In this week's riveting episode of Furnished Finder's podcast, The Landlord Diaries, we sit down with Tara Jenkins from Chicago, Illinois. Tara is not only a mother of three with multiple degrees in hospitality, but she also has a profound love for travel. She masterfully manages five hybrid short-term/mid-term rental (STR/MTR) properties—four local and one out-of-state in Palm Harbor, FL.
Tune in as we dive into:
1. A Prime Location: Discover the secrets behind Tara's Wrigley Field 2 bed, 2 bath MTR, commanding $6,000 a month.
2. Luxury and Convenience: Learn about her spacious 4 bed, 3 bath rental with a 2-car garage and EV charging, which pulls in a whopping $11,500 monthly.
3. Booking Strategies: Find out how 40-50% of Tara's MTR bookings are secured through Furnished Finder.
4. Appealing Additions: Understand the impact of adding a charcuterie board and red wine to your property photos.
5. Essential Tools: See why Tara recommends adding CubiCasa to your MTR toolkit.
Join us for an episode filled with valuable insights and practical tips that can help transform your rental business. Don't miss out on learning how Tara bounced back from a significant financial loss to create a safer and more profitable landlording strategy!"
Episode Highlights:
0:00 Intro- Welcome to The Landlord Diaries
2:20 Tara’s real estate journey started w/ a 2 flat unit
3:40 Losing $30k in 2 days led to landlording
5:35 Tara’s real estate portfolio & MTR properties
6:35 Bigger Pockets book that led to buying a property at auction
8:30 The ups & downs of real estate investing
13:18 Tara’s MTR property themes
13:40 Wrigley Field 2 bed, 2 bath MTR for $6,000/mo
16:50 Norwood Park, Tara’s 2/1 house hack for $4,500/mo
19:50 Why the mid-term rental strategy felt safer
20:40 North Center 2/1 for $7,000/mo
21:35 Chicago seasonal pricing
22:20 Spacious 4/3 w/ 2 car garage & EV charging for $11,500/mo
24:55 Best choice you can make in furnished rental marketing
26:15 40-50% of Tara’s MTR bookings come from Furnished Finder
27:15 Should you drop your price or change up your marketing?
32:20 Adding a charcuterie board & red wine to your property photos
33:40 The Cycling Mermaid, 4/2 in FL for $7,000/mo
35:30 Self managing an out of state property
37:45 Hybrid MTR/STR calendar management
38:45 Have you heard of CubiCasa!!!
43:30 Furnishing a property out of state you’ve never seen in person
45:00 Have you heard of HostGPO?
47:15 An MTR vs. STR marketing advantage
48:25 Stick to your plan
50:35 Furnished Finder tips for securing MTR guests during off-season
54:30 How to connect with Tara
Episode 102 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 rental.
Remember to like and subscribe if you enjoy our content. It's Kelly Bailey, your host of The Landlord Diaries, and my fabulous co-host, Katie Lyon, our marketing director of Furnished Finder. We are both midterm rental investors and just love bringing the newest and best conversations about midterm rentals for you guys.
Katie, what do we have today with Tara? Yeah, today we get to talk with Tara. And she talks about everything from how she got started, some flubs along the way, which we have all had, how they overcame those issues. And now they have a thriving midterm, short term hybrid business. And she's got both properties that are local to her in Chicago's and all the way down in Florida.
So we, she has so many areas of expertise and just has really gotten some really. Insightful experience into that hybrid method that I think is gonna become more and more popular. So this is definitely a great one for anyone who has maybe higher end properties, single family home properties, or is interested in doing that hybrid model.
So we hope you enjoy.
Today we talk with Tara Jenkins in Chicago, Illinois. Tara has three children, multiple degrees in hospitality and a love for travel. She self-manages five short-term midterm rental hybrid properties, four of which are local in Chicago and one out of state in Palm Harbor, Florida. Tara, thank you so much for being with us today.
How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me. Yes, ma'am. And we always like to celebrate our avid listeners. Tara's listened to at least 30 episodes of the Landlord Diary. So thanks for being a genuine part of our audience and a Furnished Finder host. So let's start off, you have a background in event coordinating at Hilton for four or five years degrees in hospitality, but.
Both you and your husband were working a lot and realize that your paycheck was gonna end up going to daycare, so you became a stay at home mom instead. And then after staying at home decided, you know what? Let's do this real estate investing thing. So tell us about your journey that led you to real estate investing.
Yeah when we bought our house, it's pri primarily single family houses in the area, but this one grabbed our attention because it was a two unit two flat you call it, here in Chicago. So the upstairs was a two bedroom, one bath, and downstairs at the time was two bedrooms, one bath, and both my husband and I grew up in two flats.
So it wasn't out of the question or out of the norm for us to purchase a two unit. While most people would be looking for single family houses, so we bought that one in, I wanna say 2012, and immediately started working on the upstairs apartment before even working on our own, just so we could get that rental income to help us with the mortgage.
And I think you listen to a lot of BiggerPockets while cooking and doing other things. And then I think what led to, okay, it's time to jump in 'cause you started working on, in 2012 is y'all lost a decent chunk of money in your retirement fund in one day. So let's hear more about how that really jump started.
The, okay, we are doing this with the real estate investing, so between BiggerPockets and the retirement fund. Yeah, so we renovated our house. We lived through the renovations in our basement. I slept in a trundle for three months. My husband slept in a trundle for three months. We had just completely uprooted our lives and lived through this renovation with three small kids.
But once it was done, I was ready to start investing outside of our. Primary residence and we were humming, we were hawing. Should we do it? Should we not? Should we? It's just, scary. Your first time investing in something else outside of your primary residence. And COVID hit.
And I remember sitting on the couch with my husband and he had his phone out and we were talking about whether or not we could afford to invest. And he looked at his 401k. On his phone and he is I pretty much lost 30 grand in the last two days because of COVID. And we're talking about investing about the same amount of money.
It was about 25 to 30 grand, and that was the moment where we had the aha realization. Like you could lose 30 grand with no fault of your own, or you can invest 30 grand and actually have a little bit of control over the asset and its performance, and that gave us the push that we needed. So you guys dove in and then what led you to where your portfolio is now?
And then also what led you to your investment strategy of short term, midterm, hybrid. Yeah, so the property that we purchased was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and that is a long-term investment. And at the time, we wanted to invest outside of Illinois because the, the landlord tenant laws are more favorable towards the landlord in Wisconsin, so we thought that it might be a little safer to invest in Wisconsin.
So we did that. It worked out pretty well. I'm happy with the way things worked out with that. And then we bought another property this time it was in Illinois. I bought it at the auction. And that was a learning experience. I was gonna say, that's a very intimidating thing to go through, right? Yes, it was.
Yeah. We, I was driving around it all started because I read the book Bidding to Buy. That's a, a. BiggerPockets book and it was a pretty small book, so I was like, okay, I could read this. Figure it out. So I did, I read it, figured it out, did what the book said to do, and then went to the auction a couple times.
I was unsuccessful the first four times, and then saw one I really wanted, I maxed out my bidding. If it went like another thousand dollars more, I wouldn't have been able to purchase it. But luckily the guy stopped. I got the last bid worked out great. But then when I actually got into the property, it needed a lot more work than I originally thought.
Yeah. 'cause these are all site on what kind of information do you get? You don't get a lot, you don't get to go on the inside. So we just peeked through the windows and that was pretty much it. And obviously you could see the neighborhood, which has a lot to do with its value. And this was in a good neighborhood, better than Kenosha.
And that's what I had learned from Kenosha was to buy. In a better neighborhood. So I did that, but then when we got onto the inside, it needed so much more work than we realized. And at the same time, we were also doing another renovation at our house on the upstairs. This time we did a complete kitchen, gut rehab, bathroom, gut rehab.
So having to take on these two renovations at the same time was a big undertaking. And you had kids at this point too, or No? Three. Yeah. Three kids. Oh my gosh. I so like your life went from Hey, maybe let's dip our toe in this real estate investing to, okay. We have a lot going on. We're in at the same time, like we are deep in.
Okay. And how did you guys handle that? That's a lot. It was a lot. And on top of that, we had a sewer backup at our house, like our primary residence that my kids' rooms are in their basement. So it was a com completely finished basement. I'm actually in it now. A sewer backup all at the same time.
And then two weeks later, after we had finally finished the renovation in the basement. In Winthrop Harbor where the houses that I bought at auction that same day, we had another sewer backup in that house because there was a water main break at the end of the block. So are you guys defeated at this point?
Are you like, Hey, I was trying to be a stay-at-home mom and now I'm a handling sewer back. Like, where's your frame of mind at this point? Because it's gonna happen in real estate. But it's, it doesn't always happen all at once, especially when you're fairly new to the environment. Yeah, I definitely felt like I overextended myself and defeated.
And I always said to Jason, I go, I hope when we're looking back, that 2001 is the hardest year we've ever had because we were tapped out of money and the hits just kept on coming. And when we got the sewer backup. In Winthrop Harbor, I ended up having to sell my 401k money that I had from when I worked at the Hilton.
It wasn't a lot of money, but it was able to bail us out and it was sad that I had to do that. Are you saying you. You borrowed from your 401k to pay it back, or you just cashed out your 4 0 1 KI cashed out. Cashed it out. Okay. So now you're looking back and you have five short-term midterm rentals. So can you look back and say, this was the most challenging, or you didn't quit, you kept going.
So what did you learn from all of that led you to your midterm rentals today? I learned to not quit. Yeah, it really hurt, it stung to sell that to totally withdraw my 401k 'cause I don't work. And that was, it wasn't a ton of money, but what I was telling myself at the time I'm gonna invest in real estate and I'm gonna use this money and it's also gonna help me retire.
So it's not like I'm taking out this money to buy a boat. So that's how I made it. Okay to sleep at night in my head. But to keep going and there's gonna be sewer backups and there's gonna be a whole bunch of surprises. But if you keep going then and don't stop. I'm not gonna stop until I reach my goals.
I think if you asked a lot of real estate investors, if they. How many have cashed out their 401k? A lot of people will say yes, like Dave and I have both cashed out our 4 0 1 Ks from previous places of employment because you're right, it's do you want it to sit and grow over time, which is a great investment option.
But also real estate is something that you can continue to grow as well. So I'm, if you are one of those that has cashed out your 401k and has that been a good decision? Put it in the comments. We wanna hear your feedback on this topic, on YouTube. I think this is, I think this is also a good time to bring up the fact that like we all see the highlights and the successes, and especially on social media.
Like you're gonna see the highlight reels of people's investments, but a lot of times people don't. Openly discuss the challenges and the hard times and what they did to solve those. But just remember that I don't think anybody who's been in real estate investing has gone through this journey without hiccups or without big issues like it's.
It's part of it, right? And that's that's totally okay. And it's to be expected. It's not an if it's a win, and it's how are you gonna handle it when that happens, right? It's not gonna happen every day, but it's, everybody's gonna have challenges sometimes. Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Furnished Finder, the ultimate platform for hassle-free midterm rentals.
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We made it to Katie's favorite section. We are going to take the portfolio conversation a little different today because one thing that Tara does very well is themes at her properties. So we are going to talk about one to three minutes about each property and the themes that have been built at those properties and how they're doing.
So let's start off with a two bedroom across the street from Wrigley Field. It's a two bed, two bath at 6,000 per month. Tara, tell us about this one and all the fun features you've put in this place. Yeah, this is a really fun this is a really fun property. It's right across the street from Wrigley Field.
It's a beautiful two bedroom, one two bedroom, two bath. Sorry. I just started co-hosting this property. Because my brother was working with the owner and he was saying how well I was doing with my mom's properties and he needed a little bit of help. And this is where I was able to shine. Having the other short term rentals or medium term rentals in my portfolio.
It's Chicago themed. The owner of the property had a artist come in and paint. On the walls, the the scoreboard from when. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series. I didn't realize that was a painting. I was thinking it was like a chalkboard or something that was already done. Someone came in and did that for you?
No, actually that was done before I even got involved, so I cannot take credit for that. Nice. A lady named Kathy, who I actually just connected with a couple days ago she was the person who. Did the paintings herself, all hand done. And it's really, that's awesome. Really cool. It's a really fun experience for anyone who's coming to Wrigley Field and they want to really immerse themselves in the wrigleyville aspects.
And one thing I like that you do very well at this property is one, we'll talk about the fact that it's a cohost listing, but what you do very well is you show in the pictures the location. To Wrigley Field that it's literally right across the street. You always do your patios very nicely and you capture not only the patio, but the proximity of the patio to Wrigley Field in this specific property.
And then you also did an aerial photo of Wrigley Field as well. So I think you've tied it all. All in very well. And then tell us about the co-hosting part of it and what the balance is there. How did you set up this co-host listing? Yeah, so I am co-hosting this listing. The owner is getting 75% and I'm getting 25% of the proceeds.
And it's interesting, it's different for me to be working with someone because I've been working on my own for so long. So to now have to make decisions together is different for me. And it's something that I'm looking forward to doing together as I continue down my career. All right. Let's go to the next property.
We are now onto the one at Norwood Park. So tell us about that one. Okay, so that's a really fun one. I live there, so I live downstairs and the upstairs is the apartment that we've put a lot of work into over the last 10 years. It was a long-term rental up until about. A year ago and I transitioned it and furnished it into a medium term rental.
And what I like about it is that I'm making more money than I used to from the long term to a short term. Medium term about double, I'm making about double the amount of That's amazing. Of money that I was before. Yeah. That's awesome. And it performs really well. I always have a lot of views on the listing.
I, I have about the same amount of views as the one in Wrigley, which I find very surprising. But Chicago is, a harder market to get a short-term rental permit for, especially my area in Norwood Park. There's not a lot of competition. Excellent. Okay. Let's see. Norwood, and is the the one thing I love about Norwood and the themes, don't forget we're focusing on the themes here, is this one is.
Part of your home, you have three kids, so of course you have a playground in the backyard, which you have done beautifully in your photos with your professional photographer that Katie, she said, this photographer is amazing, but yes, but you. I believe this is a shared backyard with the private unit.
Tell us how that works. Is that the only shared space for the private unit in your home or flat? Yes. The only thing that's shared is the backyard. It's a completely separate entrance to the apartment. Both on the side and in the back of the building. It's very kid friendly and we do have a lot of guests that come to the house because they have kids.
I mentioned in my listing, I have kids. Kids welcome, they could play together. My kids play outside. It's a really family friendly neighborhood. So I try to lean into that. And let's talk about, just real quick, because this is, you're also your primary residence. What was the decision like to make it a me, a medium term rental versus a short term rental?
Was that something that you guys considered because of the turnover and the potential guests and stuff? Talk us through that a little bit. Yeah, so I originally had it as a short term rental entirely because that's what I was used to at the time with. 'cause it all started when I started furnishing apartments.
It started in Florida as a short-term rental. So then when I started in Chicago, it's just what I knew to do is to do short-term rental. But then as I started listening to Furnish Finer podcasts, I've been learning about this whole new world of medium term rental and I thought that would be a better fit for this property because.
I live here with my family and I don't want people coming and going all the time. So transitioning it to a medium term rental felt safer. I love that. Yeah. I think that's really key for people to remember because it is it's a whole different type of tenant. You're getting these professional tenants, you're getting families.
You're not getting the loud vacation people, you're not having turnover every few days. Like it's a whole different. Game when it comes to tenants. So I think that's probably a much better fit when you have your family also in the same property. Yeah. Okay. Let's go to the next one, which is the North Center property, two bed, one bath.
Tell us a little bit about that one. And let's emphasize the price on each of these. So the Norwood was 4,500 4,500 per month. This one is a two bedroom, one bath for 7,000 per month. Just for those that you know are in different areas of the country and don't understand the Chicago market as much since we, none of us live there.
Yeah, this property is more geared towards adults. It's not very kid friendly. It's in a great neighborhood in Chicago called North Center. It's near the L train line, so you can quickly get downtown or if even if a DePaul student wanted to stay there, it would be in distance to DePaul. I probably wouldn't get $7,000 a month for that in during the school year, from September to May, but it is in reach for the summer months.
And do you switch, when do you typically switch your pricing throughout the year? Is it when you have an availability coming up, you check out your competition? Or is it seasonally? How do you check your pricing? I have that changed over for September after Labor Day. Okay, that makes sense because you're in a very seasonal market, right?
Like Chicago in the winter is. Probably not the most popular place in the world. Exactly, yeah. But the summers, it's really nice. So I think, that's very smart. All right, so next one, you've got a two car, and this is one that you just put an EV charger in, and I believe this is one that you're co-hosting with with your mom.
Yes. So this is actually the house that I grew up in. And unfortunately my dad passed away last year and my mom is also sick, when all of this happened, it was very rushed. We thought that maybe my dad was gonna be coming home, and if he did, he wouldn't be able to do all those stairs to get to the second floor.
So we moved my mom downstairs, got her fur, got her apartment furnished, and then left the upstairs furnished. And I said that I would. Assist in the rental short term rental, medium term rental of this property, and it's performing above my expectations. Awesome. Which is 13,000 per month at the midterm level.
What's the balance between short term and midterm and this one? I think, but it's recent, right? Like you're just getting started with this one. Yeah. The plan is to do short-term rental in the summer and then transition to medium-term rental at Labor Day. Okay and let's lean into the theme for this property, a lot of wood type features, and then you've got a really cool master bedroom.
So tell us about some of the theme for this one.
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Yeah, this is traditional frame house. It was built in the late 18 hundreds, but it's been renovated. My dad put a lot of. Blood, sweat and tears into this house and it shows beautifully. In the listing. My photographer, again, did an amazing job with this listing. He is the owner of Three Nine Media.
He's the absolute best photographer I've ever met. And this property does well because it's a four bedroom, three bath, which is rare for the area to be available and that, that's why it does so well. And tell us how you think that has affected your listing. Because I think a lot of people are, not a lot of people, but I think some people are hesitant to, make the investment of a professional photographer, even though it's not necessarily expensive. So tell us how you think that's really impacted, like your listing performance and your views and interest. How has that. Come back for you. Oh, I think it definitely, it shows that I'm a professional host.
I'm not somebody who's just doing this as a side gig. I think that it gives the customer on the other end faith that they're getting a good product. If I took time to hire the right photographer. To present this property to you professionally, then I'm going to in turn give you good service, what you expect from a professional listing.
Awesome. And that's so we've got one more property, but before we move on to the Florida property, which is your out of state property your. Chicago Properties. What's the occupancy rate looking like for those properties and how many of your midterm, what percentage of your midterm rental bookings come from Furnished Finder?
Okay, so our occupancy would be about 70%. I do keep my prices on the higher end which I'm okay with having a little bit of vacancy just to attract the right guest, and I have received probably 40 to 50% of my guests through Furnished Finder. That's awesome. Especially when you're thinking about the fact that you do a hybrid with.
Multiple of these. I think that's tho those are fantastic stats and I. I think you're right with waiting for the right tenant especially when it comes to midterm, you have to have a little bit more, a lot more patience than you do with short term, right? You're not trying to just take the first guest to fill a small gap.
You wanna get the right person. And if you. Lower your price dramatically to get a booking. You have that price locked in for multiple months, most likely. So you need to really make sure that still works with your numbers. So I'm always like the last thing that I change for me is my numbers, and I'd like to hear, kinda your thoughts and process on that too.
But for me, I'm like, okay, how can I market this differently? What amenities can I add? What photos can I shake up? What's my headline doing? Because when I penciled out those investments, we made the numbers a certain way and that's how they work. So I want to try not to mess with that. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that too, Tara.
Yeah, I use price labs. And they help me stay in line of where I should be. If I notice that I'm dipping down a little too low in the red as far as my competition, that they're getting more bookings than I am at a higher or lower price, I'll try to move my photos around a little bit to see if I can get bumped up on the algorithm that way.
Or adding an EV charger, that might be another thing that I could do rather than lowering my price or the one in Florida, I noticed that my occupancy was dipping and I added a mural just to try to love that again. Stand out doing things like that. Yeah, rather than adjusting the prices. I like, I love playing with the price.
You do? Yeah. Dave and I play with the price all the time, so we know what our go-to is like our go-to for our three bedroom, two basses. We know we can typically get 29 50. There's one property that we have to get more to because we bought at the height of the market. So we'll play around with anywhere from between 32 to 37.
Honestly, like pricing gets moved around a lot during the year in the Austin market, potentially, depending on where you are. So we just always, as soon as we book a property, we say, okay, let's go for the next. The next big goal. So rather than 29 50, then I'd put at 3,200. Right now, I'll leave it at 3,200 for three months and see if someone expresses interest.
If we get back to that one month or a couple weeks prior, I'll drop it back down to the 29 50 because when you do the math, we did it one time. When you do the math for. You know what the, what you'll gain versus lose, having it booked versus not booked for a three month stay or a one month stay versus a year.
It's a lot different than looking at a long term rental. Like the numbers work out. And I think Kelly, adjusting for seasonality or kind of knowing the range that you can get for a property is totally. In lines and strategic and everybody should have, like you should have your property and know, okay, I'm aiming for between this and no matter where you land.
Your numbers still check out, especially 'cause with Unfurnished Finder, you have the chance to communicate directly with these tenants when they're leads. So you might be negotiating a little bit, right? It might be like, Hey, I'm interested in a longer stay. Can I do a little bit less rent? Like you have to have that wiggle room.
But what I don't like is when you have an empty calendar and your first instinct is to just cut your price. Yes. Yes. I really like the Tara's thought of, okay, what can I add? To increase value here, but you're completely right. You've gotta have that range because seasonality changes, demand changes, all of those things.
Yep. Freshening up your photos, changing your headline, adding the availability date to your headline. And little amenities like. A fire pit, like the minis don't have to make or break it, but it's like when you look at your photos, does it look like a place that invites someone in for an experience, or is it more this is lacking and it needs something more?
So it's not that hard to invest in a nice, like patio set or a fire pit or things like that to enhance your backyard, or same idea we've talked about on the show. If you have three bedrooms and your table only seats four people, you're not marketing to the right audience because you can sleep up to six individuals.
So look back through your photos and see where am I maybe missing on those amenities or that experience that someone's looking for coming to my area. For sure. And speaking of that, one thing Tara does really well is, and in intrigues me, is you add a charcuterie board and a couple glasses of wine to almost all of your properties at different, sometimes it might be in the kitchen, it might be on the patio.
So why do you do that? And who gets to eat the that delicious charcuterie board? I always get to eat it, so I always like, make it very friendly for the photos and for myself. So I put on there what I like. Although I don't drink red wine, but I always have red wine in the photos because it photographs better than white.
Good to know. Yeah, it does. I've tested that. And the reason I do this is because. It's my job to create an experience and when people are looking at Airbnbs, they're picturing themselves with a glass of wine, with a charcuterie board, with their girlfriends, with their husbands, whatever the case may be.
And I'm trying to sell that before they even step foot into the place. Getting them excited about booking my place over another. Property with these little touches, and it's fun. Afterwards, when the photo session's over, I'll call one of my girlfriends and be like, Hey, you wanna come over? I have the charcuterie board and wine.
And you can also, oh gosh, you're probably the favorite. Yeah. That's awesome. Alright, we're at your last property, which is your Florida property out of state, and I'm gonna assume that this one you use as a short-term midterm hybrid, but I will let you tell us the details in your strategy there and the name of it.
Yes. Okay. So this is the Cycling Mermaid. This is my first furnished rental that I've ever taken on everything before. This was long-term rentals. And I did this from a distance in Chicago and it's my baby. I love it so much. And I started with a completely short-term rental model and this is my second year on it.
And as I'm going through the process of, now I'm two years in, I have two years behind me of history. I'm learning that with the slower months. It makes more sense for me to rent this out from a medium term rental standpoint rather than letting it sit empty and it took, two years to figure that out.
And that's okay as long as we figure it out and try to improve the numbers at the end of the year. And that's how I'm able to do that is come November, I'm switching over to a. Mean, probably even October this year I'm gonna switch it over to a medium term rental because with my history, the only money making weeks that I had on a short term rental for this property was Thanksgiving and Christmas.
And the rest of the weeks didn't really do so well. January was dead. So just learning from how things have been going. Okay. And this one, I believe you self-manage the short-term rental and midterm rental during off season. So what's it like self-managing for not only a midterm, which we all know is pretty, pretty straightforward.
'cause you're mainly getting a round four guests per year. Potentially more, potentially less, but it's not. Too difficult to manage the flips, combining that with short term with weekend turnovers, how's it going? Self-managing? Self-managing is good for me because I'm a control freak and I have a hard time passing over some of the duties that to of.
Property manager. I think that I give good customer service and I don't know if I can trust other people to do what I do to bend over backwards. Sometimes though, because of my background in hospitality and I wanna get five star reviews, it's really important to me. So I'll do whatever it takes more times than not to get that review.
And I have a great cleaning team. At the house. It's a gr grandmother, mother daughter team. So the daughter, that's cool. Yeah, it is cool. The youngest daughter just joined the team. This year before it was just the grandmother and daughter, and now it's three generations of women helping me with this house.
We talk regularly about, things that we might need for the house, which Amazon saves my life with. I wouldn't be able to do this from a distance without Amazon, and we're gonna get into the details of how you furnished it before ever setting foot on the property. So save that. We've got a bunch of conversations to talk about that.
Okay. But yeah, if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be able to do this. They let me know if something's broken. I let the handyman know. That's awesome. Yeah, I think as long as you have the right team, like doing it from a distance is very manageable. You just have to have, you've gotta have really great, reliable people.
Alright, I wanna talk about something that is very frequently asked questions when it comes to doing the hybrid method of combining short term and midterm, which is your calendar management. Kelly and I have talked to different landlords who. Do it different ways where they'll prioritize midterm and fit in, fill in with short term.
And then people like you who are more like, I'm gonna flip the switch based on seasonality. So how do you manage how do you manage your calendars on platforms, including Furnished Finder, especially when you might be in the middle of that. Hybrid situation. I will go into my hospitable. I use hospitable for my channel manager, and I will physically block off after Labor Day so it cannot get booked for short-term rental.
Yeah, that makes sense. Just literally flipping the switch and saying, okay, after this point we're doing midterm. Yeah. Love it. Okay. I think that makes a ton of sense. Okay, so Kelly told me about this really cool tool you found called Cubi Casa. Tell us a little bit about that and how it's benefited you.
Because I've heard of Matterport, which looks similar, but I've never heard of this one. Yeah, Cubi Casa. So my photographer in Chicago is the one who told me about this because I tried to fly him down to Florida. But unfortunately he was unable to go. And I was like, how do you do these 3D floor layouts?
And he goes, oh, just download the app. QBI Casa. So I did, when I went down to Florida. It was so easy. All I had to do was use my phone and slowly walk around the house and you point your phone down towards the baseboards and just follow along nice and slow throughout the entire house. Honestly, if it wasn't for my kids coming into the house, it would've only taken me.
10 minutes to do. I had to keep stopping my recording because they kept coming in, coming out, and I was like, ah, just stay outta here for 10 minutes. But I, once you go around to each and every room, slowly with your camera, you upload the video to the CBI casa. Portal and within, I think it was 24 hours or 48 hours, they send you back a 2D layout and a 3D layout.
And in the 3D layout, I could not believe they, all of the details that they had. In the color of my bedspread was the same. The color of the rug was the same, the Christmas tree was there. All these details that I never in a million years thought that it would've picked up are there. It looks so professional and it only cost me like a.
I think $42. That's amazing. And the reason I love this so much is I've had a similar, I needed to have a 3D or at least a floor plan for one of my properties. 'cause I kept getting asked, can we see this one in person? And they, it just seemed people weren't understanding the layout based off of the flow of my photos, I hadn't had any gaps or time in between to take the video of the property.
And so a four D or a 3D floor plan sounded like the best option to include in my photos. And so what I had a recommendation for Fiverr, so I hired someone on Fiverr. It turned out fantastic, so I would've used him again until Tara told me about this. Cobi Casa app because the difference is I had to physically, Dave had to go take the measurements, draw them out on the floor plan, and that's time consuming.
So on this one, I really liked that Tara said, is all you had to do was scan the room. It did the measurements for you and then you're able to pick up the colors of everything as well. I had to, provide some photos in addition to that. So it just sounds like an amazing app that I am really looking forward to.
Trying for sure. It even includes the square footage. That's, yeah, that's amazing. And Katie, you use Matterport. So how does it compare to Matterport? I've used Matterport before. It seems very similar. Like you just walk through and it'll tell you like, okay, go a little bit forward. And then like you scan around, you feel.
Like a robot when you're doing it. 'cause you're just like but yeah it's very handy. It's very handy, especially when people, like you said, like they want to walk through the property or visit it, but you're like. I have people in there, or maybe it's not quite ready or whatever your reason is, like they can literally virtually put themselves in it and walk themselves around.
The other thing I like is Unfurnished Finder. Like we let you add those outside links and stuff, right? So if you have a Matterport or one of these QBI Casas and you wanna link to it, you can put that link right in your listing, whereas other platforms are not going to let you do it because they want you to only stay on their platform.
We are not like that, right? So you can put, if you have a virtual walkthrough like this, if you have a video on YouTube, if you have your own property, website, if you have anything like that, like you can, you're in control and you can put it on there. So that is something that I like because it gives you the freedom to really show off your property.
Definitely. All right, so I think we're on to our last conversations, which I said we were gonna come back to this, that your Florida property, you were able to furnish it all from the comforts of your home in Chicago and the way you went about it was. Impeccably done using your resources. So let's talk about that.
And one thing that we didn't talk about the cycling mermaid is that Florida property is why cycling is a part of that theme. And when the cyclists come to the area, and now you include quite a few bikes in that rental as well. So add that part in and then go through your thought process of, l leaning on your agent and leaning on tools from Chicago that could help you furnish this property well, without ever setting foot on it. Yeah, I my agent was specialized in short-term rentals and his name's Troy Wick. Yeah, I could not have done this without him. He was so patient with me. He answered every single question I had, and there was a lot.
He went through the. Property with me over FaceTime. And I was just taking notes like, okay, what size bed can I fit in this bedroom? And he is I think you could get a king in here. Okay, onto the next one. Which one? I think you could get a queen. So I just wrote it out. I'm gonna need a queen, a king, a bunk, yada.
A And then when it came to actually furnishing the property, I used host GPO. And host GPO, they gave me websites that most people use to furnish short-term rentals like society Six was one. I had never heard of Society six until I had signed up with host GPO. And the reason that they offer this, they offer discounts to people like me if we go through host GPO.
I'm not very good at designing. I like, I really don't think I am. But then I see these things like society six. Okay. So I cruise their website a while. I'm like, oh, that's cool. I add that to the cart. That's cool. Add that to the cart. And then they have a discount code. So another thing that they did was offer a discount code for.
Pottery Barn. So I went to the Pottery Barn that was here in Chicago and I showed them what I was working with and I was like, what would you do in a case like this? Like for the couches, for example? And they, she came up with this cool idea of just doing a two big Ls. 'cause I said I wanna sleep. Nine people, therefore I wanna seat nine people.
So we came up with this idea together. I was able to place the order, get my inventory list altogether at home. Like I did the, I picked the things out in person at Pottery Barn, but then when I came home, I was able to put it all in my computer in virtual cart, see what these items cost, plus the discount.
And when these items could be delivered. So really paying attention to my timeline, making sure that the items could be delivered after I purchased the house and or af after I closed on the house, I should say. And before my guests arrive there was a lot of timing. Had to be just right. For this to work.
And it worked. It came down to the wire on one of the beds, but we were able to make it work. Sure. Doesn't it always. It's like that's the nice thing about about midterm rentals at least. I don't think you can really do this with a short-term rental, but with a midterm rental, you can start.
Advertising on Furnished Finder with coming soon. So if someone books your place because you're able to have that conversation, give them the confidence that you're going to set it up just as well as you've done all your other properties that have five star reviews, or just that opportunity to have a conversation if it's your first property, and instill that trust that you can't do on a short term booking.
Platform a lot of times then you have that deadline. So it does come down to can I get the furniture in time occasionally when you already have someone lined up to move in on a specific date and you've given yourself a furnishing deadline. One. I think the last thing I wanted to emphasize was.
I think you used Zillow for the dimension somehow. You had a lot of late nights. It was scratch paper and then it was all ready to go for that very first day When you showed up, your family helped you unbox everything. So what was that like? What were the dimensions on Zillow? I can't remember the details there.
Yeah, I, it all ended up working out. It actually worked out better at home. On my computer. Then when I got there in person when I got there in person, I realized that one of the bedrooms had a vaulted ceiling. And originally I was gonna put a king bed in there and I just didn't know that it had a vaulted ceiling, because you don't see that on the dimensions.
It's just, size bed, 12 by 12 or whatever, 12 by 12 room. But then when I got there, I was like, oh. Maybe I should put the bunk bed in this room instead of the kink. Oh. And switch things around. So I then started the process of doing that and it didn't work, and I was so upset. I was like, why did I change it?
Like I should have just kept with what I was originally gonna do. I ended up putting wallpaper in the wrong room because I was gonna switch the beds, like it ended up being a mess. But like when I got into the house, I was so jacked up that I was like, okay, oh my God, I didn't know about this and I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna change this and that and the other.
Like I needed to slow down. Breathe, stick with my plan, but I don't know, the excitement just came over me and then I started changing things that I shouldn't have changed and just having to backpedal and it all ended up working out. But I should have stuck with my plan. Like looking at the hard math.
I should have stuck with my plan. It's hard though because there's some stuff that you're like, on paper this works, but then you get into a space and you're like, okay, this isn't what. I thought it was gonna be, even though it literally is. It's really tricky. We were furnishing a unit once and it's an ar it was an arbitrage.
And I got the floor plan from the property owner, and then we got into the unit and that was not the floor plan. It was not, it was still a studio, but it was just laid out in a completely different way. So it was like. Okay, we're gonna have to adjust here. You do and you put it all together and it comes out beautiful.
And your properties are all beautiful. All right, Tara, so you are one of the people that we've talked to that is really successfully doing this short term midterm hybrid method. I'd love to know some of the tips that you're using within your Furnished Finder listings to really. Draw the attention of good midterm tenants to fill your properties in those off seasons.
I know we've talked about photography, but what else are you using on Furnished Finder? Are you reaching out to different leads? Are linking out to the QBI casa? Are you advertising and marketing your amenities? What has really proven successful for you on the platform? Anytime I see a agency, like a housing agency, I will reach out to them through Furnish Finer.
So it'll come through as an inquiry and even if it doesn't specifically match my property maybe it doesn't work for the two bedroom or the four bedroom, but it's a housing agency. And this, sometimes it'll be for insurance purposes a water main break, or a fire, any sort of insurance reason.
Or if it's a housing agency because somebody's traveling to the area for work. Anytime I see a housing agency inquiry that comes through my inbox, I'm gonna reach out to them because sometimes they're a little bit more flexible than what they portray in their inquiry. And I found that to be really helpful in with my business because even if it doesn't work out with that particular client, I've made a connection now with this housing agency and if I can continue building relationships with housing agencies, I might be first come to mind when they are looking for something in Chicago.
Yeah. I think that's, I think that's huge. Like really Furnished Finder is something that there's all these connection possibilities on, but you've gotta take the next step and pick up the phone or write the email, send the message. But we're. You have the power to do that, right? That's where it's just so different is we wanna make you, we wanna allow you to have those connections for the next booking.
'cause we don't care if we get a cut of it, we're not gonna take a booking fee. So I love that you, getting creative and really utilizing all those leads, even if it's for something that's not even available yet or anything like that. So anyway, it, this has been such a great conversation. We cannot thank you enough.
The short term midterm hybrid, I think is just gonna keep getting more and more popular. Especially for those in seasonal markets. So your insights here and just the way that you manage all of these listings and mix of owning and co-hosting and local and long distance, like I feel like you're like the potpourri of investing, so it's been so great to get to know you.
A little bit of everything. That's like the sign the marketing director comes up with is poker. Yeah, popery. Listen, okay. This is the sign that I am a true nineties kid, is my mom. Would always have that bowl of potpourri. You couldn't smell it unless your face was in it, but the thought was like, this will make my whole house smell good.
Tara, you're the bowl of popery for me. Okay. I wanna lean into your quick wittiness and what's your second analogy? Oh man. What about is trail mix better? Can she be the trail mix? Trail mix, yeah. Okay. Yes. Trail mix. Trail mix, fine. But anyway give, if anybody wants to get ahold of you, has further questions, anything like that, how would you like people to reach out to you?
I can be found. I am on BiggerPockets Tara Jenkins. Or my website is the cycling mermaid.com. You can find me there and we always put the Furnished Finder links in the show notes, so you can call Tara or email her directly from her Furnished Finder listings as well. Thank y'all so much. We appreciate y'all listening.
If you are loving our show, don't forget to subscribe, share it with a friend, comment, or we would absolutely appreciate your five star reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Have a great day everyone. We'll see you next week. Bye.