Most people flip houses, become a landlord, or purchase properties to get the most returns in real estate. But for George Salas, he found an incredible opportunity in short-term rentals, where a lot of people don't even consider. He joins Keith Baker to delve into how rent arbitrage increased his ROI significantly. He shares how he acquires his financing and puts together ample funding to keep the ball rolling. George also explains how he deepens relationships with the people that he trains, eventually building joint ventures.

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George Salas On Getting Long-Lasting Revenue Through Short-Term Rentals

Learn How Rent Arbitrage Can Increase Your ROI

If you're a regular reader to this show, then you know that I do my best to keep the topics of the interviews either strictly private lending-related or at least interesting from a different investment or personal perspective. The topic of the episode is no different as guest George Salas is flip and crushing it in the short-term rental space.

I met him at a Mastermind in Key West and I'm happy that we connected. I got on the plane to fly to Key West. I did not want to go. It had extremely limiting beliefs and yet is one of the best things I've done. I love to know stories of innovators and how people pivot when times change or when they get bad, and given the recent COVID scamdemic and the current bubble and the retail housing market.

It's a real disease. All that stuff is over 99% survival rate. It's a flipping scamdemic. We are in a bubble. I'm calling it. Greenspan said, "You can't see a bubble until you're beyond it or it's burst." I'm calling it a bubble. More than $50,000 above ask in the market is a bubble. You can bookmark this show and can come back to it and give me grief or cheer me on when I'm proven right.

I couldn't think of a better time to introduce you to my guest and his business model. The best thing of all is that George Salas is crushing the short-term rental game right here in Houston, in H-Town, which makes my smile a little bit bigger. Let's go ahead and get down to the brass tacks of the show and straight to the interview with George Salas.

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George, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much, Keith. It is an absolute honor to be here.

I'm looking forward to you to explain your business model. That is, you don't flip, landlord, own or finance but you do short-term rentals. I'm going to give you the floor. Tell us how you got into real estate, short-term rentals and the basic mechanics of your business.

My journey started when I was six years old. I'm sitting in the living room of my parents' house. My mom and dad pulled my brother and me aside and said, "Guys, we need to talk to you. You're going to go to your grandma's. You're going to stay there for a little bit." This is from a city by the name of Lima in Peru, the capital. We moved to a small town.

It was just my mom. It was an environment where I get to stand by my dad. We left that city into a small little town and then the town was 20,000 people. I didn't get to see my father for nine years but he came back again into my life. We were moving here to the US. I came when I was fifteen. I wouldn't get to say bye to him twice and it affected me my entire life until I realized that I didn't need to be better for my dad.

I didn't need to be in a place I’m good enough because I felt I wasn't good enough. I felt that because my father was never a great provider. We moved here. All through my young 15, 18 to 20, I was a grocery stacker. I worked at Kmart. Then I got into the nightlife and I invested in a nightclub. I was in the nightlife for ten years. I was the number one top promoter in Houston for 7 or 8 years.

[bctt tweet="Bad decisions aren't as bad if you learn from them. Turn everything around and make something completely drastic." username=""]

All of a sudden, I had the opportunity to invest in a club. I had a bunch of money saved up. I did invest in the venue and then I ended up losing everything. Here I am in the city. I had invested $400,000 into a club that I didn't have control over. I didn't have knowledge about real estate. I lost every penny of it. I'm sitting in the living room of my apartment at the time and I don't know what to do with my life. I'm literally lost. My buddy Ben Franklin called me. We go to his property in Flint. We spent 3 to 4 hours there and something clicks in my head with all of this inspiration.

That was a life life-changing phone call. I started training, taking courses, going to seminars. I went to a seminar in January of 2019. Four months later, I got my first flip. I did start flipping. I want it to be this real estate guy. I wanted to do a lot of deals and build an impact on real estate without knowing that you needed to have a lot of money to invest in real estate if you want to buy, fix and flip.

You need $50,000, $60,000. For DLS, you do what we do. At the time, we didn't have the resources or knowledge to do it. I made $46,000 on my first flip in 2018. Then six months later, I figured out what wholesaling was. By the end of that year, I had brought $98,000 of wholesale fees and used that cash. This is from the $5,000 in my pocket keys.

I use that cash to put into my first twenty rental arbitrage, Airbnb that had cashflowed me $2,500. It's little apartments, studios and I started with those. Since then, until now I've been able to build a six-figure business a month. Our short-term rental business does $150,000 a month. I've done 50 real estate deals in two and a half years.

I've got an amazing network of friends like yourself and in the know of all of the real estate community here in Houston. I'm in the best time of my life. I'm happy, fulfilled, fulfilling my destiny. It all started with that phone call and making those bad decisions. Sometimes bad decisions aren't as bad if you can learn from them. If you can turn everything around and just make something completely drastic. Look for that thing that you're wanting to find, which was a success in real estate and then I reached out to short-term rentals. That's pretty much a breakdown.

It's compelling because I find it funny that I had to go to Key West and meet you, even though we're right here in Houston. I've seen you come up on Facebook back in the good old days when we went to REIA meetings in person. I'll even throw John Jackson in there in Dallas. I'll include him. It is a very good supportive network.

The event, it's the same as I. It makes all the difference when you have people that you feel have your back or going to shoot you straight on something. To your point, if you mess up and you have a loss, it's either have a win or a lesson. That's the way it is. As long as you own the loss, then it's a lesson and you keep moving forward. You get into the typical way. You've wholesaled. By wholesaling, you know how to analyze a deal and see where the spread is and the margin, “What's the rehab going to cost this stuff?”

As we were talking in the pre-show, you're buying single-family residences, condos or studios. The SFR, the single-family concept but you run them not like your normal rental. If you get $300 cashflow positive a month, you're doing well. You're bringing the apartment cashflow syndication model and that's what the short-term rentals do. When you acquire, how are you financing? Are you using a bank or private money? What mechanisms and cash are you using to acquire your property?

When acquiring, we have a few strategies. I'm going to talk about purchase strategy and non-purchase. We use a method called rental arbitrage keys. This method breaks down like this. You go to a landlord, rent the property and ask them to allow you to sublease it on short-term rental platforms for 3, 4, 5, 6 to 30 days.

That's one method and it doesn't require you buying the property. Utilizing this big real estate. I'm talking about 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 square foot homes without having a buyer. If they bring in anywhere between 5, 7, 8, 10, we've got several houses doing $15,000 up a month. I'm talking about that method. What we've purchased, which we also do, I would say 60% of our portfolio is rental arbitrage, 20% is purchased direct and about 20% is purchased joint ventures.

[caption id="attachment_3170" align="aligncenter" width="600"] PLP 136 | Short-Term Rentals Short-Term Rentals: Short-term rentals allow you to do a lot of deals and impact real estate without having to invest a huge amount of money.[/caption]

We've got a few. We purchased via subject-to, partnerships, joint ventures and our corporate program. What we do for subject-to is we're taking over the payments, taxes, HOA fees and commitment with these wholesalers or landlords or sellers. We're taking the deed over to our property, and we're staging. For example, we have a property in Hawthorne, Texas, which launched in December of 2019 and it consistently brings in an average of $7,500. We just have a $50,000 reservation for 62 nights. Before what we did a little bit under $7,500 but it averages $7,500.

Our mortgage is 60, 48 and that's PITI all in. We do our cleaning and everything. We're all in for about $2,500 max utilities, $400 or $500...