Short Term Rentals Expert Panel

Join our Short Term Rentals panel of Dean Curtis, James Svetec & Adam Martin as they discuss the best approaches and offer their insights. 

Laurel: First up we have Dean Curtis, he was 25 years in real estate investment. Dean has been on our stage live before in Burlington and he's six years owning and managing a short-term cottage vacation rental management company. We have James Svetec, who is, I believe on audio only, but he's a coauthor of Airbnb for dummies. And he's a co-owner of Learn BNB and he's the founder of BNB Mastery.

I think it's fair to say that he has some experience in BnBs, Airbnb. And we have Adam Martin, who had his first student rental and Airbnb at the age of 24. He's the Vice President of sales for control your property at cloud-based property management system and he's Director and partner at Make It So Inc., Canada's fastest growing real estate wholesaling company. And he's also an active real estate investor. So, Sarah's going to be asking the questions and I'm going to be monitoring the chat. So, over to you, Sarah.

Sarah: Thanks so much. Welcome guys. How are you? Excited to have you on. I personally have a couple of Airbnbs. I have the cottage, the Hamilton property and this is going to be quite interesting. You guys are the experts in this. And the first question. So, there's a series of questions and guys, don't forget, you can ask your questions in the chat world. We'll be monitoring the chat.

If there's anything that pertains to the topics. She will come back on and ask. So, question number one about Airbnb. And I will prefix this by saying recently, if you don't know Airbnb or short-term rentals, there's been a bit on short term rentals and where you're now going to fork out a hundred thousand dollars as a fine, 10 million as a business.

It's pretty crazy. It makes my blood boil a little bit, but first question for the experts, what is the Airbnb short-term markets look like today during COVID? What are your thoughts overall? Let's start with James. How about you, answer that one?

James: Yeah, so, I guess it depends on where you're located. It's obviously in Ontario. We have a band going on. There's a bunch of like states in the US that have different kinds of bands. So, it varies from place to place, but over things like where it's illegal to rent short-term, there's still relatively few short, quote, unquote short-term rental is really happening.

You're seeing like the odd time you'll get a booking of one or two weeks. If you're housing, like a first responder you can sometimes get slightly shorter, stays if you're housing, people who are looking for somewhere else to go during quarantine. But overall, there's definitely a massive trend towards the longer term bookings.

And even if you look on Airbnb web they've tailored their website to accommodate and facilitate more longer-term bookings. So, definitely right now, the short-term rental market has a lot more stays at least 14 days in most cases, 30 days and longer as opposed to the regular kind of two to four day average.

Sarah: That's great insight. Now, Dean, you've done a lot on the cottage rental vacation rental. What can you tell us about that when it comes to short-term?

Dean: It's an interesting time, Sarah. I'm finding a lot of my buyer clients for short term rentals are holding back just cause it's a big question mark like how long is it going to last? I've been advising people to look at things with a long-term mindset. COVID-19 is not going to be around forever, obviously. Short-term rentals can make you a lot of money. They can do really well for you. They are a lot of work.

With that in mind, if they're willing to put the work in as a long-term strategy, I'm still very pro on the short term. As I said, I'm seeing a lot of buyer clients just pulling back right now. And it's funny, it's the opposite with the other clients, like doing BRRRR strategy, duplex conversions. I'm seeing stuff going in multiple offers like it's gone crazy, but the buyer, the cottages are still for sale.

Yes, it's a question mark about when they're going to lift the restrictions. But as a long-term strategy, I still think it's a great way to go. When this finally lives. In fact, I think travel to your cottage is going to start to boom. People are going to be in my mind. That's just my personal opinion.
In my mind, people are going to be a little bit to get back on the cruise ships to get back on the airplanes. But maybe I haven't seen grandma and grandpa in a long time. I want to get together with the grandkids or the grandparents. Let's go rent a cottage where we can just be ourselves together again as a family. I think that there's lots of opportunity you have there.

Sarah: Yeah. I agree with you a hundred percent. Personally for me, but when are they going to lift the borders? Which borders are they gonna lift? There may not be the same type of back and forth between countries, but I can see a lot of people from bigger cities saying, I need to get out of here. I need to get out of this condo. I need to get out of this apartment. Let's figure something out and have a good time and enjoy the summer that we have left depending on how I definitely can see the cottage piece doing well.

Thanks for sharing, Adam, what about you? Like where are you currently investing with your Airbnbs and what are you seeing in the market today?

Adam: Hey guys, so, I'm actually in London, Ontario, and way right when COVID happened the first week of March, I experienced about 12 cancellations or maybe 14. So, it was a lot, it was pretty heavy. It was all of my revenue for April as well as the latter, half of March. So, I definitely was one of the people that was like, okay, this could get interesting. And of course, you should always be investing with exit strategies, built into your investments to begin with.

Don't ever rely on one platform or one strategy to get you through something like this. But that being said, I wanted to show you guys something real quick here. I'll flip my camera. This is my Airbnb calendar on one of my listings in London. And you don't need to see much or understand Airbnb very well to just know that the blue lines are booked. Okay. So, that's my month.
Now, you could think a couple of things about the fact that either I'm under-priced or there's a lot of demand for a longer term stay at a higher rate than a long term rental, which is the case in this case. So, this gentleman, or it's two of them, actually decided to stay for two weeks and they haven't left now for they're going on 45 days. And then it's really funny. Before I started speaking, they sent me a request to extend until May 11th.

That's what we'll be doing. I'm experiencing a lot of demand. I'm experiencing a lot of revenue right now in my Airbnb, but certainly there was that big drop-off when the initial panic set in, but now I'm experiencing a different set of guests. These are people that want to either quarantine or they mostly just want a quarantine and I'm lucky enough to have my Airbnbs in a fairly large city London, Ontario, it's not Toronto, but it is actually fairly large. It's an airport city, stuff like that. That's kinda where I'm at.

Sarah: Yeah. That's really interesting. My thoughts are like, after COVID is all said and done, like we're going to see a lot of movements, unfortunately, I'm predicting a lot of divorces and when you're divorcing and you need to get out of your property pretty quick, you're probably going to look for something that's quick, that's short term, figure out your longer-term situation, but do something short term.

I can see a big need for a lot of these shorter term Airbnb rentals for a month, for two months, for three months in some of those regions. I don't know about Toronto specifically. I don't think we're going to get the vacationers as much, but we're going to get a different kind of clientele like you guys mentioned.

You did mention one thing about advertising in not just Airbnb. So, if you guys can each maybe share where you advertise for your properties and where you actually do the best, where you get the most amount of bookings, James, let's start with you.

James: I generally recommend for most people like normal times to get really comfortable with one platform before expanding to the next one and then expand to the next one based on your property.

What we've seen is that smaller properties like one, maybe two bedroom condos in downtown areas, or just really smaller properties tend to do relatively well on booking.com in most cases. Whereas you get the larger properties, three, four or five bedrooms doing typically a lot better on VRBO HomeAway.

Now is a really good time to expand onto those other platforms because each one of them does have their own little intricacies to it. So, if you try to expand them all at once, it can cause a lot of headache and a lot of different issues just because they're all a little bit different in the way often.
And so you really need to take the time to understand each one, to make sure that you're doing it properly, the more properties that you have, that you're expanding out to another platform, the more sort of complexity there's going to be with it. But yeah, now's a really good time because a lot of people have downtime and like more exposure is better right now, like we're in Canada.

I think that we're uniquely well-positioned to really deal with what's going on because we're used to like every winter we have this big down season. And so we have some strategies that we know most of us to be able to cope with that down season. One of them is just getting more eyeballs on your listing. Which is a big factor in that it is just expanding onto multiple booking platforms.

That small amount of demand you are getting your listing in front of them. Whereas other places where there's less seasonal, like the vacation areas like Florida, San Diego down the state, they don't deal with that. And they don't have that kind of experience of dealing with a massive downturn. I think that treating it that way and just taking this time to expand intentionally on to other platforms, if you have the time and the bandwidth to be able to do it properly is really good.

Sarah: Yeah, great insight. Absolutely. Dean, what about you? Where are you advertising and seeing the most success?

Dean: So, keeping in mind that a lot of my experiences in cottage rentals that's where my bread and butter is. There's a site called cottages in Canada that has done really well for Airbnb of course we were with VRBO for awhile where we're not advertising so much there anymore, but we always find too that there's all these smaller sites and companies that kind of scraped the bigger sites and they're wanting you to come and try their platform for free for, until they can get a foothold and then eventually they'll start to charge you.

I like to dabble a little bit, one of those a year, I'll put an ad up, just see how it performs. Some of them stick, some of them fade away, it's a free ad. Why not throw it up and just see how. If you were to spend the time with all of those small sites, you'd be wasting a lot of time putting up ads with not a lot of payback from it. Doing one or two here or there, I find it ends up paying off. Sometimes it's worth the shot. So, those are the two main ones for me would be cottages in Canada and Airbnb.

Sarah: All right. Great. And what about you, Adam?

Adam: Hey, it looks like I was having some internet issues there. Hopefully, got me now, but I'm perfect. So, yeah, I'm like 90% Airbnb. We have dabbled before with VRBO as well and I think we tried Canada stays for a little bit. Those platforms worked really well on our large properties. We've got like a five bed, two bath, like brand new builds.

It's like a 2016 or 2018 build that worked well. But we did get some crazy guests from those platforms that we found. We didn't experience as much on Airbnb for whatever reason that is either they got weeded out in the blind rating process or for whatever reason. But ultimately Airbnb has never let me down.

Whenever there's an issue, you call them, it gets resolved immediately. And it always brings a fairly high level of attention. So, I haven't ever found myself advertising my listing.

Sarah: That's good. Even I will second. Airbnb gets me the majority of my listings for my cottage, I do have a criteria where just like I have a criteria for long-term rentals. If they don't have at least one positive review, I don't care about the 3,500 bucks a week or whatever my cottage brings me. I won't even let them through. And again, I have a whole different set of credit, but I would rather preserve my cottage, not have it trashed for a party. But I find like when people have reviews they want to make sure that they keep those reviews.

They leave the place better. And we've actually rented to some of our friends that are not my friends, best friends that left the place a lot worse. Then most Airbnb people. Just putting that out there. So, here's a question for you guys. There's a lot of Airbnb managers, quote, unquote, or people that are going to take a cut.

I like Airbnb personally because they take a very small portion and I like to be hands-on as an example, but what are your thoughts about hiring a property manager and also when you hire that property manager, what are some of the services that they are doing? Adam, why don't we go the other way around? Let's start with you.

Adam: That's a great question, actually between my business partners, we do have a Airbnb manager and management company. They're absolutely fantastic for generating attention. So, somehow the place is typically always booked and at higher rates than we can get there using some kind of algorithm that I don't understand. But the services that they do include cleaning guest interactions.

Booking, managing any bookings and communication, as well as dealing with any issues. So, we've had cases where there's very large parties that are at our bigger house, the new one, and that stuff all gets dealt with. So, they deal with calls from the neighbors, they deal with any of that nonsense that you don't necessarily want as a real estate investor. And they take a fee for it. I think we paid like a lot, it's 20% or of revenue or something. It's a lot but then on my personal Airbnbs, I just self-manage them using a cleaner.

My cleaner will actually take care of just about everything except garbage day, for whatever reason, she doesn't do that, but she does literally everything else. And then I just manage guest interaction, which is typically a fairly low impact thing to do as an individual if you don't have one.

Sarah: That sounds like a pretty reasonable amount. And it looks like they're doing quite a bit. Dean, what about you?

Dean: I think there's a broad range of what the management companies will charge and a variety in level of services that they'll provide. So, just basically have a look around and just see what they're providing for that fee.

The last time I did any research on it in Ontario. It was probably about six to eight months ago that the charges were anywhere between the lowest I found was 13% commission and as high as 10% commission, but that difference in commission charges. There's a big difference in the services that they provide for that as well.

A 13% commission, they might just provide bare bones service. And a 35% commission. They may, doing everything like all of your virtual tour of the property and high-end photos of the property and additional services at your cottage. Maybe you can hire somebody to come and play guitar at the bonfire or hire a private chef.

There's a lot of different services provided. So, as to whether you should go with management or not, that's going to be a personal decision. It's like a regular rental property as well. If you want to get the two in the morning phone call to come and fix the toilet so that you can keep all of the rental money, then you don't need management.

If you don't want to be at one o'clock in the morning, because somebody has lost their key to get into the cottage and you have to try and get your handyman over there to let them into the cottage. You don't want to deal with any of that. Then a management company is what you're looking for.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So, James, we're gonna switch the question up because I think a lot of great points were already mentioned between Adam and Dean. One of the things that makes my blood boil is some of the government control that may or may not be fully necessary with this hundred thousand dollar fine.

I can understand if it was less, but like part of what I, and maybe this is right or this is wrong, but I don't know why it's so steep, but maybe if we can just talk about that, like what your thoughts are on the a hundred thousand dollar ban and, what does that look like for somebody in this market doing the strategy for Airbnb?

James: Yeah, that's an interesting question. I guess it's more political in nature than anything else. Like I just looked at it and I saw yeah, you're right. It's a hundred thousand dollars for an individual, $10 million for a corporation. So, basically they're saying they're going to ruin someone financially if they do it.

They're basically just trying to say. Just don't do it like, and I don't know the reality of whether or not they would actually enforce that is not one that I necessarily really want to go out and test because the stakes are just a fair bit too high, I would say, I don't know. It's tough to really comment on, cause I don't know it's tough to comment on, I would say that based on the information that I have, I honestly think that the government is doing a decent job of shutting things down and trying to keep people safe.

And I think that the thing that I always try to remind myself of is that even as we see different stats like the reporting being a lot lower and then, and so the death toll being a lot lower than in reality than what it's reported being. I think the main priority right now is to keep the hospital.
The hospitals under their capacity. And so if they're taking measures like you're seeing the Airbnb as a company is taking measures like that as well, with all the refunds that they're giving to guests, they're just trying to do everything to keep the public safe. And a lot of people would say that there's other alter our ulterior motives.

I don't know, I just basically, when I saw the regulations or the ban and the fines that were attached to it, I just said to myself that this is their way of saying we're going to ruin you. If you do this, just don't do it. Cause I think that if they set the challenge with it is that they set things too low. Then a lot of us on Airbnb are making really good returns. Like with condo corporations, I like having worked with and managed a whole bunch of properties in Toronto.

I regularly worked with owners that would that would say to me or didn't necessarily work with them cause we didn't take one take on the rest, but I would I would sit down with them and they would want me to manage the property and just say, yeah, my condo has a $1,000 or a $5,000. Fine. If we're caught doing short-term rentals. I'm just going to do it anyway, because quite frankly, I make enough money by doing short-term rentals that I don't really care if I have to pay a thousand dollars fine.

I think that's something that you have to consider as well. If they make it too low, then a lot of people are going to look out and they're going to say if the fines are only a thousand dollars, then why don't I just go and rent my place on Airbnb?
It's better than it's sitting empty. And then I lose money. Anyway, if I can make $1,500 in rentals and then pay a thousand of that out to a fund. I'm going to get a place. So, I don't know. It's a tough position. I think that the government is in. It's a little bit tough for me to call them.

Sarah: Hopefully this is temporary. And then once everything returns to normal, the same thing as lifted, Adam or Dean? What are some ways that we can get around it with the short term thing? Like when does short term become long term? Because we can still do that. We could still do it. We can help, somebody needs to self isolate, like what are some strategies that could work for now? Dean, let's start with you.

Dean: I think we need to define what is short-term and long-term. I'm not a hundred percent sure about that. And Adam, maybe you might be able to chime in if you want to jump in.

Adam: Sorry, just in my mind, like when I start thinking about the short and long term. Let's just look at established rules, let's look at the Landlord Tenant Board and the Residential Tenancy Act and just agree that maybe 30 days is long-term after 30 days, because that's always the thing that I get, oh, what if your guest doesn't leave after 30 days? Okay. I've got a really high paying tenant but it would, hopefully that's a decent defense in this case.

Dean: And that was what I was going to say as well. I know with a lot of municipal law, when in certain territories that are banning short-term rentals or looking at restricting short-term rentals, a lot of times that's their benchmark. Anything less than 30 days is considered short term with this cOVID-19.

I don't know if I would have to look deeper into the rules on what their definition of short term is. Before I recommend anybody, I would want to make sure, just check into that, but certainly to survive this short-term time period, if you can do it, and it sounds like Adam, you're having some success with some middle term rentals there.

If you can get people to rent for a couple of years there's always a market for that sort of thing. Sarah, you mentioned people trying to get back on their feet after a divorce or through insurance companies, after their house burns down, they need a place for three to five months for construction workers.

As they're working on a project down the street, they need a place to stay for three to five months. So, that's how I would pivot during this time. Again, short term rentals are a great long-term strategy, but you always have to have a plan B in place. You can rent out midterm with this three to five months, or if you had to even go to a long-term rental contract, but of course, then you've got all the worries with the Landlord Tenant Board.
You move somebody in there and you think it's just for a year. And then they decide they're not going to move out at the end of the year. Now what happens? So, that's a worry as well. I think there's things that can be done in the short term until we get through this. And then as a long-term strategy, I'm very pro short term rentals, so, I think it's a good long-term strategy.

Laurel: Yeah, I've got a question. And if someone just asks us that there's a difference between I think, and maybe it's a legal term. I'm not sure, but Airbnb and short-term rentals are safer. And someone's just asked if you want to rent a cottage, it's not necessarily an Airbnb are the rules distinguishing between that. If I have a cottage, can I rent it out? They start on Airbnb. It's just a cottage no matter how long it's for?

Dean: Like me, I always use the analogy like saying Kleenex for facial tissue. So, Airbnb is a platform for short-term rentals. A lot of people use the terminology, use it interchangeably, but Airbnb is just a platform, no different than cottages in Canada.

Now, it's a huge successful platform. So, a lot of people will just say, Hey, I'm an Airbnb, but they're just renting short-term. So, renting a cottage for a week is no different than renting a condo in London for two days, it follows the same rules. And you would want to check into the territory or the district on their restrictions or regulation on short-term rentals. That's a big caution. I want to make sure I am mentioned as well.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. I still think it's a great strategy. I believe that the ban is temporary. I also think that whatever we do, we also will have to innovate. For strategy, number one, but have a backup so that you still have a good property. Should something happen to the Airbnbs? For example, in Hamilton, if Hamilton decides to ban Airbnb or do something similar to what Toronto is doing, they're overkill and we have to have a plan B.

I still think it's a great strategy, but let's just talk about that for a second. Like why do you guys prefer that strategy over any other strategy? And why don't we start with Adam?

Adam: There's a lot of things in my life personally that make it great for me. Number one is controlling the space. So, I do live in a house with my corporation, my business, and my family, let's call them that, which is a weird setup. And most of you likely aren't in that circumstance where you live. Breathe and sleep with your coworkers, but it's what I do.

Having control over the space is a really big point for me. I do also love the potential to earn a fair bit more in my opinion than what you could get with a long-term rental. And that comes with additional costs and management, et cetera. However, I've always had a higher net benefit by doing Airbnb or short-term rent than I have with any long term rental strategy or then I've had with my student rental.

For me, it's not only about the profit, but it is also about controlling the stays. And at any time I can turn it off or pivot to another strategy. So, because it's furnished and it's furnished nicely, they work well as executive rent for short term, they work well as furnished student rentals. If you're near a school, they work well for attracting high quality tenants or guests and individuals that are willing to pay more than the average person.

And they're proving to you that they can afford to do so by prepaying you with a credit card. Which you're paid out at as soon as they check in, I'm not waiting for the first and the first isn't scary. I remember April 1st, when some of my business partners who have over a hundred units in London were thinking, am I going to be the April fool? And I already knew where I was at.

I've already been paid for my states. I'm already afforded that revenue to do with whatever I want with it. So, you've got lots of exit strategies, lots of pivots. And there's a lot of ways where you can maximize that revenue. So, that's my piece.

Sarah: Absolutely. Great answer. James what are some of the benefits, if any are different that you see, but also what are some things that we should be cautious of? I'm just thinking of financing as an exact.

James: Yeah, I think I kinda just sit in what I think the benefits are like mainly just being the control that you have and the flexibility that you have with the property and the financial returns that you get. They're typically better depending on the property, obviously the things to be aware of.
I think what Adam mentioned there was really a really great observation. It gives you the flexibility when you're doing short term rentals to switch over to long-term rental when and if you want or need to switch over to executive rentals, switch over to student rentals.

I think that the one thing I always try to stress the people around investing in properties for short term rental is not to invest in a way that you can only afford to keep the property. And the property only makes sense as a short-term rental. That's performing incredibly well, because like we've seen over the last couple of years here, you can do insanely well and post them like ridiculous numbers on Airbnb.

But if you buy a property that only makes sense as an investment when you're pulling those insane numbers and then something like COVID happens or just like the market gets more competitive and things don't keep going as well as they'd been in the past, then you're in a really tight spot. I think that's always something to watch out for is if you buy a property that makes sense as a long-term rental and you turn into an Airbnb, then you're doing exceptionally well.

And you've got a really great backup plan. You're mitigating your risk a lot better than if you're buying it, speculating that everything's just going to keep on going as well as it's been going in the past.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. You want to be the investor, not the speculator. That's great advice, Dean. I'm going to switch it up a little bit. And with cottage rentals or Airbnbs, what are some of the must have amenities? If somebody's booking and looking to book something like what their list of top five things that they look for in order to say, this is my spot.

Dean: I have lists of things that I like to look for in an investment property that I think is appealing to the masses. And again, this is with a cottage viewpoint. So, keep that in mind. So, when I'm looking for an investment cottage, I like something with privacy because a lot of the families and guests want to have a little get together as a family, and they don't want to see a neighbor right beside you, like they do in the city. And you want to keep your harmony with your neighbors anyways.

It's not going to lend itself. If you're right beside your neighbor and every single week, there's a new family. They're out enjoying the bonfires, splashing in the wire, in the water. That's going to grow tired pretty quickly with your neighbor.
If you can have privacy, that's great. I prefer to get to the waterfront if possible. I realized that's more expensive and if you can't get to the waterfront, if you can get something in a close distance to the water and the rental prices that you can charge are going to be dependent on that as well.

If you're on the water and you got to pay more money for the cottage, then you'll be able to charge more in your rental fees as well. If you're not quite on the water, you'll pay for the cottage, your rental fees will be a little bit lower as well. If you have large gathering areas, I think that's a big pro as well.

In other words, inside the cottage, if it happens, have a big dining room where you can picture the extended family, getting together to have a meal, that's the sort of thing that will really sell the vacation experience, right? If it has a massive screen where you can picture yourselves out there at night, listening to the sounds of nature while you're gathering as a family, that's a big pro as well.
Some of the experiences that they can experience when they're in the city. So, having something as simple as a bonfire. So, if there's a fire pit or an area to have a fire pit, it's a small little thing. It seems silly, but there's a lot of people living in condos in Toronto that have never experienced a bonfire.

When they go to the cottage, they want to have the cottage experience, feel like they're out in nature and still have some of the amenities of the home. And that will bring me to my last one. Sorry, I'll finish quickly. A big one is the internet. Sarah, I know I've had this conversation with you before. It's crazy, but they did a survey with renters of cottages, what weather, how they ranked certain amenities. And internet service ranked higher than drinkable water on that survey.

It was huge. A lot of people can not relax on vacation and without being able to check their email. And I know a lot of people will say, that's not the cottage experience. Like you shouldn't have the internet. But who are we to judge? Maybe if you run a business on the side, you gotta be able to check your emails in order to be able to relax. So, I would say that's a big one as well.

Sarah: Amazing, quick 20 second or less, one piece of advice or one thing that you would like to mention about short-term rentals, Airbnb. Adam, let's start with you.

Adam: Pay a cleaner, do not be the one that's going to be cleaning the bedding and stuff like that. And dealing with the mess and detaching yourself emotionally from that space, if you can. Okay. It's going to be dirty. Get over it. That's a $20 an hour problem, it's not yours.

Sarah: It is, they'll always be somewhere in terror. Careful to make it too nice. Like that. It's probably the one mistake we made. Like we come up here, we wanted to cottage for ourselves as well, and we enjoy it. And a cash flows it's essentially a free cottage, every time we like to see scratches or we see stuff.

It's fine. If somebody is paying a hundred a week, but if it's like off season, low season and then there's like wear and tear, then you have to figure out is it worth renting? So, absolutely great point. James, what about you?

James: I have to just specific to right now, like now's a really good time to just actually sit down, focus on optimizing your pricing, optimizing your listing, like doing what you need to do to get bookings, because there's going to be a lot of people leaving short-term rental over the next couple month, year.

And if you're in the game still, when things start to normalize again. I think we're likely to see a good, decent spike in demand. And we're going to have a lot less supply for at least a few months until people start coming back to the platform overall. So, I think that there's going to be a good little opportunity and in, I call it a month, if you are able to get through it and to get through it's just spend some time actually optimizing your listing here. And don't just give up on it and switch over to long-term rentals unless you really need to.

Sarah: Absolutely. Great advice. Thank you, Dean, what about you?

Dean: Okay. Two quick things regarding cottage rentals. Number one, the awesome thing is all the money comes in advance. So, you don't have to worry about not getting paid for your rentals. When I saw you had a question regarding that, so that's the awesome part about it. With cottage rentals, the thing you need to keep in mind is the bulk of your money is coming during the summer. You have to be smart and stretch that out through the entire.

Second thing, I want to mention is with cottage rentals, you really want to be sure about the regulations in the township or the territory that you're investing in. So, make sure you investigate that. If they've already got it figured out, maybe they have licensing in place. That's actually a good thing. It means they've addressed the issue. They're allowing short-term rent. And so great. Even if they short a charge, a small tax on each rental. Fantastic. If they haven't addressed the issue, it might come up shortly in the future in that territory. So, something to be cautious of anyway.

Sarah: Absolutely, great advice. And then with a piece of advice that I would say is speak to your mortgage broker and speak to your account and speak to your insurance broker, because this is a whole different ball game. You can talk to your lawyer as well, but in terms of financing, you may or may not get financing for three seasons versus four seasons. It's a whole different ball game in terms of taxes. You may be paying HST. If you rent over a certain amount, you're paying. You may pay HST on the sale. You may pay GST yearly, talk to her accountant as well on that.

And then for insurance, talk to your insurance agent, cause you're gonna need something different than your regular rental insurance or your regular home insurance. And obviously the rest of the folks as well, guys, Adam, Dean, James, thank you so much. Great information. We really appreciate having you on. Thank you. Laurel what did you get from that in terms of Airbnb? Are you looking to get into that market a little bit?

Laurel: Actually, we don't have an Airbnb. We have I think it's not a short-term rental or it could be like, we have a furnished executive rental. That's a little different. So, as in case someone we've had people in there whose homes have burned, so that's not quite the same thing. But for me, I think we're sticking with what we know right now, but I know a lot of people, there's a lot of opportunity out there. And I agree that yeah, things are quiet right now.

It's time to think about this stuff. Given what Claire was saying in the previous segment, it's just take the time and think about things because maybe you can make money with the short-term rental, but in the future, but just, hey, think about it. Talk to the experts.
Sarah: Yeah, I really like the short term piece. I like control. I like the fact that it's not necessarily what the LTB and the long-term rentals and somebody hasn't worked well a week later, they're out and I will say I am like, I love Airbnb right now, like they have started some grants for people that have lost income that have one or two properties.

If you qualify, if you're superhosts, it's likely they're going to actually email you and you can have 5,000 bucks, it's not even a loan. So, I think they're really taking care of their customers. I really actually liked that, unfortunately. Feel the same about the LTB and the residential tenancies act and how that's all set up.

But what some great insight, if I could do more on Airbnb and more short-term rentals, that's the question too, is people going to get sick of the long-term piece? And this is a great killer question as well. I don't want to be putting the wrong tenants in potentially, and having to wait 12 to 18 months.

Maybe I'm going to take some of these and I'm going to make them short term. I'm going to put them on Airbnb. Just say so, who knows what will happen? Guys Alfonso, welcome back, Daniel, welcome back. So, thanks very much guys. So, what's next?

Laurel: You know what, we're going to wrap up. We're getting to that end of the evening. And again, thank you to everyone who participated, but I'm just going to go around now to our co-founders and get your biggest takeaway, because it's funny that we learn as much as everyone else who was attending. There's always so much information that's shared and so much knowledge, so I'm just so thrilled. Your first, cause you just throw up a buck.

Alfonso: Absolutely. I've been taking notes and Sarah, Laurel, Daniel, great job tonight and interview with all of our panelists, but a few quick takeaways. First of all, I want to thank The REITE Club community, the amazing participation in the chat and people participating in and throwing the ones up there for some digital clapping.

That was a one quick one. And thank you everybody for participating in being interactive. This is why we do it. The fun energy that we get. And the other two quick things are like the new normal is starting to form. There's some things that are going to stick around. Some things are just temporary.

But it started to form new processes. Everybody in their businesses are internalizing, reflecting, getting back into the business and almost taking a defensive approach. So that they can be ready for an offensive strike in those types of situations and reassuring what they're doing.
And one thing that I've always thought, and it's never going to be different in my mind, is that the only thing that stays the same is change. So, change is going to continue to happen and go forward. Yeah, those are my kind of major takeaways.

Laurel: What about you, Sarah?

Sarah: Get your team on your side and have them work with you through whatever the strategy is that you're doing and through the ups and downs in the market, and you will come out much better ahead than trying to do this alone.

Laurel: Okay, good. And Daniel?

Daniel: A little bit, what both of them just said, which is there. We're walking in the woods at three o'clock in the morning and we can see where we're going and we're all panicking and stuff, but we know that come 5:30, 6:00 o'clock in the morning, the sun will come up and all of a sudden we'll see what's happening. And then we'll see what the new normal looks like.

In other words, we're going to come out of this and, but right now is a good time to get to as best as you can, basically get all your ducks in a row because as soon as this is over and it's not going to be over, like in one day, it's over, but as it gets over, there'll be tons of really good deals out there.

There'll be all kinds of reports, entities that will not be the time when you should take them. Maybe I shouldn't work on my credit score or take care of my credit cards or find a new team member or something. Now is the time to do that.

Laurel: Yeah.

Alfonso: How about you, Laurel? What was your biggest takeaway?

Laurel: It is having that team that really, depending on your team don't cower, don't hide in the closet. Don't pull a blanket over your head. Take the time, use the time now to do those things that you've been putting off, because gosh, we all have stuff that we've been putting off, that's human nature.

If you come out of this and you haven't done some of those things that you always said that you would do, if you had the time, I think maybe you should go talk to somebody about that.

Alfonso: And you know what and another good point that was brought up tonight, that before we get up to our next upcoming events and things that are going on, was in times of opportunity. When there are going to be great deals, we have to remember that somebody's maybe downside or their worst case scenarios.

And we at The REITE Club, all of our community, our staff, or the people that we work with individually together, and all associated with it, have that highest level of integrity. And really working in helping people through that point, we never, ever want to put somebody in a worse situation, but those opportunities are going to be ready and we have a thought process of where we want to help each other.

And through that opportunity and that downside, if we can help people through that process and how we approach that in those worst case scenarios, the fight or flight. Let's stick together and help as many people through this process and still come out winning on the other side. So, I know my co-founders echo those thoughts.

Laurel: If I can just add to that as well. And so absolutely. I think it's, don't sit, don't think you're alone. Everybody has issues. We're all dealing with issues right now. There's not one single one of us who hasn't at one point. Oh crap, oh, what am I going to do? There's nobody there. A. You're not alone and B. If you need to talk, so stop, talk to someone, reach out. You can reach out to us. Any four of us.

You can reach out to other members of The REITE Club because hey, we're all in the same. No, we're the same storm in different boats where we all have Claire said, but we have we all have information. We all have contacts. We can just sometimes talk to somebody right, helps.

Daniel: And speaking of that, I just want to add one more thing before wrapping up for me anyway is, does a term out there that's being used everywhere in the media, on the floor at Walmart, that makes me cringe every time I see it or social distancing. I'd like to shoot the guy who came up with that term. Whenever that starts, it's physically distancing.

They want us not to be near somebody physically, but of all times in the last couple of decades, this is the time for social connection. This is the time to pick up the phone, call your friends, call your family. Tomorrow, I'm calling the guy who does our audio and the guy who does our video, because we haven't seen them for a month and a half.

They're not working. I want to find out what they're doing. And I think you're going to appreciate the fact that I'm still thinking about them. I want to do some social connecting, not social distancing.

Alfonso: And on that note, that's how we're going to keep reaching out, still connecting with all of you out there in The REITE Club nation and all of our partners' amazing sponsors. Every Friday at 7:00 AM, The REITE Club podcast gets dropped. We had a new episode. We have so much amazing content. There's like a bank of them coming out.

There's amazing content talking about COVID talk. Just general real estate fundamentals in there as well, too. So, on May the 1st, the value of using a professional property management company with Georgio and May 8th, we're talking Colleen McQuarrie for the mind to state.

And I know that Laurel and Sarah loved doing those podcasts, getting into the mind and the thought process behind all of the investing. And again on May the 1st, this is a really fun time. We were all there. The four of us, Katherine joined us. We had about maybe a good 20 or five or so people on there and it was The REITE Club BYOB Social.

If you're drinking tea, if you're drinking wine, if it's a beer, we're not talking about business and you know what? I got this term from our California operations manager Katherine, no wallflowers, we it's lurkers. I like the wallflowers, but we want to see your face. We want to talk to you.

We've got some fun trivia questions. We've got some really good stories. Daniel's got some adventure stories that he's gone through and passed, and we've gotten to know each other as a community. Maybe, tune in for another one of those stories and the fun stuff that we've all done.
And then again, finally, to wrap up on May the 6th, we're going to continue with our sustaining build series. We want to be there in the worst of times and the best of times, and any time to keep building and going through this. So, we're going to be talking about commercial and multi-family stuff. It's going to be really good.

Again, thank you, everybody that joined tonight. If you're listening to this recording, thank you very much. Make sure that you get in touch with all of our sponsors. We've said it a bunch of times, Sarah Laurel, Daniel, about our power teams here they are.
The event sponsors BDO, Hub Insurance, Elevation Realty, The Windrose Group,. Blackjack Contracting, Mission 35 Mortgages, Carson Law, A.C.I.S.S Home Inspection, Cashflow Tribes, Susan Flanagan, Private Money 4 Mortgages, Pinnacle Wealth Brokers, and our Arthex Property Management, Legal Second Suites.

Last thing I'll say, and then I'll let the other founders wrap it up, but thank you, everybody of the frontline from hospitals, to grocery stores, to the people that are keeping everybody safe and ongoing, the people that are testing people that are delivering people that are just doing kind things for the human race they announced they are, there's officially UFO's in the world. Again. I don't know if anybody saw that news, but let's all stick together as humans, as investors, as people. And thank you everybody for joining tonight.

Laurel: Goodnight everybody.

Sarah: Thank you. Goodnight. And a special thank you to Paul and Katherine, who do a lot of stuff behind the scenes. So, let's thank them because if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be so organized and we probably wouldn't be able to do this. Katherine, Paul, thank you.