Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group podcast. We're gonna have just a financial Freedom Mastermind group meeting and be able to talk to a couple individuals and, and see what everybody's up. To, but before we jump into that and start inviting others onto the call, I just wanted to encourage everybody to start where you are. Take it one step at a time towards your goals as we continue to enter into February already. It's crazy.
January's already gone in the new year. But start where you are. Take it one step at a time, and share your progress with your network along the way. You have goals of becoming a real estate entrepreneur and, uh, moving into, you know, more of a, a, a role or a job or a passion that you really want to pursue. I recommend starting with it as a side hustle and then building it up from there and trying to share it with as many people as possible in your journey along the.
Because when you have a focus and you have a positive energy about you, and when you're really moving towards something, you'd be surprised how the universe works in your favor and starts to, to help you go and achieve it. So again, the advice I'd give is just start where you are and, and take it one step at a time each day. This year is already moving pretty fast. We're heading into February next week. And so it's not gonna wait for anybody.
You gotta just make progress each day towards your goals and see how far you can get. But we're gonna open it up. Anybody that wants to join, feel free to go ahead and chat in. Looking forward to having a couple people on today and, and seeing if we can't help some people. How are you holding that? Me? Come in, I'm doing good cause you know, the trees fell on my house. So currently I'm just, I have, I got the roof tarp up on Saturday, right before it rained. So that was pretty good.
Found somebody off tack, got that covered. It was around two 50, so it wasn't too bad at all. And I have my insurance adjuster coming tomorrow and my neighbor told me her insurance adjuster was coming tomorrow. So I'm gonna go speak to them and then see what happens. The more I kind of learn, the more I'm kind of realizing there's a high chance that if a anything hits your property is your insurance.
I'm hoping that the fact that the tree's been dead for a while and there's been brought, there's a rope on it that possibly. But, uh, just one person from to tech that came and looked at it. He was just telling me his experiences. I didn't really like the negative energy, so I started speaking to him. But, um, but um, yeah, so you're gonna have the insurances come tomorrow, you're gonna see what happens.
And then hopefully I'll get it all fixed and repaired once I figure out how it's getting paid for. And to that point. So that's interesting to me cuz I always thought, hey, if it's on somebody else's property and it hits your. It'd be their insurance that would cover it? Mm-hmm. Or at least your insurance would go after them. Yeah. Is that what the adjusters coming to kind of decide too?
So, according to what my insurance said, if, if it looks like it's their fault through the negligence, they will, you will essentially use your insurance. You will have a claim, we'll have to pay your deductible, and then they'll try to sue to get it. But that might. Two to three years before that's even done.
So they said normally if you want it to be quicker, you should just go through your insurance and then after the fact, but there's no way to get the insurance to pay for it front end unless their insurance agrees to it And according to Georgia State law, essentially they say if it's a healthy tree and it falls on your property, it's an act of God. So it's your insurance. So if the tree is healthy, you have no argument. Well, I heard from one of the guys pick up the roof.
He said, unless you've been complaining to the county and the city for a while, for that person to cut down their tree, if it's been dead or falls to your property, it's still yours. So that's what he told me. He said, unless there's evidence of you complaining about it, it's still your responsibility. Like I said, whatever went online, it wasn't with a lawyer.
They said the only exception is the tree is through the negatives cause it's been dead for a while or it's been a. So we'll see what happens. I'm not really too sure. I'll probably know more next week, but just kind of rolling with it. I'm gonna set some money aside from my deductible and then kind of figure out what's the next steps. I'll put You are one of the most positive guys. I know, man. Seriously, because it's been, it's been, it's been back to back.
I, I don't know how this happened, but for the tree piece, right. Was it the full roof or was it just the, the portion coming? So it hit the sunroom, but mainly it hit. So in my, I have a sunroom that's downstairs on my house hack, but then I have a little room that leads into the front door. So there's a glass door, then there's a front door into the sunroom. There's a store into my property. So luckily it doesn't affect none the living quarters.
It just damages right there to where you can't open that door longer. Luckily, I had two doors for my sunroom. Mm-hmm. . Other than that, I probably wouldn't be able to continue my house hack because there'll be no way to get. True. I had that one door right there and luckily my car wasn't parked in my driveway because, you know, I had the whole driver situation. Cause my car would've been stuck until the adjuster came.
I could have just took pictures and paid somebody like, I think somebody gave me a quote for the 8 52. Remove the tree, which isn't too bad, but they gave me used car salesman vibes. So I was just like, gimme bad vibes. I'm just not even accepting a contractor. But yeah, luckily my car wasn't back there cuz possibly my car could have possibly got hit by a branch or it would've been stuck back there till I got the tree removed. But yeah, it just hit a portion of the sunroom.
It damaged it pretty bad, but everywhere else is fine. Yeah, man. Hey, keep your head up. I like that you're going through the insurance piece cuz they should be able to cover that. The only thing to your point that, that I worry about is the, the adjustments made to it, right? Like, are they gonna penalize, but I think they should go after the other insurance. Mark, have you had any insurance claims in the past? I have not. In my previous home, I've been pretty fortunate not to have any.
That's fair. I, I still haven't met anybody who has . Yeah, I'm going through number two in my first six months. So, . Yeah. We're gonna be going to you, man. We're gonna be going to you for advice, all right? Cause I, I, I actually, you know, knock on wood or whatever this is, I, I have not either. So. Yeah. Reserves. Reserves. But Mark, how you doing? I am doing well. Doing fantastic actually. , what and why are you doing fantastic.
I'm sitting here on this call learning more about, you know, learning to get financial freedom. So this is cool. Hey, come on now. That's cool. That is cool. We appreciate you joining, man. We appreciate you joining. I know you had some good news. Finally went live with a couple things. You wanna talk a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. Well, well thank you to, to you and your help.
We went live, I think it was two weeks ago, and we, without it, she had, so I, I wanna tell you, I used a trick that you talked about. So I have my daughters rent, the place to write up reviews, each one of them. So that worked out well. And we've had, let's see, two tenants. One is assign an extension. And, and, and we've gotten some activity already.
So we've got one in, one in already stayed and left from knees dealing with getting the speaker back, which is watching the Trail of Texas going back and forth and going, oh my God. And then, yeah, again, we have another tenant that's there. It's just signing an extension in, in the, the small apartment downstairs. So with that said, it's, so, it's a good start. One of the things I was gonna ask you about the V R B B trying to get on there next as as well, but great. Good start.
It's good to see money coming in versus me paying out money. Yeah, and, and it's always that upfront capital, right? There's always like other items where it's like, Hey, we're missing this. Even today, I think there was like an iron missing, right? And it's like, okay, if there's an iron upstairs, but I guess we missed the one downstairs. All right, let's get an iron. Things like that. But it gets tightened up and I think that guest extended for like another 20 days or so.
That's. From a VR R B O standpoint, it's a quick follow. So I think that's gonna be up and running within the next five days. Just gotta actually sit down for a second and, and, and copy everything, but it will be up and running in the next five days, which will be awesome. Okay. Excellent. Anything that's on top of your mind? Alpha, outside of the tree falling down, man. I mean, honestly, I'm just, I want to start.
Because I know you're, you're really busy and I know your listing agent doesn't wanna waste her time, but I want to start trying to find a way just to go out and look at properties without wasting anyone's time. Again, other estate agent. So I'm trying to figure out on that. How to look at, cause I think you probably need your real estate license to look at properties, so I just wanna be able go out. But to that point. Mm-hmm. , what are you looking for in the properties?
Are you looking more for like running numbers, things of that nature? Because we, we can absolutely send you, similar to how we're like, Hey, we're putting together a bmb, we can actually get you into properties. Mm-hmm. , it just depends on what you're looking for. You trying to run numbers in some, do you wanna see ones that we put under? I mean, oh, let's see. Once we put on, I just want to see properties and start getting a fill for things.
Cause the more properties you'll see, I can say, okay, hey, that tree is close to that property. I know from my pieces will fall over. This line right here means that what a mitigation company was here means this will fall over. Let me check under the sink. Let me see how the gutters look. Just kind of get more in contact with real estate. So when I am looking for a property, I'm not just trying to grasp at straw.
But just trying to, like if I had a choice, I would go and see three properties every weekend, just randomly go see, go. And it's not anything in particular. Maybe three bedrooms too bad, most single family homes with no HOA fees and just try to get more of, fulfill for the Atlanta mark. Cause I can say, Hey, I seen several other properties similar like this that was selling for 400,000. I see this one right here, seven for three 50. I know it's a good. , but I just want to see more property.
So I've been trying to ask some of my friends who do fix and flips, even though that industry has kind of been paned down cause of, yeah, and like I said, besides that I really want to get through this tree thing. I'm actually still dealing with a with a, um, I think the, when people use the jet up upstairs, for some reason, at least downstair, I have a bucket there. I'm gonna figure that portion out.
But besides that, just, just, Because right now, like I have to stop spending money on this house so I can start saving money for the future house Mm-hmm. true. And, uh, I would like to buy one before the end of this year, and that's my goal. I'm sticking to it. So I'm just like, okay, when is this house gonna stop asking me for my money so I can stop putting someone's aside?
. True. So that's kinda that situation with just getting this house done where eventually a stabilizer is not asking for huge sums of money and then start working. understand the Atlanta industry, understanding the market onto different neighborhoods, what's a good deal, what's not a good deal, and just kind of taking what I learned from this property and applying it to other properties over and over and over and over.
So yeah, if it's just property that you put under contract and you can send me over there, I would love to see them and just kind of get a feel of the real estate and just. Get like more involved. I tell you what, man, I appreciate just the reminders, right? Cause we do start to hit the ground and just, and run all over the place. Mm-hmm. We literally got six under contract right now. One of them is amazing.
Has nothing to do with anything that we're working on as far as like what would work, numberwise. Mm-hmm. . But I'm actually gonna be there for five hours tomorrow cause it's gonna take that long to do the inspection. So I'll send you the details. Okay. If you wanna come. , I think it'd be kind of cool to check it out. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a MTV Cribs house, we'll call it. Right, exactly. So I'm actually excited to just walk through it.
Okay. Okay. But we do have a couple other house hacks under contract that we can go into really any time. And now that I'm starting to work on the team, cuz that was the piece that was missing for a good amount of time for the real estate standpoint. It was, you know, just me and I realized like, hey, can't be in six places at once. Mm-hmm. . And so now working on the realtor piece and I have two showing.
More than happy to connect you with them when they have showings, cuz they're doing it throughout the week. Mm-hmm. , you can just meet them there whenever it works for your schedule. Yeah. And then obviously I'm, I'm heading around and checking out properties too. It's just, okay, when you showing agents, I know if they're with a client, I'm not sure the client wants me, then I completely understand that maybe it's something that.
I could be there before or after and kind of get that unless a client is fine with it. But I know people's home experience is very personable, , and they probably just don't want somebody randomly dead just looking at stuff. So say whatever that works. Just trying to, cause I thought about maybe just getting agent on the side, but I, I feel bad ways from his time. Cause it's like I'm not gonna buy a house from you for the next six, seven months and I'm just having you show me poppies.
I never want to get that bad. Of course, of course. No. So let's figure that piece out. I think on that piece, it just depends on the client. For a lot of the clients, they're gonna be okay, as long as you're an assistant, that's what we're gonna call it. Mm-hmm. , right? Yeah. You're learning with, with the, with the rest of the team. Mm-hmm. and I can kind of coach them through it as well. So it should be fine to come around and see a couple properties. Okay. Just so you can get a fill.
Cuz there are a lot of opportunities out there, especially right now with the interest rates kind of holding steady at like a six, six and a half. Mm-hmm. . And before we hit spring. Once we hit spring and summer, it's gonna pick up like crazy. I feel like this thing is gonna take off again and granted that the Fed kind of slows down and just keeps it neutral. Last quick question. Do you still consider it to be low inventory out there? It is.
I'm hearing it's ex, even though it's, you can negotiate the inventory is really, really, Yeah, like for the house that we're looking at tomorrow, which we have on our contract, we're going through the inspection period tomorrow. There was really only two options, right? And we looked at everything all the way outside Metro Atlanta, but up for what they were looking for. It was like, Hey, we got this one and one other, so we gotta negotiate hard. And we did.
But to your point, there's not a whole lot of options out there. But that's normal for this time period anyway, right? Between November and, you know, mid-February, you're only listing if you have to, if you are working on a flip. And hey, you know, your hard money's gonna run out, now you gotta flip it and, and sell it. That's why you're listing. Typically, you wanna wait until spring or summer to list your home and there's a lot more people out.
So you can get that competition and get a higher price. Mm-hmm. . Okay, so I would agree. Mark, what are you seeing in the Boston market? Man, You know, I, I, I haven't really been paying attention to the Boston market. Well, it's slowed down for sure. Mm-hmm. , and it's, it's stabilized. So it's plateaued.
We have a friend who is trying to sell their house in Burlington, and they're working with the same real estate broker that we work with to sell our home, and they're saying it's just not a good time. Right. But they're just a max maximum equity out of your, your home right now. And I think it's just related to what's happening in the market with the high interest rates.
So it's driven a lot of the bias off the market for now, and I think they're just gonna set it out and, and see if interest rate, interest rates go down. So I think that's what, what's happening in the area in Boston right now. It's still higher than, than the Atlanta area from the starting point. Yeah. , you know that that hasn't changed. So the, the prices have dropped a little. But not significantly enough. We have people who were bought a home, you know, 10, 20, 30 plus years ago.
They still gonna get plenty equity outta their homes. So one of the, the things that I've noticed is that there, there's other states out there offering, I dunno if it was Memphis or Tennessee, these, these ready, ready to purchase homes. Have you no ne I know you have homes where in Kentucky. We're at Kentucky.
Yep. Kentucky. But I'm just, I'm just curious of what you thought about some of these other areas that now c b suggesting that, you know, the, they're gonna grow in their economy and here's a, you know, a new upstart of housing market, you know, good for investors. So have, do you look outside of Georgia now? I know you have, you know, Kentucky. Are there other areas you're looking into as.
So for right now, personally, those are the two that I'm focused on, just because I don't wanna be in too many places at once. Yeah. That being said, the goal this year is to get maybe about three more short-term personally in Georgia. And then I'm wanna expand outside. I want to get to Alpha's level at some point, but I first wanna go outside of state. and then go outside of country to where now you've got a couple in different countries. Cause I think that would be awesome.
But to answer your question and, and it's funny that you mentioned Memphis, so my nephew, and this is like a full circle moment, man, cuz I didn't start thinking about all this stuff till after graduation college. but my nephew is 20 and he's going into his junior year and I gave him Rich Dad Poor Dad a while ago, like when he was still in high school. And we talk about stuff and when I was in Louisville, he was close, he was in Nashville.
So I used to go pick him up, Hey, come hang with your uncle for the weekend and we're gonna work , which is gonna put down flooring. So he remembers all that stuff, but long story short, he, he wants to get into real estate now and he goes to school in Memphis. And so we were looking literally the other night, we were looking at a couple properties. I'm like, For five grand down, you can get a duplex for like one 60. Right now, the key mark is what is your strategy, right?
If you buy a house, even like your regular house, the house that you bought in Boston many years ago, it probably appreciated X amount, which allowed you to buy more houses, right? Whereas in a Memphis, especially like that city in general, it's really a cashflow. , you're buying these properties where it's gonna give you cash flow right now, but from an appreciation standpoint, that house may only be worth like 10% more 10 years down the road, right? Or five years down the road.
Okay. It's, it's just a, a bit different, and I can tell you even from Louisville to Atlanta, it's a different kind of appreciation market, right? Louisville is more cash flow. But it is getting some appreciation, just not as much as a city like this. So for example, the first home I bought in Louisville, I bought in 2016 and I bought it for one 90. It was a triplex that I lived in in a house. I had a lot of issues, no trees, but a lot of issues that we went through.
Some bagg bug stuff, all this stuff. It was a lot going on. But that house I sold in 2021 for three 10, right? And so that's pretty good. But that was over four or five years. Whereas in Atlanta, I bought a house that's a three two in August of 2021 for four 60, and that house is now worth 5 75. Even in this market, I could list it for five 50, right? A year and a half later, and I get multiple offers on that. And so it's.
It's just different markets, but the four 60 house wouldn't work as a long term. I have to use short term at least, until the rents catch up. Whereas the other one, it's all long term rentals in Louisville for me and Louisville is long term because the numbers worked that well for you, right, to give you that cash flow, right? Oh yeah. Especially back then. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So. Okay, good.
I mean, I was just curious cause I, I, I'm seeing that I started to look at a few houses, look, and, and you know, they talked about the grade A, grade B neighborhoods and grade C and I was just curious of what your thought is about that. Yeah. The, the first, the first property I bought. I would say, now looking back, cause I, I didn't really know the grades like that, but now I can firmly see it.
I would say it was probably a grade seed with a maybe c plus property that still needed some work and I was able to get it up to like a B, right, B minus, we'll call it. The neighborhood. Still needed work. Now it's starting to turn over a little bit more, which is, it's getting better and better. You know, as more people start taking care of their properties and you see like a flip here, flip there, but it's, it's more time intensive, we'll call it. Right. You get more cash flow.
Definitely. Like I was able to get a 12 plex on that same block for 500 K. Right. Which is nuts. But man, when I talk about the management. and, and kind of how intensive it was. It's what forced me to move to property management. Right. I was like, Hey, I'm working a full-time job up in Boston. I can't be managing this a thousand miles away. Let me go hire a property manager. I think I've told the story on here before. The first ones I hired, it did not work out. It did not work out at all.
The second ones I hired, thankfully, they came on and, and were able to help out. Okay, good. Thank you. That was helpful. Of course, of course. Desmond, how you feeling? What's up? What's up man? I'm feeling good. Just got off, man. Trying to manage my other job I got now. Yeah, . Yeah. But yeah, it's important. It's been good. For sure, for sure. Now I'm definitely busier because you know the second B and B is up, so.
You know, I'm starting to feel the pressure a little bit more, you know, I'm starting to take, take y'all consideration more, you know, more into thought. I'm like, man, you know, a cleaner will be nice like You know, will be kinda nice. But yeah, man, it's been going good. It's been going good. That is good. And I still am looking into the booking.com. I actually just reset up the profile and I saw that, hey, they can take payments now. Now I just had to figure out how to link it.
Have you linked yours to Hospi? Yeah, I have, I have, and it works like the messages. It works great. Actually, I was actually in the town hall today talking about just a small issue that I have where it's like some like weird, like metadata comes through from the automated messaging like that. , I think they, they have it working right for Airbnb, but like on booking you might see it say like, oh, calendar icon, like hospitable icon.
So I was asking literally the ceo, which that's one thing I like about Hospitable Man. They are dope with the support. Like you can hop on, literally talk to the CEO and say like, dude, what's going on? But yeah, it, it works. It works pretty seamless to be honest. Yeah, I mean, I've got, Set up with August, right? So the codes are being automatically added to the lock. The messengers are getting sent out automatically and that's huge.
Like those two things right there alone are like huge for me. But yeah, I mean it works. It works, you know, pretty well. I think like their main focus out of the gate was, but I think, you know, they are constantly trying to do what they can to make the other platforms feel loved too. And I mean, other than that small little issue I was talking about it, it works pretty seamless to be honest. Booking did piss me off though because for my first listing, I got it set up like, no problem.
Like it was just like Airbnb. I put my, my photos on there and I was like hosting the same day, but then when my second listing, I had to go through like this property verification thing and I'm like, yo guys, like I got this first property. It has a ton of reviews, like what I mean, to get verified for. Yeah. And they, they honestly kind of made me mad because it probably took me like a week after, like making it live myself. So I made it. And then they like closed it.
They like basically unlived it or whatever the word is, because they were like, oh, you need to verify. They were like, you can either, Wait for this letter that we're gonna mail you and it might take 14 days. I'm like, okay, what's the next option? Or you can upload a video of your property. Yeah. So they make you, and I saw this on my first listing, but I think I had gotten so many bookings so quickly that they're like, all right, fuck it. Like it's probably real.
But on my, on the second one, and it was even crazy cuz I had already had a booking on the second one and then they closed the property down for. Three or four, maybe even like five days. And I had to upload the video. And then they were saying, oh, like we can't see some of the shots with like some of the photos. We can't like necessarily verify. So I had to actually get on a Zoom call and they like, Automated.
So they'll send you like an invitation for the Zoom call and you hop on there and I had to show my, literally like the exact same angle I had to like get down on my knee, like in the same angle. We were taking a picture to verify and I had to like show them the street sign and everything. So it was kind of crazy setting up my second one. I don't really know why they made me do all of that, but after I got that done, it was cool.
Yeah, I mean, I was basically able to start accepting payments and start taking more bookings. So I don't know what, what happened with the second one, but after that, man, it is been great. Like I got a girl staying tonight off booking.com, checking in. Literally, same thing going on with the first one since I hosted it. Probably like, it's only really been live for like a week now, to be honest. But all those days have been booked up. Mostly from, mostly from booking.com.
Man, it is time to start adding, at least test it out. If you can add a little bit to the cleaning fee and see if you still get bookings, it'll get you closer. Yeah. But Alpha, you said you had the same thing with booking.com? Yeah, so they weren't really answering my phone calls, so they actually ended up sending me that. Letter by. I'm gonna send me that letter. I couldn't even figure out on the website. Where do you add the code to verify it? I think I eventually did.
Like I said, I have the listing up, but there's no traction to it. I'm not sure if the account is on. I just never called, cause Airbnb has been going well, but it's up completely. It's filled out for the most part. I think where I messed up was there's a way to essentially gonna booking.com and just upload your Airbnb right away, like. So I did that. Oh. And I wouldn't recommend that, so I didn't. You wouldn't, okay.
Yeah. And then essentially it just went black, like , like nothing was working. I haven't, haven't even received a message on booking.com at all. So I think maybe it would've been better for me just to put it in manually and make it a whole new listing instead of having, cause I know what they did was they took screenshots of my pictures, so the pictures were lesser quality, so I had to replace all those with my actual pictures.
Like I said, I. I just assumed the website don't work and I just said, Hey, Airbnb is working. I got one booking from VRBO and I just been running on Airbnb kinda the exact opposite of Desmond. I do wanna eventually set it up to, I'm getting bookings from both. Like you said, you don't wanna have all your eggs in one basket cause you never know what could happen. It's funny too, after sitting here, I literally. Got got a booking. Yeah. Got a booking and this is what it looks like.
They'll be like asking the check in time. It's crazy. But I did the same thing with, with with up uploading my Airbnb listening and it was kind of funky too. Like I had to go back and like . Edit the pictures or like, at least like rearrange 'em. So it's definitely not, I'll say it's not as seamless as Airbnb. Like Airbnb got it down to a T with booking. I think they were focused on hotels for so long that they're really now just trying to catch up to Airbnb.
But for the most part, once you get your, your stuff set up right, and like you, you got your photos and everything, I think it's at. I say worth the shot for me. I, I'd be, I'd be down bad, low key if I didn't have booking or, and honestly I say that, but it's kind of like, I don't, I don't even necessarily know because they book on booking so often that I feel like it doesn't get the folks on b and b a chance to book.
And I, and with my new listing, I have had a few come from b and b or, yeah, from b and b I think now. That I have more reviews and I think that's a, a real big part on Airbnb. You gotta have like those reviews and, and some of it is also what I, what I learned. I'm not sure if it's still the same now, but the way the Airbnb algorithm work is based off interest. So if you're getting booking, they're going to promote you more.
If your canvass being booked by booking.com where we're basically you're never available and Airbnb can't build that profile for you to know if you have a good. Yeah. So if you're too booked up on one platform, I have a feeling it pushes you down on, on another platform. Yeah. So it kinda forces you to focus this. It's very hard to get equally a third on all three. Cause if you match on Airbnb, they're like, Hey, booking.com.
Like, Hey, this person is being booked on booking on Airbnb so much that we don't see them. So you're gonna promote this listing. I don't know, it's just my theory and I think there's some validity to, I'm not completely sure, but I do know that. There's some influence on that.
Like if you're constantly booking booking com, you're getting one Airbnb book in a month, Airbnb is like, oh, your place is not, either it's not available cause you block it off or there's not a lot of interest in your place. Right, right. I'm not sure if that's true. I'm not sure. Maybe need can figure out, out with, through this connection. But I would imagine, I have a feeling that's a cause I know with Airbnb the more bookings you get as soon as we get a couple book.
Your next booking comes right away because the Airbnb is like, okay, people like this property, let's push it to the top. You want a two bedroom, one bath? Here you go. Here you go. And then normally what they say, they say, Redfin. . Yeah, true. They literally say, Redfin. You should book this, so, right. One thing I saw the other day that made me a little nervous though was on V R B O, I don't know if you noticed it, but they have like something called boost points or something like that.
Like, like you can gain points for your listing and boost it. And I'm like, hold up man. This looks like they're trying out something so that down the road you can pay. to boost your listing or have to pay to make it seen. And it just made me think, hey, the more you can start building that brand now, and everybody's talked about it, but try to somehow, someway get people to direct, right?
So like every time, and I, I still need to go and drop this off at a couple different places, the newer houses. But we have this, this QR code on a little sheet that we put on in different houses so that people, when they stay there, they can scan it and book direct next time. And we try to tell 'em, Hey, you're gonna save 10% on fees. And hopefully if we can get them to book direct, they'll just get used to it and now reach out to us first, anytime they're coming into town.
Cause that stuff, they'd be nervous. When I saw that, I was like, okay, at some point they're gonna start charging to boost your profile. You can just pay for it. Right, right. But question for you. Go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say with the, with the direct, are you, so, cause I know you have your own site, but I think that's through Ho Hospitable, right?
Where you have like your, it is your webpage and I think they're waiting to drop, they've been saying it every town hall, like, hey, we're gonna drop the, like the full direct feature where you can like take payments and whatnot. So I'm curious, like right now, before they have that, how were you like taking the payments and how were you like, I guess facilitating those direct bookings? Are you using Stripe or something similar? So to that point I'm using is QuickBooks.
We'll check out our short term rentals. And so right now they're gonna introduce Stripe to it to where you can actually be able to book directly on the platform and just have it go seamless. But for right now, this is what it looks like. You can change up that top page to kind of show different houses and things of that nature and, and you can pick which properties you want to display, but when you do click it, it'll show you, hey.
You know what, you can book everything that it shows on b b. It actually pulls it directly from Airbnb, which is awesome cuz you know, they were integrated with Airbnb first. That was who they were connected with. And so when somebody wants to book, they pick the days, they hit request, it gives 'em the rate cleaning fee, they hit, request the book, and then it goes ahead and it sends you like a, a direct request and you can accept that we're not.
. And so before I accept it, before I accept it and have it block my calendar, always send 'em a message saying, Hey, da, da, da, da da. Thank you so much. I'm gonna invoice you now, and once you've paid, I will accept the booking. And so when they send this request, it's gonna have their phone number and their email address. And so I use QuickBooks to invoice for other stuff. So I just. Invoice and direct. Once I see that it's paid, I accept it and it's worked so far. And with that said, right.
Are you, cuz you heard my horror story about the pets last time, are you like sending a rental agreement or you know, do you have some sort of thing where they need to sign or say at least like, okay, we agree to the rules, or how does that. Not for the direct, but the reason being, the only way you know about the direct is one through social media and we're gonna verify you and things of that nature. Mm-hmm. or two, because you've stayed at one of our properties before. Mm-hmm.
, like 90% of the people have stayed at one of our properties before. . And that's the benefit of having that platform. Cause you can see like, hey, how did we review them? Look back through the messages. Were they a headache? Do I wanna accept this person as a direct booking? And so the people that we've had have been the awesome guest.
Like I have this one guest who keeps staying at, at like my personal b and b, the first one that I had, he's a music artist and he comes out here to teach people. If not every month. Every other month. And he's always booking it, like, always like he's disappointed when it's booked up. He's like, dang man, I missed it. I'm like, yeah, I know you gotta check out some of the other ones. But it's, it's good. That's dope.
And so now it's just, I get a text, he's like, Hey, you know, can I book these days? I'm like, here. Here goes the link man. And we kind of go from there. And once they get the Stripe integration, then it's really gonna be humming cuz then they can just book on here. And I'm hoping you can take like a deposit. Right. I think they're gonna drop that soon. I'm looking out for that too.
Cause I want to set up kind of some what similar do you have where I can like send people to link or whatnot, even like my friends and stuff. Cause I'm guessing the biggest benefit for guests, right, is that they're avoiding like the platform fees. Yes. That's the biggest benefit, right? Yeah. It's about 10% in savings, roughly.
Yeah. Yeah. And one question for you, Desmond, and I know you're busy right now, but it's, it's similar to like, when I got started in this Bmb thing, it was, Hey, let me test this thing out. I like it. Let me get another one, get another one. And hey, you know, one of my flipper friends wants me to manage hers. And then all of a sudden now we got a whole management company. It's kind of cool side hustle, right? You figured out at least for the most part, this booking.com. People would pay.
And by people, I mean, I would pay to have somebody just set it up, right? Hey, here goes the listing here. Who's the photos? Here goes like the temporary login. Please set up this listing. Link it to everything just to get it off my mind. Have you thought about that as a side hustle? Potentially. Once you get it fully, fully figured out. It's been like creeping into my mind, I'll say, because honestly, like what? What you said between like my day job and managing the two I have now, right?
And making sure we got enough towels for tomorrow and shit like that. It being a full-time cleaner. Yeah. Be, be a fulltime cleaner in a way. Yeah. Between all of those different things, it's definitely, you know, taking a good amount of my time, but it, it is something I'd say I want to start to creep into and try out and then, you know, over a longer and maybe move into like a management company. You know, at least folks know, Hey, I can manage your, you know, stuff at least digitally, right?
Because I mean, with what you're saying, like, and I'll admit to doing the setup with Booking and Hospitable, it was not nearly as easy as doing it with Airbnb. Like they, there's some hoops, you gotta jump through Airbnb. They're like, oh, type in your log in, like, boom, you done with Booking? They're like, oh, go click these settings in your booking listing and like, set this stuff up. I'm like, man, like it was, it was not as easy as I thought it was gonna be.
And, you know, now having it down and like having a hospitable integration set up and all these custom codes and whatnot. You know, I feel like I, I do have some, like, I don't, I don't wanna say expertise on it, but, you know, some sort of knowledge on how, how it would work. So, you know, it's definitely something I would look into for sure. And if you want, if you want, think about it, man, go be my first client. You know, man, we can talk about it for sure, but I, I don't mind man.
I don't seriously, cuz it's, it's one of those where I'm like, okay, I need to do. We're growing ever fast. Actually just talked to a potential owner who has, it's a flipper around here. They, they don't really own properties. They want to sell all of them, but with the market changing, they have three flips. They just completed that they're looking to potentially move to Airbnb. Two of 'em are furnished right now, one of 'em not. And I was like, Hey, man, send 'em over. Let me run the numbers.
Take a look. But long story short, It's getting, it's getting to the point where it's gonna be harder and harder to go back and do all of them. And so, mm-hmm. , yeah. Think through it, think about some pricing, things of that nature, what makes sense for your time and mm-hmm. , you know, that could be a consulting thing, man. Like on the, on the side, if you have time for it, like, hey, in an hour or two hours, three hours, I can set you up on, on booking.com for X amount. Right?
And I would be happy to be a first client to kind of get that thing going. I'm gonna think about it and we definitely can talk more about that for sure because that could be, now don't hit me over the head with the fees, man. All remember, remember that your boy was fighting for you. Can't remember that? No, no, man. I fly for sure . Nah, for sure. And honestly, you know, I have to even. Dig into how do you even start to do like freelance fees and stuff like that? Right?
Because at up until this point, I've been all on a salary gig, right? Even like with the software engineering stuff, I don't do any sort of, you know, freelance coding or anything like that. I've had some folks ask me in the past, but I've really been like, oh, like, you know, I got the Microsoft thing going on. Like, I'm cool, but, you know, and even just to like plug more in with you, right? And, and understand how your business is working more, you know what I'm saying?
I would definitely be interested in, in, you know, Getting that going. So let me think about it. Right. Let. See what, you know, how other folks might be charging for that or whatever. And I'm, I'm definitely not gonna hit you over the head, know that I, I'm gonna be there on, on Saturday too, to do the build. So at least for a couple of hours I'll be screwing, screwing some nails or whatever we need. But yeah, man, we're gonna have a little competition between the engineers, man. All right.
We're gonna see who can put together faster, you or Alpha. Cause last time, I don't know what was going on with that shelf. It, it took, took go hours, man. , it took a couple. I just tell people how to build it and I watch Right. Facilitate . Nah, that's fair. That is fair. That's right. No, no, this is awesome guys. I'm happy to see everybody is off to a solid start. Alpha. I'm happy to see that you keep the positive energy and you keep your head up cuz it is gonna work out.
We gotta see the forest from the trees. Right now we're, it's hard not to focus on the one tree, but when you zoom out and you say, okay, two years from now, a year from. Five years from now am I'm gonna be happy I got it. In Atlanta. In the area that you're in? Yes. That's the Do wanna ask you one question? Cause I, cause as soon as I seen it, I was like, foursome tree. Foursome tree. Cause that's what tell me, which I know. So I was just looking at my zip code on Zillow, Mm-hmm.
. And I clicked on my property. Just say the Z estimate went down. I was like, oh my goodness, it's not too bad. But it was like a good 15% of what I bought it and it. I was gonna mention it to you like, like I know far from the trees, I'm not selling it anytime soon, but it was just like a hit to just kind of see that the estimated volume on Zillow was a lot lower than what I bought it for. I'm not sure that, of course, absolutely. It's happening right now.
I wanna say across the board for a lot of individuals. But to your point, it only matters when you're buying and when you're selling. Right? And as long as you're getting that in between cash flow and you have a strategy for maximizing that property right now, you're gonna be fine. Right? And when you think about even the Zillow estimate and things of that nature, it's really a, a snapshot of the market itself, right?
There's always gonna be some properties that are better, or some properties that make more sense for, you know, certain individuals where you'll pay more for that proper. right? And so it's just a snapshot of the market as a whole. And as a whole. The market is declining a bit right now because the interest rates, because we're in the winter.
We'll see how the spring and summer holds, but I think the neighborhood that you're in, because there's a lot of new flips going on and more developments that are taking place, I think long-term it's gonna be okay. And we're in Atlanta, man, Metro Atlanta is. Booming compared to a lot of markets, right? When you look at, I gotta get back with my guy over in Phoenix, Jamie, I think you guys met him. He jumped on a couple times, but it's, it's, it's not been good over there.
They're looking at, I think 37% to 40% declines just because that's a boom bus market and a lot of people move there that, you know, normally wouldn't. Whereas Atlanta has like businesses moving here, there's companies moving here, there's there already were companies here, but there's a lot more now. So, I like the prospects of the city overall. All right, y'all. Hey, Desmond and Alpha will see you on Saturday.
Mark, congrats again on the first couple bookings and hey, we'll keep this thing rolling, man. Yeah, we'll keep it rolling all man. Hey V. See y'all later. Have a great, have a great rest of your evening guys. See you guys. This you.