Turn Guests into Cashflow: Hospitality-Driven Airbnb & Single-Family Investing with Sabrina Linman

Sabrina Linman (00:00)

It’s been a unique journey. I’ve had this property for three years. I think it’ll be four years in February. I bought it sight unseen through the pictures. It was adorable. My offer got accepted in November and I couldn’t close until February because there was so much snow. The appraiser couldn’t get out. So I bought it in a ski area in Eastern Washington. And when I initially bought it, I bought it for myself. I didn’t think I would share it with anybody. And then I thought, what’s this Airbnb?

thing and I downloaded the app, went on the app. In 30 minutes I had a short-term rental ready for people to rent and it was during COVID time and so right away within the first 10 days I had 12 rentals because people weren’t flying anywhere.

Dylan Silver (02:17)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Sabrina Linman, is a single family investor who combines short term and long term rental models, creative financing with a hospitality mindset that drives repeat and premium rents. Sabrina, welcome to the show. I always like to start off at the top, Sabrina, by asking guests how they got into the real estate space. How did you get started?

Sabrina Linman (02:35)

Thank

I started in the mortgage industry 30 years ago. I answered an ad for a training. I live in a really small community. I got laid off from Boeing in the Northwest and I moved back to

Dylan Silver (02:51)

and

Sabrina Linman (03:00)

home community and there was no jobs, no income. And I answered an ad for a commission-based loan officer and

started being a loan officer, learning the ropes, going to real estate offices and trying to meet people and learn about loan products. And I became the manufactured home loan queen in my community. I learned about them and that’s where I started my niche business in the little country community that I lived in.

Dylan Silver (03:20)

Yeah.

That’s probably really big right now. We’ve seen a lot of movement in that whole space. Alternative housing, manufactured homes, modular homes, ADUs, that’s really big actually in Los Angeles right now. In that space, getting into the mortgage side of that space, is that a totally different niche than traditional single family?

Sabrina Linman (03:51)

it is it has its own set of guidelines that you have to work within. At the time land home packages were a really big deal and I had one company that we brokered to that did them and did them really well and I just wanted to be the best at doing them and understanding that product and in the community that I lived in and it gave me the ability to understand and learn about construction loans as well because that’s part of a construction package is putting the manufactured home on the land and all that has to go in with that it helped me learn how to be

Dylan Silver (04:19)

Yeah.

Sabrina Linman (04:21)

construction on expert as well.

Dylan Silver (04:24)

get little bit granular on this because this is something that I haven’t had a guest on the show discuss. When we talk about manufactured homes, I’m thinking most of the time when people are going to make a purchase, it’s a little bit different than when you’re going per se to a realtor to make a purchase. You may be going to a dealer and you may be walking in in many ways similar perhaps to how you might buy a car. You might walk onto the lot and you might try to get financing. Is that typically how it was?

and how it is when people were going about that process.

Sabrina Linman (05:46)

Well, of course they had to go to a dealer to find the home, but then you have to work with a realtor to find the land. So as the loan officer, I’m working with the realtor and with the manufactured home dealer in setting all those things up, setting up the closing, getting all the bids, putting the loan together. So it’s really a three-step process, similar to working with a contractor when you have a construction loan. Now we have three people involved and sometimes four if it’s an FHA because there’s a consultant involved. So the loan guidelines are different, yet people

are still qualifying for a loan product versus a stick belt house. They’re buying a house, there’s one person involved usually, it’s the realtor, an inspector and appraiser, and there’s more levels of people involved to ensure that we can get to the closing table.

Dylan Silver (06:22)

Yeah.

The, ⁓ this strikes home with me because I actually had a wholesale deal ⁓ early on in my real estate career where we couldn’t get it across the board because we couldn’t find anyone to loan on it.

Sabrina Linman (06:42)

huh.

Dylan Silver (06:48)

And it was a very tricky situation. I have a question, again, maybe a little granular here, about for folks who may have a mobile home already and are moving it, or there may be an existing home, is it very challenging to get financing in that instance if it’s not new?

Sabrina Linman (07:07)

Yes.

So if a manufactured home has been moved from its original location where it was originally installed, the only true conventional financing that will finance it is a VA loan. Can’t go Fannie, Freddie, or FHA. They won’t lend on it. But in this era right now, a non-QM loan will offer that lending opportunity. Of course, it’s a higher down payment and higher interest rate. We didn’t used to have a source for it, but there are some non-QM entities now that will offer that financing.

it’s not a traditional Fanny Freddie loan. It’s out there, but it has to be for the person with the right appetite. So let’s say they bought a piece of lakefront property and they have a manufactured home that they bought 10 years ago and they want to move it to their dream lakefront property. Perhaps it makes sense for them to do that. Every instance is different why someone would want to do it, but the financing is different for that type of opportunity for sure.

Dylan Silver (08:05)

Walking through your journey, at what point did you start looking at real estate investing for yourself?

Sabrina Linman (08:15)

Well, probably…

I was loan processing for a while and I was processing for people that were investors. And I was learning about putting those loan packages together and how they were doing an owner contract. They’d get somebody into a house, they’d give a $10,000 deposit. They’d say, you have two years to get your own loan. And of course we would want to do their loan because they couldn’t get financing because they had bad credit. So we’d help them fix their credit and then perhaps they didn’t fix their credit and they would walk away from that property. And so we’d retain their $10,000.

Dylan Silver (08:23)

Yeah.

Sabrina Linman (08:47)

retainer

because they didn’t meet their commitment on their contract. So that was one of the first things I started learning about. Back then you could do lot line adjustments. So someone would buy a piece of property, had an extra lot on it, we do an appraisal, split it up. Now they have another lot that’s available for them to build on. We can’t do that now, but I was exposed to a lot of investors who came in with creative things they wanted to do and I was part of the team that helped get them to the closing table. So I learned about that and I

about single-family attached units where at one point I built four attached units. They were multi units together but they chat out their own. ⁓

property number. So I had eight units that looked like duplexes, but we sold them individually as zero lot line adjustment properties. And so that was back in 99, 2000 that I started learning about those types of properties and investing. And that was a really great way to build wealth through rentals and then selling them as well individually.

Dylan Silver (09:52)

Do you remember your first deal that you did on your own?

Sabrina Linman (09:57)

on my very own.

A real estate agent friend of mine had some property she was trying to liquidate and she said we want you to have the opportunity to buy this house and we’re bringing the investor for you. So I bought a property maybe for $130 and I had a private money investor who gave me the loan and from that property there were squatters, unbeknownst to me, and the house was completely trashed, 100 % trash. They had a whelping pen, it was vile. And so I finally got them

Dylan Silver (10:56)

Yeah.

Sabrina Linman (11:05)

and then I had to go in and gut it and find somebody who was affordable that would go in and do all the things I needed to do to it so I could relist it and sell it and I think I made 35,000 on that first property I did by myself.

Dylan Silver (11:19)

That’ll give you some confidence, that’ll give you some air, some proof of concept there. From there, you do more of the same? Did you get into flips? Did you look at long-term rentals? What was the next year, two years like after that first deal?

Sabrina Linman (11:33)

I bought another property and that property was a single family residence. The people had a lease term that I took over and they didn’t execute it and COVID came and I could not evict them. So they squatted for two years in my property.

Dylan Silver (11:51)

My goodness.

Sabrina Linman (11:54)

Yeah, and so that property that I made, I did really well on that property because I think I bought it for 150 and I sold it for 325 because I kept it for probably five years and the market improved. And then I leveraged that property to cash out to buy another property, which is a short term rental that I own today.

Dylan Silver (11:54)

Well that’ll ranch ya.

want

to ask you about your unique strategy when it comes to short-term rentals, when we talk about hospitality mindset. I’d to say that if you’re an Airbnb host, you actually have to like hosting people. There’s the host in there for a reason. I’d love to get your feedback on what makes a successful rental.

Sabrina Linman (12:37)

Well, I think in the short-term rental business,

It’s been a unique journey. I’ve had this property for three years. I think it’ll be four years in February. I bought it sight unseen through the pictures. It was adorable. My offer got accepted in November and I couldn’t close until February because there was so much snow. The appraiser couldn’t get out. So I bought it in a ski area in Eastern Washington. And when I initially bought it, I bought it for myself. I didn’t think I would share it with anybody. And then I thought, what’s this Airbnb?

thing and I downloaded the app, went on the app. In 30 minutes I had a short-term rental ready for people to rent and it was during COVID time and so right away within the first 10 days I had 12 rentals because people weren’t flying anywhere.

As I was setting that property up, I love to host, yes, and I wanted it to be lovely the way I wanted to have it. So every time I went over the back end of my SUV, stuff would fall out. I’d be buying stuff and so it would look cute and lovely and good sheets and towels and blankets and pots and pans and decorations and planks outside and a barbecue and all the things you need to do to set up a home that…

that you how you like to live. And so I worked really hard to make it be accommodating the way I would want to walk into someplace I rented. And it’s just turned out ⁓ people leave me comments and say, we feel like we were at our sister’s house.

There’s everything you could need here to feel comfortable. We can’t wait to come back. So I try to make it as cozy and comfortable as I can as a place that I would want to go. And it’s been an interesting journey. There’s a lot of comments people leave about things that they didn’t like. Like maybe there’s not enough gravel in the driveway or there weren’t enough hangers or… ⁓

the pot wasn’t big enough to boil the noodles. ⁓ I take all those things into consideration every time somebody didn’t care for something or wish there was something more, I try to make that in the unit so that people can feel comfortable when they’re there, for sure.

Dylan Silver (14:45)

When we talk

about the short-term rental space, so much of it is dependent on where it is. Is there a tourist season? Also, too, you have to make sure that you’re having good ratings, turnover, and you have to have the cleaning staff come in very quickly.

It’s a totally different game than the long-term buy, rent, and hold.

Do you think that folks who are in the short-term rental space, they themselves, especially if they’re just starting out, have to be prepared to be physically at the property themselves often? Or can you have faith that, I’m gonna outsource this to a cleaning crew or maybe to some management team and they’ll do a good enough job to keep my rating high?

Sabrina Linman (16:09)

So that’s interesting that you ask because the property in the summertime, it’s three hours away from me. And in the winter, it is in a destination community, a skiing community in the winter and rock climbing in the summer. And the pass to get there closest to my house closes in the winter. So it’s three hours to get there in the summer

six hours to get there in the winter. And then I went, I have renters. I don’t have a cleaning team.

What do I do? So I had to find a cleaning team and I had to go over and meet them and make sure that I had someone I could trust that would show up to clean between every single rental and communicate with them. It is a management. You have to be management minded.

So you have to be host minded and you have to be professionally management minded to manage that property so that when your guests come in every single time, it’s ready for a five star rating for sure. So I have a maintenance team and I have a cleaning team that helps me. And sometimes I need them to buy garbage bags or they’re like, hey, we’re out of shampoo. So not only do they prepare the property for me to make sure that it looks 100 % for the next team, but do we need TP or paper towels or shampoo or soap or what do we

need to make sure it’s ready for them to come in and feel like they’re just stepping into their sister’s property in there. They feel comfortable. Firewood, kindling, long lighters, coffee, things like that. ⁓ You definitely have to be again management minded to make sure that it’s ready to get that five-star review because you want to be a super host. That’s the goal on Airbnb.

Dylan Silver (17:42)

Once you get that first ⁓ successful Airbnb, is there any strength that that could potentially carry over to the next Airbnb as far as maybe in the algorithm or guests can see, here’s the other host properties in the area or in even other areas? Does that carry over in any way?

Sabrina Linman (18:02)

Yes, they can see if you have another property, I only have one right now, but they can see what your other properties are. They can see all your rankings. They can see your picture and what your hobbies are. And they can learn about you before they rent your property. And when they come in to rent from you, you can learn a little about them before you accept their, ⁓

their request to stay at your property. You can read their press reviews and they can read yours as well. And the idea is that when I ask them to leave me a five-star review, I want to leave them a five-star review as well. And I put that in my communication to them. There’s automated communication through Airbnb and Verbo that you set up template communication that goes out to them. So it’s kind of a one and done. You set up your communication and the days you want it to go during their visit and those things go out.

them so that helps manage their stay, their experience, if they need anything and then when they’re checking out we hope they leave us a five-star review because we want to leave one for them too.

Dylan Silver (19:02)

Day to day, what’s your day to day like? Are you still active in the mortgage space? Are you focused on acquiring new properties for Airbnb or for long term ⁓ rentals?

Sabrina Linman (19:12)

So I’m still in the mortgage space for sure. Right now I’m focused on purchasing a commercial building that I want to put a day spa in and two apartments. So we’re working on obtaining financing for that. And then I’m working on also purchasing a 7.5 acre property that will flip. And then in the midst of that, my Airbnb and my day job. And ⁓ yeah.

Dylan Silver (19:37)

We are coming up on time here, but I do want to ask you a couple questions about the mortgage space especially for folks We didn’t talk about this on the show to this point But for folks who may feel like man homes are so expensive. What do I do? You know I got turned down a year ago at this one lender or from this one connection that I had I’m not really sure Where to go and I don’t know you know real estate investors. I’m not you know a real estate minded person myself. I almost feel like lost

I’m sure you encounter folks like this all the time. What would be your guidance to folks who may feel like, man, I don’t know if there’s hope for me?

Sabrina Linman (20:13)

Well I think the number one thing for sure is finding someone you can trust that you can talk to. If you want to become an investor or even if you want to purchase your first home, out and talking with someone that’s approachable and friendly and willing to share the steps of what it takes to get there. ⁓

I always call it a playbook. So whether you want to buy your first home or you want to buy your first investment property or you want to buy a short-term rental, let’s talk about what plays it takes to get you to the finish line so you can score a goal for sure. But it really is about meeting with someone that you can trust and rely on to help you achieve that your wealth that you want to build because it’s really about wealth building.

Dylan Silver (20:56)

Sabrina, that communication and that ability to really confide in that loan officer is key. Sabrina, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to reach out to you? How can folks learn more about what you’re doing? Where can folks get in contact with you?

Sabrina Linman (21:12)

So. ⁓

We all live and die by our cell phones. So my cell number is 360-223-3446. And you can visit me at www.sabrinalinman.com. And of course, I’m all over social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. I have, and YouTube, lots of videos out there to help people understand the process of purchasing a home, purchasing a short-term rental. Let’s jump in and get you an investment property through a DSCR loan. ⁓ Lots of opportunities to help folks and ways to reach me.

Dylan Silver (21:43)

Sabrina, thank you so much for coming on the show today.