Investing in Luxury Vacation Rentals with Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Expert Jason Griggs

Jason Griggs: 0:00

The problem with short term rentals is everyone's like, Oh, I'm gonna just buy this house and I'm gonna put furniture in it. They forget, like you have to upgrade everything. You have to upgrade the plumbing you have to put new toilets in. And all those things cost a lot of money. So you're automatically you're upside down to start, and then you got to start making the money back. So it's it's not an easy business to get up and running.

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Jason Muth: 0:44

Hello, hello. Hello. It's The Real Estate Law Podcast Jason Muth here with Attorney broker Rory Gill NextHome Titletown Real Estate and UrbanVillage Legal and Rory, we have another short term conversation today with one of the big players in one of the biggest short term rental markets in the country that is Las Vegas. Rory, what do you think about this conversation?

Rory Gill: 1:03

I know you in particular must be very excited with this conversation because we hop right into short term rentals. That's you're at the center of your world. And we had to talk about a different market something that's very, very different from New England and with properties that are very different from the ones that we operate. So I'm looking forward to hear how that all plays out.

Jason Muth: 1:21

Now, I've been to Las Vegas a lot. At least 25 times. All right, you know, throughout my career and this guy, this is Jason Griggs from Las Vegas, by way of New York, right?

Jason Griggs: 1:32

Yes, by way of New York. I love how you threw that in for me.

Jason Muth: 1:35

Well, I'm a New Yorker, too.

Jason Griggs: 1:37

Really? What part?

Jason Muth: 1:39

I'm from Rockland County, New York.

Jason Griggs: 1:40

Okay love it. Upstate. That's what my mom's from.

Jason Muth: 1:44

I love how you call it upstate, which means that you're from New York City right?

Jason Griggs: 1:47

No, Long Island.

Jason Muth: 1:48

Long Island. Oh, yeah. All right. Well, so in New York, everything north of New York City, if you live in New York City, that's upstate. So Yonkers?

Jason Griggs: 1:57

100%.

Jason Muth: 1:57

Yep. Yonkers is upstate and is the southern tip of Westchester County.

Jason Griggs: 2:03

Yep, the way I grew up, man. That's the way that's the way we roll with it.

Jason Muth: 2:08

Yeah, well, you're out on the Island. So are you Mets and Jets like a lot of Long Islanders?

Jason Griggs: 2:12

I am I'm actually a Cowboys fan and I'm a Yankee big Yankee fan.

Jason Muth: 2:16

Okay, interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of Yankee fans on the island. We're up in Boston. We're in Newburyport, Massachusetts right now, but I've been in Boston for 20 something years. Rory grew up around here. And people up here don't understand how the New York sports teams have such a divide in the area like if you're a Yankees fan, you are not a Mets fan if you're a Giants fan, you're not a Jets fan and people don't get that up here because you know it's pretty diehard but Vegas has some some good pro sports going on now. You got

Jason Griggs: 2:40

Yeah, man, it exploded which was really cool. I've been out here 13 years and I'm a huge sports fan. I coach lacrosse out here and the hockey team when they came it turned it into a full size full blown sports city and then obviously once the Raiders came but it's amazing. The Raider games are amazing all the hockey games are amazing and we're turning into like a mega sports little town it's pretty awesome.

Jason Muth: 3:03

Yeah, I think once everyone got over the whole betting element to it you know because sports betting is legal pretty much not everywhere now, but you know, we have sports betting legal in Massachusetts. Now. It's legal almost throughout New England, a couple states are holdouts. I think people kind of got over it. And that was always the fear in Las Vegas that there'll be games getting rigged or something.

Jason Griggs: 3:21

Yeah, it's so silly. Right. But it works. I mean, everybody comes everybody loves coming here for the games. There's a lot of guest fans that come. It's awesome.

Jason Muth: 3:30

Yeah. So Rory, I promised a short term of a conversation. We're talking about sports right now.

Rory Gill: 3:35

The reason we have Jason here today is not just to talk about sports, but we have, but he's an expert in short term rentals. But you've really only been doing it the past couple years. You've just taken off for you really quickly. Fill us in a little bit on your background, your background in real estate and what made you jump into the short term rental space?

Jason Griggs: 3:54

Yeah, so I was a teacher. 13 years ago, I moved to Vegas, I was a elementary school, phys ed teacher, and I loved coaching and coaching lacrosse. And I kind of got paved into being a real estate agent. And I quickly realized, when I got into real estate here, the real estate was really cheap compared to where I'm from, and all these other bigger markets. And so I had a my cousin of mine was like, let's start buying rental properties. And this is eight, nine years ago. And so we just started buying little three, two rental properties in Henderson, near the good public school. And we saw that it was a really good rental market. And it still is, and as time went on, I just started buying, you know, my long term rentals. And then I had a mentor of mine, Sean Cunningham, who was a big property manager in this town. He's like, Look, I know you love long term rentals, but I gotta get you involved in short term rentals. These things are pumping, they're making big money. And I heard about the rules and the laws and all these different you know, kind of challenges that go on here in our city, but once he showed me it, I was hooked. Because I love long term rentals. And so these are just like rentals on steroids. So that's kind of how I got involved in it. And the real reason why I got involved in it, because I had so many people that were wanting to visit. And I saw like a real niche, there was not, there's only like two big hotels here in Henderson. And Henderson is big. And I was like, so many people need to stay in Henderson, whether it be for hockey, or lacrosse, or soccer or whatever, they just want to come and go to the strip. And I was like, I need to build out some really good rental properties for the short term people who want to come. And that's how I started.

Jason Muth: 5:41

So tell me about your guest avatar, is that the same across all your properties? Or do you kind of cater to different audiences?

Jason Griggs: 5:48

It was not what I thought. It's a good question. I thought it was gonna be all bachelor parties and all these different things. But it's, I would say it's only like, 40% of that. It's a lot of family reunions. It's a lot of soccer tournaments, it's a lot of sports events. It's a lot of people come in, they do these conventions, a lot of those. I've been renting out a lot to the Formula One employees that have to stay here for three, four, or five months to build out the project. Amazon moved here. So it's way different than when I first thought of what it was going to be like.

Jason Muth: 6:25

Yeah, sometimes you just kind of have to figure that out once you launch. I mean, you should launch with a guest avatar, you know, so have you launched with bachelor parties, bachelor parties in mind. You know, it's good because you pick a direction and you pick your decor and your messaging and you know, your copy of your listing and everything with that in mind. But that as it evolves, you see the market shift a little bit and more opportunities open up for everything you've mentioned. I mean, people come into the area for work a lot of times, you know, hey, if you have what are your properties? Like? I mean, you have one big property you just mentioned 9000 square foot place, which we'll talk about in a second, but the rest are not 9000 square feet.

Jason Griggs: 6:58

No, they're four beds, they're 2500 square feet with pools, I do have a few luxury ones. But to answer your question, it's just I made my properties really luxurious, where the picture stand out where people if they're going to come to Las Vegas, if they're going to come to Las Vegas, then they want to stay in a really nice place. So what we did was we emulated the Encore and the Wynn hotel, if you go to the Encore in the Wynn hotel, it's five star, it's five diamond, it's beautiful. You come in, it smells good. It just feels like a really nice place to want to stay in live. And that's kind of what we did.

Jason Muth: 7:34

So a place like standard 2500 square foot property right? That looks similar to the Encore or Wynn. What are you putting into it when you when you take ownership of the property like what's your budget, like on average for a renovation?

Jason Griggs: 7:47

We want to stay that - this is the biggest problem with short term rentals is people over overspend on the rehab. And they overspend on the furniture. So every property is different on a regular four, three with a pool, we want to budget around 50,000 bucks for construction and furnishing I have my costs are around 20 to 25 to furnish an entire house. And that's kind of being strategic and going and using things like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace getting newer stuff that's been used a little bit. And because you don't want to go buy all new furniture, right and go put that in because it's gonna get ruined, it's gonna get worked, that's gonna get beat up a little bit. And then you can obviously have to replace it at a point you got to be really smart with your budget.

Rory Gill: 8:34

The amount you gave actually struck me as relatively low. We're just furnishing kind of a lake house in New Hampshire. And the costs of that have been out of control to furnish it from scratch. So you said that you look at places like Craigslist and Facebook marketplaces. But does that turn into a full time job in its own right, designing and finding furniture?

Jason Griggs: 8:53

It does, it does. And now you got to delegate that. So you got to hire somebody, we've found a few designers who will kind of work with us. And it's been cool kind of having a good social media following. It's kind of like a win-win. So they'll give us a discount on doing the work for us. And we'll promote them that they designed our property. Yeah.

Jason Muth: 9:13

What are the design fees? Like is it percentage of what they spend, like 20 25% or so?

Jason Griggs: 9:17

I'm doing what now it's a five bedroom house and they are charging me $5,000 to set up fee. So she's picking out all the furniture, she's going to the house, opening all the boxes, setting it all up, and then whatever I spend, but I will say this things are a lot cheaper here than where we're from. Like, significantly cheaper. All the construction cost is cheaper. All the furniture is cheaper. Everything is a lot cheaper.

Jason Muth: 9:47

Yeah. I think for our place. I mean, the one that Rory referenced, we just built a house in New Hampshire. It's our fifth short term rental and it's by two other ones that we have and it literally built from the ground up got construction permits, you know, I watched the septic design, I watched a septic tank go and I watched the foundation go and everything. So ground up looks beautiful. But you know, you take ownership this place, there's nothing in it zero, like we're not buying a furnished place. It's done. So I've never done that before from the ground up. And, you know, we're over budget when I thought we'd be. I just took a look a couple days ago and the number was like 80 something but I think that includes the overages that I paid the builder, you know, plus, I bought some things that the loan didn't cover. So I think I'm in about 55 right now, would that build, you know, I should probably have known this number off the back of my head. But you know, when you just start spending money, you just keep spending money, right? Just add it to the list, and then eventually you'll recoup it.

Jason Griggs: 10:40

You know what, I found a more strategic, less stressful strategy is I go after the furnished ones, the ones that are already all done. Doing it like that, or finding somebody who's just really good at dialing in a house for you, because I did one from scratch, I did two actually do three, and I hate all three of them, I would never do it again. And you know, to we'll get into my big one, but it's just a complete headache, because you the problem with short term rentals is everyone's like, Oh, I'm going to just buy this house and I'm gonna put furniture in it. They forget, like you have to upgrade everything, you have to upgrade the plumbing, you have to put new toilets in. And all those things cost a lot of money. So you're automatically you're upside down to start. And then you got to start making the money back. So it's it's not an easy business to get up and running.

Jason Muth: 11:28

I mean, it looks easy on social media doesn't it?

Jason Griggs: 11:31

Look looks easy, man. But it's not. Yeah, I'll be the first one to tell you.

Jason Muth: 11:36

I think what we're lucky we got into this in 2016. You know, so we started stacking properties up over the years, you know, while I was still working full time and did one a year. So, you know, we didn't scale up as quickly as you did over the past two years. But you know, finally the the first couple ones that we did they start actually becoming cashflow positive, you know, not the first year like, I mean, like, if you could do it the first year great, but whenever people get into it, I tell them like, you know, your first year is learning like, you know, just cover your costs, if you can, like don't expect that you're gonna make a lot of money on this property is very first year, but you'll pay down some mortgage, you'll have tax benefits, it'll appreciate in value, and you'll learn a lot and then you'll be able to charge more than next year. And then you know, you'll eventually what you put into it, you'll be able to pull all the money out and you own this asset. And that's kind of where we are with the first couple properties. The second one appreciated a ton. And then the fourth one we did by was was furnished right, so we did just what you were describing, like it was a fully furnished place. We took ownership of that one. And yeah, that's cost a lot less. I mean, I think we probably spent 10 to 15,000 on supplies. I mean, a lot of it was supplies, right? You know, so you got to cover the cost sheets and towels. And I mean.

Jason Griggs: 12:44

And that's like, I call that a sneaky cost, right? And it's like, towels can't be expensive. And then you spend $600 on towels and you're like whoa, towels are expensive.

Jason Muth: 12:54

Yeah, well, you're buying it from Target or super fancy company. We we've been buying a lot of stuff through Minoan. Do you work with that company? They're like, like a host GPO type buying service.

Jason Griggs: 13:06

I think I'm gonna write this down. Now. How do you spell it?

Jason Muth: 13:09

Minoan. I'll send you my affiliate link. I know the owner. I just I've been I was in a swimming pool with him back in September that I just saw him last week at a conference so yeah, he the great guys get good discounts off of products like we buy all of our sheets and towels through Parachute right now we get like 30% off everything. Yeah, I just got like, you know, Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn that kind of stuff. They usually offer like 20-30% off the prices that you'd pay retail. Polywood, you know that lots of lots of good products here. Well go check it out. It's good company. They've been on the podcast as well.

Jason Griggs: 13:40

Let's do it. Yeah, shout him out.

Jason Muth: 13:41

Anyway, we could save save a couple bucks. You know, we're always looking to do that. But yeah, sneaky costs. I've never heard that term. I love that.

Jason Griggs: 13:47

Oh, yes. Sneaky. Sneaky. is definitely the right word for it. Right? Because, again, people think it's so easy like a toaster oven. Oh, you know, it's 50 bucks. No toaster ovens are 150 bucks now. Yeah. And it just adds up.

Jason Muth: 14:01

Rory I don't even think you are I know what my linens have cost over the past 12 months.

Rory Gill: 14:06

No, I mean, I just see linens everywhere. They just kind of keep showing up and give them to delivered every day. You know, and I can only imagine what it's like with a 9000 square foot property. So I kind of want to jump into that property too. Because that one is that one obviously stands out. Tell us about the property tell us what was like to furnish that one and then what's what's it like to run such a large, single unit.

Jason Griggs: 14:28

So when we saw this property, we we knew it was gonna be a huge project. It's a 9000 square foot mansion. There's a big main house and then there's actually a second house on property with a casita with two bedrooms there. So it's a total of eight bedrooms. It's just an absolute monster. And it's got a full basketball court, volleyball court, pool, it just has literally everything like you do not need to leave this resort we call it a resort, and we just went all in with it. We bought it for 1.4 million, we put around 280,000 into this thing. So we fully remodeled it, with the intention of it being like the biggest, baddest Airbnb in Vegas and Henderson. And what we saw when we were doing it was there was no competition, there was no house remotely this size. And so when we released it, it got a lot of pop, we got a lot of attention on it, because there's just, there's no houses in anywhere in the area within 30 minutes of us that can hold, you know, 16 to 20 people. And we've done some events, we've had 50 to 100 people at our house, and it doesn't even put a dent. That's how big it is. So when people come, that's kind of like the feedback we get is, this house is so unique. It's so cool. You can have so much fun at it. And that's the real goal we were going for was we want to make it the most fun house in Las Vegas.

Rory Gill: 15:55

You said one thing in there, there really were no comps for it in the area. How do you start setting rates for something like that when you don't have competition to follow up?

Jason Griggs: 16:04

It's a great question. I actually get asked that a lot. We kind of threw like, we took a shot in the dark. But I knew like deep down, I was like this house is so unique and cool and rare. And we just set a price of 2500 a night. And we were like, Look, we're not going to go lower than this number. It's unique, and people are going to have to pay for unique. And if you do the math, like 15 people, 20 people 2500 a night, it's not that expensive per person. And so we tried it and we were getting the numbers that we were aiming for. We were getting 50-60,000 a month on this house. Somebody saw it on, we got approached to put the house to a deal with the UFC. And the UFC said we want to use the house for their reality TV shows and so we did a deal with them shortly after we released it. So we've had it up for I think four or five months and then they came in and rented it for six, seven months.

Jason Muth: 17:01

For power slap, right?

Jason Griggs: 17:03

Dana White's power slap, and UFC's the Ultimate Fighter.

Jason Muth: 17:07

Dana White's he's a Boston guy. He's from the neighborhood.

Jason Griggs: 17:10

Yes, yes. Yeah.

Jason Muth: 17:12

South Boston. So he's a Southie guy.

Jason Griggs: 17:14

He is He is for sure. He's an awesome dude. And probably the most surreal experience getting to work with him and his team and Hilburn films. And so they're the second show is gonna get released, I think in two months, and you know, it'll be on ESPN.

Jason Muth: 17:30

So two years ago, did you think you'd be you know, here in this position with a 9000 square foot place that's on reality TV.

Jason Griggs: 17:38

No, but I work really hard. With investing I'm really good at and and with the rental side of things. And now I'm just taking my strategies and my systems and kind of pushing them kind of outside of Henderson. Because Henderson, we operate in probably the strictest jurisdiction in the entire country. But we get rewarded for it, we get numbers, our numbers are top of the line compared to other markets, even the bigger markets, the Florida, the Texas and the California markets. So our just our rules are really strict. But to answer your question, no, I didn't. I didn't think I would be buying mansions. But now that's kind of like my MO, where Jason has the coolest houses that you could rent.

Jason Muth: 18:22

Yeah. So in terms of restrictions, this is a good kind of pivot into this conversation, because people don't always think about restrictions when they want to operate a short term rental. If you're new to this space, you might not even know where where to start looking. I'm curious what some of the what some of Henderson's restrictions are it's as to what makes it such a restrictive place. And then what kind of advice you have, you give people that are in your, you know, coaching programs, or that you just talked to every day that want to get into this short term rental space, about regulations.

Jason Griggs: 18:53

So I think regulations are a great thing. And everyone, you know, comes at me comes at my throat and I say that, but it's a really good thing because you don't want to go invest your money in a saturated market. And so Henderson, just just City of Henderson, not Las Vegas, it's very regulated. So there's only about 320 licenses at a time. And so when you you need a license per property. And then when you get a license on your property, there's 1000 square foot radius around your house, that no other property could come in your zone and get a license. So you're pretty protected. And you know what's going on in the market. And you could kind of base your projections of, hey, I have, like, I have the biggest one. And I have the biggest license so and I can see like, Who's the next biggest license around me and then I can use those numbers and comp etc. But, you know, in the city of Las Vegas, there's 13,000 running right now and none of them have licenses and now they're putting them the license rules in and they're only giving out 2800 licenses out of the 13,000 that are operating. So what's happening now is, there's gonna be a huge shrink of short term rentals. And I think what what I think's gonna happen is the value of mine are going to go up because I have those licenses, and they're going to be super rare. But I would always recommend to, before when you dive into this business is look at the regulations, are they involved? Is the city involved in making them legal versus not legal? Because you don't want them to go do all this work? And then have the city come shut you down because you didn't do research? So I'm dabbling in markets where there are no rules Kansas City, there's not many rules at all. And the big one, I bought an Arizona Mesa, they don't have any rules either. So we'll see what happens as time goes on. But I like having the rules better, because you know, what you're getting involved in.

Jason Muth: 21:19

Yeah, a lot of the markets that don't have the rules. You know, what I've heard other people mentioned is, they'll grandfather you in, you know, but that's clearly not the case in Las Vegas, right? If they're only giving out a sixth of the licenses for the properties that are already existing right now that that is shocking to you, I've never heard that before.

Jason Griggs: 21:35

Yeah, well, I think, like, you just got to do them, right. Like, I'm a licensed property manager, I'm a real estate professional on you have people who do them kind of crappy, right? They just take it out, they throw it on the houses isn't functional the right way, it's not safe. And they just have these crazy parties. And it's not, it's not a right thing to do to the neighborhood. And so what Henderson does, which is I think a great idea is it notifies your neighbors that there's a short term rental coming in your neighborhood. And if there's any issues, there's a hotline that you can call and report the operator. And so if I get reported, I get a $500 fine every time somebody calls. So I gotta make sure that everything is on point, making sure that my guests know the rules and letting them know, Hey, you're in a nice neighborhood with neighbors around. So be super respectful.

Jason Muth: 22:28

What besides that messaging, which is important, you know, we put some messaging about having family nearby and people that live, you know, our neighbors live here year round, you know, and they're great members of the community. So, you know, we I think that we, we stress that in all the communication with our guests, and we knock wood haven't really had any issues. What do you use for tech in terms of noise monitoring, or cameras or anything to protect the property and protect yourself?

Jason Griggs: 22:52

We have those, I forgot the name of those noise monitors, but they're required by the city. So a city inspector comes before they give you the license. And if it doesn't pass code, then you don't get your license. But we use the ring door, all the ring products, we love the floodlight and looking into the driveway, the front door camera, we don't put any other cameras in our property, not even to the outside portion, we want the guests that have feel they have full privacy. But we do have a ton of those noise meters throughout the inside of the home and outside. So if it gets too loud, we get notified. And we have like an AI VA who will get the notification and message the guests immediately telling them to quiet down.

Rory Gill: 23:36

We take all these precautions speaking that guests are going to come through and damage the property or behave ridiculously. But the truth is, I haven't seen that bad behavior. It's pretty rare actually. Do you have you had any incidents with bad guests destroying the property or upsetting the neighbors?

Jason Griggs: 23:53

Yeah, yeah, I have. I mean, I think the, the market you're in, and the market I'm in is different, right? People coming to Vegas, the party, and they get lit and the drunk and they get a little stupid. But yeah, I've had some guests, I've had professional athletes trash my house. It's just, it's just the nature of the beast of what we're in. It doesn't bother me, as long as they fix it and pay for it. Just like going into it, you gotta know that people will mess up your house like it, they're not going to treat it like their house, they're treating it like a hotel. And I would say 90% of guests that go into hotels, you know, they're messy. They're just like messy because they know it's gonna get fixed. And so that's kind of the way I look at it.

Jason Muth: 24:38

How's your insurance?

Jason Griggs: 24:40

Well, I got that. So the city requires we have to have a million dollars, liability coverage on every single property, which I think is great. That's a great rule. And then we would stay for him. You could have a separate short term rental umbrella into that policy, and we use that as well.

Jason Muth: 24:58

Yeah, I mean, everything you've mentioned, it Yeah. just tells me short term rentals have grown up right over the years. You know, when we first started in 2016, actually, Rory's parents did it before we did, but you know back when Airbnb was getting going, you know, it was very much the Wild West and you didn't hear of a lot of people that were doing it but the people that were doing it people got curious. Hey, what are you doing renting your place out, you know, by the week? How's that going? And then you know, it got really popular over the past couple of years, you know, it really spiked during the pandemic, you know, once all the bookings came off the calendar, but then everything rebooked solid for what a good year, year and a half 2021-2022. To the point that neighbors are probably asking questions, municipalities are asking questions. And, you know, hosts like yourself, you do the right thing, like you want to do the right thing, I want to do the right thing. We all want to operate our properties correctly. And you know, everyone hears the bad stories in the news of the party that trashed the place or, you know, when Airbnb puts out a new policy, it's always it always seems like it's against hosts, it's in the favor of the guests because of bad thing that happened. But comment on kind of the direction of where things are headed for short term rentals. Are you optimistic that we have not reached our peak just yet? Where do you see this heading this year into next?

Jason Griggs: 26:16

I do think eventually, every city will create a policy, because it is a great moneymaker for the city. Like, in my opinion, Vegas is losing so much money by not taxing. We get taxed, we have to pay an 11% tax, per booking. And so we charge the guests that tax. And so for the city of Las Vegas, I mean, it's the number one tourist city in the world. And if you like kind of embrace this business, more people will come because every hotel is sold out anyway. So why not give options to have people come to our city. And I'm seeing like different types of cities kind of like popping up like weird, like Joshua Joshua Tree, like you would never think, like Joshua Tree's in the middle of freaking nowhere, like there is nothing to do there. And it's popular. And so these trendy little cool places, I think it's good. It's more fun for the guests, because now they could kind of opt, they could go and kind of maneuver around the country and say, hey, I want to go check out this place in the middle of nowhere and rent a tent that's like a house. And so I don't know, to answer your question. I think it's going to be it's going to get more and more unique. I think it's going to get more adaptable. I think it's going to be more common. I hope it doesn't get too saturated. But it's a hard business to run. So I'm not too worried about it because not too many people can operate. It takes a lot of manpower and work. And a lot of people are lazy, so they won't do it.

Jason Muth: 27:52

Yeah, it looks so easy on the surface. But you know, the conference I went to last last week was the STR Wealth Conference.

Jason Griggs: 28:00

How was that?

Jason Muth: 28:01

Excellent. It is great. I'm in one of those guys mastermind groups. I'm in Mike Sjogren's Mastermind, but Mike and Bill put it on and you would think everyone's got a place in Joshua Tree or in in the Smokies.

Jason Griggs: 28:14

I was just gonna say Nashville, right everyone. That's what was the big one now, everyone.

Jason Muth: 28:18

Yeah the Smokies the Poconos, Joshua Tree. It's like all the bloggers, all the influencers, everyone's talking about the same exact markets. You know, I kind of found in my own little New England contingency when I went there. And you know, I knew a bunch of the people there because of the mastermind and other conferences I've been to. But you know, we New Englanders are few and far between at conferences like that. And we're happy with that. Like, I don't need y'all given attention to what's happening in New England likes. We got it.

Jason Griggs: 28:45

Right. It's kind of like a secret, right? Yeah. Totally get with you. Did anybody bring up Vegas at all?

Jason Muth: 28:52

I didn't hear it. I'm sure there were people over 1000 people there right into all thousand of the but like, we were really talk about Vegas that much. But it was excellent conference. So they put on a great conference, they had, you know, talk about digital marketing, talking about insurance, legal issues, design, you know, so everything you're talking about, about making your properties unique. That was a huge, you know, huge theme throughout the entire conference, and they were showcasing some of the experiential rooms that have been done, you know, the murals, the wallpaper, the things that photos pop, you know, just things that will set a property apart from just a standard, you know, four, three or three, two place in a random suburb that suddenly somebody bought and want to make it to an Airbnb and they shouldn't have. Right. Right. But ya know, it was it was good. Well, you should you shouldn't attend next year, they're actually expanding.

Jason Griggs: 29:35

I've been trying to speak at him. And I do a lot of speakings. Short term. Yeah. And I don't know not to toot my own horn too much. But I feel like it's, what we're doing is really unique. And the city that I operate is really unique. And so when people kind of listen to me kind of what I do, they're like, oh, come talk about that. Because it's different. And that's why I asked you like, the rules here are just nuts. It's like really hard to operate here. And other people just do it. Like, we have no rules. It's great. We have no rules, and I can't believe you have rules. And so I'm going to try and get in there next year.

Jason Muth: 30:10

I will introduce you to Mike who put who's one of the people putting it on. Next speaker they have like three or 4000 people that are going there. They're switching venues and they have Daymond John, is that the keynote?

Jason Griggs: 30:20

Oh, that's awesome.

Jason Muth: 30:21

From Shark Tank. So and they actually are pledging to have news speakers at the next conference, I think the past couple conferences they have done it's been kind of the same faces on stage and they're good faces, but they could probably use some some fresh blood in there. So I'll

Jason Griggs: 30:34

That would be, that would be great.

Jason Muth: 30:36

I can't I can't guarantee you he's want you on stage, but at least say, You know what, I can't get you the job. But I can get to the intro.

Jason Griggs: 30:42

What I say is I say I got the biggest, baddest short term rental in the country now then they're like, Yeah, then I show it to him. They're like, Oh, okay. Well, I got Alright, well, you weren't lying?

Jason Muth: 30:54

I do want to make sure we put a link to that property in the show notes here. So you know, make sure you send that over to me.

Jason Griggs: 30:59

Well shoot that over to you. For sure. Yeah. Um, and then if you guys ever come to Vegas, I'd be happy to let you guys use it and check it out.

Jason Muth: 31:07

Wow, look at that. We'll bring all of our Ultimate Fighter fans are here, right, man? Yeah, I'm a wrestling guy, though. So I like I like the pro wrestling. And so let's get to our final questions. And then we can have you tell everybody where they can learn more about you. We ask these of our guests to come on the podcast, really simple questions just to tie things up and get to know you a little bit better. First question, you can get on stage for half hour talk about anything in the world, like maybe next year's Short-Term Wealth Conference, what would that be?

Jason Griggs: 31:32

I have a real passion for giving back. And so I coach lacrosse here. And I absolutely love coaching and giving back to the community. And by doing that for years for no pay, and just out of enjoyment. It's really helped me succeed in business. And I've gotten great opportunities from the parents of the kids that I coach, because I give back. And now, you know, using that level up, and I work for one of the parents and the kids that I coach, and he's given me like a plethora of opportunities to better my life through real estate. And I could go I could go talk about that for a long time.

Jason Muth: 32:15

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, giving back as a good part of this business, you know, once you reach that level that you can give back time wise or money wise, it's good that you do.

Jason Griggs: 32:25

I did it without the money.

Jason Muth: 32:29

Second question we have tell us something that happened early in your life or career that impacts the way that you're working today.

Jason Griggs: 32:36

Both of my parents were teachers growing up. And I saw kind of the way they lived and kind of some of the things they instilled in me. And I didn't love it. I didn't want to live paycheck to paycheck, I didn't want to, my mom would always say, you know, you could be a teacher and get the summers off. I always had like this entrepreneurial mindset. And so I think that really played a big factor in it. I didn't want, I see a lot of people do the opposite. They just kind of fall into the path of their parents and where they grew up. And I did something totally different. I moved to Vegas when I was 21, by myself. And so I think that really triggered something in my brain to just go for it and do something different. Yeah.

Jason Muth: 34:03

And you started as a teacher.

Jason Griggs: 34:04

I started it I you know, I did, I kind of did go into that path. And then I hated it. I just didn't see growth and potential in my life. And I was like, You know what, I'm gonna do something different. And I'm glad I did.

Jason Muth: 34:17

Final question, tell us something that you're listening to, or watching or reading these days.

Jason Griggs: 34:23

I watch all of Pace Morby's stuff. He's really the only guy I'm not a big, like, rah, rah guy. I don't really follow those motivational speakers. But I think what Pace puts out is the best on the entire planet. I buy a lot of properties with creative financing, it's the best way to buy real estate, don't need loans, you could get in for a substantial amount of money off. And so I've gotten six creative finance deals this year. My goal was five and it's only March something and I bought six of them. So that if my best advice is to read everything that guy puts out, watch everything that guy puts out. He's the best guy for real estate right now. It's not even close.

Jason Muth: 35:05

Your your Mesa deal. Is that a SubTo deal?

Jason Griggs: 35:08

Yes. Yeah, it was.

Jason Muth: 35:11

Really not to open up the conversation yet. But really quickly, can you tell the audience what is a SubTo deal? And what does that mean?

Jason Griggs: 35:16

A subject to deal is you're basically taking over the mortgage payments from the seller. And so I'll go into the Arizona deal. Arizona seller was operating an Airbnb property, he had a tax issue and he also had a family accident, and he just needed some cash quickly. And so I gave him a good amount of cash and I just took over his payments and he deeded me over the property. And so I'm into that property, it was a $1.1 million house I put $150,000 down and it's a really good investment. But the main reason why I bought that was to use it for myself, but it is going to turn into a really good

Jason Muth: 35:57

And interestingly with a SubTo deal if you're investment. taking over the mortgage and Rory, maybe you know the answer to this, but you know, we've done a couple of DSCR loans where we're technically not supposed to occupy the property, right? Yeah, we're allowed to go there. If we're if we have maintenance days and everything and you know, we're not going to do a DSCR loan at a high rate and then go stay there for like five months during the high season, right? That would be stupid. But in a SubTo deal can not that you're going to move to Mesa, but are you allowed to use it freely? Or do they the days are there become a maintenance day somehow?

Jason Griggs: 36:27

Yeah, no, I could do it. It's my house. And just because just because the mortgage is in somebody else's name, you can do whatever you want with it. That's the best part about creative finance, you can structure it however you want. And so this deal was, I would say was up there with one of the trickiest deals I've ever done. It took a long time, it took a few lawyers involved that took because we did a hybrid. And we did, we were financing him the equity that he has to. But it all worked out. It was just like a war of just going to bat every day and getting it done. But we got it done. We got it done last week, Friday.

Jason Muth: 37:02

Awesome. Congrats. I saw some video on YouTube that you did a walkthrough of that property in the backyard is pretty sick.

Jason Griggs: 37:09

Yeah, it's awesome. I'm gonna I'm actually filming one right now of how I structured the deal, I'll release that. So you can watch that because it's, it's like for the normal person, they're not going to be able to understand what I did. So I'm going to try and dumb you down. But whoever if anybody's listening, creative finance is the greatest thing that I've ever learned in my whole life. And it's not even close. So learn it go on Pace's free, free YouTube, and watch as many videos as you can. Because as we go, kind of going into a little bit of a downturn, slower cycle with the market, you're gonna see a lot more people who are hurting or just not in a good space financially.

Jason Muth: 37:47

Rory, I've brought up credit financing to multiple times and subject to deals and I don't I still don't understand why this is not more common in this space. While the only people that know about it are people like you, Jason and people that are in Pace's group and follow him that this should be something that is much more common for the average homeowner to understand to

Jason Griggs: 38:04

Yeah, but I am seeing, I don't want to get too much into it. But I am seeing agents understanding it now, where when I call I call every listing of houses that I like here in Las Vegas, and I pitch it to everyone, Hey, would you sell or do an owner will carry? Now what's the benefit to them? I'll give them more money. They're guaranteed more money. And well, I want to get paid, you can get paid. I'll make sure you get paid, I'll pay your fee. And then they're like, oh, okay, great. Let's do it. So it is being more, it's gonna be more common. It's only common in kind of like the market is stale right now. It's not hot, it's not cold. It's kind of like even. If the market everyone cold, it would be super popular again. But when the markets hot, no one's gonna do creative financing.

Jason Muth: 38:57

Rory any final words like creative financing before we wrap it up?

Rory Gill: 39:01

No, I mean, it's just it's us, you just don't hear about it because it takes more work from people to and people don't necessarily want to do it. And it doesn't work in all situations, you know, it's not going to work with every seller, it's not going to work in every little market. So that's why a lot of real estate agents who only know how to sell a single family home for one owner occupant to the next they're never going to come across this and they don't really have the incentive to discover it. But if you're working in the corners or working in that niches where this is a really valuable tool, you should know it.

Jason Griggs: 39:33

Yeah, it's I'll give you a quick story. So let two weeks ago, I had an agent bring me a house, they couldn't sell it there was there wasn't much equity in the house was foreclosing and I saved the seller from being foreclosed on. And I just did the deal because I do a lot of them. And by the end, the guy was the seller was like tearing up on the phone and thanking me, because he was about to have his world flipped upside down over a $17,000 lien that he couldn't get out of. And I helped him with that. And now he could go move and do whatever he wants to do next. But could you imagine you can't pay your mortgage, there's no educated people out there to help them hit like if you get your credit screwed up, you can't even go rent another apartment. And this guy would have been screwed all the way around. So it is a good thing to know and you are helping a lot of people and that's what Pace does too.

Jason Muth: 40:27

Yeah, you know it doesn't sound predatory at all. In fact, it's it is win-win because you're coming in there to shoot me solving their problem. You know, so be the educator that you are Jason, you have a you have some kind of course or mentoring program that.

Jason Griggs: 40:43

Yeah, so I kind of got out of teaching them getting back into it. I educate a lot of realtors and kind of beginners have just started investing in rental properties. Not a flipper. Never be a flipper. And then I do the short term rental education so my website is winwithairbnb.com I'll help you find In the market to invest in, I'll help you show the systems that I use if you want to manage it yourself or you want to hire property managers, and it's working. Alot of people are kind of relating to me because I'm not some huge business guy. I was a regular teacher, blue collar worker, and kind of got into this entrepreneurial world. And so it's really cool to see my students and friends kind of fall in the footsteps.

Jason Muth: 41:31

Awesome, we'll put that in the show notes. Rory, where can people get a hold of you?

Rory Gill: 41:35

People could find me either at my real estate brokerage NextHome Titletown, nexthometitletown.com, or my law, law practice UrbanVillage Legal, UrbanVillagelegal.com. All right.

Jason Muth: 41:48

Well, that's another great episode. I can't wait to see this property. Actually, I've not seen the 9000 square foot place. So once once I get that link, make sure there's in the show notes, but I'm gonna check that one out.

Jason Griggs: 41:56

Shoot me a text. Actually, I'll email it to you. I'll email we did this really cool promo video for it. And I will send it over to you.

Jason Muth: 42:05

Awesome. Yeah. And next time we're in Vegas, we will come say hi. Maybe I'll see you on stage next year at the STR Wealth. Yeah, please.

Jason Griggs: 42:13

I would love to I would love to speak at that event. I'm not a big event goer, I'll go if I speak because I feel like it's so much better. Networking and when you're when you're talking about it, so please, that'd be great.

Jason Muth: 42:24

Yeah, heck, when you're on the stage, everyone was to come up and talk to you. You know, when you're not the stage, you got to, you know, apply your craft and the work the crowd.

Jason Griggs: 42:31

Yeah, I don't know. I just I like I like going and speaking, I'm gonna get better at it. And I can't sit still. So I can go and just sit and listen to five speakers in a row,

Jason Muth: 42:42

Sounds like a luxury property panel or something along that line. I don't know. But again, this is not my not my conference.

Jason Griggs: 42:48

I'll do it for free, or whatever you could do to get in there.

Jason Muth: 42:52

Edit that part out. Just got a fee. Well, that's it. Thanks again for listening to The Real Estate Law Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I really hope you give us a great review or five star review. We love those that helps more people hear the podcast and it expands the reach of this so more people to learn from great guests like Jason. So Jason, thanks so much for being here.

Jason Griggs: 43:11

Thanks, guys. Best of luck with the podcast. See you soon.

Rory Gill: 43:14

Thank you. Yes.

Announcer: 43:17

This has been The Real Estate Law Podcast. Because real estate is more than just pretty pictures. And law goes well beyond the paperwork and courtroom arguments. were powered by NextHome Titletown, greater Boston's progressive real estate brokerage. More at nexthometitletown.com and UrbanVillage. Legal, Massachusetts real estate counsel serving savvy property owners, lenders and investors. More at UrbanVillagelegal.com. Today's conversation was not legal advice, but we hope you found it entertaining and informative. Discover more at the realestatelawpodcast.com Thank you for listening