Killing it in Killington

[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management. With your host, yours truly, Luke Karl. Welcome to Short Term Rental Management. We have a property manager on the show today and we're very excited to have Ms. Holly George. You are in Vermont? [00:00:25] Speaker B: We are. We're in Killington, Vermont. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Killington. I want to hear all about all of it, including the four boys. We were just talking about children, which is just a wonderful experience. So, yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're located and what you're doing. [00:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have Killington Mountain Homes here in Killington, Vermont. We manage about 100 properties. What is unique about us is we really focused on the operational side and guest experience. So that was our fundamental building block and we just built piece by piece, solving challenge by challenge as we grew. So we have an in house laundry. All of our cleaners are in house. They're our employees. I. We have an in house hot tub team, a maintenance team, and a renovation team, all under the Killington Mountain Homes umbrella. [00:01:27] Speaker A: Okay, how long have you been doing this? When did, when did you start? [00:01:31] Speaker B: We've been in this business for five years. [00:01:35] Speaker A: And when you started, did you buy another property management company or start from scratch? [00:01:39] Speaker B: We started from scratch. So the backstory is interesting. My husband and I actually met at work in a tech company. So we've been working together basically our whole working lives. So we work really well together, which is lovely. And in 2006, I was at that tech company for a number of years and I had the ability to buy in, which was an interesting story because in 2006, mortgages were. It was before the mortgage crisis. Right. So I was living in Greenwich, Connecticut, and to get the money to buy in, it was a pretty big buy in. I just literally called my personal banker that came with my initial mortgage and they were like, no problem, we'll come over with a ton of money tomorrow. How I got the money to buy into this tech company so that would never happen again in this world. But that was the situation in 2006. So as with any good story, there's always a lot of luck behind it. Um, and then I bought in like two days later to this tech company and it was a private equity firm. So I brought this huge 200 page document to a lawyer and he said, you know, I can charge you $25,000 to read this, but you should just sign it. These guys are great. You're going to do really well. So Fast forward to 2021, that tech company grew 44x. We went through three different private equity tranches, and then it finally went public. And so every time it changed hands, I had golden handcuffs. So I had to keep staying and staying. But in 2021, I was out. And the non compete that I signed in 2026, which the lawyers said was toilet paper, was actually ironclad in 2021 because we had been so successful. So we thought we would stay in tech, but we could not. So we got into real estate. And we got into real estate in Killington, Vermont, for kind of two reasons. Number one, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about how Killington in 2019 was like the pinnacle of investing. You could buy a house for $200,000 and it would make $200,000 a year. Like, those are real numbers. Obviously, when we started buying in 2021, it had already doubled or tripled, but the numbers were still really good in Killington. And number two, we had always had a house in Killington, so we knew the town really well. We'd been coming up skiing forever with our kids since, like the 90s. We'd been coming up to Killington. It's an awesome town. So we knew the town and we, we went in it. We thought initially that it was a real estate play. And you'll laugh because you know this story, right? And you're like, oh, it's real estate. It's passive. I read Avery's book. It's passing pretty easy. And we had, like, a terrible property management experience with somebody else. And so we were like, well, let's just do it ourselves. How hard could it be? And that's kind of where the journey started. With our own properties, with our own property management company. And it just grew from there. [00:04:54] Speaker A: Okay, all right, so, uh, hold on. Let's back up to the tech company. Are we talking. I mean, this is not how I built this, but I do love that show. I mean, are we talking life changing money? Like, do you have to work [00:05:11] Speaker B: close to life changing money? But, like, I'm young enough, and I just. I can't ever imagine a day where I wouldn't want to work. Yeah, like, I love what I'm doing. I'm just so much fun. Love it. [00:05:23] Speaker A: So picture I was looking to paint, you know, just like where. Where is. Is life. And so five years ago, when you started this and I got again, you had a property or two of your own. Did you realize what you were getting yourself into with the cleaners and the owners and the nonsense? [00:05:45] Speaker B: No, not at all. Yeah, not at all. And it's funny, like we've read all the business books and like we are the business book, right? It's like, and then you'll make this mistake and we're like, yes, we did. And then you'll make this mistake and we're yes, it's like you, you don't learn until you learn it yourself. You know what I mean? And so we are, we've got lots of bumps and bruises from the journey, but it's been, it's been a fun one and it's, it's just always challenging. [00:06:13] Speaker A: So do you intend to stay? I mean this is a sellable business. At a hundred units, you could sell this. Do you intend to exit at some point or continue to grow? [00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah, we continue to grow. And here's kind of where the backstory of our tech company helps understand our mindset. So we were a smaller tech company, right? Like we were like a hundred people, maybe $100 million that grew into a multi billion dollar company. So I witnessed this journey through my working career, right? Was kind of on the, you know, watching this whole thing unfold with these private equity firms and all this stuff and I was like, kind of figured out what they did, you know, I was like lather, rinse, repeat. And like we were a unicorn, we were wildly successful. But from my perspective I was like, this is, this is amazing. Like this is the job. Not the like tech stuff, it's the building, the business stuff. So like that background has inspired me here. And what's interesting, like when we started in tech in the early thousands, there was not a lot of consolidation. So like what happened over those 20 years was a ton of consolidation. And that's important because here in short term rentals there's been no consolidation. Like the biggest player was Vacasa and they Maybe consolidated only 3% of the market and they failed. I mean it didn't go well. So for me, having gone through this long journey in my life of seeing all this consolidation and how to do it, I'm like super excited about that. So like starting here in Killington, building amazing systems that will scale is really important. And we kind of know the formula on how to scale. So our focus is making short term rentals a very consistent branded product. Like when you go to a Marriott, you know you're going to get a nice bed, right? When you go to an Airbnb, you hope you're going to get a nice bed, you hope you're going to get cleanliness, but you don't know, and so with our brand, you know, you're going to get all those good things, right. And so we're building something that we can scale. We have a background knowing how to scale and how to consolidate. So, you know, we'll, we'll definitely see when it's time to go into different markets and take what we have and grow it. But we have a. We've been just heads down working on building something that works really, really well and can scale. So then we'll call you and Avery and go into a different market and buy a bunch of places over there and start growing. [00:08:53] Speaker A: Nice. What's the competition like? Let's stick to Killington. Yeah. Like, you know, you've got 100. Are there? Well, let's tell me about the town itself before we get into that. Like, what is it? Paint a picture if somebody's never been there. [00:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, Killington's awesome. So it's, you know, we're in the center of Vermont. Vermont is incredibly quaint. It's a state where there's only like four McDonald's, you know, so it's a lot of mom and pop, a lot of farm to table. It's gorgeous. It's kind of the top place if you're an athlete in nature. And we're in one of the best ski towns in the east coast. So we're super close to Boston, we're super close to New York, so people can come up here all the time. There's huge plans. They're building a huge, huge base village, which is going to be the first one on the East Coast. So Killington is great, right? It's, it's a great spot, even if they didn't build the base village. But with that coming, there's a lot of excitement around the town. [00:09:52] Speaker A: How big is this town and what is the nearest metropolitan area? [00:09:57] Speaker B: So all of Vermont is pretty small, right? There's only 600,000 people that live in the state. Our town has about a thousand people, so we're pretty small town. The closest, bigger town is Rutland, and we have an airport there and an Amtrak that comes in from New York City. So we have some good transportation. That's about 15 minutes away. [00:10:18] Speaker A: How far is the train to New York City? If I were to take the train. How far is that? [00:10:21] Speaker B: You were to take the train? I think it's about four hours. And it's a gorgeous, gorgeous train ride because you're coming up the. The Hudson River. It's really beautiful. And then you cut through Vermont. It's gorgeous. It's a nice train ride. [00:10:35] Speaker A: Boston, how far? [00:10:37] Speaker B: Boston's about three hours. Okay. And it's a one, it's a one hour flight. [00:10:41] Speaker A: There you go. That's where it's coming from. It's the big city folks that want to get out into the mountains and that kind of thing. Okay, great. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Seasonality, very seasonal. So very much winter based. That's our peak season. So like anyone can do well in Killington in February. And then it's nine months of very competitive seasonality. So this summer comes on pretty strong. We have a gorgeous, gorgeous fall season. So that's pretty big. But then we have some pretty competitive shoulder seasons and that's where what we've built is very differentiated from our competition here in town. [00:11:23] Speaker A: And let's talk about the competition. You've got a hundred. You seem to me like the kind of lady that knows your competition. Who is the competition? How many units do they have? I don't need names but you know, like have they been around a long time? Are they mom and pop, you know, that kind of thing? [00:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So our competition has been around for a long time. There's about like three big players and they all have about 100 units. So it's kind of interesting. I suspect that we will eclipse them pretty soon. But we also know the finances very, very well because like I'm an engineer by training and so I spent a lot, I spend still a lot of. And the pricing. So I see what's going on. So we think there's a limit to like how many units we want in this town to be at the top. Like we want all of our units to be at the top. Our units now perform about 30 to 50% better than anything else out there. And I use Air DNA constantly. So like our one bedrooms are making $60,000. Air DNA with high confidence level will say a one bedroom will make 34,000. So there's a huge difference because of all the things that we're doing versus like an average manager or self managed property. [00:12:41] Speaker A: Do you have any experience with long term rentals? [00:12:44] Speaker B: Nope. No, we're, we try to be super focused. Like we just want to do short term and that's it and nothing else. [00:12:51] Speaker A: Good old Gary Keller is the one thing. Yes, I figured you would get that reference. You seem very well ready. Okay, great. So tell me about building the company. Let's go back to the, the old how I built this thing. So you know when you first started. Well, I guess in general, how are you finding owners? Do you have, are you the sales Department. And how are you? Are you cold calling or what are we doing? [00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah, so we haven't leaned heavily into marketing yet. We haven't even started. So like I joke because my background, even though I'm an engineer, when I was in the tech company, I was the salesperson, so I was the top producer. So I, I can't wait till I can actually start selling. But we've just been building the operational stuff. So, you know, a lot of building the cleaning teams, building the systems across everything that makes it all work. You know, Our ratings are 4.94 across 100 properties, which puts us at number two in the entire United States for large property managers. And there are a hundred reasons why we have that rating. It's difficult. So, like, we have really been focused on building that structure and that foundation and those systems and honestly, like, it sells itself, right? Because we are ranked so much higher than any of the property managers in town. And our performance is so much better that like, if someone does call me 9 times out of 10, they'll close with us. Like they'll sign up with us. Because our story is very strong. You know, the people who don't sign up with us, actually we do have like barriers to entry because our product has to be high quality. So, you know, you have to do a fire marshal sign off. So if that actually weeds people out because people who don't want to follow the rules are like, well, I don't want to, I don't want to have the fire marshal my house. And we're like, then you're not a good fit. Like if you don't care about your guests being fire safety, like, that's table stakes, basic table stakes for us. So, you know, part of the hundred things we do is, is safety. And having the fire marshal sign off is one of those things. So that, and I know a lot of operators talk about how do you get good owners. That's just one of the ways that we can weed out people who won't be a good fit with us. [00:15:20] Speaker A: This program has been brought to you by the Short Term Shop. The Short Term Shop is the premier residential vacation home agency. We have a large following and we work hard to ensure our clients happiness. If this sounds like a good fit for you, we are hiring real estate agents. We are currently hiring in Outer Banks, Shenandoah, Virginia, Galveston, Crystal Beach, Texas and the East Tennessee Smoky Mountains. Email uscareers the shorttermshop.com that's careers@the shorttermshop.com. okay, so we have 100 units. Where did they come from? Is this word of mouth? You're just crushing it. And everybody likes working with you, so they tell their friends. Is that how it's happening? [00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of. Most of it comes from realtors, so, like, we're pretty well known. And if they have to refer someone, if you refer them to us, the owners are me happy. Right. So a lot of realtors will give us leads. And when we started, we bought 20 properties here in town. So we. We got to know all the realtors and, like, our philosophy was like, we love all of you. And they. They really are. There's some very good realtors. There's. There's not. We haven't bumped into many bad ones. But so we. Our philosophy when we were in that buying mode early on was we just went with the listing agent. Like, if you had a listing, I would call you and I would buy that house. Like, it was kind of. It was kind of frenetic because we came into town and we were like, like, let's buy. And we. We hit the timing really well. So we came in, we got 20 properties. We renovated a bunch of them. There's some great stories on our social media. People love the before and after. So you know how dilapidated some of them were, and then now they're just gorgeous because we took them down to the studs. So, you know, there's a lot. [00:17:24] Speaker A: I do. I love that. I'm gonna. I didn't know that. I'm gonna follow you. I love the. I love those videos. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, great. Yes. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt there. Okay. Yeah. You know, I'm hearing the. The 20. Because you had that tuck money, I would assume you were looking for tax advantage and that's what led you down this wormhole. [00:17:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, mostly it was just honestly, like, I did the math. Very. It was. It's a funny story. My friend was selling her condo, and I was like, did you sign with the realtor yet? She's like, no, I'm going to sign at noon. So this was 8 o' clock in the morning. And the girl text chat, and she's like, oh, I'm selling my condo. And we text a hundred times a day, these girls. And I was like, can you just give me four hours? And I literally wrote the whole business plan. And I was like, I could make as much money as I was making at my tech company as a top producer If I get 20 units and like, let's go. And like, so once I, like, write it down, I'm gonna Go execute. Like, so we executed very quickly. And I was still working at my tech job at the time, and I was like, there's gonna be some limit where the banks say no. Like at some point they're gonna not give me any more money. And so I was going as fast as I could. I was like, another one, another one, another one. And like, you know, and then we did finally hit that limit where they were like, how many are you buy? What are you doing? You know, you don't earn as much to like support this many mortgages. And I was like, because in 2021, the local banks weren't as keen on like the cash flow, right? Like, it's like, hey, this house we bought for 600,000 brings in $250,000 a year. Like, but the banks were like, we don't believe that. Like, we don't believe that. Like, now they do because they know me really well. But like, back then they were like, we're not going to give you a loan based on that. We're going to give you a loan based on your income levels and your assets. So I knew, I knew there was a formula somewhere that we would hit the end. So we went as fast as we could and we, we got as much as we could and it worked out well. [00:19:32] Speaker A: Yeah, the bank wants, you know, a tax return is what they want, you know, so once you get them a tax return, that proves that you're willing to really, what they're looking for is to make sure that you're going to work your ass off, you know, and if you show them a tax return where you worked your ass off and made this thing work, then the money will keep coming. [00:19:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:19:51] Speaker A: And then eventually do that. Enough time for enough times for enough years, then eventually you don't even need the bank anymore. And that's pretty cool, you know? [00:19:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:01] Speaker A: But wow, what a journey to get to that point, you know. So now hold on, you said replace the income of my high level tech job. Now this is a, this is a thing that comes up on the Internet all the time, especially with gurus that are trying to sell you a package deal or whatever. And like, just buy this and you'll quit your job and live happily ever after. I mean, what, what was. Realistically, walk me through that. Like, I mean, obviously it wasn't like, I'm trying to make exactly the same amount over here. It was just like, can I build a business and scrap and kick and scream? But you know, financially, what was that transition like? [00:20:42] Speaker B: Oh, well, let's See it was interesting. It was interesting. So I mean, obviously it didn't. Nothing works out as well, you know, as a three hour session on paper of like did to do. I think I can do this, you know. But it did actually hold relatively true. Like it tracked like relatively true. Like the 20 units was actually correct to, to. To throw off the money that I calculated it would throw off. So it held pretty well. I mean, I tend to be conservative when I'm estimating my own life. So it did work out. The thing that we miss estimated by a lot, and that's the business books, is like the startup cost for the property management business. So like we found very quickly that laundry was a huge challenge. We, we spent like a million dollars building a commercial laundry building and like a cleaning headquarters. And it's pretty, it's paid off probably in about two or three years because everyone else in town uses a linen service. And like over Christmas, which is our peak, they ran out of towels. So like we were the only game in town that had towels for our guests. And so that investment paid off by leaps and bounds. And it's also one of those hundred things that differentiates us because our linens are nicer. Like to go back to that goal of having that hotel quality experience. You know, we buy 600 thread count hotel quality linens. And you can see all that on my social media too. Like, I love the laundry because it's. I don't. There's something about my brain that like I love processing 3,000 pounds of laundry in like a day. It's just like a big engineering, lean engineering challenge for me. So it's like very cool. It flows through the system and we know where the bottleneck is and da da da. So all that's been really fun and like we have like a McDonald's system for packing because like anything we did that was like stupid. I was like, why are we doing it? This is like, let's make this better. So like we were like writing on a piece of paper, like, here's the 14 houses we're turning today, running that down to the laundry and being like looking on a printed out piece of paper of like this house needs two queens and a king and 16 towels, right? Packing that. So we made like a McDonald's like iPad that like literally goes automatically connects to Breezeway, it connects to Hostaway and it automatically populates what we're cleaning that day. And if we move it, it moves. It's just very cool. So like it's all automated and clickable and people pack what they need to pack for that day. And it all moves through a system. [00:23:30] Speaker A: So why don't we open this commercial laundry facility in all the vacation towns in America and have that be the startup? [00:23:42] Speaker B: So I think it's the whole package, right? Like, everything we do differentiates us. I really believe that our ratings put us in a different stratosphere and that is one of the two main reasons we outperform everyone so much. It's our ratings. So, like, we're always top of the page, right? And so there's about 1400 units. And when you're rated so high, we're top of the page because, like, you know, who are they going to give a booking to? Us or someone with a 4.7? They're going to give it to us because they're going to know from a business perspective their guests are going to be happy and they're going to come back again and that's all they want, is happy guests. So we deliver to the OTAs, very happy guests with great reviews. So, yeah, like, that's the plan, right? Like we scaled this, the tech business and went national bit by bit. I mean, it took. Took 20 years. But like we have a platform now that we think is much better than what Vacas platform was, which failed because we've integrated everything like, like tech, right? It's like Apple, Apple owns everything and so they control a better experience. And so that's kind of what we built towards. [00:25:03] Speaker A: So you are what? Well, I guarantee, you know the answer to this. What percentage of direct bookings versus OTAs are you? [00:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's a great question because we are really heavy on OTAs right now. So that is the thing I'm working on this year is our own direct marketing and building that out. Like, I wasn't focused on that, I wasn't focused on the sales because it took us five years to build this operation operational platform. It just took a long time to build everything. So now that that's built, we're focusing on, on driving a few more direct bookings. But again, I think you make the point. You make the point. Well, like, they do a great job with marketing and they do a great job driving bookings and so they've driven huge bookings for all of us. So they will always be an important partner to us and we take that seriously. And you know, again, I think we're good partners to them because we deliver such high guest experience. Like they want more of what we're delivering. [00:26:04] Speaker A: Do you have a desire to get off the platforms? [00:26:08] Speaker B: No, no, I think they'll always be part of, of what we do. I don't see them going away, but eventually I would love for people to trust our brand and book more directly with us as well. [00:26:20] Speaker A: I think that that's why again, you know, we see this every day in. In these vac. I live in a vacation town myself and these old school property manage. They are anti. They will put their properties on Airbnb and Verbo and charge ridiculous numbers and have zero reviews because they don't actually want you to book on there. They're just using it for fake advertisement, basically. So. [00:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So, okay, well, where do we. What's the housekeeper situation look like? I mean, obviously that was a big, big thing, right? Was that. That was one of your first hires, I would assume. What's that look like? [00:26:52] Speaker B: Yes. And the biggest challenge, I mean, there was so many hard lessons for me to learn because again, coming from tech, you're like in this corporate mentality of everyone is wanting to move ahead and like we had to really learn a different mentality. I loved your. You had a guest a while back that started a cleaning business. Like, and I want to get him on the phone because I still have a hundred questions for him, right. Like how he built a business to do 700 short term rental cleansing is fascinating to me, but yeah, it's really hard. So what we built with the cleaning company is a culture and a training program. So we're very seasonal. So we have like our good supervisors that are like the trainers, but we have a very seasonal profile. So we have to rely on seasonal workers coming through, which is where our training program comes in and our systems for monitoring like time expectations and all of it. Like there's probably about 50 of the 100 things are just in our cleaning company because that is so critical to the guest experience. So. And again, all of that's on our social media. Like you can do a super deep dive on like all of our systems that we've built with like all of our breezeway checklists. We love breezeway. And then we have a lot of systems we built on top of that to like do scheduling because scheduling is actually quite complex. So at our peak season, we'll literally have 10 different teams of three or four people going out on the mountain. And that's fun too, because it snows here. So we've had to invest in cars with snow tires to like make sure we, you know, we're always cleaning the house no matter what the weather. So it's it's a lot of investment in the mountain town to make sure you can execute. But we've done it and we can execute. So. [00:28:45] Speaker A: I hate to bounce around so much, but you mentioned snow, so I'm going to go back to the seasonality. Is it dead? Dead in the summertime? Like, what does that look like? [00:28:52] Speaker B: No, but like, again, like, I spend a lot of my time in price labs and Air DNA. So, like, I know all the graphs. I look at them all the time. They're over here. But, you know, in the winter, we're at like 93% occupancy. Like, really, really high occupancy. Which is why I say, like, anyone can do this in the winter. And then in the summer, it dips down to like 10 to 20, 30% occupancy. So, like, in that occupancy, we own it. Like, we are the ones Killington Mountain Homes that like, takes that business because of our positioning on the OTAs. Like, we're on page one and two and no one, hold on, I'm going [00:29:32] Speaker A: to stop you right there. I think it's because you are not old school and you understand that there is a product to sell in these off season times. And the other folks are sitting around being like, oh, sweet, we don't have to do anything this month. [00:29:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, they literally, I mean, and we see it. Like, Air DNA has some nice views of like, I love it because I can see our company versus other companies. And it's like the bookings in the summer, it's just like, I'm always like, okay, don't forget that the Y axis is revenue. Right. And our revenue is like 12,000. And like our competitors are like 2,000 for the same products in the summer. I'm like, it's a huge difference. And that's where we make so much more money for our owners is on the shoulder season. [00:30:17] Speaker A: But they're your competition is not looking at air DNA. They couldn't care less. Yeah, they don't know what it is. Don't even care what it is. No, they don't even care what airbnb is. [00:30:27] Speaker B: I don't know about that. But, you know, I mean, they're pretty sophisticated, but. [00:30:32] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:30:32] Speaker B: I just think we're very unique in that we invested so much. So, like, I don't mind sharing everything we do because the barrier to entry to get to where we are is pretty high. Like, you're gonna have to build a Laundromat. You're gonna have to build a big company. You're gonna have to build all these systems. So like you can try, but it's not easy. Right? So. And I say that to our owners too. I was like, listen, like I know we charge a percentage, but we will make that and then some. And you're not lifting a finger and your house is being cared for immacul like, you know, so it just makes financial sense to work with us versus try to do it yourself. But it's not like every market has someone like a Killington Mountain Homes that does such a great job. It's like I totally understand why people manage themselves. [00:31:24] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I absolutely, I preach this all the time. You know, if you want to get into this business, property management, you can crush it. You can absolutely crush it. You just have to work hard and give a crap. [00:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:32] Speaker A: Because people in this business, you know, there's a, the bar's pretty low and it's not their fault. It's not their fault. And again, this is why I asked you if you had long term rental experience because we see it all day, every day in long term rentals and apartments where, you know, single family residential real estate, it's, it's like they just don't know any better. You know, this is the way they've been trained and it's been going on like this for 200 years and it's just the way it is and people, for people to go above and beyond, you know, for instance, this is a ridiculous story, but I went and walked and empty one of my units last weekend. I happened to be in the neighborhood and they had it for rent. There was actually people getting ready to go in to look at it. It was just a lovely young couple, you know, looked like they were just getting ready to start their lives together. And I, I happened to, I didn't know they were coming. I was just happened to be there and I walked up to the front door and there was birds chirping. And I'm like, oh my God, this house is full of birds. What's going on? And so I finally got to the bottom of it and there was a nest in like the, the pillar holding the front porch up, which was no big deal. It was just an open spot that probably since the day it was built had never been filled in. And it's just little stuff like that where like dude, I got my property management company in that town is a team of 20 people never noticed, didn't give a crap. And that's just reality, you know? Yeah, but it's like those little Things. If you're willing to get into the property management company and fill in the gap so the birds can't have babies in your house, you can succeed. It's really as simple as that. [00:33:06] Speaker B: I love it. We say that all the time too. It's like we kind of like all looked at each other when we got some really early success and we were like, what are we? We are like, all we're doing is caring. Like, we were like, that's it, we care. But it like caring means a lot of things, like a ton of hard work and stuff like that. But like really, that was what we said as well, was the difference was that we cared. You know, it was that simple. Like, that's the formula. We care. [00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Can you run, run some numbers for me briefly, like on like a today's purchase price? I know you're not a real estate agent, but like if I were to buy. Well, you tell me what, how big are these houses? Are they condos? And what do I. What, what's kind of a, you know, sweet spot? Buy this and it'll read for this. That kind of a thing. [00:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So we initially just in our own heads were like, let's go big, let's buy big properties. Like, I don't know, it seemed to be like economies of scale. So we've done well with our bigger properties. Like we'll have, you know, a six bedroom that we got for maybe 650, 650k and it's doing 220k a year. But that house today, just four years later, would probably be worth about 1.5 million. Like our prices have gone up a lot. I still think that particular scenario closes right now. Like one bedrooms are doing really well. Like, so you can get into a one bedroom in this town for like three to five hundred thousand dollars, depending on where you are. And those will do about Air DNA, right? They'll do 34,000 in our program. They'll do more like 60,000. So those still make some sense for investors. [00:34:58] Speaker A: Okay, so break that down for me one more time. 3. Which one's the one that makes some sense? [00:35:04] Speaker B: I think like the smaller units right now, like the one bedrooms are still condo, still play condo. They're going, they're going for like 300 to $500,000 in town and decorating. [00:35:18] Speaker A: It's a house or a condo. [00:35:20] Speaker B: Condos. [00:35:20] Speaker A: Got it, Got it. Okay, go ahead. Sorry. [00:35:22] Speaker B: Condo. [00:35:23] Speaker A: 300 to 500. And it'll rent for how much? [00:35:26] Speaker B: It'll rent from about 35 to 60k gross. [00:35:31] Speaker A: Okay, that's great. And, and the. So are the houses, were the houses ever in play? Was it always condos? [00:35:38] Speaker B: No, I mean like, we started with houses, so we started with large houses and you know, went from there. So like I said, the, the first data point I gave you was like, bedroom, house. Like we got it for 650. And it's doing about 220 gross per year. So that's obviously a great investment today. If you were to buy that same house, that house would probably be worth about 1.5 million. And it's renting for how much it's grossing about 220. [00:36:08] Speaker A: Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, well, and also, you know, let's be real, the market is changing, you know, at least where we are. And we were everywhere we, we are seeing, you know, Covid sellers that are just saying screw it and dumping it for less than they paid. And it's unfortunate I had to do that. I did that on, on a few apartment buildings where I got myself in a situation where honestly I had a drug dealer move in and I couldn't deal with, you know, like I. He took over the building basically and we fixed the problem. We ended up putting like nine ring cameras on this apartment building which is, you know, obviously we stole that from the short term world, not nine. We would never do that on a short term. But you use the cameras, you know, for. Yeah, check ins and cleaners and things like that. [00:36:52] Speaker B: But yeah, the things you never thought you'd learn how to do, right? [00:36:56] Speaker A: Yeah. So we cleaned the building up and then sold it, but we still sold at quite a loss. But we are seeing that right now. [00:37:02] Speaker B: Where. [00:37:03] Speaker A: That's the market. You know, you got a property that's been on and again, I don't know your market, but you got a property that's on sale for, you know, been for sale for, you know, 90 to 200 days. And you never know, you just throw up a Hail Mary and maybe you find a deal. [00:37:17] Speaker B: But yeah, what, what's been interesting about our market? So, like my initial house, I bought in 22,002 and it literally stayed flat till 2019. Like in Killington in particular, there was just no appreciation. Which is why in my opinion, the Wall Street Journal said this was the best town in the country because it was so flat for so long, since 2019. And then Covid, it really turned. So like those houses have gone up like five times. So we're a little different here in Killington than the rest of the country. Like it's still pretty Strong. And I think it's still strong because there was so little appreciation for so long that when the market finally started to appreciate, it was just literally coming up to like normal reality. It was very strange that the market was flat here for so long, if that makes sense. But we're, we're still doing pretty well. The market's still pretty strong. There's not a lot of inventory in, in Vermont. It's very difficult to build here. Very difficult. So anything that comes up for sale, there's a, there's a demand for it. [00:38:29] Speaker A: And are these wealthy people from Boston that are buying a vacation home and want to rent it on the side, is that your primary? [00:38:36] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. 100%. Corporate types that you know are looking for the investment as well as a little use. A lot of people looking at that short term rental loophole. So yeah, we have some pretty, pretty savvy investors. Like a lot of our owner profiles are high performing corporate people from New York or Boston. [00:38:59] Speaker A: How many employees do you have? How many cleaners, et cetera. [00:39:03] Speaker B: So it depends on the season. At high season we're close to 50. Low season, it comes down to like 25. [00:39:11] Speaker A: Do the same ones come back? [00:39:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And that's really fun. So we, we do have a lot of fun. We try to build a great culture. Like everyone's proud to work here, proud that we're rated so high in the whole country and we're just in this little town, you know, so they know that they are super important to our brand and we kind of emphasize that like do not have a bad day because if we get one bad review, it takes the rest of us, all 48 of the rest of us, like 280 perfect scores to get rid of your one bad day. So just stay home. Bad day. Don't, don't bring down the rest of the team. [00:39:50] Speaker A: What do they do in the 20 to 30 that are seasonal? What they do? They drive instacart or what do they do in the off season? [00:39:58] Speaker B: So we. Yeah, that's a great question. We have like contractors that come work with us. We actually, because it's such a unique market, we the, we own housing in, in Rutland. So we actually put people up in houses because in a ski town it's very hard to find housing. And you know you're not going to stay in a two million dollar ski on, ski off home if you're, you know, a J1 worker. So Rutland is a great town. There's a lot to do, there's transportation, there's shopping. So they'll stay at apartments in Rutland and coming on the bus every day and work with us. And like I said, we have a fleet of cars that our workers drive. So it's that all of that was just so much trial and error to build, like, you know, finding housing. It just went one challenge after another after another that we just kept solving for. So that's, that's why we've been five years just building this, because it's a lot of lessons learned. [00:40:57] Speaker A: I love it. Do you plan to grow to 200? Is that even possible? [00:41:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 150 to 200 is the sweet spot in this town. Before we start competing with ourselves. We don't, we don't want to do that. Okay. [00:41:12] Speaker A: All right. Do you have any tricks for somebody that's brand new and has bought a rental or two and maybe ran out of money but wants to keep doing it? So is maybe getting into co hosting and starting to dip their toe in the world of managing other people's properties? Maybe some advice on how to handle owners? [00:41:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, just communicate. Right. Like we, we care very deeply, like about our owners. So we've tried to build a communication program that respects both our maintenance team's time because those guys are really busy and they don't have time to, you know, when they're on a ladder swinging a hammer to take a phone call from an owner and answer a two hour question, like, well, what do you think about my toilet? And what you know. So we have a specific team that does owner care. And so they are the ones that like, anytime there's like a doorknob fell off or we replace this toilet, like it'll be in breezeway and we will send the owner all that information with the picture. And owners are really happy. They're like, thanks for letting me know, you know, and they, we build this trust relationship of they know we have excellent people. They're in really good hands. Their asset is in really good hands. Like we're taking care of it it. So that's a big part of it is just the trust comes from, in my opinion, consistency. Like my whole life I've been in the tech company to now, it's like consistency is what does it. So like. And there's a hundred things, like I said, to build that consistent experience. Doing an awesome job one time doesn't make up for the one time you fail. You have to just, just be reliable, do what you say, say what you do. And trust is, is huge. And I think trust is just built on everyone having a consistent experience, from the guests to the owners. [00:43:05] Speaker A: Well, you're absolutely delightful. I would put my property with you. And. And is Dan. Is it Dan the husband? [00:43:12] Speaker B: Dan is the husband. He's amazing. Yep. [00:43:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And I'm very impressed. I'm very impressed. I think a lot of people get into this, you know, honestly, by accident. They moved to a small vacation town because they like going there, and they. Then they all of a sudden. And I live in one of these towns, so I see it every day. They all of a sudden realize there are no jobs at all. So they get a job doing the only thing that there is, which is in the hospitality and. Or real estate industry, which you are doing both, Right? [00:43:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:43] Speaker A: And then they realize, oh, my goodness, this is the only job that there is in this town, and I don't like it, and I don't even understand it. And then that's what builds these crappy property management companies, you know? [00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:53] Speaker A: So you did this with intent. You did this very deliberately with, you know, highly educated. Obviously read every book on the planet, which is wonderful. And I'm very, very impressed with you as a human. [00:44:07] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you so much. [00:44:09] Speaker A: You're doing a great job. This is my point, and this is what I try to convey on every one of my podcasts, is that there are good property managers out there, number one, There are good landlords out there, number two, and Holly's living proof of that. I want to completely change the perspective that the universe seems to have that landlords and property managers are not that great. And thank you for doing your job. [00:44:36] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when we look to scale, we'll reach out to you and Avery and go into a new market. [00:44:43] Speaker A: You're scaled. You're scaled already. You're crushing it. You're doing great. How do we get a hold of you? [00:44:49] Speaker B: So we're doing a lot with social media these days, so we've got a lot of great reels out there. So check those out. We're at Killington Mountain Homes, so you can find us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Yeah. So connect with us. That's. That's what we're doing to make sure we're connecting with our guests and connecting with our owners and. And folks in the community. [00:45:13] Speaker A: I love it. I'm gonna go follow you for sure. And thank you so much for being here, as always. Don't overth it, and we'll catch you next time. [00:45:22] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me. [00:45:23] Speaker A: Bye now. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Bye.