[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, y'. All.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of the short term show Poconos miniseries. Today we're going to talk about how to find your buying team, which could be any number of things. Obviously it's your agent, your lender, home inspector, people like that. But then, you know, after that, you have your post buying team, your management team. So you need your cleaner, your handyman, you know, any. Any number of people. So we're going to kind of go through, talk about how to find these people, questions to ask, and how to make sure you're making good decisions. So to help me do that, we have our Poconos agent, Tristan Hunt. How's it going, Tristan?
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Going well. Yeah. Going. Going well. Happy to. This is a really important episode regarding. Because your team can make or break you, and that's as far as, you know, getting a profitable str.
And then once you get the short term rental, you know, is the team on the ground a solid team? Because again, a good team can, you know, make you a lot of money. You can also lose you a lot of money. So.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Oh, yes. So let's just jump right into it. The first person you're probably going to look for when you go to buy in a market is going to be an agent.
And there's a number of places you may run across agents. You might see them on Zillow, realtor.com you might see them, you know, recommended and Facebook groups.
So for me, the way I want to find an agent is I want to hear from another investor who has used the agent before. So used to Facebook groups were really great for this. Over time, I feel like Facebook groups have gotten saturated with people promoting, self promoting in there, which is fine. You know, everybody's running a business, but you have to be. Be able to kind of cut through the crap on Facebook groups. So, you know, most. Most markets will have their own short term rental specific Facebook group. So like Poconos Facebook group or I would recommend using our smarter short term rental Facebook group. We've got 75,000 people in there that own all over.
And if you go in there and you ask and say, hey, anybody but anybody own anything in the Poconos? How was your agent? So you'll get a lot of recommendations and you need to ask every single person that makes a recommendation, did you buy in the Poconos with this agent? If the answer is no, then why are they recommending if they didn't buy in the Poconos? They don't.
Did not close with this agent? Why are you recommending them. And you'll find in these Facebook groups, if you see a whole bunch of people recommending the same person, then you might want to like an overwhelming amount.
Look at their profiles. Do they all work for the same brokerage?
Do they all like. And you need to ask every single one, did you buy with this person? Because there, what has happened over time is vendors, agents, lenders, everybody.
All of us have found that if you go tell a bunch of people to recommend you, even if they never bought with you, then people, a lot of people won't do their research. They'll just say, oh well, like 20 people recommended this same person and they'll just call you. And people will typically use the first real estate agent that they call. So make sure that you ask every single person who makes a recommendation, did you close with this person?
If they didn't, if they're like, oh no, it's my cousin, but she's really nice. Well, nice isn't going to make you successful at short term rentals. So always ask, always do that research. And also know that Facebook groups these days you can pay to be allowed to self promote and lock everybody else out from self promoting. I had somebody try to sell me their Facebook group recently and I was like, what do you mean sell me your Facebook group? They're like, well it makes $16,000 a month. I'm like off what? And they said paid posts.
So a lot of people don't think about advertisements and what.
And there's nothing wrong with advertising, there's nothing wrong with marketing. But you need to make sure that you're understanding the difference between a true recommendation and an advertisement.
A lot of the short term rental data companies, a lot of of real estate investing websites that have quote agent finders where they match you with an agent, those are advertisements, which again is fine, but you need to do your research on that. I can think of two, not in this market, but two agents that are signed up for those leads in market. So if you go on a couple different websites, one's short term rental specific, one is real estate in general.
And you ask for an agent in the Smokies, you will get somebody who lives in Michigan selling in the Smokies. There's one that you will get somebody who lives in the Midwest if you choose, you want to buy in Panama City beach. You want to make sure that you're buying like that. You're doing your research on folks making sure they actually live in the market that they're selling in.
You cannot effectively sell real estate In a market that you don't like, at least live within driving distance of, you want an agent who's driving, driving through all the cabins on their way to work every day, questions to ask. Tristan, I feel like I'm running right over you with all this. So what questions do, do you like when people ask you to make sure that when they're interviewing agents that they're really getting a good idea of? Is this person a good short term rental agent or are they just a generalist?
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say the biggest one is do, do they have experience helping people sell and buy short term rentals or are they strictly just residential? Because there's a huge difference in between an agent that's, you know, normally just sells primary homes and then one that sells short term rentals. It's honestly like two different sides of a coin. I would say it's because when you get with an agent not only that knows short term rentals really well, but knows all the regulations. Especially in a market like the Poconos where there's, it's literally like maybe within two minutes this area is, you know, str friendly and the other one's not. Or maybe the township, like some of, some of the township allows short term rentals, but there's like a pocket in there with the HOA and they, they only do third day minimums. It's extremely important.
Like the first step is finding your, your agent and that's probably the most important step because they're going to set you on the right path.
They know the market inside and out. They know which areas do well than others, which ones allow short term rentals and then also too with you pick in the right agent, they'll get, you know, they have their referrals of people they've worked with and they'll get you your rest of your team or refer wise because it's also working with. Because like the next step is finding, finding a lender. Well this again same question. Does that lender work or finance or underwrite short term rentals or not? Because again it's, there's some short term rentals that you know, it might be a little hard to finance versus like a primary home. So I think really just having that specific knowledge and then also someone who's in the game, right? Like someone who operates short term rentals who can look at a home and know exactly what a guest would like and what would would like and then even like certain layouts that might not work or maybe the home might, it might be a nice home. But maybe the layout doesn't make sense and you know, how, how is that received from a guest, someone who is in the game that's not on the sidelines.
You know, deals not only helps people buy and sell short term rentals. Are they operating? Because eventually you're like, they get, you could, there's, there's a relation there to where, because eventually you're going to have to operate the home. Right. And that's what's nice about working with us at the short term shop. It's not like we're just going to sell you the home and tell you good luck. We're going to help. Yeah, we're going to help you, you know, teach you how to manage, you know, revenue management and you know, working with your team and when you hire, hire a team and when is it time to like your operations team to let some people go, like when should you let a cleaner go? And so many of the nitty gritty questions that you know, it's extremely important. And it all starts with the agent. It all starts with the agent. You pick the right agent, it will not only, you know, benefit you financially. Also stress wise too because no one wants to buy the wrong deal and find out that the home, you can't run a short term rental or you know, it's a good deal. But no one helps you or teaches you how to manage the home because that's a whole nother area as well. So it all, I think it all starts with the agent and somebody who really knows short term rentals in especially here in the Pocono Mountains and which gaps you're allowed to have short term rentals on which ones you are.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think the biggest one, especially for that market is why you need a short term rental specialist is because the regulations are so different for each little township and then each little hoa. I mean I almost made a huge mistake in a market out west a couple years ago. I got a recommendation from an investor that I knew who had bought with us and who asked great questions. And so I figured, okay, whoever they recommend, I trust, I'm going for it. And this person, they didn't do a lot of volume.
They only sold a few houses a year, which doesn't matter. Some people don't want to. But I didn't ask my number one question, which is how much of your, how many of your deals last year were primary homes versus short term rentals? I didn't ask that. And we got under contract on $1 million. Property was beautiful, beautiful view and only after running around, I got a little, you know, we all make mistakes, even people who are experienced as me talking to some property managers about like, hey, does this area rent well? Like where, where rent rents well? And it turned out we were in a beautiful neighborhood, beautiful view, beautiful property. But it was on the wrong side of town to really do well because there was a ski resort and up north of town. So you wanted to be north of town because in the high season, which I didn't know this, I went to visit in the low season, it could take an hour to get through town. And so you don't want to have a rental on the south side of town because it's going to take three hours to get to the ski slope. So I was like, oh, crap. And he kept telling me what a wonderful deal this was, what a great property. And it was for the market, for a sale for that actual market. But it wasn't the best one for a short term rental investor. And that's where you can really get in trouble. So that's why you want to make sure that you are asking those questions, hey, how many of your deals last year were short term versus primary homes? Because that, that matters. And a primary home agent isn't going to know a lot of the regulations. And the thing is too, if you ask an agent, hey, do you work with investors? Like, yeah, everybody's going to say yes, because nobody wants to turn down business. But you really do need to ask the questions to make sure they're a specialist. Which brings me to the lending side. So same thing.
When you, there's a lot of lenders out there who do short term rentals.
Your agent will usually have several recommendations. But you always want to ask a lender, hey, how many have you done deals in this market before? Have you done short term rental deals in this market before? Because there can be some things like there's nuances in each market that lenders might get hung up on. So I know true log cabins can sometimes be a hang up with lenders. They don't want to lend on a true log cabin. They want it to be stick built and just have like a cabin facade or, you know, I don't know what the specifics in the Poconos might be. Tristan, you might know that could hang up lending, but you always want to make sure that that lender has done short term rentals in the market that you are buying in.
Got anything to add to that, Tristan?
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yeah, no.
Yeah, yeah. And I completely agree. Yeah, usually it's like the, like you said, the true log cabins hold up, lending also to access issues. Like is the, is the home, like, is it a really steep driveway and like a snow zone or you know, how are, how is access to the home and like private roads, Like a lot of these things play in to underwriting. And like you said, it's a really big. Not only what I was touching on before, has the lender done short term rentals in the Poconos? Well, have you, have you, you know, lended in this specific area, even in this township or hoa? And you want to get ahead of this early because the last thing you want to do is get really far into this process and you know, it's getting close and then you realize, hey, we can't finance. So I think it's really important to get ahead of the game. And again, like I said, your team can make or break you. And I also want to add that even if, let's say you go on Zillow and you see a home and it looks great and in the description it says Airbnb friendly, well, that can mean a lot of things, right? Like saying it all, because the description says Airbnb friendly doesn't necessarily mean you can rent it between one to 30 nights. Like maybe it's very vague language. You shouldn't just depend on that.
That could be in an area where it's a 30 day minimum or you're just, it's complete or it's a, it's an area where it's really strict for short term rentals. So it, again, it's, you don't want to go alone. And I think not only, not only just buying a home in the Poconos, but in general, you always want to have a community behind you, always have a team behind you. Especially when you don't have any experience in doing this specific thing. You really want to be guided in the right direction. And again, starts with a good lender and then, I mean, starts with a great agent and then it will lead into the other people. Like every good agent has referrals to other good people, like lender, cleaners, handyman. This is all people that you're, you know, and people, good inspectors. Like, these are all people that you're going to need to make sure that you're going to be, you know, like this, you know, it's not like we're buying chocolate bars or buying real estate, right? It's a lot of money. So we want to make sure that it's not wasted money and that you're you're putting your hard earned money into this appreciating asset and it, you know, it comes back and pays you every single week.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: All right, so I think we've, we've kind of covered that, the, the pre.
Buying thing. So you need a lender and you need a, an agent obviously to buy and when you're under contract.
So there's a few people that you'll need when you're under contract, actually 1 and maybe a 1B and a 1C.
And that's your home inspector. So usually your agent will have about three home inspector recommendations.
And here's where I think people make mistakes with home inspectors. They tell their agent, hey, I don't care, just pick your favorite one and schedule it for me. So, so let me again give you an example of how that has bitten me in the ass and bitten a client in the ass, but mostly me. So it is your job as the owner of the property to make sure that you're interviewing everybody and you're doing the hiring of anybody who's going to do any work, including your inspection. So what happened for me one time is I was coming from a place of service when a client said, you know, just get it scheduled. I don't care who, whoever you usually use. So I scheduled with the guy I normally use. We, he did everything.
And couple months after closing, the client came back to me and he said, hey, one of these bathrooms has a squishy floor. And the inspector missed it. And I feel like you and the inspector colluded to make me close on this property.
And when there was this big repair and it was in a place where the squishy floor, like, you would have had to walk over and like, actually sit down on the toilet to find it. It wasn't the whole floor. And, and like, no, that was not the case. The case was you told me to just schedule whoever I scheduled them, they missed something, which is unfortunate and can happen. But nobody's colluding over a $200,000 property to try and make you close. That's like, nobody's, nobody's willing to risk their license over one deal usually. So in order to make sure that that kind of stuff doesn't happen, you guys need to make sure that you call every inspector. They'll give you a list. Your agent should give you a list.
Call every single one of them and ask them questions. Ask them things like what are normal things that show up on every inspection here? Because you, you want to be aware of that because there's no such thing as a clean inspection report. There's always going to be pages and pages and you want to know which things are normal.
So that if you've got a great deal on a property and these things come up and they scare you off and you terminate, what you don't want to do is go get under contract on another property that wasn't as good of a deal or that you don't like as much and have the exact same things wrong with it and go, oh crap. Well, I guess they all have this. And now I threw away that deal. That was really good. So ask them questions. It's your job to hire them. Hire the one that you feel the best about. And when you get your inspection report, this is the biggest mistake I see people make. They still, it's the same thing. They don't call the inspector and ask questions about what he saw. They just go, oh my God. And they terminate or they'll assume something is not a big deal, that maybe it is a big deal and you should have asked questions.
So whoever you hire, call them, get to know them and ask a lot of questions. Tristan, do you have anything else to add about that? Is there anything like maybe up there in Pennsylvania that shows up a lot? I would imagine you get some wear and tear from, from snow, but I don't know.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, definitely some wear and tear from snow. The biggest thing is the homes that are on septic, like the septic systems. Because there, let's say, you know, let's say that you're, you're going to go buy a four bedroom home, but maybe the septics only, you know, permitted and it's big enough for a three bedroom home. Well, you can't host a four bedroom home. Like, they're very strict with that. So it, like it. And this could be the breaking of a good deal and a bad deal. Because if, let's say that it's an undersized system and you need to upgrade the system, you know, that can, that can be expensive. So, and also too, it's like, how old is the system, right? Like if it's a very old city, like let's say hypothetically you're buying a home that maybe it wasn't a short term rental before and it was a primary home, but it just, you know, numbers, everything makes sense that it could be a good short term rental. It's in a permitted area, but it's an older system, you're gonna have to replace it because older systems can't handle that volume like from you know, short term rentals, a lot of people in and out, back to back turns.
I would say the septic is a big thing. And then also too, it's, you know, like having good or like kind of what you were saying before about the, the wear and tear from the snow, like is the chimney in the fireplace, like is that has to pass a safety inspection. Is there any, you know, basement moisture or your drainage or, you know, how's the roof for like a snow load capacity? Like, these are a lot of things that I see that come up on inspection reports. And like you said, every, there's no, no such thing as a perfect inspection report.
You know, a lot of. Maybe an inspection report could be 30 pages, could even be longer. But the big thing is what's on there. And like you said, get on the phone with the inspector and talk about, hey, like, what did you see? What. So because it could be like a lot of small things, like inspectors are looking at everything.
Anything they see, they're writing it down.
But again, getting on the, like having an inspection report and then having a conversation with the inspector.
Yeah. It could be overwhelming to see that report. But when you talk to him, he's like, oh, yeah, just, you know, it wasn't that bad. Right. So again, it's like always picking up the phone and talking to somebody is, you know, I recommend it.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And one other thing that I would like to call out too is home inspectors. They don't, there's a lot of things that they don't do that you need to be aware of and that you may need to hire a second more specialized inspector to look at. So home inspectors, they only inspect what they can see. So they're not opening up walls, they're not going to find major electrical being out of date or out of code or something like that. They can only inspect what they can see.
Sometimes they will get on the roof, but some of them will use drones. So ask them that. That might be a good question to ask because we actually had one in the Smokies recently where he used a drone and it looked fine, but then it was not fine. And it, when it rained, when our clients stayed to get the house ready, it leaked. So that was a thing.
A lot of times they don't do pest inspections. You might need to hire a separate pest inspector. So these are questions to ask your home inspector before you hire them. Hey, do you do pest inspection? Do you have a septic add on? Because some of them don't. Some of them do. Some of them have the capability to do a septic inspection, but. But they don't do that unless you pay extra. There's a well on the property. I don't know how many of those are around, but sometimes you might need a separate company to do that.
But typically pest inspections will be either a separate inspector or a separate add on. Same thing with septic. So make sure you ask those questions. Is there anything else specific to the Poconos that they might need a different inspector on? Like y' all have those gas, oil, heat things that. I know they have a lot of those in New Jersey.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean the, the oil, it's not. It doesn't come up too. I mean, not as much as the septics. I would say like the septics and the wells. Because there, there are both. A lot of. Most of the homes are septic systems, but there are some, you know, wells too. Like if. Because the yield matters in rentals. So like if you have a well and low yield and really like an operational nightmare, I would say also like water quality too, from the well. Like you know, doing that. Those tests. Like these are things that again, like if you go on a home and. Or go look at a home and it looks great, but getting into the nitty gritty details like this, again, last thing you want to do is close on a home and something wasn't caught and you have to deal with it or you have to spend all this money to repair it. But yeah, overall, I think the big thing specific to the Poconos things would like the roofs. Like making sure, you know, is there how. Like, how's the roof? Like, is there any issues with that? Because a lot of snow is going to be hitting on the roof, but it's mainly the wells and the subject things.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Awesome. So you will have an appraiser during this process, but you don't really get access to them, nor do we. That's a very potential between them and the lender. Having access to the appraiser is what caused 2008 partially. So we're not allowed to talk to them or do anything.
So that's a conversation to have with your lender if you. If we run into any appraisal issues.
But something to keep in mind. And then last, the last little piece is your team that you'll need to manage it. So who. Who all will a new investor need? Tristan? If they're coming in new to the Poconos.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Self managing like more. More times than not, it's going to be an investor that's out of state or just that doesn't live right in the Poconos.
Your cleaner is really important and usually from your cleaner you can get, you know, your handyman, sometimes cleaners have, you know, referrals for a photographer. Your photographer is really important. You, because your photographer is capturing your home which is the, like in pictures, which is the primary, your primary marketing. Right? Like I've seen so many homes that like I've seen them in person and then see how the pictures come out. And they're not professional pictures, they're just pictures taken on an iPhone. And you can tell the difference in the lighting, you can tell the difference in the details.
You know, your photographer is really important. But as far as from an operational standpoint, your cleaners are your boots on the ground. Like those are the people that are going in and out of your home after every single turn and taking pictures of your home and they're going to be there more than you are. So having good cleaners and handymen is really important. And then because those are the people that you're going to be working with the most. I mean you might have, you might need a, there might be something that comes up that's out of the handyman's, you know, you know, as a specialist, like it's out of hills, out of his realm. So you're, you know, you'll need like your plumbers and you know, electricians but your main core, like your team is going to be your cleaners and handyman, primarily your cleaners. And it's, I always recommend getting your team through referral. I mean you can try to find them on your own but you just don't know, right? Like you don't know this person. Better to find, it's better to get, get one of these people like cleaner, handyman from, from a trusted source, right. Like I always recommend getting, getting from referral and that. And again, your agent has these referrals. A good agent, a good short term rental agent has these referrals like okay, here's here. These are, you know, preferred vendors, a whole list of preferred vendors that they work with.
And like I said before, it's really important that you're picking an agent that is in the game. Short term rent, they do short term rentals and because you can ask an agent that does only primary like residential homes and they don't have any idea. Like I've talked to so many people or other agents and honestly sometimes I, I run into that a lot with you know, people like, like if I'm helping a buyer and I. And the. The listing agent doesn't know anything about short term rentals. So like, I get, I. I could ask questions and they actually just don't know. So, you know, sometimes you just have to do your own due diligence.
And there's a lot of agents that do not handle short term rentals even in the slightest. So that experience is really important and that experience in the Poconos is really important as well.
Again, finding starts with the agent and you get, you get a good, solid agent and they will make your life easier.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Right? Which since we're here, we might as well point out that, guys, the people putting on this podcast for you, the Short term Shop. We are real estate agents. We're actually the top real estate team in the country that focuses on short term rentals. We helped over 5,000 people buy and sell short term rentals. Tristan is our Poconos agent. So we have got you covered in terms of all the vendors that you need, all the education that you need in terms of learning how to manage your short term rentals. So we really do have you covered over here and we really hope that you will choose us for your short term rental journey in the Poconos.
That is it for this episode. If you guys are ready to buy a short term rental or you have more questions want to work with Tristan, you can reach out to us at
[email protected] if you just kind of want to learn more about short term rentals, you're not ready to talk to an agent yet. We do have a really cool program, short term shop plus you can find it's sts plus.com and there's a lot of like great coaching on there. We have one on one coaching. So if you're not like quite ready to move forward but just want to learn more, we've got that offer for you as well. And thank you so much for tuning in to our Poconos specific miniseries. Hopefully you found it helpful. And please reach out to myself and Tristan if you're interested in buying in the Poconos. Thanks guys.
