Behind the host with Moriya Rockman introducing Triangle

Okay, so it looks like we are live. So welcome to another episode of behind the Host podcast. And today is going to be a little bit different. So today I'm joined by the founder and CMO of Smiling House, Maria Rockman. And I'm really excited to speak to her about her new startup, Triangle Luxury. Now if you're a host and or a property manager and you deal with holiday, let's in general, this is something that you're going to really want to pay attention to. This is exciting, this is new and you need to spend the next sort of 20 minutes or so really understanding what Triangle Luxury is and how it could help you as a property manager and also some of your owners and some of the investors that you might invest for. So today let's introduce Maria. Thank you for coming along and welcome.

Thank you. So great to be here. Thank you for taking the time. I'm very excited to introduce Triangle Luxury and cooperation with Boostly.

So yeah, well, let's get started by not everybody who's listening will necessarily have come across here. So if you introduce yourself and a little bit about both Smiling House and Triangle Luxury.

Okay, so I'm Maria Rockman. I'm from Switzerland. I'm originally from Israel. Maybe you can pick it up from my accent. And I'm the founder and the CMO of Smiling House, which is today property management and an OTA focusing on luxury accommodation worldwide. We are active in 33 countries and you can check it, check us out as a channel via Booking pal or Rentals United. But today I want to talk to you about something else. In the last few years working in Smiling House, we got more and more people coming knocking on our door and, and asking us how much these properties cost. Guests who staying in a place like wishing to buy the property where they're staying. Of course this is happening more in luxury than in other circumstances, but I'm sure that it's maybe been part of your experience as well. I heard it from many, many, many hosts around the world that they've been exposed for kind of requests about purchasing, buying the house with their management and because of their management. And I'm happy to say that we in Smiling House sold in the last two, two and a half years, mostly since the pandemic started. Six houses in the total worth of $25 million mostly to our guests and to also to some kind of hosts overseas that wanted to, to to extend their season and instead of just summer destination to have a winter destination. And then I said to myself like, hey, this can't be there's something over here. It can't be that it's only happening to me and I start to investigate. It was a bit hard because it was the time that we couldn't meet each other and it was all via zooms. But people from the other hand had more time and I realized that a lot of my colleagues, the people I'm working with in the everyday life from Saint Barts till Saint Tropez had the same experience and we all, you know, talked about it and how do you give the information about the house, about your management and it's all about excels and from your PMS and things like this, but nothing that's really suitable for, for the real estate world. And then this is the moment where I kind of say, okay, this is something big. I have to be busy with that. And I'm a pioneer, I serial entrepreneur. So I didn't delay one second more start to develop a triangle. And today I'd be happy to show you how you property managers can be all homeowners, in case that you are managing your own properties, can be involved in real estate deals and even more important than the one part of being involved and be part of a sale, how you make sure that this house is not going to be sold to a couple with a dog and you guys going to have a continuity of your management or even get from triangle matching of new properties into your collection.

As such, it's such a good idea because often as a host, myself and property manager, we have owners all the time who need to sell properties for whatever reason or they come to us asking what property should I buy? And we don't always have time. We're busy managing the properties. We don't always have time to necessarily have that side to the business. So this is where, you know, through Triangle Luxury, it gives you the tools to be able to do that. So I'm excited. I won't take anything away. I'll let you know, go through it and you know, show. But for everybody who's listening into both the podcast and on the live, definitely pay attention to the screen. For Maria to explain this. This is really exciting.

Yes. So you want me to share my screen right now?

Yeah, go ahead, share the screen.

Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. So here, this is a Triangle luxury. First of all, you should know the Triangle Luxury is a closed platform. And this is something that your homeowner definitely want to know. He wants to know that if he puts his place online with you, it's actually not online. Only the investors that hanging around Triangle Luxury interested in buying properties from property managers with the yield of property management will be exposed to this data. So if now I'm going to give you kind of a glimpse of how an investor is able to see these properties and then we're going to look quickly of how you can upload properties to Triangle. So we have here a demo investor of course because an investor normally will see only properties in certain destination or lifestyle, but the lifestyle search here can be very wide. This is another thing that is different Triangle than looking at the real estate website. You can see Spain next to Greece, Italy next to Israel and the UK next to Switzerland. So he has the investor have a completely different overview over the properties and his money and how much yield and how much you know the forecast of management by you, done by you would be his best investment. So if we look for example at this property in Italy, okay we can see that there's a 34% yield. How we get to this number and this is how it's how how investors look at it from the inside. He will see the sales price, he will see the gross income coming from the property manager. All these details are uploaded by the property managers and this will be the cash on cash financing that creating this yield. What do I mean by that? In Italy they will get up to 70% financing from the bank. All the interest and so on is already been calculated. And because this is what the property manager is creating, in 120 days the yield of this property is becoming 34%. Okay. So for the homeowner they will be able to get all the information already on what I'm calling it on a plate. You know, I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but this kind of of information is something that normally especially somebody would want to buy a property overseas. An SDR overseas has to spend so many times traveling in order to get this information here it's given in a way, in a wide way that including videos, you can see all the pictures that you want and can share in a way that is very much eye opening. You can add some videos and drones and you can give the forecast. In this property we cannot see the forecast, but I'll show it to you in another one. Of course from here just copy paste from your existing website or whatever the rest of the information, the listing, all the details, don't forget that this time we're selling the property. So we will need a little bit information about the size and that's it. This is how an investor can see the property, can choose and can decide that he is into it. Now here, this is very important. You can see here there's three years of management. This is your place to shine. This is your place to show your good management record and that's what actually creating the yield for the property. We have another role that called ambassador and in this role we have great people like the Boostly, actually a community that's introducing a triangle. And because of this we able to also match new homes with your collection. So we are not only expecting you to give the properties that under your management that are for sale, but we can also surprise you like I did today with a guy that I'm working with, a property manager from Greece, from Paris, that I'm working with for many, many years. Today I gave him two properties through Triangle newly built that looking for management. So as a start, the property manager will be also the only professional that will give the forecast of these properties in case that they are for sale. And of course in case of a sale or just in general matching, we are doing in triangle matching between new properties that coming from, you know, constructions or from ambassadors to your portfolio. This is like just a little taste and then if you want Liam, I can show how it's working from the inside for the property manager. But in general what we are doing, we're giving you because you're coming through Boostly, we're giving you a code where you'll be able to just, you know, like it's, it's like a Dropbox where you can put the pictures, the, the description, the link to your Airbnb or to the link to your website. And we will do the first part of uploading property on your behalf.

Wow, that's really good. So there's from a property manager's point of view, I mean the benefits are just vast here because one of the proper problems we have as property managers is when somebody goes to sell the property, our first worry is like you say, it's going to get bought by a family who we won't then have the continued management of that property through a platform triangle. It just means that it'll be passed to an investor who is interested in the yields of the, of that property and who very likely is going to want to carry on with, with our performance, isn't it? So there's a major benefit there for a property manager. And then from our investors standpoint, just having that place where we can send, we get a lot of investors say, what shall I invest in? Well, now We've got a platform to be able to send them to instead of traditionally here in the UK they're looking at rightmove. They're then having to get in touch with the owners. They're then having to get in touch with the management company. All of that time is then saved through a platform like yours. Is that correct?

Right. And let's not forget that when you are involved as through Triangle, you are actually representing the owner and Triangle is representing the buyer. So you know if your owner will get to get to sell his property through you, of course you consider to be like the realtor in that case. In case of legal markets that requires to have you know, an official real estate, you know, Realtor, how do you say certificates or something like that. So we will hook you or we'll use the, the existing one of the the owner and make sure that you will get your share as a fair share like a co realtor in the deal. But actually from what I learned, from what I investigated, The big kick for us property managers actually not to lose the property beside the fact of the money that comes with the sale. And think about it, Liam. We are all part of an industry that let's say is like 11 years old, almost 12 years old, not much more. We all knew, right? And that's why our occupation is new and our abilities is new to, to the others. But let's, let's admit it. The when we just started, all of us, this business doesn't matter if it started you started two years ago, three years ago, maybe somebody started a long time ago like me, like eight or nine years ago. We got these homeowners as a fact. And these homeowners looked at us in a certain way. And sometimes, let's admit it, they were not the super duper most evaluating people on the other side. We had to ask them, hey, it's time to change the balcony or the garden furniture. And they say like ah, it's okay, you know, we're doing good enough, no need, you know, all kind of upgrades that we asking for that we know that will make the benefit immediately reflected in the price in the booking. And not always we have the nicest person or the most listening person on the other side. Imagine that while upgrading the new homeowner, the person who choosing to buy this property because of you, you have a place here in Triangle to share what you would like the homeowner to add as part of his purchasing. So here by the way, this is what we're going to give you in the end this is where you register as a property manager. But I guess that you're going to get a great link one time. Click from, from from Boostly to register with all the benefit of us uploading the properties on your behalf. But just to give you an idea of what you can ask the homeowner, the new homeowner, you can give him everything you have in mind. You can tell him how much you want them to spend and on what you can tell them. By the way, beside the price of the property, you can actually benefit from this or from that. You can make weddings in this place or retreats. You can open the mind of a new investor to new ideas. If we will look here at my own, you know, listing in Triangle, this is how it's looking like. We can see all the properties, the one that are active, the one that are on hold, the one that sent tools to be submitted. And it's important for you to understand that each and every person in this, in this platform from the investor and including yourself is getting, you know, it's getting like verified, it's getting into some kind of due diligence. And the fact that you're coming from Boostly is saving us and you all this hassle. We immediately approving you to be who you are and so on. I want to give you this example here of this property because it's actually a property that we sold. It's sold and it's on the market again, but we sold it to a homeowner, sorry, to a property manager that lives in Mykonos. And the idea that we can also play a role of opening the mind of the homeowners, the existing homeowners we have of having another opportunity and they counting on our management. This is really like a big deal. So how do we get to put all these details? When you upload a property to Triangle, you actually, after we're putting the pictures and so on, you just need to write what is the sales price and the kind of property it is. If it's apartment and so on and the address, then we'll do the rest on your behalf. We upload the pictures, you upload the videos if you have. We choose these amenities because some of the investors will look according to this kind of tags so as many tags as possible and then the general description and so on. And then the next part, which is the only part that you will need to fill up because this is your business and not ours, is this one, this yield summary you're starting from the year that you're managing the property and the style. Are you managing it like a percentage or fix? And then this kind of information of how much mortgage will be given in your country. And like you can say here, look, if you buy this property, that's what I told you this property to this new homeowner, which is a property manager for Mykonos. If you buy it actually you're gonna get the worth of 90,000 valid architect plan. That's what the owner told me that, you know, it's worth money, but it's not part of the, of the, of the renting world. But you can build a pool in this apartment and you're gonna get all the furnitures for free. Come on. Where in the world they will get all the furnitures for free if not because of us convincing the existing homeowner that this is been sold to somebody in vacation rental. Somebody wants to do vacation rental. We want continuity. We want to use the same beautiful pictures.

Turnkey type operation then for the new buyer, isn't it?

So it's right and not. Yeah, not only that imagine that you. But you selling now through triangle A property. Maybe this property has some bookings in the future. We will sell it in total continuity with hopefully with the same pictures. Hopefully if you can convince the homeowner to include the furniture in the price. So the new homeowner just get it like you know, with the future bookings. So just to. Just to go quickly. Then the other thing that you very important that you fill up is how many nights you booked it in that year and the average nightly rate each time you pressing the calculate here in the end. And this is what actually creating the yield and so on. If we want to tell the homeowner that he should spend some money on this property and this is where we asked him to do so in extra expenses we can say please, please, please change this balcony furnitures and pay another 20,000 and have it all done. Or please, please, please add the jacuzzi. We beg into all the stuff on.

Our wish lists for the properties that need to be there. Which is cool.

Yeah, exactly. So this is your place to talk without talking with the future buyer and to be involved in selling the properties among your collection. And also like I said as a credit to get hopefully a matching with new properties on the market that are not on the vacation rental market yet. And of course we can only match it with great hosts that we have in the platform.

We talked briefly just before we went live. But what other platforms are out there which does this sort of thing as.

Far as we know. And I just gave an interview to FocusWire Worldwide. Nobody creates such a platform. So it's a. Triangle is the first to market. It's the only platform that first of all that is outside of the usa that busy with selling of vacation homes. I don't know if you know, but in the United States there's the data of real estate is open to the public. So everybody can know what's the price of the cottage next door and how much it's been sold to and who's living there. We don't have this in Europe. And that's what makes our properties and the management properties even more sexy and interesting because the only information that can be given can be given from your side. And this is what creating like the superpower and why I called it Triangle. Maybe you want to. I mean, it's a very sexy name.

I was going to ask.

Yeah, but not because of that. It's because, look, real estate is not new in the world, right? We all know that real estate been there forever and ever and they always been working. Let's see if you can see my finger in this sense. There was a buyer, a seller and somebody over here, maybe in the, I don't know, in the Asian time they called it, called him, I don't know, goat shepherd or whatever. But today they call him a realtor or real estate advisor or whatever. But nobody till today took in account this person. Who is this person? This person is us. This person is. Is the property manager who have. And listen to this. This is the most important. We have not only the key to the house, we have the key to the homeowner heart. We are big influencers on the people we're working with because we creating value and we are actually working, most of us for free. We working on percentage in most cases. So we creating benefit, we creating income and we're doing it for free. So for the new buyer, the property manager is everything. You giving the keys to the house, you can influence. And to make sure that the homeowner, the existing homeowner will say yes rather than to say no. You coming from hospitality, you probably speaking more than one language. And you able to work with Triangle wherever you are. And you are the one that in case of a buyer, say I'm super serious, I want to see these two properties. Will we or weren't we open the door for him as a guest with as much as we can, a great price and let him stay in the property and decide and open the doors of the kitchen and See if maybe there's a trend that we didn't see in the pictures that passing through this property and we able to give this experience that no realtor in the world able to give. And that's why it's called Triangle because I believe for the first time the involvement of us in this process is giving completely, completely different angle that suits the way that people would like to look at buying and investing in properties in 2022.

100%. It builds to my mind by us being involved as hosts, it builds the trust between the buyer, the seller to really know what figures and what they're investing in. And that time that you're saving for both investors and also the benefits you bring into hosts as well. It's amazing. So I'm sure there's people listening to this and watching the live who and I'd love for people to put it in the comments if you do know of any investors who have approached you or if you know of any of your owners who are looking to sell, I'd love you to just put Triangle in the comments just to say, you know that that would be a really good indicator indication that you've got, you know, properties which could be perfect to go on Triangle. And we'll definitely share this message if there are people out there, Maria, who want to get involved, what's the best way to, to get in touch with you?

So yeah, so I believe that you know we, we created a special link for Boostly that you will share that with. And this, this is like you know, to put you on the, on the highway. Pressing on this, on this link will give you the access to Triangle. Fill up your personal information like we saw before. Give everything over there like who's your pms, who you are, every detail. Try not to skip any field, it's super important. And then you know, with this code we will be able to also help you to upload the first part of your properties and let you know once your properties is ready for you just to fill up that yield summary and then we will be able to push them live. If you by any chance are investors, like if you are into buying properties, then do the same just as an investors and use the boostly code that will be shared with you I believe shortly. And again we'll be able to do that. Yes. And of course if you have some properties for sale as homeowner, just mention it that you are the homeowner and the property manager. In that case you can give kind of a discount on the, you know, you don't have to pay yourself so we can highlight it in a different way. It's also important to know that we have all kind of great features that you should have in mind like the community of knowledge. I'm sure that if you are in your space and has to do and been touched a little bit the idea of real estate, you know that there's like maybe notary that involved with the property and there's a great tax advisor that you maybe know for experts that wants to buy. If you are managing properties in a leisure destination, you might ask this question and maybe you know somebody or somebody doing a financial advisory. All this you can add from your profile. You can invite professionals, doesn't matter if they are notaries or you know, expert experts or whatever to our community with them in our process. Coming from your site is they are like giving your property even extra powers. And in case of investor interested of buying this, we will let them jump on the call. They will be able to share a little bit of their tips. We will be able to share their services and get more flourishing of the way we want everybody to enjoy in this sharing economy platform. And of course use as many people and as many things that you have like the floor plans is a must to show that it's serious and drones videos, you know, we are not Airbnb use videos. Use everything you got and enjoy to see the great outcome of what coming from all this. Because you'll be surprised to see how much you're creating how much value you are creating actually for the homeowner. And I think that you can use Triangle even as a tool just to show it also around for the existing homeowners about look, you may be not happy or satisfied, look how much value I'm bringing for free.

It brings a whole new spoke to the kind of service and the wheel that property managers provide. So I've just got two questions which I'm sure people listening may ask. And I think I know the answer to these because we spoke before. But if people have got individual tax laws or things like that in their location, is that something that they can put on the listings? So if there's individual, you know here traditionally mortgages are 80, 75%.

Yeah. So when you choosing the mortgage for, you know, for Triangle, use the common average mortgage in your area for foreigners. If we will see that you've been mistaken because we have some kind of knowledge, we will edit it in your behalf. But don't you know, if you will ask a banker, they will say ah, but it's very. It's personal. It's from 40% to 60%, 70%. We will take the common average one for somebody who's coming from another country. Now, if there's a limitation, this is exactly where it's very important to involve your colleagues from, you know, from the notary or from the text to give these tips, but under their name, you don't see their name, but you know, but they are professional. For example, I'll give you an example. In Switzerland, 97% of the houses are for sale only for Swiss people. This is a huge problem. So nobody knows about investments in Switzerland. But imagine that the other 3%, they are all in touristic destinations and you still cannot know which house is, you know, is. Is able to be invested by foreigner or not. So suddenly in Triangle, investors can see all the properties that are managed and that are for sale. And for them it's like. It's like a gold mine. And. But it's written very clearly, hey guys, you are foreigners, you're limited in Switzerland for 200 meters and not more. So all these houses are following these instructions. So if you know about limitation or benefit, like if you're coming from a country like, I don't know, Cyprus, Greece, whatever, and above $250,000, there's a golden visa. Everything you know, please share it with us and let Triangle become a community of knowledge that it's bringing much more added value to the buyers.

That's amazing that it's got those features on. And the second question, which I'd have sometimes over here we've got people who have got their main home and the holiday homes we manage are secondary buildings. Is that able to be listed with Triangle still, even if it's an ancillary sort of part of it, if they're looking to sell the main home as well as the ancillary building which has income coming in, is that something?

Yes. So you have, for example, we have few properties like this already in Triangle, where, you know, we are showing the renting role of, for example, one house on the premises. But actually there's a bigger. It's a mansion or whatever, there's another property. And then the yield is looking a little bit sad, you know, it's looking a little bit small because the price is bigger. So we have a place in the way that you adding the property and maybe mention it to us that saying this property is made out of two or three properties and so far only one being rented. So we will give the value of the other parts of the Properties included in the price. So for example, the house cost two and a half million, but you were managing only the 1 of the 800,000. We will give the other parts and say this listing is including another two houses that haven't been rented in a worth of one and a half million dollars. And we will give their details. So no problem. We thought about everything and guys, you know, it's so new. Triangle is not even existing three months and we have already more than 700 million worth. $700 or euros. You know, today is the same worth of properties. So it's growing very, very fast. We'll be happy if you will be the first one in your destinations to bring, you know, new countries into the platform. And what I wanted to say, more than that, it's fresh, it's young. We will be happy to hear from you about any other features, any other knowledge, any other fine tuning that you believe that will be beneficial for your work or for the future buyer that we didn't pay attention to. And we'll be happy to edit. So this is really like open, open conversation. Please feel free to send us some kind of highlights from your side.

That's amazing. And Maria, I really feel we've got to know Triangle Luxury and really understand what it is. And the benefits are so vast to both people looking to purchase, you know, investments as holiday properties and also as property managers and hosts. The benefits of vast to us where we'll get continued income with, you know, get be part of the sale as well and actually providing more value to our owners. So if anybody is listening, definitely, you know, it's worth listing on Triangle and I'm sure off the back of this we're going to get some exciting people who will come and list with you. So did you have any last sort of minute, last words of closing comments?

Yeah, yeah, I just thought about something that we didn't discuss and it's actually a question that I hear often, you know, some property managers asking me, hey, look, what if the house is actually not for sale? And I say this is a great moment to put it on Triangle. We are not a real estate agency. So it means that if you have the trust, if the homeowner is saying, yeah, I'm not going to put a sign outside, I'm not going to list it with any realtor agency. But for you, let's put a, you know, I'm willing this price I will sell, feel comfortable about it and let the homeowner feel comfortable about it as well. This is a closed platform only for people who's interested to buying houses with your management. So it's okay. And it's actually part of the beauties of what Triangle is bringing, is bringing off market opportunities to buyers and that's what make them, make it, make it more sexy for investors to look into it. So don't hesitate, don't think that the house for sale is the house that the owner put a sell, you know, ad or you know, or sign the contract with a realtor. The other way around. Bring this knowledge before the real estate industry knows about it and let us be unique, you know, and we'll be surprised because setting up the price, we might get an offer that will surprise your homeowner and will make your position in front of him even greater. So this is the one thing I really want to make sure that people understand that it's not have to be officially for sale as long as you know that it is for sale and that you can, you know, not trouble anybody's time for nothing and you can really promote the sale of this property in the right moment.

That resonates with me because we've got owners who would sell at the right price. You know, it is an investment. They're enjoying the, the extra income at the moment. But it's a case of, you know, if the right buyer was to come along, they'd happily, happily sell based on the. On it as an investment. So it's a great idea to reach out to these homeowners now, you know, before they turn around and say, well, we're just sticking on rightmove for a family home.

Yeah. And keep on telling them this is a closed platform so nobody will able to take this information or see it online. So they are completely safe when it comes to this. You can refer to Triangle as a club of real estate investors looking for high yield properties based on vacation rental. This is what it is. So it's like I'll promote you within this club and get there. Okay. And that's. You are good to go.

Well, I'm excited to see what Triangle Luxury grows into. I mean it's amazing. We're right at the start of this journey and seeing what it grows into. And for the listeners and for people who want to follow you, where, where would be the best place to.

So yeah, check Triangle luxury on, on LinkedIn. First of all, give a like and let us be in touch with you. And we have two websites, we have Triangle Luxury where this is the place where you need to register. I believe that you will add it to the to the live post. And we have triangle luxury.com where you're going to get all the information in summary of what I just spoke, the different roles in Triangle where you'll be able to share this also with the homeowners for them to understand and to explore and yeah, and of course for myself. I'll be happy to be in touch with any of you. You can find me in LinkedIn as Maria Rockman. And if you're still not, if you're in the Luxury segment and you're still not working with the smiling house, you're welcome to join us as well. But this is really, it's all about let's play another role, let's put another hat on our head because we deserve it. We're becoming more professional and our abilities should be rewarded. And why not to make this 1 1/2 or 2 or 3% from selling a great house that we're going to manage anyway. Think about it.

What a great way to bring it to a close. Maria, it's been really exciting and the energy and you know, the you're a thought leader of the hospitality industry is very clear to see. So really a pleasure having you on and thank you very much and I'm sure we'll speak again in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Liam. Great starting the day with you and have a nice day. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to all the comments and all the new registration coming from Boostly and the listeners of this podcast. Thank you very much.

I'm sure you're gonna get lots and yeah, thanks again and bye for now.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard on the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.