How many things can possibly go wrong with ONE rental property? Well, you’re about to find out! Today’s guest had to flex her problem-solving skills on multiple occasions to get her “unique” rental up and running, and in this episode, she’s going to show you how she pulled it off!

Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! Investor Ashley Robinson bought a triplex in the little town of Salida, Colorado, with plans to live in one unit and rent out the other two. Despite her thoroughness during the due diligence phase, however, she ran into several problems along the way—from rental caps and building code issues to financing troubles and poor home appraisals. But Ashley persisted, creatively working through each hurdle until she was finally able to launch her cash-flowing rental property!

If you’ve ever hit a roadblock in your investing journey, this episode is for you! Ashley shares how she chose her investing market, changed her property’s use to sidestep rental caps, and got her building fully up to code. She also talks about the ins and outs of commercial loans—getting approved, coming up with large down payments, and refinancing when your property’s appraisal comes back low!

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Tony:
This is real estate. Rookie Show 388. Have rental caps plagued the market you want invest in. Are you confused by zoning restrictions? Well, today’s guest found a creative solution when looking for a way to invest in a capped short-term rental market in Colorado. So guys, my name’s Tony j Robinson, your host for today’s show, and welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. So today I’m here with Ashley, not my co-host, Ashley K, but another Ashley Ashley Robinson, no relation to me, but Ashley and her husband are military vets who’ve done a number of live-in flips and now work full-time in real estate. So we’re here today to deep dive on a problem property that Ashley was able to find a unique workaround for and how you may be able to do the same in making zoning work in your favor. So Ashley, welcome to the show. Happy to have you on board today.

Ashley:
Hey Tony, thanks for having me.

Tony:
So I understand that you submitted a question to Seeing Green, which is from our sister podcast, the Real Estate show, but you actually ended up solving this question on your own. So I’m excited to dive in and understand how you did that. But first, let me read the question so our listeners can understand what your situation was. So here’s Ashley’s question. It says, I’m trying to decide between my options for increasing the value of a duplex I recently purchased. It’s in an area with short-term rental caps and the wait list is extremely long. The duplex is on commercial land and it has a third unit that was created but not to code and never permitted through the county. I live in the main unit with my spouse and we want to rent the other two units. Best case would likely be to move out and change the use to a hotel, but I don’t have the capital to install the required sprinkler system.

Tony:
If I convert this property to three long-term rentals or change the use to a lodging slash boarding house, I will only need to create a firewall separation. So should I A, leave the building use as residential and create three long-term rentals? Or B, should I apply for the change of use to a boarding slash lodging house so that I can rent out the other two units as short-term rentals? I’ll need to evaluate the RV buyer pool cashflow, et cetera. So sticky situation there, Ashley, and excited to dive into this. So I guess first off, where exactly is this property located?

Ashley:
The property is in Salida, Colorado, which is in Chaffee County. This is central Colorado pretty far from any major airport or major cities. We’re looking two and a half hours to Denver, two hours to Colorado Springs. The population of Salida is only 6,000 people. The population of the other popular city within the county, Buena Vista is only 3000. So we’re really working with a tertiary market where it’s difficult to find labor, but there’s not as much competition both areas. Salida and Buena Vista were recently gentrified within the last decade, so there’s a lot of new construction, beautiful buildings and architecture in the area, but more importantly it’s really known for its recreation. Chaffee County in particular has 80% of all of its land public, so either it’s owned by the Bureau of Land Management, the US National Forest Service or the state. So recreation is huge.

Ashley:
There’s a lot of elk hunting off-roading, fly fishing if you’re into that. The town where we purchased this duplex is actually located on the Arkansas River. So water sports are huge with whitewater kayaking and commercial rafting. Another important thing for us is it’s really famous for its mountain biking. In fact, it is the birth of mountain biking and there’s a really cool documentary called The Rider and the Wolf all about that, which is really cool. My husband and I mountain bike and it has incredibly long trails, technical trails. It also is 20 minutes from Monarch Ski Resort and several hot springs. So just pretty much something for everyone in Chaffee County

Tony:
And what I love, you used the word tertiary Ashley, which is a phrase that I’ve been really pushing when it comes to short-term rental investing because I do think that’s where the next opportunity lies. A lot of these primary markets, the Breckenridge, the name, the city and the state, a lot of these markets have, they’ve heated up in terms of pricing. It’s harder to find good deals in those markets. The level of competition has increased, but when you go into these towns that are these kind of smaller but still regional destinations, those are places where you can potentially get a better return. Now I’m in California and granted I’m geographically challenged to begin with, but I’ve never heard of Selita Colorado. But yet you being from that part of the country, look at all the facts you just laid out. 80% of the land is government owned or public use. You’ve got the birth of mountain biking, you’ve got the river, you’ve got lots of recreation. There are things there that are going to be bringing people back. So I guess let me ask, how did you find Salito? Are you from Colorado or how’d you land on the city?

Ashley:
Great question. We actually decided to leave California back in 2021 to move into our rv. Now at this time we had three long-term rentals in California and we just wanted to try something new and turned out really quickly that that was not for us. We weren’t trying to live in an rv, which is a completely different story for another day. However, one of the places that we ended up visiting was Buena Vista, Colorado due to its whitewater and mountain biking. Those are two sports that my husband and I love to do. So it was all for the recreation.

Tony:
Yeah, so it was your love of sport that pulled you into this market, which is cool because again, I’ve never heard of it before. I’m sure a lot of people listening to this podcast have never heard of it before either. So makes sense how you landed on this market and why it kind of drew you in now, what actually ended up, well, I guess before we get into what happened with this property, just on the acquisition side, when you bought it, did you do the research beforehand around the zoning around what the short-term rental rules were or did you identify this problem after you had already closed on the property?

Ashley:
We did a lot of due diligence ourselves looking into the land use code and actually reaching out to both the planning and building department before the purchase. So within the land use code, we were able to determine that we would be able to change the use of the property to either a hotel or bed in breakfast without any kind of committee approval. It was just a permitted use on commercial property. So we reached out to both the building department and planning department to confirm that this was true and we learned through the building department that we would need to install firewall separations in order to make it work just because it was two units that we were trying to convert to three. That’s all they told us that we would need to do during our due diligence period.

Tony:
So you did your best to try and get the right information. You looked at the land use code, you’re calling the local building and planning departments to get that information, but it sounds like maybe there is a missing piece there and just to maybe lay laid out clearly for our listeners, Ashley, so it’s three units or is it two units with an A DU? How is this property actually physically set up?

Ashley:
It was approved as a duplex maybe 20 years ago and they added a third unit. However, all of these units were still connected on the inside. There was interior access to everything. So essentially it was laid out as one very large home for multifamily living essentially that had two full kitchens and a kitchenette.

Tony:
Gotcha. And what’s the square footage on this thing? It’s got to be pretty massive I would think to house two full units and like a smaller unit. Do you know the overall square footage?

Ashley:
I know the individual square footage of all of ’em. The largest one is 3,500 square feet. The smaller unit is 850 square feet and then the one with the kitchenette is 650 square feet.

Tony:
Got you. Yeah, so decently sized property, so sounds like they kind of did some patchwork turning this really, really massive single family into a quasi triplex and that’s what led to these issues. Okay, so you get this confirmation during your due diligence from the building department around what you need to do. I want to figure out what happens after you actually close. But first Ashley, we’re going to take a quick break to hear a word from our show sponsors. Alright, we’re back with Ashley and she just walked us through how she really did invest the time to do her due diligence, confirm what she needed to do with this property after closing. But Ashley, it sounds like maybe all the information you got before you closed wasn’t accurate. So I guess what happens after you, you actually owned the property?

Ashley:
After we owned the property, the goalpost was moved several times before we were able to get our certificate of occupancy to convert the property to a commercial use. The building department ended up telling us that we would be required in order to convert the building to a hotel to install an indoor fire sprinkler system. So the sprinkler system is required for safety. The international building code lays out that if there are more than 10 transient occupants, so just people staying for less than seven days, if there’s more than 10 of them at your property, in order to prevent the spread of fire from one unit to another, it needs to have a sprinkler system.

Tony:
I’ve never had to install a sprinkler system before, but my assumption here is that it’s probably be somewhat expensive to go back and do that after the fact. Is that a fair guess?

Ashley:
Absolutely, and it was completely out of our budget, so we decided to get incredibly creative and we were not going to stop until we came up with a solution.

Tony:
So what was the next step for you guys?

Ashley:
The building inspector actually helped us out tremendously. He found in the international building code, the IBC that there’s something called a lodging and boarding house and it did not require the fire sprinkler system. Now this is something that was not in the land use code. The land use code specified hotels and bed and breakfast but not lodging houses. So we ended up working with the planning department to confirm that a lodging or boarding house was close enough to what a hotel or bed and breakfast would be so that we were able to follow those rules within the land use code.

Tony:
Interesting. And you said it was a building inspector from the city who made this discovery?

Ashley:
Yes, because he was the one who initially had told us that we needed the fire sprinkler system and I think he kind of felt a little bad that prior to us purchasing the house, he had not told us this and then after we purchased it, it came to

Tony:
Light. I think this is another benefit and rookies, I’m talking to you right now, but I think this is another benefit of working with some of these smaller cities is that you do get to build a relationship with the folks who are working at the desk inside City Hall because if you go to some of these larger, larger vacation destinations, you might have a harder time in, I don’t know, name the city Orlando Kissimmee, building that relationship with the building director or the building inspector to the point where they’re going to be looking through their own code to try and help you solve your issue. Right. And these bigger cities, they’re churn and burning, so I love that you were able to build that connection. So he finds this little nuance inside of the code. You go with this lodging. So what are the actual conditions you had to meet to be able to I guess satisfy the lodging requirements?

Ashley:
Well, we had to bring the entire property up to the current code. So how it works when you change the use of a property is that you now have to comply with all of the new rules as if you were creating a new construction. So one of the things that we ran into when applying for the commercial access permit was that our driveways were not paved. So we in particular had to asphalt both of our access points onto the road in front of us. We also had to install additional firewall separation, just a bunch of type X drywall on top of the current drywall just so it had more time protection as well as replacing some of the recessed lighting fixtures. And then in order to get the certificate of occupancy, we had to complete all of those building inspections, get the commercial access permit and sign something that said we would never have more than 10 transient occupants in our property.

Tony:
It goes to show that when you keep digging, a lot of times you can find the answer that you’re looking for. Now, one question that I have, Ashley, can anyone change the zoning? Say I buy any single family home, can I always just go through and change the zoning or was this already zoned in a way that made changing it easier? Just walk me through what the original zoning was and why it was easy to make the transition to what you needed it to be.

Ashley:
This was actually a very unique property. Anyone could do it if they find a property similar to ours, but it doesn’t work for all properties. What made this property unique is that it was on commercial land and it’s important to understand the difference between zoning and land use the two work together, but they’re very different. So for example, you and all the listeners are likely familiar with the different zoning such as residential, commercial, industrial, mixed use. There’s just some, they vary based on what municipality, city, county you’re in. And then the land use codes are all created independently by different counties, cities, municipalities, and the land use code will specify specifically what you can do per zone. So for example, if it’s a residential property, residentially zoned, you can build anything where people live, you’re going to build your single family residence, townhouse, duplex, apartment buildings. But if it’s zoned as commercial, that’s when you’re going to build something like a retail shopping center, perhaps a hospital self storage, anything that your city or county allows for commercial properties. So anyone who would want to do a similar strategy that we were able to accomplish, what you have to do is find a commercially zoned land with a single family or duplex, a residential use, and then you’re able to change from a residential use to a commercial use based on whether or not your land use code will allow it.

Tony:
Yeah, what a great breakdown because I think a lot of folks don’t understand that difference, but the zoning then allows for certain usages. So if you can find the right zoning, then you’ve got some flexibility within the different uses that apply to that zone. So I know it sounds confusing, but guys, if you just go Google whatever city or county you live in, and a lot of times now they’re digital, but you can look up all the different zoning types that your city or your county has and then what the different use cases are within that specific zone anyway, you can go search your local county and find that information.

Ashley:
Another great thing that you can do if you’re really trying to find a property such as this is using Zillow, they do not necessarily have a commercial filter, but if you type in commercial in the keywords box and exclude land because then you’ll just get a bunch of land that is completely irrelevant, but you can find pieces of properties that might fit this criteria by just simply searching that keyword,

Tony:
Super smart tip. So you get over what may be the biggest hurdle of trying to figure out, okay, how can we change how this property is being used so that we can rent out all three units correctly. So once you get your certificate of occupancy, everyone signs off, what happens from there? What’s the actual next steps

Ashley:
After you have the certificate of occupancy? The hard work is done. So after that point we were almost completely set up for our short-term rental and long-term rentals. So at that point it was just getting photography, stocking our closets and hiring a cleaner.

Tony:
So were you then going through your rehab while you were making these changes that the city needed to get your certificate of occupancy or did you kind of do the drywall stuff first and then go back and do any other additional rehab that was needed?

Ashley:
Yeah, we did it all simultaneously. It took us a total of five months to complete the entire renovation with my husband and I doing all the work except the drywall we’re not technically supposed to be doing the drywall or permit required activities until we had the building permit. And so in the beginning we just painted the entire property. We replaced some shelvings and cabinetry, the smaller details that didn’t require the permit, and once we received the building permit, then we were able to hire people to do the drywall work, finish that painting after they were done and pretty much call it Good.

Tony:
I want to get in a little bit more into how you actually finance this actually, because I could imagine it might be a little sticky with the property that’s zoned commercial but has residential usage as you’re trying to convert back to a lodging house. So I want to get into the financial and the lending part of this, but first we’re going to take a quick break to hear a word from our show sponsors. Alright, so we’re back with Ashlyn. She just walked us through her process for converting this property into the right usage so that she could rent it out both short term and long term. But the question that’s kind of lingering in the back of my mind right now, Ashley, is the financing component. So what kind of debt, how did you structure it to actually purchase this property and fund your rehab?

Ashley:
Great question. We were able to get the property for $831,000, which was a steal at the time because the market was very slow. We had an original appraisal for $880,000, so we were buying equity from the start. However, our lender required us to put 25% down of the purchase price of the 8 31. We did not have that. We put $50,000 down of cash. Then we were able to use a 10 31 exchange from one of our rental properties in California that we sold and were able to funnel $75,000 into the property and third, in order to reach that 25% for the commercial loan we used, we ended up using a second lien on our other Colorado property. So because it already had a lot of equity in it, the bank was able to use the lien from that house as our additional funds that we needed to meet that 25%.

Tony:
Wow, so you guys got super creative with the down payment. So you had 50 K cash, you have the 10 31 funds, and I was going to ask how did you use 10 31 funds on this property, but then you said it’s commercial debt, so makes sense how you were able to roll those funds in and then you pulled a second mortgage on another property. So basically was it just a line of credit that you got on the other Colorado property or

Ashley:
No, it was not. So you called it a second mortgage and it was not a second mortgage, it was a second lien, which is really not talked about very often. We didn’t pull any additional debt. There’s no loan on any of those funds that were used. They simply take second place in line for the debt on that property. So as long as we can appraise at 25% loan to value in the future on this property, they will release that secondary lien on our other Colorado property.

Tony:
Yeah, it’s almost like phantom debt, right? They’re like, Hey, you’ve got enough equity in here so we’re not going to touch it, but only if this rehab goes south and we need to collect on that, then we will use that lien to actually get either place a mortgage, like an actual second mortgage on the property or do whatever we need to do from there. Am I understanding that correctly?

Ashley:
Yeah, hit the nail on the head. That’s phantom debt is a great way to describe it.

Tony:
Yeah, that’s super cool. I’ve actually never heard of that before. So let me ask this question then, Ashley. Was this a small local regional bank? Was it a big national outfit? Where was this bank located? How did you find them?

Ashley:
It was a very local bank, so there’s only a few branches all within Chaffee County and I found them by calling every bank in the area and getting different terms from the different banks. And this one ended up having a little bit of a scary term for us because we had never had a commercial loan before. I’ve never had a balloon payment looming over my head nor have I had an adjustable rate mortgage. But all of those things happened with this and I wouldn’t change a thing. Yeah.

Tony:
Tell me more about the actual structure. So you mentioned balloon payment, adjustable rate. What was the actual terms that they gave you?

Ashley:
Initially when we took out the loan, they gave us a five year balloon payment with a one year arm, meaning every year they were going to look and see what the current prime rate is and they would readjust our rate. We were able to lock in at six and a quarter percent plus three quarters percent. So prime, I believe it was back in November of 2022 was six and a quarter. Maybe we locked in October and then it would be plus three quarters of a percent and every year they would reevaluate. So

Tony:
You had this adjustable rate that could change every year and you had the five year balloon, but like you said, it worked for what you needed. Now one thing I want to circle back to Ashley because I don’t want to gloss over this, but it’s an important thing for Ricky to understand. You said you basically just called all the banks you could find in and around that area, which is a step that a lot of people don’t want to take. But what did you actually say when you called? Did you call and say, Hey, I’m looking for a five one arm that said 3 75 basis points higher than prime rate? Or what were you saying when you called these banks?

Ashley:
I was asking a lot of questions actually. I was not asking those specific questions. We were looking into SBA loans. We were looking into commercial loans because my husband and I were living there. We were also asking about residential loans. Residential loans pretty much went out the window with every bank at the very beginning. Once they learned that we were going to be qualifying using the rents of the different units, another question we were asking is what interest rate they would offer. At this point we were getting a lot of people telling us they were essentially prime plus 1%. Prime plus 1% was a very common quote that we were given because we didn’t have a relationship with a bank. However, this bank in particular, because we had a experience with other investment properties prior, they were able to give us prime plus three quarters.

Tony:
So you called around and basically just explained your situation and then let them provide you with, Hey, here’s what we think is the best option given your situation, which is what I think is the smart approach, right? Because that puts the onus on the bank to come up with the right solution for you as opposed to you trying to force yourself into the box of Ofone products that you know. So the rehab itself takes, you said about five months or so, which is not too bad given the size and scope of this project. So once you finish the rehab, I’m assuming the goal is to refinance to get out of this adjustable rate mortgage. So when you finish the rehab, what is the property actually appraised for?

Ashley:
Great question. So that was exactly what we were trying to do. We wanted to refinance to one, get out of the adjustable rate, but also to recuperate some of the money that we had just dumped into the property. So we were looking for a complete cash out refinance. We were able to do that. However, the appraisal did not come back where we wanted it to. We wanted the appraisal to come back at, I believe it was somewhere around $1,025,000 and that would’ve released that second lien on our Colorado property because it would’ve given us the 25% down and they did an appraisal on the property. For those of you who have done the small residential income property appraisal reports, the form 10 25, it gives you around seven different valuations of the property, and then it’s up to the appraiser to either wait all of those and come up with an average choose one that makes the best sense or whatever the appraiser believes is most accurate.

Ashley:
So with our appraisal, we received three different valuations at 1.2 million. These were when the appraiser used the bedroom count, the room count or the unit count. So for example, when she was configuring our value per the units, she found that there’s now three units. They’re each valued at 400,000, so that would be a $1.2 million property, similar to when she looked at how many rooms are in the entire property, there’s 12 rooms. She valued it at a hundred thousand dollars a piece, which would be 1.2 million. When she looked at the bedrooms, we actually ended up adding a second bedroom to one of the units. So there are now six bedrooms each valued at $200,000 for a $1.2 million valuation. Another way that she appraised the property was through the income approach, which is one of the most common ways to value a multifamily property. She took what our long-term rental rates would be for the entire property.

Ashley:
$5,650 is what her appraised value was for the monthly long-term rent and then multiplied by a gross rent multiplier, which came to a valuation of around 1.3 million. And the cost approach, if we were to completely rebuild the property from scratch, it was assessed to be 1.2 million, 1.23, and then the highest valuation was if she were to use the entire square footage of the property. This is called the gross building area. This is what I would believe to be one of the most accurate ways to appraise this property because one of the units, the two one is actually located in the lower level of the property. This property is a single story property with a walkout basement, and the way the appraisals work for walkout basements, typically they’re not included in your square footage count, but instead they just give you an extra bonus value to your appraisal.

Ashley:
So that’s what they did when looking at the GLA, but when you use that square footage, which would make sense to do because there’s an entire unit down there, they valued the property right around 1.8 million. Then when they looked at comps in the area, which are very difficult to find, again, there’s only 6,000 people in this town and there are not a lot of duplexes. There are no triplexes that they had for comps. In fact, one of the comps they use was even a house with an A DU. So just very different properties. They came back and appraised the property at 990,000 and that was using the sales approach and that’s the value that she chose to use.

Tony:
No way. So when you have an appraisal that comes back low, there’s always I guess types of recourse or some form of recourse you can take. What was your next step after this appraisal came back under a million bucks,

Ashley:
A lot of addendums.

Ashley:
We worked with our mortgage broker who was absolutely excellent. He worked diligently with the underwriter to have the appraiser reevaluate what she originally claimed. So on the last page of the appraisal is the addendum sheet, and that addendum sheet is full on ours. We would write up, send pictures with screenshots and try and explain what I just told you, how there’s an entire unit in the lower level, it should be counted as square footage. Please explain to me why it’s not. And every single time, the appraiser would just come back and say, I stand behind my original value.

Tony:
So were you able to get the appraisal value changed or was the nine 90 the final number?

Ashley:
Nine 90 was the final number.

Tony:
Wow. What did that mean for your refinance?

Ashley:
It still meant that we could do the refinance. We just could not lift the second lien on our other property. We were able to pull out $75,000 from our loan. It increased our payment around $500 a month. However, they got rid of the one year adjustable arm on our loan, and it’s now locked in for five years until the balloon payment is due and they’ll reevaluate the interest rate.

Tony:
Gotcha. So it still worked out in your favor. You pulled some cash out. So not an all bad situation, but I think a lot of lessons to learn there around the ins and outs of the appraisal process, especially when you’re in a market where there aren’t a lot of really strong comps and what you can do there. Now, one of the challenges that really led to all this, Ashley, was the fact that there was a short-term rental cap in your specific city. So can you explain what the cap is? And I’d love to hear since you were able to navigate that, how has this property actually performed as a short-term rental? So first, what is the cap short-term rental cap?

Ashley:
So for our particular county, the cap is within city limits. The city limits have their own cap to where they have a certain number of properties that can be a short-term rental, and they will not allow any more. They even have a list for local owners versus out of state owners. And if you’re an out of state owner, you are going to be put on a different list and never get a permit. But for us, we are in unincorporated Chaffee County, so we would also be held to the wait list and the limits on the short-term rental caps. And then once you get the permit, they charge you $750 a year just to do the application. It’s worth it for most people, but now that we’re zoned as a boarding house, we don’t have to apply for the permit and we will always be able to use the property as a short-term rental without ever applying for this permit now. So even when we go to sell the property, it can actually be sold as an investment property opposed to a lot of these other single family residences. When you put it for sale, it doesn’t make sense to even say that it’s been a successful short-term rental because the new investor or the new owner likely cannot even use it in that way. However, with this property, if you’re able to get the change of use to go through, you can sell it actually as a business,

Tony:
And so you’ve got a sellable business, which I love. Now I think the question burning on everyone’s mind now, Ashley, is so how exactly has this property performed since you’ve taken it live?

Ashley:
We had really high hopes for this property because we have another short-term rental in Chaffee County up in Buena Vista. That cash flows us $4,000 a month, and we were hopeful that this one could do the same. However, when we launched it back in May, it had a really slow start, which we were not too surprised by because we did not have a hot tub, which is one of the amenities that are very popular in this area. Then once we installed this hot tub back in November, bookings have gone through the roof. Monarch is only 20 minutes away and it’s been an incredible ski season. So there are a lot of people booking and it’s cash flowing. Us probably closer to 1500 to $2,000 a month for this year. We expect that to pretty much stay consistent until we’re able to refi if rates ever come down, because right now we’re at that 7% and if we get it down to five and a half, we’ll be doing a lot better.

Tony:
And just to clarify, so that’s 1500 to 2000 on top of you living there for free.

Ashley:
So we’ve actually since moved out of the property, and that number includes the two smaller units we converted to long-term rentals. So we have one renter in there for 1350 with the kitchenette. We have another renter down in the bottom unit for 1750, and then we have the short-term rental income from the larger unit.

Tony:
I mean, it’s not a bad deal, right? You put in 50 K of your real money plus what you 10 31 from the other one, but you get back 75 and your cashflow on 24 grand a year. So it sounds overall like all the hoops you had to jump through probably worked out in your favor.

Ashley:
I would say so. And I think there’s some hidden equity in there too, if I can get the right appraiser to check out

Tony:
The property. Yeah, you get a different appraiser to go out. You’ve probably got some equity in there as well. So Ashley, obviously you guys have had some success with this property out in Saleta, but what’s next for you? What’s on the real estate investing roadmap for you?

Ashley:
We are out in California now. We are in a suburb of Sacramento in Placer County, and my husband just received his brokerage license and we’ve opened up a brokerage firm called One Summit, and we are now offering property management, both long-term and short-term to others in the area. I’m working towards, my real estate license completed two of the three classes required out here in California and should be testing any now, and I just had a baby two months ago, so just doing a lot of mom duty.

Tony:
Congratulations.

Ashley:
Thank you.

Tony:
Ashley. Really, really enjoyed our conversation today, and I really do think that our rookies probably picked up on a lot of nuance around zoning, around use, around things that we don’t talk honestly, probably enough about on the Rookie show. So I appreciate you sharing that information with myself and with the rookie audience today.

Ashley:
Absolutely. It was a pleasure being here. Thanks for having me, Tony.

Tony:
Yeah, so for all of our rookies, if you guys want to learn more about Ashley, check out the show notes. If you’re on YouTube, check the description below. We’ll link to everything she’s got. If you want to find me on social, I’ll be down there as well. But guys, that is it for today, Ashley, again, we covered so many amazing things, and again, I really learned a lot myself. So I’m looking forward to our next conversation. For our Ricks guys, please like and subscribe. If you’re on YouTube, if you’re listening on your favorite podcast player, make sure to hit the follow button. So you guys never miss an episode. Now, before I let you go, do you have a problem property horror story or some challenge you’ve overcome that you’d be willing to share with myself, with Ashley and the rookie audience? If so, head over to biggerpockets.com/reply, leave your story there and we just might pick it to come on the show. And now we’ll see you guys back on the next episode with me and Ashley. Talk soon, guys.

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In This Episode We Cover:

  • How to convert a residential property to a commercial property
  • Zoning versus land use (and how they work together)
  • The biggest advantages of investing in a smaller market
  • Short-term rental caps explained (and how to work around them!)
  • How to get approved for your first commercial loan
  • Funding a LARGE down payment for a commercial property
  • And So Much More!

Links from the Show

Connect with Ashley

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.

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