E42: How We Co-Host Midterm Rentals (And Stack Bookings to Cut Vacancy)

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In this episode, Joshua and Lauren pull back the curtain on one of the hottest topics they keep getting asked about: co-hosting midterm rentals. They break down what co-hosting really is (and what it isn’t), why their model focuses on 91016, and the exact process they use to onboard and manage properties—from the discovery call to guest screening, turnovers, and performance clauses.

They also share a wild real-world result: one of their three-bedroom midterm rentals closed out 2025 with 355 booked nights—only 10 vacant days all year—by strategically stacking reservations and building a strong lead network (insurance placement, corporate stays, and overflow leads from Airbnb).

If you’re a real estate investor considering midterm rentals—or an owner curious about co-hosting—this episode lays out the operational truth: leads + systems + the right property are everything.

What You’ll Learn
• Why “stacking reservations” is the secret to minimizing gaps in a midterm calendar
• The difference between short-term, midterm, long-term, and where each model wins
• Why vacancy can kill short-term numbers (even in “perfect” STR locations)
• The #1 reason most owners fail at midterm rentals: no lead network
• Why they tell owners to expect ~10 months occupancy (and aim to overdeliver)
• How they evaluate property fit (size, layout, family features, market demand)
• The difference between market appreciation, inflation, and forced appreciation
• Their co-hosting system: walkthrough → analysis → proposal → onboarding → operations
• The “controversial” turnover move: brand new sheets + duvet cover every guest
• How they screen guests using tools like Autohost, ID verification, and leases

Key Topics Covered

Stacking bookings + insane occupancy
• A three-bedroom property closes 2025 with 355 booked nights (10 vacancy days).
• Why midterm can outperform STR vacancy patterns (midweek gaps, turnover friction).

Why they won’t build on comfort
• Selling a property to “fix cashflow” is a band-aid that sacrifices long-term wealth.
•Capital gains taxes + losing an appreciating asset makes selling a bad “quick fix.”

The three types of appreciation
• Market appreciation: supply/demand forces.
• Inflation hedge: dollar devaluation inflates asset prices on paper.
• Forced appreciation: strategic renovations and value-add improvements.

Co-hosting vs arbitrage
• Arbitrage relies on fixed rent obligations while income can decline.
• Cities tightening STR rules + oversaturation has crushed some large operators.
• Co-hosting offers a lower-liability model (no master lease exposure).

Why midterm operations are different
• Midterm guests are often families, displaced insurance claims, corporate stays.
• Furnishings must feel homey + durable, not “party house” aesthetic.
• Small details matter: bathtubs, family amenities, cohesive kitchen setup.

Their “Controversial” Turnover Standard
They do something almost nobody does:

✅ Every new guest gets brand new sheets + a brand new duvet cover

• They don’t reuse sheets for guests—helps avoid stains, wear, and hygiene concerns.
• Guests can keep the sheets; sheets are donated when possible.

It also saves labor:
• Their cleaning crew does less laundry, which reduces turnover time and cost.

Who This Episode Is For
• Investors considering midterm rentals as a strategy
• Owners struggling with vacancy or transitioning away from STR
• People curious about co-hosting but unsure what it includes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We stack our reservations. We're very strategic with our calendar and we figured out how to stack it to where we don't have big gaps. For example, we just one of our properties at three bedroom, which was our first large property that we started renting with a midterm model, for 2025, we just closed out with 355 booked nights.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Insane. That is wild.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Let me say that again. We just had 355 booked nights. And most of these were through Airbnb on this one property. 10 vacant days. And those vacant days were a couple days here, turning over, turnover, turnover. That's all it was.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Well, and that was because we typically allowed for a two-day turnover with that property.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

And some of these people want to get in so bad that we actually were getting the cleaners like we were rushing some of these turnovers and getting everybody like together so we could do some same-day turnovers because people were trying to get in sooner. That's what we ended up putting so low because there was so many people that wanted to get in sooner because 10 days of vacancy. And there's no short-term, I mean, you could have the best short-term, like nicest place on the beach at the best price, and you're probably still gonna have more vacant days than that because just the way that the turnover is gonna fall in the midweek. A good short-term rental property is gonna be booked about 22 nights on average. If you take the whole year, so you're gonna have your high season, low season, but for the whole year, you're probably looking at 22 running at max capacity, 22 nights, if you're lucky. And that's a really good short-term and a really good location at a great price.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Welcome back to The Broke Billionaires, where we document our daily struggles and building wealth while raising a young family. Join us as we talk creative wealth building for everyday people and couples that are struggling in a down economy. I'm Lauren.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

And I'm Joshua Masari, and we'll be your host.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

We're back with another episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Here we are again. No kids. This is amazing again.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Feels like a date almost, like a true date.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

It's a middle of the day.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Middle of the day. Look at us with no kids. Look at me with no kids. You never have kids during the day. It's true. Let's be real. We didn't get to record uh last week when we had our sitter. We tried. We got some content, but we didn't. We did do some content.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

We had some technical difficulties. I spent two hours trying to figure out our new software and never actually got to recording. That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

The setup does take longer, I feel like. Do you feel like it takes longer here than it did when we were recording at home?

SPEAKER_00 2:17

No, because I don't have to set everything up. It's just it's new, it's new software that I'm having to like figure out.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

So it's a you thing, learning the learning the software.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Okay. Okay, just checking. Just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Thanks. You want to fire me? You want to hire am I fired? Hire a new code.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

No, I don't want to do it because I definitely don't know the technology side of it, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

But not doing the editing now, so I'm not up till three in the morning editing these. We have somebody else doing that. Kind of. We're working on it. Working on it, yeah. We're getting it figured out.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

So we are in a phase now of we're taking one step forward and we feel like we're making really good progress. Decent progress, I won't say really good.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Like light at the end of the tunnel.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yeah, like ooh, we can see it coming. And then we have three steps backwards.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Just in everything, it seems like business, life, family.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Yeah, what is it? Like, why cannot we not just gotta be a 2025 thing?

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Didn't you say it's like the year of the pig or something? I don't know what you said it was, but I think it was a snake.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

And next year it no, right? Wasn't it the snake? It's a yeah, because I think it was a shedding year, is what it said. Like you're shedding, it was talking about like shedding friendships and things that are not serving you. And and I don't usually get into this stuff, but I liked the 2026 is the year of the horse. And I wish I had notes on what the year of the horse was. Basically, it was like a better than a snake, so yeah. Uh I mean, I hate snakes. I told you the number of I mean, we know about my Anaconda like dream from that movie when I was young, why I started having nightmares, but like I've had so many weird snake dreams. Oh, I'm just putting this together. I told you I had so many weird snake dreams this year. Yeah, that's a weird part of it. Ooh. That sounds like I don't know. I don't like snakes, but okay, anyways. Um, but the year of the horse is supposed to be a much better year. We talked that this was like our pruning year. We didn't want this to be our pruning year, but it We've been doing a lot of pruning. We've been doing a lot of pruning. So this better like catapult us into 2026 and all the hard work and everything we've done, right? It has to. It has to.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Well, everything that we're doing, all the groundwork that we're doing in our our all of our businesses. Um, you know, we've got multiple businesses that we're just working on putting, you know, SLPs in, getting, you know, everything, all these all these processes in place to run more efficiently and built to scale, like all this groundwork is going to pay off. It's just like it's not something that you see immediate results on. So it's it's hard sometimes when you're in the trenches. You know, even with the podcast and what we're building now, like having to learn social media, I had no idea. We have so much back-end knowledge just from all these, you know, people that we have in our mastermind that we're connecting with, and just all these little things that nobody tells you about, things you wouldn't know, just how to work the algorithm and how to you know, I mean, just just for example, like we have a very small following because we just started our Instagram recently, you know. We we didn't even start really posting until a couple months ago. And we have a few hundred followers, which is pretty embarrassing, but you gotta start somewhere. But our metrics, how we're growing, is in line or or outpacing where we should be for a new account. You know, we're getting 10 times more views on our posts than our following. And there's a lot of big name people that have 25,000, 30,000, 50,000 followers that get less views on their posts and things because they're not, they don't, they're not working the algorithm and it's not getting pushed out. So just little things like this, marketing things on the back end, knowledge that we have. I mean, maybe we'll start a social media consulting company because we've got all this knowledge now that we didn't have before. I don't know, who knows? But it's just a lot of intricate things that people don't ever talk about.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Because we need one more thing to start doing.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

No, just add it to the list. Just kidding, let's not do that.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

You know what? It's funny. I was asking, um, I saw someone post, they asked Chat GPT what their theme song was. So I asked that. Oh. And it gave me five. So the first one was Unstoppable, which I was like, okay, Unstoppable by Sia. And I feel like that's so on brand with like Chat GPT, obviously knows us now of like what we do with the podcast and building wealth. And so it was like crazy to see that it sees the effort we're putting into, right? But then it was funny because it went through a couple different ones and it ended with Good Life by One Republic, which is supposed to be like our payoff for everything we've done. And I was like, oh, I like, you know, it starts with like all the work that we're doing and like what we're gonna get to, but then it prompted me to keep going with ChatGPT. And it's like, will we make it? Because we're in this like really challenging season right now. I mean, it's been a very long season of this. And one of the things that I liked that it said is people who quit ask, should I bother? People who are exhausted say, is it worth it? It's good, huh?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, I like that. I know. It's funny because ChatGPT, it's like people are relying on it, I mean, people are relying on it way too much for things they shouldn't, but we rely on it in our businesses and just the things that we're starting to to lean on AI for is pretty crazy. Like, you know, we've talked about we're implementing AI into the printing business to basically replace me and take over uh on a lot of the day-to-day small tasks that take up a lot of time and pulls me away from building and focusing on the business. So just implementing that and I use ChatGPT. I had to, I outran my five free prompts a day or downloads or whatever really quick once I started using it. And I only started using it uh a few months ago. And it was really honestly, it was Dan Martell that like he hounds that into everybody and his coaching program is like use ChatGPT, use chat. It's it's a free program or $20 a month, but you get so much like work out of it, like you will make yourself way more efficient. And I asked it uh recently how often I used it. And it said on average 30 to 50 times per day. Getting my $20 per per month value out of it, but it has definitely made me a lot more efficient. Just things that I would do for work and and marketing and whatever that would take me a lot of time, or something. I have a lot of Excel spreadsheets that I work with that I get from clients for mailing and stuff. And a lot of the manual stuff I had to do in it, it will just take it and do it in seconds. It's just definitely making things more efficient.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Yeah, I think it's it's been really, really helpful once I kind of understood how it works and it's crazy how it gets to know you. Like it's wild.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

One of those anti-Chat GPT, like resisting, like I will say this if you don't get on board, you are going to get left behind because it is advancing so quickly. We were just talking about people are now using ChatGPT for their holiday photos instead of paying a photographer. Like it's now replacing photographers, which is kind of just sad. But I think they'll still be a place, but I think the whole thing it's going to shift how that works because you can instantly, you know, put your face and your kids' face and everything into it, and it'll put together a Christmas photo shoot for you.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

It's crazy because you really are not going to be able to know what's real and what's not anymore. Like the image like the pictures my friends were sending of their family's Christmas cards. It's like you would have thought they spent all this time and money like getting everything ready and doing that. And it's like getting dressed, going to this location that was beautiful and it was it was just literally So why why why go through the process and the trouble and trying to schedule it and like it's but like really questioning what's real and like I think that's where we talk about like this community that we're building like is gonna be so important to have like real face-to-face connections and you know, just those interactions and networking and knowing that those there's real people behind on the other side of it versus not knowing.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Yeah, it's a good point. Because one thing that ChatGPT or any AI can't do is the emotion. You know, it takes emotion out of it and thinks logically and with it's data driven, but it's not going to sympathize with you or being like, oh, like I've been through this, like we've actually been there, we understand that. It'll reason and it'll come up with comforting things that'll say to you, like you're going through this, but it's gonna be okay. And it'll like it's actually pretty good at at touching and invoking emotions, but it doesn't think emotionally and it can't relate to you emotionally. So that's something that you only get that from peer-to-peer.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Yeah. I will say when I was going through asking, like, are we gonna make it? I was like shocked with what the response was. I was like, this is almost like a therapist on the other side of it, like a very logical, like way of thinking about it. But it was it was interesting. Let's see, what other updates do we have? We had a really fun holiday party with Summers Capital um a couple weeks back.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Shout out to Rich, Rich Summers. So he he leads the mastermind that we're in, just kind of helping us with you know the podcast and the community that we're putting together. And that's just this is something that we don't have experience in. So we joined uh his mastermind. We're really leaning into that, and all the educators that he brings on have been just a huge, huge help. So meeting these people face to face, some of the other people that are doing big things in in the space that we are and also other spaces or lateral spaces. We we met some people we'll be doing um interviews with with some new strategies that we're excited to to bring on the show. So that's something that we're not currently doing. Um, so that's that's gonna be fun. But just being in the room with people, you know, maybe have made it or successful, but also that are in our stage, starting, starting out whatever it is that they're building, and just everybody that's very motivated and kind of has that common goal of of just kind of coming together in the community and and and supporting each other and and just learning. So that was that was nice to to get together with them.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

And not even just a common goal, but going through similar struggles. Like that's really what I took away from that night of like getting face to face with some of you know the people we are have on our calls and just getting to chat with them more is their mindset was more aligned with, you know, what we're doing and just kind of the entrepreneurial spirit and building something is if you don't have a circle of people that are doing something similar in that building something, it's hard to understand and really grasp the sacrifices that we're making. And so it was nice to be in a room with people that have made or are making similar sacrifices that, you know, when we're going through hard times, the first thing out of their mouth isn't like, well, we'll sell one of your houses. You know, it's like they their response was, yes, this is so hard and like understanding and and they have the same thing where, you know, they have people around them that, you know, would tell say the same thing to them essentially, and just how their mindset to push through is so different of and understanding like why can't you just sell a house?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Why doesn't it work that way? And you you bring up you bring up the selling house and we we get that from friends and family a lot, like because they know that we're you know, so our problem is that we're we're cash broke, we've we've just this cash flow cash flow issue, you know, just with our businesses, just the economy and everything, kind of like not that that's an excuse, but that was kind of like the trigger. And it just kind of all hit at once. And while we were in the middle of a big project that was had a lot of carrying costs, and so like everything just hit at once. But through all of this, like it's funny because even though we're struggling day to day on just simple things because we don't have the cash flow, our wealth has continued to build, which is it's kind of funny. And a lot of people don't understand that. Like we kept keep getting wealthier even though we're struggling.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

So well, and that's you, you know, we did a a post about that about our equity and how that has jumped up. And that's what prompted a couple of people to say, like, if you have this equity, why would you not just sell your house? Why would you just sit on that essentially, like not understanding?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Yeah, and there's a couple reasons. I mean, one, it defeats the whole purpose of what we're doing and what we're building. You know, we're trying to build long-term wealth. If we did that, that's a band-aid. And then what happens when that runs out? Now you've lost that asset that's not continuing to grow. It's not spinning off any profit or any uh income anymore. What like that's just like it's it's stepping backwards a lot. And it's hard to buy properties, especially in our market. Um, the other thing that people don't understand is that when we, if we sell a property, it would trigger a lot of uh capital gains that we have tax liability on. So we have a lot of equity that we've built up in these properties. Now, you've got your tax basis, what you paid for the property and money that you put into it and renovations, and that's your tax basis. And anything above that is your your capital gains that you would pay taxes on if you sell. And most of our properties have so much of that capital gains equity that we've outrun the exclusion. Like if we had lived in it for two of, because if you live in it for two of the last five years, you do get an exclusion on that. But for a married couple, it's only up to 500,000, which is a decent chunk. But all of our properties have outrun that on the ones that we have lived in in two of the last five years, which I guess is only one property at this point. But like there, there's so much equity that we've outrun that, and we would still have like hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes we would have to pay. So it's like, you know, yeah, it might help a little bit, but the amount of taxes we have to pay like wouldn't really help us out that much. And it's an income-producing asset. So it's better off to just let it ride, let it keep building equity and cash flow.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Like you said, it would be a band-aid. It's not gonna fix things. It would be a very small band-aid for right now. And with all the sweat equity that has gone into these projects, like to think we would just completely have thrown that away. And every weekend that you spent working on these houses and all that time and effort that went into it would be for absolutely nothing, is like that's gut-wrenching to me.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yeah. And that's a good point too, because there are people that say, like, oh, you guys bought it a great time and you had like when things were going crazy the last five years. Yes, we have had some of that. Um, but there's really three ways. There's three different types of appreciation. And I don't think a lot of people know the differences. So, you know, yeah, there's market appreciation where um there's just more buyers than there are supply, and it causes prices to go up. That's when you see prices getting over, you know, bidding 200,000 over asking or 20% over asking, whatever. Like we saw that a few years ago. There is some market appreciation that that we got when things are are crazy, interest rates are low and people are buying. And so, yeah, you can say that's luck, but we made the sacrifice to buy these properties and got into these properties before that happened. So, you know, that's just yeah, maybe it was a little bit of luck, but we put ourselves in luck's path. But the other part is there's also inflation. And a not very many people talk about this. I'm surprised how how few people talk about this, but in the last five years, the dollar has lost 20% to inflation. What that means is that 20% of your appreciation on your home in the last five years isn't because the market went up and because your house is actually worth 20% more. It may be that on paper, but it it's because the dollar lost 20%. You have a house that's worth a million dollars today, like appraisal value, $800,000 house in 2020 terms because the dollar is only worth 80% of what it was. So yes, that's still considered appreciation because it's on the balance sheet, but really what that is is a hedge against inflation. So if we had money just sitting in the bank, it would have lost that 20%. But because it was in a property that kept up with inflation, it's a hedge against it, and you're keeping up with inflation that way. Uh and real estate's not the only way to do that. Gold, things like that, assets that that keep up with inflation will help that. But you see people that just have cash or they're in investments like bonds and things that are like 4% or something like that. Inflation was higher the last five years. Your investment, that your 4% investment actually lost money, lost value, if you really break it down. But the third appreciation, and this is the one that we really focus on, is forced appreciation. This is where the nuts and bolts of our strategy really comes into play and where we really build our wealth is we are pushing appreciation quickly, strategic renovations, making this a higher like we take the ugliest house on the street and make it the nicest house, make it very desirable. And so, and we're doing this not, we don't just go crazy on our budget and just buy the most high-end stuff. We're very strategic. We want it to look nice, but we're also getting the stuff that's that's in the budget that we have set to make sure that we're not spending more than we're pushing appreciation.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Absolutely. The the budget is key with this.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

And I think that you know, we are very conscious when we're making these design choices of what we're using with materials where we're I gotta reel you in once in a while, but but but to be clear your design, you have a very good eye for design, and so you know what's gonna do well in the market, what's gonna get high rents, and what's gonna get that appraisal, and then all figure out a way, okay, can't do it this way, but we can do it with this material that maybe looks like that $20 per square foot tile, but it's $3 a square foot. But it looks the same because it's a replica of it. Maybe it's not flown in from Italy, but it looks like it, and no one else is gonna really I mean, who really cares?

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Truly, who really cares?

SPEAKER_00 19:14

And also like Plus this is your forever home and you have to know, but like for what we do, it doesn't matter. It doesn't make a difference. So we're finding those ways to force that appreciation economically.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

And like we talk about a lot, is like these are rentals, so we need them to be durable more than anything. So we need these, it needs to look nice, but it has to be durable. We don't need you know, has to stay looking nice. Yeah, exactly. It has to stay looking nice through renters, through, you know, we obviously have four young kids. Our houses get up completely destroyed with us living in there. So we kind of have that when we go into the design and putting together these homes of the phone.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Yeah, that's our basis. If it's if it's if it's child, if it's like our family proof, then it'll probably work for any family because we are very hard on. I hope there's no landlords that are future landlords of ours that are hearing this, but yeah, our kids are just real. They're just fun.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

They are fun. They're kids, they're gonna it they're not any harder than honestly.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

The last time that that that we had in the house that we're in now, we had as many kids, and the place looked immaculate when they moved out, so they did a much better job than we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Their kids were older. No.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

They had a six-month-old when they moved in.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

A six-month-old, but the other kids were older. So we have a five, three, two, and six-month-old. And I will say I think that our kids have an appreciation for what we do, like more so than a lot of other kids. Like, I think that they do understand it. I think that it could be a lot worse. So we have to we have to count our blessings on that with the houses.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Fair enough. Just a quick disclaimer: the information shared on this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial, tax, or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Your individual circumstances may differ and require specific strategies not discussed here. Now let's get back to the show.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

So we're gonna jump into today one of the topics we get a lot of questions about. And still I feel I feel like we talk about it a lot, which I'm surprised we haven't done an episode on this yet, because we talk about it literally every episode, but it's co-hosting and just like how we do our co-hosting, what it is exactly, and kind of walk through step by step how we get this set up and um just just dive deeper into it than we have.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

And we talk about this almost every episode we touch on it because this has been such a hot topic for us, just in the the business that again, we never went into midterm rentals and this we do this only with midterm rentals, but we never went into it thinking we were gonna co host. It was just not something that kind of came out of it. And now we got this business that's growing outside of that initial strategy that that just kind of spun off of it and it's been doing really well. And it's it's one of those things that. People don't know a lot about because it's so new in the industry, but we get a lot of questions about it. You know, I'm in a lot of uh midterm rental groups that are working on building co-hosting and learning about it. There's a lot of realtors that don't understand it. It's not property management, it's a little different and there's some nuances that that make it different, but it's a different type of of manager, if you will, because uh a realtor, a standard realtor is typically not going to have these type of lead that are gonna be looking for a 30 to 60, 90 day contract. They're used to to the long-term thing, or just like going on Airbnb and doing short-term Airbnb where you're just running for a weekend or whatever. So it's just kind of this mid ground that not a lot of people aware of. So we're just trying to bring awareness and show people what we're doing and our processes and how we're doing it and what's working for us.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Yeah. When did we start the co-hosting? I'm trying to remember when our we got our first property. This summer.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah. It was a lot in the last six months.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Oh my gosh, it was.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Yeah, we have not been doing it for very long. Pretty new for us. I mean, we've been doing the midterm rentals for a while, and it's just kind of we incorporated that because it's not much different than what we're doing. We're just doing it with properties that we don't own, but we haven't really been doing it for that long. And we've got a handful of properties that we're we're working with already. And, you know, we keep getting referred out and getting more leads on this. So it's definitely, and I'll say, like, you know, Airbnb short-term rental, people are much more familiar with that. And I think a lot of people know what the arbitrage model is. And arbitrage, for those that aren't aware, is where you go to a landlord, a long-term rental landlord, and you rent the house from them, but you get like a what's called a master lease. So you're renting it from them and you let them know what's going on. You got to find someone that's okay with it. But then underneath that, you're subleasing it basically, or you're going on Airbnb and you're you're renting it as a short-term rental, or people do this as a midterm rental as well. I don't think it works as well. It can work in certain places, but it doesn't seem to be as profitable as a the short-term model. But even with the short-term quickly going away, it was really popular, kind of started 10 years ago, about five years ago, got really popular. And the short-term market has gotten oversaturated. There's been a pretty big pullback the last year or so in the short-term rental market. Uh, there were a lot of companies that built up these arbitrage that got just started doing hundreds, thousands of properties, like got really big doing arbitrage. So they didn't own any properties and they were just short-term Airbnb on these leases. And two of the largest companies just filed bankruptcy this year. I think it was chapter 11, they just re-restructuring. But the problem is with that model, is if your rental income goes down and you're not renting these out as much, whether it's midterm or short term, your monthly rent doesn't change. It actually goes up in most cases because a lot of times they're locking in longer lease terms. They don't want to do just 12 months. You got to furnish it and set it up and you got to build up your business with that property. So a lot of times these are like five plus year leases, and there's an escalator in it so that the owner is getting, you know, increased revenue or increased rent each year. So you might have a three, five, 10% increase each year. So their rent keeps going up and their rental income is going down. So a lot of them are just running into trouble and people are getting out of it and just kind of getting the other thing, too, is that a lot of cities are outlawing short-term rentals altogether. And so a lot of these companies or people that are arbitraging in those markets all of a sudden can't do that anymore.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Yeah, that's a lot of liability there. That's one of the reasons why co-hosting was so attractive, is it's a much safer model with a lot less liability than the arbitrage model.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Right. Yeah, because you're not committing to the to this lease. You know, it's got to work for you and the owners. It's got to be a a two-way street. But if somebody can can get help with that property and you're keeping it rented for them, it can make sense for for both sides. So it's a it's a it's really a win-win um when you when it's done right.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

I feel like in that sense it's similar with working with the the owner, but we'll kind of dive in deeper in this episode of you know, what this looks like and exactly how it we set it up and what those kind of contracts look like and and so forth that we're putting together.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

And I would say one of the big things that we tell people that are looking to get into this, I always say, and this is how we started out, we we had our own midterm rentals for a couple years, year and a half before we started doing co-hosting. But I always tell everybody you need to have your own property. Uh, whether you own it or something that you manage or, you know, with a family or whatever, um, you need to get good at your operations and build your lead network. And we're gonna focus more on midterm because that's what we know. The short term we don't, we don't do that. It's just not worth it to us. I think it's in a lot of scenarios, it's actually less profitable to do short term than it is midterm.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

For co-hosting specifically.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Owners. Well, yeah, because you're spending a lot more time. So if you look at all the time and costs you have in that, it's just not worth it for us. It's not worth it. With a busy family, it's not worth it for us. Not saying that there aren't other people that aren't successful at it, but for us, it just doesn't make sense. The midterm is just so much uh less work. Um, it's still a lot of work on the marketing and you're still setting up at the beginning, but when you have a guest come in for three months, you got, you know, four or five turnovers a year versus four or five per month or even more sometimes. And that's just a lot of work because the turnovers are a lot of work, especially the way that we do it. Uh so we always tell people you need to own your own property and be operating and get good at filling your property, figuring out your processes and get that in before you start taking on other properties. It's if you don't have your processes figured out, it's gonna be a mess and owners aren't gonna be happy with the way you're doing things. And if you're not getting leads to fill properties, they're gonna have a vacancy and that's not gonna bode well and you're gonna end up getting fired.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Yeah, that's I mean, that's the biggest part of it. Like you said, like we have more leads than we're able to fill right now, which is wild.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

That's the one thing is we built up our in our market, we built up our lead network and we got to where we had way more leads coming in than we had properties for. And so we're able to fill other owners' properties very quickly because of all these extra leads. You know, we get we get leads on our specific properties, even on Airbnb, we have leads. So we so we do uh a lot of insurance placements, and so there's a lot of companies that we work with, and we're we have properties in their their database, and we actually know them personally and work with a lot of these people. And so they'll come to us when they have a need, when they have a family that's a displaced family from an insurance claim or a corporate stay or something like that. We also, even on Airbnb, we get because of our properties are renovated really nicely and have a lot of demand for them. We get leads for our properties when they're booked. People like, hey, is this gonna be available when when will it be open? Even though we've got somebody in there, now we have a hot lead that needs a place. And so we can move those leads to to other properties that we co-host for. And so that's kind of how we built up our lead network. We built up our lead network first. We're getting way more leads than we had properties for, and we can't buy properties fast enough, at least not in this market. Yeah. So the co-hosting is a way for us to be able to capitalize on our leads that we're bringing in and help other owners that may be struggling to get the properties full because a lot of people that get into midterm rentals, find that it's not, you know, if they were doing short term, they have they have to switch because the city changed. They don't know how to fill it. It's not the same. You don't just put it on Airbnb and it's just gonna rent debugged all the time.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

It is not the same. It is not the same in how it's furnished, how it's how it's marketed. Like nothing about it is this, it's not the same client or guests that you have coming in. It's everything's so different about it. It really is.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yeah, it's not like you can't leave the same Airbnb that looks like a a you know, bachelor, bachelorette party house and put that on as a midterm rental and do well. Cause that a lot of times that doesn't do well because that type of property is great for somebody to come in for the weekend, but for somebody that's bringing their family in for uh a few months at a time, that's probably not going to be that appealing to them.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, I think back when we kind of started all this with our first house and correct me if I'm wrong, but at that point when we were redoing the house, midterm rental wasn't even really on our radar. Weren't we just at that point trying to do a long-term lease?

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yeah, so that's a good point. All of our properties, when we buy a property, we work our numbers backwards with long-term rents in mind because long-term rents are never going away. We always work backwards, like, okay, we think if we renovate it to this level, we can get this amount and we'll work backwards. Do the numbers make sense? Is it going to pay for itself? And then if it does, then it makes sense to move forward with it. Well, now our strategy is we'll go ahead and rent it or furnish it. And we still like way before we do this, we still go back and forth. We always end up going midterm because it ends up being so much more profitable. But we do weigh out the the pros and cons. Um, but our numbers are done as a long-term rent, uh, and then we furnish it and then we're getting much higher rents uh with the midterm model. So it's extra cash flow and it's just great, but we don't know the laws allow for it. But as we see all the short-term getting shut down, like maybe, you know, someday their their laws start changing and now you have to do 90 days or six, or they they completely change it to where you can't do it. So our fallback is to go back to long term if we have to, but we already know that the property will pay for itself in that scenario. And so we're we're in good positions in our properties.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

Definitely. It's funny too to think that we started out with that goal in mind, but then then it evolved to like travel nurses was the first thing you had brought to me with the midterm rental. That was kind of what sparked that idea of doing because we had our cottage and kind of that guest house. But then seeing how it's evolved from the midterm into the co-hosting is just kind of it's like and you know, kind of fell into.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

For our market, the the nerd, we do very few nurses. We just found that like we get a lot of other people that we didn't even think needed this type of housing. So it's a lot bigger than just nurse. And and we our properties are booked so far in advance because we do renovate them and they are nicer. We have more demand. They typically get booked four to six months in advance. Sometimes even far, we've got some of our properties getting repeat customers now. They'll book it a year in advance and just to lock in, you know, that three months that they want for the winter or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

But that was cool to have a repeat customer come in and and know and do that in advance.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

That was a really like cool moment, I think, for yeah, just seeing the demand and and like people appreciate what we're putting out there and and and well, we've got, I mean a couple of them. We've got a couple of those now. What we do is we we get these properties to where they're they're there's a lot of demand. They're getting booked four to six months in advance. A lot of times with travel nurses, they don't get their orders or where they're going until like a couple of weeks before they start. So they're more last minute. So we get a lot of them reaching out to us, but we never or rarely have availability. Sometimes somebody will cancel for whatever reason, last minute, and there'll be a month that'll open up or here or there. And then we'll always end up filling those with a travel nurse in that scenario. But very rarely do we have availability that close. We are and we stack our reservations. We're very strategic with our calendar and we figured out how to stack it to where we don't have big gaps. For example, we just one of our properties, a three-bedroom, which was our first large property that we we started renting with a midterm model. Uh, for 2025, we just closed out with 355 booked nights.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Insane. That is wild.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Let me say that again. We just had 355 booked nights. And most of these were through Airbnb on this one property. That's 10 vacant days. And those vacant days were a couple days here, turnover, turnover, turnover. That's that's all it was.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Well, and that was because we typically allow for a two-day turnover with that property.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

And some of these people want to get in so bad that we actually were getting the cleaners, like we were rushing some of these turnovers and getting everybody like together so we could do some same-day turnovers because people were trying to get in sooner. So we end up that's what we ended up with so low because there was so many people that wanted to get in sooner if they could.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

So 10 days of vacancy.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

And there's no short-term. I mean, you could have the best short-term, like nicest place on the beach at the best price, and you're probably still gonna have more vacant days than that because just the way that the turnovers are gonna fall in the midweek. A good short-term rental property is gonna be booked about 22 nights on average. So if you take the whole year, so you're gonna have your high season, low season, but for the whole year, you're probably looking at 22 uh running at max capacity, 22 nights if you're lucky. And that's a really good short term in a really good location at a great price. When you're evaluating short term versus midterm, you really got to look at the the vacancy because that vacancy will kill your short-term numbers.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

What when you when we first were looking at the numbers, did you have a number in mind of what your goal was in terms of number of vacant nights for the midterm?

SPEAKER_00 34:37

And I don't want to promise anybody looking for a co-host in the in our market that we're gonna get you 355 days because that's I mean, I hope we can repeat that and we're going to try. And actually, to be honest, we've already booked it all the way through April with no gaps, same, same type of gaps. And we have someone looking to book it for four months stacked right on top of that. So we will actually get that'll get us to like mid-September without any gaps. So I mean, it gets us almost through the whole year with repeating what we just did. Uh, but we typically say and we take we run our numbers based on 10 months of occupancy. So that's kind of calculating, okay, we do usually do like four to six turnovers a year, and then we do like one to two weeks in between each one because if if your contract ends, you get it turned over and it may some of these insurance claims take a couple of weeks to get approved sometimes. Sometimes you're waiting. But we've just been very fortunate. And with our lead network, we've got so many people, so many leads that we've been able to accumulate for these this property or just the properties that we have that we're just we're cutting those gaps down. When we're talking to new co-host opportunities, we typically tell them 10 months is what you can expect. And then we try to obviously overdeliver, but 10 months is kind of the expectancy on that.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Yeah, that was wild. I can't believe that we've only hit 10 days. That I mean, that's great. It's it's amazing. It's I'm not complaining at all. I'm just, it was so ex I mean, that was great to hear.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

So if you're looking at becoming a ghost or want to get into this, once you have your processes figured out on your property that you're managing, you need to find your advantage. Why would somebody have you co-host it versus doing it themselves or having another co-host? Because there's a lot of people getting into this. A lot of people, you know, realtors that that do or property managers will also do midterm rentals. There are some that are specifically focused on midterm and they've got those leads built up. But most realtors that are just a property management company are not gonna have the expertise or the lead network to be able to fill these properties. I think that's what a lot of people run into. We've had people that didn't like our fees or didn't like, you know, the way we did things or whatever. And we're like, I'm just gonna have a realtor do it. And it's okay, that's fine. And then they come back to us because the realtor can't fill it and they were vacant for six months because they don't have the leads. They just put it on the MLS or or put it on, you know, Airbnb and just let it go. And they're not optimizing their listing. They're not doing the things that these midterm renters are looking for, and they don't have those those additional leads coming in from the you know, insurance placements and things like that. So you really got to find your advantage. And I would say ours is definitely, I mean, we've got a few things, but the lead network is definitely the big selling point. Like, hey, we have a lot of leads in our market. We're gonna be able to get your property filled.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

I think that's the key point right there is the leads because, like you said, you can't just throw it on the MLS and think that people are gonna book you that way for a midterm rental because it it just doesn't work. I mean, we've seen it, right? We've seen these properties that are just sitting for months at a time and that we probably could have easily filled with our network. Yeah, we see it all the time. Like we should sell it to them.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Like we can fill that quickly, but that's definitely been our advantage. And that's a big concern for a lot of owners is I don't want a vacancy. Like, or they've tried it themselves and they can't fill it and they've had three months of vacancy and they're freaking out because they've got a you know, a mortgage and they're losing money every month. And so they're like, I'm just gonna like should I just long term rent it? Cause I know I'm getting because you know, the long-term rent is safe. It's comfortable because you do understand it, you know it. People have have been it's been around forever. Uh, you know you're getting monthly rent, and then maybe on your turnover, you might have a few weeks or a month or whatever. Um, but then you're getting 12 months of solid rent. So people, it's comfortable for people, but that's not what makes you money. Being comfortable doesn't make you money. You gotta, when you get uncomfortable, that's when you start making more money.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

Yeah, you've got to be willing to take that chance a little bit. And it is, it can be risky for sure, but the the opportunity is definitely there to make more.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

We go through the same thing. We're like with like some of our bigger properties have bigger carrying costs. We're like, maybe we should just do the long-term rent because it's safer and it sounds sounds nice. And then we end up getting a midterm rental, and then all of a sudden then the leads start coming in and it starts to people start to hear about the house and we start getting more lead. We just get more demand, and then we start we get more demand than that house can handle, and then we start using those leads for other people's properties. So it's always worked out, and I think it's just you just gotta go for it. Can't try it for every month and see what happens and then give up on it. You gotta really give it time, especially depending on the time of the year. You know, there are there is a uptick in demand in the summer, and then it kind of falls off going into the holidays and then it picks back up again. Um, you know, there's insurance claims, those are all you never know when those are. So those are just kind of all over the place. But you, you know, just giving it a short run sometimes isn't the best. Sometimes you have to go through that pain to get to get through in your market. I mean, we've been very fortunate. We usually rent houses before they're out before we're, if we're living in before we even move out. We've been pretty fortunate in that. But, you know, then we've had like the next one took maybe a little longer than we were, you know, didn't take two days. It might have took a couple weeks. And so we've had those scenarios that we've been through as well. But overall, in the long run, we've just found it's just it's a really good market to get into.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

And like you said, like that has worked for us, but we would never overpromise that to someone else. I think understanding the short-term and midterm market wherever you're located is so important and really, I mean, it's not gonna work everywhere, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:49

We talked about it that's the thing, is just evaluating if it's gonna work or not. So so if you're looking at co-hosting, don't, or even getting into this, don't think that it's just gonna be successful no matter where you're at. And if you're looking to co-host, don't overpromise on a market you're not familiar with. Yes. So we're very familiar with our market and we know what we can fill. We've tested some other markets and and not done as well with this. So, like you need to make sure you know your market, you know the product and you know who's looking and have that lead network in that market. I think that's really crucial because it doesn't work everywhere. And you're gonna have different types of leads in different markets, but just knowing what's gonna work and where it's gonna work. I will say midterm doesn't work everywhere. It's not there are places that are better short-term rentals, and there are places that are better long-term rentals and and and doesn't work for it. So it's not, it doesn't work for for everything. I would say every not every property type is a good one.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

I was gonna say that's a big piece too. It has to be kind of that sweet spot in the property because we've noticed that too, where maybe it's too big of a house or too small of a house, it's not, you know, renting in the right way. The property is key for sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

So one of the ways you can do that is you look in the market that you're in and you can go on Zillow or whatever and see how many, you know, two bedrooms, three bedrooms, four bedrooms, and find out what the majority of the people there are. Because insurance claims, if somebody has a four-bedroom and they get displaced, they're gonna need a four-bedroom. So you can kind of get an idea of what the market is. For our market, we found that two bedrooms don't do as well. They do better with international travelers, but for the families and for people that that we uh in our lead network, the two bedrooms just do not fit very well. And we've we have not cracked the two bedroom markets. Yeah, we really haven't. I don't know if there is one. I I don't know if we just haven't figured it out or if there's just not there's just not enough demand for the two bedrooms. But we've also we have a an apartment building in Texas that we've done some midterm rentals with and the two bedrooms, same thing there. There was just very little demand, and then the one bedrooms there were really, really hot.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

So I mean, this is for our market specifically, but I think it's you know, we know that our studios and one bedrooms do well because of people traveling solo. And then it jumps into the families, right? That two bedroom is more of like a a roommate type situation, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:55

I mean, wouldn't you think so? Yeah, roommate situations are the ones that we've had that we've co-hosted for. We we found the the most luck with international travels. Yeah. So they'll come with a family that's that's traveling, you know, a condo and apartment might be okay. Maybe they don't need as much parking because they don't have three cars. So they've got just one vehicle because they're coming from wherever for a month. And uh that that kind of seems to be the the biggest like genre that works for the two bedroom, but we just haven't, that's not our lead network. And so it's more relying on Airbnb for that type of those type of leads. So if you have a leads of international traveler, you might be able to do really well with something like that. You gotta know your strengths and weaknesses. Yeah. And that's not a not a strength of ours.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

Yeah. We're still working on that one for sure.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

We're gonna stay off, stay away from two bedrooms, move forward, or unless it's like something that's like right by the beach and you know you're gonna be able to rent it and not have an issue, but they definitely are more difficult in our market.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk to you about our processes with co-hosting, because I I feel like you've really come up with a really unique process for us, and I think that that's important to touch on.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

This is the stuff that we do with our properties, and we've kind of incorporated that into our co-hosting. Well, one of the things that we learned early on was that sheets are a nightmare trying to keep sheets clean. You know, they get stuff spilt on them, they get nail polish on it, they get hair woven into it. I mean, we've been to nice hotels and very clearly there was blood on the sheets that didn't come out. And it's just like Do you remember that? I do remember that. And it was like it ruined the whole trip. And we learned early on that trying to keep sheets clean is very difficult and it just was not worth worth it. We were throwing away sheets constantly. So what we decided to do, and I don't know anybody else that's doing this.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Let me start by saying this is controversial. People get very upset with us over this.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yeah. We do not reuse sheets. Every new guest that comes in gets a brand new set of sheets and a brand new duvet cover.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

This would be a huge selling point for me reading this in a listening, by the way. And you too. But this would be like

SPEAKER_00 44:00

I like when I do air like uh a vacation rental like it's sometimes I want to take my own sheets because I'm like You do bring our own sheet we actually do that sometimes we and we put this in all of our listings and people love it because they are getting a brand new set of of sheets that no one else has touched and the Duvet cover too. So we reuse the Duvet, but the Duvet cover. So when you're sleeping, nothing that you're touching has touched anybody before. And people love that. We're not putting super, you know, 8,000 count Egyptian cotton sheets or whatever. I don't even know what the count in 800. 8,000 be really nice.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

8,000? Yeah, that must be some.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

So we're not spending a lot of money on sheets, and we were originally buying nicer sheets, but it was just like we were having to get rid of them because it had stains or had stuff that we couldn't get, like it was just not worth it. So we just buy Amazon Basics. It's $14.23 for a queen set of sheets.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

I will say though, I also get so many requests on where we get our sheets from. People love them.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

It says Amazon Basics right on it.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

No, I've had multiple people say, like, we love the sheets, where did you get them from?

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Because it's brand new and no one else has slept in it. So there's not pilling, it's not like it's just they're just brand new. Uh and we tell everybody these are brand new. You can take them with you. Like these are yours to take home with you. So that the like the like if somebody's worried about it getting wasted, like take it home with you. Like we we allow everyone to do that. And I will say we're not throwing these sheets away. We do donate them to the cleaning crew and wherever we can find donations, but we we make sure we're not just throwing them in the trash unless they need to be thrown away. Um but we do donate those when we can to make sure that they are getting getting reused, but we never reuse them for our guests.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

And people question that at checkout too. They're like, wait, what is this? Am I reading this right with the checkout instructions? Like, I can take the sheets with me.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

It's funny. This wouldn't make sense for a short-term rental. Because you got somebody coming for a week, your your costs are gonna be high. It's gonna, it wouldn't make sense. But these are somebody that's been been here for a few months at a time, typically. I mean, sometimes 30 days, but most of our guests are staying longer. So it's like two, three months. So it's not, you know, $14 is not that big of a deal when you're talking about a longer term like that.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

Yeah. And like you said, like we were doing, you know, four to six turnovers a year. It's not, but yeah, in a short term bottle.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

A lot of sheets, don't get me wrong. But it's just that's been a huge, like, I guess one of our proprietary things that we do that nobody else does. And I think in my groups that I talk about, I think a lot of people have have maybe started doing that. Uh, but that's definitely been one of the big things for us. And the other thing is too, is laundry, like washing sheets is a lot of work. And then then you got to make sure that they are dry all the way. Then you got to make sure that they there are no stains on them. And just having it all in the package and just ready to go makes it so much quicker for us, makes it quicker for the cleaning crew.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

It's cut on our our cleaning crew time.

unknown 46:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

So that's the other thing is we actually get discounts from our cleaning crew. We have very reasonable turnover cleanings because the turnovers are so much faster. They're not doing any laundry. So even with the towels, we take all the towels and everything, like mattress covers, everything that we are actually keeping, and we just take it, put it in a bag, take it back and and wash it. And we have a new set that's dropped off for them. So they're everything's already washed, laundered, ready to go. So they're just switching it out quick and easy and then and then running through cleaning the house. So it it actually saves us. I think I'd calculate it was like 20 or 30% savings by them not doing laundry versus having them do everything.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

Okay. So let's kind of talk through just a quick step-by-step of start to finish with our co-hosting, starting with the initial discovery call that you do when someone reaches out about being co-working with us as a co-host.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

One of the biggest co-hosting lead magnets for us, I guess, is is Airbnb. So there is a co-host platform that Airbnb rolled out last year. You have to be a host for a while. So you can't just come into this brand new, you have to be a host, you have to be hosting for a while, you have to have a certain amount of like like review ratings and things or some some different criteria to be able to get admitted to that. And then you can apply and then they go through their process. And once you're approved, you get put on their co-host platform. So when people come in and are looking for a co-host or they have a new listing, now whenever you post a new listing on Airbnb, it there's a pop-up that says, Do you need help? Would you like help from a co-host? And then so it kind of triggers people to even know what co-hosting is. But it goes into your area and you can, it's basically an advertisement for your co-hosting services.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Do you have to be a super host or just is that like what the criteria is? I don't remember.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

Or I I we we talked about this before in some of the groups, and I I there is some criteria I don't remember off the top of my head. I don't think you have to be a super host, but you do have to have a certain level of reviews, which actually may end up making a super host by default, but you have to be hosting for a certain amount of time and have a certain amount of reviews over the last 12 months or something like that to where it's like it can't be below a certain rating. Okay. So there is some criteria, it's not easy to get into. A lot of people are trying to get into it and it's not easy, but how we've gotten a lot of our leads. Also just networking with realtors and getting, you know, real estate uh meetups and just kind of getting referrals that way is another good way to get those leads as well. But the way that works, so when somebody calls, I usually do the calls. I always do the calls. Uh someone will reach out and I'll set up a call and we'll do a discovery call. And the first thing I ask is like, what are you trying to accomplish? Like, tell me what your story is. Because I want to know if we're even a good fit. I don't want to take on something and have expectations or get into a situation that's not even a good fit for us. And I'll try to refer it to somebody else or just say, hey, we're not a good fit. So the first thing is, are you looking to do midterm or short term? Because as soon as somebody says short term and they've got that mindset and that dollar figure, we're we're kind of out. You know, and I will tell them midterm, I'll show them the difference and show them how the numbers break down. And a lot of those people actually end up converting to midterm once they realize that it the short term is not as glorified as as you see it from the gurus and stuff online or whatever. A lot of those people do end up coming over to do midterm, but if they're strictly set on short term, like we just we just won't go there. So find out what they're looking to do once we kind of walk them through our process and show kind of explain to them what we do and what our advantages. Again, our advantage is the leads. So if they're in our market and they're worried about leads, we that's something that we're really strong at. So that's that's a huge selling point when I'm doing initial discovery calls. People are worried about filling the property. Well, we've got the leads to be able to do that. Uh so that's that's kind of our our big selling point. But then we'll set up a uh an in-person walkthrough and we both go do this. This is kind of more where you come in because you got the eye for design.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

That's definitely an important piece of it. When we walk the property, we want to see, you know, some of these properties have already been Airbnbs, they've been short-term rentals, maybe they're switching over, they're converting. We have had some that have been completely like, you know, either a brand new property that they purchased that they're just trying to do this with. So they're starting from scratch or they're moving out. It's kind of, we have different scenarios in this. And so we walk the property to kind of see, you know, what recommendations are we gonna have? So where do we need, is there any like updates we need to make to the property, which I don't think we've really had to do any major updates to any of them. But, you know, we'll recommend things like we should be painting this, right? It should be all one color, it should be neutral, it should be going through with furniture if there's things that need to be switched out. And it doesn't have to be high-end furniture, but it just needs to be all cohesive and it needs to be, I personally, I like it all to be neutral. A family can easily come into and make their own if they need, you know, be comfortable, right? It doesn't need to be like you were saying with the the short-term rentals where they're more like fun and eye-catching and you know, geared towards maybe a bachelor party or bachelorette. This needs to feel homey. This needs to be cohesive. There doesn't need to be anything like super loud or, you know, like cute Instagrammable things. Like it doesn't need to be like that. We want all of the, my big thing is the kitchen needs to be all matching in terms of the silverware, the the plates, the cups. Like that's one of our big things is we have to make sure that everything is up to our standards when we have, you know, our properties, right? We keep the same standards in terms of the level of items and products we're putting in the house. That's that's a big piece of it. What else do you think?

SPEAKER_00 52:01

That's important. And that's that's kind of why you come in with that. Another thing that that is always a big deal is I'll just say this, like one of the big because we want this to appeal to families. One of the big things that we are aware of, because we have small families, is if a home has a as a bathtub or not. If there's no bathtub, we know it's going to be a struggle because most of these leads are families with small children. And if there's no bathtub, that's a like a big turn turnoff for a family. That's a really good point. That don't have kids aren't thinking about that. And they're just thinking, oh, like like you said, like the the bachelor bachelorette trying to make it all appealing to that crowd. Well, you don't need the tub, bathtub in that case. You're just, you know, putting showers in. But if you took out a tub to do that, now you just kill yourself for midterm rentals because there's no family that's going to come in without a tub. It's just facts.

SPEAKER_02 52:47

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the big things too that we isn't another selling point, at least for us, we love a charger for cars. That's a big thing that we recommend, right? And it doesn't have to be something that has to be installed right away. But if we have a guest that comes in that has an electric vehicle, you know, we like to have that be an option that you would add that in. Um, same thing with items for families. So a pack and play, a crib, um, some sort of high chair, things that are going to be easily accessible, making the life easier for the families coming in is really important to us.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

Especially when you get these insurance claims and somebody is displaced, their life's like turmoil and uncomfortable. You want it to be comfortable. You want them to just be able to come in with their clothes that they have and not have to worry about all these extra things. They should everything that they need when they first come in, they should be able to just come crash through that first night, have everything they need, have coffee in the morning, have you know toilet paper, all the amenities or all the like basics just taken care of. So that's one thing is on our checklist, is making sure that somebody could just come in with a suitcase and be okay for a little while before they need to go buy anything and and just be set.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

Yeah. And I mean, we've been through that personally, so we know from experience that that's obviously very important. Um, so once we go through and we visit the property, then we do a property analysis where we're running through the different comps in the area. We list through all of our recommendations of, like I said, you know, going through of like making sure everything's the same color, just kind of cleaning things up. If there's any recommendations we have in furniture and whatnot, we put all of that into the property analysis and then you go through and send over the proposal.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

Right. Then we'll send a proposal over with what we charge. And just so you, so you know, like everybody does the co-hosting fees differently. Um, I think we do it differently than most everybody. Like I think we have a very different model, uh, but it's worked well for us and it it's a it lowers the uh barrier of entry for people wanting to work with us. And so we found that it works really well. What we do is we we don't charge an onboarding fee. So there, and there is more setup, some houses more than others, but there can be a lot of setup in the initial rollout of a property, uh, even in just the the listing, uh optimizing it and getting all the in all the databases, and it's a lot of work on the front end, but we do not charge an onboarding fee. We do 12% of gross rent, which is very reasonable for midterm rental. You know, long-term rents are usually 10%, short-term rents are usually 25%, sometimes 30. Midterm rent kind of falls in between. I've seen everybody from like 15 to 20. We're kind of on the lower end, I think. Um, but we do have a one-year commitment. So they have to commit for one year. So we're we know that we're not charging up front, but we're at least getting one year of rents or of uh our fee. We also do a $1,000 minimum per month. So in our market, that's pretty easy to hit. So if a house rents for $8,500, we're hitting that. So we don't want to get where we're renting a bunch of houses that are renting for half of that and and running around just doing just as much work and not getting that revenue.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

Right. And we do have a performance clause in there as well, too.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Yeah. So our performance clause is in there because one of the big concerns with owners that haven't done this before is what if my house is isn't getting rented and sits vacant? Am I stuck with you for a full year of not renting? I'm like, well, we've never had that happen before, and I hope that doesn't happen. Not that it can't, but we do have a performance clause that if we don't perform and get it rented in the first 90 days, that they can cancel anytime. And we've had situations that we've never actually gotten to that point, but we've had situations, or I should say we have had really hard properties to rent that just weren't there was not a lot of demand. And we give people the option, like, hey, like it's just, you know, we've done everything that we've been able to do and with our our lead network and and people are just not renting this for different various reasons, and we're happy to let them out because like I don't want somebody getting stuck. It's not making us any money and it's not making them any money. I feel bad in that situation. They haven't actually gotten out of it, but we give them the options. Like, hey, like, you know, we don't want to want you to feel trapped.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

Right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 56:47

Yeah. And then just some of the the like our full service, some of the things that we offer. So we have all of our standard operating procedures that we've kind of gone into. We do have, we'll we won't go into today, but we've got like a we're gonna do a video on this actually, our kind of our supply list and how we use that, how we do that. We have a kind of a unique way of doing all of our consumables and our our reusables. So we'll we'll go into that later. Um, but we also offer screening. So we are using auto host to screen all of the guests that come in. So it's doing a full, not a background check, but it checks, I think almost more than a background check, just scours the internet for everything on these people, checks their, you know, their phone numbers and their emails, making sure everything matches up. It's doing ID verification. If there are some red flags that pop up, our system will automatically trigger a background check and a credit check. So we are going to that point if we need to. Uh, and then we also get a signed lease. So we are getting a signed lease on all guests that come in. And that's something that we offer to as part of our our full service to all of our owners. So that's kind of how we set up our co-hosting business. Again, it's pretty new, it's pretty fresh, but it's working and it's there's not, there's very little overhead.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

I'm excited to get more properties. I think that that's kind of next on our our goal is just to continue to grow that database that we have of properties, especially here in this local area, because like you said, we have such a need for it.

SPEAKER_00 58:08

Yeah. And we're looking at getting into some more higher-end luxury properties because we're getting leads for that now, and we don't have those properties or the ones that we do that fit that criteria, we only have like one or two and they're always booked. So we're looking to kind of build out some of the higher end stuff just because we're we're getting those leads now. And, you know, now we're getting our processes figured out. We've kind of figured out how we manage everything. Now we're able to kind of, okay, now we can scale this up. Now we've got systems in place to be able to scale this up. And then, you know, we'll eventually bring on somebody else to do all this. Because we also do there's a lot of running around that we still do. We check when the cleaners do the turnover, we go and we double check, make sure everything's done correctly. We're doing um usually about a hundred pictures before and after check-in for the owners. So we go through just pictures, everything in the cupboard, everything so that they're getting feedback and they're getting pictures. And, you know, is something broken, is something whatever, just so they can see getting eyes inside and they're actually getting that feedback directly by seeing the pictures so they know that their property's getting taken care of. Um, so yeah, it's definitely still it's not easy. It's still work. There's still running around you got to do, and there's still a lot of work. But you know, once you have that turnover done, then you might be good for three months and only have a few things that you need to take care of during that time.

SPEAKER_02 59:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

I think we've just got a lot of properties, so it seems like we're always doing turnovers now, but it's just part of the fun, I suppose. Part of the madness.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

You're always doing them. I I wish I could say I was helping more with those, but no, it is you're you're doing all the turnovers. Uh it's tough with those little ones home.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Yeah. That's all I got for today.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

That's all I've got too. You haven't been reading much lately.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

I have. I'm reading, I'm still reading the same one as I'm working on writing Panada's wealthy way. Uh it's actually a really good book. I've been doing that when I when I'm able to get my workouts in, which we haven't been sleeping much, so I haven't been working out as much lately because of our amazing kids. But that's a conversation for another time. Like and subscribe to our podcast. Share it if you're finding value in this. If you if if we're saying anything that's bringing value, like share it. We're we love and give us feedback. We love hearing feedback. Leave us a review, unless we're doing a bad job. But if we're doing a good job, leave us a review. We're just trying to get the word out there and kind of see there's you know, more topics that we can talk about. If people have other strategies or other ideas, we we're bringing out we had a lot of guests that are coming on in in January and February with just different strategies and ideas, things that we're not doing. So we're really excited to kind of learn more about those strategies. Uh and if you know someone that's doing something you think would be a good fit for our show, please reach out, let us know.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:41

Yes, we'd love to hear from them. And any questions that you have on things that we've talked about, please always feel free to send us a DM or an email. But we're just excited to go into this new year, 2026. Lots of lots of year of the horse. Year of the horse, lots of fun things coming and just excited. I don't know, something about the the new year just feels like obviously a refresh and yeah, it'll be good.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:06

It'll be good.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

All right, get out there and make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

Thanks for listening. This has been a production of Rebuilding the Dream Studios.