YouTuber Ben Hedges Talks Constructing a Cabin for Airbnb

Welcome to the Plutus Podcast, where we talk cryptocurrency, real estate and investing, so you can be financially free and live your best life. And now here's your host, Eric Meltzer. So today I'm joined by my great friend, Ben Hedges, who is a YouTuber with about 200,000 subscribers. And he's also a real estate investor. Thank you so much for joining me today, Ben. Glad to be here, Eric. Wonderful. And let's go ahead and dive right into this. So first off, I'd like to know a little bit about your background prior to becoming a YouTuber. What brought you to the path of becoming a YouTuber? Well, I worked for a TV station in New York, a small Chinese American TV station. And we did put some of our shows on YouTube, and some of them did really well. It was Chinese language content, so did really well in Taiwan. And I became sort of a famous YouTuber in Taiwan, even though it was done through a company. The main platform we were popular on was YouTube. And so, yeah, we built up a huge amount of subscribers in Taiwan. I think I was voted like, well, not voted, but like the top three internet celebrity in 2014 by search traffic in Taiwan, which is actually quite a big deal. You know, it's like the size of, you know, someone like, you know, Logan Paul or something, but in the Taiwan market, it's only a small country with 23 million people, but, you know, it's pretty amazing. But then, you know, I was doing that working for a company, and I had to keep traveling to Taiwan if I wanted to make any money. And I didn't really want to move to Taiwan. So I, when we had our kids, I left that company, and I decided to do the same thing on my own. And I strategically went into the finance niche, because the ad rates are a lot higher than just regular lifestyle content in all social media. So you could, you know, if you're doing 10-minute videos on YouTube, just doing like blogs and stuff, you might earn $5 per 1,000 views. In the finance niche, you could earn between $13 and $20, depending on the time of year, per 1,000 views. So average around, you know, maybe $15 per 1,000 views. So you can, you don't have to be as big, you don't have to even do as well. You can be three times smaller than someone else and still earn the same amount of money, just because you're doing finance topics. So I started my channel, which was originally called The Credit Shifu, which means The Credit Master, teaching people how to build a credit score, then how to apply for credit cards and use the points from credit cards to do luxury travel for free. I changed the name to my own name, Ben Hedges, because I started expanding into, you know, beyond credit, into things like just a personal finance and investing in stocks and bonds and things. But yeah, I started that channel in 2016, I think, and it became really heavily active in 2017. And it's now 2023, we've got, I think, 195,000 subscribers. I've got a few other channels, Dirty Money, which is a sort of collaboration with another company, Rise TV, kind of a podcast. I've got The Business Shifu, which is actually a smaller channel, 13,000 subscribers, just doing kind of stuff more about business. And then I've also got Generation Snow, which is my ski channel. And I use that to fund my tax deductible ski trips. So basically, it's a channel all about skiing, we upload ski videos, and we use the revenue from it to buy our ski passes for the year. So it basically funds, it's a business, but it, you know, it kind of funds a hobby. But yeah. Exactly. Uncle Sam is paying you to go skiing, that's great. It's great, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. Where do you go skiing typically? Well, basically the Northeast, yeah, Killington, Vermont, Killington, Vermont, Okemo, Mount Snow, all the ones that are close enough to New York City that you can do a, well, not quite a day trip, but one night stay. And so we typically go every Monday. So that's cool. Also, one of the cool things about being self-employed and stuff, you can just totally decide your own schedule. So if you want to go skiing on a Monday, where there's no one on the mountain causing lines and stuff, you can do it, you know, whereas everyone else has a nine to five and they have to go up there at the weekend, they sit in traffic jams on the way there, they wait in lines while they're there. It's stressful, it sucks. So yeah, being self-employed, actually any kind of travel that I do, I always do it on the off peak days. You know, for example, I went to Vegas last year, I decided to go there on a Monday, everyone else is coming back right from their weekend in Vegas. And I didn't even book business class, I booked economy, but I had a full row. Everyone on the plane got a row to themselves. So I slept for like three hours on a fully flat bed and I walked past the people in first class at the end and they just had these refiner seats. They couldn't even lie flat because there weren't enough seats. You know, it really pays to be able to do things on off peak days. Yeah, totally. I understand. I actually came back from Vegas just a few days ago and I flew home on a Tuesday evening and I basically had a row of four seats to myself. And it was actually, it was on a Boeing 777 and it was the United Premium Plus, I think it's called. And I had a row of four to those all to myself. Yeah, coming home on a Tuesday. It's a two aisle plane, right? It was no, it was a three aisle plane, actually. So the Premium Plus, it's two for two. Okay, so it's two aisles and it's three sets. Oh, yeah, two aisles. Yeah, two aisles. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I totally, I totally understand that. Yeah. What are, what are some of the most, some of the most memorable trips that you've taken for your YouTube channel? Oh, well, we did around the world. No, it wasn't around the world. It was there and back, but it was kind of like around the world. It's a bucket list trip where we went to the UK, Dubai, Taiwan, Japan, and then skiing in France for a week at the end. And we stayed, well, you know, on our channel, we teach people how to use credit cards to get free nights at hotels and stuff. Every single night of the trip was in a five star hotel. And every single night was paid for either with points or a credit card free night. So it was about like 18, 18 nights or something that we had in five star hotels. Actually, part of the trip, I stayed at my family's house in the UK. So that that doesn't count. But the whole trip while we were out in places that we don't have, you know, friends or property or whatever. It was, yeah, everything was funded for free by credit cards. We stayed at the Regent Taipei, which is a five star hotel from IHG. Really, really nice. Where else did we stay? Crowne Plaza, Kyoto in Japan. Actually, I guess that one wasn't really five star, but it was incredible. Like the breakfast was incredible as the best breakfast. You know, the Japanese, they know how to do breakfast. They give you this box of like all these different things and then you cook it yourself at the table. And like, yeah, pretty incredible. I've heard that there's more Michelin star restaurants per capita in Tokyo than any other place in the world. Oh, I bet. Yeah. Because their food is just so great. It's ridiculously expensive, though. So, you know, that's a little warning to anyone who wants to go. Did you buy a hundred dollar watermelon while you were there? I didn't buy that, but I, well, get this right there, Shinkansen, their bullet train. We went from Tokyo to Kyoto for me and the family, four people. It cost us $600 in the regular class by the economy class. Wow. The same thing in Japan. Comparable distance on their bullet train business class cost 200 U.S. dollars. Crazy, right? It's three times the price and it's economy, not business. It's yeah. So I guess the Taiwan one is subsidized or something or people just earn more in Japan. But yeah, definitely really cool. And so so really being able to not have that nine to five and having a bit of freedom, it also gave you the opportunity to make a segue into the real estate space, further building upon your investment, you know, not not not working for, you know, for for a regular boss at a nine to five. So can you talk a little bit about about what motivated you to get into the real estate space? Yeah, sure. Well, I'm a big I read the I was just looking to see if it was on my shelf, but I read the four hour work week by Tim Ferriss. I actually read it on that trip I was telling you about. And that was quite inspiring. And I was like, yeah, a lot of things I'm trying to do in my life are really aligned with what he talks about in that book. And so, yeah, I was thinking, you know, I want to make my income more passive so I can spend more time with my family and more time on like passion projects and things that I feel, you know, that I care about that don't bring in any money, but are worth doing like human rights, working for human rights in China. Like this is the TV station I used to work at. That's why I that's why I joined, you know, because I was interested in supporting human rights in China and raising awareness about things. And so anyway, I started looking at that and a friend actually who was living here, he got me into this whole like culture of these cabins in the mountains. So north of New York City, you have the Catskills Mountains and there's this style of cabin that it's like sort of modern minimalist style. So the outside is like we're actually going to have wood on one side, but then the rest of it's going to be black, which sounds kind of weird, but if you see pictures, you'll know what we're talking about. And then the inside, there's like a lot of wood, like hardwood floors. You can do all the walls wood, but I'm just going to do some sheetrock because it's cheaper. But all the doors will be like pine. So there's going to be a lot of wood feeling around. And then you add in a hot tub, a wood-burning stove, a few other things. There's like five things you can charge more for an Airbnb, right? Hot tub, wood-burning stove, sauna, washer and dryer, and a king-size bed, right? And we're going to have all of them. We're going to start with four of them, and then we're going to add the sauna later on, probably in the winter. But yeah, when I started looking into it, I started looking at the prices people were able to charge on Airbnb, and I started talking to other owners and asking about their occupancy rates in the local area. So if you do this, you've got to do your research, right? Because you can't just be like, oh, I'll make an incredible Airbnb in an area that has no demand, and people will come. But probably not. It's not a case of if you build it, they will come. They have to come before you want to build it. And some hosts are finding that out the hard way. Like Shelby Church, who's a big YouTuber, she did an Airbnb in Palm Springs, and she found out that the town is highly seasonal. Highly seasonal. People only come around sort of like the late winter, spring kind of time. In the summer, it's just too hot for people to want to be there. And they particularly come around the time of Coachella and these music festivals that happen there. The rest of the year is really quite dead. So she's actually been losing money on it. She's done a lot of videos about it. She might have made some of the money back through the money she earned from the YouTube videos, probably, luckily for her. But anyway, so I started looking at occupancy of other hosts, and I found that people had actually some pretty great occupancy. Another similar cabin, a bit of an older property, so not quite as nice. The host was saying that they had an 80% occupancy. And then I talked to another guy who runs one, and he said his is also a comparable cabin. A little bit of an older building, but has some other very distinctive features that sort of make it comparable. And he said that his best ever month was $13,000 in revenue. And he also said that when he added the hot tub, his winter bookings went up, and he was up at like 80% bookings even in the winter because of the hot tub, which is crazy, right? Because you really wouldn't, you wouldn't think- Those numbers are astounding. 80%. He was earning 8,000. So, you know, I mean, it's astounding figures, whether that can be recreated or whether this guy has just got kind of lucky. I'm not sure, but it's certainly a good incentive because our place is going to be in a similar area to where he has his place. And there's a lot about the property that is similar, you know. And we have certain advantages. We don't have this stream that it's next to, which is really distinctive, but we have a newer build, which, you know, brand new house gives obviously significant advantages for comfort and stuff. So, you know, we're really fingers crossed, and hopefully it's going to be a great investment and sort of much more like passive or semi-passive income stream. Yeah. And I remember you were showing me the land. It was really just a plot of land, so you've had to go and clear the trees and really do everything from the ground up. That's right. Yeah. So it's a mountainside lot. It's got a flat section sort of in the middle of it, halfway up the slope. Yeah, we had to clear a lot of trees. The driveway had to be a bit longer. You know, when you see most houses, even people who own a lot of land, they tend to build their house close to the road, and then they have the large amount of land behind them. And that's because that means they can have a shorter driveway, so they don't have to spend as much money doing a driveway, right? That's kind of like the standard thing you've ever driven through the countryside, and you think, why are these people building their houses so close to the road? That's why. But for us, if we were going to build the, well, we didn't want to build the driveway close to the road. We built the house close to the road because we wanted seclusion. We bought a 3.7 acre lot. We wanted it to be, to feel as if you're in the woods, right, like a cabin in the woods. So we actually built a pretty long driveway. It's about like 600 feet or something. Yeah, that's quite long, right? So we've got a long driveway, which did mean that we had to spend a little bit more on that. But actually, luckily, the driveway seems to run the route of a path that has been used by vehicles before. So there were minimal trees that had to be cleared for the driveway. But then we did have to clear a large area for the main house. And so we were chopping down some pretty big trees, just lifting them up with a, they don't have to be surgically chopped down. They're just bulldozed down, basically. Gotcha. Yep. Are there some like really huge old trees on the property that are just, you know, towering giants? Oh, yeah. I mean, they're all giant. Yeah, it's towering giants. The ones we're chopping down were towering giants too. Like, yeah, pretty big, like, you know, as wide as a desk. And what's the process been like, seeing the foundation being put in, seeing the framework? What's it been like for you to manage the construction of that? Well, I've got a company managing it, but I have to approve everything. So yeah, after we did the clearing, then the first thing we did was the foundation. We kind of raced against time to do that in December before any snow or cold weather hit. And luckily, we had a pretty mild December. So the foundation went really smoothly. The framing, that goes up in a few days. That's super quick. So it's kind of funny to see, like, you've got a foundation there, and then a few days later, like, boom, there's an actual house there. And then, but there's still a lot of work to do, because you've got to do all the interior, you've got to do the siding, you've got to do the roof. But it's really quick to go from nothing to a house. We did have some problems, for example, with the patio doors. It's this 15-foot glass doors that I wanted. And I was originally going to go for three panels. And it seems that no one makes a 15-foot three-panel door, unless you go, like, a custom item that's really expensive. So with the builder, they originally said, well, you could do, like, a three-panel door that only one panel moves. But then what it was going to be was it was going to be, like, a window, and then a two-panel door. And the heights were slightly different, because one could sit on the slab, whereas the other one had to have some two-by-fours underneath. And the builder actually acknowledged that they kind of screwed up with that. So they basically waived any cost, because I had to change it. So I went for a four-panel door that was 15 foot. Because apparently, we should have realized this at the beginning, but a four-panel door that's 15 foot is a standard item at many window manufacturers. So we should have just done this at the beginning. We should have realized this. I don't know. Maybe they thought I definitely wanted three panels for some reason. But yeah, I switched it to a four-panel door. And we're going to have to do a little bit of changes to the framing, because right now, the heights are slightly different. So it's not too bad. This framing is just two-by-fours stuck. So you can actually pull them out and slightly change things. But yeah, we're actually wasting two windows. I moved the two-panel door into the bedroom. So I got rid of the window in the bedroom, and I now have a two-panel door there. But the builder has two windows that they're putting in their warehouse. And I told them, hey, guys, if I build another one with you, I'll use those windows. I'll buy them off you for the next house. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. So what's left to be done with the construction? Where are things at right now besides the windows? Well, so we've got the roof on. We've got probably 70% of the windows in. We have a huge custom window, which I'll give you some photos of. You can put them on screen. There's a full-body window, two panes. And then above that, there is a window that goes up to a triangle and fits into the eaves of the building. It's super modern and bold-looking. And that's going to be the front facade of the house. So when you come, you'll see that. You'll see cedar shiplap siding at the front, really nice wood, with this amazing modern-looking window. So that's going to be kind of like you're welcome. And that will also be like the money shot for Airbnb, this really cool-looking front facade. And then the sides will have the 15-foot. So the side that faces south will have the 15-foot window. So right now, we've got the roof on. So all the framing's down. We've got the roof on. And we've got the house wrapped. So we've got the exterior sheathing, the wood and the wrap on the outside. So then on top of that, obviously, goes the siding, which we're doing the typical sort of cabin, like vertical black siding on the sides and cedar on the front. The cedar is more expensive. So, well, it's more expensive and it also is a pain to maintain because you've got to like varnish it like every three years because otherwise it just starts to turn black. So if you've ever driven around the countryside and you've seen houses that have wooden siding and they're sort of a bit like turning black, that's what it is. It's cedar that's not being maintained. You can do that. You can just let it turn black, but we're trying to rent this out for a lot of money. So we're probably going to be varnishing it every three years. Wow. That's quite a lot of work to put in every couple of years. Yeah. And so when you are listing this, are you going to be putting it on Airbnb, on Vrbo, on all the platforms? Where are you planning to advertise this? Well, I guess I'll go for Airbnb first. And if there's not enough bookings on Airbnb, we try it on Vrbo. But I guess like, I mean, you've got to use a software to manage the calendars so they don't get clash bookings and stuff. But I think, yeah, I think first I'll just try it on Airbnb. We'll see. And then some people talk about, well, you could make your own platform. We could experiment with that further down the road. But I think, you know, we can get good bookings on Airbnb. I hear they take about 14%. That's what my friend said. So if they can do it and their algorithm can push it, I'll be fine. And then I'll probably reach out to some YouTubers and say, Hey, do you want a free stay at my... Because there's YouTubers that have channels that just cover Airbnbs. They just stay in Airbnbs and that's their content. And so I'm sure a lot of them, if you offer them a free stay, will probably come and just do a video. Are you expecting people to mainly stay there for one or two nights or, you know, based on the research you've done on comparable cabins in the area, do people stay longer? What are you, what are you thinking? Well, I've noticed that some cabins have a two night minimum. There was this tree house I wanted to book for a video actually. And I only wanted one night, but they had a two night minimum and it was a bit expensive to do two nights. So I didn't bother. But I don't know. Initially I'll probably just do a one night stay. I don't think I need to do a two night minimum, but we'll see how it goes. I mean, yeah, we'll see how it goes. If we're getting so many bookings that we can do a two night minimum, because then that reduces our cleaning fees, right? And normally with a cleaning fee, you might charge them say a $70 cleaning fee, but it might actually be a bit more expensive for you to have it cleaned. So you sort of absorb some of that from the nightly rate. So if we can cut down on the amount of cleaning that has to be done, it would be good. But yeah, at the start I think we'll just do, we'll just have it wide open and people can book whatever and we'll see how it goes. Yeah. And what are you expecting to charge for the place, give or take? I know that the prices can fluctuate a little bit. Yeah. So the prices fluctuate massively, but we will definitely come in at a competitive price at the beginning. So I'm expecting it will be between about 400 to 600 a night, depending on the time of year and stuff. But I think like the most, I mean, this place will sleep up to eight, so it'll sleep up to, it'll sleep four comfortably and then up to eight with like sofa bed in the living room and additional bunk bed in the second bedroom. So, you know, people will be able to like, you know, rent it as a family or as friends and share the cost. Right. So when you hear like 600, 700 a night, actually, you know, if you've got eight people, it's a hundred bucks each or something or less than a hundred bucks each. So, yeah, I mean, in the summer, maybe we'll start renting it at 350 just to get a load of bookings, you know, because it's the first year. So maybe the first month we'll be doing like 350. I'll probably also do massive discounts for like some family and friends to come try it out and leave positive reviews, you know, maybe do 50% off to just get it, you know, get some good reviews on Airbnb and stuff. But then after that, probably the second month we'll be looking at increasing the price. And I would say probably a minimum of 400 really, but weekends will probably be 500, 550, that kind of thing. Yeah. Are you getting like a sort of 30 year mortgage on this or are you just paying cash for this? This one. So I put in, well, I'll backtrack a little. I'll talk about buying the land first. So I bought the land for $28,000, which is a real steal. I bought it in 2020 just towards the end of like lockdown time. Right. So like there wasn't much economic activity. It was only just restarting when I was buying this. And it was actually owned by a trust, which meant that two guys, two business partners had originally owned it. And then I think one of them died. One of them got divorced from his wife. And then in part of the settlement, his wife got his share of the land and then his wife passed away and the kids got it. So in the end, this piece of land was owned by six people. Wow. So trying to do business with a trust where six people all have to sign off on it is really hard because you've got to go through their lawyer and their lawyer has to phone all of them. And anyway, I think that's why no one else had bought it. It was originally on the market for 40,000 and they had come all the way down to 29 and I haggled them down to 28. And once I was under, well, should have been under contract, I signed and I sent them a check and everything. It took them a month to sign the contract. And I gave them an ultimatum in the end. And I said, hey, guys, if you're not going to sign, I'm just going to go and buy something else. And I was really going to buy something else. I canceled my deposit check and everything. And then I was actually looking at another lot that I was interested in and the lawyer phoned and said, oh, they've signed. And I was like, oh, I better quickly write another check. Yeah. It took many months. It took like three months to actually go from, like, normally that takes like 17 days or something to go from under contract to actually. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a pretty quick process. People don't wait around, you know. Yeah. So I paid that cash. I bought that cash. That was from Tesla stock, that 28,000. Well, partly I had like a 10x gain on Tesla that year. That was when Tesla absolutely exploded. So I used that money to buy that land. So then I went for a construction loan and I was able to get a construction loan at 4.6 percent. Originally, my interest rate was down at like 3.1. But unfortunately, it took so long. It took a long time to get approved for it. And also, the lumber price was very high. So I was kind of putting off building because I was wanting to wait for that lumber to come down, you know. Soon as that Canadian trucker protest happened, because a lot of the lumber comes from Canada, that really spiked the lumber price. It went sky high. And now it's come down to pretty much pre-pandemic levels. So the lumber was cheap enough. So I finally closed on it this fall. I think it was like late October. And it's a 30-year, it's an ARM though. So it's adjustable rate. It's fixed for 12 years. So my plan is in those 12 years, either I do two things. Either I pay it back completely. I just pay extra principal every month. Or when the rates come down again, I refinance it at a low rate. Obviously, I can't refinance it now because the rates are sky high now. So I have to just stay on this adjustable rate, which is fixed for 12 years. And then at some point in that 12 years, I look to refinance. God willing, things are better within 12 years with interest rates. 12 years is quite a long time. So I'm sure we're going to see reasonably low rates within that 12-year period. And I only have to beat 4.6, which to be honest, is not that. I mean, we were seeing rates down to 3% earlier. So, you know, so that's the idea. If things go with the cabinet, are you looking, are you going to look to expand the portfolio? Absolutely. So the idea, so this will be the first one. The idea is to do three cabins. And then once I got three, then I look to do a hotel. So that's kind of like the grand plan. So actually, I'm going to be probably getting out of doing YouTube once I have two or three of these going. You know, I'll probably still do YouTube, but it will be different types of videos. It'll be, there won't be any treadmill where I have to upload videos to earn money. It'll be like maybe one video a week. And I'm going to talk a lot more about real estate. I'll have people following me around with cameras, looking at these properties and things like that. It's going to be, it's going to be pretty different. Cause it will be like, I won't be relying on it for money. So it'll be like something where I don't. A passion project really. Yeah, exactly. I won't really care how well the videos do. And ironically, that will probably mean that they'll do better because I'll be just making content that I love, right. And feel good about and people will see that. So I'm guessing that that will actually probably make the content do better, but who knows. But yeah, so the idea is to get three Airbnbs and, you know, doing the calculation, I was speaking to someone the other day, like someone giving me some consulting or mentoring, another guy who owns some hotels and stuff. And he was saying like, if you have three of these and you, you know, you add up what you can get for the nightly rate over, you know, a year, and then you add up the value of the real estate as well. And you put all that in, you know, they're all owned by the same company. And he was coming up with a valuation of several million dollars for the company, right, for the own, say, three Airbnb cabins. And then he said, you can go to a bank, you get that professionally done valuation of your company can take that to a bank, you have to get a feasibility study for, you know, if it's feasible for a hotel in your area, if there will be demand for it, you have to get that professionally done to you take those two things to a bank, and the banks will lend you money, they will lend you millions of dollars. So this is kind of what I'm trying to learn now is how to access this capital from from banks, how to access millions of dollars. It's gonna be a few years, two or three years before I'm at that stage, because I got to build at least, probably, I would say three, at least two, and have them running for a couple of years to show, you know, the income and the business plan how to work. But yeah, then my idea after that is to get the and also to learn about the hospitality industry while I'm doing it, right. So you learn about what guest experience people love, you know, all the all the cool things that you can put in it, you know, what bedsheets, what robes you get, what shampoos, what aspects of it people like, dislike, and to take that experience and then do a boutique hotel with maybe 100 rooms, swimming pool. Remember, we stayed at I think years ago, we stayed at a hotel with zebra and leopard robes. That was kind of interesting. Halimar, yeah, in Washington DC. That was that was cool. I mean, I would be looking to do something maybe not as because that was sort of like a bit racy, you know, like, the decor is kind of similar to the W, like feel of like a nightclub or something. I would probably be looking to do something that's more like rustic. And probably have I'm thinking to have a golf course. I'm thinking that would be a way to draw people in from New York City, because, you know, everything in this business plan, basically, it hinges on drawing rich people from New York to come and spend their money at our properties, right. So if you're charging 500, 600 a night on a cabin, and you're expecting, say, a couple to come, it's going to have to be people who live in like, well, people who work in the city, or maybe they live in like White Plains or Westchester County, just across the river, they commute to the city every day, they work on Wall Street or something like that. It's those kind of people that you're going to sell to. So for a hotel, most of the hotels around here, a lot of them are sort of the lower end, right, like a Hampton Inn or something like that. Small towns don't need five star hotels. But if you put it out in the country and make it more of a resort, that is the thing that could draw people from the city. If you can say, oh, you can come and play golf on our golf course, and then you can relax in a hot tub, and you can eat food in our amazing restaurant. That's more of what we're aiming at. So anyway, you have to do a feasibility study on it to see if there is possibly a demand for it. You need to look at comparable properties, you know, in the area and stuff and see if anyone else is succeeding with that similar business plan. But yeah, that's the ultimate idea. And what would you say to people that maybe have some assets that are sitting and they're thinking, well, I'm a little bit nervous with real estate, and I don't know if it's the right thing for me? What would you say to people in that situation? Well, if you have assets, I mean, if you have, say, $70,000, or, you know, between $50,000 and $100,000, you could easily buy a property and put it on Airbnb. You know, you can buy, for example, this one, technically, I'm buying it as a second home. But the contract does allow actually for short-term rental, as long as I don't rent it, as long as I don't sign it off to a management company, I have to manage it myself. So you could easily sort of like buy a second home, and then just try it out. Maybe you want to do some short-term rentals just to cover your mortgage, so you get basically a free house. Or you could go all out and be like, I'm going to do a business. But yeah, I mean, it's really, it takes a few years to do it. You could do it quicker if you buy an existing property. But even then, it's going to take a few months, because you've got to, obviously, you've got to get a mortgage, right? So if you put down, with an existing property, maybe you buy something that costs $300,000, you put down 20%, which would be $60,000. You've got closing costs of probably around $70,000. Then you've got a ownership, which typically costs around $10,000. Depending on square footage, you spend between $10 and $15 per square foot. So if it's like 1,200 square feet, at a minimum, you're probably looking at $12,000 to furnish it. And there's lists online. There's various YouTubers, like Rob Built. He has a list of all his furnishings that I'm going to use some of them, actually. Basically, yeah, it's like a $15 per square foot list. Yeah, that's a pretty good ballpark estimate. So I'm going to use some of them. And then I also have some other stuff that I want to use that I've already decided on. For example, I'm going to get the robes, probably from the Ritz-Carlton. Because there's actually a Marriott Boutique website where you can buy all of the stuff from their hotel rooms on all their brands, Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Westin, W, from high to low, right? So wherever you want to go in at the market, and I think it'll be a great selling point to advertise on Airbnb, like we've got Ritz-Carlton bathrobes. Yeah, especially when a hot tub is like one of your selling points. You'd be like getting your Ritz-Carlton robe, but from a business point of view, I think you want to get several hero items that you can mention, like Ritz-Carlton bathrobes, hot tubs, but then your sheets might be Amazon Basics to save money. You don't mention, obviously, the other stuff that's- Some cost-cutting, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I mean, don't buy terrible stuff. But actually, apparently, I can't remember, was it Amazon Basics or IKEA sheets? It was one of the two, but those are the only ones where you can get 100% cotton at an affordable price, and they're not bad. They're not bad sheets. So some things, just because they sound like, oh, that doesn't sound that good, actually, if you stay on them and you don't look at the brand, you might not even realize what they are. So there's certain things where you cut costs. Another example is in the kitchen, we've got this wonderful granite countertop, this black granite. It's very classy. In the bathroom, we're not going to bother with any kind of marble on the counter. We just keep it as porcelain, but we're going to have an amazing mirror that has light all the way around when we make up and stuff, and it's heated so that when it steams up, people are just going to look at the mirror and be like, wow, the mirror's heated, so the steam from my shower doesn't do it, and I can do my- Yeah, no condensation on the mirror. That's great. Exactly. They're not going to think like, oh, this isn't marble. Yeah. So kind of certain things to draw the attention. But anyway, going back to it, yeah, like someone, I mean, if you want to do real estate, you could go different ways. Either you could do the Airbnb route or you could do the sort of house hacking route where you buy a duplex, you live in one unit, you rent out the other one, that pays your whole mortgage. You could buy a duplex and rent out both units, so you could buy it as an investment, and ideally, that gives you cash flow. There's a lot of different routes. Obviously, Airbnb is going to be the highest paying because it's short-term rate or any other short-term rental platform, but then you're also going to be limited by where you live, so is there demand? Most big cities will have demand, but then in big cities, they regulate it more heavily. Like in New York, New York City, they've basically banned Airbnb now. They're bringing in this rule. Here it is. New York State multiple dwelling law restricts renting out a Class A multiple dwelling for periods of fewer than 30 days when the host is not present. Wow. So it's crazy, and I was watching a news report the other day. These people, they had this house and they'd moved to another house, and the father had a disability. He used to be a taxi driver and he'd had an illness or he got injured or whatever and he couldn't drive anymore. Basically, their income was renting out their previous home as an Airbnb. But now, this law that states they can't rent it out for fewer than 30 days at a time has basically led to them having no bookings. Killed it. Yeah. Yeah, it's killed it, and it was their sole income, so they're just going to move. They're just going to move to Florida, they said, which is really sad. It's like you've got hotels making big bucks off of people staying one night, two nights. When an average person tries to do it, you kill their business. It's just, it's totally unfair. It makes perfect sense. It's New York. It makes perfect sense if you're a freaking, yeah, kind of corporate, how do you say, if you're a politician being lobbied by Hilton or Marriott, of course it makes sense. But it's just totally, totally unfair. But hey, I'm sure they'll be happier down in Florida anyway. Lower taxes, nice weather. Forget the snow. Yeah. Forget the snow. New York City doesn't have that bad snow, but yeah, no. The cold. Yeah. Yeah, it has it sometimes, a couple of times a year, I guess. But yeah, in our area, basically there isn't any regulation right now, and hopefully it'll stay that way. And there's a lot of people doing it, and they don't really have, and also we're buying, in the countryside, you can buy larger lots. So the area where I am buying, it's called Mountain Greenbelt Zone in that particular town. And the requirement is you can have no more than two, no more than one house every two acres. So technically my lot is 3.7 acres. It's only allowed to have one house on it. Apparently you could build an additional auxiliary dwelling that's smaller than the main house. So it's possible that in the future I could do another smaller one, like a tiny home, but I probably won't. I'll probably keep it just to keep raising the price and make it more luxurious. So what are you looking at as far as ROI goes? What are you expecting your return to be? How long is it going to take you to make your money back? Yeah, that's a good question. So I've put in, I worked out, I put in $88,000. I bought the land for 28,000. And then I paid 70,000 to the builder, but about 10,000 of that was from an advance of the construction loan. So it's like 60 plus 28, 70, 80, about $88,000. I could be a little bit off, but about that. So when you think about the ROI, it's not the ROI on the entire cost of the place, which is $374,000 it's going to cost. At least that's what we're working out now. Because we're on a cost plus with the builder where it's the price of the materials and labor plus 15%. So it could go, we could overspend, et cetera. But right now our estimate 374,000, the land and the build. So when you're looking at, we could do a little calculation. I mean, we do get an average rates of 400 a night. We get, let's say 80% occupancy. So let's say 20 days a month. Okay. So 400 times 20, that's 8,000 times 12, 96,000. So that's $96,000 per year. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, exactly. So let's do 96,000 divided by 100 equals that. And then times 86%. So we get rid of that 14% fee. So that's 82,000. I'm not including cleaning because cleaning fees are on top of this. So let's just say it makes 82,000 a year. Then we have to take out our mortgage payments, which obviously will be around, you know, let's just say 2,500 for mortgage utilities and supplies, restocking and stuff per month. Okay. So 2,500 per month. What's that going to be? I use an additional calculator here. We've got two calculators going, times 12, 30,000. Okay. So minus 30,000. We're looking at, so we're looking at probably around 52,000 a year profit. I would say that's conservative though, because we're only going up 8,000 a month, which if you remember one of the guys I talked to, he said he was making 8,000 a month in the winter. And in the summer he was doing over 10,000 a month. So 52,000 a year. I mean, you can see that is the ROI is maybe five to eight years to pay it off. Probably this number 52,000 is what percentage of this other number? 88,000. Okay. 59%. So that's a 59% ROI on the money I put in, which is pretty crazy. You're not working out the return on investment on the entire amount because a lot of it's borrowed from the bank. So as long as you're deducting the money you're paying the bank each month from your profit, we're looking at, yeah, that's 59% ROI. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. So like the idea would be if I can continue earning most of my money from YouTube for another year, we just take all this money and put it into a fund to buy the next one for the first year, 50 grand or so. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. That's exciting. That's really exciting. Yeah. So that's leverage. That's the power of leverage, leveraging your money. Like if you flip houses and let's say you buy a house for 300,000, but you only put 50 grand into it and then you sell it for 350,000, your ROI is a hundred percent because it's the ROI on the money you put in, not the total from the bank. So that's the power of leverage. Obviously you got to be careful with it because if you get over leveraged and you can't meet your payments, then you're going to have problems and you're going to have missed payments and trash your credit score and, you know, get into a lot of trouble. But if you can, if you can not get too over leveraged, maybe you have like one project going at a time that you can really concentrate on using leverage, incredibly powerful tool. Definitely. Debt is one of the ways to make it in this world. That's for sure. That is not always an enemy. No, no, not always the opposite. Good times. Well, I think we can wrap it up here, but this has been so much fun, Ben, getting to talk to you and learning about all the process that's been going on with building your cabin. And so if people want to follow you, how, how can they get in touch with you? Oh, well, they can follow me on YouTube, Ben Hedges or Apple Credit Shifu. And on, if you just search Credit Shifu, S-H-I-F-U, on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube, or my name, Ben Hedges, it'll come up. Thank you so much again, Ben. Really appreciate your time. Cool. Thanks, man.