[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
[00:00:16] Short Term Rental Management.
[00:00:18] Long hair Luke Cash flow Carl, love you, you are the greatest. If you're brand new, you stumbled on me by searching podcasts or what have you. I appreciate you and I love you and thank you for being here. Today we're going to talk deals.
[00:00:34] Deals. What is a deal? What constitutes a deal? How do you find a deal?
[00:00:40] In 2025 on STRM from the hardest working gal in real estate, Avery Carle, we now have a new book, Smarter Short Term Rentals available wherever books are sold.
[00:00:59] Build a dynamic real estate business and out host the compet that's Smarter Short Term Rentals. The book finding a deal, finding a deal, finding a deal. Number one, deals are not everywhere. All right, I've been buying rental real estate for about 14 years. I bought my first house in 2012, give or take. And at the time everybody was telling me you can't find a deal. There are no more deals. We are post 2008 and deals are gone, they don't exist. You're never going to get a deal.
[00:01:34] I made seven offers to get my first rental property which happened to be a long term rental.
[00:01:41] And that house changed my life. I bought a house, $122,000. I put a tenant in there for $1600 after minimal, minimal work that I did myself.
[00:01:52] Years later I sold that house for $325,000 and 1031 exchange the $200,000 gain into a 26 unit apartment building which I still own to this day. And I did that. When everybody was telling me you can't find a deal, my friends, I would say that that was a hell of a deal and it took me many offers to get that deal. And yes, I got lucky. I did, I got lucky. Right place, right time, being obsessed with the market, knowing everything, everything for sale and the market. So before I get to number two, which I just hinted to. Hinted at. Deals are not everywhere. I was speaking to a buddy, he's become a buddy of mine, wonderful client who's turned into a friend. Bought a house recently and we were just on the phone a couple days ago, which you can do with me as well. SDSplus.com love to have you.
[00:02:46] And he said that he just assumed because he didn't know anything about rental real estate, he just kind of assumed that he could just buy a house, put it up for rent and make money.
[00:02:58] Didn't really know that you had to like run numbers and didn't know how to run numbers and which is, by the way, it's not that hard. Everybody overthinks the number thing.
[00:03:07] And I said, well, did somebody give you this impression?
[00:03:12] Surely the short term shop did not give you the impression that you could just buy any house and make money. And he said no, no, no, no, no. It was my own ignorance and now I know that that is not true.
[00:03:23] Luckily, I do feel like he picked a pretty good house and better yet, he's going to be a great manager. Which in my opinion is more important.
[00:03:31] It is more about the management than it is about the house. A two bedroom and a vacation town is a damn two bedroom in a vacation town. Is that three bedroom in a vacation down? Is that three bedroom vacation town?
[00:03:44] Are you going to put the right sheets and towels? Are you going to respond to people correctly? Are you going to respond to people in a timely manner? Most people do not.
[00:03:53] They don't. And a lot of people will do it right for a couple years and then get bored. Then management falls off, profits go down, they sell the house and the cycle continues.
[00:04:05] That's why I've been able to maintain because I've been really good at this for a long time and I just keep crushing it.
[00:04:14] Most people in any line of work are not willing to work hard. They're just not. They don't work hard. People don't work hard.
[00:04:21] Have you ever tried to get a tile guy to show up for a job? It's like pulling teeth. I'm getting sick of my beard, by the way. Pretty soon it'll be beach season. I got to get rid of this beard. I'm kind of sick of it. Just awful. Look at that. I broke the third wall. Whatever.
[00:04:36] Can I be real Short term rental management? By the way, I'm glad you're here. I am. I am so glad you're here. I hope you're enjoying the program.
[00:04:44]
[email protected] Anything I can help you with, let me know. So number one deals are not just laying around on the mls. They are not just in your inbox from some wholesaler, okay? They're not number two, which I alluded to number two, which is actually going to be number three. So I'm going to number two, which is a deal to me, is maybe not a deal to you and maybe not a deal to the next guy. A deal to you is maybe not a deal to me. My deal might not be a deal to you, et cetera.
[00:05:14] One man's deal is not another man's deal.
[00:05:18] It can be, of course, like that one I mentioned earlier that I exchanged a house for 200 grand into an apartment building, which, by the way, there was much more to that deal. Obviously it was. I don't know, I bought it for 1.2 million.
[00:05:32] There was other cash involved and you know, obviously leverage, etc. So it wasn't. I didn't just straight up trade a house for an apartment building, but kind of, that house certainly did the bulk of the heavy lifting of the deal.
[00:05:47] And make no mistake, that apartment building has been a pain in my ass. New roof, new parking lot, new H Vacs, but it's functioning and it's rocking. And it's something I'll probably keep forever, you know, plan to keep forever, you never know. But number two, what's a deal to you might not be a deal to me. The definition of a deal is different to everybody. Okay? If you are the type of person that grew up like me, just normal, good old American family with no money, you may not realize how many wealthy people there are in the world. There is so much money out there. You go to the grocery store, there is somebody in that grocery store that has tens of millions of dollars.
[00:06:29] And I'm here to tell you, it's always the guy you'd never expect. The super wealthy guy does not drive a brand new Escalade. In most cases, sometimes he does. But usually when you see a brand new Escalade, that person can't even afford the gas to put in it.
[00:06:44] It's like AC DC said, got myself a Cadillac, but I can't afford the gasoline.
[00:06:52] Comes from a song called Down Payment Blues, which we all get from time to time. Down Payment Blues is what we suffer from a lot rental, real estate. I'm gonna do a podcast on that Down Payment Blues.
[00:07:09] All right, so number two, my deal might not be a deal to you. There is a guy out there that can drop $2 million cash on a beach house, put it with a property manager and never see it again. And to him it was a deal. It was a deal because it's exactly what his wife wanted. He's getting enjoyment out of it. He's getting a couple, couple of bucks. Although the return on investment, the cash on cash is not good.
[00:07:35] He's getting a return on his cash.
[00:07:37] It's probably more than he's going to get by sitting in his savings account, you know, and he's getting equity and he's got bonus depreciation. He's got Tax benefits and the whole thing. That's a deal.
[00:07:50] $2 million cash on a house that's worth $2 million and rents for, I don't know, $150,000 gross income per year with a property manager, no mortgage. To that guy, it was a deal.
[00:08:04] It's what his family wanted. It's working for him. He got the bonus, depreciation saved on his taxes, and he let it rip.
[00:08:12] I realize that most quote unquote real estate investors are looking for cash flow.
[00:08:20] I get that.
[00:08:23] But your deal might not be my deal, might not be the next guy's deal. So you got to decide what is a deal to you. Number three, you got to be obsessed. You have to be completely obsessed to find a deal that do not fall out of the sky.
[00:08:38] You got to know every single property that comes on the market, in the market that you are looking in and why you do not want it. Because 99% chance when a property goes for sale list gets listed in your market, you don't want it. And you need to know why.
[00:08:53] Oh, new listing. Let's check it out. Up. I don't like that one. Because the third bath, the third bedroom is whatever, you know, who knows? And when you're brand new, a lot of that's just got to come from your gut.
[00:09:06] Short Term Shop plus has live and recorded sessions on the following topics.
[00:09:12] Creating compelling listings, marketing your STR property, setting up a new listing, managing from a distance, finding and acquiring your first or next STR live revenue management audits with the pros analyzing an STR for gross revenue.
[00:09:36] All of this and much, much more is now available at your fingertips with Short Term Shop plus.
[00:09:44] Everything you need to know to have success in the world of vacation homes and STR.
[00:09:50] Please join us at stsconsultation.com that's STS plus.com or stsconsultation.com to learn more.
[00:10:04] I remember my first vacation rental. I made seven or eight offers. We got under contract four or five times, fell out of contract mostly because of inexperience. Didn't like the septic, didn't like no joist hangers, whatever stupid crap that I wouldn't care about today. But you need to decide what matters to you. And back then, it mattered to me.
[00:10:25] And eventually I ended up purchasing the one that was perfect for me and then the second that was perfect for me and the fourth and the fifth and the seventh, you know, but at the time, people were telling me, you can't get a deal. And this was a period of time when nobody was making offers on these things, and it was in the Smokies.
[00:10:49] There was a lot of things for sale. Nobody making offers. Kind of like today. That's what's happening right now.
[00:10:55] Nobody's making any offers.
[00:10:58] And they were all listed higher than what they were worth because we were coming off.08 and everybody paid a lot of money for them. Kind of like today where everybody paid too much in 2020 and 21 and 22, and now they're trying to dump them because they're bored or whatever, and it's not worth what they paid for it. So they've got it listed too high and they are not selling. It's almost the same thing as it was 14 years ago.
[00:11:27] But if you make enough offers, you stick it out, you learn your market, you become obsessed. You can find a deal, a deal that works for you.
[00:11:40] Furthermore, if you go out and buy a house and put it on Airbnb because you heard STR was a good idea, and a year later you're not making any money and you say it was a bad deal, that's shame on you. Shame on you. You gotta do a little research. All you gotta do is listen to some podcasts, listen to some of those early Bigger Pockets podcasts. Listen to my show, Mike Sjogren. Go listen to him. He's great.
[00:12:08] Do some research. Let it rip.
[00:12:12] It's not hard, my friend. It is not hard. You are overthinking it. If you've got a down payment and you want to make something happen in your life, go buy a house. Simple as that.
[00:12:23] So to recap, deals are not just out there sitting around. They never have been, never will be. They are not, will not, and have never been sitting around waiting for you to buy them. They're just not.
[00:12:38] It's ridiculous to think that that's such a thing.
[00:12:41] That's like saying going to the bar and finding the first girl you see and marrying her is a good idea.
[00:12:47] Tapping. It's worked out for folks. It has worked out for folks.
[00:12:52] My story is really kind of not all that dissimilar to that.
[00:12:57] It's worked out tremendously for me.
[00:13:03] But in general, you've got to understand that deals are not just laying around. Number two, what's a deal for me? Might not be a deal for you. What's a deal for me? Might not be a deal for the wealthy guy. What's a deal for the wealthy guy? Might not be a deal for you.
[00:13:22] Number three, got to be obsessed, obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. If you want to find a deal they are not going to fall out of this guy and smack you on the face. You got to do your homework. You've got to work hard.
[00:13:36] Go visit your market, learn your market. Walk through the houses, get obsessed. Have fun with it.
[00:13:47] That's how you find a deal. All right. I love you. Short Term Rental Management. I'm looking for guests, which is guest strmshow.com Luke, Carl, don't overthink it.
