Matthew Maschler:
Welcome to the Real Estate Finder podcast. I’m Matthew Maschler, real estate broker with the Signature Real Estate Companies here in the great state of Florida. And with me, my real estate partner, Jill Glanzer. How are you Jill?
Jill Glanzer:
I’m doing fantastic. How are you?
Matthew Maschler:
I’m doing great. Doing great. And we have a very special guest with us in the studio today. We have my good friend Paul Adams, and he’s with Breton Park Rentals.
Paul Adams:
Yeah, yeah, we can go by that name. Absolutely.
Matthew Maschler:
Alright, Paul, how are you?
Paul Adams:
I’m doing well. Thank you for having me here. Masha. Matthew,
Matthew Maschler:
Welcome back. Welcome back. We had Paul here a few months ago and we had a slight hiccup and we lost the episode and I was so dejected and embarrassed and I asked Paul if he can come back and help me record and put the toothpaste back in the tube. And I hope you enjoy this episode of the Real Estate Finder podcast where we’re going to talk about vacation rentals. Last episode of the Real Estate Finder podcast, we did talk about investing in real estate and that was really about Landlording vacation rentals. Would you say vacation rentals is like Landlording?
Paul Adams:
I would say it’s more like hotel ownership. We are in the tourism business. We’re not in the real estate business, we’re in the hotel and tourism business. We see all of the homes that we manage as one room hotels. We see ourselves in the hotel management. The difference with us is our suites, if you like, a spread in a 30 mile radius north to south.
Matthew Maschler:
Okay. The 30 mile radius. So you’re talking about Palm Beach County and Broward County?
Paul Adams:
Yeah, north Broward, south Palm Beach, north Broward.
Matthew Maschler:
South Palm Beach County. Alright. So yeah, so obviously as you know, south Florida is a very popular vacation destination and there are people certainly I like as a real estate agent. I like people who decide to move here, but if you’re still deciding to vacation here and vacation back in the old days, like in the Flagler days,
Jill Glanzer:
People
Matthew Maschler:
Would come for months at a time, right?
Paul Adams:
They’d come for
Matthew Maschler:
Season, they’d come for three months, four months. And that’s why the Breakers and the Dantes are on the West coast. That’s why the grand hotels were built. And you can come down for the weekend, stay at the Boca Resort or the Wyndham, but maybe you want to come down for a week. A week. You can still stay at a hotel boat for a month, a month, six weeks for the season. You bring in vacation management. And maybe 20 years ago for a one week rental, I remember doing rentals on the Jersey Shore, a one week rental, and I’d go to a real estate agent and they’d have all the inventory. Now that entire industry has been replaced by the Airbnbs and VRBO of the world. You work with Airbnb and V B O?
Paul Adams:
We do. We prefer to work with Vbo O. They’re Expedia owned. We do work with Airbnb. They’re a bit funny in their ways and we have multiple other channels as well, multiple other places. A few out of the York that we manage with Recently with Marriott, we were approved to work on their platform, which
Matthew Maschler:
Is I was going to ask you about Marriott.
Paul Adams:
Yeah, well, it’s big and it’s growing rapidly and it will take a lot of market share from the other two. They have a very good value proposition for the guests.
Matthew Maschler:
This is what I was going to ask about Marriott, and I meant to do it further in the show, but we’ll do it now. I’m planning a trip with my wife and I like points and I like my status. So if I rent a house, if I rent a four bedroom house, that means I don’t get four nights and 4,000 points with Marriott or Hilton or Hyatt or I h g. So as someone who likes points and as someone who likes merit status, maybe I don’t want to do a vacation rental because then I don’t get the benefits.
Paul Adams:
Or you do a vacation rental through Marriott. Our homes are listed on Marriott homes and villas. You’re going to earn your bonvoy points, you’re going to get respected for your status as well. We know your status when you book with us, and it makes a difference also. And secondly, we’re on the higher end. We’re on the more upscale end of the market. And if you’re spending 10,000 a week, 15,000, 20,000 a week with Airbnb, with V R B O, you never quite know what you’re getting. Whereas if you book on the Marriott site, I’m can assure you, before they let us use their logo, they’re very, very stringent about who they led on their side. As a home management company, they’re very, very stringent about who they let advertisers a Marriott partner. So you can be much more confident. You’re going to get a good stay, you’re going to get a professionally managed home, and you’re going to get the best of both worlds. You’re going to get lots of bedrooms to use. You’re going to get your own backyard and your own kitchen.
Matthew Maschler:
How long did it take you to get approved by Marriott? It’s
Paul Adams:
About six month process.
Matthew Maschler:
Six months.
Paul Adams:
They do three unannounced visits homes. They’ll call us and say, we are outside this home. Can we go and take a look at it? And they inspect every photo we want to put on manually as well. They’re very stringent on that regard.
Matthew Maschler:
Do they know it’s vacant or they look at your calendar to figure it
Paul Adams:
Out? They’ll look at the calendar to figure it out. And they also know we’ve got a whole bunch locally. So if it’s busy, they’ll go to another one. But they’ll say, we’re in Delray, we want to go see a couple of homes today. And they’ll need to see it as is. They’ll need to see the linens as described, the shampoo, the shower gel, the facilities in there.
Matthew Maschler:
Can an operator with one or two
Paul Adams:
Units
Matthew Maschler:
Get into the Marriott program or do you have to have multiple units?
Paul Adams:
Multiple units? 50 minimum.
Matthew Maschler:
50 is the minimum.
Paul Adams:
50 is the minimum. They need professionalism.
Matthew Maschler:
The
Paul Adams:
Way they differentiate their cells is if you go and stay in a Marriott Homes and villas, you’re not going to call up and have some guy on the phone or no one available. If the AC goes out, they want to know that we’ve got backup and guest services to treat it. And if in, that’s seven days a week, 365 a year as well.
Matthew Maschler:
So you manage these properties, do you own them or you do them for investors? We
Paul Adams:
Manage for others, and we really have two types of clients.
Matthew Maschler:
So
Paul Adams:
The first is just an out and out investor. They want the best yield for their money. They’re not attached to the property, they never want to stay there.
The second is what we would call a financially prudent second homeowner. They might live in New York or New Jersey or London or California, have a vacation home in Florida that they may use 1, 2, 3 months a year. But in this day and age, why leave it empty? Why leave it sit there racking up bills and racking up hassle for nine or 10 months a year, we’ll take it over and we help move that vacation home out of the financially extravagant bucket and we move it into that financially prudent bucket. So now all of a sudden it’s cashflow positive, it’s paying its bills, it’s paying its face, and it’s not causing you any hassle
Matthew Maschler:
Because we are
Paul Adams:
Managing the landscape or in the pool guy, et cetera.
Matthew Maschler:
So do you think if I have a customer who’s here for season and they’re away off season, do your customers rent in the off season?
Paul Adams:
Yeah, we do. It’s a different client base. So right now it’s October, it’s September, it’s our slow time of the year. But we deal a lot with not just people on vacation. We deal a lot with corporate rentals. If a local home gets mold or burns down, we have contacts with the insurance companies, they’ll call us and say, we need somewhere for these people. If you’re having renovations or work done at this time of year, because rates are lower, it’s easy to move out and rent another home. So it’s a different type of market at this time of year, but we still rent the homes. Absolutely. I think our occupancy in September is around 65%.
Matthew Maschler:
Oh wow. Right. So for your investors out there, right, if you want to have a pure investment, reach out to us, to me, Jill, Stacy, anyone on our team, we can help you find and identify properties that would work in Paul’s program or for you owners out there who do have occupancies vacancies in your unit. We can introduce you to Paul and you can go to Paul’s website. It’s brampton park rentals,
Paul Adams:
Brampton park rentals.com. And again, if you’re thinking of buying a second home here, we have many clients that might turn around and say, look, we can afford a $2 million vacation home and leave it empty two 10 months a year. But if we rent that thing out eight, nine months a year, all of a sudden we can afford a three and a half or 4 million vacation home at the same cost to us. So that’s the rationale that a lot of our second homeowners work on.
Matthew Maschler:
So where I live in one of the gated country clubs with the H O A, it’s probably, you probably don’t have listings like that.
Paul Adams:
Zero. They’ll run me out of town. I can’t put 20 different rentals in an H O a and we don’t have any condos or apartments, which is sad for me as well. We’d love to have a bunch of condos on the beach and manage them, but I could understand those buildings aren’t built for that. They’re not
Matthew Maschler:
Built for hotels. And some have rental restrictions,
Paul Adams:
Huge rental restrictions when were we do down in Deerfield, very small building, but the owner owns the entire building, so we manage the building and he owns the H O A very easy to do in that regard, but nowhere we manage has an H O a.
Matthew Maschler:
Okay, cool. Sometimes I look on Airbnb and V R B O for myself and I’m really looking for houses with a big home theater maybe to watch a big football game or to watch a, for me it’s more WWE wrestling. I also look to see if they have outside theater. Is there any search functionality on your website where someone can find something specific like that?
Paul Adams:
Facilities are very important and yes, the backyard facility is very important for everybody. And in that regard, the photos do the talking. So our phone, yeah, we have very good, very informative photos, descriptions, videos, et cetera. Specifically for theaters? No. The search functions tend to be things like, can I dock a boat? Is there a fifth bedroom? Is there an en suite on the first floor so grandma doesn’t have to go up the stairs to go to the bathroom or anything like that? We put as many of those that we can on and we use some pretty good data tracking tools to see what ones people are actually clicking on as well.
Matthew Maschler:
One thing I noticed on your website, and I don’t remember if it’s new or if you’ve had it for a while, there was a link to a Peloton homes. So there was the bike. So if you click there, your search result will be houses that have a Peloton.
Paul Adams:
Yeah, they’re very popular. One of the things that allows us to compete again with hotels, most hotels have gym, have workout areas. We put Pelotons in homes now. And what we’ll also do now, we keep a couple in our warehouse. If you really want one in a home that doesn’t have one, we’ll put one in for you as well. That’s
Jill Glanzer:
Nice. You can set it up.
Paul Adams:
Yeah,
Jill Glanzer:
That’s awesome.
Paul Adams:
And the other thing that’s really popular is that we’ll take pets in almost all of our homes. Oh wow. So if you want to bring your dog or a couple of dogs or a cat or your support pig or whatever animal you’ve got, almost all of our homes will take them. And that’s a big attraction for a lot of people
Matthew Maschler:
There. And there’s a certain amount of self-selection, right? If you’re the type of person who can bring your dog with you and you’ve done it before, then presumably it’s a trained dog. And if your dog is just wild and it’s hard to travel with them, and if you’re constantly getting into trouble at vacation rentals with your dog, you tend not to do it. So it’s almost like self-fulfilling.
Paul Adams:
Dogs seldom give us a problem. Very, very seldom do we get an issue with dogs. It’s the under fives, it’s the 2, 3, 4 year olds that causes problems. But we can’t say no to those. I’m afraid
Matthew Maschler:
As a landlord, as a landlord who’s not a pet lover, I am very willing to allow dogs and cats. People love them. It’s part of the family. So to be able to take your dog on vacation, another reason to rent a house versus a hotel room. So that’s great. When I met Paul and I heard his accent, I said, oh, that accent. Where in New York or New Jersey? Is that from
Paul Adams:
East New York? East
Matthew Maschler:
New York. There you go. So obviously if you’re listening, you can hear he’s from England. But I noticed also on your website it says American owned.
Paul Adams:
Yes. Yeah. So I’ve received my American citizenship last November.
Matthew Maschler:
Oh,
Paul Adams:
Congratulations. And we put that on the website the day after. We’re very proud. We’re very happy to have it. My wife and I, and after living in Boca since 2004, so close to 20 years now, it was great to receive that American citizenship. We kept the British, so we had both. And our heart’s equally in both places. We don’t see one as taking away from the other. We’re not half and half. We’re all of everything.
Matthew Maschler:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So how did you get into the vacation rental management business?
Paul Adams:
A little bit of luck, a little bit of opportunity. We had some friends that owned second homes from the UK that’d come here on vacation, and this is going back over 10 years. So it was all still fairly new, the Airbnb. And we managed those for them to get them a bit of revenue and really for a bit of fun to see, hey, what’s this? And as with a lot of things, we did one then somebody else asked us, then a real estate agent asked us. And before we knew it, there was three and four and it was a little bit of a side hustle and it was good fun. Then it was six and seven and 10 and 12 and neither my wife or I was going to give up work. And now we manage close to 70 homes. We both work and it keeps us busy any one time.
We have over 200 people staying in homes locally, full-time team on the ground of guest services and maintenance team and property managers. And we find that’s very much what separates us from the competition. We genuinely look at it like we manage a boutique hotel. And if you stay in one of our homes, yes, you get a call beforehand if you need anything in the fridge or any extra things before you arrive. If you want to ship stuff down like your golf clubs or a computer screen, we’ll store it. We’ll have it in the home when you arrive. If things go wrong, we’ll fix that quickly.
Matthew Maschler:
You’re not
Paul Adams:
Just
Matthew Maschler:
Renting
Paul Adams:
Someone’s home with their stuff shoved in the closet and if something goes wrong, you’ve got to call the owner. We really do like to give people the best of both worlds. The best of staying in a hotel in terms of service and the best of a home in terms of the size and the privacy that it offers you.
Matthew Maschler:
Oh, that’s great. That’s great. And what’s the longest stay that somebody could book?
Paul Adams:
Our average length of stay is about 18 nights.
Matthew Maschler:
18 nights.
Paul Adams:
We don’t like to do the very short weekend stays. We don’t want to upset our neighbors. And frankly, it’s not great for revenue to have someone in Friday, Saturday, Sunday in the home, empty for the rest of the week. So
Matthew Maschler:
Longest
Paul Adams:
Is going to be a few months over season. We do a lot of seasonal rentals right now. There’s a lot of people calling, looking for season. We do a lot of one month rentals, one week, two weeks. And we don’t do a lot less than a week
Matthew Maschler:
Because
Paul Adams:
Again, it’s not great for revenue. And we genuinely want to be a responsible neighbor in the community. All the communities we operate in have permitting. We’re doing the right thing in that regard. But we accept not everybody wants to live next door to an Airbnb. So we treat our neighbors well and we don’t do too much turnover and
Matthew Maschler:
Cost and expense of generating the customer and turning over the house just for the one or two nights probably not worth it. And that’s where hotels fit in.
Paul Adams:
Correct.
Matthew Maschler:
But will you rent for a year or six months or is there an amount of time where it becomes like, it’s not a hotel rental anymore, it’s a lease.
Paul Adams:
It is, yes. Six months in a day is when it becomes a lease. And we’ll do those for our investment homes, whatever makes sense financially, especially over the summer. Our dream customers six months from June to December, of
Matthew Maschler:
Course
Paul Adams:
That’s great for us, great for our owners. So we do do quite a bit of that. And again, if the numbers work great
Matthew Maschler:
For our
Paul Adams:
Snowbird homes, less so generally owners want to use them, they want the ability to use them. So less so on those, but certainly on the investment homes, whatever numbers make sense.
Matthew Maschler:
So take a second here and tell us if someone wants to rent one of your homes, if someone’s going through there saying, I want to go on vacation in Florida, what do I need to, what’s the website and what do they need to know?
Paul Adams:
So the website is brampton park rentals.com. That’s B R A M P T O N, park rentals.com. It’s a very simple, easy to use website. You enter your dates, you want to stay, it’s going to show you a list of available homes and it’s going to show you the price of those homes. We have telephone support so you can speak to a local agent that knows the homes, that knows the areas that will guide you through each one. And feel free to make a book. And we offer free refunds if you cancel up to 30 days out if you often with booking, it’s often a couple of families. There’s a tremendous amount of moving parts. So we give a 3 48 hour look if you want to book and cancel in a few days, we’re very flexible on that. And if you’ve got repeat guests, we offer good discounts there as well.
Matthew Maschler:
Alright, we were talking about how in this vacation rental industry went from realtors to Airbnb, V R B O, and now search is being done through Marriott and I see it now if I’m on Marriott’s website and I put in a place that it’ll offer me the hotels that I’m familiar with, but it’ll also offer me villas and homes, et cetera. So in talking about that switch, I remember right around 2006 probably there was a movie where the home exchange was, see Airbnb was originally like you rented a room in your house, you didn’t rent the whole house like a Airbnb. And people were doing couch surfing, couch surfing and Airbnb to rent rented empty room for their house for Super Bowl weekend and whatnot. And obviously that wasn’t a business that was sustainable. People didn’t want to live in the house. And now I’ve actually seen commercials where they actually emphasize you get the whole house because people still have that misunderstanding. But I remember right around, I think it was 2006, the holiday, the movie where a person in American, a person in England switched homes.
Paul Adams:
Yes.
Matthew Maschler:
To me, that was around the time when this thing started becoming popular. And I thought about my dad had a condo in Boca West and could I put that in a rental pool and rent somewhere else? It was a lot of home swapping.
Jill Glanzer:
There’s still places you can do that.
Paul Adams:
And also where there’s a couple of sites we’ve looked at where you can rent your home and you get tokens then to go and rent another home on the site.
Matthew Maschler:
It
Paul Adams:
Rarely works. The stars have to align very well for me to want to stay in your home and my vacation dates to be the same as yours.
Jill Glanzer:
Yeah, that
Matthew Maschler:
Was probably difficult. That was probably the biggest flaw. But now it seems like, but I joke around, I’m old, right? I’m 50 or so. A lot of
Paul Adams:
You don’t look a day over 21. Matthew, thank
Matthew Maschler:
You so much. So a lot of my references are old. So watching this business grow and watching it evolve until it’s very, very useful. Last summer, I was telling you last summer, my family rented a house in San Diego and it was amazing. I was a little mad at the owner. There was things that were in the pictures, there was a home office. It was very important to me. We were rented for six
Paul Adams:
Weeks
Matthew Maschler:
To have the home office and it was locked and they wouldn’t unlock it for me. And I had realized that they’d actually changed the photos from the first time I looked at it to the time that I booked it. So that’s on me when I didn’t double check.
Paul Adams:
But also on the owner. And from our perspective as well, we live and die by our reviews like many people do online. We live and die by our word of mouth. In our business, word of mouth is very important because of the lack of a big brand name, with the exception of Marriott. And also as well for us, we find it to be very unprofitable, to have unhappy guests in homes.
Matthew Maschler:
And here it is, it’s a year later, and I’m still mad at this owner. They had a grill that was not turned on because they didn’t want us to use the grill. And the house was on the beach. It was on the cliff overlooking in Ma Jolla overlooking the water. And there was a fence and it was locked and they wouldn’t unlock the fence. And I actually said to the agent, I’m like, if they don’t unlock the fence, I’m getting bolt cutters. I rented you, showed me pictures of stairs to steps to the beach. I mean, that’s part of the
Jill Glanzer:
Steps to the beach. And then you can’t even go to the beach on the steps. That doesn’t make
Matthew Maschler:
Any sense. I’m going to get bolt
Paul Adams:
Cutters if you don’t
Matthew Maschler:
Open up. So they opened that up and I had the cleaning people turn the grill on for me.
Jill Glanzer:
They knew the secret. I mean, if you’re going to have a grill, you got to let people use it. If you don’t want them to use a grill, take the grill out.
Matthew Maschler:
It was a built-in indoor grill as part of the stove.
Jill Glanzer:
That’s weird.
Matthew Maschler:
So they didn’t want it to get dirty. And there was a couple little things. There was signs all over says please don’t eat in this room. And these were people that really should not have been renting this.
Paul Adams:
It’s the wrong attitude. It’s the wrong, you’ve got to accept if you’re charging someone to come and stay, they’re not some third cousin that’s staying for free. You’re expecting to be paid as a premium rate. You’ve got to give the service that you promised. Absolutely.
Jill Glanzer:
Right. Let them make themselves home.
Matthew Maschler:
So yeah, so if you’re an investor out there and you own the property and you want to put to use and make money, but you don’t want to deal with the aggravation of working with the referral websites and taking the reservations and moving people in, checking people out and doing the upkeep, where Paul comes in is he takes all that work off your plate. You can own the house, you can get your investment, your rate of return, and let Paul take the work off of your shoulders,
Jill Glanzer:
Manage the whole thing rather than you. If you put it on Airbnb, there’s some management involved,
Matthew Maschler:
People are going to
Jill Glanzer:
Work, people
Matthew Maschler:
Are going to contact you, they’re going to ask you questions and they’re
Paul Adams:
Going to call you say, how do I get in the Internet’s out, et cetera. You also get access to our repeat guests, right? We’ve served over 10,000 adults and they call us to come back and they tell their friends. So in terms of our ability to book the homes, we take about 65 or 70% of the revenue directly
Matthew Maschler:
Through
Paul Adams:
Our website bypassing the online listings that have high fees, that have high costs as
Matthew Maschler:
Well. So
Paul Adams:
That helps increase margins a lot.
Matthew Maschler:
And when you’re doing it yourself, you’re fielding a lot of inquiries that may not result in a rental. So if you don’t respond in enough time, that puts it in your profile typically responds in three hours or three days. And if I’m looking at a property to rent and I see the owner doesn’t respond for three days, I may not want to rent that property
Paul Adams:
Because what are they going to do when you call and say, Hey, there’s something wrong in the home. It’s going to be another three day response at that time as
Jill Glanzer:
Well. Red flag.
Paul Adams:
Big red flag. That’s right.
Matthew Maschler:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So you’ve lived in Florida since 2004?
Paul Adams:
2004. Boca Raton all the time. First moved just 50 yards from where we’re recording here to Miser on the green right behind you there, which is now big apartment building.
Matthew Maschler:
Wow. Big apartment. The Alina conference very gradually moved
Paul Adams:
A little bit, a little bit further west as we got older, as we got kids a little bit further. We’re just off military now in the cloisters and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d love to live. It’s a great, great place to be.
Matthew Maschler:
How old are the kids?
Paul Adams:
Nine and 13, two girls. Oh,
Matthew Maschler:
That’s amazing. Can you
Paul Adams:
Say where
Matthew Maschler:
Do they go to school?
Paul Adams:
Yeah, they go school in Boca. One’s at Don Estridge, the other’s at Verde. And getting on great. Like I said, what’s not to in Boca, the public facilities, the parks to bring kids up here is just a real privilege.
Matthew Maschler:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That’s one of the reasons I moved to town. I should give a shout out to how I met Paul through the Bo Rutan Investment Club, David Dweck, who runs that. It’s a fantastic reference again for you investors out there. If you want to meet other investors and service providers, people that can help you become a better investor. I know I’m a better investor from the Ratan Investment Club and from the people I’ve met
Paul Adams:
Couldn’t agree more
Matthew Maschler:
Through the club. So big shout out to David Dweck.
Paul Adams:
Absolutely. Big shout out for David. He does a great club, great service, and it’s certainly very educational whenever I go.
Matthew Maschler:
Did you go this most recent Thursday?
Paul Adams:
Didn’t go this month? No, last one I went was a couple of months ago, but I always miss it. I always learn something.
Matthew Maschler:
Always
Paul Adams:
Pick up something though.
Matthew Maschler:
Yeah, last week we talked about one of my investments and I really wanted to go down and play deal of the month.
Paul Adams:
Did you win
Matthew Maschler:
It? No, I didn’t go. So I have to go next month.
Paul Adams:
I wonder if any of my deals would even qualify for that. If I get a really good rental. I’m sure he’d let me up there, wouldn’t he? I
Jill Glanzer:
Think so. I mean,
Matthew Maschler:
Yeah, but you’d have to, usually it’s a close, right? It’s a purchase. You bought it for this, you did X, you turned it into a rental property, you made a rate of return and then you sold it for Y and then, right. So you don’t have,
Paul Adams:
Yeah, good. Seasonal rental for me is not going to, it’s not going to win. It’s not going to get me the votes on daily of the week is it?
Matthew Maschler:
I would say when you get to the point where you made enough money to pay off your past your purchase price, then you could say, okay, I’ve made all my money back and now I’m, I’m getting house money and I’m getting the residual. And I think that’s a good way to sell Deal of the week. I think I’ve won it twice over the years.
Paul Adams:
I think I saw you win it once. Did you? It was on a condo sale in the apartment building in Miami that used to be part of a nightclub.
Jill Glanzer:
I think you’d said
Paul Adams:
You’d gone out for the night, walk around there. Three years later you’re got a check for 30 grand.
Matthew Maschler:
Right, right. I remember that one. We could also do when we sell our book of Woods Property.
Jill Glanzer:
Absolutely. That was a good,
Matthew Maschler:
That’ll be eligible for deal. I bought it. I was looking for a rental for a customer and we couldn’t find anything on the market. And I saw this house in Boca Woods Country Clubs, you can’t rent it out. It’d be wonderful to rent it out as a vacation rental. But we found this, it was a bank owned, it was 2 0 8 and it was right before the prices all took off
Jill Glanzer:
2021,
Paul Adams:
Right? Yeah. Things work crazy.
Matthew Maschler:
So we rehabbed it. We’re into it for maybe 300 and it’s listed for 600 plus.
Paul Adams:
Fantastic.
Matthew Maschler:
So as soon as we close, I got to go back to deal of the week. I wonder if we set something, we set something like that up as a vacation rental for fully furnished it and market it as must be longer than six months. The H O A rules and whatnot. The problem
Paul Adams:
With us is we really, most of our guests a want to be east, right? All of our homes. I mentioned 34 miles, 34 miles north to south, but there’s one and a half miles east to west, so everybody wants to be east. And secondly, if you’ve got those H o A rules, if we put someone in for a week and then two weeks and then three weeks, they’re going to run us out of town so quickly. No,
Matthew Maschler:
We’d have to create a section on your website called Long-Term Rentals.
Paul Adams:
It’s very possible where
Matthew Maschler:
These are rentals for over six months because base, because your customer base is going to want that eventually because then they’re going to want to buy, here’s
Paul Adams:
Not a bad idea, but I would argue if that’s the kind of guess you want, you’re better off on the m l s. You’re better off
Jill Glanzer:
Refer ’em to us. We’ll help.
Paul Adams:
Exactly. At that point, that’s where people are looking for
Matthew Maschler:
That type of property. Now
Paul Adams:
Those people do fall into us occasionally and we will take them, but if you’ve got that home and you actively want that guest, really, if you really want people for five months plus, you’re probably better off with a good realtor like yourself that’s got access to the m l s.
Matthew Maschler:
It’s just getting that messaging out there. Because I know there are searchers
Jill Glanzer:
On
Matthew Maschler:
The rental, the Vbo O platform looking for that longer term rental. And I’m trying to attract those people.
Jill Glanzer:
Oh, bridge that gap. I’m
Paul Adams:
Trying to
Matthew Maschler:
Catch that net because people become so dependent on the internet that they don’t realize the value of a professional, whether it’s a travel agent or a real estate agent. So I get people that are looking at Airbnb, they’re not looking at the MLSs because they don’t have the tools to look at the MLSs. They need a realtor. There’s a gatekeeper. So it’s good or bad. The gatekeeper protects our industry, but the self-sufficient people on their keyboards don’t see that access. So that’s why I was thinking there’s a spot for it.
Paul Adams:
And we get asked a lot for country club facilities. We get asked a lot for condo rentals, and it’s unfortunately something we can’t do. We were in the Florida panhandle over the summer and very different setup there. Every single beachside condo allows rentals, every single beach, quite sonder. But that’s how it’s set up. That’s how the HOAs have been set up from day one.
Matthew Maschler:
And for years they’ve been doing the one week rental set. A lot of times in those communities it’s like check in and check out is always Saturday. That way you don’t lose a day of occupancy. It’s a one week rental, Saturday to Saturday, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you can rent out for the entire season or the entire year in those weekly clips. And what happens is people who are used to that, whether it’s the Jersey Shore or the Panhandle or Hilton Head, South Carolina, they come to Boca looking for that same product. And it doesn’t exist.
Paul Adams:
It really doesn’t. It doesn’t. In Boca or anywhere really. In south Florida, there’s one or two niche buildings, one in Deer Hill Beach, there’s the occasional one, but very, very little of it. So that’s where 99% of our portfolio is single family pool homes. It’s also what people want A private pool. Private kitchen is also great on vacation.
Matthew Maschler:
Absolutely. When the Super Bowl was here two or three years back, did you have a lot of people coming down for the Super Bowl or were we too far away from Miami for that?
Paul Adams:
We’re a bit far away. We’re a bit far away for the Grand Prix as well. And again, we don’t really want that three nighters. So July 4th is not a huge deal for us. Labor Day is not a huge for us because we don’t really want the people that want to come in for a July 4th weekend.
It’s again, we have to keep the neighbors happy, we want to keep the neighbors happy, and we want the longer, more vacation type guests, not the group of guys in for a short weekend away. So those weekend holidays and not so much of a big deal for us, what’s a huge deal for us is Easter Thanksgiving, new Year’s Eve. A spring break where people tend to take longer holidays, bigger family groups go away because don’t forget, four bedroom home comfortably accommodates two families. And those are the areas where we really excel in as well for the investors. One area that we think will work very, very well, and I mentioned earlier, everything we have is east. But if you look at some neighborhoods in Coral Springs, some neighborhoods such as Pine Tree Estates in Parkland, where for a very reasonable price, you can buy a nice big five, 6,000 square foot home, half acre backyard, some renovations on the backyard to make it a true private resort, huge fire pit basketball court, giant jungle gym swing set. There’s a big market for that. For the larger groups. I’ve got a brother, he’s got a couple of kids. My sister comes to town and all of a sudden we need an eight bedroom home or a six bedroom home. Lots of people would sacrifice being close to the beach in exchange for a nice half acre private resort in the backyard as well.
Matthew Maschler:
And especially adding to that, not even that amenity, that large acreage, that amenity will attract people. But there’s times where you have your parents or grandparents somewhere in the area and you just need the extra rooms for the holiday.
Paul Adams:
So
Matthew Maschler:
In those, a regular house in a non h o a community can really turn if it has four bedrooms and it’s cheaper than putting people up in a hotel.
Paul Adams:
Absolutely. And all of the communities out west as well, they’re full of people that have recently moved from New York, New Jersey. So we very regularly get asked, Hey, I’m visiting my family in West Boca, what have you got out there? Unfortunately, we don’t have much.
Matthew Maschler:
That person may not want to
Paul Adams:
Be east
Matthew Maschler:
Too far from their family.
Paul Adams:
Absolutely. And
Matthew Maschler:
Those neighborhoods as
Paul Adams:
Well, when you really look at
Matthew Maschler:
It,
Paul Adams:
They’re 20 minutes from the beach. And if you are west of the Intracoastal where most of our homes are, you are 12 minutes from the beach. It’s
Matthew Maschler:
Not a
Paul Adams:
Huge difference. And really who likes going to the beach anyway when you’ve got a nice private pool in your backyard?
Matthew Maschler:
But I do like the idea of finding something west on a big piece of land, making an attraction in and of itself. There’s a lot of rentals like that in Orlando.
Paul Adams:
Absolutely. There’s
Matthew Maschler:
Amazing, spectacular resort style houses during Covid. It was my kid’s 16th birthday growing up in New York you had Sweet 16. So 16th birthday
Paul Adams:
Seems to
Matthew Maschler:
Be significant,
Paul Adams:
But it was
Matthew Maschler:
Covid
Paul Adams:
So we couldn’t really do
Matthew Maschler:
Much. So we rented this huge house in Orlando. I told each kids to invite three friends, so there were
Paul Adams:
Eight kids.
Matthew Maschler:
Kept it socially distanced, kept our little bubble, but the house had a lazy river and had a waterpark. It had a swimming pool on the roof.
Paul Adams:
Wow.
Matthew Maschler:
Yeah.
Paul Adams:
Wow. And I’m sure all the rooms are decked out. You’ve got a princess room, you’ve got a Star Wars room and a jungle room relatively cheap to do. And we could generate a great return on those types of homes.
Matthew Maschler:
A lot of them in Orlando do the theme rooms. They didn’t do the theme rooms because this particular house, it was almost the destination in and of itself, but it used color to indicate pleasantness, but had a bowling alley,
Paul Adams:
Fantastic.
Matthew Maschler:
It had theater, it had a gym. I mean it literally had everything. We didn’t leave. We went for four days and we didn’t leave.
Paul Adams:
Sure. And you can pay a big premium for those things. As a guest, you’re not going to get those in a hotel. And again, from the owner’s standpoint as well, certainly where we are in South Florida, there isn’t a lot of that here. There isn’t a lot of competition. You’d get, I believe a tremendous amount of interest
Matthew Maschler:
That we could build in the western part of town. What about, I don’t want to say room service, but not room like daily service in a hotel. I don’t have to make my bed and I come back and it’s nice and tightly made and I can get into a fresh bed.
Paul Adams:
So we clean a lot of homes. We cleaned about 140 homes in April alone. In the slow month we clean about 75 80 homes. So we’ll offer additional cleaning service if you want it. We’ll come in and change all the bedsheets for you. We’ll come in and clean the home down for you as an additional charge for that. But they’re absolutely all additional services we offer.
Matthew Maschler:
Where
Paul Adams:
We really go above and beyond is
Matthew Maschler:
The things
Paul Adams:
That we’ll do before you arrive. I mentioned earlier we have a warehouse here. If you want to ship down a computer screen at golf clubs, a whole bunch of food people might ship down a dry goods. We’ll hold it for you. We’ll put it in the home when you arrive. We work a lot with a company called Family Rentals. We work with a lot of disabled people, which is they’re very appreciative of vacation homes. We do a nice FaceTime video tour with a tape measure to make sure everything’s good and we’ll provide ramps for the front door, et cetera, or anything else that you might need as a disabled person, wheelchairs, et cetera for that as well. And all of that we like to do when people are driving down late and early check-ins obviously very useful as well. You can drive right through. But those additional things are often things we do before people arrive to have in the home what they want to enjoy. The home
Matthew Maschler:
Family rentals has been in town forever. I was a kid
Paul Adams:
And
Matthew Maschler:
My dad used to rent from family rentals, extra chairs and whatnot. So I don’t know the people that run it, but that’s some business. They rent strollers and high chairs and cribs and all kinds of equipment that people need in their rental.
Paul Adams:
And they do exercise equipment now as well. They’ve widened their portfolio, but they’re a great company to work with. Very, very good. And we do that in a seamless fashion as well. So it’s all in the home when you arrive, you haven’t got to it off or pick it up, it’s ready when you go.
Jill Glanzer:
Yeah, that’s definitely not something you can do with Airbnb.
Paul Adams:
Correct. They won’t do it for you. But we will, if you book one of our homes on Airbnb or you book another home or you book it directly with us, but you’re going to get a phone call from someone in guest services asking you why you are visiting what you need. Is there anything specific you like for your stay? Are you visiting family? Do you need any local info? That’s where we like to go above and beyond because it’s a word of mouth business. And we believe that we can really differentiate ourselves with that additional service that we offer for people.
Jill Glanzer:
Right. Because I actually went to California this year and rented with Airbnb and I would’ve loved to had a service like yours in California because I actually had to switch my Airbnb because I am very much a researcher. I’m a realtor. And they showed me on the map and they gave me an address of where my Airbnb was and I’m like, you know what? Let me just do some research. And it was like a C V S and I’m sure it was behind the c v s somewhere. So I actually looked it up on the property appraiser out there. I’m kind of nuts. I was nervous. I would do the same. It was in an area that I was hoping it would be a great location. I didn’t want any surprises. So I actually messaged the person on Airbnb, the owner, they never responded to me. And right at the last minute I canceled and changed because I felt like something was off. So having a service like yours, you would never feel that because Airbnb can feel really anonymous. And I’m not saying anything bad. It’s fantastic. I use it all the time. But it can feel really weird. Like you’re talking to a computer and you’re not talking to a person.
Paul Adams:
You very much. So again, if you make a booking with us on Airbnb, your phone’s going to ring within 20 minutes and it’s going to be one of our teams saying, thank you for your reservation. Do you need know that’s check in. Who’s coming in your group? Do you need a crib, a high chair, a wheelchair? If you come in more and more now people want a desk. And they were like you mentioned we have foldout desks. If the home doesn’t have a specific one, we’ll provide a foldout desk computer screen that you can plug into and all of those additional items that, yeah,
Matthew Maschler:
Because what I’m searching for homes also, you get to the management company and then you go on their website and then you see their inventory and it confirms that it’s a legitimate company.
Jill Glanzer:
I
Matthew Maschler:
Try to think for ski resorts in Park City, Utah, I’ve dealt with this. And then in Gatlinburg, when I want to go to the mountains, there’s one operator, it’s an owner operator
Jill Glanzer:
And
Matthew Maschler:
It’s called Heaven’s Cabins. And every one of their houses is named Heaven’s View. Heaven’s Dream, this and that. And they keep adding inventory, they keep getting emails from them, and each house looks better than the last, the one that they just sent me. I’m like, ah, I really want to go to this one. But
Paul Adams:
Like
Matthew Maschler:
You said, I can’t find it on the map. And it’s in one particular neighborhood in Gatlinburg is up this mountain. Sometimes it’s going up the mountain could be a little harder with the car. So I wanted to see how far, what the
Jill Glanzer:
Drive is like.
Paul Adams:
So my litmus test for any of those management companies is do they pick up the phone? Yeah. If I give them a call, are they going to pick up the phone to me? Because if they’re not picking up the phone to me when I want to be a customer, I know they’re not picking up the phone if I arrive and I can’t find it once
Jill Glanzer:
They already
Paul Adams:
Can’t get in, et cetera.
Jill Glanzer:
Right. And
Paul Adams:
That’s what I have
Matthew Maschler:
To say to my agents all the time, pick up your phone. A real estate agent says to me, I don’t answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number.
Paul Adams:
To me
Jill Glanzer:
When you should be answering the phone, someone you have to answer the phone.
Matthew Maschler:
Someone said that to me the other day. I don’t ask the phone if I don’t recognize the number. I’m like, well how do you get buyer leads?
Paul Adams:
Have you ever get a new customer?
Matthew Maschler:
He get an offer.
Paul Adams:
Anyway.
Matthew Maschler:
All right, so that felt like five minutes.
Jill Glanzer:
That’s it.
Matthew Maschler:
And I think we’re at the end of our
Paul Adams:
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Matthew Maschler:
What else do you want to tell us? Tell our audience or repeat your contact information.
Paul Adams:
Only if you own a home and if you leave it empty for an extended period. If you want to make a nice sound investment in a home in Florida and even if you want to come on Florida on vacation, you can find us. We’re at brampton park rentals.com. I’m sure you’ll put a link on the website, give us a call. We do pick up the phone even if we don’t recognize the number, you can email us as well. And we are here. We are looking to manage your home. We’re looking to run it very professionally as well. We can help you with the setup and if you’re coming on vacation, give us a call if you’re coming for an extended period, if your home’s under renovation or you need any accommodation in Florida for anywhere from a week to a few months, we’re your people to call.
Matthew Maschler:
Alright, well thank you so much for joining us and thank you for coming me back after our last episode.
Paul Adams:
I’ll do it again if you want. No worries. I’ll do it. There we go. Oh God.
Matthew Maschler:
Thank
Jill Glanzer:
You Paul.
Matthew Maschler:
And make sure you join us. We’re going to be right here October 10th to celebrate our 100th episode. We’re going to have a little party here in the courtyard and it’s going to be a lot of fun. And I’m glad we got you in the first hundred.
Paul Adams:
See you on the 10th of October. All right, take care. The future looks bright and the storms pass by the sky’s dark blue. When it’s almost that time, light shows cameras flash when I pass living in the moment, forget about the pass. They save the best for last. Matthew Mania. We about to make a splash. Life is a marathon full of sharp turns. Got to keep pace while the hands on the pop turns high stakes. Five star. I run a show. You could tell the place electricity energy if I, I’m always on time. Even if I’m late, I make dreams come true. Living my life. Hope the same for you. Success. My sights got a real clear view. If you don’t know the time, I give you a clue what’s knows. You know what it sound it? It’s know what it’s, it is what time it. Who time? It’s what time. What? Who? What time? Got him shook, scared. Can’t look. We’re not afraid of the big bad wolf.
