Retiring at 30 Using Short Term Rentals with Zeona McIntyre

Brittany Henderson: 00:00

I'm Neil and I'm Brittany.

Neil Henderson: 00:01

We are a family on a journey towards financial and location independence. Each week we interview successful real estate entrepreneurs about their chosen investment strategy, and rate it based on how much money it took to get started, how long it took to educate themselves, how passive it is, and whether or not they could do it from anywhere in the world.

Brittany Henderson: 00:19

Welcome to the road to family freedom.

Neil Henderson: 00:21

Today we sit down with john McIntyre Yana retired at a very young age using a small portfolio of Airbnb rentals.

Brittany Henderson: 00:28

If you like our show, the easiest way for you to give back is to leave us a rating and review on iTunes head on over to rode to family freedom comm slash review for links and instructions on how to do that we would be so grateful. All right, and that's out of us. Let's hit the road to family freedom.

Neil Henderson: 00:53

Our guest today is Zeona McIntyre, Zeona is currently earning 10 to $15,000 a month from portfolio of vacation rental properties and are co hosting service for other short term rental property owners. All this is afforded ziana financial independence at a very young age, as she builds her operation largely by piggybacking on the growing popularity of Airbnb, with a small team smart some smart decisions and some online tools Yana now manages your business from home in Boulder, Colorado. Relatively hands off, Yana. Welcome to the road to family freedom.

Zeona McIntyre: 01:24

Thank you. Thanks for having me today.

Neil Henderson: 01:26

Of course, it's great to have you. And you are bringing I have as we have talked about we are short term rental people as well. But you have obviously gone much larger. Can you tell us the story about how you got into real estate?

Zeona McIntyre: 01:42

Yeah, so it's interesting, I always thought Airbnb would just be like a side gig. Like it was just like a little side hustle that I was gonna do for a minute to kind of get me through massage school is I never really considered that it would be my road to real estate. But I always loved real estate. I've always been super passionate about homes. And every time I go to someone's house, I want to see everything, even thought the maybe I'd become a real estate agent at some point, that just proves that life does not pan out the way that you think sometimes. But yeah, for me, I just heard about Airbnb from a friend. And it was back in the early days back like 2011 when my friend started, and he had just heard about it because he was laid off and he wanted to go travel. And he had lived in New York and his apartment was 3000 a month or something crazy. And he thought, there's no way I can keep my apartment that I'm locked into a lease with and travel and you know, be able to afford that lifestyle. So he found out about the website, and then it was just a huge success for him. He told me that he made $50,000 on his apartment, he didn't even know, you know, and at the time, I was a student and I was working almost minimum wage, and I just kind of never even seen $50,000 you know, like that was like a salary that only successful people had like, I couldn't even imagine it. So it really made me go okay. You know, he's been telling me I should do this, I should do this. Maybe I should do this. So yeah, I started very easily. Like I think the great thing about Airbnb is it can also be just like a very simple non committal thing. You know, you just take some photos of a bedroom in your house, and then just put that up. And that's kind of how I did it. I had a spare room. And I took some photos, put it up and just waited and people came. And from there grew, you know, so I found it to be so successful that I was renting my room, I was renting the spare room. And then eventually I spent a few years living between two different apartments. And it was just like, whenever someone rented it, I was out and it wasn't as popular back then a lot of people didn't know what I was talking about. And so I was able to live that way nowadays in Boulder. If it's busy season, you're out like there's not a free day in the calendar for a month. So I wouldn't have been able to do it back then. Like that. Now I've grown it to owning six properties, and I managed probably another 15 all over the country. And yeah, it's worked out to be really successful for me. And I feel like it's such an easy business model that it's a great way for people to get into real estate if it's something they want to try.

Neil Henderson: 04:22

And did you start in Boulder?

Zeona McIntyre: 04:24

Started in Boulder? Yeah.

Neil Henderson: 04:27

And did you? Was that a? Was it a home or apartment that you owned? Or were you solo?

Zeona McIntyre: 04:35

So back in the day? Yeah, it kind of just seemed like I mean, that was what my friend had done. Right? He lived in New York City. So there was a ton more traffic and I thought a little bolder, is it gonna do anything? But it did and that started very slowly. But yeah, for me, I was just renting an apartment. I mean, I was a total broke college student and debt and it really changed my whole life. So Although I wouldn't recommend doing it the same way that I did back then without telling your landlord or anything, I think you couldn't get away with it the same way now because everybody knows what it is. But you can still find landlords that are really friendly to the idea. And, you know, you don't necessarily have to own a place to make good money off of it, which is kind of what I do when I'm managing a ton of other people's properties. And that's an easy way to get into it. Yeah. So the management that's the CO hosting thing that Airbnb has.

Neil Henderson: 05:30

Yeah. And then where did you go from? boulder?

Zeona McIntyre: 05:36

Um, well, Boulder is kind of where I was doing my own places for a while. And I ended up buying a condo here and kept doing another rental unit, I kind of just was back and forth. I even started renting my other friends places out here in Boulder, because a lot of people knew of me and knew that that was something I've been doing a long time. But from Boulder, I ended up buying a place in St. Louis, I have a really good girlfriend who lives out there. And I ended up going out for her wedding and just kind of realized how affordable it was. And I bought there maybe three or four years ago, and the prices are a little bit different now but still hugely affordable. And going from folder where one of my rental apartments was like 1100 a month, people were saying that they had a three bedroom house that they owned and their mortgage is $300. And I just thought $300 I mean, okay, like, that's like two or three nights of renting. If it doesn't work out, like I have the whole other month like there's no way to lose like I couldn't see it not working. And I turned out to be right. I think it was also a lot of luck, you know?

Neil Henderson: 06:45

And all of your own are pretty much all of your Are you all in on the St. Louis market now? Are you have you diversified a little bit.

Zeona McIntyre: 06:52

So I own one here in Boulder, I own four in St. Louis, and then one in Colorado Springs, which is probably an hour and a half from here in Boulder. But I manage in New York and Seattle, and Atlanta. I just got all over. So you don't have to be nearby to make it work.

Brittany Henderson: 07:11

Yeah. So what is or maybe you've already gotten there, but what's your your destination? Where is real estate taking you anywhere?

Zeona McIntyre: 07:20

That's like a really interesting question. So my big interest in real estate came out of wanting to be early retired and have this financial freedom thing down. And my kind of goal was to do that by 30. And so I think I started Airbnb around 26 or something like that. And so there was no, I had no idea how I was going to make it happen. But I knew that that was what I wanted to do. So that kind of curved out this goal of just getting to a certain point. And I'm, I'm well beyond that point now. And so I kind of go back and forth with this wrestling in my mind of, do I just build to build? Because that's kind of what society tells us to do. It's like bigger, bigger grow? Or do I just, like, chill out and like travel and let my investments do their thing? So it's, it's a tough question. I don't, I don't exactly have the perfect answer for you. But I think that what's been happening naturally is that I like to get at least two houses a year. So that's kind of where I'm at. I mean, I don't know, it's kind of an addiction.

To say it's a little dangerous.

Neil Henderson: 08:30

You know, it's funny, in the, in the more traditional buy and hold market, they often talk about, well, you want to buy, you know, buy one house a year and it'll cashflow you know, 100 $200 a month. But obviously with Ansel, it would take you a very, very long time to build up a portfolio of single family homes that's going to allow you to retire early, but it's obviously much different with Airbnb.

Zeona McIntyre 8:55

Yeah, I know that was kind of one of the things that's always turned me off about traditional real estate, and just doing long term rentals is that you're replacing income of like 75,000 you'd need like 12 to 15 properties. And if it's only cash flowing $300 a month like the moment you have one big repair you're out months and months of income and that just doesn't really make sense and I get it that that's some some markets that's all you're gonna get. But I love that Airbnb gives you so much more I'm in most of my places are cash flowing at least 1000 in the slow months and maybe up to 2000 in profit each month. And that's one place you know, so if you are really frugal person you could live off of one and I hear those stories from people all the time. You know, they live in their van and travel around or they live in Asia most of the year and then just live off one place. And that's like unheard of. So it's really changed the market for us as investors.

Neil Henderson: 09:54

Well can you walk us through how you went about getting yourself educated? doing this,

Zeona McIntyre: 10:01

I think it's kind of just learned by doing. Yeah, I mean, there's no real. I mean, I guess people probably sell courses out there now and I have a blog. And, you know, there's definitely a lot of information out there. There are a few books on the subject, but it's really kind of learning by doing, I would be the first to say that Airbnb is not rocket science. But if you want it to get down to the nitty gritties, of making it really successful, you can learn more about adjusting things to have better SEO and you know, more clicks, and just different stuff that make people actually buy. And so you can refine things to make a better product. If you're talking about how to find properties, we can talk a little bit about that. That's like something that I found that was unique to what my needs are. And I think real estate is such a broad thing, that people can make it work in almost any little niche. And it's just kind of figuring out what fits your style or taste or interest. That's kind of cool, too. There's something for everyone.

Neil Henderson: 10:59

Well, let's talk about that for a second. Because how, you know, I know how to evaluate a single family home as a rental property as a long term rental property. But how do you go about evaluating whether or not a property is an opportunity? Yeah, so

Zeona McIntyre: 11:15

I mean, I look at a lot of different things. If I hear that somebody says, Oh, this part of town is really cool. Like I was just in Reno, for example. And people have been telling me Oh, Reno is like Denver 20 years ago. And you know, Denver Boulder, this whole area is very expensive. Now. I'm like a home that I would want to own and live in in Boulder is probably a million dollars. And I'm just, you know, I could do that. But I don't think it's a good investment. And I don't want to do that. I'm not I'm so in Reno, I was looking around. And, you know, they were telling me there's these two main areas that are great, like a Midtown section and a little bit south of that. So I was like, Okay, cool. Let me just pull up Redfin. That's like my favorite real estate website. Because Redfin is very close to the MLS. I feel like they have a lot of really good information. And it's up to date. Zillow, and Trulia, I find that sometimes, you know, something's been sold, you know, a year ago, and you don't have the right information there. So I don't love it. Yeah, so that was the first thing is I do some trolling around of like, okay, are there you know, multi families that make sense? How much is an average home, I love the idea of being some more like walkable and hip. Because I think when people come to town, they want to go to the restaurants, what's bringing them there. So I'm looking for big colleges, like 14,000 or more, I'm looking for hospitals, people traveled for things like that. And then like, just venues and like, what bring someone to an area. So it's kind of scanning those sorts of things. And then when I get an idea of like, okay, so the average house is 400,000. For me, that's a little bit expensive, it doesn't seem like a deal, you know, right off the market. And so I'm thinking, Okay, what's that mortgage is gonna be gonna be somewhere around like 2000 or 2500, or something like that? And how much do I need to make to be able to cover that? So then I pull up Airbnb, and I like to see in that area, because they've got a really cool map feature, you can put in an exact address, or you can just kind of look in the area based on, you know, Google Maps side to side, and just see what are people renting for? And I don't know that I went that far in Reno, I think I was just kind of like, then I'm not in love with it. If you do look around, you can see like, okay, maybe people charge, they charge $75 a night, which would be a really close call, because you're only really going to bank on maybe 15 to 20 nights a month. And so if it's $75, it doesn't really make sense. If it's 275.

Then you go, Okay, well, maybe

I can make this work. I don't think that market was super expensive, especially because they have tons of cheap hotels. We ended up staying in a hotel that was like $39 a night or whatever. We had a deal. Yeah. So when there's a market like that, that's kind of flooded with other options. It's a little bit dicey. But yeah, so those are the kinds of things there's so many resources online that you don't have to be in the place. I just happened to be in Reno at the time that I was looking, but it didn't matter. Because all you could just zoom into different neighborhoods. Trulia has really cool crime maps. So when I'm looking in like St. Louis, which can be more selective on streets, I can see street to street which street feels safer than others. And it's not perfect, but it helps give you an idea. So I do a lot of that kind of research learning about different neighborhoods and and all that. No, that

Neil Henderson: 14:45

was great. I mean, I I went to the University of Nevada in Reno.

Zeona McIntyre: 14:51

That's nice, you know it, intimately,

Neil Henderson: 14:52

yes. And we actually, that's one of one of the markets we would love to own and gotten so expensive. It's actually, the median home prices are actually higher, substantially higher than Las Vegas and Las Vegas market is very hot. Yeah, it's tough, man. If you could find a deal, it would work. But, but it's an expensive market. It's a cool town. And it's getting cooler. It's getting sort of that a lot of respect made for segue here. It's getting a lot of the Silicon Valley overflow, a lot, a lot of tech companies going in there because they can't afford to pay their employees to live in silicon.

Zeona McIntyre: 15:28

It's one of those things where it might be, it might not be great right now. But if we could find the right property later, sorry. Microphone. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's hard, because I think we're kind of in this cusp of maybe the market could fall in a bit, I have heard rumblings of like 2019 to 2022, there might be a little dip. And it's hard to know, what would cause that, you know, might just be a stock market crash or something like that. So if it's not housing specific, like it wasn't 2008, maybe it won't drop housing pricing that much. But I am less likely to buy something now that I don't think is a slam dunk. And that, to me, didn't seem like one, it could work. And if you found the right fixer upper, and you're doing all that kinds of digging, sure. But that's generally not how I'm buying, because I want to place ready to go all fixed up looking cute. And I just go in and furnish it. So you're really not, you're not doing any renovations typically, or any kind of, I don't like to, especially if I'm going into a whole new market that I don't know super well. It's it takes a while to build those crews and people that you can really trust. And renovations can go haywire and be very expensive. So it's not an area that I'm an expert in. And I just don't really go that way if I don't need to.

Brittany Henderson: 16:49

So obviously your first time with Airbnb you were renting. But eventually you did start to buy your properties. How did you go about financing your first purchases? And how much of your own money did did you use all your own money? Or are you leveraging other people's money.

Zeona McIntyre: 17:08

So now I leverage people's money in general. But back then the very first one, I got a private loan from a friend. So I had a former landlord, who was just like he owned probably 17 properties or something like that. And so he was kind of this person that I was like, who I could probably learn from him, let me see. And I I pitched it to him. And he seemed to be on board. And maybe just because we were friends and whatnot. But he worked out a good deal with me. And that kind of worked in my favor. And that place has really worked out. It just so happens, I felt like it was really expensive at the time. But it was right before boulder did a big boom. And so within the year that I bought it, it went up like 18%. And so it made it so that was really easy to kind of I paid him back early, and just figured it out. Like it was just a really good opportunity that doesn't know what's happened for everyone. But for me, I was able to pull out the equity to pay my loan back pretty quick. And he ended up turning around and giving me a loan for my next property, which was significantly less. But yeah, I've done some private loans, and I've done some kind of splits with friends. And then I've done some now where a partner gets a mortgage, and then we just put the downpayment. So it can kind of be creative in financing.

Neil Henderson: 18:32

And you do you ever have any issue with getting financing from a bank, where you're telling them it's a short term rental.

Zeona McIntyre: 18:42

So I've never gotten financing from a bank, because I just thought the type of person who likes to do things the traditional way.

And so I've been working for myself now for six years or something like that. And that doesn't look as friendly to banks as someone who can come in with a W two and say, Hey, I have the same amount of money every single month. And I'm very predictable. For me, I have a bank account for every single house and for my management business. And it's just like tons of accounting, so I can bring them my tax returns, but they don't like it because every year it's different. And I can't tell you from month to month, it's generally going up which I think is positive but because of that I've just not even tried and I found easier ways. And with the St. Louis properties, they're all under 100,000 this was kind of easy. I bought one just cash about one with home equity line of credit essentially. And I bought two with like friends cash, it just that seemed easy for the homes that are higher price, like my last home was like 205 that I had a friend get a mortgage and then we just kind of split it. And I'm the one who does all the work. So it's a really good deal for him because he doesn't even need to know anything about real estate.

Brittany Henderson: 19:56

Oh, yeah, that's a really innovative way to bring in someone Who wants to do some investing but really doesn't want to really wants it to be passive?

Zeona McIntyre: 20:06

Yeah. You know, I don't think Airbnb really is. And that's the thing for a lot of people. It's not a passive investment and that makes it less, less positive. Yeah,

Neil Henderson: 20:21

we have a we have a little one sorry, one, one family break moment.

Brittany Henderson: 20:26

So we talked about that Airbnb really isn't passive, it does take time. How much time do you spend on your business?

Zeona McIntyre: 20:35

Well, so I do it is really passive when you build up to certain amount of property. So if someone was interested in becoming like a co host, you need at least three to five properties to kind of get on most of the property management software's. But once you're on those, they have a lot of features that make it really easy to automate. You can have automatic messages, you can have receptionists that are available 24 hours a day, which is what I do. mice, my cleaners and whatnot are scheduled on their own. So as soon as someone books, it sends an automatic message to them, they schedule themselves. There's a lot of things that happen that I don't need to be a part of. And the things that make my business more busy is the fact that I have a blog, and I do podcasts and other things, mentorship, and yeah, so those kinds of things are keeping my my days fuller and my email box full. But that's kind of one of those things is like if I wanted to retire, I do have an operations manager that helps me with, you know, Airbnb resolutions and guest issues and calling a plumber and all that kind of stuff. But it doesn't have to be hugely time consuming. And so I think if someone is like a part time job, just because you need to be so available. That's the thing that can be hard and has been a sacrifice in my life is that I can be anywhere in the world, but I better have my phone turned on. And that can feel like a shackle. And so I think for someone who is working full time and trying to get into it, you do need to know that you have like a part time gig going on there. But if you're a stay at home mom and you have a lot of flexibility, that could be an awesome gig, if it's somewhere around your town, and you just kind of pop into houses here and there. If you're gonna do under five, I would say maybe eight to 10 hours a week. But if you're just doing like one or two, I mean, it could be like, an hour here and an hour there. I mean, it's not a lot of work. depending if you're cleaning it yourself and things like that. But yeah, if you outsource those things that makes it pretty easy.

Brittany Henderson: 22:38

I'm so happy now that we have a cleaner. Yeah, cuz I went home. Yeah, it's and I was at home for, you know, the first time I don't remember when we started actually having a cleaner. But you know, I'm like have a infant and trying to clean between guests. And it was so stressful. Now if there's any issue with the cleaner, I'm like, No, I don't want to deal with laundry like all about

Neil Henderson: 23:06

laundry. Yeah, we still have the laundry. That's about it's almost the the biggest that's the biggest workload.

Brittany Henderson: 23:16

On our Yeah. timewise. Yeah, on our end, the biggest workload would be laundry, and then I probably spend like 20 minutes in a week looking at like making sure that I know when people come in and maybe messaging them because for whatever reason, no one can look at their email to see that like Airbnb gave them the key code stuff. I don't understand. Yeah. Like, come on. But that's okay. So you know, so I do my best to kind of preempt that, and I'll just throw a pre done message that we have that like, Hey, here's the instructions. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely not like a huge amount of work. But it's also you do you have to be available. And and that's we've gotten screwed over a couple of times, once or twice. Yeah.

Zeona McIntyre: 24:06

When I mean, even just sleeping, you know, and sometimes people are so unreasonable about like, well, it was past midnight, everyone in the area is sleep. So we weren't able to help you. But yeah, I think nowadays people have these expectations of it's like a 24 hour concierge, like a hotel. And it's there's still a gap there. And I think there always will be and that's part of the charm. Yeah, yeah.

Neil Henderson: 24:29

So you mentioned management software. What? What's Can you give us a name?

Zeona McIntyre: 24:35

Yeah, I used to guess it. At the time that I started, I kind of started when they were beta. And I helped test and that was a while ago, probably 2013 or 14. And so they were charging me 3%. I still kind of have the grandfathered rate. I think now it's five. If you have receptionists and software, maybe it's half of it. If it's just the software, I'm guessing. I think you didn't have three to five properties to start with. And I don't know if they're the best out there. Now, they used to be kind of the only one. And now there are so many different software companies and just kind of Airbnb side businesses that have popped up everywhere. But you can have so many different features. So if I wasn't so ingrained in them, I might look around a little bit, I have heard really good things about orby rental. So I definitely recommend them. And I did a demo with them. I thought their technology was really cool. So it kind of depends. But there are probably, I don't know, 50 different companies. So just a matter of staying on top of what's offered.

Brittany Henderson: 25:43

Sorry, just that. And that's the company that basically sends that automatic info to your cleaner.

Zeona McIntyre: 25:50

Yeah. Okay. That's cool. Yeah.

And I mean, I think RV rental would do that. I think most of them do that. Because that's just kind of a just gets triggered by a booking. So it's pretty easy to set

Brittany Henderson: 25:59

up automatic things like that. Yeah, that's like, basically where all of my time goes. Mostly it besides the laundry is, hey, here's the here's, here's where we're at. And then if, for some reason I forget to let them know, then that's the problem. Yeah.

Neil Henderson: 26:17

So you mentioned having sort of an operations manager, is there anyone else that you've hired any other team members that you've hired?

Zeona McIntyre: 26:27

So I mean, I kind of built like a cleaning company, because I knew that was going to become a problem. So at first, it was just someone in Boulder that I really thought she had a great eye and her cleans were great. And I pulled her aside and said, Hey, like I'm spending way too much time on the scheduling and training and hiring and firing, would you be willing to just train people to do what you do and build a company like your thought of that. And she hadn't. And so I kind of coached her a little bit, and she's exploded. And now that I have so much confidence in her, we use her all over the country. And so she's slowly developing in all the markets that we have people. And it was just like, it's so helpful to me, because we were spending so much time on random Craigslist ads, or paying companies like merry maids trying to make them not just regular house cleaners, but Airbnb cleaners, which is a different animal. And so that part has been like much easier. From that standpoint. For us. Now, we mainly work with the one cleaning company. And I do have an operations manager that probably does 40 hours a month. And so she sort of works when she wants from her house kind of deal. But she's available a lot for emergencies. And that's just a girlfriend of mine who's just awesome and organized. And it just worked out. Well. I had someone before her and yeah, I've been working out the kinks. The thing about this kind of business is there's not really like a manual for it. So there's been a lot of things that I just had to figure out and do wrong, and then hire and train again, you know, so but pretty much it's a two woman operation. I do. Maybe 20%. She does 80% and the rest is automated. So it's not a whole lot. Yeah. Stolen at a large scale.

Brittany Henderson: 28:14

I we have a couple other questions, but I kind of want to go off onto a tangent. Okay. I loud? Well, I just think that we talked about a lot of other kinds of real estate. I think what makes Airbnb sort of interesting is some of the details in it. I just, I don't I don't know why. But I'm just curious, if you like what are some of the things that you feel like are really important for including an Airbnb or making them run Really? Well, besides obviously, the systems and things like that, but like you talked about furnishing a little bit, you want to go maybe deeper into how you furnish things like that?

Zeona McIntyre: 28:51

Yeah, so recently, there's companies now that are there furnishing airbnbs for people, you know, so I sat in on a call for a client and listen to them talk. And I've learned a lot through them. And then just from my own experience, but I have been finding that a king bed is a big attraction for a lot of people, people that are taller people that are bigger, they want a bigger bed, and I always kind of thought queens were good enough. And it really has shown me that that is something that's a little bit better. And so if you have the option in the space, a king beds nice because the other furniture is not as important. I always like having two end tables, two lamps, people joke all the time that I love lamps and I love like, fuzzy things and whatnot, but I'm trying to get colors and textures and a space that doesn't have too much in it. You know, so I don't think you need a dresser. If you have a closet. That's usually enough. I usually like to get those cool little luggage racks that they have in hotels, oftentimes, two people can put their luggage a pie if they're only there a couple days. They don't necessarily unpack everything. But yeah, I'd like to have art. I think color is really important. Because you want something that's going to catch someone's eye in a photo, and it might not be their style, in particular, but they want to try it on. So people like things like, Oh, this is the western house. And this is a Mad Men house. And this has kind of a feel. So I have a beachy place. And you know, I just I like to take on themes and have a little fun with it. And so I use a lot of prints. And I use a lot of color. And I think the photos are very important. And so investing in good photos, and updating them is totally something that gets you the clicks and gets you booked. So yeah, you want the things in the photos to be interesting. And I think I grew up a lot with Airbnb. And when I first started, I was a college student, and I had it kind of like bare bones, dormy and cheap. But I think that people are getting more sophisticated in this realm. And they're expecting more, and I still see those listings from time to time, that looks just way too IKEA basic. And I just think people are doing a disservice to themselves. You know, it's like, I get it, you want it to be affordable. But Craigslist has amazing pieces that are really cheap. And you just need to put a little more effort to make it. Yeah, so yeah, I don't think you have to spend a ton, it doesn't all have to be brand new, but you've got to make it be more quality. And I have actually found over time, I'm getting more of an eye of like, okay, that that couch is gonna last a year or this couch seems like a little more firm. And it's not going to get beat up. Because people are hard on on pieces, especially when you're trying to sleep. The most people possible in a space if someone's going to sleep on the couch, sometimes. It's just getting a lot of use. Yeah. Are you doing the sleeper couches? What is our favorite thing now? Yeah, so I can't have a couple of couches that and there are different brands, but they're not exactly like a sleeper couch where it folds out in three, they kind of like lift up to be like a flatter surface. A couple of those that I like that are actually comfortable. What's hard is that you want to create more sleep spaces, but you don't want it to be uncomfortable. And love trundle beds, the beds that are like a single and then on the bottom, it pulls out and then it could be like a king bed. Those seem to work out? Well. A lot of futon styles are too thin and not very comfortable. People don't usually like air beds. So it is a little bit tricky. Yeah, I mean, the latest thing that I've learned is that if you can sleep 10 or more people in a space, you've got a corner on the market that most people can't compete with. So if you've got big enough bedrooms, don't be thinking, Oh, cool. I'm gonna just have one big bed. Can you get two queen beds in there? Or can you get a bunk bed that has a double on the bottom and a top and then a double bed or you know, something? Think about a hotel that's maximizing the sleep spaces. So it's definitely not all about having like a big credenza and some fancy furniture or a desk and they're, like, get the sleepers and yeah, you know, yeah, cuz people typically aren't gonna be like working. I mean, a lot of people do, but they they can work from the dining table. And that's what they usually do or an Eden Island or something like that. Now,

Brittany Henderson: 33:22

how much are you typically spending to furnish? Like a basic, maybe like a two bedroom or something? You know? I don't know.

Zeona McIntyre: 33:28

I mean, usually around, I would say like $4,000 is probably around the minimum. So yeah, I did a one bedroom. Yeah, it was about that. It was like a one bedroom and a basement. So ended up being kind of like a two bedroom, one bath. And yeah, so it was kind of around 4000 give you adding more bedrooms beyond two, maybe you could say another 500 to 1000 a bedroom. Yeah, I get used beds from Craigslist, I just roll around on and make sure it's good. Names, and I'm particular about things. But you can find great stuff that you know, somebody just bought and they're moving or it was in the guest room. No one ever slept on it kind of stuff. So it's just finding the deals. And I don't think you need to spend $1,000 on a bed now. Yeah.

Neil Henderson: 34:15

So you obviously you you invest long distance? How often would you say that you visit your properties? I'm stealing your question again.

Zeona McIntyre: 34:27

Doesn't matter. Um, yeah, so I probably go about every year and a half. I like aim to go every year and that doesn't quite work out. And when I go like I just went to St. Louis in July. And I yeah, I had to replace a bunch of furniture and I thought oh, you know, it's just gonna be like one gadget one house and a couple of pieces of art that I didn't get the last time I was there. Oh my god, I ended up being like three couches. It's four houses. So there's all kinds of different things. So I was just with the U haul truck for like nine days all by myself. making it happen. I have some friends locally. But I think the thing people realize when they get partners in this, these businesses and real estate, it's like, it's usually you, you know, people, everybody wants to make money, everybody wants to buy a house, but when it comes down to doing any of the work, it's on you. So make sure that you're okay with that. You know? Yeah. It's nice that I don't have to go very often. Yeah. Are you gonna kind of stick just with the States? Are you? I mean, we talked, we kind of like, touched on what your your future goals are? I mean, do you want to invest anywhere else in the world? So I've managed a place in Spain, we had one in Cape Town in South Africa for a bit and we had a boat in Greece, the boat didn't quite work out. I just don't think Airbnb has that market. There are I mean, they rent the boat a ton through like, different Captain sites, you know, it's just a different thing. The South Africa thing just seemed to be culturally too hard, unfortunately. I mean, it's like a place that I love, and just so dearly, but the person didn't have a lot of resources nearby, we had a lot of issues with cleaners, and it just didn't work out long term. Yeah, I'm in the same one works. Well, I do hear from people all the time that are in different markets, and they love it. I personally am just a little bit concerned about not having contracts in my language and whatnot. I mean, obviously, if it's in South Africa, it's not big deal. But there are a lot of places like Spanish speaking countries that people are loving right now. But I just feel a little bit like, I don't know, the rules. I don't know the game there. What if things changed on me, I don't want to buy 100 year lease or something like that. So it hasn't fallen into place. But if I felt like really into it, I would do it. I just think the, the fantasy people have with those kind of homes is like, Oh, I'm gonna buy this like vacation place that I love to go to, and it's gonna be my favorite place. I think that's such an illusion, because you're only going to be there very, very small percentage of the time, and you don't want to go to the same place every single year. So it's way better just to rent it and buy a house and the middle of nowhere USA that makes a ton of money. Like that's what I'm doing,

Brittany Henderson: 37:21

you know? Yeah, then you can just fund your trip and rent someone else's vacation rental. Exactly. Okay, so what do you think is, like the most critical skill that someone would need to have to thrive in this niche? Hmm.

Zeona McIntyre: 37:39

I mean, I think you need to be really creative and like flexible. You know, because even today, I thought, Oh, I know what I'm doing. Today, I've got Comcast coming in a window to fix them internet, one of my like, high end places nearby.

And that didn't happen at all.

And so it's just like, sometimes, yeah, you just got to be like more available and think on your feet and change your plans and all that kind of stuff. So being okay with that. And I think you have to have a little bit of a thick skin. Unlike being a long term landlord, people have more say about your property. And when you rent a place once a year, people walk through it, if they don't like it too bad if they like it, you know, you can fix some things. But that's kind of you get what you see. With an Airbnb, everything is subject to someone's like, personal opinion. And you're a slave to the reviews, which is pretty sad, but it's become that way. So I know a ton of people that don't ever ask for damage money back and don't ever fight guests because they're scared to death. And I don't do that at all. I think we need to stand up for what's right as a host to protect ourselves because we're the ones putting ourselves out on a limb. So that is a little bit hard. And it's something you kind of need to develop to be able to, you know, read it and see what can I take away from this that's constructive?

What can I learn and grow my business from and what's just like mean, because somebody's more terrible, and it's not the arm but it's sadly true.

Brittany Henderson: 39:15

Yeah, we we learned that the hard way. We had some college to men, boys, I'm gonna call them boys because they don't deserve to be called men. They they use our casita as a stopgap they had some kind of internship or something they were doing here. And they had a cat and we allow dogs but they didn't tell us they even had a cat and we walked into the place and the cat had sprayed all over for two weeks. Yeah, they were there for two weeks. And, and they tried to say that they didn't have one and we actually were able to find the cat peeking through the sliding glass like curtains on the video camera that we have, you know, so security cameras that happened to also cover that area. And I was like, I see it because they literally carried it in a box, they carried this giant box in between the two of them that were like that must be the cat in a crate in there. Because it was it was going crazy. And you know, they fought us on it. And we really didn't get what we we probably deserved.

Neil Henderson: 40:25

We were out of business for a month just trying to

Brittany Henderson: 40:28

smell you know, and that's, that's, that's $1,000, at least right there. But well,

Zeona McIntyre: 40:37

is that that's another question that people are talking about a lot these days is Airbnb, they are way less generous than they used to be, you know, I think so often, they sided with the guests and not the hosts. Or you get a very small percentage of what you're claiming for. And so I think it's becoming more and more important for people to look into insurances, and there's a lot of new products coming out. And that's something that's kind of on my list to, to do more research about. But there is a company called slice that you might want to look up, and you pay for the insurance per day that you're actually booked. So if you're only booked seven days a month, you're only paying those seven days, but their rate ends up being higher, because you know, you're paying selectively rather than someone that you're paying every single month or once a year. Um, but I've heard just great stories, there was a guy here in Denver that had a mess, guy in his home, smoking meth, and a whole house had to be like down to the studs. And he owned it. Luckily, it wasn't like a rental because I would have been crazy. But they paid for everything they paid for his time lost as a renter and fixing it all. And it was just like a huge win. so terrible experience. But so nice to know that you had those people on the side. But I don't think I want to go that route. So I am looking at a few names for just the longer terms of the commercial insurance. I think that is something to look into.

Neil Henderson: 42:07

We actually, we actually do have that we have insurance through a company called proper.

Zeona McIntyre: 42:13

Okay, I've heard good things about them. And

Neil Henderson: 42:15

they do short term. It's a hybrid homeowner's insurance for our primary residence, and then it's got the short term rental contract and and they'll cover if we get shut down for any reason, they'll cover our lost income as well. So but that was

Brittany Henderson: 42:31

after?

Zeona McIntyre: 42:32

Yeah. Okay, here, like, let's look at insurance. Yeah, the only thing I can say about proper, I've talked to them a lot, I think they're awesome is that if you have an older home, they have some restrictions about they want additional inspections on the home. And that has been like a stop gap for me. Some of my homes are 100 years old, and they function perfectly, you know, but they want certain things checked off the list about the electrical system in the box. And some of that is so expensive to update it, because it functions we don't do it, you know, and it's not a fire hazard, but they do have a lot of particularities

Brittany Henderson: 43:10

that I don't think other companies. So, yeah, I'm still on the hunt. Alright, so if you could go back in time and reset and do all of this all over again, would there be anything that you would do differently? I mean, obviously allowing for I know, you've said, like, you don't do things the same way that you do before, like you did before, because that's different market. But if it was the same,

Zeona McIntyre: 43:36

I think now I've made this transition into realizing that like, what I know about my life is that stress is not worth it. And so I every time there's a new opportunity, every time there's a new client, I say, is this person gonna be stressful? Or how am I feeling? as I'm reading this email from this person or talking to him on the phone? Am I getting any like little red flags? Because I think at the beginning, I was so caught up in this idea of hitting a certain number and making a certain amount of money or something like that, that I was just like, yes, money person, come on, let's add you to the train. And I've had so many experiences that we're not worth it. clients come and go and houses come and go. But yeah, it's way better to like invest in a relationship with one person that you really like. So we have recently let go of a few places because it just was a huge energy set compared to the rest of the portfolio. And even booking channels. You know, we don't just use Airbnb, we use a few other channels. Some of them just don't function very well are not very vacation rental friendly. So it just wasn't worth it. And so I think just trimming that kind of stuff. I probably like wouldn't have done it before. If I had listened to myself. Yeah, well, your intuition. Yeah. Yeah,

Neil Henderson: 44:56

that makes sense. So I want you to imagine You're standing in a room full of people who are possibly contemplating getting into real estate and they have a family full time job. And what are two or three strategies that you would recommend for them to focus on that would maybe help them ensure success

Zeona McIntyre: 45:15

and be really clear about your goal? Because I think it's really easy to get swept up, and think that you just need more and more when you're making this transition. If you go, Okay, I want X amount of money and work back. And that means, oh, I only need three clients. Okay, where am I going to find those clients? I think that that makes it so much easier to let go of your job, or to like transition to part time or to you know, decide that you're going to stay home and let one person work or however, you're going to make that transition. But I think when you have like, no clear goals, and you don't know how much you need, and like what you live on what your budgets are, it can seem very daunting. And actually, this business makes it pretty simple. So you don't need a lot. You just need to know where you're trying to go.

Yeah. Is it that we're

Neil Henderson: 46:06

big believers in in beginning with the end in mind, what do you want your life to look like? Yeah, you sort of got this up and running, because the life of a house flipper is very different from somebody who does short term rentals.

Zeona McIntyre: 46:19

Yeah,

Neil Henderson: 46:20

anything else? Awesome.

Brittany Henderson: 46:21

No, don't think so.

Neil Henderson: 46:24

It's been really, really great.

Zeona McIntyre: 46:26

Oh, good.

Neil Henderson: 46:27

any of our guests want to reach out to you? What's the best way that they can contact you?

Zeona McIntyre: 46:32

My Websites? The best way is zeonamcintyre.com. I imagine you guys can put it in the show notes for me. Yeah. And there's a blog on there. And I have a bunch of resources about different software's that I really like and books that I read, so people can email me there and I'm pretty responsive.

Neil Henderson: 46:49

Okay. And you also You said you mentioned you also do some consulting for people?

Zeona McIntyre: 46:54

Yeah, I do one on one consulting for people wanting to get into real estate wanting to just figure out their financial future learn about early retirement, and people that are building Airbnb businesses, whether it's, I'm doing it or for co hosting someone else's. So yeah, I tailor it completely to the person. And I offered your guys's listeners a discount if they want to do one of those with me. Yeah, they're really fun. Awesome. We'll have all that in the show notes. Oh,

Neil Henderson: 47:23

Zeona. Thanks.

Brittany Henderson: 47:24

Thank you so much. You can find the show on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher and Google Play or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Neil Henderson: 47:32

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter searching for at road to family freedom.