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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil speaks with Tanya Rooney, a successful short-term rental investor and former corporate real estate project manager. Tanya shares her journey into the short-term rental market, emphasizing the importance of automation, effective guest management, and the challenges she faces, including neighborhood issues and hiring reliable staff. She discusses her goals for expanding her business and her passion for empowering women in real estate. Tanya also addresses common misconceptions about financial barriers to entry in real estate and the importance of adapting to market changes.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Tanya Rooney (00:00)
I had a corporate job for about 10 years and there’s a lot of people in corporate real estate that they’re in real estate but they’re not in real estate for themselves. They’re really just they have a job, they have a career, they help people, they do a good job at it but they’re not necessarily building anything for themselves but they have all of the ingredients, they just maybe don’t utilize the recipe.Michelle Kesil (01:54)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil and today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to connecting with, Tanya Rooney, who has been making serious moves as a short-term rental investor and a former corporate real estate project manager in Minnesota. So, excited to have you on the show today, Tanya.Tanya Rooney (02:15)
Yeah, thanks for having me.Michelle Kesil (02:17)
Of course, I think our listeners are going to take something away from how you’re approaching the short-term rental market and your education programs that you are running for women. let’s dive in.Tanya Rooney (02:31)
Cool.Michelle Kesil (02:31)
First off, for those not yet familiar with you and your world, can you share what your main focus is?Tanya Rooney (02:38)
Yep, I am a short-term rental owner in Minneapolis and St. Paul.Michelle Kesil (02:41)
Awesome. How did you get started with that?Tanya Rooney (02:43)
I totally by accident, which is, feels like sometimes there’s a lot of people’s story. I was in corporate real estate. I started flipping houses because I wasn’t necessarily happy in the corporate real estate sector. So I started flipping houses and we weren’t able to sell one of our houses. We were having a hard time. And one of my buddies happened to have some short-term rentals and he said, have you looked at AirDNA and figured out, you know, any of this has an option? I hadn’t. So me and him talked it over and then the rest is history at this point.Michelle Kesil (03:13)
Awesome. What have been some of the keys to allowing your business to become successful?Tanya Rooney (03:21)
⁓ Automation for sure. Like my short-term rental business runs ⁓ the majority without me. I don’t have to do a ton. I have an assistant. I have a lot of really good automations and we protect our houses with the questions that we ask prior to somebody checking in. you know, underwriting, to me it’s essentially underwriting a guest before they get there. If they’re a good fit, you know, why they’re coming to town, those kinds of things. And then controllingsome questions on the beginning help for when, how they’re gonna act once you’re in the house. So I think like setting all of that stuff up has led me to a lot more success than, you know, otherwise would have happened.
Michelle Kesil (04:07)
Absolutely.I think when people hear short-term rentals, Airbnb comes to mind. Is that what you use?
Tanya Rooney (04:14)
Yep, we use Airbnb, VRBO, sometimesbooking.com, and then we have direct booking as well.Michelle Kesil (04:23)
Awesome. What have been some of the main obstacles that you have found in short-term rentals?Tanya Rooney (05:19)
There’s a lot, but I guess, you know.Some of the ones, it kind of depends on the market. We have one market that we have some difficult neighbors and, you know, one of our houses has some difficult neighbors. And honestly, that has been an ongoing thing that we’ve had to deal with for a while. ⁓ So navigating that and how we navigate it, what that looks like with the city versus with the the neighbor and what that looks like. That’s been a pretty big one. And then another one is probably hiring. So my business is essentially built on hospitality. So hosting, so actually talking to guests.
on
figuring out like how to get guests, so that’s Airbnb, VRBO and all of that. And then the other huge pillar is essentially cleaning and maintenance. Like your cleaners will make or break your short term rental business. Because if you, there’s a certain point where Airbnb and VRBO won’t even let you be on their platforms anymore if you don’t do a good enough job. And a lot of that can come down to cleaning. So your partners in the business matter a lot. And finding consistent people
you
is interesting. mean, I go in little spurts of like, I’ve had a really, I’ve had some really, really good cleaners for a really long time, but they have lives that also change and evolve. So they, you know, might not be available anymore. They might go and get a full-time job. They might, you know, have kids and have to hang out with those kids now. So I think creating consistency around hiring for the stuff that’s important in my business and making sure that it’s good enough quality and being able to pay for it has always been, it’s not necessarily an obstacle.
but it’s something that’s important. See ya.
Michelle Kesil (06:58)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s all stuff that is definitely on the top of the mind of your business. That’s important for people to be aware of if they want to enjoy the short-term rental space.Tanya Rooney (07:11)
Mm-hmm, yeah, for sure.Michelle Kesil (07:12)
What are some of the goals that you have for where you want this business to go and to expand to?Tanya Rooney (07:19)
⁓ So this business is actually like awesome for me. right now it is a lifestyle business in the way that it does what I need it to do. We have real estate that it’s making cashflow that I’m looking for and I have enough of it automated that it doesn’t, it just doesn’t take a lot of work. So this business specifically, I might want to buy one or two more. We talk about what that would look like, what kind of property, where it would be, what the personality of the property would need to be and what we would need to create.So that is still on my mind and it’s probably something that’ll happen in the next five or ten years. Honestly, probably the next two years. Let’s be serious. But I think, you know, this, this, that part of my business is really, is kind of well oiled. I also do some consulting in commercial real estate because that was my background. So that I’m not looking to grow out either. It’s just word of mouth. Like I pick up projects here and there. I think the big spot where my life will be going is just towards
new program that I’m working through and going to start offering to people to build their own short-term rental business of and what it what it could look like and how we could help them do stuff like that.
Michelle Kesil (08:32)
Amazing. That’s exciting. Yeah, as far as this program, what are kind of the steps that someone needs to take and like what are you teaching them?Tanya Rooney (08:42)
⁓ So I guess the reason that I was born isI had a corporate job for about 10 years and there’s a lot of people in corporate real estate that they’re in real estate but they’re not in real estate for themselves. They’re really just they have a job, they have a career, they help people, they do a good job at it but they’re not necessarily building anything for themselves but they have all of the ingredients, they just maybe don’t utilize the recipe.
So they have the ingredients of like doing so much in real estate and building something for themselves.
building their own net worth, building their own set of tools for their tool belt. So the thing that I have been obsessing over is how do I help women who have a corporate real estate job or have a career that’s…
maybe it’s not secure the way it’s always been. I feel like we’re kind of going into an era of not knowing what is right, what is secure. I don’t know how to explain that really well, but mainly I grew up thinking that government jobs were secure, that having a job for 30 years is what you’re supposed to do because the business that you’re working for will take care of you and all of these things. And I feel like we’re kind of in a spot right now that that’s not necessarily true anymore.
Like there’s lots of places, I mean the government has laid off people. There is, you we happen to be in a government shutdown right now, so that isn’t necessarily secure anymore. Even jobs that you’ve had for 10 years, like you, like I know plenty of people that get severance packages. So what I see to me is a gap in skills of how can we empower more women in this world to create something for themselves that gives them the safety net that they might want or need and not know they need.
and not have to put everything on the back burner to do that because I don’t think a short-term rental business takes up so much time that you couldn’t add it in. And then when something like, something crazy happens, like whether that is a death, a divorce, a layoff, anything, they now have the skills to…
do everything they would need to do to make the money that they would need to have safety. So I think I really believe that humans are in charge of their own safety and security. They might think that it lies with somebody else, but that is, to me, made up. It’s not true. So to be able to have those skills, even if you fail, I feel that…
plenty of things in my life. I’ve flipped houses where I didn’t make money and that yeah, technically on paper is a failure, but in real life, it’s not like I have all this experience of things I know to be true and need to care about and those don’t get taken away with the money that I didn’t make. They’re all tools in my tool belt now. So utilizing that kind of, you know, mindset, I want to help women figure that out for themselves and it doesn’t I’m geared towards women because women in
general are the ones that I’ve seen a lot of my friends go through divorces and not know what the heck they’re gonna do and have to reply on alimony and have to rely on all these things. Whereas you could just build something that is forever in a way that you can go and buy a new thing. Like I know at any given time I could go out and buy a house in the next month and I could build this thing where it would have cash flow. I could structure a deal where I don’t even have to come with money and I could furnish this
place with again somebody else’s money potentially and I could run it like a business have cash flow coming in and I could utilize that cash flow for whatever I want and those skills aren’t going to go away anytime soon. Like yes the market might evolve and there might be new things you have to care about and learn about but mostly like the core skills are there. So I want women to be able to do something like that too. Like I want to teach women how to do that and I want them to join me and figure out okay how many how much money do you need you know.
I know that we can get $100,000 in a year of cash flow for somebody with just a few properties. And it took me five years. How can I do that in one year for somebody else? So that was a really long roundabout way, Michelle, sorry, to say that’s what I really want to build.
Michelle Kesil (13:25)
I love it. think that’s so powerful and so needed because yeah, like you mentioned security, safety, all those things. it’s really, we all got to figure it out for ourselves. No one’s going to save us. Not your husband, not the government. Like, so that’s so important. And I love that you’re doing that. And yeah, I think so many people, they have those like,Tanya Rooney (13:40)
Hope no one’s saving us. Yeah.Michelle Kesil (13:52)
fears or limiting beliefs of, I need to have a lot of money to invest and I love that you mentioned that that’s not true and so I would be curious for you to expand on that. if someone comes to you and is like, wow, I this program, I feel like that’s what I need but I don’t think I have enough capital to get my first house. What would you say to that?Tanya Rooney (14:13)
Yeah, I would tell them that that isn’t true. Like I probably say that to somebody once a week, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I like to challenge people to think like, I have four houses and I have other people’s money and three of them. So there are ways to do it. People do it all the time. I do tell people though, if it is your first house, you’ve never done anything, you have to have some kind of money. Like, I think there is ways to do real estate with zero dollars because I’ve done it. But I think in the firstMichelle Kesil (14:19)
Yeah.Tanya Rooney (14:42)
one like the first real estate deal I ever did, I still had $10,000 $15,000 in the bank and it was just because of a safety net. I still used hard money, I still used other people’s money and did all of that from the get-go, but I had money for when a contractor needed $3,000. Well, I can’t go to the bank and get $3,000. I need to have that. So I would still encourage people like you need to have some kind of nest egg. And if you don’t have it, then you would just partner with somebody. You’d need to find somebody. But using private money isMichelle Kesil (15:02)
Mm-hmm.Tanya Rooney (15:11)
actually pretty easy. There’s creative ways to do things all the time. Like I have a buddy that hasa storage unit plus maybe 15 or 20 properties. So like I think his total is probably $120 with his storage and he doesn’t have any bank loans. Like there are so many people out there that do it with zero dollars. Like it’s a constant thing. Typically when somebody brand new comes to me and asks me, I tell them to go to the book, Getting the Money by Susan Lasseter Alliance and like starting out with that. Because that’s between that and then Brandon Turner’s book, ⁓ No and Low Money Down Investing.
It’s kind of old, it’s still everything and it still applies that you can do it without other people’s money. There’s a lot of creative ways to do deals.
Michelle Kesil (15:57)
Amazing. Yeah, I think that really can be such a big shift for people that, you know, like in those situations like you mentioned, don’t see a way out.Tanya Rooney (16:06)
Mm-hmm.Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there’s, mean…
There’s a lot of things to do in life and there’s a lot of ways to do it. Real estate is just the way that I’m the most passionate about and the most excited to tell people how to leverage real estate on doing that. I think there is a barrier to entry, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but if you really, really don’t have any money, are hundreds, there’s tons of people that do this stuff without money, and you just might have to do a little bit of extra leg work to make it work, but it’s totally possible.
Michelle Kesil (17:21)
amazing. I love that perspective. Yeah, and the thing with real estate is it’s like, I mean, like you mentioned, even if the economy is going up and down or whatever it’s doing, it’s not going to, you know, fully go away, like, the market is going to shift, but it’s still always going to be a part of, like, a way to invest.Tanya Rooney (17:37)
Mm.Yeah, you might not get cash flow the same way if we go into this or when we go into this recession, your cash flow might tank, but you’re still getting appreciation and the appreciation isn’t gonna go away. At least typically, like something pretty catastrophic would have to happen for that. ⁓ So I think just remembering that real estate is a long game.
Airbnb and cashflow for Airbnbs and short-term rentals, that’s like the short game. It’s a bit busier, but the long game is really building the portfolio that matches the wealth of what you want to do someday.
Michelle Kesil (18:16)
Absolutely.Have you seen any challenges with the platforms like Airbnb or Booking and all that?
Tanya Rooney (18:25)
Yes, there is always something. If you’re not in Airbnb or you don’t follow it, then I’m thankful that you don’t have to worry about the things that we do. It’s nothing that we can’t deal with though. there, mean, just like us in our business and all of our businesses, we’re pivoting because something happens while Airbnb does the same thing. They’re pivoting when they need to please shareholders. They pivot when…Michelle Kesil (18:26)
Sure.Tanya Rooney (18:52)
they know that they can make money on something. Like I would do the exact same thing. Like if I can monetize my early check-ins, I’m going to monetize my early check-ins. So Airbnb does the same thing by monetizing extra items. ⁓ And we just, we deal with it as it comes. Thankfully, some of those stories are now getting to actual guests.So I’ve seen an uptick lately in guests asking how they can book direct. And while if you’re on Airbnb and somebody asks you that, you do not tell them how to do it. It’s not a good idea. If you have their phone number, you can text them and tell them how to do that, but you would never do that on a platform because you could be like, your money train could be completely kaput just like that. So I think as they make their changes, it’s just knowing that you might need to follow some people that are in the industry to help you.
Like essentially, like one of the biggest things right now is they just took away fees. Like essentially they used to make it that you would book a house for $100 and then Airbnb’s fee was $20 so the guest would pay $120. Well now Airbnb has just decided that nope, host you get $100 or like you can charge $120 but the host is now paying that $20 out of their hundred. So that, and that’s a really big change. Like typically we…
we don’t have to absorb that. So now they’re changing the way guests see prices. I didn’t know the interpretation of all of that. So I know smarter people than me. And I think that’s really important to look to industry experts. A lot of it I’ve been figuring out for a long time.
While I’m not an industry expert, think I’m getting a heck of a lot closer. But knowing that there’s other people out there that can interpret those things and following those people so that they can maybe put it into bite-sized chunks. So what that essentially meant is that we needed to put a markup now on our dollars. So if we were always going to stay at $100 a night, well, now we need to be $120 a night to make up for the fact that Airbnb is now going to take $20 from us instead of charging $20 to the guest. No matter what, the guest should have to pay for it because my bills are still going up.
guessed how you want to price things is totally your prerogative, but knowing that those kinds of things happen and then just pivoting as they come. And that might mean additional insurance, that might mean changing the way you price, that might mean changing the way your calendar is set up, whatever it is, you just kind of pivot. They still…
I don’t do a ton of direct bookings, like I probably have 10 % direct bookings. So unless I want to do complete direct bookings, I have to work with Airbnb and VRBO appropriately to ensure that they’ll still continue to give me money and people will still book my houses. So yeah.
Michelle Kesil (21:33)
Yeah, that makes sense. You know, with any outside source, you kind of have to pivot as they pivot, but yeah, I love that you mentioned just following the experts that are watching those trends and yeah, you don’t have to be the one that’s in the weeds all the time.Tanya Rooney (21:36)
No.Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely. There’s people that do it and they love it. Like why wouldn’t you go to the people that have an economist background and find out stuff from them instead of trying to become an economist yourself? Like that just seems like a great idea.
Michelle Kesil (21:51)
Yeah.Yeah, amazing. I love that perspective. Cool.
So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you?
Tanya Rooney (22:11)
The best place is probably Instagram. profile is tanyarooneymn. I also have a website tonyarooneymn.com. I’m working on my business and it’s called Invest.Nope, it’s called Wealth in Her Hands. Sorry, I’m still like figuring all of that out. So soon enough we’ll have a spot where people can go take a quiz and figure out what kind of rental they should have. that will probably, I think there’s gonna be a link in show notes with that. Otherwise you can still just reach out to me and I’d be happy to send it to you. But yeah, find me on Instagram. That’s the place I hang out the most.
Michelle Kesil (22:45)
Perfect.Well, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. Thank you for being here.
Tanya Rooney (22:50)
Yeah, thanks a lot Michelle, I appreciate it.Michelle Kesil (22:52)
Of course. And for the listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Tanya who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.
