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How Sabrina Guler Left Apple to Start Techvestor

Jeremy Werden

Written by:

Jeremy Werden

December 23, 2024

⚡️
Reveal any property's Airbnb and Long-Term rental profitability

Buy this property and list it on Airbnb.

Quick summary

Sabrina outlines the innovative strategies used by Techvestor to scale short-term rental (STR) investments efficiently. Key themes include leveraging data-driven decisions, creating standout property designs, and streamlining operational processes through technology and teamwork. The emphasis is on delivering exceptional guest experiences while maintaining profitability and scalability in competitive markets.

Key Points

  • Use data to select high-ROI properties in underutilized markets, focusing on amenities and features that cater to specific guest needs. Employ metrics like price-to-rent ratios and market trends to guide investment and design decisions.
  • Stand out by incorporating unique features such as vibrant decor, outdoor amenities, and high-quality furnishings. Continually iterate and refine property designs based on guest feedback and performance analytics.
  • Deploy systems like 1,200-point property checklists and project management software to maintain operational excellence. Build specialized teams for design, guest experience, revenue management, and property maintenance.
  • Pay attention to details like hidden cords, functional amenities, and personalized guest communication to enhance satisfaction. Regularly update properties to maintain high standards and adapt to evolving market expectations.
  • Track property lifecycles, including maintenance and refresh timelines, to ensure continued profitability. Align operational goals with long-term strategies, such as preparing properties for potential resale to investors.

Full Transcript

Check out full episodes on:

  1. YouTube
  2. Spotify
  3. Apple Podcasts

Jeremy: We are live with the Short-Term Rental Pros podcast. Today, we are doing our second episode of our Techvestor Trifecta series.

I was joking with Sabrina earlier that this was not planned at all. I did not mean to talk to everyone at the team at Tech Vester back to back to back. It just, you know, happened that way. I happen to be friends with a lot of them, and it really just aligned that way.

But you guys are in for a treat today because Sabrina is the operational wizard behind, in my opinion, probably the most successful short-term rental fund ever. I can't think of another one that's done what you guys have done. I feel like I've had the opportunity to see what you guys have achieved and everything that you have learned.

Really, through talking to John and, you know, just honestly seeing your profile all over the place—it keeps popping up on Airbnb. Sabrina, first of all, thank you so much for coming today. Tell us about your background. What did you do before short-term rentals, and how did you get into STRs?

Sabrina: Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. Jeremy and I met a few years ago through TikTok, through mutual friends and colleagues—I don't even remember. And here we are, two years later, still in the business, thriving. I really appreciate you having me on.

Prior to Techvestor, my story... So, I'm one of the co-founders of Techvestor. Sief and I started the business in July 2021. It's crazy that we're coming up on almost three years now. I have a project management background.

I used to actually work for Apple, and I was a Pro Engineering Project Manager. I focused on building AirPods products. I really had no foot in real estate, at least from the operational point of view. I was just a passive investor. I was involved in super typical multifamily deals.

During COVID, when we were going through quarantine and all that chaos, I came to Arizona from San Francisco. My parents lived here, and I looked into buying my own properties, renovating them, and being very hands-on.

Because of the uncertainty with COVID and me still living in San Francisco while my parents were located in Arizona, I thought the best thing for me was to buy a short-term rental. It gave me a lot of flexibility and allowed me to come and go whenever I pleased. It also provided a place that kind of felt like home outside of my parents’.

So, during COVID, I came here on a whim. I started buying properties and really immersed myself in a lot of different types of real estate before fully committing to Airbnb. I looked at multifamily, got my real estate license just to learn the science of real estate contracts and all that.

I hung my license with a commercial brokerage. I had hotel listings for sale. I ended up joining a ton of meetup groups and multifamily groups. I really looked at all of it and started asking myself, "What part of real estate do I really enjoy?"

With my project management background, I've always had an eye for operations, processes, people, and building things to scale. That's what I did in my prior role: I built teams to build products. So, design and the tangible things that make real estate incredible have always been my thing.

When I started investing in Airbnbs, I always loved asking this question—I'll probably ask you this: What was your favorite part of the journey? When you first buy your first property, you're researching, doing the data, underwriting, and then you go through the whole story up until you list it.

For me, I loved the research part—like amenities and learning what makes a property successful—and then the implementation of it, really bringing it to life. You know, the before and afters, the coordination of things.

When I started scaling my own personal portfolio, I wasn't really a social media person. Now I am because I feel like I'm sharing my story. But a few years ago, I was never on social media.

While I was working for Apple, TikTok was kind of a new thing. We're talking about 2020 when everyone thought TikTok was just about dance stories and teenagers. I decided, "I'm going to start talking about real estate on here and get real-time feedback as to what other people were feeling about Airbnbs in that market."

One of my videos actually went viral. That was the time when, on TikTok, you could go viral easily. I ended up meeting my business partner, Sief, the other co-founder of the business.

Jeremy: Did he reach out to you because he saw your TikTok?

Sabrina: So, yeah, on TikTok, I had...

Jeremy: I didn’t know that! That’s news to me. Oh, cool.

Sabrina: Yeah, I had a little website just showing people that I was doing design and stuff for Airbnb. The funny thing is that Steve and I ran through the same circles because he worked at Facebook.

He lived in Silicon Valley and in and out of LA. Eventually, it wasn’t completely out of the box for us to have met within our circles, but we met through TikTok. And so, that’s honestly how the business was born: just two people who had similar visions, had similar tech backgrounds, and technically met on TikTok. Here we are today.

Jeremy: Yeah, I love it. Well, I feel like... Did Sief reach out to you initially?

Sabrina: On my little website with my contact information, he did.

Jeremy: Because, yeah, I feel like... See, it’s actually funny. I’m putting these pieces together. I’ve been talking to you and various team members over the years, and Sief reached out to me at one point.

So, it seems like, yeah, Sief sees a video on TikTok and reaches out to the person. Because, you know, Taylor was on Twitter, for example, and John was on YouTube. Hearing that you were posting TikToks, I’m seeing a theme here: Sief reaching out to people he sees posting online.

Sabrina: To give Sief some credit.

Jeremy: He built a great team.

Sabrina: Well, he has a recruiting background; that’s what he did. So, I think he’s just known for finding good people and putting people together. But, yeah, that’s how the business started.

Jeremy: I love that with short-term rentals being such a new space. If you wanted to find someone in a normal industry, you’d, you know, go on LinkedIn, use Sales Navigator, and see someone’s resume.

But that’s not the game with short-term rentals. That’s not going to help you find the right talent. It really is about seeing someone’s creativity. While short-term rentals are real estate, I think there’s a big aspect of just being creative and thinking outside the box. I want to lean that into your current roles and responsibilities.

So, Techvestor—you guys started, you and St came together. You started raising money. What was the process? You buy your own short-term rental, start posting about it, and then, when St hits you up, what was the vision there?

Sabrina: We both knew that we wanted to do something at scale. I think, I think we, we had a similar vision. Doing, you know, being able to create long-term wealth for ourselves. But the question was how, and what was the best plan for that?

Honestly, we didn't know at the time. I mean, Airbnb is still pretty new. I don't know if it's even technically considered an official asset class, but at the time, it definitely wasn't. It was just something that people were not buying multiples of.

So, originally, when we got started with the business, we were like, "Okay, let's just do a few projects to see where we can land in terms of scalability."

We bought, I think, seven or eight properties that we did JV-type deals with co-workers and people we knew from our tech backgrounds. All of them were really curious about what each other was doing—like what markets they were all investing in—because we weren’t doing the same thing for each person. We were just focused on the best deal possible for whatever partnership we were getting into.

Since they were so curious about each other, we offered the idea of a fund. Like, "Okay, well, we can just put everything in here, and you guys can just benefit from it, you know, from a blended perspective." All of them, except for one person, were super down for it.

So, we officially said that we were going to launch a fund. That’s actually when we raised a lot of capital in a short period of time. I think we raised like seven or eight million—I don't remember the exact number—but something in like two to three weeks.

Him and I looked at each other and we were like, "Oh my God." At this point, from this point on, we have to split roles. He had to focus on capital and nurturing our investors and that whole process.

It was like we launched the fund in October or September—something in that year, 2021. We were coming up on tax season, and there were just so many things that needed to happen. So, our roles pretty much split. I focused on operations, which I had a background in. Basically, that means any property, after we got the keys, I pretty much owned that all the way through listing it on Airbnb.

Right now, my focus is property management. We have a pretty big team now. We have about 40 people that work for us strictly for property management, which is incredible—both on the ground and online support.

We also have an operations team: a lot of project managers, people on the ground who support our homes, construction, renovation, designers, stagers. I also help manage that process alongside the team.

Honestly, any process or any new part of the business that we're in, because I have that operations hat, I'm also involved in. That’s what I've really focused on the last two years because of how things kind of fell.

Jeremy: Bookkeeping—who did the booking? Who did the bookkeeping early on? Tracking 125 houses and all these different locations and cleaners and vendors sounds like my nightmare.

Sabrina: Well, that was back then. Now we have an incredible leadership team. It's not just Sief and I anymore. We have quite the leadership team. We have Corbin, who does our finance. We have Austin, who leads revenue management. We've headed data.

I mean, Sief and I definitely say this—and I wish I could put it behind me on a plaque: There is absolutely no way that we could have ever done this without a team. Like, there's no way. It takes an army to get things done. To be honest with you, it takes an army to get things done, but it gets better at scale.

So, like in the beginning, it was to get from zero. I always tell people this. I'm like, your challenge is from zero to 10 short-term rental properties—not a problem. From 10 to 30, you're like, "Okay, I need," you know, like, it's a lot. It's a lot. You learn a lot in that time period, and you definitely make the most mistakes.

Once you go from that, like, 30 to 60, something jumps in that, you know, when that progresses, where a lot of things start to break. I always joke around with people. I'm like, I put things in threes. Like, if you give a designer three homes, at some point they crack, right? There's a number, there's a threshold for each person because it's labor-intensive.

It's not, you know, write a script and copy and paste. It's people. They have bandwidth, they have lives, people get sick, people have families. Figuring that out so that our portfolio doesn't get hurt from it, you know, and continuing to scale was a really delicate balance. I'm really grateful that we figured it out and made it work.

Jeremy: Yeah, I'm so curious to learn from your experiences there. I mean, so yeah, personally, I think I'm at 25 listings. I haven't bought all of them; some of them I just manage. Some of them are, you know, rent and rerent, which doesn't require as intensive of an upfront transformation.

But, like, the ones that I do set up... Like, currently, I have a flight tomorrow, setting up a 4,000-foot house—seven bedrooms, movie theater, two game rooms. Granted, I'm saying this even though I haven't actually been there since signing to close the documents. I'm like, "Oh wow, it's been so intensive," but, like, I haven't actually been there.

So, how intensive could it be if I literally just, you know, been kind of tracking orders on my phone and stuff? That being said, like, multiply that by 125, or however many properties have y'all done? Let's just say, like, 2023, 2022—how many properties did you guys do?

Sabrina: I think we're at 140 now, somewhere around that.

Jeremy: So, that's like launching a property every four days, you know? Like, posting a new property live every, you know, every week. If even like once or twice a week—that's crazy, that's insane. That's something that, like, really nobody else... I would say maybe some people, yeah. Arbitrage, like sure, you can, you know, get 30 apartments in a building. You could furnish 30 apartments, I don't know, maybe in like five or six days if you hire enough labor and your orders, you know, don't have issues on returns and whatnot.

But, like, setting up 130, 150 houses in two years? And you guys, like, you don't just, you know—again, it's not just like slapping furniture inside. You guys renovate them. You don't just design them, you know. Every wall gets painted or wallpapered. You guys add, you know, pickleball courts to the house.

These are like... And it's not even like if you just renovated a house, you know, whatever. You just renovate a bathroom—like, that's not that taxing. But you guys do like 17 times that. You know, you take it to the next level.

So, how do you just, like—how the hell do you do that? I mean, I have so many questions here. But I guess walk me through the 101. Like, you guys find—I guess you do things in threes—so you find three properties to buy. What do you do from there? How does this process work?

Sabrina: It's so funny because when you average them out, you're like, "Yeah, two, three properties, like, a week for a year." It's been so inconsistent with our launches. Like, one month we launched, like, 17 homes in a week, and then our property management team is like, "What the hell?!"

Like, you know, we have too many pictures. Not only pictures. Like, you know, we take videos of our hot tubs and how to turn them on because they're not all the same. And you know, there's so many details when you list a home. I'll be honest with you—again, it goes back to the team.

Our team is very structured. Everyone has their role, and they know what they're supposed to be doing. So, when a home comes into our pipeline a few weeks before we even get the keys, we know exactly what design we're doing. We've already talked to design.

We know what amenities are going in. We have contractors that walk the grounds, that have our best interests with pricing and all of that, who say, "Hey, this is what you're looking at, and based on what you want to do, this is when we can start."

By the time we close on a property, we have a project manager assigned to the team. We have a designer assigned to the team, contractors, and all of the people that focus on getting utilities set up, the Wi-Fi, the Rings, all of the surveillance cameras.

That stuff is super important to us. I will say there are three different parts of operations that I look at. The first is the beginning part—so it's before you buy. It's right when you buy—like, what are you doing to actually start the second that you close?

The second is the middle part that's kind of messy, where the renovation is done, and you're now starting the furniture. That piece is usually pretty gnarly because you have the supplies, things don’t get in, and you're trying to make shift of all these last things that, you know, you really have no control over—right?

Things like inflation, supply demand, all these different things getting delayed. That was a very 2021 thing that we faced. The last part is onboarding the property and really making sure that the home is to a certain quality—at least for what our guests expect, right? For what we host, the house, and the listing pictures.

We want to make sure that people have a good experience. When I look at those three or four stages of operations, every single person holds themselves to a certain standard of excellence on the team.

To make sure that, you know—like, I'll give you a rule that we have in the company. A contractor will never start later than 48 hours after we get the keys. They will never start later than that. They start immediately after. They know when to show up, everyone's prepared. If they don't show up, it's because someone got sick, or we have bad weather.

But I can tell you that we've held ourselves to that standard where, when we close, someone shows up. Rings are installed, the utilities are turned on. I think having that meticulous timeline is what has allowed us to have launch time frames anywhere between 8 to 14 weeks.

I know that sounds like a long time. That range is for really heavy construction projects—like pouring concrete, reining pools, adding bedrooms, bathrooms. Those are still pretty aggressive timelines.

Jeremy: And then you're doing so many at the same time. You're also dealing with, you know—I'm sure for every thousand square feet of a house, you can assume that X number of furniture items are going to come damaged, or artworks, or stuff like that.

So then you have to deal with... I mean, even dealing with returns. How do you do that? Like, let's say this house that I just set up—I think like two of the art pieces came cracked. I think one of the bed frames came without hardware. How do you deal with returns and refunds, and making sure that you have everything you need at the properties there when you're not actually going to go there yourself?

Sabrina: It happens to us all the time. We have on-the-ground stagers that can handle the returns later. We will go somewhere local and swap out things.

Jeremy: You just drop them off?

Sabrina: Yeah, and we go to HomeGoods or swap things out the best that we can.

We've had so many learning curves in the business where we designed something, and it looks emptier than what we imagined it to be. Then we needed someone to go and rush to buy things to fill it in impromptu.

All of these learning curves have now allowed us to have an operational team where, again, we have all these time frames—like no longer than 48 hours a contractor can be delayed to start. Or, for example, we have like a thousand-point checklist, I think, I think it's 1,200. It's 1,200 individual checklist items for a person on the ground to go through our home and make sure that everything is to that standard. If it's not to that standard, we can't list the home.

Jeremy: Wow. Oh my God. That is like what I do—like make sure we have forks, make sure we have cups, like toiletries. Is that kind of what we're looking at? Or is it like, how nitty-gritty is this checklist?

Sabrina: That's just like maybe 400 parts of the checklist. The other parts are like, um, I'm trying to think... You know, does the door latch in the back work for the patio door? Does every string light bulb work? For the seating outside, how many extra basketballs do we have in the supply closet in case one pops?

It's 1,200 checkpoints because it allows us to buy some runway so that when we're managing the property actively over the next six months, we did enough inventory to buy us some time…

Jeremy: Before issues start happening.

Sabrina: Correct. And so, yeah, there's so many little things that are not perfect in that week period—like right before, just when the project manager thinks everything is fantastic. That checklist will come back, and like a hundred things are not what they wanted it to be.

That back-and-forth is also crazy because you see... I mean, I feel like the business of Airbnb is like moving mountains. You know, that's really what it is. You go to a property, and it's not what you expect. This is me speaking—like, um, when you're in that last stretch of design, when you thought nothing was going to get broken, a mirror didn't fit the wall the way that you thought it would.

Right, and you're scrambling. I think that was the hardest piece to nail down because you want to be cost-efficient. You don't want to just waste resources or furniture or spend money on things that you shouldn't be spending money on, first of all.

But also, you want to be cognizant of time. I think we've done a really good job of ironing those things out on our back end and making enough rules and processes—and literal how-to books—that our team gets trained on before they start.

Jeremy: Yeah, you guys create the standard operating procedures and all the logistical how-tos in order to move these mountains—literally and, well, figuratively. In some cases, maybe literally.

So, okay. This all makes sense. I guess my question—or what I want to dive into—is this: So, we set up the properties. You have your designer, you have your project manager, you have the furniture assemblers, you have contractors.

Then you do this 1,200-point checklist. Let's just say the checklist comes back good, or maybe we missed 100 things but got them all taken care of. What's the process look like from there?

Sabrina: Then we have our team that basically looks at the photographs. Actually, we've done a lot of re-shoots too. We've really tried to nail our photographs.

Jeremy: That’s what Taylor was saying, Taylor was like, "We'll get two photographers and see which one does the living room the best."

Sabrina: Yeah, so we'll do a lot of re-shoots just to perfect those angles. Then Austin, who owns revenue management, is the one who studies all of our competitors—what their listings look like and how we can stick out.

He determines what pictures we want to post as our first couple of five. Then we start to craft the listing. Again, because we're a bigger company now there are so many meticulous pieces in our back end. Like, we use a project management software, and that gets funneled. Right? It's not all of us calling each other to do these things. Someone gets an email; it's right in their inbox, and they take it on.

So, basically, after that checkpoint, we get the photos, we start to create the listing, we make sure that all of our permits, regulations, and licensing are ready. Then we post. We set up our listing, it goes live, and from that point on, our property management team needs to get trained on where everything is.

Once you set up your listing and it goes live, there's usually a lot of questions about the property because it's new. When people check in, there's no historical data on where to find things. So, training those people within our property management team is key.

Jeremy: Yeah, because they've never been there. There’s a lot of firsts, I’m sure. Like, this always happens to me: the first time you launch a property, there’s always just something that comes up.

Essentially, I feel like the best way to test a new property would be to go there with 20 of your friends, have a party, sleep in every room, and touch every switch. Do everything, because you’ll find a couple of things.

Like, "Oh, I didn’t even know that was there," or, "Oh, that’s kind of weird that the water heater has a switch in the other room. If you turn it off, you turn off the water heater."

Does stuff like that pop up every time you guys launch a property? Like, something random where the only way to have known that would be to literally stay there yourself for a week with 10 family members?

Sabrina: No, because of the checklist. That’s actually what we solved for. It's like every possible case scenario we test for beforehand.

Jeremy: Flip every switch, see what every switch does.

Sabrina: Oh, quite literally. If the switch doesn’t have a purpose, we cover it because we’re like, "Let’s just not confuse people. Let’s just give people what works."

Jeremy: Yeah, like I have a property. There's a switch for the dishwasher, and people are always like, "The dishwasher’s not working." And I’m like, "Why is there a switch there?" It’s an arbitrage property, so for that one, I’m not going to... I don’t know, it’s the owner’s responsibility. But if it was one I owned, that would get switched out with a wall panel.

Okay, so your launch—smooth sailing. Do you think that normally, a few months go by before things like balls start getting a little worn out or things start getting some wear and tear? What’s the process? How do we optimize? I guess you have a revenue manager. How does he optimize for bookings and revenue beyond helping create a great listing?

Yeah, that’s my first question. What are the ways to get booked and booked at premiums?

Sabrina: Oh man, you would definitely want to interview him because it is such an art.

Jeremy: I’m going to have to. I’m getting the whole team on here.

Sabrina: Yeah, you need to. You should interview Austin. He’s literally incredible. Like, he’s incredible. I can’t—I don’t even want to speak to it because I would take it from him. We have a whole team led by Austin. When I tell you he lives and breathes revenue—like, that man lives and breathes revenue.

On a Friday night at 9:00 PM, on a Saturday morning at 7:00 AM—he’s constantly looking at trends, looking at pricing online, measuring different amenities, seasonality, holidays, and ramp time frames for listing our property.

So, I can’t go into it too much. He would be better at speaking for it. But we definitely have a system there—quite meticulous in what we do in operations—that defines our pricing.

Jeremy: Pricing is so important. It’s so important. I can’t undershoot it. Two people can have the same property. They can both use PriceLabs. One person who knows all the nitty-gritty of looking at pacing and seeing, "Alright, I need to drop my prices these months in advance because the booking lead time..."

Just looking at booking lead time, historical seasonality, saying, "How does this season compare to last season? It looks better. Alright, in that case, I need to be more aggressive on prices. It looks worse."

People who do that extra level of diligence on pricing can out-earn the people who aren’t doing that by 20%. I don’t know if you agree with that characterization, but pricing—like, I feel like it used to be just PriceLabs, set it, forget it. Now it’s like you have to look at every specific season, every specific weekend, and try to optimize.

Sabrina: Totally. And there’s so much involved there. It’s not as simple as people think. It’s not plug-and-play. To be the best, it’s never going to be plug-and-play, especially if you’re working on houses where you don’t have a ton of comps. Right?

If you’re the best in your market, or you’re bringing a new amenity, or you’re just... there’s different angles to it, for sure.

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. Well, I need to—I definitely put down my note on Austin. I need to reach out to Austin because I would love to hear. So, you guys have things up, you're optimized on pricing. How do you maintain, you know, five-star reviews?

I can only imagine how difficult it is to maintain good reviews across—I mean, it's hard enough across whatever the 25 listings I have. I can only imagine, you know, the 300-plus that you have on your account.

Sabrina: Yeah, we have, um, so we have obviously a lot of reporting, but we also have systems in place to track those things. We have a review tracker that logs anything less than or higher than. We actually go in and collect data on it, like, "Okay, on this property, we've had the same three complaints, so it's now time to address that."

Or, we figure out where it's coming from, or someone needs to go fly and check out the property to see if there's anything we can do to make it better.

Funny that I mentioned that because next week we're all flying to the Poconos. We haven’t checked our properties out in—at least me, right? I haven’t been since the summer. So, we’re going to go check it out, really look at reviews, and then go into our properties and see how we feel about them.

I think Airbnb... I think people forget that it’s hospitality. At the end of the day, it’s so service-based, and you should be checking and making sure that what you’re listing is what it feels like. It’s an experience. It’s more than just the real estate itself.

So, outside of that, we look at reviews on a weekly basis. We have a call just to go through them. Every review matters to us. Also, the same thing with supplies—things missing, lost and found, things that should be replenished and replaced. Smells in the house are also something that we meticulously track.

I think, honestly, it’s an answer that no one likes to hear—it’s just keeping up with it. Right? It’s just having the system, the reminders, and the people who have the best interest in your portfolio to keep up with the task at hand.

There’s really no simple answer because, unfortunately, we’re in the business of people, right? Someone can come in and destroy your house. It just is what it is. So, someone has to constantly be checking and making sure that there are eyes on the property, whether it’s on the ground, through reporting, or through one of us traveling at any given time.

Jeremy: I’m sure—you say one person can come in and destroy your house—I’m sure you have... I mean, I have my stories. I’m sure you have to have your stories. I guess, what is an Airbnb horror story that you have?

Sabrina: Oh man, I like—what flavor do I want to pick from?

Jeremy: It’s a Tuesday.

Sabrina: Tuesday. I’m trying to think. I mean, we’ve heard of parties and stuff like that. I feel like that’s just boring once you get into it. We had a squirrel infestation—that was fun. We didn’t figure that out till later on. So, we found out that there were all these squirrels living in our roof, and we had to figure out how to get them out of our property. That was one thing.

We’ve had, you know, neighbor complaints. I think probably the worst, actually, now that I’m thinking, is one of our propane tanks—it was empty. This was one of our first properties ever, actually. Apparently, with propane, if you leave it empty, it starts to smell, and then you need to go and refill it. That’s to let you know that you need to refill it.

We had no idea, and we got neighbor complaints saying that people were feeling faint and they were going to die because of a gas smell. So, I freaked out because that’s really serious if that’s the case—even though we knew we did everything right.

So, I was really puzzled, and I show up to the property. It was like a swarm of, like, 10 angry neighbors. We called the propane company; they came over, and the guy was like, "This is natural gas. There's no way that any of you are going to feel faint or feel the way that you're feeling."

He ended up filling the tank, and the smell went away. But that was just—like, that was a scary, like, as an owner, that was a scary experience. I'm really glad we learned in the beginning to check all of our utilities and make sure that everything is up to speed with where we want them to be, because that would just be terrible if it had gone the other way.

But, that—that was, yeah. We've had, we've had a lot.

Jeremy: Okay, so propane, parties. I guess, any more recent ones? Or any—I guess ones that have—I know you're on the ball now, but, not saying you weren’t on the ball before, but you’ve really got your T’s crossed and I’s dotted and whatnot. But, any other kind of, like, recent horror stories?

Sabrina: Um, I—I can’t think of anything right now, but those two are definitely the most memorable.

Jeremy: Gotcha. And, you know, those are, I mean, again, you’ve probably had hundreds of thousands of guests at this point stay at the properties—thousands of stays. You know, if those are kind of some of the bad stories, think about it. Like, is it that bad?

You know, you hear stuff online that’s—I mean, I’ve dealt with, like, honestly what I think is kind of the worst. Knock on wood—totally knock on wood. I don’t want to say that and then next thing.

But even in those situations—like, I mean, I had a really, really big party that, like, people shot bullets through the windows.

Sabrina: Oh my gosh!

Jeremy: Yeah, and, like, jumped from, like, the rafters into, like, other guests’ arms. Like, pretty much like Project X stuff. And, you know, there was—it was during COVID. There was, like, a truck event, like a monster truck event in town. And, like, all the monster trucks, or, like, the big massive trucks, had rolled up to the property and, like, done a bunch of donuts and stuff.

Beer cans were, like, a mile down the road. Like, it was some crazy stuff. COVID was definitely, like, the craziest time because bars were closed, so I think a lot of the party issues from Airbnbs and all those stories during COVID were definitely reflective of that time period.

But even in that situation, I had, like, four handymen go over for, like, six hours. We had to remove all the trash, so we had, like, four people just picking up beer cans and trash and all that stuff. Then, like, four handymen who were just, like, chipping out whatever was messed up, fixing the window, and putting in something new.

Everything was back in shape four days later or something after the party. So, in real estate and stuff like short-term rentals, Airbnbs—when there’s issues, they can be taken care of.

What Sabrina’s job is, and what her team’s job is, is to make sure the issues don’t happen from the start. And that, you know, everything possible can be examined. Is that kind of the way you look at it? Is it like, "We’re just going to get in front of everything so that we don’t have to play from behind?"

Sabrina: Quite literally. Like, if I can, I’m—we just play goalie the entire time, trying to make sure that, like, nothing bad happens. So, I wish I had more—I wish I had a better story. Maybe Austin or Sief will have better stories than I do, at least from my most recent memory.

But, yeah, I mean, it’s something that we take pride in, right? Like, we shouldn’t have those experiences, especially being this big. So definitely, if I were to say anything from this business that I’ve learned, it’s, like, think twice, because it’s probably going to happen. And so, prepare and put processes in place.

So, it doesn't—like, I used to be like, "Oh, you know, I'll do it later." Now, I'm like, if we don't do this now, it's probably going to happen within a business day.

Jeremy: Yeah, and then make sure things don't happen again. You know, things happen once, all right, whatever, but come up with a process so that it doesn't happen the second time.

So, yeah, who does your—so you have the revenue manager, you have the teams creating the listings, you have the team setting up the properties. Who then, uh, who does your—who do you guys have messaging at this point?

Sabrina: So, we have a team. We have, like, our head of guest experience, and she manages a team of people who are basically our online support. Then we have another section of property management, and they are called our "controller team." They deal with all the inbound calls we get from guests for things that need to happen on the ground.

So, like, no toilet paper, dirty cleans, an extra clean, a door not working, something needing to be replaced—anything of that nature. I mean, 140 properties—we're, I think, on track this year to probably do over, like, 80,000 to 100,000 guests in our homes collectively to date. Just, like, a lot of volume.

So, we need two teams, and they essentially communicate with each other. One team channels all guest communications. We're not really big on, like, crazy automated messaging. We actually like that someone is there to support, and so we basically have 24-hour support at any given time, seven days a week.

And Brooke—she’s fantastic—she manages our guest experience. Then we have Andrew, and he manages all the people on the ground. To be honest with you, they are both just as busy, and they manage completely different sides of the property management arm. We definitely need both—they crush it.

Jeremy: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you need, I’m sure you guys have so many vendors: electricians, plumbers, handymen. And, you know, well, those vendors, they get sick, or they’re out of town, or something happens.

So, I mean, that’s the name of the game: boots on the ground and, also, conversely, high-quality guest communication. Making sure that guests are responded to quickly, so that they don’t think they’re talking to a robot. I totally agree with not having it be too automated.

I feel like people try to automate their messages so much. They’re like, "Oh, Airbnb is automated. I can—these messages, you know, are responded to with AI or whatever. Or, here are all the canned messages."

Like, I don’t. If I see, like, so I use virtual assistants, which I’m sure, you know, the person in charge of your guest communication team has resources around the clock around the world.

But, like, if I see a message that I think is AI, I get pretty angry because you can kind of tell. It looks robotic. So, you want personalized messages that sound like they’re from a human being.

I don’t know, do you agree with that? That you want people to think they’re interfacing with a human being?

Sabrina: Wouldn’t you agree that, like, the ROI in Airbnb is in the details? Like, that’s really—it just takes it to, like, super basic. It’s in the messaging, it’s in the cords.

When you show up to a property and you’re like, "Oh wow, they actually hid their TV cord." That’s, like, a little touch, right? It’s nice to see that. I know that sounds so basic. Or, like, there are extra wine openers. Or, like—it’s all about the details.

It’s like the finishes, the smells, the quality of the mattresses, the easy check-in experiences, the amenities actually working. It’s all about the details. That’s my world. It’s making sure that all of those little things happen on the front end so that we don’t, you know—it doesn’t hurt later on when we’re dealing with guests, and the property’s already live, and we’re seeing issues on the back end.

Jeremy: Looks like I gotta hide more cords. I think that’s something I gotta write down. I like to Photoshop out the cords. I like to Photoshop them out, but I don’t actually hide them.

People—I get great reviews though. So, it’s—I’m not—no one’s ever come at me for that. They’re usually happy because we really do—you know, if there’s an issue, like, we go through heaven and hell and high water to alleviate that issue.

And I think that’s really what they appreciate: if they point out an issue, you’re on it. You know? For the most part. For the most part, some people aren’t going to say a single thing, and they’re just going to complain about anything under the sun.

But, yeah, you’re right on. So, all right, now we’ve kind of gone through that lifecycle: setting up the property, having it maintained at five stars so that it continues to do well over time.

I’m curious—this is kind of my personal curiosity because I’m at a point with properties where, you know, if they’ve been up, like, two years, you start seeing the wear and tear on the furniture. Stuff like that starts to go up.

How do you—do you, like, start ordering new furniture after a certain time period? Or, what’s, how do you, do you guys have warehouses with backups? Like, what’s the process for, you know, kind of maintaining the homes or maintaining the furnishings, you know, over extended periods of time.

Sabrina: So, each major market that we're in, we have on-the-ground personnel, and they're called market managers. What they do is go to each of our properties in those markets where we're super high-density. They'll go check—it's like another thousand-point checklist, but for properties that are already live. They'll literally go sit on a couch and see if the little wooden feet on the couch are loose.

The thing with our homes—I know that sounds crazy because there are just so many things that we have baked into our business—but, with properties and replenishing items, I think it's just a matter of sending someone there and having them test every little thing.

We've had to replace some stuff for sure. Like, we don't love mid-century modern furniture anymore because the wooden feet on everything just break. The thing is, with our properties, we allow pretty high occupancy. Our properties hold anywhere between, I don't know, 8 to 20 people.

So, when you have churn like that all the time—yeah, like if 100,000 people are using your furniture across your portfolio a year, you're going to see that. We send people out to check on stuff, like every 30 days in between check-ins, every quarter to be honest with you. If something feels weird or not 100%, we'll fix it in hopes that it gains us some runway with that item. Or, we'll replace it.

Then, we'll actually go back to our operations leg and say, "Hey, we're never buying that thing again." So, actually, our homes have gotten better over time purely because of that.

Jeremy: Yeah, and your homes have definitely gotten better over time in terms of how they look. I've been—you know, I think I saw your face first pop up probably like three years ago or two and a half years ago, whatever. I saw your first list. I'm like, "Oh, that's Sabrina. I know her. Cool."

Now, I'm like—you know, I was actually joking with Taylor about this. I was doing a live training, showing how my properties were doing year-over-year. The place where I've definitely had the biggest drop-off in my portfolio is, like, really the only place where you guys are also located: South Florida.

I was looking at my South Florida part. I was like, "Yeah, it just seems like this house was doing well when we set it up, probably one of the best properties in the area. But now, there's a lot of inventory that’s come in that’s really, really high quality." You know, mini-golf, mini-putt, all the games, stuff like that. I just zoomed out and saw one that looked good in the pictures, clicked it, and I was like, "Oh, that's Sabrina."

I guess Techvestor’s here. That explains that. That explains that. Thank you for our—I think that property has like a 20% drop in revenue. So, thank you for that.

But, yeah, when Techvestor comes to your neighborhood, hide your kids, hide your wife, because they are knocking you out of the top 10%. You're going to—I think Taylor’s called it Uncle Bob’s properties. Even if you think you have a nice property, their property is going to make yours look like an Uncle Bob property compared to one that they’re going to furnish and design.

So, I guess in a way, kudos to you. Also, it keeps me—yeah, I’ve got to be in small enough markets where you guys would never want to come. Because you guys, I mean, you try to do, like, in each market, you're doing what, like 20, 30, 40, 50 properties at this point?

Sabrina: Yeah, something around 20 to 40 kind of has been our medium-to-dense range.

Jeremy: So, if there’s a place where you’re like, "Oh, we could set up five of these, but then we might run into some issues," it wouldn’t be worth your while to do five of them.

Sabrina: We try things. We have some markets where we have five of them. Like Memphis, actually. I think we have a little bit more than five. I think we have like eight homes there or something. But we didn’t intend on making it a huge market. Same for Panama City Beach. We don’t have a lot of homes there; we have like five homes there, less than that. So, we’ve tried. It’s just—we’re data hungry, so it’s wherever that makes sense.

Jeremy: Got it. Got it. Okay, so for you guys listening, there’s more reason to be scared. Small markets—you’re not protected in small markets. Uh, anyways, all I'm—I'm mostly just joking.

But, uh, yeah, now I'm—I'm gonna…I won't be able to sleep at night now. Okay, cool. So, you set the properties up, you make sure you know—you play goalie so you're not going to have issues. When you have issues, you deal with them.

Just trying to kind of go through this whole life cycle here. And then, I guess for you guys, what your goal is eventually, you sell the properties, and you make a profit there.

I'm just trying to go through this whole life cycle of operations on the call. So, what's that look like? Or is that just like a "later we're gonna—that's a later thing, we're not right now, today we're just focused on operating everything"?

Sabrina: Right now, we're focusing, I can't talk, on operational excellence. So, like, our CAPEX costs, our OPEX costs, our—you know, what we spend in the little details on supplies and the refunds that we give to guests—we're really focused on nailing that down, at least from my world.

But the business all has the same goals, right? Like, everyone's trying to just double down on what we've done already, make sure it performs, and really knock it out of the park. And I think that goes hand in hand with selling.

So, like, for example, something that we're working on is an internal report for all of our houses that has every single appliance warranty information. Like, literally the most boring thing I could tell you on this podcast—about appliance information and how old our roof is.

But if and when we sell, like whenever that time is, it's important that we have all of this, right? Because, I mean, you know this too—you’re not selling your home to a family. Those days are done. You're selling your home to an institution, an investor, whatever that is.

So, you're going to need all this information later on—all of the details, all the boring stuff, all the things that people don't care about. They are really, really important when it comes to that time because, obviously, when you want to sell, it's during a good time, it makes sense for all parties, and you need to move quickly.

So, we're just doing what any business should be doing—focusing on the business. And when that time comes, it comes.

Jeremy: Yeah, I'm actually in the process of selling—selling the first property or selling the first property in which I'm an investor in. This is actually the only property that I've ever invested in where, like, I'm not the one leading the deal.

But still, it's like an interesting process—selling. I'm like, "Wow, selling." Like, I've never been on this side before. "Wow, this is... Oh, they want an extension on diligence. Do I give it to them? Do we give it to them?"

It's like, yeah, they have questions you've got to answer about the property and, yeah, the different warranties and stuff like that. So, I totally get what you're saying. And that's selling one property. If you guys are looking to sell 140 properties, I mean, that's going to be a process and a half.

I could totally imagine. So, kudos for gearing up for that. So, yeah, we've kind of just gone through the entire life cycle of what you guys are doing. I mean, did we miss anything? I know we're 50 minutes in here, so, uh, is there any holes in this story?

Sabrina: There’s so many details, but I think we covered a lot of the basics. And I'm really happy that I was able to share all the things that we've done because sometimes I don't think that what we do is super detailed.

And then when I, like, regurgitate it, I'm like, "Oh my God, we do so many things. So many little things."

Jeremy: Yeah, and I'm telling you guys, if you saw their property, or just saw the listing, saw those first five photos that Austin put up—you would understand.

The, uh, attention to detail that I think that—I mean, again, every time I see your guys' listings, I'm like, "I got to level my stuff up." Like, I have not been intentional enough about... I mean, the new property I'm setting up right now, I've definitely—uh, I mean, a play structure, for example. I've never done a play structure, but I was like, "Oh, they did a play structure. There has to be something behind that."

But then I asked Taylor about it, and he told me that if you just do the basic $900 play structure, that really doesn't do anything. You need to do, like, the $2,000 play structure with two slides. And I was like, "Damn it, I did the basic play structure."

But, um, just the details. That's my point, just, like, the details. Like, the little intentionality on everything is what really adds up. And I guess, so in 2024, in order to kill... I mean, you hear the chat online, "Oh, it's harder, Airbnb is dying."

Like, what do you... Like, are you optimistic about growing into the future? And, I guess, what enables or gives you that confidence? And I guess, do you have a number on how many you're going to do this year, next year, anything like that?

Sabrina: I think everyone's trying to figure that out with, like, capital raising and interest rates. There's a lot that we've learned, you know, just being in this business for a year that was considered to be a super peak, high year, and then now entering some uncharted territory.

But I think we're still pretty optimistic. I think, to be honest with you, we're optimistic because we have a proven track record, and we know that we deliver really good products. And we've been delivering really great returns for our investors.

So, I think, you know, anyone in the space looking to diversify their portfolio and get in the space—we're still here, we're still raising money, our fund is still open for new investors. And I think, you know, our goal is to have a similar year to the last two years. We raised, you know, around 40-ish million, 30-ish million. So, I'd love to do the same this year.

But I understand that markets change and that capital raising has its peaks and valleys. So, I think that's the goal, but you never know what's going to turn out.

Jeremy: Got it. Okay. And then, yeah, what is your, so, what is your, beyond the capital-raising standpoint, which is unique to your business because you guys are a fund, in terms of the opportunities to buy out there—like, you're seeing them.

Like, if I... If you were given $40 million today, you could, or 40 more million, because you've continuously gotten 40 million, you would. Like, how quickly do you think you could deploy that 40 million?

Sabrina: We could.

Jeremy: And do you think the deals would be great, like good deals?

Sabrina: Yeah, and we still see good deals now. I think it's not as crazy as it was, you know, two years ago. But, we have internal conversations all the time just purely about bandwidth and what we can support.

Because really, what it comes down to is, when you have capital like that come in—which we've had, you know, large chunks of capital like that come in—the first thing it impacts is operations, right?

Who's doing it? How fast can we get a property up? How quickly can we get it to start producing revenue? How quickly can those investors get their distributions back? So that's, like—that's what, at least, what I look at when capital comes in.

And so, we're always sizing the business to how much we have. We know how much capital we get at any given time. And to this day, I feel confident that we can support it. But I also feel like there are still deals out there—at least ones that fit our fund model. Right? Not for everyone.

Jeremy: Got it. Okay. so, I guess, like, what is the point, this is kind of a curiosity thing—like, what do you think... What’s too much money?

You know, because I was talking to Taylor about how, like, you know, if you were a hedge fund and you were given $150 million to buy bonds, you would have maybe, like, an analyst. You'd have an associate, an MD, and, you know, you'd bring the deal to the investment committee, and they would say, "All right, this is fine. We'll buy these bonds."

And then you talk to a broker and you buy it. Like, that's the process to deploy $150 million if you're buying bonds in a hedge fund. However, for you to deploy $100 million, that's a... I don't—that's a totally different ball game. And, obviously, a lot harder and a lot more impressive, in my opinion.

But, yeah, like, is there a dollar amount where you're like, "We could efficiently deploy $75 million, but a billion dollars is—that's a lot. That's way too much." I guess, do you have that amount or number in mind?

Sabrina: I look at it from a property perspective. I'm like, "Okay, you know, at any given time, we can probably do, like, 40 or 50 properties." Something around there. Like, last month we were doing, like, 30 properties—something around there.

Jeremy: So, you ook at how many you can set up at a time?

Sabrina: Correct. Because, honestly, that's what it comes down to. That's what it comes down to—what are you deploying, what are you buying, and how much can you set up in a responsible period of time. So, I look at it from the number of properties, not so much the quantity of money, just because—yeah, because the property prices change.

I mean, we're never buying $2 million properties, right? So, there is a range that we buy in. But, um, yeah, I think we've never had any, we've never had check sizes that have hit, like, past that range where we've been in that 30-property arena.

But I'd be scared past, like, 50, right? Because it just means, like, more training, more hiring, more visits, it just puts strain on the team. But, um, yeah, I don't think we're scared of capital. It's just a matter of bandwidth, that's all.

Jeremy: Got it. Okay. All right, so $10 billion? Y’all just—as long as it’s 40 properties a month? Okay, cool.

So, what is, like—maybe it’s someone who's starting out, maybe someone who has a few properties and they want to grow their portfolio—what is the biggest pro tip you have for short-term rental investors?

Sabrina: Oh my God, I feel like that puts me on the spot. My biggest pro tip? Um, I would say, definitely study who's doing well in the market that you're in and why. The days of boring properties are over.

If you're thinking of skipping out on certain amenities because you want to be in that middle-of-the-page kind of Airbnb listing, I think those are the people that are going to go in either direction in this new market that we're in.

So, my pro tip is to really study why people do well. Save the money for really good amenities, and invest in the details. You will thank yourself later by 10x—that's my pro tip.

Jeremy: I agree. I agree. I think that's a good one. And, yeah, I told Taylor I'm in the process of trying to level up some of mine. Because, to be honest, you know, I think my listings, when I set each one up, were like 90th percentile properties in that market at that time.

But a lot of it was, you know, the white walls—very clean, very minimalist, blues, grays, blacks.

And now I'm, like, seeing y'all where it's like the pinks and the oranges and the purples and so much color all over the place, so much wallpaper, so many murals. And I'm like, damn, like—I'm like, all right, I gotta…and, like, the backyards. You know, maybe two years ago, it was like, "All right, a hot tub plus a fire pit checks the box."

But now, it's like that's not enough. You've got to have a hot tub, fire pit, big chess, bowling, cornhole, string lights everywhere—not just string lights in one place; you have to have string lights around the entire backyard.

So, um, those details are things that I'm trying to, I mean, the new one I'm setting up, I'm definitely applying there. But I'm trying to also level up, I guess. Do you, and this is my last question here, I know we're at the hour point…but, like, do you guys refresh listings after, like, a year or two, or really just set it up at the beginning and ride?

Sabrina: Our goal is to set it up in the beginning and ride. We've learned some properties do better than others, like A/B testing stuff. And then we're like, "Damn it, we gotta go back and fix the other ones because we just know it's going to perform better—it’s worth it."

I will say, on that note, it cracks me up that you said the design thing because even now, internally, we're still figuring out the design. So, like, I'll look at a new color that'll come in, and I'm like, "Guys, this is just, like, obnoxiously bright. I don't think we could go this direction."

And then my team’s like, "Well, you went that direction last time with this color. What makes them different?" I'm like, "I don't know. We're not ready to go..." There's, like, levels to ridiculousness with properties.

And we even scare ourselves sometimes. We're like, "Oh my God, we're just going to launch it as is and see if it does well." And usually, it does.

Jeremy: Like, the more vibrant, the more crazy you go, the more it stands out from the white walls.

Sabrina: Yeah. Totally. But our internal team—they roll their eyes. They're like, "We don't understand what bright means. We're confused." So, we're still figuring it out.

Jeremy: Well, awesome. I'm excited to continue to—every time now, whether it be John or Taylor on LinkedIn or John on Instagram, Taylor on LinkedIn—or you—I stay in the loop of what the new listings are.

Because then, another level of feeling insecure about not being bright enough, not having my… I'm just kidding. I have good listings. John Bianchi told me, he's like, "I'm only friends with you because I respect your portfolio."

He was like, "I hate you." You know, and I think Taylor—you guys love it. And I think that’s cool that you guys have built a team of people who love what they're doing and are super prideful about what you’re doing.

They really care about the details and the process and are super passionate about hospitality and short-term rentals and providing a great experience. Because that's why you guys are succeeding and scaling when the suits are not.

You know, like the institutions—I don't know if you saw the article about TPG. I referenced it with Taylor. But they came into South Florida and left. They tried to do short-term rentals—like, buy 20, 30, 50 houses—and they dropped the ball.

And it's because their team probably just... Your team. It's really the team. I don’t know if you agree with that or disagree.

Sabrina: I'll say it again—it’s the team. It's in the details. This is not multifamily—"Let’s throw in a couple washer-dryers and a subway backsplash and call it a day." This is—it’s a lot of work.

Jeremy: That sounds nice. That sounds very appealing at this point.

Sabrina: Yeah, remember the deals where it was just like, "Just upgrade a couple of appliances and slap on 70 bucks on rent"? It's like, you’re in the wrong business.

Jeremy: This is like—you paint the wall the right color, you do a mural, and then you charge 70 more bucks a night. You know, multiplied by 365 days a year, you make tens of thousands of dollars or more versus, like, a hundred dollars more, which is cool.

Which is why this game—you were able to quit your job, go full-time, and do this. And I was too. It's the cash flow. All right, so folks who want to follow your journey, where can they find you?

Sabrina: The easiest place to find me is on TikTok or LinkedIn, just under Sabrina Guler. And then, obviously, if you guys want to check out Techvestor and all the crazy things we're doing, I'm just starting to post a lot of my journey behind the scenes and what makes our properties awesome on LinkedIn. And then, obviously, you can check us out at Techvestor.com.

Jeremy: Perfect. Awesome. Well, Sabrina, thank you so much for joining us today.

Sabrina: Thanks for having me.

Jeremy: Awesome. All right, everybody, well, that's a wrap. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Short-Term Rental Pros Podcast.

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