Ep 23: House Hack Your Home and Create an Additional $30K Revenue Stream

We are going into part two of setting up short term rentals, vacation rentals, Airbnb, and VRBO. Today we'll dive into staging for the experience of it. Because if there's one thing that Robert has learned, is the more attention you pay to giving your guests an experience that they can't forget, the better chance they're going to come back, the better chance they're going to give you a great review, and the better chance you can increase your rates on your property and beat the market.

We are going to talk about the importance of good pictures, curb appeal, the kitchen, the bedroom, the living room, and the backyard. The details are what allowed Robert to increase his nightly rate from $150 to sometimes $400!

Check out Robert and Shelly's Airbnb link

Enjoy!

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From the Episode

In This Episode

3:44 What is revenue by design?

6:33 The importance of the curbside appeal

11:34 How to pick out great interior decor while not breaking the bank

15:00 How to make the kitchen something to remember

17:15 The bedroom experience

18:28 What to have for the kids

25:12 Is it important to get professional photos of your vacation rental?

26:33 What you should focus on in the backyard

32:48 How much Bob makes annually on his Airbnb vacation rental

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Full Transcript

Tim Murphy 0:00

Welcome back to the value driven investor podcast where we forge value driven investors on a mission to live life on their terms. No matter where you have come from or where you are going, becoming a value driven investor is in all our best interests. Because becoming financially free allows us to focus on what matters most fulfilling our purpose, our community of valued of investors is committed to showing you the way with the support of this community, you are sure to reach your goals for all of us in the value of an investor community, there is no greater gift than the gift of giving because together, anything is possible.

Tim Murphy 0:49

We're back on another value to an investor, podcast episode. And we are going to go into part two of the short term rental, the vacation rental, the Airbnb, the vrbo.com. But what are we talking about? Today, we're talking about staging for the experience of it. We talked in the last podcast part one about short term rentals in general, Bob and I got down with that column, we were like, gosh, we have to talk about staging for the experience of it. Because if there's one thing that Bob has learned is that the more attention you pay to giving your guests and experience that they can't forget, or an experience that they want to tell their friends about, the better chance they're going to come back, the better chance they're going to give you a review. And the better chance you can increase your rates on your property and beat the market. Grando again, as always, buddy, good to have you on today. Man, I'm excited to talk about this.

Bob Grand 1:53

Me too, man. I'm super pumped about this. And I'm glad that we we realized our podcast here today was gonna go for four hours. So breaking it down into smaller bite sized chunks is probably good. exists where today, it's gonna be under 30 minutes. Okay, well, you

Tim Murphy 2:07

know, good luck on that one.

Bob Grand 2:08

Yeah, no doubt. But yeah, I

Tim Murphy 2:10

mean, Bob, you're gonna pretty much take it over. Now, if you guys have not found our YouTube channel, we have a YouTube channel value driven investor YouTube channel, check it out, because today is going to be a classic example of where we're going to share screen, you're going to be able to see Bob's actual rental property that he has. It's a Airbnb, vacation, rental, whatever you want to call it. And we're gonna show pictures of that. So if you are listening to the podcast on the audio, that's awesome. And if you want to check out this video that we have, you can either go to our podcast, VDI, podcast.com, find this podcast episode, click on it, and you will see the video recording and you can listen, watch the video recording. Or if you want to check us out on YouTube. Obviously, we have a YouTube channel value investor YouTube channel where you can also see the video, and you guys will get a visual along with the audio today. But today, we are going to go deeper into staging for the experience on a short term rental vacation property. Now what is the the point here the point is number one, I want to let you know, we could seriously talk about this for like 10 hours just staging for the experience of it. There's so much detail. And every little detail matters matters. I mean, if you go to a Ritz Carlton, or if you go to a Holiday Inn, there's a big difference. That's what you're paying for. And that's what you're going for when you are trying to become a short term rental property that makes big money. So today, Bob is going to lead the conversation, and I'm going to control the pictures and the experience Grando take it from here but

Bob Grand 3:44

awesome, man. Yeah, this is going to be I think, a really good thing to go through. I like to think revenue by design, I see that in our notes, their revenue by design, making sure something's designed and spending some money on it. But what can you elaborate real quickly on what that means to you? I just want to see if we have the same thought process on that time. Yeah, revenue

Tim Murphy 4:01

by design, for me is really about. It's about what I just said, like, Are you the Ritz Carlton? Are you the Holiday Inn, because the Ritz Carlton, they have a lot more upfront expense, you know, and we're looking at all of this as a business, they have more upfront expense, but then they get more revenue because they're able to charge more because when you walk in the second you walk in the field all the sudden you just have this experience and you have this feeling about

Bob Grand 4:29

it. Yeah, and we all know those types of experiences that we've had, you know, when you walk into something and and you go into like a hotel room and there's like treats in the room. There's things that are there that really make the house or the hotel really special, you know, from A to Z, they thought through that whole process from the customer experience all the way through. And I think today when you think about your Airbnb, you should think of it exactly like that because the hotel industry has done it right. And they figured those things out. You can go stay at a one star hotel and you have an That's occation of what you're going to get there. But if you go to a five star hotel, like Tim says, you have another expectation. So that revenue by design is probably one of the best things and the key takeaways today that you could walk away from. So starting out and like, you know, looking at like your Airbnb or your future Airbnb, it was brought to me, you know, by my wife, Shelley, who set up an Airbnb who was like, you know, in the event industry, which is where she came from, before she moved over to the investment side with us, she focused on creating amazing experiences, you know, $200,000, weddings, $300,000 weddings, that wedding is gonna have a certain experience. And a, you know, $10,000 wedding is gonna have another experience exact in the wedding. And it's still the same concept. So it doesn't matter where you're at, I guess the point is, it doesn't really matter where you're at in life with that, or how you're doing it. But those things are equally important across the board revenue by design. So when you're looking at like your Airbnb, and you're thinking, Gosh, how am I going to set this up? What are we going to do? How are we going to get this thing done? You have to think, what is the experience I want the person to have? And what is the look and feel and it comes down to me? What's really cool about this is it's basic real estate when you're rehabbing. You're flipping a house or anything like that. The first thing that you want to create, is that curbside appeal, wouldn't you agree, Tim?

Tim Murphy 6:21

Yep. And I'm what I'm gonna do. So Bob, I'm gonna share the screen. We just give me a heads up. I wanted to obviously have you on the screen for the intro. But I'm gonna show the screen here and just make sure that we're seeing your property.

Bob Grand 6:33

Okay. Should we cut that? Coming back? Are we seeing property? Yes, the property right there. Okay, perfect. Let's go. Yeah. So when you're in there, and you're looking to like, what's the curbside appeal of this property? Now with with that, with the, with the university area bungalow that we have, we're taking that property and we want to make us when somebody pulled up, they get this cool feeling of like, an old bungalow that's been rebuilt for the modern times. And we wanted to have some cool little design features and things like that in the front of the house to kind of make the house pop. So it didn't just look like every other house in the area. And a lot of the houses in this area kind of run down. So we also went and kind of looked at like what is our competition doing in the area was the front yard of their house look like and what what's going on. So we kind of went through, figured that out and then realized we just need to design an amazing front experience, which is why we did the cool little checkered walkway, why we did a nice sitting front porch, because it's a walkable community. And we know that that one of the experiences we could provide is somebody sitting on the porch and a local community sitting there as people walk by, so they can chat with them and things like that. So that's kind of one of the cool things, when you think about curbside appeal, but it also relates to real estate, when you're investing and you're doing stuff you're trying to beat out the neighborhood and give that house that extra pop. And the thing I like about like landscaping and outside exterior, no details is it doesn't really cost a lot of money to do a lot of this stuff you can you can do over time and kind of build it up, which is what we did on this whole house. We kind of built it out in segments.

Tim Murphy 8:04

I thought that was I'm glad you touched on that. Because that was the first thing that came to my mind is like, well, how much does that cost? Because it looks expensive. But then I know you and you are very budget conscious you and Shelly and I bet you it isn't even close to as expensive as I think it is. But isn't that the point revenue by design right there in front of you face

Bob Grand 8:24

exactly man like that, that walkway in front porch was maybe like 1800 bucks. That was that was probably the most expensive thing. The rest of that is just a dry creek bed. And the reason we got rid of all the grass and everything was so we didn't have to do landscape maintenance all the time. And that was just a total pain. So we want to cut that cost out. And so we have to have somebody come like once every four to five months to kind of weed things out and make sure it looks good. So the next experience when you walk in, what's the feeling you get right? That HGTV effect is what I like to say when you're when you're selling a home as an agent, you know, you want your buyer to help create that HGTV effect you're staging the home you know when you're flipping a house, it's the same concept you want to create this experience for somebody when they walk in and you want them to think man I could see myself living here right so in that experience, you don't want it to be too personalized right you don't want to have like all your family photos and all that type of stuff up same thing with like an Airbnb. So when you walk into the to the Harris house, it's a real small house only 1300 square feet. So when you walk in, you can kind of see like you get this experience of WoW, luxury, right? This is a small house, but it also has really high end furnishings in the inside. And that's probably one of the the big things I think that you should think about is making sure that your furnishings are not cheap like you see in like, we've all stayed in those vacation rentals that have had like it looks like grandma and grandpa's old couch. And you find those a lot in those like cabin type settings. You know, like you're up at a lake somewhere and they've got like the stuff that they've always had from the 1970s It's not bad. It gets you through the weekend. It's cool. But you know, could you imagine walking into that same cabin and having a nice beautiful leather couch?

Tim Murphy 10:05

One, you know, I nailed it because I just rented a cabin up north in Minnesota. Yeah. And it wasn't cheap. It was a it was a nice cabin on a great lake in a great location. But it was a 1970s The guy must have bought it and just as like, Whatever, I'm gonna rent it on location, probably wasn't even doesn't even really care if he's making that much money from the feel of it. But it was just vintage 1970 No, I'll tell you is it's kind of cool. Going back to vintage 1970. But when I'm looking at your place, I definitely feel like man, I'm getting the Ritz Carlton experience when I'm looking at your place.

Bob Grand 10:40

Totally man and and that you know what you can do that vintage experience that is a thing, like there are themed out Airbnb is everywhere. And that's a really good point that you hit on. Like, if you pick a theme like that, you can do it. But just make sure you buy the newer couches that are retro, right? Like the mid century, modern furniture is a certain look, you might not want that couch from 1950 with the original fabric on it inside your house, unless it's still amazing quality. But you know, when you think about it like that, it is kind of interesting, because you can kind of create those experiences, but you just don't want that worn out garbage stuff. And you also don't want to go you know, so over the top, you know that it's so expensive, that you're afraid that it's going to get damaged, because things do happen. You know, not everybody treats the house the same way, you know, so how I live in it and how you live in it might be different. And I have you know, kids that are teenagers, you have kids that are younger, maybe they're jumping on that couch, you know, so you just want to kind of think about those types of things, when you're going through through the house. But

Tim Murphy 11:34

Bob, okay, give everybody because I think numbers are something that is people really want to understand. And again, I know you don't know every single number inside now that's not really what we're looking for. But more generalization of, you know, how do I do this? How do I find a leather couch and find it at a price where it doesn't feel like I'm buying you know, room and board furniture, something that's just going to go through the roof, you know what, what are these little details are like that, you know that that must be like a bull skull up above the tree, the TV there now, like what I love about that is it just gives the room of feeling or the antlers on the table like that we're up in Oregon, we're in the mountains, right and like it gives that feeling of of nature and whatnot. These are simple little touches that when you walk into an environment, and I know this from staging, obviously my own personal builds and properties and whatnot, when you walk into an environment, you have little touches like that, it truly makes it feel different. Whereas if Bob had all just bare walls, you wouldn't really have an emotional feeling to the property. So what are your What are your thoughts around maybe even cost? Or just some tips or some some ideas there,

Bob Grand 12:42

Bob? Yeah, yeah, you know, so like with any of that type of stuff, so, you know, we actually really love wayfair.com Like that's a place where we buy a lot of stuff. A lot of their couches and stuff common are collapsible and they're easy to move around, things like that you find really good deals you can find not low grade leather couches, you could actually buy any type of leather couch on Wayfair that you want. But the other thing is world markets another great place like all the pillows and stuff like that a lot of that stuff comes from World Market and getting that theme. The antlers. You know, we're from Oregon, so we have antlers. So we're like, hey, let's kind of make this thing here. The cow head here, the school up there. I think we found that at a thrift shop, you know, so thrift shopping is one cool thing for people who I shouldn't say thrift shopping, but those vintage stores, they're all over the place, you know, kind of like, or they have all their repurposing stuff, you can go through there and just find some cool little decal or you know accents for your house. And it kind of give it that extra pop, you know, and you'll notice like in the back of the couch there in that photo, it has like some cool little trees in the back that are led trees and all those are like Pottery Barn trees. Yeah, just to fill in the spaces and make it feel like such a cool environment that you just want to hang out in. And that's what you get in that living room. You just truly want to hang out.

Tim Murphy 13:52

Yeah, that's cool. All right. So the kitchen so the kitchen is something that you know, I know Bob can talk about there's so many details like just looking at this, I can see all the different details that you have considered for the experience. Now we don't have enough time to go through every single thing that Bob and Shelly talked about or not even talking about, think about when it comes to the experience in the kitchen because the kitchen right statistically is the most important piece to a vacation rental because most people that do have vacation rental actually do it because they want to cook, they want to entertain and they want to they're probably having a more than one family or they have a bigger family and it's a gathering and we don't have time to go into all that but again in our value, investor membership. We are going to go deep into the strategies around vacation rental, short term rental kitchens and bathrooms because both of those are big moneymakers. But Bob's give us a little insight on what you got here on your kitchen. Because yeah, you're like this is a remodel right?

Bob Grand 15:00

Yeah, I went back to the studs studs up on that one. So and, and that area used to be a wall. So it now it's, you know, it's a bar, top area and all that right there. But the biggest thing that you want just what you said, you know, people want to go there so they can cook and stuff like that cool thing about this house, we have a lot of people that come in to the university, and they want to cook for their kids that are going to the university and do that type of stuff. So it creates that experience. But we wanted to create an experience where everything revolved around the kitchen. That's why it's got a nice bar top or an island, you know, it's a small house. So we still want to create that open space. And that was the key there. And the thing to remember, when you're trying to create an Airbnb that has an experience, you can't have like those cheap Walmart pots and pans. People need to be able to cook on stuff that they're going to, you know, be able to actually cook and prep and everything and the kitchen needs to have all the right stuff in it. So that way somebody can do it. So you don't want to just leave a bunch of garbage in there and then have them have to go to the store and get everything. But when you think about the design, you need to think about, you know, from the design perspective, how do people want to live in their house? Or how would you want to work in a kitchen of your dream house?

Tim Murphy 16:04

You know, exactly, exactly. Okay, well, now, the dining room, the dining room, you know, one of the things that I know, when I've rented a vacation rental or short term rental is that if I don't have if I so let's say the place has, yeah, we sleep for 10. But the dining room table is only for five, like how important is that to have a table and seating for enough people if you have a bigger place or a smaller place or whatever.

Bob Grand 16:35

Yeah, so what I always imagine is, you know, the people that are staying there's one thing but typically they're visiting somebody in our town, they typically are visiting somebody so they might have other people over. So we always want to make sure that we at least we have enough, a couple extra chairs can go around the table. And you know, maybe some extra chairs kind of hidden around the house that they can drag in there to kind of create that space with each other. But you want to give it just enough, just enough room so people can get around it this and that, you know, but still have a nice experience. Not too cluttered, but you know, making it look really clean.

Tim Murphy 17:11

Yeah, this your property is fantastic here, man.

Bob Grand 17:15

Yeah, it's so cool. And then, you know, like the other next thing I think is probably outside the kitchen, you know, what's your bedroom experience, right? So when you think about Airbnb, a lot of times if you have three bedrooms, it's not always just mom, dad and the kids going somewhere. A lot of times it's couples or maybe it's three couples. And so with all of our Airbnb s we try to measure this Airbnb at least, we try to measure and make sure that we can get a king bed in every single room. So and that was kind of a thing, or at least to two twins in a room that maybe can be pushed together. But I'm not a big fan of that. Whenever I've had to do that. And you're like the odd person out and you show up late and you get that you know bedroom with two twin beds, you try to manwich it together. So you guys find me That's horrible. That's a horrible experience for somebody. And so we are going through him are like well, I would want to know that I could stay in every bedroom of the house. Because if I were that oddball personality showed up late and got there the middle of the night, you know, it's like I'd still be really awesome. I showed up and said Man, there's a king bed here. This is going to be sweet because your

Tim Murphy 18:17

situation though, like what if you have you know, I mean cuz like myself, it's my wife and I and then we have two kids. We want to have a couple singles in a room for the two kids. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

Bob Grand 18:28

I think like with kids, most kids that are brother and sister and like dad are totally cool to stack into a king bed. Yeah, that's my feeling. And if not a lot of kids crash on couches, kids can sleep anywhere you know so thinking for the kids is you know making sure that the king bed can cover on which it can but the one exception to that is like having one of those baby play pins you know those those little collapsible things we make sure there's one of those in the house I think my brother because we need a one on one time somebody asked for one and we just never gave it back to him but it made it makes a lot of sense right? Because they may show up and like oh I forgot this and they open up a closet and it's there. They're just like, oh my god these people thought of everything in the middle of night you know panicking running to Walmart. So the kids are important but we look at it more of the perspective of what are the adults need because kids are resilient they can pretty much do whatever you know and then when you think about that master the most important thing is king sized bed and the next most important thing is TV. I've been to a lot of Airbnb is where there's not a TV in every room. And you see some of the pictures in this one there isn't a TV in every room because the pictures are kind of old. This has been a progression for us over time where we figured it out. The last bedroom I think there Yeah one of the bedrooms there it doesn't show a TV but now every bedroom has a TV everybody bedroom has its own remote connected the internet all set up perfectly. So if you guys you know if you're experiencing you got like two three people in the house, they may want to be together and then hit the road at nighttime and chill out, watch some TV and go to bed. So it's creating that that routine experience that they might have at home. So they feel like they're taken care of. And they feel like they're actually in their own home, or a home that they wish they were in. But, you know, if you have a, I think on top of that the master, there's always a master, right? Master Master master bathroom is probably the next key thing is to make sure that the master bathroom is put together, and the main bathrooms put together just with everything that they need in it and just make sure it's good and clean, simple, you know, it doesn't have to be overly fancy. But it just should look amazing and clean.

Tim Murphy 20:32

Well, and again, I mean, we're gonna go deeper into this, because we've had so many questions. I mean, how many questions you get from people, Bob, about vacation rentals. I mean, it's like, every day, I'm getting questions about vacation rentals. So we were definitely gonna go deeper this in our community value investor community, which obviously is value different investor.com, you can sign up. Because this is just, this is the easiest way to become a real estate investor, if you're going to house hack, or if you're going to actually buy a second property. Today, we're really going to focus on you know, we're trying to focus on a house hack, because this property is a property that Bob will live in. And he will he will Airbnb out when it's somebody reaches out and he will go find someplace else to live. So we're talking, we're talking to you if you're there, and this is your house, because just like Bob, this is his house, and somebody calls up and you're like, gosh, I gotta make a couple extra bucks. I gotta have a revenue stream here. You know, this is what Bob's house looks like. And then he puts it out on Airbnb and whenever somebody says yep, I want to use it then he finds an alternative and he has a he has a alternate Don't you have like a camper or something so then you can take off and

Bob Grand 21:42

travel trailer Yeah, I have a travel trailer that I'll take off and and and really our strategy you know, this house the strategy was for Airbnb was to keep us it didn't have permanent, you know, renters in it. Because we want to go and do the every two year thing with our primary residence, right. So every two years, we want to get in there, clean it up, sell it so we can get the tax free exemption that two out of five years, huge. And so then what we do is we sell it, then we move back into that house. And then we have the pain and suffering of having to be the house hackers again and we got to go through and make sure we can Airbnb it out why we're there. Because you don't want to take it off Airbnb, you get hit pretty hard in the rankings if you do that. So we keep it on there drive up the price a little bit higher and kind of work that angle. But ultimately, it's not our permanent home. It's just kind of our fallback home. And then we move out to the next one, which you know, we're working on planning our new construction build. And that's just

Tim Murphy 22:31

you guys, if you're that person is going Gosh, I really want to get into real estate, I really want to be a real estate investor, I can really see how I can add an income stream or revenue stream, which would allow me to get away from that w two job that I just don't enjoy. I want to have this life on my terms. I want to have the convenience and the schedule that I want. I just need the money and the income to make it happen. This is one of the best strategies you can start with. It's the very basic strategy. You have a house you live in the house. You set it up, you put it on Airbnb, you put it on vacation rental by owner calm, and you just say, You know what, if somebody decides they want it, for this price, I will leave and I get to make some extra money. This is a great idea. So Bob, let's go a little deeper now. On here's some more pictures, obviously. But yeah, let's get to this backyard because I think this is the money right here when Bob talks about experience. And then he after the call yesterday he's like yeah, check out my property and I checked it out. I was like, Oh, Bob, you know you were talking about the backyard. And I'm gonna tell you what, just looking at these pictures. Like let's let's before we even go to the backyard Bob. Marketing in the short term rental vacation rental property category. Like just looking at your pictures Bob. I'm getting excited. I've looked at a lot of vacation rentals, Airbnb, short term rentals. And I don't see pictures of glasses. I don't see pictures of antlers on the coffee table. I don't see these leather couches. Like I'm getting excited just looking at your place. You know what I mean? Like so how important do you get compliments about your pictures? How important are these pictures and the staging by design and this revenue by design just through the photos?

Bob Grand 24:19

I mean, it's just like in real estate trying to sell a listing it's the exact same thing those photos make or break it you get something that's weird, and you can't quite tell it's there. Or you can't figure out the bedroom situation. It can ruin it for somebody deciding to make that happen. And like this, I mean, you're going to compare properties right when you're looking at a town you go in this system, what's this one got? What's this one got? Well, you start seeing like this backyard where it's got all these games you know, it's got that it's got a Jenga that's not even in there. It's got this outdoors area. It just lets you know that this is the next level. Airbnb and our reviews are always amazing, because people are like, Oh my god, I can't believe they had this. I can't believe I had that. displaces perfect definitely will be back. And that's what you're trying to create, right? Because you want to create it for the long term where when these people come back to the same town, the only thing they're thinking is, can I get back into that house and stay there again?

Tim Murphy 25:12

And Bob, do you? Are these professional photos by a professional photographer? Are you the one taking these photos? I mean, where? How are you getting such great photos?

Bob Grand 25:20

Yeah, do we, I mean, everything's professionally done. Like you don't, it's like $150 for professional photos. And, you know, you bet you shouldn't be shooting photos, just like in real estate, you shouldn't be shooting it with your iPhone or anything like that you want a pro to come in, get those angles and get that done. You know, it's funny, you're saying these photos are amazing, I'm looking at picking them apart, myself going, these photos have to be updated. So we got to get this done. Next time. It's all set and ready. You know, it's like, there's some it even looks better now than it does in these photos. And it's kind of like, I just need to get those things all dialed in and reshoot and have the photographer come back out. But I think that

Tim Murphy 25:56

sums it up is that when you have a vacation rental by owner, Airbnb, whatever you call it, um, you your it's always evolving, like everything's changing, it's always getting better, you're always looking for ways to make it better. And that's the revenue by design is that Bob is always tweaking this so that he can charge more money, make more revenue and get more more people filling it up faster. So go into the backyard for us, Bob. I mean, you really, you really got an experience going here that I'm just looking at like the fire pit, you know, the cornhole, it's cool, the backyard gets

Bob Grand 26:33

a lot of sun. So we want to create areas where people could sit and kind of just get out of the sun be in the sun, you know, vice versa, do whatever they want, but just have a lot of different areas, because we figured maybe six people will be staying in the house, but maybe there might be more people coming over to do stuff. So we want to put a bunch of extra chairs around the gas firepit. And make sure it looks great little you know, we added a little some black metal chairs for drinking coffee in the morning. Up on the main deck, we have some nice, you know, couches where people can kind of sit around and talk and chat. Just creating those individual experiences. And you know, to be honest, like a couple of times, we have like a backyard cam, you know, and and the cam will go off, you know, when there's motion or something like that. And one time it was just left on like on for some reason. And I saw these people, they came out into the backyard and they opened it up and alerted the cam and alerts my phone. And the person was just like like this. They go, Oh my god, like, and then she's like, Honey, you gotta come take a look at this backyard. And he's like, what? When he walks out, he's like, Oh my God. He was like, we are going to party in this house. I was like, no, no, no, no, you know, but it's like and then so I checked back a couple of times they had some people over there barbecue and it looked like they were playing Jenga. They were playing cornhole. They were sitting around the chairs, it looked like, you know, a really cool time. I was like, they're not partying too hard, because they're a bunch of older people. But, you know, the point of it is is that's the feeling you want to create when you walk outside and you create that outdoor experience.

Tim Murphy 28:07

That's really cool, man. Yeah, that's definitely cool.

Bob Grand 28:11

It is cool. And now even outside like you know, in the pictures you're looking at there there's there's a big giant pergola if you go to the very last pictures in it, we just created this pergola structure and we put a nice big table out there, and we've got a TV out there for people that come into town for football games and stuff. We figured they're probably sports fans, so they probably would want to be watching the game and doing stuff if they can't go to the football game or maybe a couple but they still might want to enjoy and look at the you know, watch the TV outside and have a good time.

Tim Murphy 28:43

There's a pergola Yeah, yeah, that's got a TV on that. That would wall there.

Bob Grand 28:49

Yeah, we got a TV and then we got a big giant table that's like sits up at bar height. So you can sit around it and you can put a lot of people around this thing. It's it's it's like an eight foot table. And you can just stack people around it and just hang out out there. So people can be playing cornhole, people can be playing Jenga you can be watching that and we've got a big cooler that sits out there it's just such a fun thing here here's

Tim Murphy 29:12

what somebody might be thinking as they're watching this especially if you're if you're checking out the pictures and watching the video here. Did you overdo it? Did you spend too much money is this really going to give you a return on investment?

Bob Grand 29:25

Yeah, so recent reviews with the property they've all talked about this backyard I mean it's every any review like people are just this backyard amazing or if maybe it's the private reviews that they're telling us you know, they're like oh my god this backyard. It's it's great. Let me see. This one review says great house perfect location visiting you have a great four family gathering with lots of entertaining area in the backyard very comfortable. Shelly was easy to correspond with. This home is adorable. The three bedrooms were all comfortable. So you That's great things to hear. The backyard is a 10. My kids love the backyard Jenga and cornhole, everything is immaculately clean. The home was clearly remodeled with care and style. Those are the types of reviews you want, right? Because that's just gonna keep churning stuff. And I'm telling you, man, it looks way better now than it even does in these photos, which I've taken, I haven't optimized it enough, you know? And does the backyard cost money? I mean, people are gonna, like, Oh, my God, you spent so much money on this backyard. We spent money over time, right? Like, there was a time where there was no backyard. Yeah, there was a time where I was air being being this house out. And all it had was that upper deck. And then the rest of it was just rough, old grass, you know, from the house after I bought it, because I just hadn't got the yard yet. And then after I did that deck, I poured one year, I poured the big concrete patio. And then I had that, you know, and then I went and tore out all the grass, and laid down fabric because I didn't want to maintain the grass and had a cut every week, and put in a bunch of pea gravel and create a cool experience, you know, for people to be able to walk on and stuff like that. And, and so it's just, you don't have to do all this stuff, like people that God can't do, it's gonna cost me 1000s of dollars, that's this isn't house hacking for me and do it. It's just thinking about those things, your house doesn't have to look like my house, but you should be focusing on like improving it and optimizing it and thinking, if I were to create an amazing experience with my house, you know, what would that be? But, you know, the, we could keep talking for hours upon hours upon hours about this and all the little details. And I know, right? You know, it's never ending. It's never ending, like I could go on for days about this topic. And so hopefully, we've at least given the nuts and bolts of what to do, how to style how to make sure that you're, you know, places staged and thinking about the experience first man,

Tim Murphy 31:54

yeah, Grando. You know, it's awesome. I'm glad that we were able to show people a live product that you've been working on for how many years has it been that you've been working on this particular about that place

Bob Grand 32:04

in 2017, got it back to studs, got it back to life around 2018, mid 2018 was living there and then said, Okay, now how do I optimize this for Airbnb? Why?

Tim Murphy 32:16

So it's not like you said, it's literally I mean, three, four years in the in the works? And now I mean, give give them a because I want them to know that your place is the Ritz Carlton. Okay, after seeing it like that, um, what what do you make? I mean, how much do you hope to make a year off of that place? Like, what were you making on day one when it was like a crappy backyard? And it was like, beat up grass? And like, what are you making today after spending this money? How has it increased your revenue? You know, because revenue by design, man. Right. So

Bob Grand 32:48

this is actually good. So initially starting, I was getting 150 A night out of it, right? So back in the day, but I was getting 150 A night out of it. Because of proximity, the location where it was at what are up to 200. And it had house wrap on the outside and people are renting it. The front porch was like half sunken, and people were like, oh my god, like, I was pleasantly surprised when I walked through the door. Because basically, in a nice way, saying the outside looks so bad. I wasn't sure what was gonna happen. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna run it and know that so? Yeah, so it went from that to this transition over time. And one cool thing was a couple came a few years, you know, right. When that happened, it had house wrap, and they stayed there for about 10 days. Then they message us, Hey, can we rent your place again, we're coming back. And we're like, yeah, and we didn't even think we had like really good photos at the time they came back and they're there next year. He was like, oh my god, the outside of this place looks amazing when we're first date and it had house wrap on the outside and no front porch and all this stuff. And so it's just been a progression over time. And I think it's a good thing. So I mean, so that place will generate probably about it, you know, it's we're about 70% bookings, we stay there 60 to 70% booking because we stay there, but it should generate upwards of 70 75,000 and our out of pocket you know total maximum out of pockets about 30

Tim Murphy 34:08

to $75,000 of revenue a year now That's gross, not net right?

Bob Grand 34:15

Guess 75 gross in our out of pockets is anywhere from you know 30 to 35,000 100. Really

Tim Murphy 34:21

so 30 grand 30 grand. So if I'm sitting there going, man, should I rent out my house? Should I do what Bob's doing? I might be able to add 30 grand to my bottom line to my income. Well, if you think like

Bob Grand 34:35

if you're just house hacking, you want to cover your mortgage payment to free up your income so you could buy other investments like you're now no longer paying mortgage payment every month how much you know how long will it take for you to buy another investment when you're not making a mortgage payment every

Tim Murphy 34:47

Wow Bob like that's, that's awesome. I mean, that's awesome for people. I hope you you caught that because if you want to get into the the game of real estate investing, I just think we nailed the first and the best strategy for you to implement, because it's about as least risky as you could possibly get when it comes to real estate investing. And Bob has added additional $30,000 in income on his bottom line. Like, if that doesn't help you. I don't know what will and he's gone from what was it 150 bucks a night to now what do you rent in that place? For the minimum

Bob Grand 35:24

right now it's 300. But during peak times, we'll get for 450.

Tim Murphy 35:29

Oh, my gosh, man, that's awesome. So he's invested in this awesome revenue by design, he has amazing experience the you know, you can go and find this property and, and we'll probably share the link on our Facebook page. But you can go and check out this property. And you can see the reviews, this is for real, this isn't fake. And he's gone from 150 bucks a night to 300 $400 a night, because of the experience by design that he's created and that Shelley is created. You know what, that's what it's all about. We got to go here. Because, you know, we could talk about this for 10 hours. But the thing is, is that we design is so important, whether it's in flipping, whether it's in rental properties, whatever it is that I'm actually just set up an interview with my designer who helps me design million dollar plus properties. And I'm really excited about that. And you know what, I think Bob, we got to get Shelly on because, Shelley I know, she's the brains behind a lot of these different touches. I mean, you're a good looking guy, and you know, your design. But Shelley Shelley is the Queen, right? Yeah, that's so true. So I think we got to get Shelley on and we got to have go even deeper into just you know what her thoughts are about that. But again, Shelley is going to be helping us create some really awesome guidebooks if you're out there, and you want to actually execute and take action on this strategy. And that'll be all in our value investor community. But for today, I think we just gave you guys a little bit of a taste of what it would be like if you want to do a house hack for a short term rental property, because at the end of the day, staging for the experience of it, is what it's all about. Alright, we'll catch you at the next on the next podcast. Thanks a lot. Grandal. That was awesome. Thanks for listening to the value driven investor podcast where we lead by giving for more information about our community and what's new visit value driven investor.com. The value driven investor podcast was produced by digital legend media in Minneapolis. Build your legend, digital legend media.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai