Don't miss this episode of Unstoppable REI Wealth where Billy Alvaro interviews Matt Hays about his experiences in real estate. Matt talks about how he started in real estate and was doing fix and flips and wholesaling and how he transitioned in record time to short-term rentals. He also discusses the challenges he faced when the market changed that forced him to make this short-term rental pivot. This episode is packed with helpful tips for anyone looking to get into the real estate business. Don't miss it!The importance of using technology to maximize profits when renting out propertiesThe importance of having a long-term exit strategyThe importance of branding your businessThe importance of capturing email addresses from guestsThe importance of providing a five-star experience to guestsThe importance of taking an Airbnb master class KEY POINTS Approximately mentioned @ 00:00:32 In just the last year, Matt has brought in over a million dollars in net profit from his Airbnb business. Approximately mentioned @ 00:00:48 Matt breaks down the technology he uses, how he finds properties, and how he sets everything up for his Airbnb business. Approximately mentioned @ 00:01:21 The Airbnb Master Class is a one day event that covers everything you need to know to be successful in the Airbnb business, from scouting properties to running numbers to managing and stocking them. You'll also get access to the Airbnb community and monthly webinars. Approximately mentioned @ 00:08:08 To determine if a market is oversaturated, look at the number of Airbnb listings in the area relative to the population. If there are more listings than there are people who could potentially use them, then the market is likely oversaturated. Approximately mentioned @ 00:46:02 This episode of Unstoppable Real Estate Investing Wealth gives the blueprint to success for starting, growing, and scaling your real estate investing business. My mission is to give you, my listeners, the insider secrets for starting, growing, and scaling your real estate investing business so you can experience and live the unstoppable lifestyle. Approximately mentioned @ 00:46:31 The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many real estate investors to lose a lot of money. Billy Alvaro and Jason Medley discuss how to reset and become a "savage" in order to be successful in the current market. Connect with Matt: https://www.theairbnbeast.com/ And after that head on over to... https://easysell411.com https://billyalvaro.com https://billyssecrets.com Who knows maybe you will be our next partner? To get some neat (and FREE) Tools | Tips | Tricks to help you in REI!
Don't miss this episode of Unstoppable REI Wealth where Billy Alvaro interviews Matt Hays about his experiences in real estate. Matt talks about how he started in real estate and was doing fix and flips and wholesaling and how he transitioned in record time to short-term rentals. He also discusses the challenges he faced when the market changed that forced him to make this short-term rental pivot. This episode is packed with helpful tips for anyone looking to get into the real estate business. Don't miss it!
The importance of using technology to maximize profits when renting out properties
The importance of having a long-term exit strategy
The importance of branding your business
The importance of capturing email addresses from guests
The importance of providing a five-star experience to guests
The importance of taking an Airbnb master class
KEY POINTS
Approximately mentioned @ 00:00:32
In just the last year, Matt has brought in over a million dollars in net profit from his Airbnb business.
Approximately mentioned @ 00:00:48
Matt breaks down the technology he uses, how he finds properties, and how he sets everything up for his Airbnb business.
Approximately mentioned @ 00:01:21
The Airbnb Master Class is a one day event that covers everything you need to know to be successful in the Airbnb business, from scouting properties to running numbers to managing and stocking them. You'll also get access to the Airbnb community and monthly webinars.
Approximately mentioned @ 00:08:08
To determine if a market is oversaturated, look at the number of Airbnb listings in the area relative to the population. If there are more listings than there are people who could potentially use them, then the market is likely oversaturated.
Approximately mentioned @ 00:46:02
This episode of Unstoppable Real Estate Investing Wealth gives the blueprint to success for starting, growing, and scaling your real estate investing business. My mission is to give you, my listeners, the insider secrets for starting, growing, and scaling your real estate investing business so you can experience and live the unstoppable lifestyle.
Approximately mentioned @ 00:46:31
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many real estate investors to lose a lot of money. Billy Alvaro and Jason Medley discuss how to reset and become a "savage" in order to be successful in the current market.
Connect with Matt:
https://www.theairbnbeast.com/
And after that head on over to...
Who knows maybe you will be our next partner?
To get some neat (and FREE) Tools | Tips | Tricks to help you in REI!
Billy Alvaro 00:00:00 What is going on? I got a guest on. Coming on today. Mr. Matt Hays. Talked with him about investing in Airbnb. So this dude in the last 14-15 years been investing in real estate and, blew it up. I mean, the guy's been doing some really crazy things. But the economy turned this past year when the market shifted and he was selling a majority, if not all of his properties to hedge funds. And the hedge funds basically just pulledthe plug. So Matt, instead of him putting his head in the sand trying to figure out what not to do, he said, what the hell am I going to do here? He transferred his whole business from fix and flip and wholesale right over to Airbnb. Dudes bringing down over a million dollars a year net with his Airbnb business. Look, if you're looking to get into short term airbnbs, this boy breaks it down, gives the gold it's 45 minutes. The first 15 is about his transfer. Over the next half hour is all nuggets, bro. Like nuggets. The technology he uses, how he finds these houses, how he goes about, uh, getting him set up, like everything you need to do to get your Airbnb set up and pushed.
Billy Alvaro 00:01:05 This is the absolute podcast you're going to listen to.
Billy Alvaro 00:01:07 Hope you guys enjoy it.
Billy Alvaro 00:01:10 Welcome to Unstoppable real estate investing wealth. My name is Billy Alvaro, aka the Unstoppable BA. Former billion dollar mortgage banker gone bankrupt, turn professional real estate investor. For each week, you'll learn the tools, strategies, systems, and secrets myself and other highly successful real estate investing entrepreneurs use to start, grow, and scale their businesses, creating massive profits and how you can too. And we'll teach you how to put those profits to work so you no longer have to get ready to finally experience financial freedom and generational wealth. Now let's get started.
Billy Alvaro 00:01:49 What's up? What's up? Welcome back to another episode Unstoppable Rei wealth, bringing a heat, showing you guys how to stock, grow, and scale your real estate investing business. And in some cases, even maybe pivot vertical that you're going to get into in today's guest is right along those lines. I'm interviewing Matt Hays from St. Louis, kansas City. Where St. Louis?
Matt 00:02:09 St. Louis, Missouri. My man. Yeah.
Billy Alvaro 00:02:11 I'm like I see KC on here. That's what you're investing?
Matt 00:02:15 Yeah. St. Louis, Kansas City, some parts of Florida, stuff like that.
Billy Alvaro 00:02:20 So Matt, I'm,, looking forward to this interview because I know you were a big fix and flip guy and wholesale guy for a while.
Matt 00:02:28 That's right.
Billy Alvaro 00:02:29 Over the last year, you've done a complete switch ruski, where you're now doing like shit is short term rentals.
Matt 00:02:35 It is. Yeah. This year we got hit hard, man. I mean, we scaled up our team. Our goal was to do 300 transactions. We ended up doing,just north of half of that. And a big reason is because the number one buyer that we had was an institutional buyer. And so we were feeding them products, closing ten to twelve deals a month. The money was great. They're overpaying their demands. the renovations were just cheap crap, and we were throwing it in there and just turning these things we were buying houses on the MLS lipstick, selling to them, and making a pretty substantial profit. Well, Jesus, it was awesome for about 18 months, and then once we saw those interest rates start to jump up, they got nervous and the first thing they did was they sent price reductions on our existing contracts. 42 of them. 42 contracts? Yeah. Price reductions. Which I was, okay, like, hey guys, let's get this shit done. Meanwhile, I just hired a new GC. He was a little wet behind the ears, so I ended up doing double the work following his mistakes. Then, um, the next month they raised the interest rates again, and this time they pulled their contracts, pulled them out, all 42. Mind you, um, I'm sitting with not cheap houses, $200 to $300,000 homes. They said, no, we're not doing it anymore. So they pulled the plug there. And anyways, we had to scramble, we had to re rehab houses because they look like shit linoleum carpet formica, uh, in a $350,000 house. People love granite, night cabinets, solid services, shit like that. So anyways, we pivoted, uh, we got through it. We're down to like three vacant by now. So our goal was to have zero vacant properties, and a vacant for me is something that's under contract, under renovation, or ready to rent.
Billy Alvaro 00:04:38 Got it.
Matt 00:04:39 So we took some of them, we moved into our short term rental portfolio, some of them to our long term rental portfolio, and then we just fire sale the rest to get out from underneath the deck.
Billy Alvaro 00:04:48 How many years you've been in business?
Matt 00:04:50 So Trinity, I think, has been in business seven years, but I've been in real estate for 1920 years. I remember the first time I picked up Robert Kiwisaki's book. It's like how everyone start, at least not everybody started before YouTube and podcasts and really using internet to connect with people. Read, uh, The Rich Day at Port, I did, and I was like, just instantly like, hook, this is my life, this is where I need to be. And so Blair and I, we did our first real estate investment about six months after that. And then we were a slow investor. Slow for me, it was like two or four deals a year in my twenty s. And then fast forward now in my 30s. We didn't start really freaking knocking, going crazy until about ten years ago.
Billy Alvaro 00:05:36 Let's check this, because I think there's going to be a lot of lessons that people could take out of this.
Matt 00:05:39 Right?
Billy Alvaro 00:05:39 I want to get into the airbnb thing that you're doing, but I think a lot more lessons. Matt, uh, when shit went sideways. So let's pull the lessons out. Do you think obviously you were growing too fast?
Matt 00:05:54 Yeah. I'll just tell you what we did, we did wrong. We knew what our pain points I know what my pain points are now. We were not a mass production rehab. So that's where we made the mistake. More than half of those homes we should have wholesale and taken a third of the profit that we did. And then just instant turn and burn thin files, one of my mentors likes to call it. Because the rehab files, like this thick wholesale files like that. So how much time and energy and money go into that? So generally we do about 20 to, uh, 25 flips a year and we wholesale the rest. And then we add some to our short term portfolio. But anyways, so don't scale too quickly just because you see the dollar signs. There the next thing, and this is the biggest lesson that I've learned. Anybody that's on your team that's not a doer, get rid of them. You got to constantly babysit somebody and they're not producing. That's what blair and I realize. Blair is my wife, also my business partner in life and business. So we realize that now that if you are not a doer and I have to look over your shoulder every day, every hour, every week, then you are not on the bus with us. You're not on the right team. And so we're very fortunate that we now scale down our operation and we're making more money doing it.
Billy Alvaro 00:07:08 How bloated were you when you had full operation, when you had staff fully up?
Matt 00:07:13 Say that one more time.
Billy Alvaro 00:07:14 How many people? How bloated were you? How many people? We had eleven people. What are you down to now?
Matt 00:07:19 Uh, now we're down to four.
Billy Alvaro 00:07:21 Four people.
Matt 00:07:21 So we've significantly scaled down, right?
Billy Alvaro 00:07:24 Yeah.
Matt 00:07:25 So I've got my finance, uh, my finance guru, right? Covers all the numbers, the books and the billings and all that stuff. And then I got my tech genius and then Blair and I and so what we realized is those four people were the doers in the business. And so scaling it down to what it is now is just such a weight off my shoulders because it felt like every day I was chasing the money. We'd get four or five huge closings 40, 50, $60,000. And then the damn money was out of the account within a week and a half to two weeks. Between payroll and contractors and all that stuff that was going on.
Billy Alvaro 00:08:07 Uh, I want an honest answer. Do you think sometimes that, uh, entrepreneurs that are on the path to growing that they look at people around them that may be a lot larger, that is scaling and like, well, fuck, I could do this, man. Do you think you got that bug? Yeah.
Matt 00:08:24 Okay.
Billy Alvaro 00:08:25 I appreciate it, man.
Matt 00:08:27 100%, man. I saw friends of mine doing it, but I scaled too fast. I hired, like, five people in one year. And for my operation, I know that that could be, like, nothing compared to someone.
Billy Alvaro 00:08:40 But you doubled your size in a year.
Matt 00:08:42 Yeah, we, uh, pretty much tripled it in a year. And we realized really quickly where the money is in this business and how to have an operation that makes sense for our life and our kids life. We got four kids that are very active in sports, and we want to be able to participate in all that stuff. And it's very difficult if we have a company that is not necessarily struggling but isn't doing what it needs to be. It's like, I was working four times as much for less money. I do the math on that. 24 hours. I was working 30 hours a day. Let's just call it what it is.
Billy Alvaro 00:09:20 I think every successful entrepreneur that's real has a story similar to that, where they just they went sideways for a bit.
Matt 00:09:27 And you got to learn.
Billy Alvaro 00:09:28 We got to take our bumps and bruises. We don't we don't we didn't go to college for this. They don't teach us this in school. Like, you learn as you go, and you learn from mass to minds. But sometimes, like myself, like you, we get a little crazy, and we decided to grow a little too fast. That was my demise when I had my mortgage bank. Dude, I still would have been alive. I grew that fucking thing way too quick. 950 employees within, like, four and a half years.
Matt 00:09:48 Four and a half years. Wow.
Billy Alvaro 00:09:50 8500 magazine. 8500.
Matt 00:09:53 $136,000.
Billy Alvaro 00:09:53 And 18 months later, I was fucking bankrupt. Like, $14 million in debt. So, like, bro, I get it. I get growing too quick. I get losing your eye off taking your eye off the ball. What are the lessons did you have? Because I know a couple that I could pick out.
Matt 00:10:09 Yeah. So for us, for being an investor and an entrepreneur, it's almost like a curse. So a businessman can jump into a business and he can function all of it. Right? That's the integrator that CG teaches us. But the entrepreneur, real estate investor, it's almost a curse because we're looking at everything. The new shiny ball that keeps jumping down, we want to go chase it. Should I do? Novations Land entitlement? Uh, should I do sub two? Should I do creative financing? Should I do airbnb? Should I do? Fixing wholesale? Be a contractor. Should I be an agent? All this shit, it's like, Damn it. And so Mike Watson, he got up on stage and he talked about Entitlement deals, and he's like, all this shit. And he went bankrupt. He told us his story, and then he's like, Dude, I got down to my narrow focus, so I'm digging an inch wide and a mile deep, and I'm like, Damn it, I'm getting back. And we pivoted now luckily, I heard this after ah, the fact, and I started doing it. But in August, actually, July, excuse me, is when we started narrowing our focus down. Okay. This is the space that I want to be in. And so our company is doing three things. We are doing wholesaling because we're never getting rid of that. Honestly, it's kind of like breathing.
Billy Alvaro 00:11:33 It's just cash flow coming in, man.
Matt 00:11:35 Yeah. We get leads that come into our system. I'm not going to turn those away. I'll go on the walk through. I'll talk to the people. I like helping people. So if I can help them get rid of that burden, some asset, I'm going to do it. We close on, uh, two on Friday. We're still doing that stuff. Airbnb very heavily, will always have long term rentals as like, our little kid brother and then mentorship. And so I'm teaching people how to get focused and go down the airbnb path. And so that's it. I'm not chasing any other real estate ideas. Yes. All the stuff I heard the conference CG is great. Um, all the different ideas that everybody's doing. I just want to stay focused on what we're doing. And then I want to spend the next few years just freaking being a beast and killing it in those categories. And I don't think I'm going to fix and flip another house next year. I really don't. By getting a good enough deal, I'll probably wholesale it because I got to look at all the time. I have hundreds, uh, of hours that are invested in every single flip. Not that I'm the one with the hammer, right? My wife and I are picking out the colors. We're going through all that. We're getting the designs, we're meeting with the contractors. I get ripped off by three contractors this year because I violated my own.
Billy Alvaro 00:12:58 Rules, paid them up.
Matt 00:13:00 I was scaling. I gave one of the guys a little bit of money up front. He did a rehab. It was okay. I gave him a little money up front for three more. Never heard from him again. I mean, it's the same old story. Never give a contractor a deposit.
Billy Alvaro 00:13:15 We've been down that road. We learned the hard way, man. And we know what we know. And then we violate our own rules, our own guidelines, and we get fucked.
Matt 00:13:21 It's like, I'm mad. Hey dude, I've done so many blah, blah, blah real estate investments. Like, I can't get burned. And then for that shit to happen me three times this year, I'm like, you know what? I needed to reset in my life. And then, uh, Jason, uh, Medley sat me down, which was pretty cool. We were just having a pool, shit and shit for a couple of hours and started doing some soul searching and really hitting home some things that I know I needed to do. But now, uh, I'm freaking getting on it. And his biggest takeaway from that was, it's time to be a savage. We're getting into a little bit of a recession here. We know it's going to happen, right? All the signals are pointing in this direction. Everybody knows about it. So it's m time to be your freaking beast. It's not time to sit back and take naps and do that kind of shit. And you got to do the same thing with your family. Same thing with your relationship with God. Same thing with your relationship with your wife. That's where I'm at.
Billy Alvaro 00:14:15 With yourself.
Matt 00:14:16 Uh, make sure that this is okay. Because if this is okay, how am I going to make anybody else okay?
Billy Alvaro 00:14:23 And start to your brother 100%, man.
Matt 00:14:25 Because if I'm going to be a mentor to other students, I got to make sure homebase is freaking good to go. And so now I'm finally there. Uh, like Blurryman said, I've never seen you this frustrated and low. I don't want to use the word low, but this frustrated with real estate than I was this year. It was always fun, somewhat easy for me.
Billy Alvaro 00:14:50 You got your licks, bro. You got kicked, you got knocked down. And it ain't fun when you are in the kingdom out and you roll in a few hundred thousand dollars a month, half a million dollars a month. And then all of a sudden the wing gets knocked out and you're like, what the fuck do I do here? There's a lot of guys right now in the same situation. I'm interviewing and talking to dudes off the record, on the record. And they're just like having a fuck of a time. 1 million, 2 million, 3 million. $4 million losses and counting.
Matt 00:15:20 I know crazy real shit.
Billy Alvaro 00:15:22 And majority of them the funny thing it's not funny, but the ironic thing is most of them that are getting that got in trouble. They did it because I called the COVID fever. They had the COVID Gold rush fever. When the market started booming, everybody just took their underwriting guidelines and the concept of real fucking investing and it literally went in the toilet. And he started becoming a cowboy and like wild west. You know what the funds are buying fucking $10,000 spread, but I'm really making 30 because they're overpaying and I'm buying MLS, bro. That was what was going on. And I was frustrated because I saw a lot of guys I was on the East Coast and I saw a lot of guys taking the fuck off in CG and a lot of these other, uh, masterminds that I'm in. And I was governing myself only because I've been down this road in 2008 happen when I lost my fucking ass. Because I was the cowboy and I was doing loans that I knew the people couldn't afford, the company knew that people couldn't afford, but Wall Street was buying them those stated loans. And because the money was so good, you don't think all of a sudden the bottom falls out. All those loans go south. They have you buy them back, right? And they have a buyback. So it's like, oh shit.
Matt 00:16:37 Yeah, bro.
Billy Alvaro 00:16:38 Mittens of dollars in buybacks millions.
Matt 00:16:40 Yeah, man. That's a struggle, dude. I get it. So many members too, that are people that I've talked to, um, went through a similar situation this year that are heavy hitting investors. I get it. And I am so blessed that, uh, was it four years now blair and I found airbnb and started scaling that business. And that business was always kind of over here, like, okay, that property would be a good airbnb. Let's throw some furniture and get it live.
Billy Alvaro 00:17:12 I want to get into this like, what your strategy is airbnb? Because you're doing well.
Matt 00:17:16 Dude. Dude. And so I didn't realize until middle of the year that like, fuck. Uh, man, this is it. Why do I need all these people? Why do I need all this rehab and contractors and just coming home exhausted, leaving the house at 05:00 a.m. Coming home at 07:00 p.m.. Right? And all these airbnb, I started looking at all the profit. We're almost to 100 grand a month in profit off of our airbnb portfolio. That's great. Okay, so it's 80 and airbnb in about 20 in longer. But the whole portfolio, if I were to just stop trinity everything and just sit back, we'd be making a little over a million a year. Now where I found the is the suburban short term rentals that everyone is overlooking. Everyone automatically thinks that it's got to be near a lake, uh, near a beach, near a vacation destination. And I started noticing something going on in Kansas City because I have a couple of friends out there. They manage some stuff that I have. And it's just a freaking house in a neighborhood. And we get anywhere from five to $7,000 a month. And so what?
Billy Alvaro 00:18:27 What's the attraction? What's the lore for people to go into a regular neighborhood and not go like, why are they going there?
Matt 00:18:36 So that's a great question. So we kept getting that question from all our students, right? Or potential students doing these podcast webinars. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to start probing people. Let's find out what they're coming to town for. See my grandkids weddings, graduation parties. Any reason that you would just travel business, traveling nurses. There's a rock climbing convention. My kids got soccer tournament, baseball tournament, any kind of youth activity. Fiber guys came to town relocating. My house got on fire. I got to have somewhere to go. My house flooded, my house getting worked on, all those types of things, right? So I narrowed it down to as if there are hotels in the town, then people are traveling there for non vacation needs. Right. I started looking at towns across the Midwest, and there are so many untapped towns that have hotels call the hotels at about 08:00, 09:00 every Friday night. Ask, uh, them if they have any vacancy. More than likely they're going to tell you they have one or two rooms left. Right? So that means a lot of people are traveling to that town. So in this town in St. Charles county, right on the edge, right before Hickville and all of that, it's got about, uh, 60,000 people. I was the first one to put an Airbnb in that town. And I'm like, how am I the first one? So I look at Air DNA, it tells me it's going to suck. It's going to be terrible because it's got no data to pull from.
Billy Alvaro 00:20:01 Sure.
Matt 00:20:02 People are relying so much on those data sources. I guess I'm cutting from a little bit of cough, right? Like, I'll take that risk because if not, I'll just sell it or I'll turn it into a long term rental. Pull the furniture, put it somewhere else. Yeah. So we got this property up and rolling. We did 4800, uh, in December, and it was live two days before December.
Billy Alvaro 00:20:24 So these like, little markets that you're going into, how many years you've been doing it in those markets?
Matt 00:20:29 So short term rental, we're pushing four years now. I'm not like a ten year legacy expert.
Billy Alvaro 00:20:36 You got some data, so let's look at that.
Matt 00:20:38 I got some properties, I got some cash flow to prove it. So we have vacation houses in those markets.
Billy Alvaro 00:20:44 What is your average, I guess, what do they call it? Like your rental time frame?
Matt 00:20:49 So we like to do a three night minimum. So three nights, but we generally get four, five, 7810 kind of all over the board. The weekends always look up no matter what.
Billy Alvaro 00:20:59 What's the percent of a month that the house is rented?
Matt 00:21:02 Uh, we're at 78%. Occupancy. It's pretty fucking high, dude. That's the sweet spot. So if you're higher, that means, what, your price is too low?
Billy Alvaro 00:21:11 Sure.
Matt 00:21:12 If you're lower, you're overpriced, or you picked a bad location, or your property isn't what it needs to be.
Billy Alvaro 00:21:18 Sure. That's crazy.
Matt 00:21:20 So for me, I stay away from everything seasonal. I don't want anything to do with something near a lake, because what does a lake mean to me? Like, lake is the Ozarks. That's loto. That's a big for us. It's now on Netflix, right? Even though it's a different lake that they use on the show, Ozark. Uh, but the point of me saying that is, it's dead for the majority of the year. You get Labor Day to Memorial Day to Labor Day. That's all you get. You get heavy summer traffic. If you don't have a reason for someone to come there september, October, November, December, January, March, then I don't want to touch it. I don't want anything seasonal. I want to keep it turning. I want to beef up my reviews. I want to keep that cash flow coming in every single month.
Billy Alvaro 00:22:04 So what do you look for in these houses? Like, what's the type of homes that you look for to put airbnb?
Matt 00:22:09 That's a good question. So what I look for is called a 20% rule. So most people, they got the 1% rule. I'm going to rewire everybody's brain real quick because I invented this. This is me. So there is a $250,000 house. I want the annual revenue, the top line revenue, to do $50,000 a minimum. Okay? So if it's a $200,000 house, I want to do $40. Now, I have $175,000 houses doing 70. So if you can exceed it, that's where you want to be. And that rule goes for any type of airbnb. It's a quick math, it's a quick way to do it. I also like to pick legacy assets that are going to be worth more because am I looking for the cash flow? Yes, cash flow is amazing. That's why I'm in real estate. But I'm also looking for a large exit or a large equity gap. So I want to buy an asset that might just turn back into a, uh, normal single family house. Ten years from now. I look at everything in a ten year plan. So let's say I got a three bedroom, two bath, traditional, ah, ranch house with a good foundation, good lower level heat, AC roof, water heater. Everything's been updated. Good. Now that house is in a good market. Excuse me. It's in a good area. Ten years from now, I have options. So, inflation and appreciation. Do we think the government is going to figure shit out no matter who's in office? Huh? No, they don't know what the hell they're doing. Nobody does. Right. So inflation is going to continue and appreciation is going to continue. Even if we dip into a recession, it's going to come roaring out. So that's why I always look at a ten year play. So my guests are going to pay down my rent and it's going to go up. So I got this massive equity gap. I use my hands a lot. Uh, obviously, look at myself there. We got this massive equity gap. And ah if I've got that massive equity gap over a slew of properties, maybe even some eventually paid off, now I get on someone's radar like Marriott or Vicasa or one of these other companies that wants to okay. I want to grab 100 short term rentals, but I don't want to do all the hard work that I did getting them set up, going through planning and zoning, getting the city council on board, all that kind of stuff. Airbnb. There is a lot of nontraditional assets out there. And while those may work, it doesn't check the box for me of having a long term exit in a traditional property. I want to keep it to where I could sell it to a homeowner, I could sell it to an investor or I could sell it to a large player.
Billy Alvaro 00:24:59 Do you have a minimum bedroom bathroom count that you're looking at?
Matt 00:25:03 Yes, um, I am a three bedroom minimum guy. Even though I do have a two bedroom, one bath house. I want to sleep as many people as the city will let me. So make sure I point this out. I don't want people to think that that means people are going to party in that house. We have serious and legit rules that they know about that they have to follow with the non smoking and no loud music, no loud noise outside past 10:00. We have cameras, we have noise monitors. We go through all this stuff. The neighbors got my cell phone numbers, so I want to make sure that we're solid. So when my house sleeps twelve, we're catering to families. People with four or five kids. That's why we female bedrooms. My wife is really good at this. For a few hundred bucks, she can theme out of bedroom Star Wars or Harry Potter or Marvel or DC or whatever. I'm a Marvel junkie, so every time she gets it, I'm like, Marvel. It I don't even know what that Harry Potter she is. My kids know, but I know. And these things can be sprinkled anywhere, man. It doesn't have to be rockets. I would stay away from over saturated markets and then some people how do.
Billy Alvaro 00:26:16 You know it's over saturated?
Matt 00:26:17 So you can go to Airbnb and look to see what's there, right? You, uh, can do that. You can go to Verbo, you can go to Furnished Finder. You can look at your market and see if it's saturated. I'm working on the per capita number. I don't know if that totally makes sense because sometimes there is a little tourism mixed in. We do have three properties in St. Charles, Missouri. I'm sure you've never heard of it, but it does have a tourist allure because there's this historical area of Missouri that used to be our home capital. So there's a lot of nice restaurants, a little bit of shopping. They have some festivals every weekend. Something's going on. So there is a little bit of allure there. So if, uh, you can check the box of a suburban airbnb and a vacation airbnb, you just hit a home run. Each one of those houses I have in that area should do between 80 to 100 grand a year in top line revenue.
Billy Alvaro 00:27:16 Damn, that's crazy. What is, um, your methods for getting these properties in? How you going about marketing real estate?
Matt 00:27:24 I'm kind of a deal junkie, so I get to look at all this stuff as the deals come in. I can say, okay, I don't only have two in St. Peter's. They would allow me a third. And a deal comes in in St. Peter's. Price is good. I like Grandma Update. I like grandma houses. So Grandma house, she lived there for 60 years. There's nothing wrong structurally, but it's got the wallpaper and green and pink carpet. That just means I need a facelift. So I'm not getting into massive renovations if I don't have so I want to be in and out of that thing in 45 days or now. Look for expired listings. Look for listings that are 9121, hundred and 80 days.
Billy Alvaro 00:28:15 Those deals that are online. Are you willing to pay a premium for those types of houses? Because you know you're going to be banging them out.
Matt 00:28:20 You don't have to anymore. A year ago, I was got it. A year ago, Blair and I bought we bought some property in Florida. We furnished it. We started the cash flow process coming in. And what's funny is I exited on three of those deals. I still have two beach houses, and I exited on the three because I didn't realize how much of a demand there was at the time, the rates were still low for fully furnished, fully renovated, with pools ready to go properties. So we got this massive, uh, I think it's like five X Star money. If I had kept it, obviously I would have gotten depreciation and all that other good stuff. But we ended up making about 250 grand per release. Yeah, not totally about two to 250 per property. And I'm like, you know what, I sell it. We rolled some of that money into some other assets, uh, with the 1031.
Billy Alvaro 00:29:21 So talk to what are you mad about? Um, some of the technology and tools you guys use in the business.
Matt 00:29:28 Yes. So that's a big one because a lot of people, they get tunnel vision with Airbnb. It is the horse it's going to represent. Depending on your market, Verbo could have the market share, but depending on the market, it's going to represent 75% to 80% of all your reservations. And if you're going to have one property and you want to keep things simple, then I would probably just recommend going with Airbnb. Right. But if you're like me that's trying to squeeze every last penny out of that property, I recommend you get on Guesty. Guesty for pros. It's, uh, like a hub, right? It's over here in my office. My wife's got the booking calendars when people are checking in and checking out, because we manage all of our local stuff here ourselves. So we use Guests for Pros and has an integrated API, which what that means is, in layman's terms, is that it talks to every other service that we use. So we're on, uh, booking.com Verbo and Airbnb.
Billy Alvaro 00:30:34 Love it.
Matt 00:30:35 And in the process right now, we're building our own private website to get people to come back to our properties. I'll talk about the private website here in a second, but the next tool that you need is Price Labs. There's a couple of other tools out there, but I recommend Price Labs because what that is, it's dynamic pricing so it's going to dictate and automatically set your pricing for the year. And it's going to fluctuate and change based off of occupancy and vacancy rates in the area and what's going on in the area like 4 July, Valentine, uh, state, these rock climbing conventions, all this stuff that goes on Timber Ground coming to town, or Garth Brooks coming to town. How Price Labs knows, I don't know. I know it's got an AI built into it. All I know is I pay a few hundred dollars a month and it gets me thousands in return. That's a big one. Uh, we also like remote lock. That is probably some of the sweetest little technology out there. You'd have the key or the credit card or you'd have to give them the code and then everybody's got the code. Well now, let's say my guest checks in at 04:00, we have check ins at four, check out at ten. So at four their code activates. Mind you, um, they've already been sent the code in an automated message that was preset with guests. So they're automated message the rules, the dos, the don'ts, the WiFi password, no matter how many times you tell them. Um, we have to tell these people the WiFi password. We could plaster it to the couch and still tell ask if the password was but anyways, so the remote lock then activates us fourth lock, and then it deactivates a ten. And that's all done online with remote lock. And it talks to guesty and it all works in harmony. Love it. And so if we get a verbal booking or Price or uh, HomeAway, uh, booking, or an airbnb booking, or a direct booking, it doesn't matter. It all flows through the same system. Now, most of our bookings do come with airbnb. Now here's the thing with Airbnb, that's the short game. That's the short tunnel vision that somebody can get on because it's all they ever hear about. But the long game, and this is what Blair and I are building, is we're building a brand. So we named all of our properties Blair's House. So we're now branding all of our marketing, all of our materials and everything that goes into this house, blair's House. We got a cool little logo. We're putting it on the shampoos, we're putting it on the snacks, the water bottles. Love it to get
Matt 00:33:22 sent, all that kind of stuff. Not because I'm self branding, but I want them to remember Blair's House. So here's the thing. This goes to the long game. It's email and cell phone capturing. So my VA, Bianca, she's watching this, I Bianca. I'm probably going to send this to her anyway so she can, uh, pull some stuff out of it. But what she does is she captures the emails and she puts them into this database. Now what are we going to do with the database? We're going to touch them twelve times after your stay. So every month we got an email that's going to go out to every single former guest, unless they were blacklisted. And we'll pull that off. And all we're trying to do is just stay top of mind with Blair's house, not that we're trying to save the 3% that Airbnb takes out of our pocket. I don't care about that. I care that they come back to my property so that we stay full. Absolutely right. So now I'm in the data capturing business. So we're capturing all this data. You imagine how powerful that will be in 2345 years from now? We have tens of tens of thousands of email addresses, and now we have all these people just coming and staying in our properties. So that's the goal, because what we've noticed is people come back to the area time and time again. They've got family they're visiting in the area, and more than likely, that family is going to stay. So they're going to want to come back. So this just goes into all of our plan, right, for the email capture. How do you get their email address? Well, first thing is we ask. Second thing is we have this system called Stayfi. So Stay fi, you hook it up on your router in the house. They have to push like a hotel. They have to put it in their email address before you give them the password. Now, the TVs are already set up. This is just someone signing on their laptop or the kids are signing on their devices. Kids normally don't have email addresses, so they're like, hey, mom, what's your email address? And they throw it in there. Now, sometimes you can get two or three email addresses per booking, especially if there's more adults in the house. Capture all that stuff. Stay.
Billy Alvaro 00:35:34 These are great tools, bro. Honestly, like killer tools. You mentioned about the theme rooms. You went through some really sick, sick pieces of technology, brother. A lot of value in this podcast, by the way. Talked to me about amenities, things you guys put into the house to really make it more personalized, really draw the people back in. What does that look like?
Matt 00:35:56 That one is a whole podcast. But I'm going to tell you straight up that my wife and I do everything we can. So stop thinking that, no, I don't need to do that. No, that's a dumb idea. We do fucking everything. I saw someone had a hammock in their backyard. Now all my houses have hammocks. You want to make sure you're checking every single box that you can on that Airbnb. All you got to do is follow it. Does your house have a piano? Yes or no, right? I'm not going to go buy piano shop. Cheap pianos are they're like $100 people give those damn things away, right? Foosball, ping pong, air hockey, get the cheap games. Don't buy the pool table, okay? Unless you have a higher end airbnb, which I do. So those houses have all that shit, plus pool table, plus shuffle, uh, board, some other things. I'm talking about those suburban stays that are at that $500,000 price, .8 hundred. Got it. Stock the kitchen, man. Both coffee pots, the keurig and the pot. Get the tea kettle, get the French press, get, uh, all the utensils that you can possibly think of that a kitchen needs. My wife, she spends about $1,000 kitchen. We get the plates and we get the plastic. We get all those little appliances. Blender, crockpot, flat top. The list is long. And we've always added a little bit as soon as we see somebody else bring something into the house. Right? I'm not talking about gadgets, I'm talking about real appliances that most people, uh, have in their home. You want them to be able to cook Thanksgiving dinner in that house. Next thing is those beds got to be comfortable. I'm not saying you got to go drop five grand on a temporary mattress. You can get a good mattress for five. $600 for a king on Amazon that's delivered rolled up in a box. That is comfortable. You need TVs in every room. I do an arcade machine. So I got this really cool dude here that in St. Peters that makes these arcade machines brand new. They don't smell like smoke, they don't smell like mold. These ones that get pulled out of these 1980s freaking arenas or whatever, they just stick to high. Right? So we put that in there. I'm checking boxes and we make sure that it's cute and it's nice. And it's today's colors. Right. Most of the houses we do, um, we renovate them a little bit. Okay. Some larger renovations, some are really small one. And you can also do this on Arbitrage method, like, I own. Um, I have two Arbitrages that are running right now just to see if I could do it. It was honestly one of the easiest
Matt 00:38:48 things I've ever done. I put a Facebook post out there. One of my buddies like, hey man, yeah, I got a property coming in January. I'd love to rent it to you, because he knows I'm going to pay my bill and I'm going to keep it clean.
Billy Alvaro 00:38:59 Yeah, so you rent it from him and then you're double swapping it over on the airbnb side.
Matt 00:39:03 That's it. Uh, his name is BJ. We pay $1,700 from him, m, and we bring in about six grand. So I have about 900,000 more in expenses off that. So we generally do between 2000 $3,000 net per profit almost.
Billy Alvaro 00:39:22 I love this. Um, I know you're not obviously going out and cleaning your houses and managing. So what is the management side look like?
Matt 00:39:30 Yeah, so for the stuff I have in Florida and the stuff I have in Kansas City, I pay 15%. So I don't do anything. But look, uh, at the monthly statements and ask questions and stuff like that.
Billy Alvaro 00:39:42 Do you have a matching company that handles all that BS?
Matt 00:39:44 Yeah, so I'm not an out of state guy. I know how to do the out of state. But Blair and I are in the process of building our brand, and we're only building our brand on the St. Louis based property because we are freaking anal about the cleaning and the services. Blair checks every single property, uh, after it is cleaned to make sure the pillows are right and the snacks and the water is put out. Wow.
Billy Alvaro 00:40:11 She's going out to every property and checking things out.
Matt 00:40:13 Uh, every property. And the reason that we're doing that, man, is we're not this fly by net company. We're not okay. I'll deal with a bad guest once in a while. No, we want to make sure every single guest experience is a five star review every single time. And we're building our brand, so that's going to take us a couple of years. And my wife and I mean, we get our hands dirty all the time on stuff. We're not sitting on some high horse over here. I got no problem with that. Now, is that job potentially higher, uh, for our business? 100%. But right now with, um, the recession coming up, it's all hands on deck. I want to make sure that it's done right.
Billy Alvaro 00:40:56 Matt, how do you handle this is great information, by the way. How do you handle the higher end houses? All the stuff that's in it? Piano, uh, pool table, video games. Do you have them sign disclosures? Do you have them sign some sort of document saying, hey, the house check prior to coming in, it's going to be the same way when you come out? What does that look like?
Matt 00:41:16 So, yes, we do have them sign something. And it's basically like a chargeback policy. So they don't charge back airbnb for the hosting service or whatever. But yes, we do have that done on the more expensive properties. I will say we've been very blessed and we haven't had a horror story. We've had some headaches. We got a headache right now. On our Westfield property. Someone booked it, marked one guest. Then they brought seven people. But what they didn't actually do, they didn't bring seven people. The owner of the business booked it and then sent seven of his employees. So we're talking construction workers digging fiber like Jesus. So they were smoking weed in the house all week and they're construction workers and it's been raining outside. They got boots to do the math. The whole house is just healthy, man. I spent like 8 hours cleaning that thing. We submitted an air cover request for an additional $350 that got instantly paid it. So we got our, uh, $350 plus the $245 that we charge for the cleaning fee. So we got about $600 to throw the cleaners away for, uh, all the work that they did, but they didn't break anything. It was funny. The guy responded back. We drug test our guys, so there's no way they were doing that now. I showed him pictures of roaches on the table and little weed scenes. I'm like, dude, I'm not fucking stupid. I'm from the Midwest. I live in Missouri. I know what the hell weed smells like. Come on.
Billy Alvaro 00:42:49 Too funny, bro. This, uh, has been a really good interview. You laid out a lot of gold. If there's anybody out there looking to get into Airbnb and they don't listen to this podcast and take action with it, they're foolish. I know you said you have a massive on. You have coaching. Like, talk to me about that.
Matt 00:43:06 So we realized through this year that we needed to start giving back. And it was on our agenda two years ago. But then COVID hit and things got pushed. And I'm probably a fool for waiting this long. But now Blair and I offer an airbnb master class. What that? Is it's a one day event. You come, you sit down, and I cover everything that you would need to know to be successful in the Airbnb business. How to scout them, how to run your numbers, how to manage them, stock them, how to rehab them, find private money. I even throw a little seller financing nuggets in there too. I do all that stuff. Uh, we feed you. You, um, can come and stay at some of our properties. You can see it firsthand, so that's big. And then you get into our inducted into our community. So we do monthly podcasts or excuse me, we do monthly webinars. You have my cell phone number. So I'm giving all my students my cell phone number. So if you run the numbers on a deal and you need questions, you call me. You leave me the longest voicemail that you can, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. So what I mean by all this is like, we want all of our students to be all so successful with this program. It's cheap. $2,900, man. It's cheap for a one day event. And I'm sure, you know, real estate, education, and all that kind of stuff, shit. The Masterminds that I'm a part of, I spent 100 million a year. Me too.
Billy Alvaro 00:44:34 How do they find out about, uh where is it? At their website?
Matt 00:44:37 Yeah. So you can go to the Airbnbast.com kind of like beast mode, right? Airbnbast.com. Or you can, uh, follow me on Instagram, that is at the Airbnb. Or you can call my office, 314-4643 800, and ask for me.
Billy Alvaro 00:44:59 I know you're sick. I appreciate you showing up today because I know you're nursing this thing. You beat up pretty bad over there. But look, you have really laid down some goals, some really good, serious, uh, content that people can take and leverage from this.
Matt 00:45:16 Thanks for having me on, dude. Um, uh, I'm anxious to help anybody that's in the business or wants to get in the business and figure this whole short term rental thing out. It's not going anywhere, guys. It's here to stay. It's putting a hurting on the hotels. And I'm very excited about the path that this thing is on.
Billy Alvaro 00:45:38 Congrats on pulling through the bullshit that we all had to go through, and you still standing, and you built yourself a whole different business. Same business, but a completely different line. So congrats on that, bro.
Matt 00:45:49 Thanks, man. I appreciate you, dude.
Billy Alvaro 00:45:51 Got it, brother. Talk to you later.
Billy Alvaro 00:45:54 Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Unstoppable real estate investing wealth. My mission is to give you, my listeners, the blueprint to success. The insider secrets for starting, growing, and scaling your real estate investing business so you can experience and live the unstoppable lifestyle. Uh, I've made it simple for you to catapult yourself success. Go to billionssecrets.com@vilyssecrets.com. There you will find every single tool, tip, trick, strategy, system, and secret used to make millions of dollars as a real estate investor. Everything my team uses and my guests use all in one place for you to tap into so you can start, grow and scale your real estate investment business. I really hope you implement what you're learning. I hope you utilize these tools, tips.
Matt 00:46:48 Tricks, strategies, and secrets.
Billy Alvaro 00:46:49 And I hope to see you on the next one. God bless. Bye.