Pascal Wagner bought 12 properties in two years, and then his occupancy dropped to 65%. In this episode, he shares how he booked a one-way ticket to Atlanta, fixed the bleeding, and rebuilt his portfolio into a 104-room operation running at 95% occupancy and a 25% cash-on-cash return.

Pascal is a true problem-solver, and he gives a masterclass in co-living operations: how to keep houses clean, set firm standards, reduce churn, and build a team that lets you sleep at night.

What you'll learn:

• How deferred maintenance crushed his occupancy, and the turnaround that reversed it
• The "graffiti train" effect and why small messes escalate fast
• Building a "tattle culture" with cameras, fines, and clear expectations
• Why he ditched house managers for dedicated cleaners
• Welcome baskets, onboarding calls, and slashing 90-day churn
• The case against pushing rents, and why filling rooms wins
• Refinancing co-living, navigating appraisals, and staying upfront with lenders
• His current thesis: buy ugly, renovate right, and pull your capital back out

—

🏠 Join our FREE co-living community: https://www.millermcswain.com/community

📲 Follow us on Instagram:
Miller McSwain — https://www.instagram.com/millermcswain
Craig Curelop — https://www.instagram.com/craigcurelop

🔗 Connect with Pascal Wagner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascalwagner

Enjoyed the episode? Leave us a rating and review, it helps us reach more co-living operators.

Corey Enman runs the largest co-living property management company in Phoenix — 40+ houses and 100+ rooms — and in this episode he gets tactical about exactly how he does it. This is a pen-and-paper one: the specific softwares, screening rules, and operations systems he's spent three and a half years refining.

Corey walks through his SWAT cleaning system (sweep, wipe, attend to the bathroom, take out the trash), why he switched residents to Telegram instead of WhatsApp, and the screening criteria that keep his houses problem-free, including why he turns away smokers every time. He also breaks down good market vs. bad market dynamics, why he now targets 11-bed/4-bath houses that cash flow $2K+ a month, and the four phases of scaling a co-living business from scrappy solo operator to a real management company.

Plus: the power of niche vs. general masterminds, the $1 first-month trick to fill empty rooms, when to make your first hire, and a co-living horror story involving nine people in a four-person house that changed how Corey screens forever.

In this episode:

• The SWAT cleaning system that keeps 40+ houses clean with one VA
• Telegram vs. WhatsApp for resident communication
• Tenant screening: smoking, pets, guests, income, credit & criminal history
• Why co-living cash flows in both up and down markets
• The 11-4 floor plan and why 7-bed houses no longer pencil
• The four phases of scaling and when to hire
• A jaw-dropping co-living horror story

Follow us on Instagram:

Craig Curelop — @craigcurelop
Miller McSwain — @millermcswain
Corey Enman — @corey.enman

Join our free co-living community: www.millermcswain.com/community

Most of the co-living world runs on PadSplit — but Craig and Miller don't operate on it themselves. So they invited a PadSplit insider to explain exactly how it works.

Suzanne Vetillart, a Host Advisor at PadSplit and an 8-year Seattle investor, joins the show to demystify the platform: what it is, who it's for, what it costs, and why the affordable housing opportunity is only getting bigger. From the membership agreement and fee structure to the early-adopter advantage in markets like Seattle, this episode is a clear, honest look at PadSplit from someone on the inside — useful whether you're a host on the platform or operating right alongside it.

A standout takeaway: stop thinking of PadSplit as a vendor and start thinking of it as a partner. They bring the platform and the marketing muscle; you bring the operations — and together you solve the affordability crisis while building a real business.

Follow along:

Craig Curelop → instagram.com/craigcurelop

Miller McSwain → instagram.com/millermcswain

Suzanne Vetillart → instagram.com/suzannevetillart

In this episode of The Co-Living Show, Craig Curelop and Miller McSwain sit down with twins Hem and Harsh, the operators behind CH Room Rentals, to unpack how they scaled from their first house hack to 7 co-living homes and 35 rooms in just a couple of years.

Hem and Harsh share their story of immigrating to the U.S. from India, working full-time through college, saving aggressively, and using house hacking as their entry point into real estate. What started as one 5-bedroom home in Charlotte quickly turned into a repeatable co-living model built around furnished rooms, strong tenant retention, self-management, and family partnership.

This conversation is especially valuable for newer co-living investors who are trying to figure out what the next few steps look like after buying their first property.

In this episode, we cover:

- How Hem and Harsh scaled to 7 homes and 35 rooms
- Why 5 bed / 3 bath homes are working in their market
- How they use house hacking to keep acquisition costs low
- The benefits and challenges of running a family-owned co-living business
- Why they chose to self-manage instead of using PadSplit
- How furnished rooms help them command higher rents and improve retention
- Their favorite platforms for finding tenants, including Facebook Marketplace and Furnished Finder
- How they keep vacancy low without overcomplicating operations
- What they learned from their first eviction
- Why local REI groups and co-living communities helped accelerate their growth
- Their next phase: new construction co-living homes

The episode also includes a community Q&A about rising utility costs and how co-living operators can respond when expenses increase faster than rents.

Join The Co-Living Community on Facebook to connect with other operators, ask questions, and learn from people actively building co-living portfolios.

Follow Miller: @millermcswain
Follow Craig: @thecraigcurelop
Learn more about CoLivingPro: colivingpro.io

In this episode, Craig Curelop and Miller McSwain sit down with co-living investor Travis Schwartz to talk about one of the biggest debates in the co-living space: Should you self-manage your rooms, or use a platform like PadSplit?

Travis brings a unique perspective. After starting out by building his own systems, managing leads, and filling rooms himself, he eventually moved his portfolio onto PadSplit. That decision helped him simplify operations, cut down on manual lead management, and shift his focus back to acquisitions.

And the results were significant.

Travis bought 12 co-living houses in one year, mostly in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, using a strategy built around high cash flow, aggressive renovations, and long-term holds.

Craig and Miller challenge Travis on the tradeoffs of PadSplit, including fees, platform risk, saturation, and whether it still makes sense at scale. Travis also shares what he has learned from renovations, appraisals, permits, tenant retention, and building software for PadSplit hosts through PadPulse.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Travis got into co-living after years as an entrepreneur
• Why he bought three houses at once when he started
• His target of under $40,000 per finished room
• Why he focuses on cash flow more than short-term equity
• The hidden risk of negative equity in co-living renovations
• How PadSplit changed his operations
• The pros and cons of relying on a third-party platform
• Why some markets become saturated faster than others
• How to think about amenities, pricing, and tenant retention
• Why offering a discount to a good resident can be cheaper than turnover
• What Travis is building with PadPulse
• His long-term vision for co-living and private equity

Connect with Travis:
PadPulse: padpulse.io
Email: travis@padpulse.io
LinkedIn: Travis Schwartz

Follow the hosts:
Miller McSwain: www.instagram.com/millermcswain
Craig Curelop: www.instagram.com/craigcurelop

Join the free Co-Living Community:
www.millermcswain.com/community

If you enjoyed this episode, leave a rating and review, and share it with another investor who is trying to scale their co-living portfolio.

Matt Osman is back... and this time we're going deep on one tool that can dramatically reduce the cash you bring to a co-living acquisition: the invoice authorization.

In simple terms, it's an addendum where the seller agrees to pay your contractor directly at closing. Done right, it lets you fold renovation costs into your loan, keep the seller whole, satisfy the lender, and walk into a co-living-ready property with a fraction of the out-of-pocket spend.

Matt shares real examples (including a $100K invoice authorization on one deal), the front-end vs. back-end negotiation playbook, how to position it with listing agents, and why the appraisal is the linchpin of the whole strategy.

Connect with Matt: Email: matt@investslb.com
Ask about the Co-Living Agent Accelerator

Follow Us:
Miller - www.instagram.com/millermcswain
Craig - www.instagram.com/craigcurelop

If you got value from this one, share it with an investor who's about to close on a co-living property, it might save them five figures.

The Co-Living Insurance Gap (and How to Fix It) | ft. Matthew Osman

Co-living is growing fast—but insurance hasn’t caught up.

In this episode, we sit down with Matthew Osman, a co-living realtor and operator who’s been working on one of the most overlooked risks in the space: improper insurance coverage.

Most operators assume they’re covered under standard landlord policies.
But once you go beyond 4 unrelated tenants, you may be operating in a gray area, or worse, completely exposed.

We break down what’s really happening behind the scenes and what you should be doing instead.

What We Cover:

• Why co-living doesn’t fit traditional insurance models
• The risk of having 5+ unrelated tenants under one policy
• Common scenarios where claims get delayed or denied
• How commercial-style co-living insurance works
• When to switch from landlord policy to co-living coverage
• How to think about insurance as you scale your portfolio

Why This Matters:

If you’re making co-living-level income, you need co-living-level protection.
This episode gives you a clearer path to protecting both your property and your business.

🔗 Resources & Links

• Join the Co-Living Community: https://millermcswain.com/community
• Co-Living Pro: https://colivingpro.io
  
  

📲 Connect with Us

• Miller McSwain: https://www.instagram.com/millermcswain
• Craig Curelop: https://www.instagram.com/craigcurelop
  
  

If you found this helpful, share it with another operator.
This is one of those topics most people don’t think about, until it’s too late.

In this episode of The Co-Living Show, we sit down with Franco Montano, a seasoned operator managing 600+ co-living rooms (and owning 150+ himself), to break down what it actually takes to scale a co-living portfolio.

Franco shares how he transitioned from running a 42-location T-Mobile business with 750 employees into real estate—and why co-living became his highest ROI strategy.

If you’re serious about building a cash-flowing co-living portfolio, this episode is packed with real-world insights you won’t hear anywhere else.

🔑 What You’ll Learn:

• How Franco scaled to 600+ rooms under management
• Why co-living works even in expensive markets (remote investing strategy)
• The truth about tenant demand, pricing, and vacancy cycles
• How to structure leases to avoid winter vacancies
• Why most operators fail due to poor underwriting (not operations)
• Franco’s remodel strategy (including converting homes for under $10K)
• The biggest mistakes new co-living investors make
• How to build systems and teams to scale beyond 20+ rooms
• Why affordable, safe, and clean housing beats fancy amenities
• Real talk on tenant screening, evictions, and long-term retention

🧠 Key Takeaway:

Co-living isn’t complicated because of tenants,
It’s complicated because of systems, operations, and scaling.

Master those, and the upside is massive.

🔗 Connect with Franco:

📧 Email: Franco@highestmanagement.com
🌐 Website: highestmanagement.com

🔗 Connect with Us:

📸 Miller McSwain: https://www.instagram.com/millermcswain
📸 Craig Curelop: https://www.instagram.com/craigcurelop

💬 Join The Co-Living Community:
https://millermcswain.com/community

🚀 Resources Mentioned:

👉 CoLiving Pro (Marketing + Pricing Tool):
https://www.colivingpro.io

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the show, leave a review, and share it with another investor looking to scale in co-living.