How Teresa Perkins Uses Short-Term Rentals to Build Income, Legacy, and Transitional Housing Impact

Teresa Perkins (00:00)
So we gave up our apartment two days before we were going to move in. I got a call that no person ever wants to get is from my flooring guy, Teresa. We’ve just arrived at the house and there’s been a fire.

So we’re like, okay, you know, what do you do at one moment at a time at that point? Turns out what happened was he was redoing the floors and he put the stain rags in a bucket in our guest bathroom and they combusted and they started a fire.

Dylan Silver (02:05)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Teresa Perkins is the founder of Stay Scenic, a hospitality company. She and her husband, Mike, got their start investing in real estate by using an in-law suite in their home as a short-term rental. She helps women launch their real estate investing journeys. She also started a nonprofit, Small Cloud Housing Inc. that focuses on providing transitional housing. She’s a contributing author in the book, Hospitable Hosts, STR Sisterhood Edition, which just became an Amazon bestseller. Welcome to the show, Teresa.

Teresa Perkins (02:35)
Thank you so much. really appreciate you having me.

Dylan Silver (02:38)
Absolutely,

absolutely. Now I’d like to start at the beginning, right? Getting into real estate using that in-law suite as a short-term rental. How did that come about?

Teresa Perkins (02:50)
Oh my gosh. It is quite the story. I might have to back up just a little tiny bit. We wanted to move out of Minnesota because we’re really tired of six months of winter. And so we were like, we’re going to go south. So we had a long list of items that we wanted in a house. And when we decided to move, that was during the time of after COVID that everyone else decided to move. Actually, that was when we could actually make the move. while we had a long list of wants in our house.

There was also a high competition. probably remember that time when everybody was moving. We were trying to compete with offers that were like, you know, over asking. No, no, no, ⁓ trying to think of what that is. Thank you. no, no, approval or, know, anyway. So it was really challenging. Even we were on our way to see places and they said, I’m sorry. That just went under country. my gosh. So it was a challenging time to buy.

Dylan Silver (03:33)
Yeah.

Teresa Perkins (03:49)
And the long list that we had, my husband has a lot of toys, mustang, know, all of those things. And ⁓ we needed a lot of space. That’s exactly right. And so we were trying to get that. also have kiddos and we needed to get down here before school started. we were like, you know what, we’re just moving into an apartment.

Dylan Silver (03:59)
Garage space, yeah. Gotta put the Mustang somewhere.

Teresa Perkins (04:16)
We’re like, okay, well, this is a more interesting season than we anticipated it being. ⁓ so we not only just had a move that was across states, but we’ll move into an apartment instead of a house. And, know, then there’s a whole host of craziness that goes along with that. To be honest, we got into our apartment for three weeks and we found the house that we know, ⁓ we bought. And, I should back up to our, I think we have spent our entire marriage, ⁓ doing

Dylan Silver (04:32)
for sure.

Teresa Perkins (04:46)
housing projects. We’ve spent probably five to 10 % of our marriage in a Lowes home depot or Menards or some sort. I think our hottest state might’ve been when we bought three toilets. know, it was, we’re no, we’re no,

Dylan Silver (04:48)
Okay.

personal home like the homestead, right?

Teresa Perkins (05:49)
Yeah, yeah. Well, this one happened to be the house that we just bought that is had the in-law suite in it. So we had a lot going on when we found this house. That is now our home. It was about this so much. Our realtor said it had a lot of deferred maintenance, which is my new favorite term for saying that it needed a whole lot of work. was ⁓ we we we prayed that we’re like, please, Lord, we’ve spent the last 15 years.

Dylan Silver (06:12)
Yeah.

Teresa Perkins (06:18)
doing all sorts of projects. Can we just have a house that was no projects? Don’t say that because you just laugh and like, this is what we got was a series of projects, which was great. It’s a beautiful home. had the bones. It had the garage is that was the important part in land. ⁓ Also, the really cool part was it had an in-law suite in it, which was just bonus space for us at that point. We were now living several states away from our family and friends. And we were like, you know,

because of COVID, most people could work remotely. And we thought, what an awesome thing for us to be able to have a space dedicated to our guests that would be able to just have their own space. They could stay for a week or two. didn’t care. It was just extra to us. so we were starting to do all that because we lived in the apartment and because of all the deferred maintenance, we were like, you know what, let’s do all the things that it’s more difficult to do.

⁓ while we are not living there. So we had all of the wood floors redone, which was throughout the whole house. Painted everything that would stand still and so forth. And then we’re like, okay, it’s time to

Dylan Silver (07:22)
Yeah.

Teresa Perkins (07:29)
So we gave up our apartment two days before we were going to move in. I got a call that no person ever wants to get is from my flooring guy, Teresa. We’ve just arrived at the house and there’s been a fire.

So we’re like, okay, you know, what do you do at one moment at a time at that point? Turns out what happened was he was redoing the floors and he put the stain rags in a bucket in our guest bathroom and they combusted and they started a fire.

Fortunately, because it was in the bathroom, the water, one of the water pipes first put out the fire and ⁓ basically stopped everything from going up completely because nobody

Dylan Silver (08:14)
Yeah.

Teresa Perkins (08:15)
there, you know, we would have been in total loss, but it also then flooded everything, which included the basement. So it was an interesting, there’s an interesting learning there that now we know how to deal with fires. There were things that we dealt with that we didn’t have a clue, you know, like I never thought I’d have to replace the attic insulation or have the ducts cleaned or, you know, all of the things that come with a fire and a flood. And anyway, the, the in-law street was part of that. And so we ended up

Dylan Silver (08:19)
everything.

Teresa Perkins (08:43)
It needed, it was also needed a whole lot of love and like, well, I guess that got moved up the list to fix. So now we’re fixing the unlawful suite. At that point, I had also joined a real estate mentorship where we were talking about all things, know, all the different things you can do, which there’s so many opportunities in real estate, the sky’s limit, which is the wonderful thing about real estate and the terrible thing about real estate is you can, if you don’t.

Dylan Silver (08:48)
you

Teresa Perkins (09:08)
focus on one thing, nothing gets done because there’s just so many ways you can go and so many cool things you can do. While we’re doing this, I was starting to look at, what can we do for short-term rentals? I really love short-term rentals. Both Mike and I come from a big family. love hosting. We love people. And what is it? Mike’s like, why don’t we just use what we have? let’s, why get another mortgage? Why don’t we just, you know, change our in-laws? We can use it as a short-term rental.

Dylan Silver (09:24)
Yeah.

Teresa Perkins (09:37)
There was a couple things that we would change design wise because of that. But man, that was awesome. was like, I’ll give him credit. I was a little mad that I didn’t think of that first. But no, it came up with this great idea. So that is exactly what we did. And I shut off everything and I laser focused on that thing because it was like, you know how it is when you, you know, there’s just so many good things. ⁓

Dylan Silver (09:49)
You

Yeah, yeah.

Teresa Perkins (10:39)
I wanted to focus on the thing that I knew we could do well and that could generate revenue to so allow us to recoup some of the money that we spent on other things and really start us down the path of a steady stream of income truly for as long as we want it to be. mean, one of the awesome parts that I love ⁓ about having a short term rental in our home are the tax benefits. So both Mike and I work full time and now

Dylan Silver (11:05)
Shoot.

Teresa Perkins (11:08)
When we were able to get things done in our house and because the guests paid for it, we have a hot tub, was part of our strategy. We had a pool, which is awesome. ⁓ But we’re like, well, know, now when the pool season dies down, we’re going to need something to keep coming, to keep guests coming and to be competitive because this is actually a really competitive short-term rental market. ⁓ Chattanooga is really, there’s so many things to do in this area. ⁓

We have a lot of people, it’s actually a really huge tourism, huge tourism in the billions. And it’s just a great place to be. And you know what, it’s kind of funny because we had targeted Chattanooga as where we wanted to be. We wanted to be in Tennessee. There’s no state income taxes, which is a big deal. ⁓ But we ended up being in North Georgia. And you know what, not long after that, Chattanooga actually passed some restrictions on short-term rentals so that we would not be able to do what we do

Dylan Silver (11:42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hmm.

Teresa Perkins (12:08)
today if we had landed in Tennessee.

Dylan Silver (12:10)
would have had to be

30 plus days stays. Yeah, that can be tricky. I’ve seen something similar happen in Dallas, right? ⁓ You mentioned, you know, getting the start in the in-law suite. Once you had success there, were you then looking at acquiring other short-term rentals?

Teresa Perkins (12:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, we are. We absolutely would love to be in the Gulf Shores area. Not only because it’s a great place to be, but we really like the area. We want it to be kind of a lifestyle asset where we’re able to go and enjoy it ourselves, as well as, you know, bless people with other people that say, you know what, why don’t you come stay, enjoy it, stay on us or, you know, where you may not have been able to go otherwise.

but yeah, love that market. We went for our first time last year, we’re totally hooked on it. It’s really just so beautiful, the white sandy beaches. It’s lovely, really lovely.

Dylan Silver (12:51)
Yeah.

mentioned to in

the green room before hopping on here, I’m looking at looking into the Gulf Shores for myself, I’m looking at some areas of the country, Gulf Shores is certainly one of them in Alabama. I also know, you you’re involved in the transitional housing space, you know, helping veterans, folks reintegrating into society from the prison system, and then some other, you know, segments of that world as well. How did you get into that space?

Teresa Perkins (13:06)
Yeah.

You know, ⁓ we have, I’ll just say we were in church one day and ⁓ our pastor was talking about this story and we may be familiar with it, the prophet Elijah where he was, it was a season of drought, which we kind of felt like we were in personally. We were having made this transition and you know, we were trying to find our groove in our new home. We love it, don’t get me wrong, but it was a challenging season in many ways, especially with the fire and all the craziness. ⁓ But we had heard about this.

the small cloud and it was like, okay, was in a season of drought. They prayed for rain, told his servant to go and look for ⁓ the sign of a breakthrough, the sign of rain. And the servant went back seven times and finally came back and said, Hey, I see a small cloud, size of a man’s hand. And it was the sign that abundance was coming, the sign of huge blessing coming. And it was like for us, our small cloud was our in-law suite. It was the sign of a new beginning.

a big abundance coming and that actually has been incorporated into a mural on our our on our short-term rental as well as in our key chains. This is small cloud. That’s where our nonprofit is now called Small Cloud Housing Solutions because we want to also be the blessing to someone else. We wanted to we also have a lot of veterans in our family. got awesome. We love the veterans. We love folks that serve our country and their families. That’s a big, big commitment.

And we wanted to think, we’re starting to get a little bit older and we’re starting to think about our legacy and what we can leave

and what we can, how we can serve. And for this, that meant for us to provide housing for some of those populations, such as veterans, the folks that you mentioned, the prisoners that are ⁓ transitioning back into the community. Another one that falls on my heartstrings is that kiddos that have, have aged out of foster care.

that ⁓ don’t have a house ⁓ or don’t have a permanent home, which as a mom that does me in, I’m sure as parents, it’s hard to hear that not everybody has a stable family. I grew up in an amazing family and everybody deserves that. One other thing that I think is one on my heart and I hope it’s really cool and I hope it works out is I’d love to have a farm where we can have one or two houses or whatever and have people. ⁓

Dylan Silver (16:09)
Yeah.

Teresa Perkins (16:35)
learn what it’s like to ⁓ be responsible for animals or plant a garden or all the cool things that come with that. ⁓

Dylan Silver (16:41)
Yeah.

That’s

a game changer. I’ve had that experience. grew up in Northern New Jersey. I lived on a ranch in Denton, Texas, which is still considered Dallas Fort Worth, even though it’s like 30 minutes from Oklahoma where I was living. It’s probably a little bit closer to there than it is to VFW. you know, working with the ⁓ animals on the ranch and then, know, putting up fences and moving chicken coops and, you know, you know, ⁓ eggs into incubators and watching them hatch. You’re like, wow, this is a whole other level.

Teresa Perkins (17:13)
I love it.

Dylan Silver (17:15)
you know, of country that I’m being exposed to. And I will remember that for the rest of my life. I did it for a year. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. You you also mentioned how important it is for people to have some level of involvement. I echo this. And I also think that this is echoed, you know, with our ⁓ government as well. I think that there are in many states is money set aside for transitional housing for veterans.

for some of the communities that you mentioned. And I think there’s even potentially real estate investment strategies that can be tied into that. know, one of the ways that people tend to oversimplify, this is again, kind of an extreme analogy here, is people will compare it to like a Section 8, all there’s money set aside for Section 8. This is different, right? This is different. But just in the same way, people might be surprised that there might be some funds set aside specifically for certain types of housing.

Teresa Perkins (17:52)
That’s it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we’re just learning about that. I’m really anxious to connect with other investors that are doing something very similar because there’s a lot to learn. One thing that we’ve done is we have invested heavily in mentorships in many areas of our life. That has been a game changer for us. It’s so nice to not only connect with like-minded people who raise you to another level, but

When we work together and so many times when we’re in school, we’re taught, you you do your own work, you’re doing all by yourself. The opposite is really true in real estate. It’s all about the relationships. It’s all about working together. It’s all about lifting each other up. In my opinion, ⁓ you know, how do we help each other and how can we become stronger? How can we help our communities? How can we help, you know, each other and lift each other up?

Dylan Silver (18:59)
We are coming up on time here, Teresa. Any new projects that you’re working on and then as well, what’s the best way for folks to reach out to you?

Teresa Perkins (19:01)
Yeah.

Well, New Projects is really the nonprofit in getting all that moving. So there’s a lot going on with that. We are going to start with Veterans Homes. And the best way to reach out to me is you can email me at Teresa. So it’s t-e-r-e-s-a at stay scenic.com ([email protected]) . And that’s easy peasy or you can always call.

Dylan Silver (19:29)
Teresa, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for your time today.

Teresa Perkins (19:33)
Thank you, Dylan. I really appreciate you having me.