A big market crash, an impending (or ongoing!) war, and a global pandemic – all of these have significantly impacted individuals and businesses. As a real estate investor, can you prepare for these events?
The short answer is: no, you can’t.
At least not specifically. Who could tell we were going to have to rely on Zoom for the past few years? Sure, you can’t really foretell when and how unprecedented events will happen. They’re called “unprecedented” for a reason. But that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost! Continue reading and see what we did to stay afloat during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The points below are from the 27th episode of The Real Estate JAM, where we team talked about our experience with building a team, stories about hiring, and how we navigated the COVID-19 lockdown situation back in 2020! Tune in to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
During the episode, we get a throwback to our first few days with the COVID-19 lockdown. Here’s a quick summary of what happened.
- All bookings from March to June 2020 were canceled after the lockdown announcements were made.
- While you might think three months isn’t a big deal, this is the spring break season, where short-term rentals in Panama City earn 80% of their revenue!
- And as if it can’t get worse, all this happened right after we dumped a ton of money into purchasing properties, furnishing, and marketing!
It would have been better if the governor of the state of Florida hadn’t said “no more short-term rentals.” Wasn’t half-occupancy considered? Or, at least, he could have said, “no hotels,” instead! What about the people that still had to visit?
But all of this happened already, and we’re only looking retrospectively. And yes, we do understand that there are safety protocols that most people can follow, but not everyone’s going to comply.
You’re still reading this, and that means we made it through – it’s 2022 now! And you know what? We still stand by what we said in that episode from 2020. There’s no way for us to prepare for something like that, and we wouldn’t have done it any other way.
And what was it that we did? We split our eggs into different baskets. At the time, we were just one year into the short-term rental world. But even if we were convinced that there’s more money to get by going all-in with short-term rentals, we still did wholesale deals and long-term rentals. We didn’t rely on one thing.
Sounds easy, right? But it’s not. While there weren’t many problems with the rental side of things, on the wholesale side, many buyers backed down from the deals because their lenders weren’t able to honor the agreements they had anymore! Even on our end, the loan funding fee of $995 went up to $4000! A few thousand dollars isn’t a make-or-break type of situation, but they also raised the percentage we’re paying per month!
That’s what unprecedented times do. They cause chaos. It’s up to you as a business owner to stay on top of the game. Because we didn’t go all-in with short-term rentals, we had enough to keep ourselves afloat until we navigated the “new normal”.
Want to learn more? You can listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
Outline of the Episode:
- [02:52] Imagine the stress of working on a full-time business while also having separate careers on top of having families. Too much, right? Melissa shares how they’ve tried to deal with this problem by hiring VA’s.
- [06:21] Where do you find people to hire? Facebook’s a great place to start, but you might find it better to get yourself a higher qualified pool of people. JD shares some challenges he’s experienced from bad employees. Where can you get that higher qualified pool of people?
- [12:12] Is oversharing or being too open with people affecting your attrition rate?
- [15:04] A quick summary of the things you should do to hire better people. Hire on multiple platforms, get (and call) references, don’t set high expectations early on, and get “shiny star” applicants ASAP if you find one.
- [21:39] Another life-changing book other than Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
- [27:03] Get a glimpse of how the team struggled through the first few weeks of COVID-19. You might already have been used to it by the time you read this, but it’s still interesting to learn how a company can move through unprecedented times!
Connect with the Real Estate JAM!
- Website
- YouTube
- Shorefront Investments
- Email: jd@shorefront-investments.com or info@shorefront-investments.com
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