Jason & Kellie Davenport will challenge us today to unlock our potential in the mid-term rental space through insurance stays. Their 4 homes on Furnished Finder average $4,000 -$7,000 each in monthly cash flow. Jason & Kellie receive insurance requests from all over the country and have established Vetted Homes to further educate MTR hosts on the topic of insurance stays.
Episode Highlights:
0:00 Intro- Welcome to The Landlord Diaries
2:30 Portfolio of insurance homes
3:10 Educating the masses on insurance MTRs
3:35 The first insurance stay
5:40 Why host Katie Lyon embraces arbitrage
6:35 Why many STR operators are adding or moving to MTR
7:00 How to help displaced families get back on their feet
10:10 Types of homes needed for insurance stays
11:40 How to combine Furnished Finder w/ your insurance stays
13:35 What motivates MTR hosts?
14:10 Types of insurance requests coming through Furnished Finder
15:55 What is the average length of insurance stays?
17:20 2-3x your rental rates w/ MTR insurance stays
20:45 Vetted Homes provides new sheets & towels for each stay
24:35 Business strategy for the insurance housing niche
26:45 Lead times for mid-term rentals are shockingly short
29:10 5 tips for connecting w/ insurance specialists or families
29:45 Identifying the right property for insurance clients
31:50 What areas are good for insurance stays
34:55 Negotiating the deal with insurance relocation agents
38:55 Welcome your guests w/ the Furnished Finder House Rules
39:55 Kelly & Jason’s welcome guide
43:00 Connecting w/ relocations specialists through Furnished Finder
44:30 Best practices for Furnished Finder search rankings
44:55 Tax benefits, LLC & cost segregation advice
48:00 Safety tips, protect your real estate properties
55:00 Mid-term rentals can be freedom for your family
Episode 101 Transcript
Welcome to The Landlord Diaries, where we talk about midterm rentals and the opportunities behind them. We'll share landlord stories, talk about maximizing investment potential, and discuss how to live the very best landlord life. This podcast is proudly brought to you by Furnished Finder, the leader and largest online marketplace for midterm rentals.
Remember to like and subscribe if you enjoy our content. It's your host team, Kelly Bailey and Katie Lyon of the Landlord Diaries, coming to you with midterm rental tips as hosts ourselves. Katie, what do we have today in the insurance world? Yeah, today we have Jason and Kellie, who we have had the pleasure of running into at a couple of different conferences over the past year.
They're so great, so sweet, so approachable, and so knowledgeable. They have found their niche within the insurance, housing space of midterm rentals. So they are giving homes to people who may have maybe had a flood or a fire or a natural disaster. They've got larger properties and they really are here to just share some knowledge and some information on how to get into that part of midterm rentals.
So we hope you enjoy.
Jason and Kellie Davenport will challenge us today to unlock our potential in the midterm rental space Through insurance stays. Their four homes on Furnished Finder average 4,000 to 7,000 each in monthly cash flow. Jason and Kellie receive insurance requests from all over the country and have established vetted homes to further educate MTR hosts on the topic of insurance stays.
Guys, we are so happy to have you today. How are you? We're doing great. Thanks so much for having us. Yes, thank you. Jason and Kellie are special to me. We connected on it at two different conferences. First conference we met at was the CHIPA Conference, the Corporate Housing Providers Association back in February of 2023, and then again at the Midterm Rental Summit in April of 2023.
And I just think they're both amazing people and have loved following their journey and staying staying in relationship with them. So let's go ahead and tell your story today, guys. You're working hard on the networking side and training program side for in insurance partnerships, but what does your current portfolio of insurance housing look like and do you own, manage what's the.
What's the ownership style? Great question. So we currently own one home in Georgia, and that one we are doing strictly insurance, midterm rentals. And then we have two arbitrage ones that we do in California. We also help multiple families with their rentals. And so we've taught them how to do the start to finish in hosting families who have been displaced due to fires or floods or some sort of catastrophe.
So now we are helping to educate the masses on how to do insurance, midterm rentals, and it's our passion. We love hospitality. Hosting families is probably my favorite thing. And so being able to do that and to actually make money doing that sometimes feels. How is this even true? But it's so fantastic. I love it.
So let's get back to the very first home. How did you jump in from the beginning and say, you know what, we wanna try this insurance thing or try midterm rentals? Was it on purpose, on accident? How'd you get there? Yes. We started by actually our friends who are now our business partners, Jason and Jackie McClure.
They rented our house where we lived and then we moved out to the beach, which was so amazing. We took our family, packed us all up, and we moved out to the beach and they rented our home. And then they ended up doing rental arbitrage on our home and hosting families through who had insurance claims.
And so we watched from a bird's eye view of what they were doing. And Jackie said, Kelly, you love hospitality. Like this is totally up your alley. Really should take this over and do it on your own. And so they moved to Texas and they have. I think they have 22 properties now all over the place.
And so we jumped in and we started doing Airbnb and then waiting for an insurance claim. And Airbnb was not my favorite or short, I should say short term rentals. It wasn't just Airbnb, but putting on the short term rental platforms. And it was rough for me. The turnovers, the constant, having my phone with me worried about everything and everyone about their stays and how they're doing and all that comes with that.
And so once we housed Amid insurance family, I thought, this is amazing. I love this. I can get to know you, I can help you. So for me, that was perfect. And so then we just started, listing on different platforms and then since then, have developed relationships with, gosh, probably over a hundred agents.
I feel like now that we know and. So they keep coming to us asking for properties. And so now I'm like, this is, everybody's gotta know about this. I would love to share this with people. If I can't house 'em, I want somebody to house them. That's awesome. I wanna add a couple of things into what you said.
First of all, for any listeners who don't know what arbitrage is, 'cause we talk about it so much it's arbitrage is when you're renting out a property that you don't own. So you could be, it could be a friend's house, it could be, technically maybe a co-host situation, or it could be one that you lease out and then you furnish and you lease as a furnished rental.
It's not. Incredibly common, but it is a really good way that you can get started. You just need to find the right kind of landlord or property owner to work with. So I wanted to hit on that just so everybody knows what that is. I have a bunch of arbitrage properties myself because for me and my family, it's a good way that we can keep building our numbers in our portfolio before, like we have another, I don't know how many thousands of dollars for a down payment, right?
So it is a really good option. The other thing I wanted to touch on is what you said about short term rentals, because we hear that story nonstop, which is, yeah, I had short term rentals, and then it was just so much constant work, or I couldn't leave my phone away, or the amount of the turnovers or the needs of the guests.
It's a lot. It's a lot. So it's encouraging to hear that you guys have experienced the same during that shift. So now you're working with a lot of insurance claims. I'm gonna assume you have larger properties. So tell us, maybe tell us like one or two stories about some of the families or individuals that you've hosted and how you helped them get back on their feet.
Yeah, I would say it's probably our favorite thing to do in this industry, is try to help somebody who's had some sort of horrible thing happen. And just help them, have a soft place to land so they can get back on their feet. The one that comes to mind for me is a tenant named Michelle, her.
Poor thing. Her, she had a garage fire and it actually was up, the garage was below her kitchen, so it just engulfed a part of her kitchen. And we were able to house her just being able to be there for her when she needed it. And then I think she literally lived, like down the street. It was like four or five houses down the street.
So it was nice to from where our house was. Yeah. The one that we're arbitraging. So just being able to, help her through that rough patch. And then we're actually, Kelly just met met her yesterday. So they're still friends today, but through the whole process, it was just like intriguing to see how Kelly and Her's relationship just formed.
And I feel like Michelle was very intrigued. What, okay, so tell me what you guys do. I don't get it. Like how do you guys do this? So it was cool and I think it put the bug in her ear a little bit so she's maybe I need to look into this a little bit more.
But I dunno if you have anything to elaborate with Michelle. Yeah, it's, it is just, it's sweet. We we do go above and beyond in what we do because I just care about these people as if they were my friend and my friend lost their home to a fire or had a flood and were displaced and trying to move their kids and pets and all of that.
So we give a hundred dollars in gift cards when they show up and we do new sheets and towels for everyone. And I know that's not necessarily industry standard, but that's vetted home standard. And that is to just say, I'm sorry. If that happened to my friend, I would go find their kids clothes and I would help do that, help shop for them or whatever's needed.
I feel like offering things like that to just help and show them that we care about them as people. We're not just there to take their money and house them for the time being. So yes, I feel like I've actually, yeah, gained some friendships over walking with these families through it and just being there to listen to them because I can't even imagine going through all the insurance nonsense I'm sure they have to deal with and contractors and all the things that they're doing.
So yeah, that's one. And then Katie, you mentioned the types of homes and we do have, ours are three and four bedroom homes, so they are usually single family homes. We try to pick areas that are like in suburbs or kind of outside major cities where, lots of families live where there are homeowners.
That's something that we recommend to, people that we're teaching to try to find something in near densely populated areas or outside. Of those areas where there are homeowners, good schools, we look for that. We prefer single family home. Single level homes because we've had a lot of just people, elderly people needing, walk-in showers and no stairs and the, those types of things.
So over, the last four years for us and eight years for our partners, that's one of the things we learn and recommend. So yes, our homes are bigger usually. We have done condos before and those have done okay as well. But I know with corporate housing there's a kind of, a lot of people doing it that have apartments and that sort of thing, so where the houses, especially in neighborhoods that are higher owner occupancy rate, are harder to come by for rentals. So the fact that you had. A house four houses down from her house probably just made Michelle feel so much more at home through the process. So let's jump into the Furnished Finder side of the insurance process.
How has Furnished Finder been a part of your midterm rental journey and what do you teach others about Furnished Finder in your vetted homes course? Awesome. First I tell them that the people of at Furnished Finder are our favorite. Oh, amazing. Yay. Oh, we love that. No, it really has been such a joy.
Meeting you guys and just being encouraged by your stories and. Just you're real, you're open. It's been a lot of fun getting to know you guys and Brian as well. And I think hopefully some more at the midterm rental Summit as well. Absolutely. But as far as Furnished Finder we tell all of the people that we teach or talk about midterm rentals too, to definitely use Furnished Finder as a platform to list on.
We've had many inquiries for insurance housing through Furnished Finder, and so I feel like it's a very minimal price to pay to have our properties on there. And so we do, we list them all on there and we recommend that everyone else does. And so we've developed relationships. More relationships with insurance agents through using Furnished Finder.
So it's been a huge blessing to us. So we do, we tell everyone to use it. Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Furnished Finder, the ultimate platform for hassle-free midterm rentals. Whether you're a seasoned landlord or just getting started, furnished Finder has everything you need to find your next tenant.
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We love that. And you guys, when we met you in person, both of us haven't met you in person and you're just like this walking little stick of joy, and that's how so many of our landlords are because. You're right, like the midterm hosts are in it, yes, we're all in it for business purposes, but we're all in it like, because we like doing this too, right?
We like serving people and helping people. Everybody at Furnished Finder feels the same way. We're all about helping our landlords and making it so that everybody can be as successful as possible. Yeah, for sure. And one more piece to the Furnished Finder puzzle. Do you find that with the insurance stays, most of your inquiries come from the relocation rep or do they come from the displaced family that's on their searching and finding their own places?
What do you find is more common? Oh, that's a great question. I would say mostly through the insurance reps. Occasionally we'll have an owner find us on Furnished Finder or Airbnb. Or Zillow actually is one that we see a lot as well. So we list on all of them, but I would say most of the time it's the relocation agents.
And I don't know if that's just because of the relationships that we have already or if that's just where they're hunting. But yeah, I feel like we've had 'em all over the place, I would say. And I like how you guys are very clear that you list on Airbnb and you list on Zillow as well, because that is phenomenal, right?
Furnished Finder. We're never gonna be like, we are the only place that, people are looking. We are very large place that people are looking. But when you're in a business, it's important that you market yourself in all the different avenues. And we always tell people like, we're not trying to claim you and hoard you, right?
We're trying to like, just help you succeed. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And we know that midterm rentals combine very nicely with the short-term rental strategy. So we encourage you to both embrace short-term rentals, midterm rentals, whatever is best for your style. And then a lot of us decide, what, short term rentals is a lot of work.
I think I'll just, it might be a little bit less cashflow, but it's worth it for, those four stays a year or insurance is probably two stays a year or one stay a year sometime. What's the average time length that you find for your insurance stays? We find that usually, like floods are probably two to four months on average.
And then I would say a fire is usually close to six months, sometimes up to a year. Our places are in California, so we don't have a ton of natural disasters, but I know across the country there are more of those, which. Yeah, I don't have a ton of experience with that, but those could probably be longer, depending on sadly how destroyed the home is.
Yeah. We have a vetted homes community member who had a 14 month stay. That was the record. I've never seen one that long. That's about, that's pretty close to what ours was. We had a one year stay. It started off with the insurance, guessing it was going to be about three months, and then they didn't extend it another three months and extended another three months.
So by the end, it ended up being a year. And it was a great experience. So insurance guests are definitely worth inviting to your home. And like Kelly's saying, you get to love on 'em quite a bit and make sure that you're helping them through a really tough time in life. So one of the things that both of you say is don't limit your potential.
What does this mean to you in regards to insurance stays? Can you paint the picture for us? And if you need a prompting, I have five to seven things wr written down. Yeah. I'm like, oh shoot, what did I say about that? Yes, please. Would you remind me? Thank you. Yeah. The cash flow we've already covered some of them.
So cash flow, and I think that's one of the main things you were saying when we met is, hey, thinking that bigger picture, like a lot of trainers out there in the midterm rental space, say plan for $500 to 1500 cash flow, but a majority, like Jesse Vasquez says, try to double the rental income that you would get for for long-term rates.
So how do you guys look at your properties, see the value and. Make sure it's the right fit for insurance stays, but also not at the cost of, you negotiating too low either now you're getting into the curriculum of our course. We like that a little bit. Previews, we're giving little previews free value here for sure.
No, there, there's a whole bunch of platforms that we check in the surrounding area. That's probably a really, like the most common question we get is, okay, one, where do I acquire property? And two, how much can I charge per month for midterm rental stay? But I think we, we take a look at the major platforms like Zillow, Airbnb, and, you can do a quick little search 30 days and you can see what the nightly rate adds up to over those 30 days.
Then we also have a little formula where we check nightly rates at local hotels. If there's pets involved, there's definitely gonna be a fee to board pets and a lot of hotels frown on pets for lengthy lengthy time. So it's tough to give an exact number 'cause the areas do change. And then out here where we live in California, you can get a lot more than maybe in other places.
But everybody wants the real raw numbers. We average rent for a three bedroom, two bath in Southern California is anywhere from 35 to 4,000 a month long term. And we're cash flowing 10, sometimes 12,000. Or renting it for that. Sorry. Renting. Yes. Yeah, we're, I would say we're seeing.
Getting rental rates from probably 8,900 to 13,000 in California per month. Okay. And then our, in Georgia, probably 6,900 to 9,200. And that one actually surprised me. So it's exciting and I feel like it's, it, the numbers are great for the amount of work that you have to put in, and that's the part where switching from short term to midterm, I was like, all I have to do is get new sheets and towels and make sure the house looks amazing and go get the gift cards.
And then, I don't know if you're gonna get to this, but I create a welcome website for the people and. Prep them. Yes. I love your welcome website. Tell us one, you said something. So before you tell us about the welcome website, you said new sheets and new towels. That's something that vetted homes has chosen to do to make these displaced families feel extra special, where I think probably a majority of midterm rental stays probably switch out sheets and towels as they get stained.
And that's something that you have a special, care for your insurance guests. So tell us more about that and then the welcome guide. Sure. Yeah, obviously, I tell everyone it's your business. You can do whatever you want and it's okay. I get it's expensive to buy new sheets and towels and all of that.
I get it. But for us personally, it's worth it to just welcome them. And honestly, I think if I was coming somewhere for long term, I wouldn't, I would love like clean sheets, new sheets, and towel. So we do a full startup kit. So it's new sheets, new towels, shampoo, conditioner, toilet paper towels, dish soap sponges, trash bags, just so that if they really were coming with nothing, if they lost everything in a fire and they have nothing, it is at least allowing them to show up and live there for a night or two minus the food, but live the they could use the gift cards, to go to a restaurant, but minus that to get them on their feet.
And so that to me is important. But I get, not everybody has to do that, but that is something that we highly recommend. But also not everybody is targeting, not everybody is targeting insurance clients, right? You know that your tenant is coming probably from a large. Time of stress, they've been displaced from their home unexpectedly.
They likely don't have many of their belongings, if any, and they're gonna be frazzled to all get out, right? And they're already like, this isn't a trip or a journey that they're is on their calendar and they're looking forward to, right? So those things are gonna go a really long way and I think that's a really great way you guys have looked at your target tenant type.
Because let's say that you are, gonna go more the midterm traditional route and you're gonna go towards medical professionals, you might err more on the side of we're gonna keep the same sheets and towels like Kelly said, until, you know they need replacing. We're just gonna wash 'em really well, but we're gonna make sure we've got a white noise machine and maybe an eye mask and a black, blackout curtains and maybe some bottles of water in the fridge.
There's different ways to take that hospitality that you're saying and apply it to the different tenant types. I think that's what's so great about what you guys have done there.
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And even going back to Kelly to circle back with specifically insurance. And that is actually all that we do. And I, with that comes vacancy rates. Like we do have vacancy because the only tenants that we currently host. Our families who have been displaced. So we know, we've seen over the last four years that it's been lucrative to do that.
And so we know some months, we can't predict the next catastrophe. So that's the other thing we teach and tell people, if you have to budget well, you have to have the reserves. And if you don't and it's not, you're not able to take the risk, it might not be the best option for you. But over time, that's how we've done it.
And I would even state, state doing it that way. The other thing is with insurance rentals, they usually call you that day and they need the family moved in within a week. So if you have your property on Airbnb or somewhere else and you have a stay set up, three weeks out, you're not able to host this family.
And so it is a little bit tricky with the calendar. And I know I have we have people that. They're go-getters and they'll try to book within that two weeks and make it work. And you can do that as well. We've just chose to let it sit and then when they call, it's, yep, the place is clean and ready.
We're ready to host you immediately. And but it's, I feel like some people don't really know that. They think, oh, I'll just do it all. Or families will. Yeah. Some of our mem community members will say we wanna go stay there in June. Is that gonna work? And I said if you have a family who moves in March and they have more construction, they might need it still in June.
And we honestly recommend it. Please don't kick these people out. Please don't. If you are committed to doing this, this, what do you even call what we're doing? This little niche of insurance, midterm rentals just insurance families, then I think you need to be open to an extended calendar that allows them to stay as long as they need to.
Yeah, these, I, you're right, these insurance people are gonna need that house. Hi, I have someone who I need to get there today. And Kelly, I think this would be interesting to hear your take on your lead time as well, because I haven't had any insurance clients yet. My properties are all smaller.
Kelly, you have a mix. You're midsize, midsize, midterm rentals. But even mine with a lot of digital nomads or I get like grandparents traveling seasonally and stuff, there's still a lot of the times, like my lead time for a tenant, they'll reach out to me like two to three weeks or less before they're ready to look for somewhere.
The lead time is shockingly short. What is it for you, Kelly? So we've had two insurance stays and it was very similar. It's like you need it right away because it just happened. In regards to our other stays we see it's pretty similar. It's families that are relocating to just have a little adventure and maybe they've got family that lives in the Austin area and they wanna go visit.
So we do get, a lot of our bookings are last minute, but I think in a way it's the culture we build around midterm rentals as well because of a lot of the midterm rental hosts. I just got a request on Airbnb for a stay. I think it was like a one month or three month stay in January of 2025.
And I just let them know exactly like you're saying, Kelly Hey, I. I am so like, thank you for reaching out to us. I appreciate, your interest in our home. We don't like to remove people from our homes, and you never know how long a stay is going to be. So we don't book that far in advance because our neighborhood is a 30 day minimum.
So we can't fill our gaps with short-term rentals. So I hope you find exactly the right place. And here's two recommendations in the area. If you want to look at these as potential alternatives. And I think that's, I think if we, if you are listening. Get on YouTube, write in the comments, how long are people planning ahead in your area to book your midterm rentals.
We wanna hear from you guys and know what's going on there. I think we've made it, Katie. Five tips for connecting with insurance specialists or families. Before we jump there, did anybody else have anything to add or are we good to go? We're good. Good to go. Okay. So this is as we know, Jason and Kellie are in California, probably somewhat close to Hollywood.
I think they're within like a hour if there's no traffic, maybe. So every Hollywood film has a preview, right? So we're not gonna, they're not gonna give you all the tricks, but they're gonna give you a little preview of five tips. And let's start with the first one. Tips for identifying the right property for insurance clients.
Sure. So we usually recommend single family homes three to four bedrooms. Usually if you're able to a walk-in shower's, amazing single story would be ideal. A fenced in yard for all the pets that people come with. There's been a couple times here that you have highlighted that a walk-in shower or ground level homes that don't have stairs for those clients with accessibility needs, have you found that you have a decent number of insurance travelers that have accessibility needs?
Or is it just random here and there? It is random here and there, but I do feel like we've seen it a lot and I think partly too, we're seeing a lot of multi-generational homes and grandparents are coming with them often and so I feel like that is the majority of what we are seeing.
However, I will say we have one property that does it is it does have stairs and all the bedrooms are upstairs. And because of its location and where it's at, it has still done really well. So I don't say, I don't really like to say anything is off limits and not a great option. I just am sharing more.
These are what we've seen of done maybe better. And we've talked about this a couple times on the show, less than 1% of furnished rentals are set up for accessibility needs. So one. Come on guys. Let's provide for those that are looking to move around the country and get a little vacation in or a longer stay, but they need certain things like a walk-in shower or no stairs, or grab bars in the shower, whatever it is, keep those little tips in mind.
You can go back and listen to episode 67 and 68 if you want more tips on that. So now we're on to, on our five tips. Number two, how do you know if your area of the US is good for insurance stays? That is a great question. What we found that is successful, it's not always the case, but what is most successful is obviously areas where there's high density in population.
So the more people in the city, the more chances for some sort of catastrophe. We've also found that being centrally located in a town makes a difference. For whatever reason, usually insurance companies will allow, is it a 2020 mile radius from the house? So we've had families that, don't live in the center of town, but we have a property in the center of town.
They choose to be closer to the center of town, whether that's because they're closer to work or commerce or maybe they just want a change of scenery. But it's a little bit more lively and a little bit more amenities available, near the center of a town. But also areas where there's schools, like families with children, they don't want to be displaced very far from the schools that their children attend.
Yeah it's. Tricky to pinpoint exact areas. The perfect perfect scenario that I always say would be like an older neighborhood. A house is built in like the seventies, eighties that have never been touched or remodeled. And then you have the house that's perfectly remodeled, upgraded everything nicely designed because you stick out in that neighborhood, and you're like the home that everybody wants to have in their neighborhood.
So yeah, those are also, if you're, if. Yeah. And if you're in that, those neighborhoods where those properties are aging, that's where a lot of times, the pipes can start to burst or if it's not a natural disaster, but some of those things start to fall apart. And all of these things are like very common sense, right?
You wanna be somewhere where there's a lot of houses. 'cause the more houses there are, the more insurance claims there's going to be. But it's not always instinctive for us to sometimes we're always just looking for the exact answers instead of putting on the real thinking caps. But I like what you're saying, especially with being central. I'm thinking, I'm in Denver and there's a million suburbs and 20 miles covers a lot, but even from neighborhood to neighborhood, you can go, you can have a 20 year age difference in the properties. That's really interesting to think about.
For sure. Number three, negotiating a deal for insurance clients is different than your standard midterm rental guests. What does that process look like? Since you're not working with just one-on-one, you're working with an agency a lot of times. Yeah. Yes. So I found that's where the relationships are very important.
Getting to know the relocation agents and just being upfront and open. I would say being flexible is one of the biggest things. I, honestly, a lot of times, especially in new markets, I'm throwing out a price which I, after doing, you know, all of my research, I think this is a good, fair price.
And then, but then letting them know if this price is not approved by the insurance company, please come back to us because I don't wanna keep this family in a hotel. And if we can negotiate and make it work, I would love to do that. Obviously if all the numbers worked out and it's still profitable for us or the homeowner, whoever we're working with but I would say we usually try to shoot for, oh, this is where I get nervously, like giving numbers on a podcast and people be like, this is what Kelly said, whatever you're comfortable with.
It's like a rule of thumb though, right? And everybody's gotta know. You go market to market, you go seasonal, you go amount, like this is, as with everything with real estate or investing, it's take this with not a grain of salt, but like a big hunk of salt. Sure. Okay. Yep. Awesome. I love that.
Yeah, so we usually will set our price, whatever that is, and then we will do, if there's pets, we'll do a pet fee or we'll do sometimes pet rent and then we'll have a security deposit. And for us, honestly all of that can be negotiated 'cause every insurance company is different. What this family could be approved for might be different from what another family was approved for.
And so I set my number, I set it higher than I normally would, and then just negotiate and see some of the time say, great price looks good, it's approved, let's move forward. And we're like, awesome, wonderful. But the last thing I wanna do is send my price out and then it not get approved.
And then you don't hear from the relocation companies, which can happen often. So I've learned to say, if it does not get approved, please come back to us and let us know what is the price that they're looking for, what is approved. And then you can decide from there. But I do, and you're typically working with a relocation specialist, right?
Which for those people who have not been in the insurance housing world before, you've got your agent who, they're the one that's selling you the insurance. You have the insurance company, but then this. Relocation specialist is someone who comes in and their entire job is finding homes for people who have been displaced.
So I think that's important to know just because it's a little, it's different than a lot of times. I didn't even know that existed prior to getting into all of this. Yeah, and that's what we're finding too, is people don't know about this industry. It's just, we, like I said, we've been doing it four years.
Every person we've talked to had no idea. Our partners have been doing it eight years, and then it's just been a buzz kind of the last year, honestly, where it's oh, what is this? I can make just as much that I did with my short term. Obviously some short term areas can make more if you're in Sure.
Destination, locations and all of that, but the amount is still really good. And much less of a headache, for sure. Yes. Wow. Kelly, you are impressive. You just rolled up number three, four, and five, all in one. Nice work. Oh, good job. So let's keep rolling and ding. We forgot that we were going to let you tell about your house rules and the cool website that you create for your properties.
Before that just a quick reminder, Furnished Finder, if you wanna keep it simple. And that's what we've heard so many times is how simple Furnished Finder is to use. You don't have to update your whole calendar, you just have to pick one date. And same thing with the Furnished Finder house rules. It's part of the edit listing process.
You can just, it prompts you through what you should think about providing a guest, and I think it's got maybe 12 different points. And so you just fill out those sections and then over time you'll start to realize. I need to add that to my house rules. And then you just literally go in, add it to the section.
And then I've, we've got my Dave and I've got seven houses or so. And so I don't just add that rule to one of my houses. I'm like, copy paste. So it's really easy to use. But Kelly's display and Jason, they've got a really cool option for you guys for your welcome guide. So give us a scoop.
Sure. We found very quickly, doing Airbnb, mostly short-term rentals. You get those calls of how do I work the tv, how do what day is trash, all the, all those details. And so I said, okay, this is way too many messages back and forth. How do I make this simple? And throughout, we found this website called card.
It's CARR d.co, I believe. Okay. And so it's just a free website that you can post. The pictures of your property. And then we have one. So the pictures of the property is also one of the ways that we advertise our prop, our property, if you're marketing to different relocation agents or whatever that they say, can we see the actual home?
You can make a website that just has the pictures of your house and the square footage and just minimal details if you need that for anything. So that's a simple way we do just to show the property to the homeowners or to the tenants who are gonna come in. So that's one thing that we use the card for.
And then the other thing is for the welcome website and so on that welcome website, they walk into the property. We have either in a picture frame or some of our properties, it's just a piece of paper that's thrown on the counter that's either laminated or sometimes not. If it's been destroyed, it's whatever we can get to quickly sometimes.
And it's just they scan it and on there they, it opens up the welcome website and on the welcome website it has. The wifi, it has trash day, it has how to work, the washer and dryer, how to work the dishwasher, and any other details they need to know. Here's the community pool, here's where we keep the key.
Is there anything I'm missing? The house rules? Yeah. Oh, and the house rules. And then how you can reach us if you need to reach us. Oh, we put the local restaurants and most of the people that we have know this stuff, but 'cause they live in the area, but we just put it on there. Some of our favorites coffee shops, you can add as much as you want, but you can keep it very simple.
But Kelly was saying, when somebody asks about something, you note it and you think, okay, I'll put that back into my website. And then I, we don't, we honestly don't hear from them once they move in, except to just when we check on 'em, like, how you guys doing? How's your, the property, your property going and all the repairs and stuff.
That's most of our conversations. It's not usually asking about the home. We try to cover all the details and we try to put videos into, to, some people don't know how to do the Nest thermostat, so it's put a quick YouTube video in there. Or some of them are him of okay, push this button, keep it simple.
Oh, I've never thought about that, the videos. That's a great tip. Yeah, it is very helpful. Okay, so you guys have your systems totally flushed out and I think they all center around hospitality, which clearly is like what you're amazing at. I wanna know how you also use Furnished Finder in that mix.
Like how do you use that to really make sure that you're supporting your guests and your tenants in the right way and matching up with the right people? And tell us a little bit about how you integrate that. Sure. One of my favorite things about Furnished Finder is that. We can list our property.
And then I like the unmatched leads because that gives us an opportunity to reach out to different relocation agents. Even if it's our house might not be a perfect fit, sometimes I will reach, just reach out to them because now I have their contact and I can say, hopefully this one works.
But if our place is maybe not a fit, we have places, say she's contacted me about Georgia, I can say we have places in Texas and we have places in California, and if you're looking anywhere else we would love that, that you could check us out there too as well. So I love that we can establish a relationship on Furnished Finder, even if it isn't that exact property we're looking at.
I also like how easy it is to update your calendar. I can, that's a site that I can go to really fast and just keep refreshing it and just keep updating it and saying, this is when it's available. Because like I said, we do have vacancy often, and so I like to feel like I'm doing something.
I'm working towards. Somehow finding a renter. And so when I'm updating the calendar, I feel like I'm being proactive with it. So I really do that too. And I like how simple the site is. I could find my properties easily. So yeah, it's been great. Yeah, the best way to make sure that your property is at full visibility and showing up as high as possible in the search rankings is really to make sure your calendar is up to date, be active on the platform and reply to leads as they come in.
Yeah, for sure. We keep it simple at Furnished Finder and that's what I love. So we've got three more questions and then we'll wrap up this episode. It's been a great conversation with you guys. Tax benefits of having your own company and having your company in an LLC cost segregations. What would you like to say to give advice to other investors?
Yeah, I think one of the problems that we have not only us but all of the people that we help is there's a lot of passive income that people generate. We obviously want to do our best to keep and hold on to as much of that income as possible, and obviously do it legally. So yeah, there's tips and tricks that you can learn as you develop your own business and we really wanna just empower people to be entrepreneurs to, take control of their finances and yeah, just be flexible, be able to work wherever they wanna work, whenever they wanna work, but also, have financial freedom at some point and create gener generational wealth. So we encourage the development of entities, LLCs you can put your property in an LLC if you'd like. We always like the disclaimer, we're not tax professionals at all. So consult with your CPA for your particular situation.
You are protecting yourself. You're also knowing how to handle a lot of that passive income that's coming in and what you can write off and what you can't write off depending on your particular situation. And then one of the things that we learned early on is, like you mentioned at Kelly, cost segregation.
And that's just accelerated depreciation on your home. Just speeding up the process. And there's a cost segregation report that you can do. And again, it might. Or might not be a good fit for you and your particular property, but there's a way to offset the passive income that you receive if you accelerate that depreciation.
So these are all things that we get into in more detail with the curriculum that we teach our students. But yeah, that's a little snapshot. Yeah, Dave and I did cost segregation on almost all of our properties so far, and from what he's our numbers guy, so I'm gonna talk about it briefly. But from what he said was, you wanna keep you wanna make sure you're keeping the home like if it, if you're not gonna own it in four to five years, it's probably not a great property to do a cost segregation on, but you, if you are planning to keep it, then we just staggered our hours and we did one or two per year so far, and it really went from us paying money on taxes to us getting money back on taxes.
So it's, if you're not familiar with the cost segregation term, definitely look into it and consider it for your investment properties. Amen. And then safety, you guys have like this special knowledge on safety. What should we know as midterm rental hosts? Oh yeah. So in another life, I was a home inspector slash termite inspector.
Oh. Had a very unique opportunity to be in a lot of homes, specifically here in Southern California. I did it for almost 20 years, and the conditions that people were living in were quite alarming. But yeah, it's, everybody's like safety first. But a lot of people don't act like that.
A lot of people emphasize in money over safety which I get it. But our, like I said earlier, our heart is to be a soft landing place for a family who just had some sort of safety thing go wrong in their house. So it, it could have maybe been prevented if they had the right safety.
Elements in their house. So if it's a smoke alarm, carbon monoxide fire extinguisher, those are like the obvious ones. But there are also trip hazards, falling hazards, electrical issues. There's a lot of things safety-wise that kind of get overlooked or it gets addressed maybe once and it's never revisited.
And that's scary when it, it's 2, 3, 4, 5 years later. Yeah. And it's oh yeah, maybe I should check and see if my smoke alarm is working properly. Or. Pool safety as a whole. And I'm guilty of that too. 'cause that's not the fun stuff. Where I would rather replace a cute pillow, a cute throat pillow, or a new rug.
But he's so great about those details and he's right. And it, honestly, it's helped me sleep so much better at night. It does knowing, because we have a property with a pool and when we had a family with Littles, I was like, I babe, I don't think I can sleep. I'm just worried about them.
And he, and then he's remember we have this in place. There's, all these warnings, so we should be alarmed if something happens. And so I'm like, okay, you're right. So it, it has been really helpful to not worry about that stuff. This is a fun, small round table discussion.
If you have anything to add in, Katie, I sure do. You're saying safety applies to pe a lot of people compromise safety, be for the wallet, but if you don't like plan ahead and take care of those safety issues, you're gonna have a much bigger impact on your wallet. So like those preseason checks and keeping like a, like maybe having a structure chat, GBT can give you can give you a list of, Hey, here's what you need to check on your home.
Or you can reach out to your go-to home inspector inspector and be like, Hey, what should I set up annually? Or maybe have them out every so often. The two things I can think of for Dave and I, which we don't really talk about safety on the show, so this is a fun topic. One is.
Foundation issues, right? We all know they can get quite expensive, but if you put in a small investment now, then you're going to preserve that investment later. And so our temple house, it ended up being a quite it was a larger project, but we had to completely put a. Water barrier around the exterior of the home because it was already known to have foundation issues.
It already had the lifetime warranty for specific spots that had been treated, and we were seeing shifting doors somewhat often. So we've decreased the amount of times we're getting calls for shifting doors by getting the, what the foundation guy said. He said, put a moisture barrier all the way around your home.
And so it adds to the landscaping and the look of the home as well. So we, we put the moisture barrier, we put a mulch bed around and it was a great addition. Second would be. If y'all haven't ever looked at, and I don't know how well they work, but I bought 'em because it was just one of those fun impulse buys, fire blankets.
Oh yeah, you got one too. You Instagram I was influenced. I think mine was Facebook but yeah, it fire blankets. If you think of a renter having to use a fire extinguisher, that makes a huge mess. But if they can stop it by smothering the fire with the fire blanket that sits right next to the fire extinguisher.
And I just wrote on top of it, use in this scenario. And that is like a fun addition to your home for very low cost. I think it was like 10 or 15 bucks or something. Katie, anything to add for safety at your places? I always have a fire extinguisher and like a large one. I don't go with the minimum size.
They're not expensive, but they're not like cheap. They're like 30 or 40 bucks, which maybe more than, I don't know, 50 to 75. I don't, but totally worth it. I will have one of those all over. A first aid kit. I put in every place. I just think that you might not necessarily be traveling with little stuff like band-aids and I think that's just a nice, at least to have the very basics.
I also, in our last property it's a townhouse, so it has a front door and a back door that opens to the yard and it's the side of the building. So we have the whole side, and this was the first one we actually put in a blink security camera that's it's in the back, it's motion sensor. So when there's motion, the floodlight goes on and it starts recording.
And I just let that tenant know Hey, I have this just for security purposes, if you want access to the account while you live there, totally fine and no big deal. That, and that I like about midterms because I'll change the password every, like four times a year or two times, whatever it ends up being.
But I would never, ever wanna do that with a short term rental. And that actually helps her feel safe as well too. We put a new backsliding door in there as well, just because that was, I think that's a big security thing. And Charlie bars. Charlie bars on any sliding doors or large windows.
And you can literally just go to Home Depot or Lowe's and get like a piece of wood that's the exact length and that will work better than any lock on a sliding door or a window. So I'm a huge fan of Charlie bars or $2 pieces of wood. Nice. That was a fun new conversation for the landlord diaries. I enjoyed that.
So let's wrap it up back to that heartfelt. You guys have seen Jason and Kellie are very passionate about their business. So you guys wanna speak specifically to how you deal with life challenges as you work through your business and with your three kiddos? Sure. Yeah. I feel like we're in the exciting time of Jason leaving his company of 20 years doing termite.
Wow. So it's really exciting. We, are just excited for all that's ahead and it's been so neat to find a, I call it my job, but I love it. So it feels so fun. It doesn't feel like a job, but something that can bring in income, doing something that, that we both love. So that's been really great.
I also just love the freedom. We are at all of our kids' sports games. Now we have three. So we're trying to figure out how to divide and conquer where we used to be at every kid's game, but now they're overlapping. So it's been quite an interesting thing, but it's amazing 'cause we can do that and we can be there at any time and we can work from our phones when we need to.
And that has just been, I feel like the best part of all of this. And specifically working with midterm rentals, the, I feel like there's not such an urgency to take care of the family's issue that is up. However, I, we say take care of it as fast as you can get on the call. Let them know we're working on it, we're trying our best.
But a lot of times there are things that. Minimal that you can take care of in a day. If something's not working with the sink, you could say, Hey, the plumber's coming. Let me I've called them, but they're coming out tomorrow or something like that. And they're, it's not so urgent where I feel like with short term rentals, it's take care of it this minute or we're asking for our money back and this, we're giving a horrible review.
So I feel like that has brought peace of mind. And I always say, if no one has died or been injured, then everything else is fixable and we can handle it. And I've learned to decrease my panic. But I have some trauma from Airbnb stuff, which is a whole nother story when we got broken into.
But besides that I just the midterm rental aspect and then housing the families who are just really thankful to be in your home, that you've given them a place to stay has been really. Just a great thing for our family. And now sharing with people, and that's what I love about this industry too, is you can share with so many people.
And when our property's booked, I have other, I'm getting leads from other places, and so my favorite thing is to call someone else and say, guess what? I have a lead for you. Do you want it? Is your place open? And I feel like that's the culture of midterm rentals too, which I love. Like we are about sharing and talking to people and helping people, and I feel like you're, it's a win-win, win situation.
And then sometimes it's an extra win-win. You get to share it with other people. So it's been a great little thing. What about you, babe? You said it, she said it beautifully. I, it's very rare to be in an industry where everybody's happy, and you're helping everybody. So it's just, it's a big difference from.
Me having to live to deliver bad news to people for 20 years. Sorry, you have termites. Or sorry, this is wrong with your house. You need to fix this. So yeah, this is good. Just being able to love people well and to help them in their time of need and be that home away from home that they need to get back on their feet.
Yeah, and speaking to our family too, it's been really fun with our kids and helping them get involved in seeing what it looks like to help other people and to prepare a home. And we've given them opportunities to invest in our properties where they've given, of their, the money that they have, a hundred dollars.
And I say, okay, you're buying this end table. Not really, but and then when it's rented, they get their $25, the percentage that we said. And they're learning. Oh my goodness, okay if I invest. And then one of my daughter was like, but wait, it's gonna take me four months to get my money back.
And I said, absolutely. But after that it's all profit and you're not doing anything for it after that. So you worked hard at the beginning, which is midterm rentals. Like it is a lot of work. Yes. And that's the other thing, when people say it's easy, it's so simple. 'cause you don't do much.
I'm like, that's not true. We work really hard. Yeah. You prepare the homes, you get 'em ready and do all those things and you're still working hard throughout as well. But it's, that's been really fun for our kids. And even recently our middle sons like, I wanna learn to build houses and do rentals and stuff.
And so it's been exciting and fun in that way. I love that. You guys are so great and I love just, you have such a focus on hospitality and serving people in so many different ways and you guys are just so joyful and I don't know, like you're just like some of those people where I know, and this would go for anybody in the midterm industry if you're like, man, I need some help.
You guys would help anybody out. So you guys are a treat and a treasure and thank you so much for being on here with us. We just love having you be a part of the Furnished Finder family and we can't wait to see what you do next. Thank you guys for having us. It's been truly an honor and yeah, we look forward to.
Joining up and sharing all about Furnished Finder with everyone that we do this with. So thank you all so much. For sure. See you in San Diego. See you in San Diego Midterm Rental Summit 2024. Let's do it. Remind everyone how to connect with you if they want to hear more about your business Vetted Homes course, or check out your Furnished Finder properties.
Yeah, you can find us just on our website, vetted homes.com. Or on Instagram. It's vetted homes and we're putting out content regularly. There's options to get involved if you want our help. If you need our help learning how to do what we do, the way we do it. But yeah. Awesome. Another great episode of The Landlord Diaries.
 Thanks for sharing your heart today. Don't forget to subscribe and comment on YouTube if you'd like to connect with us. Have a great day everyone. Bye.