Pocono’s Short-Term Rental Investing: Go Small or Go Big

Jeremiah Noll (00:00)
what I tell all my buyers in this marketplace is go really small or really big. So for us, that means like spend less than $300,000.

And that might be surprising to some of your investors to realize you can get a cabin that’ll make like $50 $75,000 a year for less than 300, right? We’ve got really low prices. I’ll just that’s on the side. Or spend like $600,000 to a million dollars and get like a massive, like four or five thousand dollars square foot property with like six or seven bedrooms. Go really small or really big because there’s way too much competition in the three, four, five bedroom space. And that is how you make it easy to compete.

Issa Hanna (02:06)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hannah and today I have Jeremiah Noll here with us to share his knowledge. Jeremiah, welcome to the show.

Jeremiah Noll (02:14)
Thank you. Thank you for bringing me on.

Issa Hanna (02:15)
I’m super excited to talk to you. We were talking before. ⁓ very knowledgeable ⁓ and in in property management and and also just in real estate in general. So with that, can you kind of give our viewers ⁓ what your main focus is these days, what you’re doing day day?

Jeremiah Noll (02:31)
It’s more like what’s not my focus. people are always asking me, like, how do you find time for all this stuff? ⁓ and generally speaking, I just have done so many things that I have to hire people to do things that I can get people to do. So I’ve grown my team from you know, from just me doing literally everything. I was cleaning houses, I was selling houses, I was ⁓ fixing stuff, I was doing renovations. We handled

you know, million dollar projects. And I I’ve gone from that to hiring a property manager, now up to three property managers, hiring a maintenance crew. One guy’s been with me for five years. Like I’ve grown that to five people. Our cleaning service is here. so all these different things that I did just to support our clients, I’ve been able to find leaders and elevate them and train them to do it my way. which is which is not always their way.

⁓ so it it can be challenging sometimes to find somebody who has that attention to detail, cares about quality and ⁓ and still differentiate yourself and make enough profit that you can stay in business.

Issa Hanna (03:32)
Exactly. And and when you do find these people, one thing you said is ⁓ and it was a source of pride for you, you treat your employees well. ⁓ yeah. So give us some light on why that’s important and then just the importance of that in general.

Jeremiah Noll (03:45)
Well, I think this is true for like any vacation marketplace, right? Anywhere you’ve got like a big town that’s just centered around tourism and skiers or or the beach or whatever, I think you don’t really find many good contractors. Like, ⁓ and and and to make that make sense, at least in our marketplace, like if somebody develops a bad reputation, there’s somebody else that doesn’t know the reputation tomorrow purchasing a property and hiring them. Right. And in Pennsylvania, there’s no like licenses except for a master electrician and plumber. So

You could literally be like a college dropout that paints walls and now you’re in business for yourself because you got fired for taking off on 420. You know, like like there’s people out there responding to Facebook posts, like, I can go, I can give you a quote, and they’re they’re just looking to make 25 bucks an hour. They show up to your house and they’re not accountable. They’re never committed to anything, they’ve never finished anything in their life except for maybe a high school diploma, which wasn’t all that hard for most people, at least not in Pennsylvania. So like

What we’re talking about is is like not the bottom of the barrel, but this is where contractors don’t move away because of their bad reputation. So the cleaners are here, the contractors, the people who are fixing things, like you’ve got painters that are walking around with like a multimeter saying that they can do plumbing and they don’t know how to use the multimeter and to do like electrical either, but they’re doing it anyway. And they’re burning down houses and they’re doing subpar work. So buyer beware. If you’re buying a property here, get everything tested.

Because you don’t know what’s behind those walls. And I found junction boxes behind the walls and people, that’s illegal. I’ve had buyers that are like electricians are like, you can’t do that. That’s illegal. We don’t have to check for that. It’s like, no, you need to check. Like, this is a vacation marketplace. There were no building codes here until like 2002. And almost everything’s built prior to 2002. So you have to watch yourself. You have to get a good inspection and all these different things. But

That’s been, I would say, probably the biggest challenge is finding good contractors. But once you find one, what do you do to keep them? You can’t burn bridges. You have to not let them feel like you don’t like them. Like they’ve got to believe that you are their best friend. Like that’s that’s how you grease the wheels. That’s how you get them to prioritize you. And what I found was treating them really good was not always good enough. So I’ve I I built up my business enough that I could hire people.

in-house. I guarantee their pay every week. I guarantee them like their hours. I full time. Right. And so that’s the way we built this. So that I didn’t have to rely on somebody who said they’re going to finish the job Monday. I could like fire them. ⁓ now. So like it’s a it’s a much bit different place to negotiate from when you’ve got a contractor that’s not like doing three jobs right now and yours is the lowest paying. So which is like another thing I’ll just mention to you. Like

People come to this marketplace and they’re like, hey, I need three quotes and I want to choose the lowest. No, you don’t. You don’t want to choose the lowest. And you don’t want the one that’s going to be there next week either, because that means that they’re not doing any other jobs. ⁓ so generally, if somebody’s good over here, like they’ve got two or three months of work already lined up. And if they’re available today to help you out, ⁓ that’s a red flag. If they are the lowest priced as well, that’s also a red flag because.

The the state of like contractors in the Poconos, and we could talk about this with cleaning services too. It’s it’s true for them. But it’s essentially like they’ve got no lack of work. So they can kind of choose who they want to work with. And some of the very best that I’ve found, some of the highest performers, are extremely choosy on which homeowners they’re willing to work with. And the homeowner has to follow this condition and this condition. They have to be ⁓ like a friendly personality. They don’t come to the property too often, they don’t just stop in and hold them accountable.

And that’s also a problem. So like finding a cleaner that’s okay with being held accountable, that’s like okay with like taking photos of the clean afterwards, that can accept, you know, personal responsibility when something’s not done quite right, quite right. ⁓ like that’s that’s the tricky part, you know, and ⁓ and I think we’ve got a good handle on it, but my biggest challenge has always just been hiring more. Like we’re constantly I’m constantly paying for ads, recruiting people, and but

Yeah. Anyway, back to the point. So it’s we I just treat everybody in my team as well as I possibly can while still holding them to our standard. And, you know, bonuses, when I make money, they make money. And they know that. So if they’re not getting a bonus this month, it’s because we had a tough month or I just invested more into it. So they understand that. ⁓ if we got time, I’ll tell I’ll give you a great example of what I’m talking about.

Issa Hanna (08:10)
Yeah, sure. ⁓ I’d love to hear one of the examples.

Jeremiah Noll (09:00)
I’ll try to keep this quick because I know time is valuable. ⁓ our cleaning service, we do an inspection after every clean. So we have a different person, not the one who cleaned it, because it’s got to be a fresh set of eyes. They’re going through, they’re taking photos. Sometimes it’s 150 pictures. So these pictures all go into WhatsApp so that you know they’re all organized by property and whatever. ⁓ I don’t use breezeway. If you’re a breezeway rep, please stop calling me. ⁓ this is not an opportunity for you to like make a sales call.

but no, so so we use WhatsApp threads and we take all these photos. So at once a month we get together and I used to be a teacher. So like this is kind of our approach to making people better and helping them get better. It’s this collaborative approach. So you ever play Where’s Waldo? That’s what we play. But with the inspection photos, so I’ll put up all these pictures and there’s a couple that are like perfect. There’s nothing wrong, but like it’s all the issues that we found. And I’ll find like a pill underneath the bed, or I’ll find like

you know, an empty water bottle underneath the couch. And we take photos of these things, then we remove them, we make sure everything’s set. I’ll take pictures of like dust on the floor that’s been vacuumed. And but why is there dust there? It’s probably just like they empty their vacuum or something like that. And they didn’t whatever. So we’ll put stuff like this up on the screen for all of our cleaners and then we say, who can spot the issue? And it’s like where’s Waldo? It’s like, ⁓ I can see it. And they’ll they’ll point out things I didn’t catch. Like, well the the lamp is not quite centered on the nightstand.

And it’s this collaborative, like fun kind of environment. I even thought about, well, I did this like the first meeting. I gave out candy, but I was like, now I’m kind of rewarding it. You know, I don’t really want to reward it. I just want to learn from it. And so what’s nice about it is it’s not punitive because nobody knows what date those photos were taken. Nobody, I mean, you they can tell what house it was taken at, but they don’t know that. So we just kind of build these systems for accountability without making people feel bad about correction.

And when our cleaning service manager feels like they need to correct the cleaner because they’re seeing patterns, then that’s a one-on-one conversation. We’re not calling them out in the meeting like some other like some other corporate environments do. You know, like I’m not using embarrassment to correct them. I’m using this like kind of fun atmosphere, this interactive thing. And ⁓ you know, if they left it, sometimes they know, but they can keep that secret.

Issa Hanna (11:10)
I love that man. ⁓ very, very you’re bringing fun to the workplace. You know it’s hard to find good good workers, so when you do find one, you keep them happy. ⁓ things like that would definitely make me want to come work for you, you know, just just everything you

Jeremiah Noll (11:25)
Or

hiring.

Issa Hanna (11:28)
I don’t know if you could afford my services, but hey, we could talk.

Jeremiah Noll (11:32)
Yeah.

Issa Hanna (11:33)
I’m I’m not a good cleaner too. I’d be the one where ⁓ whereas Waldo, I I’d be the worst at that. They’d be like, Yeah, he’s had another ⁓ another mess up over there. So I don’t think you’d want me to work for you. ⁓ I I wanted to also say or talk about and make the point that the property managing, the the cleaning company, everything was born out of necessity because you sold clients these vacation rentals and then you felt bad because

There were there’s nobody to help them with them and then they were they were, you know, they’d get in and they’d sell out. So ⁓ you know, can you kind of elaborate on on on the story, like maybe the first time where you realized, okay, I’m gonna make my own property management company, like the the light bulb went off.

Jeremiah Noll (12:16)
It was like you said, it was born out of necessity. ⁓ basically me getting too busy and on the edge of burnout and hiring more people. But ⁓ to to go back to actually let me just tell you, like right now today, there’s probably like five like good property management companies out here that I would trust to manage my places. And I am an investor first. Like I was a landlord at 30 and now 10 years later, I’ve got I think five properties. But like that’s just

so I can see it from both perspectives. I can see it from the investor side. I’m also the real estate agent selling and buying properties. I’m also the property manager. So I’d I’d become like everything to my clients. But like the issue back in like 2016 was like there were so few good cleaners and none of them wanted to be held accountable. And the other issue was that there were so few good contractors. And the ones that you got along with for a while, they like they flake out on you when they find a better paying paying job.

or they move out of the area, which is another big thing. So

⁓ so basically I was I was a math teacher for 10 years while I was building my real estate like thing on the side. And ⁓ 2020 came and everything changed for me. I was like, I don’t think I need this anymore because I was making more in commissions, like double what I was making as a teacher. ⁓ and the healthcare was great, but you can always buy a health plan. You know, like it’s not that expensive. Like I’ve got good benefits today.

⁓ and back then, you know, it was a kind of a shoestring, it was just me doing my own thing. So, what did I want to do to keep busy? Is I got a bunch of tools. I started fixing things for the properties and the clients that I built good relationships with. So ⁓ one of them didn’t want to buy a $650,000 investment because he didn’t trust his property manager. So I made a deal with him. Look, I’ll manage your property, but you have to buy it.

So I got a nice fat commission for selling the property, but I also had signed up at that point for something that now has lasted me like seven years that I’ve been managing these multifamily buildings. And he’s since like refinanced multiple times his property, I think is worth like one point three million dollars at this point. ⁓ but a lot of that has to do with all the work that we put into it, all the good tenants that we put into it, all the people that I evicted. So like we basically just got started and we worked together.

You know, and he’s he’s a really successful investor at this point, but that was one of his like that was one of his ⁓ like milestone deals, right? That he would not have done if I didn’t agree to sign up for, you know, what I’m in now. Yeah.

Issa Hanna (14:41)
And ⁓ a lot a lot of times I just want to make this one point. ⁓ that’s all it takes, guys, is you to be that reliable professional, ⁓ for you to start collecting the fat commission checks and then be able to make a property management company and then a cleaning company, ⁓ just off of this client base. So ⁓ you get back to your story though, because I was enjoying, I just wanted to pull that out.

Jeremiah Noll (15:43)
So this might make you laugh. ⁓ that client gave me a book and he said, Jeremiah, you need to read this. And it’s like the power of one. I forget what it’s called, but it’s like focusing in on one thing. And I’m like, I agree. I could be really successful if I just focus on one thing. But if that was my case, like back in 2017 when I signed up with you, I never would have become a property manager. I’d still just be selling real estate just at a higher level. You know, like so, like, you know, this is medicine, it’s good advice, but you know, you don’t want me to quit doing this, do you? ⁓

So like I just, I don’t know. I love starting new things. I love seeing progress. I love seeing things grow. And this organization, it feels like a family. Like I don’t call them employees. I technically they’re employees, but I don’t call them that. ⁓ another like weird angle is almost every property manager in this space outsources literally everything they possibly can. It’s like a guy, sometimes they’re like a state or two away and they’re good at marketing and they’re good at revenue management, but they don’t.

Clean the houses. They don’t fix them. They’ve never walked into some of these places. And they’re managing property sometimes across the country, trying to build some sort of a brand with a catchy phrase. And I’m not saying, like, if if your listeners are like that guy, I’m not saying you’re doing something bad. It’s like it’s better than nothing, right? But I feel like there’s so much more strength in the way I’ve built my business because everything’s local. We’re only willing to go up to 45 minutes away from our office.

I’ve got 23 team members. They’re all working right here. W2 full-time workers. I’m giving jobs to Americans. And does the messaging get difficult? And is it really repetitive? Yeah. But like I’m still using Americans for that, you know? ⁓ other like the people that I’m competing with are probably making much, much fatter profit margins. But like I I built this team to manage my properties, right? So I want to make sure that quality control is there, that trust is there.

And you know, trusting a call center in India is not really something that I feel comfortable with right now. And so my clients, I think, appreciate that because they know that the people who are managing their properties is the same people I have managing my properties and it’s this team. So that’s kind of been an angle for us. ⁓ but it’s also a challenge because it’s a lot easier to hire people in a country where the pay is like three or five bucks an hour.

Issa Hanna (17:48)
Okay.

And and you know what, guys, ⁓ I just want to make another point. That’s with everything, you know. When when you buy something made in China, it’s gonna be cheaper than built in America. You know, you’ve built this, ⁓ an American brand in your own image with American workers, and and for you, like you said, for your own property. So they’re good enough for you. ⁓ you put the stamp of approval, you can vouch for them. These big box property management companies or

lenders or really anybody in our space, they’re not going to give you that level of care and detail and attention that somebody like Jeremiah would because ⁓ he this is his company, you know, he built it in his own image. ⁓ you’re not just a number, you know, you’re you’re like you said, he doesn’t even call the employees family. So ⁓ I want to point that out because it’s it’s definitely good. ⁓ we have a huge network of investors here. I know a lot of investors

Watch me at home. So I just kind of want to give you my stamp of approval in case somebody’s watching at home. This is the guy you want to deal with. I I wanna ask you, Shift, a little bit. Let’s talk a little future here. you you’ve been able to grow your your management company to over a hundred properties now or a hundred doors, from from the one in twenty seventeen, right? plus yours.

Five years from now, where are we going to see you at? Are we scaling majorly? Are we going down? Are you going have more rentals? Where do I see Jeremiah at?

Jeremiah Noll (19:19)
I’d really like to expand into other marketplaces, but the same way that I’ve done it here. So I’ve always built my team, I’ve always built my business to operate independently. So I’ve always got my eye on how do I make myself replaceable? And right now what I can’t replace is the sales, the onboarding, the marketing. But at some point, I’m gonna find somebody with that dynamism, with that like that go getter attitude that they’ll answer the phone at nine o’clock at night like I will.

Right now, don’t have that yet. But at some point I’m gonna find that. And I expect in the next five years, that’ll free me up to go to South Florida and start a second location for Galvanized Management. Or maybe the Smoky Mountains. I don’t know. I’d like the I’d like them both. I like them both a lot. But like I want to be able to build these again and again. But first things first is I need to build up that team right here to operate pretty much independently, you know? ⁓

You know what? Do you want me to talk about this market a little bit? Because you do have a lot of investors and not everybody knows the coconuts.

Issa Hanna (20:19)
Yeah, let’s hear about it.

Jeremiah Noll (20:20)
Absolutely. So the number one thing that stops people from investing in short term metals in the Poconos is the regulations. So many people don’t understand it. It seems like a minefield. And if you’ve got a minefield over here and you’ve got like a beach over there that’s no mines, oftentimes you just go on the beach. It’s it’s nicer, it’s easier to figure out. Your friends are already there. There’s no there’s no mines. Over in Pennsylvania, there was a superior court decision that put the regulations for short term metals on the on the township level because it’s a zoning issue for transient occupancy.

So every siffering so every single township now has their own zoning permits and their own zoning ordinance for vacation rentals. And from like 2020 up until like 2022, everything was in flux and everything was changing. And people were saying, I don’t want these renters in my backyard because of COVID. So like that was all really scary and and whatever. And the area I think kind of got a reputation. But

People kept investing, and the ones who did are the ones who are sitting on so much equity today. ⁓ it’s really not that risky. You know, this is where I invest, this is where I I know this marketplace. ⁓ where you really get yourself burned is when you use like your your cousin from Lancaster, which is like a two and a half hour drive from here. It’s when you use somebody who doesn’t know this marketplace.

And what I tell all my buyers in this marketplace is go really small or really big. So for us, that means like spend less than $300,000.

And that might be surprising to some of your investors to realize you can get a cabin that’ll make like $50 $75,000 a year for less than 300, right? We’ve got really low prices. I’ll just that’s on the side. Or spend like $600,000 to a million dollars and get like a massive, like four or five thousand dollars square foot property with like six or seven bedrooms. Go really small or really big because there’s way too much competition in the three, four, five bedroom space. And that is how you make it easy to compete.

It’s a very competitive market. So is every vacation rental marketplace. It should be competitive. That means it’s mature. At the same time, there’s strength in numbers. So when a township knows that like 10% of the revenue is coming from vacation rentals, like they’re not just gonna ban it, you know. And actually, the pendulum is swinging the opposite direction now. It’s actually becoming more free and more open today. But that that is probably the number one thing that’s caused people to hear about the poconos hear about the low prices and the returns and say, no, it’s too risky for me.

I’d much rather have something that I can refinance in 20 years because it’s still in business, it’s still doing well. So we talk about like these contractors that are difficult to find. And ⁓ but the thing is, like if you find a good one, like you don’t really need them that much, but you just stay on their good side, you offer them bonuses for showing up, you know, stuff like that. I got a lot of tips about this stuff, like on my podcast, where we talk about how to keep them, you know, how to find them, but then also how to keep them, stay on their good side. But like our

We’ve got investment properties out here that are grossing about 20% of their cost. And the cost to purchase them is between 200,000 and 2.7 million, depending on where they are, how big they are, and a few other items. But like that place at 2.7, they dropped the price already. Now they’re $2.4 million. It’s a nine-bedroom lake front on Lake Harmony. It’s like I I I want to see somebody invest in this. It’s a value add opportunity.

And I I’m like kind of like I’m just trying to give an example. I’m not necessarily pitching that one property. ⁓ but it earned, I want to say $230,000 in the last year. So this can be covered with the DSCR loan. You’re only responsible for your down payment. And there’s some value add. I would say maybe $60,000 to $120,000 of improvements can be made to this property that’ll bring that value back up to 2.7. And then you can refinance and get most of your money back out. Like that’s actually possible in this marketplace. And I’ve looked at it at the 2.2

you know, whatever million dollar price mark. I also analyzed it on the podcast, the infinite return strategy for short-term rentals. I analyzed it for ⁓ a town home next to Camelback Ski Area that was $280,000 because they’re all cookie cutter in that neighborhood. They’re all three bedrooms, two baths, same layout.

Issa Hanna (24:07)
They’re all gonna comp out.

Jeremiah Noll (24:09)
Yeah. I mean, I looked at air DNA and I looked at all these different properties and what they’re buying for, what they’re selling for. And from that one, short story, you know, ⁓ it’s two hundred and eighty, put it $120,000 into it, and you’re gonna make it similar to a property on Air DNA that’s making eighty thousand dollars. And now you put four hundred thousand dollars into a property and similar properties are selling for five hundred. So eighty percent loan to value, you take a four hundred thousand dollars back out, you’ve got nothing left.

And you still have a property with a mortgage price and everything else. I was looking at ⁓ like two thousand dollars a month. Now if you pay a property manager twenty five percent, and that’s what we’re getting out here, is like twenty to twenty five percent. If you pay a property manager twenty five percent, you’re still netting like a couple hundred bucks.

Issa Hanna (24:49)
Amazing. And and one thing I always say, ⁓ you know, when when you’re analyzing, when you’re assessing your, you know, where to invest, what to invest in, when it makes dollars, it makes sense. you’re a math teacher. You know, you know, you guys do ⁓ teachers do really well in our space, but especially a math teacher where you could crunch those numbers. ⁓ and then, you know, you being so knowledgeable in such a hard, hard ⁓ area. Like you said, you can’t get your cousin from Lancaster to

to to buy a house. you’ll you’ll get eaten alive. You’re you’re in water, there’s sharks in the water, right? You need somebody that can swim. ⁓ if if they can’t swim in that water, they might be the best swimmer in the world. If they can’t swim in that particular current, ⁓ you’re gonna get eaten up by the predators. So I I just man, you’re you’re dropping knowledge bombs on us today. I love it.

Jeremiah Noll (25:39)
And I could I could tell so many stories and I I love to tell stories, you know, but

Issa Hanna (25:43)
I I actually want to ask your advice now for our younger viewers, right? ⁓ because a lot of people are investors and they’re accomplished and they watch this. A lot of people also watch my show to kind of get ideas and and and you know, to see what a real ⁓ successful real estate person talks about. So ⁓ the most important thing in our business is building relationships, but growing your network. You know, you you can’t do business.

without knowing anybody. So can you give them some tips on where to start, where to go build those relationships and grow the network?

Jeremiah Noll (26:15)
Absolutely. I actually had somebody reach out to me through my website asking for a mentor. And I was like, maybe. When I was a teacher, that was one of the things I missed was like mentoring young people. So the she was like fresh out of college, had a business degree, no job yet. And the advice I ended up giving to her after two hours on the phone. I’ll I’ll I’ll summarize it down. I said, work in this industry. Just work here somehow.

If you’re cleaning houses, if you are helping, like if you if you accept a job with a property manager, if if you work in real estate somehow, what you’re gonna do is expose yourself to all this education, to all these connections, to all these people. And like the cleaners that are out here, they’re seeing which properties are successful because they know how often they’re cleaning it. They get an idea of what the decor looks like. They get an idea of like what makes it successful, what it’s renting at. They’re they’re talking to the property owners, there’s they’re they’re

They’re making connections. And when I think back, that’s what I did. I just got a job as a real estate agent, you know, and I answer the phone when the lead’s called. And I sold a million dollars of real estate my first year. And most most agents don’t do that. I just answer the phone. In vacation marketplaces, it’s actually kind of easy to succeed. I mean, I don’t I’m not patting myself on the back at all. I’ve got a work ethic, but I think a lot of people do. It’s just a lot of the contemporaries, a lot of people who live here don’t have a work ethic. So like

It’s not that hard to be head and shoulders above the rest. ⁓ but the advice I gave her in short was just get involved in this industry. Learn and learn b while you have a job because you’re fresh out of college, you need to pay the bills, you need to move out of mom’s house, become independent and and and get some credit, you know? But ⁓ but I just told her, like, work in this industry. It’s like if you want, I’ll hire you. You know, you can work in my cleaning service and I’ll keep mentoring you.

Now, she did not apply for a job. ⁓ but but you know, like people take advice sometimes, sometimes they don’t. I’m always surprised when they do, because I think I give good advice. ⁓ but I mean, that was ⁓ I think I think that’s good advice for young people. ⁓ one of the things that I could have done better to get into was actually home inspections. One of the inspectors I work with has a home inspection business, and he has access to private money through some of the networking ⁓ opportunities that he’s taken advantage

So this guy who’s a home inspector is walking through these multifamily properties with me, and we’re both pointing out issues that an inspector would catch, and he’s able to make a cash offer with no inspection. And that is one way to find a fantastic deal when it comes to multifamily, because these sellers are just trying to liquidate, they’re just trying to do what’s easy, their bat their time is really valuable, and they don’t want to have to deal with renegotiating later on and whatever else. So like you get them to their bottom number sometimes because you are the inspector.

But if you are a home inspector out here and you find a deal that’s particularly good for you, if you just become like really dramatic about how bad this is, that buyer’s gonna walk. And now you’ve got the opportunity to buy it. And because of your relationship with the buyer, you can find out what they had to under contract for, what their terms were, what their rent was, and everything else. Now you’ve got this insider info and

You know, you might even have a direct line to the to the seller, potentially. So, you know, investors love off-market deals. I actually hate them. I hate off-market deals. They fall apart more than anything. Everybody feels like they’re being taken advantage of. But whatever. Right. So if I was starting over again, I think instead of sales, I’d probably get into home inspections. Cause I also really like looking through like the engineering side of it, going through the crawl space and identifying all the mold and all the different things that can get somebody a better price.

Probably my favorite part.

Issa Hanna (29:41)
And ⁓ and as and as somebody who’s who’s sold over 200 first time home buyers, I will personally attest to you that it falls apart during inspection. ⁓ if the deal’s gonna fall apart with the home buyer, it’s because of inspection. So ⁓ yeah, a hundred percent. You’re a hundred percent right. ⁓ and now now if if people wanted to get a hold of you, have you managed their properties or maybe invest in the poconos or just invest period out or

By period out there, where would they get a hold of you at? Well we

Jeremiah Noll (30:10)
We

we are onboarding a couple of properties a month. We don’t want to do too many. ⁓ and like I told you, there’s like five companies that I would trust that’s out here. I give free advice all the time and somebody can contact us at [email protected] That’s my email. And I’ll give you some free advice, some free resources, and we can talk, you know, we can chat or or consultation, whatever. A really good place to just passively keep in touch is my podcast. It’s called Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions.

⁓ Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. There’s a few on YouTube that have like a lot of B roll that is really valuable. Cause I’ll talk about the HOA, the homeowners association, which this is a land of HOAs, by the way. Like there’s almost no opportunities that are outside of a homeowners association. So often investors are like calling me up and saying, All right, I just don’t want to be in an HOA. I’m like, there’s like one listing and you’re not going to like it. ⁓ there there’s so like few. And

And that’s just you know, because the overlap between townships and HOA and where you can and when you cannot do it. ⁓ another strategy I’ve seen really fail is ⁓ while we’re just on this topic, is when somebody says, I want to buy a property that if it doesn’t do well as an STR, it’ll do well as an LTR. Like they’re they’re they’re already counting, like I might fail and my backup plan is long-term rentals. I think that’s a terrible way to go into it. That’s like preparing for a long voyage and saying, Well, if I don’t make it all the way, I’m just gonna like

Do this instead. You don’t end up getting any success. You actually reduce your chances of success by trying to optimize for two different things. ⁓ and in practice, what that means is like buying a colonial style house and then trying to rent it to skiers. Like they’re looking for vaulted ceilings, they’re looking for chalet, they’re looking for like a Swiss kind of appeal. And you’re getting them something that looks like the suburbs, and they’re coming from the suburbs. Like, why are they going to stay at your house? Like, so you just you limit your success.

Or you limit your potential by trying to have a backup plan. ⁓ but in short-term rentals, there’s always gonna be a buyer. Like our marketplace is there’s always gonna be somebody who wants to buy it. So if you get it and you fix it up, you do that value add, there’s always gonna be somebody who’s who’s gonna buy it. ⁓ I am getting way off topic though. ⁓ we were talking about how to get in touch with me. so

Issa Hanna (32:22)
And

your podcast. Make sure you guys check out Jeremiah’s podcast. If you want, give it to them again. It’s the Short-Term Rental ⁓ and your email one more time because I really want my viewers to get a hold of you, man. You’re the poconos, the knowledge you’ve got, unbelievable.

Jeremiah Noll (32:37)
It’s called Short-Term Rental problems and solutions. And we take an insider’s approach. We take listeners’ questions and I answer them live on the show. I’d love for us to find some listeners who are bold enough to come on the show and we can go back and forth and we can talk like this. But right now, most of our questions are all just emails, which I’m perfectly happy with answering. ⁓ I like to rant, you know, so like I’ll complain about other agents. Like the ones who are faking it are making a lot more money than me. I just I’m not willing to fake it.

And I’m sure that’s true in in your marketplace as well. But ⁓ you know, we are we’re a rare, rare breed, right? But ⁓ but then the email address is [email protected] And ⁓ I’m also the broker. So in in Pennsylvania, most everybody is an agent. They all work under a broker. I got my broker license so I could do things my way. And so that we could really grow without those, without those borders.

But ⁓ in in the Poconos at least, we’re all really laid back. I’m wearing a t-shirt and jeans. It’s this is how I work. You know, usually you see me in hat. ⁓ so when like when an agent shows up to show like one of my properties and I can see like they’re wearing a suit or something like that, I’m like, they’re from the city. These these these guys can get taken advantage of. They don’t know what they’re talking about, they don’t know what they’re dealing with. One of the big issues out here is radon, and they’re not gonna get a radon inspection. Like this is a

poisonous gas and it it sometimes gets you like a two thousand three thousand dollar credit from the seller if you can identify it and it’s a two hundred dollar test. Why not do it? Well if you’re from Philadelphia you’re not thinking about that. Just because you

Issa Hanna (34:06)
You

don’t even know. Yeah, you you don’t know. ⁓ I you know, like I said, I was a former Chicago land agent. ⁓ some areas in Chicagoland we had higher radon levels. When I when I sold the property to a buyer there, I would make sure they knew to get a radon inspection. ⁓ same same thing with you, but like you said, a guy from from Philly, he’s not gonna know that there’s elevated radon over there. He’s just gonna sell you the house, make the commission.

You could call him back a few months later. He may or may not answer you. ⁓ that won’t happen with somebody like you. And that and that’s why I’m I’m you know, I I said I want my viewers, if if they’re interested in anything you said, to make sure you contact ⁓ Jeremiah because he he can really help you, especially in that poconose market, you guys. Jeremiah, I’d like to thank you so much. I ran out of time ⁓ for today, but I do want to invite you back on the show, man, to pick your brain a little bit more at a later date if you’d have me. Nice.

Jeremiah Noll (35:00)
For sure. I’d

love to talk about like ⁓ the deals and and and ⁓ whatever, like more of a real estate side rather than a like a property manager side. I’d I’d love to continue on this.

Issa Hanna (35:10)
One hundred percent, man. You’re super knowledgeable and I I’d love to have that conversation with you for the viewers I think would benefit a lot. ⁓ and to the viewers at home, if you guys enjoyed my conversation and want to see more just like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time, the real estate pros are out.