1182 » How to Do Your First Airbnb with Jason Centeno

Joe: Hey, what’s up, guys? Joe McCall here. Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. And today we’re going to be talking about Airbnb. Airbnb is still around, right? Even after the pandemic, after the doom and gloom of everybody saying that it’s the end of Airbnb as we know it, it’s still around, is still kicking and lot of people are doing very, very well with it. Even in spite of all of the new regulations that seem to be coming out of nowhere, there is a still a huge, huge opportunity for Airbnb. And so I have a guest today on the show. His name is Jason Centeno and we’re going to be talking about how he’s profiting from Airbnb still today. And we’re also going to be going deep into the how to, so one of the changes I’ve decided I want to start making in my podcast. And I want to be talking more and more to people of like how to do X, Y, Z, right? Like making this podcast more of a class instead of just an interview. And I don’t know if you all are interested in that or not, but I think there’s so many interview podcasts out there and I’ve been doing the interview style thing since 2011 myself, but I want to interview people but bring more value to the table. I want to bring more. How do you do this? Give me steps to how to hire this person, how to do this marketing strategy, how to do Airbnb deals. And so we’re going to be talking to Jason about that today. And I got a free resource, so we’re going to give you later on at the end if you stick around, he’s put he’s put together this incredible spreadsheet that gives all of these tons of resources and he evaluates them and tells you which ones are good and which ones aren’t, and they’re all applicable for your Airbnb business. We’re going to be talking about that. And even if you are not doing Airbnb now, but you’re thinking you might want to stick around because it’s going to be really good podcast.

Joe: All right. I got a few things real quick for you if you’re watching this on YouTube now and Facebook. Thank you so much. I want you to please comment down below. Tell us where you’re from and if you have any questions or anything you want to comment about the show, type it in the comments. I’d really appreciate it. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. Give us a thumbs up like this video. Just did a video about a week ago with a guy and named Ray. And it’s this is what got me fired up about doing more how to content on these podcasts. And the feedback has been amazing and it’s amazing too. Like the more value you give in a podcast on a YouTube video or whatever, the more people love it. The more people are like, Yes, this is awesome. Give me more. So if you like this show and you’re listening to the audio podcast, subscribe, leave us a review and iTunes or Apple Podcasts, whatever it is. I’d really appreciate it. I think you can also leave reviews in Spotify. I would appreciate you leaving review in Spotify the other day. This is crazy too. I don’t know if this is just because Spotify is showing me these results, but when I went to Spotify and I had a friend do this, I think it’s true. Like if you search for real estate investing in Spotify, this real estate investing mastery show is either number one or number two. It’s like, what? Really? So I’m very humbled by that. I appreciate you guys. If you’re listening on Spotify, show us some love, please and give me a review. You can actually leave a review in Spotify as well. Cool. Oh, yeah. One more thing. One more quick announcement. I don’t look at the cover because I don’t like it, but I just released my new Simple Land Flip book. And this is an actual real book. Okay, it’s a dumb picture, I don’t know. But whatever. It’s a book on how to flip vacant land and it’s a it’s a PDF and it’s available for free. If you go watch my webinar, I have a webinar on how to do land deals. You’ve heard me talk about this, maybe you’re sick and tired of it, but like, listen, these deals that I’ve done with my sons are very, very profitable deals and I love this business. We’re still doing houses, but I really like land and I think it’s just in a lot of ways so much easier. And so I wrote a book about it, and you can get the book for free if you go to simple land class dot com simple land class dot com. I have like a 60, 90 minute class on there and it teaches you how to do this stuff. At the end of that webinar, you have a chance to get this book for free, for free, no strings attached. Well, the string is you got to watch the class and I’m going to make you an offer to buy my course in that class. But here’s the cool thing. I just posted this today on my Facebook. So if you are on Facebook, go look at my profile. Just posted a picture of a guy that I’m sorry I forgot his name. I’ll look it up here in a second, but he just got a refund from completing my class. My goal is to give $1,000,000 in refunds. Yes, Darren Pezzo. And you can’t see right now, but just about looking at the check, I have a picture of him holding the check right here from 14 days ago. He got back from vacation in Florida, opened his mail and got a big, fat check from me. For doing what? Completing the program. So to date, I’ve given almost I’ve given over $200,000 in business completion challenge refunds. So what I do which is different than. Everybody out there. And Jason, I appreciate you waiting for me. He’s great. He’s patiently waiting there for me. But I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and anybody who completes one of my courses just completes them, goes through the course and completes it. I will refund their money. You don’t even have to do a deal. And so what does that involve? Well, it’s simple. You’ve got to go through the program and watch the modules, because sometimes I get so frustrated, like people just don’t even open the course or log in, like go through the program, watch all of the modules and do the work. All right. Do the work. Participate in the Facebook group, participate in the coaching calls, ask questions if you want, and show me that you’ve made at least 25 offers, 25 written offers. You don’t even have to talk to the sellers, just make 25 written offers and I will refund your money. Why do I do that? For a couple of reasons. And I’m going to explain this to you, because it’s really important to understand nobody else is doing this, and I’m doing it for very good reasons. All right. Number one, I look at it as an investment in my most important asset. You guys, my customers, my audience. I love you guys. And I want to reward people who take action. And I know that if you go through my programs and you complete them, you’ll be a raving fan and a customer of mine for life. So I want to give you the money back because maybe you’ll stick around and maybe sign up for something else I sell down the road or maybe do coaching or partner with me on deals or something like that, right? So if you’re happy, then everybody’s happy, right? It’s a great way for me to get testimonials as well. I have over about 100 pictures that you’ll see on this class. It’s simple land class of people holding their refund checks. I just that’s my favorite part of the webinar, but it’s also way I get testimonials, which helps me just grow my audience and make more fans, help me sell more stuff, right? And then you’ll also tell other people, I want to make this a simple and easy as possible. The other reason I do it is it’s how I do deals. It’s one of the ways that we do deals. Students bring us deals. Sometimes we partner with them, sometimes we lend them on deals. Sometimes we just say, Hey, listen, this will be somebody else that you should partner with. Or Here’s somebody else that might be interested in lending on that deal. So it’s one of the ways I do deals. I know if you take such massive action and just take step one, you will have success in this and maybe you’ll bring me a deal and I’ll buy it or I’ll partner with you on it, or I’ll lend you money on the deal or something like that. It’s a great win win for everybody involved. See, my philosophy is simple. If I can’t make you money that I don’t deserve yours. And I know that if you just take some steps of faith and take some action, there’s no way to lose. It’s a complete, no brainer decision. And you know what else to a lot of people don’t even ask for a refund because they get so much more value out of the course that they don’t even ask for a refund. So anyway, I offer it because it’s a great way to incentivize people to go through the program and finish it. And it’s amazing. It’s cool. So if you want to get your money back and just buy the course, I will give it all back to you. It’s crazy. Nobody else is doing that. So go to simple land class dot com. Right, enough of that. All right, all right. Enough of that already. Let’s bring Jason here. Jason Centeno, did I pronounce your last name right?

Jason: You did, thank you.

Joe: Nice. Thank you. Thanks for being patient there. I went way longer in my intro than I normally do. I appreciate that.

Jason: No, that’s okay. In fact, I actually was going to ask you a question. So out of those 25 deals that these people put in to get their money back, the 25 offers, how often do people come back to you? So kind of like when the dog catches the car, like what? What does he do with the car? How often do you get people coming back and be like, What do I do now? Is that is that common or do you like, you know. I guess I’d like what’s the that percentage of people that do that.

Joe: Well, a lot of people I don’t know the percent, but people who do say what I do now, I tell them, go watch module four, go watch module three or whatever. Right. Well, we have a Facebook group where they can go ask questions of what to do next. And yeah, but for percent of people who actually do deals. I don’t know. But that’s one of the things I used to do it, Jason, where like if you complete my program and do a deal, I’ll give you your money back, right? And I wanted to make it even simpler than that because it is still so many people stop by. It’s amazing how many percent of people actually even go through the course and open it. It’s even more shocking how many do not even complete the program or go through it all. So that’s why I do this. I wanted to incentivize them, so I don’t know. But I’ll tell you how many years doing deals, I don’t know. But for all the years I’ve been teaching, I have more testimonials, success stories of people doing vacant land deals than I ever did with lease options and my my wholesaling courses on my lease option courses. So I getting really good success if people just take action and you see that in your own business. I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long, long time and you’ve probably seen a lot of people trying to get into Airbnb and get all excited at the beginning, but then kind of fizzle out, right?

Jason: I have in fact, a long, long, long story short, before I was doing any kind of Airbnb, I too was, you know, flipping. And I just took, you know, I was kind of too long, saw me and got into wholesaling to everybody and their grandma started doing it and then, you know, got ahead of the curve and started taking some of those buy and holds that weren’t necessarily performing well, you know, kind of a pain in the butt ones. And I, you know, I experimented and made some of them into short term rentals and that’s kind of how I got my my start with it. And now a lot of people are doing Airbnb because they make it so easy or because it’s so easy. It’s just like a flooded marketplace. So there’s some there’s some things that if you were trying to basically step into the market right now, you might want to consider navigating. And I guess we’re going to kind of go through that right now. So before I even start, okay, so before I just put a little framework here, you and I agreed we were going to kind of play this game of almost like, like wholesale is like if you were dropped in a city. Yeah, you had a wholesale, you didn’t know anybody, let’s say. How would you get your first deal in 30 days? Yeah. So I’m going to kind of mimic that a little bit. But to do that, I guess I switched it off. Sorry, because it was shirt underneath. I was like, or this is going to be smart. I wanted to ask a couple of questions of you. First, just to kind of set the ground rules or the stakes behind what we’re going to do. So right now, we’re going to we’re going to go with what, you know, going from zero Airbnbs to one Airbnb and what would be the fastest, easiest depending on your situation way to do that. So right now, so I go into a new you. Whoever goes into a new market, I want to ask these questions. Just kind of give us some months, am sure, some context, right? So when I go to this new market, do I know anybody or am I kind of like new to America? Like what? What’s the what are my limitations there.

Joe: Let’s do it. Where. Yeah, let let’s do it where, you’ve got a regular full time job, you’re making decent money, you, you’ve got a wife and one or two little kids. You’re working a job that you’re not too happy with. And you listen to a ton of bigger package podcasts and Joe McCall podcasts, and you have heard this people making money on Airbnb and you watch some HGTV show and you’re like, I’m sure there are some show out there and short term rentals, right? I’m like, Man, I can do this. So you’re not strapped for cash, you’re not homeless, you’ve got a car. You’ve either got a little simple college education. You’re making medium, medium. You know, you’re making decent money, maybe, let’s say 75, 80 grand a year for your family. Right. And you want to start doing Airbnb. How about that? So what would you start doing to to start doing Airbnb? Because then you’re what market are you in two days?

Jason: So I made my bones in the Philadelphia market which is a little bit tricky right now because it’s not.

Joe: Let’s not talk about the Phillies.

Jason: Come on now. I got these guys on. So is that okay?

Joe: The Eagles are good. I like the Eagles. Don’t like the Phillies. They beat my Cardinals a few weeks ago and they just killed and annihilated and embarrassed the Atlanta Braves.

Jason: Happens.

Joe: All right, sorry.

Jason: What are you going to do? All right. So regular job, decent money is something to cater your wife and family. What kind of job is it? Just. I just want to know what this person’s skill set is.

Joe: An accounting job. You’re an accountant.

Jason: That’s actually good. Okay. So I think I have enough here, so. Right, let’s go. So you’re like, okay, I’m ready to start. Yeah. Typical guy, probably, I was single and I didn’t have a house to live in. Maybe just an apartment. One thing you could do and it’s a hack is you could you could start with literally thinking about the house you live in or the apartment you live in. You know, one of the easiest ways to get into Airbnb and the least restrictive is going to be if you live in the house, which they call a shared space. Now, I want to give you guys a little bit of sort of lay the land. There’s kind of three flavors of Airbnb, right? There’s the I own a property completely and I control it completely. And that would be like the owner operator, right? You’re the owner of the property and the host. Pros and cons of that would be like the pros is like you control everything you could you could go ham and have solar panels on it and control, you know, utilities. You can. Yeah. Smart locks. You can have cameras outside. Outside. Remember what I said? Now, what kinds of technology and you really just. You control the expenses to the nth degree. Yeah. The cons are, you know, everything goes back to you. You’re fully responsible for property management. And so, like, you know that if you are thinking that Airbnb is going to be less work, the answer is no, it is. It’s more. You have to think it’s probably double the property management but like triple the benefit in the right area. So that would be the one flavor owner occupy. Now the flavor that everybody likes to jump into in these days is what’s called rental arbitrage, which is basically you’ll rent out an apartment and you operate this thing, you know, as an Airbnb operator. And there’s pros and cons to that. The pros are obviously you can get into this thing with a little less money. And I say a little bit because it just depends on what your tastes are. And, you know, like you might have expenses taken and for some things you should go, you know, make an amazing product. In fact, you know, I’ll be honest, some of my Airbnbs look better than my own house because it’s an investment like you’re trying to bring money back in quicker and the sofa in your house is not going to produce any income versus no one there. Right to sleep there. So you have to kind of way these things out, you know, and the cons to that are what kind of landlord do you have part of your negotiations in the beginning is really you know.

Joe: Let me explain this a little bit. You’re talking about rental arbitrage. For people who don’t know, rental arbitrage is when you approach a landlord of a property that owns it and you say, hey, I want to do an Airbnb on this, I’ll pay you that rent and let me manage the Airbnb side of this. And so you just pay the landlord who owns that property rent every month and you are arbitraging that house and collecting the Airbnbs and hopefully making a profit, right?

Jason: Yeah, exactly that. And the pros and cons to that are some people think it’s easy, but because it’s such, because the word Airbnb is so popular, it also comes with its pros and cons, meaning, oh, you’re going to have parties here, or Oh, you’re going to be making a lot of money. So I want a piece of the action. So there’s these kind of dances you got to do. And also what kind of landlord is it? Because a lot of landlords like, you know, they don’t want the extra management that comes along with Airbnb. So if you almost have to do a house inspection, kind of like when you move into a rental apartment, you do that. But how can you tell us the roof is leaking? How can you tell far the toilets are not getting clogged in the shower pressure. All these random little things that people out there kind of want to have, not be their problem, are suddenly your problem. But you could push that to the landlord. How fast is he going to respond? Is he going to respond? Is he going to kind of take his time with it? And how is that going to affect your business? Right. So there’s like I said, you can get in cheaper and a little bit less risk, but you also have this partner now that may or may not be in it with you. So there’s that like there’s a closer relationship you got to build. And the last flavor and the one that’s can be very difficult is co-hosting. Some people will simply do this for somebody else. Like if you for you, I could be your co-host and I could charge you a percentage a month just for the all the operations. Let’s say you’re the landlord and you’re like, I want to do an Airbnb. I just don’t want to have anything to do with the property management. Well, you can charge anywhere from 15, which is crazy low, but 25, 30% even just to run this thing where the landlord never has to deal with any of that stuff. But at that point you’re a glorified property manager. And so, you know, and kind of at their I don’t want to say you’re a slave, but in a way you feel like that sometimes because they won’t even bother, you know, like maybe they live around a corner that you live miles away and you’re like, somebody needs to go change the smart lock batteries or something like that. It’s like, Whoa, that’s your job. I pay you well enough to do that. And then it is your job, right? So you’re running around more. So I would say co-host is not the move for a guy with a wife and family because he’s got extra kind of things. If he, you know, he could be he could go and rent and he’d probably do a rental arbitrage kind of deal. That’s a quicker way to get it right. So let’s just say this guy is going to do rental arbitrage. He is not an investor landlord yet. He doesn’t have it all. So he’s going to take the middle road, the one that everybody kind of is doing a lot right now that’s starting to get on people’s nerves. But it is what it is. Right. So first thing he’s going to want to do is identify a property that’s near something where people want to be right. So urban centers, lots going on. Suburban, maybe not so much. So dropping a pen and Google Maps with the address in it is a start. You can find out what’s around there. Are there schools? Are there hospitals? Are there any other kind of attractions? Are you close to the water? How far away are you from the water? Are there cultural centers, these kinds of things? Right. And depending on what kind of deal you have, you know, these are going to be more options for the people that you would bring into. I think Airbnb does a really good job in the beginning of just stuffing a brand new listing and I’m just going to stick to Airbnb and I Hotels.com, not VRBO. We’re just going to go with the simplest first one, which is like, so is this almost like ten minute setup kind of thing? Right. So what are you close to? And I say that because every one of those places has an advantage to it. You know, you get you got to figure out who you want to cater to. One of the mistakes people made is they just they put the house on, they make it pretty and they think everybody’s going to come to this place, kind of like a restaurant if you make a hot pot or you make a jerk cut or something, right? Like it’s going to appeal to a certain type of person, but not to others, just because maybe they don’t like that kind of food or whatever. So your design is it has to be great. And if you’re thinking smart, you might even go with some kind of a a theme because themes do work, right? When it comes to travel and stuff like that. The pictures are important and what shows the females normally of the couple, they’re normally attracted to the vibe, the color, the color schemes and stuff like that. Men kind of, they just go with it because if it’s a family traveling, they’re nice. Like it’s not a place to sleep. And the wife is all this so cute actually kind of makes their decision. So you can go cute and neutral or you can kind of like really go like if you’re near Orlando, they go crazy with like Airbnb, like sorry. They go with Disney themes and Marvel themes because they want to attract people who are going to Disney or going to the attractions. So there are themes are like really, really out like, like movie sort of setups like the movie rooms and all that. So this guy’s probably not there. Let’s just say he’s in a job market where there’s a lot of flexibility, like, okay, I’ll give you an example. Maybe he found a place with a good rent because you got to remember, like, you don’t want to have a high overhead because you are paying utilities as well, just like if you were renting yourself the rent if you don’t negotiate like a first and last month. I mean, you have to work that out with that with the person there or, you know, the landlord. But the, you know, the overhead, the electric, if there’s a pool like I personally, for me, I look for whatever is the most cement because I don’t want landscaping if I don’t have to have it. You know what? The least amount of things that can break because they’ll break everything. Right. This is this is just like imagine a group of large children. If they can break, it will break. And so you kind of you kind of got to make things kind of dummy through some smart TVs with Roku. Roku remotes where there’s only like two or three buttons. So you start to think, what’s around me? And let’s say you want to you go to hospitals. So there’s a whole thing like medical tourism, right? So what does that mean? So maybe you’re your niche and you’re if you’re an accountant, this doesn’t really I don’t I don’t know what the networks for accountants. I don’t know when accountants come into town for things. But like, you know, you could be near a convention center and just kind of attract the convention center. People just have to know in the convention center. So I’m trying to get a person to think about is who is your highest and best customer that you want to attract and start to craft something for them. Kind of like if you were in market, who’s your avatars? Right. So for me, when I was doing it, the reason I did it was I was a firefighter. So that became part of my profession. And I and I would see people getting burned out of their houses and they if they had renters insurance or. Ali, which is a type of insurance. Yeah, they wouldn’t normally get money to go stay in a hotel. Well, first of all, my heart and second of all, my sensibilities is like, well, if I had something, I could give them more square footage for the same price. What a kitchen that made them feel more like home. And it was paid by insurance. What would you choose? A hotel where you got to pay for parking and you got to just all the stuff that goes with hotels or something that you can, you know, cook food and save money and cause, you know, you’re going through a hard time. So for me, initially, who I went after with my Airbnbs was, you know, if you could get through the adjuster, the insurance companies, anybody dealing with emergency work, and then I created, you know, I created my marketing materials around that. This is stuff you could put it. You put stuff in hospitals, you could put it in Red Cross, you could put it in all sorts of places. But I want you to start thinking when you’re getting into this, who do you really want to appeal to first? Okay, so that’s important. And you’re going to start to build your advertising brands around that, and you got to start thinking about that from day one. Do you do an analysis? So for your first one, I mean, if you’re going to. Okay. So there’s sites like Airbnb and Roku. I’m sorry, data rabbit, I think is, is free. There’s a few free and there’s some paid sites. But I would go to a free site.

Joe: By the way, are these on the spreadsheet we’re going to be giving to people later?

Jason: Yes. Yeah. So this is a list of like kind of like these about a few analysis kind of tools and they’re on there. Some costs have a price, some costs nothing.

Joe: And just so you know, let me let me interject this here, Jason’s been generous enough to give us a free vacation rental software and resource guide and you can get it for free at Joe McCall dot com slash Centeno. And you can see it there on the screen. But yeah, that’s going to be killer. And so we’ll share that with you guys here in a minute and I’ll ask Jason to kind of show us what’s on it. But this is good. I mean, one of the things I’m getting from this, Jason, as you’re talking, is like there’s a lot involved. There’s a lot you got to know about and you can’t just go into a blindly you’ve got to get educated on the right way to do it. And the different strategies to getting how do you get that first deal so good. But do you’re talking about the Airbnb research stuff, right?

Jason: Yeah. I mean, you’re going to have to start obviously looking for properties for rent. So there’s a lot of ways to do that. I mean, I think you can just I think people teach this all the time going on Zillow and looking for rent. But, you know, that’s what everybody does. So I would just start asking the guy that what you really want is you want somebody to somebody who is connected to landlords. And usually that’s what property managers, real estate agents that are our leasing agents, your friends and family, anybody. In fact, I would say if it was me, the first people I’m going to ask if I can rent something from, is anybody I know, period? Why? Because they’re the ones that are going to let you take a shot at this. And if you mess a couple of things up, they’re not going to be that matter as much as you can cause you signing up on like a crazy, expensive lease. And I think I could be wrong here, but most people know at least one landlord in their family or kind of a friend. So I would just be like, let’s talk to that guy first. Right. And also to pitch them so you can see what that person doesn’t like and, you know, hone your pitch for other landlords. Because as you grow as an asset, you have to expand out to people you don’t know. It’s going to get tougher and tougher. So go and practice on those guys you do know and just like mess up, be like, Oh, this is what I’m trying to do. You know, like for me, I was like, my, my, my, my tagline was like, hey, I’m, I’m the land on your land. I’m a landlord’s best friend. Well, why? Because when I come into your apartment and this is something for more advanced, you could even do this in your house, too. If you if you think about it, if you have a nice house, you can almost pretend it’s like an Airbnb and put a video of yourself just talking about like, why does somebody hire you as a tenant and you just you’re talking to landlords and property managers. I’m your best friend. If you look around, this is how I keep our places, as you can see as well design. We touch a paint, we do all the things so that if you even ready to sell, at some point you’re always showroom ready. You can come in here. You don’t have to prep anything to sell. Not that you want to sell right away. But the point is, you could walk in here at any time, do an inspection and be like, Damn, these guys did a better job than I would have you. You’re the tenant that every landlord wants more than just, you know, anybody that’s just showed up begging for a place to stay. So start to think about yourself as a landlord’s best friend and put that jacket on, that coat on, that idea on when you’re talking to people and even make a video for it. Because what that’s going to do is it’s going to introduce you to these people as a professional. That’s really. Yeah. Which is why I say you should start to think about your brand. Now, give yourself a cool name, get yourself an Instagram thing and like news can buy cameras. My favorite thing for anything you’re trying to do a brand because camera, you can do videos, you can do test, you can stick testimonials like let’s pretend you were a landlord. Like if you had good tenants, you could get landlords, you could get tenants to give you a testimonial that would kind of probably add to this, you know, as a landlord or just anybody you’ve done business with as a testimonial, I’m just telling you to think of all these pieces to bring to this, this, this business plan that you’re putting together, even though it’s one house, because as you want to go and grow, it’s already there for you. You can just keep it in mind. You already know what work you can add to it so that by like, say you want to scale unit three or four, you got this going on. You know, you don’t really need to ask anybody more. Suddenly people are referring you. And that’s kind of what I did to, to get in there and even like create a niche that I, that I don’t talk to many people about because I was like, I just so good at that. I want to do that again. I want to crowd the space, but I’m really, really double down on who you want to appeal to, like as your core ideal tenant and go with that like travel. I’m going to travel nurses, pros and cons to them, but they rent for longer periods, usually three months. They don’t pay as much, but they’re quiet, they don’t complain as much. And if you allow pets or if you have a yard for that kind of stuff, they’re kind of like a perfect medium because you don’t have to do a lot of management to make sure like you have a furnished place and that things work and they don’t bother you for three months and it’s like better than normal rent. It used to be anyway. Now like kind of when it went crazy. So they’re, they’re sort of kind of petered out. But I’m just think like that is what I’m saying.

Joe: Nice. Right? So you’re a husband, you’re a dad, you got your accounting job. You’re working 40, 50 hours a week. You want to start doing you start getting into real estate and you. I really think that Airbnb might be a good way to start. Right. So what are some of the things that you’re going to. How would you start looking for deals? Would you go talk to a bank and try to get a loan?

Jason: No. First thing. And I practice what I preach. Any time like Facebook groups the best go into any in search. Airbnb hosts like. I run two pretty big ones. Airbnb host the Philadelphia Airbnb host of Tampa and I’m.

Joe: Say that again, I want people to write that down. If it’s all right, even if they don’t live in Philadelphia or Tampa, they can join.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s a lot of people join just to kind of feel the market out.

Joe: Nice. So Airbnb Hosts Philadelphia.

Jason: Airbnb Hosts of Philadelphia and then Airbnb Hosts of Tampa. And they have identical sort of profile pictures. So you can tell which one is which goes with each other. And then what I do is I actually start to link them onto other cities so that they ping pong off of each other. And when you want to jump markets, you actually have some places else to go to. So it’s kind of takes a while. But they hit critical mass after about 500 people. So they start to grow on their own. And then you can just kind of sit back and, you know, moderate. Every once in a while you go in these groups and then you start to use a search by and for any topic inside the group. I like Google, but inside the group, hey, what are the regulations if if that’s a big thing, you know, any, you know, what’s the zoning what kind of licenses do you need? So you can you can hit Google for all that, but you can also go in there. And if you search those kind of keywords, you’re going to find a ton of things and you could just start reaching out to people, Hey, what did you mean by this is going to get you there a lot quicker, a lot faster. And you can also tell who are the people that are actually friendly to talk to and the ones who just don’t want to be bothered. Right. So you get to sift if you’re home or you’re accounting or like you work somewhere. This is what you’re going to be doing when you’re not out there in the streets or meet ups. Right. Because this is the first thing you do. And from that, you’ll start to find people. Now, I want to say also for all of them, the groups, the Facebook groups is important, because if you’re given any kind of value and you should ask questions, which you do also, just like just try to give some kind of value like, hey, you know, anybody need a sofa? It looks good. I mean, maybe it is free. I mean, even stuff like that. Why? Because people see you adding and not just taking you, right? So you want to you want to do that. And then if you want to just test out co-hosting, there’s always somebody in them groups is like, man I need a co-host. I need a little bit of help. So you might say, well, I only got two grand right now to spend on anything. What can I do with that? Go test out co-hosting because that gets you some on the job training. And you know, you basically just making money from day one just for helping.

Joe: Can you talk about the kind of I’m sorry to interrupt there, Jason, can you talk about the type of money can somebody get from doing that co-hosting?

Jason: This is tricky because the smartest co-hosts go after the biggest properties. So then it could be a big, big nut. But here’s the thing. I would say, don’t even try to co-host. If you have no property management experience, if like your zero real estate experience, you never rented a house like you never have the house. You don’t know what it costs to fix a roof or deal with any even you can’t even change a lock. Don’t try to co-host because you’re just going to put yourself in a bad situation and disappoint and get a bad name right? Like they might not put you right in a group or blast you on social what people will hear about you basically wasting people’s time. So with that caveat, don’t try to be a co-host if you’re not even remotely a handyman or anybody who can actually do anything other than to pick up a phone. Because anybody, a VA can pick up the phone. Anybody can pick up the phone or text or you know, that’s not that that’s not enough. You need to be able to actually do some stuff and problem solve. And that’s what I was trying to say. Like if you have a full time job, that might not be for you because you’re weekends are going to be full of worry. People not getting in at a certain time, the lock don’t work, blah, blah, blah, blah. So like you’re not getting sleep. It’s like landing planes on the weekend. If anybody knows Airbnb, it’s like a lot of people want to check in Thursday, Friday, they want to do something Monday. So you just making sure cleaners and everybody’s kind of working together. But back to just one. If you were just going to co-host one and you could find a big house like a mansion, something that they’re making $4,000 a night or $2,000 a night, like, you know, they have these 20 to $30000 a month. If you’re making 20% of that, you do the math right. You could be doing real nice with that.

Joe: And I would it be 20% of the gross rental rate?

Jason: That is tricky. You have to negotiate that. Typically, that is minus cleaning. That doesn’t include cleaning fees unless you’re like managing cleaners to, you know, some people do and they can actually make that a profit center. So I’ve seen cleaning companies that were really decent take on the co thing and do well because they control they can control the cleaning house and they can also make sure they have enough of an army to go run out there and kind of do some of this. Okay. Put up, you know, a curtain rod that fell down, extend somebody, take out the trash, which is kind of my. Where I’m at like that. You know, they don’t specialize in anything, but they can do all the little things that people are always asking for that normal cleaners can’t do or they can’t do. Right. So that’s one way.

Joe: 20% can be significant if it’s a big enough property.

Jason: Well, the other thing, too, is for that 20% or 25, you know, if you’re trying to scale co-hosting as a business, you’re going to need some of those resources in there, like pricing software, because most real estate investors will balk at a high number for on management. I mean, typically, we’re trying to get 7 to 10% tops, right, like as a management fee from anybody because we feel like that’s all we’re willing to give up. So imagine getting someone to give up 20, 25%. You’re going to be bringing something real good to the table like I better never see any problems. I better always hit this number and yadda yadda yadda. I don’t want to be bothered, which is why it’s tricky if you have a regular job because there’s a lot of pains you got to solve and they can be coming in the middle of the night. So the software, you’re going to have to make it. You’re going to want to like some kind of property management software. You’re going to want some kind of pricing software and some kind of messaging communication software. When you onboard a host, I remember when I was doing it pretty heavy. It was costing me roughly with the softwares and like one kind of part time VA I was looking at like onboarding. Anybody was going it was going to be like a ten, $110 a month kind of overhead per person I bring on. So imagine if you’re co-hosting some unit that’s only making $4,000 a month in, you might be making 800, but then you have the cost of 100 to $200. It’s cool, but it’s not excellent. And you have to do more of them to make it worth your time.

Joe: So the point here is a great way to get started. If you’re and Jason, I want to split this up into two different podcasts because this is so good. So we’re already 40 minutes into it and my intro went really long. So my apologies to you. Is it okay for you if we can do this in part two?

Jason: Yeah I mean we could do this if you want to do like you said you want to provide classes, I’ll do the best I can. If that’s what you want to do, I’m. I’m open to it.

Joe: Well this is really good. And the little ideas and hints and or, like, tips that you’re giving to people are fantastic. And I know you’re real busy, Jason, but I’d like to see if we can do a part two. And I also just got a text from my wife that I have to take my I have to take my daughter somewhere. So I kind of wrap it up. But guys, you can get a free vacation rental software and resource guide that Jason is generously given to us at Joe McCall dot com slash centennial Joe McCall dot com slash write this down Centeno and it’ll be in the YouTube description. It’ll also be in the link for this podcast as well.

Jason: Why don’t you turn this into like a zoom thing where we can kind of just not be limited by that. You can record it and you know, maybe that part two becomes a Zoom thing. I mean, you just do and we go out.

Joe: And get people in asking questions and stuff. That’s a great idea. We’ll do something like that. In fact, let’s it’s a great idea. The part two will make it live so people can go out there and ask questions now, if that’s cool. All right. So, Jason, I appreciate your time. I really do. And everybody go to Joe McCall dot com slash Centeno and on that page by the way too, you can get Jason’s social media profiles and stuff. But Jason, where can people find you right now?

Jason: Yeah, you can just go to Jason Centeno the same way you see my name spelled there dot com JasonCenteno.com. And it is basically a page I whipped up on camera because we just talked about it. I did it. I like, I don’t know, an hour or whipped it together and you know, it has the link on there. And then there’s links to all my socials including I actually created an app to serve Airbnb host called Trashmitter.

Joe: Oh yeah.

Jason: It’s a way to deal with trash. So all that’s kind of in there, but I don’t want to know the thing about me right now. I just want to note that you’ll see that on there, too. Well, yeah, that’s all my socials, my business, social. And anytime you want to rap about this or even join, or if you say you want to join one of those groups, contact me. I can shoot you a link, whatever you need.

Joe: Well, that’s awesome. And Trashmitter, by the way, I just got a text. I got a few minutes. Sorry. Talk about Trashmitter. This is a really cool concept. It’s a business you started to serve the Airbnb community. Talk about Trashmitter for a second. This is cool.

Jason: So long, really long story short, I started Trashmitter because I literally got pissed off at the way trash was being handled in relationship to like a business or an Airbnb. Philadelphia is notoriously dirty already and nicknamed Philadelphia for a reason because people don’t give a crap, but then you generate more than a normal amount of trash and things. We start to become a problem, including if you’re a hospitality host, you know you’re going to end up with you don’t have a place to store your trash normally. You can’t put it at a certain time. They’re going to give you fines. You’re going to start getting smells, you’re going to start getting bugs, rats, roaches, fleas, everything that comes with having trash someplace. Where should I be? So my solution at the time was like just hiring people. But it was so sporadic and weird. And I couldn’t depend on them. And then when you fire them, they start doing stuff on purpose, like no more trashing property. So it was just such an angst, such anger. So anyway, I decided to create this app and this app. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I thought I could help more hosts, not just me, but more hosts and eventually the world. So literally, it’s Uber for trash. We pick up 2 to 10 bags. We’re not the junk guys necessarily, but you could reach them through us. So we’ll be an umbrella for all things trash. Think the internet of trash. But more importantly, we’re going to build in like we called trash tokens, which are like an, like a crypto that you’ll gain points for using those and working with us. Because I want to see a world where kids, homeless people, whatever could start collecting trash like a Pokemon game and then get it to the right place. And, and in exchange, they get these trash tokens which they can use for goods and services and basically cash out because I want to like clean up the earth. So that’s why my hair is green. So I get a million bags. So far we’re about 2500. But just to let you know, that’s why I did my hair green. It ain’t about the Eagles. It was about I get a million bags, my hair is going to be green because that’s what I’m repping. So that was a story.

Joe: That’s so cool. I’m glad we got to talk about it before we wrap it up here. But again, Trashmitter. You can see it on the app store, the Google App Store or the Apple App Store. And there’s a website I just put it out here on the screen Trashmitter.com To get more information. Great, great concept. And you’re slowly growing this out across the country, right?

Jason: Yeah. So we’re in we’re in Philadelphia now. We’re trying to we’re expanding to Tampa like slowly because it’s a different market. But ideally by the end of the year, we want to be probably in about three more markets. And then now we’re just looking for more people to connect with, because I want to connect more people in this business. I don’t want your business. I want to cooperate with us because we want to grow your business because we’re going to be a lead source for you guys. And our lane is 2 to 10 bags, so there’s plenty for everybody else. We’re just there to be fast. We call ourselves eco medics. We’re there to go in. We’re going to fix the problem and get it to the experts. Like I said, I was I was a retired firefighter. So I think of things as speed and triage. We’re triage everybody else can deal with the bigger things. And then once we got that pretty handle well handled, you know, we can affect the whole system, build out a better network, yadda, yadda, yadda, everything that comes with the growth while you’re doing good.

Joe: So this is fantastic. Very good, guys. Jason Centeno, thanks for being on the podcast. Really appreciate you. We’re going to do part two. I want to talk more dove deeper into this Airbnb stuff because a lot of people are hearing bad news about Airbnb, right? We’re going to be talking about that in part two of like, well, I heard you can’t do it. I heard it’s illegal. Yeah, I heard these HOAs are cracking down in places.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, there’s ways around things, but you got to be depends on how much trouble you want to go through to get that result. And sometimes it ain’t worth it. And sometimes it is, you know, just like everything. Everything in real estate’s like that, though, right? So. Yeah.

Joe: All right. Very good. All right. Thank you, Jason. And we’ll talk to you soon. See, everybody, take care. Bye bye.

Jason: Thanks, guys.