Snowballing to $8,500/Month Cash Flow with 10 Rental Units (in Just 6 Years!)
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Today's guest is a rookie investor who has used many different strategies to build an $8,000 per month cash flowing portfolio. From house hacking to live and flips to shmedium rental strategies, this rookie proves that putting in the extra effort

can mean a huge difference in your cash flow. And what makes this story particularly interesting is how she's turned her properties into unique experience in an unsuspecting market, including a Taylor Swift themed unit complete with a custom scavenger hunt. Now, Kelsey Porter has built a portfolio using creative financing, hunting for off market deals, putting in sweat equity and keeping an entrepreneurial mindset for every single project.

This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, and I'm Ashley Kerr. And I'm Tony J. Robinson, and let's give a warm, warm welcome to Kelsey. Kelsey, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. So Kelsey, you caught the bug of real estate investing from one of your clients. Can you tell us that story? Yes. So I have been a realtor since 2018. I've been a realtor since I was a kid.

And I did grow up around new construction and investment properties, some luxury spec homes in the Lake of the Ozarks.

So I did grow up around it, but it was never really on my radar until as a realtor, I helped a first time home buyer in his 20s, Josh from Cleveland, Ohio, shout out to you. And he was obsessed with bigger pockets, obsessed with the idea of house hacking for his first property. And yeah, I helped him buy a very reasonably priced duplex in the greater Cleveland area out there. And he taught me all about house hacking. I understood rental properties.

But he was talking about the ARV after he would do some upgrades to the unit he was going to live in and everything. And yeah, I was like, I'm capable of this. I think my other half will buy in. We got to get on board with this investing. So what was the first step that you took to actually start investing in real estate? We flipped a flip for our first house, so our primary residence.

was a kind of live-in flip that was already flipped, but they skipped out on a few detrimental pieces. And as a realtor, I actually showed the house to a couple of people

different people before we looked at it for ourselves and people kept passing up on it. And I was like, if she just would have taken it to the finish line, she could have gotten so much money for this flip. So we ended up buying it after it sat on the market for a while, lived in it, renovated it, did a couple key pieces that were pretty expensive, like a floor to ceiling, beautiful marble tiled shower, rain shower that was a walk-in and

It took us about a year to save up the funds to do those renovations. And so after we did them and dumped this money into our primary, we were kind of sitting on the couch one day and I was like, okay, how can we house hack next? Like, should we sell this house? Should we rent it out? We have so much money tied up into it. And looking back,

we probably would have done a cash out refinance or a HELOC or something, 'cause we had a very low interest rate on that house in, but we ended up selling it in 2021 so that we could take those funds out and put them towards our first investment properties. We still lived in Ohio at the time,

And my dad called me from Des Moines, Iowa, where we live now. And he had been redoing this duplex inside and out going way over the top on it in the Des Moines area. And he was like, hey, remember that property I've been updating the last two years? I think I'm thinking about selling it. Do you think it's worth much more?

than I paid for it. And so I didn't have access to the MLS as a realtor in Iowa yet, but I ran what comps I could and realized like, holy crap, dad, like this duplex is worth way more than you paid for it. Then I got off the phone with him, sat down and I was like, wait a minute, this duplex that my dad has completely remodeled

and done up really well is exactly the criteria that we're looking for in a duplex in Cleveland, Ohio, but it's 70 years newer. My dad's the one that did the remodeling.

why don't we just buy this? So I called him back and I was like, hey, dad, you're going to sell this duplex and you're going to sell it to me. And he was like, what do you want an out of state duplex in Des Moines, Iowa for? You know, like he's been an investor for years, but he is local to his market. And so he was like an out of state and, you know, duplex. What do you want that for?

And I was like, no, no, no, we want it. And I love that your first two deals came from like relationships or properties that you had a firsthand knowledge of. And obviously not everyone's going to be in that same situation. But I think the lesson for rookies is that sometimes the right deal could be right underneath your nose and you're not even recognize it. But I want to go back to the to the rehab on the, you know, the flip that you flipped.

Um, so did you have any experience? I know you said you kind of grew up in new builds and things like that, but did you personally have any experience prior to that and managing a rehab or DIY projects of that sort? So being around my dad building houses when I was a kid,

We were always bouncing around. Like he would put up a spec home, we would move into it, and then he would sell it out from under us and we'd have to move into the next one and so on and so on until he built his like dream custom home that took him several years to finish. But, you know, I was always kind of around that new construction thing.

live in kind of renovation and finishes. So I have kind of always been around that project management, remodel, new construction. I just never really even thought about it until we bought this house that needed the shower for daily use. And aside from the, aside from the shower, Kelsey, what other maybe leverage points did you guys focus on to increase the value of that property? Yeah. So just little bitty things like we did replace the basement windows, um,

which they were original from the 1940s. So like that adds a little bit of value, but it's not sexy. Like the shower was very sexy. It was expensive. We also replaced the garage door. It was the old original, really, really heavy wood door with like glass windows. It was a liability to be honest.

And we replaced that with a new garage door with a motor and electric opener. I mean, who wants, what first-time homebuyer millennial nowadays wants to move into a house where like they have to get out of their car, open up the garage door, drive in, shut it manually. I mean, it's just little things like that. We added a patio out back. We added some arborvities for surprise.

some privacy because there were still a couple houses behind us that hadn't quite been brought up to today's standards. But yeah, it was in an A-plus neighborhood. We bought really, really well. I'm sure part of that was luck and then part of that was skill, being a realtor myself and knowing what people are chasing. Did you have any lessons learned on this project, like looking back through the whole live and flip

project that you did. Is there anything that you would have done differently or you learned from that experience? Absolutely. I think I touched on it already, but we would have cash out refied. At the time, interest rates were still super low, so we would not have been sacrificing a low rate for a high rate or anything like that.

but we absolutely would have done a cash out refi. It was a killer location, super close to Lake Erie and this beautiful park with a waterfall. We loved this house so much. We probably could have lived there forever. We loved our neighbors. We loved the community. The house was just absolutely adorable and came together so well. So looking back, I think that would be our biggest learning lesson is like, maybe don't sell the real estate. Yeah.

just because you need the money to invest and move on and do other things. Sometimes there's more creativity you can put into it. So Kelsey, I think the million dollar question here is how did this live in flip actually turn out for you? So if you can just walk through the numbers quickly, what was the purchase price?

What did you guys put in for the rehab? What were your total acquisition costs? And then what did you net on the back end when you sold? We paid $226,000 for this single family home in 2019.

In 2020, we sold it for $325,000, so about $99,000 exactly more than we paid for it. Of that $99,000, our expenses in there, so our rehab expenses, the closing costs, marketing expenses, that kind of stuff that we were able to subtract out, ended up being about $25,000.

So our pure net on this property was approximately $75,000. And I know this off the top of my head because we had to pay capital gains. So I forgot to tell you that was another beautiful, wonderful, you don't know what you don't know learning experience from that one was we did not quite live there for two years. And I

am notorious for asking for forgiveness rather than permission. So I knew capital gains was on my radar, the whole idea of it, but I was like, I think we'll be able to get around this for sure. Like, let's just sell it. Let's keep this momentum going. No analysis paralysis here, right? And then what do you know? Our CPA was like, yeah, you have to pay capital gains.

It'd be funny if the IRS actually worked that way where you could say, hey, my bad. I actually didn't know about this. Can we just rewind and pretend like this didn't happen? But IRS wants to get paid. So I don't know if there's someone you could ask for forgiveness. Maybe now that they're cutting huge departments in the IRS that you will be able to do that.

My bad. Okay, we have to take a short ad break. But when we come back, we are going to hear more from Kelsey on how she's mastered the medium strategy and how she finds off-market deals. We'll be right back.

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Okay, let's get back into it with Kelsey. So Kelsey, on one of your more recent deals, you were house hacking a duplex. Can you give us an overview of this project and how you made it work? So we currently live in our dream home.

That we will probably live in for a very long time and potentially raise kids in. And having Airbnbs in our portfolio already, I came home one day and I was like, hmm, I wonder what someone would rent this new construction, four to five bedroom, three full bathroom, finished basement home for, right? Because...

That's just how you think as an investor is like, I wonder what someone would rent our primary out for. So we put it up online and turned a few groups away that just didn't necessarily make sense. And then we got a knock on our door one night.

And this really, really nice, absolute pleasure of a couple was building their dream home. It was a custom build that was taking significantly longer than they expected. And they needed a place to stay than your average kind of Airbnb situation. And so they wanted to live in our house for three months. So we said...

okay, we'll be out in a few days. And then they moved in and then that project ended up taking almost a year. It was about nine months that they rented out our personal residence, furnished, and

and which paid for our wedding that we have coming up in October. Fun little thing there. And while we were doing that, we bounced around our rentals, one of which was a house hacked duplex we purchased. We lived in the first unit. We completely gutted it. And yeah, I wrote these letters to duplex owners and this couple got back and they were like, we're moving out of state to be closer to family, which is what we did when we moved here to Des Moines.

And we are considering selling our duplex. And I was like, cool, we are considering buying it. Let's talk about it. So we ended up getting that deal off market, house hacked it, completely gutted the inside of one unit and the outside of the entire duplex. We lived in both sides at one point. Like I'll rent out anything completely.

Don't leave your house vacant too long because my parents joke that I will like have their house rented out when they come back from Florida. I can rent out anything and for like a lot of money. So I'll make you a lot of money if I rent your house out. But that's just something I'm notorious for. So I like we finished gutting the inside of the one unit while we're living there, which we lived without anything.

living room for about 30 to 35 days. So we were just like working and like...

relaxing at night in bed we like spent way too much time in bed when we didn't have a living room and then once we started coming to a completion of the inside of that unit I actually filled it on furnished finder with a travel nurse for the winter and so I was like oh sorry I'm kicking us out and we have to move next door into the other unit and do the same thing all over again because I've got a travel nurse moving in here so I want to go back to the very beginning I

Just on a whim, you decide to list your primary residence. Was this on Furnished Finder too? They listed it on? Yes, on Furnished Finder, on Airbnb and on Zillow just because it's a more luxury medium term situation. So we kind of put our eggs in a lot of baskets. So in this situation, okay, you get somebody that wants to rent it and you move out with, you said a couple of weeks later,

What are some of the things that you must do? You're living in this property to get it ready. Is there anything that was like, you must do these three things if you're moving out of your primary, leaving all your stuff basically to get it ready for a renter or a

Nothing. You just have to take your personal belongings and go. Yeah. So this was a pretty unique situation in the sense that we didn't have a lot of competition in our suburb. And these people wanted to move in really quick, really sought after this property and knocked on our door. And so I was actually at Pickleball. It was a Tuesday night. My fiance texted me and was like, somebody just knocked on our door and wants to rent our house. And I'm like, what? And so they were like, we know it's really sudden, but we'd love to move in Sunday. Yeah.

This was Tuesday night. And he was like, no way. Like, well, that's too soon. And they were like, it's fine. This house is perfect. Like, you know, we just really want to be here while we're waiting on our new build. So whatever you need to make work, we can make work. And so I come home from pickleball and he's like, yeah, get this. They wanted to move in Sunday. And I was like, ha ha ha. And then I thought about it and I was like, I think we could do it.

And he was like, what? And I was like, yeah, I think we live very minimalist. We have two spare bedrooms. It's just the two of us. We have barely any photos up on the walls. It's all just like simple artwork. We're pretty, we're just pretty minimalist. We don't have a bunch of stuff in all of our closets. I do have a very organized OCD storage room for my Airbnb supplies. So that was a bit of a cluster.

We kind of moved that into my parents have an outbuilding, but it's like 45 minutes to 50 minutes away from Des Moines. So that was not very convenient. But yeah, I mean, basically, I just got a Schlage keypad, which I'm like a huge Schlage gal. And I put it underneath our stairs to the basement. There's a little closet where I keep my like real estate stuff. And I put it underneath our stairs to the basement.

And my, my signs, my lock boxes and all that. And so I just, we just started dumping everything we didn't need for what we thought was going to be three months, but ended up being nine months plus. I mean, honestly, they, this couple treated our house better than we do. So yeah, they were great. And we just put a key pad on a closet door and shoved everything we didn't need to take with us. Now, the other part, you said that you, you moved into this duplex, but you, you briefly mentioned that you founded by sending out letters to

So I guess a couple of follow-up questions here, but first,

How did you build this list of potential duplexes to send to? Were you driving for dollars? Were you pulling from some website? And then what did you actually say in the letter that prompted the response? Yes, I'm an open book about these letters because they are a little bit of work, right? So we would drive for dollars. We drove for dollars for probably the first six months we lived in Des Moines. But yeah, so I've sent about 75 of these letters out.

over the last couple years, and I have successfully closed three deals from them. I've had seven total responses.

Two of them were crazy and wanted way too much. And I was like, whatever. And then two of them I'm nurturing. So those are nurture leads. And I know for a fact, I will buy those duplexes in the next couple of years because I'm going to be the first person they call. And yeah, I've been nurturing those relationships. So it is a Canva designed letter. And I'm an open book about sharing that with other people, mainly because I know a lot of people won't put in the work, right?

It takes work to handwrite some of the details on the envelopes and the letters and to get them printed and to take them to the post office and to drive for dollars and then stalk who owns these properties. Like it's a lot of work, but it's been extremely fruitful for us. Well, getting seven callbacks.

And closing three of them. I feel like that's a pretty good ratio. I mean, I'm not in sales, but I feel like that's pretty good. Yes. No, it really is. And as a realtor, I have sent out thousands of mailers. I've spent thousands of dollars doing these mailers as a realtor to try to pick up listings and clients. And I've never gotten a call back. Not once.

And I've used all these fancy schmancy systems and all this stuff. So I just went back to the basics, back to old school. I'm going to design this letter. I'm going to print them. I'm going to handwrite as much as possible. I'm going to send them manually. And that has worked. Kelsey, what are you actually saying in the letter when you mail it out? So I start by introducing...

Hi. So we have a picture. We have a cute picture of us on there because I think it's really important to put a face to a name. And I just introduce us. I say, I'm Kelsey and Carson. We own the duplex over at 123 Main Street. I actually put one of our duplex addresses, whichever one's closest to the duplex I'm asking them to sell me. And that is strategic. I want these middle-aged, retired people.

landlords to drive by our duplexes and see, wow, this, this, you know, younger couples really taking care of their properties. They really are doing things right. Like I'm not afraid of people knowing what we own when I'm trying to buy something from them. So I actually put in the letter, we own the property over at, you know, one, two, three main street and

And that we're looking to grow our portfolio, that I'm a realtor. So I do disclose that up front and that he is a data analyst and that we're just obsessed with real estate and we really want to grow our portfolio here locally in Des Moines.

and that we live down in the Norwalk suburb and I've got family that helps us and it's a whole family team ordeal that we're doing. And then I go on to let them know how long we've been together. We've been together about 13 years. We met at Truman State University in Northeast Missouri and everyone in the Midwest kind of knows the surrounding Midwest states. And so the fact that we've got

family, you know, in Kansas City and St. Louis and Omaha and, you know, down in rural parts of Iowa, like, it just it's relatable, I think, for a lot of these people. And then I just, you know, close it out by basically not being salesy at all. And just open ending, you know, we would love to buy this duplex from you, we could potentially have a cash.

conventional financing or seller financing option for you. And then I kind of explain in one little quick sentence without being pushy that the seller financing option could mean complete passive income, which as landlords, we all know that almost doesn't exist, right? Unless you're a private money lender or something like it's hard to be very hands off and still make that mailbox money.

So I actually say that directly with the seller financing option. And then I kind of close out by saying, you know, if you're not willing to sell this to us, no big deal. We also love networking with other investors locally, and we'd love to hear your story and how you got started. And so I think, you know, it's just very not pushy, not salesy, and it just opens the floor for relationship building. Kelsey, how have you been able to finance all of these properties? So we have been self-funded.

up until now. And basically we're just, again, frugal. We live under our means. So if that means, you know, continuing to cook meals in all the time and squirreling away funds or traveling only when we have a place to stay because friends have a vacation home somewhere or stay with friends somewhere, you know, whatever it takes to squirrel away as much as possible to snowball into that next property, that's really what's worked for us.

And then, you know, house hacking previously and putting less down to be able to have funds to do the remodels and the furnishing of units. That's really helped as well. But yeah, most of our loans have been conventional, either, you know, 5% to 10% down primary residence house hacking loans, or we've had a few that are just traditional investing loans too, where we put 25% down. And those always hit a little harder. Yeah.

Because you got to come up, you know, to the closing table with so much more cash. But in the end, we've been doing the short and medium term method with these units so that we can cash flow more than any other method.

So that then we can snowball into the next. I love that idea. And just one last question for me on the direct mail piece, because I'm so fascinated by this amazing response rate that you have. But you had also mentioned that you've got a couple of leads right now that you're nurturing. And I think that's something that a lot of rookies don't fully grasp.

is that the likelihood of you sending a piece of mail and closing that deal in one conversation or even two conversations is exceptionally low. So what does nurturing look like for you, Kelsey? How are you nurturing these leads to the point where they actually get to the, they say yes on you buying their property? So I think this comes from years of experience as a realtor and top, top,

and training as a realtor. But, you know, when I say I'm nurturing these leads, that means that every couple months I have a touch, which means I'm in contact with them some way. If that's just shooting them a text saying, you know, happy birthday, or I hope everything's going well with your daughter and the new grandbaby you have, or

Or if it's, hey, just drove by the property and noticed you guys removed that tree, you know, like it looks so good. And then also I include, this is so funny, but I include all of these nurture leads for potential investment properties. I include these people's names and personal residence addresses on our Christmas card list. So they're getting a Christmas card from me every year. They're getting these touch points every couple months.

And then once in a while, I'll send out like a postcard follow up to that letter just saying like, hey, don't forget about us. We want to buy your duplex when you're ready. So again, not salesy. I do not believe in cold calling as a realtor or an investor.

I've had to do that before for work and I have not enjoyed it and I only believe in doing things that I enjoy. So yeah, it's just some touch points throughout the year to just remind them why wouldn't they call me when they're ready to sell is what I want the whole aura of the situation to be. It seems like one of your strengths as a real estate investor is the networking and just keeping in touch with people, sending out those mailers or Christmas cards,

Is there anything else that you are doing to keep in touch with other investors or contractors or leads that you're doing that sets you apart from other investors that aren't as active in the networking piece? Yeah, so I go to any networking event that has anything to do with real estate or contractors or real estate investing in the greater Des Moines area. I'm always...

Always looking at what is my next event I'm going to. I'm very involved at the local level through our Chamber of Commerce here. And so I'm meeting other people in business constantly with that.

and building relationships with other investors locally is one great because I'm a realtor. So if I ever have a property, I could take it to them if it fits their buy box, and maybe, you know, sell a house from it. But mainly I build these relationships because I believe in an abundance mindset. I think that there are investors out there and realtors and any industry has them. But

I think there's a lot of people out there that think, ooh, this deal crossed my desk. I have to have it. I'm not letting anyone else buy this. And I believe in an abundance mindset. So if it's not good timing for us and our finances, if we're still bouncing back from that last property we purchased, or maybe it just doesn't quite fit our buy box exactly, we're

I'm going to pass that on to another investor and ideally someone who hasn't even bought any properties yet and they've got that, you know, bug and they want to start but they don't know where to begin. That's what I believe in with my networking is building these relationships, having that abundance mindset, being able to pass off these deals if they don't necessarily work for us at that time because there's always going to be another one.

And while there are finite properties, and that's why I love the Mark Twain quote of buy land, they're not making any more of it. There is finite real estate, right? But for X, Y, Z reasons, people are selling things all the time and offloading properties all the time. So if this deal doesn't work out and I can hook someone else up with this deal, whatever.

The next one is going to be even more perfect for our buy box. Now, something else I want to ask you here, Kelsey, is I know that you've spent a lot of time researching the right loan product. And I think Ashley and I both have benefited as we've built our portfolio and getting access to certain loan products maybe other folks were overlooking, weren't aware of, or maybe just weren't offered at the banks that they were going to.

And you've got something called this all-in-one mortgage. So I've personally never heard of this. Ashley hasn't. Our listeners probably haven't as well. So what is it and why has it been beneficial for you? So that was actually our very first duplex. So if you remember, I said we put a bunch of our funds that we pulled out of that first flip into our first duplex.

We bought it traditionally in terms of, you know, it wasn't a house hack. It was a true investment. So we had to put 25% down. Well, if you remember, we just put about 25 grand into that flip out of pocket and, you know, had to sell or we thought we had to sell at the time to pull money out to buy our first rental. So we were thinking like, dang, if you got to put 25% down every time,

you know, you buy a property, how are you possibly ever going to be able to save up to buy the next one? You know, it just seems like this, it seems like you're treading through concrete sometimes when it comes to these heavy down payments. So we ended up doing some research and really it was more of like an experimental thing. It was really hard to find any information on it, but basically there's a couple different names for this style loan. An all-in-one mortgage is

It's also referred to as an offset mortgage. And then it is also referred to as an interest only mortgage. And so basically what it is, is kind of like a HELOC. So a home equity line of credit where you can, instead of having to sell the property or refinance and do a cash out refi to get money out of the property that you have in it, you can actually have access to those funds and

and it's just an interest-only payment. So instead of a traditional mortgage, every month that you're paying principal, interest, taxes, insurance, you're just paying the interest. In theory, we could take money out of that account, use that for the down payment, just like you would a HELOC, and then you're only paying interest on the balance of that loan. It's pretty common in some other countries and parts of the world, but it was really hard to find any loans

You know, articles or videos of people explaining what this is, and it is really powerful. And as you can imagine, the underwriting process on this type of loan is extensive, much more so than a conventional or commercial loan from my experience.

Because as you can imagine, it's a lot of power to give someone to be able to access funds, you know, after closing. And it works just like a checking account, essentially. And you even get a debit card in the mail, which is terrifying.

But yeah, after closing, we basically got a letter in the mail with a debit card to that account. And it works like a checking account. So basically, to clarify, this is a home equity line of credit where you have the line of credit. So right now for my two line of credits that I have, I emailed the bank. I send them a form saying I'd like to...

They put that money into whatever checking account I want that money in. With this all-in-one mortgage, what they're doing is they're giving you access to a line of credit with a checking account, and that money is sitting in the checking account then, and then you just use that debit card or you use a checkbook to actually write a check, and then you're only paying interest on what you've used.

Out of the checking account? Is that tracking? Correct. You're paying interest on the balance of that principal of that mortgage. So, you know, we put 25% down right away because we bought it as an investment. So 75% of that purchase price is what we're paying interest on, right? Because that's the loan. But the more money we pump into that, the lower our principal comes down.

the less interest we're paying. The more money we take out of that account, the greater our principal is on that loan, the more interest we're paying. So it's kind of like this give and take. So we always thought we would use this as an emergency fund situation where we don't

We don't have the fund access to the funds in other ways. So let's pull it out to buy this next property. We've actually used it more to pump money into because it's saving us, you know, 4%, 6%. It's a variable rate after the first three years.

So it's saving us. The more money we pump into this account, it is saving us in interest rather than just sitting in our checking account, not really doing anything for us. So we've actually done the opposite and we pump more money into it, but we do knowing that we have access to those funds if we need them. We don't like to use the debit card a whole lot, but we have wired directly from this account to close on a property before. So we have kind of used it like we thought we would, but instead of

taken more and more money out, we've actually been leaning more towards putting more and more money in to save us on that interest. We have to take our final ad break. But when we come back, I want to hear the overall picture of what your cash flow is on these properties. We're going to be right back after this. And if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you are subscribed to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube channel. And if you're listening on your favorite podcast app, make sure to leave us a reading and review. We'll be right back.

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Okay, welcome back from our break. We are here with Kelsey. So Kelsey, what does the overall cash flow look like on your properties today? So our portfolio so far, we average about $8,500 a month. And that is after all expenses, reserves, you know,

the full pity payment, the principal, the interest, the taxes, the insurance, everything's said and done, we are at a point where our portfolio is cash flowing 8,500 on average. So now because we do run short-term rentals out of a lot of these units and medium-term rentals or mid-term rentals, and sometimes we do short-term rentals on some of these properties, we're doing short-term rentals in the summertime, medium-term rentals in the wintertime when the Airbnb market kind of dies down here in Des Moines. So you can imagine our

our pure cash flow varies from month to month, the winter months being a little less when we kind of pivot into that slightly less cash flowing midterm realm. And then it obviously shoots way up in the summer and the heat of the busy Airbnb market here in Des Moines in the summertime. So on average though, for the last three years, that is our net cash flow.

between our 10 doors. That's awesome. Congratulations. Yeah, over eight grand in cash flow with 10 doors is amazing. Now, we talked a little bit about, you know, you going into the kind of medium-term rental, moving out of your own place, but you've also just got like some truly dedicated short-term rentals and you've got a unique take because you've been focusing on experience, which I think is...

very important part of being successful as a host today. So how are you leveraging or creating kind of unique experiences for your guests? Yeah. So every time we furnish a new unit, we try to grasp onto some type of theme or vibe that's

differentiates this unit from our prior units because our buy box is very strict here in Des Moines. And we started noticing after the first two units that when you are really strict on your buy box and your neighborhood that you're shopping for these properties in, you start competing with yourself.

So not only are you competing with the growing, you know, STR boom here in Iowa, but you're also competing with yourself and your own properties. And so we really wanted to kind of cast a wide net in a way that each one has its own little vibe or theme.

And that way we're getting in front of as many eyes as possible, grasping as many eyes as possible, and as many tastes as possible. So, you know, we have like a rustic, industrial, very Iowa, welcome to Des Moines themed one. We have the Taylor Swift themed one.

Airbnb, like you talked about. We've got a little cactus house, which is like a Western, almost like coastal cowgirl theme that people love. And so we really just did that out of necessity to differentiate our own properties from one another. And it's really been a strategy that works for us.

And yeah, our Airbnb that is Taylor Swift themed is definitely the one that people we get the most questions about because I was actually not a Swifty going into this.

I love music. And of course, some of her biggest hits over the years I've listened to and loved, but I would never have considered myself a Swifty. But then I was trying to think, you know, this was our sixth of eight furnished rentals. And I was kind of running out of ideas, right? And so I was thinking like,

what do like a lot of people in the world love that like is really unique? And so I started doing research in other destinations on Airbnb and the theme Taylor Swift kind of came up. And of course it's like in Nashville and in these like bigger cities where people come for her concerts and stuff like that, like those made more sense. But I was like, hmm, I wonder if we could pull that off in Des Moines, Iowa. So I called up my friend

who's been a Swifty her whole life and my best friend, who's also a big Swifty. And I was like, I need to schedule conference calls so that you can tell me everything you know about Taylor Swift, because I think we're gonna do this Airbnb and I need all the details. And they were like, okay. So I did legit conference calls with these two friends and they told me everything they know about Taylor Swift. And then I started only listening to her music and God love my fiancee.

I only allowed him to listen to Taylor Swift for the two months that we did all the research and furnishing of this unit. And yeah, then we are, now we're both Swifties. Now we both listen to her music all the time. We really bought in. This was around the time she started seriously dating Travis Kelsey. And then, you know, they won the Super Bowl last year. And there was like, I couldn't have paid for better like amping up marketing to release a Taylor Swift Airbnb than if I would have like paid Travis Kelsey to like date her or something like that.

Well, you have to be a fan after she's made you money in your Airbnb. How could you not? Yes. No, exactly. Now we are both very much Swifties. We've caught the bug. And yeah, we do listen to other music too now. After we released it, I allowed us to open up our realm of music again. But yeah, we were all in. And that's how I like to do things, right? Like I don't like to, you know...

halfway do anything. I want to give 110% on everything I do. So that's why I was like, I need to, you know, talk to the biggest Swifties in the world that I know. I need to take all these notes. I need to really dive into this. And so we did actually style this unit in a way that if we, God forbid, have to transition it into a different theme than Taylor Swift, like if it doesn't work, because again, this was a little experimental.

I designed it in a way that we could fairly easily transition it away from that theme if we need to down the road. So that was a big strategy that I think gave us peace of mind going into such a niche space.

theme. Kelsey, thank you so much for joining us today on the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. Where can people reach out to you and find out more information about you? Honestly, the gram, Instagram. That's my favorite social media platform. It's the easiest way probably to get to

a hold of me. And my handle is at Porta style dot real dot estate. And yeah, I'm just so excited to have been here and to meet you guys. This has been such a pleasure. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us and taking the time to share your experience and your journey. We can't wait to have you back in a couple of years to hear who's the next pop star themed Airbnb that you have going on.

I'm Ashley and he's Tony. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Real Estate Rookie, and we'll see you on the next one.