Amy Holweger - Getting Your First 2 Investment Properties

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:

When you read about successful real estate investors owning dozens (or hundreds) of properties, it can feel intimidating. They're making tens of thousands of dollars a month and you're just getting started. How do you get that first property? Once you do, how do you go get that next one? Meet Amy Holweger! She's an investor in the Minneapolis/St. Paul and surrounding area of Minnesota. She just moved to the state with her husband in 2021, acquired their first rental property in the fall of 2021 and recently closed on their 2nd in the spring of 2022. She shares how they did it, balancing investing while working her normal job and her art studio on the side, what they were looking for in their properties, working with a property manager, and much more. If you're just getting started on your investment journey, this is a great episode for you to hear practical information to help you get going.

In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:

• Investing in the Midwest gives you the ability to earn cashflow each month.

•  Growing passive cashflow gives us an option to not work anymore if we want to and retire early.

•  She used cash for 25% down payment on her properties.

•  Knowing your risk tolerance helps you to pick properties that are a fit for you.

•  Start building systems that would allow yourself to scale.

•  Having a great property manager is the key.

•  1% Rule is looking at the purchase price of the property and monthly rents are roughly at 1% of that price.

•  Appreciation gives us money in the future to do more deals.

•  There is a lot of opportunity in short term rentals.

•  Long term rentals give you balance and base to have cash flow.

•  Cash flow puts money in our pocket and helps us grow our portfolio.

•  Keeping long term rentals is like a buffer for your income if you continue to work.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro of Amy’s Career
1:37 - Amy’s background
7:15 – Investing in Midwest
9:15 – Amy’s Investment journey
15:38 – Hiring a Property Manager
19:32 - The 1% rule
23:58 - Amy’s second property
27:33 – Appreciation versus Cashflow
32:21 – Taking risks

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Full transcript here:

Mike Swenson 

Welcome to The REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.

Mike Swenson 

All right, welcome, everybody to another episode of The Real freedom podcast. And what's exciting about today's episode is a lot of times we talk about investors, you know, sometimes there's investors out there that have hundreds of units, 1000s of units, or they've been in business for 1520 years. And today, we get a chance to talk with somebody who has just begun the investment journey, you know, gone through taking the key couple of first steps and is right in the thick of it. And so today, we have Amy Holweger are on, and Amy's going to share about her process of getting her first couple of rental units. You know what her and her husband, Phil have gone through the questions that they've had the fears that they've had, and here they are a few months later. And they are into their journey. So we're going to really hear about the early steps.

Mike Swenson 

For a lot of you out there that maybe haven't dipped your toe in the water yet. Hopefully, this episode will give you a chance to have the confidence to move forward and take that leap and begin your investment journey. So and I should also quick clarify, Amy is a client of ours. So she's worked with me personally. So you can hear her feedback on on working and going through the process, but just wanted to make sure that I disclosed that as well. Welcome, Amy. We're so excited to have you.

Amy Holweger 

Thanks, Mike. I'm happy to be here.

Mike Swenson 

Why don't you just share a little bit about your background. And then kind of what got you excited about investing and why you wanted to do it and what it's going to accomplish for you and Phill.

Amy Holweger 

My background. So I mean, I work in E commerce for my day job and, and my husband works in it. And we bought our first condo, which was our first primary property of a few years ago, I think about five, five years ago now. And when we were going through that process, how I got interested in real estate is that I knew nothing about it. And we were doing it in our agent in Washington State kind of helped, you know, answer questions and things. And he realized that I had an interest. So at one point after we actually closed on the condo, he was like, hey, there's like this landlord Meetup group, do you want to go? And I was like, I don't know what this is. But sure, yeah, let's go. So I went there. And Jennifer beetles was actually a guest speaker that night. And so I got to meet her for the first time, I thought she was super awesome. And I was like, whoever this person is, I need to like, know more about her.

Amy Holweger 

And then so I found her and found B through her, found her Meetup group, through addicted to ROI, and started going to those groups. So I just thought that it was the the idea of real estate was really interesting. And so, you know, we spent a lot of time learning, I think that there were kind of a lot of fears holding us back in the beginning, we were really trying to, you know, get our financial house in order. And then, you know, right after we bought the first or condo together, you weren't married yet. And then we got married a bit after that a little shortly after that. But so there was a lot of like life stuff happening. But we're still regularly going to the meetups and meeting people. And then we decided, alright, well, you know, we want to invest in but we need to do it out of state because Washington State just wasn't an option for us. And Jennifer beetle's was, you know, that's what she specialized in was, you know, investing out of state. And we weren't quite ready at that point, I think, to take the leap. But then we ended up buying a house.

Amy Holweger 

And then we stayed there for a couple years, but right after, like, a couple months after we bought our first our actual house in Washington, then COVID hit. And so you know, kind of like everybody else, everything was really uncertain about just life and everything. But we, I think at that point, during COVID, we took Jennifer's five years to freedom course. And that's where we had a lot more hands on experience kind of analyzing deals, and we gained a lot more confidence through that process. And I was like, alright, well, if we really want to get serious and want to do five years to freedom, having this huge mortgage, even though we went to like a place where, you know, is was certainly not expensive for Washington and we kind of moved really further north out of Seattle to get the best deal that we could. And then we realized, well, this mortgage is really weighing us down. You know, we've slowly kind of increased our income over the years. I finally been within the last year then got a couple of new jobs and really increased my income and they were like our Right, let's move to Minnesota.

Amy Holweger 

I actually spent about six months kind of researching because I wanted to, we wanted to invest. But at the same time, it's like, well, if we can move somewhere else, we can have a lot more money to invest every month. So we decided that we'll maybe we'll just move to the states we want to invest in Minnesota was one of the states that Jennifer had kind of identified in the Minneapolis area as a place that was good to invest. And I was like, well, that's close to home. And, you know, we've picked out quite a few states and gone through and said, you know, what fits our needs, and Minnesota fit those for us in yon from North Dakota, and so it was close, you know, somewhat close to home. And so we're like, alright, well, let's, let's just do it. Let's go. And Phil was on board.

Amy Holweger 

And he's very averse to change the fact that he's like, really gung ho to move to Minnesota. I'm like, All right, this is the sign we need to go to Minnesota. So within I had signed up for the inner circle with Jennifer beetles, and then we I so that I could get referrals. And then I got referred to you, Mike, this year gave me a couple options. And I interviewed people and, you know, you were the person I chose so that we could go and start looking at properties.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah. So talk a little bit about because I know, you know, people listening to this podcast are from various different states, and even different countries, but But thinking about Washington versus Minnesota. You know, one of the things that I think people like about investing in the Midwest is you have the ability to earn cash flow each month. And the appreciation may not be as good as it is in other places, kind of depending on where the hotspots are. But it's solid, right? In the Midwest, we're stable, right?

Mike Swenson 

Versus on the coasts, a lot of times for trying to find a rental property, you're banking on appreciation, and you're probably taking a cashflow hit every month, to be able to do that now, you can still make a lot of money in appreciation, but it's costing you to be able to do that. So maybe just spend a couple of minutes and just kind of talk about those differences. And why a place like Minnesota, when you're looking at the United States, I could invest in anywhere, you know, why is the Midwest or Minnesota? Better? That why shouldn't say better than but why is it? What what is the upside of that versus comparing it to someplace on the coast?

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, well, I mean, Minnesota is the best state anyway, just great. But

Mike Swenson 

I am biased, but at the same time people do invest in all states, so they do.

Amy Holweger 

So yeah, in Washington, you know, that was where we got a lot of kind of our seed money to start investing was because even though we only owned our house for two years, because we were kind of in the bubble, where everything was appreciating really fast, just to people moving out of Seattle, or even moving from California and flooding into Washington and all the house prices, housing prices just went crazy. And so we actually had a lot of appreciation from that, that we were able to take that and bring it over to Minnesota to invest that. But Minnesota we chose just because it was very much we wanted kind of lower priced real estate to purchase. And we also wanted to be able to have cashflow. cashflow was a kind of our number one thing, you know, because long term, we we want to retire early.

Amy Holweger 

So being able to have cash flow that puts money in our pocket every month helps us to grow our portfolio, but then also it gives us the option then, you know, hopefully within five years to to have the option to not work anymore if we want it to. So that was kind of the things that drove us to to invest in Minnesota.

Mike Swenson 

Okay. So then when you guys finally decided where you were going to land, it took a little bit of time you had there was a lot of space in Minnesota where you could consider living. And we finally selected a location, which is a little bit north of the Twin Cities, so about an hour away. And so you guys got your property there. You you started there. And then kind of Where Where did your investment journey? Go once you once you got ruts in Minnesota?

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, so we are right outside of St. Cloud. And so we decided that we would go and invest in St. Cloud versus Minneapolis just because it seems just analyzing some properties that the cashflow was quite a bit stronger in in St. Cloud, even if the appreciation wasn't quite as high. But again, you know, cash flow was where we were going and so I started looking at deals and then you know was kind of eager one as soon as we bought our primary to start looking at investment properties. And I think that one that I found in St. Cloud was just looking at the MLS from the listings and ran the number First, and it was really excellent cashflow. And so, yeah, it was let me just move forward on on that one.

Mike Swenson 

So, you know, a lot of people that have concerns about investing, number one is I don't have the money. Number two is, I don't necessarily know what I can do financially. Why don't you walk through that process? In terms of, you know, you guys were fortunate to have money saved up. But then to you, you have to talk with a lender, you have to put together a strategy. So how did that? How did that conversation work for you to kind of decide, what can we afford? What type of price point do we want to be in, and then that eventually led into your second property too. Yeah.

Amy Holweger 

For you know, what we could afford, you know, the, the, with how crazy housing prices were in Washington, we still bought the lower means in Washington, but with our combined three properties that we own Party Rentals, and our primary home is actually equivalent to the single house that we owned in Washington, which we, you know, qualified for. So we knew that we had some room to purchase properties, and be able to make that work for qualifying. But we knew that we were going to at least for the first one we wanted to do, you know, the do our 25, we want to multifamily, and we wanted to do the, you know, needed 25% down, so we just looked at what we had for money to kind of get as big of a property as we could, and to be able to put that money into something that would cash flow so that we could go and get our next deal. Or our initial strategy actually was always to use just the cash 25% down.

Amy Holweger 

And we did that on the first two deals. But now, we're at the point where, you know, I don't necessarily want to wait for more cash to come in. And, you know, I do want to stabilize our two properties before, you know, before moving forward on another one. But, you know, to me, doing the 25% down felt like a really safe, you know, first move to make very conservative and some people build their entire portfolio that way, just based on risk tolerance, and everybody has a different level of risk tolerance. And I think that's totally fine. You know, if you want to do 25% down and save up, and that's, you know, and don't have you don't want partners or, you know, don't don't want to, you know, do a burger or something like that, then, you know, that was that was where we were just wanted something kind of turnkey, so that we didn't have to worry too much about fixing things up on our first one.

Mike Swenson 

Yep. And I think that's, you know, there's a lot of people that do go that route, as far as, hey, I'm going to either house hack live in the house. I know, we were joking when we were doing the inspection on your first inspect, or your first rental property about how that really wasn't your intent to show up on weekends and paint and repair stuff and all that kind of stuff. And so yeah, you were looking for something turnkey. So I think that's, you know, as people are trying to figure out what type of property they want, you know, you have to decide, am I willing to put in work do I want to put in work or not. And so for you guys, it's you have jobs, you're busy at your jobs.

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, so for the property manager piece, I mean, basically, I wanted to start building systems that would allow us to scale. So starting, you know, with our first couple of properties, making sure that I have all of our documents organized, that I know what's going on with each of the property is that we're doing proper bookkeeping on them. And for, you know, another lot of people out there that self managed, but for me, it was just not, I would have to put in a lot of time and effort into learning the landlord laws and, you know, contacting tenants and, and things like that. And, you know, well, some people, they have great tenants, and, you know, nothing ever goes wrong. You know, I always like to plan for things to go wrong. And so I knew that if things even though our first rental property is only eight minutes away from us, we decided to hire a property manager because we said, man, we're only we're only paying, you know, a couple $100 a month on this property.

Amy Holweger 

And that's totally worth it for us to not have to worry anytime something breaks or if the tenants aren't paying, and really our property manager only surfaces things to us if it's over, you know, $300 for repair or if the tenants are having issues which we really haven't had any issues with our tenants, we had one one thing that came up, but it wasn't wasn't big and it got resolved. But yeah, we just didn't want to have to handle repairs and worried about you know, having a you know, all All of the he has a the Property Manager, which already has a team built up. He already has, you know, repair people that he trusts and vendors that, you know, that he can set those up things up with, which you know, then was really good decision for us. Because within the first couple of weeks of closing, we had a water heater that that went out. And we knew that the water heaters were very old when we purchased the property plan for that. But

Mike Swenson 

I think it's the record for the oldest water heater in an inspection that I've ever done so far. And so we were surprised it was working at that time.

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, no, I did in the Property Manager, they said that it had been kind of just patched up and patched up. And I was like, yep, just replace it. It's fine. But I that was all that they did. They called me. They said, Hey, this is broken. I said, Great. Get it, get it replaced. And they're like, Oh, okay. And then that was it. So they went in, they got everything replaced, they got our rental license for us. Anything else that has been broken, you know, they immediately have responded and the tenants seem very happy with, with the property management so far. So it's, and it was actually, it was actually kind of a coincidence that he happened to be managing the property prior to us getting the property.

Amy Holweger 

So if you knew everything about it, and so it was, I think, the easiest handoff we could have possibly imagined on our first property. But I think that, you know, our property manager has for our first property has just been knocked out of the park and has saved me so much time and energy and stress that I wouldn't. Like I said, even though it's less than 10 minutes for us, I wouldn't choose to have it any other way, just because of the time. It's totally worth it for me. So

Mike Swenson 

yeah. And I think you guys are thinking long term, which is important, because a lot of times people think by the dollar, right? Like you, it's quite possible that if you look back 12 months of having your first rental that you were like, Yes, I could have saved X amount of dollars by not having a property manager. But then if you look at the time that came up, right, the water heater, it's Hey, now I'm in between my job, and I gotta go call some vendors and try to figure it out. Little things like that. Or if the tenant tenants did turn over, now you're trying to figure out how to find new tenants.

Mike Swenson 

And so yeah, it's certainly possible in one year's time, you could save some money, but when you're thinking big picture of look, I want to eventually replace my job, or have the freedom to be able to replace my job if I want to. Having a property manager is key. So you're really thinking about that stuff long term. And then in terms of the property itself, for your first one, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's three bedrooms and four bedrooms on a duplex, right?

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, so it's a very large unit. So like the three bedroom is 1100 square feet, and the four bedroom is then 2300 square feet. It's just like this monster building. Yeah, so yeah, we were lucky to get those those large ones. And we have two families in there that I think that hopefully be in their long term. And they've been good tenants so far,

Mike Swenson 

is somebody who analyzes properties, I mean, most of what we see is always two bedroom, two bedroom, two bedroom, two bedroom. And so when you can find those ones, where there's three bedrooms, or even four bedrooms, and I remember there was one duplex that I found where it was two, five bedrooms on both sides. Like those are the ones where they don't come around much. I mean, I've maybe seen one in the past year, or a year and a half. But yeah, when you can find three and four bedrooms, it helps the economies of scale, there's a little bit less supply of those. So hopefully, you guys can fill those more quickly. And then obviously, you can charge more for rent. So you do gain the benefit of the economies of scale, if you can find those three and four bedroom units.

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, definitely. And I mean, the, the purchase price on that one was a little higher, but not too much higher than, you know, our Minneapolis Property, which was, you know, two two bedroom units, and it was much smaller square footage wise, that means half the half the square footage, if not less than that, than the one that we purchased in St. Cloud. So we just really got really good bang for our buck on that property.

Mike Swenson 

Yep. And I think too, one thing to share. I know there's a lot of people, when they look nationally add investing in properties, they think, Oh, the 1% rule. You know, for those that don't know what that is, it's you look at the purchase price of the property and your monthly rents are roughly 1% of that purchase price. And for both of your properties you are give or take right around that 1% rule. On your first property. were well above it. Your second one, you're kind of right at that 1% row but I think that goes to show that they're still out there. You know, we analyze a lot of properties

Mike Swenson 

And there's so many of them that they're not anywhere close. But when you hold out and you're patient and you find those, they're they're still out there. And so, you know, a lot of times people are just giving up thinking, there's no chance I can ever get that. But both of your properties are right around that 1% rule. So hang in there, you can find those properties and see how they produce over time.

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, and I, you know, in the Properties analyze, like, I feel like there, especially in this area, that there are a lot of properties that do meet the 1% rule, they just may not meet my criteria for other reasons. Or even if they need the 1% rule, I know that there might be even better deals out there. And so then I kind of hunt for those.

Mike Swenson 

Yep. And I think going back to, there are a lot of properties that you've experienced above the 1% rule. Going back to the value of a good property manager, I think that's what we can we can chat about because we've had a few properties where we've reached out to your property manager and said, Hey, what do you think about this, and he said, you know, what, not the right area, not the right type of tenant here, you know, maybe it's an area where there's maybe more turnover may be more likely that they're not going to pay their rents. And so the you know, being having a property manager that's experienced in the area has been around has seen things can really advise you on Hey, even though on a spreadsheet, the numbers might look nice, in reality, it may just not be a fit for you.

Mike Swenson 

And so I think that's where the value of the property manager, you're also paying for that wisdom and expertise, where you know, Amy, brand new to Minnesota, could try to figure it out on her own, you might be successful, but at the same time, why don't we lean on somebody who's been a property manager in this area for hundreds of properties for years and years and years? They can quickly just say, No, that's really not the right fit. Or when you factor in the maintenance costs, you know, in this type of building, it's going to be X amount higher, and so don't don't do that. So we've really relied on our property manager to help guide some of those purchase decisions as well.

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, definitely. Because it's like you can you can do your research and make sure the neighborhoods are good, and all of that. But they're just some things that even though we live here that we just we don't know, or we may miss that are just, you know, for things that are located in the area that maybe we didn't think about, or that this checks all my boxes, and this looks pretty good. But you know, again, there's factors that because he's kind of boots on the ground, he knows the area really well. And he's like, I've actually had a property in this area. And this is how it did. And it's this is a similar type of property. So you know, I don't think this would work out well, for you.

Amy Holweger 

So even though all the research everything else is yes, you know, you still have experienced, which, you know, you could still choose to move forward with that and say, I think we can make it work. And, you know, he'd be like, alright, well, let's do it then. But, you know, I think it's yeah, it's super valuable to have, you know, a couple of people look at that, and, and just verify, yeah, yes, you're making good decision, or no, this is a really terrible one. And, you know, could have saved us from, you know, having a vacant property or, you know, renting out below, we thought we could get for it. And you know, a lot of other things.

Mike Swenson 

Just chat a little bit then about your second property. So, first one you guys closed? Was that November of last year, if I'm remembering right, so November 2021. And then your most recent purchase, you guys closed? March, right of 22. April 29. Oh, April, time flies. Right. So April 29. So you guys went from moving to Minnesota, last year to first property in November, second property, April. So it can happen really fast. So talk a little bit about your thought process as you were looking at buying your second property then.

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, so the thought process that I decided to open up to Minneapolis, just because, you know, if we did want a little more appreciation, or just to kind of get into a market where that isn't necessarily driven just by schools, whereas St. Cloud because a lot of schools there that's kind of more was driven by we don't have students in our properties, but you know, we've got we've got families, but you know, looking at Minneapolis, I feel like the, the risk of having properties, there's a little bit lower, just because, you know, you think about the changes that are happening with COVID Even where, you know, people are not necessarily going on campus all the time for school and, and things like that, that Minneapolis has a lot more opportunities for jobs, which in Minnesota, you know, that's something to look at, because, you know, you get out to some of the more rural communities

Amy Holweger 

And there may be a really a property that looks really good on paper. But if there's only one big company that employs everybody, and then it goes under, you know, thinking of like elderly, for example, that that seems to be kind of, you know, digging deeper into that one, you know, there were some deals that came up that looked good. But then, you know, maybe, from what I was looking at that maybe there might be have companies that pulled out or something. So it's like, you know, trying to hedge against possibilities of, you know, people not having employment in the case of if we have a recession. But again, you know, and I thought that Minneapolis might be, might be a stronger option for us. So I thought we'd at least try one there. See how it goes. And then if, you know, we find we really like investing in Minneapolis more, maybe start putting more properties there.

Mike Swenson 

Yep. Yeah. And I think the, for people trying to consider, you know, what, what am I going to use to choose where I want to have a property, it's different for everybody, you know, like you, you chose your property and St. Cloud was certainly higher cashflow, a little bit less appreciation, the property in Minneapolis is going to be a little bit less cashflow. But a little bit more appreciation opportunity. It's in a neighborhood that is potentially more up and coming. It's in a very convenient location. And so you're looking at, okay, cash flow, and the short term might not be quite as good as a property and St. Cloud. But if you fast forward three years, five years, I might hit that appreciation a little bit stronger, which provides more opportunities if you do some sort of cash out refi. And then like you had mentioned a place like Albert Lee, there's great cash flow opportunities, the population has held pretty stable. It's gone down a little bit over the last 10 years.

Mike Swenson 

So you're looking at is my cash flow play worth the long term possibilities of what's the job market going to look like 10 years from now, you know, in a place like St. Cloud versus a place like Minneapolis versus a place like Albert Lee. And so yeah, you're you're kind of looking at what are you comfortable with? What is what is feel comfortable with? And some people are like, Hey, I wouldn't touch that one with a 10 foot pole. And another investor might say, hey, that's exactly the type of property that I'm looking for. And so everybody's kind of different in their analysis. But yeah, you guys banked on Minneapolis as as a potential up and coming neighborhood with a good potential appreciation play. And let's see where see where that goes.

Amy Holweger 

Yeah, definitely, I wanted to get a mix of, you know, appreciation and cash flow, just because cash flow gives us money now. But you know, appreciation gives us money in the future to do more deals. And so it's good to have a mix of both at the property still cash flows, which is nice. But yeah, we're kind of banking on appreciation to like you said, do a cash out refi or, or HELOC or something like that in the in the future?

Mike Swenson 

Yep. Okay, so now that you've got two under your belt, what is running through your head as you think about the future? I know, Amy, and I text quite a bit back and forth with ideas and thoughts and, and it changes and there's lots of great opportunities out there. But we're What are you guys thinking? As you think about maybe, maybe even, you know, the next 234 properties in the future? What's running through your head?

Amy Holweger 

Yeah. So we're kind of I think that Minnesota has a lot of opportunity. And so, you know, we would like to put get some more properties here. But we're also looking at Florida, since your team is now doing properties there as well. And looking at short term rentals, because I know there is a lot of opportunity for short term rentals. You know, I definitely wouldn't want our portfolio to be entirely short term rentals, just because, again, things like COVID can happen where people stop, you know, stop traveling. But then, you know, the long term rentals we we like to have, but obviously, because they they kind of give you that balance, they give you that base where then you always have cash flow.

Amy Holweger 

But I think once we're kind of really solid with the long term rentals that short term rentals or even mid term rentals, since there's so much here for the for healthcare that I think the midterm rentals are, are a good opportunity, even in a place like like St. Cloud. And so, you know, I think we're kind of open at this point to a few different options. You know, but I think that, yeah, the long term rentals we still want to do so I'm looking at, you know, if we do more long term rentals, doing something bigger, like, maybe like an eight to 12 unit. It feels exciting to go like based on Alright, what's my comfort level here?

Amy Holweger 

Who knows, we could find a 16 unit that we fall in love with, we're able to, you know, get the financing that we need and we're able to get, you know, the partners that we need and we just make that work so I don't like to box in too much what we're going to do because it seems I have these, my dreams always seem too small when we actually go out and we're doing things we're like we could do more than this without really straining ourselves much more.

Amy Holweger 

So you know, long term rentals, and we want to get into bigger units. And, you know, we're working kind of right now to network and, and find people who do want to one of the best with us that we can start doing the commercial properties, and then reserving our kind of our spaces of the residential loans for the short term rentals, because most likely, those will be single family, we wouldn't, I wouldn't want to buy a single family necessarily as a long term rental, but I like them for the short term rentals for the midterm and short term. Just because an up north, you know, we've got all the lakes. And so I think that we would like to try a short term rental in Minnesota. And then, you know, there are lots of other opportunities and other states as well for short term rentals.

Amy Holweger 

But I feel like, you know, you can get Lakeside property for a really good price here. And then it's, you know, good for the summer and then good for the winter, because you've got lots of people, snowmobiling, ice fishing all of that. So yeah, I think we're kind of looking to do a mix that will just kind of buy the deals that if we find a short term one that comes up and, you know, we want to buy it, but I think those are the kind of the types that were open to or more during the vacation rentals, and then still keeping long term rentals in there is like a buffer.

Mike Swenson 

So yeah, what I love about you guys, is you're certainly open to opportunity. And, you know, trying to, to figure out where that niche is going to be, but also be smart about diversification. And so yeah, it could be short term up north, it could be mid term rental, depending on the location, it could be Florida, it could be, you know, other things. And so you definitely are keeping your options open and to, like you said, not limiting your thinking to, hey, what if I can partner with some folks and we can find for 812 16 unit property, because they're out there? It's just, you know, having the right conversations with the right people. And yeah, if you could take take down 16 units, that opens up a lot more opportunity for you. And so it's just finding those right people in those right connections to do that.

Mike Swenson 

So yeah, so I, I love your willingness to be open, and to try things and to take risks too, because, you know, there's people that have been in real estate for 20 years that continue to say, Oh, I really wish I could get into rentals, but I just don't know how, and they have all the information, they have all the connections that they need, and they don't do it. And you're jumping into a state that, you know, a year ago you didn't live in. And now here you are rolling up your sleeves, and getting a lot of stuff done. So I know a lot of people would be envious of the position that you're in, and just six short months.

Amy Holweger 

Thank you. Yeah, it's been a it's been a lot of work. But it's been a lot of fun. And I'm really excited to buy more rentals. But also then I've got, you know, my husband who he is, I'm definitely the more like more risk taker and he is more risk adverse. So it balances out nicely. So we're, you know, we always, even though he's not always as present in like these kinds of conversations, he's definitely my partner on the back end, helping us make sure that we're not taking too much risk, you know, that we are kind of going at it from a place that, you know, allows us to sleep at night. It's kind of like, you know, people always ask, like, how much did you have an emergency fund? It's like, well, how much do you need to sleep at night?

Amy Holweger 

And I feel like with our rental portfolio, that that's kind of how we approach it, it's, and I think our risk tolerance kind of goes up over time, and what we're willing to do, and that's why, you know, I never to say Never say never, because we said never to a lot of things we were never going to partner or we were never going to do commercial, you know, and now we're like, alright, well, let's we've, we've learned new things. We've met new people, and these seem like really great options for us. And so we're always excited to learn more and do more and, and see what happens.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah, it's gonna be exciting to see what happens in the next 12 months or even, you know, three, four or five years because you guys have made great strides in just a short period of time. So if anybody you know, has questions, and they're looking at how do I get started, and what do I do and Amy just helped me get over my fear of getting started? How can they reach out to you,

Amy Holweger 

I can be reached via my email. So [email protected] would be probably the best way to replace routine.

Mike Swenson 

Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your journey and just prove that you can work with me and still have a good time and, and be alive to tell about it.