Transcription
About a month ago, we did a video all about co-living. A new property that I purchased with Jack Selby from the Ice Coffee Hour. And this property is going to make so much money. But you know what else it did? It created so many comments. Some of them good, some of them not so good. So today, we're going to be answering the questions in the comments and addressing the people's concerns about the co-living model.
Today, I've got Jared with me. Hi. And what's cool about Jared is, Jared has all of his living expenses covered by his three co-living properties. He's newer to the co-living space, but all of his monthly expenses are covered by his co-living property. So probably somebody you should think about listening to. He's got a lot of experience. In the last year, your average property is cash flowing how much? About $1,500 net. $1,500 net. Now, when we say $1,500 net, that means $1,500 in his pocket after management expenses, etc.
So let's go through the first of the 10 myths that everybody has with co-living. By the way, we're reading right at the comments, guys. So make a comment on this video down below, whatever your curiosities are, we want to know. And while you're down there, please give us a little bit of love on the subscribe button.
So number one, this is illegal. Jared, okay, check, check this out. This one's too good. "Rooming housing is illegal in the cities. You have to check with the municipality first." Did you check with the municipality? I did not. You did not? Neither have I. I've never checked with a municipality one time. "This type of housing, it was a zoo. It's a zoo. Lots of complaints from neighbors in city, just simply shut it down with a large fine. Think twice before you do this. Do your research." Does this sound like somebody who actually has a co-living property? It does not. If you know what you're doing, that should never happen.
Okay, cool. So let's talk about this. Is it illegal to have co-living properties? Not to my knowledge. No. Why would people think it's illegal? Is it because they think you have seven tenants in the property? That's part of it. I think the municipalities and some of the cities have, uh, something along the lines of two or three non-family members, something along those lines. But in this case, it's not a tenant, they're members. It's a member agreement they sign, not a tenant agreement.
Okay, so this is being done in all 50 states, guys. They are not tenants, they're actually part of a group. They are part of a, uh, membership where they are a member that their rights get revoked if they break any of the membership laws. And so they are not tenants, they are members of a housing organization. Okay, kind of cool. That's how they get around all the laws. And by the way, this has been going on for a very, very long time. In fact, multiple co-living property, uh, companies that manage co-living properties have gone public on the New York Stock Exchange. They've done IPOs. This has been around a lot longer than you think, you uneducated troll.
This one's a good. I like this comment. "I've actually seen another video that does this for elderly. Many times they can't afford this." So Tracy COA in the Sub2 community, she is doing what we call Golden Girls co-living, where she is focusing on the elderly. What would you say is the demographic?
So that's number two. The demographic that I get all the time are, check this out. This is a great comment. We got to pull this up because this is number, this is number two. Okay, here we go. Michael Cel right here says, "Who the f wants to co-live? That would be awful. I don't even want my house within 500 feet of another house." Well, Michael, you're not everybody on the planet. There's 8+ billion people out there. What, bro? What are you talking about, man?
Let's talk about the demographic of your typical tenant. It's not what I thought. I was thinking something along, I don't know what I was thinking, but my typical tenant is, it's working class. I do have some construction workers, but I also have a nurse. She's working three jobs. She's actually saving up to buy a house, which I think is awesome. I've got an insurance agent, um, I have a couple of people that are entrepreneurial and all they're trying to do is save money on their living expenses. And one, one of my members actually has a house, but he's living in Phoenix because he's going after something in the medical field. His entrepreneurial, so that's why he's here. His house is in Nebraska. So yeah, it's, it's up and down the stack and ages too. I have some elderly folks, um, I do have some younger folks, but I'd say most are, say the demographic is probably mid-30s to 40s somewhere in there.
Super interesting. This is the thought I had when I heard about co-living a couple of years ago. I said, man, are these people that just can't afford to live anywhere and they're just broke? And they've got, I, I imagine the car they drive has two mismatched tires, one of the tires is constantly going flat, the paint is fading on their car, maybe one of the windows is broken and they have a plastic bag over their window. And they're driving up the house smoking weed. That's literally what I thought a co-living property tenant was. And then I run into all of them. They're all working professionals trying to save money, or there's somebody getting ready to get married and they're saving for their wedding, or they're saving for their down payment. I have a tenant, or I should say member, because they are technically not tenants, they are actually members. I've had members that come to me and go, man, thank you so much. I've saved $30,000 by while living in your property. Like, how is that possible? Like, well, my average rent.
Let's go to the second, another question. What's the average cost of a member in one of your houses? Utilities, internet, cleaning, landscape, and their rent, all included. What's their average cost? I pay all of that. It's averaging around $200 a week per room. $200 a week. So he has $800 a month per member. Now, they rent by the week. Why do we rent by the week? Well, um, the property manager has established that. But renting by the week is so that way they have the ability to leave at any time and it's pretty flexible. Um, and I'll say, some people have trouble maintaining their finances. Let's say, and so rather than waiting an entire month and be screwed out of the money, every week you catch it early. And there's $25 late fees. And if they do have an issue, you, they are asked to leave.
Okay, so let's just, let's mythbust the thing about the tenants are jalopies and weirdos and all that kind of stuff. 90% of the people I've ran into are, I'm like surprised because I didn't know co-living and I've never lived in co-living, so I make poor assumptions. So you, my friend, watching the YouTube channel, have probably made some poor assumptions like Michael has. Like, maybe you're not understanding. Michael has probably a wife and kids and children that he would never co-live, obviously. But what about the people that haven't gotten married yet? Somebody just graduated college and they have student debt that's crippling them and they're like, man, I'm starting out at a low-paying job. I want to save up money, get my first car, get my first this, pay off my student debt, whatever it may be. $200 a week with utilities, everything, internet, cleaning, landscape, and their rent included for $800 a month. Yep. That's insane, guys. That's, that's half the cost of what, not even that, that's probably 30 to 40% of the cost that you'd get anywhere else, right?
Okay, oh, this one's good. I like this one. They said, "Running a seven-figure portfolio out of Charlotte. I'm crushing it. You're dead if you're not doing this." For real. That's what that guy says. So that's kind of good.
Let's talk about occupancy. Mike Flair says, "It's easy to see this as a complex business model. To keep that place rented out with seven people will be a nightmare. You can factor that revenue that you have 30 to 40% as you will struggle to keep this place fully occupied, eating up all your profit." You're netting $1,500 a month. By the way, that's a conservative. It's, I've hit $2,000 multiple times. I gave you $1,500 because that is a very conservative estimate. And I like to be conservative when I run my numbers, which we can get into if you want. I run it. I have eight bedrooms in each house, but I run the numbers at six. So I'm extremely conservative. So it's actually, I've hit $6,000 that per month, but I hold pace $4,500 because I want to be, uh, real. My numbers are a little bit more aggressive. I will look at an eight-bedroom house and say seven. I look at my occupancy is always going to be somewhere between 85 and 90%. That's kind of my, our goal. But yeah, we always have vacancy. There's always going to be a proper. Are there days and months where all eight beds are rented out? Yeah, but then you're going to have a week here and a week there and this, that, and the other, and whatever else. But we're somewhere between 85 and 90%. Do you know what your occupancy is? I'm about 80% normally, but I'm at 78 right now. I had to ask a member to leave.
So, okay. And why did you have to have them leave? He was smoking in the room and being loud and slamming the door at 4:00 in the morning, and it was upsetting the other members. Did you ask him to leave, or did your manager ask him? I asked him to leave. Why wouldn't the manager do that? Because the manager that I have only manages the acquisition of the people and collects rent. Okay. So you still have to manage the property yourself. Got it.
"Third world living in the making." This person says, "Third third world living in the making." This tells me he's not owned one of these properties. Are your properties third, third world living? No, my properties are very nice. We have granite countertops, stainless steel, cleaning services. I mean, it's, I live there sometimes. I mean, I, I'm staying there right now, actually. I've been there for three days. So.
Okay, now this one's an awesome one. This one, you're going to get a lot of comments about people saying, "Seven people in one house. Talk about fights. How often are people getting in fights, or are they always getting along?" I've never had a fight. I'm not going to say they're all getting along, but I've never had a fight. A lot of people have different job schedules, so I've never had an issue with it. You don't get tenants, "Oh my gosh, this guy bothers me, get him out of the property." Nothing like that. I've had one. Yeah, that's the one most recently I had to ask leave. Okay. So one person out of three houses, which is 24 doors that you have, 24 units, 24 units. One person in a year, which means you probably had had 100 residents somewhere in there. And that one actually was my fault. I probably should have done a better screening effort on that one. Did you have red flags when you were letting him in the property? Um, not necessarily. It's just, uh, when I interviewed him, he was extremely loud and he was a little boisterous about, "Oh, you're not going to have problems out of me." And that right there should have clued me in. But I, uh, I learned. So now I know. Okay, cool. So you, out of probably a 100 members, you've had one person you had to ask leave. Yeah. Well, two. Because in the very beginning, uh, I had an elderly gentleman that had a scooter and he wasn't a very good driver. So he would bump into walls, doors. Yeah, he was, he was not a good driver.
Okay, so, um, interesting. "Third world living in the making." Now, just like Airbnb, this one's a really good one. "Just like Airbnb, won't take long before you got to deal with crippling regulations because of housing, housing shortage, parking issues, and peace disturbances and so on." So first and foremost, there are no peace disturbances. Secondly, let's get to the parking one. That's one of the top 10 questions that pops up all the time. Is that everybody assumes that they all have cars? That's the funny thing. And I like, I've been to some of my properties, fully rented out, not a single car in the entire front of the house. I'm like, where are all the cars? Well, most of the time, these people are working like 16 hours a day. They might be working two different jobs. Secondly, they're, a lot of them are taking bus, public transit, they're taking the, the tram, they're taking whatever. Right. Regulations because of housing shortage is exactly why this won't be regulated. If you saw California, they're actually giving grants to people that are doing this. This just came out in Sacramento. The city of Sacramento is giving grants to people that are doing the co-living model. So it's actually the opposite of what you're thinking. You're thinking the government. Guys, in New York City right now, the city of New York will pay you if you own a property. They will pay you $300 a night. Okay, $300 a night because of all the immigrants that are coming in all over the United States. Guys, this is happening whether you like it or not. The way that we do it is just way more structured, and they actually have agreements and all of those types of things. It's happening in every metro. It's been going on in California for 100 years. It's been going on in Miami for 100 years. It's been happening, and you've never heard of regulations one time. Okay. Um, not only are they not giving regulations, they're giving incentives for us doing it. Interesting. I don't remember one time somebody in the government was like, let's give these Airbnb investors some bonuses and some grants for doing more Airbnbs. It's not the same thing. Okay.
Um, all right, so let's talk about utilities. So that, that was getting along. Utilities. Talking about utilities. This one says, "No one's talking about the HVAC in the house. When you start closing off main living areas or bedrooms, you are disrupting the design of the HVAC system. The return air that were once open to the whole house are now going to be isolated to one bedroom." You have three houses in the hottest state in the United States. How are your air conditioning complaints? None, because I run them all at 72 degrees. It's part of my acquisition and keeping people. Um, I also, I cheated though. I have solar. And one of the houses is a legacy solar system. So it's a one to one. Cool. So you've got, you've got three houses right now. Two in Glendale, one in Phoenix. One in Glendale, two in Phoenix. Okay. One in Glendale, two in Phoenix. Guys, it's 105 degrees right now. No. Okay. His houses don't have HVAC problems. Who's paying for the utilities? Me. So you're not splitting utilities, you're not running any of that stuff. Their rent is part of their plan, and it includes utilities. Yep. And high-speed internet.
Okay, you know, you get some people that are smart. Like, "RI Ridge wingit says, 'They do this all around my college campus. It's been around for a very long time. Pace just brings it to the spotlight.'" Cool.
All right, next one. Cleanliness. Right. Number, this is question number four. Cleanliness. What about cleanliness? Who's, who's cleaning the property and who's in charge of all the cleaning? Uh, I'm in charge of the cleaning. I have cleaning comes through twice a month. But when I screen the members, uh, I make it very clear, abundantly clear. I repeat it like three times like, this co-living model does not work unless you can fit in the co-living model, which part of that is being clean. Uh, I learned that early on. And so I, I put a lot of onus on the members of of doing that. And as such, I've had a pretty good, um, track record. I'd say the cleaning lady updates me like, okay, there's some things here and there, but in general, it stays pretty clean. Okay. So you clean the property twice a month? It's a deep clean, I imagine. Yeah. Well, common areas. We clean the kitchen and bathroom and hallways. We don't clean the bedrooms unless they ask. Okay. And that's, and I'm not involved with that. The cleaning lady sometimes will clean the rooms if she's asked, separate from me, and they'll pay her a little bit of money. Yes. Yeah. Okay. That's cool. Yeah, I love that. We, um, mine her a little bit different. We have, I now have nine co-living properties, I think maybe 10. And we clean their bedrooms as well. Like we'll go in, we'll vacuum, we'll do all the stuff. We're not going to clean up their mess. If we open up their door and there's stuff everywhere, the cleaning girl is told to leave. If their room is tidy, then our cleaning girl will go in, vacuum, get underneath everything, all that kind of stuff. Cool. So we pay for that. She's already there. Our thought is, if you'd like her to clean, please know you need to clean up. And it incentivizes them to keep their room clean so that they go, hey, that'd be nice. Somebody come in and vacuum my room and wipe the blinds down twice a month. That'd be awesome. And so they, the cleaning girl just does it as part of her fee. I might be paying my cleaning girl more than you, um, but she says, the, my understanding with the cleaning girl is that she's cleaning like six out of the eight bedrooms per, um, every two weeks because they leave their doors open and they have their stuff tidy enough that she comes in and zips through and makes it easy. Cool. Just a thought. I might steal that from you. Yeah, it's not a bad idea.
Um, okay, so Matt Madden says, "All the joys of being a landlord times seven." You know, the worst part about being a landlord is vacancy. And when you have a single-family property that you rent out and you have a vacancy on that property, you lose all the money for the entire month, maybe two. And there's no cash flow during that time frame. Whereas if you have a repair on one of your properties, which I'm sure you've probably had some repairs here and there. Had to replace an AC and $7,000. So yes, I've had some repairs. Okay. So that's kind of nice. He had a $7,000 air conditioning unit that he had to replace. Probably an older house, older unit, right? '70s. SE, the unit was from the '70s. It was a 50-year-old unit. So thank goodness he had the cash flow from the properties that, uh, he didn't have any vacancies on the properties and he was actually making money on the properties. That's the problem with like a regular rental. You lose one month of that tenant, it wipes out your cash flow for the entire year. Okay. All right, so it's not the same. It's absolutely not the same. You can't compare the two. You got to, you got to, guys, get educated. You know, I love the smart people. Ryan and Antonella says, "The issues pointed out in the comments are all issues Facebook Marketplace landlords and college roommates have always had to deal with for eons. There's always a little bit of risk, some relationship skills you've had to learn, some relationship skills, and there's a little bit of strategy. But this is the reality of the world we live in today is that if you want to cash flow rental properties, you have to change strategies to this or Section 8 in high yield areas, or you literally cannot cash flow." I agree. I think I'm going to say it again, like I've been saying it for three years. If you are trying to get into the Airbnb game, it is a waste of your time. The only time to, the only way to get into Airbnb is if you're getting into like national park areas and areas where there's massive traffic, you're not in HOAs, and you're in places that people will vacation regardless of what the economy is doing right now. Every one of my friends, um, I just saw Tiffany High, one of my friends, she's a wholesale trainer. She is selling her entire portfolio. Why? Because she has regular rentals and she has Airbnbs. Everybody that's getting their their asses handed to them right now are people that are in the Airbnb market. I don't know anybody that's in co-living that's like, hey, I'm having a hard time.
Buy box. What do you want to stay away from? If I sent you a house right now that was a three-bed, one-bath house in Mesa, would you buy that house? No. It's not my, my buy box is a little bit different. I, I look for 2,000 square feet or better, no HOA, no pool. My lawyer says stay the hell away from pools, and plenty of parking, which means typically it's a corner lot or a wide mouth cul-de-sac, something like that. So that way you have some street parking. But, uh, I'd say 60% of the people have cars. But you also want to buy near public transit so that way people that have, uh, don't have cars, they can ride the bus and whatnot. I do have people that use the scooters and little electric bikes now are popular. So it helps out with the transportation.
Okay, so you are looking for what I'm looking for. I'm, I'm 1,700 square feet is my minimum, or a carport that I can enclose. And if I have a carport that I can enclose or a garage that I can enclose, I will look at it. I have full-time crews that work on my, on my team. So things are inexpensive for me. What somebody else would spend $25,000 on, I would spend $15,000 or $16,000 on enclosing a garage. And so we'll get a good another bedroom, maybe even two out of a garage. And that adds also another 500 square feet, which is nice. We then add a mini-split, so now we've got another air conditioning unit dedicated just to the garage for those two bedrooms. But we're not touching anything that doesn't have two and a half baths or more. Most of the time, I'm looking for a third bath. Yeah. Okay. Because you're at eight bedrooms. What's your minimum bath that you want at eight bedrooms? My minimum bath's two and a half. Uh, try to hit the three, but two and a half, I think is key. That half bath is is huge. And, uh, if I can add something here, I don't go to the garage. My strategy is to basically add walls. So in the future, if I ever needed to, not that I want to, I could actually just tear the walls down and turn it back into the single-family house. I know a lot of people are adding like kitchens and two or three bathrooms and splitting up rooms and all that. I'm not doing any of that to keep my construction cost down. And I, I don't go to the garage either, 'cause the garage for me, like I said, I want to keep it to where I go back to the way it was. But also the garage is like 2x for me. I know you have a full-time construction crew. I don't. And so instead of that $5,000 per room, now it's $10,000 per room. And I just, I just don't do it. Electrical, HVAC, all that. So I stay out of the garage. Love that.
So when you're looking for deals, like right now, this morning I was in the Sub2 Facebook group and I saw four deals that are all four-bed, two and a half bath or three bath. And I said yes to all of them except I then dug into them. Two are in an HOA and one of them is, um, uh, one of them, the bathrooms, they have one bathroom, obviously, is in the primary bedroom, so it's dedicated in that bathroom. Then they have another junior bathroom that's in another bedroom. So only, only way to get access to that is to go through another bathroom or bedroom. On my, like, dang it. So really, there's only one main bathroom in the main hallway. I really want at least one or two. One and a half. And I said no to that deal as well. So you kind of have to look at those types of things. We have a property right now that I'm doing with Jack Selby that right now, the property is seven-bed and three baths, and we are going to add another bedroom in the garage once we stabilize and get the property cash flowing. So there's things that you can also add along the way once the property, the properties are actually shelling out cash. You don't need to do it all right out of the, at the beginning.
The, uh, management. Who, the heck is managing these properties for you? What does that structure look like? You have somebody acquiring the tenants and and taking the cash? You are then doing what? What are you doing? Uh, I'm doing everything else. The maintenance. The way it's set up is the property manager is supposed to deal with the members, not the tenants. Um, but if you want to run a good service, I, I do inject myself in there. I'm trying to provide the Alex Moos, you know, provide a good service type of thing or good product. And, uh, so I do inject myself for a couple of reasons. One, I want to have a good quality service, but also so I know what's going on and how to pivot and change and, uh, ask people to to change their ways if I need to. People like, "What if it's a one-bedroom apartment? You can only rent to one person." Okay, that's obviously not a deal. Goes back to the buy box.
Wish you read these comments. "I found my first seller finance house and he wants a ton of money down. Do a Morrie method and he thinks it will rent for far more than real estate agent. Need this pretty property pretty bad because I have two daughters in college." Butch Green, I do read my comments. Just go watch the Morrie Method videos and you'll figure out how to get that deal done.
"Your explanation of co-living as an alternative to Airbnb really made me think about shifting strategies. Cool. The way you detailed the tenant behavior and cash flow potential was unexpected and just made perfect sense. Thanks for the inspiration." It's amazing to me that one person will type that and then another person will be like, "I'm skeptical." Just everybody's a little bit different.
"If this is the future, sad times ahead for this country." I actually agree with you. I, sadly, affordability has gone through the floor. It's plummeted. People can't afford housing. So what are we going to do? There has not been a president in the United States in the last 100 years that has actually made housing more affordable. Not one time has that happened. They will give these incentive programs, but they're stealing the money from somewhere else and they're forcing somebody else to pay those incentives to then give to people. And the incentives they give are so limited that it really never makes an impact. Name one president. Name one president that made affordability their main focal point and they actually solved it. It has not been solved. It has never been solved. It will never be solved. And so what we could do, Jared and myself, can either go, oh man, this really sucks, which somebody could solve the problem, or we can be real estate investors and solve the problem together.
Okay, so this is interesting. So people like look at me and you as we're the problem. Okay, so take a look at this. "Co-living is going to save America. Not so. Not being able to purchase your own home in America and having to cohabitate with a stranger isn't what's going to save us." Right. Got it. Tell us the story about the nurse again. How did you help that nurse go and help her buy a house? Yeah, she was, well, she was working her butt off, to be honest, but, uh, working three jobs. But with that low cost, she lowered her overall expenses so she could save a lot more to then go buy a house.
Okay, this is an interesting thing. Um, "You have zoning laws. You cannot do that. This guy just makes these horrible ideas. No way. You, is this a horrible? Do you actually have three houses?" I do. Yeah. One in Glendale and two in Phoenix. "But it's a horrible idea and this is all fake. I just made this idea up." Oh, okay. Well, then tell that to all the hosts and the other 120 available units that are on right now.
Um, okay, here's an interesting one. "The Libertarian says, 'Voting Republican will save the country, not the economy destroying Democrats.'" First okay. Yeah, I see it. "Voting Republican will save the country, not economy destroying Democrats." The Republicans have not helped out affordability, and neither have the Democrats. The people who help out affordability are the entrepreneurs. So you can either be a Republican or Democrat where you can both be wrong, or you can be an entrepreneur and actually solve the problem as an individual.
Jared, do you feel like you're actually providing in some valuable, um, skill? Not skills, uh, valuable products to these people? I do. And I actually, to be honest, when I started, uh, investing, I didn't, this wasn't on the top of my list. But I went to one of the AZ RIA meetups and there was a gentleman there that I think one of the investors had brought, and he was living in his car. And he was a little haggard, but anyway, he was able to afford a place to live and get out of his car. So I thought that was, um, that was pretty moving to me.
"This guy gives such bad advice. You cannot just do this. Every city is going to have zoning laws and neighbors will surely complain. It's a horrible business model." How many neighbors are complaining to you? I'm, I'm genuinely curious. I have, I have no neighbors complaining. Part of that though, is part of my strategy is I actually meet the neighbors. I don't tell them that what I'm doing, but I do tell them it's going to be a rental. And I ask if there's anything that they need. Uh, example was Scott, my neighbor in the Glendale property. Said, "Come here." And he walks me in his backyard. And it's night. The guy waters this lawn. Spends like $200. We're in Arizona, like, on his lawn is ridiculous. Nice big property. And I go in his backyard and I look up and he goes, "Look at that skyline. What do you see?" I said, "I see two old rusted out swamp coolers." Like, you get rid of those, you do whatever you want. It's like, done. So I did it that day. So I try to make the neighbors happy. They have my cell phone number, so if anything happens, they can give me a call. But that's just part of my particular strategy.
Okay, so, um, you're not running into neighbor complaints. I've never had a neighbor complaint one time. I've never had a zoning law complaint whatsoever. And also parking. Are you having parking issues? I'm not, because part of my buy box is parking. That matter of fact, if I look at a property and it doesn't have parking, I don't even look at it. Um, because for me, parking in, in the Arizona and the Phoenix area, I would like to have parking in case people do have cars, 'cause it's a big city and you kind of need a car a lot to get around. Uh, I'll say, um, another thing with the, uh, properties is I maintain the landscaping. So I don't give anybody an excuse to call or bug me or whatnot. I make sure that the properties are well maintained. Here in Arizona, we have palm trees. Make sure the palm trees are trimmed and the yards are kept nice. I do try to, uh, get rid of lawns and I don't want to water anything, so it's usually rock, but the weeds are taken care of. Um, I've got two separate landscapers I use in case they're busy, so try to make sure the properties look nice at all times. So I guess who cares about the communities you enter?
H, Jared, hopefully the cities and HOAs will find and stop you. Any, any comment about that? So where do people live if they can't afford these $1,200 studios with first and last and deposits? You know, what's their options? So we're providing an option for people to, um, live affordably. So I, I disagree with that.
Okay, um, so you're happy to just squeeze peasants into a house and pay them and pay them? Make them pay you two times? First and foremost, they're paying half of what the normal cost is to rent a property, and they're getting utilities and high-speed internet and cleaning included. They're underpaying. They are dramatically underpaying. Do you have tenants that thank you for giving them this space, or do people complain that you're charging them too much money? I have, I have members that thank me for providing this space. I don't have tenants for any of the legal folks that are out there. There you go. There you go.
So yeah, they do. Uh, well, we also, we make sure to, we do put two refrigerators, you know, stainless steel app and all that. But I make sure, 'cause I'm running eight bedrooms, I make sure to have two refrigerators and make sure to keep on top of maintenance. Uh, we have two handymen that are on call, not on call, but I can ping them to handle any issues that come up. And then if they do come up, I, I try to, I go ahead and say, look, you know, like for example, we had one of those, the faucet or bathrooms where the, um, sorry, the tub where you lift up and it does a shower. Somebody pulled and broke that. So we just replace it with something hearty that won't ever break again, something solid. And so that's actually my plumber, Isaac, if you're listening. Um, but I just tell him, go ahead and spend the extra cash to make sure that doesn't happen again. Um, so things like that.
Okay, so again, the, I think the demographic, demographics has got to be the biggest thing. Is people, it's like crazy. They would all have, these are all college students, right? Guys, I was surprised too. Truly, I was surprised. By the way, I gave you the address of my last co-living property. I do own these properties. I'm sure Jared, if you send him a message on Instagram, REI Jared, he'll tell you the addresses of the property he owns, or he'll give you the link to the listing where he's marketing these properties.
When you need to find tenants yourself, I'm sorry, members, where are you finding your members when you need to find them yourself? So I'm, I'm finding success with everybody told me that Facebook Marketplace was the thing. So I'm not a marketer, but I have not yet, well, I have one, but normally Facebook Marketplace isn't working for me. So I started utilizing all these different tools and I found that Turbo Tenant actually works. And now Turbo Tenant is more for apartments. And all four of the folks I've, uh, got recently are from Apartments.com. Now, Apartments.com doesn't do room for rent, rent by room, but they do, um, one-bedroom, one-bath apartments, which is how I've sort of marketed it. And so when they inquire, I, I let them know, hey, that this is a one-bedroom, or sorry, yeah, a rent by room model. So that's how I've been doing it for right or wrong.
Okay, I think I could just, uh, keep hammering through, um, people's just uneducated stuff. Check this out. Chris Cast says, "This is what I've been doing for four years with my properties. I rent by the room with one month deposit in advance and one-year contracts in the state of Utah." So he's managing it himself. He doesn't have the member model. He just, he's, he's not doing your say, he's doing the same thing you're doing, but the legal structure of calling them a member is what you're doing and what I'm doing, right? They're a member of a club. This guy's just like, I'll just take a month, one month up, and I'll give them a one-year agreement. There's plenty of people that want this. This guy's been doing it for four years. Okay. State of Utah, by the way, has a lot of regulations. In, um, Utah. Let's see. Better make sure the HOA is good with it, which I highly doubt. We're not buying properties in HOAs.
Do you, as a landlord, worry about tenant conflicts fighting each other and causing harm to themselves or the house and injured and sue you? Who do, who, who do they think people are? I don't understand the question, honestly. The biggest problem with the co-living model is they all think that the residents are pieces of, they are cast. They guess what I did too. I didn't think they were pieces of. I was just like, who wants to rent a rent by room? Because I never needed to in my life. I had an opport, my parents taught me how to make money at a young age. I never had to rent by the room. But if I could go back in time and rent by the room when I was in my 20s, I could have saved so much freaking money. I was never home. I was never home. I was always working or going to school. And I look back at myself like, yeah, actually this would have made a lot more sense to me. But it wasn't really available back then. So I think the biggest issue people have is they just don't know what these clients look like. Yeah, I have a client, he's an insurance adjuster guy. I don't know what he does, but he's actually in Florida right now for the hurricane damage, but that's what he does. Since he travels so much, he just needs a place to call home, home base. And so I, it's actually a perfect member 'cause he's never there, but he just wanted a cheap place to call home for whenever he comes back. So it's a, it's a perfect member.
This is the last one I'll go over. When I give you guys numbers on YouTube, remember, I'm only giving you guys. When I say net, I mean net. And when I say, um, when I give you guys numbers, I'm assuming my property with vacancy, repairs, all of that stuff. My numbers are always including that. Same thing with you. What are you making on every property on average, including management, vacancy, and repairs? That's the $1,500 net. Same as you. That is net. That's property management fee is at 15% taken out. That's taxes, insurance, maintenance, everything. So $1,500 net. And and again, that's a conservative number. I, I, I regularly hit $2,000 on two of the properties. One of them I hit about $1,700. So when I say $1,500 net, that's a low, very conservative number.
And here's my last comment of the day. "Screw you guys for bringing down neighborhoods." Would you want to live next to a co-op? Any comment about that? I wouldn't have a problem with it. So I run them. So no. Um, I would actually, I would have a problem with it. And that's why I choose to live in a different neighborhood. I, I choose to use guys' information on YouTube is free. Chat GPT is free. This is a wealth of knowledge on the YouTube channel for free. You can figure out how to do this too. So you can either either and moan that somebody else is doing it, or you can ride the wave and make the money as well. We're providing a service and a product to people that couldn't afford it otherwise. Look at your story. You've got a nurse. It's like, I want to save up all this money and go buy my own personal house. Guys, we're providing a stepping stone for people. And you might not like it, but we are reacting to the marketplace. This is what entrepreneurs do. You can tell you're just going to be a victim mentality for the rest of your life. You're like, screw this guy for, I'm bringing down neighborhoods. Would you want to see the houses? All of the houses that I've bought and put into co-living before I bought them, did you improve the houses or did you make them worse? Big time improved them. And I maintain them. So I have one neighbor that's across the street. I already mentioned him, Scott. He actually thanked me because the person that was there before, the yard wasn't the best and it was kind of maintained. And also obviously the taking the swamp coolers off the roof was a was a big plus.
Okay, this one's got to be the last one. "This is nothing new. Roaming and boarding houses, hard to insure and expensive to insure with several unrelated tenants." Are you having a hard time insuring these properties? No, I, uh, insure them with my regular, uh, rental insurance. And then I have a balloon, uh, or not a balloon, umbrella policy as well. Okay. So he's got two insurance policies. Guys, if you need insurance, you can go to Sub2Insurance.com. The Sub2 Insurance will insure any property, any type of exit strategy, Airbnb, co-living, does not matter. And you can also get a co-living, um, rider on top of it. So you tell them I'm doing co-living and they will insure the property. Sub2Insurance.com. That's who we use.
Um, and thank you guys for screwing me. For the people that actually enjoy this content, addressing every one of the negative comments and the positive comments, give us a like, a subscribe, subscribe, maybe share this with somebody that has a little bit of hate to to share. And we'll see you guys in another video all about co-living.