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Show Summary
In this conversation, Tim Hubbard, a seasoned real estate investor and host of the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast, shares insights into the world of short-term rentals, particularly focusing on international investments. He discusses the challenges and opportunities of investing in countries like Colombia and Brazil, the importance of effective property management, and the impact of regulations on the short-term rental market. Tim emphasizes the need for thorough research and understanding of local laws, as well as the significance of maintaining high-quality management to ensure success in the competitive short-term rental space.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Tim Hubbard (00:00)
the management piece is crucial. I mean, and even much more so in the short-term rental space than in the long-term rental space because as you said, like reviews can just crush your returns. I mean, basically the way that short-term rental properties show up on platforms like Airbnb or booking.com is based on reviews and price. And if your reviews aren’t doinggreat, then you lower your prices and that’s not the direction you want to go. so management really can make or break your property. I you can have two properties right next to each other, wherever they are in the world, even there in Dominican Republic where you are, like you could have two condos on the beach right next to each other that are identical, same amenities, same location. But if one has really good reviews and the other one doesn’t, it can literally make twice as much money.
Dylan Silver (02:24)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Tim Hubbard is a real estate investor who focuses on short term rentals and is also the host of the short term rental riches podcast. Tim, welcome to show.Tim Hubbard (02:38)
Thanks for having me Dylan, happy to be here.Dylan Silver (02:40)
Great to meet you, Tim. And I was watching a couple of your episodes. I love talking to other podcast hosts, especially folks who’ve been doing it as long as you have, because I think it becomes both a passion and then a really amazing networking tool, which is what I’ve found for me. How did the podcast, the Short Term Rental Riches podcast come about for you?Tim Hubbard (03:02)
Well, I’ve been investing in real estate for a long time and things have gone pretty well in the US from originally and I was investing in multiple states and eventually multiple countries and a lot of people had questions how I could manage properties from far away, especially short-term rental properties which have you know infinitely more pieces to the operation. And so I started the podcast just as a simple way to answer those questions, you know whichQuick actionable advice for short-term investors and six years later, been doing it every Tuesday and it’s been great.
Dylan Silver (03:38)
I think the short-term rental space, especially internationally, is amazing. I live abroad in the Dominican Republic, which I mentioned to you before hopping on here. And seeing how big Airbnb is outside of the US really puts into perspective just how incredible the STR space is. When did you become involved in short-term rentals internationally outside of the US?Tim Hubbard (04:02)
Internationally, guess 2017 for the first time when I invested in Columbia. I spent a lot of time in Columbia. Still do. We’re building a boutique resort in Columbia and Medellin right now. And then I eventually met my wife in Brazil. And so now it’s split time between Brazil and Columbia for the most part.Dylan Silver (04:24)
I don’t speak any Portuguese. I’m imagining you have to get by, you gotta speak some Portuguese at this point.Tim Hubbard (04:30)
We speak Portuguese pretty much the whole time at home, yeahDylan Silver (04:35)
My fiance is Dominican from Dominican Republic, so I’ve had to learn how to speak Spanish. And it’s amazing, you probably have this experience, Tim, you know when you don’t have the option to speak English, it’s remarkable how fast you’ll start learning another language, even if you think maybe you’re not the most inclined to do so.Tim Hubbard (04:54)
and that’s a necessity. Yeah. You either learn or you don’t communicate. That’s pretty much it.Dylan Silver (04:59)
That’s right. I’m hungrynow. I guess I need to learn some some Spanish or some Portuguese in your case. Walk me through what it was like getting involved in investing abroad. Was it a very intentional goal or were you abroad and realize, hey, this is a great place, you know, many in Colombia, Brazil, right. And if I’m going to be here, I might as well be investing over here.
Tim Hubbard (06:12)
Well, originally it was just a, it was not so much an investment as it was like just something I wanted personally. I wanted, you know, some space abroad that was mine and I didn’t need to rent. Investing internationally, I mean, there’s quite a lot of things. It’s very different, right? I mean, first of all, the regulations and the legal systems are different. So you have to make really certain that you’re working with a good lawyer and you understand all of theall of the nuances. I mean, like there is no MLS or anything like that in South America, for example. And so that also means that the markets are really inefficient. You know, when not everyone can see the prices and the activity in the market, it means that there’s also a lot of opportunity. So from that aspect, there is a lot of opportunity. If you really understand the market and you understand, you know, the values of properties and,
and then also how to operate them in a different country, different language. So originally I went to Columbia just personally, but after spending a lot of time there, some good opportunities came up. And so yeah, started building a resort hotel about three years ago. We’re still building it today, so adding phases to it. You also have the exchange rate.
difference, you know, so that’s a completely, yeah, that’s completely outside of just real estate fundamentals, you know, it’s a whole nother dynamic that you got to consider. ⁓ And we also don’t, as foreigners in another country have loan opportunities, which makes investing incredibly more difficult, you know, unless you have a whole bunch of cash, I mean, but basically the returns are going to be
Dylan Silver (07:28)
Yeah, I’m an arbitrage.Cool.
Tim Hubbard (07:55)
lower on a cashman cash basis if you’re investing 100 % cash versus just 20 % you ask for 25%. So quite a lot to think about, but you definitely got to make sure you’re working with people that you trust.Dylan Silver (08:07)
No question. And as you’re mentioning so many of those different obstacles and then ways that international investing is just straight up different. No MLS, right? No loan opportunities. I’m going through a lot of that myself right now as I’m you know learning what the correct visa process is, as I’m realizing that I can’t find comps for you know these townhomes or condos. And then also too, it’s eye opening and I’m sure you had this experience early on becauseI felt like, wow, there’s this whole world of real estate that exists outside the US. And as a realtor, I had just kind of falsely assumed that there’s going to be MLS is everywhere. I can find comps. I remember the first time that I asked a Dominican real estate agent for comps. They were like, yeah, that doesn’t exist here. And I’m like, well, how in the world do people determine property values then?
Tim Hubbard (09:00)
Yeah, I mean, it’s incredibly inefficient. I mean, you’ll even come across multiple people selling the same properties for different prices. You know, everyone’s trying to sell them.Dylan Silver (09:09)
Yeah, what does he do?You know, I think when we talk about international investing in particular, at least in my experience, it’s as much, you know, a love for the area as it is an investing strategy. And I’ve noticed this in the short term rental space specifically versus some other segments, you know, corporate housing or long term, you know, year to year rentals. People will find a place. I spoke with a guest yesterday who has a Airbnb in Aspen, Colorado ski destination.
that they personally love. So they’re there, you know, first and foremost, because they would be maybe buying a property for themselves, they would be out there enough that they’re going to get use out of it. And then to be able to turn that into a cashflow opportunity is really icing on the cake. To me, that’s what international investing and being someone involved in the STR space internationally represents.
Tim Hubbard (10:43)
Yep, yep, good thoughts there.Dylan Silver (10:46)
Let me ask you this, Tim, between the different investments that you have internationally, but then also domestically, do you notice that there’s any trends that have been linked to success, but also on the flip side of that, things that people are doing, maybe to cut corners and make it simpler for themselves, such as, you know, hiring out an agency to manage it entirely when thatSomething like that could tank your reviews and get you taken off Airbnb or so on. ⁓
Tim Hubbard (11:19)
Yeah,the management piece is crucial. I mean, ⁓ and even much more so in the short-term rental space than in the long-term rental space because as you said, like reviews can just crush your returns. I mean, basically the way that short-term rental properties show up on platforms like Airbnb or booking.com is based on reviews and price. And if your reviews aren’t doing
great, then you lower your prices and that’s not the direction you want to go. so management really can make or break your property. you can have two properties right next to each other, wherever they are in the world, even there in Dominican Republic where you are, like you could have two condos on the beach right next to each other that are identical, same amenities, same location. But if one has really good reviews and the other one doesn’t, it can literally make twice as much money.
And so it all
Dylan Silver (12:11)
That’s right.Tim Hubbard (12:13)
It all comes back to management and there are a lot of pieces, you know, when it comes to management. So, and there are a lot of people that try to take the easy road out, you know, and unfortunately, that’s gotten a lot harder to do. You know, when I first started with short-term rentals, you could put a property online and guess expectations were super low, supply was very low. And so there weren’t a lot of options and people stayed. They left you a great review.and it was a lot easier to make money, but now there’s, you know, way more supply. Some markets way more than others and expectations are higher. and so it’s a lot more challenging. It was, there’s still a ton of opportunity, but the people that have tried to, you know, make it passive or hire out someone that doesn’t maybe have the expertise, or isn’t paying enough attention to the property. They definitely see the.
the negative side of that. And once you get bad reviews, you can’t really get rid of them. So it’s sort of a downward spiral.
Dylan Silver (13:15)
Now, when we talk about, you know, managing risk to a degree, like bad reviews and this type of thing, that adds a layer of complexity to it. But what what also you have to be aware of in the United States, at least, is that you might have an area that changes the legislation. I’m licensed in Texas and Dallas. You can’t do short term rentals. So it’s 30 days or longer. I mentioned to you before hopping on. I was listening to thepodcast that you did with Furnish Finder CEO Jeff Hurst and who’s in that space, right? But abroad, do you think that there’s any risk of that in places like Colombia, Brazil, where I’m at in Dominican Republic? Are there any people who are saying, hey, we need to legislate out these short term rentals because there’s too many of them? Is that pressure existing abroad?
Tim Hubbard (14:06)
No percent. Yeah. I mean, it can exist at multiple levels. So it could exist even as much as like a statewide level or region wide level or county. But then, you know, it can exist on like a neighborhood level. If you have a HOA or administration, which they have in, you know, foreign countries as well. And then it can exist in an individual property or building level.If you have neighbors that have lived somewhere for a long time and you can get pushed back there. So you can get pushed back or you can get regulated out as a short-term rental in a whole bunch of different ways. And we can see like in Barcelona, for example, they just banned short-term rentals. France, I mean, lots of really big cities have this internationally as well. you know my personal properties that are abroad. In Brazil, for example, you know
Dylan Silver (14:47)
Yeah.Tim Hubbard (14:58)
We have a property in a very percy city. And even though that city relies very heavily on tourism, there’s lots of buildings in the area that you cannot run as a short-term rental. In Medellin, where we’re building the hotel, same thing. There’s been tons of properties that have been regulated out. And so it does create an opportunity though. If you have a commercial license or if you have aproperty that has a permit and you’re in an area where there are a lot of regulations and those properties start to come off the market, then that means there’s less supply and the demand for your property goes up. And, you know, we can see this all over the place. We have some partners in Canada, for example, that have like one of the only commercially legal properties and their prices have skyrocketed since all the other properties came off the market. So
While it is challenging, I think the people that get in trouble are the ones that don’t either have a permit or they’re going into an area where those rules aren’t established yet.
Dylan Silver (16:47)
You know, that’s interesting to touch on the commercial space because I’m personally getting involved in multifamily and in commercial. I just had a conversation with my broker yesterday about sending out a buyer’s rep agreement to someone who wanted to make a seller finance offer on some properties in Texas. And it’s a totally different game, right? It’s totally different game. I can speak on the realtor side.that’s it’s like you’re either going to do commercial or you’re going to do single family residential and you’re you’re basically not going to mix it to was the feedback that I got. But on the investor side, if you’re looking at short term rentals to your point, if you can’t do the short term rental strategy due to local regulation, having the ability to do commercial investing and look at some of these commercial plays means that you can
be active in some of these areas where maybe short-term rentals are not allowed. And so being able to pivot like that, while kind of two ends of the spectrum allows you to be active in so many different places.
Tim Hubbard (17:57)
Yeah, really, really important to get the zoning right. And some properties have mixed zoning, where it’s residential, but also commercial. And those types of properties would be much easier to get licenses to operate as a hotel, essentially, even though they may not be a hotel. So really, really important piece of the investment.Dylan Silver (18:19)
Tim, we are comingup on time here on the show here today. Anything that you’re working on or anything that you’d like to get out to our audience or is there a way for our audience to reach out to either you or your team?
Tim Hubbard (18:33)
Definitely. So my podcast is short term rental riches. We talk exclusively about, you know, short term rentals. But our company is called Corzly. We we act as this core operating center on behalf of short terminal operators in multiple countries and over 40 cities in the US. We’ve managed 10s of 1000s of guests. It’s all that we do. We’ve got a really amazing team and we have a virtual approach to the management. Allsort of based off of my personal portfolio, which we still manage today. So, corzly.com or Short Term Rental Riches podcast, you can find us at both of those places.
Dylan Silver (19:08)
Tim, thank you so much for coming on the show today.Tim Hubbard (19:11)
Thanks for having me, Dylan.
