Maximize Airbnb Returns Using This New Real Estate Tool

Dylan Silver (01:31)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is a Houston based real estate broker and the founder of STRIQ, a platform known as the Zillow for Airbnb investors. Please welcome Matt Sanderson. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt Sanderson (01:47)
Hey man, thanks for having me. Good to see you, Dylan.

Dylan Silver (01:50)
It’s great to have you. I love my Houston investors. I love the Houston real estate guys and gals. think I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is. But of the four majors we’ve got in Texas, right? San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, DFW and Houston. There’s definitely a vibe out there in Houston. Am I wrong in saying that there’s a vibe out there?

Matt Sanderson (02:09)
Hey,

I’m surprised you said that. know, most people from Dallas, you know, they don’t say good things about us here in Houston. So I’m glad you said something good. You know, I used to go with school. I went to Abilene Christian, all my Dallas friends, when they heard I was moving to Houston, they’re like, well, you’re moving to the armpit of Texas. And I was like, hey, you know, there’s some good people out here. There’s good food and there’s a lot of real estate. So that’s a good thing.

Dylan Silver (02:15)
Ha ha ha ha.

I’ve just noticed, and this is just me colloquially speaking, that when I’ve been out to Houston, it’s been a vibe. People are conversating. And maybe it’s just kind of the placebo effect of going to a new city and kind of spending a weekend or a day there. But then also, I think there’s pluses and minuses to every one of the majors. But Houston is this huge opportunity specifically for investors because you have, of course, insurance is more expensive because water and issues.

Matt Sanderson (02:50)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (03:03)
You also have lot of cost-effective real estate out there, especially for being such a big city.

Matt Sanderson (03:08)
Yeah, well, and just so I know, I mean, a lot of your listeners, I mean, mostly residential, are any of these people also commercial investors as well?

Dylan Silver (03:18)
There’s a lot

of commercial residential, a lot of multifamily, a lot of people that are involved in land and ⁓ RV parks, that type of thing, but a lot, a lot are ⁓ single family home investors as well.

Matt Sanderson (03:24)
Okay.

Okay, yeah, just because I did want to mention, I mean, I do a lot of like residential, but mostly like on the short term rental side, but I am also a commercial real estate broker. And so I want to say from a Houston perspective, ⁓ man, there’s literally trillions of dollars of dry powder on the sidelines that are targeting Houston, Texas as a major platform and hub to buy industrial commercial real estate, ⁓ something called iOS sites.

industrial outdoor storage, ⁓ know, basically sites that are, you know, between 10 to 50 to a hundred thousand square feet industrial facilities. I mean, there is massive amount of demand and we’re seeing like trillions of dollars out there that is like hunting for deals right now. So it’s crazy the amount of demand is Houston.

Dylan Silver (04:19)
Yeah.

And to your point, Matt, we sometimes gloss over this being in Texas, right? But the port of entry for Texas is where? It’s mainly Houston, right? So if you’re getting international, mean, maybe there’s other ways, but mainly it’s Houston. So if you’re having major shipments, they’re coming through Houston. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that it’s a huge burgeoning hub for industrial investing, right?

Matt Sanderson (05:32)
Yeah, I mean, you think about Olin gas and with Trump being in office, there’s a couple of things he’s done. I mean, really, he said drill, baby drill. So Houston, Texas is where most of the energy is. I mean, along with some in Dallas and other places, but this is where a lot of the headquarters are. But second of all, he just announced and you probably told your listeners this, ⁓ this new package with the big bill that just went through for 100 % bonus depreciation coming back. So I mean, those two things combined with Houston as

almost now the third largest city in the US, just behind Chicago, and I think it’s about to pass it. It’s growing like crazy.

Dylan Silver (06:09)
believe in.

I’ve also, this is kind of very granular Houston knowledge, the city is landmass wise huge, huge. Like, I remember, I’m sitting in the back of someone’s car, there’s a gym out there, a fitness gym, ⁓ I forget the name of it, but it’s Christian Guzman’s gym. It’s like the Disneyland for fitness is what it was. And so I’m sitting in the back of someone’s car, we’re driving across Houston, and I took like a

Matt Sanderson (06:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (06:40)
I felt like I took like a 40 minute nap. And I wake up and they’re like, we’re still in Houston, we’ll be there in like 20 minutes. I’m like, how big is this city? And we had driven like 45 miles and we were still in Houston. So literally a huge city.

Matt Sanderson (06:43)
I know.

yeah, it’s, mean, continuing to just expand out. mean, it’s funny, my, my kids, when I drive into Houston from Dallas, we take that trip a lot. You’re right. You start feeling like you’re in the city and then like 30 minutes later, like, we there yet? Cause you just, you just keep going down the highway. So anyway, it’s, you know, it’s a lot of people don’t love to live here because of the views are not like Austin or Asheville or all these cool places. But man, from a cost of living,

⁓ opportunity standpoint, business standpoint, I mean it’s incredible.

Dylan Silver (07:29)
Is it a, I don’t know, and woe is me, or maybe my ignorance, I don’t know enough about the history of Houston, but is it a newer city if you compare it to Austin, to Dallas, that type of thing?

Matt Sanderson (07:41)
Honestly, I don’t know. mean, probably about the same time.

Dylan Silver (07:43)
Cause one of

my thoughts is like, some of it I think could just be, there’s just not as much, and we’re talking about burgeoning and investing. It could be, we might see a huge swing for Houston, and I’m looking at home pricing in Houston, and I’m saying, if I’m gonna invest, and I’m looking at areas, and I can get this over here, I can get this over here, I can get this in Austin, and Houston has huge draws with sports teams, it being the port of entry, right, you have so much.

commerce coming in and out and then the city itself is massive, which again is underplayed. But when you have a massive city, lots of land, then you have really, I would say more opportunity for people to be part of that Metro kind of to draw comparison to DFW. I live in Denton, which is like closer to Oklahoma than it is to Dallas, but we still consider ourselves DFW Metro. And so I would imagine Houston has a lot of that where it’s like the area is in flux. There’s a lot of

Matt Sanderson (08:34)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:42)
growth and it’s not just vertical, it’s not just, you know, high rises, it’s outwardly expanding as well.

Matt Sanderson (08:48)
yeah, mean, you really wouldn’t think it would go much further, but I mean, it’s like the Northwest Houston part of Houston is expanding like crazy. It’s almost like expanding into College Station to where College Station and Houston will eventually merge almost. So I mean, wouldn’t doubt it one day. It feels like that’s kind of where it’s going is a merger between College Station and Houston. I’m sure Houston love it because there’s a lot of Aggies here.

Dylan Silver (09:48)
That would be interesting. That would be very, very, very interesting. I feel the same way about DFW and the 35 corridor up to Oklahoma where they’ve got the Windstar Casino, because you’ve got Fort Worth, then you’ve got Lewisville, then you’ve got Denton, where I’m at, which is really like 50 minutes or an hour from Dallas. And we still consider ourselves DFW. I’m like, goodness. And then we’re in like Tornado Valley over here. you know.

Matt Sanderson (10:07)
Yep.

Dylan Silver (10:14)
We have to be aware of that and then you’ve got Sherman and Bonham and then you’ve got Oklahoma So I’m saying like this is gonna be one shot DFW to Oklahoma and it’s just gonna be a big area

Matt Sanderson (10:26)
I mean, honestly,

with the new Disney, I think that’s been announced going in like North Dallas, in Frisco area. mean, there’s just gonna be enormous growth going out there. I mean, and you think about like short-term rentals, which we’ll talk about later, like there’s enormous ⁓ amount of demand in like Orlando for short-term rentals and people trying to like outbid each other of like buying a house and then making it like Orlando Disney theme with cool princesses and slides and.

Dylan Silver (10:30)
Yeah. Yeah, Frisco.

Matt Sanderson (10:55)
action figures and all that stuff. Imagine what you’re gonna be able to do in Dallas when that new theme park comes in to expand into this new, newer type of investment type. Because most people are probably doing long-term or mid-term type riddles, but when this place comes in, I you’re gonna have an opportunity to do some awesome Disney-themed properties to get huge returns on your properties.

Dylan Silver (11:21)
That’s a great point. That is a great point. I mean, good, good on DFW for, for securing that deal. What a, what a huge, I mean, we’re real estate guys, right? You can’t get a bigger real estate deal than having Disneyland come to your, come to your area. I mean, that’s huge. mean, also the competition and sometimes people say there’s no competition. I think I’m putting it out there. There’s a competition, Texas and Florida, right? You got people that are snowbirds coming down to Florida, but you also have people saying, well, Texas,

Matt Sanderson (11:28)
No.

Yeah, I know.

Dylan Silver (11:52)
⁓ And so when you have a Disney come into an area that’ll definitely change things. But I want to pivot a bit here, Matt, and ask you about STRIQ, or strike, right? And how this came about for you. What was the genesis?

Matt Sanderson (12:00)
Romania.

man, yeah, so fun story. I’ve been a real estate broker for like 12 years doing commercial real estate transactions all over the place. And one day I was like, you know what, I’m doing all these deals for other people. Why don’t I go invest in real estate? And I didn’t have $5 million to go buy commercial properties. So I thought, well, why don’t I get into this residential game? It’s a little bit of a lower barrier of entry to get in with the down payment and you can go get financing a little bit easier.

But you a lot of people you probably talk to, it’s like, man, like to make a lot of money, sometimes you gotta have like 50 doors or a hundred doors. I’m like, I don’t wanna wait that long and I don’t wanna buy that many properties. I’d rather have a fewer properties to make more money. And so I discovered this Airbnb short-term rental thing

and I ended up buying a property in Fredericksburg, Texas that turned out to be like a 60 % cash on cash return. And I was like, my gosh, like.

Dylan Silver (13:01)
Yep.

Matt Sanderson (13:07)
I didn’t know these types of deals existed. And that’s what opened my eyes to, short-term rentals, you can typically make three X or more what you can typically make on a long-term. But the pain and the problem was to find that dang deal, I had to go to Zillow, find a property that I’d go to AirDNA to run revenue estimates and then spreadsheets. And it would take forever to run one transaction. And most of the time, they were all negative.

Because usually most properties are negative performing out there and it’s hard to find the needles in the haystack, right? So I thought well, what if we just brought all this information together? What if we just had a platform that could just syndicate the MLS run revenue estimates bring in your spreadsheets bring it all together and then you as the investor can just put in your filters of hey Show me anything show me anything above 20 % cash and cash return that makes $3,000 a net cash flow per month

Dylan Silver (13:40)
Yeah.

Matt Sanderson (14:05)
that’s under $700,000 purchase price and boom, like let the technology literally reveal

to you in seconds. And so that’s what the idea was and that’s what we built today.

Dylan Silver (14:18)
So you don’t need a real estate license to use it though, as a user.

Matt Sanderson (14:22)
No, mean, as a user, it’s literally like you get on Zillow, ⁓ but what’s really cool about it, it feels very similar, but it’s so much more powerful than Zillow because it shows you the properties, but then it also shows you the revenue potential, the profitability, the cap rate, the cash on cash return, and the entire underwriting. So what’s really cool, do what?

Dylan Silver (14:43)
Will it do comps?

Will it do comps or anything like that?

Matt Sanderson (15:29)
And then, so that’s the app. We also have a dashboard called the COMPS dashboard, and it shows you all of your COMPs. So not from a sales price perspective, but from a revenue perspective. So when a real estate agent sells your house, you’re like, hey, how much can I sell my house for? They pull COMPs. Well, in the same way, we pull COMPs for revenue so that you can know exactly how much you can make ⁓ if you were to run it out on Airbnb.

Dylan Silver (15:58)
That is incredible. what’s it what’s this process been like putting this together? Because it’s got to be a huge undertaking, right?

Matt Sanderson (16:07)
I mean, hey, if anyone else out there has tried to do a startup, you can probably relate. I’ve never tried to do a startup like this before, so I didn’t know how difficult it’d be, but we started this journey four years ago, me and my co-founder, and it all started with this idea of, hey, let’s bring it all together. How hard could it be, right? Well, it took us like three and a half years to really build it, and now we’re finally letting other people get to use it. So it’s taken basically four years to get to where we are now, almost,

half a million to a million dollars to do it, to build it, because data and technology and AI is very expensive. But we did it. So we’re here and now it’s an opportunity for other people to check it out.

Dylan Silver (16:43)
Yeah.

Is it all over the US or is it Texas right now? is it? Where is that? Where can you get data?

Matt Sanderson (16:54)
So we’re all over the US right now, but what’s really cool, so is we’ve solved the acquisition piece where people wanna buy these short-term rentals. We’ve solved the optimization revenue piece to figure out, hey, based on comps, how do I get to the top 10 %? And where we’re going is, hey, what if I have a property that is an active short-term rental? I’ve got history in revenue and expenses on it.

Can I sell this thing on your platform directly to your targeted investor base? That’s where we’re going next. And that’s a global opportunity because people in Brazil and other countries are already contacting me saying, Matt, we don’t have the MLS and things like you guys have in the US. We would love to feature our beachfront properties that make a billion dollars and feature them directly to your investor base. So that’s where we’re going next.

Dylan Silver (17:26)
Hmm.

They don’t. Yep.

So I’m moving to, I just brought this up, I’m moving to a Caribbean country, ⁓ yeah, in August, which this podcast may not be out by then, but I’m moving in the beginning of August. And one of the things that’s interesting is they can’t pull comps out there, they don’t have an MLS, so their whole system, you don’t need licenses, right? Their

Matt Sanderson (17:54)
Are you really?

Okay.

Dylan Silver (18:11)
system is drastically different. I don’t know.

I don’t necessarily know that you don’t need licenses, but what I do know is I was told like you basically have to go down, pay a fee and now you’re a real estate agent. So one of the things that I found so interesting as I was like, well, how do people buy properties down here? If they don’t know what other things are selling for, is it just based off like you talking to a guy or a gal or an agent and kind of just getting their feel for it? And that was like, yeah, like you just have to know people. So I was like, man, these

Matt Sanderson (18:41)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (18:43)
Areas the and so many of the Latin American countries are like this these areas need something it’s ripe for opportunity I don’t necessarily know that they need this whole bureaucratic like MLS creature that we have which costs so much money as you know Matt for new agents Yeah, I got a start-up and it’s kind of like fee after fee after fee But having ⁓ a strike or an STRI Q in their area would be huge right like I mean every

Matt Sanderson (18:55)
yeah.

yeah.

Dylan Silver (19:10)
Putty, is an international investor who wants to invest in that area, has something that’s distilled down that’s relatively cost effective where they can see, look, this is where we’re going to make money in this area.

Matt Sanderson (19:23)
Have you ever used LoopNet or CoStar?

Dylan Silver (19:26)
I’ve only heard of LoopNet, I’m not familiar with CoStar.

Matt Sanderson (19:29)
So LoopNet and CoStar are commercial real estate platforms for people to list properties for sale. So me as a broker, when I go represent someone, they tell me to sell their property and I go put it where? I put it on LoopNet and CoStar. Crexie is another platform that was founded by the Zillow founder and another guy. ⁓ Those are some competing platforms that are on the more commercial real estate side. And that’s where commercial real estate

institutions and buyers really go look for these properties to buy and you literally just list them direct. So what if we could become the loop net or costar for short-term rental investors in any country to where these people that have these properties, just, it’s simple. They just go to our platform, they list their property and we could either get a marketing fee or maybe a brokerage fee on that and they get to.

Dylan Silver (20:14)
my gosh.

Matt Sanderson (20:28)
sell directly to the targeted investor that wants that property in any country. So that’s what I think is most exciting is yeah, we’ve solved that acquisition and optimization phase, but we haven’t even tapped into yet the sell side, which there’s some really cool properties out there that generate a ton of money that could be sold for high cap rates and high cash on cash return to these investors.

Dylan Silver (20:51)
As popular as Airbnb is here, I’d reckon to say it’s just as popular, if not 50 % more popular in some of these places. I mean, it is shocking. It is shocking to see. ⁓ And then the creativity is also off the charts too. mean, what you can find is, you know, I’m in Texas and you can find like tree house getaways in Arkansas, or I can go find, you know,

rooftop loft penthouse suites for you know $1,500 a month with a view of the ocean in Santa Domingo and I’ve heard of people I had a guest from I want to say it was Nairobi Kenya as saying that you could get for like $1,100 a month in Nairobi Kenya condo and a chef

Matt Sanderson (21:31)
Mm-hmm.

Thank

Dylan Silver (21:51)
for the full month. And I’m just thinking about like all these opportunities and things that come into

It is really an international game when it comes to the short-term rental space. It’s truly international. I think the people like yourself who really see that opportunity and tap into it and aren’t just hyper focused on like the US, but actually looking at it as a worldwide scale, that’s gonna change the game.

Matt Sanderson (22:02)
Yeah.

Well, just imagine, you know, if you’re a high income earner out there and you’re making, I don’t know, a couple hundred thousand dollars or more. And, you know, Trump just passed this big, beautiful bill and you get bonus depreciation up to a hundred percent now, which I think is like maybe a forever thing. Why not take a lot of that money and go buy really cool properties on beaches and lakes and places you could go visit? Because when you go buy long-term rentals or, you know, when you do that,

you can’t ever visit them because they’re leased out 95 % of the time or 100 % of the time. Airbnb, you go buy these properties wherever you want them to be, they cashflow better than long-term rentals and you get to go use them whenever you want and you get massive tax write-offs and someone else pays down your debt while they appreciate. So you get cashflow better than long-term rentals. You get wealth building better than, I mean, about the same as other, I guess, because other people are paying down your debt and it’s appreciating.

And then you get tax benefits, which might wipe out your active income versus your passive. And then you get to go use them whenever you want. So it’s literally like the Goldilocks or like the unicorn out there that I’ve literally gone all in on because I think it’s the best real estate play in my opinion right now.

Dylan Silver (23:19)
That’s amazing,

think it’s super fascinating. I mean, that’s what I’m passionate. I have a real

license, right, but I’m really more passionate about working with investors, ⁓ doing investing on my own. I haven’t done a deal yet from the cradle to the grave as an investor. I’ve done many wholesale deals. ⁓ But it’s just so much opportunity in the short-term rental space. It’s really, and then too, we haven’t talked about this, but there’s a lot of, you know,

I guess concern in the US over short term rentals is it am I going to have to convert this out of short term if it gets banned in the area that I’m in, which actually happened in Addison, Texas, which is Dallas area. I don’t know if it’s still but in 2023 they banned short term rentals. And so people are looking at this. then, you know, when I’ve traveled abroad, there’s like, I mean,

Matt Sanderson (24:11)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (24:23)
not even, we’re not even talking about like if they’re gonna ban short-term rentals. It’s like the process to build a house is like you just build a house. Like there’s not all of this red tape to jump through. And so they’re not even talking about like in certain areas of Latin America, they’re not talking about like banning short-term rentals. Like they’re glad that there’s new builds going up. They’re not talking about like, well, you can’t have this type of thing. So the opportunity is like inspiring and fascinating for me.

Matt Sanderson (24:31)
Do it.

for sure and you mentioned wholesaling a second ago. What’s cool about our platform is, you know, as a real estate investor, that you usually fall into one of these three camps or maybe all three are a combination, but you either have time, you’ve got expertise, or you can develop the expertise or you’ve got money. And so if you’re a wholesaler out there or if you’re someone that doesn’t have as much capital as you’d like to have to go buy some of these deals, you might have time.

or hopefully you could figure out the time and you could build the expertise and if you’ve got a tool like STRIQ that literally just shows you

profitable properties, then all you have to do is just start sending those deals to people that have the money. in that case, you can either go get that property under contract and then flip it as a wholesaler or better off than just taking a $5,000 fee or whatever is go send these to Capital Partners.

Dylan Silver (25:41)
Yeah.

Matt Sanderson (25:50)
and go be 50-50 % equity in these deals, and I know a ton of people doing that right now. If you get good at finding these deals, find the money, you could become a 50 % equity partner in that deal with zero money.

Dylan Silver (26:04)
I gotta download the app then. I gotta get on there, right? Matt, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go if they wanna dive in to STRIQ or maybe if they wanna reach out to ya or how can they learn more about STRIQ?

Matt Sanderson (26:07)
Let’s get you that, baby.

So go to striq.com. We’ve got a 14 day free trial, so you can check it out for a couple of weeks. See if you like it, you can cancel any time. And then because you were awesome having us on the show, you can use the code DILLON20 for 20 % off any plan if you decide to stay on. Otherwise you can use it for 14 days and see if you like it and see if it’s helpful. Or you can reach out to me [email protected] and would be happy to help.

Dylan Silver (26:52)
Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Matt Sanderson (26:56)
Well, thank you, man. Thanks for having me.