Master Rental Arbitrage: Your Path to Airbnb Investment Growth

John Harcar (00:02.189)
OK, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m here today with Isaac Vance. And what we’re going to talk about is besides his journey in business and real estate, we’re going to talk about how to use and get your first deal using short term rental strategy. Guys, remember here at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, kind of all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5x their business. And we do that by providing the tools and resources, the opportunities,

to grow that business you want to grow and live that life you’ve always dreamed of. So Isaac, man, welcome to our show.

Isaac Vance (00:38.944)
Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Excited to talk short term rentals.

John Harcar (00:42.913)
Sounds good, man. And I’m excited to dive into that world, too. And especially as your first deal. That’s kind of interesting. But before we get into all that and jump into the weeds of that stuff, tell our audience a little bit about you, kind of your background, how you got into real estate, and kind of what got you up to today.

Isaac Vance (00:52.193)
Yeah.

Isaac Vance (01:01.441)
Yeah, definitely. would say, know, my background, I’m a, I’m a retail manager. I still work my nine to five, you know, but, ever since, yeah, I’m still, I’m still in the grind, still in the grind. So, but ever since I was young, to be honest, like the nine to five, the two weeks of vacation a year, like I knew just like that, that definitely wasn’t for me. And there had to be another way. So I’ve always had that entrepreneurial itch and it was just trying to find the right vehicle, you know, for me. So.

John Harcar (01:08.056)
okay.

John Harcar (01:25.94)
Mm-hmm.

Isaac Vance (01:30.113)
I would say I definitely tried a few things. I’ve sold on Amazon before. There might be some people out there with a wine chiller sleeve with my name on it. I dabbled in the vending machine business. I have one in my local mall up here in Temecula. But I finally, you know, I really just focused in and tried to find, you know, the one vehicle that would really actually change my life. Like both of those two.

It would take years. You would need 100 machines or just so many products on Amazon. I was like, what’s the one thing people pay first? Rent or mortgage. So was like, OK, I know I need to somehow be in real estate. And having a normal job, I did not have enough money for a down payment incidentally. So was like, OK, how can I get in when I don’t really have much money down? So that led me to short-term rentals.

John Harcar (02:00.567)
Sure.

Isaac Vance (02:27.647)
I saw the monthly returns, a thousand to two thousand. You hear the people in this space like, three times what you’ll make on a long-term rent. So I was like, okay, I’m intrigued. I want something that one or two deals in can actually change my circumstances and not have to scale so much. So yeah, so I definitely started off with, it’s called rental arbitrage. So I rented a home and then I subleased it and put it on Airbnb.

John Harcar (02:46.196)
Right.

Isaac Vance (02:57.04)
I used a business credit card to fund it. Like I said, I didn’t have a lot of money, but I did my work in advance. I set up my credit right. I had a good credit score, good credit lines, opened up an LLC. So the down payment, typical rental, they want first.

you know, to furnish it all, use the business credit card. It took off in about four months, paid off the whole credit card. was a 0 % interest for 12 months. So I got that out of the way. All the risk was gone. From there, it was all actually profit from month to month. About five months after I paid off the credit card, I had enough money and I bought some land in Georgia.

John Harcar (03:20.045)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (03:29.941)
Nice.

Isaac Vance (03:46.081)
and I launched my first Airbnb on my own with me and my wife. It’s a glamping dome like an hour outside of Atlanta.

John Harcar (03:54.017)
Nice.

Isaac Vance (03:57.142)
pretty much how short-term rentals got me to own my first property.

John Harcar (04:02.581)
That’s awesome. And we’ll go into all that here in a few minutes. And if you ever watch any of my podcasts, I’d like to go backwards. So before you started doing Amazon and vending machines and all that stuff, was there any exposure, any influence, anybody in your life that was doing real estate, any type of real estate?

Isaac Vance (04:13.908)
Okay

Isaac Vance (04:24.277)
Honestly, no, and I think that’s the that’s the hard part for a lot of people trying to get started You know when you when you get the bug or you know? One of the first things that got introduced was richie dad poor dad. I feel like you everyone’s Know I know exactly I had this when I was a teenager, but after I read that I was like, okay assets and real estate, you know, so that got my mind going

John Harcar (04:36.753)
Okay, okay, I was waiting for that. That’s so was waiting for that. The purple book.

John Harcar (04:48.343)
Got it.

Isaac Vance (04:52.031)
But yeah, no, I mean, I think especially in this day and age, the internet is so huge. So no, I didn’t know anybody personally, but once I got interested, I’m like, okay, I’m hitting YouTube podcasts. like, I was.

John Harcar (04:56.397)
Mm-hmm.

Isaac Vance (05:05.195)
learning and just seeing that it’s possible through other people and I just had to connect to myself and think like hey if they can do it I can do it too and there’s just too much free information out there but it definitely just takes your own drive because those around you especially in the beginning when you’re getting started there you know it might be negative you know they’re not understand what you’re doing they’re not going to support it because they don’t know and you don’t know

John Harcar (05:18.22)
Yeah.

John Harcar (05:24.778)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:28.812)
Yeah.

Isaac Vance (05:30.111)
But that’s why reach out to resources, maybe find mentors, podcasts, things like that. So that’s what kind of motivated me and helped me realize that least it is possible.

John Harcar (05:41.429)
Right, okay. So what are you doing nine to five?

Isaac Vance (05:45.823)
So nine to five, I am a store manager at Tommy Bahama. Yep. I’m wearing one right now.

John Harcar (05:49.097)
Ooh, you probably just clean boy. get a bunch of those shirts. No, my stepdad, my stepdad has like, yeah, my stepdad has like, they’re all Tommy Bahamas shirt. All of them. It’s all he wears. Okay, so you’re doing this. This is interesting because, you know, a lot of biggest hangups with folks is, I have a nine to five job. I don’t have time to do anything.

Isaac Vance (06:08.307)
And for me, that’s definitely an excuse.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record or anything like that.

you’re not going to get through those hurdles. When I started, I literally started my arbitrage a month after my daughter was born and I went to a new job so I didn’t have time off. Was that the best time to be starting a new endeavor? It’s never going to be the right time. There’s always going to be excuses. I I stayed up until 2 a.m. just researching, learning Airbnb, learning.

what makes people click, learning why they’re booking, like learning the data, like understanding it. So yeah, it’s really, all of that is really just an excuse. You just have to have a strong why and some determination, and you can definitely achieve the things you need to achieve, especially with all the data out there. There’s too many, like there’s too many people giving away free information.

John Harcar (07:03.304)
There’s, oh yeah, oh yeah. So as you’re working 95, mean, what type of tools or resources were you studying? I mean, were you just online? Did you do any type of mentorship, any coaching programs, anything to help you learn? And then also too, before you answer that question, why rental arbitrage? Why short-term rentals? Why not flipping? Why not rental, regular rentals, long-term? Why not any of the, you know, the stuff most people start in?

Isaac Vance (07:21.321)
Yeah.

Isaac Vance (07:32.852)
That’s true. You know, I would say the reason for me was, I’m glad that you touched on this. I pictured how I wanted my life to be, you know, like, so I’m like, instead of picking a business that was trendy, which is what I did the first few times, was like, I saw people selling on Amazon, know, maybe they’re making money. Let me try to, I’m like, how do I actually want my, like if I’m successful, like how do I want my life to look? So I know I did, I know I needed a certain amount of income.

John Harcar (07:51.008)
Right.

Isaac Vance (08:02.622)
and I didn’t want too many deals. So Airbnb kind of inserted itself there with the cashflow perspective. But then what else interested me is how you can run it. It’s very automated. So that’s where I was like, okay, now I can get my time back and not only my time, I don’t have to sacrifice the amount of money that I actually need to eventually quit my job. So kind of those two factors, just the business part in general and the cashflow that it brought in monthly.

John Harcar (08:24.855)
bright.

Isaac Vance (08:32.105)
is really what drew me to that. I reverse engineered how I wanted my life to be to match the business. Some people will take their passion, like, I love working out. like, is it the best business plan? Who knows? But if you’re exactly. So I really just landed on the business that I knew would make me happy when I am successful. So that’s kind of how I found that.

John Harcar (08:48.095)
If you’re Alex Formosy, is. You know, that’s it.

John Harcar (09:00.779)
That’s how you found that. Okay, very cool. Yeah, okay, and then did you do any type of mentoring, coaching, anything like that?

Isaac Vance (09:02.586)
Airbnb.

Isaac Vance (09:07.947)
coaching.

So I actually didn’t. was just, there was about, there was two YouTube channels that really like broke down like step by step of how to get into Airbnb. Especially when I got started in, I got started in 2023 is when I launched my first arbitrage unit. So the boom had already happened. You know, like after COVID that’s, you know, that’s when the explosion happened. So I followed Robb Bill and the real estate Robinson’s and there’s like a couple, a couple other podcasts, but.

John Harcar (09:26.893)
Okay, right.

Isaac Vance (09:39.837)
They really had some like step by step tutorials of what to do, how to do it, what tools to use. I literally just copied and pasted. Like I used the exact property management system that they referred. I mean, down to the same mattress. If they’re giving me mattress, why not? Exactly. And that’s why I try to preach this a lot. Like I’m not reinventing the wheel. I’m doing my own thing with like unique stays, which we can get into later.

John Harcar (09:57.335)
Hey, I mean, about to say, it’s working, why not just jump on it, geez.

Isaac Vance (10:09.766)
the systems and how it runs and how to price and things like that, like it’s already been done. It’s already been laid out. So, you know, why not follow in the footsteps? And like I said, I didn’t have any money. So, you know, I need the free YouTube.

John Harcar (10:18.775)
So how are…

Yeah, exactly. YouTube you. mean, there’s a lot of fantastic information on there. So let’s kind of get tactical and walk me through the place. So you’re you’re renting a property with your own in your own name.

Isaac Vance (10:32.966)
Yes.

Yes, in my own name. I so first the way you know, we could dig in deep how I first found the deal. So I knew what type of home after all my research like what type of home and what base amenities it needed to produce, you know, some cash flow and make it be successful. So what I did was

John Harcar (10:53.313)
And how did you find that stuff out like AirDNA, DadaRabu, what did you use?

Isaac Vance (10:57.991)
Yes, I used the air DNA and I supplemented my projections with also use the service called SPR search. His name is John Bianchi, huge data analyst for the short term rental space. I think I paid like a hundred dollars for him to go through and verify and vet out my property to see what it would make. So not only did I just trust my own, I like, I threw at least a couple of resources to verify what I was seeing.

John Harcar (11:24.706)
Yeah.

Isaac Vance (11:26.76)
especially being my first property. But I would literally just go on sites like Zillow, Trulia and look up furnished rentals. And if they fit my properties, if they fit my buy box, then I would just email them, hey, like, are you okay with me, know, being in a short-term rental leasing it? I could pay.

John Harcar (11:43.405)
Okay, that was gonna be my next question. Are you talking to these people about it are you, because some people might be listening going, okay, so I’ll have to rent a property and I can just like do a short term on it.

Isaac Vance (11:46.991)
Yeah.

Isaac Vance (11:52.956)
Definitely not. want it. You need to get their permission. You need to do it right. And I will say I was lucky. You know, after 60 knows one guy said he’ll meet with me and you know, they were paying a property manager. was it was already a short-term rental, but they were paying a property manager so much money that they weren’t making. They weren’t making the spread. They weren’t netting anything. So he was like, hey, if you just, you know, manage on your own, you’ll probably just make money, you know, instantly and

you know, being it was already short-term rental, he gave me all the contacts. I was truly blessed. Like he had the cleaner, he had the handyman, he had the plumber. I mean, you couldn’t have asked, I mean, for the perfect setup. And we can dig into the relationship part after because that single relationship has actually skyrocketed, you know, like my entire kind of journey to this point. But yes, you want to get it in writing, you want to do it legally and, you know, go from there. So yeah, that’s how I initially, you know, rented it.

John Harcar (12:24.847)
Mm. Wow, perfect, perfect.

John Harcar (12:49.951)
OK, and then you just, you you went out and bought a bunch of furniture to furnish it all. And when how long did it? Yeah, how long did it take you to get your first booking?

Isaac Vance (12:49.988)
and put it on your B &B.

Isaac Vance (12:57.606)
with the business credit cards.

Isaac Vance (13:02.88)
It took me like less than a week.

John Harcar (13:05.031)
Nice. Okay. And then you learned all that via YouTube, you right?

Isaac Vance (13:09.303)
Yeah, and that’s where the research came in. So like I finally could put all my research into play. So especially at this time in in this space, you know, the amenity boom was, was that the is that the base? So I knew I needed something scroll stopping, you know, I mean, it’s, you know, short term Reynolds and Airbnb, it’s really like Instagram, you’re scrolling until you see that like, what is that? So I knew psychologically, and like my cover photo needs to be eye popping enough to catch something different.

than everybody else is posting. So if everyone has a picture of their hot tub, I need something else. It doesn’t have to be something crazy, but it needs to be something else for them to stop. So.

John Harcar (13:44.14)
You need something to do.

John Harcar (13:48.141)
You need a picture of the big bar out on the balcony or on a patio or something like that with the fire going and something like, yeah, no, I get that. That’s awesome. So how many properties do you have now? You have the one you mentioned with your wife, the dome, which sounds pretty darn cool. Tell me about that property.

Isaac Vance (13:53.303)
Exactly.

Isaac Vance (14:05.977)
Yes.

Yeah, so this is, mean, this is my baby. So this is actually our only, the only one we own. And I will get into how to kind of supercharge, you know, the owning process from short-term rentals. But yes, it’s in Sparta, Georgia. It’s five minutes from a lake. We provide, you know, a coffee bar, a fishing, you know, fishing lines. has, has wifi, smart TV. So it’s like glamping.

On the next level, you know, you got a memory foam mattress. The dome is insulated. We have AC I mean everything everything you could think of it’s truly like a couple’s getaway or like a solo traveler getaway things like that So I’m still reinvesting constantly, you know I just put out some outdoor string lights that really gave it a nice vibe for the outdoors since the dome is small but the land is there’s plenty of land so I’m focusing on the outdoor sounds like I want to get a hot tub in there, know things like that to

to kind of spruce it up. And I completely own.

John Harcar (15:05.547)
Nice. And this is land you own.

Beautiful, love that. So what do you think are some of your struggles going on right now with growing your business?

Isaac Vance (15:19.078)
You know, I will say one of the struggles is our next project. So we actually plan on doing a container home in Williams, Arizona, right outside of the Grand Canyon. And it costs a lot more than the dome in Georgia. So we’re pretty much fully built, like building a home from scratch. So, but it’s, it’s, it’s raw land. So, I mean, I have to, we’re, we to put in a septic system. We have to put in a water system. We have to build a foundation. So.

John Harcar (15:37.996)
Okay.

Isaac Vance (15:47.11)
All of that with all of our projections, about 80K to pretty much start that project. So I would say the finances part is holding us up. Which kind of takes me into this other strategy, which is co-hosting or managing other people’s Airbnbs to really boost your income, to then put all that money towards your personal portfolio. And that’s what I’m doing now.

John Harcar (16:13.835)
Right, okay. Okay, so how did you start doing that? mean, and I guess another good question too is like, how do you get people to trust you to co-host?

Isaac Vance (16:24.26)
Yeah, definitely for me, I just I used my like my first deal. So I kept all my data of like, you know, what I did to the summer, my average daily rate, my occupancy, things like that. And I will say I transitioned. So one of the hurdles in arbitrage, which I don’t it’s the way I got started, but I really don’t pitch it because it is risky. You know, it’s your personal name, you know, things like that. But after the end of my first year, they knew what I was doing and they knew how successful I was, obviously.

John Harcar (16:47.274)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Isaac Vance (16:53.189)
and they tried to go up on the rent of $1,000. They’re like, you know, they’re like, you make money, it’s fine. know, I’m not just living in it. Yeah. So what I did, you know, I will say props to my wife. This was her idea. Cause me, I’m, you know, I’m very risk averse, a little too risk averse at times. So she was like, no, like we cannot like, I thought we could have pulled it off with the extra thousand, but she was like, no, like they’re going to keep, it’s just going to be a cycle. This is going to go up and up and.

John Harcar (16:58.773)
Yeah, you made, yeah. Right, right, okay.

John Harcar (17:11.085)
Mmm, me too.

Isaac Vance (17:22.342)
And the lease, offered a shorter lease. it’s like, you knew that was the strategy. They were just going to keep going higher and higher. So she had came up with the idea to switch to managing. So I pitched them. was like, Hey, I’ll leave my stuff in there. Like I’ll leave my pool. Don’t I have like a pool dome, pool table? I’ve, know, I brought all the fun stuff. They just had like the beds, you know, some of the base things. I was like, I’ll leave all my things in there. If I can just cohost it, if I could just manage it for you at.

John Harcar (17:27.361)
Yeah, exactly.

Isaac Vance (17:49.689)
you know, at a percentage and they, and obviously they they said yes. But yeah, but to actually grow it, you know, I guess for someone who doesn’t do arbitrage, you know, straight into cohosting is really just the research. It’s just know what you’re talking about. Know the area, know what, know your, know you have to know your numbers and really the plan is to, for people who, for, I’m sorry, for

John Harcar (17:51.137)
Right. Cool. Very cool. Okay.

John Harcar (18:07.007)
Know your numbers.

Isaac Vance (18:19.117)
those long-term owners, buy and hold owners, they think of short-term running, you think of so much work. Like, I don’t want to have a short-term, you know, I’m like, sounds like, you know, you got a guess, you got a complaint, you know, you got to do so much work. So it’s really pitching them how a normal property manager would pitch you. Like, hey, this is done for you. You know what I mean? Do you want the advantage of the cash flow? Like, you can make three, four times.

John Harcar (18:39.425)
Yeah, white glove.

Isaac Vance (18:45.109)
Including my percentage and you still don’t have to do anything. I take care of the permit I take care of the person I take care of the clean Everything so it’s like just letting them know that you can actually take care of it like a normal property manager would and just letting them know the benefits is really how you can get someone to trust you and To into you know scale your business and once you get one. It’s really a snowball effect I’ve I’ve had a couple referrals to have how I do my business and

John Harcar (18:57.514)
Mm-hmm.

Isaac Vance (19:13.273)
You know, Airbnb itself. Now this was a game changer for me. So I got started just in October of 2024. So it’s only been what, like six, seven months since I started actually managing for people. So from that one arbitrage unit, I’m at 10 properties right now and I have two in the pipeline for this summer. So Airbnb played a, I will say they played a big role on that because there was no, there was no way of connecting the owners to the property managers. Like

John Harcar (19:23.319)
Yeah.

John Harcar (19:32.182)
Nice.

Isaac Vance (19:42.572)
You had to do it all yourself. Like I said, I’m going on Trulia. I’m going on Zillow. Like, Hey, do you want to convert your, you know, long-term, I long-term rental. So short-term rental, like let me help you. You know, it was all just, you know, grinding, hitting the pavement and they realized that. So they created a network. It’s called the cohost network. So if you’re above a certain rating, so if you have to maintain like a 4.8 stars to even be visible on the platform and they pretty much, you know, promote these hosts.

John Harcar (20:00.845)
Mm-hmm.

Isaac Vance (20:12.707)
to owners who want to Airbnb. So it’s pretty much like a dashboard. Like, hey, I live in Temecula, California. Like I want Airbnb in my house. Let me click on there. And then four hosts will pop up. Exactly. And it’s like a profile. It’s like Facebook. It shows their profile. It shows how many listings I have. It shows my rating. It shows all your reviews. So I incentivize this host to really be good hosts. It’s like they’re going to pick the person.

John Harcar (20:14.644)
Okay, yeah.

John Harcar (20:25.419)
It’ll show all the operators or managers.

Isaac Vance (20:40.696)
you know, who offers the best services, who has the highest rating from reviews. then honestly, I’ve probably got half of my, half of my clients from Airbnb. They just messaged me like, Hey, I have this property. I see, you know what you’re doing in this area and can you help me out?

John Harcar (20:44.929)
Right.

John Harcar (20:55.447)
That’s sweet. That’s awesome. What advice would you give to someone that wants to get into short-term stuff that you’re doing?

Isaac Vance (20:57.475)
So it’s a bit of both.

Isaac Vance (21:04.781)
You know, I would, I would say just really, you just really have to be focused and you have to be determined because you know, you’re going to like a sudden before I my arbitrage, you know, like you’re going to get a lot of notes. You’re going to get people who don’t reply. You’re going to get people saying, F you. I’ve got a couple of those too. You I got to you know, like you, you can’t let that deter you. And that kind of circles back to your why I’m like, the why has to be strong enough to get through those initial hurdles. Cause honestly, once you just get one client.

John Harcar (21:30.039)
Yeah.

Isaac Vance (21:33.059)
And we could even kind of touch on the automating part, which is the best part. Like once you get that set up and you get that one client, it gets put into the system and it’s all automated and you’re making that passive income. You’re making, you know, 500 to a thousand a month and you’re going to get the bug. Then you’re going to grind, but it’s like getting to there. You know, you got to get to that first one. It’s like everyone’s first deal is hardest, you know, like buying real estate, everything. It’s like no matter what business, the first client, the first deal is the hardest. But if you can get to it.

John Harcar (21:38.796)
Ahem.

John Harcar (21:49.983)
Right, right.

Isaac Vance (22:02.656)
I mean, on the other side of it is, know, the sky’s the limit, gotta be consistent.

John Harcar (22:04.883)
It’s got to be consistent. Well, very cool. If folks that are on here listening, they want to talk to you about getting into short-term rentals and what you do, or maybe, you know, like I said, they might have a property that they want you to manage. How do they get in touch?

Isaac Vance (22:16.162)
Right.

I would say my website, it’s staykresorts.com. It serves two purposes. It’s one, it’s my direct booking site for my dome. And then two, it’s where I promote my co-hosting and managing as well.

John Harcar (22:33.673)
Awesome. All right, cool. And I’ll put that down in the show notes. Hey, man, thank you, Isaac, for coming on here and sharing your knowledge, bro. I love it, man. I think that’s a fantastic way to get into real estate. And everybody out there, I hope you guys enjoyed it and took some good notes. And Isaac, thank you again. And we’ll see you guys on the next one. Cheers.

Isaac Vance (22:41.547)
Definitely.

Isaac Vance (22:52.948)
All right, have a good one.