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- [00:00]
A
What's going on, everyone? Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate. I'm David Green and we got a Seeing Green show for you. I am joined today with previous guest Shane Sanders. Shane, I don't know if I ever asked you, do you go by the nickname Sugar Sugar Shane? Yep. Sugar Shane. I should have known that. It's like everyone whose name is Floyd has to be pretty boy. If your name is Shane, you're going to be Sugar Shane. Sugar Shane Sanders. Today we did one of my favorite podcasts we've ever done on the David Green show where we talked about Shane's strategy, how he's using the burr and combining it with ADUs. Have you come up with like a snazzy name for this yet?
- [00:34]
B
Not yet. I was waiting for you to do that.
- [00:36]
A
I need to work on that. I used to let Brandon Turner handle all of the nicknaming, but now that we're not co hosting together, I need to step up. But do you happen to know which show number it is by chance?
- [00:46]
B
Oh, I want to say it was 79 or maybe 71.
- [00:51]
A
I'm going to pull it up. Yeah, we will pull it up and then we'll give that to you guys to go check out because it was an excellent show. And if you're someone who's been frustrated trying to make real estate work, specifically trying to make it cash flow in today's market, you don't want to miss Shane's show. It was so good, so sweet, so full of healthy sugar, that we brought Shane back today to help out with the Seeing Green show where we take questions from you, the listener base, and we answer them for everybody to hear. If you guys would like to be featured on the show, I need your input to be able to make it. Head to davidgreen24.com Ask where you could submit your video question or your written question. If you're shy, if you're incredibly good looking and you don't want the rest of us to feel, feel bad and we will answer your question on the David Green Show.
- [01:34]
B
And I did pull it up. It is episode 81.
- [01:37]
A
Episode 81 for everybody out there. If you want to be inspired to invest in real estate again, make sure you go check out Shane Show. Shane, you got this energy that makes me feel like I'm on like MTV and I'm interviewing a BMX racer or something. Have you ever been involved in any extreme sports?
- [01:55]
B
I mountain bike a decent amount and ride dirt bikes and stuff like that, but not really.
- [02:01]
A
Now you've sunsetted into Pickleball, right? You want to tell us all about your pickleball prowess?
- [02:05]
B
Oh, gosh. Well, I thought I was a lot better than I am. We can't figure that out pretty quick. So I've got some practice to do.
- [02:15]
A
Shane was in a pickleball tournament, supposed to play with his sister, ended up playing doubles with his mom and they lost. So he's been humbled but he we're going to make up for that today. He's going to leave feeling like a winner because we have a great show for all of you guys. Remember, today's show is sponsored by the one brokerage that is my mortgage company, the one brokerage where you go for every kind of loan. So if you need someone to do a mortgage for you, a family member that you trust, a friend, or anything you're trying to buy, whether it's a primary residence, an investment property, a heloc, a DSCR, or a short term fix and flips loan, we have gotcha. Go to davidgreen24.com use the contact us button. You'll chat, go directly to me. I'll learn a little bit about your situation, get you connected to somebody and we'll help you with building wealth. All right, let's get into our first question of the show today. This comes from Nick Garfield in Rochester, New York who is living and hoping to invest in Charleston, South Carolina.
- [03:07]
C
David, first off, thank you so much for all of your raw content and for any insight you can provide us. Quick background on my situation and why my fiance and I are coming to you for advice. The part owner of the small business here in Charleston, South Carolina. This role has free housing as one of the perks between regular savings and putting away bonuses. I'm proud to say my fiance and I have saved up about $60,000. Our plan as we began saving was to purchase a house hack here in West Ashley, a three or four bedroom house that we could rent out by the room while living there without repairs, maintenance and vacancy. Our portion of the mortgage for these homes would be roughly $300 to $400 a month. House hacking classically works because you're cutting down your expenses from what rent would be. Of course we would still benefit from loan pay down tax advantages and some small forced appreciation. But it is an increase in monthly expenses for us. What do you think? Keep saving as much as we can while possible or jump in and buy a house act strategy. Thank you for any advice. Bye.
- [04:03]
A
Man, we get the tough ones here on the David Green Show. This is the question I fear more than anything, do you take advantage of free housing from a family member, from a parent, from a job? Or do you house hack, lose the free housing, but start building the wealth chain? What's your thoughts on where you fall on this one?
- [04:20]
B
I would personally say take the free housing, but I would also invest in real estate. I don't know how much you have saved up or how quickly you can save, but I would take the free housing and buy a rental property, maybe a DSCR loan or something like that, personally.
- [04:36]
A
Okay, so what's your, your logic here on why they should keep the free housing but still get into real estate?
- [04:43]
B
Just because if they're having that free housing covered, like if they are going to house hack, I mean that definitely could work out, but it could be a longer play to get a higher return where if they do have their free housing, they can then buy a rental property and have the full mortgage covered and hopefully have a little bit of cash flow on top of that and just own the real estate sooner than later.
- [05:03]
A
That's the same way. I think the only exception here is when you're house hacking, maybe the biggest advantage of the whole thing is you get a primary residence loan. So you can't get in for 3% down, 5% down, 3 1/2% down. You go full investment property, you're putting 20% down unless you do the burst strategy like what you're doing. But then you got to figure out a way to, to get the house either with cash or financing, makes it a little bit more expensive. Then you got to refinance it. You got some risk if the execution doesn't come out. And that's where my hesitation comes from. Because 20% in today's economy is much harder to come up with than it used to be. I mean, it's always been hard to save 20 for a house, but when we had an economy where you're just printing money like crazy, everybody was making money, a lot of people were saving it. Then your previous investments were usually doing really good, so they were all cash flowing and you had equity. So people were pulling money. I was just. Capital was everywhere. So you could find the 20 if you had been in the game pretty easy. It's not the case today. It's. People are scraping by. So what do you think about like if you were in his position, would you be just putting straight 20 down on a house or would you be trying to borrow money on a like hard money loan to get into something and burr it and then refinance Out.
- [06:17]
B
Gosh, it's. It's really tough. Tough to say, but it would be hard not to take the free housing. And I don't know how long that's going to last. But if you do have that for a handful of years, I mean, that's. That's pretty huge in my opinion. Yeah, I, If I were to be in that situation, I'd probably take the free housing and then hopefully do some sort of burr or fix and flip or something like that. It's just might be a little tough to find that money now.
- [06:41]
A
The flip side of this, you just made me think about it. If you lose the free housing, the job says you can't have this anymore. Now you gotta go house hack. Maybe if you don't think prices are gonna go up anytime soon, you take advantage of free housing. And then you start to get a little more itchy about getting out of that. If you see, ooh, the market's taken off, it's getting hot. I think I need to go house hack and let the tenants pay for my house. I wish I had some more details about why he's getting free housing. Is this like a unit that his boss has and he's like, hey, you can stay with me in my garage or in this upstairs ADU I have or something. If you're working in the company, I would be inclined in today's market to tell most people to do what you said. Like, you could get it for free. Get it for free. It's kind of like a 401k that your employer is matching. Like, I'm not a huge fan of, of the stock market over real estate, but, man, if your employer is going to be giving you free money now, I kind of become a fan of that. That's hard to turn down if you're in that situation. So I'm gonna stay stuck on the fence here with this one. I'm like, I could be on board with either direction, but I'm definitely not mad about you staying in free housing. Keep saving that money, keep stacking it up. And if you're gonna buy something by an investment property, that's not a bad play at all, especially because you're saving two grand a month. So at the end of a year, that's $24,000 plus whatever interest you have, plus whatever you might have already accumulated so far. So really can't go wrong with the scenario. I kind of want to know why there's all these bikes, though. Is this like a bike rental place or a bicycle shop? Did you did he mention where it looked like it?
- [08:14]
B
Yeah. I mean another thing too is like you could buy, I don't know how long that free housing is, but could buy an investment property and do a, furnish it and do a midterm and be able to bring in a lot more money that way. And then once you know your free housing does end, there's shorter leases so you could move into it after that. That's an option depending on the loan type and whatnot.
- [08:34]
A
Yeah, maybe you just look for a multi unit rent out all units, make one of them a multi, a medium term rental or short term rental. So you got an opening if you got to move into it. When your free housing ends, you move into the unit that you have furnished like you just said. From there you go buy a house to house hack. And you are not rushed to buy the house because you have something you can stay in. Once you move out and you move into the house hack, you can go back to renting that unit out. What we're really getting at here, the pattern is the flexibility. You want to buy a property that you can use for several different uses, which usually means you need more than one unit. That's what investors sort of got to be looking for. How do you get something, you could build an ADU like you do Shane, how do you get something that has an adu? How do you get something that has an adu? And you can turn another unit into an adu, but the more units you can get, the more flexibility you have and the less risk you're taking.
- [09:23]
B
Yeah, for sure.
- [09:24]
A
Good deal, man. That's, it's always the hardest question. People always, I'm like, ah, well, how do you turn down free? As much as I love real estate, I think I love free more. All right, let's get to our next question from Eric Gardiner.
- [09:35]
D
Hey, David, here's a question about the BRRRR strategy. So I've, you know, typically you refinance it when you're done, but now I'm hearing from a lot of lenders and is that you have to wait for a year before you can get a new valuation. Otherwise they tie it to whatever you paid for it originally. So I've heard some terms like delayed financing, but I'm just kind of curious, what, what are people doing for their brrrs to cash out of a brrrr? Now is there an entity game where you can buy with one entity, sell it to the other one once the new value can be established? Hope to get some understanding on this.
- [10:10]
A
Thanks Shane, have you ran into this problem refinancing Brrrr Properties?
- [10:14]
B
No. So I actually haven't heard of that where if it's within a year it goes back to that original value. I have heard about like prepayment penalties where you can't refi within a year. So I'm not sure about that just because I haven't heard about that with the value. But if this was an issue, you probably just buy with a different loan product. Even a loan or something like that that's not going to have that to counteract that.
- [10:38]
A
I don't know that I've heard about this either. I'm guessing he's probably going to local banks that are not. They don't have a big appetite to do a lot of loans right now. Usually the local banks get scared quicker and they get nervous or they think, oh we got a lot of money that we put out that's secured by real estate. We feel like we're unbalanced. We want to try to get more deposits in the bank to counteract some of the loans that we have out there. And so they look for reasons to turn people down. We at the one brokerage work with over a hundred lenders. We have tons of them. And so we go shop these loans to different people and find one that doesn't have that rule. Which is probably why it has not made it back to me that we're having a hard time with our clients finding someone because if seven of them in a row say we want to wait a year, we find the eighth one pretty quick. But I wonder what you do if that is the problem. You can't get your money out for a year unless they use the original valuation. That's just stupid. Like how's a, how's a bank going to tell you your house is worth the same you paid for it even though you've put all this money into it? And if they had to sell it, if they foreclosed on it, they wouldn't be selling it for what you paid for it, they'd be selling it for its new value.
- [11:41]
B
Yeah, I've never heard of that.
- [11:43]
A
There's got to be a thing where that's the banks you're talking to there don't want more loans. You should contact us and let us look for something for you. I hate to make that a commercial for our own loan company. I just can't see why they'd be making you wait a year as far as selling it to another company. I think you're going to run into the same problem because if you go to sell it to another company that you own, then when the lender wants to refinance it, are they going to look at it like, well, it was just bought, you got to wait a year. I don't know that you're getting around it doing that. It's still a sale. It actually would probably delay that 12 month counter. Like one strategy you could do would be you take an investment property HELOC on it and you could get access to some of that money but you'd still be paying those higher hard money rates. The best advice I can give if people are running into this position, now that I think about it, is you probably got to shift your buying strategy to lower priced homes. Because if you're doing this on an $800,000 property, that higher rate on your hard money is going to really hurt. If you're doing this on a $200,000 property, the difference between a 7% rate and a 9, 9 1/2% rate doesn't hurt as bad when your loan balance is really low. So you can kind of offset some of that risk by just dealing with cheaper properties. But really you need to be talking to your lender before you start. That's one of the reasons I like our company is you'll use the same loan officer for your hard money loan when you purchase that you're going to use when you refi, that you're going to use on a HELOC that you're going to use for anything else. So we would have that all squared away before you bought it the first time. We would know, hey, these are what our lenders want to see before you can refinance at the new arv. And you wouldn't get into that mess. So maybe just start there before you buy. Try to get your lending lined up. But Shane, you're not running that problem when you're doing it right?
- [13:23]
B
Nope, I'm not running into that problem. One thing I am running into is for DSCR refi is the long term rent value or appraisal. Let's say it's 2,000amonth but the payment's going to be 2,200. It's not enough for the DSCR ratio but we've been doing midterm loan products to get or short term because technically I don't think there is a midterm but it does get that number up to be able to get approved for that.
- [13:51]
A
So what you're saying is when you're trying to refinance out of your hard money into a DSCR loan, the rents are not high enough on a long term rent to get hit that 1.2%, so your rate's too high. So you're saying, hey, use the rents from a midterm instead of a long term. Those are higher. And then you're just furnishing it and running it as a midterm rental instead.
- [14:12]
B
Exactly. Yep.
- [14:14]
A
It's not a bad idea. What's your thoughts on someone who hasn't done medium term rentals or even a short term rental? Because you could do kind of a hybrid. If you do medium term, you can do short term. You don't have to, but you can. What's your thoughts on somebody starting there as opposed to starting with the kind of easier, less moving parts?
- [14:30]
B
Long term, I think it's great. I mean, it costs a little bit, a little bit more money to furnish it, but yeah, yeah, we actually have, I think three or four midterm rentals going on right now, and we're able to get about 3,000amonth opposed to 2,000amonth. For the long term, the biggest challenge is just not having gaps because, like, even if you're getting a lot more and you rent it for three months and then someone's out and it's empty for a month, then you do it again, it's like it might not pencil out to be that much better, but what we have started doing is do. Doing Airbnb in between. Yeah, the midterms.
- [15:01]
A
The short term stays in between the midterms. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. The smart. That's very smart. The furnishing part, because this is really good, good advice. The furnishing part can be much more expensive than people think. When I first got exposed to the short term rental game, I, I was shocked at how much it would cost to furnish a house. Now I found out in hindsight this is because I was going to furniture stores and looking to buy all new furniture because that's where my property manager was sending me. And since then I found consignment stores, I found Facebook Marketplace. This might sound like obvious to other people who are married and have kids and have wives that do this kind of thing. I am not, I only do business type of stuff. Right. The gym or business. Or listening to Shane tell me about pickleball. So I, I did not know that Facebook Marketplace was. It's now my new favorite thing in the world. Right. It's like, I love Facebook Marketplace to a degree that I should be Ashamed of just because you can find somebody who needs something out of their house and will sell it at an incredibly good price. What advice do you have when it comes to furnishing? To keep things as budget friendly as possible? Because you gotta remember, you cannot finance what you're furnishing. It's all straight capital.
- [16:10]
B
Yep, pretty much Marketplace. Yeah, I've done a couple that were just going out and buying everything new, and it adds up quick. It was a lot more than I thought. But yes, on Marketplace, you definitely can find some nice newer stuff that's pretty much brand new for a lot less. So that definitely helps. But it does take a lot of time. Just all the back and forth and driving around.
- [16:30]
A
Yeah, that is 100% true. It is time consuming. I've literally had to, for the last month, work out of the truck on the phone because I was driving so far, picking stuff up, putting it in the back, and just making like, zoom calls or phone calls. That is a great point. You got to be kind of logistically minded with setting up routes and knowing what you're going to pick things up. But it is so much more cost efficient. I literally would change the design plan for certain bedrooms based off of what I could get on sale on Facebook Marketplace. So I'll give you guys an example we're talking about. When I let my property manager manager furnish some of my cabins in the Smokies, they would spend 2500-3500 on brand new pine wood log bunk beds. Beds that are really nice. I could get the same bed on Facebook Marketplace. It's going to be used. Might have some kid that took a crayon to it. Okay. It's not like in perfect condition. 400 that I'm spending $2,500 on. And that's one bed. You do this times four bed. This is a massive, massive savings. Then the mattress is going to be incredibly expensive. If you go to a mattress store, you could get a mattress on Marketplace for 50 bucks. A hundred bucks, Right. Maybe they've got a couple of them. So if I had a plan to do a bedroom a certain way, but I couldn't find the pinewood bed on Marketplace, but I found, like a sleigh bed with like an espresso color, I would literally just get that king bed. Hundred dollars, find another mattress for a hundred bucks, and then look for furniture that matched that espresso color for that bedroom. Like, that's how it was worth it to. To furnish it so much. Marketplace almost becomes like, I Don't even know. It's like instead of getting storage, you just sell your stuff in a marketplace and then when you need it again, you just go buy it back out of marketplace instead of paying for a storage unit.
- [18:16]
B
Yeah, seriously.
- [18:18]
A
So that's your tip of the day. That's your quick tip. Look at Facebook marketplace for any and everything for your short term rental. I literally am looking at it like five times a day. I'm picking up arcade games, I'm picking up outdoor games, I'm picking up outdoor furniture, I'm picking up patio tables, I'm picking up umbrellas, I'm picking up kitchen utensils and cooking stuff. Like, if I see somebody on there who's like, get this out now. Even if it's something I don't need that bad, I'm buying it and keeping it in storage. I bought hot water heaters for like a hundred bucks because the person's like, I got a new one coming. I need to get rid of this thing. It's one year old, but I'm replacing with a bigger one. I don't want to pay the dump fee and for 100 bucks I can get a water heater that might cost me $1,000 and I'll just keep it in the garage of one of my properties till hot water heater goes out. Pay handyman to go grab it, move it over there. I love it. So I'm probably preaching to the choir about people that already know, but there you go. There's your tips for getting your rents higher so you can refinance out and furnishing it cheaper. All right, our next question comes from Jason Elder, who is in Maryland and invests in the DMV area.
- [19:21]
E
Hey David, my name is Jason and my wife and I are longtime listeners and fans of yours. We currently own and live in a townhouse in Maryland about 30 minutes from D.C. and just started renting out our basement. We we're starting a family in the next year and have been looking to buy our next property before the end of the year and to continue to expand every year after that. What we're getting caught up on right now is we're not sure whether we want to buy a house hackable single family property near the area we currently live in, Maryland, or a small multi family, probably a duplex in Washington D.C. our max purchase price is about a million with 20% down. Thanks for taking our question and we look forward to hearing your thoughts.
- [20:05]
A
First question to him would be why are we putting 20% down if we're buying a house to live in. What do you think about that? Is he trying to avoid pmi?
- [20:14]
B
I was thinking the same thing.
- [20:15]
A
Don't do it, man. It's not just pay the PMI and keep all that money for the next. I'd much rather that somebody pays PMI, puts 5% down instead of 20 and buys a beat up run down tiny house that has space that can be developed like a basement or it can be built out to like make your square footage bigger. Improve the kitchen, improve the bathrooms. Figure out a way to do that on a budget and put the money that you would have put in the down payment into the actual improving of the property. Pump your equity up because if we're talking about up to a million dollars, you could add a lot of value to a property doing this. Especially in today's market where stuff's not moving time. It's so that when the market goes up and you have a renovated bigger property that's much nicer, sell it and go do this again. Like kind of the live in flip model. You're going to make way more money doing that than you're going to waste in pmi. You have a different opinion there.
- [21:10]
B
No, that makes sense. The only thing I'm wondering is like I don't know that area too well, but if the, you know, if the price points are really high, maybe that's an option to do where they want to live and potentially at that high price point, I don't know, you know, what their income looks like and stuff like that. But maybe with a small down payment it'd be hard to get approved to be able to have your income cover that payment. So maybe that's the case.
- [21:34]
A
But let's go for the value add. You're going to be better long term. So I'd look for the ugliest house with the highest upside. I'd look for something that has a basement that's not developed. I'd look for something with a really big like bonus room that needs to be finished off. Maybe it's like a 2:1 that you could turn into a 4:2 or something like that. That just ugly as heck sitting on the market for a long time. Write the most aggressive offer you can find, someone that has to sell it. If you're talking about the area that you're talking about, I think long term that like Virginia DMV market, that's one of the stronger markets we're going to see because it's so dependent on federal that I think your market's like, really strong. In fact, I'm getting ready to start a brokerage and one of the first places we're going to be launching is the Virginia State specifically, because I think it's a very solid market where people are going to be buying in the future. That would change things. Let's find the best deal you can find for the least money that you have to pay. Let's focus on building equity. And then next year or two years from now, whenever it is that you think the market is like the most solid, you cash that equity in, you make good chunk of change, you put that as the down payment towards the next house and you just keep snowballing that.
- [22:44]
B
Yep, totally makes sense.
- [22:47]
A
Anything you want to add there?
- [22:49]
B
I mean, yeah, I, I do like what you're saying about keeping, keeping that cash. You know, it's like I have done that before where I probably shouldn't have forked out 20, 20% down. And then, you know, you're, you have all that cash out there and it is hard to get your equity back in certain, certain situations. So, yeah, putting a lower down payment and then building up that equity with that cash, that's definitely a great option.
- [23:14]
A
I, I think when I was new, I was putting 25% down. I was like, oh, if I put 25% down, I get my interest rate.02 lower. And I just didn't have podcasts to listen to and I was throwing way too much money at every deal. And I was buying like one house a year when I should have been buying three or four. It was 2010, the best time ever to buy. And so I know that feeling of, like, being scared. And I don't, I don't want to tell somebody to spend more than you can. This is under the assumption that you're house hacking and you have tenants that are going to be in these units, you're going to be renting them out, and that your rents are going to cover you. But look for the property that has the most units that you can rent out or the biggest upside, not necessarily like the location, whether it's close to where you are or where you want to go. Because if you buy some close to where you are, it's a great deal. And you said you want to move, you can leave. The lenders cannot force you to not leave. Mortgage fraud occurs when you know you did not intend to live in that property and you just lied and said that you did. But if you do intend to live in it, or you live in it, and then you decide this doesn't work for me. Works calling, life's calling, whatever. And you rent that property out to somebody else, you're fine. And you get all the equities. Get another one. All right, good deal there. Let's move on to the next segment of the show. This is comments and quick hitters. Your hot takes, viral headlines and real estate rumors. Worth a lightning round response. So we're going to get into some comments here, Shane, and jump in if you have anything to say here. The first One comes from GGS Holdings 7225. Remember that there is a lag effect with inflation. That's why the Fed is probably hesitant to drop the rates. Now that's for a moment of my YouTube videos. What do you think about that?
- [24:48]
B
Yeah, gosh, it's tough to say. I. I actually don't follow interest rates as much as I probably should just because of my strategy. It doesn't really make too much of a difference. But yeah, I could definitely see that happening.
- [25:00]
A
All right, next is from Michael, Apple, David. All this short term talk got me thinking. Since we have a turnover coming up soon, would you ever Airbnb on Dadu when you live in the main house on site with a family? Not really a destination type bnb, more like an easier hotel stay. One bed, one bath. Maybe it's not special enough for short term. Glad you're here because it's kind of related to what you're doing. So what do you think, Shane? Would you ever rent out the ADU in a property that you're living in with your family? It's not like the main house, but it's a property attached?
- [25:39]
B
Yeah, I would, but I would definitely run the numbers as a midterm. I personally prefer midterm over short term, but it just really depends what the numbers look like because, like in my market, midterms are awesome. And yeah, I mean, having, you know, the midterm between one and like six month leases is pretty dang similar to a long term where you're not having people in and out, you know, every other night. So that's something I would look into, but I wouldn't be completely against the short term.
- [26:06]
A
Let's talk about all the ways that midterms are better than short terms. Midterms. First off, you know, you're not dealing with Airbnb people as often. And I know what I'm about to say is a stereotype or a stigma. I don't care. Almost all of my headaches have come from Airbnb guests. Something about Airbnb draws a terrible experience for the host because my theory is Airbnb's rules favor the guest over the host so much. It is so unbalanced that the people using it walk in with this arrogant confidence that they can point out anything wrong with your house and get a discount. They can threaten you to give them a discount or they'll leave you a bad review. And you are competing against so many other people on Airbnb as a short term rental because that's where all the people host their homes that you're terrified of getting a three or two or one star review. And so you give them whatever they want. That's the first piece. Second, you're going to get way more people that show up for two or three days that have no investment. This is not their home. This is where they're going to either vacation or unfortunately party. Not a lot of people are going to bring a party into a place they're going to be living in for six months. That's something they do in a short term property that they don't have an emotional attachment to it. You go with the midterm person, very less likely that they're going to be having parties and trashing your property. Just from my experience. Next thing, the people that are renting on furnish finder or midterm rentals are usually there for a purpose. They're not there on vacation, they're not there to have fun, they're not there to party. They're there to work and sleep. So they typically use your property to bathe, to eat and to sleep. And then they leave like a good upstanding, American red blooded citizen and they go produce something of value in the world and then they come back and repeat the cycle. These are the people that we want to be renting to. These are the people you want to be providing lodging for, not the people that are coming to destroy your property so they can have fun. This does not mean that everybody who stays in a short term rental destroys it. Many of those people are amazing and we always try to give them gift cards when they leave the property in really good shape. If you ever stay in one of my properties and you're, you leave it in good shape, you clean it up, you compliment us, we offer you discounts on future stays. Immediately we give you our email. Like if you're ever coming back, we're giving you a healthy discount because we trust you. Make sure you tell us you've stayed before. We can pull up your past email and we can give you A stay. But with medium term rentals, I don't hear about things going wrong hardly ever. The police are not called and the neighbors are not getting mad. It's just much better. There's also a lot less competition. I mean, there's a lot of people that are putting medium term rentals on, but you don't get people that are like decking out their property to be like $100,000 remodel with chandeliers and crazy stuff that you're just like begging someone, please stay in my house for four days and give me some money. It's just kind of like cheaper furniture and practical living. So there's not as much to break and not as much to mess up. I cannot think of one reason why I'd rather have a short term rental person than a medium term. Can you think of anything, Shane, where short term would be better? I can't.
- [29:07]
B
Unless obviously you're in a super hot, you know, market where that's really the only thing that pencils out. But yeah, what you said about the fact that they're there for work, I've seen that, like in one of my markets they're building, they have a five year data center project going in and there's like 500 construction workers and they're great too. You know, it's not just the travel nurses. There's all sorts of traveling professionals or construction workers who just need a place to sleep and they're great.
- [29:36]
A
That's exactly right. That's your ideal tenant. A person that just needs a place to sleep and is so grateful for anything that you do to make their stay a little bit nicer. That's in contrast to the entitled person who's going expecting you to bend over backwards and kiss their butt. And if they don't like the smell of the soap or they don't think there's enough rolls of toilet paper that are left in the house, they're making your life hell. So it would actually, to this question, be a benefit, I think, to do exactly what you said. Try to make it a medium term rental, see if there's demand for that and avoid the destination stays that this person's worried their property might not appeal to.
- [30:12]
B
Yep.
- [30:13]
A
All right, next up, Chris Locke on TikTok. That rhymes. Didn't know that it would. Thanks for your podcast. I listen regularly. I appreciate the realness. My husband and I are a year and a half into our journey. We learn with each deal. Shane, what was your opinion of me before we recorded together?
- [30:30]
B
Well, I felt like I knew you. Because I've listened to every single Bigger, Bigger Pockets episode, a lot of them twice. And then all your seen Green episodes. And so I like you. I learned a lot from you.
- [30:43]
A
I appreciate that. And you know, I will say when people meet me, they do the whole like, oh, this is so weird. I feel like I know you. And they feel weird telling me that you don't have to. And here's why. I too have felt that feeling when I met Brandon Turner. So Brandon and I did not start the BiggerPockets podcast. He, him and Josh Dworkin, who was the original founder of Biggerpockets, were the co. So the co host. When Josh left, I stepped in and replaced Josh. So I was walking in to meeting Brandon. I knew what he drank at Starbucks. I knew his daughter's name. I knew all the houses he had bought. I knew the stupid jokes he made. I knew where he was good. I knew everything about Brandon. And it was weird when I met him in person. Like, I don't think you know this, but we're already friends. You just don't know me yet. This is the weirdest situation. Right? So anybody ever meets me in person or comes on the show, you don't have to worry about feeling bad because I completely relate to that weird experience of feeling like I know someone that doesn't know me.
- [31:41]
B
Yeah.
- [31:43]
A
Also, I'm ashamed to admit this. I don't think I know my TikTok handle. I hired a new assistant. We got a TikTok going. I think it's official. David Green or David Green official. But you can find me on TikTok. We're now posting content there just like we're doing. It's usually clips from this podcast or like discounts on some of the properties that I manage if you want to stay there, or design ideas from stuff that we put together. We're getting more and more of that going on. But if you're somebody who has a short term rental and you would like us to manage it, we do fill my properties with people who listen to the show. We get direct bookings more, quite a bit more than other people would get. Reach out to me, tell me about your short term rental. Just go to the chat option@davidgreen24.com and let me know. All right, a couple more comments here. Michael Haiti, you really got my attention with your story. This is from a YouTube video about one of the government agencies that shut down one of the properties. I had happened on several of them and basically ran it into the ground. I Could talk with you for hours about this issue. When you were describing your troubles, my mind kept thinking California and not Florida. I've spent 20 years as a civil engineer, mostly in Arizona and now California, doing land development for others, but now myself on the side while working at W2. I came from Arizona in a culture where it's pro development and everyone except the city of Phoenix bends over backwards to help get your developments done in my city and neighboring cities in Northern California, it's exactly what you described. You nailed it when you said there are W2 employees in planning, public works, and other departments that are hateful out of jealousy and do not want you to succeed just out of spite. What's your experience with city officials that make it harder for you, the taxpayer who is supporting their salary, to contribute to the economy?
- [33:25]
B
It's kind of tricky, but one thing that I try and do is fully understand the code and then just bring that to them rather than like, when I first started out, I would go in and ask them, hey, can I do this? Can I do that? And I noticed I would get different answers depending on who I talk to. So what's helped me a lot is just really, really understanding the code before I even talk to anyone.
- [33:47]
A
All right, that's not a bad idea. And Shane does understand the code really well. We're going to have you give out your contact information at the end of the show because I was very impressed with your approach when it came to dealing with city officials. It was equal parts patient, smart, and humble. So well done there.
- [34:03]
B
Thank you.
- [34:04]
A
All right, moving into the next segment of the show, the real news report. These are the headlines that matter. Milwaukee holds title as the fastest housing market right now. Well, that's a little surprising. And in recent data, the Milwaukee Waukesha area is the fastest moving US Housing market among the top metros. Homes are selling in just 32 days on average. There is affordability, job market stability, quality of life. And in contrast, many other markets are cooling or have inventory slash delisting issues. What are some things, Shane, that you look for when you think that a market's healthy?
- [34:40]
B
I'm looking for one. How many people are there? How many people are coming in, what jobs are coming in, what's being built, even as far as, like, grocery stores and stuff like that. But I'm really looking at the large industries, too, and just seeing who is investing in that area and trying to forecast a little bit to see, just to kind of have an idea of the, you know, growth for the next five to 10 years. And I'm also looking at income levels, too. That's pretty important. They don't have to be super high. But I just don't want to overpay in an area where they do have, you know, a lower national income.
- [35:14]
A
Isn't it crazy that 32 days on market is the fastest moving market in the country? Yeah, that was like a bad market not that long ago if it took a month for a house to move.
- [35:26]
B
A few years ago it was like, in my market, it was like one to two days. Yeah, it's changed.
- [35:32]
A
I just. That's one of the things that's really hard about real estate investing, because you'll hear people tell you correctly that you need to analyze a property by the numbers. But what makes it hard is those numbers change so quickly, like government policy. And whoever is in charge of that is so impactful. When it comes to, do we let the market collapse naturally or do we come up with something to prop it up so there's a bigger collapse later? Do we come up with a creative solution to fix everything, or do we come up with a solution that makes it worse? Like, you can't predict that. You can't predict, if I buy this house in two years, who's going to be the president, how are they going to respond to things? Or if I buy this house, I have four years of the next president, what are they going to do? You just don't know. And it has such a big impact on where interest rates go, where the overall labor market goes, the confidence people have in buying homes. And it tends to be feast or famine. People are all jumping into real estate at the same time. Houses are flying off the shelves, or usually people don't want anything to do with debt at the same time. And houses are just sitting there. And that's one piece that as long as I've been in this position, I have not figured out how you account for that, like, unpredictability in policy that affects the housing market.
- [36:50]
B
Yeah. And that, I feel like, keeps a lot of people out of the game, just the uncertainty. Because no matter how much research you do, you're never truly going to know. And I do feel like that keeps some people from doing anything.
- [37:02]
A
Yeah, I think it does keep people from doing anything. And I don't know what advice to give people regarding it other than if you're investing in affordable homes. It almost doesn't matter what market you pick. I don't want to say it doesn't. It almost doesn't, because those will always be the ones that everybody wants. When the market's red hot, affordable homes are in demand for investors. When the market's cold, affordable homes are in demand because everybody's trying to save money. So that's your best advice. However, that's also the most competitive space. That's what everybody wants. So it makes it harder on you when you move in that area. But that is going to be your best bet. So I wish it wasn't that way, folks. I wish that we just had like one mind. All the Americans were of one value system and we were like, hey, we all agree this is the direction we want to go. We're going to debate ideas over how to get there. Unfortunately, it sort of turned into I'm the person who says we're going to try to fix it this way. And then there's another party who goes, hey, we don't really care where it goes. We just want to buy your vote. So we're going to tell you whatever you want to hear. And that turns into you don't know when like musical chairs who when the music stops, you don't know what politicians going to be in place. So you can't predict what type of policies they're going to have.
- [38:14]
B
Yep, exactly.
- [38:16]
A
All right, next article is about viral dancing agents. Now that I do the Real Talk Realtor podcast, I love looking at what is happening in the world of real estate agents, man. Like it is. The cringe levels are off the charts right now with what's happening. It feels unfortunately like there's an intersection of only fans and real estate agents. Like we're hitting a point where they're going in the same direction. And I'm desperately trying to veer us off of this. But like the amount of attention that people like today on social media, it just being a real estate agent becomes a perfect profession to get into if that's what you like. And it gives a bad name to a lot of the good ones, but it's definitely entertaining. Is it marketing moves or tone deaf? In Melbourne, two agents dance in front of a sold sign after closing a deal. Some praise it as a creative marketing in a crowded space, while others say said it was tone deaf amid severe affordability progress. A small story, but it reflects bigger tensions how agents are using social media versus public sentiment. Shane, you buy a lot of houses, you're involved in the real estate space. I'm sure you know real estate agents. What do you think about if an agent should be presenting themselves as professional or if we should be blurring the lines of like Your personal life with your professional life. Like you're kind of seeing a lot of social media minded agents doing.
- [39:37]
B
I would rather work with someone who's professional and just is a master in their trade or, you know, fully understands everything about being a real estate agent rather than someone who's more popular online and dances in front of the sold sign but doesn't actually get into the nuts and bolts of everything. So for me, I want someone who truly understands the market and everything to do with it.
- [40:00]
A
I. That's amazing insight right there. You said the most important part. I think I've irritated some of my listeners unintentionally by criticizing real estate agents. Okay, I'm not criticizing the profession of real estate agents. I am a real estate broker. I help people sell houses. Like I just said, I'm getting ready to launch a brokerage. I am pro real estate agent. I do not want us to get away from them. I am pretty critical of like loan officers that are sleazy. Even though I am a loan broker, I am critical of real estate agents that instead of putting their attention and their effort and their energy into learning what the contract says, learning how to solve problems, like you said, learning everything about their profession. How do we not only fix problems, but how do we learn how to communicate with the other side calmly to get both agents on the same team to solve a problem? Right. There's a lot of like just ego involved right now in the, in the real estate space, which, as you probably know, the most egotistical people tend to be the most insecure people. So like, as our overall knowledge and skill level goes down in the real estate agent space, the ego goes up to compensate for it. Like, and, and I think that's what we're getting at is it's not bad to be posting things on social media, but it's sort of become the substitute for understanding what your job is. It has become a knee jerk answer for agents to just be like, I don't know, let me call my broker to ask dumb questions that they really should have known. If they've been in the business for this long, they haven't read the contract. They will not talk to the appraiser, they do not talk to the home inspector. They're not asking questions like what is a rafter? Or why does this say that there's an electrical panel issue? What is an electrical panel? What is a circuit breaker? I rarely see questions being asked by agents to learn about the thing they're selling, which is a house. And instead it's a lot more of my outfit looks really cute today. Let me make a TikTok video and mash it together of me walking in the office holding my Starbucks coffee. Or let me get all the other agents in the office that are middle aged, unfamiliar with social media to awkwardly dance and put me in the front of it and smile. Right. Or let me make some dry sarcastic comment and put that on my social media so people think that I'm fun or approachable. It just. I don't hate people marketing themselves. I don't want that to be in substitute for learning the job.
- [42:21]
B
Yeah, for sure. I have nothing wrong with someone doing like that if they really know what they're doing. Because I've worked with quite a few agents, some good ones and some bad ones. And the bad ones just blew my mind. The lack of knowledge they had. It was just quite unbelievable.
- [42:35]
A
Yeah. If I was like in charge of the national association of Realtors, literally the first thing I would do is say we are upping the bar for what it takes to get your license. It's like a two year degree basically. And you are going to study contract law. You are going to study like therapeutic, therapeutic techniques for calming people down that are anxious. You are going to study public speaking so you can communicate better. You are going to, most importantly study construction. You're going to know how far apart studs are when someone's building something. You're going to know a little bit about electrical system or a roof. If you want to say you are a licensed agent, at minimum you will understand something about a house that you're selling. A sprinkler system. It is too freaking easy to get a license. And then you just pass a test that has nothing of use on it and you just issue state forms that some attorneys put together that you don't know what's in there and your clients are signing it and they don't know that you don't know anything until they've already hired you. And now with the Sitzer Burnett ruling, you have to pick your buyer's agent before you can even go look at houses. So you're committing to somebody before you've had a chance to figure out if they're smart. No one tells the consumer base how to tell if an agent is smart. So by luck of the draw, you happen to get a good one, you're okay, but you get a bad one. It's like, I don't know, it's like saying you gotta commit to being engaged to this person before you go on a Date with them. That was the ruling. And I. I can't stand what it's done to the industry. We just need it to be harder to do and we need less realtors in the space because I think you'd weed out a lot of the people with bad work ethics if you said you have to commit to, like, a little more mental exercise before you get your license instead of making it so easy.
- [44:16]
B
Yeah, that'd be great.
- [44:17]
A
Well said. All right, the next segment of the show is the featured property of the week. This is where we show on coast to Coast Getaways one of the improvements that we've done on properties that we managed to help for owners achieve better roi. So this property is in the Smoky Mountains. It is called Falcons Crest. Am I sharing the screen here, Shane? Can you see that? Okay. All right. This is a property in its current condition when we got it. So this is. This is the master bedroom. And you can see it's a little bit outdated. There's a tub in the middle of it. There's a couple old camo print chairs that I don't know why chairs inside of bedrooms were so important. I don't know who sits in them. You got one big bed, and this is a really big space. So it's like the whole upstairs of the property is this one room, and they just threw furniture in it to try to take up space. So it's not like it's terrible. I just thought the space was not being used very well. This is some photos of my cell phone of stuff that I literally bought on Facebook Marketplace to improve the property and the sleep count. So what we had before, I don't know if the photos are all going to show. It was a bedroom downstairs, a game room downstairs, and then that bedroom upstairs that I just showed. So you had technically two bedrooms and two beds. I came in and said, we're going to take that upstairs area, we're going to turn that into the game room because it's bigger and add bunk beds to it. So we got three twin bunk beds here that I found that were all more or less the same color and like, kind of bed. This one's a little bit bigger. So we've already increased our sleep count by six beds and turned it into a three bedroom instead of a two. We then framed in what was the game room downstairs and moved that big bed that was up here down into that bedroom. So these are some arcade games that look pretty new to me that were purchased on Facebook Marketplace probably, like, these were probably 200 bucks each. Usually they're 4 or 500 bucks. And then this game is a little bit more expensive. That's like probably a fifteen hundred dollar game that was bought new and was already there. That was another $200 pac man game I had to go pretty far to buy. But you got like a little arcade corner there. That rug came from all these was about $60. Dude, did you know how expensive rugs are? Have you bought one of those recently?
- [46:38]
B
No.
- [46:39]
A
I don't understand how they could be so expensive. You walk on it and it's made of nothing. That should be expensive. There's like 400, 500 rugs just that aren't even that impressive.
- [46:49]
B
Jeez.
- [46:50]
A
Crazy. So we move that pool table up here. We don't have professional pictures taken yet. These were just taken from the phone. But I think in the future I'll have some new ones that we'll be able to share. That cabin is now booking even without new professional photos taken. We're getting a fire pit put in the front yard before we get new photos taken. It went from being a terrible performer that barely booked at all and when it did was super cheap because it was two bedrooms with two beds. We've now made it a three bedroom instead of a two. We didn't have to change any bathrooms. We went from two beds to eight beds. We changed the sofa into a sofa sleeper to add another bed. So you like have nine total now that sleeps 2, 4, 10, 12 people instead of like 4 to 6, which I think is where it was before. And we're in the process of renovating that game room, adding some new wall art pictures. We'll get some like stuff on the walls and the better pictures of those arcades. And now you're going to have like a much cooler space for like two grand or so. Those bunk beds were purchased for like 150 bucks. They, I got them with the mattresses. The arcades were used. That's including what it costs to move the pool table upstairs. Actually probably a couple grand is high. It was less than that. Is this a thing that you've had to do much of in your space, like thinking about things from this angle?
- [48:15]
B
Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, a little bit. I, I like what you're always talking about, just like adding bedrooms when you can going to be doing here on a property pretty soon. It just adds so much and you can typically do it for pretty dang cheap. So yeah, I definitely, definitely like going that route and just maxing the amount of bedrooms for sure.
- [48:35]
A
I Know where the rest of the money came from? We have to pay to frame in what was the game room. So we have to frame in a closet and then I put like barnwood doors to go across the front of it. But so what we have now is a house that sleeps 12 instead of four. So now I'm competing with like three and four bedroom properties. It is a three bedroom, not a two. And I am cheaper than all the four bedrooms. That's why it's booking so quick.
- [48:59]
B
Yeah, that's all.
- [49:01]
A
When I get the fire pit built in the front yard, I will also. This is another thing I should say when I'm figuring like what's a renovate on a short term rental, I'm not just randomly throwing an amenity in there. I'm thinking of it from the perspective of what will the picture look like. So like this cabin is pretty ugly. Just the front of it, there's no good angle. It's like it's on a hill. And then you got to walk up some pretty steep stairs to get there. So when you take a picture of the front of the cabin, you're mostly looking at the basement and the stairs. Like, I don't know, like if you take a selfie and all you saw was like your chin, like it just looks terrible, like your nose hairs and stuff. Right. There's no way to get a good picture of this cabin, but there's a lot of beautiful trees around it. And in that game room, when you open up the windows, it looks like you're sort of sitting in a tree house because it's up really high. So looking at the treetops when you're up there and it's very green. So I'm having a fire pit put at like the lower level, like where the you drive up the driveway and then you'd step off and there's a fire pit right there. And then you would walk up the stairs. So the photographer will take a picture that has the fire pit and then the cabin in the background. And we'll like kind of fuzz out the cabin. But you'll have the fire pit in focus. And I have this little system where I buy these oak barrels, cut them in half, pour concrete in them, put a 4x4 in there, stain it, and then run cafe lights around the fire pit that's in there. And then I run the cafe lights from those four by fours up to the top of the cabin. So you get like you're sitting underneath kind of like a blanket of lights.
- [50:29]
B
Is what that looks like, that's smart. People love those lights.
- [50:33]
A
And it's not that much money. It's like, dude, it's like makeup for a cabin.
- [50:36]
B
Yep. You're just, just a vibe curator over there.
- [50:39]
A
That's it. And it's not that much money. But I will now have that first picture that's so important on a short term rental that has to catch att. And for the fire pit is going to be a total of like, man, I got a guy to do the work and I'm buying the stuff myself. This is another thing. I'll often get bids and I'll say, just give me labor, I'll buy the materials. Yeah, you get a way better price because for them to say I'll build you a fire pit is four grand. Five grand. Well, you don't know what it costs, so that doesn't sound that bad. But if I say I'll buy the materials and he quotes me four grand, I'm like, it's going to take you one to two days to do this. You think you should be getting $4,000 for eight hours of work? Like you're making 500 an hour as a day laborer. That doesn't make sense to me. So they have to give you a bid that's reasonable. And then I'll go buy all the materials and I'll have it dropped off at the job site when they go. So they'll tell me what they need. And then I usually kick them like another 100 bucks for their time to go through the Home Depot website and pick out what I need. And that makes them happy. So I'm paying him like 400 to build the thing and then I'm having all the stuff dropped off. Well, that benefits me because he doesn't have to rent equipment because he doesn't even have a truck. And it benefits him because he doesn't have to take all that time to drive to Home Depot, pick up the stuff, make two runs. These cabins are pretty far apart from everywhere you have to go. You're driving on mountain roads. So all said and done, for less than four to five thousand bucks, this cabin will go from sucking eggs to being the best value that you can get for what it's competing against. And this person's like, you're going to literally see their revenue more than double for a couple grand.
- [52:12]
B
Yeah, that, that's awesome. That is smart too. Like what you were saying, I do that all the time. Buy, buy the materials and then just get bids for labor. Labor you really can't Save so much. It's incredible.
- [52:23]
A
Yeah. Can you give us a little bit of advice or any tips for people that are like, maybe intimidated talking to contractors and don't know how this process works?
- [52:32]
B
I mean, just like just, you know, trying to wrap your head around exactly what they need to do and then just. I try to meet them on site all the time if it's something I don't have a bunch of, if possible, to just go through everything and then. Yeah. Buying the materials yourself. And they can actually help you with the takeoffs too, if you don't know what to order. So that can definitely help. And you can still save a lot of money that way.
- [52:54]
A
Yeah, it's, it. There's no way around it. You're going to be intimidated when you first start talking to contractors. I think that piece of advice that we just shared is very helpful. If you just say to them, hey, I'll buy all the materials. I just need you to give me a labor quote. If you want to take out that shower stall, put in a tile shower, what would it cost?
- [53:12]
B
Yep.
- [53:13]
A
And then the other piece that I'll say is, how long would it take you to build a tile shower because, oh, it'll take me two days or something. Well, if somebody else says it's going to take them seven days, I'm like, well, you must be really bad at building showers because it takes everybody else too. Like, what are you doing that takes seven days? So if they're quoting you $5,000 for labor, but it only takes two days to do it, you can quickly see what you're paying per hour. And it doesn't make sense that, like, surgeons are making less money than some of these, like blue collar workers that aren't even licensed to come in and do some of the work. And I think that's one of the ways that you figure out who wants work and who doesn't.
- [53:49]
B
Yeah, for sure. And also just getting a lot of bids. Like, I actually last week just did a roof replacement here on an older home and I got four bids. The highest one was like $29,000. And then another one was like 19, another one was 14, and then one came in at 6. And it was actually a really legit company and they did an awesome job and just finished it up for 6,000. And it was the exact same product and they did a perfect job.
- [54:15]
A
What's your thoughts on why that happens?
- [54:18]
B
I don't, I don't know if it's just because they're busy. Like here there's a Few new housing developments going in. So I think everyone wants the big stuff. So like just a one off little job like that, they might just be like, you know, I'm only going to do it if I can just make bank. That's, that's my theory. But it's tough to say because they varied so much. It's just insane.
- [54:37]
A
That's the only thing that I can think of it sometimes people assume it's because I'm a woman, so they're trying to rip me off or it's because they know I don't know what I'm doing and they're. And there could be an element of that. You don't know. It's likely. What you said, they don't really want your job. They want to go take on a really big project, build a whole house and they only have so many laborers they can trust. It's actually incredibly hard if you're running a construction business to find people that can do work that aren't on drugs, don't know what they're doing, don't go to work that day, need constant supervision, screw up and have to, you have to go back and fix it like to win any kind of skilled blue collar labor today, crazy hard to do, right? So what's that?
- [55:16]
B
I said, yes, it is right?
- [55:18]
A
So if you only got like four dudes on your crew that you really trust and you can go take a job that pays 20 grand that those four guys are going to work on or a job that pays six grand that those four guys work on, it is obvious that you should take the twenty thousand dollar job. So if there's work coming in, like you just said, that's bigger. And then someone says, hey, I just need a little teeny remodel. If they have nothing else going on, they're gonna bid $6,000 because it's. They got to keep their guys working. But if they got a bunch of other jobs, that may be why they hit you at 29 000. That's their indirect way of saying, I don't want your business, bro. Like this is not what we do. So don't always assume that it's because of a nefarious factor when it could just be that the contractors are really not great negotiators or communicators. They swing hammers that they don't manage. Conversations great all the time. All right, moving into the next segment of the show. This is our blooper segment. I thought this was pretty funny. Airbnb CEO shares a hilarious story of a guest demanding a refund over ghost harassment. So in this story, there is a person who claimed they were harassed by a ghost and they wanted their stay refunded. On Airbnb, which I was just talking about earlier, the story was shared by Airbnb CEO and co founder Brian Chesky. In the interview, he talked about the haunted house with a ghost named Stanley and said, we get millions of customer calls every day. And here's some bizarre stories. A guest reached out to Airbnb's customer support and demanded a full refund. When asked for a reason, the guest claimed, the house is haunted and there's a ghost in the house. Afterwards, Airbnb support team contacted the host, and in a shocking turn of events, the host didn't deny the presence of a ghost. The host told us that it's a friendly ghost named Stanley that Stanley even mentioned. Stanley is even mentioned in the listing description. While AirBB reviewed the listing, they confirmed that Stanley's presence was mentioned in the description. The company reached out to the guests reminding them that they were aware of Stanley's existence before booking the property. And surprisingly, the guests admitted that they told us, and we knew about Stanley. That's why we booked it. But Stanley is harassing us. And so now, because Stanley won't leave them alone, they want the full refund. Wow. That's nuts. Like, where do you fall on this? Are you with the guests? Are you with the host?
- [57:35]
B
I think it depends on what Stanley did. What type of harassment are we talking about here?
- [57:40]
A
Is he, like, turning the water cold when you're in the shower and taking your towel away?
- [57:45]
B
Yeah, yeah. Is it just a property that has a bunch of problems and they just say that?
- [57:50]
A
Huh? Yeah, that's nuts. So that was our. The first story was the kind of stuff that you get. We get insane stuff, dude. Like, we had a dude that showed up at one of my cabins. I had just been in the cabin myself.
- [58:04]
B
Okay?
- [58:04]
A
We were there. He booked it. So we had to get all of our stuff and move to a different cabin. I had a cleaner come and turn the cabin before the guy came. It was, like, the easiest turn ever because I'd only been in a couple days. The dude shows up and tells us the house is like a pigsty. It's like, well, that's physically impossible because not only was it clean, but it wasn't a pigsty. When I left, there was, like, nothing that could be there. I travel with a tiny bag. And one bedroom was used. Our two bedrooms were used. He sends us a Video of him on his hands and his knees on the Dravel driveway moving around the gravel to point out that there was, like, a gum wrapper that was in the dirt of the huge driveway. He then, like, walks up the hill into the trees to point out that there was, like, a beer can outside up the hill that, like, probably fell out of a trash can that a bear had dragged away six months ago and no one had seen. Okay, so he sends us this, and he's like, just wanted you to be aware that when we got here, the property was not in acceptable condition. Doesn't say anything else, but, you know, this is a jab. He's setting us up because he wants to ask for something. Then we had a legit problem of the well pump, like, kept turning off. So after we sent a person out there and they said they fixed it, it happened again the next day. We sent another person. He said, I tried something else. I just said to the guy, hey, they're telling me it's fixed. I've already spent a lot of money on people going out there to fix this, but we can't guarantee that it isn't going to happen again. Why don't we just discount or, sorry, refund the rest of your stay, let your guest out of the lease and you just find another cabin to stay at and, like, we'll even give you back, like, a little bit of money for the. The two days that you were here. He says, no, I don't want to do that. As long as you send somebody, we're going to be good. Then we have more problems. The hot water tanks have the elements burn out because there's no water in them. And they keep trying to take showers. Now he's becoming, like, hostile. He's berating my staff. I'm listening to him screaming at them on speakerphone, complaining. And I jump in again, hey, man, why don't you just leave? Like, this isn't going to get better. I can't make water appear in that well. There's no one that I can call, like, outside of an Indian rain dance or something. I don't know what we do here. Why don't you just find another cabin? And he doesn't want to leave. He insists on staying, but he just keeps complaining every day about whatever else he can find. I say, hey, we have another cabin up the road. Why don't you guys go take showers in that cabin and then leave this cabin. We have two other cabins your party could split up in, or you could just get on airbnb and find another one. He refuses to go. At the end of the stay, he basically is like, I want the full stay refunded or I'm going to make sure everybody knows about the terrible experience that we had. And I'm like, this is why he showed up crawling on his hands and his knees looking for the gum wrapper and wouldn't go. Because they know the bad review they leave me is going to hurt way more than anything that I could do on their side. And it's like professionals who show up looking for something that could go wrong. And I don't think. I don't think that gets talked about enough for people thinking about getting into the short term rental game, especially if you're in a vacation market that's competitive. I'm pretty sure there's like YouTube video and TikTok videos making the rounds telling people, here's how to get a free stay, free vacation. This is the kind of thing you.
- [61:23]
B
Do that is crazy. Yeah, it's just like, long term, too. Like professional tenants. I mean, there's like organizations that'll have fake websites and phone numbers and we'll do your fake pay stubs and stuff like that. It's just, it's at every different. Every different level. You know, short term, long term, there's just so much fraud. People just wanting free stuff. It's insane.
- [61:44]
A
The service animal thing, everybody has a service animal. They figure out that rule and then they bring like five rottweilers into your property when they told you they had a service animal. And they just hang on that ADA thing. Now they try to find some safety issue with the property. They stop paying rent, but they say, you can't make me pay rent because there was a safety issue. But they never made you aware of it until they stopped paying the rent. It is unfortunately becoming easier for people to do that and it's a harder time than ever to be a landlord.
- [62:14]
B
Yeah, for sure. I feel like, especially now, since a lot of times they're not actually meeting you. Like, people aren't going to do that as much in a restaurant, out in public, where they're actually face to face with the person, where here they're not really face to face with you at all. So they can do it and they just don't, like, feel bad about it.
- [62:31]
A
Yeah, that's a solid point. You're just a person on a screen. Doesn't mean anything to them. If you guys have a funny Airbnb story and you want to have it shared to put on the show we want to share it, go to davidgreen24.com ask and submit your funny, sad, or terrifyingly traumatic story of a tenant so we can share with other people and they can be on the lookout. All right, last segment of the blooper section. I bought one of those pine log bunk beds that I mentioned on Facebook Marketplace and I put it in my truck. This is before I tore my bicep tendon. And the. Unfortunately, whenever you rent a truck at an airport, you always get a five foot bed. It drives me nuts. When you get a crew cab truck with a five foot bed, it's like not big enough to put anything back there, but you got all this leg space that you don't need when you have a pickup truck. You could just get a Suburban or something if you wanted space. So I can't lift the tailgate up. I have to use ratchet straps to hold like this full size Amish style log bunk bed. That was beautiful in the truck. Well, there's these little pieces that sort of connect the side rails together that go on the front and the back and one of them slips underneath the ratchet straps when I'm driving up and down the mountain roads taking it to where it's going. So I get to the destination and we're trying to put together this like Amish bunk bed and it's missing one of those pieces that would hold the rail together. So now I have this beautiful pine log bed that is useless because I'm missing one piece. And so I bought the whole thing for 300. Like these are like over 2000 bucks to get these beds new. And I'm calling around the Smokies trying to find an Amish person that knows like how to build me that one little piece, right? So we finally find a guy who, I don't know if you've ever been to that area. There's not a lot of people that are super ambitious that live in these tourist areas like Maui's. The same way to get anyone to do labor is very hard. They don't, they don't love going to work is the way I'm going to put it. In like any vacation area, they're always mad that there's tourists coming into their town making things more expensive. But not everybody takes advantage of that and services these tourists like they could. So I finally find a guy after like 4 days of searching to get this, this last piece made for the bed and he ends up doing the whole thing for $300. And I just thought it was hilarious. That, like, I had to pay the same price for that one piece that I paid for the entire bed. Which is also a testament to why Facebook Marketplace is awesome. No, no, no. I know it sounds that way. I'm sure everyone's wondering why a person who's supposed to be wealthy from real estate keeps talking about Marketplace. I just like it that much. So in the future I will be posting some upgrades. This is another three bedroom cabin that had a loft that. But I put a bunch of fun stuff in the loft and added the bunk bed and then added a sofa sleeper up there. So we increased the sleep count by quite a bit in that cabin as well and basically made it like a fourth bedroom instead of a third. So I also put like a little mini golf space in the backyard and built a fire pit back there. So if anybody has any ideas on how to decorate a mini golf without spending a ton of money, I'm not able to find big outdoor dinosaurs on Marketplace. So I'm trying to find like the fun stuff that you would see for mini golf decorations like rocket ships or, you know, a big bigfoot statue or something that I can put in the backyard. Definitely open to suggestions. So let me know if you guys have anything. And that is our show for today. Shane, how did you feel about it?
- [65:55]
B
I loved it. I thought it was great.
- [65:58]
A
Yeah, it was great having you here.
- [65:59]
B
Cool to see the questions coming in like that.
- [66:02]
A
Yeah. Make sure you guys submit your questions@davidgreen24.com Ask Shane if people want to reach out, connect with you, where can they go?
- [66:09]
B
They can find me on Instagram at Sugar Shane Sanders.
- [66:13]
A
Sugar Shane Sanders. Make sure you go check out the David green show episode 81 to learn more about Shane. And then thank you all. Make sure you reach out to me email or the chat option or you can DM me on Facebook or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you and reach out to Shane as well. We'll see you guys next week on the David Green Show.