167. Here's How This Project Manager Tackles 10+ Renovations Per Year - Interview with Skyler Vaughn

26:59So you really have to kind of bet those contractors out to make sure that they can take on the amount of work that we're looking to put on their plate.

27:07Natalie Palmer:So at this point, you mentioned that you have a solid crew. They're even staying overnight at the properties and everything. How are you, have you like signed exclusivity agreements with them? Like, are they not allowed to work for anyone else at this point? Or is it just that you have enough work to keep them busy? Pretty much it's enough work to keep them busy. We don't, I don't like to tie people down in that way because I think it could lead to bitterness in general. And even with the current contractors that we work with, you know, they're exclusive to us as long as we have enough work for them.

27:38And I'm not going to have them sign anything to make it seem like they're tied down to us because in my head, I try and act as good of a person as I can knowing that this is business also, but at the end of the day, if I can't promise you work, by no means am I going to say, sorry, like you got to give me another two or three months until I give you the next project. So thankfully from my time at TechFester until now, we've been able to do project after project, which allows us to kind of keep these contractors within the fold of everything. And I would say the biggest thing from my end is just the communication aspect.

28:11Like I try and be as straightforward and truthful as I possibly can with contractors. And it's almost like a constant, maybe once every two weeks, I'm actually having conversations with them and saying like, hey, this is what our pipeline is looking like right now. We may have like a one month gap here. So if you need to take a project, you know, down in the Poconos for a month, like totally understand, but just keep us in mind because I do have like two houses that are going to close in 60 days. and I'd like to pencil you guys in for those. So in my head, it's just really the big, biggest part is the communication piece and just being honest with people.

28:45And, you know, most contractors can be a little bit crazy, but if you can find certain ones that are at least able to communicate back with you on what their workload is looking like, it, you know, it could provide a very fruitful situation for both parties for sure.

29:00Natalie Palmer:Okay, let's go through like one full project, like start to finish. So you guys close on a property, What are first steps for you with managing the completion here? Yeah. Thankfully, I don't really get too involved on the acquisitions front. Pretty much my biggest job as the project manager is to give pricing for our pro formas. And so my job pretty much starts, I would say, a month to two months prior to even closing on a potential property. And so what that looks like is typically Maddie finds a property. she's doing a little bit of a of a deal analysis putting in at least like a rough number of like okay i think we'll need to spend like 150 000 on the renovation so she's coming from like a very high level approach and then we have sort of like a unofficial kickoff call typically between maddie and i and again this is very early on this is before we even know if we can raise the money for a property but it does take at least you know a 30 minute to an hour you know meeting between Maddie and myself to at least kind of what we call bucket pricing.

30:00So, you know, okay, we're going to do a full interior paint job, roughly, we're spending X amount of dollars on that, we're going to put a sauna in the property, okay, X amount of dollars are going to that. So that's sort of the first steps. And then I kind of get a little bit of a layback period between that portion of time until probably the week of closing. And once I'm understanding, okay, we're, you know, set to close on this date, the first thing, which is very, very simple is like the utility setup, right? So a lot of people forget about that. But a lot of times when you're transitioning a house from one owner to the next, you really want to get the utility set up almost on the day of your closing the day after, because sometimes you can even get yourself in a situation where the previous owner may get mad if you didn't set up the utilities in time, they're getting back billed for dates and stuff like that.

30:44So we try and stay really on top of getting the utility set up first and foremost. From that period of time, depending on how willing the seller was to allow us into the home while we were under contract, a lot of times those first two weeks after we close are going to be, again, a little bit more simple things, but stuff that's really crucial like measurements. We oftentimes will get matter ports, the 3D scans of properties as well. So we can actually not have to be at the house every day. We can just visualize the home in its you know, in its totality and get started on the design aspects. So those first two weeks typically are going to be just again, more of like a high level approach, starting to get contractors out there to give estimates on the project as well as kind of that first two week period.

31:28And then really, we try and hit the ground running, I always love to get started on the project as soon as possible. We typically tell our investors that we have about a six month runway from close date to, you know, hopefully the first guest checking in before that six month period. Oftentimes with TechBester, we were being held to a about three month standard of getting the house up and running. So that's kind of what I'm used to. But again, because of the care and the due diligence that Maddie and I both like to utilize with the projects, we always budget for a six month holding period with the properties with the hope of, of course, launching them well before that six month period.

32:05Natalie Palmer:But it'd be way better to launch in four months when you promised six, then have promised three and launch in four months. And things happen, right? Like, you know, what I always tell people to do when we're doing those high level renovation budgets, of course, we get home inspections. We we learn the house as much as we can. But sometimes you don't know what's happening until you open up a wall in the bathroom, for example. Right. So there's always going to be little hiccups along the way during the construction period. But again, you just have to do your absolute best to try and hit the numbers on the head or as close to at the beginning so that you're not scrambling at the end of the project to find an extra$10 ,000 that you have to put into the house because something unknown happened.

32:46So yeah, so during that period of time, again, it's going into the construction phase. We approve estimates with our contractors. We're getting our designer, which is typically Maddie. And now we've actually now hired an interior designer as well. So now we'll be getting her started as early as possible, which again comes from the measurements of the property, making sure she also understands the nuances of each individual home. And as the design is coming together, we're having the contractor start on mostly like demo stuff, things that what I like to call is like undesign related items. Like if we have to replace a roof, that's something that they can start immediately because we just have to pick out a shingle color and they can get going.

33:25So we do a lot of sort of the dirty work first. And then as the designer has about a month to a month and a half to actually get the whole process done from, you know, paint colors to furniture, then we're able to kind of at the tail end of the renovation portion of the project, get those sort of finishing touches done. And then it's the whole staging, putting the supply cabinets together. All of that kind of comes together in that last month period before we have our photo shoot and pass it off to the property manager.

33:54Natalie Palmer:And are you what's your personal involvement in the like supply closet restock and like the staging? Like, are you more focused on managing contractors or are you doing that stuff as well? I'm doing all of that. So from my time at TechFester, that was all a part of the project manager's job. And again, that was more of like, I always called myself like the messenger, right? It was like, I wasn't doing it myself, but I was making sure the person was hired to go and do the staging and go and do the supply cabinets and all of that. The cleaners being hired and getting a deep clean done before the photo shoot.

34:28So it was very much sort of like a quarter pack where I'm just like kind of calling everyone, making sure people are scheduled at the appropriate time and date. and it's funny because Maddie used to really love doing the supplies and like taking content of like every little drawer with the coffee setups and all of that stuff but I've sort of now taken over that role because I say I keep saying I'm passing the property off to our property manager which we work with Federico on that but I'm also very involved on the property management side of things so from that standpoint it was really good for me to take over sort of that last mile of like getting the supplies, helping with the furniture assembly, making sure things are where I know they're going to be.

35:08So when I'm going to like take videos for Feday's team, I know the house better than anyone. And so that's really been helpful for that last mile for me to kind of take over that process as well.

35:19Natalie Palmer:Well, you just led to my next question perfectly. So I was going to ask about the handoff between project management. Now the listing is ready to be live. How are you handing that off to the property manager? So you're taking videos. You mentioned you have stuff in Google drive, but like, what exactly is that handoff looking like? That handoff is looking at something very, very organized. That's probably the best thing I'm that I'm, I want to say known for in the space, but like, I love to be as organized as possible because I know how difficult property management is. Um, especially working with a team like Fede, he has a great group of, um, virtual professionals that help us with the guest communication, the revenue management, but they'll never visit the houses in person, right?

36:02So that handoff to me is one of the most crucial things to make sure that we are ready to go for that first guest and beyond. And so everything like you're mentioning, FedA's team uses a tool called Notion. And so what I'm pretty much doing, I like to store, I like to do like a double storage of things. And what I mean by that is I'll use like my Google Drive and I'll take a bunch of videos of the house, everything from like, here's how you access the lockbox of the supply closet to like, here's how you turn on the oven and here's how you turn on the sauna. So very detailed. I'm walking through a video, talking through the video so that they can not only know the space themselves as best as possible, but if they run into an issue with a guest, like the sauna is tripped and they can't figure out how to turn it on, they can immediately just go into Notion or go into our Google Drive folder, grab that video and send it directly to the guests.

36:51And it's pretty much solved at that point in time. So that handoff is so crucial for every last person that's involved from your cleaners, even like landscaping stuff, snow plowing stuff. You can make videos about everything. And I mean, some of our houses are really large, like 4 ,000 square foot plus. You can imagine, I mean, I'm making probably 30 plus videos of those properties. Some of the smaller ones, you know, we're looking at like the 20 video range, but it's just crucial. Even sometimes when I'm doing it, it's like, it almost seems kind of dumb. Like I'm taking a video of like the inside of the kitchen cabinets.

37:26But ultimately, I know that question is going to come up from a guest. And I know that our guest communication team, if there's no video or if there's no text information that they can copy and paste and send to the guest, I'm going to have to continue to get more and more involved and have to message the guest directly or take a phone call with a guest. So I try and minimize my workload on the property management side by making that handoff as clean as I possibly can. Yeah.

37:53Natalie Palmer:And with how many projects you're doing, you cannot be like going back to like do videos later. Like when it's launched, you're already probably managing two other projects. And so you have to just like book and like that, that project and have those videos and be done with it. Yep. We don't even like, I mean, even from a construction standpoint, like there's one house that we, that we're, you know, we're going to be launching sort of in the winter this year and we're waiting to do some of the outdoor construction because it's like going to be launched into the winter we don't necessarily need to like spend an extra five thousand dollars on like you know loungers outside because they're just going to be stored all winter but even something as simple as that is that and what i'm going back to at the beginning of this you know podcast of like storing information in my head is like okay i need to know that like okay in march april whenever the weather starts to turn i'm like okay i need to make sure i'm telling fede's team like, hey, let's block off this specific week so that we can make sure that we're accomplishing some of those items that we held off on during the main portion of the renovation, getting the house up and running, which I don't love.

38:58I know it has to happen, but it is a little bit of a, from a project manager perspective, it's like when I'm done with the house, especially you want to be doing it most of them recently, I'm like, I'm done. I don't really want to think about that.

39:08Natalie Palmer:I'm back to get some laundry. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, let's talk budgeting next. I have said many times people have listened to No Vacancy. I personally don't believe in budgets on a project. And what I mean is like, I'm not going to run away and spend a million dollars on a$200 ,000 house. But I've always thought like, once you're there, and you've already spent hundreds of thousands, I'm not going to like not spend$3 ,500 more on the better sauna. Like at that point, like we're going to do the product right. But obviously with you guys, like this is investor capital. It's not you and Maddie being like, oh, I'm going to splurge on this or I'm going to splurge on this.

39:46Natalie Palmer:Like you have a budget. If you do open up the wall and there is a problem there and that eats up 10 grand, you have to cut somewhere. We're not going back to investors and asking for more. How are you pre-planning your budgets? How are you staying within when these like, you know, random things pop up? Like how are you pivoting? I just have there's there's a certain portion with me. And, you know, this is where a lot of times a project manager will butt heads with a designer and it's there's certain things from you know and let me take a step back we're in real estate right like that's the main game here and i think a lot of times especially in our community of short-term rentals people think of like i need to have the mini putt course but i don't need to replace the roof and in my head i'm like that is that's nonsense like i understand that maybe that mini putt is going to drive obviously it's going to drive 100 % more revenue than replacing the roof.

40:40But from an equity standpoint of the home, I think that's where a lot of short-term rental hosts, sometimes it just goes out the window. And to be quite honest, and this is maybe getting more macro, but we're working on cash out refinances on four houses right now. They're not going to care that we have a mini putt in the backyard. They're going to care that our roof is brand new. That was a$20 ,000 expense that we put into the home to make sure the roof is going to last for another 30 years. And so So with those cash out refinances in mind, that's sort of where I think our investment approach is a little bit different than like your standard short term rental investment opportunity where you're almost going all in on the revenue side of things, which, of course, we're thinking about those things as we're making decisions as well.

41:24But at the end of the day, some of these cash out refinance opportunities were like, oh my gosh, we're going to almost be able to pay our investors back in full on some of these within the first two years, not from short term rental revenue, but from the equity in the home that we just generated. And again, that's coming from the things that aren't fun, like a roof replacement, you know, a bathroom remodel to expand the bathroom or add a hat from a half bathroom to a full bathroom, adding an extra bedroom. So we're really trying to think about it as like a holistic, not just a short term rental approach, but like, what would this look like if we were just flipping this house and trying to sell it afterwards, too?

42:01So we're kind of trying to take both approaches, blend it into one. And we've seen some pretty good success, you know, very early on over the first couple of years here as we're doing this in upstate New York.

42:11Natalie Palmer:that's such a good answer and yeah like we're you know going through our pro formas and like with investors we're usually projecting they'll get money back by like five to seven years but yeah if you can refinance in year two or three and not just be banking on the revenue of the short-term rental it can totally change the calculations i love that answer because you're totally right like it doesn't just have to be about like the you know cute amenity or something like you're trying to add value to the real estate. 100%. And I think it is market by market. Like maybe you wouldn't take as much of an approach as what I'm saying if you were in like Scottsdale, for example.

42:48And like, that is like a true, true, true. You have to be like high, high level amenities, always that stuff to compete as a short-term rental. Here in upstate New York, we have a very unique opportunity because we always are buying these houses with also who the end buyer is in mind. So five to seven years down the road, if we're looking to sell these houses, not only can we market this to another short term rental investor, show proof of our revenue. But in New York, like we have all of these big cities, New York City included, where there's just a ton of people that love to travel to upstate New York, have a very big bankroll.

43:24And some of them don't even want to buy the house to rent out. They just want to buy the houses like their second vacation home they can travel to two weeks out of the year. So when we're coming from a design aspect, which Maddie obviously just clearly crushes with her upstate New York design style. But again, we're just looking at sort of that end buyer. And we know not every house that we sell in five to 10 years is going to be to another short-term rental investor. It could very, very well be someone that's just looking to buy the house as like a second home for themselves.

43:52Natalie Palmer:So how are you setting your budget from the beginning? Like during the project, you know, if you guys like come across something, then yeah, it makes sense. We're going to spend more money where we need it to like actually improve the asset. But when you guys go into underwriting a pro forma or deciding how much capital you need to raise from investors, what's like your calculation for every dollar? We start always at, we need to meet a certain cash on cash return. So anytime that you take a call with Natalie or any of us from the team, you're going to see typically anywhere between a 12 % to 17 % cash-on-cash return, which is pretty solid within the short-term rental space in today's time.

44:31So that's where we start. And knowing that that's where we're trying to hit, it's very easy to work backwards from there. So clearly, we know we're going to be buying the house at a certain amount. We're going to have to put 25 % down with the DSCR loan. We know the closing costs involved. So we're starting kind of at that cash on cash, looking at the purchase price. And honestly, that will just spit out a number, right? When you get through all of those things that you have to pay for, then we're like, okay, that's going to technically leave us with$100 ,000 to spend on the renovation, furniture, supplies, everything.

45:01And that's sort of where when we're doing deal analysis, it's very easy for that deal to either work for us or not work for us and move on to the next, right? Because even just looking at photos on Zillow, since we have done so many projects, I can just straight up tell Maddie like, okay, if we don't have like$300 ,000 to spend on this house, it's not going to work from what we need it to do for us. And so it's somewhat of a simple approach, again, in the acquisitions period of like a high level going from the cash on cash return downwards to see if we can actually make it work. And if it doesn't say like, okay, I think, you know, I'm only going to need$100 ,000 for the renovation, 50 grand for the furniture.

45:38If that can work within that 12 to 17 % cash on cash, then we move on to the next step, which is probably putting in an offer, going to visit the property, talking to the agent, seeing if there's anything that we're missing before we go through like the home inspection period and stuff like that. but it's a very simple approach early on. And then I would say once we actually know, you know, we're getting closer to closing the property, that's where I, you know, was talking about earlier on my end, my job is again, to go out and get line item budgeting and estimates from our contractors, everything from, okay, this bathroom, you know, the shower is going to cost X amount of dollars.

46:12The vanity is going to cost X amount of dollars. So it's very granular from that standpoint. But again, like I've been talking about things change throughout the project. So ultimately, we know we have X amount of dollars to spend, by no means can we go over that. So when these things do pop up, that's why we like to take care of sort of the big ticket dirty items that no one really likes to do or think about early on, because those are the things that are going to really push the equity. And then we always try, like recently, we've been doing a lot of wellness themed properties, saunas, hot tubs, cold plunges.

46:44We're always, always, always, if that's the direction of the home, going to make sure that we have enough money for those, but maybe that means we can't wallpaper eight rooms in the house. We just have to paint them or buy a$700 sink fixture. We have to just buy like the$150 Amazon one. So those are some from the finishing perspective. You can really, you know, cut your budget back down if you need to towards the end of the project. Or again, there's just some things with the business that we're involved in. We can't neglect doing a new roof if there's leaks everywhere, for example.

47:15Natalie Palmer:That's so simple. So you just basically, you're like, no matter what, we will not go below a 12 % cash on cash return. And if we're seeing that we need an extra 100 grand to make this work, and that puts us at 9%, then this isn't the deal for us. Move on. Yep. And I'm, and Maddie will laugh at this, but it's like, I'm more of like, let's just move on. Like, you know, there's, there's even a house right now that we're under contract on for like 120 days, and we're still trying to make it work. And I'm like, there's more out there. Like, let's just move on, get it out of our brain and we can move on to the next one because that's the biggest thing for us right now is, you know, we have certain contractors we can work with.

47:51We really want to push ourselves in terms of the number of projects that we're doing per year. At the beginning of the call, we said we're at about five or six. We would love to do 10 to 12 in 2026, right? So we want to really start scaling the business. And to do that, you have to be a little bit more mathematical and less emotional with the houses. It's very easy to fall in love with a house when you're looking at the photos on Zillow. But for me personally, I'm more of like the logical, like, you know, I just don't see how this is going to work out or plenty of other properties on the market right now.

48:22Let's just go look at another one and see if that one's going to work out for us.

48:26Natalie Palmer:Would you factor in the, you personally, this is like a question for Skylar, would you factor in how much you think you could get from a refinance into that? Like, would you personally be like, you know what, I'm okay taking, our projections are showing 9 % cash on cash, but if we can refi at this rate, I'm willing to do it. Or are you just thinking like, that's too variable. We don't know what it'll appraise for. Like, I need to know that at least on the income, we'll make at least 12%. I would say the latter there for sure. I think the cash out refinances were always something in the back of Maddie and I's head.

48:58But it wasn't something that we could prove. And that's talking about markets as well. Again, like in upstate New York, that has been kind of like the biggest headache for us in terms of trying to get investors into the market here in upstate New York. There's beautiful houses to buy. There's awesome opportunities. But the problem right now is there's not a lot of data to prove those opportunities. And that's coming from not only the Airbnb revenue side of things. There is Airbnbs here, but they're not technically, in my opinion, on the standard that we can produce. And so it's hard to find comps even at that point in time, just from the revenue standpoint.

49:35And it's even harder sometimes to find them on like, oh, we think we can cash out refi at like a$600 ,000 value and we bought this house for$300 ,000. That's kind of going on in our heads as we're thinking about it. But for your question in terms of like what's on the pro forma and what are we telling investors, it is almost always a straight up like, here's what this looks like as a true just short-term rental play. Yes, we have a potential opportunity to cash out refinance this property, but we have no clue what an appraiser is going to give us on these opportunities. But thankfully, again, being kind of early on, we're in the process of doing four different cash out refinances right now.

50:13We're talking about like multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in value on those four from the purchase price that we originally bought the house at. So maybe now moving forward, it's something that maybe it's even something on our team to talk about is like, you know, that's like, okay, this is just like the straight up revenue play. But we also want to show you like, hey, if this can cash out refinance in year two at this price, you're going to get half your money back in the first two years also, which is obviously going to speed up that payback period and the cash on cash return.

50:45Natalie Palmer:Yeah, yeah, no, it's insane. On our last meeting, you guys told me like what you're getting some of these appraised at. And I'm like, hold on, you bought this nine months ago. And it's like already we're appraised for this much. Like it's crazy. um yeah okay so Skylar to close out I would just love to know so you guys are bringing on a new project manager um so what's like next for you like I know you're going to be training this person and still have a lot of communication but like what are you hoping ends up being your new role yeah um and yeah just like the process of like empowering somebody to do this I love that you said they might end up being better at this than you are but I'm sure they're still going to turn to you for a lot of questions.

51:24Yep. Yeah. I, you know, from the project management standpoint, I think I'm always going to want to be involved to some capacity. And I think it's just because, you know, not to have this be therapy, but it's like, I'm a very like control freak. I have a hard time like letting go of things that, especially when I see something go wrong and I'm like, oh, if I was just doing that particular thing, it wouldn't have gone long. It would have been done fine. And so from the project management perspective, like, I think my role is stepping into more of like, again, being a business owner, and that might sound like unique or cliche and, you know, what everyone says, but it's like, I'm going to have to learn what it's like to, you know, step away a little bit to allow this person to flourish in their own way.

52:08And so the next few months, I think that's going to be my biggest like struggle point of being like a manager to a certain extent. I've never really managed another project manager before. And so it's like, I have to learn, you know, how to talk to someone, how to encourage them, how to step in when I when it's needed, but let them do their thing at the same time. So from the project management side of things, to be quite honest, it will be a little bit of a learning process for me the next few months. But again, this person that we are hiring, so far has shown that again, it is someone that has, in my opinion, even more of a skill set on the project management than I even have.

52:40And again, it's from, she has a background in actual project management at high level W2 jobs. Whereas me, it was, all right, I'm managing 10 houses. I have to figure it out myself. So we'll see how that goes. And then just from a macro perspective, I would say with the company, again, I want to act more as a business owner and also step into potential roles that I've been helping with, but not owning. And from that perspective, as you can imagine, right now we have a portfolio of seven properties. There's a lot of legal paperwork. There's a lot of like talking to attorneys. There's a lot of talking to our lenders and getting them all the documents they need and everything along those lines.

53:21And one thing I would say for everyone is one great book that I've read recently is it's called Rocket Fuel. It's the idea between a visionary and an integrator. And Maddie and I have both read it. And we very clearly fall into Maddie as the visionary and I am the integrator. And so Maddie has had to play some integrator roles because it's just been me and her. And I've had to play some visionary roles because it's just me and her. And so we're hoping to continue to go down those, you know, separate paths. I'm more of like the, I can remember a lot of things. I can communicate with a lot of different people and make sure things are getting done.

53:53Whereas Maddie can take more of sort of that high level focus on marketing of the business, focus on actually getting us to the right place in the next five to 10 years as a whole, as a business with the strategic planning. but when there's not enough hours in the day, which up to now, there hasn't enough enough hours in the day to accomplish all of that ourselves. We're having to kind of integrate our roles together and just make things work. So with the hiring of new people, that is hopefully where sort of our business is going is being able to scale at the right pace with the right people for sure.

54:23Natalie Palmer:How did you find this project manager for anyone out there who needs their own Skylar? Well, Maddie is the queen of our social media. And so that's, Social media has been the biggest driver of our business, of our lives for the last five-ish years or so. And so that's literally how we found the project manager. We pretty much just made a job listing on our website. We promoted it on social media. We had probably a good 10 to 15 applicants to go through, which was awesome. And same with the interior designer that we're hiring, all through social media. And again, going back to hiring people that are better than us, like Maddie, of course, has a great design eye.

55:00and she's still going to be overseeing to make sure the houses have that upstate New York look and feel. But even talking about the interior designer that we hired, she has a degree in architecture. She can do architectural drawings of bathrooms, of kitchens, of staircases, decks, everything that we really don't have the professional skill set for. And it's just been, hey, contractor, can you make it look like, wow, it's like, we can literally just pass off a drawing from our interior designer to the contractor. And there's really not a lot of communication that has to happen after that, right?

55:31There's maybe a few questions, but from the project management standpoint and the interior designer standpoint, I feel like we truly are hiring people that have more of a professional skillset in those roles that again, hopefully will just flourish with us helping and stepping in where needed.

55:45Natalie Palmer:Yeah, for sure. Okay. Well, you need to take the Myers-Briggs test. I swear by it. I've done Enneagram and like all the personality tests out there. Nothing has been more accurate for me than my Myers-Briggs. Like I read it back and I'm like, this is me to a T. I'm an ENTP if anyone's wondering, but I'm dying to know. So you have to tell me. I will. Sure. I have a fix hour drive to Cape Cod tomorrow. So I'll make Maddie drive half and I'll take free one. Don't pay for the, the legit Myers Briggs. The free one is called 16 personalities. I think it's 16 personalities.com and it's totally free. Take that one.

56:21Natalie Palmer:Um, and then tell me what you are. Um, okay. So to close out, we do obviously have to promote that. We do have some investment opportunities available right now, you guys, if you want to work with us. So for one, we have a partnership opportunity. We always have the Airbnb in a box deals, like Skylar mentioned at the beginning. If anyone's in a unique investing situation and you want to be the sole owner, you don't want to split with partners, you can always inquire about one of those. Those are just more custom. So we would sit with you to figure out your budget and your goals for your property and go from there.

56:52Natalie Palmer:but we also have a partnership opportunity this property is so cool it's going to be called the heart pond retreat it has a private pond on it like this is something else skylar that like the pond in the zillow photos had like algae overgrowth and stuff and i was just like how are you going to renovate a pond and you were like yeah we figured it out like we are gonna like line it with this lining we're gonna add white sand to make the water crystal clear adding like a pump system in there and this is the price and i just would never know how to even start renovating a pond but he figured it's all about asking questions right it's like just quickly is like we have a really good home inspector even in upstate new york and he just like knows random things and he knows random people that do random things across upstate new york they got a pond guy literally if we if we don't know it's just okay who's the first person we can ask which is usually either our contractors or our home inspector and we move from there right and if it's something that we feel like okay we just we don't know what we're doing here we need to ask more questions or even use chat to bt to kind of figure out how to you know at least start on the right path you got to do what you got to do when you have maybe a private pond to work with too so well we got a pond guy you guys and the heart pond retreat is going to be so cute what is this one on like seven acres of land private pond there's like your own private bike trails on the property it's going to be so cool so that one we have a partnership opportunity available.

58:15Natalie Palmer:I will put the investor interest form in the show notes. If you want to fill that out, I'll reach out to you. And then we've also got a flip, which I actually think by the time this episode comes out, there's a good chance the flip might be closed. We're very close to putting all the investors in place for that one, but I could keep you posted on the next one or if there's any chance we could fit you in. This one is more of a private money lender situation. So six months, will pay you back. You wouldn't have equity in the property or profit share. But it's a more guaranteed return structure. Yeah.

58:47Natalie Palmer:It's so fun that you guys are doing flips and stuff now. I feel like whatever an investor's goal is, there is something FTLOU can offer. If you want the ongoing passive returns from a partnership, we've got that. If you need the custom Airbnb in a box situation, we've got that. If you want to just have your money held for six months for a private money lending situation. We've got that. Oh, yeah. I'm very excited. The flip is going to be one of our first ever like we're buying this property to flip the house and I cannot wait. Right. I mean, everyone here from like a short term rental standpoint is like, you don't have to furnish it.

59:20You don't have to do like crazy wallpaper options like that. It is going to be really exciting. And in my opinion, I'm hoping it's going to be a little bit easier. Fingers crossed. Nothing crazy happens, but I'm excited to not have to like furnish or like buy supplies. That's for sure.

59:34Natalie Palmer:Yeah. Yeah. No. And even like, you know, I've been talking to investors on that one and they're like, well, if it doesn't sell, what's the backup plan? Are you turning it into an STR? And I'm like, no, like we will refinance it to pay you back. And then we are getting a long-term renter in there. Like we're not furnishing this one. Like we're done after just the renovations. So absolutely. And one thing I wanted to mention too, is like, I think if people are out of state and don't know like New York geography that well, that has been a little bit of a hiccup for people. I know some people are thinking like New York is notoriously not a good real estate market, but yeah, you don't know New York.

1:00:07I just want to mention it is like, we are not New York city. Like I kid you not come travel up here. It is beautiful, especially in the fall times. It is like a different state in upstate New York. Like there's all different regulations rule set from the short-term rental perspective. It is one of the only markets I would say that is very like early on. There's not a lot of regulations going on up here. if there is, it's still kind of wide open, but you obviously have to go through like a permitting process. So we don't really have to deal with a lot of that stuff. So if anyone is like thinking about potentially talking to us about investing, but you're like, I don't know about New York, I promise you, it is not what you hear about like New York City banning Airbnbs.

1:00:44It is like quite literally the opposite of that. And that actually ends up helping us. Everyone in the state is so focused on New York City and all of the regulations they need to put into New York City, upstate New York a little bit gets forgotten about for the regulations and the permitting processes and stuff like that. So that has been a huge actual help for us operating in this market too.

1:01:02Natalie Palmer:Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up because I had those same misconceptions, just like being from California, I've never even been to New York. I assumed, how are you guys doing this? Completely different world than New York City. Very much. Yep. Okay, cool. Well, this was so helpful. I just love hearing about all your systems. I have no interest in doing this. But for anyone out there, I think that they would have gotten a lot about what the processes look like. And yeah, I really appreciate you being an open book on all this. And then, like I mentioned, guys, I will link the investor interest form below.

1:01:35Natalie Palmer:Hopefully, we can partner with you on a couple of our projects. But like Skylar said, we're hoping to get to 10 to 12 next year. So there will be more available. If not this time, just fill out the form and we'll get back to you when the right opportunity comes along. Perfect. Thanks, Natalie. And with that, it is now checkout time. Thanks for listening and I'll see you back here next week. Lastly, as Airbnb hosts, we all can appreciate a good five-star review. So you already know a great review on this podcast would mean so much to me. Please subscribe, review, share, and connect with me in the show notes below.

1:02:10Natalie Palmer:Bye!

1:02:21Thank you.