In the world of real estate investment, finding niche markets that offer strong returns and stability is a constant quest. If you're a landlord or an aspiring real estate investor, you might want to keep your eyes on an emerging trend that’s hitting a home run in the industry: monthly rentals for professional athletes.
The rise of monthly rentals
Monthly rentals have carved a significant niche in the rental market, providing a sweet spot between short-term stays and long-term leases. Catering to tenants who need a place for months at a time with flexible lease terms, monthly rentals are gaining popularity among business travelers and professional athletes.
Why professional athletes choose monthly rentals
Athletes are often on the move, with professional commitments requiring them to relocate periodically during the season. Typically, their stays range from four to six months. Monthly rentals fit perfectly into this lifestyle by offering fully furnished housing with flexible lease terms. The security of having utilities included in a consolidated rental agreement is an added attraction.
Enter Clubbie: Fulfilling a unique housing need
Jordan Meltzer, Co-Founder/Owner of Clubbie, recognized this unique need when working as an intern at a sports agency between 2016 and 2018. This inspired the creation of Clubbie, a service that specializes in finding fully furnished monthly (mid-term) housing for professional athletes. Clubbie has successfully housed over 1,000 athletes and is increasingly relying on platforms like Furnished Finder (opens in new tab) to connect with reliable landlords.
What makes monthly rentals so attractive to investors?
Consistent Demand: Cities with sports franchises see a consistent influx of athletes needing temporary housing, especially during training seasons. Areas like Phoenix, Scottsdale, and parts of Florida are particularly hot markets.
Favorable Lease Terms: Offering leases with flexible terms, such as a standard 30-day notice period for termination, appeals to athletes who may face unexpected trades or injuries.
Lower Turnover Costs: Compared to short-term rentals, rentals like furnished apartments see fewer turnovers, reducing maintenance and cleaning costs.
Relationship Building: monthly rentals provide the opportunity for landlords to build longer-lasting relationships with their tenants, enhancing trust and communication.
Tips for landlords: how to attract professional athletes
Responsive Communication: Being responsive can make or break a deal when athletes or agencies like Clubbie are working on tight deadlines.
Updated Listings: Ensure your property listings have current photos, accurate pricing, and clear availability to stand out.
Flexible Lease Options: Understanding the need for early termination clauses helps mitigate potential vacancies caused by athletes' unpredictable schedules.
Utilize Reliable Platforms: Listing your property on platforms such as Furnished Finder (opens in new tab) can connect you directly with this target market.
Final thoughts: embrace the opportunity
As monthly rentals continue to gain traction in the real estate market, landlords and investors alike are presented with a profitable opportunity. By tailoring rentals to accommodate business travelers and professional athletes, you can expand your portfolio's appeal and increase occupancy rates. The positive experiences of athletes and the robust service provided by companies like Clubbie reflect a promising future for this segment of the rental industry.
To dive deeper into how you can maximize your monthly rental investments, tune into Furnished Finder’s podcast, Landlord Diaries, to catch episode 149 (opens in new tab) featuring Jordan Meltzer, Co-Founder/Owner of Clubbie. Learn about how monthly rentals are revolutionizing housing solutions for athletes and how this trend could benefit your property investment strategy.
Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, monthly rentals for professional athletes offer a compelling option in the diverse landscape of real estate investing. If your in the right markets, now is the time to get in the game!
Episode 149 Transcript
We have a repeat client that we've worked with who's a pitcher on the Cincinnati Red. It's really nice family. We'll work with a husband who's the player, but we also work directly with a wife. we're actually housed them last year, this year. And then also this year in Cincinnati, they're at another one of our properties that we found through a landlord.
And so the story is, you know, and this is the differentiation and it has to do with Furnished Finder, but it also just has to do with the type of people that are on your platform. So we had a retired fireman that we ended up housing our client for about a 60 day stay during spring training. And, the landlord's, a retired fireman and the family that we're housing has a really young baby girl.
And I get a photo halfway through the stay of, you know, the baby girl with her mom and, and the athlete, her dad at the fire station riding a firetruck with the landlord at the property. And it's just that level of taking that extra step and, you know, not everybody needs to be a retired fireman and do something like that, but like that kind of level of, personal care and like relationship, you know, is just, it's just awesome and you're just not gonna get that like anywhere else.
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. Imagine finding furnished housing for a pro athlete in under 48 hours. That's exactly what Jordan Meltzer Co-Founder/Owner of Clubbie does. With over 1000 athletes served and more than 50 placed in furnished finder listings. Just this year, Jordan shares how midterm rentals are becoming the.
Go-to solution for teams, agencies, and players. If you're a landlord looking to attract reliable, repeat seasonal guests, this episode will show you how to get in the game. So Jordan, thanks for being here with us today. what inspired you to start Clubbie? Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it. First and foremost, being on the podcast today.
Thank you so much. Yeah, it really all started, you know, back. During my intern days working for a sports agency from 2016 to 2018, the agency represented about a hundred to 200 players and I was tasked with finding housing for all the players, or at least a good bulk amount of them.
And right then and there, I saw the need for a company that really specialized in midterm, fully furnished housing, Dealing with sites like Airbnb, going through realtors talking to, generic corporate housing companies. a lot of them existed and maybe they worked with professional athletes, but there was no business that all they did was midterm, fully furnished rentals for professional athletes.
And when we first started out where thought was, Hey, we'll do it for mostly minor league baseball players. And we really quickly grew into working with professional MLB baseball players at the big league level. Tons of guys across pro ball. And now we've been actually fortunate enough to start working in other leagues adjacent to that, like the NHL, the A HL, the MLS, the NFL.
And really what we wake up and brush our teeth to do every single day is find fully furnished midterm housing with utilities included, and most importantly, on flexible lease terms for our professional athlete clients. So tell us why an athlete might need monthly rental housing.
This is gonna feel very obvious to some people, and to some people it might not feel so obvious. So let us know kind of Yes. Why, why does that need exist? Yeah, it's really twofold. I mean, if you think about your favorite professional athlete, they're not living in the city that you root for. 12 months outta the year, at least on the vast majority of times, they're not doing that.
The typical length of stay for a professional athlete if they don't get traded or they don't get hurt, or they don't get released, or they don't get waived, is about four to six months. works really well with midterm rentals, similar to something like a traveling nurse, because typically what we look for in our stays is stuff that's four to six months in terms of lease duration, but then the flexibility with something like a 30 day notice to vacate.
Some type of early termination agreement that we can come to with the landlord that we're working with so that it protects the athlete in the situation where, as I mentioned, they get traded, they get promoted or demoted to a different team, they get hurt. In some cases, they actually just get released from the organization.
So it's that combination of fully furnished utilities all in one on a flexible lease term. That's why they like to use Clubbie and ultimately why I like to work with so many different landlords that I find. On sites like Furnace Finder and other platforms as well that we use. Yeah, let's dig into that a little deeper.
I love from your website the statement, focus on the game, not housing, right? Like you're taking care of that and this is your niche. So being able to find that housing is important and Furnished Finder one of those platforms that helps you be able to find reliable, housing. For your professional athletes.
So, and you've been searching, I think since 2020, since you founded, uh, Clubbie. So how has Furnish Funder been a reliable source for Clubbie? Yeah, I mean, it's just another great platform that ultimately is gonna connect us directly to these great landlords, owners of midterm rentals that are a perfect fit for what we're doing.
And so the best analogy to think about in the world that I work in is my goal for our clients is to find essentially a needle in a haystack. And what I mean by that is a player might come to us and say, I'm looking for a rental in Los Angeles, or I'm looking for a rental in Arizona, or Phoenix, I should say.
But hey, a one bedroom for one player is different than a three bedroom for another. And so what is really nice in terms of working with landlords directly is I can essentially cater options that are in the neighborhood that they want, in the price point that they want. That have the amenities that they're looking for.
Maybe I have a player that's looking for, a view or I have another player that only wants a single story house or wants a yard for their small dog or their large dog. you name it, we probably have gotten a request, over the years with a specific amenity or something that a player's looking for.
So that type of ability to work with landlords directly and build those relationships with those folks and find exactly what our players are looking for. Is what's makes it so much differentiating than simply working with all the other providers that we might have through corporate housing companies, realtors that we might know, property managers maybe that we might know.
Being able to have that needle in a haystack kind of feel where I can find exactly what I'm looking for. And look, if I can't find exactly what I'm looking for, maybe I can check off four of the five boxes that My client wants. And so that's what I love so much about it and why I like working with so many landlords across the country for, our client's midterm housing needs.
Well, I think you've kicked us off Great. For our first, conversation in, you know, what does Clubbie and other organizations like Clubbie look for in a property? So you've already said each athlete's need is going to be different. So what are some of those non-negotiables, that Clubbie is looking for when placing athletes?
One, I wouldn't call it a non-negotiable, but, you know, 99.9% of our athletes are not looking for rooms in a house. They're looking for a full unit. So that's just, you know, renting a room out to somebody is a fit for certain personas. It's just not really a fit for a lot of the athletes that are working with, even some of the athletes that are on minor leagues, teams that are not making a ton of money.
I just, I haven't had a player say, Hey, I want to rent a one bedroom in a house. That's one piece. The, the other aspect that is controllable to maybe a property manager is just understanding the notice to vacate language and understanding why we would need a flexible early termination. there's certain protections that our athletes are provided, reimbursements in the case of trades, et cetera.
but we have a pretty much a complete, we won't work with a property essentially if there's no early termination option on the lease. We just will have to work with another property that understands that. Because ultimately what could happen is we sign a six month lease with a property and then 30 days into the state something happens.
And again, to no fault of the player themselves, you know, it's outta their control if they get traded or they get hurt, or things along those lines. And we never want to have a situation where we sign a fully guaranteed lease for the full term of the stay only to get out of it and then have some type of friction with our clients.
So that's a first non-starter. Then really outside of that, in terms of what we're looking for is a lot of the same things anybody would be looking for. We're looking for updated photos, we're looking for updated and accurate pricing. And probably the hardest thing is updated pricing and availability.
Making sure we understand if your property is showing as available for specific dates, is it actually available? And then I guess last and not least is responsiveness, right? So a lot of times we're working in that 72 hour window where we're gonna submit. Requests out where we'll find out which options are available.
If you're not actively checking quickly, you'll probably miss the boat on the proposal that you send us, and we'll have already provided three to five options to our client to review. I love what you said there, Jordan. Reaffirming the best practices on furnished miner and honestly best practices as a midterm rental or monthly rental landlord in general. early termination possibility scares a lot of landlords, right? Like, what if my tenant signs a three month lease and then they have to back out, right?
And this can happen with travel nurses too. Contracts get canceled, needs of facilities change, and it can feel all or nothing to a property manager or property owner. I would encourage everybody to remember that, as a part of your lease, an early lease termination clause is very standard.
we recommend that every single lease have it, and it's essentially answering that question, what's what happens if I need to end the lease early? It's pretty standard practice to have a 30 day out. and I think it would be good to hear from you, Jordan, if. Like, you know, a lot of these athletes are okay with a 30 day out.
You can, you can give more flexibility or less, and then you can add layers of protection. I mean, we have providers that we work with. I think the most flexible I've ever seen is 15 day or 14 day notice of ak, a lot of corporates that corporate rentals that have what we call core inventory.
So they might rent 10 units in a building and they're just flipping it all day long. A lot of time they have long-term leases. A lot of those folks will have, in some cases, 14 or 15 day notice to vacate. The other thing that we, will sometimes agree to is like a 30 day notice to vacate with a one month early termination penalty.
So essentially, effectively two months, rent, but it's really staying away from like those, you know. Full guaranteed length of stay and look, if you have a property and it's just not feasible for you to have an early opt-out, maybe it's a pretty expensive property and you are very seasonal. Maybe during summer months, it's like, Hey, I make 95% of my money or 75% of my, my revenue between the months of April through October.
That's my high season, and I can't afford to do that. That's okay. That might just not be a fit for you. But I would say if that's not the case, if it's not necessarily super seasonal and you wanna work with, a company like ours that's, it's just kind of something that we absolutely need and we find 90% of the time it's not, it's really not an issue.
Yeah. It's something that, the folks have dealt with. and that's why we love midterm rentals so much because it's kind of in that DNA good luck if you go to Zillow or Redfin and try to convince an unfurnished. You know what we call a new setup where we have to install furniture, set up all the utilities, and we do that, especially when there's not inventory, but it's really difficult.
I, in that case, I'm making 10 phone calls and getting two yeses. We'll do a midterm lease. So it's something that's important to us for sure. Speaking of inventory, is there any hot markets that you need more inventory right now or over the last year that landlords should start looking into?
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some of the markets that are like hottest for us, where we do a ton of business every year is gonna be during spring training in Phoenix, specifically all across Phoenix, Scottsdale, the west side of Phoenix and Glendale. Surprise. Goodyear all the way over to Mesa. So that kind of greater Phoenix area. We do, 30 to 40 placements a year, maybe even more than that across all of our partners, in all of our, properties and then also across Florida.
So you think like Clearwater, Tampa. St. Pete, all the way down to like Jupiter, Florida's a very challenging market for midterm rentals in the early months of the year. It's just incredibly high season there. and there's, I believe, a 13.5% short-term rental tax that gets charged. So things typically stack up, but those markets are big for us.
And then we frankly do a lot of placements in kind of the middle America cities where, you know, Cleveland, Cincinnati. Pittsburgh, Kansas City. We done a ton of placements this year in Summerland, Las Vegas. So it's really just all over the place for what we, what we have a need for. I'm gonna give a shout out to Round Rock Express in, in, Austin, Texas too.
I've seen a handful of leads come in for pro athletes Katie, what did you wanna add? I was just gonna say, every time I think Clubbie, I think baseball. So what percentage of your clients Are some sort of, you know, minor league or major league or some sort of baseball player?
Yeah, I'm working to change that. we love working with baseball players and it's where we kind of got our start, but we're really trying to. Expand into some of the other sports that we've been fortunate enough to work with. I would say, since we started Clubbie, at least 85 to 90% of the leases we've done have been major in minor league baseball players.
And then the other 15% are split across leagues like the NHL, the A HL. The MLS we love working with MLS players is awesome. NFL, the only league we actually have in place a single athlete ad in is the NBA. And a lot of that comes down to 15 players on a roster. These players are making millions of dollars from the get.
It's a very exclusive league and a lot of times they're buying immediately and if not, they're making enough money that like a luxury really high-end realtor will work with them on a rental. 'cause you have to remember the reason why athletes like to work with me and with Clubbie is. They are professional athletes, but realtors for the most part, they don't love to do rentals because of the margins that you get as a realtor on doing rentals.
And they especially don't wanna do midterm furnished rentals. Some of them do, but I'm just speaking in the generalization. I mean, that's why we've been able to find a really good niche with the athletes that we work in. And yeah, just this morning we actually signed a, a lease in, San Jose for one of our a HL clients with a, with a local landlord.
expanding that into other sports is absolutely what we're, what we're trying to do. Nice. Well, I'd love to hear, if you have any stories or details of how a landlord can stand out in that conversation with you or in how they host their property. Yeah. As I was alluding to before, the biggest thing is accurate pricing and availability and updated photos.
You know, make sure that the photos of your listing. Are what it's represented to be. You have to remember what we do is sight unseen so our clients aren't in the city and then going and touring properties. Most of the time that's not, that's not happening most of the time. Our athletes are making a decision on the properties that we're sending to them based off of the photos and the details that we have from our landlords.
And so if a landlord has two photos and they're in low quality, I would just won't even send it, even if the pricing and the availability works, and I think it could be a fit. So if you have updated photos, you have updated pricing and availability, you have a ton of details of what we can expect, and you are very responsive.
When we reach out to you, you are going to have a great opportunity to win business with us. we've been successful in what we've done based off how we treat people. When stays work out, or even probably more importantly, when stays don't work out, having respect for the landlords. 'cause things happen.
I mean, we do enough stays that, you know, there's issues that arise, there's things that break. There's maybe things that weren't expected, just being respectful and having like, just understand like, we're all trying to do work together on this. You know, I'm making a profit definitely on the business that I'm doing.
Our landlords are making hopefully, a profit on what they're doing because. Why else would they be doing it? So we're ultimately here to try to, you know, serve these athletes the best we can, best way we can, while also running a business. And that kind of like cordial respect for each other is what we really do.
And to be completely honest with you, I would say we've had nothing but 90 to 95% great relationships with anybody that we come across. We've had a handful of situations. Where, you know, we signed a lease with somebody last year in Florida, for example, and then they just essentially canceled the lease on us before the move in because they got a better deal somewhere else.
Not because, oh no. Of a crazy situation, but we've, we've had a handful of situations like that. We've had a handful of situations where people are trying to get, landlords might be trying to get all money up front for a stay when it's like a 90 day stay plus a security deposit and just kind of understanding that at the end of the day.
Even regardless if I can afford to do it, I have to go back to my client and say, Hey, it's first month's rent, last month's rent and security deposit. It's $8,000 a month, so it's $24,000. That's gonna make it really tough. So again, that doesn't happen for the vast majority of stays, the vast majority of stays, people are very understanding.
They do prorated rents, they do security deposit, duet signing, plus a cleaning fee. They work with us in terms of, you know, getting paid seven days prior to move in and then we pay our bills on time. So just, you know, understanding that, that component of it is huge. Just being a, just being a, a solid person is, goes like 90% of the way.
Yeah, it's actually really encouraging because everything you're saying is things that we drive home all the time. Right? And it's nothing special. It's nothing that it's like, oh, you need to have, X, Y, and Z, that only 5% of the landlords on Furnished Finder or anywhere have, in order to be a candidate for one of our athletes.
you need to have an honest relationship. You need to have reasonable policies. You need to have a good early lease termination clause or just a process for that. You need to have good photos, you need to be responsive. I was talking to one landlord once and we were talking about responsiveness and they were like, yeah, I try to respond to every direct message or inquiry.
I get like a direct inquiry within two to three days. Oftentimes too late, right? it's replying quickly and thoroughly, right? So it really is like going back to the basics even when you're working with someone who's, you know, as distinguished as.
A professional athlete, right? it's just about these basics. So I think that's just, if you are in a point in your business where you don't have professional photos, you haven't honed in your response time or you know your listing details, leave something to the imagination. Take some time, and it's not gonna take you long.
But get those things worked out, it's gonna pay in dividends because otherwise people are gonna scroll right past your property and you're not gonna catch that attention as much. And, one other thing that is probably the most important thing, and it has to do with being on your platform or frankly in the world I live in, is just don't get discouraged.
And what I mean by that is you have to remember that my business here at Clubbie, we get thousands of housing requests per year. And I'm not housing thousands of leases. It's called full funnel conversion. If you come from the world of software sales. Find out, you know, the full funnel conversion, you might get a hundred leads and you end up accommodating 15 or 20 of the athletes.
That's just the way it works. They're coming to us, they're gonna Airbnb, they might be going to a site directly, they might be working with a realtor. And I can't ever get discouraged when I provide great proposals that meet somebody's budget that are in the area that they want to be, that are checked every single box, and then they just go to another property that they found themselves.
How that relates to your site is, Hey, look, if you are responding to messages and you haven't gotten anything, the bookings aren't coming in, don't get discouraged, Maybe use it as an opportunity to see how you can improve your listing. Maybe you do have to lower your price.
Maybe your pricing is good, but you need to update your photos. Maybe you need to have better descriptions. Or maybe you just need to get lucky, or get not unlucky. And all that means is if you continue to get requests from us or from anybody, my main thing I would say is just continue to be responsive.
Continue to let them know the details of what your reservation is, get the reservation booked. And then the one thing that I think is actually a great opportunity for a lot of your landlords is, 90% of the listings that we ever come across have zero reviews on your site. I would think that if you got a review based off the algorithm, it might drive you up the page a little bit.
So take that extra step if the stay is going well, to prompt your client to leave your review directly on your guys' side, on furnish binder, like on your listing. Get that because that's gonna differentiate yourself. it also helps folks that are coming to the site for the first time.
To know that you're legit, what you guys do a really good job of is the ID verification we have yet to come across a listing where it's, I would argue ever, and definitely not within the last 12 months where, or maybe one in the last 12 months, which we reported, which was the listing that we thought was fake.
It just doesn't happen. so getting those reviews and letting people know that you exist and you're legit is great. just don't get discouraged. keep. Working and eventually you're gonna get a great tenant in your unit. These are all great points. I hope you're listening because Jordan is giving so many great takeaways of how you should think through your landlording, maybe tweak some things, tweak your marketing, if you don't have those reviews.
Get out there. You can even ask your past guests, to leave your review. So make sure your relationship, throughout the stay is good enough that you know whether you can ask them for a five star review or not. Get out there. Let's make some changes. thanks for everything you're sharing so far, Jordan.
I think you have a great story of how landlords can stand out. Did, you, personally? Yeah. So I won't name names just 'cause I haven't gotten approvals from many of our clients, but we have a repeat client that we've worked with who's a pitcher on the Cincinnati Reds, really nice family.
We work with a husband who's the player, but we also work directly with a wife. and we're actually housed them last year, this year. And then also this year in Cincinnati, they're at another one of our properties, that we found through a landlord. The story is, you know, and this is the differentiation and it has to do with Furnished Finder, but it also just has to do with the type of people that are on your platform.
So we had a retired firemen that we ended up housing our client for about a 60 day stay during spring training. And the landlords, a retired fireman and the family that we're housing has a really young baby girl. I get a photo halfway through the stay of, you know, the baby girl with her mom and, and the athlete, her dad at the fire station riding a fire truck with the landlord at the property.
and it's just that level of taking that extra step and, you know, not everybody needs to be a retired fireman and do something like that, but like that kind of level of. Personal care and like relationship, you know, is just, it's just awesome and you're just not gonna get that like anywhere else. And you know, we've been fortunate to come across so many different landlords.
You know, we have one, for example, in LA that's like a volcano enthusiast. So if a volcano erupts in Madagascar, there's probably no volcanoes in Madagascar, but she's on CNN talking about it. But she's also a landlord that I'm working with. It's just that kind of stuff is just kind of cool.
Bonus points of just coming across all these people that are awesome, many of which might only just own one rental, right? And they just have a full-time job doing something. Or they might own two rentals, but they're just good people and they have these kind of cool stories on what they do.
And you know, bottom line, they're just like, really? They're easy to work with. If there's a problem that happens, they're quick to like, fix a maintenance issue. They're quick to get us our lease documentation when we need it. They're open to amendments. Like, if, you know Clinton, who's not on this podcast, who I have to give a ton of credit to, is my, my co-founder here and handles all of our leases.
He's currently on his honeymoon right now in Europe. So I've been stepping in from him on that front. But sometimes he has like a small amendments that he does on like what our leases are and we're not looking for the world, but there's just certain things. So just being quick to be able to like edit your lease if it's something that, you know, we're never asking for the world on anything.
Just doing stuff like that is huge. But yeah, those stories like that, I mean, are just so cool in working with local landlords. And why? I just love, you know, to work with them directly and definitely on a platform like yours. Midterm rentals are so relationship oriented. Short-term rentals, it's like transactional, right?
It's like, get 'em in, get 'em out, make sure there's no blips, turn it over, go to the next, how high can your occupancy, like, it's very like high paced, high trans. Like it's, it's just, it's very transactional. Long-term rentals is like, okay, you get someone in there and you're like. I hope I don't hear from you for a very long time.
You're like, and monthly rentals. It really feels like you get to know these people and you get to know. What they're there for. And you get to know how you can serve them. at one of our rentals recently, we had the fridge go out and the fridge going out is the worst because you just know that everything inside that fridge, unless the tenant caught it really quickly, it's all garbage.
Yeah. everything is garbage. and it just stinks and there's nothing much I can do as a landlord about that. But what I can do is get you a new fridge, ASAP and we got them a new fridge within 48 hours and these tenants were blown away. They were like our last rental, something happened and it took two or three weeks to get something.
it was some sort of a mechanical air conditioning or water heater or something and it was like, no, like this needs to, you treat them as if it's. Someone you really care about and someone that you want to have a fantastic experience and it's not always gonna be perfect. Things happen, maintenance things happen, but it's about how you treat that relationship.
Lemme say one point on that some of the best reviews we've ever gotten from clients is not when the state went perfectly. It's when the state actually something went wrong. And so for any landlord that's out there, my challenge to you, and this is how we look at it.
Is when something goes wrong, use it as an opportunity to show how you differentiate yourself from another landlord that's not gonna take that step. we work with decent margins at Clubbie. so in, a situation where like a fridge goes out or something like, you know, and we're not replacing the fridge, but maybe if we were working with a client, the landlord have to replace a fridge 'cause it's their property.
But we would send a client a $200 gift card to Vaughn's to pay for all that food from our end. Mm-hmm. Right out of our pocket. That level of when something goes wrong, they have been at another property where something went wrong and the landlord twiddled their thumbs for six weeks and never fixed the issue.
And you know, it built resentment and they leave a one star review, et cetera. But if something does go wrong and you step in there and you immediately solve that problem and go a step above like. For us, it's so important because, yeah, these players are living with each, literally. They don't physically live with each other, but what do you think they're doing in the clubhouse for six hours a day or eight hours a day, every single day?
So if you're doing wrong by them really quickly, it's gonna spread across the league. Man, these Clubbie guys, they suck. They never fix anything, yada, yada. But if you're doing right by them and they find a great stay, and if any goes wrong and they get you out of the lease. We have a ton of organic growth across teams from player to player, and we track it on our marketing channel.
How did you hear about Clubbie player athlete referral? And they don't even tell us who it is. Like, I called a guy a couple days ago and I just, when I talked to him on the phone, he said, Hey, you got referred by a player? He's like, oh, I just left the Tacoma AAA team.
And like literally half the clubhouse is like, you gotta use Clubbie. And that only happens because of what I'm talking about in terms of, yeah. When things go wrong, doing right, and hopefully things don't go wrong, and it's just a great stay from start to finish. But yeah, I just wanted to make that point.
and Furnished Finder experienced that type of growth too. And we still do right? From word of mouth. And it's because all of the landlords, all of you guys listening are amazing, right? And it is. It's what do you do when things, go wrong, right? If a fridge goes out, can you send. A cooler, right? Can you send some ice?
Can you send a $20 gift card to DoorDash or something? What can you do, even if it's a small thing, just to make the situation a little bit better? I think that's so huge and it just hones in on the relationships. So with relationships, I wanna ask you, Jordan, because as a landlord, It's not the most typical that Furnished Finder landlords are gonna hear from someone like yourself versus the tenant directly.
What should they be prepared for? What does that process look like? If I'm a landlord and you approach me and say, Hey, you know, I'm Jordan from Clubbie. I have athletes that I'm looking for housing for, how does this, how does this going to work? What should they expect from that process?
Yeah. So I mean, we try to keep it as simple as possible. when we're contacting properties, the first thing that we do when we reach out is not even tell them that we have a professional athletes, We literally just say, Hey, I have a client that's looking for a stay from this state to this state.
is your property available? It's listed on your website as available, and this is the price that's listed at. Is that the correct price? Is it available? And does that price include utilities? If the answer is yes. Then I say, okay, my name's Jordan. I work with professional athletes across the country. I have a client on this team that's looking to stay in this property from this state to this state.
I think it would be a fit for them to consider. all I need to know is your pricing and availability, and are those photos accurate for what, our client is looking for? The answer is yes. We will just add it to our presentation of about three to five listings to take a look at. We'll then send it over to our client to review.
Client goes to option number three, says I want to book that. We reach back out to the property and say, Hey, our client wants to book your stay from this date to this date. Do you approve of it? Yeah. Most of the time they say it's not a problem.
especially if there's like a termination fee. and then at that point all we're doing is creating a lease, having the landlord send us their lease. We club BLLC would be listed as the lease c the lease, or I think the lease. We see we're listed on the lease as we're leasing the property, and then the player or the family is the occupant, and then we just have a sublease.
And so people are like, well, what's the commission? There's no commission. Well, what are you charging me? Nothing. Like, that's why they love working with us. It's like we give you exactly what you're looking for. We're not asking for discounts. Unless a player's like, Hey, can you try to knock off a couple hundred bucks off the stay?
Which sometimes they do, and sometimes we get, but we pretty much never try to, I don't really go to people and try to negotiate. Like, I, I don't, that's just not, I'm not trying to save a couple hundred bucks and like, that's just, I don't like starting relationships off like that. But I appreciate when the price is, what the price is.
So if it's listed at 4,000 and then I call 'em on the phone and it's 5,500, it's like, well, I feel like you kind of. They switched me because now I have no margin on the deal and it's not gonna be a fit. but yeah, that's really the process. I mean, we had a lease that we signed this morning where, we got our sublease signed yesterday afternoon and last night we signed the master lease with the property.
the duet signing was 1500 bucks. and we paid the security deposit soon as we sign the lease. So the landlord's like, awesome. They pay their bills on time. we got our security deposit paid. So that's, I guess another thing is we we're never holding security deposits. We're always passing them over to the property.
and then we just, you know, we, we typically will just go by the terms of the landlord. So that's why in this case, I actually proposed to the landlord at signing. I'll give you first month's rent, security deposit, and the move out cleaning fee. And I actually kind of forgot that the state didn't start for like 45 days because I would've been so used to stay starting like 72 hours after I sign a lease.
And she's like, well, the lease doesn't actually start for like 45 days, so look, why don't we just do security deposit and then I'll deduct the cleaning fee like prior to move? And that's what we ended up doing. And the player loved that because when I sent him the lease, he texted me and he said, Hey, is it only the security deposit due at signing?
Yeah. And it's only 1500 bucks. It's not refundable. So if in this case it was not refundable in the event that he cancels, not refundable if he treats the unit right. so yeah, we just try to keep it as simple as possible. we pay our bills on time. That's most important.
It's never missing a payment or being late. We never do that. and. Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's super simple Now. I don't know if all the other corporates are as easy to work with as us. We try to be very easy to work with. but I would assume that for the most part, you know, companies are getting requests from their athletes.
They're scouring different platforms. they're looking at owner occupied, or sorry, owner owned properties like I call 'em landlord properties, like owned by like a mom and pop. And then they're also looking at corporate housing companies that do, frankly, a really good job. it's always a really good experience when you work with a corporate housing company because there's no variance.
And what I mean by that is if I'm working with a hundred landlords, 90% of them are gonna be really great and 10% of them are not gonna be so great. And there's gonna be variance between all their systems, how they collect payment when they want to collect payment. The corporates is like much more streamlined.
It's all pretty much the same exact thing, and there are flexible lease terms. The difference is the pricing you're gonna pay in Dallas, Texas. If you're staying with a corporate 150 bucks a night, or $160 or $175 a night for a one bedroom or a two bedroom apartment. A lot of the time where we can get deals directly with landlords for a fraction of that.
Still have margin in the deal for it to make sense for us, still stay within our client's budget. And like literally everybody's happy. The client's happy 'cause they got a great stay at a good price. I'm happy because I made money on the deal and the landlord's happy because they got occupancy. maybe they're housing an athlete they think is cool and frankly they're getting rent, and, getting their bills paid or getting their rent paid on time.
So it's like literally win, win, win. That's why it's been a good experience. Okay. So let's take a step back just for a second. If I'm a property owner, I'm really not gonna know any, my process isn't gonna change, right? whether I'm working with someone like you from Clubbie or with the tenant directly, except for the fact that.
Clubbie as a company is going to be the person on my lease. And then you are making money and profit by essentially serving as a concierge to the athlete. You're gonna mark my property up a little bit. You're gonna make the difference. it's pretty standard practice. To screen a tenant?
Is that something that if a landlord requests a screening that you guys can accommodate? Yeah. And my other question is maintenance requests, things like that. Move in instructions, move out instructions. Do those go through you? If I'm a landlord or do those go directly to the tenant? How does this kind of work with win?
It's a landlord. 'cause I feel like a lot of landlords are so used to working directly with the tenant. It's kinda like, oh, there's this other person here now. Like what? What do I do here? Right. Most of our athletes are, public figures to a degree. You can find out exactly who they are, what, what organization they work for.
So I'd say 80% of the time, maybe even more. Um, we haven't had a property like require a background screening 'cause we can show them who they are in the case that they do for compliance or whatever they need. We can, we can get it done. It's not really that difficult. It's typically sending over password protected like files on whatever they need in terms of rank social security, or.
Photo IDs, things like that so they can get that completed. So we've done that from time to time. So that's not an issue. Now regarding the instructions, what we do is corporate housing. So yeah, you're going to send all the move in instructions to us. You're gonna send out, move out instructions to us.
And then from the player's perspective, we're kind of like the all in one solution. So another reason why they like us is unlike working maybe with a realtor. Again, I'm not trying to dog realtors that do a really good job, but on rentals, a lot of times they find you the unit and then they get maybe a half month or a month or two months rent commission or whatever it is, and then it's like, okay, you're on your kind of your own.
We manage to stay from A to Z. They're paying their lease to us, so they're toilet stops working, they're reaching out to us, the lights don't work. They're reaching out to us. They have this issue, they're reaching out to us and we're communicating that with the property and making sure that the issues are resolved.
And the same thing happens with. Move in, move out instructions. Another thing that we always try to look for with landlords is, landlords that'll be, and we're respectful to them, but landlords that understand that our players might have a need to extend because of like the playoffs, for example. So a lot of times we'll have a conversation, um, with, um, a landlord say.
The player wants to sign a lease from April 15th, the start of the season through late September. What is like the notice period that I need to give you for an extension? Right, and that part It is what it is because sometimes our athletes, frankly, they do not know if they're gonna make the playoffs until the last day of the season.
And I can't come to a landlord and expect that they're gonna give me a one day notice to vacate. It's just not how it works. So a lot of times landlords are nice that like, Hey, you stayed with us for six months, we haven't had any issues with you. You pay your bills on time, so I'll be flexible. I'll give you a 15 day notice to extend at the end of the season.
And oh, by the way, it's not worth, we're just blind. We'll like look at the standings. We're like, there are three games up if they win this game they're in and we're gonna extend for another 15 or 30 days or whatever that may be. But yeah, that level of like what I do is twofold. I have to. Make sure my clients are happy, and also I don't wanna burn relationships with landlords and leave them with like a bad taste in their mouth.
And so it's twofold in terms of like, we literally treat our landlords like clients too. in the same way that we treat our clients. even though we're paying you rent, we wanna have a great relationship. Because maybe we'll use you in the future for somebody that's never worked with us, knows who the heck is Clubbie, what the heck is this real?
Well, Hey, why don't you talk to these five landlords that love us because we pay our bills on time, we're communicative, et cetera. So as a business owner, the main thing that drives business for me is leads, right? So clients that are coming to me and requesting housing. The way that we make our business work is really not by spending a lot of marketing dollars.
our market is very small, it's very niche. So if we spend a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, odds are for every a hundred dollars you spend $1, we'll actually go to an athlete. The only way our business makes sense is by getting essentially free leads, people that are finding out about us and requesting housing.
And I can't think of a better way as a landlord to get great midterm renters than to list my property on a site like Furnished Finder, if you are using the site correctly, like you are gonna fill your units, and again. We love working with a site like yours and all the different properties, that are on it and all the different owners that are on it.
So again, if I'm a landlord that's out there, I would absolutely be listing my property on a site like Furnished Finder, and it's a great experience working with you folks. We, you know, it's the core of our business is matching. Amazing tenants with amazing landlords and the fact that you are out there helping these athletes focus on what they do best and leaving the housing to you and you're out there communicating and making those relationships with our landlords, you know, it's such a great partnership.
It's such a great match. And, you know, I have yet to host. An athlete, but I have a really good friend who hosted a minor league baseball player in Des Moines, and she had nothing but the best experience and it's, you know, it's fun. It's fun to be a landlord and to host different kinds of kinds, right?
Yeah. So I would encourage everybody, make your listing shine. This is your chance to market yourself to not only tenants and travelers, but people like Jordan who are looking on behalf of travelers, right? Yeah. Amp up, you know, ramp up your communication game, your photos game. Be flexible with those early termination clauses and don't be thrown off if somebody contacts you.
That is not the tenant themselves. That's okay. There's a lot of people out there like Jordan, who are, who are working to place tenants. Sometimes they're placing travel nurses, sometimes they're placing families and you know, you might score and, and hear from Jordan, who's looking to place an athlete.
This was such a treat to get to talk to you. how can anybody get in touch with you if they have more questions or, or things to chat about? Yeah. The biggest thing is please follow us on our Instagram page. It's at Clubbie, that's at C-L-U-B-B-I-E. But yeah, find us on Clubbie on on Instagram at K Clubbie.
our website, is another great place that you can find us. You can send us an email and we look forward to working with all the landlords that are out there. we love the experience so far and thank you so much for having me on the show.
Well, Jordan, we really appreciate you just sharing so many helpful tips today. if you have hosted someone, through Columbia or a professional athlete, put it in the show notes. That would be fun to see. What are your favorite teams? Who have you hosted in your properties? Let's start a fun sports conversation in the comments.