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Show Summary
In this conversation, Joseph Woodbury discusses the potential of investing in real estate, comparing the returns from traditional rental properties to land investments. He highlights the significant difference in income potential, emphasizing how strategic choices in property investment can lead to vastly different financial outcomes.
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Joseph Woodbury (00:00)
but one of the things that they have in common is that they all require work. You know, if you want to make money on Uber, you’ve got to go drive around. Same with DoorDash or Instacart, even Airbnb, You have to, you know, the person stays for two days and then you have to clean up after them and…and get ready for the next customer. And so it’s a lot of overhead and management. Neighbor is really the first marketplace ever where we let you take space that was just sitting there unused. You rent it out. You’re spending less than 10 or 15 minutes every month on this. It’s just purely passive income hitting your bank account every month.
Quentin (02:08)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited to be here today. I am excited about my guest. Maybe, you know you have heard what he’s about to talk about, but for me, this is something that’s kind of new for me. And what he’s doing, he’s doing at a high level. I just can’t wait for him to tell you about it. It’s a fantastic idea.Believe it’s a fantastic business that he has. And I’m so excited for you guys to meet Mr. Joseph Woodbury. Mr. Joseph, how are you doing today, sir
Joseph Woodbury (02:45)
Doing great. Thanks for having me.Quentin (02:46)
No, absolutely. Thank you for being on and listen, man, I want to dive right in. I would love for you to take the listeners and the viewers into your world. Tell them what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little bit of origin story of kind of how you got into this space. We, I think we love origin stories. And also if you can tell them what markets or what part of the world you’re in and in the part of, you know, what part of the world you serve. And so, sir, you got the floor, Mr. Joseph, take us into your world.Joseph Woodbury (03:17)
Yeah, thanks. So we’re the nation’s largest storage and parking marketplace. What we do is we allow individuals to rent out space either in their home or their rental property or on land they own for storage and parking. So this could be a driveway, it could be a shed, it could be a garage. It could even be a large industrial space. So we’re essentially the Airbnb for storage. And we’re now in all 50 states. We’re in almost every city in all 50 states.And we have individuals that earn anywhere from a few thousand dollars a year to over a million dollars a year.
Quentin (03:53)
I love it, I love it. I mean, you’re opening it up to a lot of people to kind of get involved in what you’re doing. I mean, if you got a free space that you wanting to rent out, I think, you know, like you said, you’re the Airbnb, you’re the God. So you’re affecting and changing a lot of lives, sound like to me.Joseph Woodbury (04:09)
Yeah, yeah, it’s really cool. There’s been a lot of marketplaces that have started to provide gig economy income. You think about the Ubers or the DoorDash is,but one of the things that they have in common is that they all require work. You know, if you want to make money on Uber, you’ve got to go drive around. Same with DoorDash or Instacart, even Airbnb, You have to, you know, the person stays for two days and then you have to clean up after them and…
and get ready for the next customer. And so it’s a lot of overhead and management. Neighbor is really the first marketplace ever where we let you take space that was just sitting there unused. You rent it out. You’re spending less than 10 or 15 minutes every month on this. It’s just purely passive income hitting your bank account every month.
Quentin (05:45)
I love it, man. So I kind of want to pick your brain when it comes to strategies, because obviously you found something that’s very successful. Have you identified or can you identify any core strategies that you use business wise and even I’ll broaden it to even personal strategies that you use that you can say, yes, this this these different things kind of determine my success.Joseph Woodbury (06:09)
Well, you know, the first thing I’d say as as the CEO of the company hands down, the best strategy I can have is to hire amazing people. Like it’s one thing to talk about different business strategies you can use, but the most effective business strategy is to go get the most talented, hardworking individuals out there, because it turns out if you do that, most problems tend to work themselves out because those talented individuals.they’ll come in and implement the best strategies. But beyond that, some of the principles that we use at Naver is we try to be very customer focused and centric. We’re always listening to our customers. We want to provide them the best experience they can be. And they can give you a lot of feedback. Now, sometimes the customers give you a feedback and they may want XYZ feature, but you as a company, if you’re really doing your job,
you’re taking that feedback and turning that into a problem. Like what is actually their problem, not what is their suggestion, but what’s at the root of the problem they’re experiencing and how can we best solve that? And the solution may not be what the customer suggested. If you really dive down to the root of the problem, you may be able to address that more effectively. So I think that’s a big part of where a company adds value is not only listening to those customers, but also being smart.
in how you implement the solutions.
Quentin (07:34)
Absolutely loved that listening, you know, a lot of people don’t do that nowadays, but you saying listen and then implement. I mean, that’s a beautiful strategy in itself right there. Now, Joseph, on your way to building this, obviously you have success. You’ve built something sustainable on your way to building this. Have you ever ran into any kind of adversity, you know, like has things, you know, deals went sideways or are there times that you had to pivot fast likeor have there been adversity while building neighbors?
Joseph Woodbury (08:03)
Oh, for sure. I marketplaces, you know, I’m able to sit here now and say we’re, we have users in almost every city in the country and we’re in more states than any other storage company. But that wasn’t always the case. And marketplaces are difficult because in the very early days when you first start a marketplace, you have supply in one area and demand in another area and they may not match up and…When the renters come, there’s just not enough options for them. And the hosts they’re are listing their space, they’re not getting reserved fast enough. And so how do you solve that problem? Like, why would anyone want to use your platform when you first start out as a marketplace? They call it the chicken and egg problem. And so you have to somehow convince enough people to want to come and stay on your platform and be patient.
so that you can start to attract the demand. And then it’s a virtuous cycle from there. The more demand you get, the faster your supply gets rented and the more money they make, which attracts more supply. And the more supply you get, the better the experiences for the renters. They have more options, more price points, you know, different quality spaces. And so their experience improves and that attracts more renters, which attracts more supply. And so…
We’re now at this great phase where you come on our platform and you can find what you’re looking for and users that list, they’re gonna make a lot of money. Like I said, we’ve got you know users making 30, 50, 100K a year, investors that own multiple properties on our platform. That wasn’t always the case. So we had to work really hard to get through that early phase.
Quentin (10:19)
Nah, man, thank you so much for taking us on that journey and helping us to understand some of the adversity that you face as you build. To me, it’s like you’re figuring out long-term problems, right? Like you hear it, but you’re figuring out how to solve these problems. And I think it’s very, very good for people to hear you walk us through how you get to the success that you’re having. So let me ask you this, Mr. Joseph, like what’s the next?real goal? Like are you looking to solve or scale like something next? What’s next in line for for neighbors?
Joseph Woodbury (10:52)
Well, we’re really leaning into this investor customer that we have. So I’d split out our customer base into three different types of customers. The first is we’ve got those residential customers. These are individuals like myself. I actually rent out my RV pad on the side of my home. It’s great. Pays my utilities every month. Phenomenal income. The second group is a group we callinvestor hosts or power hosts. These are individuals that maybe own you know five rental properties or 10 rental properties, and they’re using Neighbor at multiple properties. And then the final customer we have is large commercial real estate owners. Sometimes these are 10 or $20 billion publicly traded REITs, big multifamily REITs or office REITs or retail space.
and we work with them to earn passive income across their properties as well. And so it’s this middle category that we’re increasingly excited about because these individuals, they center their lives around how to generate passive income. And in many cases, they’ll start buying rental properties, listing them out on neighbor and they’ll get excited about it because you know they’re earning.
$2,300 in rent on a property and their mortgage is $2,000. So their net is about $300. And then they add neighbor to the property and neighbor adds another $300. So they’ve just doubled their net earnings on a rental property through neighbor. And so they’ll expand that out. But what’s really interesting is we’ll see some of these individuals, they’ll start to do the math and they realize, wait, should I be buying properties
specifically for neighbor. I’ll give you some numbers. In Utah, if you had you know $500,000 to invest, that would buy you roughly a townhome property here. And you could rent that out for $20,000 $25,000 a year, maybe $30,000 on the high end. Let’s say you listed it instead as a short-term rental, like you put it on Airbnb.
Now your earnings on that property are maybe closer to 30 or $40,000 a year in rent. But let’s say instead of buying that rental property, you took that $500,000 and you bought a plot of land that would purchase you around an acre to an acre and a half in Utah, in Salt Lake City. And we could yield you almost $100,000 a year. So it’s like same investment, but instead of yielding
you know, 25, $30,000 a year, you’re yielding $100,000 a year. So it’s so fascinating to watch these investors, they’ll start using us on their rental properties, and then all of a sudden, they’re just buying properties specifically for a neighbor.
Quentin (13:43)
I love it. It makes all the sense in the world. And I love how you broke down the three categories, residential, the investor, who you call in like the powerhouse and then like the large commercial. So it sounds like, you know, you are building really good relationships with these investors. And so I want to talk about relationships from your perspective. Like, how do you view relationships like have relationships and building relationships?made a big impact on your business? What has been the biggest impact of building relationships for you?
Joseph Woodbury (15:01)
Well, you know in a business like ours, one of our values, of course, as a company called Neighbor is to be neighborly. So this is something we think about a lot. And we do a lot of things internally to create a neighborly culture for our employees. Now, how do you do that you know externally, especially with the number of customers we have? It’s not like we can interact with all of them.You know, we’ve got customers in little towns with 2,000 people. And we’ve also got customers in downtown New York City or Miami or Seattle or Los Angeles. We’ve got them everywhere. And so we can’t interact with them, you know, on a one-to-one basis. And so it’s about providing tools for them that allow their feedback to be heard, that allow them to do what they need to do.
It’s about creating good messaging campaigns. So we try to have really up to date and useful lifecycle, you know email updates and other updates like that to share with users the new tools and features they can use. And we just try to make them feel part of a community. They’re part of a community of earners. We actually have a cool…
Facebook group where our hosts can go on and talk to each other and share tips and what’s working for them and how they earn more money. So ⁓ it’s as much about us as it is about them and what they’re doing and what they want to share.
Quentin (16:24)
love that, you know, and I heard neighbors and my first thought was just like, you know, in the neighborhood, right? You’re getting different properties in the neighborhood, but I love how you like know, like this is what we do. We want to build a neighbor like atmosphere and environment. And so that lets me know that relationships are important to you and that relationships are so important into this space that you’re in.Joseph Woodbury (16:50)
For sure, yeah, it’s essential and we’re a hyper local marketplace. So a lot of marketplaces, connect people across distances. You I may use an Uber when I fly into Chicago and I don’t have a car and I need a way to get from the airport to my hotel. Or I may use Airbnb when I’m traveling to another place and need a place for my family to stay. But I’m probably never gonna talk to my Uber driver ever again.You know, they live in Chicago. I don’t after the five minute car ride. We’re never going to see each other again. Same with Airbnb. I may never talk to my Airbnb host ever again. But neighbor, these people live in the same communities like you want storage and parking as close to you as you can possibly get it. The best place for your items would be inside your own home. The next best place would be, you know, as close as you can get it. It’s so great to have your boat, you know.
a couple doors down or in the small business near where you work. so relationships can be built here. We’ve had hosts that, you know, they start working together and, you know, now they go to lunch every two or three weeks together because they developed a friendship and a relationship and storage lasts a long time. Someone can can put their RV or camper trailer in or their items and they could be there for.
six months, 12 months, two years, three years. We have users that started with us way back in 2018 that are still storing their items today.
Quentin (18:23)
Man, you said storage can be for a long time. Storage can be generational. I mean, you can pass it from one generation to the next. So you’re absolutely right. Storage can be for a very long time.Joseph Woodbury (18:32)
Yeah, very long term transaction and that’s why our hosts love it. It’s very dependable. You know you drive for Uber, you don’t know what you’re gonna earn this month or next month. It can vary up and down. But with our users, they get the same direct deposit in their bank account every single month. And it’s just dependable. It’s that income that’s kind of in the background that funds your life. You don’t have to work for it and so you can still put your time and attention into whatever your day job is.your main job and this is just supplementing your lifestyle.
Quentin (19:04)
Listen, I know you got people interested now. So listen, how can somebody get in contact with you? How can somebody reach out to you, collaborate with you? Like, how can people get in contact with you to learn more about what you’re doing? And if they want to partner up with you.Joseph Woodbury (19:20)
Of course, yeah, so we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible. It’s just neighbor.com. And you can also go on the App Store and search neighbor and we’ll pop right up. And if you go to neighbor.com slash host, then that’ll take you to a page where it will teach you how to list your space, can give you an estimate of your earnings on that space, et cetera. soneighbor.com slash host.
Quentin (19:49)
There he is. Listen, thank you so much. I mean, I think this is a phenomenal idea. I’m glad that you guys have marked yourself and brandished yourself. Y’all are the Airbnb. Y’all are the masters at what y’all do. And so I absolutely love it. Thank you so much, Mr. Joseph, for coming on and sharing. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your story. Thank you for your perspective. This was definitely, definitely a great episode. And so much nuggets was in this episode. So thank you for being here today.Joseph Woodbury (20:20)
Thank you so much for having me.Quentin (20:21)
Absolutely. So listen, y’all heard him. Y’all heard him. Y’all got the value. you make even make yourself some passive income. So definitely check out Mr. Joseph Woodbury. But also please make sure you’re subscribed. That way you don’t miss out on these amazing people that we continue to bring up just like Mr. Joseph. And so thank you again, Mr. Joseph and to everyone else. We will see you on to next time.
