Latest / REL Freedom Podcast / Lauren Keen Aumond - How I Quit My 9-5 Job From Real Estate Investing

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Lauren Keen Aumond - How I Quit My 9-5 Job From Real Estate Investing · REL Freedom Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I definitely have a bias towards action.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's bit me in the butt yet, but I think it potentially could at some point.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: There's so many people that you see that have been analyzing deals and thinking about getting into real estate.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: For the whole time I've been in it which, let's say, since 2017, since I had that first true rental I mean, it's been six, almost seven years of people I know analyzing, analyzing, analyzing and never acting, and the number of transactions that I have done and bought and sold and traded up in that time.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It's really set us up really well.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: So definitely you need to act.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, mike Swenson.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Real Freedom Show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, mike Swenson.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Let's get some real freedom together.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Hello everybody, welcome to Real Freedom, talking about real estate, leveraged freedom, building time and financial freedom through different opportunities in real estate, and today we're gonna talk about mostly short-term rentals.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: We've got Lauren Keen-Aumond on here and she specializes in short-term rentals in the Tampa area and up the West Coast of Florida, recently just quit her job and is now doing this, as well as a few other things, full-time.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: She is the host of the Dalton is Easy podcast, also have House Money podcast, and then we also talked offline about investing in a lot of stocks too, which isn't necessarily the norm for people that invest in real estate, but excited to hear more about your story.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Welcome, lauren, to the show.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Mike, I could not have described myself better.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I'm a details guy so I like to talk in detail.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: So yeah, lauren, why don't you just share about your background, how you got into real estate and kind of what you're working on now?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I got into real estate with my first real estate purchase, right, I mean, the first thing I did was bought a primary home.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I did that right out of school.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It was the same year I graduated from the University of Florida in 2012.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: And I got a roommate which made me like a landlord right away, which I didn't think of it that way at all.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: But buying in 2012 was obviously a good time to buy in retrospect At the time.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: What I try to tell people is it seemed terrible, like everything at just more than halved in value, and it was actually a scary time to buy.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So that's how I bought, naturally got some appreciation, was able to get rid of most of my mortgage payment at that young age and at the same time, I got into sales.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I started in retail, then I went into accounting for a year and then I got into sales, and so I increased my skill set, increased my W2 income quite a bit, and so in my mid 20s I was looking at a good amount of equity in my house.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I was maxing out my 401K and my IRA and I had a little money left over, and so I kind of circled background and thought, all right, I did a pretty good job accidentally with my money, not paying a ton of attention to it.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I wonder what I could do if I started thinking about it more.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: And so talk about why short term rentals, how you got launched into that.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: So at first I was thinking, ok, I'm going to do long term rentals.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Growing up, my parents had their primary home and one rental property, and actually that rental property my mom bought at 24.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Right about the time she met my dad, and then my dad was like, that's cool, we're not getting any more ever again.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: So my parents had their primary home and the one rental, and so at first that was my goal.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I bought another primary home and I was 27.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And I rented the first one out that I had bought at 23.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: And I thought, check, I'm done, golf course, community, bmw, six figure job, hot husband, well, boyfriend at the time right with also almost a six figure job.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I'm like man, this is it, like I have arrived.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: And then I did a little bit of math and I was like, hmm, can't retire till 55.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And we were doing well, you know, objectively.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: And so that's when I started thinking back to house hacking, which is when you buy a property, live in part of it, rent the rest of it out.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: So we're like, okay, cool, we're going to buy a house with an above garage apartment, we're going to long-term rent.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: That doesn't take too long in Florida, though, to realize I don't need to get a long-term tenant.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: People want to come here all the time for vacation.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do a vacation rental, and so that's the path that we went down.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: We ended up moving out of the golf course community to you know, sometimes I still think about that place.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: But we bought a bed and breakfast it was actually commercial bed and breakfast at the time moved into the house and then rent two accessory dwelling units out, which are, you know, little separate cottages in our backyard.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: We rent them on Airbnb and VRBO and directly and on a short-term basis.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: It was just a natural thing.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: It was already a bed and breakfast, it was already being used for vacationers, and so we just kind of continued that.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: We certainly made a ton of updates to the property and the property was only, I think, being booked directly.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: It wasn't on Airbnb and VRBO.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: So we went ahead and did that.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: So that's how we got into short-term rentals, and that was in 2020, which wasn't a great time to be in short-term rentals because they were shut down, but we took the plunge anyways.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: So then you were I mean assuming managing it yourself, because you weren't on Airbnb and VRBO, there wasn't necessarily a ton to do in terms of marketing, because people just knew of you and came back to you.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Or how did you market?
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I was talking about the lady before us.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: We did immediately put it on Airbnb and VRBO.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, you did Got it.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she was just getting direct booking, so we knew there was an opportunity to increase revenue basically immediately by doing that.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: But yes, we managed it ourselves.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: We were renting our camper also on this property because there was already electrical and sewer for that, because there had been a mobile home also here, which this sounds like a big property.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: You had two ADUs and a camper plus your house on the same.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, it sounds large.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It's a very normal size, actually kind of small lot.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So it sounds large but it's not.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: So we did rent the camper for a while.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: The camper has paid for itself twice.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit of extra work, so we've just decided all right, good job, camper, putting you out to pasture, it's just ours now.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: But the two ADUs they basically pay for the whole property, which is great, and we did that for about from January 2021 is when we launched to June 2021.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And that's when we bought a duplex and we put one side of that duplex up as a short-term rental and put the other side up as a long-term rental, actually kept the tenants that were in there.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: And so once we expanded to that, that's when we really systematized.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: That's when I got a property management software.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: That's when we put in the locks that could set themselves using the lock software, got a bookkeeper, really engaged our accountants more and got QuickBooks and all of those things.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: So once we got to three, four short-term rentals is really when we systematized much more.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: And at that time all of them in the Tampa area, or did you then start to move up the coast?
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those were all Tampa.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So that was yeah.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: So we launched in January 2021 with the ADUs, and camper added the duplex in June of 2021.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: That's when we bought it.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: We didn't launch it to September 2021, which, by the way, is about the worst time you could launch a short-term rental in Florida and then we added a 16-year apartment building in December 2021.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And so that is when we started.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Really, that was that's up the coast and we started with three short-term rentals, three long-term rentals there.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: One more tenant has since left, so now it's four and two, which brings us to a total, and now that duplex has completely flipped over to both short-term rentals as well.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: So that brings us to eight short-term rentals.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: We bought another duplex in 2023.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, that's all long-term.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: So we have eight short-term rentals and four long-term rentals right now.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: So for that six unit, how intentional was that?
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: To go to a commercial property?
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Location-wise, how intentional was it?
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Or were you're just like we're just finding something that's close?
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Or I'm curious to know your decision-making.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: You know, I work with real estate agents full-time.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Most of them are residential agents and I just hear all these why they can't do something, why they can't do something, how they don't know enough when they're residential real estate agents.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: So for somebody that didn't work in real estate full-time, I'm curious to hear, like, how did you educate yourself, how did you make those decisions to move forward with making the leap and getting a property like that?
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Well, early on in 2017, when I bought my second primary and rented my first primary out, that's when I decided I am like a landlord now.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I'm going to listen to podcasts, I'm going to read books, I'm going to understand numbers, and you know, there were some other transactions kind of in the middle there that I skipped over before we got to 2020 with the short-term rentals.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: But I have a finance degree.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I sold business finance training for seven years.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I took the whole graduate certificate in financial planning from Boston University, a little bit analytical mind, pretty decent with numbers not as good as my engineering husband, but fine.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: And so we're good at analyzing deals and we have basically go or no go metrics and we were looking for small multi-families.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: It was pretty early on that I realized it's better to have more units on one plot of land than one.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I think, single-family homes are great investments in terms of appreciation, but my goal was always to be able to leave my sales job if I didn't like it anymore or if something, if I had a manager I didn't like, or the company sold, or I started to hate the product, or whatever happened.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I always wanted to have the opportunity to leave my job, which means I can't pay my bills with appreciation.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: I needed cash flow, and so I decided small multi-families very early on, and so we had bought the duplex on the water that I mentioned in the middle of 2021.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And we were like all right, let's repeat that, let's find another small multi.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And it just happened that it was a six unit.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Typical small multi-family, which is typically something that you can get a conventional mortgage on, is a duplex, triflex or quad.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: That's sort of what I had in mind.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: We just happened to find this six unit apartment building which a lot of the super professional folks they want bigger than that.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going to go over four and you're going to need a commercial loan, they want to go way over four.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: They don't usually want six.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: But we saw it.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: It's located in the same county as my grandma and my uncle and my uncle's a handyman, and so I felt like we had a little extra layer of protection there, with family being close by, and it just didn't.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: We weren't put off by the fact that we were sort of looking for a duplex and it was a six unit.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: So we bought it for $5.85 plus a spare lot on the street for $120.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: So we sort of paid $705 for it and we did a 1031 exchange of a duplex that I had into it and a seller financed at 5% with a seven year balloon.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: So that was kind of a fun deal because we had the 1031 exchange and the seller financing all at once.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: But yeah, we just had our numbers and it was a home run.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: I mean that deal, I mean it's support, I mean when other properties aren't doing well or when we bring new units online, when we renovate anything, it all comes from that property.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Basically it really was a home run and we hit our numbers and we just acted as decisively as we could, knowing we had to sell the property to buy it.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Preston Pysh, they also can't outlaw them, so we have the state licensing there and that does require annual inspections and things like that.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think we had to put a backflow preventer on our hose bib this year.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: That was the one thing they made us do with our second inspection.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so we have the licensing through that.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: It's not.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: It's I want to say it's like $200 a year.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: It's not too bad.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: It's interesting to me because I'm in Minnesota.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: We have investors here.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: In terms of landlord laws, we're certainly not the strictest, but we're not the most lenient.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Somewhere in the middle I hear a lot of investors talk about investor-friendly states.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: They name them all off and you've got to be there.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Then I hear on the short-term rental side like oh, what's the next hot market?
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Are you going to be in Disneyland or not?
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: It's like you can find a really awesome opportunity in a spot where not a lot of people would consider.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be the hotbed and you can still have a really big success story without being the hot state.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Now Florida is one of the better investor-friendly states but at the same time, the hot market.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: You're not in Disneyland and you're still making money on a short-term rental.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: It's just interesting to hear people's perspectives on things.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I would never own near Disneyland.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: That's a terrible idea.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Everybody goes there and they think I want a free Disney vacation.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to buy a place so it's free when I come stay there.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: The competition is insane.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: The places are themed and beautiful and stacked with amenities and still too cheap.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Just side note, that would not be what I would do.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I think of short-term rental markets really in four categories, one being national tourism hotspots, of which national, maybe even international, is what I would think of Orlando.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Then I think of more the regional tourism hotspots.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: That's what I like.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like within two hours of a major airport.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: My 16-apartment building is two hours from Jacksonville, two hours from Orlando, two hours from Tampa.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: We can get any of those people, but it's also going to be a lot of people that are driving.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: I also have this hunch.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: We'll see if it comes true in a recession-type environment that people that can't afford to go to Orlando maybe they'll stulp, drive somewhere nearby and come to my areas.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I think those really expensive places will probably be hurting more.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: You can also have just a metropolitan urban area, something like maybe Nashville that you consider that tourism, or something in the Chicago area, places where people aren't just going for tourism, they're going for business travel, they're going to visit family and things like that.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: If you think of the fourth, it would be sort of miscellaneous or rural.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: You're in an area where sometimes people come.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's cheap, but you buy a place and you rent it out.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I'm a fan of the regional places where people can literally drive to.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: I think that goes back to for people looking for places to invest.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: You also don't have to overthink it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: You use the decision where it's like hey, I have family there.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: If something came up, you've got some eyes on the ground that can help figure things out.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: You don't have to overthink it.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: I see so many investors that think like I have to pick the perfect place or I'm not going to do anything.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: It's about just getting started and doing something.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: You can maybe get a little bit more strategic, you can get a little bit better, but it's okay.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: You're going to learn so much by doing it versus deciding, oh, I can't find that perfect place, I'm just going to do nothing and sit on my hands.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: I definitely have a bias towards action.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's bit me in the butt yet, but I think it potentially could at some point.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: There's so many people that you see that have been analyzing deals and thinking about getting into real estate.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: For the whole time I've been in it which, let's say, since 2017, since I had that first true rental I mean it's been six, almost seven years of people I know analyzing, analyzing, analyzing and never acting.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: The number of transactions that I have done and bought and sold and traded up in that time.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: It's really set us up really well.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Definitely, you need to act.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Nowadays.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I could easily my uncle's not a huge part of our business.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I've built a ton of relationships in that area.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: If he said, lauren getting too old for this, you're like okay, no problem, uncle Lee, you can, you're out, I got this.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't necessarily now knowing what I know and having.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I mean at the time I had maybe, maybe, maybe, had 100 stays, probably not Probably like 50 guest stays at that point.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Now, two years later, I have almost 600.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: So the amount of experience that I have now versus then, it's invaluable and you don't get that if you wait, the only way that you can really get in.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: To get these learning lessons is to actually get in.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I will say I'm not a fan of just buy whatever.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: If you lose money, consider it learning.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Your deal should at least pencil.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Let me put it that way.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Strategic moves In terms of managing.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Then what would you say for people that maybe haven't done property management before and they think, oh, I've got a higher property manager for short-term rentals.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: How would you help them make a decision on whether they do it themselves, hire somebody, some sort of hybrid model?
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: What's your experience been with that?
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Well, you should definitely analyze your deals.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Assume that you're going to have property management, assume that you have that expense so that you can do it.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I sort of think why not try it yourself first?
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: If you don't like it or you're bad at it, then turn it over, get your feet wet under you.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: You need to be a very organized person to be able to manage short-term rentals, long-term rentals I think there's a lot of leeway there.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: You can get by If you don't hear from somebody.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: It's like on the third, when rents late or fifth or whatever.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: You can look and see if people deposit everything or not.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: You give them a call.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Then maybe once a month, one of your tenants calls you and they have a maintenance issue and then you set that up.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: It's very reactive, almost short-term, mental.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: You really need to be thinking about it as a business and thinking about your business every single day.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: You need standard operating procedures.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: For example, if a hurricane is coming towards Florida, I need to know what I'm going to do.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I need to be proactively reaching out to all these guests and we need to have a plan in place.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I need to have very detailed communications to guests about checking in and where to park and what the Wi-Fi is.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: I am eliminating some communications that are coming at me.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I need to have very good, very accurate listings that really depict both the good and the bad of every property.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Nobody is surprised when they get there.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: You need to be thinking about your business and at least doing something in that business every single day.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: If you're the kind of person that can be organized and can be proactive is a little bit type A, is a little bit of a control freak is a little bit of nobody can do it as good as me then I think those are the kind of people that should manage short-term rentals themselves.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: You do need to be able to manage people also.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: You have to have obviously good customer service skills with the guests, but you also need to be able to manage your cleaners, especially landscapers, hot tub people, snow removal people I assume I don't know Do we do that.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Pest control yeah, I don't.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: But pest control.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: You need to have all of these people and you need to also be a good manager and a good leader of them.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I feel like start by managing it yourself and then pivot away if you need to.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: You mentioned about highlighting the good and the bad about the property.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: So people have a realistic expectation.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Talk about that, maybe on the bad side, because I know as a real estate agent, we hire professional photographers to make the property look as good as possible.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of times we go into a property and we're like, ooh, it doesn't look as good as the pictures.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Now, for us that's a little bit of a win because we get people in the door.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: But in terms of short term rentals, you don't want people to be disappointed when they walk in because you do have great professional photos, which is one thing you should have.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Talk about painting that realistic picture to create realistic expectations.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you guys will be out there virtually staging stuff too and really pulling bait and switches on people sometimes.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: No, I'm just kidding If a unit is upstairs, I want people to know.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: A lot of people come to Florida.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: They're older, their knees aren't great, what have you?
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: They need to know if a unit is upstairs.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: They need to know about parking Wi-Fi, whether there's a grill or not, whether there's.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: I have a couple of places that have no in-unit laundry.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: It's because they're really small and I legitimately don't know where I'd put a washer dryer on that property.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: But I want to make sure that it's very upfront that we don't have laundry.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I want people to know we don't have currigs.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: You're getting Mr Coffee, you're getting drip coffee.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I do provide the coffee, but you don't want anybody walking and being like, oh, this is not what I thought it would be.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: You want them to walk in and be like this is exactly what I thought.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I have one unit that has two bedrooms but both bedrooms are upstairs.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I need people to know that there's a bathroom downstairs but not a bedroom.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I had somebody book and they didn't realize that and then they had to sleep on the couch.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, well, I'm sorry, it says it in there.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Those are just some of the examples of things that I want people to know.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Because obviously that dictates the reviews, which really drives your business, and you don't want people to be disappointed or I wouldn't even say disappointed, but missed expectations and then that leads them to maybe leave a negative review.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Talk about that reviews process making sure that people leave with a good experience.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Hopefully get that good review to drive future business.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: A lot of it is really related to the property, a little bit of it is who you are as a host and the listing and the guest communications.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: But some of it, like my 16-day apartment building, it's just a really good-looking property.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: It's remodeled nicely, it's decorated nicely.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: If I do say so myself, it's just beautiful and it's a really good price.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: People, there is a category of reviews that is value.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: But I think, no matter what you do, that value is going to seep into the overall review as well.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: And that property it just gets good reviews all the time, every time.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: A couple of my other properties, even though they're good, budget friendly things, they're just, objectively, the buildings and the units are not as nice and they don't get as nice of reviews.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: But that said, that means I sometimes get fours right, like you basically get fives and fours and that's really all you should be getting.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: If you're getting anything outside of that, you need to fix what the problem is.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: If it's you, if it's your listings, if it's the furniture, I mean, even if it's the location, sell it Like you know.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: There's only.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: There's only so much you could.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: You can really do for location, obviously, but the other reviews are the lifeblood of your business.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: But in my personal portfolio it's like my nicest units get the nicest reviews.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: What are you thinking about in terms of the future?
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: You've grown quite a bit over these last two, three, four years.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Do you want to continue to just add more units?
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Do you want to hold pat with where you're at?
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Explore other locations?
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: The immediate goal was to leave my job, which I was able to do.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: The next goal is for my husband to leave his job.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: He is an owner of his engineering firm, so that makes things a little more difficult.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: It would be basically when the firm changes hands or he gets bought out.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: But that is the next goal and we probably, more so than adding, would maybe rebalance a little bit.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe we'd sell some properties that have really built up some equity over the last few years.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Try to trade up, get into bigger buildings probably.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Let's say, for example, I wanted to sell I have a duplex that's about $300,000 worth of equity and let's say, maybe I'll trade that up for a bigger apartment building, maybe a longterm rental, and maybe even get property management for something, depending on the size of it and maybe not in Florida, so I don't have to deal with the insurance issues we're dealing with here and get some diversification in the portfolio that way.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: But in the immediate future, for the next year or so, it's get back to stabilization.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: We had it another property this year, we flipped another unit this year and that required a remodel.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: So get back to stabilization, get through season.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I'm about to be pretty busy January through May and then a little bit in June and July as well.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: So get back to immediately stabilize and then potentially longer term rebalance a little bit and maybe diversify out of state.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: But I'm not sure.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Real estate agents are you tired of letting the busyness of life get in your way from achieving your real estate investing goals?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: I'm super excited to announce we've created the Real Freedom Investor Agent Tribe.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: It's a place for you to come, get educated and network with others so that you can make sure that you're hitting your real estate investment goals.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: So find out more on our website, realfreedomcom.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Click on the store link.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: We've got a membership.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: We've got a mastermind group and some private coaching as well.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Check it out.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: I've priced it super low.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: The goal is to get you and not have price be a determining factor to keep you from your goals.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: So come check it out, schedule a call with me and we're happy to see where your real estate journey is going to take.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: You Talk a little bit real quick just about the adulting is easy and house money.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: What you're doing outside of the short term rentals.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Adulting is easy started as a way for me to tell my sister about personal finance.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: She's 13 years younger than me, so I was a teenager when she was born, and now it's me interviewing experts in the personal finance space.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So the adulting is easy podcast has been around since October 2019.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: So just celebrated four years and that's just going strong.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Also on Twitter at adulting is easy Instagram and YouTube House money is a partnership with my friend and now business partner, Allen, and he and I sort of realized that all the content creators are basically reinventing the wheel and doing everything themselves and we're like let's join forces, and so I managed the house money podcast.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: There there's also interviews, but they're shorter and, rather than being personal finance experts, they're people involved in real estate and not just real estate investors.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: We interview a lot of people that are in the real estate space and kind of on real estate teams, if you will.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: So interior designer, lender, plumber rougher people like that and then we also discuss blogs and other real estate topics there.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: So I handle that, the podcast, Alan handles the newsletter.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: He's also written a few books, and then we have a long-term mental course and a short-term mental course as well, so that's something that was launched just in May, so obviously you're listeners like podcasts.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: If they want to listen to interview type stuff, general personal finance, they can definitely do.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Adulting is easy.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: But if you really want to deep dive into real estate, then the house money podcast is the way to go.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: It's cool to see people that you know building their own path and being able to leave a job and kind of design what you want to do and have real estate be part of the reason why you can stand on that leg by having that income coming in.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: So congrats to you and what you're doing.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Anything more?
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: I know you mentioned a couple handles and everything but anything more in terms of how people can find you.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, I'm.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: PalsMoneyMediacom.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: You can read the blog, sign up for the newsletter, check out our courses, contact us.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: That's really the main website.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Thank you, lauren, for coming on and sharing your story, and best of luck to you in the future.