So I My fiance, Matt is an estate manager at a property just outside of Charlottesville that I had moved to. Now, now I'm in my self funded search and I had moved in with him. He lives on the property and the property has a couple rental houses that are managed by guest houses.
Acquiring Minds
No SBA Loan and $75k Out of Pocket
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And so I had been familiar with this company for a while Also personally, since 2017, I had been renting properties of my own on Airbnb. So I was very familiar with what the vacation rental management industry looked like and what it was like to operate on a very small scale, you know, one property at a time in that space. So this was like part of my life and part of my awareness, but it just was…
But now that I was in my self funded search and I was going through this process of getting to know business owners in Charlottesville, I had an aha moment of why don't I reach out to the owner of guest houses? So my fiance put me in touch with him and he immediately, because of that connection, I think I lived on the property. I was engaged or at the time I was dating Matt.
He took a meeting with me and so we, that's how I learned about guest houses and that's how I initially, you know, got in touch with the seller. And he wasn't looking to sell at the time. And so we, we talked for a while before ultimately he decided he was interested in it.
He knew from our first meeting that that's what I was doing. I was looking to buy a business and I was interested in buying his business. So it took a little while for him to warm up to it.
But he had been burnt out and so he was entertaining selling. And then ultimately he did decide he wanted to.
He was younger, right? Younger than a typical boomer.
Yes. And so that actually was one of the weaknesses. I wrote down kind of what I liked and didn't like about the, the business, and to me that was a risk, is that he was so young. He was 40, I think, and so he wanted to sell.
But there was always this question in my mind of like, is he serious? Why does he want to sell? He, you know, his reasoning was, and even still now to this day is just he's burnt out.
It's a 247 business and he had been doing it for a long time. He had acquired guest houses, but he had previously worked for a competitor and before that a different company in the industry. And so he had been in the industry for probably 15 years or so. And he was Just burnt out.
Well, it, it is the classic red flag of, of the seller's motivation for two reasons. For two reasons. First of all, the, the big one is, are they. Do they know something you don't?
They do know something you don't. They always do. The, the asymmetry, as we know in this world, is, Is high. So. But are they. Are they hiding something from you and trying to sell you a lemon?
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