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Show Summary
In this conversation, Michael Chang discusses the importance of building relationships in business, emphasizing the need for mutual value exchange and collaboration. He shares insights on how to effectively communicate and plan with others to foster deeper connections and achieve business goals.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Michael Chang (00:00)
So if you are a W2 professional, make $300, $400K plus a year.Airbnb real estate is a great way for you to invest in real estate and save on taxes. This is a much more recent phenomenon. In July of 2025, they passed a new tax bill that increased bonus depreciation for 40 % to 100%. So it makes short-term investing a very, powerful wealth building strategy because you can save five, six figures in taxes and have a property that you own and can enjoy and can earn cash flow.
Quentin (02:04)
everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited again today, excited to have another guest that’s going to take us to his world and going to show us things from his perspective and let us know what he’s doing in real estate. And so I’m very excited to introduce you guys to Mr. Michael Chang. Mr. Michael, how you doing today?Michael Chang (02:27)
do well, but they can have you on show.Quentin (02:29)
Absolutely, absolutely. So much thank you for being here. And like I said, man, I really want you to take us into your world. I want you to tell us what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a bit of an origin story of how you got in real estate, we love origin stories. And if you want to tell us what markets you’re operating in as well. So I would love man, just if you would take us into your world.Michael Chang (02:51)
Oh great, so my business revolves around short term rentals. So investing in Airbnb rentals. And what we do is we invest in short term rentals, not just for the cash flow, but also because it’s a great way to offset your W2 income.So if you are a W2 professional, make $300, $400K plus a year.
Airbnb real estate is a great way for you to invest in real estate and save on taxes. This is a much more recent phenomenon. In July of 2025, they passed a new tax bill that increased bonus depreciation for 40 % to 100%. So it makes short-term investing a very, powerful wealth building strategy because you can save five, six figures in taxes and have a property that you own and can enjoy and can earn cash flow.
Quentin (03:42)
Absolutely, I love it. What markets are you in, Mr. Mike?Michael Chang (03:44)
So we’re personally invested in Tennessee, the Smoky Mountains National Park, Sevierville. We own six properties there. We have another property in the Catskill, north of New York City, which is where I live. We also have about 30 apartments that we control and operate in Philadelphia. So all in total, wife and I, we started this business in 2016. We have 37 Airbnb short-term rentals that we operate.They did about $2.3 million.
Quentin (04:12)
Beautiful, beautiful.So listen, you’ve built something definitely that’s successful. You didn’t tell me the numbers. I would love to know what are some of the key strategies that you’ve used business-wise and personal as you continue to grow and be successful and build? What are some of the strategies that you’re using?
Michael Chang (05:17)
What do you mean exactly what strategy is it using?Quentin (05:19)
I mean, are there, you know, some people say, you know, persistence, some people look at the, you know, being, you know, more disciplined when it comes to the deal, when not acting emotionally. Some people have personal strategies of working out in the morning, meditating. Like, so what I’m just trying to get to some of the strategies that you’ve used there to be successful. Yeah.Michael Chang (05:37)
I got you.Got it. Yeah, no, I don’t wake up at four o’clock and do the Saratoga Spring face wash thing. That’s not how, you know, it’s pretty successful. You know, I would say, you know, having a very defined why you’re doing it. have two young kids. They’re four or two years old. I came from a pretty decent finance job. I was an everyday investment banker at City & Merrill for 10 years here in New York.
I’m an MBA from Cornell and you know, we’re making money. wasn’t, it wasn’t a cash flow issue. It like, how do we actually be good parents and build walls and have enough to support our family? you know, investing in real estate, building business is not straight to the right nut, right? There’s a lot of challenges along the way. your point about persistence, consistency, you all that I think are
outputs of an underlying goal that you have. And for us, was very much of, want to be good parents and we want to provide for our children. It’s why my wife and I have done this and be able to see it through over the past nine years.
Quentin (06:45)
Absolutely, no, that’s a strong why. Your kids is a strong why, building a legacy and a life for them. I think I read somewhere, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, is that you don’t spend a whole lot of time working a day, maybe like an hour or so that you work a day. Did I read that correct somewhere?Michael Chang (07:00)
Yeah, I mean, managing the business, you know, it takes an hour or so a day between my wife and I, you know, we still work on it. We have to our material participation requirements. So we have to spend a minimum of 500 hours a year on the business just for ourselves so that like, you know, we can hit those tax benefits for investors, though. You don’t have to hit 500 hours. You can know if you do 100 hours between you and your spouse that’ll work. If you so that’s a common kind of avenue that people take touh, take the tax benefits. Um, so, but you know, we, we built this business now where it runs a lot on its own. Um, we’re, you know, working on the business, not in the business. And we’re able to spend that time building other businesses, um, like our, our, uh, our education business through, uh, STR, like the best. Um, that’s a program that we’ve launched to help other high income professionals be able to take care, take advantage of the short-term rental tax simple.
So they can buy real estate, pay them on taxes and not be stuck at work all the time and spend the time with their family and their kids.
Quentin (08:04)
Yeah, yeah. No, no, thank you, man. Again, thank you for the strategies. I mean, the things that you just dropped, I’m sure people are like, okay, this sounds good. And I say this a lot on a lot of the podcasts that I host, because you talked about your why. And I tell people all the time, if you know who you are, you know what to do. When you know what your why is, when you know what powers you for it, any situation you put yourself in, you’ll know how to get yourself moving forward in that situation. Because you know your why. You know who you are.Michael Chang (08:22)
youQuentin (08:33)
what to do. And so I appreciate you sharing those strategies. Now you mentioned, you know, it’s not always easy in real estate. You know, there are some adverse times. You know, I like to tell people there’s a journey to success. And so I know, you know, there’s times when things get real, when things go sideways, when you had to pivot fast. And are there any stories that maybe you can share for our viewers of a time when you had to pivot fast, when you faced adversity and you had to overcome it?Michael Chang (09:34)
Yeah, I mean, you know, COVID, right? COVID, you know, March of 2020. you know, we had a book of business that in two days, you know, everybody kind of canceled all the reservations and the entire country shut down. So that was a very, very difficult time.And I remember, you know, know, folks that are married to listen to this, you know, you have those, you know, kitchen table conversations with your spouse. Right. You sit there and, you know, kids are asleep. You sit there and you’re like, hey, honey, like, so what are we doing? So like, how are we going to do here? It can be a lot of different situations. It’s not always just business, I think everyone kind of remembers those kitchen table moments where, you know, it’s probably late at night, you’re sleeping, you’re your PJs.
You’re cheat or something and you’re just like, you know, let’s figure this out because at the end of the day, it’s just you and yourself, right? Ultimately, all that responsibility comes down to you guys. Your kids look up to you and like, know, maybe your business, look up to you, they’re there to, you’re supporting their families, a lot of responsibility. And you know, we’re faced with a pretty difficult situation, like what do we do? And, you know, without kind of getting into all the details, I think the…
biggest part of how we were able to kind of get through it was, I think one, we had each other and we both believed in each other. We both were like, hey, you we can both do this. Like, you know, we can do hard things. This is gonna be a tough situation, but let’s just figure out a game plan. Is this like executing? It’s not. And we’ll figure it out. I think one just kind of like, isn’t like fighting with each other. It’s just like, hey, let’s like, we’re just together. Let’s work on it. Like, we’ll figure it out. Like we’re smart people. Two is just like.
keeping relationships like we had relationships with landlords, lenders, and you know, I a lot of things kind of walked away. think for us it was like, let’s just like everyone is in a bad spot right now. But we’ll get through it like everything else, like we all will get through it. And the people that get through it, the best are the ones that are able to keep those relationships more constructively with people, not like, you know, find solutions that work for everyone, Because those relationships are the ones that like,
are going to compound over time that you keep with you. And those relationships have been great for us after COVID. People saw like, hey, Mike and Liz, they couldn’t left, but they chose to walk straight and work with us. And we figured it out. We all came on ahead. And it just builds a lot of trust. And you get access to deals and terms and conversations. would never get access to it if you were just like, well, look.
You know, kind of playing the short term game, right? For us, it’s that long term compounding that we believe in. And lastly, just being financially responsible, right? We didn’t even when times are good, we didn’t kind of over leverage ourselves. We always kept preserved. We always knew that things aren’t always up to the right. So, you know, having a good rainy day fun and just making sure that, OK, things go back for a year, but we have enough to cover it. And, you know, we’re going to outlast some of the people.
because we know that people aren’t as responsible for us. So let’s just stay the path. Let’s keep the relationships. We have enough in the bank so that we can weather the storm and let’s just keep the execute because there’s gonna be far fewer competitors once we get out of this. And that’s where we can thrive. And luckily, that’s why ultimately we can just pass. It wasn’t even years later, was months later because by August, September of 2020, things really turned around and we were a big beneficiary of the travel boom.
that happened afterwards.
Quentin (12:56)
No, man, you really just gave them the blueprint to long-term success. And one of the things you mentioned was trust. I tell people all the time, trust is built in drops and lost in buckets. And so it’s just built with little drops. like you said, these long-term relationships that you’ve built, you was able to bank on them when you needed it. And they was able to look at you and say, yeah, Mike and Liz, they’re sticking to the plan and they’re building something phenomenal. And we see now the success that you’re having.And so I would love to know, what are you most focused on solving or scaling next? Like, what is the next real goal for you and Liz?
Michael Chang (13:32)
Yeah, I for you to you know, I want to raise good kids that’s always all that’s always ultimately the goal Therefore to so they’re young they need they need us. So either be there be present now if they have you knowQuentin (13:36)
Yeah.Yeah.
Michael Chang (13:45)
For us to gather the financial resources so that we can provide for them. So I have something to call here. But from a business perspective, we need to grow our portfolio. We need to buy property that are good AirBnB’s and provide those tax benefits. ⁓ We’re growing our…our social media, our brand, so that we can tell people like, hey, like this really, really works. And I think a lot of people see that stuff online, you know, they see the Lamborghini and they see kind of all this stuff that’s supposed to attract their attention. Like we’re not, we’re not the kind of people, I don’t own a Lamborghini. What I do have is, you know, we have a very defined strategy that we use, that we help our students use, our community use. Hey, if you,
don’t know how to invest in real estate. If you don’t understand short-term rentals, if you don’t understand how to enjoy these tax benefits, I guess complex is a lot of different moving pieces. And people out there have like, you know, what I call point solutions, right? Hey, we’ll help you find it. We’ll help you do this, help me do that. ⁓ In our view, it’s not really the best solution, especially if you are a beginner or first time investor and you really want a
comprehensive integrated solution where all the pieces are connected, especially for us, like we’ve done it all ourselves seven times.
So when we share with others what we’ve done and they utilize our system, it’s not something that we like our, district created. Like they just use what we use. the same people, it’s the same process that we use for ourselves where we put our own money in there. Um, you know, this is an investor money. This is Mike and Liz partnered money. Like you said, the drop by drop by drop, right? and
There’s something to be said for if you’re using your own money versus an investor’s money or things like that. What is out of your own hard-earned money? You look at things a lot differently. I think for us, it’s been a recipe for our success. We treat ⁓ what our clients buy and how we advise with our own. We look at it like, we understand that first one ⁓ and we want to make sure that it’s ultimately a success for you.
Quentin (16:31)
Absolutely. Now I’ve heard you mentioned, you know, some of the relationships that you that you’ve had, and I would love to talk about relationships for a second. Like, how do you build relationships? Like when it comes to growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you with your relationship building?Michael Chang (16:47)
Yeah, I actually just got off. I just got off a call with a vendor. I was looking over some some of my data and give me some advice. And, you know, I think, you know, what building relationships, a lot of it is like you, you can’t just take you got it. You give to it even if you don’t can give at that point. You lay out a plan like, hey, how do we kind of work together? So just give an example, you know, just literally write before you we hop on the phone. They look they spent 30 minutes with me.looking for a bunch of stuff, they give me some really good value actually. Like, hey, we looked at it like, this looks good, this is full of options, I’m just easy to see here and that like, could make a really big difference. And I was like, hey guys, like that’s great, really, really helpful. And you could just be like, great, thanks very much, appreciate it, you know, have a great day, right? Which think some people do are like, know, just like, make a massive extract value on that 30 hour long call. But you know, for me, it’s like, hey guys, this is super helpful, I really appreciate it, we’re definitely gonna implement this.
Quentin (17:30)
Yeah.Michael Chang (17:40)
But like I’m sure if you can find 30 minutes like something this query, there’s other stuff. So why don’t we, you know, send her a call. Let’s start consulting. Let’s take a month, two months. Let’s set up like five hours. You know, I’ll pay you for it. Go deeper into my business, help me kind of figure it out and we can lay out a plan, you know? And I that’s just like a better way of doing business because, day one, get off the phone like, okay, yeah, like it wasn’t just a waste of time. You just like try to squeeze all the information out of us. Like everyone, everyone’s smarter.And two, it’s like, hey, you one, you like compensate for value to like, you know, you’re just thinking long term, right? I know if you’re able to find something 20 minutes, like let’s take two, four hours. Like I’m sure there’s other, you know, there’s other stuff there too that you’ll find. And even they don’t find anything. This is like, I know that like things are going well. So I have that piece of mind, at least. That’s how I think about relationships. Like you have to, can’t, you know, it can’t be just one person making money.
Right. That’s never going to be a good relationship. You both have to make money. You both have to create value for each other. And that also is like what I believe is the recipe for long term success. Because ultimately like money is money. It’s like it’s great you need it. But it’s those relationships you build along the way that want to make business more enjoyable too. You like you have a group of people that you work along the way and you know everyone is successful. It makes it more fun.
And ultimately, you’d be more successful when you have group of people that are pulling for you.
Quentin (19:05)
Yeah, I definitely think people are the real currency, right? Like the way you just said it, people are the real currency building these relationships, making sure they express a prosody. You know, I live by old, know, ancient proverb that aren’t sharpens iron, you know, like being around people who you can rub up against that’s going to make you sharper is the way to go. And so relationships are everything in this space. And so I echo exactly what you said. Yes, sir.Michael Chang (19:31)
It is a tune.Quentin (19:34)
Listen, Mr. Michael, this has been good. You have given us amazing content. Before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you, sir?Michael Chang (19:47)
Sure. The best way, if you want to just follow the social media, we talk a lot about our journey, our tips on Airbnb investing. It’s at Michael Chang, BNB. M-I-C-H-A-E-L-C-H-A-N-G, BnB.⁓ Check mark on there. So please follow me there and then if you want to learn more about what we do on the Airbnb investing side ⁓ You go to STR like the best so STR means for my null so STR like like the best all one word see my little logo here my best little blurry there, but as you like the best calm I have a ton of free resources on there the podcast we have a lot of really good
Material where you can learn about this referral real taxing the poll and you know, see if it’s a good fit for you And if it is we’d love to talk to you
Quentin (20:39)
Listen, there he is, Mr. Michael Chang, sir. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your story. Thank you for your perspective. We definitely need people in real estate that’s doing it the way you are with a servant’s heart and also with just building great relationships. And so thank you so much for sharing today.Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all got the value. You heard Mr. Michael. Y’all know we’re going to continue to bring you amazing people just like Mr. Michael. So go ahead and make sure you subscribe. That way you don’t miss out on any of this amazing content. So again, Mr. Chang, thank you so much. And to everyone else, we will see you on the next.
