John Bianchi on the $50,000 a year view premium

Quick Summary

John's argument is that amenities aren't decoration, they're line items you can find in the data before you spend. On Blue Ridge style cabins, a standout view is worth about $50,000 more a year in gross revenue than a comparable cabin without one, and he can point at the comps instead of guessing. Most of the hour goes to sorting the amenities that actually move revenue from the ones that only look good, plus the mistakes he made learning the difference. If you want to pull the comps for your own market, that's what BNBCalc Markets is for.

Key Points

• Techvestor bought somewhere between 85 and 100 properties in 16 months, and about 70 of those were live. John gives both numbers, which quietly shows the lag between closing and earning. He puts the renovation window at two to six months per home.
• John says he's searched more than 288 markets while Techvestor's fund operates in four of them. Acquisitions is his whole job, picking the market, then the property inside it, then figuring out how to maximize what it earns.
• At Live Oak Lake in Waco, the one bedroom A-frames pull about $120,000 a year in gross revenue. Another operator's one bedroom shipping containers in the same area pull about $30,000. John's read is that the containers have rooftop patios with no photos of them, two chairs and no hanging lights, no fire pit, no hot tub, no lake.
• John lost $40,000 on two homes in Scottsdale after spending about 20 grand on each to set them up. Neither had a pool heater, guests kept asking before booking, and every competing listing had one. A pool heater is now standard on every Techvestor home.
• Scottsdale almost doubled its listing count in a year, and John says everyone there is still making about the same revenue year over year. In a smaller city he doesn't name, most homes cap out around $80,000 a year in gross revenue while one better amenitized listing does $150,000, and he has no way to know if that market would absorb a second one at that price.
• Order matters with amenities. Match what the market already has, John says, then differentiate. One Techvestor property just wasn't getting booked until they added a hot tub and a putting green, the two most common amenities in that area, and it went on to outperform its target. Jeremy put about $2,000 into outdoor games and string lights rather than a pickleball court the two of them priced at $15,000 to $20,000.
• Asked whether backyard string lights are the best ROI in the business, John counters with a photo shoot. He has opinions on the lights too, crisscross them over the hot tub rather than ringing it, but he flags that one as pattern recognition from studying listings, not something he found in the data.

Full Transcript

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Jeremy: What's up, guys? We are live with the Short Term Rental Pros podcast, and I'm here with John Data Boy Bianchi. Data Guy, sorry. Data Man. He is the premier finder and underwriter for short-term rental properties, literally for a living. Finds the best places and the best types of properties to perform as Airbnbs. John, thanks for coming today.

John: Appreciate it, man. I'm real happy that you invited me here. This is going to be a good one.

Jeremy: John, for those who don't know you, tell us about yourself. Where are you from? How did you get into short-term rentals? Give us that 30-second TLDR.

John: Okay, sounds good. I'm Canadian, just because you're asking where I'm from. I live in a small little vacation town. My whole life is surrounded by vacation. But I'm the head of data for Techvestor, which is a short-term rental investment fund that's bought almost 100 properties now in the past 16 months. My job is to identify the best possible property, the best market, best possible property within that market, and how to maximize the revenue of that property.

And then I also am the founder of Point Analytics, which is an Airbnb data consulting firm, which helps people do exactly that. So find profitable properties when it comes to short-term rentals.

The way I got into this, though, was that I wanted to build a business and learned about rental arbitrage and thought like, hey, this could be a good way for me to get started back in 2017. And then just started to build up a business from there, then got into Airbnb property management, and then had my own Airbnb cleaning team. And then COVID came around, wiped that all away. And I realized that the one thing that I did the best out of everything within that business was understanding the data. And so then I started teaching other people it and just organically grew into what I do now. So that's a real quick breakdown of how I got to where I'm at.

Jeremy: Okay. So you wanted to get into Airbnb, and in order to do that you did a lot of research, you did a lot of underwriting, and you found, oh, I enjoy this and I'm pretty good at it. So how did you get linked with Techvestor, and then what have you done for them? I know you guys are on a spending spree, or on a buying spree. What's that been like? How many properties have you guys acquired? And what's that rollercoaster been launching? I think, tell me, how many properties have you guys even done in the last six months?

John: Let's start off with how I got started. I've only had two jobs in the past eight years, and Techvestor was one of them. And so I actually was just in a period where the consulting firm was not at a point where I really wanted to be. And I had enough time during the day to be able to still have a job and keep working on that.

And so I started reaching out to a variety of different companies like AirDNA, Point Analytics. I actually reached out to Kenny Badwell from STR Insights to work for him before STR Insights was even launched, or the day as it was launched. And Kenny said no. He said, sorry, I'm not a data guy. Kenny's like, no. And then fast forward six months later, we're putting on events together about data.

But anyways, reached out to Taylor over at, the head of acquisitions for Techvestor, pretty much just pitched him, told him, explained to him exactly what I do, how I analyze markets, properties, all this different stuff. And he on the spot was like, we got to get you in here. The next day the CEO called me up and pretty much gave me an offer to go work there. And that's how I got started working with Techvestor.

And at that point it was such a small team in comparison to where it's at right now. Anyways, I started about a year ago from now. And just where it was a year ago from where it is today is pretty insane. I don't know the exact numbers. I know that we're definitely about 45 million to 50 million in that range of amount of money that's been raised within the past 16 months. And we have somewhere between 85 and 100 properties that we've officially purchased within that timeframe. And we have 70 or 71 properties that are officially live.

So within that period of time we've launched 70 plus properties, obviously identified all those properties, bought all those properties, pooled everybody's money together to be able to do that. And we're hitting the projections that we were planning on hitting, which is the best part of all of it. So it's great that we can launch all this, but we're actually hitting our numbers, which was my job to figure out essentially in the first place. So it makes me really happy to see that we're actually hitting those numbers.

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. And you guys really are, at least to my knowledge, launching more. Obviously people do arbitrage, launching a couple hundred properties over the course of a year or two years, but all that really entails is throwing in some furniture and calling it a day. When you guys buy properties, a lot of the times, and I want to give a shout out to Skylar, but you guys actually do a lot of general contracting and renovate houses before setting them up and turning them into Airbnbs, which I think is really...

To me, honestly, I think that's the coolest part. Obviously it's cool how you underwrite deals and find the revenue projections and find the winning properties, but then how quickly and efficiently you guys have been renovating them and prioritizing amenities and turning them into these cashflow machines.

John: Yeah, so that's a shout out to Sabrina, the COO, co-founder.

Jeremy: Sorry, Sabrina and Skylar, everyone who says that.

John: Yeah, exactly. Sabrina is absolutely amazing when it comes to operations. She has a huge team underneath her, and everybody... It was a work in progress to be able to get to the point of being able to scale and launch properties as quickly as we do, but she has been working at it to make it a well-oiled machine, let's say.

And most of the time when we're also getting these properties, yes, we are doing some general contracting on it, we are renovating certain parts of the home. Some homes need more than others, different things like that. But generally we're getting the properties up and running as Airbnbs, like two to six months. We're in that range, depending on how much work needs to be done, just because we have such a good system behind it.

And as for the amenities, that's my... I've been pushing amenities like crazy. And as you can see, if you actually look at our homes, we just keep getting more and more amenities. It's essentially how we've decided to stand out from everybody else. So we match everybody else's amenities, and then we provide more on top of that. That really is what helps us stay at the top of the market.

Jeremy: Okay. So you instruct Sabrina and company and say, hey, these are the amenities we need to provide. Or tell us about your process for saying this is a house, or this is a type of house that we need to go after.

John: So two things there, the type of house that we go after, and then also the amenities that we get, right? So it's really like the logic that I use is the Burger King logic. I talk about this all the time. McDonald's spends millions of dollars to figure out what corner to be on, and then Burger King opens up across the street, right? So Burger King is essentially using what has already been proven to work and replicating it, just repeating it.

And that's what we do with the data. We take all of the data that currently exists for all the other Airbnbs that are out there, take all that in and figure out what are they doing right and what are they doing wrong. And then which homes are working and which ones are not, right? So it's just a matter of reviewing all the data to be able to come up with that answer.

And as an example, in Chicago, three bedrooms within a certain area in a certain neighborhood don't cashflow, but four bedrooms do. And that's very specific to that neighborhood. And you only figure that out by seeing that all the three bedrooms were only making 60,000, whereas the four bedrooms are making 100,000.

Anyways, what I'm trying to get at here is that when it comes to selecting what property that we're going to be going for, we're just using the data that's already there to be able to determine if it's going to cashflow or not based off of the other Airbnbs.

Then what we do when it comes to actually determining the amenities and what to add to that property and what not to, because amenities are different across all the different markets, right? So amenities in Florida compared to amenities in the Smokies are completely different for the most part.

And so my logic behind this of how we decide what we use and what we don't use is that we first want to match the amenities, and then we want to go above and beyond, right? So if you have, let's say, $30,000 that you want to throw into amenities, my recommendation for you is to always match the amenities that are out there. So if everybody has a hot tub, you need a hot tub. If everybody has a pool, you need a pool. If everyone has a pool heater, you need a pool heater, right? You have to match those main amenities, because otherwise you're going to be falling behind right off the bat.

Then you can get a little bit creative. Then you can talk about like EV chargers and saunas and putting greens and all these different things that are maybe going to put you above everybody else. And even when you do that as well, when you're deciding on those amenities, you still have to think about your guest avatar and who's the exact type of person that's going to be staying within that size home within that specific city. And then you match the amenities based off of that.

Does that make sense? That was a really long answer, but I hope that added up. I tried to kind of bring you along the path there.

Jeremy: Yeah, no. And I've definitely, I'm so blessed to have, John has shared me his process many times before, because I, for better or worse, employ a similar process, and definitely I've tweaked it. John's process is the process if you want to be able to find not only what type of property is going to perform well, but better than the others, which a large part of it about this game is beating the other listings in your area.

And I guess I want to parlay this into, what have you seen? Has there been changes in the last few years? Like properties that you thought were going to outperform two years ago, they're not cutting it nowadays, now it's more difficult? Or just, what are the general changes in the landscape that you've seen over the last couple of years?

John: Before I answer that, I just want to, I want to mention one thing, because you just gave a little bit of shout out of my process. But I want everyone to understand that the reason that Jeremy and I are friends outside of this podcast, while we've hung out a couple of times, is because he showed me his portfolio and it was genuinely like one of the best portfolios I've ever seen.

And I kind of always make a joke where I'm like, yeah, I'm only friends with Jeremy because I actually respect his portfolio. Like the way the whole design, the photos, the amenities. I'm like, this is, because I see so many people's portfolios and they're always like bad photos. They think they're doing great, but they really aren't. And then I come across yours. You don't even have a course where you're teaching anybody how to do this, and it's like one of literally the best portfolios I've seen.

Like yours, we use your comps to buy homes for Techvestor. We're like, Jeremy did this well with his property and he pretty well does exactly what we're going to do, so let's just assume we'll do as well as him. You know what I mean? Like I've done that in the past. So just anyways, throw that little shout out there for you, because people need to know that if they don't know that.

Jeremy: I didn't have him on here to say that.

John: No, anyways, respect your portfolio big time. It's very impressive. But what was the question again? It was something along the lines of...

Jeremy: What have you seen? I've seen changes. People talk about it being bust and things are getting harder. Like what is it, just, hey, the line items and the equations are different than before? But what have you seen, if there have been any changes? What are they looking like?

John: There's not like major changes that are happening. There's an economy that is happening behind the short-term rental scenes that is changing the Airbnb game, right? So Airbnbs are vacations. And if people have to have the money to be able to actually vacation.

From my understanding, from a stat that I've heard, people had like a 30% savings ratio during COVID. Nowadays they have a 3% of their money is actually being saved. So naturally people aren't going to be able to spend as much money to go on vacations, right? Which means that you kind of have a shorter list of people who can actually pay, stay at your home.

And then on top of that, there's a larger number of Airbnbs that have come onto the market from 2020 to now, right? Everyone kind of uses 2020 as like the starting point now, because a whole bunch of Airbnbs dropped off and then they restarted, right? So 2020 to now, there's obviously a ton more Airbnbs, and there's technically less people traveling. That's why people are kind of feeling this crunch right now when it comes to Airbnbs.

But I wouldn't say that it's a... I wouldn't say there's a ton of people that are losing money hand over fist when it comes to this. I think they're still making money. They're just not making as much money, right?

Now, with that being said, if there are less people traveling and there are more Airbnbs, that means that the competition has increased for the remaining supply of people who are actually traveling. And the major change that I have seen is that you just have to be more strategic and more competitive with the way you put together your listing and the way that you market it. But the reality is that you should have been doing that from day one regardless, even if it wasn't very competitive. It's just gotten harder. People are feeling it and they're now putting more effort into those things.

And so the question is like, how do you stand out for somebody else? I already mentioned it, right? You know exactly what type of guest is the best possible guest to stay there, whether it be large groups of women, families, bachelor parties, 20-year-olds that are going for whatever reason, like whatever it is for your exact guest avatar. And then you build the listing specifically for them. If you're near a golf course, build a golf haven inside your home. If you're near something family-orientated, build it so that it's a haven for the kids and it's very immersive and a great experience.

That's how you're going to outdo all the other people within your market. And that's actually how you're going to maximize your dollars invested into your amenities in that home, rather than just throwing it at random stuff and hoping it works out well. It's just more strategic. And it's also...

Jeremy: You got to, not to cut you off, you got to be a pro. You just got to be a pro nowadays. The days of just being a JV, and I used to be a JV basketball player in college, so I'm not trying to take shots at any JV people out there, but no JV. Today you got to be a pro. You've got to do well.

John: You really do. And the funny thing is, in 2019, before COVID hit, it was the exact same thing. That was peak Airbnb listings. So as an example, in Kissimmee there were like 50,000 listings in 2019, and then COVID hit and it dropped down to 30, or like 35 or something like that. So there's like a huge drop-off, but 2019...

Jeremy: I was actually looking at Kissimmee today. I think there's, yeah, 34, yes, 435. It's probably how we both look at the same Airbnb data.

John: Yeah. And another little fun fact is that the number of listings has dropped in Kissimmee every single quarter since 2020. So it's actually, it went from like 50-something down to like 38. Now it's all the way down to like 34, somewhere in that range. It just consistently has dropped. I don't know why, but it has.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think Kissimmee is a funny place where I feel like it's a lot of international buyers.

John: Tons, tons.

Jeremy: Like a lot of people just literally when you need to deploy capital, like a lot of Canadians that can't really make any money in Canada. So they go, all right, let's make money. We make money in the States, and Canadians go to Disney World. They all know Disney. So for whatever reason, Kissimmee is like Disney and China dollars.

John: You could actually look at the, there's a certain couch that they all buy. It's got this like headrest that kind of like moves up and down, and it's a long gray one usually. And that's the, it's the one couch that like all of the Chinese investors have like added to all their listings. So if anything else is kind of different, you'll notice that one couch. Those are usually the Chinese homes that are ran by some random property management company that doesn't know what they're doing. So the homes look great, but the photos kind of suck and they don't make the money that they're supposed to make.

Jeremy: And I feel like a lot of people, and Kissimmee is a market where they're just buying to deploy, like they don't really care if the house is actually cashflow. And that's obviously, that floods inventory of people who are just, if they don't really care to make money to begin with, they're probably not going to do everything as well as they should. Kissimmee is like the land of like themed Airbnbs, the Mickey Mouse rooms and all that stuff.

I guess the question for you. So you guys, I feel like our design, like my design and how I set things up, and you guys, was kind of on par for better or worse. But I feel like you guys have lately took it up another notch in terms of amenitizing the crap out of properties and starting to really lean heavily into themes. What are your thoughts on like theme A, just like amenities, amenities galore?

And I think if you guys aren't going to be able to see John's portfolio, so maybe, I don't know, if somehow you stumble upon some of the properties, they are pimped out with amenities. Like I'm telling you, every square inch. If they're in Scottsdale, Arizona, and they've got a quarter acre backyard, which would be actually a massive backyard, even still, literally every inch of that backyard has some sort of activity, just something that is like photo worthy. They're going to have the fire pit in one corner, they're going to have the putt-putt in the other corner, they're going to have the Connect Four, they're going to have the big chess. Like literally every possible cheap game you can buy off Amazon that will be one photo, like one moment, they have it. Like you guys definitely are probably the biggest customer to life-size chess and Connect Four that there possibly is.

So do you just, when you look at these properties, really nowadays, is it about those themes and those amenities? Is that really, from an ROI standpoint, what really sets apart properties?

John: Definitely, for sure. Like that's, we're creating an experience for our guests, right? I know not everybody can do that. Even if I were to go and buy a property myself, I would not be able to put together the backyards that Techvestor has been able to do. So I'm not saying like, hey, you have to do that to be able to win. We're just kind of in like a different category with the way that we're trying to do things. And so we're taking advantage of that and trying to provide an elite experience to people, if that makes sense.

Jeremy: This property I'm under contract on, you'll see, we'll see what I can do. There's like a shed, and I saw you guys like converted, I follow Taylor on Twitter, and I saw that you guys converted a shed to like a tiki bar, and there's a shed on this property.

John: So we actually did that wrong. I was actually pretty annoyed with that. We can talk about it.

Jeremy: This is why I have it on right now. This is why. Tell me about the shed tiki thing.

John: So you just said that you really liked the shed and the tiki bar, but it's honestly, it's done wrong. The reason, so there's another Airbnb listing that's out in Florida somewhere and they had a shed in the backyard. But what are you using a shed in an Airbnb for? Like it's useless, right? But it's there, so might as well take advantage of it.

But these other people just cut out a hole on the side of the wall and then they turn that into a bar, and then there's like stuff inside the shed that you can use to actually like make drinks and whatnot. And then they've just lined up chairs on the outside of the shed. And then it was very close to the pool, so it just worked out perfectly, right? Because you don't need to put anything in the shed, so why not take advantage of that?

And so that's what we were supposed to do with that home, but instead they just made a bar inside the shed, which I didn't think made a ton of sense, because it's a really hot market. So if you step into the shed, it's just going to be way too hot. So it would make more sense to just have the person, one guy inside making drinks, and everybody else hanging out outside. So if you are going to do that, that's how it should be done.

Not putting down the Techvestor team, we're planning on fixing it and whatnot, so like it's fine and we know what to do moving forward. But yeah, that was just a little bit of a miscommunication.

Jeremy: I'm curious. So you guys obviously set up the properties, you do general contractors. Like how many houses are you setting up at a given time? Like how many houses are setting up at this moment?

John: So it depends on the flow of investments coming in. Naturally that's a big part of it as well. And like I can't talk too much on that, because that's not my area of expertise. We have an entire division of the company that is there to try and bring in money to be able to keep doing what we're doing. And so I can't really speak too much on that.

But I can say that it comes in stages. Q4 is always going to be the largest investment time, because people will know how much money they need to invest to offset their taxes. And so that's always the biggest influx. As an example, I think during March we launched like 30 properties. Or between like the last two weeks of March and the first two weeks of April, there was about 30 properties that got launched all around one time, like put onto Airbnb's platform.

Right now I have no idea how many properties are being built up right now, genuinely have not a clue, because it's just not my side of the business. My side is acquisitions, right? Figure out what's the best thing to buy. And then we pass it off to the team that takes care of onboarding and bring the property to life, which would be like Skylar and Sabrina.

Jeremy: Okay. So you're part of the value chain, which I think one of the fun parts is really just, if we're going to spend $500,000, where can we make the most?

John: And that's all I do. That's literally all I do all day every day is like, how do we spend this money the best? Where are the best markets? Why are these the best markets? How do they stack up with all these other markets that currently exist? And then like within there, what's the difference between buying a three-bedroom and a four-bedroom on a returns? Like how much more can we expect?

But then the even more fun thing is the revenue drivers of those markets. So like we have one market where if you have an additional bedroom, you can expect like 20, $30,000 more. But then we have another location where that makes no difference. You can go from like a three-bedroom to a four-bedroom, or sorry, a four-bedroom to a five-bedroom, and it makes no difference on the amount of revenue that you're gonna end up making, because that's not the biggest revenue driver.

Which I just find, I find those things super interesting, because you'd think that would be common across everywhere. If you add another bedroom, you add more people, you can make more money, but that's not the case everywhere. So anyways, like, I can't give away all the secrets. I'm just saying that that is the most fun thing to do, to try and figure out how to best allocate that $500,000. Or in this case, $45 million.

Jeremy: And do you have, because a lot of times people, I feel like they're like, oh, what is your cash-on-cash return need to be? I get asked that all the time, which is, what cash-on-cash do you require to buy a house? Do you look at that?

I feel like for me, I'm always gonna be, like second I reload and have enough cash, and like I have the financing available to me, I'm buying another house. I'm not waiting until interest rates do X, Y, or Z, and my cash-on-cash goes up 2%, goes down 2%. Like I'm gonna buy a house, I'm gonna set it up, I'm gonna turn it into an Airbnb, I'm gonna get it rented, gonna save my cash for another few months, and I'm gonna do the same thing again. I might throw in an arbitrage property in the middle there, throw in a couple arbitrage properties, but that's, I'm gonna keep doing it.

Like I'm not, but do you have a, is there a specific cash-on-cash? Because you're just allocating based off how much you guys raise, it's really like, all right, no matter what we're gonna deploy, this is the best way we can do it possible.

John: Two things on that. The one, Taylor from Mr. Jones on Twitter, he is the one who does all the official underwriting for the property. So like he's the one figuring out that exact number, and we have different metrics that we need to hit for each one of those different areas to work for the entire fund. So it's different from different markets.

I'm not the best person to talk about this, honestly, if I'm being, this isn't the best question for me. But we do, we have a preferred return, I believe, of 8 to 12%. And don't quote me on that. I don't know 100% if that's accurate. We're aiming for in that percentage as a return for our investors. And all I know is that when we buy these properties, they have to meet a certain metric, certain cash-on-cash metric. I can't remember, I don't know exactly what it is. And when we do that, it allows us to get the preferred return for our investors throughout the fund. Does that make sense?

Jeremy: Yeah, so you guys look at, your end user is your fund effectively. So you guys aren't, you're not your traditional case, because when I buy, it's more traditional. It's me buying, or if I have investors, I have a couple investors, they're like partners. Whereas John and Techvestor buys on the behalf of a pool of investors who aggregate their capital to invest in these properties. So it's not quite an X and O comparison to what like most people listening who are looking to buy houses.

John: Yeah, and, but I can tell you that we'll never buy a bad property. We'll never buy a property that like doesn't hit a certain metric. Every single property that we buy has to hit a certain number that will allow us to be able to meet the return that we need to be.

John: And we're, if we can go above that, we're gonna go above that, obviously. And I obviously do the, like, I'm constantly searching what's the best market to be in. How do we figure out what's the best thing to buy? And I know that what we're buying is some of the best possible things to buy across the entire United States. Just because I've searched, since January alone, I've searched over 288 markets, and Techvestor is only in four markets right now for this fund. So that just goes to say that the markets that we're in have been chosen for a very specific reason. And then we're even maximizing everything within those markets. So I know that what we're buying is one of the best things that you can buy in all of America.

Jeremy: That makes sense. Got it. So you guys are, so you're, I mean, at this point you pretty much know every market. What types of properties within those markets do well, down to their bedrooms, bathroom counts, down to their amenities?

What have been some like funny things? Like, I think I listened to you on Avery Carl's podcast when you were like, Blue Ridge, Georgia, like you can confidently say that a four bedroom cabin with a view that's like an unobstructed view, as compared to like a four bedroom cabin without an unobstructed view, are gonna do, I think you said like 50% different or like something nuts.

Like what have been like those little findings that you've seen where you're just like, I can quantify and say that like having this amenity, not having this amenity, while it might seem little, I mean, a view obviously some could consider, like that might make or break someone's vacation. But what have been like the things you've seen where you're like, wow, guys, if we don't have this, like we're missing out on like 50, on a crazy percentage difference in revenue?

John: So the view one that you were talking about is like the amazing view compared to a non-amazing view. And the amazing view, it was, they're making $50,000 more a year. So if you had that view, you would make $50,000 more a year.

I think one of the crazy ones, have you heard of Live Oak Lakes down in Waco, Texas? That like really nice...

Jeremy: That guy who has like the seven little Scandinavian property.

John: Yeah. Anybody...

Jeremy: And he just put in the pool and the shipping container.

John: Yeah, and it's on a little bit of, it's on a little lake. He's got paddle boards. Everyone's got their own hot tub and their own dock. And it's like these Alpine homes, Alpine A-frames.

Okay, so I think he's a super interesting case study, because if in Waco, Texas, there's another guy who has a whole bunch of shipping containers that he's turned into these unique looking places for people to stay, right? Obviously the shipping containers are not as big as the Alpine homes. But if you were to compare these two side by side, the Alpine homes are making like $120,000 a year. And I'm pretty sure they're all one bedrooms, right? It's like $120,000 a year as a one bedroom. The shipping container is making $30,000 a year as a one bedroom as well. So you have these...

Jeremy: Yeah, huge difference. That's like what, four times, four times the amount?

John: But they're both in my head...

Jeremy: Yeah, and if you're doing it with seven, they have seven pets. That's a difference of 90,000 times seven. That's $600,000 a year difference in top line.

John: So there you go. I find them as a super interesting case study, especially for anyone who's planning on doing like a unique Airbnb. Because if you actually take a look at those shipping containers, they're designed well and they have good photos. But if you really study them and you compare it to with the Live Oak Lake, what you'll realize is that they also, all these shipping containers have rooftop patios on top of them, right?

Jeremy: Oh, wow.

John: What you'll notice though, is that there's no photos of the rooftop patio, no like direct photos up there. There's only two chairs up there. There's no like hanging lights up there. There's no aesthetically pleasing anything that's going on up there. There's no privacy from up there as well. There's no fire pit around the area. There's no hot tub with that either. There's no chairs on the main floor, on like the ground area of these shipping containers. And so there's also no like community pool. There's no nearby lake. There's so many amenities that they don't have in comparison to what the Alpine A-frames actually do have.

So very similar concept of like a smaller, unique remote stay, but the one is maximizing it through all the different amenities that they can provide. And then the other one's not, right? And that to me is the major difference. One of the major differences between these two, that's allowing the one to make four times the amount, 400% more, right? Which is just, it's an insane amount, because they're offering the exact same thing.

Imagine if you had like an Airbnb that was a two bedroom in a certain city, and then another guy down the street was making 400% more than you because they were strategically adding the right amenities that were creating a better experience for that person. And they took better photos and they showed it off better and they paid influencers to come in and actually show off the listing so much that everybody knew about it and wanted to actually come there. It's like all these things. It's just an interesting case study. Is that something that was interesting enough to be able to like share that you might...

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. That's the one too, James. You guys haven't seen, there's a pretty good YouTube video on the Scandinavian A-frames. What's it called?

John: The Live Oak Lakes.

Jeremy: Live Oak Lakes. Yeah, and they do that. That guy's on his, he's on his game. I would say he has the advantage of, he has one, at least that I know of, he has one property.

Some other guys who I think have done it is in Atlanta, Georgia. These folk have like their primary house, and in their backyard they built like five or six like tree houses that are all like really unique design, like really, like they just did it. They knew who their avatar was, and all the design and all the little like pictures on the wall are perfect. Forget what that one's called.

But there's just examples where, and I actually was talking to Avery, or talking about you being on Avery Carl when I was on her podcast. We were talking about how like two investors could literally get the same exact house, like the same exact house, and do like significantly different. And she actually gave an example of where literally the same investor owned two houses, like owned two identical houses, like same view, like literally on the same road with like the same view. And they didn't design it like exactly the same. Like both of them are like slightly different, but still it was like a $20,000 difference even in the same exact type of property. Really like little things in this game like make a big deal.

John: So funny. I wanna add to that, the idea of like same. So we actually had a duplex that we got in one market, which is literally the most as same as it could possibly be other than like a hotel, right? So like each side is the exact same property, the exact same building, same property, same everything.

And when the person was painting the mural in the one home, they screwed it up. And so then they just painted the whole wall green or something like that, just a plain color. And then the other side got a mural, right? And we saw a huge difference between the amount of revenue that was being made from one listing to the other listing. And the only difference was the mural. And so we paid somebody a lot better. It was doing a lot better just simply because it had a mural, and these were identical properties. So naturally we sent out somebody to add a mural to the other property as soon as we possibly could, right? Simple things like that.

Jeremy: Because you guys do a lot of work on the front end, but do you guys, after like you've had a listing up for six months, a year, and maybe another data point comes to your attention and we're just like, oh crap, we got to add whether it be a mural or maybe something that's bigger, we got to do a larger renovation. Like, would you guys just pause the listing and then add additional amenities or renovate?

John: I know what we do is that we're paying attention to every single property and we have certain metrics that they should be hitting. We know how well they should be doing. And we're trying to always make sure that we're doing a little bit better than that.

And we will come across properties and we'll just, because we're paying attention to them every single day. We have multiple people on the asset management team and revenue management team. And so they'll notice that certain properties are just not getting booked. And they're like, why is this one not getting booked?

As an example, we had one property literally was not getting booked. It had a lot of bookings for the next couple of months, but then all these other properties were getting booked in the same market, but that one wasn't. And so we kind of focused in on that one and we're like, okay, what is wrong with this property? What exactly could it be missing in comparison to these other properties? Like, what are we not seeing here?

And what we realized, this is early on, so this is almost like eight months ago, we realized that there was no hot tub and there was no putting green. And we thought to ourselves like, okay, we have to, let's just, we need to do something. Those two amenities are the most common amenities in this area. Let's add those two amenities, right? As soon as we added those two, bookings absolute, like started to come through, they started to increase, and the property hit the target that we were trying to hit. It actually outperformed the target that we were trying to hit.

So that's why I have this theory of you need the main amenities and then you can differentiate yourself, right? But you need the main ones first. Cause we had, the property was beautiful. I actually thought it was a great looking property when I was first getting started with Techvestor. I was like, this is a really nice property. It's put together really well. But then once you really study it, you realize it didn't have the hot tub, didn't have the putting green. You add those two things and all of a sudden we start getting the bookings and we hit our targets. Yeah, that's an example of what you're asking there.

Jeremy: Gotcha. And I want to get, agree or disagree with this statement. There is pretty much no better ROI than string lights in your backyard.

John: Agree, ooh. I think a photo shoot might be a better ROI.

Jeremy: Okay, all right. Obviously, let's just assume you're taking the photo shoot. At the time of like physical things to add to your property.

John: Okay.

Jeremy: I mean, string lights were cheap. Like you can get 48 feet of string lights, 96 feet of string lights for 40.

John: Well, you're challenging me. Let me think about this now. Is that the best? Because that is one, I actually, somebody, one of the podcasts I was on like last week, they're like, what's some of the best amenities? And I was like, oh no, Kenny and I did a workshop on top amenities. And one of them I said was like string lights. It's literally one of the best ones. Because it does create an atmosphere for your listing, right? So it gives it like a vibe. It makes it look cool. It looks like it's pulled out of a magazine.

But at the same time, you can't just, so here's a mistake that people make is that they wrap them around whatever they want. So let's say you've got a hot tub and you want to put like string lights above your hot tub to kind of create a little atmosphere at night for people. And you put them on the outside. It's almost like a border around the hot tub.

Jeremy: Like a circle around it.

John: Like a circle, right? But above the hot tub, obviously. That to me is actually a mistake. So that's kind of the cheap way of doing it and not the aesthetically pleasing way of doing it.

What you need to do is crisscross, go back and forth all the way on top of that hot tub, even if it takes an extra set of string lights. Because when you take the photo, the string lights are going to pop significantly more. It's very noticeable. It's more pleasing to the eye. It is like the more aesthetically pleasing, something straight out of a magazine way of doing the string lights. And it doesn't look like you just cheaply threw a set of string lights up there. Does that make sense?

Jeremy: It does. And now I'm literally thinking about our string lights that we have. And I'm like, we don't do any circles, but we do a lot of like, we don't crisscross enough. We might just do like one line and then one line on the other side, where we should be probably between them, zigzagging and going corner to corner.

John: So what I just explained there, there's no data that I've researched that has told me that, just so you know.

Jeremy: Okay.

John: There's no, I haven't like found a data point where it's like, oh, this crisscross compared to the circle makes 10% more. Like that's not...

Jeremy: Hey, write this down. This is a fact, write this down. It's a fact.

John: Here's the research. This is me just studying so many listings and seeing like really well put together, beautiful listings and trying to understand what are they doing differently?

Like another good example of this that I believe in, but once again, this is more of a gut thing than a data thing, which is something I don't normally do, is that I don't think you should just put a hot tub in whatever location that you're at. I think you should create a hot tub with like a cool vibe around it. That makes it like a fun place for people to go, right? You get the greenery, you get the neon lights, you get stools around it, maybe bar around it. You put a pergola above it with the hanging lights. You've got these nice steps that come into it. Maybe even you add like wood all the way around it so it looks really cool. And that just takes your hot tub to like another level, right?

So now if you're in direct competition with somebody else, you don't just have a hot tub. You have like a hot tub that people wanna hang out in at night and they're picturing themselves hanging out in that hot tub, right?

But then again, you also design it specifically for what avatar would be going to that home. So in certain markets, you don't need to have a neon light. That's just gonna throw some people off. But if you have like a bachelorette themed place and you throw like a pink neon light inside that hot tub and a place for the people to like hang out around the hot tub, that's gonna definitely create a better atmosphere.

Jeremy: Like they sit on a platform or something next to it? Or what do you mean by hang out next to a hot tub?

John: Like maybe they have a little bar around it, a little bar stool, like a wood bar all the way around the hot tub and some bar stools that sit beside it. So everyone can kind of sit there and have drinks. And some people are in the hot, like say it's 16 people that can stay at that Airbnb. Not everybody's been in the hot tub, but everybody may want to hang out. And so that just gives them the option to.

Jeremy: Gotcha. And I think I saw one of your videos that said heated, that what was one of the highest ROI things that were pretty universal. And you said, oh, do you think it's a pool? No, it's actually a pool heater. Was that based off years of research, just like the string lights?

John: That's based off of me losing $40,000 in two homes in Scottsdale. And because I didn't have a pool heater in both those homes. So that's actually like the reason I'm obsessed with the data and the reason I'm so crazy about all this stuff and getting it right is because I've lost money doing it, right? Like I've made enough mistakes where I'm like, okay, I'm doing something wrong here. What am I doing wrong?

And I ended up getting two homes down in Scottsdale and both of those homes did not cashflow. But I spent like 20 grand on each of them to kind of get them up and running, but both of them didn't cashflow. And so I was trying to study to figure out what is it. And everybody was messaging me saying, like, why does this pool have a pool heater? Or like before they book it, like, do you have a pool heater? It just kept coming up over and over again.

And then I started looking at the competition and everybody has a pool heater across the board, right? And so eventually you start to realize like, hey, my listing's good, it's better than others, but I'm not making as much as I should. Why is that? And then I'm missing that one thing, which is the pool heater. And it's a standard with every single Techvestor home. If there's no pool heater, we add it in. And you can ask anybody who has an Airbnb that has a pool or doesn't, and they'll always tell you that like that pool heater is absolute gold to a guest.

Jeremy: Is that even, I know you guys have some properties that are like in the North. Are those necessary? Because obviously like Florida, I'm in Florida, a lot of the properties have pool heaters.

So just like Scott said, your comp set. If your comp set has something, you don't have something, that's when you're in trouble. So like a hot tub in like the Blue Ridge, the Smoky Mountains, you need like a hot tub is non-negotiable at this point. You can't not have a hot tub. That's not a yes or no. You got to build that into your equation that there's going to be one regardless.

Is that even true? Like in the North where there's not as many pools, like as Florida, there's a lot, but you know, I know you guys have some like Poconos properties.

John: Well, for sure, right? Like think about what a pool heater does. If you have a pool, that's one of the best amenities, and people are booking a home and paying more to stay at that home because you have a pool, especially over the people who don't have it, because it gives them so much more things to do within that home, right?

But if you don't have a pool heater, that pool is only useful for like two to three months, maybe, especially in those Northern markets. So when you have the pool heater, you extend the usability of that pool through maybe doubling the number of months that you could actually use that pool, right?

And yes, like pool heater in the North is probably more important than pool heater in the South, but everybody has a pool heater in the South. So therefore it's just as important. Does that make sense?

Jeremy: Yeah, it does. And I'm getting some consulting here, because the property I'm buying isn't in the North, but I guess I got a stomach it by a pool heater. My comp sets don't have one. So it's not like, oh, if we don't have, and it's not in a place where every, like a lot of houses have a pool.

And actually this is a question I have for you. So I'll say like my investment strategy has been changing over the last two or three years, since I started buying in really 2020, which now we are, I guess, three years since the start of COVID. Whereas I'm looking for like kind of those vacation looking houses, those Scottsdale, Arizona houses, but trying to put them in like medium-sized markets where there isn't any of them there. Like there's no houses with the golf, the putt-putt in the backyard. There's no houses with the hot tubs, heated pools, like none of that stuff. And I'm really running without data because I'm just going to see what happens, but I just have a pretty big hunch that it's going to work. And going well so far.

But I guess you guys, because for you guys, you like are deploying a lot. So it's important that you buy places where you can actually buy a lot of different properties. And like with a pretty high degree of certainty, like they're going to fall within a certain range. Like it doesn't make as much sense for you to go where there's no data because it's not worth the risk. Am I wrong or right in that assumption?

John: You're a hundred percent right in that assumption. Like my duty is to the investors. Everything that Techvestor does, everyone that works at Techvestor, we are working for the investors to ensure that they get a good return. They're number one, right? And taking a higher risk than we need to do is something that we're just not going to do. We go to the markets where there's a lot of data that backs up that if we do X, we will receive Y.

Whereas what you're talking about is, I know exactly what you're talking about. That's why I was laughing, like kind of smiling as you were talking about it. But going into these second tier cities where there's not a lot of data, taking a formula that works really well in the popular cities and applying it to the second tier cities. It's something that we could talk offline about. There is some data on it and I can show you it and we can kind of walk through it. But it's interesting. I think that it's possible in a certain way. You have to do it right for sure. But there are some people out there that are doing it, but you're taking a bigger risk, and the risk that you're taking is that there's not going to be the demand. There's not going to be enough people to meet the demand that you want for that home, right?

So in other words, like if you take some of the homes that are in Scottsdale and are done up insanely beautifully, insanely well, right? There are a lot of people going to the Scottsdale market that are paying a lot of money to be in Scottsdale and they're okay with it. It's a city that is a little bit higher end city. There's some higher end golf courses. There's people that have deeper pockets that are willing to go there and have that really nice experience right now. There's also a lot of people who are willing to do that. That's why there's like 8,000 listings in that area and they can support that many listings.

But if you go to a smaller city, like a second tier city, is that same crowd willing to go there? And is that same crowd willing to pay that same sort of top dollar for that exact same experience? And if so, how many more of those listings can you put into that same location and be able to support that same amount? In other words, there is a certain level of demand. Like eventually the demand hits a ceiling and people are, one, are not willing to pay any more. And two, there's just no more people to pay for that location. Does that make sense?

Jeremy: Yeah. So it really comes to like, is there a large pool of customers to an area, and in that area, what are they expecting? If you're going to a Scottsdale, you're willing to pay, but that's because you're willing to pay for that experience. Like you expect it in Scottsdale. So you bring the money with you. Whereas other places, like the secondary cities, you're not going there with the expectation.

John: It's also not the norm, right? So there's one city specifically that I'm thinking of in my head where most homes cap out at around $80,000 a year, like they make $80,000. That's really it. But most of them aren't that nice in the first place, right?

Now there's one property that has actually done better than most. It has more amenities than the other, and it's making $150,000, right? So most people are making $80,000, he's making $150,000. And to me, that's super interesting, because I know why he's making $150,000, because I can very clearly see that he's providing a better experience with more amenities for these people.

But my thought is like, all right, so you have a certain amount of people that are willing to pay for that going to this city. So you only have one group a week. So like they're going to him.

Jeremy: So you don't know if the absorption, it can absorb two property. Like you have no way to stress test the absorption rate.

John: Exactly. And that's it. Now, mind you, it's the same thing for every market. And there's no way to figure that out, right? Because in Scottsdale, Scottsdale has almost doubled the amount of listings that it's had in the past year. And we're still making the exact same amount. Actually, everybody in Scottsdale is still making the same amount year over year. So think about that. There's double the amount of listings and the amount of tourism demand in that area has met that, the supply's met the demand, or yeah, the supply's met the demand.

So if you go into one of these second tier cities, how many can you actually throw into there that are going to be able to achieve that higher than normal revenue amount? It's an unknown. That's why it's a high risk, right? If you're the first guy doing it, you're probably fine. And then you add another 15 in a year's period, it's like, they may not all hit that number that you're looking for, but maybe they do. And that'd be the cool thing.

I do it. And then Techvestor says, oh, Jeremy's doing it. He's doing pretty well. Maybe we launched 20 more right next door and see how it goes. We need data. We need people like you to take the risk, to prove that it works, for us to then go in and actually do it.

Jeremy: Gotcha. I'm going to put in my, it looks like I'm putting my Airbnbs on, I'm private mode. Totally joking. Totally. Me and John compare notes. We compare notes all the time. We want to share stuff with you, but there's stuff we obviously can't share because it's literally our businesses at this point and what we do for our livelihood.

But I would say there's this, like I'd say the second house I'm buying where it's really a shot in the dark property, the first one, and I'll talk about it. Cause honestly, to be frank, I don't really care, because you're not going to find a similar property to it in that entire town, like there's just going to be no supply of it. But the one, the mountain, the green mountain cabin in Western North Carolina, I showed you with the really big backyard. It doesn't have the backyard. I mean, it has the hot tub, fire pit. It has the long range mountain views.

I'll just say like, I had an assumption. I shot in the dark with no data here, but I made an assumption that was just totally wrong. It ended up being okay. Like the property is doing well, but the assumption I had that wasn't based in data, but just based off me doing research in the local area.

John: Dude, like I respect you so much for this listing alone. This was one of the first ones that you showed me. And I remember just seeing it and being like, d*mn, like that is actually extremely impressive. The photos, the game room, the hot tub, the fire pit, the way it's shown, like no string lights though.

Jeremy: No string lights. No, no, no. That's where I'm. We F'd up on the string lights. All I do is I look at this now and I just think, oh, I got to put a wooden post here, a wooden post here, a wooden post here, and just bring like the sh*t out of this backyard.

John: Yeah.

Jeremy: That's all I see now. Like, it's definitely a sickness when you look at your own properties and you don't look at them for like how other people see them, but you're just like...

Jeremy: Dang, we could have been 5% better here. 10% better here. I think about that with my, like my first list of things that I put up that I had. Like, I wouldn't even want to show people nowadays. I would be like, they're not at the level that I would ever want them to be at, but at that time they were good.

John: Yeah.

Jeremy: So I'll go now. I'll tell you what my assumption, there was no data, but we built the game room. I don't know why there's a chair there. We didn't have anyone there when the guy took photos. I don't know why he thought that was a good thought. But yeah, I got the sunset here, got the fire created in there.

John: Real quick, the chairs that you have around the fire pit, for anyone who's watching it, how did you decide on those chairs?

Jeremy: I've actually seen you guys have these same chairs. Not, well, I didn't buy them knowing you guys, I've just seen after the fact that you guys do these same chairs.

John: Yeah. I noticed that most of like the higher end sort of area means ones that are doing better, we're using a lot of those exact same chairs. And so I told the onboarding team, then they started buying all of those chairs for our specific markets. They just show up under, in my opinion, then the Adirondacks chairs. Now the Adirondacks chairs, yeah, they're probably more comfortable, but these are just like, they're the new style, let's say, that shows off really well.

Jeremy: Yeah. They're modern. I normally do the Pollywood Adirondacks just because they don't wither. Like you don't have to replace them.

John: Yeah. Those are, yeah. These things you have to replace every like couple of years.

Jeremy: Hot tub. We put on a little hot tub pad with gravel under it, but the little steps there. Got the nice sunset photo here with the paper. You guys on Spotify, sorry, if you can't see this, just imagine beauty.

John: What was pretty good too. I actually like it.

Jeremy: So it doesn't really show anything off other than the amenities.

John: Those, yeah.

Jeremy: Yeah. And the inside of the house, we did a pretty inexpensive, so we did renovate all the bathrooms, made them modern.

John: Real quick, strong suggestion to not show off your bathrooms and bedrooms as the first thing when you walk into the home. Like reordering the, not trying to, what I'm saying is that we're looking at the outside, we're looking at all this awesome stuff, and then we're looking at parts of the home for the next, like...

Jeremy: We didn't get good. So it's an A-frame with vaulted ceilings, but they like just did not take. And it's so hard to get photographers out here. This house is in the sticks. Like that's what's, and that's what I thought was a natural advantage, was like this house was so in the middle of nowhere that no one's going to buy another one. But this, yeah, this probably should be the next photo.

John: I'm assuming the fact that it took 46 photos to get to this one.

Jeremy: All right. My notes are open. My notes are open. I got my to do is 46 or five or something. Just, I don't know.

John: You kind of want to, like my opinion, if I'm going through these photos and we just saw all that cool stuff outside in the game room, and then we get into the house, I know you have beds, I know they look like bedrooms and they look like beds. Show me the living room, the common space. Show me those things.

Jeremy: Yeah. I don't get why they just did not take a lot of photos of the A-frame area, which they should have. This was definitely a huge selling point for the house.

John: Best ROI, man, photos. I said this. If I was you, I mean, if you just got like string lights, if I just added some string, like this property is so good. String lights and maybe a pool. You already have a pool table in the garage. Like I said, I don't really have a lot of suggestions. And the photos aren't terrible. You could do better, but they're not terrible by any means.

Jeremy: The one we're actually doing this week. And then I actually talked to you and asked you for your opinion, which it helps to have a friend like John. And I hope to not share too much of my stuff right now.

I'll tell you that the issue that I did with this house, or not the issue, but like where I was wrong with like assumptions, which is like, sometimes you're just, I don't know, if there's no data points to suggest something, it might be because it's just not a thing.

This house is like five minutes from Western Carolina University in this town called Kilohe, which I didn't know anything about this town or anything. And I was just like, I came to, it's a big university. There's like 11,000 undergrads, and there was just no like cool looking short-term rentals in the area. There's random houses that do like okay, but there's no like cabins, there's no hot tubs, there's nothing like that. So I assumed that was like, all right, there has to be people visiting their kids. They're totally going to pay three, 400 bucks to stay in a cabin. Oh, for a week or on the weekend.

Like we had, and then it's been two, about then over a year. I think we've had one guest the entire time that is at all affiliated with the university.

John: Like, I'm not putting it down. I understand how you got to that assumption, but I'm not surprised, like after hearing about it, just because I actually used to have an Airbnb. My first Airbnb was my house that I lived in, that was close to a university, and I lived in like a city market, right? And when you're in a city at an Airbnb within the city, it's very close to the university, it kind of makes sense that way. But you're just going to like tour a university, you don't necessarily need to stay at a cabin, right?

Jeremy: Yeah.

John: You're just going to kind of like stay and move it. What I would actually say, and this is for anybody who's thinking about this, when it comes to universities, if you're going to go for a university that's nearby, do a small romantic cabin that the people that are in college that are dating can rent out over the weekend as their cute little getaway. You know what I mean? Cause that's the age group that is not going to trash your house and probably willing to spend the money that you want to be able to make it. But then again, I don't think I'd ever personally try and target college students in any of my listings.

Jeremy: And I stay like my, and John, I'll take your thoughts on this, but I'd say, I don't want to say like I got lucky because I used my brain and I thought ahead of time, but back in 2020, when I started buying, I was like, I think a few years from now, right now COVID, people want to get out of their house, they want to go to these rural areas or scenic places. Who knows if that's going to reverse the order, but regardless, I think that group family travel is going to become a thing that's bigger and bigger over time, and is also something that no matter the economic situation, like folk are going to still.

And I think your guys' portfolio for the most part is really geared towards like multiple families traveling together and wanting all of that resort experience under one roof or in the backyard. Am I wrong? Or is that kind of like the high level target clientele amongst your portfolio?

John: If you want to summarize, yes. It's slightly different depending on some markets and some locations within those markets, but for the most part, that is the main person that we're going after.

Yeah. Like, it's a good cabin. And you also followed the trend at the time, which was like a remote cabin, which is exactly what people are looking for within that cabin. It's doing fine.

Jeremy: It's doing very well. I'm not saying it's not doing well. It is. We bought it for 429K, it should pull in a hundred this year. So it's doing well.

I was just, I had an assumption. Like my investment thesis was not like, hey, there's this Thompson area that have these amenities. It was like, I know what a mountain cabin should look like. Like a mountain cabin 200 miles away I may have used as a comp. I didn't use one two miles away. But it was, hey, I think that there's going to be folk coming to this area because it's a university, and that's why this place is absolutely going to crush. It has crushed, but not for the reasons that I thought it would crush. It's crushed because it's a good listing.

John: Yeah, it's a good listing.

Jeremy: Yeah, it's remote. And that's why I'm not worried to show it, because you're just not going to find a unique 3000 square foot A-frame anywhere near there. It's just, there's a dozen or, they're sorry, they're, I don't know, they're a terminology for just very rare.

John: Very rare. Yeah.

Jeremy: I don't know what the terminology is.

John: What did you learn from that when it comes to your thesis, right? So like the next time you went and got a property, how has it changed your opinion when you think about how you're going to get one?

Jeremy: Yeah. I would just say, if you're going to make an assumption that's not based in facts, like data you can see, it's probably not right.

And I'll give it another example from my portfolio, like right here, and I'll show you this house. And again, I don't really care to show, because there's just no houses for sale here, and if they are, they're way too expensive where no one looking here is going to make money. So I will share it. This is a house.

John: Any secrets, right?

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly. Full transparency. But yeah, this is another property. And I've also showed this to John and asked what he would do. And we're doing photos again on Thursday. We got this listing up. We bought the house in November and we got the listing up right before New Year's. And we just wanted to get it up. Like we wanted to get the New Year's booking. And if you look, you can tell it's unfinished because of what's back here.

John: Yeah. For anyone who's on Spotify, the hot tub is not unpacked.

Jeremy: Exactly. Exactly. So this was back in December, and since then we have added a deck here. So there's a deck that comes all the way out to the hot tub. We've added a deck all the way out to the end of the porch on the other side.

John: Is the deck, does the hot tub sit on top of the deck, or does the deck wrap around the sit in the...

Jeremy: So the thing is we've been renting this thing the whole time. So we actually put the hot tub right here next to the steps, so that, cause the deck literally has only been there for a week or a couple of weeks at this point.

John: Okay.

Jeremy: We could theoretically pick up the deck and now put it on the, or pick up the hot tub and put it on the deck. But at this point we've already done the electrical, it's going to stay where it is. Now, talking to this, having this conversation, we should have somehow had the deck like come out to it where people could have sat on it or something like that. For next time. It is what it is.

John: Yeah, exactly. You win some, you lose some. It is what it is.

Jeremy: But at the backyard, what I liked about this property compared to like all the other properties around here was none of them had a flat backyard. This is like one of the only lake houses with a flat backyard. And like my thesis on this house, which we're going to see, is that you can't really add the cornhole, the volleyball to any of the other properties, like no one has a flat backyard. So my thought is like, if we add all those things, it's going to do nuts, because it's the only one where you're going to have photos where you're going to show all the little things that John talked about earlier.

John: So this is what I look for in all the homes that we're trying to buy, is a competitive advantage, right? Something that just gives us an ability to stand out in comparison to everybody else that's out there. And if you're looking at a property and almost every home is the same, but then one has a massive flat backyard, it's like, that's an amazing thing to have for an Airbnb, because it just allows you to out-compete everybody else.

Jeremy: Yeah. This makes a ton of sense.

John: And we actually talked about this property a couple of times now. And you asked me, you're like, hey, should I put a pickleball court in here, or what do you think? And was that right? You were thinking pickleball?

Jeremy: Yeah. I was like, well, what do you think the ROI of a pickleball court?

John: Cause like, I just personally, I'm not going to lie, I want a pickleball court. Like, I've been trying to push for a pickleball court in like all of the Techvestor homes. And then we just had an offsite meeting where we all got together, and there's a pickleball court in the backyard. And we played for like three, four days straight, like just constantly. Everyone, we're having like little tournaments back and forth. Turns out I'm not very good at pickleball in comparison to everyone else on the Techvestor team, but there's still so much fun. And anyways, they're a ton of fun. But what was it going to cost you? Like $15,000?

Jeremy: Yeah. Something probably even more than that, cause it's not completely level. It is a little bit hilly, unfortunately.

John: Yeah. Well, we had discussed, I was like, hey, let's say 20 grand into a pickleball court, or you take that 20 grand and spread it across a whack load of amenities and fill up this entire backyard and kind of give people a variety of different things to be able to do. And what did you decide to do?

Jeremy: Yeah, we held off. Granted, I'm also buying another house, deploying capital in that. But yeah, we held off. We're going to do, I just went on Amazon, I ordered probably $2,000 worth of like outdoor games, string lights, stuff like that, and we're going to get drone photos. So we're going to take new photos with the decks. Also we finished the game room in the garage. So we've really been focusing on amenities.

And it's been like, this has been a weird property for me. Cause I've essentially held back like July's price, where I think we're going to be able to get it after these photos, but I know for a fact with the current photos, we're not going to get the thousand, $2,000 a night in July.

John: Yeah. So here's another question for you. Can you close the photos for a second? I just want to see, how many guests does this host?

Jeremy: 16 plus.

John: Okay. And then how many?

Jeremy: Most of my properties that we own are like 12 plus, or at least 12 up to like in the twenties.

John: Yeah. I like the strategy. Here's my pet peeve that I'm just going to point out real quick. How many seats do you have around that fire pit?

Jeremy: Not enough. I don't know.

John: One thing that always gets me. Now, I will give you credit, cause I know you have a ridiculous amount of seating for like stools around the kitchen.

Jeremy: Yeah. Don't forget that.

John: Yeah. I remember when I saw that I was going to give you sh*t about the dining table, and I was like, oh wait, no, he's got a crazy amount of seating around there. And then you even have a nice large couch too. So I'm like, he knows what he's doing. But I always just want to point out the around the fire pit, unless you have a bunch of like other cheaper foldable chairs that people can use and whatnot.

Jeremy: But we don't. And also if I'm going to give myself crap, I don't like this. We need to make this nicer.

John: I would say that those chairs there, they're good quality. You just don't have any color. There's nothing you need in there. You need like maybe a, I don't know, neon light right across that A-frame along the wood part there that said the name of the place, that they're painted this black, like just to make it look crisper.

Jeremy: And I ordered a TV to like put up here and string lights. I don't know, our crew just said like it just gets absorbently wet over there somehow, which...

John: And maybe some books on the counter, and that'll pop and give it color. I sound like an interior designer right now, but...

Jeremy: I know you're totally right. I got to get on it. We're actually doing our photos while we have guests. Like we've literally had guests here while we've been adding a deck, while we've been doing all these things, we just work in between guests. So I accepted their, like this last guest requested the book, and I told them, I was like, hey, we're going to have photos Thursday. It's going to be predominantly outside the home, but you have to be cool with it for us to accept you.

And I want to say my assumption with this house was like, there's a casino, a Caesar's Palace that's being built, that just launched like a temporary casino.

John: Okay.

Jeremy: 20, 25 minutes away. And my assumption for the last two years was like, things are going to go gangbusters once this casino opens. And it was just an assumption. It was an assumption, and things are going well. I underwrote it as if it's going to do well, regardless of a casino.

John: Okay.

Jeremy: So it's not, but like casino's open and nothing's happened. So it's like, if you make an assumption on something that just doesn't have like a clear data point already existing for it, then you're just making an assumption.

So like, for people who are like, oh, we're going to buy in this area and they're opening this like amusement park or something, and because this amusement park's coming here, all of a sudden short-term rental demand is going to increase like a thousand percent. To be frank, you can't make any of those assumptions. Like in my experience, unless there's cold, hard data already existing, you got to throw it out the window or take it with a grain of salt.

John: Yeah. You have way more experience with that than I do. I have never done that. So I'm going to take your word for it. Get the, like a logic of wanting to use an assumption and thinking that things are going to change as whatever happens, but you've experienced it twice now, just the most two, two things. And like you said, it doesn't go that well.

Jeremy: So granted, what's going well, so I don't want to say like, no, I made a huge mistake. I just had a big part of my investment thesis wasn't rooted in the data and or existing data, and so far. So it's a learn. But honestly, also in my experiences, you make a f*cking sick property and it does well, regardless of the data.

John: Yeah. You can put together something that's really nice, right? You're going to do well now, like, as long as you're in a place that has demand, for the most part.

This is actually, man, I feel like there's a lot of stuff that I say, and I'm getting into doing like joint venture deals, right? So if anyone's listening to this, wants to join venture deal together, reach on out. But the thing is that I say a lot of stuff, but I have to start backing it up. Like I'm doing it with Techvestor, and it's great to see it through Techvestor and like the way that we're performing really well. It's awesome, right? So I have all this proof through Techvestor, but I want to be doing a lot of this stuff personally, kind of like how you are and you have all these different properties.

And I'm like, man, I want to put together, I always want to take some of these risks that I keep talking about and really put together, kind of like how you're going to be going into a city that doesn't have an amazing listing, but you're going to put together an amazing listing and give people kind of what they want in that market. I'm like, that's exactly what I want to do. Cause I know how to do it and I know how to execute it. And so I just want to make that happen. So I'm hoping.

Jeremy: In a way you can and can't take more risk when it's like you on the line.

John: Correct. Like, yeah, right. You have the choice to do it, right? But then it's your money you're putting on the line more than anything, right?

Jeremy: You're falling on your own sword. And I would say like when I've raised money from investors, literally everything had to be like underwritten to a T, and like, no, oh, I think that this could happen, and if this happens, it's going to. I ignored, even if I thought that in my head, it was pure, hey, this property here is doing this. For example, when we initially started on this lake, it was like, hey, I'm managing a property on this lake that's the same size, that's making this much. As long as we have a listing that's just as good, we're going to make about as much. This pencils out.

Again, for anyone not watching, the places I have properties, we bought a while ago. Stay away.

John: You really don't want anyone to work anymore. I don't believe them. Somebody to check those numbers.

Jeremy: Yeah. No, actually to be completely honest though, cause we started on this lake and then the number stopped working. And then I moved to Florida, South Florida on the East coast. And you still find the numbers can work there. But then I moved to the Smoky mountains because the numbers were really good there. And these were like numbers where they're good no matter what you do. Like you could have been 20, 21, and the numbers would have still been good. Now the numbers are good if you are in that, yeah.

John: Like we said, that top 10 percentile performer.

Jeremy: Checking every possible box you could possibly check. Having John help you out and give you the, have him on your podcast so he can tell you what to do. Just start a podcast.

John: This is not even a podcast. You just start having me on here.

Jeremy: Yeah. This is a fake podcast, actually.

Wow. This is probably the longest I've ever went. And John and I, when we talk, we can literally go all day. But I guess maybe we should wrap this up here. But John, I want you to tell everyone, what is the most tangible pro tip you can think of?

John: Okay. So when you're getting started with Airbnb, or even if you are an Airbnb, right, if you're going to a new market, whatever, there's a sort of three step process. First is regulation. Make sure you know those regulations inside and out. Don't do anything until you know your regulations. Then step two is the data. And then step three is the actual operations, right?

So make sure you know that you can operate in the place. Then understand the data inside and out, so you're ensuring that the property that you're getting is actually going to be profitable rather than just hoping and guessing. And then once you have the property, that's when you can start worrying about like, how are you going to message the guests and how are you going to clean the home? You don't really need to worry about those things until you've figured out what property is the absolute best thing to purchase.

And if you are considering that and you're trying to understand the data and you're getting confused by it, I have three free courses on YouTube that break down Airbnb data and help you understand it. And the absolute best one is the Profit Map Masterclass. So if you go to my YouTube channel and go to my playlist, you'll see those three different courses. And the Profit Map Masterclass is what teaches you how to understand Airbnb data through and through to be able to find a profitable property. Cause that's what I do all day, every day. So it's not just one tip. It's a free resource that you can use to be able to master the data game.

Jeremy: Got it. So essentially it's one step at a time. First step, understand the data, understand what makes the property profitable. And what is the best tool? There are two best tools to doing that. One, Profit Maps, John. Also, if you want to quickly run the numbers, quick plug, this podcast is brought to you by BNBCalc.

John: Okay.

Jeremy: And then obviously, I don't think a lot of people, they have the tendency to like really overthink things and like, wait, what if, what about if a guest messages me at 11 o'clock PM and I'm already asleep? All right, that's a later problem. All right? Right now, let's just find you a good property.

John: Exactly. Just focus on the data. Put all of your effort into the data. And if you do that, you'll ensure that you're getting a property in the right location, right spot, with data backing it up, and they'll feel confident about actually purchasing it.

And I'm going to do a little plug here. If you aren't confident about it, I just released a service which allows me to do a property valuation for you. So if you're considering buying the property, we'll analyze the data for you. We'll come up with an assumption of what we believe that property will make based off of the data. And then we'll also tell you exactly how to maximize the revenue of that property. That's either going to give you a hundred percent confidence to go buy that property, or to walk away from it and try and look for a better one, to ensure that you're actually getting a profitable property before spending a hundred to $200,000 on a home, right? So just learn the data inside and out. And if you need a professional's opinion, reach out.

Jeremy: How much, just out of curiosity, how much is that last service? And then also where can they find you other than YouTube, that they want to reach out to?

John: That service costs $500 per property, and it's a 24 to 48 hour turnaround time. And then if you are looking for that, you can see my name right here is The Airbnb Data Guy on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. And in my Linktree, you can find the link that will provide you the property valuation order form. Does that make sense? Go to my Linktree in any of my socials and you'll be able to find the ability to buy that.

Jeremy: Beautiful. All right, guys. Yeah, definitely check John's stuff. You said I'm legit before, which I appreciate that. Definitely a lot of actors out on the worldwide web. But John is, he's legit. He is the best in the game. I really have talked to so many people, and in terms of being able to just identify a winner and then obviously reverse engineer, when I say a winner, cash flowing, profitable, lucrative, short-term rental property, and then being able to reverse engineer and figure out what makes it a winner, there's nobody better than John. So definitely give him a look, and it provides a lot of value that I'm obviously taking notes on myself.

Yeah, John, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming.

John: Appreciate it, man. Thanks. Have a good one.

Jeremy: All right. Sounds good. Until next time.