Multiple 6 Figure Incomes: Airbnb Arbitrage, A Million YouTube Subscribers, Selling Advertising, E-commerce Store With Matthew Varga
Welcome to the Truth About Real Estate Investing Show for Canadians!
I am Erwin Szeto, a full-time real estate professional since 2010, splitting time as an investor-specific Realtor and eight-figure portfolio real estate investor.
More important to the size of my portfolio is the financial peace that comes with it, and I want the same for all our investor clients and listeners of this show!
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My strategy is value investing through renovation and maximizing rents through densification.
One of the strategies we teach our clients is student rentals, and would it surprise you that we sold a townhouse in Thorold, Ontario, for $804,000 this past weekend?
Where is Thorold, Ontario, you ask?
It’s nearby Brock University, and Brock University students love living in the newer construction homes my clients own in the area.
What makes these houses special is they’re less old at eight years young.
I worked with the builder on the design, so the builder delivered to my client a six or seven-bedroom student rental with noise cancelling and fire retardant insulation in any shared walls and ceiling.
Basement is finished with two bedrooms featuring egress windows, fire code compliant for a person to climb out of in case of fire, and closet doors omitted, which saves money and one less thing to break.
Since the builder was delivering our clients a finished product, our clients were able to finance just about everything.
We paid around $315,000 for these purpose-built student rental townhouses, which rented out for $2,700.
Fast forward to today, market rent is closer to $4,900 per month, and as mentioned, we listed and sold for $804,000 for what was about a 1,500 sq ft townhouse.
Return on appreciation alone as it’s easy math: bought for $315k, assumed 25%, sold for $804,000.
The return is $490,000—a return on investment of over 620% over eight years via simple, boring, buy-and-hold real estate.
Never forget that making money is the objective. Not how many doors, or the current fad investment, or how many Instagram followers one has. Make money!
Congratulations to our client and the many others who continue to hold these properties – A nice boring, no-renovation property in massive demand by both buyers and tenants.
In my experience, that’s a winning investment.
If this meets your investment criteria, please let us know and reach out over email or social media dm.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows…
This week, I personally prepared an N4 and N8 for my tenant, who missed April’s rent and is persistently late.
I’m getting involved as I am operating without a personal assistant, and I think it’s important for managers to get into the details from time to time.
The tenant is very apologetic. I’m not too worried as I have her mother as a guarantor, who has a great job and pays rent on time.
I know because the mom is also my tenant, but I’ve noticed my tenant’s tone in our communication is very different with me vs. my assistant, as in she’s more polite to me.
It’s not fun having to threaten tenants with eviction, but if they’re not held accountable to the terms of the lease to pay on time, then they won’t.
Then rent is also about 30% under market, so she really shouldn’t be putting her cheap rent at risk either.
I know some are asking why we don’t automate… well we did, but money wasn’t in her account. Honestly, we’re likely being too nice, but she’s a single mom, and it’s been a few years, so we’re tolerating for now.
This is my daughter’s house too, so one day, it will be her job to play the role of landlord.
Speaking of my daughter, she came third place in her competitive speaking class!
My son didn’t win anything as, sadly, he inherited my habit of mumbling but yay, daughter!
Cherry, I and our families are all shy and quiet, and everyone knows public speaking, presentation skills, and verbal communication skills are all important; hence the kids are three years into public speaking classes, and the results have been awesome.
I’ll see my kids holding conversations with adults at social events, and they’re not shy like Cherry, and I were at their age.
Our experience has been good, so I’d recommend public speaking classes if your kids feel shy.
Speaking of public speaking, my team and I have presentations to give at the upcoming iWIN Meeting Online only.
We’ll be giving the same awesome economic and market updates investors need to know both east and west of the GTA.
AND we’re just about to confirm our guest speaker, and it will be either a multifamily investors expert who has retired thanks to their portfolio of hundreds of doors and does zero work…
OR a senior living/retirement home investor with over 20 years of experience and a fund. Whomever we have will be excellent, as that is the standard here at iWIN Real Estate.
The meeting will take place at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, April 18th, via Zoom
If live and in-person networking is more your thing, Saturday morning, April 22nd, we will be hosting the iWIN Mastermind Tour. We will:
- Meet for coffee at Hamilton’s #1 ranked coffee shop (BTW, the croissants are to die for),
- Tour the inside and outside of an income property or two,
- Followed by a mastermind lunch.
Our last iWIN Mastermind Tour sold out in only four days, so do not delay. The education and networking are excellent, the cost is $20 plus taxes and fees, and all profits go to charity.
Registration links will be sent to everyone on my email list.
If you’re not on my email list yet, go to www.truthaboutrealestateinvesting.ca, enter your name and email address on the right, and you are all set!
Multiple 6 Figure Incomes: Airbnb Arbitrage, A Million YouTube Subscribers, Selling Advertising, E-commerce Store With Matthew Varga
On to this week’s show!
This week we have Matthew Varga, who, together with his wife Nikole, have several six-figure ventures: a YouTube Channel HealthNut Nutrition Inc., with almost 1,000,000 subscribers for which they generate ad revenue, show sponsorships, and an engaged audience to market their e-commerce store towards…
A growing portfolio of real estate investment properties includes some that are AirBnb.
Matthew is also doing what’s called Airbnb arbitrage, which means he’s the long-term tenant to other investors, then furnishes and operates an Airbnb business in the property to make money to pay the rent and keep any remaining profits.
Airbnb arbitrage can be a great way for newer investors to break into the market, but not without risk. Matthew was kind enough to detail his wish list of features in order to command great rental rates before taking on an AirBnb arbitrage opportunity.
Matthew also recently returned from Florida as he now spends winters there to both avoid our cold winters and go looking for real estate opportunities, and he shares how he’s able to do so.
Adam, our Podcast Producer, said this is one of my best interviews.
I have no clue what I’m doing; hence we’re stuck at 17 listeners, but Matthew is young and successful, so I can’t recommend enough that you listen and take notes.
Please enjoy the show!
This episode is brought to you by me! We don’t have sponsors for this show. I only share with you services owned by my wife Cherry and me. Real estate investing is a staple in my life and allowed me to build wealth and, more importantly, achieve financial peace about the future, knowing our retirement is taken care of and my kids will be able to afford a home when they grow up. If you, too, are interested in my systematic strategy to implement the #1 investment strategy, the same one pretty much all my guests are doing themselves, then go visit www.infinitywealth.ca/events and register for our next FREE Online Training Class. We will be back in person once legally allowed to do so, but for now, we are 100% virtual.
No need for you to reinvent the wheel; we have our system down pat. Again that’s www.infinitywealth.ca/events and register for the FREE Online Training Class.
To Listen:
Audio Transcript
**Transcripts are auto-generated.
Erwin
Welcome to the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians. My name is Erwin Szeto a full time real estate professional since 2010. And I split time between being an investor specific realtor and bigger portfolio real estate investor. More important than this has anyone’s portfolio. It’s all about financial peace in my wife and I have it. And that’s what I want for all of our investor clients and our listeners of the show. My strategy is value investing through renovation and maximising rents through densification. You know, often that means basement suites, I have student rentals as well. And that’s one of the strategies we teach our clients that is called Student rentals. And I know a lot of people have their ideas when a student rental is I like to write my rent my investments like a business. So what surprised me view that we sold a townhouse in third Ontario again, that’s the world Ontario we sold a townhouse for $804,000 Just last weekend $804,000 for for a townhouse. Where’s Thorold Ontario, you ask? It’s actually very close to Brock University and Brock University’s love living in newer construction homes, which is what my clients property was in, in that area. What makes these houses special is that they’re they’re less they’re only eight years young. I have worked directly with the builder on the design of these units so that the builder delivered to my client, a six or seven bedrooms student rental house. What made us two rental houses that we had noise cancelling and fire retardant insulation in any of the shared walls and ceilings. The basement was finished with two bedrooms featuring in each bedroom featured an egress window, which means it’s a fire code compliant window for a person to climb out of in case of a fire. We admitted closet doors which save our clients money. And it’s also one less thing to break in. In my experience. A lot of students don’t like closet doors, they ended up being used as coffee tables. So that’s not something I want to be paying 457 $100 per coffee table. Since the builder was delivering to our clients a finished product, our clients were able to finance everything, pretty much everything so there’s almost no renovation to come in out of pocket for our clients were paying around 315,000 for these purpose built student rental townhouses which rented out for at the time 2700 A month again 2700 Rent a month for a $315,000 personal instrumental townhouse fast for today, market rent is closer to 4900 per month as we’re in the middle of a housing crisis. It’s even worse for students. And as mentioned, we listed and sold the house for so it’s sold for over asking it sold for 804,000 firm for what was about 1500 square foot townhouse. The return on appreciation alone because it’s easy math again bought for 315,000 Assume a 25% downpayment. So for 804,000 return is $490,000 as a return on investment that’s over 620% over eight years, via a very simple, boring buy and hold real estate strategy. Never forget that making money is the objective. And also before I continue on, in my experience, university students do not end up in the landlord tenant board. So in my opinion, depending on where you operate, but a lot of student rentals, a lot of students as tenants are lower risk than regular tenants. Because again, in my experience, my clients don’t end up in in the landlord tenant board battling their tenant for like non payment of rent or anything like that. So again, never forget that the objective is making money. Now how many doors do you have or what the current fad is, whatever it is right now, or how many Instagram followers one has, it’s all about making money in here my client did so successfully. So congratulations to them and many others who and I have many other clients who continue to hold these properties. They’re hoping that we get back to peak which is the over 900,000 So again, it’s a nice boring, no renovation property in a massive demand area for both buyers and tenants. Again, we’re in the housing crisis. So tenants are scrambling still that’s why the rents are so high they’re scrambling to find property and in turn parents are looking for property to buy because I would do the same thing I wouldn’t pay these pay these are tortures rents. So I prefer my preference would be to buy and there’s many parents out there looking to buy again in my experience this is a winning investment. I think everyone would agree this is a winning investment Good luck making these returns in any other fat investment out there. So this means your investment criteria please let us know and reach out or email or social media DM me we’re everything basically gets back to us. So but it is not all sunshine and rainbows this week. I personally prepared an end for it and eighth for my tenant who missed April’s rent and is persistently late. So those are the those are the forms that one has to fill out respectively and it foreign aid both are related to non payment of rent. I’m getting involved as I’m operating with whoever personal assistant right now who’s no longer is no longer with us. She’s okay she’s not here at the company anymore. But I do also think that’s important for managers to get into the details from time to time. And honestly it gives me something to talk about. Talk about and it refreshes my Maria on how to do these things. The tenant is very apologetic. I’m not too worried about not getting rent, as I have her mother as a guarantor who has a great job and pays rent on time. I know because the mom is also my tenant. The mom is also my tenant. And also I’ve noticed since I got involved with the tenants tone is in her communication with me is very different than how she communicated with her assistant. My tenants memories tend to be very different. Her recollection of her payment history and history of being on time is very different than, yeah, her tone is different with me. It is not fun having to threaten tenants with eviction, because that’s essentially what these forms are for. That’s what they do. Like, you know, this is a notice for eviction for not paying rent. All right, but if tenants are not held accountable to the terms of the lease, just no different than if I’m not held accountable to the terms of my lease, you know, we run a really tight business, I handy people are basically on call to all my tenants, should they ever need anything? Yeah, if they’re not held accountable, and they don’t pay rent on time, then this is what happens. Also my tenants rent is about for this specific tenant that’s late. It’s her rent is about 30% under market. So she really should not be putting her cheap rent at risk either. I know some of us, some of you out there listening are asking why don’t we automate what we used to. But when money wasn’t in our account, is there was a lot of NSF charges going on. So yeah, honestly, we’re being a little too nice. But she has a single mom, so we’re tolerating it for now, though, it had been a few years. This has also happened to me at my daughter’s house. For those who don’t know, I bought property smoke chair and I’ve already bought properties. We’ve earmarked properties as our RSP for each kid retirement our real estate savings plan. So one day it will it will be my daughter’s job will become the landlord and one day so she’ll have to take over this and take it off my plate. Speaking of my daughter, she recently came third place in her competitive speaking class. My son unfortunately didn’t win anything. Again, unfortunately, he’s inherited my habit of mumbling. But yay, daughter. Cheering myself and our families are all shy people, especially growing up are all introverted. I think we’re all pretty much all introverted as well. And I think everyone knows that public speaking and public presentation skills, verbal communication skills are all important. Hence, our kids are three years into public speaking classes. Only last year, they got into competitive and the results have been awesome. I’ll see my kids holding conversations with adults and with adults at social events, either family or work related events and they’re not shy like sharing our at our at our age, our experiences has been a good one. So if your kids are feeling shy, I’d recommend public speaking as well. Speaking of public speaking, my team and I have presentations to give at the upcoming iWin meeting online only meeting will be given the same awesome economic and market updates investors need to know both east and west the GTA and we’re just about to confirm our guest speaker. It will either be a multifamily investor speak expert who has retired thanks to their portfolio, they have somewhere north of 300 doors I believe. So this is someone who is extremely legit. And also when Brian does zero work, as in he is truly retired. It’s not like some of these invest these some of these folks out there who are saying they’re retired but they have a full time job. Or it’s either gonna be Brian who is the agenda has hundreds of doors very successful makes lots of money, or we have a senior living slash retirement home investor with over 20 years experience and they have a fund as well. So it’s gonna be either senior care investing, someone who also has a fund or a someone who has a REIT, sorry, in the apartment building space, whomever we have, it will be excellent. As these folks are serious veterans of the industry. They’re a lot older than I am as well.
Erwin
So they’ve got lots of time and experience in the market. And as always, this will be an excellent I win real estate meeting. And as that is always the standard here. As I mentioned, this will be an online event only the meeting will take place at 730 on Tuesday, April 18. Via zoom, hopefully everyone knows how to use Zoom. If live and in person networking is more your thing. Saturday morning, April 22 will be we will be hosting the island mastermind tour. Again, that’s called the island mastermind tour, which consists of we’re going to meet it for coffee, we’re going to meet this one’s in Hamilton. So we’ll be meeting at Hamilton’s number one ranked coffee shop by the way the croissants are to die for. Once we’re all gathered, we’ll head out for a tour, both inside and outside and an income property or to sell sometimes it’ll be owned by my clients. So these are actually real investment properties, followed by a mastermind lunch. Our last our mastermind tour sold out the one we did in Oshawa just a few weeks ago. It’s sold out in four days. So do not delay. The education and networking is excellent. If you haven’t been on one of these tours before. Again, we’re meeting for coffee we’re gonna be inside doing tours inside and outside of income property and mastermind lunch. So there’s lots of opportunities to network with like minded people that costs only $20 plus taxes and fees, all profits go to charity. So if you’re not on my email list, then you and I don’t know why there’s already over 10,000 Hardworking Canadians on our email newsletter. And all you need to go do is go to this, this podcasts website, www dot truth about real estate investing.ca and put your name and email in on the right side and then you’ll start getting our email newsletters. You’ll get informed when these new episodes come out. When we host events costs are, again are nominal for almost all our events, our island meeting this online is free. So we’re giving away a whole tonne of quality education that actually makes people money. So yeah, so get on my email newsletter. If you’re already getting our emails, then you’re just gonna check it out. You’ll be informed when your first chance to register. So yeah, so do not delay for the island mastermind tour because again, the last one sold out in four days. So and there was a lot of disappointment afterwards. So please do not delay onto this week’s show. This week we have Matthew Varga who together with his wife, Nicole have a several six figures ventures so several six figure businesses in different categories. They have a YouTube channel called it’s called Health Net nutrition Inc. And it almost has a million subscribers from which they generate ad revenue or from YouTube. They also have show sponsors and because they have an engaged audience and they have a brand, they able to market their followers, their e commerce Store. So they have they make money. So there’s multiple revenue streams stemming from this successful YouTube channel. They have a growing portfolio of real estate investment properties. Some are buy and hold and some are buying holds the Airbnb in Matthews doing what’s called Airbnb arbitrage, which means that he that he is the long term tenant so he’s renting from other landlords and then he furnishes that property and operates an Airbnb business instead of rental property to make money to pay both pay the rent, and then Matthew just keep any remaining profits. Airbnb arbitrage can be a great way for newer investors to break into the market, but it’s not without risk. Well, if you don’t make enough, then you’re on the hook for the rent. Right? Right. But Matthew was kind enough to detail his wish list for features in order to command and rent the great rental rates before he would consider taking on any or Airbnb arbitrage opportunity. Matthew also recently returned from Florida as he now spends winters there in Florida to both avoid our cold winters and go looking for real estate opportunities. He also shares how he’s able to do so like logistically with visas and investments and whatnot. So Adam, our product, Podcast Producer, you know, he’s off camera, he’s Off mic. But he said that this is one of the best interviews we’ve ever done. It’s really interesting. It’s an interesting interview because a lot of people talked about doing YouTube and ecommerce stores and therapy Bill arbitrage is Matthew actually does it does. It’s quite successful. So for me, I have no idea what I’m doing here. You’re stuck at 17 listeners, but Matthew is legitimately young and successful. So I can’t recommend enough that you have a listen and take notes. Please enjoy the show. Is it Matthew? Man
Matthew
Now like most of us say Matthew, I don’t have a preference people I know for a long time call me Matt. Newer people usually say Matthew, I usually introduce myself as Matthew, but it doesn’t matter. Someone calls me Matt or Matthew. Okay,
Erwin
my mistake leads us both. Yeah. What’s keeping you busy these days?
Matthew
Yeah, so what’s keeping us busy these days is probably like our biggest newest project is like our Airbnb arbitrage business. So that’s something that we started up just over a year ago. And we’ve built that up to about 15 properties. Now. That’s a mixture of mostly Airbnb arbitrage. But there are some of our own units that were long term that we’ve converted into Airbnb s. And then we also manage some people’s Airbnb s for them. So we’ve had people reaching out and asking me to manage their properties for them, because they’ve just been underperforming. But yeah, so we’ve been doing that for just over a year now 15 properties, I think our gross revenue over the last year on that is about 350k. And probably by next year, we’ll have that up to about a million I think as we add more properties and more more investors. So that’s sort of what we’re, we’re looking to do. And like I said, that’s like the Airbnb arbitrage model. So we can sort of talk about what that is, and break that down. And then on top of that, we also run our YouTube channel, as we were just talking about a little bit earlier. So we have our main YouTube channel that’s more focused on health, wellness, family stuff, since we had our, our daughter two and a half years ago. So our content shifted a little bit to more family content, and that we’re just gonna hit a million subscribers this year. So that’s a big milestone for us. We’ve been running that for a while. Now. We have our ecommerce store that we’ve that we’ve been running for the last couple of years, we’ve been making some shifts there on on what we’re offering to people. We have our natural skincare line that we we started a few years ago, but it’s sort of dropped off a little bit but we’re looking to like really build that up this year and really put a lot more effort into into that line of business. That sounds like a lot already, doesn’t it? But yeah, we have all that going on. And then we have our long term rentals that we manage We’ve been testing out some different businesses that I’ve that I’ve been interested in so like Turo, renting out cars on Turo, I think that can be very complementary to like the Airbnb business. Yeah. And then recently this year I got seasons tickets for the Toronto Raptors. So I’ve been, I’ve been sort of using just trying that out too. And that’s been actually like a pretty good a good thing when it comes to like, I think I made about roughly like profit on the season’s tickets this year, which is a whole other thing we can go into, but like roughly like 5k for the year in profit on like, selling like tickets with like a bit of markup to people. And I didn’t know you could do. Yeah, so that’s like, just something I got into this year. And I see you’re wearing a Toronto Raptors shirt. I have to go to a game right to take you to a game and so
Erwin
you know, funny thing about me is like, I just like to see the Raptors win. So we can go see Detroit Pistons. Magic, the ones that nobody wants. Yeah, exactly. Nothing bums me over. They suck on the Raptors lose.
Matthew
Ya know, it’s a very different vibe when you’re there and like, you know, they’re winning, compared to when they’re losing. So I think like, I think this year, they’re their team’s not the best. He started out really well. But he sort of dropped off this year. But like, I think because we have the only team in Canada, like the demand for tickets is still really strong. And you can do a pretty healthy profit margin. Yeah, yeah. No idea gets very interesting. All right.
Erwin
I thought introducing myself was difficult. This is pretty bad. There’s a lot the size of the boat full. Okay, let’s start with our Airbnb arbitrage. What does that mean? So Sam, I’m a grade five. Explain to me what’s Airbnb arbitrage. Okay,
Matthew
so Airbnb arbitrage is where you rent a home from a traditional investor landlord, someone like yourself, or any of the clients that you work with. And basically, you rent the home, you’re paying normal market rents to them, and you’re turning around furnishing that property. And then you put it up on Airbnb. And the profit that you make is the difference between what you’re paying in your expenses to that landlord, utilities and other costs and what you’re making on Airbnb. So this is something that we just started doing, like I said, just over a year ago, and I think it’s just probably one of the best business models that I’ve seen, especially for like new investors, or anyone who’s just looking for something that has a really good cash on cash return and high cash flow margins. So we typically tend to work with real estate investors who own multiple properties. And they’re looking for someone that they can rent their property to have less headaches and long term tenants. So that’s how we actually got into in the first place, because we had some friends of ours who were into Airbnb arbitrage that introduced us to the model. And because we own long term properties ourselves, we have long term tenants we understand like the frustrations can kind of come with it when you get people who don’t pay rent on time, don’t pay rent at all. As we know in Ontario, it can be difficult to evict people or recoup funds that you lose. So when we sort of heard about this business model, it made sense for us as like landlords to be like, Oh, I can see why we want to want to rent to someone who’s doing this model, because you have it professionally cleaned multiple times a month they take care of so we take care of any maintenance issues on site, you know, so it was a great win win to be able to offer this to investors and other landlords. And the profit margin that you can make well, putting it up on Airbnb is actually like really good. If you want to give you an example of like our most recent project, our most recent project, we’re renting a triplex from an investor in Windsor. It’s three units, it’s got two one bedroom units, and then a three bedroom unit. So we rent this whole property from the investor. And we’re paying him 4000 A month, which is you know, good market rent. So he’s happy because he’s making what he would have gotten if it was a long term tenant, three different long term tenants renting all those properties. So he’s making his cash flow that he’s happy with. And then we furnish the property, I think our total cost of service
Erwin
who pays for furnishing, we pay for furnishing? Oh, boy, yeah. So well, it’s actually you
Matthew
know, so to furnish this and we tend to go more on the higher end, not higher end, but just like better quality furniture because I just found a lot of other people who do this business or who set up Airbnb, they try to do the cheapest route they can and I’ve just found like, yeah, you kind of you attract certain clientele. You can’t really charge premium rates. So we tend to go for a higher quality furniture, higher quality decorations and other things. So for us to furnish that property we spent about $30,000.30 to 35,000 bucks for the whole triplex that’s five bedrooms, two different living rooms, so couches, rugs, you know, all this stuff for the kitchen. So yeah, we spend about 30 35,000 To furnish the whole place. And with that landlord, we were able to negotiate two months free rent because he had a few things that he was working on. And in those two months we were actually able to generate on Airbnb $11,000 of revenue, which went right into our pocket. it. So right off the bat, we made 11,000 profit in those first two months, which basically pays for almost half the furniture, a third of the furniture. And now that we’re paying over, like we’re paying our normal rent, so we’re paying him $4,000 A month, our total cost to run the property with utilities and internet is about 4300, give or take. And for this month, March, we brought in 6800 in revenue on Airbnb, so we made a profit of about 2500 for this month, and it’s one of the slower months. So I’m fairly confident that we’re already starting to get bookings for May, June, July, I feel like we’re probably going to bring in closer to like 9000 in revenue in those summer months when people really start travelling more. Yeah, so we’ll probably make about five to six grand profit off that one property. So you know, kind of do the math, you start to do a couple of these. And you can really like one or two of these a person could leave their nine to five job if they wanted to. Which is a big motivator for a lot of people these days.
Erwin
This sounds fantastic. Now, I think you know what, I think we all know I personally like really like Airbnb, but doesn’t work on every property. What are you looking for in a property that you would take on because remember you actually met you DM me asking me your fact checking someone who pitched you said that the rents for this I’m like no they’re not Yeah.
Matthew
Yeah duplex in Hamilton. Yeah, so normally what we look for in a property is we look for a property renovated looks nice, you know nearly done white kitchen you know, granite countertops, we tend only want to deal with like a higher end property that we can get good clientele on there. People are willing to spend more than just sort of the average nightly rate on Airbnb. We look for cities that have regulations that are favourable to us. Hamilton used to be pretty favourable, but it’s from what I was pretty terrible now it’s yeah, it’s really changed. It’s very anti air b&b. I mean, it’s good if you’re if you own the property and you’re just renting out your basement on Airbnb, I feel like you can still do that there no problem,
Erwin
but you’re probably killing the new bylaws.
Matthew
Because it’s probably taken a lot of the corporate people who were doing it out of the picture made them had to adjust more mid term rentals. But we look for like newer properties, nicer properties, duplexes are great because we can rent out the basement and the upstairs. Now we kind of focus more on Kitchener, Waterloo, Barry, St. Catharines Windsor, so you know any investors who have properties in those areas, if they’re looking to, you know, talk more about this sort of model and see if it’s a good fit, like feel free to reach out to me and we can talk about that, really, we’re looking for awesome properties that have usually like like a nice backyard space that we can do up because I find the high season for air b&b in Canada is obviously summer the summer months. So we’d like to be able to offer like a nice outdoor setting. I usually like a little firepits and Muskoka chairs barbecue. I feel like that just helps us bring in more bookings in our competition. Really, any property that’s in a city that has like good rules and regulations, it’s up to date looks good, has like a backyard that we can utilise and do something with it has the potential to do well on Airbnb,
Erwin
what about amenities? What amenities are important when you’re looking for an air b&b that will perform?
Matthew
Like I said, I think just like a nice backyard space and like upgraded interior open about like, what I
Erwin
mean, like like walkability. Does it be close to hospital? Employment? Restaurants?
Matthew
Yeah, I mean, for some cities, it is good. It depends on like, who you’re looking to target. So I find like those amenities make more sense if you’re doing the midterm rental sort of anything over like the 28 days, because then you might be targeting more like students who want to who are like so for example, in the Windsor property, some of the people we have booking with us, their students go into the University of Windsor, they’re international. So then proximity is a useful thing. But I find that if you’re like so for example, we have some Airbnbs. And Barry, like people aren’t really concerned about the proximity to hospitals or grocery stores or anything like that. And the wintertime, people are asking, like how close we are to the ski hills because we’re getting a lot more like, you know, people who are booking for, you know, ski vacations right now and Horseshoe Valley and Blue Mountains and that so that I find is but as long as you’re within like 15 to 20 minutes of that it hasn’t really impacted our ability to get bookings. But yeah, I would just say unless you’re looking to target more midterm rentals in a lot of the cities of Barry, I find like some of those amenities aren’t as important because most people who are staying with us are driving up anyway. So they have the ability to, you know, drive to like grocery stores or anything that they need.
Erwin
Right. So see me parking then as well, I guess. Yeah, definitely need
Matthew
parking, unless you’re doing it more in like, the core of the city. But in general, yeah. If you have parking, I found that to be really important because most people are driving up to stay with us. Yeah, that’s definitely something and then also usually for rules and regulations. They tend to have certain requirements for a number of parking spots and things like that. I
Erwin
remember Adam and I were staying in an Airbnb in a duplex in Ottawa. That said they had to parking for two but they didn’t want street parking. And there was street parking was only for three hours. Oh, yeah. So we weren’t happy campers. But it’s funny because Airbnb can be a bit of it’s not consistent, right? Because every operator is different. That was probably one of my most favourite experiences. But you know, I still like staying in Airbnb is because there’s always a common area. Yeah, which don’t get no hotels.
Matthew
And I think like for us, like we have a young daughter and like staying in a hotel with with kids in my mind is just so you get there a bit younger and they maybe they still take naps or they go to bed early. Once you put them down here, you’re stuck in the room. Right? So I find like Airbnb is a really good for families and people travelling and like you said, having an outdoor space. You’re right, like, sometimes the consistency of bookings isn’t there. But you know, we’ve recently converted, we’ve been converting a lot of our long term rentals into like Airbnb is as people move out. And even with lower occupancy during the winter months, at some of our barre properties, I found that I’m still bringing in more than I would with a long term tenant. And I have someone who in like, it’s filled half the month. So there’s less wear and tear and less this and I’m still able to bring in the same or more as I would if I had rented it long term. So like the benefits kind of outweigh the cost, right? I find for us in a lot of those properties.
Erwin
How are you managing though, because Airbnb is much more transactional than a long term long term relationship with long term tenants. You know, I’ve one property yet on here for the tenant. I hear for the tenant, maybe twice a year, maybe? Yeah, right? Oh, sure to hear from you get way more than that for for an Airbnb customer. Yeah,
Matthew
I sound like so a lot of things on Airbnb can be automated. So all your messaging can be automated, you can have everything sort of set up where you have your sequence of messages that gets sent out to guests, when they’re checking in. So like they get there, after they book, they sort of get their welcome, thank you for booking with us message, then they get their check in message like an hour before their check in time to kind of list everything that they need to know about the property, their door code Wi Fi information. And then we usually have sort of a day after they, they check in just sort of touch point being like, okay, you know, like everything going good, you need anything, and then we have our night before checkout, just sort of letting them know hope like you’re checking out tomorrow, don’t forget, you have to check out by this time, here’s sort of, you know, what we’d like to see if you could make sure your dishes are clean, and this and that sort of what we expect for our checkout. And then after they check out, we just have like a follow up, it just says thank you for staying with us. If you have any feedback, let us know, trying to get them to give us you know, like five star rating or good rating. So a lot of the stuff with Airbnb that you would think would be time consuming can really be automated now. And I found to be honest, like even over the summertime, when we have guests after guests, after guests and in our properties, like the amount of communication from people, as long as everything’s really laid out and clear for them. I hardly hear from people. Because you think to yourself when you go booking Airbnb, unless there’s something that you can’t find, or you like something that’s missing that you were expecting, like you don’t reach out to the guests, you just want to go there, enjoy your vacation. And I have no interest in reaching out to people like the hosts on Airbnb to talk to them, right. It’s like, as long as everything’s there and setup for me and I understand like, how to use everything. And then I don’t hear from anybody
Erwin
just want to have a lot of Airbnb use experience we just got back from one in Huntsville and their labels everywhere. And I loved it. Yeah,
Matthew
I think like you can really, you can really take a lot of the work out of Airbnb, you can have your electronic electronic locks can have electronic locks that sync up to like your Airbnb platform. So it’ll change the codes and send those to to the guest. There’s really like, I would say probably like 80, or 90% of the work can be done up front and automated. So you don’t have to worry about it ever again. Like there’s a lot of work to like, get everything set up and like understand the platform and how it works. And if there’s any damage or anything like that, like having your systems in place and make sure that you get reimbursed for that and that you don’t get sort of left covering the cost of that.
Erwin
Has that ever happened? How many claims have you had made?
Matthew
Not that many? Not that many, but yeah, we have had some damage, even just the other day, I had a guest who’s staying at one of our properties and like they broke the couch leg, you know, so it’s like, oh, they’re just like, oh, the leg broke. And I’m like, It’s a brand new couch like two months old. So I don’t know if they were flopping around on it or who knows what they were doing. You know, but in the end, it’s like okay, well we have we have our our process and our procedures that we follow. We have our photos that our cleaners take after they clean a property to show that everything’s in good condition that way you can’t have a guest try to say oh, it was like that when I got here because we have our photo evidence that shows everything’s clean and everything’s intact and in shape. And then you know, as long as we have that evidence and then when the guest checks out, we take our our follow up photos after they check out that just shows and documents anything so for that couch will be able to, you know, basically, if we can’t get a part to repair it like we’ll get it fully covered Airbnb will pay for that couch for us to buy brand new one. Oh, yeah, sir experience has
Erwin
been pretty good.
Matthew
So far. Yeah, as long as I think people that I’ve talked to have had bad experience or been unable to get reimbursed is because they didn’t understand the system, they didn’t have a process in place. I was talking to a guy the other day who didn’t get reimbursed for stuff, but he didn’t have any photos. Like, from his cleaner, like before the guests checked in afterwards clean. So they were sending in photos up from their listing, you know, an Airbnb is like, well, these are like listing photos could have been taken months ago. Right? So as long as you sort of understand what Airbnb is looking for, and you follow that to a tee, there’s really not much they can say, because like they offer that insurance, and they offer to cover it for you. And if the guest isn’t willing to pay for which a lot of times they they won’t, then Airbnb has to cover it.
Erwin
So house insurance work, like you imagine you have your own insurance. What insurance of the the investor have oh, like the owner of the home? Yeah, the the real estate investor who is in sorry, in an IRB minute arbitrage opportunity. Basically, you’re the property manager, just that your intention with the strategy is a short term rental on Airbnb platform. So what kind of insurance would the owner of the property have?
Matthew
Usually the owner of the property would just have their standard house insurance that they would have? We have a we have you know, Airbnb has its $2 million air cover policy that protects us some landlords like us to have our own, like 10 insurance that we are happy to get so that we have that coverage. And then we also have our own, you know, corporate business insurance that covers us under the Airbnb platform for our Airbnb business. So, you know, you have really four different touch points of insurance. So it kind of provides ample coverage, that people really don’t need to worry about anything, right?
Erwin
Do some investors insist on having like to do they will get their air b&b insurance.
Matthew
I’ve never met anyone that has like that has asked to get that or has that. I mean, because really, they’re renting.
Erwin
That wasn’t cheap, as well over 200 a month.
Matthew
Yeah, I mean, because most of the time, like when a when a landlord is renting to us or renting to us. It’s just like a regular long term tenant, like we’re signing the lease under our company name, you know, and then we just have an addendum that allows us to do you know, Airbnb arbitrage to sublease it. So from what I’ve seen, no one’s ever had to get any extra insurance because they’re renting to us as a long term tenant. And we’re the ones running the business. So we provide the insurance on our end to protect the property and damage and everything else. So
Erwin
in my case, I was the I was still the owner, and I had a hired property manager. Okay, so it wasn’t an arbitrage. I wasn’t renting to them there. There were a service provider to me. But yeah,
Matthew
you own that you were you just had a property manager, running it for you, right,
Erwin
running an Airbnb business. Yeah, like, so I was paying like 20%, my rents of the Airbnb Ryan. And he was dealing with an all basically nice house experience. So I’ve shared it before, my location was not the right location. And also it wasn’t a duplex, it was a single family home just didn’t make enough. It didn’t work for us. Because again, for my clients, like for example, I wasn’t doing nearly as well as my clients were. Right. So for example, my clients are are in like much more walkable areas closer to like restaurants and like the convention centre and stuff like that, they got much more walking traffic. So I was hoping for more performance like that. I didn’t get it. So you know, I just sold and bought another house instead. Yeah,
Matthew
makes sense. Do I mean, I find like, even for a lot of investors now I think like if you like said, if you’re in a city that allows Airbnb to be done, like, I think it’s a really viable option for you know, investors to try to look at that if it makes sense for them to do that, instead of a long term tenant. Like I said, we’ve converted and been converting our long term rentals into like Airbnb, just because the numbers I find the numbers are so difficult on a long term tenants to like, really, and these are properties that we bought five years ago, you know, and even then you’re still like, oh, it just the numbers aren’t that strong. So I mean, I don’t know you’re more involved in in like that side of things now, but like, I just when I’m seeing like properties going for, like 850,000 for a duplex, and I’m looking at like the rents of, you know, say, I don’t know 2800 upstairs or whatever. And 1500 1700 downstairs. I don’t know how people are pulling this off and like generating cash flow. Like I’m not sure what you’re seeing on.
Erwin
Definitely tough for anyone getting in anyone who’s younger. Anyone who doesn’t have cash, fortunately, do have some clients who have cash, so they’re all winning. It’s really sad. Yeah, it’s really sad. It is like the rich are getting richer. Yeah, like they have all the advantages. For example, they can do large cash down payments and not have not had to pay HELOC interest on that money for down payments and when and whatever renovations you’re gonna do. Right, but the reality is who needs the most help? Who needs to do The most for themselves financially? Yes, not the rich people
Matthew
know exactly. When I see like my sister in law and other people are in their, like, early 20s. I just think she’s like, What are you going to do? Like, I feel like at least for my daughter, I’m like, Okay, well, you’re gonna benefit from decisions that we made, but people who don’t have that luxury, as tough. And that’s why I do and I think that’s why you’re seeing such an uprise in like Airbnb arbitrage and that sort of model on like, social media and, and, and stuff because it is a way for people who, who don’t have the capital to get into like a real estate investment to profit and generate income from real estate, like I was, in my example of like, the Windsor property, like I was saying, it’s like we’re making this month, like 2500 bucks a month, in cash flow, sure, there’s more work involved than if it was a long term, you know, a lot of money, you know, but you’re like, that would be five really good long term properties, if you were able to generate 500 bucks a month, cash flow off, like long term rental, and which is, which is still like a bit of a stretch, I would say now, but like, that’s like five good properties, you know, and if you’re looking more like a 200 to $300 a month, sort of cash flow numbers, you’re talking like, you know, eight properties that you would have to have to be able to generate the same amount of cash flows that we do have one and we don’t have to worry about, you know, roof or H vac or anything like that, like so we take care of all maintenance on a property if there’s any damage done by like a guest like we would obviously have that bear and painted freshened up and the places kept in like immaculate condition, which is like why landlords like to work with us because their property just they would get their property back in the exact same condition that they gave it to us in which a lot of times is you know, when you have a long term tenant,
Erwin
they lose turnover, I know your turnover costs. I
Matthew
mean, we had a great tenant, he moved out, he was with us for five years. And like, even though he was an amazing, tenant kept the place good, like treated like his own home, it’s like, it still cost us like $1,500 to turn it over to get it sort of just rent ready again, with paint and other things just to make it look new again to put on the market. Like that chews up a lot of your your cash flow in the midst. So I think that’s like one of the benefits of why you’re seeing, like, we get reached out all the time by investors who want us to do the same model, like rent their property. That’s why I was asking you about Hamilton, because I was like, oh, yeah, we hadn’t been in that market yet. So just seeing what the rent rates are. But we’re seeing a lot more investors wanting to go that route just because of the peace of mind of not having to worry about professional tenants damage people leaving the place dirty. Yeah. So it’s definitely like a growing side of like the real estate industry, which I think is pretty exciting.
Erwin
So I think it’s for a young person who wants to start in our airbeam arbitrage. And it’s a wonderful way to learn the business. If you don’t have the capital, yeah, right. You’ll learn a lot of but a home construction, learn a lot about like, working with tenants and managing people and managing real estate. And then when you go on a property, it’ll be a lot easier.
Matthew
Yeah, no, that’s very true. And then like, if you’re able to generate that kind of cash flow, like it gives people the advantage of hopefully being able to, like put that aside, save it up and actually get into their own. It’s hard to generate that kind of cash flow or income per month. Of like, with anything, right? Yeah. Especially with the cost of living and stuff going up. So yeah, I’m definitely seeing a lot more people reaching out. I’m getting a lot of people asking if I do like coaching for them and like people just trying to like get into the model because it’s you know, there’s a bit of a learning curve, but I think like anyone can do it just once you learn the systems and that it’s, it’s definitely a really cool strategy. And I think like a great way for people to get into real estate, especially younger people, or people who just don’t have a capital of their own to, you know, buy something. So
Erwin
hang on. Well, you were still doing a lot of this from Florida. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sure, not local for a while,
Matthew
that’s a good thing is like you don’t need to be local for it. So we were in Florida for over six months. Last year, we were actually we went down to Florida to really look at the real estate market down there, because as we’re kind of talking about, like numbers have just been pinched a little bit up here, we found it to be difficult to difficult to justify spending the amount of money we’d have to spend on a down payment to get the cash so that we can get off the properties we’re seeing here that that fit our sort of model of what we were looking for. So that’s why we went down to Florida and we’re looking there and I mean, seems like a lot of Canadian investors that that are pretty well known have been going down to to the states sort of take advantage of the opportunities down there. And especially now like when we went down early last year I found like the numbers were good but like the bidding wars on properties like last January and stuff when we were in Florida and we were looking at stuff it was like we were putting offers on properties in like Orlando and like everything was going above multiple offers, you know, like sight unseen so we it just like we weren’t able to actually like secure anything because just
Erwin
Just what months were these what month we were you know making offers
Matthew
so we yeah, we were down there from because as a correction early started, you know, like we were down there in November to May
Erwin
right so you’re full on like rates are going up. Well, this is last year sorry. Yeah, right, sir. Break something going up since what February I’m sorry. Like,
Matthew
when I say last year I forget we’re in 20. So that was like 2220 2120 22 started going up. But yeah, before we started going up, sorry about that. Sorry for the confusion. Yeah, so there was still like before rates were going up. And there was, you know, like, obviously, like, huge demand for everything. So yeah, that was, say, January 2022,
Erwin
you’re probably lucky, you didn’t get anything accepted.
Matthew
You know, like, the only benefit would have been getting like the low interest rates on mortgages. But now we’re seeing a now when I’m like looking at stuff. So we’re actively looking at, you know, Airbnbs in, in the US. So we’re looking at Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, like all areas of Florida, Smoky Mountains, which is like in Tennessee, Nashville. So we’re looking at the Phoenix like all these markets that have like really great opportunity for Airbnb. And we’re seeing now that because the markets have slowed down so much like the thing that I like about the US market is the ability to do like more creative financing. That’s a bit more of a viable option here. Like here in Canada, you can do vendor take backs and and other things. But I find like, in the States, just because there’s so much supply of stuff and such like a bigger market, doing like creative financing, and seller financing now that the market slowed down is his lot easier, like because people need to be creative to be able to unload these properties now with the interest rates of what they are.
Erwin
Because I remember when I was in I was in Fort Lauderdale before the pandemic, back then it was standard for 30 days financing conditions. Yeah. Because the market and I looked at a property on the water. And it had been on the market for like seven months already. Right. In today’s market. I don’t load especially with like the last like two years ago, probably a year ago
Matthew
probably disappeared. And yeah, we were like I said, and we were
Erwin
already days for conditions. Yeah, we’re here, right? Yeah, you can’t even deliver on Ontario.
Matthew
If you didn’t have like a cash offer. Or it was hard to get something like we were fighting now in Orlando there was like, Oh, we were interested in a lot of like Airbnb ease around Disney. And we just felt like things were going quick. like it’d be up a couple of days. And that’s it. Whereas now we’re looking at it’s like, we’re seeing things on the market for six months, you know, multiple mines, you’re seeing like price drops, dramatic price drops, like we’re seeing stuff in Fort Lauderdale that January last year were listed at like 1.5. And now we’re seeing they’re going for 899. So like huge, huge price drops. I mean, granted, like I would say what they were trying to list it at last year was quite an inflated number. But you’re starting to see a lot more opportunity and a lot more people willing to get creative and do different things like seller financing is, you know, like for talking to a lot of sellers. They are open to that. You know, it’s
Erwin
almost unheard of in residential here.
Matthew
It’s hard. It’s difficult, right? It
Erwin
seems Jaisalmer finance you get a lot of
Matthew
gurus here will kind of tell you like, oh, yeah, Finnur takeback in this but I just don’t think it is well. It’s just not something that’s done so much here, I found
Erwin
what’s usually more like complicated properties, like apartment buildings and large commercial. Yeah, not in a single family home.
Matthew
They’re in single family, like you can just go on Zillow, and you can like type in seller financing and sort of filter through like people were saying, open the crate, because they’ve had it listed for like six months. And a lot of these people they random is Airbnbs. And they’re not able to generate the revenue that they they want anymore. So they’re just trying to like unload these properties. But a lot of times like they bought them less than two years ago, I’d say 550 And now they’re selling them for 750. So I’m sure they’re happy with the capital gains they’ve got but yeah, so we’re seeing a lot of opportunity in the States right now.
Erwin
Like the dollars like 73 cents right now. So we’re just crazy because a year ago it was like 80 cents. Yeah, that does not seem to affect you like because I know you have your other businesses I’m gonna guess you’re earning money in US dollars. Yeah,
Matthew
so we are earning US dollars which shall be just keeping us and we’ll use that for our investing but even when I look at the numbers, when you’re looking at like what it would convert to from like Canadian to us and based on the cash flow that you can get so for example, like we’re looking at a property in Orlando right now with a partner, and we’d be getting this for 700,000 It’s six bedrooms, five bath 3500 square feet pool in the back and like a lot of times in in Florida and other places when you’re buying Airbnb by him but fully furnished. So we’re getting like, you know, 40k where the furniture already in there now are carrying costs on it with with 20% down I think like the monthly carrying cost is about five grand when we included like HOA fees and property tax and you know, lawn care and pool maintenance is about five grand
Erwin
and mortgages more than that carry on.
Matthew
So like total, okay, yeah. I don’t know, I don’t live in a 3500 square foot home with a pool in the bathroom legs. So yeah, so you’re all in annual carrying costs about $60,000 us for that property, conservative estimate err DNA and doing our research on it, like we pull in over 100,000 us on that property. You know, and that’s like a conservative 65% occupancy, you know, so we’d be able to generate almost like 40 grand conservatively in revenue, like in cash flow on that property, right? So when you kind of look at the numbers are like, well, that’s what you’d be bringing in on on that property there. So even with the conversion, if you do even convert it back, like some people, usually a better strategy is to keep it in us keep it in like your S corp or whatever, and then just use it to purchase more properties and sort of grow and expand that. But even if you were to convert it back, like I think like the numbers really weren’t for themselves. And like I said that that like conservative estimate. So because of our other business, like the social media and stuff, like we utilise that business to help us fill our occupancy up. So we’re marketing our Airbnb properties, you know, to our audience, where it’s like, especially like Disney, because we have a lot of families that follow us and follow our content. So like being able to market these family friendly areas and properties to you know, a million people online allows us to have a much higher occupancy rate. And you know, that 65% Because we’re able to market to them. And we can even set up our own like direct booking site, and like sort of take out the 3% middleman that we would have with Airbnb only 3%. Airbnb charges 3% to the host. So that’s like our profit margin that cuts out but like it’s also like, Oh, now the person booking with you directly doesn’t have to pay the Airbnb fees on Airbnb ZAN. So you’re sort of saving not only you’re making a bit more profit on your end, because you’re not paying Airbnb, the 3% but also the person booking with you directly is saving quite a chunk. I don’t even know what Airbnb is fee is on the guessing but usually seems pretty high when I’m if I’m looking at Airbnb, and I see Airbnb services, I’m like, oh, it’s quite, you know, quite a lot. So sorry, what
Erwin
was the asking? What was the asking that are not Orlando hosts? That was 770,000.
Matthew
Us? Yeah. And it was like, sorry, you can build it for that. Yeah, I mean, and we’re seeing that those kinds of numbers like really all over the US like when we’re like when all over but like all the areas that we’re looking on that we know have a good amount of tourism and people coming in. So that Fort Lauderdale, same thing, we’re looking at properties in Fort Lauderdale that are you know, 800,000, same thing, we can generate 110,000 in revenue off Airbnb conservatively. So we’re still able to generate anywhere between like 30 to 50,000 us cash flow on top of like what you’re paying, and then you’re getting mortgage paid down. And that if you’re not doing the arbitrage model, which is something that we’re looking at down there as well and getting opportunities presented to us for that. So I just find with the US there’s just like a lot of ways to make money. And then I think like if you’re creative with Airbnb, you can also make revenue on different things. So part of the reason why I got into Turo and doing like, you know, sort of renting out like our Tesla, and that is, is because I was like testing that business out to see because I just saw an opportunity when we were in Florida is like, oh, like, what our plan is, is to like, you know, purchase these Airbnbs in Orlando and other cities. And then we’re also going to have vehicles that we have that we would offer to our guests to be able to like double dip. So you know, a lot of times when people are planning a vacation, they’re booking their stay first, and then they’re getting their vehicle. So like when we booked our place in Orlando, it’s like, oh, we book our house. And then we look at like, Okay, now we need to get a car to rent so we can get around. So what we’re going to do is that we offer vehicles to our guests who are booking with us, like, hey, you’d like to book with us, we have, you know, a van SUV, whatever, we’ll give you like, you know, a great rate cheaper than what they would get it for if they rented it, you know, through a car rental agency. And it sort of all built into their, into their bookings. So you can sort of take advantage of a lot of different revenue streams if you kind of get creative with it. Because we were paying like we were renting when we went down to Florida, we didn’t drive down, we flew down. And then we were renting a vehicle and I mean, like to rent a van for for a month in Florida was costing us like, I don’t know, 1500 USD for like a month. And that’s like booking it for a month. Right? So it was Yeah, much to it. Yeah. And that’s just like through and that’s a month like you get a booking, like if you were to rent that for like a week, you’d probably be paying more like 900 bucks for the week. So yeah, so there’s just like a lot of opportunity I find in in the states just because of the amount of tourism coming in to some of those key areas where it’s like, oh, people need a vehicle in Florida. Usually like a lot of Airbnbs like people charge you pool heating, you know you want to heat your pool it’s 30 bucks a day, or you want to barbecue 25 bucks a day you can rent that too. So you just see so many ways that people are making additional revenue on top of just their listing that I just find it a lot of opportunity
Erwin
right can you sell me Disney tickets for cheap
Matthew
that I don’t think you can but I’m like I’m sure you could like you could get creative and maybe like offer people I don’t know, gift baskets or something like that to you know like going Aliexpress or Alibaba and order a bunch of like Disney stuff for cheap and sort of give it to guess is like a welcome gift for free.
Erwin
So I want the listener understand like most people are not this vertically integrated Have your own traffic to your property.
Matthew
If you didn’t, I mean, like I said, like the numbers that I was stating were really more like what you see when you go to like air DNA and you do your research and sort of see like what, you know, an air DNA is just like a research tool you can use and it’s pulling historical data based on other people who also don’t have your following. So those are numbers that you’re seeing based on, you know, someone who doesn’t have the ability to market to other people still taking data
Erwin
from Airbnb, VRBO. Home, I don’t see what’s what’s the sort of one that’s
Matthew
a big one. Okay, but I don’t I don’t want to pull data from there. I know, it’s like, majority of the data that you pull will be from Airbnb, right? Yeah, no, so you’re getting a relatively accurate
Erwin
sort of just for listeners benefit that the data is representing someone who’s paying for traffic via Airbnb versus you can drive your own truck some of your own traffic as well.
Matthew
Yeah. So when you’re using air DNA to like run your numbers, it like air DNase using historical data from let’s just say Airbnb to be like, Okay, well, we know similar properties to this that have four bedrooms, two baths over the last year, they’ve been able to generate, you know, $100,000 in revenue at an average rate of $400 a night 65% occupancy. So
Erwin
they’re in the show, even though even the listings in your area, so you can
Matthew
pay extra I mean, you don’t even need to pay extra you can use like their rental laser tool for free and get like at least that base knowledge. But then yeah, you’re right. If you want to pay a little bit extra for like city specific data or state specific data, you can do that and get even more granular with their numbers.
Erwin
I think it was paying like 40 bucks a month. It’s been a while. Yeah,
Matthew
they can, they can be pricey. I found like, they really I mean, I only use a free, I use a free option to give me like a base idea. Like, okay, give me a broad general overview, like okay, how much can I potentially generate? And then I dive deeper by just using Airbnb itself to sort of see what other bookings are, are there and other listings and competition to kind of get a better idea of what other calendars look like, for the next few months. And you can really do a lot of this stuff for free. You don’t need to necessarily pay for that extra information if you don’t want to.
Erwin
And how was your experience with traffic Airbnb wise, because we’re in the middle of a recession? It’s funny because I often joke like, like, for example, where was I? I was skiing. This is full Blue Mountain or something? No, I was I was a blue mount a few weeks ago. Oh, yeah. Summer session. We’re having places packed on a Monday. Yeah, not a holiday. Yeah. People are dropping 100 bucks. 120 bucks on the lift ticket.
Matthew
Oh, man. I mean, we were just in the Bahamas for for a week. And same thing. I was like, it’s full. Everyone’s there. And there’s like a Palm Desert isn’t the cheapest place to to travel to and like you’re just like, man, like, I don’t know. Yeah, it sounds like you’re going to these resorts or ski hills in this just empty because someone’s going out. So like, there’s a recession. Obviously, it is impacting people, unfortunately. But there’s a huge sector of people who aren’t impacted and like they don’t care. They want to have fun. They want to live their life and enjoy themselves. And, you know, we live in a world of instant gratification. So I think like the days of not doing things to hold off, because it’s like the best financial choice. I feel like maybe the generation coming up isn’t as inclined to do that as like maybe our parents generation when they’re a bit more willing to make those sacrifices. I feel like now people are more inclined to be like, Wow, just put on a credit card now figured out lame. Hence my credit card debt site had an all time high. I think right now, too, right?
Erwin
Interesting. Not the people I roll with, but I will send you a low I roll with are generally much more well off than their parents were. Yes. There’s that too, as well. So one observation I made was, so I see the same place Christmas holidays in March Break, March Break this past March Break with not nearly as busy. So as I was talking to one of the staff a ski place and like it’s not that busy. She was yeah, my friend at the bank, though, says that people are just taking out money and all these different currencies. And that’s where we’re just guessing people were going so people went took a bigger expense to go travel overseas than to go ski so for small, my small observation is people are spending even more money now than they were during Christmas holidays. Yeah, I can’t believe it. I think like is that what you’re seeing that like you must see some of this in your Airbnb information in terms of your bookings or whatnot? Like I imagine you’re busy.
Matthew
Yeah. So I mean, I found like, March has been a bit of a slower month but I think it’s just because of the weather’s been you know, it’s not like it’s just all yourself, though. It’s all Canadian based right now. Yeah. So for
Erwin
Florida bookings have been crazy. Yeah,
Matthew
right now like all the properties that I’m looking at and when doing my research like most of them are 100% occupied for these months. You know, you’re still getting like the snowbirds going down to Florida. They just have no interest in staying up here for the winter so they’re going down regardless every year but even with our berry properties like I’m always amazed at the I’m always like blown away by the amount of money that people will pay for like an air b&b and Barry I mean like this is a four bedroom, two bath bungalow. We did like a renovations. It looks great inside. We did like a little you know, nice like media room downstairs. 75 inch TV a few aims. And when I was initially setting this up, which would have been the last summer I was setting this up to sort of test it out to see how it would do. I was thinking like my max rates during peak season would be maybe like, three 350 At night type thing. And like we’ve had people no word of a lie pay is $800 a night for me like we allow up to like 10 people’s, we allow bigger groups because we have, you know, it’s a four bedroom house, but like we’ve had people pay upwards of $800 A Night to like, stay at a house and bury so like the numbers blow my mind. Sometimes I’m like, What’s the
Erwin
occasion? Was there an event or no, like, like a pop concert or?
Matthew
No, I mean, if it’s like there’s Boots and Hearts, which is like a country festival there that we have had people pay pretty good rates. But these are like on a like on the normal weekend. Like a normal weekend, people coming up because they’re like, oh, summer Christmas, like, but over Christmas time, we had family staying with us. And they were paying pretty good rates, probably about like 600 Nights 700 night, but even just like in February, for like a two day weekend, people who booked they had a group of 10 of them as a group of friends going up there for like skiing. And because we charge additional rates for any guests over five people, it helps gives us like a night nice extra boost. So they’re paying I think 400 bucks a night regularly. But then with the extra guests on top 50 bucks a poppy tonight, it ended up increasing our rate to about 800 bucks a night interest. So when you kind of divide it by 10 people, it really ends up not being that much per person, I’m sure when they broke it down by I think just for us like we like I said we’d like to put in higher quality furniture, we like to do different things that just make our property stand out. Like Like I said, 75 inch TV instead of 55. Like a lot of people do create a nice media room, and we got a foosball table and a ping pong table. So kind of gives people a little bit more to do that makes us stand out. So people are willing to pay a little bit extra for that.
Erwin
And then just naturally, you don’t have to provide it you just provide the venue for the greater experience to happen. Yeah, right. Because you don’t you don’t get that when you’re on like five hotel rooms.
Matthew
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I think like when you get larger groups, because we can do that. It’s like when someone wants to break it down. Like if you were to book five hotel rooms, like how much is a hotel room at night, probably like 200 bucks. 250. I don’t even know if 300. So you probably get like, a significantly higher cost. If you were to stay in hotels. And if you were to just book one place, and then you can all stay there, cook your own food, have a community have TVs in the living room to like lounge in. So it’s different experience.
Erwin
Totally different. I’d much prefer to really enjoying it. Now. We’re running a time I need to ask for the YouTube business. Okay. Because you’ve been you guys have been out for a long time. Yeah. How long?
Matthew
We’ve been doing YouTube? I think roughly it’s probably been about 10 years now.
Erwin
So what’s it called so people can look it up? Yeah,
Matthew
so our main channel is Health Nut Nutrition. That’s the one that’s run mostly by my my wife. And then I have my own channel. It’s a smaller one. I just started the other. The other year. It’s just my name, Matthew Varga, mine’s more focused on finance, Airbnb, real estate investing. So that’s obviously my focus. And then my wife’s one is more on healthy food, cooking healthy lifestyle, childcare stuff, like parenting stuff. So, so we’ve been doing that for 10 years, we originally started YouTube. 10 years ago, we moved to Australia for two years, we went and live there backpack travelled Southeast Asia and Australia. And we were doing YouTube just to really mostly for our family just sort of like documenting our travels. So they because at the time, there really wasn’t vlogging or, you know, people were making a living on YouTube. That’s how we kind of got into it originally. And then my wife sort of kept going with it. And she started doing more like the recipes and healthy lifestyle stuff. And then just over the years just exploded and in grown into what it is, you know, today, we’re like I said, we’re hitting a million subscribers, I think we’re somewhere like, I don’t know, 100 million views or, or more. So we’ve really, you know, like, created a community online, which is just like a really cool, cool thing that we were able to, you know, not only like, make a living doing that, but we’re also able to, like provide value to people all over the world. And you know, it’s pretty cool the world we live in now.
Erwin
So I’m assuming you monitor that YouTube pays you for like your content. Yeah. What kind of rates do they pay? I don’t know if you know, yeah. So I want to ask you what you get paid. But what kind of, because I think like most people have no idea. Yeah, first of all, I don’t think a lot of people know that YouTube will pay content providers.
Matthew
Yes. I always find like one of the first questions like when we like you tell someone what you do. It’s like, oh, what do you do? It’s like, well, like we do YouTube people always ask like, we get paid for that. So like yeah, and then the next question they asked I think it’s like the only job in the world where people can be like, well how much do you make? So they asked like people always ask that I find like you would never ask someone else that like when you first meet them but I think because of the nature of it. Yeah, so like
Erwin
what you guys are your lives are out there on the internet.
Matthew
Exactly. And like because we’ve been doing for so long in the sighs I mean, like we get spotted all over so it’s like, become a really cool thing. But so with YouTube, we have different ways that you can like make money from it. Obviously we have like AdSense revenue, which As the ads to get put up on our channel, like before you watch it as I’m sure we’ve all, you know, click the skip ads button many times before but so that’s why pay so I don’t even see them. Oh, so you pay? Yeah, so we get, we get ads through that, that brings in five figures a month off of just ad revenue. Yeah. And then we work with brands. So we’ve worked with it. We’ve worked with Amazon, Walmart, Target Sobeys, like, you know, big multinational companies on lots of different like campaigns and different things.
Erwin
Like brand ambassadors for for large businesses.
Matthew
Yeah, usually, it’s sort of, they’re paying to be like, hey, like, we want to, you know, either new product came out or just market awareness. And they’re paying us to be mentioned in a video, one of our videos where we’re talking about either the product, so a product review, yeah, sometimes it’s like food, where it’s like, oh, we work with Sobeys. And we create, like a recipe, using their food products. So they are getting market exposure that way. And I mean, like, that’s also like, that side of the business brings in multi six figures as well working with these large companies. So definitely, social media is a lot more, I think, a lot more lucrative than like, you know, people would probably anticipate maybe not so much. Now, I think people have no idea going into going into No, we were just doing it at that point. Like, we were making nothing like I think we Nicole was really doing it for a number of years making no money at all, I think like the first thing we ever got was like a free straw one day. They ever going back like six years or something like that. But it was like, literally, it was like, here’s a free glass straw. And we felt like, whoa, like we, we just got like, if someone gave us a free product, just to like show it on our channel is mind blowing to us. And then, you know, when we were able to monetize, I mean, back then there wasn’t as much revenue being made from it. But I remember like, when we made like, our first dollar on, like YouTube ads, and you’re just like, wow, and then you just started like to see the snowball just gradually over time being like, oh, and now I mean, people make millions doing, doing YouTube and doing all that stuff. So it’s a cool question.
Erwin
How does anyone price say, say I want you to, you know, feature my, my water bottle and on your show, just sort of do a product review? Whatever. How does one price that I remember falling Tim Ferriss and how he was trying to price promoting anything on his stuff? It’s not easy. No, it’s all pretty. This is all still pretty new area. Yeah. Not not completely new area anymore. But it’d be based on like views, and I don’t know what else?
Matthew
Yeah, so I think like, a few years ago, I would say like companies and agencies were maybe a little less knowledgeable and stuff. So like, they were paying more based on how much of a following your hat. So if you had a million subscribers, they were paying more based on just the total viewership that you had, and the size of your channel. But now they’ve gotten smarter. And they’ve realised that like, just because you have a big channel, like, you know, we know people with, you know, multimillionaires on it, but like they have zero engagement. So now, like companies are a bit more wise, where it’s like, doesn’t matter for for eyeballs and whatnot. But it comes down to like, what, what’s the engagement? Like, you know, like, how much are people interacting with your content, leaving comments, you know, like, normally, when someone’s paying you to show a product or show something, it’s like, usually, there’s a link involved to like, go to their go to their website, and like, check it out, or go to their social and follow. So now it’s like, those are things I’ve tracked, where it’s like, okay, where are people actually clicking on what you’re recommending to them a link to buy my water bottle? Yeah, exactly. Right. So it’s like, but if you’re paying someone 10s of 1000s of dollars to show your product, and then like, no one’s clicking on it, or buying it. And it’s just wasted.
Erwin
Right, much more sophisticated now, much more sophisticated. Now, compared to what Tim Ferriss was talking about, because he was all based on how many listeners he had downloads he had, and that’s how he would price it.
Matthew
Yeah. And that’s, like I said, that’s how it was done for the longest time. But I think now, there’s a lot better ways to track things, there’s a lot better ways to really see like, well, what value are you using during
Erwin
benefit? Yeah,
Matthew
yeah. So normally, it’s like, the more engagement that you can get, the more you can prove that to clients more you have examples of like companies that you’ve worked before, like, the higher that you can higher rate that you can charge based on that, right. And then it also depends on like, you know, there’s upsells and there’s bundles, like, Okay, you on YouTube and Instagram and Tiktok, you know, like, wanted
Erwin
me on Airbnb, on product placement in my room, maybe,
Matthew
you know, like, it’s like, oh, like, okay, like, we can do it for this. But, you know, like, we’ve worked with mattress companies, say, for example, and it’s like, okay, well, we can do it like this, but, you know, maybe we can work out a deal where you give us like mattresses that cost where we can buy them at cost, we can supply our Airbnbs for more affordable price. You know, so there’s different ways that you can like work with companies, you know, and like sort of figure out different things but yeah, you know, and then there’s other ways to obviously make revenue from like social media, like you know, creating your own products selling your own stuff online courses. Like I said before, we have like her own e commerce stores. So that’s another avenue that we
Erwin
direct people to it’s your stores or is it on Amazon?
Matthew
It’s our own store. So we do have Amazon affiliate, so you can make money through like affiliate links like Amazon or you know, other people’s products. But then we also created our own store that at first we started selling mostly like wholesale items. So because we were doing a lot of food stuff, so we have like a published cookbook. So we had a lot of food products on our store. So it’s like Oxo, you know, Oxyelite, the company on the big hand ergonomic handle. Yeah, so we were selling a lot of these products more like buying it from a wholesaler, you know, and then selling it online, typically with like a 50% margin. So we’d buy it for $10 sell it for 20. But then when you account for people packaging and the packaging supplies, we just found that the margins weren’t as strong as we wanted. So then we started reaching out to companies on through Alibaba and AliExpress. And like getting our own products made through them. So like silicone baking mats, glass straws, like different things like branded your Yeah, we’d have a branded with our logo on it’s
Erwin
so sorry, isn’t deposited there. Because I think that’s really, really key is I believe it’s successful ecommerce business has to be have a strong brand.
Matthew
I agree. Yeah, if you have a strong brand, then you can, like I said, if you’re just selling, like when we’re just selling other companies, products and brands, the margins were slim, like we’re maybe making 10% margin or something when you account for all the costs and everything else. And so your rip you off easily. Yeah, someone could. And then like once we started shifting, like, oh, we focused on like, well, we have our own brand, let’s start to like, make our own products with our own logo and our own like label on it. That sort of fit our model of what we’re looking for, like silicone baking mats, you know, eco friendly bento boxes and different stuff. Well, now it’s like, we’re buying them from, you know, China, say $3, you know, and you’re able to sell it at 20 $25. Right, so like, your margins drastically increase and like we’re not over, we’re not charging more than the market is for that type of product. But just because once we started going through, getting rid of the wholesaler in the middle ground and kind of reaching out and getting our own stuff made, like the margin has drastically increased, right?
Erwin
Because I know a lot of unknown a lot of people approached ecommerce from from the product and did not develop a brand. So while those seem to have gotten out of the market, like a lot of people who started like the last five years, people who didn’t get enough get in early enough and folks who do not have a brand Yeah, they might have a logo and crap and stuff but like, they don’t have an audience to show it to.
Matthew
There’s a big difference between like, yeah, having a logo and having like a brand and a presence and where people are like, oh, I want to buy your stuff specifically because I I trust you and I believe in what you’re saying and I know you’re creating good quality stuff. But yeah, I think because like over the last five years, there’s a huge push for like FBA, like fulfilment by Amazon and like all the Guru’s talk about how you can make, you know, millions doing that. So there’s a lot or see those ads anymore. No, you don’t want to see it that much. I feel like now it’s the Airbnb arbitrage model you’re starting to see a lot more of but like I do think that that’s, you know, it’s obviously very different than you know, fulfilment by Amazon. But that was like a such a push for so long. dropshipping and that, that I think a lot of people thought that was a way to, you know, make their millions and like you said, by not having a brand and actually like a holistic ecosystem where people want to like actually purchase your stuff. It’s like they eventually faded away, because once the market gets flooded with the same product at cheaper prices, eventually people get priced out.
Erwin
And almost say, like your brain is also as a you and your wife, Nicole. Yeah, you are the brand. We are the brand you are. It’s a I don’t know, if you want to call it influencer marketing. I think it’s the label. It is. Yeah, it’s not a corporate brand. No, exactly. It’s just unfortunately, what a lot of people who are out of the business now it was just, to me, it was a generic name that we’ll never see again.
Matthew
Yeah, yeah, I think because we do a lot of, we do vlogs and more personal content, too. So a lot of people who are watching us, like they feel like they’re part of our family and feel like they’re part of us. So when we are selective with what we offer promoted to people very selective because you need to be I feel like, that’s one way that like, if you try to promote everyone’s product, just to make a buck, you can lose credibility really quick. So we’re very selective about what we do. But when we do actually like something and promote it, you know, people trust us because they’ve been watching us for so long and feel like they’re part of our family. So it makes a big difference. Putting in that work ahead of time doing like social media and building a brand and a following. You know, you just have to be prepared to do a lot of work for no recognition for for a long time. I think that’s you know, the key is just being consistent in doing it. A lot that people don’t like about like social media is that it does take a lot of work upfront for some work yeah, like you were doing for search for so long, right? Like how long have you been doing it for you like you guys are? It takes a long time it’s like a slow steady grind by like, you know, it pays off dividends because I’m sure like, people you work with in your your industry, like your company and stuff. It’s like people buy like even myself like I followed you for a long time before I never actually met you We’re went to any of your events, right? If it’s like, oh, I have to watch someone for years seeing with like, anyone else that I’ve ever gone to in either events or done anything. Like I tend to be there personally like watching someone for years or a long time before I’m willing to commit or like to their stuff. So it’s like the grind that eventually pays off. But it’s just for so long. It doesn’t seem like it is right, right. Right. So it brings
Erwin
up two points. So I’ve been blogging since 2010. Yeah. And the podcast start in 2016. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah, I’m wondering, I’m probably number two in the space in terms of when I started
Matthew
your 12 listeners, isn’t that 12 her? Some people,
Erwin
I’ve had some people declaring they’re the 18th listener. So we’re growing, we’re growing, but I was always building an email database along the whole way. So my email database is over 10,000 now so my so my podcast for example, goes to that date of email database. So I that’s the thing that I don’t think a lot of people understand. Just like the new the new E commerce people don’t understand that you need a brand. The news newbie podcasters out there, they understand you have to have an audience, existing audience. I got in with an existing audience. I only had a couple 1000 on my email list at the time when I started the podcast, which is why it went well. It’s why continues to do well, while we continue to see like all these new people podcasting, but it’s going to be a tough slog. Yeah, right. Yeah, do not have a an audience already to share it with. Then the other thing you mentioned, you mentioned that you follow people for a long time. I think that’s wise, because you need to understand people’s track record before you’d ever invest in them. Yeah, right. And I bring that up now because we see the all these gurus who who only did real estate in this boom period, never saw correction before and you know, they’ve coached their clients and now their clients are failing and it’s really sad times.
Matthew
I’ve seen some people that I’m like, they you know, made million selling, you know, courses on Airbnb and other things. And like, I find, like, yeah, people aren’t willing to actually share like, what they’re actually doing are making a lot of times it’s just like, the surface sloths, a lot of the Guru’s, right. They just show like, I think we’re talking earlier like, it’s all just
Erwin
good. recording all the good stuff, right? Usually they’re selling something,
Matthew
but I find like, no one’s willing to actually show you like their numbers and what they’re doing like a lot of people are like, Oh, I make you know, seven figures on Airbnb, but then you don’t actually see show me like the numbers show me what actually what you’re doing show me like the background show me like, there’s a big difference between gross and net to like, any business owner knows like, yeah, let me see the properties right. Like, I remember I like I was saw some people there on a different podcast and someone in the US that I like, and I follow and I heard these guys on in their time with Airbnb business. I was like, Oh, wow, like, that’s really cool. Impressive. So it’s like, oh, I want to see what their properties look like. took forever to find these guys. But like if you’re if you know what you’re doing on like DNA, you can find people find their listings, all their listings are like three stars rated poorly. Clearly, they’re not actually running their business. Well, meanwhile, they’re selling 1000s of dollars courses to teach people how to run an Airbnb business department for money there. Yeah, exactly. So it’s like, sure they had their 10 properties or whatever that they were saying. But like, like I said, I looked at and you’re like, Okay, three stars, no future bookings, like, get you’re telling people like, I’m gonna teach you how to make money on on this. It’s like, I think just people need to know like, there’s a lot of people out there like selling the snake oil. Right? And like, gotta like dive deep into it. I think if someone’s not willing to like, show you what they’re actually doing. Show some numbers show some like physical proof. Yeah, show me the property show me like what you’re doing. If you’re not willing to do that, then like, it’s probably cuz you’re full of BS. Yeah. Right. So I think like, or someone just come out of the woodwork where it’s like, like, I think you’ve made that point before. It’s someone who just got into real estate a year ago, or, you know, and then five years ago, even Yeah, even five years ago, it’s like, Well, you haven’t really been through the ups and downs and learned different stuff. So just be mindful, be mindful in our first
Erwin
choice. But these groups that like they celebrate the deal, like a deal getting done, which is great. Celebrate getting a deal done. But often all these deals were not any good. Yeah. As in like, even the numbers going in weren’t any good, right? You don’t celebrate that. But in your to your point, like, show me the numbers. Yeah. And when I saw the numbers, I see these folks trying to raise money on online on social media, whatnot. I look at their deals. And like this is this deal is terrible. Yeah. Right. But they’re telling everyone it’s great. And all these people who don’t know how to better deal, they’re like, Oh, I like the person all they seem really fancy the drive the drive, whatever, XYZ car, it’s really nice, you know, nice sunglasses or some nice hair, you know, they speak really well. I’m gonna invest in them without knowing how to vet a deal. Right? And then it all falls apart.
Matthew
Yeah, so I would just say to anyone who’s like doing looking for like, and I’m a firm believer in coaching and I think there’s value and there’s so many things that I that that’s like one of my downfalls like don’t do enough coaching and I’m really trying to like, get more into it. Like actually, like hire coaches for things. I tend to always be at the mindset of like, oh, just figure it out myself, which is like, not the best way but like, I’m stubborn sometimes. But I’m just like, oh, whenever I do, actually, like have a coach someone who’s teaching me or helping me it’s like I find like it makes a big difference. It’s just like fun. Finding the good people because now I think it’s well known that you can make a lot of money coaching people, because people are always willing to pay good money to like better their lives and do different things. So a lot of people take advantage of that. So I think just like said, doing that research and looking at the scenes and like, if you have someone that you want to get coaching from, like ass, asked to be like, show me what you’re doing, like, let’s see some numbers here. Versus your properties. Yeah. So it’s not willing to show you like, there’s a reason because like, why wouldn’t so if I’m coaching someone about Airbnb, and they’re like, Okay, well, like, Let’s see your progress. And like, sure, like your take a look, here’s my calendar, here’s this, like, here’s, here’s the numbers we’re making, like, why would I want to hide that if I am doing good, I should be proud of what I’m doing. And if I truly believe I can help people achieve something better their lives and like I should be showing them how it’s how I’m better in my life, by that way, to you know, show them what they can do if they put the effort into.
Erwin
I don’t worry over time by how to estimate Florida. Sorry, you’re talking about your visa? Share? Yeah. What’s your plan? Like? What’s your plan to like? split time living?
Matthew
Yeah. So right now,
Erwin
I’m actually curious about Yeah, so
Matthew
right now we’re working with our lawyers to get an E one visa, the typical visa people go for in the US when they’re like a real estate investor, or someone who’s Canadian trying to get into the US usually go for an E two. So a lot of the people I know who are applying for visas, they’re they’re going for an E two, which is like an investor visa. And usually that one, you need to invest a certain amount of money into starting a company or buying a company in the US show that you’re going to be enhancing the economy there and putting money into the system. And that’s the route that you can go to get like a an E two visa,
Erwin
these guys are open to foreign buyers. Yeah,
Matthew
like if you can, if you can show like hey, like, really offensive. Yeah, and you can go in and be like, Hey, I just bought this x business, it’s generating this much I’m gonna hire these people like I’m, I leased an office space, if you can show, hey, I’m putting money into the economy and I’m doing it then like applying for a visa is it takes a bit to get through it. But like most people can be approved for visa, because you’re you’re bettering the economy there. And that’s what they’re looking for. So we’re going to do an E one visa, which is a bit different. And it’s just because we have an online store. So we already do trade with the US. So that one, we’re doing basically like a sort of like an investor trading visa, but it’s because we already have a relationship with selling to the US sort of allows us to get a visa without having to put like, a big initial investment into the US. So like the EU usually have to like put, like, you know, they usually say the numbers like $100,000, sort of what they’re looking for to show that you’ve invested in and you’re, you know, doing things with the visa that we have just because of what we’ve been doing already, it allows us to not have to actually put any money upfront, we’re basically just saying, Hey, we already do a lot of trade with you, we’re already benefiting your economy, we just are looking to expand in the US and do more. So we need a visa to help us with that. So that’s the route that we’re going just because you don’t need to put that initial upfront cost. So it really works out for us. But our goal is to spend probably like, more time in the US thing thing Canada like I’m not a big fan of winters, my thought is I would always rather vacation somewhere cold for skiing and snowboarding, then like vacation somewhere warm for for a week. So that’s sort of, you know, what we’ve been working towards. So yeah, our plan is to move down to Florida, and start really growing our Airbnb business that are in our investing down there. So we’ve already been working with, you know, Canadian investors and US investors looking at properties to really grow our, our US presence down there. And just by getting a visa and being present in the US, it’ll just open up more doors, better financing opportunities, if you’re a Canadian trying to invest in the US, you typically have to put a larger down payment no different than an investor foreign investor buying in Canada yet to put a larger chunk down. So by us getting our visa there, it’s gonna allow us to work with our investors that put less money upfront to buy properties. And I just like I said, I just see a lot of opportunity in us real estate, like we’re talking about the the numbers down there. And I mean, those are just like solid cash flowing numbers on just sort of regular, you know, properties for air b&b. So the numbers just really speak to us. So we’re just looking to devote more time and energy down there. And, you know, our goal is to try to help Canadian investors invest in the US just because there is a lot of opportunity there. But there’s a hurdle of like learning how to invest in the US and what you need to do and how to set things up legally. And like I said, the financing stuff. And I think that scares a lot of Canadians away from investing in the US, like a lot of people reach out to me. It’s usually that like, I don’t really know how to do anything down there. Like it’s a different market. It just seems like everything’s so different. So this just allows us to help people who want to invest in the US have a better opportunity of doing it. And like I said, I just think that the numbers speak for themselves there. So
Erwin
you’ve been really generous with your time.
Matthew
Enjoy great commerce. Patience. So long, it’s been a couple of years
Erwin
you’ve been away. Yeah. Any final words,
Matthew
any final words that you feel like you need to have some, like wise words of wisdom, I just think for people, it’s just be open to looking at, like, different opportunities. And I mean, like, when I got started in real estate, it was the traditional long term buy and hold, which I think is like, you know, was a great business model at the time. And like, I still think there’s opportunity there for certain people who are looking for certain types of, you know, safe, easier investments. But I think there’s just like, so many different things that have opened up over the like, since I started investing and probably since you started investing with like, Airbnb arbitrage cash
Erwin
flow and single family home back when I started,
Matthew
yeah, exactly like, back then it’s like, oh, you could buy a property and be like, I’m making 500 bucks a month off this, you know, get a couple of those. And you could leave your nine to five and, you know, like, run real estate as like a full time business, which I feel like, you can’t really do that now. But with some of these other options, like you do have that, that ability, it’s just being creative getting outside of like, the typical box, I think, like we’re a lot of people are talking about with real estate, a lot of those take a little bit extra work, you know, but I think like the work pays for itself. And I think also not being like if you’re not in a an area, or a city or province or state that the numbers make sense. Like don’t be afraid to invest like elsewhere in different areas where the numbers make a bit more sense, the work upfront might be a little bit more, but you know, if you can, if you can get into a market, the numbers really make sense for you and can help you achieve like your actual goals in life. And I think it’s like worth it in the long run.
Erwin
Fantastic. I have a selfish question. What do you think the market timing right now,
Matthew
you would know more about like the Canadian market timing, I think US market talk to us timing is is fantastic. Right now, because I just think, like, I think earlier, there’s a lot of creative options, because people are sitting on properties for months and months at a time you’re seeing like, prices drop in a huge, huge drops, because rates are going up because rates are going up. And like a lot of people today. Yeah, rates went up again. So people aren’t able to unload their properties, there’s a lot of supply on the market. So people are willing to be creative. So if you can come in and offer them, you know, seller financing option that works subject to you know, like I’ve been learning more and more about that down there, which is like another great creative option where you just take over their mortgage payments for them. So you can actually look to do something like that, where you might be able to take advantage of their low interest rates that they had from locking in a mortgage like two years ago. And people are really open to that sort of stuff. And I also find even if you are looking at like the Airbnb arbitrage route, I find like I’m getting a lot of people in the US who are like really open to that when they probably wouldn’t have been a few years ago or last year because they would have been like, well, I can just do it myself or I can rent it long term. But now that there’s so much supply sitting on the market, like people are willing to give up two months rent free, lower security deposits, like different things are willing to like give concessions where you know, like we know a year two years ago, you rip roaring Yeah, like, like they were in the driver’s seat. And if you wanted to get something you just had to like, take what you were given and, you know, hope for the best words. Now I feel like people who are willing to like who are actively looking to buy or do things like you’re in the driver’s seat, you have a lot of opportunity to like, negotiate and talk to people if they’re not willing to be flexible or do what you want. And let’s move on to other properties
Erwin
raising man, thanks so much for coming in.
Matthew
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Erwin
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