How to Choose the Right Galveston Short Term Rental (and Crystal Beach Too!)

Avery Carl [00:00:02]:
Hey guys, welcome to the short term show Special Episode Series 10 Episode Deep Dive on the Galveston and Crystal Beach, Texas markets. Couple notes before we dive in. If you guys are looking for current income and current prices of properties in this market, you can get all of that info on our website@theshorttermshop.com you can set up searches just like you do on Zillow or realtor.com all those places. And we do have all the income data as well, so be sure to check that out. Also make sure you check out our other special episode series. So we have 20 markets that we operate as real estate agents in and we have 10 episode series just like this one. On all of those, make sure to check out the short term show as well as the short term rental management show. And be sure to join our Facebook group.

Avery Carl [00:00:45]:
It’s called Short term Rental Long Term Wealth. Same title as my book. Now let’s go ahead and dive in. Hey guys, welcome back to episode two of the short term show special episode series on the Galveston and Crystal beach markets. We’ve got two great guests today to help us talk about what to buy in this market. And we will start with Kelsey on the intros. Kelsey, you want to introduce yourself really quick.

Kelsey [00:01:19]:
Hi, yes, my name is Kelsey Ardwin. I am a short term shop realtor in the gallon, Crystal beach market. I’ve been helping investors like myself find houses in this market for two years now. And I own two in Crystal beach myself and one in the Smokies.

Avery Carl [00:01:34]:
All right, thanks, Kelsey. And next we have Shelly Larson. Shelley, introduce yourself real quick.

Kelsey [00:01:39]:
Thanks.

Shelly Larson [00:01:40]:
My name is Shelly Larson and I’m a real estate investor. I have a little mix of long term and some short term. Been doing it for maybe 20 years, but not seriously until maybe the last two. And I have two in Pres beach.

Avery Carl [00:01:56]:
And they’re maybe casual about having been an investor for 20 years.

Shelly Larson [00:02:01]:
Yeah, well, not a ton. Just dabbling for 20 years.

Avery Carl [00:02:05]:
I don’t know, man. I think that makes you pretty damn experienced. Well, we, yeah, I think, I don’t, I wouldn’t say dabble like you’ve either done it or you, you weren’t and you were doing it. So give yourself some credit. 20 years is. Is some serious credit.

Kelsey [00:02:22]:
Yeah, Kelly knows what she’s doing.

Avery Carl [00:02:25]:
All right, so guys, today we’re going to talk about what to buy. So in the previous episode we talked about why would you look in these markets for an investment? And today we’re going to talk about what. So we touched a little bit on the different areas in the last episode. But let’s recap on that. Kelsey. So what are the. The main two areas that you can invest in this market and are there any pros or cons to each?

Kelsey [00:02:53]:
So you’re talking about Galveston versus Crystal beach or.

Avery Carl [00:02:57]:
Yes, unless there’s another area that I’m unaware of. You, you tell me.

Kelsey [00:03:00]:
I recently have looked at numbers for Surfside in addition to Galveston and Crystal beach. And I do think there is some reason to consider that as a market where I didn’t think so about two years ago, the numbers are looking comparable or slightly better than Crystal Beach. And that’s. If you look at our numbers, this is really kind of getting far in the weeds. But like in Jamaica beach, there’s a lot of canal front properties and so the numbers are higher. And in that way I think it drives the average up essentially because you have all these waterfront areas. Well, Surfside is a small area and so there’s not a whole lot of houses and most of them have a view. And so because of that, it, it kind of drives the average up a bit.

Kelsey [00:03:47]:
So, you know, I think you can do well in all those areas.

Shelly Larson [00:03:50]:
Okay.

Kelsey [00:03:51]:
But specifically within those areas, the general rule of thumb is that you want to be walkable to the beach. My definition of walkable is that you would not be crossing a two lane highway where people are going 50 plus miles per hour. So a neighborhood that connects to the beach is typically what you want to do. Um, now Crystal beach does have drivable beach. Galveston, don’t really do that. Surfside, it’s drivable, but typically you want to be south of Highway 87 or south of San Luis Termini Pass Road, southernmost Tulane Highway.

Shelly Larson [00:04:27]:
Okay.

Avery Carl [00:04:28]:
And are the guests that you get going to be different coming for different reasons in either place?

Kelsey [00:04:35]:
Now, one thing I didn’t mention is that while I typically don’t recommend Bayside and Crystal beach because you kind of look around, it doesn’t really look like vacation for the most part. In Galveston, there are some really, really nice bay homes. Actually, the number one property in Galveston is this really gorgeous bay front property. So you can do that right there. You asked. Repeat your question.

Avery Carl [00:05:05]:
Oh, sorry.

Kelsey [00:05:06]:
Are.

Avery Carl [00:05:07]:
Are there. Are the tourists coming for different reasons in any. In either place, or are they all just kind of coming for the beach?

Kelsey [00:05:12]:
They’re coming for vacation. There are people who are staying. That’s where I was going with it. There we go. Who will stay on the bayside and they will bring their boats and they’ll use like A boat slip that’s at the property. A lot of people who stay in Jamaica beach want to do that. So some people are coming for fishing. Like maybe the whole family is coming for beach, but you know, maybe the dad and uncles or whoever else are gonna go on a specific fishing trip while they’re there.

Kelsey [00:05:41]:
They’re all really just coming for a weekend or week long vacations.

Avery Carl [00:05:45]:
Okay, and let’s talk about the size of the properties really quick. So Shelly, what size is yours?

Shelly Larson [00:05:52]:
Mine is a 5 6. It’s got a sleeping like it’s got a family room upstairs that’s converted to like a sleeping loft. So we market it as a six on the OTAs and then we just purchased another six. And so yeah, large designed really to host, you know, like extended families, you know, where we bring grandma and grandpa and all the grandkids and everybody stays like family reunion type thing. And I think that’s, that is like a big draw to our market. You know, like it. I mean my perspective is from having a larger sized property. So I see like, you know, groups, like big families and groups.

Shelly Larson [00:06:31]:
But I do think that is a really good draw to Crystal Beach. Each there just aren’t. I kind of like looked at the numbers. There’s like a disproportionately high number of three bedroom properties versus four and five bedroom. So I mean it depends on your budget. Right. And what you have to spend. Obviously you can get into a three bedroom for a lot less, but you will have a lot more competition.

Shelly Larson [00:06:54]:
So I think if that is kind of what your budget dictates, just you have to be aware that you really need to like amenitize your property really well. And unless you can get pretty close to the beach, like, you know, because in our market like beachfront is kind of a built in amenity. Right. So. But there aren’t a ton of three bedrooms really close to beach. You tend to have larger properties there. So yeah, you just want to make sure that you have a lot of competition and you need to make your property stand out and like Kelsey often says, make people feel like there on vacation. Right.

Shelly Larson [00:07:29]:
Not. It’s not just a place to sleep. If you want your property to do well, if you don’t want to have to do a lot of work to make your property do well. If you can get a four or five bedroom property, it gets easier as, as the bedroom count goes up to, you know, fill your. Fill your house. Really.

Avery Carl [00:07:44]:
Okay, that’s, that’s cool because a lot of people get a little Scared to go with the bigger properties. But you’re saying that you found that to work better.

Shelly Larson [00:07:52]:
I think, I think it’s easier to, I think it’s easier to book your house. And I, even if, even if your budget dictates, like if you could afford a little bit bigger, but it’s farther back from the beach, I think that, you know, that can still do really well if you have the proper amenities. You know, you don’t have to be beachfront to do well if you can, if you have a little bit bigger property. And not saying that a three bedroom can’t do well, I’m just saying I think it’s more work.

Kelsey [00:08:19]:
What we’re, what we haven’t said is that I really don’t sell other than some very, very well priced two bedroom villas with a loft which really sleeps like a three bedroom. Other than those two bedroom, like almost like a tiny home. I sell exclusively three bedrooms and up because we do have insurance costs and we do have property taxes and those eat out of your budget and so you’ve got to have meat on the bone after that. So that necessitates that you really buy three plus bedrooms. And my goal is always to have the way I hear families. I’m a native Houstonian, worked here my whole life and I was in college and a lot of times families come down. So it might be you coming down with, you know, your mom and dad and your kids. It might be that you’re splitting one with, you know, your best friends.

Kelsey [00:09:13]:
I try to make it where you can for sure sleep two families. So if it’s a three bedroom, I try to do a king bed in one room, a king bed in another room, and I try to bunk out the third bedroom. If that’s all you’re working with. If it’s four bedroom, I’ll do that same combination and then the fourth bedroom I’ll either do, depending on the size and what we’re working with, something that is somewhere in between. Maybe it’s a queen over queen bunk, maybe it’s, you know, two side by side fulls. Something that caters to either teenagers or, you know, other adults. If there’s a different mix of people. The bigger the property generally the better in this market.

Kelsey [00:09:52]:
I own a four bedroom and I just bought a five to six bedroom.

Avery Carl [00:09:55]:
Okay, awesome. And I think the bed configuration is important too because when we didn’t have kids, I would look at that and say, man, if a bunch of adults are traveling together, why would they want to sleep in the same Room with like two queen beds in there. That’s weird. I don’t want to hear other adults breathing during the night. But now that we have kids, when I’m looking for a short term rental like we rented in Indio a couple of weeks ago with my parents and my brother, I was specifically looking for a property that had at least three bedrooms, but one room had two beds because I don’t like being in a separate room from my kids when we’re in a strange place. Plus all those properties have pools. So I wanted to like have the kids lock down, for lack of a better word, make sure nobody’s gonna accidentally sneak out to the pool at nighttime. Not that they could, but.

Avery Carl [00:10:39]:
So I like to, when we’re traveling, have the kids in the same room with me. Not that they, they sleep with us at home too.

Kelsey [00:10:44]:
They’re spoiled.

Shelly Larson [00:10:45]:
Like, they’re like, mama, can I sleep with you?

Avery Carl [00:10:48]:
And I can’t say no. But I now I look for that to have, you know, two, at least two queens in one of the rooms.

Kelsey [00:10:54]:
For that reason, I think that really considering who is going to use your property and how you’re going to use it is really important. Like that third bedroom, if it has a balcony on it, it’s not going to have bunk beds in it. Most likely that’s not how I’m going to set it up. I don’t want kids to have. As a mom myself, I’m not. I think about how my own kids would use it and I wouldn’t want my kids to be accessing a balcony without parents knowledge in the middle of the night or something. Or like I have a bedroom on the first floor. I don’t set that up to be teenagers mostly use it so it doesn’t have direct access to the main house.

Kelsey [00:11:33]:
And we’re very clear about that for that reason. So you have to think about how people use spaces and I think that goes unthought about a lot of times when somebody is figuring out how they want to put furniture in a house from afar.

Avery Carl [00:11:46]:
You got something, Shelly?

Shelly Larson [00:11:47]:
Yeah. I think in Crystal beach it’s just really important to really think about your bedroom configurement configuration, you know, like how you use your rooms. If you have like a four bedroom, like it’s like what Kelsey said, okay, if you get a three bedroom, you definitely want to market that to two families and you want to try and make sure that with at least two of those bedrooms you can try and fit king size beds in those bedrooms. I really think you will Handicap yourself. If you put a queen size bed in either one of those like adult sleeping rooms. And then like if you’re going to get a four or five bedroom, again, like think about how you’re going to set it up to host extended families. So like as many king bedroom or king beds as you can and then offer like one or two spaces for kids. And you know, like whether you have like one dedicated room with bunk beds or also like if you have a big enough king bedroom where you could do a king bed and then like twin over twin built in bunks.

Shelly Larson [00:12:46]:
Right. Or full over full built in bunks so that a whole family can stay in that room. But yeah, the number of king beds I think is really important without just like using up all your bedrooms and putting king beds in.

Avery Carl [00:12:58]:
You’ve got to have a king. You got to have kings. At least one. But preferably if, if it can even remotely comfortably fit a king in a bedroom, you’ve got to do it. To me, queen beds are one person beds.

Shelly Larson [00:13:09]:
Yeah, yeah. Like if you, if you have a, a room that’s tight with the king, but you can get around it, you know, and room to move, do the king better.

Kelsey [00:13:18]:
I have, I have one bedroom in my first property and it really like, it would be really tight with a king. I’m like, we’ve left it alone. We’ve left the queen. But I wish I could have a king in there. I really do.

Shelly Larson [00:13:30]:
Yeah.

Kelsey [00:13:31]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:13:31]:
Always get a king if you can. Is the rule of, my rule of thumb when it comes to beds in bedrooms. So let’s talk about, so we talked about, we like the bigger properties, so that’s good information. I’ve seen a lot of people posting in Facebook groups and stuff about looking at condos in Galveston or townhomes. Does, does that work here? There’s some markets like Panama City beach condos are great. Myrtle beach condos are great. Gatlinburg condos are not great. What, what does it look like here?

Kelsey [00:13:58]:
I don’t sell them and it’s not because I refuse to help people buy them. There’s a variety of communities where, you know, townhomes condos, where when we first looked into this market, you know, at, at those. We ran into time after time, there was a pending lawsuit. There were. The financial stability of the condo unit was just not good. It wouldn’t have been. It’s not a good situation to get into. And I think beyond that, I just don’t think that Texans are condo people.

Kelsey [00:14:32]:
I really don’t. I’ve never lived in a condo my whole life.

Avery Carl [00:14:35]:
That’s genius. That’s actually genius because that’s really not very Texan thing.

Kelsey [00:14:40]:
Texas, we like to own our own things. We want to own the land underneath. So we don’t live, we don’t, we don’t live like that. And it’s not New York. Like yeah, we want our space.

Avery Carl [00:14:51]:
And so I think that’s a really important thing to remember because yeah, like if you’re doing something in New York, that’s, that’s what it is that everybody’s doing apartment life and. But when you’ve got a bunch of people from Texas coming, these are not condo people. These are, these are house people. And that I think that’s really important to remember.

Kelsey [00:15:10]:
Yeah, I try to steer people away. Your crowd is Texas. And they are. We, we just are not condo people. Never stayed. I stayed in condo one time in Florida to go to Disney World and I also did not pick it. So I didn’t pick it.

Avery Carl [00:15:28]:
Okay, so condos, not so much town. Any townhome action or not really same thing as condos.

Kelsey [00:15:34]:
Any of the townhomes that exist are really like an in town sort of a primary thing. And if you were trying to. There were some townhomes that. There was a client that I helped try to buy one but she got bit out of it. But it was right down the street from Schlitterbahn and it was close to the in town attractions and still pretty walkable to the beach. And so I was like, okay, this is kind of an exception to the rule. And it wasn’t super old, but I mean it was, it was not a beach house. I try to tell people over and over and over, people are coming here for a.

Kelsey [00:16:08]:
What kind of vacation? Not that I do it like that, beach vacation. And what do they want? A beach house. So you need to give them what they want. And if you don’t give them what they want, if you’re trying to do like a slab foundation house and turn the, convert the garage into a fourth bedroom or something and somebody who wanted to do that, you know, they’re going to expect it at a discount. They’re going. If they’re, if you’re not going to give them the beach house, then they want it for less. And I think the in town houses a lot of times compete for your dollars with hotels.

Avery Carl [00:16:39]:
I think that’s really important because you want to buy what the tourists have come to expect. And when tourists come to the beach, like you said, they want to feel like they’re on a beach vacation. And I think where a lot of investors get tripped up is trying to do something a little bit different because it’s cheaper. Like maybe the brick ranch home is significantly cheaper than the bright colored beach house. But they forget the part where the brick ranch home is not going to rent the same way a cool, fun colored beach house is going to rent because it does not give you the beach vibe. You could pick up a brick ranch home and put it in any suburb of Houston or any city in the country and it would feel like you belong there. People want to feel like they’re at a beach house, not inside their aunt’s house in a suburb of Houston. So I think that’s really important to make sure.

Avery Carl [00:17:25]:
I call it scraping the bottom of the barrel price wise. Like shopping out of the bargain bin. Who said that it was Alan in Shenandoah said shopping out the bargain bin, where you’re looking for a good deal. Yes, we all want a good deal as investors. But don’t buy something weird because it’s a bargain. And expect to make the non bargain income that the good beach houses are making.

Kelsey [00:17:47]:
They’re, they’re letting their budget rather than what people want, dictate what they buy. And it doesn’t, I think most of the time work out unless they’ve really amenitized or they’ve got some very out of the box idea. Like they have a whole lot more vision than I do perhaps. But buying the obvious, it needs to look like vacation, needs to feel like vacation. That’s typically a beachside property. You can get away in Galveston with it not being beachside with it being across, but a beachside property that’s furnished with, you know, not wicker furniture. Please stop with the wicker furniture.

Avery Carl [00:18:25]:
That’s actually my next question is surrounding.

Kelsey [00:18:27]:
Decor and like primary home stuff like, like dark wood, espresso colored things. And Shelly, Shelly had an interesting thing in her house. I want to skip shortly back because we’re going to go back to decor. But in Shelly’s house that she bought, the way it was set up, didn’t you have what, two king beds or two queen beds in every room upstairs? Really long wide rooms and configuration in it.

Shelly Larson [00:18:56]:
Yeah, they’re, they’re weird configuration. And there’s a lot of windows, like on windows on the two walls where you could put beds. So it kind of feels like, oh, you have to put the bed, there’s like only one spot. So that would kind of dictate the size of bed that you could Fit, but not really, because you just have to figure it’s not such a big deal to have a bed that goes a little bit in front of a window. Right. So they had. Had like two queens. Yeah, they’d taken up two big bedrooms with, like, two queens in each, like, trying to turn it into.

Shelly Larson [00:19:24]:
What do you call it, like, flophouse. It’s like, you know, it’s just pack them in. Right. And sleep as many people as you possibly can. But that just takes away from the nice feel of an escape and a bedroom where you just want to, like, come in for the day and relax and have a, you know, a peaceful place to sleep. So you’re better off to. Yeah, definitely put the king in there and not pack in the queens and all the bunk beds, like, wall to wall, which a lot of houses do. Yeah, you see that?

Kelsey [00:19:55]:
Another pet peeve I have about beds is that people will do. It’ll be like they put an adult bed in a room. And I know we’re different on the whole kid sleeping topic, but I don’t sleep with my kids in the room at home. And I. I don’t. I don’t want to do that on vacation at all. But I mean, they’re old enough that they’re not just wandering off. Right.

Kelsey [00:20:17]:
Like, you know, I understand pack and play in the room at that age in an unfamiliar property that makes sense to do. But I don’t like it when somebody has a really common configuration is they’ll put a queen bed in a room and then they’ll have like a twin over twin bunk. Or I’ve seen like a triple twin, twin bunk. And I’m like, that sounds awful. That’s my worst nightmare. I don’t want to sleep there. I’m sure there’s lots of people who feel the same way. So I try to prioritize having private adult bedrooms.

Kelsey [00:20:46]:
Even if that bedroom is tight, even if it’s small. I try to give the best views to adults, balconies to adults, like deck access. As long as it can be a private bedroom or like, direct bathroom access. And I give the kid bedroom the opposite of that. Even if it’s the largest room, I’ll bunk out the largest, say, secondary bedroom. But even if it’s a tight one, I’ll do it. That is. That’ll be an adult one.

Kelsey [00:21:16]:
But decor is. People are looking for beachy. A lot of times people come in and they want to do two things that I really hate. I don’t know. I mean, we have investors from all over but sometimes you get the navy blue and white stripes. Like it’s nautical. There’s not a lot of sailing here. Sure.

Kelsey [00:21:35]:
People who do it, but this is not Cape Cod. It just isn’t. It isn’t. And they also want to do these, like, what is it? Like a boho? Like bohemian. Light brown wood and it’s just like a sea of white and then just a whole lot of light brown everything. And I’m like, I don’t even know what room I’m looking at. Is this the third bedroom or the fourth bedroom? How many bedrooms are there? They all look the same, and they don’t look interesting and they don’t look fun.

Shelly Larson [00:22:03]:
Yeah, I started to see some of that, like, that boho decor, which I really love. It just doesn’t feel like Crystal beach to me.

Kelsey [00:22:10]:
Yeah. You know, it’s not that I hate it as a whole.

Shelly Larson [00:22:13]:
Yeah.

Kelsey [00:22:13]:
It’s that it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t fit the market.

Shelly Larson [00:22:16]:
It’s fun and it’s like, kind of eclectic, and it can be colorful. You know, it’s. It’s nice, but it just doesn’t feel like Crystal Beach. And I. I don’t know how to describe that other than just saying it doesn’t feel like Crystal Beach. You know, Crystal beach is like a casual beach market. And it’s not, like Kelsey said, it’s not blue and white stripe, you know, Cape Cod. That doesn’t feel right either.

Shelly Larson [00:22:37]:
Even though it’s beach. Right. It’s a different vibe than, like east coast beach markets. It’s. It’s Texas beach. It’s, you know, fishing, bird watching, driving on the beach, Bright colors, lightwood, you know, I don’t know, like recycled glass light fixtures and just those kind of artsy, funky. A little bit.

Kelsey [00:23:02]:
There’s some of that. Yeah. Yeah.

Shelly Larson [00:23:04]:
You know, you’re. And you don’t want like the Florida, you know, vibe either. It’s. It’s. I don’t know, it just. Yeah. Colors, bright colors, light wood, nice decor. But it doesn’t have to be like over the top.

Shelly Larson [00:23:19]:
But it does need to be nice.

Kelsey [00:23:20]:
It’s not real fancy. I mean, you. You can buy a very fancy house and there’s. There’s definitely demographic for that. I don’t. By and large, it’s not. They’re not really looking for super fancy. They’re looking for fun.

Kelsey [00:23:33]:
They’re looking for you to show them a good time with the house. For me, personally, we just amenitize it.

Shelly Larson [00:23:39]:
Yeah, I get that all the time in my Reviews for my guests. I’m like, oh, your house feels, like, so cozy and comfortable, like home. And that’s what they want, but they want it to feel like a nice home. So, you know, like, you want, like, big, comfortable couches and colorful pillows and, you know, things like that where they can just hang out inside and, you know, they like to watch their. Watch their sports and drink their beer and, you know, just relax and be on vacation. So.

Kelsey [00:24:05]:
Okay, so the core thing is the, like, what. What do they call, like, velvet couches? That’s not crystal beach either.

Avery Carl [00:24:12]:
Oh, yeah, I do. I love velvet couches and, like, maximalist design. But, yeah, that’s probably not a beach thing, especially because sand.

Shelly Larson [00:24:21]:
But.

Avery Carl [00:24:21]:
Okay, so let’s talk about that a little bit. Is this a market? So I had a property when I first bought that, it had laminate countertops and some. And, like, linoleum floor in the kitchen, like, for real linoleum, like, dated. And these add early 2000 blonde wood cabinets. And I was able to rent it like that for three or four years just to get rolling before I eventually updated it. Is this a market where you have to get rid of that stuff immediately to be competitive, or can you roll with it? I mean, obviously, we’ wicker furniture, rattan furniture. No, thank you. That’s very golden, girls.

Avery Carl [00:24:55]:
And we want to, you know, have, like, nice, comfortable furniture. You don’t want it to be that dated. But is it something that you can roll with it the way it is or we need to update as soon as we buy the property?

Shelly Larson [00:25:06]:
I don’t think you want to roll with that. I. I think you can see. Sorry. I think you can totally get away with updating in, like, not having to just gut a kitchen.

Kelsey [00:25:21]:
Right.

Shelly Larson [00:25:21]:
Like, you could paint the cabinets and, like, freshen them up, put new hardware on them, make them look pretty, and. But then you can’t do laminate countertops, really, if you want to be competitive. And I don’t know about, like, I think you need stainless steel appliances. Really? I. I think. I think you. You can maybe go with that short term if you’re. If you just don’t have it in your budget.

Shelly Larson [00:25:42]:
But I think it will hurt you. Yeah.

Kelsey [00:25:44]:
You’ll have to lower your prices to compete, though. What I like to tell people is that when they’re trying to pick a house, that people who are guests, potential guests, are going to book a house that is as nice or nicer than their own home. So if you. If they don’t have laminate countertops and they don’t have linoleum floors and they don’t have white appliances. They’re probably not interested in your place. If their house at home is nicer, then your house does not feel like vacation to them. So not only do they not want to book, you’re also kind of deciding who your clientele will be. You’re saying at home these people live like this or this is an upgrade for them.

Kelsey [00:26:26]:
And so you kind of have to decide who are you marketing to, Especially.

Shelly Larson [00:26:31]:
If it’s a three bedroom. I just. There’s like so many three bedrooms in Crystal Beach. If your house has laminate countertops and bad floors there, people have way too many options.

Kelsey [00:26:43]:
You could get away with it more. So if you had like a five or six bedroom house. Yeah, you probably. They’re looking for the space and there’s not as many options and so they’ll decide sometimes to not be picky. Okay, on that topic of like big spaces, we didn’t touch on this earlier. There’s a couple properties in Crystal beach where it’ll be like two properties on one piece of land and they have a basketball court and a pool and a big fire pit. And it’ll be like eight bedrooms between the two of them or larger. I’ve seen as much as I want to say 13 bedrooms on one property.

Kelsey [00:27:20]:
And they market it like it’s a corporate retreat or like a huge family reunion location. And those properties are the ones that absolutely kill it. They make the most money in Crystal Beach.

Avery Carl [00:27:34]:
So you, you rent both of them at the same time, Like a little compound.

Shelly Larson [00:27:38]:
Yeah. Okay.

Avery Carl [00:27:39]:
Yeah, I’m sure they do make the most. But while we’re talking about amenities, let’s talk about amenities. So are there any amenities that you need to have that everybody has? Like you just. It puts you on par with everyone else.

Kelsey [00:27:51]:
You have to have a sand shower, just an outdoor shower. Some people are like, almost every house has them, but. But there are a handful who don’t. Like, there’ll be a property that may have gone through a winter freeze and the CPVZ PVC pipe may have burst and they just didn’t reinstall the shower or something like that. Or it’s new construction and it’s not. They just didn’t want to add it into the purchase price. So you have to add it later. But you may not realize as a out of town, out of state buyer that that’s a thing.

Kelsey [00:28:22]:
But you should definitely have a sand shower.

Avery Carl [00:28:25]:
All right, gotta have that. What about hot tubs?

Kelsey [00:28:27]:
I have a Hot tub. And it definitely keeps things booked in the off season. I don’t think you have everybody have them. And getting cleaner to clean it is challenging. It’s not normal like in the Smokies where everyone has one and it’s standard practice.

Shelly Larson [00:28:40]:
I think it’s growing, though. I think you’re starting to see a lot more houses put hot tubs in. Yeah, Definitely think it’s going to get to the point where if you don’t have one, you know, you. It may hurt your book. Okay.

Avery Carl [00:28:52]:
What about pools? Are there many pools out there?

Kelsey [00:28:54]:
No.

Shelly Larson [00:28:55]:
And I can speak to that because I’ve been doing research to put a pool in my house. There are county restrictions, like you can’t permit pools within. You can’t have. If you’re within a thousand feet of the vegetation line or the dunes, you can’t have a pool unless it’s under your house. And then if you’re within 200ft of the vegetation line, you cannot have an in ground pool. So that’s why you just don’t see very many. Like the county won’t permit them. And so, like beachfront houses, they don’t have pools.

Shelly Larson [00:29:26]:
And I mean, if I. I’ve seen pictures of them, but I. Maybe they were done like unpermitted.

Kelsey [00:29:31]:
Yeah. Before restrictions change. Right.

Shelly Larson [00:29:35]:
Because I think that’s what I suspect just changed. So I had a contractor tell me that like the county said, they just changed. So 200ft of the vegetation line, you cannot put an in ground pool in. And so you’re starting to see them further back and they’re under the houses. So people build them underneath the. You know, because all the houses are raised up on piers. So they put them in.

Kelsey [00:29:56]:
In ground under their house, like into the. So there’s pilings that come into the ground and then there’s a slab that’s poured underneath all of the pilings and they like jackhammer into one of the open spaces, like between the pilings, and they’ll put in a pool and then raise up the edge like a foot or two or something to increase the depth. And they’ll do a pool in there. And there’s a lot of houses that have those that they do really well. Also helps if you land is hard to come by. So you might have a great property, but you don’t have, you know, some ginormous side yard. So it allows you to utilize the area underneath your house.

Shelly Larson [00:30:32]:
I definitely think if you’re. If you buy a property further back and you have like, good yard space, if you’re, you know, far enough back from that thousand feet and you can set a pool in that would be a great amenity.

Avery Carl [00:30:43]:
Okay, so we just don’t see many pools around here. So that’s, that’s good to know because in other beach markets it can be different. So that’s definitely an important call out here. Last thing that I want to talk about is hoas. Are there many, Is it, are they typically friendly? Are they like resorts that are built to be short term rentals, or are we typically not buying in HOAs, preferably.

Kelsey [00:31:06]:
Overall, if you have a, if you’re in a neighborhood that has any kind of an hoa, it’s mostly going to be a voluntary hoa. And they’re. You’re basically paying. If you agree to, you don’t even have to pay like 100 bucks a year. And it goes into their fund to help keep like the grass mowed around the entry sign and lights turned on on the entry sign or weed eated around like a beach walk over or something like that. It’s super minimal. Other than those neighborhoods where I’ve talked about there being short term rental restrictions, by and large, they’re not very active hoas unless you see amenities. So if there’s community amenities, like Singing Sands has a community pool.

Kelsey [00:31:51]:
It’s one of the only ones in Crystal beach that does. And then there’s villas at Rollover Bay. And they have, they will, they’re working. They just set up their pool and they have a pond and they have some other things. They have an hoa. So I think in Singing Sands it’s voluntary. So if you want to be able to have access to the pool, then you pay the yearly fee. And then in villas at Rollover Bay, everybody pays.

Kelsey [00:32:16]:
And it’s something like, I can’t remember if it’s somewhere between 600 and 800 a year. Again, our HOAs are low. Texans do not like restrictions. They don’t like overactive HOAs. It just, it’s just not how we do.

Shelly Larson [00:32:31]:
Even though we had one where I purchased until a year and a half after I owned the property. Oh, we’re gonna try and build a golf cart, you know, drive on beach access for golf carts from our, from our, you know, street. Does everybody want to contribute? And I was like, oh, sure, you know, so, yeah, it’s just kind of like a community organized thing that you can or cannot put money in the pot.

Kelsey [00:32:55]:
Yeah, gotcha.

Shelly Larson [00:32:56]:
Community expenses. Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:32:58]:
Okay. So is there anything else in terms of what or where to buy in this Market that we haven’t touched on that you think the listeners would benefit from hearing about?

Shelly Larson [00:33:08]:
Well, I don’t see. I, I think like, you know, it is important. I mean not, you don’t have to totally do this, but to kind of stay as close to central Crystal Beach. You just like, people tend to look there when they’re booking. So the further out you get, like towards Gilchrist, which is like an outlying smaller beach community, which they’re beautiful houses there and I think they can do well, but they’re just harder to boat. So, you know, looking more central, I guess you want to say close to the big store.

Kelsey [00:33:40]:
The big store is my waypoint in Crystal Beach.

Shelly Larson [00:33:43]:
It’s the only grocery store in town. So yeah, the closer you are to the big store, that’s sort of like a thing that people look for.

Kelsey [00:33:51]:
Okay. It’s not that people are just dying to get groceries. What it really has to do with is that people like to navigate Crystal beach on their golf cart. So they’ll drive out of the neighborhood. Like you might, you might rent a golf cart. It might be like 250 for a weekend or like 450 for like five days. And they’ll drop it off at your house. And then most likely you can drive it through your neighborhood onto the beach.

Kelsey [00:34:17]:
As long as you have like drive on access, you can drive it onto the beach. And then we actually have a, like a barrel number list. So like at barrel 50, if you go down, if you drive down the beach and you see barrel 50, it’s a trash barrel, super fancy, right. And it has a number on it on the sign. But if you make a right there or you know, you turn north on that street, you’ll run into, you know, geez, Molcajete Mexican food restaurant up the way or if you turn it, Barrel whatever, you’ll end up at the big store or whatever. So they navigate Crystal beach on their golf carts. And so being centrally located means that they can get to places on their golf carts. Now it’s, it’s 28 miles of beach on Crystal Beach.

Avery Carl [00:35:01]:
Oh, that’s a lot.

Kelsey [00:35:02]:
Yeah. And a lot of people who come from other markets want to know, oh, well this, this one’s Crystal beach and then this one. And you’ll find pinpoints on the map even in Galveston where it seems like it’s a named beach, you’ve been to Hawaii or something. Like you go to certain beaches and it looks totally different. Well, Texas is mostly flat. You get to the coast, it’s, there’s not rocks. It’s, it’s flat, it’s packed down sand. I often tell people that I’m not driving with my three kids to Florida.

Kelsey [00:35:31]:
We’re not driving 14 hours. I don’t care how beautiful the white sand is in Destin. It just isn’t happening. Certainly not on the weekend. I can’t take a weekend trip to Destin. It’s not happening. But. So that would have to be a big vacation for me and my family.

Kelsey [00:35:46]:
But I can go down to Galveston or Crystal beach any weekend I wanted to with my family. And that’s a one hour or a two hour drive, that’s easy. And the sunsets are the same. You’re still enjoying the water.

Shelly Larson [00:36:01]:
Like when you’re looking. Just to keep in mind, I’m sure like Kelsey or your agent would point this out, but it’s just something I notice is if you’re looking at a house that’s on a beach access road, just consider that there’s a lot of traffic that’s going to go by your house. It’s going to be noisy, there’s going to be like big trucks, duallys and things going by at all hours of the day and night. So yeah, that’s something to pay attention to I think. And so you, you know, when you’re looking at the map of Crystal beach, you’ll just see all the beach access roads, which there’s, there’s access for golf carts and then there’s access for like trucks.

Kelsey [00:36:37]:
So Google Maps is your friend. If you’re looking from afar, what you want to do is get on Google Maps and go to like satellite view. So you’re looking at a specific house and you want to ask yourself, well, how do you get to the beach? You know, so you know, you’re looking at it in satellite view and then you can see probably that the road goes straight and it continues the same width when you get to the beach. But you may find that it continues and then it seems to narrow and so you can drop your little yellow guy on there and take a look. And sure enough there will be a sign that says something like golf carts only. Or you’ll notice it’s a walking bridge. So you can kind of verify without actually being present what your beach access is like in that neighborhood.

Shelly Larson [00:37:22]:
I mean, I think some people, they may consider that a bonus. Right, because it’s easy to just drive onto the beach. But yeah, you just have to be know what you’re in for if you purchase a home that’s on a beach access. Okay. Awesome.

Avery Carl [00:37:34]:
Well, guys, thank you so much for all the amazing information. I think there’s a lot of things that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought about that I learned. So awesome stuff. And if you guys, you listener guys are interested in buying a house with Kelsey and Crystal beach or Galveston, then you can email us at agents at the short term shop.com and we’ll get you connected with her. Or if you would like to hang out with Kelsey and Shelley and myself and 60,000 of our closest friends in our Facebook group and just talk about short term rentals all day, you can do that at. The Facebook group is called Short term Rental, Long Term Wealth. Same title as my book right behind me. Or we have a live Q and A every Thursday that you can join@essay truestions.com thanks, guys.

Avery Carl [00:38:13]:
We’ll see you on the next episode.