Getting Your Foot In The STR Door Using House Hacking

Hey everybody. Today we are talking about house hacking, which is a very popular strategy both in the UK and in the US and also how you get lending to do house hacking and just generally Airbnb and lending in general. And this is one of the things that many people talk about. They go, I want to get into short term rental. I just don't have the money to do so necessarily now. So what we're going to be doing is diving behind the host with a very special guest who's going to be talking us through this subject today. And if you haven't heard of the Brucely podcast before or this is your first time listening, what we do is we give hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get more bookings. We do a mini series where we dive into a host's journey, which is exactly what we're doing today to help us answer that question. My name is Liam Carolan and today we're going behind the host with Drew Hitler and he is from Host Loan. So you can go and check out hostloan Co. But before you check that out, let's get Drew's story and find out much more about how he does his house hacking and some of the truly amazing tips. Let's dive in. Drew, do you mind giving yourself an introduction where your business is in the world and anything else you'd like to share?

Absolutely. Well, first and foremost, Liam, thank you so much for you and Boost Lee for having me as part of the podcast today and 37 years old, live in Arizona and I've been, I don't know if this is a bad word or not, but I've been an Airbnb super host since 2016 and also doing some direct bookings throughout that time as well. And you know, a quick elevator pitch of how I introduce myself my company to others is don't roll the dice with your lender if they're not an Airbnb super host. I have had a major focus on the type of lending to help serial real estate investors because after you get a couple mortgages in America and other places too, it becomes more difficult. So I've tried to just be a professional problem solver in that field. So how to make it just as easy as the first one for the 5th, 10th and 20th. So we got a great team here. Everybody on my team owns a rental or short term rental as well too. So we all talk the same, the same lingo.

How did you get started? So I'll definitely want to dive into the house hacking side of things. But take us back to how you got started and how you became a super host and how many units you've got now.

Yeah, so it's a great question. So I got started. You know, everything in life, I think, happens and revolves around a compelling event. So I've had a couple of these in my journey in 2016, or maybe it was 20. It was 2015. It was the end of 2015. I had a merger, an acquisition with my W2 or day job, my 9 to 5. And at that point, it didn't take long to figure out that I just took a pay cut. But they still want to keep me. And so I had to do one of two things. I had to, in my head, I had either put my truck on Uber, which they wouldn't accept. Airbnb was a platform that looked like a side gig source of income for me. So that was it. Moved out of my apartment whenever it rented and I stayed with my girlfriend and I was blown away by. After just two weekends, it paid me to live there now. So I just had to sacrifice a little bit to put myself ahead. And then at that point I just got, you know, I play golf, so I get bit with the golf bug. You play a lot of golf. But I got bit with the real estate bug at that moment. And then that was just the snowball that kept building. That evolved later into a lending career and business as well.

Why is that a good, a good strategy for people to consider when starting off?

Yeah. So the one thing that I heard from somebody that I look up to is David Green. He's the host of Biggerpockets. I know he always says it is real estate investing with training wheels. So. But there's a multiple different facets, right? You can buy a house that has a business underneath you, you, you rent out the business that helps cover the mortgage or your housing expense. You can buy a five bedroom home and rent every single one of those bedrooms out. That's going to help with your housing expense. I just, I didn't know it was house hacking at the time. I just knew I needed to save money. And so I thought just by lending my apartment to somebody else for the weekend that that would make life easier for me. And I didn't find out until about two or three years ago that's actually called rental arbitrage. So I just thought I was subleasing my apartment at the time. But that's house hacking, right? You could, I mean, technically I was apartment hacking, but it's any way that you can generate income off of a property that you live at, either pay you money to live there or just kind of offset your, your housing expense.

What does the business look like now? How many units do you look after? And then we'll segue into the, the lending side of things.

Yeah, so right now I have seven units across three states that I probably like to say I self manage between three and four hours a week Right now one of those units just had a major flood three weeks ago so I'm fighting that. But my team is, has been amazing that I wouldn't be able to do it without them. I've been upped to as many as 14 units. I sold some in 2021 and the beginning part of 2022. I've done the bursters, the burrs, the long term holds but then I eventually got up to about, you know I was up to 15 but some one of those was a long term. So I had 14 listings at one point that I was on pace to do right around 690, 700,000. But I got rid of some of them because I didn't have the right team in place. And so then I just kept the ones that I really, really like, got rid of some of the others and then with some of those proceeds what I did was snowball that into my next big venture which is the you know, short term vacation friendly, you know, I guess mortgage company is what you could call it.

What would you say to somebody who's looking to be able to spend the same sort of time on their business per week as you're spending there while managing successful properties across you know, a number of different states. What's the, what's the secret sauce?

Find the right friends, change your circle of friends. Unfortunately you know, that never feels comfortable to say but you know the most successful people I know have multiple businesses. You know Rob, you mentioned his name earlier. He comes to mind because if you have the vision you're, you know, I know Rob's a pioneer, then other people are just going to. That's an exciting journey for a lot and if you are good at forecasting a vision then everybody wants to be part of that growth. So I think you know that's, that's the first thing that comes to mind. I think that's the most important post loan.

Talk us through. What is host loan? How did you come up with the, the idea for it and what does it do?

So host loan is. Well I would, when somebody asked Major what, what do you do or how, how can you help me when I talk to a client, it's. I say, don't roll the dice with your, your mortgage broker or mortgage lender, an Airbnb super host. And you know, there's all types of mortgages out there, right? And there's all types of mortgage companies out there. I just chose this focus, hyper focus on one niche. There's reverse mortgages, there's government loans, there's non. There's hard money, it's private money. I just chose to focus on the product that would best fit me. And so I'm a host and I did loans. So there, there cometh the name, right? And you know, it's other people that are just as smart, if not smarter than me say the same thing. If you can find a problem and then create in any fashion a way to solve some of that or all of that problem, you're going to have business. And being in the government loan section for so many years before I started Host Loan, I knew that if somebody had two or three mortgages on their credit report for them to get, that fourth one was going to be more work than the first three that they did all combined. And so like, how do I find a solution to that? And I was able to. And that's why we've been able to grow and then know working with Rob, helping the host campers, things like that, just sharing the information that I have with others has been a way that we've been able to grow.

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