220. The Tricks and Tips to a $170,000/month Mid-Term Rental Company

0:00Imagine being a travel nurse paying$3 ,000 a month to stay in a sketchy motel. Most people see a strange situation. Our guests saw a$2.1 million opportunity. Jesse Vasquez walked away from a$200 ,000 a year golden handcuffs healthcare job by recognizing a massive gap in the housing market, the midterm rental. Today, his portfolio generates over$2.1 million in gross revenue annually, and he brings in three to five times the cash flow of a traditional landlord. That sounds like the absolute dream here. all without dealing with high turnover or cleaning toilets. He's here to show you how the midterm rental business is the easiest real estate niche to start with no money or no property and how a simple AI prompt can make you$39 ,000 a month.

0:45I'm Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to Helpful Podcast where we uncover the secrets of building and renting successful businesses. And I am so excited to have Jesse on here today. So Jesse, thank you so, so much for being here and talking about midterm rentals with us. Yeah, what's up, man? Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here as well. It's gonna be super good. You're on the YouTube channel, So I'm excited to get you on the podcast here. But let's start with a baseline for the audience. For anyone who has never heard of you before, heard of midterm rentals, can you kind of explain to us in 20 seconds about like what you do to set the basis for this?

1:14Yeah, my name is Jesse Vasquez. I'm over in Modesto, California. And basically the way to talk about midterm rentals is 30 day stays at a time. So forget long term, forget short term. This is right smack in the middle where you have a travel nurse that's on assignment for 90 days. You have a construction company that's working on a new bridge that's going to maybe be six months of staying in a property. So essentially, I connect with companies and they're going to be using my property to stay or properties and other markets as they're staying on assignment for whatever, whether the travel nurses or doctors or whatever it is.

1:43And they pay two to three to five times long term rental rates, which is pretty freaking awesome. Yeah, pretty freaking awesome is right here. So what does that equate to like annually? What are you doing annually in revenue? And we're going to talk more about how someone can get started in this by one way that basis. Yeah, I have 22 properties right now all across California. So Central Valley, California, all the way up from Bakersfield to Sacramento, a little bit in the Bay Area and then Houston, Texas. And we do about$170 ,000 a month right now. And that's in revenue for all the properties.

2:11They average about$7 ,000 a door, which is usually two to three times long-term rental rates, especially in California. So we're doing about$170 ,000. I fluctuate every now and then, but we're pretty consistent right now because I've been doing this for a decade and I built these relationships with all these companies, which I'm sure we're going to talk about here in a minute. But yeah, that's what we're doing now with 20 something properties. Well, let's dive into it then. At least it's the basis for us. But I gotta ask, I mean, did you, were you born and bred to be in the real estate market coming out of the womb?

2:36Or like, was there a specific moment where you're like, okay, I need to get into this midterm rental space? And like, how did you identify that opportunity? Yeah, man, to be honest with you, Ryan, I did not, I learned real estate when I was young. And the way I learned it is when I was a kid, I was picked up from school one day. I don't know if you've ever seen National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Have you watched that before, Ryan? I've actually have never seen it, which is funny enough because I know people absolutely love that. I've actually have never seen it though. So don't hate me for that, but I've not seen it.

3:03You got to put that on your queue, man. You got to watch that. So I was picked up. My parents used to drive the same car that the Griswolds had. It's this old minivan looking thing. It's like a station wagon. I got picked up from school one day. And long story short, my parents took me to a courthouse. I was sitting in the back of that courthouse. And as a kid, I was nine years old. I watched my parents go through an eviction process with them trying to get a tenant out of their home. So my introduction to real estate was like, I was awful, man. It was like my parents arguing. It was them losing a property over a period of time.

3:31So I never really wanted to get into real estate. Up until 2015, I worked as a healthcare developer manager for 18 years. And there was a woman named Barbara that was at this nursing station. And I happened to walk by her and she had this amazing accent, Ryan. She was saying like, maybe you can guess this. She was like, isn't he a doll? And she would say, watch out for deer. And you know what accent that is? You familiar with that at all? I mean, I'm assuming it's from somewhere in the South, But if I hear doll, I'm thinking of like the South, but I don't know. I'm awful with impersonations. She was from Fargo, North Dakota.

4:02And she stayed. Isn't he a doll? I'm from California. Everybody here says dude and bro and man all the time. So I was drawn to her and she told me she was a travel nurse, Ryan. And that's when I realized like, oh my gosh, there was a massive amount of opportunity. So I saw this travel nurse and she just basically said, I'm a travel nurse. I'm on assignment and I'm staying here for 90 days. And she told me she was staying in a Motel 6 in the worst place, Ryan. And we're spacing Modesto, like this prostitute ridden, drug infested place, which actually we went and recorded at it with Upflip when they came out.

4:31And I realized that the power of these companies paying is two to three times long term rental rates. And that's the moment that I started to flip and realize like, oh, my gosh, these companies are paying thousands of dollars by connecting with people like Barbara, which I've seen all over the place. So that was kind of like my introduction to like the awful stuff as a kid and then seeing an opportunity when I had no intention of being in real estate, but seeing there was an opportunity there. Well, let's talk about that opportunity then, because obviously you identified this, you know, you're seeing what they're paying, you're hearing where they're living at.

4:58What did you do? And what would you advise people that are listening right now to do to get started on that very first rental property? Well, I'll tell you right now what I did. And this is something that sounds really boring. And I'm going to explain the story to you guys here in a minute. So after I met Barbara, she told me to go down to talk to the HR department because she told me she was staying in a crappy place. The hospital wasn't able to find her. For anybody that's ever worked in a hospital before, right, you got to have a badge. Like you'll see like the badge and there's a little key card on the door and you badge it.

5:21I sat in the HR department stairwell for about 20 minutes waiting for somebody to badge it and to go into that office because you had to have a key to get in there. And I sat there for 20 minutes. I'm like, should I really go and do this or not? All of a sudden a nurse came in, she got her badge, she zipped in and the door swung open. It was one of those quiet closed doors where like it opens right away. And then it slowly started to close. And I'm like, should I do this? Should I not do it? Should I do it? And Ryan, right before, about 10 inches before the door shut, I stuck my freaking nasty shoe in the way, stopped it from closing.

5:48I opened the door and there was this woman sitting right in the front. Her name was Misty. And I remember her name because she had the big giant pencil like you have, you know, school teachers when you're like in third grade. And I said, Hey, I just talked to Barbara on the third floor and telemetry floor. And she's like, what the hell are you doing in here? How'd you get in here? And I said, why? I explained the story to her. And I told her that I was interested in housing people like Barbara and how I connect with that. And Misty was like, we've been looking for somebody like you that owns homes.

6:10I didn't own any houses, just keep that in mind. And she said, we've been looking for somebody like you that owns property or has property because we've been having our clinicians stay in these crappy places. And that right there, Ryan, if I didn't do that regular kind of thing where I put myself in the way of going in to talk to somebody when I had no idea about what I was doing, which a lot of listeners right now are like, should I do this? Should I not do it? Is this something I want to do? Something as simple as putting my foot in the door to go in to talk to somebody. That was a moment that changed my, like, I wouldn't be here talking to you right now, Ryan, if I didn't do that.

6:37So the cool thing about this is that a regular guy like myself, which can relate to most people in a lot of ways, like you don't have to do anything astronomical. was just me figuring out and talking to the right person and getting uncomfortable for a minute and just sticking my foot in the door and asking her. And she literally was like, go get property, we'll work with you. And that was it, man. Like, that's how it all started off for me. That's what I love about like entrepreneurship. I feel like there's always just that one like distinct moment when, especially when you're just like starting from zero where you're like, ah, do I do this?

7:05Do I not do this? But as I say a lot on this podcast, like that's generally like what separates the entrepreneur from like the wannabe for new or is like, the entrepreneurs like actually took action similar to like what you're saying there i'm sure that has been the best decision of your life maybe up to this point yeah and i was not an entrepreneur like i did not have that mentality i did not think about that at all i wasn't one of those like gary v guys it's like i was selling baseball cards in the in third grade like i had none of that at all it was just like i saw this opportunity this glimmer of light i seen all these people and i just made a decision i think again that's most people fall into that category but you're right man it's about taking that initial action and actually making movement and somehow the universe, God, whatever it is that people believe, like you will be recognized when you go out and put yourself in a situation like that.

7:45Something positive will come from it. Like really, I honestly believe that. Oh yeah, no, I'm in the same exact boat for you. It's not a coincidence that like the opportunity was there and you took it upon it, but okay. For the listener that is interested in doing like the midterm rentals as well, like one, do you need to identify people that are going to potentially live there? And like two, like how do you identify the best properties for this? I'd love to hear more two than one, honestly, but give us both. Yeah. So I think the best way to identify these properties is you need to find out what's actually happening in your market.

8:13And there's some really cool websites that allow you to do that. First one everybody knows is Airbnb. So if you list on Airbnb, you will have people reach out to you that will ask like, hey, I want to stay at your place for 30 days at a time if you have your property listed for 30 days. And you just ask them like, hey, what company are you coming from? Are you on assignment here? Like, is there more people coming with you? And you'll start to find out they might work for Marshall. If you guys are into music at all, there's a company called Marshall and all the big bands and all these people use them.

8:36They were building a new platform in Houston, Texas, and I happened to have a connection there. So I talked to them on Airbnb and they said, yeah, we're going to be staying with six other people. So I built a relationship with Marshall, the company, and I was able to have people come stay there. So the types of properties really are going to be uniquely identified by the people that are coming into your market. So Furnish Finder is another website that everybody can use and it's free. You can actually list your property on there. I think actually I'm lying. I think it's 149 bucks a month, but you can list on that platform and people will send notes to you and say, hey, I'm coming from this area.

9:05I'm looking for this. They're telling what company they work for. You can just ask them what companies you work with. And you start to think about this, like, I want to build a relationship with this company and this person so I can eventually have them stay at my property where they'll pay two to three, four times long-term rental rates. So that's originally how I start to look at it. And if you start talking to nurses and you realize that there are one nurse coming by themselves or there's two nurses, then you start to like formulate, okay, one bedroom is going to respect work best in my market because I've identified four companies and they're all coming down.

9:32They always have one employee or you might look at, you know, Marshall or Google or you might talk to somebody from Apple and they're coming with 10 to 20 employees. So now you might want to think about a three bedroom house or bigger because you can house more people. So that's typically how I do it is I want to look at what's happening in the market. And you don't have to own any property. This is the cool thing about this. For those of you listening right now, like, oh, I would love to do this. I want to make 175 grand, you know, a year with 20 properties. You don't have to own anything. You guys heard my original story.

9:55Like I didn't actually own any property. I found the opportunity and then I bought the property and then they worked with me. So you can actually reverse engineer it, which is a lot different than most business models in the real estate space. It's completely different. You can actually do this without owning property. Are you working a 9 to 5 but dream of entrepreneurial freedom? Look no further than the Uflip Academy, the number one entrepreneurial platform with 20 plus step-by-step courses taught by active business owners, live workshops, hands-on skill training, a business idea database, and a thriving entrepreneur community to keep you accountable.

10:34Click the link in the description below to join the Uflip Academy today and make this the year you stopped dreaming and started building your business without guesswork. I want to talk about that process though. So you're identifying the opportunity first and then you're actually going to buy the houses? Yes, that's exactly how I've done it. So yeah, like I'll just give you another example. There's a company called Gala Winery. They're out of Modesto, California. They make, it's a wine called Apothic Wine. It's like this massive, huge wine is distributed all across the U.S. On Furnished Finder, I noticed that there was three engineers.

11:02They were all three different engineers and they were asking for lodging. And what I ended up doing is I ended up calling Gala Winery and saying, hey, I just saw that there's three people that are looking for housing. They're all coming from Europe. Do you guys have a housing department? And the woman, her name was Liz. She was like, yeah, we actually, we would love to be able to work with somebody that has property so we can send all of our engineers that help make wine. Every three months, we have new engineers that come from other markets in other places of the world, like Spain and Europe and France and all this stuff to help us develop new wines.

11:30We would love to be able to work with somebody that has property and we can keep them in the property. I ended up getting a two-year lease with them, Ryan. The mortgage on that property was$2 ,000. They were paying 6K a month. Wow. Yeah. Whether there was somebody there or not. So they just wanted to make sure that they had a reliable, comfortable house that was close nearby Gallo so that these engineers that can come from all over the world and stay in this property while they're on assignment to work at Gallo Winery. So again, there was an opportunity. I saw it by literally just connecting with these companies that I saw the people requesting property on Furnish Finder.

12:01So that's how you get started. And again, most people don't, they're not going to want to pick up the phone. They're not going to want to dial anybody. That's too uncomfortable. They don't know what they're talking about, but that's where you have to start to put yourself out there in a way, start to assume and respond to some of these things. And I have a YouTube video, a YouTube channel where you guys can go check this stuff out. But there's so much information that's available nowadays, Ryan, that there's no reason why people shouldn't be able to go out there and create this opportunity for themselves.

12:23Again, you don't have to have the property. You just got to do a little bit of research and find out who's coming. And that's the easy part. We're talking about outreach to hospitality companies or even a staffing agency or something. If you're starting from zero, what's the first outreach move that you do to them? Do you just pick up the phone and say, who's coming here, how often, or talk to us about that. Yeah, I'm going to give everybody right now a masterclass on this because by the end of this conversation, when you guys are driving down the road, just in your regular in the market that you guys live in, you're going to spot opportunities after you're listening to this whole entire conversation.

12:52And that's the whole point of this. So the very first thing that I would do is I would actually start to drive around in a town. Like if you live in, I'll give you guys an example of this. I drove by Extended Stay Americas. You know what that is, Ryan? Extended Stay America? Oh, yeah, I know them. It's a hotel chain. And what they do is they're actually the biggest government contracted hotel company in the U.S. They're actually owned by BlackRock and Blackstone. BlackRock, actually. That's who the biggest midterm rental competitors are. I drove by there one time, Ryan, and I saw work trucks that were parked outside.

13:21I took photos with my iPhone 17 or whatever it was at the time, iPhone 10 or whatever. Took photos of the work trucks that were from other states. And I called those companies the next day and I said, hey, I see that there's work trucks in front of an extended state of America. I'm actually a housing provider for construction workers, for doctors, for all these different agencies. And I'm curious how much you guys are actually spending a month right now on lodging. And this woman that I talked to on the phone, this company that was based out of Alabama, they had five engineers. They were paying$150 a night for those five engineers that each have their own rooms in Extended Stay America.

13:52If you do the math on that, that's literally almost$22 ,000 a month that they're spending on having five people stay at an Extended Stay America. And I was like, hey, I actually have a five bedroom house. Can you tell me where your work assignment's at? And she gave me the general area. She didn't give me exactly where. And I was like, my property's half a mile away. And instead of you paying$22 ,000 a month, I would charge you 10K to have all five of your engineers. It's a five bedroom, four bath. So you're saving$15 ,000 a month. They were going to be at this job site for six months. So that right there alone, Ryan, I was able to get that place booked for 10K a month, saving that company$12 ,000 a month for six months.

14:26Do the math on that. And they ended up actually connecting with me every time they were going to another market. Liz would call me and say, hey, Jess, we're going to Baton Rouge, Louisiana now. Do you have any property out there? And guess what I would do? I'd connect with my community and say, who's got property in Baton Rouge, Louisiana? They would end up doing the deal. I would get a 10 % fee. So$10 ,000, I would make$1 ,000 a month for six months just by connecting a person to another person. And that's the whole goal on this. And I want everybody to get this. It's not like the short-term rental industry where it's like, pick me.

14:53My place is the best. I have the best home. I got the best pictures. I got the most cold plunges. I got the most, you know, themed out cactus house, whatever it is. Like this is like we're a community where you can have a property in Austin, Texas. I'm in California and somebody is going there. I'm going to connect with you and you and I can do a deal together. You're going to pay me a little bit of a referral fee because you're now getting your place booked for six months. So it's like if you build relationships, I have students that are doing over a million dollars right now, right? Just by connecting people.

15:19And I think that's one of the craziest and coolest things is that you don't actually have to own any property. You could just be a lead connector connecting with these companies and building the relationships with the owners of the property. And then that's all you got to do. So when you talk about all these different opportunities, you don't have to own home. You can go be a lead connector. You can go drive by extended state Americas. You can drive by construction sites and see work trucks from out of state. Light bulb goes off. Oh my gosh, now there's an actual opportunity there for me to do something.

15:44And again, depending on what lane you're in, if you want to be a lead connector, if you want to own property, if you want to arbitrage a property, rent somebody else's home and put those people in there or rent your house for$3 ,000 and sublease it for$10 ,000, you could do that too. So now you're making$7 ,000 a month, Ryan, for renting my property and putting those people in there, just subleasing it out. So there's so many ways to do this. For the one that you like took a picture of and like, hey, like we're at an extended stay, we're spending$22 ,000 a month. For that instance, did you actually like buy a house for them to like stay in then?

16:10Or like, can you clarify that for us? Or what about? I did not buy a house. I actually had a property that was a five bedroom, four bath. You already had it. Yeah, I already had it. But if I didn't have it, this is what I want everybody to realize if you go on Furnished Finder or you go on Zillow, Ryan may have a five bedroom, four bath property. I'm just giving you guys that as an example now. He might have that listed on one of these platforms, Zillow, as a fully furnished house for$3 ,000 a month. I got a contract for 10. Ryan, I can call you up and say, hey, Ryan, my name's Jesse Vasquez. I own a company that places companies and people in property.

16:41Your property happens to be the perfect fit for this family. I'm willing to sublease your house for$3 ,000, what you have it listed for, for the next 10 months to a company? Is that something you're willing to do? And you could say, yes, no, whatever it is. And if you say, yes, I'm going to rent your house for$3 ,000. I'm going to sublease it for$10 ,000. So I'm making$7 ,000 a month by literally just using your house and then re-sub-leasing it out to that company for$10 ,000. Because I already have a contract with you. You and I have a lease together, and you know that I'm going to be subleasing that out.

17:08So I just want everybody to get context to that. So I technically can rent without owning any home, but just building a relationship. I just made$7 ,000 a month. for the next six months or however long they're going to be there for by renting your house for three and then subleasing it for 10. It makes 100 % sense. The question that I'm sure a listener, a skeptical listener is going to say, is that legal? Like, is that legal? 100 % legal. Yeah. Sub-leasing is what corporate housing companies have been doing for since the 50s. So this is technically corporate housing. If you think about it at its core, we're just doing it on an indie boutique level where it's independent operators, boutique operators that are doing this on a smaller scale and not a large scale.

17:46So this corporation, this methodology of what I'm talking about has been done for literally 60 years now by big corporations. We're just doing it on an indie level, on a boutique level. Again, I want to ask, like, if I'm listening to this podcast right now and I'm going to go do this tomorrow, how do I do this? Do I literally Google, like, you know, travel? I don't know. Like, what do I do tomorrow if I'm actually interested in this? Because this is really cool. This is a, it's a newer business idea, especially for Upflip. So I'm curious, like, how do I actually get started with this tomorrow?

18:16This isn't like a trash valley service or it's a little bit more. How do you do it? Yeah. So you're going to want to educate yourself in the market. So you're going to want to know who's coming into your market. Like, do you have hospitals? If you have any level one or level two trauma hospitals, and that's basically like essentially Grey's Anatomy, level one, level two hospitals are basically that where you have it's a trauma center. They have they have specialty doctors on site. Those big hospitals like that attract more clinicians. They attract more people. The agencies will pay for the housing.

18:41So they may pay six, 7 ,000 for a doctor to come stay. You got to start to do research on how to do that. In fact, I'm going to give everybody a pro tip right now. If everybody goes to Indeed.com and say you live in Austin, Texas, what you're going to want to do is go into Indeed and where it says job, type in registered travel nurse and then type in Austin, Texas. And you will literally have probably a hundred leads of companies that you can start calling and saying, hey, I'm a provider of housing for so-and-so travel nurses in this market. I'm in Austin, Texas. I see that you guys are hiring.