Jason Hartman begins the show discussing what we don’t see when we look at successful people. We typically don’t see the struggles they have dealt with on the way to the success we now see. Later on the show, Jason brings on guest Spencer Burleigh, co-founder of www.RentTheBackyard.com. Spencer’s company will build a unit on your land, list it online and split the rental profits with you 50/50 as long as you have an area at least 25′ by 20′ clear and you live in your home most of the year. Listen as Jason and Spencer discuss the business model and how you can take advantage of it.
Investor 0:00
You’re gonna laugh, but because of your podcast, we’re positioned. Well, I don’t know how else to thank you. But thank you, your podcast and your services are amazing. And I wish I could do more as far as working with you guys, but I haven’t really but maybe in the future, obviously. But once again, our family is grateful to you and your services. And your information is priceless. Thank you so much. Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and
Announcer 0:34
fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate trends. Actions this program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now here’s your host Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:16
Welcome to Episode 1302 1302 and greetings from aboard the ship. Yes we are on the princess cruise ship right now. And we are just landing in Boston. Yes Boston, Massachusetts. I mean I should say tax that uses Boston tax it uses and we are in the library on the ship. Carmen and I just had a beautiful breakfast out on the deck. It was absolutely gorgeous. And I did not know coming into Boston Harbor. There are all these really cool little islands out there and it was just gorgeous as the sun was rising there. What a What a beautiful time of day The air is cool and crisp. Fall is in the But it’s not too foolish, really. It’s kind of warm, but it’s kind of getting there. So, greetings. Today we are going to talk about renting your backyard renting your backyard. Yes, you know, you can do that. And here’s what’s interesting about today’s guest and show is that we are coming to the point where technology is allowing us as investors to slice up the pie of our properties and do different things with those properties. And this show, today’s guest is a perfect example of that. Remember, I talked several episodes ago about that service to startup based in San Francisco that doesn’t do what Airbnb does in terms of renting your properties night by night or weekend by weekend or week by week, but allows you to rent your property, hour by hour and I’m not saying any of this is The thing for any of us to do yet, what I’m trying to show you, with today’s guest as well, is that this is a trend, that there are new macro trends coming our way that will present new opportunities for us as real estate investors. Remember the preamble for the National Association of Realtors, one of the largest, if not the largest, actually trade organization in the world with about 1.4 million members. You know, it’s been around over 100 years, I think the preamble is under all his land, under all is land. And when you control that land, when you control that real estate, you are in control of a resource that has limited supply. And those ingredients that make up your houses. Those packaged commodities, as I talk about are very, very valuable not indexed anyone currency. They have the Universal need, so they literally fulfill the needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Remember, you study that in college, and may or maybe even in high school in a psychology class. That’s what real estate provides for us. So it’s an awesome asset class. It really is. Anyway, we are here on a venture Alliance cruise. And yesterday, we sort of took our second venture Alliance mastermind trip to Newport, Rhode Island that was actually our second trip years ago when I launched the group. But this time we did it on a cruise ship. And it was pretty awesome to see those big mansions that the Vanderbilt’s and the Rockefellers and all the rest of these incredibly wealthy aristocratic families in, you know, the early 1900s built, I mean, these were their summer cottages. Yeah, Carmen, can you believe those were their summer cottages Those were the second homes. I I think it would be pretty nice as a first time wouldn’t it? Yeah, probably two nights there were unbelievable. They were huge places decoration inside these mansions it’s it’s unbelievable. I mean, it’s pretty much a lot like, you know, these European castles and royalty. These people definitely wanted to keep up with the Royals keep up with the Joneses, right? Yeah, that was the that was the new American thing. It definitely was. And so yesterday, now different members of the different venture lines, people went on different excursions. People sort of did their own thing. But then we, most of us ran into each other yesterday and the two of us we saw the breakers which was just opulent Of course that’s the that was my second time there. And then we also saw marble house. Which one did you like better? I think I like the marble house better, is hard to tell. I mean, if I had to compare them the marble house maybe was a little less Berlin but I mean, they’re all too much of everything. And it was interesting. I was just thinking about you know, every room every member of the family has a story. And one of the rooms have was these art collection that I don’t remember which member of the Vanderbilt family did, but instead of like, usually they do where they collect one piece of art over time and you know, their transfer with family members. They just bought the entire collection and had it all built just for one room. So they just didn’t want to wait, you know, to build on the family tradition. They just wanted to have it all at once. Didn’t want to wait to have to go through the bother of collecting the pieces one at a time. Right, right, right. Yeah, something else. Before we get to our guest today. I kind of want to switch gears for a moment and talk about the show billions now I’m sure many of you listening are either watching maybe you’re bingeing or you have binge or have watched the Showtime show Billions, which is been a very, very popular show. It’s about a wall street crook. Well, I think he’s a crook. I think most people agree. He’s a crook. That’s Bobby Axelrod, who is a likable crook. He’s a cool guy, no question about it. And then Chuck Rhodes, the US attorney who is trying to take him down and he’s just on this vendetta like it’s his life’s mission to get this guy to get Bobby Axelrod. It’s really an amazing series very, very well written. Well, here’s the thing I want to talk about now, Carmen, I got you into this show billions. And what do you think of billions now was a mistake. I started watching it and I couldn’t stop. But it was, it was a great I loved it. Yeah, it’s a great show. So one of the things that many of us forget or fail to realize all together, is that every successful person every successful in our Every successful company every successful charity, nonprofit, political candidate, movie star, musician, whatever, any buddy who is successful in any field, we either don’t realize, or maybe we just forget that that success that they enjoy that to the outside world looks like many times it looks like it was easy. Looks like oh gosh, I could do that. You know, I remember I’ll tell you a my own personal thought. I remember when I saw the movie years ago, this social network, and Facebook of course was just becoming popular and I thought, you know, that was so easy. Like what Zuckerberg did and well, maybe the Winklevoss brothers right? Who knows you know, they have the big lawsuit about that and you know, the Winklevoss brothers said they hired Zuckerberg to create the Facebook, the Facebook, which was what it was called back then. Who knows right? Who knows who the the real, the real inator was they had this big lawsuit and I think Zuckerberg gave the Winklevoss brothers 100 million dollars as a settlement. Here’s the thing, this article about the show billions I saw interestingly in Business Insider, it says showtimes billions has beaten a lawsuit from a wall street performance coach, who claimed the show ripped off her book. Anyway, this performance coach, the wall street performance coach sued the show billions claiming that they ripped off her idea, right. And on Friday, a US District Court judge ruled in showtimes favor basically dismissing the lawsuit saying that they did not rip off the book idea. Now who knows what’s right or wrong? You know, a lot of times people go to court and justice is not served. Sometimes it is right. And you know, there’s two sides to every story isn’t there? But here’s the point. Want to make is that, you know, as investors, we have to fight some battles once in a while don’t wait. We gotta fight a battle, right? We get a bad tenant who’s trying to rip us off who we have to evict. Maybe they leave the house in bad condition. Maybe our property manager is nickel and dimed us. Maybe the seller of the property doesn’t deliver on their promises. I mean, look, this is the world. And if you are listening, and you have a corporate job, you’re probably not used to this too much. When you’re in the entrepreneurial world. It is rampant. It’s terrible. Now in the corporate world, you have politics, you have people climbing the corporate ladder, you have people, you know, putting their feet on your shoulders to try and push you down so they can climb so they can get that promotion. Look, it’s a competitive world. It’s a as they say, hey, my dogs right here. Hi, Coco. What do you say? Actually, you can’t see anything because she’s not saying anything. But I put the microphone in front of her, in front of her face goes on the cruise with us. It’s a dog eat dog world. That’s why I referenced the dog, dog eat dog world, right? It’s competitive, you got to fight some battles to build your empire. And the same is true with Showtime. You know, I talked with professional musicians, authors, anybody that’s doing anything in the world. And you know, they’re fighting lawsuits of people stealing their copyrights and their intellectual property. There’s just all kinds of crazy stuff that goes on in the world. And the reason I tell you this is because I want you to remember the next time in any endeavor in life, you gotta fight a battle. You gotta remember I mean, look before our current president, and it’s obvious our current president has fought a lot of battles love him or hate him, right. He fights a lot of battles Donald Trump, and he did long the was in the political world. And we all heard about those pretty publicly right. But think about it. Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, I mean, look at the Clintons. Gosh, they have fought a lot of battles. The Obama’s fought a lot of battles. Anybody love them, hate them doesn’t matter. That’s trying to rise to the top and stick out and do something great. They fight a lot of battles to get there. It takes, you know, they’ll fight battles with the IRS, okay. In the Scandinavian countries and Australia, New Zealand, they have what they call the tall poppy syndrome, right? You know, the culture, the world wants to cut down those tall poppies, and make everybody conform and everybody’s be the same, you know, who are you to stand out, you know, who are you to be anybody, right? The world will say, you don’t have the right to do that. So here’s the Nelson Mandela version. Okay, and I want you to think about this next time. You are encountering a struggle, okay? A battle, right? You got to fight the battle. Right? Mandela said, Our deepest fear is not that we are weak. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous, actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. So the quote is longer than that. That’s kind of a truncated version of it, and it’s great. Look it up. Check it out. It’s it’s really quite inspiring. I believe he used that in the speech when apartheid ended in around the mid 90s. So check that out great Nelson Mandela quote, But think about that you set an example. You got to fight some battles to make yourself a success in the world. Don’t play it small, play it big. You deserve it. That’s the way it should be. Alright, without further ado, let’s go to our guests. Remember we have profits in paradise coming up at the end of the month. We’ll look forward to seeing you there. Go to Jason Hartman calm for more info. And let’s talk about renting your backyard. Pretty interesting concept. And again, this is presented today to show you kind of this overall trend. That’s quite fascinating. And we also talked about some interesting construction costs concepts as well that you want to hear in this interview. Here we go.
Jason Hartman 14:47
It’s my pleasure to welcome Spencer burly to the show. He is co founder and CEO of rent the backyard now we’ve all heard a lot about the sharing economy in this is a new spin on it Spencer Welcome, how are you? I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s good to have you and you’re coming to us from San Francisco Bay Area, right?
Spencer Burleigh 15:07
Yeah, we were based down in Santa Cruz right now.
Jason Hartman 15:09
Okay, great. So how old is the company? When When did you launch?
Spencer Burleigh 15:14
Yeah. So we incorporated back in November of 2018. So we’ve been in business a little while now. But we’ve been sort of setting everything up and are going through our first set of projects right now.
Jason Hartman 15:24
So I read an article about this and wanted to reach out to you and invite you onto the show. Where did the idea come from? Tell us about the problem and how you came about and the solution.
Spencer Burleigh 15:35
Yeah, so my co founder and I were always really big sort of financial nerds. And as young people we were looking out to come to the Bay Area, and it was just so expensive, but at the same time, there’s so much extra land that isn’t really being used. So when we heard about these things, the state calls accessory dwelling units are at us, we got really excited and thought we could apply like a financing model where we pay for everything up front and in exchange, we split some The rent with the homeowners over a period of time.
Jason Hartman 16:03
So tell us more about the ad you. I mean, there are lots of little kits and mini dwelling units. What makes the ad you I mean, what are some of the chief characteristics of it and make it unique.
Spencer Burleigh 16:19
The ones that we’re building up are really up market. They go and they have sort of everything a homeowner or a tenant needs to live independent from the homeowner. So they have a small kitchenette. They have a bathroom including a shower, and then they even have a separate living area and bedroom. They allow a tenant to live entirely independently from a homeowner and have a really great quality of life. We like to think of them kind of as like a distributed apartment.
Jason Hartman 16:44
So many houses have casinos or additional units in the back. What makes this different or is it just a more modern version of it? Is it a prefab house, you know, tell us about the cost of and so forth.
Spencer Burleigh 17:01
Yeah, so the innovation that our company really brings is on the financing side. So right now, if people want to build one of these units in their backyard, they need to typically borrow over $100,000 against their house and manage a construction process, and then handle all the ongoing property management on top of all of that. So what we do is we make it really, really easy for people to get started with one of these units, and to go and sort of just sign on the dotted line and we take care of the permitting, we take care of the building, and then we even take care of the ongoing property management. So for a lot of people, it’s a really easy way to take this is extra space that they’re not really using and make some extra rental income
Jason Hartman 17:40
from it. So the homeowner with the space in the backyard needs to pay for the unit though, right?
Spencer Burleigh 17:46
No, so we cover all the upfront costs, and the homeowner never pays any like a single cent unless they choose to like leave the agreement.
Jason Hartman 17:54
How many square feet are these units?
Spencer Burleigh 17:55
The ones are building right now we’re about 300 square feet. As we expand we might offer A slightly larger one. But the 300 square foot units are kind of in the sweet spot of, they get a whole lot of rent and their construction costs are relatively lower compared to larger units.
Jason Hartman 18:09
So the backyard needs to have space of at least 20 by 25 feet. They need to live in the front home most of the year. Why? Why is that? What if someone owns a rental property and they want to, instead of having one unit, they want to add an additional unit to the rental property?
Spencer Burleigh 18:27
Yeah, so this is a little bit dependent on jurisdiction. So there are some jurisdictions that require that the homeowner live in the property most of the year. So we kind of just say that as like a, an easy way to sort of be able to go and like screen people at this point. But as we expand, we’re definitely interested in working with a lot of people that have investment properties. And we already are starting a couple of projects with people that have investment properties in places like San Jose, where you aren’t required to live in the home most of the year.
Jason Hartman 18:55
So those are really that sounds like that’s really more just the same rules that Airbnb and VR Bo are fighting all the time with, I mean, almost everywhere, they’ll let you rent something out to, you know, on a short term rental website as long as you are there as long as the owner is present. But as soon as the owner isn’t present, and they want to just strictly rent like the whole house to somebody, that’s where they’ve sort of made the regulation to disallow that, right?
Spencer Burleigh 19:29
Yeah, the lines seem to be drawn in different places and different municipalities. And there seems like there’s a lot of innovative things coming on the regulatory side. So we’re excited to work with people that have more investment properties than sort of primary residence they want to use this with but mostly we’re doing people with primary residences, just because that’s the way that the laws look right now in 2019.
Jason Hartman 19:49
Yeah. So if someone approached you and said, I already have a back house or I have a carriage unit over my garage in the back, or I have a casita. Mother in law’s quarters, you know, would you do a deal with him?
Spencer Burleigh 20:04
Yeah, it’s definitely something we would be would consider. I think the biggest value add that we have right now is that we financed the unit. So we might, we’ll just see like, oh, if you have a, like a home equity loan or something you’re using to finance that you might be able to sort of come to us and we could help you sort of roll that like monthly payment you have on the unit into our agreement, where we just split the rent or something like that.
Jason Hartman 20:26
Now, in the world of zoning, a typical residential property is what’s called our one or residential one. And if it’s a duplex, it’s called are two. And that means, you know, two units, you’re able to do this in our one zone properties, right?
Spencer Burleigh 20:46
Yes, most of the properties we see are one and then in California, they subdivided into like our one dash for our one dash eight, and we’re able to get all the way down to our one dash eight, which means there’s like eight properties on an acre to Typically, so we can build on sort of quite small lots, the state has, at this point passed a lot of laws that make them much, much easier to build, even in smaller lots.
Jason Hartman 21:10
Right. Right. And so, so it looks like the municipalities are really trying to address the housing crisis, to some degree with this kind of stuff, which is great. How much do those units cost? I mean, I know you’re financing it, but just to understand kind of the economics of it. What do they cost you to buy or build? I don’t even know the right word. Those units,
Spencer Burleigh 21:31
it really depends on where we’re building right now. I guess the the average would be somewhere between 100 and $200,000. But that depends on things like, what are the city permits look like? And like how level is that the ground in the back and just work need to be done back there. So it’s a little bit of a range and then we kind of as part of our process for taking a look at properties are able to figure that out and give like a better idea of like what the rent split will look like for homeowners and what the term of the agreement will be. So it’s fair for Everyone, I mean, that’s
Jason Hartman 22:01
actually surprisingly expensive. You’re saying that’s, you know, somewhere in the ballpark of $300 $330 to $660 per square foot.
Spencer Burleigh 22:14
Yes, they’re quite expensive to build. It’s typical with these buildings that a lot of the things you have our fixed costs. So like, once you get someone like in the backyard to lay like a slab Foundation, being able to lay another hundred square feet, is not the most costly. And we’re definitely looking at ways to sort of work with different manufacturers and sort of be able to push the cost down as we scale. But the cost as you point out is one of the reasons that like we’re starting out in California where real estate sells at about $1,000 a square foot typically. So we’re really focused here but as the costs go down in the coming months and years, we’ll be able to be in a lot more places, which we’re really excited about
Jason Hartman 22:53
in these are manufactured houses though, right most of its built in a factory and assembled on site. Is that correct?
Spencer Burleigh 23:00
Yeah, so they’re largely prefabricated so they either are flat pack so they sort of come together like IKEA on site,
Jason Hartman 23:07
or they’re trucked in like fully constructed in either rolled or lifted in. But there’s all sorts of site work you need to do like a slab foundation at this point, although we’re looking at really cool things like pillared foundations which would cut the costs and enable homeowners to get into these units for for less all the time, the cost of the unit versus the engineering and pouring the slab and all that kind of good stuff. Like Can you divide that up at all for us? It is amazing how much this stuff still cost. I’m just in shock. I’ll tell you why. Just to give you Spencer some of the background. our listeners and clients keep sending me these things and you know, you see people sharing this stuff on Facebook. Well, you know this 3d printed home was built for only $10,000. And here you can buy a house on Amazon for $19,000 and have it shipped to you for no shipping cost and I investigated this because I didn’t believe it, it sounded, it sounded fantastic. At first, my greed gene was kicking in, I’m thinking, I’m just gonna buy vacant lots all over the place and put these little units on them and rent them out. And it’s going to be great. And then I, I really started investigating this come to find that all of those companies seem to have the same answer. When I say, well, they’ll say, well, you have to do this, that you have to have engineering, it doesn’t include HVC. It doesn’t include plumbing, it doesn’t include electrical, and there’s engineering on the site, just like you said, with yours, etc, etc. I said, Well, look, how much does it cost? And, and they all say the same thing. They say it’s, it’s pretty much pretty comparable to new home construction. And then I’m thinking what is the point? You can just have a builder build a house, right? And I said, Well, what in your eyes does new home construction costs and they, they’ll say, typically they’ll answer about $200 per square foot and I’m like, Wow, it is amazing to me that we can’t build a house for less than that nowadays, it seems like it should be dramatically less expensive if it’s done in a factory. But I don’t exactly know what the hang up is, to me, the construction industry. It’s just a very primitive industry. And I’m all in favor of modular housing, built in a factory assembled on a job site. That’s the way it should be. Yet there’s this crazy stigma that Americans have against that they think of a mobile home like some cheap mobile home. Well, actually, there are some very nice mobile homes out there and some very nice manufactured houses. But you know, the bank’s view it differently when it comes to financing. It’s just I know crazy. We need to get over this. There’s a housing crisis in the country. And we got to make more cost effective housing and people got to get over this discriminatory belief against manufactured housing, but still, it needs To get less expensive at the same time, what’s the problem
Spencer Burleigh 26:03
in our businesses really, like we’re sort of the entire company is a function of rent versus construction costs. So this is something we think about all the time. And we’re talking to all sorts of really exciting manufacturers that do that, like 3d printing, and do like low impact foundations where they build units that sit on stilts, and all sorts of other things like that. And those are are able to push the cost down. Hopefully, that will get below $100,000. But a lot of the cost that’s built in comes at the city level. So especially in California to build a new home the amount of like, times you need to go and ask the community for its input. Oh, yeah. And be able to do impact studies and things like that dramatically increases the price. So with these accessory units, there is a new cut out in the California law that makes it so you don’t need to do a lot of those steps, which drops off a lot of the overhead there. But yeah, you’re totally right. The construction still is very, very expensive, and we’re really committed to pushing that down to make this viable for more more homeowners and more renters and help fix the housing issues we have in this country.
Jason Hartman 27:07
Even what you said there though, getting it like your goal is to get it down to $100,000. That’s still $333 per square foot.
Spencer Burleigh 27:18
Yes.
Jason Hartman 27:20
still incredibly expensive. I just see this future of everybody living in tiny 300 square foot houses because it is remarkable what this stuff costs. And then I suppose if and when you expand to areas that are affected by things like hurricanes, tornadoes, California earthquakes, of course, but then your cost might go up even more. It depends,
Spencer Burleigh 27:41
right? Yeah, I think the building codes definitely play a role in the the construction costs because things do need to get built to a certain standard. Right now. All the units we built are built to the same like building code that a typical houses and we tell people that the units we build will will last longer than their main home and That’s true because the building codes have become so much more robust and have so many more requirements than they used to have, which I think also influences the cost of instruction. Oh,
Jason Hartman 28:11
no question about it. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Let’s talk about the income side for a moment. Before we wrap up. You say that it like right on your website, it says you can earn $6,000 per year as a homeowner by renting out a unit in your backyard. Tell us how you calculate that and what these units rent for and the economics I think you mentioned that you split the income with the owner of the property. Tell us more about that.
Spencer Burleigh 28:38
Yeah, so the idea that we have on the move to is is where one where we guarantee homeowners the first $500 of each month’s rent, and then on top of that, we’ll handle all of the the maintenance or repairs and pay any increase in property tax that might come from installing a unit. And what this does is it gives homeowners a much more stable source of income and they’re really able to be able to Especially when they’re an older person who’s on something like social security and wants to know exactly what their checks going to be, we can give them that stable income. So that’s the model we’re doing right now. We’ve thought about doing more explicit, like profit sharing, where we split around like 5050, or something like that. But um, at this point, we’ve heard from homeowners and so many of them, that we’re just offering the first $500 of each month’s rent as a guarantee to homeowners to give them that stability. How many
Jason Hartman 29:27
of these units do you have installed so far?
Spencer Burleigh 29:29
Yeah, we’re going through the process of building our first batch of 10 or 20. So we’re kind of chugging along and and we’re installing units at a really quick rate.
Jason Hartman 29:37
Are you back to do funding from VC or angel investor?
Spencer Burleigh 29:43
Yeah, we have. We have enough funding to accomplish our goals from venture capitalists and then the goal is we we get larger is to issue debt or find more sort of third party investors that are interested in like the cash flows or business but we’re just starting out with venture and using that to run the first batch of these units.
Jason Hartman 30:00
Okay, so how much do you project? I mean, is anybody living in one of these yet? Is anything built? Or? Or is it all under construction?
Spencer Burleigh 30:08
So far, the unit, we’re specifically like under rent, the backyards name building are under construction. But um, we work with a building partner that’s built over 180 of these in the Bay Area. So they’re very experienced, and they have a lot of units out in the wild.
Jason Hartman 30:23
Okay? And how much those rent for that’s what I’m getting at, like, what’s the renter paying? And I know the homeowner is you’re working on the deal where they guaranteed 500 per month, which is great. What does the renter pay, though?
Spencer Burleigh 30:36
Yeah, so right now we’re looking between 1500 and $2,000 in the Bay Area. So it’s a little bit of a range. This depends on like, if you’re close to a Tech campus, like Google or Microsoft or someone like that, or if you’re close to like a rail station, or a sports arena or college, and then also just sort of generally what city you’re in. So we’re trying to sort of optimize the places we build it. First, to maximize that, that top line rental income, but it’s a pretty wide range, at least in the Bay Area. Okay,
Jason Hartman 31:07
very interesting. One of the things on your website that’s addressed is parking. And that’s a big issue for a lot of a lot of municipalities. You know, if you have a three bedroom house, you’ve got to have at least a two car garage. You know, that’ll be what they say. And if you want to build that extra bedroom, you know, you gotta have another parking space. Now you’re saying though, that’s almost never required, which surprises me?
Spencer Burleigh 31:32
Yeah, so this is something that’s specific to California. And as we as we grow, that might be a requirement that changes and something we need to build. But California specific law on these accessory dwelling units is that you don’t need to build parking. If you’re within a quarter mile of a public transit stop, including a bus stop. So almost all homes that we look at in in the Bay Area, that that requirement, yes. don’t require parking to people. Right, right. They’ll at least have a bus stop for sure. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. Is there any thing else you want to share with our audience? I don’t think so at this point, we’re really focused on the San Francisco Bay area right now in 2019. But we’re sort of excited to expand and the next markets will probably be looking at or Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Austin and beyond. So, we’ll be to where you are soon enough.
Jason Hartman 32:19
Yeah, yeah, Good stuff, good stuff. And I gotta say, from the looks of you and your partner, you guys look really young. So congratulations on getting a head start on life with what you’re doing. Do you care to share anything about that, you know, up to you. But you guys are really starting out early. It looks like
Spencer Burleigh 32:40
yeah, I think that um, one of the reasons we started this this company was because as younger folks, we were looking to move out to the area, and it was just so expensive. And at the same time, we’ve been really big, like economics nerds, my co founder and I are engineers out of Carnegie Mellon. And we had really sort of became really fast friends by talking about different and interesting financial products. So we’re really excited about the work we’re doing. And we’re super big housing nerds and hope we can make some impact in the world to make it a little bit better for existing homeowners who can go and take some underutilized space and make some extra income from it, as well as, as on the renter side and helping more people find high quality, affordable places to live.
Jason Hartman 33:24
Excellent, good stuff. Well, hey, I wish you a lot of success with this. It’s certainly needed. The website again is go ahead and give out your website.
Spencer Burleigh 33:32
It’s just rent the backyard.com Excellent. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.
Jason Hartman 33:38
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