Year: 2019

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Buying A Short Term Rental In Less Than A Month!

The time has come! For the next five weeks, I will share the process I used to identify, submit offers, and buy my first Airbnb property. I will go try staying high level on my IG post and then go into more detail on my blog. Looking forward to sharing the steps I used! I am by no means saying this is the exact way to do it, but I learned a lot during this month long process. Here we go!

Step 1: Identify Target Area to Purchase In

Step 1 in this journey was identifying an area to buy a property in! You will always hear from top real estate investors that you make your money when you buy! A key component of this is buying in the right area. Buying in an area that is attractive for what you are trying to use the property for.

The first thing you need to understand what areas are good for the type of investment you are trying to make. My goal was to buy a property that would work well for short term rentals (STR) through Airbnb/HomeAway/vrbo. A key thing you need to understand are the laws in your area. In Orlando, the Airbnb laws are pretty strict. There are many cities and HOA communities that don’t allow Airbnb. Period. Could you imagine if you spent time identifying a property to later realize you can’t use it as an Airbnb?! That would be a buzzkill.

So first, know the laws. After I understood the laws for each city, it was time to narrow down a more specific area. There are many programs you can use to assist you with this, but I found the best program to use to be Mashvisor.

What Is Mashvisor?

Here is the description used by Mashvisor on their website header

“Use analytics to find lucrative traditional or Airbnb properties in a matter of minutes. No more spreadsheets, no more searching.”

The program has a monthly or yearly subscription model and I ended up paying $350 to use the program for a year.

Different Maps Mashvisor Provides

There are many views provided by Mashvisor that are really incredible. Below shows a snapshot of what you see when you search for a market.

The feature I like the most is the heat map Mashvisor creates. You have the ability to toggle between Airbnb Rental Income, Airbnb Occupancy Rate, and Airbnb Cash on Cash Return. Once you have selected a toggle, you can see heat maps showing more and less desired areas.

How I Used This Information

Having the information is only half the battle. Having a program to merge data from many resources is beneficial to reduce down time I had to research. I leveraged the ability to toggle between different heat maps to identify an area. When staying on the same part of the map, I would look at which areas had the most green. Once I identified an area having a decent amount of green, I would zoom in more to the area and do the same thing. I would continue doing this until I finally identified an area that was roughly 2 square miles.

Step 1 complete!!! I had identified the specific market I wanted to buy a property in!

Key Takeaways:

  1. First understand how you plan to use the property. I planned to use the property for Short Term Rentals. I needed to ensure I narrowed my search down to only areas allowing STR.
  2. Leverage platforms that take data from sources. This will help to reduce the amount of time it takes to research an area.
  3. Continue drilling down into the map further until you have a very targeted market. Doing this allowed me to find a very specific area I wanted to target for purchasing a STR.
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Your Phone Isn’t Worthy of Your Morning!!!!

This weeks ridiculous challenge: No phone time for the first 30 minutes of each day.

Yeah. You read that right. No phone for the first 30 minutes of the day. But YRB33, I set my alarm each morning to wake up to on my phone. Oh boo hoo. You can go buy a $5 alarm clock. Crazy enough those still exist today. Go get one!

Why this challenge? I continue hearing the ability to control your first and last hours of the day to be critical. What better way that having a Miracle Morning with no screen time beforehand.

There is one fundamental issue with screen time first thing in the morning. You are not in full control of what you might see and how seeing that will make you feel. When you have 0 screen time in the first 30 minutes of the day, you have complete control of what you see and think about. This is true power.

Benefits I Expect To See

There are a few key benefits I expect to see from doing this challenge.

  1. I expect my eyes to feel less strained! Ever noticed how your eyes feel drowsy after too much screen time? This might be me, but my eyes are always struggling after looking at a screen for too much time.
  2. I will have complete control of my thoughts in the morning. I will also have much more control over my time in the morning. There are many times when I go to check social media with the expectation of spending 5 minutes. That 5 minutes turns into 30 and now I am in a rush to go somewhere. Take control of your time and mindset!
  3. The first 30 minutes of your day are critical to setting your day up to be productive. Focusing on a morning routine will allow you to clear your mind and take full advantage of the first hour.

I am sure there are many other benefits to no screen time in the first 30 minutes of your day. These are a few that come to mind for me.

I thought the cold shower challenge the other week was pushing it, but this might cross the line. I am super interested to see if anyone else is willing to take this challenge with me. If you already do this, more power to you! That is awesome and you are awesome!

Key Takeaways:

  1. Control your thoughts at the beginning of your day to have the ability to control what you see.
  2. Challenge yourself to do things that feel uncomfortable. This is something that I will definitely struggle with.
  3. Go buy an old fashioned alarm clock! They actually exist and were the main source of waking people up prior to the smartphone.
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Three Reasons You Shouldn’t Pay With Cash!

How do you currently spend money? Do you use cash envelopes like a lot of the DFC community advocates? Do you use a debit card? Or do you even use travel hacking credit cards to earn points while you spend?

I used to not care in which medium I spent my money. Now, I make it a point to use travel hacking credit cards only. Here are three reasons why!

First, paying with a cash or even a debit card provides no value to me. There is nothing I receive from paying with cash or a debit card. I am not in a cash tight position. Building a credit card balance in which I pay off every week earns me points I can redeem for travel credit and/or other rewards.

Second, I don’t have any issues with budgeting. I know a lot of people in the Debt Free Community are all about cash envelopes. Yes, you can make a cash envelope look pretty, but in my eyes there is a larger issue if you can’t budget without putting cash in an envelope. I would even go as far as to argue it is easier to budget when spending on a credit card and utilizing certain apps.

Last, paying with cash doesn’t allow you to build up any sort of credit history. If you want to invest at some point in your life, it is important to have a credit history. The largest hit to my credit score right now (preventing me from being in the low 800’s) is my credit history. Paying with cash and/or debit cards doesn’t allow for your credit history to build.

There are many other reasons to not pay with cash, but I wanted to outline some of the most important. I plan to continue paying only in credit cards for the rest of my life. There is no reason not to, at least from my perspective. It is very important to know thyself before making this decision. Don’t switch to credit cards if you have no self discipline in your spending habits.