AirBnb Business | Orange County Real Estate Investor Meetup

Okay, okay, so we're recording now. So, um, go ahead and take it away. I don't know if you need to share your screen or if you just want to talk. Whatever's— whatever your presentation is, uh, you're up.

Cool. So now I'm just gonna talk. Um, I didn't set up a presentation. I figured I'd just talk about what the business is and what I do. So hi everybody. My name is Rafael. Joe here asked me to come on the meetup and talk a little bit about my business and what I do. So for the next 35 minutes, 45 minutes, I'll talk about what it is exactly that I do, how I started, and kind of where I'm at now and why I chose this business structure. So first I want to apologize because I have been sick. I'm kind of quarantined right now as well, so you can kind of— my voice is kind of disappearing a little bit. Um, but anyway, so what I do is I basically run a short-term rental Airbnb business here in Orange County. What that means is we use the rental arbitrage model.

So we—

this is a little different than what the normal topics are in this meetup. We actually don't own any real estate at the moment. We use other people's real estate and other people's property to work our business model in. So the rental arbitrage model, what we do is we lease out a unit as a regular tenant would under my corporation, and then we re-rent the unit, the apartment, or the home on sites like Airbnb, VRBO, as well as we do direct bookings with travel nurses, business travelers, and then people coming through the area through our direct website as well. And networking like this as well, there's insurance companies who need people When the house is being remodeled, and that's where we come in and we provide our, our homes for them. So if you guys have any questions along the way, just please type them in the chat box, or, um, and then we'll try to address them, or we'll do them at the end as well. Okay. So, um, a little bit about how I got started. Same thing, some of you guys joined some meetups, did some research online, BiggerPockets, heard a bunch of podcasts. About 3 and a half years ago, I wanted to get started in real estate investing, and I was looking more for buy and hold. And here in Orange County, as you guys know, houses, you know, $500,000, $400,000 and up, it's pretty hard to find a property that you can cash flow in here in Orange County. You're either gonna end up negative cash flow, or you're gonna end up, if you're lucky, with a couple hundred bucks, $100, $200 at best. Um, I had about $15,000 to start, which is not a lot, not even enough for a down payment for a house here. So I was doing some research. I read a lot that you can do real estate with little or no money down. Um, at the same time as I was starting to do research back then, I had heard about a gentleman out in Los Angeles who was renting out 10 apartments in a small complex out there, and the guy was on Airbnb and he was driving around a Ferrari and just like living life, and it caught my attention. And, you know, every time I travel, I stay in Airbnbs. I don't go to hotels. I don't go to— I stay in either VRBO or Airbnbs. I don't go to any hotels or anything like that, no motels. So I was curious about it, and so I started doing some research online. I ran into a gentleman whose mastermind I joined as well here in Orange County. He talked about them as well, and I decided to give it a shot. So what I did is I took— I spoke with my brother about the company and what I was trying to do, and I took my money and he loaned me some money of his, and we decided to open up our first apartment. We went through the learning process of how do we do it, right? Because you can't just talk to someone and say, hey, I want to rent your apartment or your house and I'm going to put it up on Airbnb or VRBO. It's just not going to work. Some people will be okay with it. Some people— most people will always tell you no, and it's like anything else. You go through a lot of nos before you get one yes. As long as you know how to talk and what you're saying and how to explain that to people, eventually you'll get a yes. And so what I did is I decided to go the legitimate route and started an LLC. So I did this all through my company, so I wouldn't do this in my personal name, both for legal reasons as well as more of a professional standpoint. And I ended up getting our first apartment. And so the way I did that was we started calling— we decided to go with apartment complexes over single-family residences at first. And we started making phone calls to a bunch of different apartment complexes asking, hey, you know, me and my corporation, we're trying to host business travelers and travel nurses in the area. We had, we had some contracts with local businesses with people who need a place to stay. And, well, we want to be able to run short-term rentals here in your location. A lot of nos, and finally we came across one. My business partner made a lot of phone calls as well, and we came across one that said, yeah, we'll consider you. It's a corporate lease. Come on in, we'll talk. So we went in and we actually got lucky with this complex because at the time it was going under a complete and full rehab, and so they were about 60% occupancy. Um, so So kind of like you do with, with flipping and wholesaling, right? You're helping someone solve their problem. We came in and said, hey, you know, we'll lease out some units and we'll help you fill your vacancy as you rehab the rest of the units. And so we explained what we did, same thing as I told you guys right now. You know, we're a corporation trying to lease corporate lease apartments and we're going to host business travelers, mainly families for leisure in that area because of Disneyland, of course. And we'll manage everything ourselves. That way you or the management of the complex doesn't have to get involved at all. We put all our systems in place to where we can manage the people directly and we'll go from there. And so they said yeah. They allowed us to take our first apartment. Excuse me. And so we did this back in November of 2017. And, you know, I was ecstatic. Of course somebody said yes to us after— I'm telling you guys, it was countless, countless of nos. No, we're not going to let you host. You know, why would we do that? Um, and so, uh, we started it early November. It took about 2 weeks to get up and running. Um, at first, me and my business partner started furnishing the apartment by ourselves. So a little bit of background with that. And to give you more of an explanation of exactly what we do, so we'll go to a complex and we'll lease the apartment. We furnish the apartment. And then we re-rent it at a premium, so we make a profit on top of it. So if we'll rent an apartment for $2,000, a 2-bedroom apartment, $2,000 for a 30-day, a monthly rate of $2,000, then we go and then we re-rent that apartment for, instead of one person staying there for a year or 30 days, we'll bring in on average 6 people a month at a higher rate. So we take that, the That $2,000 cost and we sometimes triple it, double or triple it in the month, right? So we can take a 2-bedroom and make a $6,000 income on it and about a $3,000, $4,000 profit on a good month. So the first month, going back to that, that first unit, I'm gonna go into detail of how I started and how I grew, and then we'll go back into the specifics of how I actually acquire. And if you have questions along the way, we'll answer those as well. So that first unit back in November, the first 2 weeks we started throwing in furniture. We started furnishing the apartment, putting in, you know, beds, couches, sleeper sofas, because, you know, we want to host as many people as possible. And we quickly realized that, you know, we can't really furnish our own place. You need somebody to actually help you with that, to be able to make it appealing for the target customer you're trying to attract to that location. Otherwise, it's not really going to sell. So we ended up hiring a professional interior designer who came in and finished up the apartment. And so she came in middle of November, about 2 weeks in, we went live, put up on Airbnb to get started. And at the end of November, we had cleared all of our month's operating expenses. For that first apartment, we put in a total of about $2,500, $25,000 into the apartment in terms of furnishing only, all furnishing as well as the deposit and the first month's rent. And so the first 2 weeks of operations, we covered the first month's rent and we covered about a $400 profit and we covered all of the utilities. And that was in 2 weeks in November. So of course we were excited, right? We let it run just to see how it would go in December, and December was about $5,600. Keep in mind, this is our first unit, first month operating. We cleared about $5,600, which is great. It's almost double the amount of what the expenses were at that time. So that's, that's how it started. After seeing how well it was going, we started to implement our systems to scale and grow and get bigger as we went along. Of course, expenses go up as you go. Fast forward to February, the complex saw how good we were doing, how well we were managing our guests coming and going. At that point, it was mainly people from Airbnb only. Um, and so they, they liked what we were doing. We were paying them full rent, and they offered me another one. They said, hey, this one just got remodeled. Do you want another one? It's a 2-bedroom. I said, yeah, I jumped on it. This time, knowing a little bit from the last— from the first one, we cut a bit of expenses, right? We added a lot of things in the first unit that we didn't need to add in the second unit. And so we cut up— we cut some expenses. We did our second one, I want to say close to $15,000 maybe. What we did is we took the profits from December, January, and then most of February, talking to some family members. They gave us some money because they wanted to invest as well with us, and so I said okay, and we opened the second one. The second one started in End of February, I believe it was. Fast forward a month, March, the complex, same thing, offered me another 2. I opened another 2-bedroom and a 1-bedroom in that same complex. From there, we're basically dry on capital. It does require some cash to get started. It's not obviously no money down. You have to furnish the apartment, you have to pay for the deposit. And so we let the business run for about I want to say 3 months, and we saved all that profit. At the same time, me and my partner at that time, my business partner at that time, we were also working other businesses and had our jobs as well. So we had other income coming in. Then fast forward a couple more months, the same complex came to me and said, hey, I have a few more units. At that point, we ended up taking working capital loans. So as we were growing, we started talking to different banks, seeing if we can Get some loans. Most, most banks won't give you loans if you don't own the actual asset itself. And since we were doing rental arbitrage where we don't own the actual apartment complex or the residents, they won't loan you money. But then we came across a website called Kabbage who gives working capital. They gave us a, I believe it was like $24,000 loan based on the numbers that we were generating for the past units. Opened up 2 units that way, 2 apartments. Um, by the end of November 2018, we were at 9 apartments. Um, 8 were in the same complex, 1 was in a different location. At that point, we started doing different locations because, you know, you don't want to be stuck in the same area as well. And so, um, we ended up doing a total of 5 apartments, all with family members who were interested in what we were doing. Just like I'm talking to you guys now, I was talking with them. I got excited about what we do because To me, it was a great business structure. We didn't actually have to own the property, and we can still make great cash flow off, off these apartments. There was a little bit of risk involved, but based on what we've seen, it was pretty much guaranteed to get your apartments rented if you, if you were number one, attracting the right customer, number two, you were in a good location, and you were managing your location correctly, right? 3 things. And so, um, As I was going, about a year later, same thing, talking with a friend, he said, hey, I have some funds. I'll be happy to invest with you if you'd like to take me on. Of course, I said, you know, and so I opened a few more. Then, at that point, we had about— with his funds, I opened 2 units. We were at 11, and then we went to a new complex. This was July 2019. Same thing, still saving. We were paying ourselves very little from the business, saving all the income that we were making. At the same time paying off the loan from that Kabbage loan, I took on another working capital loan. This time it was with PayPal. They were great. They gave me another, I believe, another $20 grand to work with, which is, if you play it correctly, you can actually even open 2 units with that. Some of the things that we learned along the way for doing so was, you know, we knew we were going to open more units, so to cut costs, we actually started shopping ahead of time. We would go on websites like OfferUp, Craigslist, and buy used furniture. So if I know I'm gonna need a dining table and we find a dining table that fit our criteria, we would buy it, store it, and hold it ahead of time. Saved us thousands of dollars. It wasn't all new furniture. Um, one of those things that you learn as you go along. And so we, middle of July, going back to July, we opened up an extra 3 units at a different complex. So now we're in 3 different locations across Orange County and we're at, um, 17 apartments. We reinvested all the money we were making. We were making a profit of July, and I'm going to go into some of the numbers. They're not accurate, they're not 100% accurate, but they're pretty close, just so you guys can kind of get an idea of it. But with 17 units, we were bringing in a profit of about $22,000 a month on top of expenses. So we were basically taking that money and investing it to open one new unit, right? And so Fast forward to November 2019, we're at 19 units. We stopped growing at that point because we want to kind of stabilize. We were taking on a little bit of debt. We were paying off prior loans. At that point, we kind of wanted to start paying ourselves a little bit more money as well. And then we'll get into, you know, COVID. We're operating pretty good. The slow seasons here in Orange County are January, February, November, October, those months are the slow months. So right now we're actually in the slow months. So we had 2 decent months. We were able to break with a little bit of profit in January and February. March was our best month. March, April, May, June, July are our best months. Come March, we were on target to do, I believe, $65,000 just at the beginning of the month, not counting the reservations coming in for that month. And COVID hits and just everything went downhill, right? We ended up having just a substantial amount of cancellations. We ended up with a total of $17,000 profit, not even enough to cover rents. So everything just kind of crashed down. Luckily, we were doing the right thing before and saving our funds, right? We were thinking, hey, we're going to reinvest this. Instead, we ended up taking that money and paying all our rents and covering our expenses. And so the way we were able to get through COVID was we restructured our business a little bit. So instead of doing 1-day to 5-day to, you know, 7-day to 10-day stays, we ended up shifting to longer-term stays for 30 days to 3 months at a discounted rate. We would still make a small profit at times, but it wasn't as good because, you know, we have expenses to pay at this point. When you have that many units, your expenses go up. Utilities were expensive. Some of the amenities we provide get expensive. And so we ended up working— thank God we have great relationships with our complexes that we work with and some of the property managers and the owners— that we were able to work some deals with them where they allowed us to pay a percentage of rent based on the profit that we brought in for the month and then defer some of that as a payment. And so we got through the bad months. Not that it's great now because we're still in COVID, but we've been able to stay alive. Through that time, because we've shifted a little bit, some of the things we did is we started actually targeting business travel— I'm sorry, travel nurses. So we started making phone calls. We got on the phones and started basically cold calling hospitals and saying, hey, you know, we have short-term rentals, we have corporate lease apartments that we can offer to your nurses or your doctors if they need to quarantine here in the area. And then did the same thing. I actually talked to some of the city, the local cities here. And some of them actually reached out and said, yeah, we actually do need some of your places because some of our firefighters can't go home to their family when they're coming in contact with COVID Police officers need a place to stay. And so that helped out a little bit. And then we started shifting more instead of hosting families because nobody was really traveling, we were, we were hosting more business travelers as well. A lot of the people that, that, that were here for business couldn't leave. They couldn't leave back to their— to where they were going because, as you guys remember, a lot of airports shut down to leave the country as well. So they needed a place to stay for, you know, 1 to 2 months. We actually just had somebody who just checked out 3 days ago who was with us since April, and it worked out great. You know, they covered my expenses and I was able to use some of those funds because they pay you everything upfront for all those months. To while they were with us during this quarantine. So that's kind of how I got from where I started to where I'm at now. You guys have any questions about that as we go?

Yeah, I have a question.

Yeah, go ahead.

So like with all these expensive— what is like the upkeep maintenance of the side of this? Like how much do you have to actually use of the money for these like maintenance?

Um, you mean like to keep the unit operating?

Yes, like just as in case of furniture and just stuff like that.

So it depends, right? Um, there's 2 different types of costs for this. There's your startup cost and then there's your operating cost. The startup cost is the cost that you're going to use to get started only. You don't account for that during your operations. That's kind of what your return on investment will be based on what you invest into the, into the actual unit. The second cost is the operations cost, which I think is what you're referring to, right?

Yeah.

So, in my example, because I don't own the actual complex, the apartment, or the actual home, I don't have a mortgage. I just have a rent payment, right? So, I have things that I have to pay, and then we provide amenities like internet, all utilities, we provide Netflix, certain TV subscriptions, and then we provide cleanings while they're here if needed. So some of the expenses that we go through on an average would be just the rent, just those things that I mentioned. And then I aim to make a profit on a 1-bedroom of $1,200 a month, and on a 2-bedroom, $1,600 to $2,000 a month on profit during a normal month with no COVID, of course. So it's hard to give you an actual percentage or a number, but it's— you must know the number that is your cost of what it's going to be when you get started. So you need to know what rent's going to be. You need to know what your utilities are going to be on average, and that's very simple. You'll be able— you can, like, even if you rent an apartment, you'll know what you pay for electricity, right? It's about $100 a month on electricity because people in Airbnbs do run their AC, like, they just run it. They keep it on all day long. And so I don't have an actual number, but on average, Like, my, my break-even for a 2-bedroom would be about $2,800. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, that does answer my question.

Yeah, so it's about $2,800, and so I try to make an extra $1,600 on top of that. And that's a great question because those numbers are very important to know so that you know how to price your unit, um, on a monthly rate and a nightly rate, right? You don't want to price it lower than your break-even cost. If it's going to cost $3,000 to operate that apartment for the month, I gotta be able to make $3,000 off of it. So what's my cost? $100 a night. So I don't price anything lower than $100 a night. Makes sense?

That makes sense.

Yeah. And so, um, that's one of the— we'll get into some of the systems that I use to do the pricing, but that's basically how you end up, um, pricing your unit. Any other questions, guys?

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

I think I have a question.

Yeah, go ahead.

How did you initially get the contracts or agreements with, say, the traveling nurses at first to eventually have them come to your properties?

So, good question. There's actually no contracts involved. We don't sign any contracts with anybody. People can come and go as they please. The only contract that they sign with us is when, when they make that initial booking with us. So if they book for 30 days, they're there for 30 days. If they leave early, it's just based on the cancellation policy. If they choose to leave early, they get a percentage back of what the reservation was. But that's about it. There's no— we don't make contracts with hospitals or anything like that. We just offer it up to them and we tell them, here's the rate, this is what the availability is, and they'll basically come to you whenever they need it. Travel nurses like to travel in pairs, from what I've noticed in my experience. And so they like 2 bedrooms because rather than renting a 1-bedroom for, let's say, $3,000 a month, they can rent the 2-bedroom for $4,000 a month and both save that extra $1,000 each and live together. Does that make sense?

That makes sense.

Yeah, so there's no contract with travel nurses. We just made phone calls and offered it. There's also websites What's the website? I can't remember it off the top of my head right now, but we put it up on a website. It's also another booking platform, kind of like Airbnb, but it targets strictly only travel nurses in the area. So what we do is we put all our information, pictures of the apartment or the property, and then we tell them, hey, here it is, it's available, here's the monthly rate. We offer them a discount, of course, because they're travel nurses. We know that they're kind of on a budget. And we tell them what the rate is, and then they go and they put it on the platform, and then they bring the customer to us. They decide to go with us, they contact us, we make the booking, and they just stay with us. We make them sign just a rental lease agreement, and that's it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, thank you.

Cool.

Yeah, good question. Okay, so anybody else before I keep going?

What other advertisement platforms do you use besides Airbnb, VRBO?

Um, so we've used Booking.com before. Um, we— it used to be also HomeAway before it became VRBO only now. And, you know, they, they put you on, I think it's 32 different websites, Expedia, a bunch of other ones. Um, and then we have our, our own direct website as well that we kind of market sometimes. Um, and that's mainly, mainly word of mouth. Um, but those are the top 3 websites that we like to use only. We don't— I'm actually not even on Booking.com anymore because what I've noticed is it kind causes a lot— it brings a lot of problem guests. But yeah, Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, Expedia, that website for travel nurses. And I've been on another one, and it was also for travel nurses. There's 2 travel nurse websites, and I'll remember, I'll put it on the chat if I remember what it's called. But those are, those are the only ones mainly that I use.

Do you get a lot of bookings through your website?

Just curious.

Only return bookings. Yeah, we get a lot of return bookings. So I've gotten quite a bit of return bookings through our website. No new bookings because again, we don't advertise our website, so I don't expect people to just find my website and say, hey, this guy hosts people. Mainly like this, I'll put my website, I'll give my website to insurance companies, and that's how I have gotten bookings from insurance companies that way. But I get a lot of return bookings because every time someone stays with me, I tell them, hey, next time you come back, Book with me, you'll save yourself the booking fee from the platform. Like, yeah, Furnished Finders, that's it. Um, and so what I'll tell them is book with us and come back and stay with us at a discount because you don't have to pay the service fee from Airbnb or VRBO or Booking.com. And of course they stay with us. Business travelers like to stay in a spot where they've been treated well, they've, they've been happy and they felt comfortable, and we get a lot of return bookings that way.

And one more question. Do we have to do aggressive advertising, partnering up, for example, with local businesses, wedding places, so you can provide the venue for guests to stay? You mentioned hospitals, you know, what else?

So you don't have to, but again, if you put in the work, you'll get the return on it, right? Start making phone calls. People are going to be interested in those, and if you have what that customer needs, they'll book with you, right? If if you have a seven-bedroom home with a gigantic patio and an amazing pool, and and someone can host their wedding party there, then that's obviously somebody you got to target. You know what I mean? And you make those phone calls to those wedding venues and tell them, "Hey, this is what I have," and. even offer them a discount or say, hey, people that stay with me, we work out deals. If they stay with me, I refer them to your wedding venue or your bridal shop or whatever it is. Yeah, as aggressive as you want to be. I've never really needed to because I'm in a great area, Orange County, right? I just made sure that my units were made to target that customer, which is the family leisure traveler, right?

Mm-hmm.

families with kids who are coming to Disneyland. I provided things like, um, like a stroller. Um, they don't have to rent a stroller at Disneyland. I saved them some money. A pack and play, right? They can take the pack and play, and when their baby gets tired, they pop it open and the baby takes a nap, or they hang out while they're having lunch. Things like that.

So, sorry, what cities are you in?

Yeah, um, I'm in Fullerton, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana and Irvine. And so we've moved around a lot because some cities have restrictions now, but that's a whole different topic in itself. I see some questions in the chat. Give me one second, guys. Sorry, I got the sniffles now. So yeah, somebody had said furnished finders. Furnished Finders is a website that I use as well for marketing. Depreciation on furniture. So we don't factor depreciation in on furniture at all. It's just a startup expense for us. The way I look at it is if a couch breaks and I can't get a handyman to fix it, I just replace it for a new one. There's no depreciation on it for me at all. How does the insurance work? Are renters covered under landlords or is that a business expense for you? So it is a business expense. I do have insurance for all our units. Something you do want to have. I use a company that, that deals specifically with short-term rentals. Let me get you guys the name, one second here. And so it's called Proper Insurance. They've gone a little pricey over the last couple of months, but they're pretty good. They cover most of the things that you need. Like, we— I know another operator who had an instance with bed bugs and lost a lot of money on a couple reservations, and it was quite expensive to get rid of it. And they covered not only the cost of the reservation plus the cost to get rid of the issue. So yeah, insurance is an expense for us. They also cover damage to the location, but they cover it for the owner. So we don't get covered. Like, let's say a guest comes in and just trashes the house, like, I mean, holes on the wall, burns the house down or whatever, they'll cover the house and the owner gets paid. So it's a great— it's actually a selling point that I provide. It's how I got the last 2 single-family residencies. We just simply explained to them that we provide the insurance and it covers their house, and they loved it. Some of the examples of problem guests you mentioned tend to come from Booking.com. That's funny. So yeah, um, okay, when I talk about problem guests, guys, as you guys know, Airbnb has a really negative aspect in the community towards houses and people partying and people causing problems in, you know, hours of all— all hours of the night raging and, you know, throwing parties. That's what I mean by problem guests. Some of the things that I— when you get a Booking.com reservation, you've got to treat it like a direct booking. Airbnb protects the host to an extent, right? When something happens, Airbnb comes in and they're the mediator. They'll listen to both sides of the story, they'll cover you from one side, and depending on how the story went, you'll either get covered or you don't. But they're the mediating party who will protect you to an extent as a host. VRBO does the same thing, but only if you have a deposit in place or if your house gets fully destroyed and you actually opted into the insurance that they offer. Booking.com does no such thing. They basically just bring in the, um, they bring in the, the, the guests for you. They say, hey, here's a guy who wants to book, and they give it to you. It's up to you to, to make that, to, to charge his card, make sure that they show up on time, make sure to do the background check. and make sure it's the right person checking in. So all of that stuff is up to you, and you got to get a rental agreement signed by them, right? With Airbnb, you don't have to do any of that. Airbnb does it all for you. So problem guests are people who, who do last-minute bookings, who come in to do things they shouldn't be doing in your unit, right? We have people doing drugs in our apartments. Um, we thank God we have the systems in place to stop those things. Um, people throwing parties, right? We have the systems in place to instantly nip it in the bud and end it. Like, we don't have to deal with that. So that's some of the problem guests that I'm talking about, just people who are here to do things that we just don't allow in our units. Hope that answers your question. Uh, yeah, it's a— I have a— someone said business type. Yeah, it's a dual partnership LLC is what I use. Um, it just— that's what I use right now. As I start moving forward, I'm actually structuring it a little different. So cool. Any more questions before I go into some of the smaller details of how I operate and kind of what I'm doing now?

Oh yeah, I'm kind of, um, oh, well, he can go first.

Oh, this is pretty quick. Uh, I just want to know, where do you see yourself, um, scaling from now? You said you're building, I think it was in 2019, you built up to 17 to 19 units. Do you see yourself getting to a point where you have enough capital to take on bigger units or like whole complexes, or are you just gonna stick to the model of Just single units.

So, it's cool. It's funny you said that. So, that's one of the things I was gonna get into is the goal of the business, right? One of the things that I wanna do is, and the reason why, I guess I'll just get into it now to answer your question, and this is part of what I was gonna talk about anyway, why I decided to get into this business and this structure. It was, I wanna have enough units and the goal is a 5-year plan to have 100 units. Whether they're in the same complex or whether in 100 different complexes, to me doesn't matter, but I want to have 100 units. 100 units cash flowing me enough to be able to buy one property in Orange County every month. That's it. So imagine having 100 units that I can bring in and say, hey, I cash flowed $120 grand. I mean, that's more than enough for, for a down payment on a house. Which is why I started doing some networking and learning how to do fix and flips and buy and holds because I want to buy— I want to start buying properties at a discounted rate, and if the numbers work, I'm going to buy and hold them. And $120 grand a month will do that for you, right? So, to answer your question, the second part of your question, right now I actually have 17 units in— I'm sorry, 14 units in one complex. But I also know, I brought some other operators to the same building. Total, the building is 120 units, and we control 36 units of those. All for short-term rentals in the same complex. So absolutely, if there's an— if there's a landlord out there who has a 200-unit complex who's willing to work with me, I'll take all 200 units, right? Um, so yeah, does that answer your question?

Yeah.

So, um, uh, who else had a question? I think, Alonzo, you had a question, right?

Yeah, thank you. Um, So, so for your first question, this is probably my question for now. So what are some of your systems in place to stop parties and drug usage?

I'll get into that in a minute. Yeah, I'll get into that in a second. I just don't want to, because if I start going all over the place, I'll lose track of what I'm going to talk about here. So, but I'll get into it in just a second. Some— Dima, you asked, what type of property do you prefer, apartments or detached? detached single-family residences. Me personally, I prefer apartments because they're— they're for several reasons. Um, number one, you're able to operate in apartment complexes due to the zone, the zoning laws of that city, as opposed to single-family residences. Um, some of the cities out there that have short-term rental laws and restrictions, a lot of it has to do with zoning. And so some of the complexes that I'm in, they just happen to be in a good zoning area where I'm able to operate without problems. Not only that, single-family residencies are the ones who attract that negative— that negative outlook, I guess you can say, or that negative reputation towards Airbnb, right? If I put up a single-family residence in a neighborhood where people just don't want people coming and going, Throughout the month, they'll probably complain to the city, and I just don't want to deal with that type of a headache. Not only that, the systems and processes that I have in place are more structured for apartments, so I prefer apartments. Well, okay, so to go— I'm gonna go into the systems, right? And then we'll go into a little bit more detail. So right now, my business, it's fully automated, which is how I met Joe, because I'm ready to do something else. I work an average of 3 to 5 hours a week. It's the beauty of this business. When you have everything in place, I don't really have to work that much. I have everything in place for the business to basically run itself. And I have a great team and the people in place. I have a great business partner who deals with all my day-to-day operations. She handles everything that's day-to-day. If batteries on our door locks die, she goes and replaces them. If a couch breaks, she hires a handyman to come fix it, right? Things like that. I have a cleaning team who I originally started with a family member and a friend who they took over and now they manage all my cleanings. We use a website called TurnoverBnB who actually emails them our cleanings every single day. So, I don't even have to get involved. They just get an email and say, hey, these units need to be cleaned this day. They go and clean them. We use what's called Slack to communicate. They come in and they say, hey, this unit's been cleaned, ready to go, check in. I now have a virtual assistant who handles all of my communication with guests. So that took some time to train. I'm still training as we go. It's a work in progress, but she handles all my communication with guests, accepts reservations, declines, cancels, everything that needs to be handled on that side of guest relations. And then, um, the only thing I actually manage right now is when there's troubled guests. I manage my pricing and I make sure that my units get booked, right? So, so many things that I use. Again, TurnoverBnB, that's a website that basically syncs all my calendars together and teaches my— and sends my cleaners my list of cleanings every single day so they know what to clean. I use a website called SmartBnB, probably one of the best tools we have out there. They're great. They manage all automation and messages. So I send all directions to guests 2 days prior, and it's step-by-step directions on how guests can find the location. SmartBnB does that all for me. I basically make a template and they mail it to all my guests every single time. They send check-in instructions, follow-up instructions to see how they were able to check in, and then checkout instructions, and then a review request. So 4 different things, right? And then to answer your question, Alonzo, some of the systems I have in the unit are things like NoiseAware. We have Vivint security systems in some of our units. And we have Ring doorbell cameras and we have August lock doorbells and all— we use code entry to all our units. It's all automated, right? So the way we're able to stop troubled guests with that is because NoiseAware, awesome tool. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it, but what it does, it's a little device that you plug in. It looks like, like a little wall charger, and you plug it in and it doesn't record anything in the apartment. What it does is it monitors noise levels, right? So, um, what we do is we'll put it like in the living room, and we've tested it out. It's awesome. When you have the vacuum, you can tell where the vacuum is at. When you have children yelling, you can tell when the children are yelling. You have the TV full blast, you can tell when the TV's full blast. What it does is it can pick up how many decibels of sounds are in the room. So if there's 10 people in there and the noise starts getting out of control, it sends us an alert after a specific decibel level. And so we know, hey, there's a lot of noise. It's 10:30 PM. Quiet hours are from 10 to 8. 10 PM, what's going on? We check cameras and we see 6, 7 people walk in through the doorbell. We know something's going on, right? And so NoiseAware, awesome tool. The Ring doorbell is just that, it's a doorbell camera. We use it just to make sure that the right person checks in. We've had issues where someone books for a different person and it came back and kind of backfired on us. We've lost reservations that way because you're not allowed to let other people in, you know. We just want to make sure that the person who booked is the person who's staying with us. And then we have Vivint security system. So this is the good one when we have a lot of troubled guests and people who are doing drugs and things of that nature. Which should set off the alarm. If it's— if we talk to them and we say, hey, listen, we saw 7 people come in and you guys are walking in with cigarettes or whatever is in your hand. There's a guy carrying, you know, 2 24-packs in his hand and now the noise monitor is going off. We send them a nice message. Hey, can you guys please stop the noise? We have a good relationship with the neighbors. We don't want any problems. And, you know, please follow the house rules. It's that simple. They sometimes respond sorry and they end it, or they just stay quiet, which is fine. You know, we're not wanting to ruin someone's vacation. But we just don't want them disturbing neighbors. We want good relationships. And so second noise is, hey, I mean, they continue the noise. Second one's a little more aggressive. Hey, listen, if this doesn't stop, we're going to get involved and your reservation will end. Third one comes and, all right, you know, you've had enough warnings. If it doesn't stop, security system will be set off, the authorities will show up, and you will be escorted off the property. At that point, if they don't, security system gets set off. We show up, the authorities show up, and we've had people, oh, you know, we rent here. Well, actually, I own the property. Oh, you know, we've— The great thing about it is that people can't actually squat because we have proof that they've only been there for, you know, a couple hours or a day at max, right? 5 days, whatever it is. And so most of the time people will leave right away and we end up ending the reservation. How we get rid of people with, with where we've had issues with drugs. Unfortunately, you can't find that out because you're not going to go in the apartment. But we've had situations where we've walked in and people are like pretty much strung out on the couch or on the bed when it's time to check out. We don't get involved with that, right? We just set the alarm off, authorities show up, and they get escorted off, off the property. It's that simple. And so, um, that's what Vivint does. So does that answer your question? Hopefully, or help in any way.

Uh, for me, you went over and beyond, so I appreciate that.

Cool.

Yeah, I'm glad. And so, uh, the— that's basically some of the, the biggest things that I, that I did, right? And so kind of where I'm at now, um, I have 19 units. Um, we had 21 at one point. We had to close 2 down because of COVID Same thing, we just decided it was better to close them off, and we put all our furniture in, um, in storage. But one of the good things is we've actually found some opportunities to help grow the business during this hard time, right? A lot of other operators who didn't have the capital saved to continue have sold off a lot of their furniture. I've bought a 3-bedroom house worth of furniture at an extreme discount for, I'll say, $2,000. Something that would normally cost me $15,000, right? I can furnish an apartment now with that. I can take and furnish 2 different 1-bedroom apartments, um, with just that furniture alone. And so it's cut my cost significantly for the future. So when it's time to scale and grow and add more units, that's what I'm doing. Um, right now, other than that, I'm no longer growing. I just opened my last 2 units, um, 2 weeks ago. Uh, it's kind of what took up my, my time the last 3 weeks, opening up those 2 units, because I got a contract with another complex. Which, going into— it's funny, when you get started, just word of mouth and how well you operate in a complex. And that first building that I was telling you guys about, they've been through, through 3 different property managers. And the first property manager, when they got let go, the manager loved us. We had a great working relationship, and she went to a different complex. And there was the assistant manager and the actual manager, and they went their separate ways. And it's funny, no more than— I want to say a month later, I get a phone call from both of them offering me units at their location because they have vacancy, you know. And so when people see how well you operate and you make relationships just like this, networking and talking, people will offer them up to you. It's really hard to get your first one, and it's really hard to get your first one at a new location. But once you get going, you'll get them offered. They'll be— I get them handed to me all the time. Even now, I have people messaging me, hey, I have a house in Los Angeles. I've been to meetups like this where I've just— I wasn't even talking, I just was networking at the end of the meetup and I started talking with people. And it happens that the guy owns 5 houses out in LA and he's offered me— I got offered 2 1-bedroom houses in Long Beach. I passed on them. I've gotten offered a small complex in Koreatown. I took the— I took a unit there. I closed it down because it was— the complex was poorly managed. And so, it was just hurting our business more than it was helping. But, you know, all through networking. And so, people will offer them up to you just by word of mouth like this. And so, what I'm trying to do now is currently stabilize because COVID has affected us drastically. It has hurt our income, so we're not making as much as we thought we would. But once we get past it, we do want to scale and we do want to grow. Like I was telling you guys, the reason I decided to get into this business was because when I first started, um, I, I, I couldn't figure out what to do, right? I couldn't afford to buy a, a 3-bedroom house and make some money off of it. And I didn't want to do out-of-state investing because I didn't know what I wanted to do back then, right? I didn't know how to, how to look at numbers and analyze deals like I do now. Um, I didn't know how, how, how how it would take and what expenses needed to come into place for a long-term tenant. So this worked out for me. I put everything in place, I learned as I went, and now the goal is to have 100 units and make enough cash flow to actually purchase these properties and eventually own multifamily and, and use the short-term rental structure in that multifamily. So that's basically the whole reason why I decided to get into this business. Luckily, I've had great relationships with relationships with people who have helped me grow along the way. They've gave me money to open units, um, they've offered me locations to open units, they've helped me in terms of setting up units, and I've returned the favor, right? My bookkeeper, she's one of my best friends, um, she does all my books at a greatly discounted rate, and I didn't even have to ask for that. She just offered it, and I, I showed her how to start the business. Took me a lot of convincing to teach her, but once she started doing my books, she saw how great we were doing and she jumped on board. She now has, I think, 5 units. And she has a full— guys, she has a full-time job, works 40 hours a week, right? She has 5 units that she does part-time, and she does my books part-time. And I've brought her other clients who also run short-term rentals, and she does their books on the side because this business requires basically no time to do, right? Once you have everything in place— don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work to get started, But once you have everything done, it gets in place. Everything goes into the right— I guess everything, there's a time for everything. So, um, that's basically it. That's all I really want to talk about, how I got started, what I'm doing, what I do. Hopefully, you know, I taught you guys, or not taught you guys, but was able to inspire some of you because it's, it's very, very doable, guys, even now during COVID Um, but yeah, we'll get into more questions and Go from there. Oh, I actually see some questions here. Um, how long are the leases? Oh yeah, great question. Actually, I forgot to talk about that. Uh, how long are the leases that you are signing up for with the apartment complexes? So a lot of the things that people think is that when you go and, uh, and try to set up one of these apartments or one of these leases with the, with the landlord is you got to offer them a little extra, right? Hey, Why would they want to let you use their unit to do what you do? Well, we sign a 1-year lease for everything. If the owner's not on board or he's not really sold on it, we do a 6-month lease just so they can try us out, we can try them out. Maybe the location doesn't work for us or we don't work out for them, but we do a 1-year lease for everything. Regular— tenants for 1 year, guys. That's what we do. We're a regular 1-year tenant to these landlords. The reason why these landlords love to work with us, right, it's very simple. When's the last time a regular 2-year, 3-year term tenant deeply cleaned their house, right? Scrubbed their toilets, had a cleaning company come in and clean it, and actually took good care of the property? Probably the moment that you did it, the moment they moved in, maybe. I don't know. Or the moment that they're going to move out and you have to clean the entire place professionally. We clean it professionally 5 to 6 times on average a month, right? If a tenant breaks, I don't know, a hole in the wall here, we patch it up. We don't call them, hey, there's a hole. We patch it up. It's simple. We get a handyman come in and does the work. We repaint the walls when kids come in and scribble all over the walls. Their place looks better than when they handed it to me 5 years down the line, right? My first unit now that I told you guys that did great, still one of my best performers, um, and it looks better than when I got it. Some of the things are a little run down, like the rug. Actually, it's funny, I'm actually gonna get rid of one of the rugs now because it's just been trampled on forever and we've washed it numerous times. But in order for me to sell that apartment, I have to keep that apartment at top-notch value, right? People aren't going to stay in a rundown place. So when I explain this to landlords, they're on board. I'm going to take great care of your place. I'm going to take care of the little issues. If a window breaks, I'm not going to call you. If the only time I'll call you is like, let's see, the pipes are backed up and like it's going to be like a $2,000 fix, I'm going to call you. But if I got to call a plumber out to fix piping issues, I'm not going to bother the landlord. I'm going to deal with it because I got to deal with it instantly, right? I can't have a guest without a toilet for 3 days. It's not going to work. And so landlords love that. They love the fact that we take great care of the apartment and they have guaranteed rent for their unit. That's what they're in business for, right? They're not renting out the unit to make rent plus rent profit. They're renting out the unit to make their rent on their mortgage of their property, which is what we're already providing for them. Does that make sense? So yeah, a 1-year lease is all we do. Let's see. Yeah, John, so that's exactly what I do. So it's not a dumb question. He asked if I'm rent— if, are you renting these and then subleasing or are you purchasing? So rental arbitrage, you can totally do this if you own the property, guys. Again, the only reason why I don't do it is because back then I didn't have the funds to purchase the properties. The goal is to build the funds to purchase properties doing this structure. And so yeah, I rent and I sublease. I'm not technically sublease in contract language. I do have some, some contracts that allow me to use subletting, but we're just reassigning because I'm not actually signing new leases to all my people. I'm just, um, assigning them the apartment for, for a short term. I'm not making them sign a lease that says, hey, you're going to be with me for 5 days. There's no need. I have the lease in my name. I'm taking full responsibility of the unit. They're just staying with me for 5 days at a premium. That's it. So yeah, good question. Uh, called B&B Formula, never heard of it. Uh, the channel Airbnb Automated on YouTube is a whole channel dedicated to this. Oh, cool. Yeah, I might do some— I've been thinking about doing some YouTube videos on this. Um, how do you find a landlord willing to do this? Do you cold call Craigslist for rent? So I think I kind of answered that, but yeah, um, you just cold call apartment complexes, talking, networking, guys, networking. I mean, like this, if there's a landlord out here who's interested in me renting their place, I can take a look at it, and, um, if it works out, I'd be happy to do so. Um, I'll be happy to rent it. It's just people who are in need of renting their place, right? Um, but yeah, cold calling apartment complexes and going out. Don't do it over the phone. Make sure you, you talk to them and go out and meet them in person. It's very hard to, uh, to, um, to do it over the phone. Am I looking for investors? Always looking for investors. Um, so we can talk if you'd like later. I think that's all the questions. Anybody else out there?

Okay, best chance.

Yeah, go ahead, anything you guys got?

Uh, yeah, quick question maybe. Um, are you still working your, your 9-to-5 job that you had mentioned earlier?

No, no.

So, so great question actually. This is what I do full-time right now. It's a kind of a double-edged sword because I have a lot of free time on my hands, so I don't usually put that time to the best use. It's actually why I reached out to Joe the first time because I was ready to learn something new. I want to learn flips, right? I'm learning how to do— right now, going into this part of my journey, I guess, is learning the actual parts of actual real estate investing. I want to learn how to analyze properties and deals and rehab costs. And because if I get that that property at a correct number that works and I can purchase it instead of flipping it, I can hold it with this business structure, I'll hold on to it. And so, I can't start purchasing things without knowing how the business works. So, yeah, that's what I'm doing now. I'm not doing 9 to 5. This is what I do full-time. I'm actually learning. I've been doing a lot of— not a lot because I've been busy, but I'm actually doing cold calling now as well to try to find some off-market deals. hopefully bring to Joe so we can work on them together. And then, so I can find myself— I have a lot of people right now, like I have a couple of realtors out in LA who send me deals all the time. Some of them don't work because I kind of learned a little more how to analyze numbers myself. So I have to keep bugging you, Joe, with those deals sometimes. But yeah, it's what I'm doing right now. I'm focusing mainly on learning how to find investment properties.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

Anybody else?

Uh, I think— oh, my contact email, guys. Email me at, um, yeah, I'll just put it on the chat. I also started an Instagram page if you guys want to follow me on there. It's brand new, but I'm dropping tips and tricks and things like that to help, um, new Airbnb operators kind of figure out a lot of the Techniques on how to price, how to how to get listings up, target customers, things like that. So nightinrain@gmail.com is my email address. Just go ahead and shoot me an email through that, and I always respond. It takes me a while because I don't check my emails often, but I do respond.

Okay, thank you. Rafa, I appreciate you, uh, talking this month and giving us all this great information. And, um, like I like to say, you know, there's, there's so many things you can do in real estate. You know, it's just not one thing. And here you are starting out with, uh, you know, I would say very close to no money down, um, and then, and building a business that is creating, uh, that much For you, so that's awesome. I do want to say a couple more things, and then I'm just going to open it up for chat for anybody that wants to talk about anything that they want to talk about real estate related.

As we as we get into the to the new year, I. Have been mentioning that I've geared up a wholesale team of about 10 people right now doing nothing but cold calling. And, and I think there'll be some more opportunities coming up January and February after we get out of this foreclosure forbearance stuff. The, the other thing is I noticed today that President-elect, if you want to say that, president-elect. It's hard for me to say that, sorry. But anyway, President-elect Biden is looking to offer brand new first-time homeowners a $12,000 incentive to buy a house. This is not the first time this has happened. In fact, Obama did it when he was president. and Biden was vice president. So maybe he's gone back to that playbook. But if you're looking to buy something, I would wait till after he gets in office and all these new policies come out to purchase, you know, something and get $12,000 back. I have 3 kids. They were all of age and graduated college right as all this was happening in 2008, and they each bought a condominium back then, and they got actually $15,000 back then. I don't know why he went down, but they got $15,000. So they were, they were very happy, um, purchasing their, you know, their, their first investment and then getting $15,000 back on that purchase. So, um, as, as a new president-elect, you I know you're going to see a lot more things of this nature coming your way. So, you know, keep track of all that stuff that's real estate related because you'll see, you know, some opportunities out there. Okay. Does anybody have anything that they want to talk about tonight? Wow, quiet crowd.

I did kind of start this business, just to give you guys an idea. I just happened to have the $15,000 saved, but the other half of that money came from a credit card that my brother loaned me, right? You guys can get started with things like that as well. Just use creative financing, you know what I mean? So if you ever need a an attorney at any point of the process? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. What was that? Did you need a— did you ever need an attorney during any point of the process? No, luckily I haven't. So, um, things, you know, I mean, I would imagine you would need an attorney for things like if there's a lawsuit involved, um, if there's someone who's coming after you or things of that nature, but In running kind of a short-term rental business, it's not really necessary because I don't need them for contracts. Again, I'm just signing a regular lease. That's pretty much the only thing I ever sign. I didn't need it to start my LLC. You can do it online. No, I've never needed one.

Thank you.

I had a quick question also.

You said you're looking to Flip houses, you know, down the road, are you strictly looking in Orange County or are you going to be flexible with, say, a market like Riverside or San Diego, LA? Or are you just looking just to stay in Orange County?

It'll be anywhere that I'm local to. So current, like right now, I'm quarantining in Riverside at my parents' house and I've been looking at the market out here. So You know, when I just actually moved out of Anaheim, I was looking at Anaheim. It's just so hard to find properties in Orange County area. The realtors that I know that I've made relationships with are sending me deals out from LA, so I'll look at those as well. But I'll look anywhere. I'm gonna be focusing my attention mainly in the next couple weeks, probably here in In Riverside. So yeah, I'm looking for a very specific model myself. Like, uh, as you guys hear all over BiggerPockets, right, the BRRRR structure. I want to do the BRRRR model. I'm looking for properties that I can clear that 70% mark, you know what I mean? So I can, um, fix, rehab, flip, and I mean, and keep myself rather than having to flip and sell because I want to hold them. As long-term rentals for short-term rentals if I can.

You actually jogged my memory. So I'm interested in getting into this Airbnb strategy probably once the COVID wanes because I'm a little wary to jump into a lease right now with the potential of a shutdown. But, um, I was, I was curious, you had mentioned some margins regarding Airbnbs in the Los Angeles market, and I was, I was curious if you had any more, um, or data, data or knowledge on that, because I am interested in getting into that market.

Would you say that again? Data or knowledge on what? On the laws?

Oh no, no, no, on the margins of Airbnb, like, like profits you take home at the end of the day. Nice expenses.

Um, so I don't actually have any data. You can do all the research in the world that you want. There's, there's websites out there that will give you data on what your profit will be or what the estimated profit is, but there's really no way in telling, you know. And I'll tell you why. Like, AirDNA is a really good website that tells you what your predicted income will be. Um, let's say if you search on City of Anaheim or the City of Los Angeles or whatever city you're looking for, The thing is that they pull all the data from all the short-term rental websites, the biggest one being Airbnb, right? VRBO, Booking.com. The problem with that is that they can't— they can't distinguish the properties that they're pulling data from. So if in this location here is a 2-bedroom house that's renting for $6,000 a month, and right next door is a 2-bedroom house, but they're only renting the bedroom in that 2-bedroom house, at $1,200 a month, it's gonna average it out and say, well, 2-bedroom house only make an average of $3,000 a month. Does that make sense? So there's no— there's absolutely really no way of, um, I mean, you'll— it'll give you an idea, don't, don't get me wrong. That's a great place to start. Yeah, but you won't know until you really get started in your area.

Yeah, yeah. See, I just didn't know if, um, you had, uh, did any, uh, uh, work over there, as in looking to, uh, potentially, um Secure a property before your strategy of arbitrage?

I did, actually. I did. I mean, I, when I first learned about this from hearing all that guy and how good he was doing, I did a ton of research. I was still not even sold on the idea because I was still kind of sold on BiggerPockets and, you know, BRRRR and flip and no money down and wholesale and all that. So, um, But I did do a lot of research. I, I went on that website AirDNA. I pulled numbers in specific cities like Fullerton, Anaheim. I did Koreatown, mainly those cities, but I looked mainly for attractions. You can do this business anywhere as long as 2 things: there's an airport and a hotel nearby. That's it. There doesn't have to be a major attraction. I just happened to be in the area where Disneyland's at. So I took advantage of it.

Okay.

I took advantage of it. So I did my research. Yeah, I know that there's travelers. I mean, within— I mean, I live 3 miles from Disneyland, and within that area, you know, there's, I want to say, 50 hotels. I wasn't even allowed to operate in Anaheim, so what I did is I went to the next best place, Fullerton, up the street, right? And so I just— and then I made sure— one of the things I'll tell you, one thing you're better off knowing Rather than looking at profit margins or numbers before you get started, you're better off trying to figure out who's the customer that you're going to try to attract to your listing, right? You don't want to start trying to attract everybody because then nobody's going to come. You know what I mean? If you have a game room with a pool table and a ping pong table and a cake and a little kegerator, you're not going to bring older couples or families.

Right.

You're going to bring a bunch of people trying to party.

Right.

Same goes for my 1-bedrooms. I don't attract 8 people to my 1-bedroom because there's gonna be no family of 8 traveling to a 1-bedroom. So instead, I put in some things like a king bed where people want their space to sleep, right? I put in a clothes steamer. I put in all the amenities, right? All the— I put in baby baths. I put in baby soaps and shampoos because You do have a couple sometimes who wants to travel to the one bedrooms or business travelers who need a place to work. I put in work desks and we put in whiteboards, things of that nature, that when people come to my place and they go, oh, I can work at that place and I can enjoy myself, right? And they have everything I need. I know I don't have to go anywhere. I provide coffee, right? I provide 100 megabytes internet. Who doesn't want to be there? You don't have to leave ever. So you're better off knowing the customer that you want to attract to your location. Then kind of worrying about, I wonder how it's going to do, because I guarantee you, man, once you start— like my first one, I had no idea. I just took it. I just said, I'm going to try it. And so I made it. I did a 2-bedroom and I said, I'm going to try to bring in families for Disneyland. And so I did too much to it. That's how I learned as I went. I provide— we had a machine where it dry cleans your clothes. It's never been touched in What, 2 and a half years we've been operating, never been touched. It's sitting there collecting dust now. I actually have my cleaners wipe it every couple days, every time they clean, because nobody touches it. But what I do now is I provide, um, pack and plays, baby showers, baby soaps, shampoos, a baby bath. I provide a stroller, I provide a high chair, I provide Keurigs, um, I provide, uh, Netflix and HBO, right? Disney Plus, because that's what families are doing. They're going to want to relax and watch a movie with their kids. They're going to want to put a pack and play for their babies. They want the stroller so they don't have to rent one. You get what I'm saying? So it's who I decided to start attracting, and it's what started bringing people to my place.

So I get it, and I appreciate that. That kind of gave me insight into LA. I feel as though I may attract, if I were to do this model, Pretty much travelers and sightseers who would like to see the city themselves. So I think structuring a property towards that type of Airbnb user would be perfect.

One of the things I will tell you, yeah, and so when I had my Koreatown apartment— sorry, someone asked me what my Instagram username is, I was pulling it up for you. When I had my Koreatown apartment, all I attracted, it was a studio, And all I ever attracted was couples, like just people coming to check out the city, nothing else. And I even provided like the baby bath and all that stuff at that place too, but never got any people with kids ever. It was all couples just traveling to check out the city. Um, it sucks that I'm not there anymore. We just had a bad experience with that complex. Um, but I'm not, you know, it, that's, that's what you will attract. One thing, make sure you guys always make sure you know what the The hosting laws for short-term rentals in your city are. I know a lot of places in LA don't allow it anymore, even in the zoning areas. So you got to be careful with that. I'm going to put my— I'm going to put my Instagram tag on the chat in case you guys want to. And I'm dropping like photos and Um, just tips and tricks on like how to operate, things to do, how to attract your customers, things like that, just to kind of help out. Anyway, sorry I took over again, Joe. Any other topics?

That's fine. Yeah, it, you know, a lot of things come up after, uh, you get done talking, and, and that's fine. Answer the questions. Um, I noticed there was some question on BiggerPockets. If, if you haven't checked it out, um, There is a free signup for BiggerPockets, and it's just a group of investors all over the US. In fact, they're actually all over the world right now. Great resources there, and they do have a paid version, and then if you want to become a premium user like I am, then you pay a lot more. But I found it a great resource and That's really kind of the way that I meet investors here in Orange County. So I definitely, I would check that out. If you want to meet with me either in person or online on Zoom again and talk specifically about what it is that you're thinking about doing or want to do, there's my calendar. You can book something there. And again, we were doing okay until last week, and now they shut the restaurants down again on me. And so we can only eat outside at certain restaurants. I'll have to check my calendar. Marty and I went out to lunch, I think it was a couple of weeks ago. Rafael is, is, you know, taking me out to lunch.

And there's several other people here. You know, just basically to pick my brain. You can, you can come to my office and meet with me there, depending on, you know, what your COVID philosophy is. But I can do, I can do all this online as well. So if you don't feel comfortable doing that, then we can just definitely stay online. Okay, any other questions?

Actually, Jesse asked a question on here. Uh, he said, do you plan on doing this Airbnb short-term rental strategy in Riverside or other areas besides Anaheim? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I actually did want to do it in Riverside, Jesse. Um, I just stopped because COVID hit, so I'm kind of waiting out just to kind of see how it goes. I'm basically just running the ones I have right now.

Not—

I'm not going to add any more until this whole thing Hopefully it blows over. But yeah, Riverside is somewhere I want to go to. You can attract college students out here. Obviously there's no school right now, but, you know, people need to travel for their kids' graduations, students who need a place to stay while they're here. I've had that as well.

Anything else?

No?

I don't see any, any hands raised or, or comments. I want to thank you for showing up this month. I normally don't have a December meeting, but I'm trying to get my eviction attorney to do a presentation because I think that'll be very timely. So if I can get him booked, then I'll have something around the last week of December, but if not, then I'll just let everybody know. that, you know, we're not, we're not going to have a meeting in December. If it was face-to-face, I definitely would not have a meeting kind of too close to Christmas. But, you know, Thanksgiving is all messed up this year, and I'm sure Christmas is going to be the same, all messed up. So anyways, again, thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Thank you. I will finish recording this and I'll send it out to everybody in case you missed something here. You can go back under the recording and listen to it again. Okay. Okay, thank you. Talk to you guys later.