Real Estate Trends Going Into 2024

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Only need like a small section of people to be interested in what you're doing. And realistically, you're in the real estate industry, and you're trying to sell deals whether it's as a wholesaler to investors or as a flipper to retail buyer, you're appealing to the people that can afford that. And so what 70% of people that can't, it doesn't really matter, in my opinion. What's going on, guys? Happy New Year's collecting keys, listeners. I I was gonna say family, but I don't know all of you. I don't know if I wanna be your family, that is weird. That's weird.

Dan Austin: [0:34] And do you wanna tell them that you love them too?

Mike DeHaan: [0:36] I see we're presumptuous when there's when there's like a

Dan Austin: [0:39] Love you bro, love you guys.

Mike DeHaan: [0:40] Brand or something that calls everyone like their family. I'm like, get what you're saying, but you might not even like me and I know Dan doesn't like you, so that's why.

Dan Austin: [0:47] Do we have what do we call it? What do you you know, like, have like a group like, Oucher Mosey has like Mosey Nation?

Mike DeHaan: [0:52] Yeah. See, that's good though. Right? Like but he has like a marketing team that he pays a lot of money to come up with good names for stuff. We don't do that, so everything we do is cringey.

Dan Austin: [0:59] I was saying like Keys Con, but like that's an event that we put on.

Mike DeHaan: [1:02] Which I is a

Dan Austin: [1:03] good name, Keys Con.

Mike DeHaan: [1:04] Yeah. The Keys Con. That's getting a little KKK I didn't wanna go

Dan Austin: [1:07] That doesn't sound good. You're right.

Mike DeHaan: [1:09] You do two k's. Keys Con. We should

Dan Austin: [1:11] not do that.

Mike DeHaan: [1:11] Definitely not do that. But anyways, guys, welcome to 2024. If this is your first time to collecting keys, I am Mike DeHaan, here with my cohost, Dan Austin. And as you can tell, we like to talk rubbish from time to time. But this is a show for people that want to learn to make massive income, not just passive income from their real estate investing businesses. And yeah, that's what like to dive into on these shows. So this Wednesday show is the Mike and Dan show, and this is the episode where we kinda talk about business, real estate investing as a whole, what the market's doing and whatever else we feel like for that week.

Dan Austin: [1:45] What is the market doing?

Mike DeHaan: [1:46] Dude, don't think anyone knows what the market's doing.

Dan Austin: [1:48] It's so different. This is like such a good example right now. Like, this moment in time is a good example of like how hyper local real estate is.

Mike DeHaan: [1:57] Totally. Yeah. So, I guess, why are you saying that? Would you just Google that you pulled up?

Dan Austin: [2:00] No, I'm just listening to the folks in our scale community and the different coaching calls and different coaching things that we do. Uh-huh. And just generally listen to other investors and our partners and seeing because we are, we have a footprint that we market and do sales across the nation. Uh-huh. And you can see some markets just popping off. Can see some markets that are dead. You can see some markets that are average. And there's not necessarily, I would say, a rhyme to the reason because, you know, generally we've seen the Southeast be a really strong market in the last twelve months, comparatively speaking to other states. But then there's like little pockets in the Southeast that maybe aren't so hot.

Mike DeHaan: [2:35] You're completely right. And what's weird is like there can be areas that are within a stone's throw of each other that are completely different. So like in our our national marketing acquisition business that we run, we're in several markets in the Southeast. Two of them are very close to each other. So we do some stuff in Memphis, just North Of Memphis, and we do some other stuff that is down south in Mississippi, basically just across the border. Because if you guys aren't from the Southeast, Nashville, Mississippi share a border. I wouldn't know that if we didn't work there.

Dan Austin: [3:05] They're real close. They're almost like the brother or sister.

Mike DeHaan: [3:08] Yeah. But like if you were to drive between the two towns that we work in, they're like three hours. Like they're not close. They're not crazy far. Literally one of the markets is absolutely on fire. The other one is bone dry. I don't know why, the market values are typically the same, the type of conversations are typically the same, the problems people experience typically are the same. But there's just like a massive disparity in lead flow, and like quality conversations and deals getting signed around. And it just is kind of a weird sort of situation. And then even we're in a handful of different properties in Florida, it's exactly the same thing. You know, there's like these different areas of Florida that we're in there within a couple hours of each other, some of them will be just extremely hot, the other ones we can't get a deal to save our lives, and I don't know why. Or like we don't even get any calls really from some of the other ones. And it's just interesting, know. And going into next year, I don't know, I do think that, I guess next year, this year, going into 2024, I do think that generally the real estate market will improve.

Dan Austin: [4:08] I feel like we're in this spot, right? You know when like, you probably don't know this because you've not been

Mike DeHaan: [4:13] a new skier for a while,

Dan Austin: [4:14] but I picked up skiing as an adult. You know when you're skiing though, or you're a snowboarder, and you're transitioning from edge to edge and there's this like brief moment, if you don't do it fast enough, you're kind of on this flat spot on your skis Mhmm. Which is not a safe spot to be. It's uncomfortable if you stay there, right? But typically you don't, as you get better, don't, it doesn't even exist, but when you're first new, like me, when I learned as a 30 year old from a four year old, I found that flat spot, it's just there's no control, you can't really feel where you're going, you have no direction. Right. Because like, we're in this brief moment right now, the end of the year, going into Q one, I think we're gonna be in this brief flat spot in the market, where it's just like, you don't know which direction your skis are gonna be pointed when you come off of it, but I do agree with you, in the new year, like the direction is gonna be trending up.

Mike DeHaan: [4:59] Yeah, I mean well I think that just the general sentiment of it, of real estate is a lot higher. You know we've had our period of time where the market went down in 2022, we've had the high interest rates, you've had everyone kind of like pointing at each other, waiting to see what's gonna happen next. And I think that that's gone on for long enough people are kind of just comfortable, and so it'll start to increase, and then we have, you know, these sentiments from the Fed saying that they're going to drop interest rates this year, which makes sense. It's an election year. You know, the Democrats are going to wanna bring those rates down so they look as good as possible going into the next election cycle. Yep. So they're gonna be intrinsically motivated to do that and so they will. And I mean, think that it'll only take some really small interest rate shifts for all of a sudden the buyer pool to start getting super hungry again.

Dan Austin: [5:44] Absolutely. And like part of that too, if you think about it is like, there's some people that lost their butts recently.

Mike DeHaan: [5:50] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [5:50] Like, or they lost a good chunk of their money. So those people naturally in a down market that happens, right? Some people like shake out because they're pushing too hard. There's still like a good amount of money sitting on the sidelines that are ready to deploy because people didn't wanna lose their asses, and they're now, they're gonna be getting hungry and tired of sitting on the sidelines, or they had three or four flips they were sitting on for the last four or five months, those get cleared off going into q one, now they're feeling a little bit more excited to start flipping, and I think all of that is like a perfect storm to start seeing a gradual like opportunity for more and more people.

Mike DeHaan: [6:22] Yeah. I think something that just exists in general right now with you know, the rise to real estate market has helped this with the everyday person being able to generate some wealth. There's a huge gap in just like general incomes that are existing from people that are high skilled employees versus lower skilled employees. I don't think that the haves compared to the have nots have ever been like more widely split in a modern generation. Like maybe if you go back a hundred plus years, something like that, you'll see it. But a lot of general talk about the economy and they talk about like, oh you know, so many Americans can't afford these things, run out of cash and all those sort of situations. But there's a hell of a lot of people that are doing perfectly well. You know, it's like I see a lot of jokes about how expensive travel is and how unaffordable travel is, but I'm a big traveler. Every time I go to the airport it's fricking packed. Like every plane's booked, people have expendable income. It's just maybe not like the bulk of Americans, but the thing is is that you don't need the bulk of Americans to be buying your house, right? Or like your property, you need one. Know? And so it doesn't honestly matter what 70% of Americans are doing if you are producing a good product, you're trying to do these transactions in the real estate industry. You only need like a small section of people to be interested in what you're doing.

Mike DeHaan: [7:42] And realistically, if you're in the real estate industry, and you're trying to sell deals, whether it's as a wholesaler to investors or as a flipper to retail buyer, you're appealing to the people that can afford that. And so with 70% of people that can't, it doesn't really matter.

Dan Austin: [7:56] I think if I was to look at it at a macroeconomics level, what I think would be happening to explain some parts of what you're saying is like, you have baby boomers who are retiring fast. They have been for several years, but they're rarely retiring, which means that they've just left their peak earning and they're at peak savings, so they're spending more money. They have more money to spend as well, so you see all these people traveling, there's probably some of that. You also have Millennials who have finally come of age and are able to produce decent income, they're at the, if not the middle peak, or like getting into their peak like growth years, right? Because they're in their mid to late thirties, they're really looking to make that move from maybe employee to manager, senior manager, all that sort of stuff, right? And so there's these two, the two biggest generations in history finally have spending power and they're spending it. So whether there is a giant glut of people in both of those categories as well, that don't have the money to afford to live the way like other people do, it doesn't really matter because you have like this overbearing amount of spending power from two of the largest generations. And you have Gen Z and Gen X in the middle that, yeah, nobody cares about them.

Mike DeHaan: [9:03] But you have, but what you also have though is you have a big influx of the baby boomers that are dying and they're leaving their money to their Gen X and their millennial children.

Dan Austin: [9:12] Millennial kids who are like, YOLO.

Mike DeHaan: [9:14] Right. Exactly. And they're gonna go, they're gonna buy property and then do other things with it. You're starting to see that a ton.

Dan Austin: [9:18] Yeah. Some wealth some wealth transition. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [9:20] Wealth transfer is huge right now. Yeah. So I don't know, there's a lot of talk about the affordability and all these sort of things but I think that if you're playing in the real estate space, the larger picture of that especially in the residential space, you can probably get around it. You know, I still think that you wanna play for the most part in like the starter home price point if you're gonna be in residential because there will always be buyers for that. The people on the lower end will buy up to do that. The people on the higher end who are worried about interest rates and their monthly payments and their budget are going to buy down.

Dan Austin: [9:52] For sure.

Mike DeHaan: [9:53] Just like as always, be careful in that sort of middle upper class price point. You know, where you're getting into monthly payments of 3,000, 4,000, $5,000 a month. Because that is going to be something that even if it is affordable for people, they're probably going to be a little bit cautious about jumping into those.

Dan Austin: [10:11] Absolutely. Yeah. And you don't wanna have to sit and hold those, know, unless you know exactly what the hell you're doing experience, there can definitely be a lot of money made at that tier of the market, but comes with lot more risk.

Mike DeHaan: [10:21] Yeah, so, yeah, who knows, we'll see. We got a bunch of closings signed up for January. Yeah. I mean, we already have 10 lined up for the month and I like that also that we signed around last month. And we haven't even really started acquisitions for this month yet. So things are starting out with a good clip. We've been having a lot of quality conversations when they do come in like our lead flow in general has gone down, but our quality of leads has gone up, which has been interesting. I think the biggest challenge we're facing right now is just dealing with hiring for some of the different roles we're looking for. So if you are interested in working for us Yeah. You should send an email to admincollectingkeys dot com. You're hiring an acquisition manager to work for us remotely, to come and close deals, you know, that we're we're looking to wholesale across the country and they're also looking for a disposition manager to come and help us move some of those deals as well. So if you're interested in that, throw that out there, admin@clickingkeys.com, we'd love to chat

Dan Austin: [11:15] with you. For sure. We're a fabulous company to work for.

Mike DeHaan: [11:17] I mean, I think we're a decent company. Our turnover is generally very low. Yeah. People don't come and go very fast, know. Some of these other smaller companies or other operations, you see a lot

Dan Austin: [11:26] more people coming and going, firing, hiring, all that sort of stuff. We tend to keep people around.

Mike DeHaan: [11:31] I would say we're not an easy company to work for, like if you're looking to come and like screw around, that would be hard.

Dan Austin: [11:36] Yeah, we're not No small business can have that, right? No. And you really have to have everybody, you know, that's the cool thing about our team, like you have to have everybody kinda hitting on all cylinders for it to work. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [11:47] Yeah. And if somebody that wants to come in and learn about real estate or be involved in a real estate business doing a lot of transactions, yeah, we can definitely do that with that. You you get to be involved in their scale community as well as a perk of that. But yeah, so we've just been navigating that which is always a challenge. I hate hiring in general right now with all the different platforms and stuff that they have out there.

Dan Austin: [12:08] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [12:08] Because like, as we've grown our business to a pretty decent staff size, we have 17 people that work for us now, there's like, I'm starting to realize just how much of a fricking scam so many of these different hiring platforms are on both sides. On like the business owner and the, I would say applicant side, like the business And seeker I see all would see these posts on Reddit and different things of being like, it's impossible to find a job right now. Like I sent out 500 applications, I didn't get a callback. This isn't because people don't want you, it's because the platforms are freaking trash.

Dan Austin: [12:42] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [12:42] Like honestly, as like the business owner, they probably put your application behind a very expensive paywall, that I don't wanna pay when I don't even know if I want you yet, right? Or they limit the number of people that we can even get, and even if people apply, right, that are beyond like that amount that we're already paying hundreds of dollars a month to be able to see, we don't see it until we pay them hundreds of dollars more a month.

Dan Austin: [13:06] Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [13:07] So like literally, like if you go on Indeed, it can be like, okay cool, here's your 50 applicants that you get for this insane amount that you just paid, and the 50 gets filled up right away, and it's very difficult to go through because it's very clunky. Then And the next 50 that come through after that, I don't even get to see them until I pay them more money. It's ridiculous.

Dan Austin: [13:25] It's a scam.

Mike DeHaan: [13:26] It is a scam. It's a it's a freaking racket, dude.

Dan Austin: [13:29] But you know what we gotta do? We gotta go back to Craigslist.

Mike DeHaan: [13:31] Honestly.

Dan Austin: [13:32] That's actually like a legit job board because it doesn't do any of that. No. They charge they charge you $25 every time you post a job. $25 flat fee.

Mike DeHaan: [13:40] Do they have any?

Dan Austin: [13:40] That's not a problem. Yeah. And guess what? Then you get people that they basically can apply directly from your ad and it just goes into your email inbox. Yeah. Like, that's that's a legit hiring work except for, to be honest, some of the people you find on Craigslist these days are not qualified to do a lot of things.

Mike DeHaan: [13:56] They're no less qualified than the other ones. That's good price push. And here's the other thing that's dumb too, so I list this sales job that we're hiring for. Three quarters of the people don't have applicable experience. So they're taking up all of my

Dan Austin: [14:08] All your credits?

Mike DeHaan: [14:09] All my credits. A freaking SaaS salesperson. Right. Need a real estate acquisitions person.

Dan Austin: [14:14] Yeah. It's almost like you have to like put in there who should not apply.

Mike DeHaan: [14:18] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [14:18] You know what I mean? Like if you were this, don't apply.

Mike DeHaan: [14:21] Well, mean you can, but then people still do it anyway. Yeah. Then you probably get ginged

Dan Austin: [14:25] with like an EO complaint too.

Mike DeHaan: [14:26] Probably.

Dan Austin: [14:27] Yeah. Not equal opportunity.

Mike DeHaan: [14:28] So it's just such a dumb process. I mean like, don't know, this is a problem when the tech companies rule everything. You know, they rule the hiring board versus you know, they rule the algorithms for the media that we're exposed to.

Dan Austin: [14:40] Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [14:40] It's like that's one of the big things in the influencer social media space, which unfortunately we are a part of now, is we go and we do stuff on Instagram and just sort of seeing the variation of like views that your reels get Mhmm. Or like the amount of exposure things get. And here's the thing guys, if there's people that you've seen recently that have very quickly blown up from being like, you know, a certain number of, you know, say a couple thousand followers, 10,000 followers even, to like suddenly they have a 100,000, they 100% bought followers.

Dan Austin: [15:09] Yeah. That's not easy to do. It's not possible.

Mike DeHaan: [15:12] If they're not like a super hot chick

Dan Austin: [15:14] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [15:15] Or they don't do something that's just like super, I don't know, outlandish or something that goes viral.

Dan Austin: [15:19] Like they're not actually like good at what they're doing.

Mike DeHaan: [15:21] Yeah. Like that person 100% bought followers.

Dan Austin: [15:25] Yeah. Yeah. They're just like every other dude on there talking heads, like they they probably Totally. Bought

Mike DeHaan: [15:30] You know, especially how many like white dudes, and we're guilty of this as well, are on there just like talking about business and stuff and you go and you look and So you're like

Dan Austin: [15:36] many of us out there.

Mike DeHaan: [15:37] There's no way that 35,000 people follow this person. Right. And then you go and look at the reels like, yeah, they got 800 views. Of course that doesn't follow

Dan Austin: [15:45] them, know? Exactly. Trash.

Mike DeHaan: [15:47] It's funny even with like some of the larger people that do have legitimate followings. I saw a post, it was from it from Brandon Turner the other day that had been out for like a day and it only, you know, he has a 100,000 plus followers. The thing only had, it was like 600 likes.

Dan Austin: [16:02] Oh, I bet that hurts.

Mike DeHaan: [16:03] And I was like, if you look at it perspective wise, I remember when he used to always have like 25,000.

Dan Austin: [16:08] Yeah. You're absolutely right. It's an interesting process for sure to see that, and then you're right, the tech company's kinda controlling a lot of that platform, so they're controlling your exposure to some extent. Ideally, like what Elon is doing at X is the like, is really trying to push it toward the community it drives who sees the views. I don't know how that works. Nobody's seen my Twitter stuff or my ex stuff so it doesn't Yeah. I'm obviously not liked by the ex community right now.

Mike DeHaan: [16:31] Yeah, you don't see enough racist shit, that's what they want on there now.

Dan Austin: [16:34] I know you gotta see some hateful stuff. In theory, what he's saying is that that won't happen because people won't like that, right? But maybe opposite of that is,

Mike DeHaan: [16:43] people love it, though, that's the problem. It gets the people going.

Dan Austin: [16:46] What do you think, like, so I don't scroll Twitter often, but like, you know, obviously I'm writing my posts on there when I have thoughts, and so the one thing I will notice, and maybe it's just because I do have certain followers that I guess see other stuff is, I feel like Twitter used to be pretty hateful, and now it doesn't seem like there is as much hate. I don't know, I could be totally missed.

Mike DeHaan: [17:06] I've like literally never actually scrolled the platform.

Dan Austin: [17:09] Really? Yeah, I've been scrolling it like this last couple weeks especially because like I'm, you know, typing, you know, whatever and I'm like, oh, let me check what this is about, know, and I have like, I don't know how many people I follow on there, and it feels like there's less hate.

Mike DeHaan: [17:20] Maybe. Yeah. Don't know. I just don't really care about that platform. I have one because our our marketing manager said that I should, but I hate it.

Dan Austin: [17:27] You're not gonna care about it until it's the big one.

Mike DeHaan: [17:30] It was the big one fifteen years ago. It was the big one before Obama got elected, dude.

Dan Austin: [17:34] I'll agree to disagree with you on this one. I think it has the potential to do more than it is now.

Mike DeHaan: [17:38] Well, yeah, does.

Dan Austin: [17:38] Because everybody thought Facebook was never gonna die. Look at that thing. I think it's stone age crap. If you can't change Instagram, same thing. Kids are on Instagram, man. Middle aged millennials like us are on Instagram.

Mike DeHaan: [17:51] I don't know. I think I think that the age of sort of like modern social media like that is on the way out. Know, because everything shifted towards like the short form video content or that's been so huge. Well, that's what it did. But now I feel like it's getting away from that even because the problem with the short form video content is so impersonal. Yeah. You know, and you're starting to see like less engagement, those sort of things, and

Dan Austin: [18:12] YouTube will come back around.

Mike DeHaan: [18:14] Well YouTube's always been huge, but YouTube's a different kind of consumer. Yeah. Like YouTube is, there's people that like sit and watch TV, like especially kids. But like I I know I know a lot of people that are like, oh yeah, they're like really into these YouTubers and they watch these like thirty minute videos they make. Tell you what, if I like go to something and there's a YouTube video that's more than ninety seconds, I'm not gonna watch it. I'm on the I'm on the short form train.

Dan Austin: [18:33] Yeah, my kids like the YouTube stuff. My son likes to watch diggers dig holes in the ground on YouTube kids, so.

Mike DeHaan: [18:39] Yeah. But the thing is, like the tech companies too though, like they can start to influence the real estate market because we had this that lease to own. You're saying that you're having problems because Zillow

Dan Austin: [18:47] Pissed me off.

Mike DeHaan: [18:48] Zillow didn't wanna show it because it was a FSBO, right? It's for sale by owner.

Dan Austin: [18:51] Yeah. So, FSBO stuff on Zillow, which is I knew this, I thought I knew this, but I didn't really realize the extent of it is, you literally have to go in there and it's not easy to see Mhmm. But you as a viewer have to select like basically retail leads or for sale, or other, I think they call it others.

Mike DeHaan: [19:09] Which no one would ever do.

Dan Austin: [19:10] No one would ever do, no one do, because like why would you do that, right? I could see if you wanted to filter the other way where you only got to see the for sale by owners or other types of listings, but they would also would fall into the other category. No, they

Mike DeHaan: [19:22] don't do it and

Dan Austin: [19:23] they make it kind of hard to see just on the platform, it's grayed out, all this stuff. So literally, I'm looking on Zillow when we posted our house that we're going to sell on special financing. We don't have a broker's license as a company in Idaho where this property is at, so let's just do for sale by owner, and yeah, it just doesn't show it. Like, most people look through Zillow on the map. It doesn't even pop up on the map, you go to that setting within the app, which nobody's doing, right? Nobody's No one's doing that. And if you're just a consumer looking for a house, like you would automatically think, oh, for sale by owners and everything would be on here. No, Zillow's really pushing for listing only, which is kind of part of this whole conversation with the National Associate Realtors and all this, the cartel that they've created there and built out, which is a whole another conversation, but yeah, what a frustrating thing that a big tech company can control the real estate market. So really at this point, it really isn't a distributed network of people being able to sell their house on a central platform, it's if you are within the National Association of Realtors and they can pull your data from an MLS, you can now sell your property.

Mike DeHaan: [20:27] Yeah, I mean, it's just exactly and the problem with that is they know that it's going to restrict the FSBOs.

Dan Austin: [20:34] They're doing it on purpose for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [20:36] They're doing it on purpose and but they're like, oh you still have the options, you can't go and like accuse them of that.

Dan Austin: [20:41] And they make it kind of a pain in the ass to list it too by the way.

Mike DeHaan: [20:44] Even though you kinda know it so they can sort of play both sides. But any of these platforms, these like third party tech platforms that are integral to your business, I think it's really important to have some kind of hedge or backup plan. Like think about the Airbnb sort of crowd as well, or like the VRBO crowd. I mean, understand if you're an Airbnb investor, you have to earn the rights from Airbnb's algorithm to show up. Especially if you're looking at like so many different areas right now that are becoming incredibly, I would say like abundant in Airbnb opportunities as people have gotten over their travel bug. Starting to see Airbnb prices plummet. My wife and I we were looking at potentially going down to Salt Lake for a couple weeks just to like hang out and work from there, be closer to Skaria, but because it didn't snow anywhere

Dan Austin: [21:30] I know.

Mike DeHaan: [21:31] Probably not gonna do it. But like I was looking at Airbnb options, there was places down there that you could get that were like nice houses for like $35 a night because no one's freaking renting in these cities anymore.

Dan Austin: [21:41] Nobody's renting at the peak of the season for that area too.

Mike DeHaan: [21:44] Yeah. That's And it's like that all over the place, but then I'm looking at it, and then the crazy thing was is I was like, oh, well, this area's kinda cool, and I would zoom in. A second I would zoom in, there would be like 30 more places.

Dan Austin: [21:54] Wow.

Mike DeHaan: [21:54] Right? And I'm like none of these people are making money at all. Like they're never going to for this entire winter.

Dan Austin: [22:01] Yeah, Airbnb's like gotten awkwardly weird. So I got a call, so we're overcharging one of our Airbnb's that we own to another investor here in town, and so I got a call from the neighbor. I swear to God we get some of the craziest shit. So the neighbor's like, she's kind of a weird lady anyways, and I've only bumped into her a couple times, and

Mike DeHaan: [22:19] she's like, I don't know, is this

Dan Austin: [22:20] Dan Austin guy, is he the renter or the owner, who is he? I don't know. I was like, can I help you? That's exactly how the conversation started. Yeah. And anyways, she's like, yeah, there's this group of people that are living in the house across the street, and they're coming in with like, different groups of people, like two in the morning, they'll hop in, they go around the back of the house, which makes no sense that they would actually do that because there's nothing in the backyard, there's like just, you wouldn't go that way. Like, she's like, and then they're like bringing tons of stuff in the house, and in the backyard, and it sounds like what we have is somebody that's potentially like doing a drug deal or like running a chop shop out of our Airbnb. So I called the guy who's arbitraging it and, you know, he didn't really give me any information. He said he called the guy and it was all fine and all good. You know, there's not a whole lot we can do at that point, but like, just weird. She had listed off a bunch of stuff they're doing and I was like, yeah, that definitely sounds like they're doing something illegal. Absolutely, out of our property.

Mike DeHaan: [23:16] So are we gonna take a look or what are gonna do?

Dan Austin: [23:18] Yeah. I'll probably do drive by this weekend just to see what's going on.

Mike DeHaan: [23:22] I think we talked on here about my friend's Airbnb that had like the Mexican cartel that was doing drugs out of it. Pretty

Dan Austin: [23:30] And

Mike DeHaan: [23:30] yeah, had because it was in a little condominium unit And so they had like a security camera that they were able to get when the FBI came in, kicked in their door to arrest these Mexican dudes that were in there. And literally they came down the hallway just like the movies, they had like the little battergram, they banged in the door, they like dragged these dudes out, like cuffed them.

Dan Austin: [23:54] That's legit.

Mike DeHaan: [23:54] And then inside their Airbnb, they like, the FBI went and like cleared all of it, it was good and everything. And they were cutting open the couch pillows and they were finding all these drugs and stuff that were hidden in them. And then like, was it, was like a week or two weeks later, they had the Airbnb up and running and they immediately get a request from another Hispanic person that was like a brand new account, and they were like, okay, this is a weird red flag. And so they rejected it, they told the FBI, and the FBI came back and they basically, what did they do? It was like somewhere inside their walls, the guys had busted it open.

Dan Austin: [24:34] Busted their drugs in there? Or put their drugs in there?

Mike DeHaan: [24:37] Yeah, put drugs inside the walls and then Like finished refinished it.

Dan Austin: [24:41] Smart.

Mike DeHaan: [24:43] So this guy was trying to rebook it, so he could go back and get his drugs.

Dan Austin: [24:46] Get his drugs? Hell yeah, I would. That's probably He's probably getting his ass chewed right now by his cartel boss.

Mike DeHaan: [24:51] He's probably dead, dude. They probably chopped off his head Right.

Dan Austin: [24:53] They're sure they're dead. They're definitely dead. Yeah, I think, so that's kinda, that story kinda popped in my head when I heard this, I like, oh no, oh no.

Mike DeHaan: [25:00] Because that was in Spokane, that wasn't far away, that was over by the REI, like that's a stone's throw from our places.

Dan Austin: [25:05] And the reason why I bring it up is because I would imagine the the guy we're arbitraging with is, you know, desperate for good listings, right? He has to pay us a certain amount every month, and if he wants to make cash flow, he needs to at least have it listed. So this was a long term listing that popped up, which can always get weird on Airbnb in general. If they're longer than thirty days, you really do need to have a lease signed with them, because they can basically become tenants, now in Washington where we rent, in a lot of states, they become a tenant and follow their tenant landlord law, and you have to go through the proper eviction process, so you'll, there used to see these videos back at, you know, maybe the early twenty twenty's, where people would be like beating down their Airbnb guest door on like the twenty ninth day to get them out of their house, because they're like, they know, they find out, oh crap, these are those people, they're gonna try to like squat here, especially during COVID. It was like really a problem. But yeah, it's definitely getting weird out there.

Mike DeHaan: [25:56] Yeah, I know. The short term rental game, man, I think is in so much blocks. I've talked to so many GoBundance guys too, they're like, man, my Airbnb's are bleeding. Then I also hear from other guys that are like, mine are doing better than they ever have. It kinda goes back to what we were talking about with the, you know, the retail market as well. I feel like a flipper. There's flips that are sitting for months. There are other ones that are selling in two days. I mean, we have a one of those duplexes. You guys listened a couple weeks ago to the properties that we all, that are subject to mortgages got called. We accepted a cash offer on one of those like two days after list. Yep. Right? I mean it's just the kind of the way of the world right now. You don't really know. But I think the biggest thing is you should do as much as you can in your life and your business in general to not have your systems fully reliant on the algorithm of some tech company that doesn't care about you at all.

Dan Austin: [26:45] Yeah, that's your entire business dude, can you imagine that? Like there are people out there like they became Airbnb hosts.

Mike DeHaan: [26:50] That's fine.

Dan Austin: [26:52] Like that's their entire business and you're relying on one revenue stream, know. We do have a couple short term rentals, we have all sorts, we're very diverse in our portfolio, just from a tenant standpoint and a property style standpoint, and I think that's helped us be successful even in this time, like we've been getting our butts hooked with landlord stuff, like, or property stuff for the last two months and going into the next two months. Like we have this guy, signed to our property manager about, he's our bed bug guy that all of a sudden fell ill and is in the hospital and he's not

Mike DeHaan: [27:20] coming home, like he's died. Mhmm. Like they're like, yeah, he's dying.

Dan Austin: [27:24] And, so we're like, okay, we'll move all the stuff into a storage unit and we're gonna pay, we're gonna eat the cost, We don't have to technically, but that was the plan. Turns out, not a single place, not a single storage facility will lease to this guy's, to hold this guy's stuff unless he's there. He's dying, he can't get out, like he's in hospice or he's in some sort of like care. Right? And so then the property manager's like, well, we'll put it in our name, and they're like, yeah, we're not letting you do that for two months, you have to sign a full like six or twelve month lease. So I'm like, that's so stupid. Right? They're probably a huge market for these short term things, right? Then you could have like one of those like auctions that they show on TV, right? It'll be fun. Yeah. When people don't pay their rents, right?

Mike DeHaan: [28:05] When people get all the things that bedbug stuff

Dan Austin: [28:07] that they buy at auction, well we bombed, yeah, no shit, we bombed it, it's all clear. But the problem with this situation is, okay, so it turns out the guy has some electronics, that's all he cares about. He's like, bring me my electronics, I don't know what that means, but apparently it's a lot. Everything else, he's like, I don't care a shit about. He's dying, right? So somehow we're gonna deliver him. I'm imagining like one of those old badass stereo systems with tower speakers, like projectors, and all this weird stuff that this guy's probably into audio visual stuff, and it's gonna get delivered to his hospital. That's what he requested.

Mike DeHaan: [28:39] That's what he wants, man, that's fine.

Dan Austin: [28:41] So he's gonna get it, it's his dying wish, and then we're just gonna pay to junk out everything else. But the problem with that his too is, okay, so he's not gonna be able to pay us back, the dude's dying, he was on section eight housing anyways, so we had to pay, you know, whatever it costs for the bed bug treatment, and then we're gonna have to pay the cost to junk this place out, and then, because the dude was pretty dirty, we have to do a full gut rehab on this unit. All that to be said is, who do you charge? Nobody. There's nobody, you just have to eat it.

Mike DeHaan: [29:11] Nobody. You'd be sympathetic to the fact that the guy's dying, that's what you're supposed to do with like a good human, but as a capitalist, that's terrible.

Dan Austin: [29:17] But even if we even if charged him, right, so he's on section eight housing, he doesn't have 2 nickels to rub together, and he's done. What are you gonna put like a bad mark on his credit and put it give him like the collections? His cell phone's probably gonna get shut off. Actually, I don't even think he has a cell phone. I think they're having to communicate with him through the social workers. So it's just a interesting shit show Yeah. To say the least of weird things that can happen when you're talking about owning a portfolio of properties and why I do, I'll go back to my point I just made earlier, it's like having diversity of that, of your income in your portfolio is really helpful, like although we're getting our butts kicked here, we have other income sources coming in. We have our steady Eddie single family homes that are rented to the state, they just pay through ACH every single month. Mhmm,

Mike DeHaan: [30:02] Yeah, I'm just grateful that we actually have a good property manager to deal with a lot of that shit now.

Dan Austin: [30:06] I know, I know, they're calling me and they're like, what do you wanna do on this, that and the other, and I was like, I don't know, like sounds like you guys got a good plan already, like you don't, you know, just they're being nice and letting me make the decision, but it sounds like they're already doing the right things, they're collecting rent, they collected a bunch of back rent from a guy, like you know, just doing a really good job, so that's so helpful It's in this

Mike DeHaan: [30:24] only taken us five tries, so if you have property managers and you're like, man, my property managers, I think they suck, If you think that, they do.

Dan Austin: [30:30] They do. You can

Mike DeHaan: [30:31] go and find somebody better.

Dan Austin: [30:32] Are good ones out there, it took us a while, we've had problems. If you've listened to this podcast for the last couple years, you'll hear our woes. Property manager, in house property manager, outside of our company, we've lost a lot of money dealing with it, that's why I always recommend like, find a property manager, interview them, ask them questions, and then give them one or two properties. Don't give them your whole portfolio right away. We've never done that, unfortunately. Like the property manager we had before that, we gave them a couple properties, including this property with the bed bug guy on it, and they cost us a pile of money. If we gave them the whole portfolio, who knows what would've happened as far as cost of money lost.

Mike DeHaan: [31:07] Yeah, think that's a great sort of tip there, is if you're trying to try a new one, don't just give me a whole portfolio at once. Mhmm. Try them with a couple of properties because it's much easier to clean up that mess than if they convert over 25 units.

Dan Austin: [31:17] Absolutely. And treat them just like anybody else in life. If they aren't meeting the expectations that you've agreed on, fire them. Who cares? Yeah. Doesn't matter. They're like, well, you signed an agreement with me, who cares? Like, tell them to pursue it, know, like, if they're gonna lose you money, they're not gonna manage the property, at least to the expectations you guys have agreed on, then don't worry about it. Just leave.

Mike DeHaan: [31:38] Yeah. I mean, you you have the ability to stop working with whoever you wanna stop working with. So cool. Alright. So 2024, Dan, what is one big thing you're looking forward to this year? We gotta do the obligatory looking forward.

Dan Austin: [31:53] I haven't even thought about that, man. You caught me off guard. I don't know. What am I looking forward to from our business standpoint?

Mike DeHaan: [32:00] Just like in general, it'd be your business, it can be for yourself, it can be I mean, we're both entrepreneurs so they tend to kind of blend one into the other.

Dan Austin: [32:08] Yeah, I would say I'm really looking forward to seeing the scale community and how that brings value to our community, like all the new additions that we're able to bring to it, like all the stuff we've already listed, the disposition platform, discounted mail, pretty much so, all the cool stuff that we're gonna be able to bring as a community, because like there's stuff that, it's stuff that you and I have wanted, and now we're able to get a community, because we have like negotiating power, and we also just have the ability now to actually like get these things because of where we're at. But then also bringing in with that new kind of model of the scale community, bringing in A players that are ready to scale their business to the next level. I think being around the types of people that are like you and that wanna do things are only gonna help us and other people grow better. So, that's that's my biggest, business look forward to. The other thing I'm looking forward to in 2024 from personal standpoint is figuring out just additional growth in like passive income for me, know, that's like a big focus for me, so continue to focus on that growth. I have no idea what that looks like, I've been kind of testing and retesting some ideas, but to me that's like actually an exciting venture, because 2023, we didn't pick up a lot of passive, because we focused on massive. Mhmm. And I really believe that that's an important thing, And so as we continue to grow our massive income, how do I find those awesome opportunities to invest in passive income things? And I was actually, while I was in the gym yesterday working out, I was thinking about in my head like the numbers, like if you just made like $50 a pop a year, that's all you could, extra money you had, and you're investing that in syndications over like ten year period, what would that cash flow look like from a passive standpoint? Because when you put money into a syndication, and 50 k is usually like the bare bottom limit, like they're usually higher than that, but if you could do 50 into a syndication, what would that look like as those things started rolling over and you started having big exits and you started getting some cash flow on some of these deals, like that's like the ultimate passive income.

Mike DeHaan: [34:05] Mhmm. Absolutely. That's something that I'm personally interested in is exploring more of those options just because you know, we own a lot of rental properties that's just been fine, but there's always just ups and downs.

Dan Austin: [34:14] It's not as passive, right, if you're truly looking for passive.

Mike DeHaan: [34:17] Yeah. And there's there's the wealth generation parts of long term real estate holding. Like you get the debt, you get the appreciation, all sorts of things. But for me, it's now that we have like a business that has grown so much, I'm like more interested in like how can I truly get passive? I mean, if that means less net return, but it's something that I don't have to stress about anything. Okay. So that's cool though. I guess for me looking forward this year on my GoBundance one sheet last year, my theme was it was gonna it was the year of the CEO. Mhmm. And I was really trying to figure out how to evolve into that role. Because when we started last year, I mean it was you, me and two sales guys pretty much and now we have a team of 17 people across everything. And so my goal is to learn how to evolve into like a leader in that sort of position. And I feel like, I personally feel like I've done a pretty good job. I don't know if you feel the same way. But now I'm looking forward to having a full year of growing and expanding and optimizing that skill set and that role within the company so that we can like continue to do more things. Know, because like it took the first six to seven months to sort of like get comfortable with that. So now having a full year doing that, I think would be awesome. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [35:26] I'm really excited about it. I like it.

Mike DeHaan: [35:28] Yeah. So awesome. Well, good stuff. And then scale community is gonna be sweet too. That little brand shift that we changed from the instant investor program to scale community is gonna be super rad. I'm super excited. We've already had a ton of outreach, we've had some really heavy hitters that decided to jump into the

Dan Austin: [35:42] group I as think that just makes it so much better, right, and that's what we're going for, Yeah. Is being around the like minded people.

Mike DeHaan: [35:50] Mhmm. Yeah. So if you're a investor that's doing you know, being one to four deals a month and you're trying to figure out how to do more deals while not having to work your business as much, go to collectingkeys.com/scale and you see if you're a good fit. Go a little application, pop on a little interview with you and we'll see if it makes sense for you. Awesome. Well, thanks guys. We appreciate you joining us on this first Mike and Dan show of 2024. You guys have a great one out there and we'll talk to you next week.

Dan Austin: [36:16] See you.