure that they'll do same day turns again. In some markets or some cleaners who are maybe stretched beyond their capacity, they'll tell you, hey, I don't have the ability to do a same day turn. So if someone's checking out at 11 and you know the next check in is at 4pm, I don't have enough bandwidth to clean that in that timeframe. So I would need you to block the day of checkout so that they can check in the following day at 4:00pm and that, that just decimates your, your ability to really generate revenue. So anyone who can't do same day turns out is a hard no for me as well. So those are kind of the four big buckets that I focus on when I'm talking to cleaners. Ash, I'm curious what your processes look like.

[Ashley Kerrick]

Honestly, I haven't had to hire a cleaner yet because I had someone who was co hosting for me and they took care of all that. And I kind of just inherited my cleaner from them. So I haven't gone through that process yet. But I can answer some of these other questions about how I manage it now and how I pay them and the bookkeeping and things like that. So right now we use Hospitable where we manage our bookings. Then we also pay them per an hour. So my last cleaner that I had for a very long time, it was by the job and we paid her no matter if it was a super easy clean or was a disaster. It was. She charged the same rate every single time. And this cleaner charges by the hour. So it's from the time they walk in the door until the time that they leave, they're charged. They charge us that. And then for accounting software we use, well, it's not really accounting software, but to actually pay them, we use Turno. And then for like our full bookkeeping of the property, we use Baselane, where we're actually putting in, you know, the income that's coming in from Airbnb. And then the expenses that are are going out that include the expenses for the cleaner and then cleaning cle. Then that last part there of the cleaning crews, if they do laundry or if that's a separate service, laundry is included. We always have like extra sets for each property in each bed and then they actually take the laundry with them. Our one property, our A frame doesn't have laundry there at all. So they take it with them to do it and then they put on the fresh linens that are there and then they, when they come back the next time they bring the dirty that's turned new and then leave it there as the extra set.

[Tony J. Robinson]

Yeah, a lot of our process aligns pretty closely with what you said, Ash. I think one of the biggest differences though is that we actually do pay by the job. And the reason that I like that better for the single family space, we pay by the hour for our hotel, Those are like W2 employees that work for us. And you know, there's a bunch of rooms under one roof, so we can kind of track that a little bit easier. But the reason that we do it by the job for our single family portfolios, because it's easier to control the cost and we can make sure that we always have the margin built into the cleaning fee. So for example, like our five bedroom cabin, our cleaner charges us 225. Well, I know that I need to charge the guest a Little bit more than that to account for the fees that Airbnb charges and all those things to make sure that I'm not actually losing money on the cleans. So we prefer the single family side to pay by the job. And the way that you can gauge what that per job cost should be is to look at the cleaning fees for the other properties in your area and that'll give you a good baseline on like the max, max, max that a cleaner should be charging you. And again, ideally, you should always be a little bit less to make sure you're accounting for those fees. So if you get a quote from these cleaners and they say, I'm going to charge you $600 to clean your two bedroom, and you look at all the other two bedrooms and they're charging 1 75, or there's a really solid data point for you to take back to that person. Say, hey, 600 seems a little bit unreasonable. So we do like to charge by the job. We also pay our cleaners usually either bi weekly or monthly, depending on the cleaner. We prefer monthly just because it's easier for us from a bookkeeping perspective. But we have some cleaners who prefer biweekly. So we'll do the first and the 15th and then we'll just pay them through our business banking platform. We use Relay and we just issue ACH payments directly into those cleaners bank account. So that's how we pay them. And then we do issue 1099s at the end of the year. All of our cleaners for our single family properties are all contractors. You know, they clean our properties to clean other properties. Right. So we pay them as contractors and we issue 1099s at the end of the year for them as well. So that's kind of how we have ours set up.

[Ashley Kerrick]

Yeah, I do 1099 as well. And I think in the question they got them switched up, it's said, do you issue W9s? And a W9 is actually what you want to give your cleaner. And I highly recommend that you do it upon hiring them and have them fill it out so that you have the correct information. You need to actually issue them a 1099 at the end of the year. And it could be their company or their personal name, whatever they operated and operate under. Unless they're like a corporation, then you don't have to issue them a 1099.

[Tony J. Robinson]

And like my strong recommendation is to not pay them until you get the W9. Because once you pay someone for a whole year and then you're chasing them down to get that information, they're a little less likely to, to, to comply. So, and that's actually a cool feature inside of Relay is that. And this business bank that we use is that you can issue someone a payment, but it won't actually send that payment. Like they'll see it like in queued status, but it won't actually send until we have a valid W9 on file for them. So that's a really cool feature that that Relay has to kind of automate that process. The last one that I didn't answer was about the laundry piece. This does vary from market to market, from property to property. For our smaller properties, our cleaners typically do the laundry on site. You know, we've got a 391 square foot tiny house. We can do the laundry while we're there. But for our larger properties, you know, there's not enough capacity to, you know, turn five beds or six beds, whatever it may be in one sitting. So there are cleaners who take it off site. So just kind of talk with your cleaner and get a better sense of like, hey, what do you feel works best for this specific property? But again, making sure that the total cost of the clean and the laundry is still less than what you're charging to the guest.

[Ashley Kerrick]

Well, thank you guys so much for listening. This has been Real Estate Ricky, an episode of Rookie. Reply. I'm Ashley, he's Tony. Thank you guys so much for joining us. And make sure you are subscribed on YouTube at a real Estate rookie and follow us on Instagram at Bigger Pockets Rookie. We'll see you guys next time.

[Tony J. Robinson]

Hey rookies, if you're watching this, we want you to apply to be a guest on the Real Estate Rookie podcast. That's right. Ashley and I are looking for amazing stories just like yours to be a part of our Real Estate Rookie podcast. Now look, you don't need to be an expert. You don't need to have done thousands of deals. Even if you've done one deal, your story could help inspire the next listener

[Ashley Kerrick]

as a rookie investor. Especially if you just got your first deal. It is all fresh in your minds and you are the best person to tell your story, give your experience on how you got it done to help someone else get their first deal.

[Tony J. Robinson]

So head over to biggerpockets.com guest if you want to be a part of our show again. That's biggerpockets.com guest and we'd love to have you on.