Welcome to "The Landlord Diaries," where we bring you inspiring stories and insightful tips from the world of midterm rental real estate investing. In this episode, we dive into the remarkable journey of Bailey Kramer, a young entrepreneur who chose real estate over college and is now generating over $12k per month with his mid-term rental properties in Indiana, Illinois, and North Carolina.
At just 23 years old, Bailey's decision to forgo traditional education was influenced by the life-changing book "Rich Dad Poor Dad." Listen as Bailey shares his experiences overcoming the biggest obstacles as a young investor, securing his first property, and strategically growing his portfolio with the help of real estate partners found on the Bigger Pockets forum.
Discover Bailey's pivotal decision to sell his six investment properties during his senior year of college and his evolution to a mid-term rental strategy, where 50-90% of his bookings come from Furnished Finder. Bailey offers invaluable research tips for checking mid-term rental demand and supply in any area, along with calendar and pricing strategies to maximize cash flow and occupancy.
From understanding the importance of guest avatars to mastering out-of-state management, Bailey's insights will equip you with the knowledge to elevate your real estate investing game. Tune in to connect with Bailey and learn how his entrepreneurial spirit and strategic mindset can inspire your own real estate journey.
Episode Highlights:
0:00 Intro- Welcome to The Landlord Diaries
2:45 The life-changing impact of "Rich Dad Poor Dad"
3:50 Overcoming large obstacles as a young investor
4:15 Securing your first property and growing your portfolio
7:15 Meeting real estate partners through Bigger Pockets
7:45 Bailey's shift to the mid-term rental strategy
13:20 Research tips for mid-term rental demand and supply
18:05 Calendar and pricing strategies for maximizing cash flow
33:15 The significance of guest avatars in your business
38:45 Key tips for out-of-state property management
Join us on "The Landlord Diaries" for an episode filled with actionable advice and inspiring stories from the front lines of real estate investing.
Episode 105 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 of the Landlord diaries. Kelly Bailey and Katie Lyon coming to you from the Furnished Finder marketing team. We are both midterm rental investors ourselves with around 10 doors each. And we have a great episode today with Bailey Kramer, who is a.
Furnished Finder, powerhouse user, and he's has some fantastic tips. Katie, what were your main takeaways? He is a power user, and I think, we do get into some details here with pricing strategy and calendar management, which are like two really hot topics for Furnished Finder landlords. Especially those who might use short term rentals either seasonally or to fill in gaps.
We talked really in detail with that and some pricing strategies, which were really great. We went into really good details there. So everybody's gonna have some great takeaways there. And he's just like a guy of action, right? He is young. He is all about just making moves and.
Diving in and exploring. And I think the joy with midterm rentals is it's very easy to pivot if you need to pivot. Either small pivots with your pricing or amenities or larger ones with your strategy or anything like that. It's great to talk about his portfolio and how he's put all of these things into play.
So we hope you enjoy and don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening to this so that you can always get the freshest content and be getting the most. Up to date and relevant information on midterm rentals. Enjoy
at 23 years of age. Bailey Kramer did not choose to pursue college, but instead full-time real estate investing. Why you asked. Bailey is cash flowing over 12,000 per month with a handful of owned and managed midterm rental properties in Indiana, Illinois, and North Carolina. Bailey, I'm excited to hear your story today.
How are you? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on. It, I get a little confused sometimes 'cause my last name's Bailey. So it's like I recognize that name every second. That's funny. So yeah, we're gonna have some fun with it today. So you are 23 right now, I believe. Yeah. What led you to become a successful real estate investor at a young age.
For sure. So what started off for me, which is what started off for a lot of people I know is Rich Dad, poor Dad. So I read that book my sophomore year of college and that's what introduced me to real estate. And that opened up a whole can of worms about, from real estate.
But even before I read the book, I always knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, something where I could be my own boss, I can create my own time freedom. So I always knew that was gonna happen some way, shape, or form. I had no idea it was gonna be through real estate until reading The Purple Bible.
Rich Dad, poor Dad. Have you ever played the Rich Dad? Poor Dad? Board game cash flow? No, I haven't. I've seen it though. You should check it out. My, my brother-in-law is our realtor for our Austin properties and he loves that game just for strategy and being able to scale. That's cool. I ne he always wins when we play.
So Bailey, we've had a number of episodes featuring guests that started real estate investing at a young age. So now you are one of those episodes. We have episode 17, 24, 54, 60, and I'm sure quite a few others. But what are some of those challenges that you've had to overcome such as learning a new industry, finding lenders and partners, and let's talk about one or two of those large obstacles and how you overcame them.
Yeah, so there's been. Ton of big obstacles, I'd say. But really the first one that I think a lot of people go through and I went through myself, was just getting to that first property. That's always the hardest one, the scariest one, because it's like you, it's like when you know the least, you have no track record.
You're basically just all talk at that point. And that's how I was from basically the moment I read Rich Dad, poor Dad, I told everyone about real estate. I talked about how great it was. It wasn't until about a little bit over a year later for me, just talking about it to me actually getting that first property.
Over that year's time, there's probably, I could name probably a million different challenges and I would say like the first one and the one that hurt sometimes the most is just, that is like the fear of getting to the first one that like unknown of how you're gonna do it. I remember. Just like feeling also bad because I would talk about real estate so much, but I just didn't know how to get to that first one.
So then you start to hear all these like outside pressures. So that's like that. That was definitely like the biggest challenge I'd say starting out for me. And I know for a lot of people. Yeah. Which I think they call that impost, like you feel that imposter syndrome when it's just a self pressure more than anything else from someone else.
So then the actual, like when you got into your first property, what was one of those obstacles that you're like, oh man, that's a big challenge. Let's keep rolling through it and figure it out. Yeah, so just getting that first property itself, like it took a couple months literally of just cold calling and cold texting, basically vacant properties and like pulling lists from Prop Stream to try to just find a property that would be a good deal.
So just that process alone took a couple months. Then we had to raise, it was like 120, $130,000 for the first property. Then we had to renovate it. So everything I was doing it for the first time. So there wasn't one part of the process where it was like, oh yeah, this part's easy. Every piece had its own challenge.
Yeah, for sure. So tell us kinda how you grew the portfolio and what your current portfolio looks like. Totally. So starting out, the way that I initially started growing was with partners. So I mentioned college and a lot of people have their own, strengths and their own background advantages. For me, I would say my biggest advantage was like I had a great family growing up and I think that's a huge advantage.
One thing I didn't have though, and again, this isn't a bad thing for people who do, but something I didn't have was I didn't have family who invested with me in these properties. So that's just like something where a lot of people hear, oh yeah, you must have, your dad must have just given you all the money to invest in the properties, which is not true.
This is, this actually just came from partnering with other people that I literally met and sounds stupid that I did this maybe it's scary, but I literally met people through like the BiggerPockets forums through Facebook groups, and that's how I literally started partnering with people that I've never met.
That sounds smart. Not stupid. Very smart. In, in hindsight, when I'm like, man, I've never met these people ever, and I'm just gonna trust them. It. It sounds a little crazy, but it's just normal, I think, in the real estate world. But looking back, I was like, wow. I was a sophomore in college. I think it is even more crazy that these people who were older than me decided to partner with me.
But at the end of the day, I brought hustle and time to the table. I ended up scaling, to answer your question, scaling with these partners till I got to six properties. Then I hit a kind of a point where I was like, okay. I was entering my senior year of college and actually like halfway through it, and I hit a point of what is the future gonna hold?
And I was like, all right. Like I, I've gotten a lot of experience, I learned a ton in those just from those six properties alone. And I made the pivot there to. Essentially say, you know what? I wanna go out on my own and do this solo. So I sold the six properties that I had invested with the partners, and that's when I just started going buying properties myself and then also at the same time as when I owned the properties with the partners, I started co-hosting for other people who had Airbnbs. So that kind of happened simultaneously. It took some time to happen. But to answer your question, I now have three properties that I own. Two of them are single family houses, and then one's a triplex and I co-host about.
I even know an extra eight units or so. Katie and I are like that. I'm like, what number is it today, Katie? Yeah.
Yep. And then what are you using those for? Are they all short term rentals? Are they all midterm rentals? Do you mix them? What is kinda your rental strategy there? Yeah, so big evolution, it started out, so it started out fix and flipping, then it went to long-term rentals, then it went to short-term rentals, then.
It went to midterm rentals, and that's what I've stuck with for probably the past two years now, maybe a little bit longer, two and a half actually, where I've just been doing 90 plus percent midterm rentals for the properties I own for most of my coasting clients. And then I still have a couple properties I cot that are in vacation markets, so those, in the summertime we'll do short-term rental.
Wintertime, we'll do midterm rental or short-term rental in the summer midterm in the winter. I think you fill the gaps. Like it's nice when you can fill any gaps with your midterm rentals with short-term rentals, because if you're in a neighborhood where you know you have a 30 day minimum, or you know you haven't been approved for short-term rentals, then a lot of midterms don't like to book too far ahead because then you might have a larger gap that you can't fill 'cause you're not able to do short term.
So you've really maximized there with being able to do mainly the mid. Term rental strategy and flex with the short term, whenever it either to fill the gaps or when it's really happening in those vacation markets. So that's brilliant. And I think your, your cash flow and your breakdown is you've got, around 7,000 per month for the properties that you own in around a five.
10,000 per month for the co-hosting properties. So we're gonna come to a conversation a little bit about pricing strategies, which Bailey is very good at, and how to maximize the revenue at your property. So we're gonna get there. But first, Bailey, one of the things that we talked about on your intro call.
Was that you mentioned Furnished Finder is a huge part of your business with about 90% of your triplex bookings coming from Furnished Finder and over 50% of your single family home bookings. How would you compare Furnished Finder to other online travel agencies and what are some of those differences that stand out to you in the Furnished Finder process?
Yeah, totally. Furnished Finder, the two big platforms for me are like Furnished Finder and Airbnb. So I'd say the two biggest differences between Furnished Finder and Airbnb for me is really the fact that on, I guess the demographic that I'm targeting on Furnished Finder, which is mainly travel nurses and insurance companies.
I'm getting more of those people coming through Furnished Finder than I am through Airbnb. I think it just makes more financial sense for the renter, the travel nurses to go through Furnished Finder because the fees are less, there's really, there's no fees AK less than the fees on Airbnb. So it just makes it easier for everybody and more cost efficient that way.
But I also think it's nice that since the term is longer. It gives the ability, the opportunity to talk with the host directly on Furnished Finder, which also makes it really nice. Yeah, because if you're staying with someone for a week or weekend, you might not care too much about. Talk with the host, but if you're gonna stay for three months or longer, that's when people tend to care a little bit more, in my opinion, just from what I've seen.
So that's like another huge advantage of Furnished Finder. You can just talk to 'em directly. Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Furnished Finder, the ultimate platform for hassle-free midterm rentals. Whether you're a seasoned landlord. We're just getting started. Furnished Finder has everything you need to find your next tenant.
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All right, so you have some really insight, insightful research tips on as far as checking MTR demand, which is always a hot topic. So let's go into those a little bit. And tell us about those. I believe you talk about how to search the nation and find where people would like. To travel with an MTR and then to check the supply in an area.
So give us a little bit of details about how Yeah, totally. So with midterm rentals, like one of the biggest hacks that I do to find markets and locations that are not saturated for midterm rentals is I'll first go on Airbnb and I'll essentially just search an area. And it also, just one quick thing, it comes down to who you're actually targeting.
And knowing your demographic, because there's all types of properties, there's all types of bedroom counts. So what I like to do is you really use this test for targeting families. So for me, this is okay, I'm getting, this is for insurance company bookings, where family's gonna stay at my property.
So what I'll do is I'll go on Airbnb and if I've never been in the area before, which for the two properties I invest in, or for the two areas that where I invest in. Before I bought properties there, I've never been there in my life. So I've used this and done this many times. And I've done this in other markets too, where I haven't yet bought a property yet, but I'm just waiting for the right one to pop up to do this.
You only have one in North Carolina, right? And the rest are in other states? Yep. So what I do is I go on Airbnb and just to find out the good locations for family friendly place is I'll literally just poke around on the available listings in Airbnb. I'll just start looking at the reviews. The reviews don't lie.
People will share if the area is super terrible, sketchy, not somewhere they want to be at night. On the flip side, they'll tell you if an area is really good, safe to walk, family friendly, all that stuff. So that's the first thing I'll do is just to find out the area, because whenever I'm talking to realtors, I always tell 'em, the only thing that I really need you for is to be my second, eyes.
To let me know, is this an area where you'd want your family to live for three to six months? If they tell me yes, like that's like the biggest sign, and that's why I use that Airbnb test to see the reviews. So that's like the first thing of just picking the location. Now, as far as seeing the supply, what I do is like today is April 9th.
So if I'm looking at a market, I would look out typically five to seven days out. So five, seven days would be April 14th to the. 16th or 17th, and I'm gonna look, see how many properties are available. If I want to book again April 15th to three months out. So that's April, March, or April, may, June, July. So I'm looking for April 15th to July 15th, and I wanna see how many properties are available in this market.
And then what you can also do is filter it down to. What type of property is gonna meet your demographic? Like again, I said family, so for me, I'm looking for three bedrooms or two bathrooms or greater. So if I put that filter of three beds, two baths I use this test a lot. If you look in Orlando, Florida and do that test, there's there thousands of properties available.
So you can absolutely do midterm rental there. And there is a lot of demand because there's a lot of, there's just a lot of houses there, a lot of people there. But it's really hard to stand out from the crowd because there's so many properties available versus if you do this in Yeah, any, smaller markets, Orlando's just huge.
But in these smaller markets, and you do that test, you typically see sometimes no properties will pop up. Like sometimes, literally there won't be anything available. Sometimes just one, sometimes five. Wow. But I like to invest in pro in markets where there's like less than five that pop up that way.
I'm pretty much the clear choice, especially, and we'll talk about like the pricing side of things. Especially if you keep your pricing strategy and your minimum night stay settings tight. You may be the only choice in your market, which is what I like. All right. I like what you're saying here, and I like the fact that there can be different.
Amounts of supply in different areas and even in a place that has a lot of supply, you might be the only one of that property type or something or that size, but you need to really dig into it. 'cause you need to know what your approach is. That might change if you're gonna do midterm rental full year, if we're, if you're gonna do a hybrid situation, what target tenant you're looking after.
So all of that has to be in alignment. So you hinted on pricing and I really wanna dive in there because it's such a hot topic for our landlords. Let's just go ahead and skip right to it. Talk to us about your pricing strategy and kinda how you go about setting your numbers to maximize your cash flow, but also to maximize that occupancy because a midterm rental is no good if nobody's not.
Totally. So nobody's knocking. We're gonna go with that for sure. So the biggest thing with pricing and it. The, like when people think pricing, they think about the numbers, how much am I gonna rent the property per month? And that is super important, but that's really secondary to the minimum night stay settings.
Because if you don't have the minimum night stay settings correct, the literally your pricing doesn't matter. Like it makes no difference what you're gonna price your property at if you're minimum night stay, settings aren't correct. So the way that I like to do it. And this also depends on if your property is in a seasonal market versus if your property is just in some random market where there's really no peak season.
It's just the same all year round. So just to give an example, like for my properties that are just in the Midwest, not in the vacation market, I'll have it so that if someone wants to book my property, let's just say a month in advance, they have to stay for at least 30 days.
They wanna book my property 60 days in advance, then they have to stay at my property for at least 60 days. The only time I will lower that minimum requirement is if they wanna book it a week in advance, or sometimes two weeks. It just depends on how my other properties are performing and balancing my risk a little bit.
But if someone's gonna do a short term stay, it's gotta be outta short notice for me, because kinda what I mentioned before is. When that insurance claim booking comes in or that inquiry comes in, I want my property to be available. If my property is not available, I'm gonna completely lose out on the opportunity to house that guest.
And that's where a lot of people mess up is. A lot of these hosts are scared to have an empty calendar in the future. So they say, you know what? I got this inquiry for two nights in four weeks from now. I'll just take it to feel good. So they take that booking and then all of a sudden they only have two days booked over the next six months.
But since they have two days booked they completely lose the opportunity to get that longer stay because they have a block in their calendar. So that's like the first part. This is smart. Yeah. Yeah. This is smart. Especially for like when you're hybriding the two right of short term and midterm, because you have to pick which one is your primary, right?
Are you a short-term primary and then you're gonna fill in off season or something with midterm, or are you gonna do primarily midterm and you're gonna fill up the short term? If you try to not pick one of those two, your calendar's gonna be a mess. I think this is also a good reminder to everybody that you can set your minimum stay requirement on furnished binder.
And you can also discuss that since it's not a direct booking platform, you can have those conversations with people. And like Bailey is saying, you can be like, oh, you're looking at a calendar date that's x far in the future, like my requirement for that far of a commitment out is this amount of a stay.
Like it gives you the chance to have these kind of. Gray areas that you can really customize. Okay. Carry on. Bailey, I just wanted to quickly interrupt you because those things I think were really good. Totally. You're good. So the, so that, that's like the minimum night stay stuff. That's it.
That's 80%. It's 80 20 rule. That's 80%. You gotta have that right now. As far as the pricing goes. This is a funny topic because I'll just share. So what I do for my pricing. To set the pricing is, I'll just go first on Furnished Finder and I'll literally just look at. What are the other properties priced at?
And I'll just get my pricing, depending on if my property's nicer, less nice compared to the bedroom count, and I'll just get an average right there. I'll also look on Airbnb, see the properties available. And on Airbnb, they're always just a little bit more because of the fees and stuff.
So you just have to say, okay, if it's $3,500 on Airbnb, but 3000 on furnace Finder, you're still looking at around 3000. So just whatever. But what I've realized is. My, the pricing that I've been able to charge. 'cause what I've done over the past, two years is I've slowly increased my prices and it's not something that I would've just seen on Airbnb or Furnished Finder.
And it's not even something that the insurance companies that I work with would even just there's no way of just knowing upfront. So what I always say, and what I do is when I'm buying a property and I'm trying to figure out how much money I'm gonna bring in. I'll just use Furnished Finder as like base price.
I always know deep down I can beat it and go higher, but that's like base price. And then what I've been able to do to really raise the prices, I mean as in just to give it like real examples here I was charging I think I think my price was like in my head, I think $2,500 for one of my properties that I wanted per month and an insurance company.
I was talking to 'em over the phone. And they were, they, and this rarely happens, but it's just from trying to listen and poke some holes in these people, they said, Hey, does $3,500 work for you? And I was like, absolutely. 3,500 works for me. And I don't, honestly, I don't remember if that one came for their Airbnb or Furnished Finder or how I even got the lead, but that was just from an insurance company.
Letting me know that I can get 3,500 for my property, and that is a number that would work for them. Yeah. So I was like, great. Instead of $2,500 in my head being my new minimum, which I found on Furnished Finder as what I thought I can get. I said, okay, 3,500 is my new threshold because I know someone's willing to pay it.
Then recently, as in less than two weeks ago, I was talking to a guy and where did the lead come from? This one came from. I think it came from Furnace Finder, to be honest with you. And they were interested in my property. So long story short, they came to look at the property and unfortunately it is the area, it was a good area, but it was just too far south to where they wanted to be for their kids' school.
So what did they ended up when, what they ended up telling me, I was talking to the guest is they said, man, I really like your property and our only other option is this. A piece of crap property for $5,100 a month and he said he, he mentioned in there that they were already approved to stay at that property.
He just didn't like, he didn't feel good in his soul to stay at some terrible property and give these landlords all this money for a bad property but Right. The main thing here is he told me that he was approved for $5,100. So I'm thinking in my head if he was approved for $5,100 and I was only asking 3,500.
I know I can go up more, I'm still not gonna just increase to the 5,000. 'cause something about that also doesn't really sound right to me. Like I, I think it, it has to be a win-win and it would be a huge win for me and potentially for them too. I don't know. I haven't, I'm not saying just jack up your price just for the sake of it, but it's, I would never have known that I would be able to get 5,100 if it wasn't from talking to this guest.
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A lot of times with midterms, you need to get in there and start talking to people before you realize. What type of tenant has what budget for your type of property, right? It's not as cut and dry as a short term rental where you've got average daily rates and you've got all of this data to pull because.
It's not just vacationers, right? You have insurance claims, you have families, you have executives, you've got interns, you've got the traveling medical professionals, and all these people's budgets are all over the place. So it's like you really you're not gonna know the temperature of the water until you get in there and start swimming.
So I like that you're doing and that. And that you're not just saying, okay, you were approved for 5,000. I'm just gonna charge 5,000 now. But you're matching that kind of with your integrity and the value of your property and knowing okay, what is a fair market value for my rental?
I think this is, I think everything you're saying there is very good. And just to encourage everybody. Especially on, on furnish binder, it's very easy to change things. You guys, it's so easy, but you can't change anything if you don't start. You have to get in there, put a price up, see how it does, right?
And then you can flex it as much as you want, as much as you want, but you're providing this value and this service and that holds some weight. I have a tip I wanna add that we all have these little quirky things that we do for our midterm rental businesses, but you don't always think about communicating them with others.
And so this is something I haven't talked about on the show before, is the idea that once a booking comes in for a specific property, it's not okay, now I can sit back. Chill for a little bit because this one's booked for three months. It's more, let me go ahead and plan ahead for the next one. So as soon as you get a booking, they pay those first move in fees to secure the property.
Now what's my next the furnish funder calendar in its current form is very simple. All you have to do is put your next availability date. So I think, okay, they're gonna be with me three months. They have a 90 day contract, or their remodel is. Supposed to be complete by this date, so I'm gonna put that date as my next availability.
I'm gonna leave it live, and now I'm gonna do exactly what Bailey's doing is rather than whatever price I had it at, I can set it a couple hundred higher. Because it's so far out. And now if someone wants to have that conversation ahead of time, now you know what your next bar is to reach.
So I'm totally with you there because that's exactly what I do is, and because midterm rentals aren't straightforward with the data, you don't all have all that data like you do on the short-term rental side. When you change pricing, it can actually largely be affected on the Furnished Finder map.
'cause other people will then be encouraged, oh, here's some gaps. I'm gonna change my pricing too. And one of my neighborhoods has five to seven properties on the same street, and I own two of them. So if I increase my pricing because I'm booked, then that encourages them to try to get more for their properties as well.
But like you're saying, not to be unrealistic in your market and not to do it just because what's the highest dollar that you can get? It's to really meet those different avatars in your market. And there's so many variety of traveler types on Furnished Finder. So unless anybody wants to add something, we'll go to that next.
Is there something you'd like to add, Bailey? No. I just, one more thing too, just another example of how and just another thing that just came to mind that Katie mentioned is another way that I learned of just knowing the value of the property is I got an inquiry on my property that wasn't available and that they were begging for it to be available.
So I was like, unfortunately it's already booked. They inquired on a different property of mine that was larger, and they said and it was much more money. It's, it wa the, it wasn't the right avatar that we were targeting, but there was nothing available. So she said, Hey, I'm willing to go up to this price.
And it was like a couple hundred dollars more than I would even think about for my property. So just like different ways of knowing that people are willing to pay more, but then also with that, and we talk about not being greedy and stuff. I made the mistake of. Making my price too low and I wouldn't say, I wouldn't even say it was a mistake because I did it on purpose just to get the ball rolling.
And it was the first time I rent out this property. So it wasn't a mistake by any means. But the lesson that I learned from it was the, there were a couple. The guest wasn't needy. Yeah, they were a little bit needy and they wanted me to fix things and not, sorry, not fix things, do things that were extra, like the property was totally fine.
There were some things that like one of the water faucets or whatever needed to be replaced, that was legit. Then there were some other things that were like, nice to haves, but totally not required by me, and I did it for her anyways because I was just like, why not? But my lesson that I learned there was.
If I'm gonna go above and beyond as a host, regardless, I should be able to charge a price that reflects that because if I just charge a super low rate. And then I go above and beyond. Yeah. Then I'm shoot myself in the foot. But if I just charge Yeah. A price that's fair for everybody and allows me to be a great host and even more, then it just makes more financial sense as well.
So that's just something I learned too. And also, like I, I don't feel bad necessarily charging more for my properties because I know that I'm gonna go. Gonna provide a premium service. Yeah, I this is, we don't talk about pricing much, so this is gonna be really helpful for a lot of people even though it's a longer section on pricing.
And so the last thing I wanna add that is very valuable is when you set your rate on furnish find. You're still communicating with tenant leads. So when you have a rate, like one of mine I have at 3,200 right now when I know I can get 29 50, but I have it at 3,200. And so when I see those tenant leads come in and they say they're.
Budget is from 2,400 to 2,800. Maybe sometimes I won't even mention it, but depending on, how close we are to the bookings, whether it's a longer stay, if they're gonna be there more like six months or a year, they'll say, Hey, I see the top end of your budget is 28. I can come down to that for you.
And it can be a win-win for both of us. So that's the cool thing about tenant leads is you can see and have those conversations just like we're talking about. All right. Reaching your guest avatar sometimes can be a make or a break for your business. So what are some marketing tips you have for other midterm rental hosts out there on, how do they know what their ideal guest is?
'cause a lot of people don't even know where to start. And how do you market to that guest once you figure it out? For sure. So the main piece here, I'd say it comes down to two things. One, property size. And then two amenities. So as far as property size goes, like I, I hear people who are like, Hey, I had this five bedroom, three bath house.
Should I rent this out to traveling nurses? And I'm not saying you can't because you could rent it by the room and that's totally fine, but you have to understand that's gonna be the strategy, like renting it by the room. Oh, I think a lot of people come into it a little. More, I guess blindly and not understanding that, like for example, a traveling nurse, from my experience, they typically only need one bedroom.
And a lot of the times people are coming solo, sometimes they're coming with the spouse. So could they take a two bedroom? Absolutely. But all the inquiries I've gotten have been for people who are just looking for a one bedroom place. So for me. One bedroom properties is for me, travel, travel nurse central.
And then on top of it, it goes into what do these travel nurses want amenity wise. So from there you can also just look at the comps and see this is another way to charge premiums, but what amenities do your guest avatar do your competition have, and what do they not have? For example, washer and dryer in unit.
That's like a super huge, simple one that yeah it's so important to have, and you'll see people who have it who have listings without a washer and dryer in unit. And those are typically the listings that are either way less, they're charging way less money because. It's a huge deal to not have a washer and dryer in your unit, but that's like a simple thing that you could do to charge a premium and also just have as a standard for your units.
And then on the flip side is just, again, going back to the property size, is knowing, okay, if you're gonna target insurance claims and families relocate and stuff like that the bigger the property, the better. If you go for a one bedroom property. And you try to cater that towards an insurance claim, again, it doesn't mean you're not gonna ever get one, it just you're, it's like the 80 20 rule, right?
But probably even more like 90 10 for that situation. Those families are looking for larger houses. So knowing right off the bat, like what size property, 50, these different demographics and really I would say for me so far, traveling nurses. The insurance claims families, relocating and construction crews are kinda the four demographics that I've had experience with.
And I'm excited for this midterm rental conference because I'm sure there's gonna be more niches and more demographics that I learn about. And maybe that will help me as well say, okay, for a one bed, one bath property. This is also who it caters to. And then you have multiple avatars for different size properties.
It's always changing, right? The tenant type and the demand is always changing in midterm rentals. And I also wanna say that if you have any of these amenities, make sure that you check them in your Furnished Finder listing because a lot of these, you, the tenant can, or the traveler can actually search and they can mark that they're specifically looking for specific amenities when they are searching.
So just. A hot tip coming in for everybody there. They can filter on the app with like things such as king beds only, or things like that. There's like good filters that you can figure out, if that's what you want, you can dig in deeper. I'm gonna lean in a little bit to that washer dryer conversation because it's like.
You can guess what your avatar needs, but just as we're saying, like so many times on this show, you really have to just jump in to figure it. Figure it out. And so most of ours have built-in washer dryers, but I have two backyard cottages that don't have washer dryers. And you know what the Ben.
Or dishwashers. And you know what the benefit is? It's an entire unit all to themselves at a low price. Where to get the lower prices, a lot of times you have to share a space or rent a room. And so it's like there's so many different ways you can navigate what your avatar is. And it's if you think it's one.
You can lean into it, but don't isolate your potential leads like some people. And if this is your style, go for it. No, whatever works best for you. But some people will lean and say, medical house only. What about relocations? And it's it's so crazy once you get into your midterm rental markets.
How many different reasons people are coming to an area. Like we've got a ton of people coming for electrical work right now in one of our cities like Solar Farm, they're building a solar farm. Tesla and Samsung are building like crazy in the Austin area. So you'll see a lot of requests for Samsung employees or Tesla employees.
So it's, there's always tons of reasons why people are coming to the area. We're down to our last two questions, and I think we got about five minutes, so we'll knock 'em out real quickly, Katie, I'm gonna let you take lead on the out of state management tips. Yeah, so give us just some quick hitters on some out of state management tips because I know some of your properties are out of state and sometimes I can feel a little bit intimidating for people, but it doesn't have to be totally biggest thing.
A couple tips. Number one, you gotta have a good team. That team sounds fancy, like you at least need one absolute rockstar. The more rock stars, the better. But if you have one rockstar, they can completely make or break your ability to operate a property remotely. So that's the first one.
The second thing is I use Walmart Plus to help me so much. So it's kinda like Amazon Prime, except it comes faster than Amazon. It can come within two hours usually. And that's helped me a ton of times in situations where, let's say the heat's not working and it's 8:00 PM or 7:00 PM and it's I gotta order some heaters from Walmart.
That, that's coming clutch several too many times. But I would say that's another huge tip. Yeah, tho those are kinda my two, like two big ones I'd say. And finding that lead person on your team, where have you found is the best place that you find? Is it from your agent or is it from TaskRabbit?
Or where do you find your people? Yeah I found a lot of good people from my real estate agent asking her like, Hey, who do you recommend for our contractor? Who do you recommend for this? And then another thing that I've done is a lot of times I found really good cleaners who also double as my runners and stuff.
So the way that I'll do that is I'll just basically go on Google typically. I'll just start calling the cleaners. I'll ask 'em if they have Airbnb experience and you can tell pretty fast. And just from talking to somebody, if they're willing to go above and beyond and do what we need as Airbnb hosts.
Some cleaners are like, I only clean properties if you want me to do anything for you. No. Of course we pay 'em for it, but they're like we don't do that. We only clean. So those people I don't really work with, but those people who are like, yeah, I clean Airbnbs and even sometimes I do extra tasks, I'm like, you're the one right there.
Yeah, for sure. I love that. A good team is so important. And a good cleaner is so important. And I know you, 'cause all of my midterm rentals are out of state as well and we've had several times where I'm like. The supply bin is out of toilet paper. I'm like, okay, can you go buy some I'll keep paying you for your time, but can you just go buy some and the right, if you get the right people on your team, like they will and that's so clutch.
Alright, last question for you Bailey. I wanna give you the opportunity to. Let everybody know the content that you provide that's helpful for anybody interested in midterm rentals or investing in general, how to connect with you, what value you can offer back. So yeah, let us know or share that with our listeners because I know that you have such great insights and information that you share on your own channels as well.
Yeah, totally. Thanks. So I like the biggest place where I'm dropping crazy information is on YouTube. A lot of it's like sharing my screen and just walking through, like real stuff. That's was, that's what was most helpful for me in every facet of real estate that I've dove into from the long-term rentals to midterm rentals, short-term rentals, stuff like that.
So that's what I'm doing, giving backside of just a lot of documenting. I actually did a call with a inquiry from Furnished Finder. It was like a lot of bleeping out and a lot of I had to cross a lot of things out, but it was just like cool to. Show the actual process. Like literally from the second my phone got notification, I hit the record button and started showing calling.
So that was cool. So a lot of stuff like that, that on the channel. And then Instagram I share some of that as well. What are your channels so we can make sure and they can look it up. What's the name of your YouTube channel? YouTube. I think it's just my name to be honest. You can just look up Bailey Kramer.
I think that's it. And then on Instagram it, you can probably just look up my name too, but it's the Bailey Kramer. Someone has Bailey Kramer just without any of the special spaces, so I need to buy it off of them or something. But for now it's just the underscore Bailey Grammar. Got it.
If we will also have it in the show notes as well. So if you'd like to connect with Bailey or hear more of a story, feel free to give him a call on his Furnished Finder listing or look up his website. It'll all be in the show notes. We appreciate you being here with us today. Tons of great tips. This was a great episode for you to share with your friends that are looking to either get started on Furnished Finder or already have a Furnished Finder account.
And we just appreciate y'all so much. If you're loving our show, please don't forget to subscribe or comment and we'd love your five star reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Have a great day everyone. We'll see you next week.