Who are we? and what the EF are we doing here?
Welcome to Evereste Experiences! You’re probably wondering, who the EF are we, and what are we doing? Actually, probably not, but I’ll tell you anyway.
We are Jen and Ross. Jen, a former Marketing Project Management Exec, and Ross, and Production IT Professional, decided to buy a lake house in Fox Lake, IL. Why, you ask? Well, we had just moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, right before the world shut down due to covid. We were in lockdown, missing our friends and family, longing to be with them. So we decided, why don’t we buy a lake house just north of Chicago, and when we come to visit, we’ll stay there. And when we’re not using it, we’ll rent it out. Mind you, we didn’t have a ton of money to spend. But we had our sights set on it, and we did it. We scraped together the cash for the downpayment, and found a big, 5 bedroom lakefront property that was already being rented out. We bought it, and immediately had buyers remorse. We knew nothing about short term rentals. But hey, how hard can it be? (Turns out its pretty hard but thats for another blog post).
We bought it furnished, completed a master bathroom renovation with the only money we had left, and went live with it in the middle of winter of 2021. The bookings started trickling in, and we thought, hey now! We just need to cover the mortgage and utilities and we’re happy! Fast forward to July of 2021. Back to back guests, revenue rolling in, we were dumbfounded. Could this really be a business?! We got hooked. We stockpiled all of the cash flow from the lake house and bought another rental. And then another rental, and then another. Its now November of 2024, and we have 6 rentals across the United States. Most of them renovated with modern upgrades for ultimate comfort. All of them thoughtfully designed by yours truly, with guests top of mind. Everyday we thank our lucky stars that we took the plunge and never looked back.
If you want to hear more about our story, or take a video tour of one of our cabins, check out these links below.
The day we closed on our first Short Term Rental, before the nerves set in!
