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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel Podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Marc Younger, owner of Home Theme Orlando and Storybook Vacation Homes. Marc discusses his unique approach to real estate investment in Orlando, focusing on theming properties to attract tourists. He shares insights on managing a growing business, overcoming challenges, and building strong relationships with investors. Marc emphasizes the current market opportunities for investors and his vision for scaling his business while maintaining a boutique experience for clients.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Marc Younger (00:00)
We just kind of did the ROI and realized huh, know instead of getting $250 a night for a for a six-bedroom home for a Family that’s coming down to Disney and we theme it up and make it really exciting.we do some interior design put that whole package together and the family is now willing to pay 500 bucks or 600 bucks to stay at that home. And at Christmas we even get 11 or $1200 a night. So by doing that, the numbers start to make a lot of sense and then you’re able to get really interesting returns.
Michelle Kesil (02:08)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil and today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Marc Younger, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate and theming property management business in Orlando. So yeah, excited to have you here on the show today.I the listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching creating this one stop shop business. So let’s dive in.
Marc Younger (02:43)
Absolutely, thank you, Michelle.Michelle Kesil (02:44)
Awesome. So just first off, for those who are not familiar with you and your world, can you give the short version of what your main focus is?Marc Younger (02:54)
Yeah, absolutely.I’m the owner of Home Theme Orlando and Storybook Vacation Homes. I guess, long story short, it’s kind of a one-stop shop for investors that are looking to take advantage of the number one tourism market in the United States, which is Orlando. ⁓ We have this little thing I’m sure you haven’t heard of called Disney World ⁓ that fuels a lot of our growth. But we also have Universal Studios that just opened up a new theme
We have SeaWorld, we have Legoland, and then we have a lot of connected businesses like Escape Rooms and Mini-Golfs and everything because of that. So we are the number one tourist destination and investors love to invest here because of that. It’s not going away anytime soon. And what we do is…
⁓ I’m a realtor by trade, so I help investors navigate the market here and help them invest in what works and avoid what doesn’t work. ⁓ And then second of all, ⁓ we realize that theming the properties, so if you buy whatever you buy, a four-bedroom house, a six-bedroom house, eight-bedroom house, there’s a lot of them here, so you have to differentiate them. So we have a scenic studio, home theming,
Orlando and the creative team there helps ⁓ turn your house into a wonderful experience for guests. And then the investors are always looking for a good property manager. So we have the property management wing as well that helps you properly manage the property and also get the tax benefits as well, can be really, especially since recent developments with the new bill that was signed.
⁓ We’re getting 100 % appreciation now, so a lot of investors have come back into the fold and they’re really excited about that.
Michelle Kesil (05:40)
Amazing. love that. So yeah, how did you get started with this business?Marc Younger (05:45)
So I lived in Montreal, Canada and for those of you who know Montreal, it’s cold. Eight months of the year. So basically ⁓ we came down here on vacation ourselves and lived the experience. We went to Disney, Universal. We stayed for a full month. ⁓ I was a financial advisor in Montreal, needed a break and brought the family down. We had so much fun during that month that we decided, wow, like, could this be a place that we actually moved to?looked into it with an attorney and got a visa down here and the rest is history. opened up the theming company five years ago and the property management wing two and a half years ago and now we’re a one-stop shop where investors can find the best properties, theme them and property manage them.
Michelle Kesil (06:35)
I love that. Yeah, I feel like a theming business is not so common. mean, at least I personally haven’t heard of it. Can you like explain a bit more on what that looks like?Marc Younger (06:47)
Yeah, so we’ve noticed that.You know, the Orlando market is very popular. whatever you buy, whether it’s a townhouse, a house, a huge mansion, I mean, you need to differentiate yourself from the other competitors in that community that you’ve bought in. So over here, what they do is they, they gear them towards short-term rentals and they’ll have a builder will build a clubhouse in the middle and then, you know, five, six, 700 homes.
So when you’ve got, you know, two, three, four hundred competitors that are kind of exactly like your house, you need to differentiate yourself. So ⁓ since Disney Universal theme parks are the big thing over here, if you make castle rooms and, you know, wizard worlds and things like that, people will react to that and they will be willing to pay more to stay in those homes. So
We just kind of did the ROI and realized huh, know instead of getting $250 a night for a for a six-bedroom home for a Family that’s coming down to Disney and there there ten people well if we You know theme it up and make it really exciting. We turn the garages into game rooms. We do three or four themed bedrooms we theme the second floor the first floor and
We
put in flooring where they would have some carpet and we make it really, we do some interior design as well. So you put that whole package together and the family is now willing to pay 500 bucks or 600 bucks to stay at that home. And at Christmas we even get 11 or $1200 a night. So by doing that, the numbers start to make a lot of sense and then you’re able to get really interesting returns.
Michelle Kesil (08:41)
That is so unique and cool. love that. What has been like the key to keeping your business running smoothly with all of these moving parts.Marc Younger (08:52)
Yeah, it’s not easy. You know, we have about 17 staff right now. Carpenters, muralists.support staff. So we have a 3D printing department. So keeping all those cogs rolling perfectly and of course people are human, right? So people get sick and you have to account for those things. People hurt themselves. So you you just have to keep everything rolling and anticipate demand and anticipate ⁓ you know how many people you need. So it’s always a challenge but I think that we’ve with our five years experience now
we’re getting really good at things.
A couple of years ago it used to take us four months to finish a house and now we’ve got it down to about three and a half weeks. So we’re really accelerating things as we get better at it and as we buy ⁓ better equipment that makes our job faster then we can speed up the process and that’s really important for investors because they want
want to buy a house and then have six months of renovation. They want to be out there as soon as humanly possible and starting to make money. And we understand that. I own one of the houses myself. I manage 40 of them. But I’m an owner myself, so I know that you want the house out as quickly as possible and start making money.
Michelle Kesil (10:53)
Yeah, absolutely. That timing is really important. So let me ask you this. Every business has moments where things go sideways or you have to pivot fast. And I would love to hear one of those moments that you’ve experienced and how you overcame it.Marc Younger (11:16)
⁓ well, I think just having,the next man up kind of mentality like a sports team. You know, we recently, our graphic designer who does a lot of our homemade canvas when we canvas the walls, she got hurt. She was on a ladder and she fell and sprained her ankle and she was out for a few days. And so our foreman who had a graphic design background kind of stepped in and helped
us out. So it’s just as long as the team has a good mentality where they’re all willing to kind of step in ⁓ and by fostering a good work environment where you know you’re not you know it’s not a toxic work environment so people like working there a lot of our people at home theme tell me like this is their dream job you know to be able to work consistently. One of the things that we do differently than most scenic studios or even Disney or Universal is we don’t hire a
fire like they do. So they’ll hire for a job and then when the job is over you get fired. It’s gig work and so it’s hard to kind of, even though these companies are well known, it’s kind of hard to ⁓ gain loyalty from people when they know that three months later they’re going to be back on the unemployment line. So for us keeping our staff for as long as possible for many many years in some cases kind of gets a loyalty
and then when you need something they’re there for you.
Michelle Kesil (12:47)
Yeah, absolutely. think the people on your team can really make it or break it and it’s what keeps people in that long-term business when you look at things from that perspective. Awesome. So let me ask you this. What are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?Marc Younger (13:02)
I agree.Right now we’re able to do basically one house at a time. ⁓
I’m looking to be scaling my team so that we can do two houses at a time in the new year. you ⁓ know, working to scale the right departments, to get the right people in place, to have two install teams, to have two teams on the CNC routers, things like that, so that we can help more investors in the coming year. And we’re really close. We’re just kind of
dotting the I’s and the T’s on that so that in the new year we can really be rock and rolling ⁓ and being able to serve double the population.
Michelle Kesil (14:41)
Amazing. How are you working with investors? How are you finding them? What does that process look like?Marc Younger (14:49)
Yeah, I’m kind of listed on a few different websites ⁓ that are short-term rental market oriented. So, Raboo.com is one of them. ⁓ And I also work with financial advisors that do cost segregation reports to save taxes for investors. And then those investors need a real estate project to save all those taxes. So, they look to me to helpthose clients out. So they refer them to me and then I help them on the real estate side.
Michelle Kesil (15:24)
Amazing. And when it comes to like managing the properties, can you expand on what that service looks like?Marc Younger (15:33)
Yeah, absolutely.So we’re a full service property manager. So we understand that most of our clients, if they’re investing in, you know, four to $600,000 homes, they’ve probably got a busy work life. And we don’t want to take every single spare moment of their lives away from them and making them do everything themselves. So we take care of everything from the cleanings between guests to the maintenance.
to and we have all local people because we are here so you know it might sound like fun from St. Louis or California or you know New York to try to manage a property in Florida but you know from anybody who’s tried to manage Airbnbs you know people can reach out to you at 2 in the morning and then you have to respond by 3 in the morning or Airbnb gets on your case ⁓ so you never have a waking moment to yourself ⁓ you know some weekends
when we got started with the property management, I would be manning the Airbnb desk all weekend long. And I was like, how am I supposed to have a life, right? Because essentially, if people come in and say, hi, I’m your guest, the AC is not working, it’s getting hot in here, can you help? You can’t just say, ⁓ I’m out with my kids, I’ll get back to you tomorrow. know, it’s just not, they want instant gratification. So we have staff that takes care of that. We have staff that does amazing cleanings. ⁓
Our guests just will not tolerate ⁓
you anything not being perfectly cleaned in the house. So you have to do an immaculate job. and these are, you know, six, eight bedroom homes. They’re big homes. So we need to send like three staff in there to clean the whole thing before the next guest gets in there six hours later on a back to back. So ⁓ we have to have, you know, we have to be on top of everything. So yeah, maintenance, cleanings and marketing. marketing on all of the platforms
not just Airbnb, we put you on seven different platforms. We also market our own personal Storybook vacation homes website. And now we’re getting into some different things like Marriott vacations where we’re gonna be listed, ⁓ Florida rentals where we’re listed, and we’ve got some new stuff coming ⁓ with discount theme park tickets. So we’re constantly working to up our marketing game.
so that investors are as fully booked as possible.
Michelle Kesil (18:12)
Amazing, yeah, sounds like you guys are taking care of all of it behind the scenes. That’s amazing. So what is like that big goal that you have for this business? Where do you see it going?Marc Younger (18:26)
Well, we’re at 40 homes. think that the next goal to reach is 100 homes. We like being small. There are a lot of companies out there that have 500, 1,000, 2,500 homes. And it’s just like, we want to stay boutique. We want to be that company that knows each one of our investors’ names. We don’t want to be calling them, oh, yes, client 7651. A lot of bigger companies are like that.and we don’t want to be like that. We’d give a rich experience ⁓ and really take care of the homes, ⁓ really do the maintenance well. I walk into a lot of competitors’ homes where there’s just screws sticking out of the walls, there’s paint that’s come off and nobody’s touched it up, bandisters that are loose, I see it all, beds that are kind of falling apart. So we strive, we’d rather stay small
and do a really good job on the maintenance the cleanings and keep our amazing ratings a lot of our competitors on VRBO and Airbnb and all that are like at a 4.3 a 3.5 which is kind of like a really bad restaurant you know whereas like we’re at 4.8 we’ve got 1,500 reviews and we’ve still maintained superhost status which is quasi impossible
these days. So to be so highly rated with so many reviews, you know that you’re doing something right at that point.
Michelle Kesil (20:03)
Yeah, that’s incredible. yeah, how like, like there’s a lot of investors listening to this show. How can they maybe get involved with this opportunity or learn more about it and yeah, see kind of like the benefits that are possible for them.Marc Younger (20:21)
Yeah, well, you’ll I’m sure you’ll put my my number at the end of the clip, but they can either contact me directly. mean, I love speaking with investors. It’s what I do. you know, being an investor myself, I like like your your crowd. I live for the numbers. I live for the excitement of it. And and so, yeah, love to speak to them in person. ⁓ They can also go on our website, HomeTheme Orlando.and just click contact us and I’ll be glad to give them a call back.
Michelle Kesil (20:56)
amazing. yeah, are like the are there a lot of opportunities available for people? What does that process look like if someone wanted to? Yeah, invest with you guys.Marc Younger (21:10)
Yeah, it’s actually really great because again in 2022 we were in a market, completely a seller’s market. There was very little inventory and you know those five properties in one of the communities I’m thinking about and there was about 100 buyers that were all vying for the same five properties. So they were asking 100,000 over asking. They wanted no inspections. You know they they wanted basically cashoffers only and they were asking whatever they asked for somebody was willing to give it to them and you know that those properties were selling for over a million dollars and I was like wow would you like me to name my first child after you while we’re at it because it was just you know we want no inspections we want no check we want no this we want no that and it was like wow just take it as is and pay the highest price possible whereas now because of the interest rates that had gone up
you know everything kind of froze in I think the whole United States kind of froze for the last two years where you know basically sellers are not selling and buyers were not buying now sellers are selling and they’re selling at a really deep discount you know what what used to cost 950 is now costing just over 600 so it’s what I’m telling investors is it’s a great time to get in
buy at 40 % off and then basically just wait out the same five year cycle, five to six year cycle. I don’t have a crystal ball, but when interest rates go down, naturally the investor pool goes up and therefore prices go up. So it’s just a question of waiting. I predict that what happened from 2017 to 2022 where we had a 50 to 100 % ramp up will happen again between
20, 25, 26, who knows, right? 29, 30, 31. And so in a five year, six year time span, we’re probably gonna go through the same cycle as interest rates come down. So I think it’s a great time for investors and to pick up properties on the cheap and then just ride that wave.
Michelle Kesil (23:25)
Yeah, definitely. Thank you for sharing that. So yeah, before we wrap up here, I know you mentioned your website and your phone number, but are there any other places that people can connect with you?Marc Younger (23:36)
⁓ I mean they can see our Instagram. We’ve got an Instagram page with lots of our themed homes, but I think the best places are HomeThemeOrlando and StorybookVacationHomes.com. So those two websites, one for the theming, one for the property management, and anytime you hit the Connect Contact Us button there, ⁓ it goes straight to me.Michelle Kesil (23:58)
Well, I appreciate your time, your story, and perspective. Thank you again for being here.Marc Younger (24:04)
Thank you for the great questions, Michelle. You were fantastic. Appreciate the time.Michelle Kesil (24:09)
Awesome. And for those of you that are tuning into the show, if you got value from this, make sure that you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Marc, who are building real businesses. And we’ll see you all on our next episode.
