It’s:• Close to a conference center that brings in regular visitors• Near an amusement park people travel hours to visit• A short commute from Moody Air Force Base, where people often need short- and mid-term housing• Right by Valdosta State University, which brings in families and visitors throughout the yearWhen you start looking at markets this way, you realize that even smaller cities can have multiple demand drivers in one place.The house itself needed some work, so we decided to take on the renovation ourselves and turn it into something new.I’m still early in my career, but one of my goals is to really understand the Valdosta and South Georgia investment market — what works here, what opportunities exist, and what investors should be paying attention to.And sometimes that learning happens covered in drywall dust. :)If you invest in smaller markets or have experience with short-term rentals, long-term rentals or flips, I’d love to hear what you look for when evaluating a location.

It was zoning: a land use code that made small multifamily expensive and complicated to permit.The city's planning board, working with aldermen and city leadership, rewrote the code.

Conference sessions and events are for attendees only; however, there are lots of hotel amenities for them to enjoy! 

The bigger factors tend to be:Operational complexity (multiple properties, scattered locations, mixed asset types)Control needs (renovation pace, leasing standards, branding)Volume consistency (enough units to keep a manager fully utilized year-round)Leadership capacity (someone actually able to oversee operations)For many investors, the tipping point isn’t 10 vs. 20 doors — it’s when coordination becomes a full-time operational role instead of a side responsibility.If your portfolio can support:A dedicated operations leadStandardized systemsVendor oversight and accounting processesThen in-house can create efficiency and tighter control.If not, third-party often remains more economical because you’re effectively “sharing” infrastructure across multiple owners.Door count matters, but process maturity and management bandwidth usually matter more.

Most real estate investors are facing some degree of adversity right now but good leadership communicates well and instills confidence.

Over time I ended up speaking nationally at IMN, Five Star, and similar conferences on note investing and special assets.

The "simplest" way is to start all the thought leadership work digitally: LinkedIn posts, youtube videos, podcasts, etc. 

The auction I went to was a while back, but it was scheduled in a conference room at a Marriott hotel. 

Add in tech conferences, corporate travel, and remote workers staying for extended periods and the result is a market with consistent demand across the entire year rather than just a traditional tourist season.

I had met some of the gurus at conferences, but none of them actually had experience doing what they were trying to teach.