This Nurse is Can Achieve Financial Freedom Through House Hacking - Ep. 50
Zeona went From College Student to Financially Independent in 2 years with Airbnb! She has been an Airbnb host since 2012 and has grown her offerings to Consulting and Co-hosting homes from Seattle to Spain. At 33 years old, she is an avid Real Estate Investor owning 7 homes & managing 15 others, all rented short term. She teaches her clients to create automated hosting businesses through her website / blog: www.ZeonaMcIntyre.com. Zeona has been to 47 countries, spending half the year in Boulder, Colorado and the other half traveling the world as an international pet and house sitter.
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Zeona Mcintyre’s Choose FI Episode
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy (00:01): All right, this is on fire. I'm super honored to have Zeona Mcintyre join us. And I have been following her for quite some time. She has just like me been on the ChooseFI podcast. And that's what I learned about her. And listen to her story, extraordinary stories about working with Airbnb and how she helps other people with their Airbnb. And that just started from her just diving in and doing Airbnb herself. So now she's actually pivoted a little bit and focusing more on nursing. So for we get into that stories Yana, can you introduce yourself and talk about your journey, your personal journey to financial freedom?
Zeona Mcintrye (00:43): Yeah, so it was kind of an accidental journey. I got really into personal finance when I was about 18 or so, because both of my parents were really bad with money and I just kind of was like, dang, there's gotta be another way. You know, it doesn't look like everyone out there is struggling like we are. And I realized like maybe if I just study and read all these books, I can figure something out. So we started on like the Susie Orman track, which I, you know, I think our stuff's a little too general. I don't know that it's as fire friendly, but it was a great place to start. You know, it got me investing, it got me saving and, and just understanding debt pay down. And that was great. And then I kind of moved into the idea of fire and I found mr.
Zeona Mcintrye (01:28): Money mustache, which maybe some of your readers are familiar with or listeners. And that got me really excited. His whole story is about retiring by 30. And I think when I found him, Nina was 25 or 26 and I was like, I don't know how the heck I could do that, but I want to do it. I'm just going to try to copy him and have that goal. And who knows. I'm just going to make it happen. So don't get in my own way with all the reasons why it's not going to work. I've just got to do it. And magically in that time I found Airbnb and just started doing it very casually. I thought this is a cool side hustle. Maybe I can make a little bit of money. Maybe I can quit my retail job. I was in college at the time.
Zeona Mcintrye (02:09): It does not make you much, but as a college student, you have this like magical ability to live really cheap. You know, you haven't gotten used to luxuries in life. So you're good at eating Brahman. You're good at riding your bike and you're going to have a roommate. And so that's a perfect recipe for how talking, which I want to talk to you about today. So yeah, that built up for me and, or Airbnb organically ended up taking over and starting with just renting a room, turns into having extra apartments. And then I ended up buying. Then people found out I was doing Airbnb and asked for my help. So I started managing and it's just become this huge business out of nowhere. So yeah, you never know where your life's going to take you, but I did retire before 30. So I'm like, Hey, Oh, and happened
Naseema McElroy (02:57): goals. You are pure goals. And if you were like retire before 30, that's impossible. But I just want to, like, first of all, your journey is incredible from just like going through Susie Orman. And I follow Susie Orman too. And I didn't necessarily, I, her advice was really good. I think it was good content. Right. But it wasn't like super actionable, but to go from Susie Orman to like mr. Money mustache, which is such an extreme, I think that that's so funny, but yeah, I love mr. Money, mustache and his content because he focuses on really knowing your numbers and knowing that it's really not that hard. But once you understand that, then those numbers, the way that you can control your finances is incredible. And so that's great that you latched onto that as such a young age. I'm totally envious because I wish I would have known anything about money at 25, but that allowed you in less than four or five years to retire.
Zeona Mcintrye (04:02): Yeah. It was like two years.
Naseema McElroy (04:05): Right? Exactly. Exactly. Part of that is because you didn't have to make up for like a hundred thousand dollars income. But also the other part of it is that once you really get intentional and you really just start paying it like attention to your finances, things move exponentially in ways that you can never imagine. And so, yeah, if you can take one thing away from this, it would be just get, move me, get into action and things will start falling into place quicker than you think. So when people hear my story and like that I paid off a million dollars in debt and you know, under three years, they're just like, that's not applicable. That's like so crazy. Like, I don't think, you know, that's not relatable. How can you do that? People are out here doing it all the time. So Ziana you behave like basically a millionaire and two years from just starting out from like a renting one room. Can you talk to me about that as that evolved, like how you grew and grew, let's go into a little bit more detail about that because I know you have some interesting stories, especially in relationship to how you started buying your properties and financing things.
Zeona Mcintrye (05:21): Sure. Yeah. So just to be honest and correct, I am not a millionaire and I wasn't a millionaire right away, you know, and you don't need a million dollars, which is what I love, you know, for me, what I needed to do. And this is kind of like the idea of personal finance or financial independence is that you need to just cover your expenses with your assets. And so that's why rentals are so great. Because at first I was like, okay, how am I going to say 600,000 and put it in index funds? Like that seemed like a million millions of millions of dollars when I was 25 know, but I was only spending 2000, 2,500 a month. My expenses were very low cause I was young and frugal. And so how do I just replace that with income? That it doesn't really take much of my time. Maybe it's two or three hours a week and I can do it. And that's what Airbnb did for me very quickly. And even before I was owning property. So that's the little trick there, you know?
Naseema McElroy (06:23): Yeah. I think that's super important. Cause people are just like looking at these numbers is not about that. It's really about how much of your income that you have to work for. Can you replace for things that you don't have to trade time for money for? So that's really, really good. So how did you become a property owner after just being a renter?
Zeona Mcintrye (06:45): Yeah, so I held that in my mind, it's, you know, kind of having these goals, right? So it's like I had this big lofty goal of retiring by 30, had no idea how I was going to do it. I also held in my mind, man, I just really love real estate. I've always been that person that, you know, you invite me over to your house and I'm like, I want a tour. Give me the tour. I just love seeing how people live and decorate and everything. It's just been an exciting part of my life. So I knew I wanted to own, but I had no idea how it was going to go about that and thought, Oh, maybe I should become a real estate agent. There was all these ideas, but I said, okay, don't get in your way. Just hold that vision. And when Airbnb came around for me, it became really easy.
Zeona Mcintrye (07:25): I kind of tell people that Airbnb is like training wheels for real estate. So an example of that is maybe about two years into me doing Airbnb. I kind of started with just renting rooms. And then I got, Oh, and my own apartments that I was renting and renting. I had an apartment that I think it was like 1100 a month for all of my expenses and utilities rent. And so I thought, okay, great. I've got this place. I've had it for over a year. I've seen it through the entire cycle of Airbnb having it seasonalities. And I thought that in the height of times I could make maybe close to 4,000 a month. And in the low times I'm making 1700 a month. So I was never coming close to that 1100. I was like, totally in the clear then when I went to go buy a place, it was the same kind of layout, one bedroom, one bath, five minutes away from the place I was already renting, but buying it, made it a little cheaper. And so it was about $950 or something like that a month with the mortgage payment. And so I thought, well, I've already been doing 1100, nine 50 is nothing, you know, like, I know I can clear that. And so it's kind of that idea of like, let me try out this concept and see if it's working and then I can really apply those numbers to something that I'm going to own.
Naseema McElroy (08:46): Yeah. I liked that. I liked that. It just was that little leap that you took it. Wasn't like, yeah, it wasn't like extraordinary thing that just like, whew, you have to do all these major things. That's great. So also on top of you're renting your Airbnbs out, people will start to ask you, well, how do you do it? Because they see you being successful at it. How did you help other people in their Airbnb business?
Zeona Mcintrye (09:12): Yeah. So there's something that Airbnb kind of coined called co-hosting and essentially you're just managing a property for someone. So it's kind of the best of both worlds because someone gives you a property it's already furnished and they say, you know, we're going to cover the mortgage utilities. You just take a percentage off the top. So know I would list it and get it ready. And then I would make 20 or 25% off of every booking, but I put no money into it. You know, this is a property that was just handed to me. And so even if they have a really bad month and they didn't make that much money, I made money because I make the money on every booking. So it was really a win, win situation. And I think co-hosting is definitely still very valid and it's very needed. So it's a great way to get into it.
Naseema McElroy (09:58): Yeah, I think that that's great because a lot of people think that it's only, you're either renting or you're an owner, but there is this little piece of co-hosting that could be a lucrative side hustle for people, even nurses who want to learn more about Airbnb, because I think it teaches you the business of Airbnb without you having to invest your money. And so to me, that's like an easy stepping stone to get into having an Airbnb, if that's something that you want to do in the future. So now post COVID post this pandemic well not, but we're actually, during this pandemic, things have shifted and kind of the short term rental landscape. Um, can you tell me how you've been able to kind of pivot and how that is affecting nurses?
Zeona Mcintrye (10:45): Yeah. So everything's kind of turned to longer term, you know, the average of Airbnb stays in the past were really like three or four nights. That's kind of what I saw on my end and I manage about 20, 25 properties. So I've got good data and I've been doing it a long time, but really overnight, it really turned into people were isolating for two weeks after a trip or they wanted something month to month because they didn't know where they were going or the market that I've been seeing a lot of success with is travel nurses, which you've probably talked a bit about. And people that already nursing might be familiar with a lot of people that do, um, you know, travel nursing or travel doctors. And so obviously nurses are really needed right now, you know, being in like a medical pandemic. And so, yeah, I've found that it's really convenient that they have these, you know, three month contracts that sometimes extend to six months. And they're paying still a little bit more than market rate, maybe a little less than Airbnb, but you'll have a lot less expenses because you're not getting cleanings every week and all this stuff, you get a tenant in there once they're situated. They really don't ask you a lot of questions and it just kind of coasts plus they're at work all day. So they're really ideal tenant.
Naseema McElroy (12:01): I'm glad that you stumbled upon that population because that's actually who I've always rented to as nurses. And typically as my colleagues and I've always touted, like how's hacking people always say, and I was a single mom and they were like, Oh, is that say, you know, I had people in my house with me and my daughter. And so I was like, yeah, I've done it for years. It's like, if anything, I have another babysitter. Cause it's my coworker. But the important thing is like we went, especially nurses that are coming out of state to travel and work. They come out here and they grind, they pick up extra shifts. So all they're at your house doing most of the time is sleeping. What an ideal tenant. I couldn't think of a better tenant. As a matter of fact, I was like trying to pitch Airbnb to make me have my own personal nurse's Airbnb, because that's just how great it is. So what platform specifically are you using to find travel nurses?
Zeona Mcintrye (13:04): I've had a lot of success with furnish finder. I've heard there's a few others out there, but it's been enough. It's pretty great. And it's really just like a lead generation site, but what I've also found that's great is that if you have more than one listing it an area, so say, I don't know what town you're in, but I'm in Boulder, Colorado. And so maybe I have five different apartments here, but I'm only going to put one listing on furnished finder and they send me anyone who is within maybe 20 miles. And so I can send it to all five. I can say, Hey, you know, this one's booked, but I've got three others. Do you want one to B's? And so you can really pay for one listing, which is a hundred dollars a year and not worry about having five listings on furnished finders. So it's great in that way.
Naseema McElroy (13:51): Yeah. And then speak to a little bit of the differences between like Airbnb and furnished finders, Airbnb, you get these per stay and you know, all these other fees, Furnished finder is basically just, they charge you once a year for the listing and then everything else you kind of just handle on the back end, right? Like you have to set up your own leases. You have to be responsible for your payments, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Zeona Mcintrye (14:16): So with Airbnb, I would say it is really easy because sometimes people won't even talk to you and they'll just book. And so I personally love that that idea might be weird for someone who hasn't done it before, but I love just waking up to bookings and going sweet. I've got money and everything's set up so people can prepay on Airbnb and you don't really need leases on there because they've kind of got everything secured for you. They take a security deposit and they do take a fee for each booking. So they're taking 3%, which sometimes can add up. And so if you're looking at fees on the client's end, they're paying about 15% and sometimes more for taxes in the area. And so that might be the difference between them booking and not booking is saying, Hey, you know, I could pay 1500 a month, but I can't afford 2000.
Zeona Mcintrye (15:07): So Airbnb doesn't always work for those longer term people on furnished, finder's end. They're just making their money for having a listing once a year. So you pay your flat fee with them and all they're doing is sending you leads and it's up to you after that, to do stuff with it. And so you have to have a little more knowhow, you know, you have to find a lease, which generally you can find one that's just, you know, general for your state, which is fine. And then, you know, you've got to do a little back and forth with the client to make sure that they can cover the security deposit and how are they going to send you the money? So there's a little more work involved, but once you do that, you've got them for three months. So it's not too bad.
Naseema McElroy (15:47): Can you talk about other systems that you used with furnished finders that kind of streamline things for you? Like, do you use like a rent payment portal or a background check site or anything like that that helps you?
Zeona Mcintrye (16:00): Yeah. So one of the partners with furnished finders cozy and they have a really cool set up, I feel like they make it really easy. They've got it set up where people can apply through cozy to do a background check. And so you can choose if you want one that's really comprehensive, like background eviction and criminal and credit, or you can do a more simple one. And then from there, you know, they'll keep the least in the client's folder and they don't provide leases for you. So it's not perfect, but it's got a lot of things and they can hook up their bank account and then do auto payments. So you don't have to chase them for money, which I really love. So cozy makes it really simple and that's actually free for landlords. So I definitely think that that's a great thing to use.
Naseema McElroy (16:44): Oh, you know what, and I also noticed that furnished finders now with providing state specific leases. So you don't even have to go look for leases. So yeah, that's great. So this is a very trying time for nurses right now. A lot of nurses who you couldn't tell me for the life of me, like a nursing income will be unstable. And for the first time I'm seeing nurses not working are, if they're working, they're hesitant about working because they're on the front lines and they're scared of infecting themselves and their family. And so they're really questioning like their main income source, which they've always felt is reliable. Let's talk about the benefits of house hacking, because this is just something that I have always hated, but especially in times like this, like how house hacking is like a super important way to generate extra revenue.
Zeona Mcintrye (17:42): Yeah. So I think what's really cool about house hacking is you could do it in different ways. So if you're the type of person that says like, Hey, you, I don't want to live with that. Many people, you can buy like an up to four unit building and it still can qualify for kind of an owner occupied loan, which gives you the lowest interest rate and the lowest amount down wired. So if you buy something that's bigger than that, or if you buy something that you're not intending to live in, you're pretty much stuck with the 20% down payment. And that's a big difference between being owner occupied and being able to pay as little as 3.5% down. And so to give some examples of that, because I took some little notes here to make it easy for people to understand kind of where we live.
Zeona Mcintrye (18:30): It's about like 350,000 for a house, you know, and it 20% down for that, it's like $70,000. Like that's pretty intense, but if you're doing only 3.5%, it's like just over $12,000. So that's something that a lot of people can save up for. And maybe just a few months, maybe half a year. And once you're doing something like a house hack, kind of the general idea is that you try to live for free. And so if you can have something where, you know, it's for individual units, they're all paying a little bit more. So that covers your mortgage and you can also do it where it's a four bedroom house. And if you're okay with living with other nurses, then you can rent out the rooms. And what's great about having nurses that are traveling is maybe in your area, if you could only rent an unfurnished room for maybe six or 700, but to a travel nurse that needs a short term, stay in a furnished room, they might pay a $1000 a month, you know, something like that. And so all of a sudden, yeah, you can be living for free and covering any kind of expenses for the house maintenance and utilities. So if you're living for free, that takes a huge chunk out of how much you need to make every month.
Naseema McElroy (19:44): Yes. Yes. That is, that is awesome. That's awesome. So, so much value, so much good information. Um, how can, when nurses connect with you to work with you on the services that you offer and what services do you offer?
Zeona Mcintrye (19:59): Yeah. Um, so basically I just have my blog, so I do a lot of teaching through my blog and podcasts are on there that I've been on. Um, but yeah, so I've, I mostly teach about Airbnb at this point, but I think I'm going to be starting to branch out into more things and talking to people about using nurses. I really enjoying this. And so I would love to help more nurses, but yes, I do one on one coaching. I do financial coaching. And so my website is just my name's zeonamcintyre.com. And you might have to put that in the show notes because it's some crazy spelling.
Naseema McElroy (20:33): Yes, yes, yes. So yes. Make sure you guys reach out to Zeona cause she has some excellent resources. Like I said, I've been following you for a long time and you have a lot of valuable information on just getting started and yeah. Kudos to you on pivoting really fast. Can you talk about a little bit before we go about how your finances have changed? Um, since the chronic virus,
Zeona Mcintrye (20:59): because I do management for other people, I sort of just said, Hey, you know, I'm managing my own properties. What's a few more properties. I've already got all the systems set up. I'm just going to do that. And so I never, I mean, I retired for maybe two years, but after that, I kind of like went back into having this business and serving people. And so my income had always been covered by the houses I own. So I own seven homes now and I make on the first six, cause I just bought the seventh one maybe a month ago on the first six, I make 40,000 a year in profit and I can live off of that cause I live pretty simple and I share expenses with my boyfriend. And so that's my kind of idea of being financially independent is I've got that money coming in no matter what.
Zeona Mcintrye (21:45): And so with the other business is I made a considerable amount more and it was great and I was saving and everything and it kind of lets me buy more houses, which is great. But now it's yeah, it's, it's kind of peel back a little bit and I don't know exactly what I'm making every month, but even just in my bank account, I had been saving to maybe buy something, try something new. And so I've got over two years of runway just sitting in my bank account in cash and that's just, if my homes didn't make any money and they're all rented and covering themselves. So I'm really in a good financial position. And I think that's just kind of, because of fire and having that knowhow and also having that skill of saying, Hey, when things get bad, I can tune it real down and I can just cook from home and, and make it really an affordable life. So having that frugality piece is really important. I think, to know how to use it.
Naseema McElroy (22:47): Are you afraid at all about losing income because of tenants not paying? Because it seems like this is not a landlord friendly time when they're giving a lot of renters, a lot of leeway as far as breaking leases or not paying.
Zeona Mcintrye (23:03): Yeah. I haven't had any issues with it yet. So what's great. Is I still have my Airbnb listings up and Airbnb they're paying an advance so I know I'm getting paid for sure. And then with the nurses, they're on a short term contract, I have worked with a few people and then they said, Hey, you know, actually my contract got canceled and then they never actually came. That's no big deal, but once they're in the home, they know they have a contract and they kind of keep up to date with you. So generally they're not going to lose their position or run out of money within those three months because they're working. So I haven't had any issues, but I think, yeah, it's definitely something to kind of tread lightly. If you're going to be renting to just regular people of Craigslist or something you might want to do a little more deep dive on, Hey, do you really have a job and call their employer and make sure that it feels like something steady,
Naseema McElroy (23:56): excellent tips. And it's just a bonus that you're serving nurses and, you know, nurses are the most trusted profession. Wow. So you can't lose, you can't lose in my humble opinion, but see, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for joining us and again, share your website and how people can get in contact with you.
Zeona Mcintrye (24:17): Yeah. The auto McEntire goes.com. Just send me an email. Thanks.
Naseema McElroy (24:21): Awesome. Yes. And I will definitely have a link in the show notes for that. Thanks Zeona.
Zeona Mcintrye (24:26): Thank you.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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