Vince Villani & Adam Hager - $250k Revenue In 6 Months Without Owning A Property
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:
For many people, real estate investing is an amazing path to build long-term wealth. At the end of the rainbow comes opportunity towards time and financial freedom. However, what if you're looking for some more immediate results to accelerate time and financial freedom now, so that you can invest that time into other things down the road. Adam and Vince currently have 11 short term rental properties across the US. They are using the arbitrage method to build their short term rental business. They are also the founders of Airpreneur.com, a coaching program designed to help people in 9-5's scale to 10k profit per month in short term rentals without needing tens of thousands of dollars to purchase properties.
In this episode hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- How their challenges lead them to explore the Arbitrage model as an alternative approach to real estate investing.
- The key concept behind rental arbitrage, how does it differ from traditional long-term tenant agreements in terms of renting, leasing, and generating revenue from short-term rentals.
- Where their Airbnb Arbitrage units are located, and their target market for this short-term rental business.
- Understanding the market, overcoming potential restrictions, and effectively reaching out to landlords to secure rental units that align with your goals.
- How crucial is taking the initial step and getting started in real estate investments like rental arbitrage
- How can you gain confidence in the short-term rental business and start with sensible deals rather than waiting for a perfect unicorn deal.
- What amenities and design elements are guests typically looking for in short-term rental properties, and how can you meet these expectations to attract and retain guests.
- Vince and Adam Scaling from 1 to 10 Units in 4 Months and Plans for 20 Units by Year-End.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro Their Career
5:56 - What is Arbitrage
8:57 - Target market for short-term rental business
11:27 - Expanding their business
13:43 - How to get started in short-term rentals
22:09 - Amenities and design elements for short-term rental properties
25:01 - Their Future
Follow Vince and Adam:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/767451248507167
https://www.facebook.com/vince.airpreneur
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093322602833
✅ SUBSCRIBE HERE IF YOU'RE LOOKING TO BUILD WEALTH THROUGH OPPORTUNITIES IN THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY
📈 GET STARTED INVESTING TODAY AND ACCESS OUR DEAL LIST!
💵 PARTNER WITH US ON BIG DEALS!
👨👩👧👦 BUILD YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT CAREER WORKING WITH INVESTORS HERE
🎙️ LEARN ABOUT REL FREEDOM & HEAR MORE REAL-LIFE STORIES
💵 FREEBIES: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FREEDOM FOUNDATION BLUEPRINT
🏠 LOOKING FOR A REAL ESTATE AGENT ANYWHERE IN THE US? FIND A TOP AGENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY HERE!
👨👩👧👦 JOIN OUR FACEBOOK COMMUNITY
🎧 SUBSCRIBE TO THE REL FREEDOM PODCAST 👇
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
🔗 LET'S CONNECT 👇
Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
Minnesota Real Estate
Read the full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
All right welcome everybody to another episode of real Freedom talking about building time and Financial Freedom through opportunities in real estate we've talked about a lot of different models a lot of different strategies here on this show over the last three years and one of the ones that we haven't really dug into deep is arbitrage the Arbitrage method with short-term rentals and so I'm super excited today we've got Vince villani and Adam Hager here and a little bit about their story is they've had some experience with investing in in real estate in the traditional way and decided hey we can build cash flow and build revenue first that we can then use in the future if we'd like to invest in real estate and so you know a lot of times with with real estate what people don't realize is the cash flow takes a little bit of time you know the amount that you're putting in isn't necessarily what you're gonna see right away you're you're going to have Equity play you're gonna have paying down the mortgage and you're going to have the tax benefits and all that but you may not see as much cash flow and so the Arbitrage method is a way where you can see a lot more cash flow a lot more quickly so they have scaled their business to 250 000 over 250 000 in Revenue in just about six months of doing this and have a couple different models but 10 properties total between them so Vince and Adam were so excited to have you on the show welcome thanks for having us why don't you guys just start by sharing a little bit about your background and your journey and kind of how you got to arbitrages as the method that you guys wanted to pursue
Vince & Adam
So Mike um I had gone the traditional real estate route you know my goal was always to have the long-term uh long-term Freedom you know build that Equity develop cash flow and you know of course that's our ambition the first time we purchase a property is like okay now I'm going to be the next Grant Cardone right um but uh ultimately what ended up happening before Adam and I partnered um was I bought my first uh multi-family home it was on Long Island so the numbers were all over the place because the house was insanely expensive but the rents were also very high and long story short um ever since I bought that property the numbers on paper were great and then every time I would start to develop cash flow I would have to dump all of that money into some major renovation project you know the first year it was a deck second year was the roof recently it was a huge electrician job and I just called Adam about a horror story that um we had a pretty bad leak in the basement recently mold developed all this stuff so like I I don't even have Capital anymore from that property to put back in the property now it's I have to come out of pocket so um now granted be worth a decent amount of of money in 30 years but that doesn't help us now from the perspective of developing enough cash flow to kind of live your life and get your time back and that's why we jumped into the Arbitrage model and then I'll I'll have Adam kind of introduce the model a little bit more and you know why we jumped into it
yeah so I was actually doing uh Airbnb Arbitrage for a year prior to meeting Vince but I only had one property I had gotten into it it immediately was Cash flowing you know 1500 to 2 000 a month so like it was doing really well um and I just honestly sat on my Laurels like I didn't do anything for essentially an entire year I didn't add properties I didn't think of expanding it I was just so great extra income bring it in I get to the end of the year and I look back and I'm like what did I do I had an opportunity here that was clearly working I could have replicated it I could have looked to learn more at the time I didn't have all the knowledge I needed I had some but I didn't have to the point that I could actually grow it to a multiple six-figure Arbitrage business so I uh was already aware of Vince we had known each other prior from from college and had mutual friend groups it's been a few years since then and we kind of reconnected and talked about this he was sharing me some of the experiences very similar to what he just said about his long-term rentals um and I was looking for partner that had his kind of same longer term visions of growth and he I kind of talked about the Arbitrage model and he really understood it and then we kind of partnered together and really expanded the last year to the numbers that you just said you know well over 250 000 Revenue 10 properties we actually just signed the 11th property that we're going to be setting up in two weeks which is great so we're continuing the expansion and the the great part about Arbitrage is I always ask people like well what's your goal with real estate like if you do traditional wrestling like are you trying to get Equity or are you trying to get cash as soon as possible so you can buy back your time or you can do other things because traditional real estate Works everybody knows it works you're going to be able to to get properties that Equity is going to go up your baby you'll be able to buy a property once a year or you can get Investments funders Etc you're getting it even two a year you repeat that on cycle and over time you are going to build equity in 5 10 15 20 years like it's going to work but if you're trying to quit your job if you're trying to buy back your time if you're trying to get cash flow from a business to reinvest in properties I think that short-term rentals and specifically Airbnb Arbitrage is the one of the best ways to do that and Mike I'll add one more thing I'm sorry I I um I've been around the Bigger Pockets Community for a long time and that's originally what inspired me to get to long-term rental investing and I remember the first time I heard of Burr and I was like okay this is this is it right like this is the way and the more and more I spoke to people who were at least attempting bur or you know starting their bird Journey you know I started to realize okay if I really want to scale with traditional real estate I have to constantly leverage my debt and I don't know that I can sleep at night knowing the only way to bring in five figures of cash flow is to be two million dollars in debt at all times and I was like there just there has to be another way to leverage real estate and profit off of these units and Adam and I spoke to other folks who were doing the Arbitrage model successfully and it just seemed like the quickest way to go into it without having to leverage Capital you know because again each time you want to purchase a new property that's another 50k out of your pocket or leverage debt leverage that HELOC HELOC and I just I didn't feel comfortable playing with my my debt that way um but uh yeah without going on too much of a rant that's really the the mindset behind why we jumped into Arbitrage and why we were dedicated to making it work as quickly as possible
Mike Swenson
And for people that don't know about Arbitrage do you want to just give the kind of the quick explanation of what that is for people that are like I've heard about it or I haven't heard about it what in the heck is this Arbitrage thing
Vince & Adam
Sure so essentially a rental Arbitrage is when you approach the landlord to to rent out their property you can almost think of traditional long-term tenant they're signing a lease they're paying a monthly rent and then they're paying utilities Etc well we're doing the exact same thing we're working with landlords we're signing a lease we're paying rent every single month we're paying utilities however we then get permission from the landlord to re-list their property on different short-term rental sites and we now profit the difference between the revenue that we bring in from these sites and our expenses such as rent utilities Wi-Fi and cleaning costs so after all those expenses we profit the difference and the difference here is we only have to a real only investment is investing in furniture and as we'll get into later there are actually ways where you can invest in Furniture et cetera without even using your own cash or Captain the one thing I'll tack on to that too is uh we always get the follow-up question well isn't that the same as subletting and I guess in theory it is similar to subletting but the difference is uh this is the analogy I always use and it's like a restaurant owner like a restaurant operator right you're leasing the space to run your business out of it's a little bit different than just like hey I'm trying to pocket some extra cash by renting it out to other people at a shorter term basis like you're you're leasing the space and you have a professional relationship with the landlord now it's almost like you're offering Property Management to the landlord but at no cost to them and that's one of the advantages of them working with you.
Mike Swenson
Yeah it'd be just like if I you know had a a commercial space on Main Street and I was like hey Mr Mrs landlord I'd like to rent this space from you to be able to run my business um it's it's similar to that your business just happens to be providing housing um and Hospitality on top of that the kind of the key piece of you know I I often tell people when that are doing short-term rentals like your hospitality you're not housing but you're running your hospitality business in their property absolutely now for you guys where are your Arbitrage units located.
Vince & Adam
Right now the all of them are across Pennsylvania and New Jersey um we started within like a three hour distance from where we are however in the second half the year now we're going to be expanding into multiple States now that we have a team in place Etc it's one of those things that can be operated completely remotely I think a question a lot of people have is my area isn't good or I don't think there's a lot of traffic or I don't think it's a great vacation spot very often that's not true there's usually opportunities within an hour to two hours um from from where they are because if you think about it the average person really just wants to make an extra five to ten thousand dollars per month in cash flow like if they make an extra five to ten thousand dollars per month in cash flow they're happy as a clam like they're doing everything they want so that's really only three to seven deals right the chances are that there is a Market within two hours of them that they could go to to set up their first property and get one to four places that are going to cash flow a thousand two thousand dollars a month in profit to help them get to that number pretty quickly they don't need to be in a Beach town they don't need to be in the biggest cities like our first property was in our local town that only has a hundred airbnbs that isn't known for tourism or anything like that and it's been consistently cash flowing.
Mike Swenson
One of the things that I encourage my investors on you know when they're getting into traditional investing is you got to get started to get better and for somebody that's pursuing this model um yeah you could maybe find the most lucrative property in the United States in the future but you got to learn a lot about how to run the business how to set up your systems and all that first and so the best analogy I heard going back to the the Bigger Pockets references every investment doesn't have to be a home run you're still going to have to have singles and doubles and maybe a couple of triples sprinkled in there to be successful but it's the singles and the doubles that are going to help you learn and grow so that you can get better and find those more profitable ones or you can move into a luxury you know opportunity in the future but you got to get set up first and then learn the business before you can you know look for some of those opportunities in terms of getting those initial properties and and systems set out talk about some of the challenges or learnings or things like that that you had to to go from you know that that one property to now getting up to you know adding so many here in the course of six months what was some of the the stuff that you had to go through to expand.
Vince and Adam
That happened very quick Mike and honestly it happened quick because once it's not too difficult truthfully it's just a matter of being persistent and then once you understand how to articulate the benefits of what you're doing before you know it you'll have too many opportunities to really you know accept as a matter of fact that's what happened to us month one um so to answer your question a little more directly it's it's really about understanding right and the two aspects of understanding a market are just are there restrictions and what are the restrictions and the other is will it financially meet my goals um and really the best ways to research that restrictions Google search and then as for financial analysis you know we use a platform air DNA but you can use some other platforms as well but once you have that information Mike it's really just about um reaching out to landlords who have units available for rent that match what you're looking for and what you think will be successful in that City and once you do that you know you kind of cluster all of your viewings on a a weekend if it's a city that's not quite in your backyard um and then from there you know before you know it you'll have offers for multiple units at one time as a matter of fact Adam and I are still kicking ourselves in the butt but month one we went out and we looked at I don't know maybe five six seven units that day and we had about three different offers and we could only pick one because at the time we didn't understand how to leverage our our Capital the right way um and we we accepted one deal said no to these two others and in retrospect they would have been killer deals um but the reality is really just about coming across professional knowing how to articulate the benefits and then once you have that that pitch so to speak down it's really not too difficult it's a numbers game at that point.
Mike Swenson
Well and and the reality is is you still picked one most people out there probably wouldn't have even moved forward and so they're still sitting at zero and so um the longer I'm in the investment space with people the more I just encourage you you got to do something you got to do something you got to get started and so hats off to pick one to begin with instead of you know it great you can kick yourself over not getting two and three but most people listening to this podcast are gonna be like oh that's such an awesome idea and then never do anything about it.
Vince & Adam
Right yeah I think the lowest hanging fruit that someone could do if they want the absolute zero risk to get into a deal would be the following it would be first identify the area that you think might be potentially good second is look for landlords who are renting out the space with the furniture they're already renting it with the furniture and they don't want to get rid of the furniture like they want someone to rent it with the furniture now one those people that first off they usually mark up the price a little higher because they think they can get more but usually what happens is actually harder for them to rent it out because not a lot of people want something that has all the furniture so right away there's already better negotiation ability from the value that you bring in to go to them and get the rent lowered second there's a model Property Management people usually think of property management of a company that does this maybe long-term rentals and just manages them but you can do the exact same thing for short-term access so you can be a property manager and approach this landlord and explain to them the value of what you do and split the profits on the deal of what you're managing for them so you're still doing all the same work of managing it on short-term rental platforms but now you have zero dollars invested you have zero and then the landlord doesn't have to put any money in the furniture so it makes it a no-brainer for them there may be two thousand dollars in additional cost you need for some stuff they don't have but that's really nothing for the landlord because the landlord is going to end up making way more than he would have made with a regular renter and now you're going to get a part of that just for management so even if you don't know everything that you're doing you're getting experience you're getting in you actually cannot lose because you have no expenses so you can only make money from day one and that is the easiest lowest paying fruit of the least risk type deal that you could start in short-term rentals.
Mike Swenson
What weight would you give to balancing Optimum spot Optimum finishings Optimum look versus something like that that's a little bit more of a layup type deal that you can get how much are you balancing am I am I trying to just take something to get to get going and and build that income or do I want to hold out a little bit for that property that that I think can can be a lot more successful right out of the gate and not necessarily handicap you right at the beginning with a sub-optimal property
Vince & Adam
That's a great that's a great question Mike my advice would be get started way with what you can take because then you'll develop the experience right so like if you wait for that perfect unicorn deal to come by you may not know what to do with that opportunity when you get it right so um the thing is there is a little bit of a learning curve I mean it's not drastic but just understanding the operational side of the business which the beauty of this business model is it eventually can just be handed off to Virtual assistants people to automate that for you and software but the reality is for your very first unit I would do that don't wait for the Unicorn deal wait for something that I mean just like with traditional real estate right wait for something that has at least sensible numbers on paper and if it makes sense go for it because then you'll get the experience and then the next time you reach out from for more units you'll have infinitely more confidence when you do that right um so there isn't really really like the Unicorn deal that's going to come by that's you know going to be visible right away right like you you'll know what to look for the more experience you get with this because you'll understand why certain listings do better than others make sense
Mike Swenson
Now when you guys look to expand and grow how confident would you say you were in kind of understanding what people are looking for kind of what that appeal is and then knowing how to price that and even two probably furnish it with Furnishings that would fit what you're trying to attract talk about that learning curve because I feel like for people that haven't done this before pursued it that's probably something they're like I don't know anything about that what do I do
Vince & Adam
Yeah I mean that's definitely something you have to build confidence in through experience and learning the different skill sets like nowadays I can look at the listings in the area and I'm like okay I can outperform this listing I can outperform this listing I can Market better than this listing because the truth is that most people still have no idea how to Market their listing like they don't know the best way to present it we get messages all the time from people hey I'm not getting any bookings on my listing can you take a look at it the reason they're not getting any bookings is not because the the place isn't good or the location isn't good or like they couldn't it's because they're just not marketing it correctly and like you said pricing is a huge thing price optimization is a huge thing um the best thing you can do for that is first off pay for a software so I I talked with a buddy of mine who owns a property in Florida he was getting booked out eight months in advance and I told him that's bad and he's like what do you mean that's bad making all this money like that's bad because that means you're under pricing so much that it is getting booked out eight months in advance you want your what's called lead time which is how far you're getting booked to be much less than that and I looked at it and it's because he didn't have a pricing structure he didn't have his software he was using for pricing and I was showing him similar properties that were making thirty thousand dollars a year more than him that's just all they did was price higher and they had better pricing and he's like oh my gosh so we got him on a software and we got him going with it and he's making tremendously more money now his lead time isn't eight months but that doesn't matter what matters is how much you actually getting booked at when people are booking so these are definitely important skills and to be honest like you kind of have to at some point and work with coach of some kind Vince and I worked with the coach when we started I went through multiple programs just to learn as much as I could not necessarily always one-on-one with the individual but I at least paid for a program to go see what they were doing in their perspective on it as I built these skills it's it's very hard to just go from zero and assume that you're gonna figure it all out you really kind of need to get ahead in some fashion and consuming content and paying for courses is the best thing you can do obviously there's nothing you can beat one-on-one but if you can't afford one-on-one or you don't want to commit to that investment right away I would still urge people to buy some sort of program because at least you're going to have the basics of understanding to speed up that process because otherwise it may take you six months to learn the same lessons that you could earn in a month and that's what we did we really just consumed a bunch of content and all these different skill sets and then through experience of implementing it we had our own strategies and then we crafted our own unique Style and Vince has his own plans of how he does designing as Vince designs all of our units uh I don't do any designing so any questions around that would be him but you know he went out there and he learned all this additional stuff too and we just the skills compile over time so the best thing someone can do is they got to invest in some sort of course or program even if the program's a couple hundred bucks like it's gonna be very hard for them to get the knowledge to out-compete competitors and really understand all the access of the business just through trial and error yeah Mike the uh the the instagramers of the world have made this a very popular business model and it's very competitive now now granted not everybody in the space is a professional operator but that's what getting a professional operator gets you is you now are ahead of a lot of the people that are just dabbling in this who are taking pictures with their iPhone and posting it on Airbnb like you you don't want to be that person because then you're risking spending all this time and energy and not making the cash flow that you could make um and whatever the other thing Adam said too is everyone's fixated on the occupancy rate right like I can't tell you how many people are like oh my units my unit's going really well it's at a 100 occupancy but that means nothing if it's fifty dollars a night right like I could get 100 occupancy if I just put my prices to the floor um so occupancy does not mean you are making as much money as you could as a matter of fact if you're above 90 occupancy typically you're leaving a lot of money on the table so there's a difference between doing Airbnb Arbitrage and property management and making some money versus maximizing the income that you're making on the model um and operating it professionally so we certainly had to learn new ways to do that from other Devin and eight figure hosts out there and um if we didn't if we didn't invest into people like that I think we would have never understood what we were leaving on the table so that's something we strongly recommend is is seeking kind of professional guidance for sure.
Mike Swenson
Have you ever heard the phrase you're the average of the top five people that you hang around well real estate agents I'm excited to increase your five with you we're launching the real Freedom investor agent tribe to help you get educated and connect with others to build your real estate investing journey and also to help you along the way as you're working with Real Estate Investors so come check it out on our website Rio freedom.com go to the store we have a membership we have a mastermind group and private coaching to help help you stay accountable to your real estate investing goals and to make sure that you connect with like-minded people to accelerate your progress and to cheer you on along the way check it out realfreedom.com click on the store you mentioned about designing it amenities you know what are some of those things that people are looking.
Vince & Adam
For every city is different like for example um and that's actually the cool thing about this is like you the whole purpose of somebody booking an Airbnb is they want to live like a local they don't really want to just stay in a hotel so like for example if you're in New York City which by the way is an awful area to try and start here because of the restrictions but if you're in an area like New York City and you have parking as an amenity that's like gold right but in others like if you do it in your backyard Minnesota parking might be like standard right so um from a Furnishing standpoint um from a Furnishing standpoint you can add amenities that will make your listing a little bit more competitive whether it's things like a children's room a game room um things that might separate yourself from other listings but the reality is sometimes the amenities are found just in areas that you can't control right a pool parking um washer and dryer those are things that like are typically in the unit before you even obtain it um but that's part of the research phase part of the research phase is identifying if I'm looking in Minnesota Minneapolis Etc what are the best units offering that other units are not and then how do I make sure I have that in my listing and then once you understand that you really set yourself up to be a 75th percentile or higher unit because you have the things that are causing the most bookings um from a Furnishing standpoint it's really about potentially maximizing bedrooms uh or beds like housing space um but then you can really get into the weeds and the creative side like if you want to create an experience type stay that other people don't offer that's another thing that drives bookings as well so a lot of ways to to go about that for sure.
Mike Swenson
So what are you guys looking to do I mean you've experienced a lot of success these last six months what are you looking to do here moving forward.
Vince & Adam
Yeah we're trying to get to 20 units by the end of the year um and then we're going to re-evaluate uh we're still probably going to continue with rental Arbitrage it may we just may shift the type of deal we're doing right or the way they're doing it there's within rental Arbitrage there's so much to talk about there's many different ways we're specifically focusing on houses and ideally even more luxury houses however there are also people who do not to Arbitrage that Target apartment buildings and their whole goal is to get as many in apartment buildings as possible that's a different sales process that's a diff that's a slightly different management process the numbers on those deals are different from a beginner's friendly standpoint the easiest thing you can do is find a house or like a small a single apartment that's not in a huge complex going after large complex deals and trying to get five units at once it's probably going to leave the disaster in in a few different ways until you have your operations Etc set up so you know everybody gets into this with wanting to get cash flow to reinvest in equity and I think that's great and I think that Vince and I will eventually do that however I mean if you just keep adding rental properties and short-term rental properties your short your cash flow just goes up and up and up and up and up I mean there's really no limit to how grow you can big or just adding a team slightly slightly more complex but there's no reason to to stop if it's working in the system's going um and we're and we're young obviously right we have time we don't necessarily uh we can always build that so we're just trying to build as much cash flow as possible for this and then will we eventually invest in into deals and get Equity et cetera and maybe do large large vacation rentals that we put into short-term rentals that we purchased yes but for the immediate future the plan is really just going to continue to stack repeat stack and repeat on this model yeah um Mike one more thing too just to clarify we we started this expansion journey in February and those that one to ten unit Mark was really achieved just in February March April May and we stopped after May it was actually to build um you know some resources for others to learn how to do this but so since then we haven't continued expansion and the deal that we just obtained the other day was from one of our original landlords that said hey I've got another unit available do you want it so um the reason I mentioned that is not like in a boastful manner at all it's just that those four months head down shut up do hard work um and then if we continued if we didn't stop to build out our you know our resources and whatnot uh we probably would have been at 20 units by now right um so that's how quickly things can happen and it's really just a matter of knowing how to do it once do it well and then after that first unit it is infinitely easier to tack on additional units especially when you're established in a particular Market.
Mike Swenson
Our time flies by really quickly here but for people that want to learn more about you and and what you guys are doing or maybe reach out with questions how can they do that.
Vince & Adam
They can um they can add us on um social media um or I guess I'd recommend um reaching out to me via Facebook I mean uh Vince Anthony is my name there um another easy way to get in touch with us is just to head to airprinter.com so like entrepreneur but airpreneur.com and you'll have an option to just book some time to chat with us there I think those are the best ways to get in touch with us you're gonna wear your airpreneur hat that's waiting for it to get embroidered okay uh or else I'd be rocking the merch but but yeah that's probably the best way to get talk to us airpinter.com awesome.
Mike Swenson
Well thank you guys so much for coming on and sharing your story it's excited to see somebody that can have such large success so quickly and hopefully Inspire other people to do the same like yeah you don't have to chase the long-term gains you can that's great or you can do something that's going to build some cash flow in the short term and and use that to fuel a long-term stuff so congratulations to your guys's success.
