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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Kristen Knapp interviews Vivian Yip, a former Apple program manager turned real estate entrepreneur. Vivian shares her journey from corporate life to real estate, discussing the challenges and opportunities she encountered along the way. She highlights the rise of her property management company, Hestia 360, and the growing trend of midterm rentals as a viable investment strategy. Vivian also introduces her new venture, Crew Homes, aimed at connecting Airbnb investors with midterm rental opportunities. Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes the importance of quality and relationships in property management and offers valuable insights for aspiring real estate investors.
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Vivian Yip (00:00)
whoever said that short-term rentals are passive was completely lying. And then there’s long-term rentals. We have one long-term rental and we cash flow $600 a month on it, which sounds really great, but we also bought that in 2015. So we got in early.Kristen Knapp (00:05)
Right, totally.Yeah.
Vivian Yip (00:23)
But if you’re investing today in 2025, it’s really hard to cashflow on a property and it’s really hard to find a way to invest in real estate that makes sense. And for a lot of people, short-term rentals is far too much work.Kristen Knapp (02:08)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Vivian Yip, who is an ex Apple iPhone program manager who got into the world of real estate and now she’s a real estate entrepreneur and investor and property manager as well. We have a lot to talk about. She does a lot within the industry. So thank you so much for being here, Vivian. So let’s start at the beginning. You were at Apple working really hard. Tell us about what that experience was like and what made you transfer into real estate.Vivian Yip (02:26)
Thanks, Kristen.I had a really great career at Apple. spent almost seven years there. My last position was a program manager, but I was really excited about working in a startup environment, even though it wasn’t a startup, but it was a startup environment, worked with some really, really brilliant people. I was able to actively engage in some major continuous innovation projects. And it was all wonderful until probably the pandemic.
We started running into a ton of supply chain issues. My team was responsible for the execution of the logistics of iPhones. So as you can imagine, there are supply chain issues all over the world. Apple was not neutral to it, right? We had our own set of problems then. And that is when I decided that I needed to get out of corporate. It wasn’t giving me joy anymore.
Kristen Knapp (03:12)
Right?Right? Yeah, I can imagine that’s a really stressful job.
Vivian Yip (03:27)
Totally, totally stressful. And my body started giving me signs to quit my job. And I’m forever grateful that while I was working in corporate, that I invested my money into real estate. And when the moment came to decide to pivot, I was able to do so without a ton of hesitation at all.Kristen Knapp (03:47)
That’s amazing. So you already kind of built this on the side and knew that you enjoyed it and were good at it. So you were able to just kind of make the full week.Vivian Yip (03:54)
Correct. mean, we were, my husband and I, were flipping houses at the same time as well. We were flipping houses in order to try and keep some of them, which we did. And over time we realized that real estate could potentially replace our corporate jobs and we could free up our time, be in control and not have to worry about asking for another day off. That was really, that was really the big thing for me. Cause I, I think that life is worth.Kristen Knapp (04:16)
Yeah.Yeah.
Vivian Yip (04:20)
living and exploring. I love to travel. I love to see the world. And I hated that in corporate you get two, three weeks maximum. It wasn’t enough.Kristen Knapp (04:29)
Right.Yeah. And real estate, mean, it’s definitely a stressful job and it’s time, or it takes up a lot of time as well. But if you’re loving doing it, I mean, you really do have to love this industry to be in it. If you love it, it doesn’t feel like a lot of work. So then you founded Hestia 360, which is a property management company. How did you kind of get into property management?
Vivian Yip (04:45)
Correct.Well, as I was planning, well, as I was quitting my job at Apple and acquiring more properties, it’s very hard to cashflow in Austin where I live. And I started exploring the furnished rental model. I started with a short-term rental. And when the pandemic hit, I accidentally pivoted into midterm rentals, found success in that. Then I ended up some, lo and behold, I’m now with seven midterm rentals. And over time.
Kristen Knapp (06:01)
Right.Vivian Yip (06:07)
people started realizing that I was specializing in this space and people started asking me to co-host. So I started co-hosting and then people asked me to do more things. And I was like, well, that’s more like a property management role because there’s this clear divide between what you can do as a co-host versus a property manager. And I found myself saying no to so many opportunities that it didn’t sit well with me. So then I read a book called Who Not How?And I was like, okay, I have to open up my mind and stop saying no, and maybe just say yes, but figure out who can help me. And that’s when I partnered with my real estate broker. became a licensed realtor, partnered with my real estate broker who already has a long-term rental property management company. And I asked her if she would partner with me to make this happen. And she said, absolutely. So that became the birth of Hestia 360. And now we property manage about 30 properties all across Austin.
Kristen Knapp (07:00)
ItVivian Yip (07:00)
And it’s been reallygreat because it allows me to have a lot more visibility and pulse into the strategy in my market.
Kristen Knapp (07:07)
And talk more about the opportunity with midterm rentals and what makes it such a good investment opportunity.Vivian Yip (07:13)
⁓ there’s so many reasons. do I start? First of all, I’ll start with, I started with short-term rentals and I only did short-term rentals for about six to seven months before the pandemic hit and I switched to midterm. And I can tell you after seven months, I was already feeling burnt out. There was just so much work involved in short-term rentals between guest check-in messaging.Kristen Knapp (07:16)
youVivian Yip (07:35)
turnovers, chasing your cleaners, restocking things. was like, holy smokes,whoever said that short-term rentals are passive was completely lying. And then there’s long-term rentals. We have one long-term rental and we cash flow $600 a month on it, which sounds really great, but we also bought that in 2015. So we got in early.
Kristen Knapp (07:45)
Right, totally.Yeah.
Vivian Yip (08:03)
But if you’re investing today in 2025, it’s really hard to cashflow on a property and it’s really hard to find a way to invest in real estate that makes sense. And for a lot of people, short-term rentals is far too muchThey don’t have time. They don’t have the interest in hospitality or long-term rental numbers just don’t pan out. So midterm rentals to me is a really great way as a, as a fine balance between the two and
I love it because when I was able to expand and scale my own personal portfolio, I made it a regular paycheck for myself. I found ways to get consistent income month after month and instead of relying on a company to give me paychecks, I ended up giving myself a paycheck.
Kristen Knapp (08:47)
Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, I do think that midterm rentals are such a good opportunity right now. And what would you constitute as a midterm rental? Like what are the kind of the parameters that you would say make it?Vivian Yip (08:58)
In most markets, it’s defined, anything that’s defined as not a short-term rental. there’s people like, well, what’s a midterm rental? There’s no, there’s no legal or city definition of a midterm rental. You’re either a short-term rental or you’re a long-term rental. So midterm rental is a strategy. Legal, legally speaking, it’s short-term rental or long-term rental. So in most markets, it’s 30 days and more. Some markets it’s28 days and more but I just came back from DC and I found out that long-term rentals start at 60 days and more Which I was surprised at
Kristen Knapp (10:06)
Yeah, interesting. And I’m sure each area has their own regulations with these rentals, especially as it pertains to Airbnb. Can you talk about kind of those challenges?Vivian Yip (10:11)
rights.⁓ the challenges, with short term rentals and midterm rentals.
Kristen Knapp (10:19)
Just with, you know, being on Airbnb, you know, just the legalities around these rentals in general.Vivian Yip (10:28)
Yeah, Ithink the biggest obstacle for real estate investors isn’t the city rules for midterm rentals. It’s more about the HOA regulations that occur. Some people buy properties and they become accidental landlords. Maybe their life changes or they have a life event, like something that happens where they become accidental landlords and they want to turn their property into an investment property that cash flows through the midterm rental strategy.
And a lot of obstacles people run into is an HOA. And that HOA may say that they can only do 30 days only, or sometimes they’ll say they can only do 90 days or six months. And that can be a huge deterrent to being able to operate this furnished rental model. But that’s not to say it’s not possible. There’s different ways you could write the leases. Some HOAs are smarter than others, and we’ll catch that.
Kristen Knapp (11:18)
Yeah, and from the property management side, do you work predominantly with midterm rentals?Vivian Yip (11:23)
We work predominantly with midterm rentals. A lot of our properties, however, are able to straddle the hybrid strategy. So we attract the midterm rental guests, but we fill in the gaps with short-term stays.Kristen Knapp (11:37)
Awesome. I mean, that’s a really great service. Can you talk about, I think a lot of people kind of think property management might be one size fits all. Can you talk about why, you know, working with you and working with a company of your size might be the better option for people?Vivian Yip (11:52)
I think that, and this is totally biased, but midterm rentals, it’s a lot of it has to do with relationships. A lot of it has to do with relationships and understanding how the strategy works. Because if you’re a short-term rental property manager, you’re so focused on filling the calendar in the future with short stays because that’s how you get a pulse on the upcoming events andKristen Knapp (11:58)
Yeah.Vivian Yip (12:21)
the popularity of your listing. Whereas in midterm rentals, it’s really more about being positioned properly, having your calendar open so that people, maybe if they had a flood or they had a fire or they’re relocating or on a work project, they need a place for five to six months at a time. How are they supposed to book your place if you’re running a short-term rental model calendar? So number one, it’s really important to hire a property management company that understandshow to execute this specific strategy. And number two, it’s really about having relationships as well because a lot of midterm rental bookings can come through direct bookings and knowing the different avenues to get direct bookings, whether it’s having relationships with local companies that bring in employees or having relationships with the insurance companies that use furnished rentals. And then also having a really great network of other homes
Kristen Knapp (12:52)
Right.Vivian Yip (13:16)
that are available so that if your property’s not available, you can refer it to somebody else.Kristen Knapp (13:20)
Right, absolutely. And that kind of brings us to your next entrepreneurial endeavor, which is Crew Homes, which I know you’re really excited about and I’m excited for you to share more about it.Vivian Yip (13:31)
So for the last two years, I actually ran the company as Corporate Rentals USA. And as you can imagine, answering the phone and saying, hello, Corporate Rentals USA was a huge mouthful. So we actually rebranded in July to Crew Homes, is short for Corporate Rentals USA. So crewhomes.com, we basically have created our own network ofAirbnb investors that want to attract these midterm stays because at the end of the day, we get requests for housing all over Texas, all over California, all over the nation. So being able to find you easily is why we built our B2B platform. So you can create your own listing on our website. It needs to be a furnished rental. We prefer that you have professional photos because we prefer single family homes as well.
But ideally, it’s a way for us to find you if we have a match. So we’ll reach out to you, confirm all the terms and conditions of your property, and we’ll bring you a corporate client when there’s a need.
Kristen Knapp (15:16)
amazing and talk about kind of like why why it’s challenging to do that on Airbnb like itselfVivian Yip (15:23)
Because number one, Airbnb cloaks the owner information. if I, say for instance, I get a request for somewhere in Southern California, we talked about Huntington Beach before this, right? And if I don’t have someone in my network in Huntington Beach, then I might reach out to some property that I find on Airbnb, but then I have to…try and communicate on the Airbnb platform and that’s really inconvenient and very difficult. Rather than try and take someone off platform from the Airbnb app, it’s really for me about building a relationship with the owner on my own platform. And that way I can easily find them.
Kristen Knapp (16:01)
Yeah,focusing, and you can focus on midterm rentals as well. You’re not getting booked up short term.
Vivian Yip (16:08)
Yeah. Yeah.And then, you know, sometimes like, for instance, if you are on Airbnb and you might have a booking for, let’s say Halloween, which is coming up, but you’re the rest of your calendar is empty and you’re just dying for a booking. But somehow, Kristen, I got a request for Huntington Beach. I look at your property, I reach out to you and you say, you know what?
I’m willing to make other accommodations for my current guest that’s booked. I would love a six month stay with you.
That’s really the power of it, is being able for us to reach out to you and giving you an opportunity to make that decision.
Kristen Knapp (16:44)
Yeah, mean this is really exciting. So how did you go about even building this platform? I feel like it’s a that’s a big undertaking. Yeah.Vivian Yip (16:51)
it’s been a big journey.It’s been a really big journey. So I have a pretty entrepreneurial background and I’ve dabbled over the years between WordPress and Wix websites and all these different things. And when I started my first instance of a website back in 2023, I had a WordPress website, but it just didn’t do what I needed it to do. My model, my business model was different because over time you
discover things that are working or aren’t working and you pivot. So it was a WordPress website, but there wasn’t any capability for someone to self onboard. It was really reliant on our team to do that. And so I spent over a year trying to figure out what would be the next right thing. And finally, I started making the implementation of the new platform starting in February this year, and then we went live in July.
Kristen Knapp (17:41)
That’s so exciting. And then what are your? Yeah.Vivian Yip (17:43)
So it’shard because I’m like CEO, CFO, CTO, I’m all the things and it’s a lonely journey, but I feel like we’re on the right path now and I’m really excited because anybody can self onboard their property and it just makes it really easy for us to grab the inventory that we need to support all the requests that we get.
Kristen Knapp (18:03)
Absolutely, and what’s some advice that maybe you can give to people about building something from scratch, maybe something you wish you knew at the beginning?Vivian Yip (18:10)
There’s so many things. I think that if you’re going to run into… So I have a lot of people that want to transition from long-term rentals into midterm rentals purely because they’re like, what? I can make two times more money than long-term rentals. And my first question to you is, do you want to be in the hospitality business? Because that could mean phone calls or issues at one o’clock in the morning.or two o’clock in the morning, if a guest shows up late because their flight was canceled, do you have your locks automated or do you have a key box? Are you available to answer questions when the guest needs you? That’s like the first test. If that makes you cringe, you’re probably gonna stay in the long-term space. The second thing is, are you in it for the hospitality? Are you gonna go and furnish your property with all this used stuff from grandma’s house and just put furniture in it?
Kristen Knapp (18:50)
Right.Right.
Vivian Yip (19:02)
Or are you really into the business for building a haven for someone to stay in for a while? I really believe in standards for this space, which is why we have a certification process. So we don’t just move anybody into your property. Before we move someone in, we actually have an inspector that comes in just to make sure your dishwasher works, your washer and dryer works. The lights are clean, the fans work, the…Wi-Fi is workable, the security works, like not security, but like the locks work. We’ve taken corporate housing standards into the Airbnb space. So before we move a guest and we send an inspector to go through this inspection checkpoint, just to make sure that we’re bringing the guest into a reliable space that they’re gonna be happy with, because they’re gonna sign on for a three, four month lease, maybe even a nine month lease.
We want to make sure we iron out all the issues at the forefront before they move in and not have them worry about.
moving from one problem into another. Like a lot of our guests, they’ve had to move out of their homes because of water damage or they had a fire. It’s super, super traumatic for them. And if they, can you imagine if your house just burned down and now you move into someone’s Airbnb and it’s garbage, it hasn’t been maintained, the lights are burnt out, the fences are all broken. That just doesn’t feel good to me. I want to make sure that when I bring in a guest into your
furnished rental that it’s going to pass the sniff test. And then we move in. So that is our Hestia certification, which is the foundation of what Hestia 360 is about. But Hestia is a Greek goddess of hospitality, hearth and home.
Kristen Knapp (20:33)
Yeah.that. Now those are great, it’s kind like a good checklist to you know pulse check yourself because I think as you said a lot of people are really interested in the money of it but you have to be interested in the whole picture of it for it to be successful. Absolutely well I mean you’ve given such great advice on midterm rentals and I’m so excited to see where Crew Homes goes. Tell everybody where to find you, where to find both of your companies.
Vivian Yip (20:55)
for sure.Sure. If you’d like full service property management in Austin, Texas, it’s Hestia360.com. That’s H-E-S-T-I-A 360.com. If you are interested in joining my network, it is crewhomes.com. That’s C-R-U-homes.com. And if you’re interested in learning about the strategy and get coaching from me directly on the midterm rental strategy, you can find me at vivianyip.com.
Kristen Knapp (21:31)
Well, thank you so much for being here, Vivian.Vivian Yip (21:34)
Thanks, Kristen.I was really excited to join the show today.
Kristen Knapp (21:37)
Amazing. Well, thank you everybody for listening. I hope you learned a lot and please follow Vivian and everything she’s up to and we will see you back next time. Bye.
