Intro
[00:00:00] Mark: Wow. I just got off a one-hour and 30-minute Zoom call with Mr Ruben Kanya. Ruben very kindly jumped into our community and he, um, walked us through medium-term rental strategy for the insurance world. And the cool thing about this. is that we had a room where 50 per cent of Americans, and 50 per cent of people were based in the UK and the tactics that he shared, everybody could use.
[00:00:26] So wherever you are in the world, if you are looking at the 30-day stay plus, and especially with the insurance companies, this is one. Not to miss. This is 90 minutes of pure gold and I'm going to clip it and I'm going to add it in because I want everybody to see this. So Ruben, thank you so much for allowing me to do so.
[00:00:45] Thank you to everybody who took part in the call. I know how much they got out of this and I'm excited to see what your takeaways are. Please leave them in the comments, but most importantly, let's go and implement them for me. Right, without further being said, let's flip over to the Zoom call with Mr. Ruben Kania.
[00:01:04] Ruben: It's such a pleasure to be here. What I do is I just surround myself with, you know, stand on the shoulders of giants, right? Like, having Mark here, Dave, you know, he's been on the pod constantly just extracting knowledge. That's why I have the lab coat because, you know, it's an experiment. And, you know, there's, there's a method to the madness.
[00:01:21] There's a proof of concept. And what I love to learn is proof of concepts and then go deeper and deeper. And, um, it's not, it's, it's, it's not anything. As I said, it's, there's proof in the process. So my goal is to learn it. From those proximity of everything and be able to go deep. And that's what I've been able to do.
[00:01:40] Uh, and, and still learning, uh, in the midterm mental, uh, insurance and niche that I've gotten a chance to dive deep in. But that's me in a nutshell. And I do love unconventional methods of doing things. I think it allows for you to be able to identify that you have to have a change in paradigms.
[00:01:58] And I love to go deep into those rabbit holes and find a thing that can work for me. Us and then help others do the same.
How many medium and short-term rental properties
[00:02:06] Mark: How many properties do you have that you are doing on a medium-term rental basis? How many of your properties you're doing on a short-term rental basis and everywhere else in between?
[00:02:13] Ruben: Yeah, so we own half a dozen properties, but we'll manage up to just a dozen. Then we have a national network that we launched with the help of a list of 30 plus properties. Uh, we're 90 per cent occupied in this midterm mental insurance age. The only time we do short-term rentals and again, I'm a short-term rental.
[00:02:32] Uh, I should say, uh, baby or graduate. Uh, we use that as a hybrid. Uh, and now we just go all in and work directly with these insurance companies. And there is, it's one thing to, like I said, to get one booking. I think if we've been in the space long enough, we've probably gotten an inquiry. But the goal is how do we continuously get them over and over and over again?
[00:02:53] And that's kind of the rabbit hole slash. Uh, a method and framework that I get a chance to experiment in daily and get a chance to see others in my community, uh, win as well as we've kind of taught the model, uh, with our network with a bigger purpose, of course, because the strength in numbers, which I'm looking forward to talking about, especially for you, for those of you guys who have, uh, within more than one property or have a network or management,
Break down of the MTR Strategy Â
[00:03:19] Mark: can you just sort of break down when the MTR strategy became popular in America and, uh, In Canada and just very quickly explain what it is because in the UK, we have it the same but we don't call it MTR.
[00:03:30] Yeah,
[00:03:31] Ruben: yeah, we had a good chat about that last time, right? About the, you know, methodology but the concept is the same, right? So midterm rentals are another form of saying a 30-day plus stay, right? When we think of short-term rentals here in the U. S. I can speak on what I know. Um, it's it's 30 days or less.
[00:03:52] Uh, so you have multiple guests. Yeah. Airbnb or short-term rental, right? That's more or less the concept of multiple guests Uh again, you can charge a premium for it as you should. Um, but I always thought no How can you have your cake and eat it too, right? And so With that model, they've furnished accommodations, uh, transit and yes, they're coming in for multiple different reasons.
[00:04:14] And what we ended up falling into is the midterm rental niche. But most people who know the midterm rental niche are thinking, or at least what's most prevalent at this time, is the travel nurses and the professionals that are coming in and they're staying for 30 days plus, etc. And that's fine. But we weren't done.
[00:04:35] Uh, you know, a layer deeper to, um, to be able to tap into, you know, less turnovers, less headaches and more money. Uh, and it's so funny because I feel like I'm like on a late night, like a show of like, Hey, do you know that there's a strategy out there that does that? But that's really what we wanted because.
[00:04:55] I don't I don't want to say we've been burnt down, but we talk a lot of a lot about return on investment. And, um, but I like to talk about return on peace of mind as well. Right? And of course, doing the math. Part of the reason why I wear the lab coat is because I'm always doing the math before. You guys might know it was BiggerPockets and I was looking at, you know, oh, okay.
[00:05:16] Like traditional rentals. Yeah. 1% rule, et cetera. And then the same asset type, which I love to talk about, can be looked at very differently, right? You can look at one single-family home. One can see it as a long-term rental. One can see it as a short-term rental. One can see it as a midterm rental, and we see it through the lens of a midterm rental insurance niche.
[00:05:34] So to give some context, mark, uh, and, and for everyone here. What is midterm mental insurance? Exactly. So here in the U. S. and I'm sure very similar wherever you might be watching this from is we have homeowners have what we call the primary residence, which is where you live. You have a home insurance that you pay if you have a mortgage, it's baked in.
[00:05:59] So, typically, you're paying a premium either monthly or. Annually and it's baked in it's required because the insurance company the mortgage company that lent you the money wants to make sure that The home is insured should something happen now when we talk about these instances that happen They're not as extreme as you might think we're not talking about floods Or it's it includes floods.
[00:06:20] It includes fires including trees falling on a home But it doesn't have to be actually that serious. It usually means if it is water damage I usually had I had a gentleman that came and Maybe how does washer kind of was unhooked properly and it just created a bunch of damage on the floor and needed to rip off the floors Uh, etc.
[00:06:38] So we're talking about that kind of thing where when you're a home When you're a home owner and you have an insurance policy What happens is you now are eligible to tap into what we call loss of use or additional living expenses or coverage d So if you look at your home insurance policy wherever you are, you might Have this depending on if it's a primary residence or not or an insurance.
[00:06:59] Um, if it's a if it's rental, uh, You'll see it's loss of rent. So it's not the same thing but you want to look at the Loss of use because that's what we tap into and these insurance companies are paying on behalf of the family to relocate them into a French accommodation And the thing is these insurance companies are like a trillion dollar industry They have the money and for them.
[00:07:23] This is the biggest thing What is their alternative? They don't have a less costly alternative than you. You become a deal to them because I always like to use the case study, right? And you've probably heard me say this many times if there's a family of five with two dogs that need to relocate, the hotel is not ideal.
[00:07:42] They don't have a dining room. They don't have a kitchen, etcetera. They don't have a backyard with the dog to play. So, um, Even if they were to go the hotel route the lifestyle is not the same and if you got to relocate for three months Renovations end up always taking longer. Where do they turn to where are the options?
[00:07:58] Well, there's not that many options because most people are doing Airbnb. So the calendars are not available But those who know and are aware of these databases and optimize their properties effectively can get these inquiries from these insurance companies that will then increase your profitability and occupancy where you can get booked by a premium.
[00:08:19] So that is the niche that we've tackled and this is why we're geeking out about it.
[00:08:24] Mark: Having a blast, gonna get it on the Boostly podcast. Boostly like Bruce Lee cause it's so hard and the T is loose leaf. Making up those rhymes don't write it just do it loosely.
