This Lucrative “Rental” Strategy Brings in $800,000 Per Year

Ashley Kehr:
Do you think glamping is just a trendy buzzword? Today’s guest turned tents, domes, and off-grid cabins into a business doing nearly 800 K per year with minimal upfront capital, and he’s going to help rookie investors see how raw land can unlock real estate wealth.

Tony Robinson:
Today we’re talking with Garrett Brown, a short-term rental investor who pivoted from condos in Houston to building one of the top rated glamping destinations in the entire state of Texas. So if you want creative cashflow with lower costs, this episode is your blueprint.

Ashley Kehr:
This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley Care,

Tony Robinson:
And I am Tony j Robinson. And let’s give a big warm welcome to Garrett. Garrett, thank you for jumping on with us today, man. Super excited to get into it.

Garrett Brown:
Thank y’all for having me on. I’m always love talking glamping and always love talking with you all, so it’s a perfect combination.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah, Garrett, usually you’re a co-host, but I think this is the first time you’ve actually been a guest on the show.

Garrett Brown:
Yeah, it’s been a while before. I worked at BiggerPockets probably a couple years ago. I was a long time ago, but it’s been a while to be a guest on there and I’m excited to tell my story and hopefully incentivize some rookies out there to take action in the glamping space.

Ashley Kehr:
Wait, were you on rookie before?

Garrett Brown:
Probably a few years ago. That’s actually how I,

Ashley Kehr:
God, I feel so bad that I don’t remember that

Garrett Brown:
Y’all do so many and talk to so many different people. I do not take offense to that at all because

Ashley Kehr:
I mean, obviously I’m going to cut this part out, but I used to have one of our old producers, Daniel, whenever we would go to meetups or be at conferences, I would always have him when he would introduce me to someone say, do you remember so-and-so on the podcast? Because so many times I would go like, oh, it’s so nice to meet you. And they would say, oh, I actually was a guest

Garrett Brown:
When I was even on, when Eric and Dan, I think Eric and Daniel worked together. I can’t remember, but I remember Eric was the main guy I talked to. But yeah, no, so it is been quite a while.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay, so Garrett, what actually got you into glamping and why did you pivot from traditional short-term rentals?

Garrett Brown:
Yeah, I got into short-term rentals probably like a lot. Well, a lot of people got into ’em during the pandemic boom and things there, but I got into it about 2018. I was a real estate agent for years before I was doing fix and flips, buy and holds, and I was doing okay. Some were wins, some were bigger losses. And so I heard about the Airbnb thing going on and I was like, all right, let me try my hand with this. And I got a really good deal on a few small condos in downtown Houston. This was when back when you could put up an air mattress and do well on Airbnb at that point. And so it was going okay, and then the pandemic hit and all the big institutional money started coming into the space. And at that point for just a one bedroom downtown Conroe, I mean downtown condo in Houston, you’re not going to be able to compete there.
All you can do is drop your price pretty much with some of these big hedge funds and things coming in. So I saw the writing on the wall, I was going on YouTube University and kind of seeing what was out there and I love creative things. I have a music passion. I had a music studio before I did real estate and I was like, how could I tie my passion for real estate with my creative passion? And this thing glamping came up to me and I’m like, okay, what exactly is that? Is it glamorous camping? Whatever you want to call it? I was interested. I love nature as well, and started going down that path. I saw the almost just crazy cashflow that was coming in on some of these places with the minimal investment that was needed to get it started. So I started making my way and figured out how could I do this?
And raw land is tough to get a loan on. It’s tough to usually a lot of people buy it cash. I had some cash saved up about $50,000, but not enough to get a piece of land that I really was interested in. So I learned about this thing called land hacking, which is a form of glamping. They’re all kind of mutually tied together of sorts. And land hacking is essentially when you find a house similar to house hacking, which of most of the BiggerPockets audience might know about that, where you take a house and you rent out each room. Land hacking is essentially the same, but you get a house on a piece of land, get a mortgage for it, it’s a lot easier to get a mortgage on a house already there. The utilities are already there. And I decided like, okay, I’m going to build little bitty cabins on these different parts of the land and that will help me pay my mortgage down, help me add equity value to the property. And it just kind of exploded from there to a myriad of different ways that I learned a lot of lessons and had a lot of wins just from that endeavor that I took on from there.

Ashley Kehr:
Garrett, I have to imagine that if worst case scenario you have a property that has a rental unit on it, I’m assuming you rented out that house. So even if the glamping didn’t work out, you at least have some source of revenue on this property or the ability to sell a single family home.

Garrett Brown:
The cool thing about land hacking, you can go the glamping route where you’re putting cabins and tents and prefab tiny homes or whatever you want to do on this land, but you always have that house on the property. And one thing I forgot to mention a little bit ago is I found a house that needed a little bit of work, nothing crazy, but I didn’t find a pristine house that was ready to go and I couldn’t force some appreciation into it. So I found a house, we bought it for about $550,000. I’ll break down some of the numbers to it, and it had 11 acres on it, and the worst I thought was I can make it a long-term rental if I wanted to. It probably wouldn’t cashflow as well at that price point, you probably need to find something a little less, but I knew I could renovate the bathroom sum.
We took out the carpet and put LVP flooring throughout it. All these were already adding to the equity value, but I knew I had the land and I could have turned it into RV pads, I could build a self-storage there. I could build more long-term rentals. You don’t even have to go the short-term rental route if you don’t want to. I’ve seen people build tiny owned communities that are for long-term rentals only. And so I knew I had a big exit strategy. And then at the same time, I’m acquiring land that is not far. It is about 45 minutes from Houston, Texas that is going to be in one of the faster appreciating areas around basically because I knew people are gradually starting to expand their bubble to get outside of the downtown areas. And as it started going along, not everybody will take the same route that I did.
Sometimes if you’re going the investment route on it, you’re going to have to put 20 or 25% down. But I used an owner occupied loan. I sold those condos that I mentioned and sold my townhouse. Actually, I took a big swing with this, but I knew it was going to pay off. I took some of that money. It was about $50,000 by the time I got it done, I got into that house for 5% down. It was an owner occupied loan. So technically I had to live in there for a year, which I did because I was building out the cabins. But doing that with just 5% down, I only had to put 22,000 down to acquire this house and all of this land that would’ve probably cost me. I would’ve only if I was just getting raw land, I would’ve had to put 200 or $250,000 down and then I wouldn’t have had the funds to get some utilities to the property, build out some of these cabins and really start to bring up the cashflow and bring out the equity appreciation that was there. So that is just how I kind of saw where the writing was on the wall for it.

Tony Robinson:
So here, your recommendation to Ricky’s who are looking to maybe do glamping building it out is reducing their costs by finding a piece of land that already has a house on it to get more favorable financing. And I think that’s a great strategy because I think when a lot of folks think about building, the only thing that comes to mind for them is raw land, but there’s not only is the financing then more expensive, but then there’s also the additional cost of getting that land ready to be built on. Maybe you have to grade, maybe you have to get utilities, maybe you have to get wells run or septic tanks or whatever it may be. But if there was a home on that piece of land already, hopefully a lot of that infrastructure costs is taken care of. So I want to learn more about the challenges around the utilities and building it out. But first, just to clarify for all the Ricky’s who maybe aren’t familiar with the phrase glamping, what exactly does that mean and how is it different from traditional short-term rental investing?

Garrett Brown:
So again, it’s one of those things that you can call it what you want. I think glamping came from glamorous camping, but it’s essentially luxury camping to where you’re providing most likely a utility such as a bathroom nearby that has a flushable toilet. You have electricity on the property, you have running water, usually hot water is a big thing of glamping. And now even now you probably have wifi for the guests. There’s probably a memory foam bed inside the units. Little things like that that are go above and beyond the luxury side of just slapping up a tent in a campground that people are traditionally thinking of. And you have maybe one public bathroom that’s 500 yards away that everybody shares, and then you have no electricity capabilities and things there. So we really wanted to emphasize the luxury side of glamping when we were building these out.
And because those utilities were at the house, I’ve heard people get quotes for bringing electricity to a property like raw land of a hundred thousand dollars, $200,000, just insane amounts that you couldn’t even comprehend unless you have a big budget or hedge fund behind you. And with my property having electricity already there, it costs me $5,000 extra to bring electricity to my first cabin as opposed to the 20, 30, $40,000 quotes I would’ve gotten from just trying to find a piece of land and then develop it and worry about the roadwork. That’s another thing people underestimate is how expensive roadwork is. I already had a road going to the property, and so I just added on some more gravel roads to that, and it was so much cheaper than spending a hundred thousand dollars, $200,000 and having the county have to tell me where I can put the road, how big it has to be because it’s already been set there for me. So it was definitely a very smart move on my part to figure out that nuance of when you’re looking into the land purchase portion of it.

Ashley Kehr:
So for the glamping part of it, once you’ve purchased your property, you’ve got your financing on it. Are there any ways to actually finance the tents or the domes or whatever you’re putting onto the property?

Garrett Brown:
There actually is now. It’s kind of amazing how fast this space has grown in the past four years, five years since I’ve been in it. When I first got into it, there wasn’t as many options. It was just starting to become a little more popular. My first cabin, I call it a cabin, but I got a geodome for my first property from a company called Pacific Domes that’s in Oregon. There’s a lot of dome companies. You could buy one from Alibaba for a thousand dollars, $2,000, it’s probably going to fall apart the next week that you put it together. But I went with Pacific Domes. I had a great reputation. It was about $10,000 for this dome when I bought it. They didn’t have options at the time, but now I know that there are tons of financing options out there for the domes. I think even Pacific domes offers their own.
But the other really cool thing that I’ve even been exploring as I’ve been expanding and adding more sites is I even today this morning, put on a deposit on a new tiny house. It’s called a park model, which means it comes on a trailer with wheels and you can get those financed just like a car or an RV loan, and it’s very simple to do because they’re also very easy to repossess if they want to take it off your property. So it’s actually surprising how easy that is. So yeah, the financing options have exploded in the past few years. So we can touch into that and I’m always happy to give recommendations, but you’ll be surprised at how many tiny home builds unique builds, geo domes, yurts, everything out there now offer financing because they see that this is the way the business model is growing for them as well too. So it shouldn’t be something intimidating, but if you can buy it cash, that’s awesome, but if you can leverage some of that financing and reserve some of your cash to either enhance the site or just have as cash reserves, that’s a great method to go down as well.

Tony Robinson:
Garrett, I’m super excited to keep diving into the world of glamping. It is part of the short-term rental space that I’ve never personally explored. So I want to break down exactly how to find the right land, what kind of structures work best, which you’ve touched on a little bit already, and really how to run the numbers on these glamping structures, especially if you’ve never done this type of deal before.

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Tony Robinson:
Alright, so we’re back with Garrett. So Garrett, I want to talk about the actual build out, but before we do, I guess I just have one question and I’m sure a lot of the Ricky audience is thinking this as well. Who the heck is paying money to come stay in a tent? What is your typical demographic of traveler? So

Garrett Brown:
Every one of the main things you have to decide when you’re getting into this space is what your vision is long-term for the property and who your guest avatar or your target guest even is. Because there’s some glamping sites that are catered to families and they built it out like that. And there’s some glamping sites that are catered to couples or romantic getaways, and there are some that are more just maybe a little more traditional leaning towards the camping side with a little bit of luxury that kind of target more of a mass audience. And so I knew that I went and traveled, one of my biggest pieces of advice is go stay in some of these structures nearby. Go find glamping sites near you or campgrounds and things and go try out some of these unique structures. I went and stayed in a geodome in Arizona near the Grand Canyon when I was looking, I went and stayed in some tiny homes.
I went and stayed in different places to see what they were doing that I liked, what they were doing that I didn’t personally enjoy as a guest. And so I decided that I really wanted to tap into the higher end luxury market of the couples romantic getaways. And the biggest part of it that I didn’t mention before that is you just need to build an experience that caters to that guest you’re trying to attract. So I went to some facilities and they would have 20 or 30 domes stacked up right beside each other, and there’s a lot of those out there. I went to some that was way more spaced out and you had one cabin on a couple acres and then another cabin that was much further away. And both of those could be successful business models. Again, it goes back to your goals and envision, but I decided that I wanted less.
I wanted less structures on my property, but I was going to command a higher rate. Each one was going to have their own private amenities, and so I knew that I was going to be able to target and in the glamping field, I will just go ahead and say that I had to be taught this. I didn’t realize it at first. Women dominate this market for the booking side of it. If you look at our social media feed there, it’s about 80 to 85% women that are on our feed. And the main reason, and I’ve talked to tons of people, glamping experts all over the world, and they all say the same thing, that guys, we plan a trip about a week ahead in advance. Women are planning the trip a year or two in advance, and so that’s how you get those long lead times, long bookings.
And so we started to cater to our audience, which we knew was going to be somebody that loved nature, somebody that liked to explore, and that was also near a major city. That’s one thing that I try to talk about a lot, and I mentioned it in the guide that I wrote for BiggerPockets coming out soon called the Glamping Investor that it’s called the 60 30 10 rule that I have. And so I knew that I needed to be around 60 minutes from a major city, and when I say major city, 500,000 plus people, the more cities nearby the better 30 minutes from some type of national, regional or state attraction. So that way that at least people from that city are going to come out to that area routinely and have something to do. We obviously want to build the experience for them on site that they never want to leave.
But all the other places around you will draw in even more people and make sure you have a pretty decent flow of guests coming through. And then the 10 of it is just 10 minutes from some type of civilization, dollar General, a gas station. There’s land out there that people will see and it’s three or four hours from everywhere and people are like, oh, it’s so cheap. I can buy that and it’s going to be great. And it’s like, yeah, it’s a reason that you can buy 20 acres for $10,000 in this town because nobody is ever going to travel there. So we just looked in the analytics of it. I found the place I found ended up being 45 minutes from Houston, Texas, and it’s two hours from Dallas and Austin and all the other bigger sites. It’s near the second largest lake in Texas and it’s also near a national forest.
And I have the reason it is near a Dollar General as well, because the reason that’s so valuable is because if you’re not near any of these, how are you going to get cleaners to come out there? How are you going to get supplies? How are you going to get handy people? The further they have to travel, the more expensive it becomes and the harder it becomes to actually keep them. So I thought about that while I was building out the entire business and I thought about my guest avatar to decide on exactly how I wanted to build it, what amenities I wanted to add, and that helped us to get an idea of the nightly rate that we could attract. So then once we kind of set that foundation, we have crushed it and definitely gotten, we make as much per night as a five star hotel basically does because we built out that experience and we also didn’t put each structure on top of each other. But again, they’re both good business structures just wasn’t for me personally.

Ashley Kehr:
Garrett, you literally described the reason my A-Frame is successful because it meets that 60, 30, 10 literally almost to the minute it meets that because we did not think it was going to be successful. Well, as successful as it is, we obviously thought it was going to be an investment, but it has done better than we expected. And it is a perfect example of that rule that you have come up with because it proves it. It proves that that actually works if you follow that rule. And the Dollar General thing I laugh at because that is the closest store to there. There’s no Walmart or Target or anything in the town, but there is a Dollar General and part of Dollar General’s model is that they find towns where you don’t have a Walmart and a Target and they go in and drop their buildings into there and you can still get your essentials. And in our A-frame it’s very limited cooking. We don’t have an oven, we have a stove top that you can cook on, but I’m assuming that there’s other glamping tents or different glamping things that don’t have huge kitchens for people to cook on. So being 10 minutes within civilization so you can go out to eat things like that is also important.

Garrett Brown:
It’s good for the guests too. We find that tons of people on our social media all the time are like, oh, I’m scared to go out there. It’s in the middle of nowhere and things like that. And then when we kind of relay what exactly is around it and all these things, they start to get a little more at ease. Nobody wants to just be in the middle of nowhere, what nothing around, and then you’re out of paper towels and then they got to drive 45 minutes to figure out the paper towels. And so that sounds like a nightmare to me is something I didn’t personally want to find out how that would happen if it did happen to me. So

Ashley Kehr:
You know what, that just made me think I should find out if Instacart will deliver to that property because that would be a really good thing to add into the listing is this does have Instacart so that you could order stuff.

Garrett Brown:
My second glance site that we just opened up near Austin is a little bit bigger of a town, a little closer to Austin and my first glance site, we can get Uber Eats and things like that out there. It’s much harder. It takes a lot longer, but the new site near Austin, it is the biggest revelation ever that if I need something I can just Instacart it or Uber eats it to the guests. A guest had ants inside and we have pest control and all that and sometimes just things happen in nature and I instantly, I UberEATS him some ants spray and we turned a bad situation into a five star stay with just that. So that was amazing. Don’t have that luxury everywhere, but if you do, oh, that is definitely a top tier a minute you’d be able to have for your own self.

Ashley Kehr:
I can completely relate on a personal level because I have never lived in a house that can get DoorDash or Uber Eats. Never in my whole life until I bought my lake house and at the lake house, I am spoiled to death and it started to get out of control that for the first time in my life I could DoorDash stuff and I really had to cut back, but it was funny. Yeah,

Tony Robinson:
That’s hilarious. I can order something on Amazon at 8:00 AM and it’ll be at my house for 2:00 PM It’s insane. The infrastructure that we have out here,

Ashley Kehr:
It’ll be recording a podcast until we be like, okay, we got five minutes. I’m going to run a Starbucks. I’m like, okay, if you give me 45 minutes, I can do this.

Garrett Brown:
Yeah, I’ll run to the gas station around the corner and get my coffee over here.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah, I’m spoiled down here in SoCal. But Garrett, I want to talk a little bit about evaluating the deal because we get the rule right, 60 30, 10, which is super important just from a practical standpoint for the guest, but how do you as the investor evaluate the potential of AGL site? I think when we think about traditional long-term rentals, it’s a much more straightforward process to predict what the income will be because you just look for other properties of the similar size and functionality of yours and see what they’re renting for. But if I want to go outside of Austin and build a Glamp site filled with Yurts and domes, I may not have as many other yurts and domes to compare to. So what is the process for effectively analyzing glamp sites?

Garrett Brown:
So when I first analyzed my first site, that was something I kind of ran into because I’m near Houston, Texas is where I built it, but there wasn’t many unique structures in the area when I started looking around, I think I saw one yurt that happened to be maybe 20 minutes away from where I was, which we will get into the permitting issues, which I didn’t run into much because I planned ahead, but I was starting to see like, okay, there’s not many unique builds and that could be a sign of, maybe it’s not the right area to go into, but I took a chance with that. I knew it was so close and I could follow the 60 30 10 rule. Nowadays though, I’d say there’s a lot more commonplace for different glamping structures and my friend Ben Wolf who created Stay On Narrow, which is one of the coolest destination, he’s not really glamping.
He’s even more high end than that than I would say like tree houses and things. But one of his phrases that he uses a lot every time we talk is he looks for Signal and not saturation. And so how he even found one of his popular sites that he knew was going to be profitable for him was he was looking in the area. You can use something like Price Labs has market dashboards that you can go into and see what’s performing in the area and see what comps you have, but you could even just go onto Airbnb, simple as that, or even go to Google and type glamping or campgrounds, tiny homes, things like that in this area. And as you’re looking at ’em, use something like the market dashboards from Price Labs and see what these structures are kind of making, see what the reviews are saying.
Do they have high-end amenities? Do they have great photos and all these things like that. If you’re looking in an area and you see a few tiny homes or smaller cottages or cabins that are performing pretty well based on the market research from Price Labs in your own, just diving into Airbnb, that’s probably a pretty good sign that there at least is the desire for people to rent this type of accommodation. Then if I go into it and break it down even further, even to this day sometimes it’s going to be hard to know it exactly what you would make on a structure if there’s not other similar ones there. If you have a couple glamping sites that are already established, you can get a pretty good feel for where you’re going to fall in line with revenue wise. But with my first geodome, I was going to be the only unique stay in the area.
Everybody’s average daily rate was around one 50 or 200 for just smaller cottages, and I decided that I was going to add the amenities to beat them out, and I started lower with my price points. We were about under, I think we were around two 50 nightly rate, and we kind of just kept gradually raising that up and adding more cabins to keep increasing that lever. The main thing that really helped me decide though was I was using spreadsheets and typing in different numbers and researching other people’s head calculators. I’m pretty sure I even used Tony’s calculator at some point to decide on different, what are these short-term rentals making? How is this going to compare? And so I took a lot of that data and made my own spreadsheet, and I actually will put it out to the public soon with my glamping investor guide of you can analyze these different glamping structures by simply seeing what else is available in the area, looking at their nightly rate, learning in their occupancy on something like Price Labs, and then entering all your information that you see, and it will help you automatically calculate what your cash on cash return will be if you want to sell it in five years, what that profit could be.
If you don’t have a ton of data out there, there’s no real way to know, not a ton of data. If you don’t have a ton of structures like yours in an area you’re going to, it will be a little harder to estimate what you’ll make. But if you’re able to fall into that 60, 30 10 rule and understand that if you build the experience with the right marketing behind it, which I personally think is one of my strong suits and why we’ve been able to really make it go forward, then you’re going to be able to beat those traditional short-term rental cottages and cabins because you’re building an experience and people thrive and will pay much higher than you even expect for these experiences that you could provide. People crave this type of stay now, and I build it for virality. I build it for Instagram, and that’s what people love. They love the social currency of staying somewhere cool and being able to get away from these city nights, and you’ll be a little surprised that you can almost double the rates of some of these just basic cabins that are out there if you provide the right couple of amenities and the right experience for the guests that are thinking about it.

Tony Robinson:
Greg, I want to give you some kudos because I think it takes guts to go into a market where the dataset is limited and you’ve got to not take a leap of faith. I think that’s underselling the work that goes into it, but it is a little bit of like, Hey, we’re going to make some assumptions around what we think is possible here and being able to kind of take that swing. But I think it goes back to the point you made at the beginning of the podcast where it’s like, even if I just were to turn this single family home into a long-term rental, we’ll probably still be okay. And I think having that as your fallback and having a backup plan is what gives you some confidence to move forward. I know so far we’ve talked about all the parts of glamping and all the good things that come along with it, but I know that it’s not always sunshine and rainbow. So permits, septic inspections, guest expectations, and just all of those rookie mistakes that can kill your dream site before it’s even built. So I want to get to that right after A quick word from today’s show sponsors.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay, welcome back from our short break, Garrett. What are some of the mistakes or maybe items that glamping investors totally underestimate getting started?

Garrett Brown:
So there’s a myriad of things that you need to pay attention to. I think I talked to glamping beginners and people that already have sites all over the country and the world all the time, and I think the biggest holdup for a lot of people is the permitting side. I was lucky enough, well, I don’t know if luck’s the right word, I did my due diligence, but I’m in an area that I didn’t have a ton of very high pressure permitting processes to go through, but it’s because I did my research upfront with this. So I says I’m looking into the sites, I’m looking in trying to figure out, I’m trying to bring this geodome structure to rural Texas where most of these people, they probably have one person in the permitting department and you call ’em up and Hey, I want to build a geodome, and they’re like a geo what they think you’re trying to build something just like a spaceship or something.
And so one real big piece of advice I will give is if you are going to go the geodome route or the yurt route or anything like that, I highly recommend that you try to find a company that will be able to give you architectural stamped plans. Pacific Domes is one of the ones that it’s included with the cost or I think it might’ve been a little more like another 1500 bucks or $2,000, but those plans made it much easier with my county to get it permitted. And as I was looking into different counties, there’s three or four counties that were in the general area of that lake I was looking in. I would call each permit department and I would say, Hey, and you always want to be honest. You don’t want to lie and tell ’em you’re doing something else. I would call ’em and say, or email, Hey, this is what I want to do.
I want to build a geodome or a glamping site. Is that something we could do? What are your thoughts? Three out of the four we’re just like, no, I don’t know about that. No, I don’t think we could ever do that. One of them goes, we’ve never done that, but we’d be open to hearing it. So I was like, okay, that’s a good sign. And then also the biggest key piece was I was talking to contractors at the time in all of these areas and I would just ask them, most of them work in multiple counties. I would go, Hey, which county has the easiest permitting process? And every single one of ’em was like, Hey, go to county A, county B, good luck. You’re never going to have that happen. County A is one to go to because they’re not going to care as much. They just want hope. They’re not watching this.
They just want their permitting money. And so that’s how I ended up in the place that I was. And the other big piece of it is when you’re newer rely on well, contractors with a great reputation, I was on Facebook groups, all of them have local Facebook groups in these areas and I was asking like, Hey, anybody know good contractors? Anybody know good contractors? And I was getting some recommendations, but the names that kept popping up multiple times, those are the ones that I would call to because then I ended up finding out that small town areas, this is how it is pretty much all over the board. One of the contractors had, I think his aunt worked in the permitting department there, and it was like he was like, oh yeah, that’s no problem to get that permit done over there. We can do that for sure.
And it’s kind of what you find out in these small towns is that usually you just need to pick up the phone and call around and tell people what you’re thinking about doing. The better contractors you use, the better electrical electricians and all that. They most likely have reputations with the county to where if they find out you’re working with this contractor, they’re not going to care as much. They’re going to be like, okay, he’s obviously working with somebody we know that builds all the time out here. So they were very relaxed for a lack of better words with my structures. But the other thing is septic is going to be huge too. Don’t underestimate your septic. That is by far the biggest pushback you’ll get in your permitting. The process is how you’re doing your septic design. And so finding a reputable septic company upfront and working with them, they should have something that’s called a septic designer or a septic system drawer artist, I don’t know, whatever they want to coin it sometimes this person is going to be vital in you getting your permitting for your systems there.
If you want to do the off-grid toilets and things, that’s a whole nother, I don’t recommend it for good luck to your cleaners for dealing with that. And you’re also not, you’re not going to get those prices that you’re thinking you’re going to definitely have to dramatically cut your estimated revenue if you’re using that type of system. But go with a septic designer that knows the area and think about your vision too upfront. One mistake I made was I knew I wanted six or seven cabins in the end. Well, I don’t know if it’s a mistake, I want to correct myself because sometimes just the sheer amount of money you have could stop this. But I wish I would’ve designed one massive septic system to feed every single cabin. It would’ve been much cheaper in the long run, but I did a septic system for just my first two cabins, which saved me money instead of doing one septic system per, that’s way more expensive.
I don’t recommend that, but me doing the two cabins, I paid about $10,000 for my septic system. If I would’ve been able to have the money upfront, which I didn’t at the time, full transparency, if I could have gotten all seven cabins and one big septic system for about 25 to 30,000, I would’ve saved a lot of headache and money going forward with my county because that was the one thing they were a little worried about. They were like, Hey, we don’t want you to have a ton of small septic systems all around your property and things like that.

Ashley Kehr:
And more to maintain, more to pump, yeah,

Garrett Brown:
More contract maintenance contracts I have to have. But again, I didn’t have the funds to do that, build all this and spend 30,000 on a commercial septic system. But that is the one thing that I would get ahead of is your septic design, because almost every single county that’s going to be one of their biggest worries. Well, actually less than the structure, it’s actually the septic involved.

Ashley Kehr:
Garrett, what about the water source? There was a time where I had a dream of owning a campground and I learned a lot about water. Daryl even went and got his water certification in case we did buy a campground. And so now he’s certified to test water, I guess. I don’t know. But one of the properties we looked at was had a wellhouse and it had to be tested because there was so many units on the property as far as campground hookups and things like that on it. So what about that for glamping, the water source? I mean, what is the best option to use there?

Garrett Brown:
Very similar to with that. So with our water, well, and I want to throw this out there too, people are hearing these big numbers for electricity and septic, but I will say those add a ton of value to your land, and if you want to exit later on and sell everything, that kind of infrastructure is how you’re going to make a lot of your money back. So if you’re going to spend money on utilities, don’t be upset about it because that is actually putting in real value to the land that you’re building. So with the water well system, one great thing about having a house on the property, and again, every county’s going to be different, so work with somebody in your area that and talk to your county. I was able to tap in for my first cabin into the water well system that I had for the house because it was only a one bedroom.
After that though, when we wanted to, we knew we were planning on expanding and adding more. I had to add another water well system to the back of the land that could feed more cabins. And so now I’m able to, even with the new cabins that we’re working on right now, I’m able to tap into the water well system there for each, and I’ve certified it with the company that did the water well. Don’t get Joe hanging out at the Dollar General to come and try to put in a water well for you with one of the hand cranks or something. Use a reputable company because it’s a big deal too. You’re going to need your water tested and maintained. And so you want a reputable company that has been there for a while, get a few different quotes from different companies. And then that Water Well Source though is going to be able to supply quite a few cabins.
It’s kind of amazing how, and every area of the country is different too. Again, I’m in east or east Texas of sorts, so maybe a little different for me than somebody in Montana or something. But making sure that you have a well-built water well system that can supply. And again, this is why you need to know what your vision is going forward. You just want to make sure that you’re going to be able to have the capacity for all the other units. I spent about $12,000 on my water Well and about a thousand dollars to build a wellhouse around it, but that water well system added a ton of value to my land. Now I have water on both sides of my 11 acres, and I also have been able to feed almost every single other cabin that I have with this water well system. But it was all by design and knowing what my vision was for the future. So it’s something I wouldn’t take lightly in your planning

Ashley Kehr:
And talking about a well and a septic, you don’t have to pay fees on it. You do public utility, so that is one of benefit. You have a huge upfront cost, but over time, I have a friend who’s buying a house right now and the septic is 37 years old, so she hasn’t gotten the test herself back yet, but I’m like, I’m pretty sure there’s a chance that’s going to have to be replaced. But the fact that some of these systems can last a really, really long time, obviously it was still working. The house didn’t back up with

Garrett Brown:
A lot of those are built. They do a different type of septic system now it’s called an aerobic system. It’s a little newer and works a little better, but even though some of those older septic systems, if they were built well and they were permitted, they probably were made of concrete or something like that, and they hold up for quite a while. But that’s why you get any place you’re buying and it has a septic, you need a septic inspection.

Ashley Kehr:
And in New York, the county requires that you have to can’t transfer title without doing it. And the banks require for you to get, especially if you’re getting a mortgage, the bank will require you to do

Garrett Brown:
It. My water bill and sewer bill each month is $0 now. Well, besides the maintenance and things like that, but even a long-term rental I bought not long ago near Houston, Texas, the water and sewer bill is almost $150 a month now and has been fluctuating. And it’s just small things like that that just gradually eat up into your profit. And so it’s great having a $0 water bill each month.

Ashley Kehr:
Feel free, take those long shower.

Garrett Brown:
Oh, they do. Trust me, the guests do. I see our electricity bill. That’s the one thing that

Ashley Kehr:
Actually you have to get solar panels.

Garrett Brown:
Yeah. Yeah, that might be the next step because electricity, I definitely electricity and wifi, you’re not getting away from paying those. For sure.

Tony Robinson:
Garrett, how many units that are on that property now?

Garrett Brown:
We have five units currently, and we are in the process. We just got our permit for our next two, and after that we’re probably going to shut off how many more we build. My goal was always six to seven, and so we’re very close to that.

Tony Robinson:
So if we go back to that first, the first one you built out, I just want to kind of compile all of the costs aside from the costs that you spend to acquire the single family home, but the septic, the other utilities, the actual build costs, just like ballpark, what did you actually have to spend out of pocket to get that first unit up and running?

Garrett Brown:
So this is definitely a learning lesson for me, and I tell people going forward that I love my geodome. I’d probably never build another one. I learned so much about it, and I don’t, I hope Pacific Domes doesn’t hate me for this, but I wouldn’t recommend people building this because I spent about $125,000 between all the utilities, all the roadwork, the structure. I mean, we spent like $10,000 on the bathroom inside. It’s not just a cookie cutter place. We have a hot tub, we have a deck, it’s overlooking a pond. All of that. We spent about $125,000. I love my geodome at cash flows like crazy. I think we made the two and a half years we’ve been running it, we’ve made 90 5K gross each year with it. And I wish I would’ve spent that money on a more traditional A-frame maybe or something.
My recommendation for anybody thinking about this, especially if you’re going to spend that kind of cash and you’re not going like the Safari tent route for a little cheaper, which you can do and everybody has their place, I would try to build something a little more stick built, but very unique. The best you can work with an architect or something, but then really spend the money on the outside that you’re building as well. Some of my people, I have a friend in London who has a very popular site called Secret Garden Glamping, and he spends about 40 or $50,000 per unit, but they spend about that same amount on the outside, and they are booked out for two years in advance because they make the outside so cool. And he said the same thing. People love the inside. You need a place with ac, you need a place with running hot water, nice bathrooms, but most people that come out there are actually trying to hang out outside.
They’re only sleeping or maybe cooking some meals here and there inside. So any advice I would have for people going forward, you’re going to have to spend the money on the utilities. And with our second cabin, it was a lot cheaper because I had the septic in place already. I had the water well in place already. I had roadwork done. It became much easier. But that first cabin is usually the one with the biggest lift. So I would look into something maybe with a little more equity value, but I do love my geodome and it has performed well, and it is held up very well too. So it’s just something to think about for people that might be considering these types of stays.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Garrett, thank you so much for joining us today, and congratulations on your new book. Where can People find The Glamping Investor?

Garrett Brown:
Yep. So it is coming out July 15th. Depending on when you’re listening to this, it may already be out or it may be pre-order available. You can go to biggerpockets.com/glamp guide and you’ll be able to order it there. It’s every bit of knowledge that I’ve gained in these past five or six years put into one amazing resource. And for the cost of a Netflix subscription, basically, you don’t need to spend $6,000 at a Mastermind to learn what I’ve learned over this. I put every single thing into this book, and I’m sure it’s going to be a valuable resource for anybody that is curious about this type of investing.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Garrett, I can’t wait to read it. I recently did a YouTube video on Bigger Stays YouTube with Garrett, and I had to stop during the middle of it because I felt like I was at a conference. I just paid a thousand dollars, and someone just said that one thing that was like, yes, that made that worth it. So definitely check out the book, the Glamping and Foster, thank you so much for joining us today. This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.