Well, I know when you’re out there looking for a property that there’s a million avenues to go down, right? There’s a million people saying a million different things and it gets a little complicated to figure out who we should be trusting, who we should be following and what research and where we should be learning this research from. In today’s episode, I want to talk about one of my favorite places and it might shock you. Stay tuned. Let’s jump right in.

Welcome to short-term rental riches. We’ll discuss investing in real estate but with a specific focus on short-term rentals. Quick, Actionable items to Acquire, Manage and Scale your portfolio. I’m your host Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I am happy you’re here again. Another week, another topic. There’s always great things to talk about and this week, I want to break down how I’ve been doing some property research in the modern world and it’s going to surprise you, at least some of you and I’m just going to cut to the chase and don’t tune out after you hear me say this, but I do a lot of my research on YouTube now. I know that sounds totally crazy, but I’ve got some reasons why I think you should be using YouTube as well to do some serious market research. Of course, we always want to visit the properties we invest in and we always want to have someone there and a team that we trust, but we can get a lot of the research out of the way. There’s pretty much everything is available on YouTube these days, so I want to just break down how I go about using YouTube to do research on new markets maybe that I’m not familiar with and I have used this to buy a property in a market that I was completely unfamiliar with and it’s worked out really well.

So, I want to start off by just kind of giving a little bit of a market update and why I’m again using YouTube to narrow down markets and to do some very preliminary research. Why? Because I think we’ve got some good times coming up as real estate investors to make some good acquisitions. So, I want to break this down just a couple real quick pieces. This isn’t the main theme of the episode, but I am actively looking again in real estate. When everyone’s kind of leaving the market, a lot of times that’s when we can find deals and that’s probably when we should be coming back in, right?

So, the first thing is the single-family home. So, this is every property from one to four units. This is very different than the commercial world, right? So, in the single-family home, what do we have right now? We have lots and lots of homeowners that have interest rates at two, three percent and for them to sell their home and move somewhere else, it’s going to cost them a lot more than that, right? At the time of this recording, we’re looking at seven and a half, eight percent. And so, it doesn’t make sense for a lot of people to move. And that’s why a lot of people are not moving or they’re not selling their homes if they don’t need to. And so, what effect is this having? Well, we have less supply on the market, right? So that is one segment of the real estate market, right? We have much less single-family homes coming on because people aren’t leaving. It’s costing more to buy new properties.

So, the second segment I break down and the segment that I invest a lot in is in the multifamily space. And so, these are properties, five units and higher apartment buildings. And there’s a lot of opportunity coming up with this segment because they use a different type of loan structure traditionally. So, when someone goes out and they buy a single-family home, a lot of times they get a 30-year mortgage and it’s fixed for 30 years. And if they’re locked in at that three percent rate, then they’re probably not going to sell unless they have to. But remember, these people that have to sell, well, those could be better deals, right? Properties are staying on the market longer, prices are dropping and pretty much all of the markets that I’m looking at. But there’s still a lot less supply than there is in the commercial market. This is where I think there’s going to be a ton of opportunity because of the loan structure. So, a lot of these properties have short term loans. I have shorter term loans as well. So, a lot of these commercial properties, these small multifamily properties have commercial loans which are much shorter, which means someone’s going to have to refinance them in the near future. And a lot of people in the recent past, as prices were just kind of going through the roof, were trying to buy these big multifamily properties, add some value, refinance, pull out cash, pay off all their investors and have a win-win for everyone. Well, a lot of these people are getting caught kind of right in the middle, unfortunately, because interest rates have gone way up, which means the expenses for that property have gone way up, which means people are not going to be willing to pay as much for those properties as they were when interest rates were lower. So, in other words, when interest rates go up, less people can buy real estate. That is just plain as simple, as easy as it can get. And that means there is less demand for the same amount of properties, which what does it do? That pushes prices down. So, we see across the board already nationwide that multifamily properties are down like 25 to 30 percent. And I feel like we’re just getting started. A lot of these shorter-term loans that people use to acquire properties in the last couple of years, they’re coming due. And that means they’re having to refinance or either having to add cash to these properties to be able to refinance or they’re going to be underwater with the bank.

So that’s just quick and in a nutshell, two different real estate segments there. I think there’s a lot more opportunity coming up with the multifamily space, at least in the near future, and not as much with the single-family space, although properties across the board are staying on the market longer. And they’re pretty much from what I’ve seen, getting price drops across the board. So, we have another piece that adds to the supply, and that’s new construction. That is also going away. Those same interest rates we use to buy properties, those same higher interest rates are what contractors and builders use to fund their new projects. And so what does that mean? Their new projects are more expensive, right? And not only more expensive to build because of the interest rate, but their expenses are higher because we’ve had inflation. And then there’s less people at the end of the tunnel to actually buy their completed projects, right? There’re less people that can afford to buy these new homes because interest rates are also higher for them. So, we’re going to see new construction really dry up in the next two to three years. That’s going to decrease supply. That means that rents are going to have more demand on them, right? We’re kind of turning into a renter’s nation. So that’s kind of just in a nutshell. I’m out and about looking again. I was just in Florida a little while ago and going to be back there in a couple of months. I really like Florida, really like affordable markets. You’ve heard me say that a lot on this podcast, if you’ve been listening for a while. And a lot of people are moving to affordable markets. And so that is a good supply demand equation, one that we want to be in front of as a real estate investor. So, I know the podcast has a focus on short-term rentals, right? But as we know, a lot of these properties that we can buy as a long-term rental can also work as a short-term rental. We have quite a few episodes on that and the differences. So go back to strriches.com, check out all of our prior episodes. We have them categorized there. You can search through them. There’s a million ways to do a short-term rental, right? But there’s also a lot of pressure on short-term rentals that people bought recently. And so, I think we’re going to see some good deals on those coming up as well.

I just want to throw out one more caveat here too. And that’s that a lot of people are like, oh, well, when interest rates come down, there’s going to be, you know, prices will just go back up again. But I don’t think that’s going to be the case. Why? Because banks that loan on single-family homes, that loan on multifamily properties, they also loan on commercial properties like office buildings. We’re just getting annihilated right now. And so, banks are tightening up. And so just because interest rates go down doesn’t mean that loans are going to be easy to get. And if loans aren’t easy to get, then lots of people can actually buy these properties, right? So, keep that in mind. After the last crash, 2008, 2009, it was a lot more difficult to get a loan. Same thing is going to be happening now, but just for different reasons. So that’s just in a nutshell, I’m out and about looking. This is sort of the market dynamic going on at the moment. And as I do this research in these different markets that I haven’t necessarily spent a lot of time in, I’m learning a lot on YouTube. And so, I want to break down my process. Sorry for the long intro there.

The first thing is there’s a lot of channels on basically every market of real estate. And so, I’m going to be referring to the United States for the most piece, because that’s where most of our listeners tune in. Thank you for tuning in again. But I want to let you know that I bought my property in Brazil. A lot of you know I spent a lot of time in Brazil after doing a couple months of research on YouTube. Now, there’s a lot of channels that exist on different markets. We have to make sure that we find someone that’s credible, right? And we also have to understand someone’s motives, right? So, if we find a real estate agent and a market and they’re saying this is the best market that ever existed and it’s growing and look at all these beautiful things. Well, we have to keep their motives in mind, right? So, it’s good to look at both sides of the coin. It’s good to look at pros and cons and just keep an eye out for that. But I did a lot of research before I bought my property in Balneário Camboriú. I know that’s a mouthful. That’s what it’s called in southern Brazil. Beautiful property. It’s honestly been one of my best investments yet. And I knew nothing about this city before I went there. I learned about new developments coming up. I learned about new infrastructure in the city. I learned more or less what the prices should be for what types of different properties. I mean, I learned about tourism in the area. I learned about pretty much all of this pretty accurately before I even visited the city. And so, of course, we can do this in the US as well. The first thing I would recommend is if you have your eye on a few markets that you don’t have your eye on 50 of them, right? Narrow down or at least narrow down a few states. And then where can we start with this? If you’ve never been to Florida and you’re thinking about investing in Florida, if you’ve never been to Tennessee or Oklahoma or wherever it happens to be, and you’re thinking about investing there, well, do some broad level research first. Go on YouTube. I know this sounds crazy. You might even be watching this on YouTube if you’re not catching the podcast version. Yes, we are on YouTube. So, if you prefer that, head over there. But do some preliminary research first. What are the pros and cons of this city? Just from a general person’s perspective. And they’re going to talk about things like, oh, the weather’s great, or the weather’s not so great, or the people are friendly, or they’re not so friendly, or the cost of living is really high, or the property taxes are really low, there’s no state income tax. Maybe we can do a lot of general research up front. So that’s a good starting place. But of course, we want to go much further than that. And so, we want to start to look for channels that have experts on that area. Maybe they’re economic experts or maybe they are real estate agents or real estate brokerage owners that work in multiple states. That is a good find that can help you compare between different states. So again, we want to be looking at both sides of this, right? Every market has an upside and a downside. But there are lots of active real estate agents in these markets now where you can learn about specific neighborhoods. And maybe you don’t trust what the real estate agent’s saying on in this particular market where you happen to be because obviously, they want to sell properties. Well, then you could simply go on YouTube and search what is a new resident of so-and-so city think about so-and-so city. And you’ll get lots of people just talking about what it’s like to move to that city for the first time or things that they didn’t know about before moving there. You’ll get their insights. You can literally do this down to a neighborhood level without even ever going to that neighborhood. So that is a good place to start.

So, once we start to do all this research, we narrow down on some neighborhoods, you can start to determine who really is an expert in that area. Because remember, when we’re looking on YouTube, if you look up Charleston, South Carolina, what are the pros and cons? Well, you’re going to get one video popping up, but you’re also going to get multiple other related videos popping up. And so, if you’re looking for real estate for sale on the US least expensive coast, for example, you’re going to get related searches that pop up and you can start to see how credible these people are without personally knowing them. So of course, the number of views and subscriptions and all of that really help go along with. But I would also look at how long has this person been producing content for that area? One little warning, too. I know that there’s a lot of doom and gloom out there. The market’s crashing and these markets are losing 50 percent. And the reality is, if these are the things we’re subscribing to, they’re going to have new content like that almost every day. We don’t need to be watching it every day, right? That’s really going to sort of sway our opinion on certain things. It’s not necessary to watch someone talk about a market crashing every single day, week after week, right? So also try not to get caught up in the negativity, right? I was looking in Florida, for example, which obviously has hurricanes. Their insurance rates have gone up. I was able to find out information about insurance rates and all types of things. Can actually find contacts, brokers, agents, property management companies. Everyone’s pretty much on YouTube these days, right? But I found myself going down this rabbit hole of, man, I don’t want to get a property in this area because the hurricane’s really bad. Oh, man, I don’t want to get a spot here because these hurricanes are really bad. And pretty soon before I knew it, every recommendation on my YouTube channel was like giant storms, giant storms. And so, you can really go down a rabbit hole. Hopefully you can catch yourself before you go down too far. And just remember to always look at the pros and cons, right?

I’ve dedicated years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to trial and error to figuring out how to manage my personal portfolio remotely. And it wasn’t always easy and it took a long time. But now my amazing team can professionally manage my properties without me. And good news, our team can also manage yours. Let us save you the stress and headaches and some money by offering you an industry to find out more about partnering with us, head to strriches.com, hit the property management button, answer a couple of quick questions and meet with me personally. That’s strriches.com. Rest easy knowing that with my team, your properties will be in excellent hands.

Okay, so there’s a lot that we can learn on YouTube. Pretty much all of our preliminary information. We can find contacts, we can find out about the weather, we can find out pros and cons, we can discover small neighborhoods that maybe we wouldn’t have before. We can break things down to the zip code to really hone in. And then afterwards, start to do our research looking for specific properties using Redfin or by contacting some of these local brokers and being on their list, right? So, we can really, really get down to a granular level. But a lot of times we want to be on the high level too. So, I want to give you some of my favorite macro-economic resources when I’m trying to get a feel for the market. I’d say number one, hands down, is Ken McRoy. Him and his team have a $2 billion portfolio real estate spread across the US. He’s been through lots of markets. They really know what they’re doing. And his channel is really good on a macroeconomic level. So, he is more focused on multifamily, but I highly recommend checking him out just for broad level information. And then Jason Hartman, who we actually had on this podcast before. Make sure you go back and check out his episode if you missed it. He is definitely an expert in the single-family space. And I’ve listened to his podcast, his YouTube channels for a long time. So, make sure you check him out. And then there’s another channel I probably mentioned before, but that’s the Real Estate Guys Radio. They’ve got one of the longest running podcasts or radio stations out there.

Now, I’m talking a little bit about podcasts, but you know, a lot of these things are interchangeable. Now, pretty much everyone who’s got a podcast is on YouTube and vice versa. So, our podcast is on YouTube. For example, if you’re not watching this on YouTube, I like the Real Estate Guys Radio because they have a lot of broad general real estate content. They break down single family home, they break down multifamily, they break down office, industrial, retail, economics. They also talk about some alternative investments, not just real estate. So very good macroeconomic and just big picture podcast to help us wrap our heads around kind of what’s going on in the environment, right? They’ve been around and they’ve been doing things for quite a while. So, I highly recommend their channel as well. Now, on the short-term rental side, get paid for a pad. That’s a great one. We had Jasper Rivers on this podcast a couple times. Actually, that was one of the first podcasts I started listening to. We have Heather Bear. I really like Heather Bear’s podcast. And again, these are all on YouTube as well. She has the Vacation Rental Success podcast. She used to own a management company. So, she puts out some really good information. We don’t really need to get overwhelmed. Just give you a couple more Airbnb Automated or Sean Rocky Jeets. I think it’s pronounced. I’m not sure if it’s my favorite content producer personality, but I got to give it to him. He’s got a lot of properties. He’s really good on the operational side with lease arbitrage. Remember, lease arbitrage operations pretty much exactly the same as owning the properties. So, I do think he has good content. Robb Built, if you haven’t heard or seen his channel before, I think he makes fantastic videos. I don’t think all the videos are maybe 100% quality good informational time, but he definitely has entertaining videos and he does put out a lot of really good content. So, check them out. That’s a few on the general real estate side. That’s a few on the short-term rental side.

So yeah, I kind of just wanted to break down my quick market outlook for the moment. Let you know that I’m out and about looking for properties again. I think I’m probably I’m definitely not rushing into anything in the moment as prices are dropping, but I think there’s going to be a lot of good opportunities. Especially in the multifamily space for those of us that can get loans or can at least raise money to buy some of these properties at high, high discounts. Yes, every market is different, but the general trend across the nation, multifamily is down a lot 25% to 30% single family homes are staying on the market longer, less people can buy them. And that means that they’re getting a lot of price drops. Construction is going to be drying up, which means that there’s going to be a lot more demand on the rental market and also less supply. So, a lot of things happening right now. We need to do our research, obviously, before we pull the trigger on a new market. But YouTube, as crazy as it sounds, is a really good place to do a lot of good research now from the high-level market view down to specific neighborhoods, down to getting contacts of experts in the area that you are looking to invest in.

So, I hope that helped a little bit. If you haven’t considered that as a channel before, I hope you consider it now. Just remember, there’s always two sides to every story. If something sounds too good to be true, or everything’s 100% positive, you know there are some negatives out there. So, make sure you double check that. And until next time, I hope you have a wonderful day.

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