Self Managing for Over A Decade - Industry Expert Luke Carl Shares His TOP Tips

Well, welcome back, everyone, to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. Excited to have yet another fellow podcaster on today. Today we have Luke Carl. He's the host of the Short Term Rental Management podcast, which is very near and dear to our hearts on this channel, providing a lot of good advice. He's also the director of the education for the Short Term Shop. Luke, welcome to the show.

My pleasure, man. It's great to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you. Can you give us a little bit of background?

Yeah, yeah. So I'm probably better known as Avery, Carl's husband.

And we started the journey together years and years ago. We bought our first house before we even got married, and.

It just was a natural fit. I remember very early when I first met her, she was, you know, 24 or something like that, and.

She said, I think I want to get my real estate license. And I was like, what is that? I don't even like, what is that? You know, and I was like, okay, cool. And she actually didn't do it at the time, but we revisited that later. We moved a few, you know, a couple times and things like that. But yeah, ended up being obviously a pretty good deal for her. Pretty huge in the, in the world of agents and selling real estate. And of course, the short term shop was born somewhere in that process and, and you know, kind of even before that, you, when we started buying a few rental properties of our own, didn't really know anything about.

Was before we'd ever discovered, you know, bigger pockets or rich dad or anything like that. And, and just kind of jumped in, man. And I come from a background of fairly do it yourself type of a family and, and so we bought a couple of long terms and then branched out into short term. Just kind of on accident, really. It was natural evolution. It was the next town over was Gatlinburg and it worked out. And I still to this day, I have the longest running Airbnb. Two of them, actually. The two longest running Airbnbs in Gatlinburg in the Pigeon Forge, Smoky Mountain area.

That's awesome.

And, yeah, and it just kind of went nuts from there. You know, we were early adopters. I've been on Airbnb since 2011.

And, and I, I never really thought of it that way. I was just buying more houses and they just happen to be, you put them on VRBO instead of Zillow to rent. And of course, today I do, I still, I, I still love long terms. Absolutely. I have, I have apartment buildings. I, I, I have way more long terms than I do the short terms, but they're still the cornerstone of the whole thing.

And now as we get older, man, the cool part is we really appreciate the short terms more now than ever. Like exponentially more now because of all the debt pay down over the years and they're not as stressful anymore for multiple reasons. We're not leveraged as much as we used to be. And that's nice. It's a very good feeling. And also primarily because we have grown as, you know, getting a little older and we have a family now and we can go use these things, you know, and that is awesome. And used to be back in the day, we would go, we would go, but you know, we were never really in a situation where we could enjoy because you're killing yourself all day, every day to get to where you're trying to look for in life. And you know the old quote.

Do what no one will do now so that you can live like no one later. That kind of thing. But yeah, so for me, man, it's been an incredible journey and really I'm loving the short terms now way more than ever.

That's great. That's great. Well, if for anyone that missed the episode we did recently with Avery, Carl, go make sure you go back and check that out. And Luke. So let's see. So you got a bunch of units long term and short term. Can you give us a little idea what your portfolio looks like today?

Yes, it's a little everything, man. So I've got a lot of single family long terms in a few, couple different markets in the South. We live in the South. Well, Avery, I think would call the south the Panhandle of Florida. She says. Anything else outside of the Panhandles? Not the south, of course. She's born and raised in the deep south. So I listen to what she says. You know, I'm not. I originally Midwestern, but a couple of different towns in the south, in Tennessee and Alabama, I've got long terms and duplexes, single families and duplexes. And I try to stick to decent school districts, that kind of thing. Maybe 1500 bucks a month on those, on those bad boys. And then I have apartments, I've got several apartment buildings in my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, go big red and. And then I've got the short terms. I've got eight short terms. Like I said, I've had most of them for quite some time. I did buy two in the past, maybe two years, and I actually exchanged a couple at one point. I Exchanged some smaller ones for some larger ones and I still do have some small ones but. But yeah, that's kind of a mix. The mix across the board somewhere around 300 units.

Awesome. That's amazing. That's amazing. And do you manage all of them yourself, including the long term ones as well?

I don't know, but I have. When I first started again, you know, I'm the kind of guy, my, my dad, you know, he was a army Vietnam, got Vietnam, Vietnam vet. And he was, you know, tough guy, kind of mailman. He was a mailman but so like low blue collar but get things done kind of guy. And so, you know, he taught me how to change the brakes in his truck when I was like 6 years old and that's just how I was raised. And so when we first started real estate, it never crossed my mind to hire a manager. Just would never be something that I could imagine. We didn't have the money, you know, I could, I'm ten to. For what? You know, like that kind of thing. And then as time went by and I did self manage my short term or my long terms until I had I think somewhere in the around 30 doors and then we moved, we moved was the catalyst there and things started, you know, we were starting to build our way out of, you know, into, into a more.

Financially sound life and we moved to Florida from Tennessee and it was just a natural. At the time my long terms were all in Chattanooga, which I do still own though and, and that's what it was, just a timing thing. It was like, okay, it's time. I can't do this anymore. I'm going to be further away. I was managing my long terms from a distance and with success, you know, I built a team. I had guys working for me that would do the rehab. One guy, you know, in particular, you get to 20, 30 properties in the same town, you kind of get a little, you know, network going there and for sure it worked, worked out pretty well. But eventually I did put on third party property management and I've, I deal with five third party property managers right now in four different states and I, I do the short terms in house. I'm very much involved with the short terms. I have a team obviously very similar to what you have that I built out over the years. I went through many people to get to where, you know, it's hard, hiring and firing is hard. But wonderful team right now. I'm very proud of all the. I only have two, two full timers and well three if you count the bookkeeper and he's in house.

And I'm very much involved. I mean I'm not sitting there responding to guests, of course.

But I, and I, and I don't have the apps on my phone. I think that, you know, that was a big event in my life where I'm not looking at the apps anymore. And I do still have hospital. Like I use Hospitable, so I have that. But no Airbnb verbo get it out or no notifications.

And, but I, you know, I still, I, I know every now and then I know like the guest name and we talk about, you know, you gossip within, you know, the organization of the. Oh man, can you imagine Mary Beth did weird thing over here at this house. And you know, I'm, I'm definitely involved in, and I enjoy it.

Yeah, that's great. Well, I, I, I love that, that you're in it too. I mean that's, you're, you're coming from the per. Perfect place to be able to teach about it. Right. And, and so a lot of great content on your podcast. I think one of the things that's exciting and that, and that you've, you've touched on here is that it's just easier to manage things virtually now. And it doesn't have to be like one set way. I mean we can decide which parts of it we want to do. We can outsource the other members. So I think in general it's just gotten a lot easier and that's a lot, that's exciting for me. You know, we can do this anywhere, but there's definitely challenges. Right. And so just curious to hear from you. What have been some of your biggest challenges managing more specifically the, the short term rentals remotely.

Well, I mean, you know, it never ends, man. It's just the life of a landlord though.

Even, even with, I really think, and I think you'll agree with me, people gotta get over the distance thing. It really isn't a factor. I'm not going to go look at this thing even if it's right down the street. I do, I'm going to contradict myself. I'll stop by once a year, but I'll make a trip out of it. Right. So all my houses are kind of in clumps in my, in my apartments. So I'll make a trip out of it, go see my folks in Omaha and I'm going to go run every one of those properties. Of course you're not walking. You know, if there's a lockbox on A unit. You go in, obviously, and, you know, my property manager has the same code on every lockbox, and. And so I don't even have to bother them if I just show up. Oh, that. That unit's got a lock box on it. I'll walk it and I'll. And then I'll text them and say, dude, what the hell? How come there's no carpet in here? Or whatever, you know, why are you not working on this unit? Yeah, but, you know, I mean, to me, it just. I don't know if it's just the way we've always lived our lives is to be fairly virtual. My. My back. When I had a job, I. I came up in broadcasting. As a matter of fact, I had a long career in radio and rock and roll radio with Sirius xm, and I still do that. I moonlight occasionally on the weekends. That was virtual as well, too. And that's great. You know, Avery's always been about time.

We had a professional radio voice on this show, because the last 200 episodes or whatever have not been. So thank you for that.

Yeah. You know, it's just second nature for just talk rock. And, I mean, I still do it, you know, I mean, for fun. I. I don't. I can't. I don't have time to do it full time anymore, but. But yes. So we just always been virtual. To me, it was like. I can't really explain it. If you're worried about that, get over it. It's just not that big a deal. In other words, you're gonna have to send a plumber back out to fix what he did wrong the first time, even if the house is next door or if it's six states away. You know, I mean, to me, it's just old hat, you know, I mean, it's just part of the gig. I don't. I don't really have a much of a better explanation than that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I. And that's the reality, though. It's. You know, I think we do. We just need to get over this remote management thing. I mean, that's just the reality now. And for anyone that wants to manage any property, if it's too far to drive to, which could be for you, you know, an hour away, then you're managing it remotely.

Right.

And so it doesn't really matter the distance that we put in between it if we're already at the point that we can't just step over to it. I think for us, you know, some of the. The big challenge has been housekeeping of course, and maintenance. And we got to make sure our properties are always in. In good shape. Do you have a couple just pointers around what you guys look for or maybe how you go about finding your housekeepers?

Yeah, you know, I mean, it's gotten a lot easier. I hate to use that word, but, you know, you've been doing this a long time. And when we first started.

Back, guys like us were pioneers. You know, we people, housekeepers, were looking at us funny like, wait a minute, what do you mean, you own this house? Like, they didn't even. Didn't even understand what we were trying to do here, you know, and, and they were almost like, you had to go. You had to go find the, the people that were sick of working for the property managers. And most of them were not willing to do that because they liked the cushy gig of having a solid calendar and having somebody to check in with that was going to hand them towels. And a lot of times they even had their own vehicle from the company or a vehicle that they could have access to at least.

And you, you kind of had to, like, you know, ask nicely. Hey, take a chance on me here. I think I'm going to make a go of this. And they're like, you're gonna put this thing on what? And do what with it? It doesn't make any sense. And now that's all gone. The stigma's gone. Everybody knows what I mean. Hell, Verbo's been around for 29, 30 years, you know, and Airbnb has been around long enough now where it's not like this weird thing that's unheard of. And, and, and we saw that in the, in the, in the education space as well, in the influencer space. It was, all of a sudden it was like, oh, there's this new thing. Let's go take it over. And everybody's got their own. The podcast and all this other crazy in TikTok stuff, you know, but now everything's settled down and it's normal now. It's a normal thing in the world of real estate. I mean, when Avery and I first started, when she, you know, it was really her, and then she got to the point where she basically every. All of her clients were asking a million management questions, and that's how, you know, she would just pawn them off on me, and I was happy to do it. And that's kind of how the short term shop was born. So I teach all. I teach classes for the clients and stuff. And.

What was my point, you know, so now.

Nobody looks at. It's weird. It's. It's like, oh, Airbnb. I know what that is. It's totally normal. It's not. It's not like this weird thing where everybody feels like they're walking on the moon. We're just renting a house, and instead of renting for 12 months, you're renting for three days. It's. It's been going on since the beginning of time, but it just taken so long for people to realize, oh, wait a minute. This isn't rocket science. Anyway, back to the cleaners.

You know, the. They're. When you're contacting them, it's. It's a normal deal now, and they know. Okay, I. I think I can take on another owner or two owners, three owners, and then maybe I'll keep half of my houses with a property manager. And, of course, Turno seems to be gaining some traction. I've never personally used the, The. The marketplace on there, but I hear great things. And then in Facebook groups. There's a million Facebook groups, but you got to get out there. You know, the cleaners have always been a pain point, you know, but it's no different than anything any other business on the planet. You're hiring and firing, and if you don't have any experience hiring and firing, you're gonna suck at it. And that's. That's where we see people fail. You sucked at hiring the housekeeper. You didn't even realize it was you. You blamed it on him or her, and now you're gonna end up selling the house because it wasn't a good experience. I mean, it. What. It would be no different if you bought a gas station and you needed to hire a cashier and it didn't go well because, you know, don't know what the hell you're doing to hire a housekeeper. Hire a. Hire a year.

You can either give up and crawl into a. Crawl into a ball and be a loser and sell the gas station, or you can go hire another cashier and.

You know, well said.

Failure was not an option for me.

You know, well said, well said.

Yeah.

You know, I. Through the years, I've. I've learned some of the same lessons there. It's. We got a. It's. It's. It's. It's a skill hiring people. Right? But it is nice. It is that it has gotten easier, like you said, because there are now services like Turno, or properly, where someone could actually go to find housekeepers. And a lot of the housekeeper. Someone might Find on there now is a professional housekeeping company, you know, just for short term rentals. Do you have a take on hiring a professional housekeeping company versus maybe just hiring a someone independently?

You know, I think that's a personal preference. And that has been going on since the early days. You know, it's, it's, it's, it also depends on your market. Obviously in the Smokies, for instance, there's really only like two or three kind of, you know, companies. Most of them are mom and pop. So as opposed to Florida, where I live, I live outside of destiny in the 30A area and the Emerald coast. And most of them here are companies. And usually what that means is that, that somebody got good at it and, you know, get better at running a business and, and then, you know, they bring on more people. So the problem there is the problem I, you see all the time. And now since we're on the subject of housekeepers, here's the problem there. You get a girl who's really good.

Everybody wants her, and she, her phone blows up and then all of a sudden she's got so many houses she can't keep up. And then she sucks, right? Or he, he or she. And I see that constantly. So I'm always preaching to my cleaners. Luckily again, if you have a few more properties in the same market, you have a little more pull, you know, But I mean, you know, it's not, it's not. Everybody can be Tim, and we can't all have 40 properties. And you know what I mean? It's like, it's not, it's not possible in a lot of cases. I get that. But if you only have one, you know, you really got to watch that culture. You got to, you got to like check in with her. That's my best advice. Just like any business, you got to have check, you know, once, even if it's once a quarter, Give them a call or at least somebody from, you know, maybe I'll have my, the girl that handles my, my messages at least communicate. They're communicating almost every day. But.

I ask them, how many houses are you doing? And I ask them when I'm, when I'm hiring them. How many houses do you have right now? 15. How many do you want? 47. Nah, ain't gonna work for me because you're gonna get to 47 and everything's gonna completely crumble and you're gonna waste my time. Yeah, because running a business is, could not be, you know, I mean, in most cases it's a Lot different than cleaning a house, right? They're, they're different things. Somebody who's really good at cleaning a house may not be that great at running a business. And then they think they are or they want to be, and then they get up there and they're like, crap. Managing these employees sucks. I'd rather clean the house. So then it goes back the other direction, you know, so. And I see that, I see that all the time. I had one of my cleaners recently, she dumped like six properties because I told her a hundred times, you're taking too many properties. You're taking too many properties. And I, so I just check in with them and I make them be honest. I'm like, how many do you have right now? And, and, and I'm gonna find out if you're, if you're not telling the truth, you know, because they know when I hire them, when I'm, when I'm doing my interview process, I want to know, do you want 47 properties or do you want 15? Now, the big giant company, there's, there's definitely advantages there too. You know, I don't have any of those right now. I've actually never, that's never really been a fit for me. But if you're the type of person that likes that vibe and you're willing to maybe if it's a.40 bucks extra a turn or something, to have the, the, the security of them showing up and handling the sheets and towels, if that's what you want to do, I got no problem with that.

Yeah, I think one of them, one of the important things you said there, basically, it's just we need to take care of them, right? I mean, we need to check in with them. If we found someone that's doing a good job for us, then we want to work with them as long as we can.

And whether that's a professional housekeeping company or just an independent person on their own, that's, that's always important. That's important for any, anyone that's on our team, right? Just making sure that things are transparent and that. And everyone's being taken care of. Well, good stuff there, Luke. What about. So you mentioned maintenance and that you, you know, maybe once a year you stop in and, and check on things. Our maintenance with our short term rentals is a little more involved than it is with our long term rentals.

Right.

Because we have furniture and stuff in there. And so what do you guys recommend for someone managing remotely in terms of making sure that their property is up to Date.

Well, again, market specific. And when I meant when I, in this case, when I say market specific, it's seasonality. If you're on the beach, like where we live, if this were, you know, in a beach market, like say a Florida beach market or, or even like a North Carolina beach market, you're going into battle, right? For from like March 1st until probably mid, mid October, give or take. And you know, there's a little lull there in September, maybe in May.

But you know, new mistake is to try and send housekeepers and handy people over there with every tiny little thing that a guest brings up. Can't do that. And now keep in mind, I do want to say on an open forum, I love my guests, okay? I love my guests. They are awesome. We can't, we are not in this business without them. I don't think that gets talked about often enough. The heart is, you know, hard working Americans that earned that vacation. Reminds me of being a kid, man. When we went on vacation it was a huge deal and we spent, you know, my parents were spending every penny on that trip. So love my guests. Love my guests. Now that being said, of course they drive us nuts, right? So.

The point is if a guest is hitting you with this, that and the other little detail, just kill them with kindness. Do your best. And I put a, I basically put a list together and I have separate, you know, I use like I use Trello on Monday.com Asana that kind of thing or, or breezeway would be good.

Just you know, organizational tool basically like better than something. Better than post it notes that and I'll make lists and I got like my off season list. I'm doing that right now. I'll get, let me get to that. But like if you got some stuff going on, a lot of that stuff can wait. You know, here's a good example. I've got. I did a rehab on one of mine in the, in the off season, put it in service, brand new everything. Realized I forgot to do the microwave and it's a built in and I started getting messages because the micro was actually broken. Not it works but like you can't see the, the numbers on it. The touchpad is broken. So I started getting messages and I'm like crap. I, I did, you know, I went and I did. I got the nice, I like a nice appliances in my short terms, that's a big thing for me. They got to be nice, especially the washer and dryer. And the fridge doesn't need to be all that crazy as A matter of fact, I don't even really like ice machines in a. In a short term because it's too many things to break. And the stuff on the door, ice machines, you know, the whole thing.

But one, one more thing to the appliances these days are just like. Oh my gosh. Yeah, you. Every additional thing you add on there like a ice maker, it's one other thing that could break, just like you said. And when they're only lasting, you know, two years these days.

Totally. You know what I mean? You got me on another tangent now, but I went to one of my rentals yesterday and the couch looked like crap and it's not even a year old. That's what drives me nuts when new people come in and they agonize over the couch they're buying. How much should I spend on this couch with this? That. Where do I get it? Do I get it on Wayfair? Do I get it local? And I'm sitting there like, who cares? It's going to be trashed. You know, like you need to be making sure that your cleaner sending you a picture of it every now and then to make sure that you don't need to go get another one. So, you know, I would just go local store, get one on sale, have them deliver it, get it over with, you know. But anyway, put a list together of all this stuff and then have a handyman or whatever go over there and fix it all at once. And then also look, you know, because right now it's timely and topical to be talking about. We're shifting into to winter season here in the beach and even in the mountains. And so I'll start walking my properties. I walked one of them yesterday and I put a list together. You know, I got my guy on my headphones and I'm like this, this, this, this, this. It's the same crap every year. Really. Paint the staircase because the staircases get beat. If you got a Sheetrock staircase in a vacation house, it's going to get trashed, guaranteed. They're tracking up their suitcases. If you got white treads on there, dude, forget it. It's track and you got to get it repainted, you know, and other stuff like.

Swapping out a TV or whatever that needed, you know, stuff that could wait, you know, fixing the, the pool alarm or whatever it may be. I put that list together now again, I don't know when it's going to come out. We're recording this the 1st of September 23rd. So, you know, if you put a list Together in late, late summer, early fall. Then you could start getting those folks scheduled to do the jobs in January, February, because that's another new mistake on multiple levels. Oh, just wait till January and do all that stuff. Okay. But if you waited till January to start calling around to find these dudes, they're booked until April, you know, because that's in a, in a, in a vacation town, all the vendors are super busy with the bigger jobs. They're always busy. But with the bigger jobs in, you know, December, January, February, even in mountains, beach, wherever it may be. Again, we. I like vacation towns, right? And I live in one. It's a whole thing. But, you know, if you're, if you're like, oh, sitting around saying, I'm going to do that in January and you're not planning for that in September, October ain't going to happen, you know, so that's what I like to do now. I don't even know what you asked me originally, to be honest, but that's what I'm, I'm psyched on that. Right?

About plan. No, you're right on it. Planning, planning.

You're right. Plan maintenance. I'm walking my properties. I love it. I love it. And I, and I walk through and I'm like, oh, yeah, this thing looks great, man. This looks way better than the guy next door. And I, you know, because my houses are nice, man. My house are nice. I do not play around. You know, you got to get those rehabs done. You got to have a nice house. Because if you're, you know how it is, man, so many people, they just put it on the Internet and think that they're going to get good reviews and make money and it just doesn't work like that.

It's a slippery slope with maintenance too. You know, you let one thing go, it creates a bad review and then your visibility goes down. And so we got to make sure the on top of that. So good, good advice there. Luke. I want to ask you another question. I know because you got a big portfolio of properties and a lot of them are different.

What is your take on or what. What's your preference? I guess on a small property, let's, let's stick with the short term rental theme here. But a small short term rental versus a big one. Do you have a favorite?

I love them both. If you're brand new, trying to pick, my recommendation would be go with whatever you can, whatever the budget is, you know, working for, because it's better not to. Just don't wait. Yes, you Know, again, we're living in a world where let's, let's be real. The market right now is freaking crazy. You know, I mean, like, it's nuts out there. Nobody knows the industry, interest rates doubled in a year. Everybody knows all that. But I mean, I'm finding in my markets that there are more deals right now. A lot of people are selling because there's a million people got involved. You know, there's a metric.

Rear end load of people that bought real estate. Not even just short terms, but real estate. 20, 21, 22. And I've heard it, I think it was from David Green, actually a statistic. 50% of real estate gets sold in the first 12 months.

So right now we're seeing the effects of that. People are dumping them because they're like, oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be. It's not making money. I didn't, you know, and truth is, they didn't try because they're not you and I, and they're not obsessed, you know, And I hate to say that because people crap on me. Well, like, oh yeah, of course, you talk about you're doing well and blah, blah. I got people crapping on me lately for being successful and I'm just like, no, man, why would you do that? I don't. Get out of my room. Get out of here. I don't, I'm not hanging out with losers. Let's, let's. David Lee Roth. Here's a quote. I'm gonna give you a quote. It's lonely at the top because it's so crowded at the bottom. And I am not gonna sit here and make excuses for why I'm doing well. And also, I'm not freaking Grant Cardone either. You know what I mean? Like, I ain't rolling around putting videos in my jet. I don't even know how we got on that subject. What was the question?

No, it's, it's, it's a really good point. I don't know either. We kind of went off there, but you're making a really good point. And it's that.

They'Re, they're, you know, if someone wants to operate their short term rental well, they can operate it. Well, if someone doesn't put in the time, then they neither need to find someone that can help them with that or unfortunately, it's probably not going to work out too well for them. So that's the reality, right?

It's like any business though. It's any business.

It's not just us.

Don't, don't pigeonhole, don't, don't pick on us. It's anything back to the grocery store, the, the gas station. What about, got a clothing store? You know, I, I do that analogy all the time, pricing your properties like it's like a clothing store. You got the new stuff, comes in, in the, in the beginning of the season and it's hot and it's exciting and everybody wants it. And then by the end of the season, all you're left was with the crap that nobody wanted. So you need to blow that out, put it on sale and get it going. And a lot of people just don't, you know, they, not they. If you end the season with a bunch of jeans sitting on the table, you're probably going to lose your business. This, you know, so. But yeah, people are selling right now. No, that was the point. That was the point. The big ones and the small ones, get the one you can afford. And I'm not saying, I'm not gonna say everybody go make offers. I'm that kind of guy. I know that. That's, you know, maybe some people are more conservative. I love closing deals, making deals. And my, my advice is get the one you can afford right now. But long story short, to get back to your actual question, I love them all. I've got five. I've got five bedroom all the way down to zero. Zero bedroom and studio. Yes. Do a little studio. 550 square feet. And that was my third one ever. Third short term, years ago. Smokies. And I love, I love them. They're. They're different animals. You got more personalities coming in and out of the big one. But you're going to make more money with probably less occupancy, which at the end of the day, a lot of folks are scared of that. Oh, man. It's not as booked as much I want to get the small one because I know it's going to be booked all the time. I, I understand that. But really, at the end of the day, what you're doing is saying, I'm, I would like to work harder because you're dealing with more guests when you do it that way, you know, So I love them. I love them both. I love big, small. Let's do it.

Yeah, they can work any way, can't they? I mean, it, it really comes down to supply and demand, right? Like in regards to the occupancy thing. I mean, if you're in a place where there's a lot of demand for short rentals or There's a lot of demand for big rentals. It all comes down to that equation. But they work all across the board.

Right.

And what I love about the self management model is that most all of these management principles, at least in my opinion, are pretty much the same, whether it's a big home or a small one. Yes, of course you're going to be dealing with more guests, maybe you have more issues with parties, you got to put some other things in place. But the principles are pretty much the same. What's your take on that?

The principles, I'm sorry, on like long term managing.

Yeah, managing a, a small property versus a big one.

Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. It is the same. You know, there's a few things that I, I will, I'll give you a couple tips. So on the big properties, again, back to the personality thing.

The dude that booked the house, he's got, he's in charge of like 10 other people, right? Or she. Here, let's just go. Let's go with he. Why not?

And so all 10 of those people are barking at him. What, what room am I in? What? What, how does the WI fi work? What's the tv, blah, blah, blah, where's the beach, you know, where. How do I get to the hiking trail, all this stuff. So he becomes the damn travel agent. And, and that's annoying. And then he's like, dude, I don't know how I got signed up for this. I don't want to deal with all this crap. So that's where a guidebook comes in handy.

Totally.

If I can plug, if I can plug a guidebook, you know, it's not rocket science. There's a bunch of them out there. I like touch day. There's hostfully, you're welcome, Dak. It's a bunch of them. And so I shoot that guidebook, that dude, then that dude can share the guidebook with his whole group and, and then they kind of get off his back a little bit. If you got a good guidebook, then. But that's more work. A lot of people don't want to do more work. And guess what? Then you're probably not gonna get the income that you need. This is simple math equation. Work equals cash, you know, so, and, but with the short term, the small ones, you, you get the trade off of less personalities, you know? And again, I used to be in the bar business way back in the day, and it's like everybody that walks through the door is a different personality and it's exhausting. So the little ones are Cool. Because you don't have to deal with that. But that being said, again, you're, you're, you're dealing with more, more bookings per year. It is technically going to be less humans in and out your door throughout the year on the, on the, the small one because you know, you got all those 10, 12 people that you never deal with. But you're going to have, you know, probably 20% or so depends on your market and the size of the property. You're going to have higher occupancy. So you are dealing with more actual reservations, more reviews, that's that kind of thing. And then really, you know, this the cool thing about single family short term. Well, there's many cool things about it. The coolest thing is a 30 year fixed. I mean that's freaking awesome.

Yeah.

Even though they suck right now, it's still better than any. You can't get 30 year fixed on any other asset class really. You know, so single family. But.

What was my point? Oh, with a single family, large, short term, you know, four, five. Every time you add a bedroom, you're adding a family. So it's almost like multifamily. But only, only want, you know, 30 year fixed loan as opposed to going out and buying a 10 unit apartment building where your, your loan terms aren't going to be as awesome. Of course then you do get a cap rate in an NOI on a, on a apartment building. So that goes that direction a little bit depending on the way you look at it. And you can bring in other people's money a whole lot easier on a, on an apartment building. But so yeah, it's almost a gate. It's a gateway drug, you know. So once you get up into that four or five range, six bedroom range, first of all, it costs way more money. So you know, if you're going to continue down that path, you'll probably end up in commercial real estate. All, all roads, Tim, you know this all roads lead to commercial real estate. If you stay in this business long enough, you're going to get into a hotel, you're going to get into a. I like long term. So I stood, I did the apartments, I did apartments instead of hotels, but it was the same thing for me. I would. We got to the point at one point years ago I said, Avery, I can't do any more short terms. Back when I had a day job and I was just hammered all the time I'd been, was so busy, I said I can't do it. And I, I don't Know how to put them with a manager. That's stupid. So we went back to long term and then eventually we brought in some more short terms and then eventually I said, I can't do any more single families. Let's go get an apartment building. And then we went from there.

Yeah, good old real estate, right? Gotta love it. I, I think the cool thing about it is it's just the only investment class that I know of. Maybe there's someone out there that knows of a different one, but it's the only one that I know of that no matter where you are in life or, or whether you own the property or you're renting it, everyone is somehow financially connected with real estate, whether their parents are owning the home and they're staying in their parents home or they're renting or whether it's a short term rental or a long term rental or whatever happens to be. And so I love that about real estate. Makes me feel a little more secure. You know, it's a great asset class and a lot of good stuff today, Luke. A lot of great, great tips. I know you've got much, much more that we could jump into, but as we kind of wrap this up, wanted to ask you real quickly that the title of the podcast is Short Term Rental Riches. And a lot of times when people hear the word rich, they think of just the financial side of it. But that's not all life is about, right? Not just finances. So wondering if, if there's something in your life that maybe, you know, a new.

Way that you know, something new that you've implemented or a new way that you're doing something that's really impacted your life in a non financial sense.

Yeah, I thought about this and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't come up with a good answer. But so I'm gonna go a couple different directions. Number one, physical fitness obviously gets huge for me. Well, the kids in the family are always number one, period. My daughter just turned five and it's just incredible.

That's cool.

So that is it, period. But as far as like selfish stuff, you know, I'm a huge runner and running is, is, is, is real. I, I, I owe in my opinion, my work ethic or they, maybe they go hand in hand to the discipline that running has taught me. I've done 27 full marathons. It's just, it's one of the, it's my thing. I do it every morning and I get out there and I listen to books and crush it and, or at least I feel like I'm crushing it. And.

Yeah, so I owe a lot debt of gratitude to running and what it's taught me as far as discipline is concerned. And I don't know, yoga, I think that's probably more your style. It seems like you're a very spiritual guy and I am into yoga as well. I actually just finished Deepak Chopra's new book. Was not that new. Came out last fall. Called Abundance, which was. Which was wonderful. I did. You didn't ask me for a book. Book recommendation.

But book recommendations, always welcome. Always welcome.

I'll throw another one at you. Speaking of riches, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. That, that book got me out of the I'm supposed to be poor for the rest of my life thing because that's, you know, kind of how I was raised where you just, you know, you. We're never going to have money and it's just the way it is. So that's another book suggestion. You didn't ask me, but I love books.

No, I love. I love books too. I, you know.

Yeah, they're just. It's. It's amazing how I try to read every morning. You know, it's amazing how you can just. You can pick up a book and you can learn someone's life lessons in just one book. You know, someone could spend their whole life researching just one topic and then they share it all with you in one book. And so they're just super, super. I love them. Well, awesome having you on today, Luke. Tons of great advice. I love. I. I loved all of it. The running too, is. Is fantastic. Also. I also try to run quite a bit and you know that that runner's high that they talk about is a real thing. You know, it's. It's a lot of times when I'm dreaming about the. The things that I want to achieve as well. And so. Well, how can everyone find you? You guys have a lot of good resources out there. What's the best way for someone to connect with you guys?

Yeah, we're around, you know, the short term shop, obviously. Avery's real easy to find and in my podcast, short term rental management, I'm not really much on the social media. Avery handles all that stuff or the somebody does anyway. I don't know. But.

You can email me lukeshorturnshop.com I would be more than happy to. To talk to anybody and a big fan. Tim, appreciate you having me on and thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks again and thanks again for the professional radio voice that's much appreciated.

Yeah, I had to work on that, you know.

Just kidding. It just happened. But anyway, thank you, man.

Until next time. Thanks, Luke.

Thank you. Take care.

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