Sarah Weaver

Sarah Weaver: I'm Sarah Weaver. I bought rental property in 2017 knowing that it was going to be a rental property. I set out thinking if I could buy a house every two years, do that for 10 to 15 years, and maybe someday far in the future I'll be rich — that was my whole plan. Thankfully I was on to something, because I bought that first property, two years later I bought another property, two years later I bought four properties in one summer, and then I bought another two the following six months.

Through doing all of that I just started sharing my story on Instagram and social media, really showing people like, hey, look I'm buying these properties — but what makes it unique is that I was living in South America, I was living in Bali, I was living in Indonesia and then New Zealand, I lived in Mexico. I was living far away, which not everyone wants to do, but I think there are lots of people that live in an expensive market like California or New York or Austin, Texas, and they thought, wait — this girl is living in Buenos Aires but buying in Missouri? That means I can buy in Missouri. That's where sharing my story became so much bigger than just posting on Instagram. It became about showing people that this is really possible.

I have now built a portfolio of 19 units. Half of my portfolio is furnished because I really like the midterm rental strategy, where I rent out a furnished unit but instead of doing a two-night or three-night stay, my guests are on average staying about 87 nights, which is pretty nice because that means there are about 70 days of silence. Whereas with a true short-term rental it's all automated sure, but it's not passive. What I love about the midterm rental strategy is that it just fits really well into my lifestyle of living abroad and investing in the Midwest. I ended up actually writing a book about it, and the book has been read by tens of thousands of investors. I'm really proud to say that it's put a lot of money in people's pockets and given them the freedom that I've been able to experience.

I think that Steadily has just made themselves really known on the conference scene, and I'm a self-proclaimed conference junkie. I'm thankfully now speaking at a lot of conferences, but even before I was ever asked to speak at a conference I was attending a lot of them. I think at the beginning as a real estate investor your job is to get your — I call it my PhD in investing — and so I was just gathering a lot of information, and along the way came across Steadily and was really impressed by their business model. One of the things I kept hearing was, "it takes five minutes," and I was like, okay, sure, sure — but nothing takes five minutes. What's interesting is that I have used your website, and when you go to Steadily and type in an address of either a property that you own or a property you're thinking about owning, it really does take less than 20 minutes. I have done it in as quick as eight minutes because I've timed it. That is such a benefit to investors who are analyzing a lot of properties.

For some markets if not all markets, insurance is a huge cost that really eats into our cash flow, and so it needs to be considered really early on in the analysis process — whether you're analyzing your current portfolio or something you're thinking about purchasing.

I have been using Steadily to analyze properties for about two and a half years. As far as switching my own policies over, I think that happened this year for the first time. As a real estate investor you think you've mastered one thing, and then you get a phone call about a leaky sink or a plumbing issue — and those are to be expected. Any investor who is self-managing, like I do, expects those things. What we don't expect is our insurance premiums going up significantly. I think every time it happens you're like, ooh, that really stings.

What I love is that when that did happen on one of my fourplexes, the insurance premium was increased a lot — over $1,000 for the year — and I was able to call Steadily, speak to someone on their team, and look at all my policies to make sure I was correctly insured — not over-insured or under-insured. Investors ask me all the time, "how much insurance should I have?" and I say, guys, that is not something that's taking up my mind space. I go to the experts for that. That's the reason I have a bookkeeper, a CPA, a tax strategist, a real estate attorney, a mentor, an accountability group. There are people out there that are experts in what they do, and that is why I like using Steadily — I want to reach out to them and say, hey, you teach me how I should be insured. I have questions I've researched that I should be asking to make sure I'm getting the correct information, but I'm not memorizing what insurance policies I should or should not have on my different properties. I instead have someone in my back pocket that I can ask questions to, and that's Steadily.

How I describe Steadily is that they're a technology company with insurance experience. I like that there are people on the team that come from the insurance world, but really you guys are a technology company, and so it's not as analog as talking to my insurance broker Doug, who I love dearly — hi Doug — but Steadily just has the ability to run numbers so much faster, and sometimes that means saving me money. Earlier this year I examined every policy I had, first with my insurance broker and then again with Steadily. What was nice is that a lot of the exact same things my insurance broker said were echoed, which really validated that everybody knows what they're talking about and they're telling me the same thing. But then I was also able to switch two of my policies over to Steadily and it saved me $1,200 — which was really nice because that was the same year my fourplex premium went up. That type of savings is actual real money in my pocket. Sometimes people use incorrect math and they're like, "I saved $1,000," but they spent a lot of money to save money. In this case it was a dollar-for-dollar savings.

I think the only other option is your old-school insurance broker who has a secretary, and you're going to have to wait, and he's going to be on the phone with one of his other clients — that's just how that works. There is really no other option for landlords and real estate investors to have real estate investing-specific insurance, especially with the quick analysis. Being able to just type in an address and get a quote spit out — there's nothing else on the market like that.

As I'm analyzing a property I'm thinking about purchasing, insurance is a cost that needs to be explored. For a lot of investors I work with, they're investing in a market they've never even visited, so they don't know how much insurance is in Omaha, Nebraska, or in Tampa, Florida — and they might be shocked at how high it is, because it might not be anywhere near what it is on their primary residence: one, because it's an investment property, and two, it's likely in a different location.

I think real estate investors are so obsessed with adding more doors to their portfolio, but the reality is you need to be analyzing your portfolio every quarter. How can I save money on utilities? What big expenses do I have coming up? You need to really wear the hat of an investor with your current portfolio. I've been able to make a rent rate increase on one of my tenants with a quick and pretty painless renovation, and I was able to add $800 a month in cash flow — that's more than if I went and picked up a new property. So one of the things that needs to be looked at at least every six months, if not every quarter, is what are your insurance expenses and can I save money? A really great tool for real estate investors is to have a technology company that is an insurance company — like Steadily — that you can easily contact and say, hey, here's my current policy, can you guys save me money?

I just cannot emphasize enough that Steadily should be bookmarked on every real estate investor's browser, because I'm using it every single day that I'm analyzing properties. I'm literally typing in the address and checking to see what insurance is going to be. I hear all the time investors say, "oh, I can't find anything," and I ask them, well, how many properties are you analyzing? When I built my portfolio as quickly as I did, I was analyzing 20 to 40 properties a week. Steadily really helps streamline that process — if I can just quickly type in an address and get an estimated quote, that's so much faster than picking up the phone, calling a broker, waiting for them to call you back, or going down a Google rabbit hole and getting distracted. You really should be using Steadily as a part of your due diligence process when you're analyzing properties. It's really tragic to hear real estate investors buy something and then have sticker shock at how much insurance is, when they really should have been analyzing that at the beginning. Knowing what insurance is going to cost is a crucial part of the analysis process.