Community Highlights: Meet Dustin Cooper of The Cooper Investment Group

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dustin Cooper.

Hi Dustin, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My short-term rental business began shortly after a vacation trip for my wife’s birthday. During the summer of 2020, my wife and I wanted to take a small trip for her birthday after being stuck at home during the pandemic. We took a drive to Savannah for a weekend getaway and while it was nice just to travel somewhere, I noticed that we did not have as much fun as expected due to a majority of things still being closed due to the pandemic. On the way back home from this trip, while my wife was sleeping, I secretly booked a hotel stay in the Buckhead neighborhood as a surprise to make up for our lackluster trip. Once we arrived we were excited when we checked in the room as it was on a high floor and had a spectacular view of Midtown and Downtown Atlanta. Being in the vibrant city gave us the energy boost which we were looking for in our initial trip. Our only thoughts in that moment was that it would be really nice to have another place in the city that we could go to and feel rejuvenated and was our own.

This got my wheels turning as I have always been interested in becoming a real estate investor but was always unsure how I wanted to approach achieving this goal. As I began to think of ways to acquire a secondary property, my thoughts were how could I achieve this and not have to pay for it myself. I could recall hearing this episode on the Earn Your Leisure podcast, which had a guest speaking on the Airbnb business. Amongst other things, I could recall the guest stating how quickly you could pay your mortgage or rent in a few days, by renting out your property on a short-term basis instead of long-term. With this in mind, it gave me the idea that I could purchase another property and rent it out a few days out of the month. My wife and I could stay in it on the days not booked just as a getaway into the city for a creative energy boost.

Next, I started searching for properties online and reached out to a realtor and advised them of my plans to obtain an Airbnb-friendly property. After visiting a few places, we found one that matched the criteria that we were looking to achieve and purchased the property in a month’s time. After taking a few weeks to fully furnish the place, we created an Airbnb profile and received our first booking within minutes. As the bookings began to come in, I noticed that off of one property, was nearly making the same at my full-time job. My wheels began to turn again that if I had only a few properties like this, I could turn this to a full-time business and fill comfortable leaving my 9 to 5 job. After obtaining a second property, I decided to go full-time in the business and I left my job of ten years.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road in this business has not been smooth as should be expected with going into any business but has been fulfilling. Some of the challenges faced in the beginning were things such as making sure the property was cleaned and staged for the guest within a timely manner. When we first started the business, my wife and I used to do the cleaning of the property ourselves since it was only one property. We felt that we could save money by managing it ourselves. We began to run into issues with this because we both were still working full-time jobs, so on days there were guests checking out and another guest checking in on the same day, someone would need to go clean the property. I had limited flexibility with my job so most of the time I could only go clean on weekends. This in turn put the burden on my wife to manage and clean the property during the week which was not a long-term solution. Shortly after, I left my job to work in the business full time which helped ease the obstacle of making sure the unit was cleaned and taken care. Quickly after this pivot, I realized that my next obstacle was that there was no way to grow the business if I was always cleaning the properties as there are only so many places I can clean within a day. With me cleaning the properties, this would also limit the time I needed to source and acquire new properties which would keep my business stagnant. In order to rectify this, my next step was to hire a cleaning team which would in turn free me up to acquire more properties and have more time to build multiple sources of passive income and businesses.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about The Cooper Investment Group?
The Cooper Investment Group is a real estate investing business, in which we specialize in acquiring properties and renting them out on a short-term basis servicing travel nurses, business professionals and vacationers. What sets my business apart from other similar businesses is our hospitality along with top-notch amenities, luxurious designer decor draped and staged in all of our units. We decorate all of our units with a luxury theme which makes it fun, and photogenic all while being comfortable for the guests to stay. I’m most proud of how I’ve been able to adapt my business model shift as things change within the industry. My initial journey was to start this as a side business as a way to earn extra income. I have since grown it into a profitable business, that I have transitioned from only focusing on vacation travelers to now more corporate leasing to companies serving professionals, production staff and travel nurses. This has been gratifying to me as my mother is a travel nurse, so I understand what it’s like for someone to travel to a place to work and be away from their family for weeks or months at a time. I would like readers to know that my mission is to provide housing for professionals and travel nurses to feel at home in our units by making them feel at home as they do so much for our communities.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
What I like best about the city of Atlanta is the entrepreneurial, creative and progressive spirit of the city. Like most, I come from a background where the normal is to work a job your entire life and hope you save enough money to retire one day. What living in Atlanta has taught me is that you don’t have to do things the traditional way to be successful. This is the city of creative entrepreneurs, so my mind has been stretched and opened to ways of starting a business and having more control of my destiny. I admire that a lot of people here are willing to take the gamble and bet on themselves to reach their dreams and desires.

What I least like about the city is the amount of crime that has grown over the past few years. With any major city, crime comes with the territory but the lack of safety has grown so much that it tends to make you stay away from the city as much. I do however believe that the city is headed in a better direction as far as the crime and look forward to what the future may bring.

Contact Info:

• Website: cooperinvestgroup.com
• Instagram: @cooptheinvestor

Image Credits
Profile Photo by @irisbonetphoto Other Photos by @howelldesigns