What You Need to Know About Hospitality Midterm Rentals

If you could go back to the start and give yourself one piece of advice, what would that be?

I would have been around people that were doing what I want to do more and I didn't know anybody at that time. I had friends that were in Airbnb in the Airbnb space, which I am in the Airbnb and short term rental market as well. But I wish I would have been able to have a specific mastermind or group or somehow connect with people that were super like minded in that space at that time.

Hey, so thank you for checking out this week's episode of the Boostly podcast. My name is Liam Carolan, the co host of the miniseries where we go behind a host and we dive into somebody's hospitality business so you can gain knowledge, leverage their experience and implement the tactics which you might not know about before listening to this podcast. So today we're joined by a host who really specializes in midterm rentals, which is a term we will dive into what that actually means. You're going to pick up some really actionable tips. This, this person shares a lot on social media, has got a big Instagram and is really lighting the path on this slightly more niche strategy of hospitality. So let's introduce our guest who's all the way from California today. He's here to share his story and yeah, let's introduce him. So we've got Jesse Vasquez and his company Airventure hosting and I'm really pleased to have you on the show today. So welcome along, Jesse.

Well, Liam, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be on the show. Let Mark know. I'm excited too. Yeah, man. I used to actually work in the healthcare division of hospitals, so and home health agencies. So my job, I worked, I was making Liam really good money in the US $200,000 a year, which is a pretty damn fantastic living. And I worked to try to get travel, not travel, medical professionals, folks that were discharging from a hospital. So say I fell, broke my hip. My job was to get a patient that was going to go home to get nursing and therapy and all these things that patients typically need at home, they don't need at the hospital anymore. They can all have these done these things done at home. So you probably have that a lot over where you're at, where it's basically in home nursing for patients. And that was my job. I was competing with about 30 other people in the space to get patients that were discharging to come home. And yeah, I kind of stumbled Upon. Maybe I might be fast forwarding a little bit, but that's what I did. That was my. My 9 to 5. It was a 24. 7 type job. Patients, there is no time for discharges happen all hours of the day in hospitals. So I was always like, go, go, go, 24 7. I didn't have a. That's how I was trained. That's how I learned, which helps me a lot to this day. But, yeah, that's kind of what I did in a nutshell, man. From the beginning.

That sounds really cool. And when did the moment come where you went? Hang on. Hospitality is a thing. I can. I can get into this.

Yeah. So I tell the story pretty often as I worked on the hospital floors. Liam. I would go to all these different hospitals. That was my job, right? I was. I was, you know, in a suit and tie, and I was dressed, you know, meeting with doctors and stuff. And there was one day in particular, I was on a hospital floor. This woman named Barbara. She had this really heavy Midwestern accent. She was from Fargo, Minnesota. And she would say things like, don't you know? And like, oh, ain't he a doll? And I don't hear that stuff. In California, everybody says, dude, man, and bro, just like I am right now. And I asked her, I was like, you know, Barbara, what are you. What are you doing here? And she said, I'm a travel nurse. And I said, cool. Like, where are you staying? She said, Motel 6, which is like pretty much a shithole motel here in the US they're trying to revamp it and make it something else. But back in 2015, when I first figured this out, it wasn't a good place, and she was in a really bad side of town. And then, Liam, I asked her how much she was paying a. A month for that property or for that little room. And she told me $3,000. And at that point I was just like. My head was like. And then that light bulb moment went off. And I'm like, holy crap. I could buy a house for 250k right now. In this market, interest rates are 3%. My mortgage payment would be about 1400 dollars a month. I would be all in water, sewer, garbage, electrical for probably right around 1900 to 2K. And I would be able to make a thousand dollars off this person. So I started asking her what, you know, how she got there, what agencies she worked with. And I figured out there is a whole other side in the medical industry that I already knew about. And it's all based around contracts And I just went up to the hr, the human resources floor of the hospital. I knocked on the door, they let me in. I said, hey, I'm going to purchase a home and I want to house travel nurses just like Barbara, is this a need here? And they said, absolutely. We don't have anywhere for these folks to go. And then it just took off from there. Bought my first property that I didn't even live in as an investment property, and I started renting to travel medical professionals and I got a contract, which we can dive into as well.

I love that. And you know, Boostly is all about not taking the power back from the OTAs and being in control of your own business, being in control of your own land. So, you know, that definitely speaks to me and it's just great to see what you've done there, which is to build the business around structure, which allows you to control the income effectively. And some of those benefits you just mentioned, I mean, we're now approaching the shoulder season and the colder weather as we record this. So depending on when you're listening, this is sort of getting towards winter 2022. But one of the things that people are finding is that bookings have dropped off since the summer. You know, there might be a few more units available. Well, one or two of these 90 day stays is going to fill a lot of that period of time that they need. So without giving away the secret sauce, how do you position yourself as a host? How would somebody position themselves as a good option for somebody who is looking for a midterm rental?

Yeah, that's a good question. So for me, so this, you know how Airbnb has a sexiness appeal to it, right. There's properties that are just like, you walk in, you're just like, holy smokes, this is amazing. And I love this place. I want to be here for two days, right? It becomes the experience. That same concept needs to happen with your midterm rentals. As more folks are getting going from the short term space because of regulations or they're just tired of doing it, or just like you mentioned, competitors are coming, Right. And you want to have that same aspect in the midterm rental space where somebody would come in, they walk in, they're like, holy crap, I'm glad I'm here for the next three months. And I think a lot of people were, you know, just filling a room. They thought business travelers just need to have a, you know, a microwave, a coffee machine, and, you know, a washer and dryer. But the way this market's going is that you can't do that anymore. You got to really kind of adjust and become that different type of place again. You want to have sense of experience. So for me, going into these places, especially with like digital nomads, people are traveling like you want to have like crazy fast wi fi speed. You want to have, you know, a place that has a sense of purpose behind it, where it's intentionally put together for business travelers or for medical professionals with like blackout curtains, noise machines, things that can that, that they ask for on a regular basis. And those are typically what they ask for. But also, again, they're coming. Imagine leaving. You live in the Midwest somewhere, you're traveling 2,000 miles and you're going to be in some random place you know nothing about and you're going to be there for three months. Like you want to have somewhere that's an experience and that's exactly where this space I feel is going. Especially if you're going to be keeping somebody in that property for 30 days or 90 days at a time because they feel like they live there. You know, like with your Airbnb, Liam, like you'll have somebody message and say, hey, we're having door lock issues, there's a jam, it's not working all the time. Or hey, you don't have a wall outlet charger in this specific spot. Midterm renters, they don't do stuff like that. They'll actually like go out and take care of their own things. They'll go buy specific things because they feel like they live there. Which is a huge difference between what you typically would get from an Airbnb host to a midterm space. So the midterm renter. So that's what I love about it. It's like, you know, you. I forget that I even have these clients that are in these properties sometimes, actually. Often, yeah.

One question which I do want to ask is if you could go back to the start and give yourself one piece of advice, what would that be?

I would have started sooner. I would have been around people that were doing what I want to do more. And I didn't know anybody at that time. I had friends that were in Airbnb in the Airbnb space, which I am in the Airbnb and short term rental market as well. But I wish I would have been able to have a specific mastermind or group or somehow connect with people that were super like minded in that space at that time. I learned from somebody named Richard Fertig. I don't know if you know who that is. He's a, he's been in the Airbnb space for many years. I picked up a lot of kind of his thoughts and his business processes and had, you know, meetings and things with him in the past. And so he's very intricate when it comes to market demand and things of that nature. So I wish for me starting that I was able to find a group that had like minded individuals. And we live in an age now, Liam, where these groups are everywhere. I mean, obviously you got to vet these people and make sure that they're accurate and they're, they're, they're true, truly doing what they say they're going to do with those results somehow. But that can be life changing. And you can also skirt a lot of the potential issues you'll run into. Instead of it taking two years to really understand, you can do it in, you know, three to six months. So I wish that I was able to around, you know, be around more people that had the similar mindset earlier on.

Is there anything that we've missed or any sort of closing comments before we close?

No, man. I think the only thing that I could say to everybody listening right now, if you're thinking about getting into this space, just jump in and do it. Don't put too much thought behind it. A lot of people get stuck with the analysis paralysis. We're not promised tomorrow. So get out there, educate yourself. Education before compensation, you definitely want to do that. And I forgot to mention that I also have a YouTube channel where I talk about this stuff all the time. And if you just type in Jesse vasquez In the YouTube search bar, you all pop up there. So that's it for me.

Liam, thank you so much for spending it on the Boostly podcast. And yeah, let's buy from Jesse. And let's buy from me too. Catch you on the next one. Bye.

Thank you everybody. Having a blast.

Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast.

Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.