Five Steps To Get Rid Of Smoke Smell In Your Rental Units | The STRR Podcast #53 | Tim Hubbard

This seems to be one of those growing challenges because marijuana is legal in more places than it's ever been. We're getting more guests in our short term rentals that are smoking or that think they're allowed to smoke. So that's what we're going to talk about this weekend. Let's jump right in. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. Quick, actionable ideas to help you along your real estate investment journey, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Welcome back, everyone, to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. We're talking about smoke this week. Smoking weed, smoking joints, maybe cigarettes still, you never know. Well, not us smoking it, obviously, but we're talking about, unfortunately, the guests that come into our rentals and think that they can smoke or maybe just don't care. We're gonna review five steps, actionable pieces of advice that can help you with this, help you combat it, help you prevent it, or help you to get rid of the smoke if someone gets through your preemptive measures. So this has all sort of come because, you know, marijuana is legal in more places than it's probably ever been. States are legalizing it in the U.S. canada's legalized it down here in Colombia, they've legalized it. It's just kind of going all over the place. And along with that, you know, have come all these, like, little apparatuses, these vape pens and all this stuff. And, you know, there's ways to hide it and do all. So it's just more of a challenge than it was before. And in some states, it's more challenging than others, like California, where I still have properties, that's much more challenging than, say, Oklahoma City, for example. So not to stereotype the whole state, but we do have more, more issues there. So I want to talk about just five things we can do. Let's break it down. Number one, our house rules. And we've talked about this before, we'll put a link in the show notes to go back and review. But we want to have a no smoking house rule and also a penalty if we catch someone smoking. We've got $200 a night if we find someone smoking. Now, it's a little more challenging to win these resolutions with Airbnb, for example, unless you have evidence and timestamps, you know, if you have a picture of ashes right after a guest checks out, or a burnt mark on a table or a countertop or something like that, you send that to Airbnb right away, you start a resolution. It's going to be hard for the Guest deny that. But a lot of times we just smell the smoke. Our housekeepers just smell the smoke when they go in. So I've got some, some options for that, for eliminating that. But after we have our house rules, you know, there's another step we can take, and that's just posting signs. So we have specifically in California signs that say no marijuana. I mean, you can't miss it. When, when you go into the properties, it says no smoking. And this includes marijuana. Some people think because it's legal that they can actually smoke inside the properties, but that's not the case. And that includes vape pens or anything like that. So that's number one, let's review those house rules, make sure we've got them posted. Number two, let's post some additional signs. If we're having a big challenge with it, if it's a big issue, post some more signs that say specifically no marijuana or no vape pens. And you can find those signs on Amazon. So check that out. Now, let's say they get through these preemptive measures or they just don't care, unfortunately, and they smoke in your apartment. They check out. And then you got another guest checking in. You got to clean up that smoke smell or you might have a bad review. First step, there's a smoke spray that we use called Zepp Z E P. I believe we'll leave a link in the show notes for that also. But you can just spray that. It's a. It's a smoke odor eliminator. So that's like the most basic. If it's not too heavy of a smell, if it is too heavy of a smell, you can bring in the Big Daddy. And who is the Big Daddy? Well, that is a ozone cleaner. And a friend just recommended one of these to me recently. We got one. It's worked fantastically. It's a machine you can get off Amazon. I think it was a couple hundred bucks, or maybe not even like maybe a hundred or something like that. I'll leave a link for the one that I bought in the show notes. But you basically just put this ozone machine in. Whatever room or area had all the smoke you leave it on. You have to make sure you're not in the space where it's being used. It's not safe to be in the same room breathing with the machine running. And they have clear warnings on there. And actually there's some places like California that don't allow these ozone machines. So maybe you can ship it to a different state. We got them in Tennessee now and then maybe you, you know, ship it after you've ordered off Amazon, ship it over to California. I'm not recommending anything, but you know, that might be a way. So the ozone machines, they can work well, they can do wonders and they can do it really quickly. If you got another guest checking in, number five. And this is really, really cool. The short term rental industry is still growing so quickly, right? We've got all these new tools and stuff coming out and one that's come out recently is a SMOK detector specifically for marijuana smoke. I think it even does vape pen smoke. And it's made by fresh airsensor.com it plugs right into a, it's like a wall outlet and you can program, I believe you can even set alerts to go to your property management software depending on what one you're using. Now they do have a minimum purchase of 50 units. WA WA wa. I know. And a lot of us don't have that many units. Now if you have bigger vacation rental homes, I think each unit does about 500 square feet. So maybe, you know, who knows, maybe you need five or 10 of them for a vacation rental home. Now if you just went out and bought all 50 of them, you can lease them for $6 a month. So it's $300 a month essentially to really eliminate smoke in your rentals. Maybe you can combine forces with a fellow short term rental house or someone else and you can share them a But at the moment that's their minimum purchase order. I wrote them to see if we can get a lower quantity and also if they can give us a special price for our listeners and our loyal subscribers. So hopefully we can. If something comes in, I will make sure to notify you guys. If you're not on our email list already, make sure you go to restmethods.com if you fill out your email for our ebook that talks about finding the best properties and what to look for, you'll go on our email list. And then when we find new technology and new things come out, I'm sending out emails periodically. I'm not going to bombard you, but that's a good way for us to stay connected. So head to restmethods.com if you haven't been there yet. Hopefully you know that helps you combat some of these smoke challenges, these smoke issues. Let's review our house rules, post some additional signs if we need to, specifically for marijuana or vape pens, just letting them know that also is included as smoke. Let's get some smoke spray cans, those Zepp smoke spray cans and just keep those around for your housekeeper so they can try to clean that up. If it's not a super dense smoke smell, if it is a bad smoke smell, if they're really just hot boxing in there and getting carried away, check out one of those ozone cleaner machines. I'll put it. I don't know exactly what you call, but I'll leave a link in the show notes for that. Just remember, don't be in the same room with it while it's running. It's got warnings on there. And number five, consider giving those fresh air sensors a chance. If you can use that many units or if you have someone you can share them with, go ahead and buy some of those guys and those will work. My friend that recommended those as well said it's doing wonders. It's basically eliminated their smoke issues. So take a look at those five things. Hopefully that helps you. And until next time, as always, have a wonderful day.

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