What Most Rookies Get Wrong When Picking a Rental Market (Rookie Reply)

Ashley:
Chris and Ksenia were new parents with demanding careers and a goal that still felt years away. Build something that could eventually give their family more control over their time. Their first rental was supposed to be a straightforward investment, but almost immediately after closing, that plan took an unexpected turn and pushed them into a strategy neither of them had prepared for.

Tony:
And instead of backing away, they learned the business from the ground up and turned that surprise into a repeatable model. And four years later, they’ve left their W-2 jobs and now operate 17 short-term rentals in Knoxville, Tennessee. And today we’re breaking down the pivotal decisions that took them from one unplanned opportunity to their business, Rocky Top States.

Ashley:
This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I’m Ashley Kehr.

Tony:
And I’m Tony J. Robinson. And with that, let’s give a big warm welcome to Chris and Kesenia. Thank you guys for joining us on the podcast today.

Chris:
Thank you for having us. Happy to be here.

Ashley:
Let’s start back going to 2020. What did your careers and your lives look like before you actually became real estate investors?

Knesia:
Yeah, so at that time, I started my career in public accounting. So straight out of school, worked with a Big Four accounting firm in consulting, shifting into operations and innovation, automation, all back of the house type things. And it was just saving here and there. Always had in the back of my mind that one day we’ll have rental properties, whatever that looks like. We’ve had on both sides of our families, we’ve had rental properties, parents had rental properties, things like that. So we kind of knew that, okay, that could be a possibility. So we’re working towards that. Didn’t know when that could happen, but it was a demanding career, traveling a lot. And I was fortunate enough to start working from home kind of early on. So I think it was about 2017, 2018 that I was able to start working from home, but I was still traveling all the time.
And we knew that we were going to start a family soon, and that was definitely not the lifestyle that we wanted for our family. And we didn’t know how to get there. So that was our life then. You?

Chris:
Yeah. So I was working at the university at the time. We weren’t married at this point in 2020. So we knew that we wanted to plan a life, like Kasenya was saying, where we could really invest in our future family, our future children, whenever that was. So we were trying to lay a roadmap on what that could look like. And with me kind of already, with my parents owning some rentals, I knew that that could be one way to get some of that freedom in our lives. And that was just something that I’ve always talked and saw my parents doing. I mean, they started investing around 2009, so right after the 2008 financial crisis. So I knew that, okay, I’ve seen them doing it. Maybe that’s something that we can kind of replicate during that time. So that’s just kind of something that we’ve been just kind of eyeing on for quite some time.

Ashley:
And what did you end up buying for your first investment?

Chris:
Yeah, sure. So since I was working at the university, we were both UT alumni, so we knew that we wanted to invest somewhere close to home. And close to home for us was a university. So we knew that, hey, student housing could be such an easy thing to get into at first. So we really heavily started looking into just within a mile of campus here in Knoxville. And that’s kind of how we fell into our first rental. It’s literally run on campus. It was a one bedroom, one bath. I think we bought it at 240,000 at the time. Of course, it’s appreciated quite significantly since then. But at the time, we weren’t really running the numbers. We just knew that, hey, that’s just something that we can afford. It’s a one-one. We can either get a student or two in there and managing will be very easy.
At least at the time, that’s what we were thinking.

Knesia:
All we knew was that we have saved enough to put a down payment on one investment property at that time. So we’re like, okay, maybe we’re ready to get our first rental. And getting a student housing type rental just seemed like a most straightforward answer. We’re a college town here. A lot of students come in. So like, okay, well, this seems like a most surefire way to just not pay two mortgages at the same time for the shortest period of time. But the challenge was that we. So at that point we had married, we had our first child. She was about two months old and we closed on our first property. So everything kind of happened close. And that happened in the spring timeframe, in late spring, but students don’t come back to campus until August. So we’re like, what are we going to do for four months?
We’re not going to pay for four mortgages or for two mortgages for four months. That would be a lot, but we’ve heard about this whole Airbnb thing. So maybe for the next couple of months, we could flip it to short-term and still get a student in there for the fall. That was kind of the first pivot to the original plan, but still seemed very much in line with the original plan of having a real estate investment that’s a long-term rental that would still allow us to continue on in our professional pursuits and start generating some of that passive income. And maybe over time, a year later, two years later, five years later, we’d buy our second one. That was kind of the thought process at the time.

Tony:
And Kasin, you mentioned something I want to go back to where it’s like, “Hey, we saved up this money. We finally had enough to buy the first rental.” But for a lot of folks, even if they have the money saved, there’s still this analysis paralysis that prevents them from actually pulling the trigger. So what was it that allowed you and Chris to bypass that and actually take all this money that you’ve worked so hard to save up and put it into an actual rental property?

Knesia:
Oh, it was scary. I’ll tell you that for sure. It was very scary to buy that first one. The level of anxiety that I feel now closing on a property is so different than it was closing on that very first one. I think that vision of we always knew that rentals could be a path to the life that we want to create, which is more time with each other and more time with our children and our family and our community. And we knew that that could be the past. That was kind of the north star, if you will. And also we liked having hands-on assets. So it felt more palatable to us to invest that into a real asset versus investing it into other types of assets where we could physically go to the property. We could physically feel it, touch it. And that’s another reason why we wanted to invest local.
That also felt like the right move for us. Not only did we both graduate from University of Tennessee, but we just love our town. We love Knoxville, and we wanted to contribute to a Knoxville economy too. So it just felt like all of those pieces aligned really well to move us in the right direction.

Ashley:
Now, what happened after you listed that condo on Airbnb? Did it end up being successful? Did you have to pivot at all? What did it look like?

Chris:
Yeah. So going back to just our initial plan of renting it out to students, I think we did just some really rough calculations on a napkin. And we saw that we can maybe cash flow, I think it was at the time, like three or $400, which at the time I thought that was pretty good. And so that was just kind of what our base was off of. And when we first listed on Airbnb, we got our first guest within two hours of listing it. And that was not something that we were expecting. And so we had that first guest literally that night. So we rushed over there, got the place ready, made sure that every little thing was done. And then we left. The guest came. And the first thing that they reached out about was, “Hey, I locked myself out.” And I think this was within three hours of them checking in.
And we were like, “Oh boy.” And mind you, this was at 2:00 in the morning. So this is our first experience. 2:00 in the morning, guest reaches out, “Hey, I locked myself out.” We

Knesia:
Have a five-month-old baby at

Chris:
Home. Yep. And of course, the key is with us at our house, because there is a digital lock. But what we didn’t realize was the handle part where you open the door was also a locked doorknob at the time. So he had absolutely locked that as well when he left. And so we were like, “Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?” So luckily, I saw the message come through at two in the morning. I rushed over there, unlocked the door for him. And then since then, we literally, after he checked out, removed that door and put a door without a lock on it. And we’ve never really had an issue since then. But that was kind of our first experience of an Airbnb day one, which is kind of comical to think about at this point.

Tony:
So I guess I’m just curious guys, did this first experience of a 2:00 AM wake-up call, which is probably the nightmare scenario for everybody that gets into the short-term rental space, did it deter you guys from continuing to scale up? Or I guess just what happened with that first listing and how did it change your strategy moving forward?

Chris:
Yeah. Like I said, when we first listed it on Airbnb, we got the first guest within two hours. And then I think about three days later, pretty much our calendar was basically full for the next six months in those couple days of listing it. We did not realize that. And thinking back on it, because our pricing was literally the same every single day, there was no pricing strategy, there was no dynamic pricing that we had included at the time. So I think it was like $129 every single day for the whole calendar year. And these game days, which at the time we didn’t realize can go up two, $3,000 a night for home games here in Knoxville. So I think with a combination of just standard pricing without controlling the calendar, we didn’t realize how quickly the calendar would get filled up. And it was just kind of by mistake at first that we were like, okay, we’re just going to have to keep pushing back when students can come.
And as the weeks rolled in, the calendar just kept getting booked and booked and booked. And here we are a year later and the calendar is fully booked. So that’s kind of when we started realizing, okay, maybe we try this Airbnb thing and see just how it turns out in one year and we’ll just give us one year leeway and see how it goes. I think that was our time or that was our thinking at the time.

Knesia:
And also we were not yet thinking about expansion.
So that’s what we were just approaching it as that unit. That’s our one short-term rental. Let’s just take care of the guests that are coming in to that particular unit. Hopefully we won’t get many more midnight calls. But it taught us a very important lesson to think about what are some things that the guests might reach out about ahead of time and try to mitigate them before they even happen. Like the doorknob scenario, for example. Now in all of our properties, that’s one of the first things that we check. Are there any other lockable doorknobs that would prompt this scenario? However painful that was on the very first night of our Airbnb journey, it taught us a very valuable lesson. There’s been other lessons since then, of course. But no, I don’t think it really deterred us. It was more, okay, that happened. What do we do to make sure that that doesn’t happen again?

Ashley:
How did the cashflow compare to the long-term rental? You had expected maybe $300 per month for a long-term rental. What did it end up being for a short-term rental?

Chris:
So like I said, our rough calculation on a napkin, it was going to be about three, $400 in cashflow to get a student in there. Once the football season started rolling in, like I said, it was priced at $129 straight across that first year. I believe that in a month we were bringing home. And mind you, we were also cleaning as well, her and I, fully. We didn’t have any cleaners. We cleaned it ourselves. I think the revenue a month was 38 to 4,000 a month on average.

Ashley:
And what were, after your expenses, how much did your cashflow?

Knesia:
That would’ve brought our cashflow to about 4X for a short-term rental versus long-term rental.

Ashley:
Now coming up, Chris and Kesenia explain how they learned a business they never planned to start, why they cleaned the first property themselves, and how a HELOC helped them move from a one bedroom condo to an entire house. That’s right after this. Welcome back. Chris and Kesenia, Airbnb demand changed the plan for you on that first deal, but now let’s talk about how you learned to operate it and turn one successful test into a repeatable strategy. So Chris, once you realized this was now a short-term rental, how did you learn what to do next?

Chris:
Yeah, so I think not outsourcing anything really accelerated how to operate a short-term rental, whether it’s cleaning, whether it’s guest communication, whether it’s just operations and scheduling and doing all that, and just keeping that straight while still working a full-time job. So I think allowing us to do it ourselves really accelerated that path forward. So I think once we realized that, okay, maybe we should try doing our first property as a full-time Airbnb going forward, when we made that decision is when I really did due diligence in listening to as many podcasts through BiggerPockets, through different sources of information, whether it’s YouTube, whether it’s listening to podcasts, whether it’s reading books. I tried to just soak up as much information as I possibly could. And sometimes it didn’t even pertain to short-term rentals, just real estate in general. Because before this, we weren’t versed in it at all.
And I think that really helped us get to where we are, just listening to it every day, really getting into the details and how other people really have built their successful SER businesses before us. And then that’s really helped a lot.

Tony:
Now, one thing I’m curious is that you guys did decide to handle the cleaning and a lot of the maintenance yourselves. I guess one, why did you guys choose to go down that path? And then two, what did that hands-on experience teach you and how did it benefit you as you guys scaled up the portfolio?

Knesia:
Yeah, I think the big reason why we wanted to do it ourselves is because we wanted to learn this business. If we’re doing this seriously, if we’re taking this seriously, we wanted to learn the ins and outs of all the aspects of running a short-term rental. And cleaning is a huge part of the guest experience. What is a guest arriving to? What is the first thing that they see? And if we’re hiring someone, if we’re bringing someone on board, we want to be able to train them. And in order to train someone in the standards that we have, we need to set those standards for ourselves. And I think a big thing for me, so coming from the business background, having the accounting background, I also wanted to understand the effort and the cost and do that analysis. Okay, how much effort is it to truly turn a short-term rental versus cleaning a house?
There’s a huge difference with that. So you’re going in and you’re fully resetting the property. So it was really important to me personally to fully understand all aspects of that. And with setting up the property, I think my experience also translated directly to that with how much I’ve traveled for my consulting job. I’ve stayed at hotels all over the country, all over the world, and I knew what I would want to see in a stay. What are the things that are missing from a hotel that I would want to see it in an Airbnb? Or what are the things that we’re missing from an Airbnb that are really a hotel amenity that could be brought into it to give that special experience? So I think the core value for us has been always let’s create spaces that we want to spend time in, that we would want to stay.
And if that’s what we’re doing, let’s clean it to the standard that we would clean the place that we would want to arrive to. The smell that we want to smell when we first open the door, even small things like that, like the lighting that is there when the guest first opens the door, those little things all add to the guest experience. But at the same time, doing it in a way that it is not overwhelming and is not overly personalized. So it gives you that feeling of home without feeling like you have just entered someone else’s spare bedroom. But you have arrived somewhere that is a curated experience that has all the comforts of home, gives you the quality standard of a high-end hotel. And it’s very difficult to communicate that to someone. I can conceptually talk about it, but if I’ve not walked that road myself and have learned what does it take to actually put that experience together from cleaning, from how do we message the guests, from what are the amenities that we include in our properties?
Then I’m not able to train the team. I’m not able to set that standard. That was hugely important to us.

Tony:
Yeah. And Kasenya, I know as you guys have scaled that you’ve been able to maintain a really tight, I guess, compliance or the quality of your turns are still very strong and you guys have really strong review scores across your portfolio, which is hard to do as your portfolio scales. So I think the time that you guys invested, really learning the ropes yourselves has definitely paid dividends as you’ve scaled. But I want to talk a little bit more about the financing piece. You mentioned that the first one was you guys just kind of saved up you guys from your day jobs, how you guys afforded the first one. But how did you guys get enough capital to buy the second one? Because for a lot of rookies, we can understand, hey, save some money to buy the first one. But deal number two and deal number three, it becomes harder to wrap their heads around, okay, how do we actually get enough money for that?
So Chris, how did you guys, after taking down the first one, where’d the capital come for the second one?

Chris:
Yeah. So after the first one, we realized that, okay, this definitely has a lot more cashflow potential than a long-term rental. Of course, there’s a lot more work involved, but the cashflow is well worth it. So I was thinking, okay, if we were to get into another property, does it make sense to try another one bedroom, one bath? Or can we get into a home and potentially four times what we’re cash flowing now with more rooms? So we were searching and we came across a property. At the time it was listed for $650,000. And this was in the end of 2022. And of course, getting into that first property, a lot of our liquidity or liquid cash was gone by the time you furnish it, by the time you do all these things. And we didn’t have long enough time to build up the reserves to get into a second property.
So we actually looked into a HELOC. And since we bought our primary in 2018, it appreciated quite significantly in the four years that we had it. And we decided to actually take some money out of our primary to get into the second home. And that’s kind of the strategy that we used to get into that second property.

Tony:
And on that note, a lot of investors have leveraged the HELOC to do exactly what you guys did, but there are some folks who are listening that are maybe hesitant to tap into the equity from their primary residence to help them buy an investment property. What was it for you guys that gave you the confidence to say, “Hey, this is a risk worth taking?”

Chris:
Well, I think that first property really showed us that, hey, if a one bedroom, one bath can work and we can really maximize our cashflow running the property really well. At that point, we knew that, okay, this first property has shown us that getting into a second property that’s much larger can prove is worth the risk since we already had the experience, that one-year experience under our belt. So that gave us the confidence to really fully move into the second property, which is a four bedroom, three bath. So quite a bit larger than our first one.

Knesia:
And I would also add that we were really trading our equity for an equity in another property. So thinking about it that way really helped me get past that. Not just think, “Oh, well, I’m taking money out of my personal home.” Is it a risk? Absolutely. It definitely is. But trading equity from one property to another property, it did not feel like an outflow. It almost felt like an expansion or a trade. It had carried a very different weight with it than it would if we were to take that money and use it for something else.

Chris:
Yeah, I think for me, the true pivot happened when I believed in myself and in us that we could make this a successful move. And I think that was the biggest thing is just having the confidence and knowing your own ability and really investing in your time and your ability that you can make this work. I think that was the biggest shift for me, moving from that first property to that second property.

Ashley:
Now, as you continued to host more and more people, what was your ideal guest? Who were your guests? And what did you take away from that to actually find other properties to purchase in the future?

Chris:
Yeah, absolutely. So right now, all of our properties are no more than three miles from campus, from the University of Tennessee. So that’s really our market, our niche market. And because we’re every property that we either have or own, since it’s so close to school, that I want to say 80% of our guests are somehow affiliated with the university, whether it’s alumni, whether it’s parents of students, whether it’s professionals that are here for a conference with the school. So I want to say that 80% of our guests are somehow connected to the university here. And that’s really been our niche market. And that’s who we try to cater to the most.

Ashley:
Tony, do you have any experience with that? I know you’re really selective into vacation areas or whatever, but have you or maybe any of your students done something similar where they go in, create their Airbnb, and their ideal guest type ends up actually being something not what they expected or completely different? When I had an Airbnb arbitrage, a large majority of our guests were there to visit family members in the local nursing home. We never would’ve expected that would’ve been an ideal guest, but that was a large majority because there was nowhere else to stay in the area.

Tony:
Because most of our, or all of our short-term rentals are really in true vacation destinations with a very low permanent resident population, we generally know what people are coming for. But yeah, there’s definitely been folks, Kristen Continia being one of them who have invested in markets that there’s multiple drivers for demand. And we might think that A is the initial driver, but as we get into it, it ends up being B. But that’s why honestly guys, when I talk about looking at markets, I think it’s important to understand what the demand drivers are and to obviously build your property around that. But sometimes people will look at a city and say, “Well, why are people going there?” And my answer sometimes is like, “Does it really matter what’s driving them there? If the demand is increasing on a year-over-year basis and the revenues are really strong and the price to revenue ratios are really strong, I’m kind of indifferent about what’s actually bringing them there.
It’s just the fact that the people are there and there’s more people there this year than there were last year. So I think I would put more importance on the trends of demand more so than what’s actually driving the demand itself. Unless it’s something weird that’s like a, hey, people are only coming here because there’s, I don’t know, it’s like the World Cup. Hey, the World Cup is only coming around to this place once in a lifetime, so that’s never going to happen again. But as long as it’s consistency, I think I’m okay with that. But Chris and Kasenya, I think that the other part of your story that I really love is that you two are doing this together. And there are a lot of husband and wife duos, a lot of spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends, whatever it may be, people who are couples that are doing this together who would love to follow in your footsteps.
And I know one of the questions that me and Sarah, my wife oftentimes get is how do you guys divide responsibilities as a couple? And how is that dynamic being a husband and wife, but also being business partner? So yeah, I guess Kasenya, maybe we’ll start with you. How have you guys divvied up the responsibilities in your business as business partners?

Knesia:
Sure. I think over time we have learned that we have really complimentary strengths to one another. So with my background and how my brain operates, I love anything operations related standardization, thinking through how can we make this experience for our guests, but more being on the back end of things. Being guest-facing is not my forte, but that is his forte. He is excellent at guest communication and relationship and all messaging and things like that. So we’ve over time kind of settled into these roles where he runs the front of the house and I run the back of the house. And it was not something that we said, “Okay, you handle this and I’ll handle that.” Thankfully, we naturally fell into these roles that really aligned with our abilities well. So then we may think about things totally differently, and he may be considering things that I didn’t even think about.
So when we sit down and do our rundown for the day, all right, what do we have going on? Who’s checking in? Who’s checking out? What’s on our schedule? Oftentimes the things that I say are very different than the things that he will say. That’s exactly why we started our daily rundowns because we’ve learned that not only do our brains work so differently, but because we fill those complimentary roles, we are so focused on our lane, so to speak. So we have to purposefully come together to really create that best experience for our guest. Overall, I It’s been awesome to work together. And part of it, I think it is because we’re so complimentary to one another. We fill each other’s gaps really well. And we also get to bounce ideas off of each other and we get to share in the highs and the lows of the business when there’s that situation with the lockout that we mentioned at the beginning, it was not, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is happening in the middle of the night.
Why did you do this? Okay, this is our thing. Let’s go take care of it. Obviously we’ve got a little baby at home. It makes more sense for you to hop in the car at two in the morning.” It’s that kind of thing. But sometimes it’s let’s get our kids in the car and go fix that TV because we need four hands. So we do that. It’s been really enjoyable to do that together. And now that our kids are getting older, so they’re preschool age, but not babies anymore, we get to bring them with us and check on the properties. And sometimes they’ll ask questions like, “Oh, the guests coming today? What are they here for?” Or, “Are we going to get balloons for them?” Things like that. And it’s been really exciting to do that and share that not only with one another, but with our children as well.

Ashley:
I can relate to that aspect of when we were renovating our A-frame property. My kids were there all the time to see this huge transition of their remodel. And before we listed it, we stayed there a couple nights and we would just be like, “Just think anytime we want, we can come and stay here. This is ours.” And it was so exciting. Guess how many times we’ve stayed there since renting it? It’s so hard to block off a night for yourself because you think about, oh God, we are missing out on that money. We got to pay the cleaning fee still. But it is cool to share that with your kids.

Tony:
And I think what oftentimes makes two people work as spouses also allows them to work together as business partners as well, because naturally, a lot of times people end up marrying folks that they are complimentary with. And it’s the same thing for me and my wife where it’s like the details that I’m good at, she doesn’t want to do. The things that she’s really good at, I don’t want to do. And as a business partners, we just really naturally compliment each other. So I love that it’s kind of played out that way for you guys as well. But I think the other part of your story, and that’s really interesting for the Rickies that are listening is that you guys have only been doing this for a short number of years in the grand scheme of things, but you both are now doing this full-time.
So I’m curious, how did you decide when the time was right to actually step away from the W-2s for each of you and turn this into a full-time gig? So Chris, we’ll start with you.

Chris:
Yeah. So yeah, that was a very difficult decision to make as a family. We both had pretty high income W-2s, so it’s not like this was something that was going to be super easy to walk away from by any means. But for me, since I was really the one running the guests, messaging, making sure that everything was getting done, it was easier for me to step away from my work and really start doing this thing full-time. Since Cassania was still running the backend of stuff, she could still do it while she was working at W-2. But for me, going to property to property, making sure that everything was perfect, making sure that the guests had exactly what they went. For me to be on call twenty four seven, I couldn’t do that with a regular job. So we’ve been running short-term rentals now for four years.
And just this past October or December- December. December was when we finally made the decision that she could also walk away from her W-2 and also start really focusing on the business. But I think the real pivotal moment was when we realized, “Hey, we’re making enough for this to actually live off of.” I think that’s an easy answer that, “Hey, we’re making enough. This is kind of replacing our W-2. So yeah, why not? This is not a nine to five by any means. So why not walk away from the W-2 and really just invest in our own business and see where we can go if we’re both doing this full-time?”

Tony:
Guys, when you first started, when you got that first rental just a few short years ago, did you ever imagine that that quickly you both would be able to be full-time in the business?

Chris:
No, not at all. I think after we got that second property, I think in my head at the time, I thought it would be another couple years before we got into our third, if we were even going to get into our third. Obviously, that was not the case. But no, we did not imagine that we’d be here in such short amount of time.

Knesia:
Yeah. I think getting into that first rental gave us the vision for it being possible, but the timeline, absolutely not. We thought that was years away. We though that the opportunity to be able to not only work with one another, but to be home with our family, to be there for things like extracurricular activities or school pickup and things like that, to actually be there. Did I have a flexibility with my W-2? I did. I’m very fortunate that I had a lot of flexibility with my W-2 before. But there were times where I would be in the pickup line and on a call at the same time. That’s not really being there. So the decision to fully step away and step into this business and really be with the family was the best decision that we’ve made. And I would also say that the numbers don’t have to be there a hundred percent when you make that decision.
When you see that the numbers are pointing in the right direction and you know that you, especially if you’re doing this as a family, you as a family are aligned on the vision where you want to go, you’re already ready to make that call if that’s where you’re headed.

Ashley:
Now Kesenia, what does your properties look like now? How many do you guys have in total? And you guys are also co-hosting some. So how many are you guys co-hosting?

Knesia:
So we have nine that are our own, and then we co-host eight more.

Ashley:
That’s amazing. Congratulations.

Tony:
Well, guys, don’t go anywhere. Chris and Kasenya are closing out with how business changed, not just for their financial reasons, but their family life as well, and what a rookie should evaluate before choosing short-term rentals and the advice they wish they had when they first started filling up their calendar. So we’ll be back in just a quick moment. All right guys, we’re back with Chris and Kasenya. Now, you guys now operate 17 short-term rentals between your owned and your managed properties in the same market where you began, but the gold started with creating more time for your family. So I want to understand how that goal has actually been impacted. So how has building this business changed your family life and your definition of freedom?

Chris:
Yeah, so it’s changed a lot. I think the biggest thing for us is that we do everything pretty much together. So pickups, drop-offs, any kind of extracurricular activities that our children may have, we’re there for. We don’t miss a single one. And that’s really important to us that we’re there for those moments. And then at night, for the most part, we’re all together as a family. We definitely eat dinners together every night. We do bedtimes together every night. So having this freedom now in the four years has really allowed us to spend so much time with our kids, with our friends, with our families. And that’s definitely something that has always been the vision and we didn’t really know how to get there. But at this point in time, yeah, I think we’ve made that vision a reality day to day.

Knesia:
Absolutely. And I know my work would take me away from home a lot for travel. So that has been a huge shift for us as well, where I’m home overnight. I’ve not been away overnight from my family and that’s been very, very exciting.

Chris:
Yeah. I think something that we really value now that we’re in the thick of things is we actually get to help out our friends in situations where let’s say they have a nine to five, they’re stuck at work, they can’t pick up their kids, or they can’t do this or that. We’re there to help. And I love the fact that we’re able to bridge that gap and be that, “Hey guys, we’re here. We can do this. We can help you guys since we do have some of the freedoms that maybe some people don’t have to use our time.” So I love the fact that we’re able to help our friends and with their family moments and family time. So I love that aspect as well.

Knesia:
When working together and spending the time that we get to spend with one another, I think has also strengthened our marriage quite a bit because we’re able to spend a lot of time together, work through problems together, problem solve, troubleshoot, and just connect with one another. And we’re very thankful for that opportunity. So few people really get to do that.

Chris:
And I do love also the fact that now that our children are getting a little older, they are starting to get involved now, which I love. I see so many situations where, even for myself, yeah, I knew what my dad did, but I don’t really know what my dad. I didn’t know his day-to-day because he was always out. But with us, we bring our children into what we do. They’ve talked to our guests. They’ve set properties up with us. They’ve cleaned with us even. So they’re really also. It’s now become more of a family thing than just a me and Kasenya thing. So I love the fact that we’re able to include our children in it as well. And they get to have the insight of, “Hey, this is what mommy and daddy do.”

Ashley:
I read this article the other day, and I was trying to Google real quick what it was called, but there was a term of parents who are doing a retirement period of time, almost like a sabbatical while their kids are teenagers to be able to drive them to all their activities and doing sports and things like that. But I think that’s a great thing about real estate is you can already have that life by the time they are teenagers too, if you start investing sooner.

Tony:
Well, guys, for people who are listening and they’re resonating with your story, but maybe they’re worrying that short-term rentals, Airbnbs are just too much work or they’re too unpredictable, what would you tell them as they think about deciding whether or not short-term rentals are the right strategy for them?

Chris:
Well, I think our advantage was that we were already doing it from day one together. I don’t think we would be where we are at if it was just me wanting to do it or if it was just her wanting to do it and I just kind of followed along or if she just kind of followed. I think our biggest advantage from day one was that we were both in it together. Whether it was really late night calls or whether it was unexpected things, we knew that, okay, let’s go tackle it together. Let’s bring the kids, let’s hop in the car and let’s go. I can’t imagine trying to do this, especially in the early years by myself. And I’m sure you can either. I think that’s the biggest advantage that we’ve had so far. But another thing is, I mean, I hate to say it, but I do want to say that we got lucky in a sense as well.
There was a little bit of luck with just us buying that property on campus and then us realizing that, hey, this has not been worked long-term for a couple months and pivoting to a short term. And I mean, that was kind of luck. I mean, that was not something that we had planned. Now, we took advantage of that situation, but it was not something that we saw as a vision or anything like that. So I think there was a little bit of luck as well in our journey to where we are now.

Knesia:
And I would say if you’re even remotely thinking about it, just do it because you can get stuck. I know I can get stuck in the analysis paralysis mode. And I would say, “Well, if this happens, what if? If this happens, what if? Okay, let’s talk through that scenario. If that happens, what are we going to do? Okay, A, B, and C. Great. We talked through that scenario. That’s fine. It’s out of my head now. If another scenario comes up, let’s talk through it and that scenario is out of my head. Though if you’re even remotely thinking about getting into real estate or getting into a short-term rental, because if you’re willing to put in the work, the cashflow is worth it, then just do it. And learn step by step. Learn as much information as you can. There are people that have come before you that have done this already.
There’s so many resources out there. Even setting up a property, there’s so many resources in terms of here’s a list of all the things that you need to stock a kitchen with. I know that I pulled one of those lists together when we were setting up our property, and that helped me so much because there’s a fine line in what do I put in the kitchen that is necessary and useful versus overcrowded? There’s that balance too. And there’s already people that have done it and that have figured it out. Use that. See if it works for your property. If it doesn’t, pivot and keep going.

Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for taking the time to share your journey and what you have experienced so far and some of the lessons learned, but also your success. So where can people reach out to you, find out more information about who you are and follow your investing journey?

Knesia:
Yeah. So if you want to take a look at our properties, you can go to rockytopstays.com. And if you want to reach out to us directly, you can send us a note at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

Ashley:
Amazing. Thank you, Chris, and thank you Kesenia for being with us today on the podcast. It’s always a pleasure to have rookie investors on so that our guests can hear their experience and get some motivation, inspiration, and also learn how to get started themselves. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony. And if you guys, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at RealEstateRookie. We’ll see you guys next time. All