Sabitha Setty: A Doctor & Short-Term Rental Expert
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What happens when a physician stumbles across a short-term rental while traveling and it grows into a huge passion? Meet Sabitha Setty! Not only is she a physician by day, but she's also a short term rental expert and recently got her real estate license. She owns multiple short term rental properties in the Phoenix and Sedona area and takes some time to share with us how she got started, things to consider in starting your own short term rental portfolio, and lessons & tips she has learned along the way. Don't forget to join her Facebook Group - "The Unorthodox Doc - Short Term Rental Group" that now has well over 2k members.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Sabitha is a physician by training, she was an accidental landlord and then an intentional short-term rental, real estate investor.
- She decided to design and market and sell and teach on how to invest in short term rentals.
- She got her license and now she’s building out a referral-based business to connect to people in her class and facebook group.
- In 2017 she visited her first Airbnb, which got her started with the idea of investing in them.
- Since then she has purchased 4 short-term rentals as of this episode. 2 of them are in the Phoenix area and 2 of them are in Sedona. She's working on purchasing a 5th.
- Sabitha differentiates between long-term rental, short-term rentals, the reserves you need for each option, as well as their Pro’s and Con’s.
- People can connect to her via her Facebook group called The Unorthodox Doc - Short Term Rental Group.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro and overview on Sabitha’s career.
01:05 - Sabitha’s background career and how she gets her first Airbnb rental.
10:33 - Analyzing the opportunity of a short-term rental and whether it makes sense
16:48 - Difference between long-term rental, short-term rental and reserves needed.
19:15 - Sabitha’s suggestions and tips in furnishing a property.
24:58 - Important things to consider in setting up a vacation rental property.
32:33 - How people can connect to Sabitha.
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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. We've got a brand new episode of REL freedom stories. And I'm so excited. Today we're going to talk a lot about short term rentals. And we're going to hear from somebody who actually hadn't been in real estate full time to begin with a physician, we have Sabitha Setty here. And she's going to talk about her journey from being a physician getting into short term rentals. Now she has a real estate license. And so not only is she focused on helping and growing her own business, but in others as well, and teaching them how to do short term rentals and talk strategy and all sorts of great stuff. So welcome to the show Sabitha, we're so excited to have you. And if you want to just take a couple minutes, and share a little bit more about you.
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Mike. I really appreciate it. So as Mike mentioned, my name is Sabitha Setty, I'm a physician by training, I was an accidental landlord, and then an intentional short term rental, real estate investor. And then, to make my life a little crazier, I decided to design and market and sell and teach a course, on how to invest in short term rentals. And if that wasn't crazy enough, then I got my real estate license. And now I'm building out a referral based business to connect my my people that are in my class and in my Facebook group, with agents across the country that can help them get into the short term rental market. So interestingly enough, I I set up my first Airbnb in 2017. And the reason I did that was because in 2016, I had gone on vacation, and just it had been a number of years since I'd gone anywhere. I'm a single mom by choice. So it was me and my son. And I just thought, oh, I'll just book a hotel. We were going to San Diego at a book a hotel, and I'd taken a friend with us. And just honestly, it never occurred to me like the logistics of being in a hotel room with a child. And it was horrible. And there's no
Mike Swenson
test of that with three boys. Yep.
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, it's really horrible. And I remember we had a pack and play in the corner. And my son was, you know, just there was nowhere for him to play. There was nowhere for him to be he was either in the pack and play or on the bed. And so anyway, long story short, the following year, I stayed in my first Airbnb, and fell in love with the whole concept. It was an apartment in downtown Los Angeles. It was around Thanksgiving. So I was there visiting friends for Thanksgiving, and I didn't want to stay in their small apartment. So we booked a place. And as my girlfriend and I were sitting on the couch chatting about this apartment, my son was in a bedroom sleeping taking a nap because he was you know, he was two years old. And we sat there and we were like, this is just amazing. Like, there's a kitchen, there's a bathroom, there's a bedroom, there's all this space. And so she and I and I was addicted to Zillow to begin with.
Sabitha Setty
So I got on Zillow, I looked up the apartment and found out what it costs. We kind of did the backwards math of what I was paying, and what do you think it would cost to clean this place? How much is this furniture, it wasn't anything special. It was all you know, IKEA kind of stuff. And it didn't take long. We were like, Okay, so this is a really lucrative business. And quite honestly, it just never dawned on me before to even consider it or look into it until I stayed at my first property. So that's kind of how that was the the seed that was planted. And, you know, Fast forward four years, I've got five properties that are on Airbnb, and I just love it.
Mike Swenson
Well, I think you're exactly right, going, you know, going back to the idea of having a child in a pack and play, you know, we have three children. And when you go to reserve a hotel room, right, it's usually two queen beds or a king and a pullout. And so when you put in an occupancy of five people in a hotel room, it wants to try to book you in two hotel rooms. And so similarly we we looked at an Airbnb this summer and and now our youngest is three he's old enough to at least understand like, he's, he's able to be in a hotel room and not completely disrupt things. But we did the pack and play thing in the corner. And he wakes up in the middle of the night and he's wondering what's going on? Where am I he's crying. And really the only option is to bring him into bed with you.
Mike Swenson
Well, then he's kicking and tossing and turning and it's no good for anybody to the point to where it's tough to want to sleep in a hotel room, you know, and every child is different, you know, so I'm sure other people that have babies that sleep wonderfully don't have that same experience but, but it's a different circumstance or, you know, we just stayed in a hotel two weeks ago, when we traveled to a family member's house, and we got them to bed, everybody got asleep, well, then I'm sitting next to the door with the bathroom light on with my computer working, because you're all in the same room. And sometimes you can find a hotel where you've got a little bit of a separation, sometimes you can, depending on the city here, and you know, we were in a small town with only one hotel choice. So it's kind of like, this is what you get. So, you know, I think for those people that haven't been open to the idea of a short term rental, or maybe never used a short term rental, just understanding like, it can accomplish a whole different set of checkboxes that you never thought possible with a hotel. And I think that's a key piece too, is you legitimately are meeting a need that people have out there, that the typical hotel may not fit,
Sabitha Setty
Right, and I'm you know, I was so happy to pay the rate for my Airbnb, you know, that nightly rate, because we were just getting so much out of it, quite frankly. And my, my son is rooster, you know, he's up at 5am. And you can, you know, it's one thing to get a get away, be awake at 5am, it's a whole nother thing to be functioning at 5am. So right now, in a hotel room, like if I need a cup of coffee, and I have to go downstairs, I've got a tote, a two year old with me, it's just not the same. So being in a being in a private space, like short term rental is just so ideal, you have a kitchen, you can make your coffee, you can even make breakfast, save a little money, you can have snacks, you know, when you're traveling with kids, they need snacks, what you know, every 45 minutes, so you really got to be prepared.
Sabitha Setty
So yeah, that's how I got into the business. And I just love it. I love providing a service. I love providing value. I also love sharing my city with people that are coming to visit and you know, sharing things with them when they say, Hey, we've got a you know, we've got a seven year old and a 10 year old, do you have any recommendations on things to do? I'm like, I just love that. I just love saying, Oh, absolutely here, you know, go to go to this park and do this in the water. You know, the waterpark is open. And there's a museum and you know, so I just, I love the hospitality side of the business too. So, yeah, it's really, yeah,
Mike Swenson
well, and I think that's something important for people to understand is, this is a service based industry, you are in the hospitality business. And so it's different than a long term rental, where, okay, I put it up for rent, somebody rents it on a 12 month lease, we hear from them maybe a little bit here and there. Now, there's a lot that you can do to automate things to where you're not necessarily as engaged as other people have it set up. But understanding your competition is hotels, other air and B and Bs and other short term rentals as well. And so you have to market yourself, well, you have to position yourself well, and you have to give great service because, you know, it's it's all about the reviews. And so you have to get good reviews, if you want to continue to have people book your rooms.
Sabitha Setty
Yes, for sure. Yeah, it's definitely I think it's important for people to understand that the short term rental business or niche market is definitely a business, I think that it is very, very customizable. So on one end of the spectrum, you can get into the business by renting out your guestroom that you're not using. And I think that's amazing. If you're a college student or a grad student and you need some cash, you can you know, you can do that you can Airbnb out a separate bedroom. Or if you buy a duplex, you can you can short term rental out the other side and start getting into the real estate business. And then you can take it from that end of the spectrum all the way up to the top of luxury properties, right where you're five and six bedrooms on the beach, and you're creating an experience for people like a full service, vacation experience for people. And then quite frankly, there's everything in between.
Sabitha Setty
Right now my properties are in the in between. I focus on families that are traveling couples that are traveling and individuals that are traveling in my down to my phoenix properties that are just studio apartments and two bedroom apartments. So those those are my those are my that's my target audience really my avatar at some point, I wouldn't mind getting into that luxury feel, you know, creating that experience or whatever but that's for the future.
Mike Swenson
yeah. And so and then along with that, too, you know, you can be as involved or not as involved obviously if it's, you know, renting out a bedroom in your house, you're going to be pretty because they're gonna be living with you. I've seen properties where you know, they I close to me, there's there's somebody who lives on a lake and they have a separate cabin, just like a one bedroom cabin that they rent out. And so it could be on your property but not necessarily in your house. Or, like you said come you know completely separate properties. completely separate areas. I mean, you could own an Airbnb in another state if you want to, and still find ways to automate it and be, you know, hands off if you need to. So why don't you talk a little bit about how you because I know everybody wants to know, how do you find these? How do you understand the financials behind them? To know whether I'm investing in something that's a good opportunity? Or not? Because you you obviously need people to stay there to make it financially viable? And so how does that look like in terms of seasonality and things like that? How do you kind of analyze the opportunity?
Sabitha Setty
That's a great question. So it's kind of multifactorial. So I think the first question you have to ask yourself is location, right? Location, location, location? Where do you want a vacation property? And do you want to use it? So the real question is, is it a pure investment? Or is it something that you're going to use? Now, if it's pure investment, it could be anywhere, right? It's, it's really based on the math, where does the math make sense, and then you invest there. If it's something that you're going to use as a family, then I think it's ideal to pick a location that you love, because I think you can be a better host if you know the area and experience it and love it. Um, I would say as far as figuring out if it's legal and how to do it, and if it makes sense, you've got to start at the state level, and then go down to the county level, and then the municipality, municipality, could be a city, it could be a township, it could be a number of things, right when you break it down, and you've got to make sure that you're following the rules and regulations of each of those different municipalities.
Sabitha Setty
And you want to make sure that it's legal, you want to make sure that you can get your finger on the pulse of the community, like, is it a welcomed thing? Or is it a not welcomed thing? Do you want to be in a community that is divided on how they treat their short term rentals? If you don't, if you don't want that headache, then I would definitely recommend moving towards more of the vacation rental markets, where, you know, the vast majority of properties are vacation rentals. So that that's places like the Carolina mountains, the Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge, Georgia, the Florida coast, where you know, there are beach properties that are basically all vacation rentals or majority. Because then you you eliminate that headache of wondering if there's going to be rules and regulations that are changed or modified while you're getting your business set up. And after you've made your investment. I think one of the things when I got started a few years ago, there really wasn't there really wasn't a good analysis tool out there to figure out like, is this gonna make money? Or am I gonna be floating this mortgage, I literally had no idea how to figure that out.
Sabitha Setty
So I created a spreadsheet that did just that, as I was, as I was doing the research, I thought, Well, gosh, Sedona has some seasonality, you know, we've got the spring is a big time for us. And the fall is a big time, and I had no idea how the summer would do or the winter. So I created a 12 month spreadsheet that kind of goes through all the calculations to account for all the seasonality. There are tools out there, I don't know if your listeners have heard of air DNA Co. But air DNA takes they scrape all the data from Airbnb as well as VRBO. And they can give you some guidance on what the average daily rate is and referred to as the ADR. And they can give you some guidance on what the occupancy rate is across the board in your area. And then when you subscribe to our DNA, they give you a lot of free information.
Sabitha Setty
But then when you subscribe, you can really dial down and deep into analyzing your particular city. And what you want to do is analyze your property against like properties, right? You want to apples to apples, so three bedrooms, compared to three bedrooms, four bedrooms, compared to four bedrooms, and then a little deeper, you want to check out the amenities, right, a three bedroom with a pool is going to rent differently than a three bedroom without a pool. So you'll want to kind of take that into consideration and crunch the numbers that way. So yeah, so I use a pro format to analyze.
Mike Swenson
Well, I was just gonna ask quick what, you know, when you think about the busy season in Sedona versus the non busy season? How does the vacancy change in a month? How many you know, how many dates out of the month? Are you booked in the busy seasons versus not just for folks to get an example?
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, absolutely. So Sedona is a pretty, pretty great market for all year visitors. But I will say this. So in our I think it was August of this year, I had about a 50% occupancy, which was shocking. shockingly low, I should tell you, because normally my occupancy is 75 to quite honestly 99%. There are times when and if you're that high and what I've learned over the years is when your occupancy gets above 80 85% Chances are your prices are too low, so you need to bump up your prices a little bit. I personally don't really like having back to back to back bookings. I really like my property to have an opportunity to breathe I like and I like to have the opportunity to get a Handyman in there and do things. I also like the opportunity to go there myself occasionally. And just spot check things, you know, just make sure are all the light bulbs working? Do I need to recharge the you know, the the lock on the door and and all the little things I like to just kind of pop in. So yeah, if you get above 90% occupancy, you really probably need to raise your rates a little bit and, and take that into consideration. So in Sedona, a low occupancy is probably 30%. I haven't had that yet. And then the highest of almost 100%.
Mike Swenson
And how does that change in some of the other markets that you've looked at? You know, say, say, for example, you know, we've talked about I live in Minnesota, people like to come here in Minnesota in the summer, less people like to come in the winter. And so so obviously, you could have a much different swing then in a place like Sedona where it's warmer all the time,
Sabitha Setty
Right. And the same thing happens in you know, the Smoky Mountains and on the beaches, right, the beach properties are going to be booked all summer and then the shoulder seasons taper off. And then the winter, you might only have the holidays, you know, families that decide they want to be at the beach for Christmas, they might book skiing, or something like that, or the High Holidays. So I mean, you just have to do your due diligence, I think that's where air DNA comes in air DNA comes in handy is to really dial into that market and kind of figure out that occupancy based on the based on the season for sure.
Mike Swenson
You really want to look at it at a 12 month lens. Because yes, you know, making your buying decision is you got to look at all 12 months, because you're going to have your highs, you're going to have your lows, but really that 12 month lens of okay, my mortgage payment, my expenses are x, how much income am I going to experience for a full year to decide if there's enough margin there? Right?
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, 100%. And that's what's so different about long term rentals compared to short term rentals, right? Like long term rentals, once you get a tenant in there, it's a fixed situation, the rent is the rent, the tenants gonna be paying some of their utilities, you're gonna be paying whatever you set up. And it's really just a static picture of the financial scenario. Short term rentals are so different. That's why you need a pro forma to take a look at each and every month. Because, you know, if you buy some, like, let's say you buy a beach property in January, you close on it in January, and January through mid March, you're going to be floating that property, right, you're gonna be paying a lot.
Sabitha Setty
And here's the thing, the expenses of a short term rental are also somewhat fixed. Because if there's nobody booking your property, it's not like you can turn off the Wi Fi, turn off the electricity, turn off the water, or trash, right. So you still have those fixed expenses. So you really need to know if you can flip that property through those few months until you start getting those bookings for, you know, May, June, July, August. And so I think that's important as well, for investors to realize what's your what's your hold period? What's your, you know, that at the end of the day,
Mike Swenson
right, yeah, you've got it, you've got to be able to have enough cash, not only to make the purchase, but get to that busy season? And then where are you going to have enough in reserves to get you through to the next busy season the next year, you know, so it's, it's gonna take a little bit of time, before you might realize those gains.
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, and you also have to have reserves. So this is different from short term long term rentals, you have to have reserves to cover things like a new set of dishes, or a new set of linens a new set of, you know, and these are small expenses in the grand scheme of things. But if you've got five bedrooms, and you're buying five sets of sheets times two, so 10 sets of sheets, you've got to build that in, you know, to your, to your situation, because that can change, right?
Mike Swenson
Yeah, well, I think that's another thing in terms of expenses to look at when you're purchasing a property is you have to furnish the property now so not only are you looking at Can I buy it, not only are you looking at what's the busy season, but now you're looking at I've got to buy a bunch of stuff because they are using my dishes, they are using my bed, and so all of that stuff and decorations. So you are going to have a beginning set of hard costs that you're going to have to incur as well to get it up and running. So what is what does that typically look like? Or what are some suggestions you have for people for maybe furnishing a property?
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, so it's really variable. It depends on it depends on the property itself and how you want to furnish it so if it's a mid range property you can get away with you know, Amazon and Wayfair and some of the lower end IKEA kind of products. And then if you're doing a luxury property, you're you're not going to fill it with IKEA so you need to step it up and have the budget to to buy the nice leather couches and the beautiful furnishings and the artwork so really depends on the property. I think for the average, you know, the average say three bedroom, two bath house, you probably want to at least account for about 25 grand in you know, linens, dishware, kitchen appliance, kitchen ware, furnishings, towels, bed frames, mattresses, all the things Yeah. Are there some things?
Mike Swenson
Are there some things in terms of like picking out? beds, right? Because, you know, it's it's one thing where that that bed is going to be a make or break for a lot of people in terms of reviews. So what are the things that you've learned along the way in terms of some of those furnishings of what's gonna hold up well, versus maybe what's not?
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, it just so I bought a combination. So I've done a combination of furnishing from ground zero. And I've also bought properties that are already furnished. There are pros and cons to each, I think Brian buying a property that's completely empty, and you start from scratch, at least you get to it, you get to design it, and you get to think about it in a, you know, in kind of a logical manner. However, buying something that's already furnished get gives you the opportunity to just kind of go in there, test things out, refresh, what you need to refresh, and get it on the market really quickly, which is huge, because right now, with COVID, you know, there's a lot of delays in supply chains. And so my order, you might order something and it could be five or six weeks until you get it. So five weeks later, that's a whole nother mortgage payment. So, um, you know, right now, it's actually kind of beneficial to look for properties that are already furnished so that you can just refresh what you need to refresh.
Sabitha Setty
I've had I've had really good luck with dizziness, green tea mattresses, I have a lot of great review. You know, people say they love them, I get my towels from Costco right now I get my sheets from Amazon. Dishware just depends I have corral at most my places because it's sturdier and it lasts. And they're mid range properties. So it really, you know, I think you have to take the whole picture into account of what property you have, and what kind of what your guest is expecting and what you're charging. Right, I think you're you want to set the expectations properly. And I think that's one of the ways you can get really good reviews is you set your you set the guests expectations properly, and you set the price properly. If you're charging $600 A night and somebody is on a creaky mattress, with a frame from Ikea, they're probably not going to give you a great review, because they're going to walk in expecting luxury at $600 a night, and they're not going to get it and so really, you've really kind of got to match up the field, the price and the expectation of your guests for sure.
Mike Swenson
Did you have to make any adjustments like that on the fly? Where maybe you got some constructive criticism on a property? Or do you feel like you properly kind of assess that at the beginning?
Sabitha Setty
You know, I think I've gotten really lucky I've I've really kind of assess things properly and price things properly. I have not, I've really not gotten anyone that said, Oh, the value just wasn't there. I've had it my property in Phoenix is in a up and coming neighborhood. So it's it's got that urban feel to it that not everybody is going to love. And so I have gotten a little bit of criticism. They're like, Oh, the dogs in the neighborhood were barking or oh, this neighborhood didn't feel safe, and things like that. And so what I do with that is I actually changed my listing description, and I couch everything in a way that is not, I'm not pointing out flaws. I'm not going to say hey, this is a sketchy neighborhood, right? I say if this is an up and coming urban neighborhood, there's quite a there's a lot of foot traffic, light sleepers may not do well. And so I set that, you know I set the stage for is somebody reading the description, they say, Ooh, that's not going to go well with me. Then they can move on. Right, they can book somewhere else.
Sabitha Setty
So I think that's really important. If you have a property that's hard to get to so I just did a little vacation checking out some unique Airbnb s in Joshua Tree. And, you know, I could critique their listings all day long. But I think what what some of them have done really well is they've set the stage. So they say, Hey, this is a remote property, there are dirt roads involved in getting getting to the property. Keep that in mind. And I think that's really important. You know, set the stage set the expectations. It's up to your guests, your potential guests to book or not book based on how you describe your property.
Mike Swenson
So yeah, when when we were looking at Airbnb in Michigan this summer, you know, we were we were kind of booked late, so it was tough to find anything available. But then there was a couple where it was rustic cabins. No Wi Fi is like let's see here three kids with no Wi Fi that's not going to vacation. Right? Yeah, so So yeah, it's good to be accurate. And and I do like that because you are setting a realistic expectation. certain places accommodate certain people and certain ones don't. And so really being clear on that is going to help you in the long run. You'd rather have somebody book and be happy than to book more people and get a negative review that might impact that in the future.
Sabitha Setty
I think that when you're setting property, you really have to, you have to have an avatar in mind, you have to have your ideal guest in mind and, and buy a property that will fit them and decorate it so that it'll fit them. Right? If you're, if you're trying to attract business travelers into, say, a metropolitan area, then you're you want to have a workstation, you want to have really good Wi Fi, you want to have good lighting at the desk, if they're going to be doing meetings, you know, working remotely. So it's really about knowing your guests and setting the stage properly. For sure.
Mike Swenson
What are some things that folks might need to know in terms of because you had already mentioned charging the locks, right? So you've got electronic locks on properties? Talking about kind of that check in experience? You know, property management, cleaning, maintenance, that type of stuff? What are some other things that are important for people to know?
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, so it depends on how much hands on you want to have with with your properties. I like to be a little hands off whenever I can, and therefore I have the choice to be hands on. So I like to have ring doorbells to kind of have a visual of how many people are there? I tell you, when I first started, I would watch the ring camera kind of periodically to say why is it going off so many times, you know, how many people are checking in and, and so it does alert you to certain things right now, I don't even bother. I'm just like, whatever, I don't really mind, you definitely want to have an electronic keypad of some sort if you can, and if it fits the property type. So I have an electronic keypad at two properties.
Sabitha Setty
The other three, they're more on the budget end, so I just have a contractor's lockbox and they get the key out of there. Um, that's not ideal, I definitely want to have I want to upgrade those in the future. So that's kind of, but there's four doors, so it gets a little costly. Um, you definitely want to hardwire as much as you can. Because making sure batteries are charged is a little bit of a pain. That was kind of a rookie mistake I made I got my ring doorbell is his battery. And I wish I'd had it hardwired because that is just one more thing that needs to be maintained. Right. So depending on your property and how large it is, there are noise alert monitors.
Sabitha Setty
So if you want to prevent parties or larger gatherings, you can put those into the property. And what it does is it just reads decibel levels. It's not recording actual conversations or anything. It's just checking the levels of the noise. And then, you know, some people pro and con on the camera situation outside of a ring doorbells, you know, some people like to have cameras at their pool or Jacuzzi or whatever. You have to really disclose that in your, your listing to make sure people know, I personally wouldn't rent a property that said, hey, there's a camera facing the pool and be like, No, thank you. Right. That's, that's not my idea of a relaxing vacation at all. So I would move on from there. So yeah.
Mike Swenson
Now another thing that you've mentioned in the past is just talking about being a good neighbor. Because you know, long term like it might be nice that you quote unquote, get away with stuff early on. But at the end of the day, you want to have good relationships with your neighbors, because you don't want them to always call the police or always have an issue or stuff like that. So really setting a good expectation. Because, you know, if you have a vacation rental property, realizing that this is everybody's vacation that goes there, so they're probably going to be up later than normal, they might make more noise than normal. And so just finding ways to build good relationships with those neighbors. So you're not the problem property in the neighborhood. How do you how do you recommend, you know, doing that,
Sabitha Setty
There's a lot of ways so one thing is, if you're targeting your guests properly, properly, you may not get those types of guests that are, you know, having a wild party having Margarita night outside by the pool. That being said, I think it's ideal if you've got one of those neighborhoods, it's a little bit contentious, where some people are okay with Airbnb, ease and neighborhood and some orange, I think it's ideal to introduce yourself, give out your cell phone number to your neighbors, let them know that hey, this is a business but I want to be a good neighbor, if you see anything, or if anything bothers you shoot me a text. And you know, if people are being too loud, if the neighbor lets you know, you can always reach out to your guest and say, hey, you know, just want to let you know if you guys could keep it down a little bit. I want you to have fun, but just keep it down a little bit the neighbor's house or whatever.
Sabitha Setty
You want to make sure that your trash is is taken care of. You want to make sure that the parking doesn't get out of hand. You don't want 10 people up and down the street if that's where your neighbors need to park as well. So it really depends on the neighborhood and the property and kind of the dynamics of the whole situation. But I really do promote you know, being a good neighbor abiding by any HOA or CCN or reg. Regulations. I think the people that are doing illegal short term rentals are really ruining it for the rest of us right as an investment vehicle. And that's a shame. So I really They try to, you know, encourage people to do everything on the up and up.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Well, I like, you know, you had talked about previously, when I, when I heard you speak about how, you know, this really is a shared economy here, like it's a it's a great business model. And it allows you as a physician to have a side business or, you know, like not really a side business, it's also a primary business too. But like, it allows people to do something like that and open up some financial opportunities that many wouldn't have had in the past. It's not like, you're gonna say, hey, I want to start a hotel. Because I really want to be in the hospitality business. So there's a lot of benefits for people to do that. And yeah, if people don't do it, well, cities are going to come down with with regulations and shut it down. And so you really want to show how to do it well, so that we can keep doing it this way in the future, and provide some entrepreneurial opportunities for people versus having to get shut down and not being able to do that.
Sabitha Setty
Exactly. And also, you know, I like to think about the other scenario, too. We're all investors and real estate agents. And we have, do I need to be doing this not at all right, I obviously I can make a really good living as a physician. But I just think it's a nice way to have alternative streams of income coming in. So that if something happened to me, as a single mom, I'm not tied to being in the hospital for 12 hours a day, you know, 15 days a month. I also like to think about what about the the woman who has a really big, nice house, her kids are off at college, she suddenly finds herself widowed. And it's her family home, she does not want to give it up. It's paid for it's, it's where her family convenes at the holidays. And she's got three extra bedrooms. Well, quite frankly, the shared economy, allows her to host guests in her house and have company make a little income, pay her expenses. So I mean, I'm a huge proponent of the shared economy concept. And the ability for you know, the bar is really low with Airbnb, again, started out as an air mattress in San Francisco apartment. So the bar is low. Anyone can get into the game. And I think that's a really lovely thing. So you don't need to have a million dollars to invest in luxury property. You can start small.
Mike Swenson
Right? Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, I think that that covers a lot. I mean, certainly, we could talk about a lot more. But I think we covered a lot of the the big key pieces that people would want to know, for folks that you know, have love, you know, what you've shared? How can they learn more about you, and learn more about what you're doing?
Sabitha Setty
Yeah, thank you so much. So I have a Facebook group. It's called The Unorthodox Doc - Short Term Rental Group. And then I also teach a course called roadmap to investing in short term rentals, launches a couple times a year. And they can reach out to me in either of those areas. And then of course, the [email protected]. Yeah.
Mike Swenson
And I think in the short term rental community, it's it's good to meet others and communicate with others, because you're going to learn so much faster that way, versus trying to figure it out yourself. I mean, even though I don't have a short term rental yet, being in these communities has helped me to understand like, Okay, I need to think about this and this and this, or Yeah, that's a really important thing. So I think getting involved in those communities is really beneficial. And it's going to raise the learning curve, and then raise your bar of professionalism, and ultimately, your bar of success in doing this, so there's a lot of value there in what you're providing for people.
Sabitha Setty
Absolutely.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. We really appreciate it.
Sabitha Setty
You're welcome and thanks for having me on.
