Luke Carl [00:00:03]:
Welcome to the Short Term show from Blue Ridge, Georgia. We will cover everything you need to know, including buying, holding, managing from a distance, raising rents, renovating and how to rent it when you are not using your very own vacation home in the North Georgia mountains. For more information on current purchase prices and income data, please visit theshortermshop.com welcome to the Short Term show special episodes from Blue Ridge. Great to be here. Great to be here. Short Term show from Blue Ridge North Georgia mountains. Happy to be here with the greatest of all time, the Short Term Shop. I’m the director of education and I have a podcast called Short Term Rental Management.

Luke Carl [00:00:58]:
My name is Luke, I do have Yak. He is a fantastic real estate agent in the market and we have a client, Melody, who is a rock star in short term rental hosting and we’re happy to have you here today. Today we’re going to talk about things that happen regularly, what to do when you get some weird stuff going on in vacation house and particularly in the mountains of Georgia. So let’s go with with bugs. Let’s start with bugs. So my bug system is get the exterminator over there once a month. Some exterminators want to do every three months. Okay, that’s fine in a primary home, but when it comes to rental real estate, and especially in a piece of rental real estate that is being, you know, used on a short term basis, two, three nights at a time, bugs and reviews, they don’t really go hand in hand, right? So a bug is going to get you a bad review.

Luke Carl [00:02:03]:
So talk to your, talk to your exterminator. I do have several podcasts on this subject as well. Going to plug my podcast against Short Term Rental Management and some exterminators will say, sorry, I only do once every three months. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t hire that person. But they will do what’s called a retreat, you know, so you just got to call them periodically if you’re on a quarterly basis and say, hey, can you get over there next week on this day and get it retreated, you know, that kind of thing. And but a lot of times, especially in mountain markets, you’ll be able to find an exterminator that will do once a month, which is ideal. And you are hopefully looking for somebody who understands the door codes. And of course in a market like this where everything is a door code, that shouldn’t be too difficult.

Luke Carl [00:02:47]:
But I would definitely have that conversation with them while you’re interviewing. Hey, are you going to be cool with like me sending you like an ical, having your own door code to go in between guests, etc, that kind of thing. Melody, what have you run into with your, with your pest control folks?

Melody [00:03:03]:
Yeah, I do the same thing, monthly pest control service and it pretty much covers a lot of stuff. And I haven’t really had an issue with guests running to bugs. The only thing that I ran into was wasps and hornets and that was because there was a nest nearby at a neighbor’s house.

Yok Re [00:03:22]:
So.

Melody [00:03:22]:
So the pest control service people were able to identify it and remove it as part of the service. And yeah, it’s nice because if you ever have an issue and you have the monthly service, they’ll come out and it won’t be an extra charge. And then, yeah, for me scheduling them, I have, I just have them call me the beginning of every month and then I’ll tell them to come at like a date where I have a turn. So it’s pretty easy. Yeah, Yep.

Luke Carl [00:03:50]:
You want to make everything as simple as possible. If they’re making you like, you know, call them every time that they need to get over there with 48 hours notice or something random and annoying like that, it’s just not going to work and you’re going to end up hating this, they say. I think that’s the most important thing to take away from today’s call. It’s not about the annoying bug guy, it’s about fixing it so it’s no longer annoying. And it’s like that with every aspect of landlording. Yach, talk to me about what bugs in general you got in the area. What do you have, you know, carpenter bees? Do you have scorpions? What are we looking at?

Yok Re [00:04:22]:
All the above? Yeah, no, we, you know, definitely, you know, number one, look, I tell everybody this is, you know, this is North Georgia and this house is made out of wood, so termites, you know, I mean, you know, some people don’t classify. I mean, it is a bug, but it isn’t, you know, the biting kind that, that your people are going to be, you know, your clients or your renters are going to know much about. But, you know, every system around here, you need to have, you know, the centricon system going around your house. You know, that’s a yearly thing usually to set that up, it’s about 6 to $800 a year to maintain those centricon traps. Once a year they come back out, they rebate the stations, usually about half that much. So if it’s 600 to set up, it’s usually 300 to retreat and that goes on annually and you know, get that termite bond then moving on. You know, the next probably, you know, bug that you have to worry about is going to be the carpenter bees know, and again, it’s not something that’s going to necessarily bother your people as much as it. They can be somewhat destructive.

Yok Re [00:05:25]:
And I don’t know the science about it. I don’t think the scientists know the science about it. And what I mean by that is why somebody’s house, right. You know, somebody’s house on. That’s sitting right here. Cabin gets just hammered with carpenter bees and the house next to them doesn’t. And some people say it’s the type of wood, the type of build, the way it’s finished. You know, maybe it’s the type of stain, the type of paint.

Yok Re [00:05:49]:
I can tell you I’ve seen carpenter bees go through all sorts of paint, all sorts of stains. Carpenter be traps tend to work when they’re fresh. Again, I say this, it’s. It’s not usually a huge deal. You know, it’s something you have to worry about in the spring. But you know, they’re boring holes in your deck and you know, it can kind of become an issue in some instances. But you know, the good thing is the exterminators and can come out there. There is some sort of topical spray that they can treat your house with.

Yok Re [00:06:16]:
Some people say it works great. Some people say they haven’t noticed it work at all. But again, carpenter be something you have to look out for. You know, your standard wasps, bees, ants, you know, anything else, you know, the, that you would see anywhere can be there. Scorpions. You know, they’re the little tiny scorpions, like the size of a nickel, you know, smaller than a quarter, you know, smaller than a, than a roach. Quite frankly. Those.

Yok Re [00:06:40]:
I’ve seen them in probably 1% of the cabin, so I don’t see them that often. But I do see them and I, I think the cabins that do tend to have them. They, they will do that monthly treatment and it doesn’t take any additional service to kind of COVID that and usually knocks those out. But you know, carpenter bees are really kind of. Carpenter bees and termites are really things a homeowner needs to concern themselves with the most. And then obviously the annoying ones like wasp and whatever, you know, you have to consider those as well.

Luke Carl [00:07:11]:
Yeah, yep, absolutely. All right. Yeah. Again, consult with your professional pest control folks. Carpenter bees are a pain in the rear end, but a lot of times you can’t really do anything about them. You can stand on the front porch with a beer and I rolled up magazine and swat at them. I’ve done that before. They’re.

Luke Carl [00:07:30]:
They’re actually. Oh, one more thing on carbon dies. They’re harmless. If a guest messages you and say, oh, my goodness, there’s these big bees hanging around the porch. Bumblebees, they. They do not sting. Again, not legal advice of any kind. It is possible for the male to sting.

Luke Carl [00:07:46]:
I’ve done a bunch of research on this, but it is extremely rare. So, you know, having them. I kind of enjoy having them around. They’re pretty, but they will eat the crap out of your house. All right, let’s move on to a dirty house. If you’ve got a situation where a guest shows up to a house that hasn’t been turned. Now, this is not as nearly as common as it used to be. When I first started, that was the thing, you know, you were always kind of worried, oh, my God, is this guest showing up to a dirty house? Because you, you know, you get busy and you forget to check with your cleaner and this and that.

Luke Carl [00:08:17]:
But today there’s so many scheduling apps and softwares, and your management software should basically kind of keep track of this for you. So it’s not nearly as big of a deal, or I should say, it’s not nearly as common as it used to be, but it is certainly still a big deal. And if the guest shows up to a dirty house, you. You made a mistake. You’ve got to get that fixed on the front end. So if. If you’re only gonna let that happen once, and then you’re gonna say, oh, man, how do I implement something to make sure that doesn’t happen again? Again, Your property management software, there’s websites that’ll do the scheduling for you, like Resort Clean and Turno. But if it does happen, you’re gonna need, you know, a backup plan.

Luke Carl [00:09:00]:
And usually what I’ll do is I’ll reach out to the guests and feel them out, because some guests are going to be, like, absolutely furious. Like, you ruin their entire life. And some guests might not even really care that much. They might be like, hey, we just showed up. It looks like they forgot to clean. We’re washing the laundry. You know, we’re washing the sheets. We just wanted to let you know, you know.

Luke Carl [00:09:19]:
So my piece of advice there, again, on the landlord side of things, is to just take that case by case and feel out how angry they are. And I’ll be honest, I am just as happy. I’M usually more happy to give them a little bit of concession when they’re cool. If they’re, like, furious and, like, want to just, I mean, just absolutely furious, I’m just like, dude, hey, man. You know, I don’t say this, obviously, but we’re human, we make mistakes. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s possible. Same thing could happen at a hotel. You show up.

Luke Carl [00:09:51]:
I have that happen all the time. I have it happen all the time at hotels. I show up and they say, oh, sorry, your room’s not ready. And I’m like, what are you talking about? I just had this happen at Disney with the kids. We got all the way down to Disney and they said, sorry, your room, we gave it to somebody else. And I’m like, what? And so they put us in another room that didn’t have the bed situation we were looking for, for the kids. And, and then we had to move the second day to a different room because the room that they gave us in in, you know, exchange for messing up the first time, somebody else had to check into that room. So we couldn’t even stay in that room.

Luke Carl [00:10:27]:
And so, you know, I mean, these things do happen. You got to do your best to kiss their rear end. If they do show up to a house that has, it is dirty, that’s not, not good. And again, you’re, you’re only gonna let that happen once and then you’ll start putting a system in place, an operating procedure for when that, if that does happen. Melody, have you had that happen before?

Melody [00:10:50]:
Luckily, no. Yeah, I think early on, right when we started set up a pretty good system with my cleaner and my cleaner is very reliable, so luckily haven’t had to deal with someone coming into a dirty house. But there has been instances, just a couple, where like maybe cleaning. There’s like a last minute mishap and my cleaner wasn’t able to make it due to an emergency, so I would just get a new cleaner, like a backup cleaner. Since I’ve interviewed a lot, I have a lot of them just like, just their numbers and how they did in their interviews, so I could trust them. And if I do have a new cleaner coming in just for like that one turn, then I would just let the guests know as well, apologize for any delays and then let them know that we had a new cleaner come in and to let us know if there’s anything that was missed. So then we could be kind of on top of the quality of the clean.

Luke Carl [00:11:45]:
Yeah, love it, love it. Yeah, you know Again, handle it the best way you can if and when that does happen but you know, you will likely that system will kind of evolve over time and a lot of that will also have to do with how your cleaner wants to handle that as well. Hopefully your cleaner is cool and wants to get over there and fix it. Go ahead.

Yok Re [00:12:03]:
Yeah, be humble. You know, I think that’s the first thing. I think everybody, especially when you get started out, you want to fly off the handlebars over, you know, fly over the handlebars over, over every little complaint you get. You know, be calm, be humble and if somebody says hey, it’s, you know, there’s beer cans all over the place, thank them, apologize, thank them, ask them if they don’t mind, take pictures and send them to you because that way it kind of covers you and your cleaners, right? Because you never know who’s fishing out there for, you know, the old, the 10 off or whatever. So kind of ask for proof because not only are those clients kind of calling you out, they’re also calling your cleaner out. So but again, approach it with a little bit of humility. I think that’s always the best, you know, firm but, but, but be humble.

Luke Carl [00:12:51]:
I agree. Oh my goodness, I can’t believe this happened. How, how could this happen? How can I? And again, if you knew, if, if you knew it was going to happen, it wouldn’t happen. So you know, we’re not telling you to lie here. Let’s move on to some weather in general. Yak. What is the weather as far as severity look like and, and what times of year do about what our hurricane.

Yok Re [00:13:12]:
Season’S real, real small, basically non existent. We don’t have earthquakes so it really is snow is the only thing you have to worry about here that, that really is it. You know, no sort of weird landslides or anything like that. You know, snow is it and the past few years, you know we, we end up getting you know, two to three flurries a year and maybe one or two of those will have some, some staying power to be honest with you. You know, could you be in a neighborhood Melody her properties in Cherry Log and there’s a lot of small shaded roads and if the ice, you know, if some of the paved areas do get iced over, that ice could be there for you know, 24 to 48 hours. But typically speaking I would say there may be one, maybe two days a year where it gets a little dicey and then you just kind of have to work it out right. Each, each situation is different you kind of have to, you know, you do have to be unlucky for that one day to kind of be a turn, you know, to be honest with you, in this market. But it can happen.

Yok Re [00:14:20]:
It certainly can happen. I can think last year there may have been one day where it was kind of dicey, maybe two, but that’s really it. And snow’s the only weather that you got to really concern yourself about here.

Luke Carl [00:14:33]:
Yeah, if I see snow coming or like, it’s inevitable or, you know, it also depends on the property. If you’re up a mountain and you got snow, nobody’s getting there, you know, so. And then we got to talk about whether the guest, you know, is messaging you saying, hey, I noticed it’s going to snow. Can I get a refund? So again, this is an operating procedure. You got to put that in place when you’re new, you know, you just got to kind of roll with it and see where it’s going to take you in the future. The where, where I’m at now after many years of doing this is if. If the house. Most of my mountain properties are, you know, somewhat steep areas, and some of them are really steep, but if, if I see it’s going to snow, I’ll reach out to them and I’ll say, hey, it is going to snow.

Luke Carl [00:15:15]:
And there’s a really good chance you’re not going to get to this property. So we’ll go ahead and offer you a full refund because if they do show up, you know, pretty good chance they won’t be able to get there. But, you know, that’s. That’s a super steep roads, which are not all that common around here. So, Melody, have you. Have you had any snow? It. I mean, for. Snow’s rare in general.

Luke Carl [00:15:35]:
We do want to hit that. That point home. It’s not like going to happen really. And if it does, that’s when, you know, people freak out in the south if it snows. So, Melody, have you had any snow issues?

Melody [00:15:47]:
Yeah, similar to what Yak said last year. It wasn’t really that big of an issue. Maybe like two times that we had to deal with snow. But yeah, for me, what was most helpful when dealing with that stuff is that I joined local Facebook groups. So, like our community has like a Facebook group, for example, and they’re very communicative on that to tell you which roads you can take, which ones aren’t iced over, which ones are blocked off. And then also following the local weather app is helpful. For me, I got WSB TV Weather. But yeah, I also communicate with my neighbors a lot, so they also let me know kind of the status of the roads, and I’ll communicate that to the guests.

Melody [00:16:32]:
And yeah, just in case I do have, like, instructions in the winter that I. I put in at the beginning of every winter for my messages regarding, like, driving precautions, what to watch out, what watch out for, how to use certain areas of the house for winter, and then also leaving faucets on a slow drip to help make sure that the pipes don’t burst.

Luke Carl [00:16:57]:
Yeah, you know, I’m. I’m from up north and I met a girl from the south and we moved to Tennessee and this was years ago. I don’t live there anymore. But she said, it’s going to be cold tonight. We need to drip the sink. And I’m like, what in the hell are you talking about? I thought it was some sort of, you know, voodoo. I don’t know what, like she was making it up and like a seance. Yeah, yeah, let’s summit.

Luke Carl [00:17:21]:
Let’s get out the Ouija board here. You know, I’m like. But it turns out it’s true. And what it is, is it relieves the pressure in the pipes and basically makes it so that it’s not impossible, but much more difficult for ice to form if it gets down below 32 degrees. And that is a real thing. I will ask my guests if it happens to me. And again, it needs to be under 32, like, during the day, which is going to be very, very rare. You know, maybe at night you’re going to get down that low occasionally, but by.

Luke Carl [00:17:47]:
By lunchtime, it’s back up to 40, 50 or whatever, you know, in most cases. So drip in the sink. That is a real thing. But again, as far as discounts and refunds, et cetera, at least with the weather, I’ll. I’ll go ahead and get upstream of that and offer it to them before they get there if it’s really bad. Otherwise, no way. I mean, unless there’s an actual evacuation of some sort, or the weather forecast, weather service says, hey, you know, you. We can’t.

Luke Carl [00:18:12]:
We’re going to shut this area down because there’s more snow than we can handle. Then you got to be careful with folks that are looking for an excuse because they got in a fight and they decided not to come, or they ran out of money and they can’t afford it, or who knows? And they’re. They’re trying to make up some excuse as to get the money back. So it is. It is a fine line, at least for me, between my cancellation policy and, you know, giving folks the benefit of the doubt most of the time. Me personally, I’m happy to just refund people. Cancel, you know, let them cancel on their end and give them a full refund for. For honestly, almost any kind of issue.

Luke Carl [00:18:53]:
Now, again, that’s going to come down to your landlording strategy. Everybody’s going to handle that stuff different as far as giving refunds, discounts, et cetera. Not discount, now that I’ve used that word. I do not use that word. I don’t like that word in my listings whatsoever. I do not want to give the impression that there is some discount to be had at my place. My price is my price. And if you’re looking for discount vacations, you’re in the wrong place.

Luke Carl [00:19:21]:
Yak. Did you have something there?

Yok Re [00:19:22]:
Let me. Let me ask you a question. Let’s just say you got to check out on Sunday, all right? And that Saturday, late Saturday night, storm rolls in, 6 inches, 8 inches of snow on the ground. Your folks come to you and say, hey, can we have another. Can we have another night to let this thing melt off? How do you approach that? They want a free night.

Luke Carl [00:19:42]:
Me, 100. I will. If it’s not booked, I have no problem doing that whatsoever. And I’m pretty much guaranteed a good review there. A happier guest, a safer guest. Safety is always number one, period for me. And I wasn’t gonna make any money that night anyway, you know, so I got no problem with that. Melody.

Melody [00:20:02]:
Yeah, I would do the same thing. If it’s unpassable, even if someone is coming in the next day, I would have them stay another night because it’s dangerous for them to leave and it’s dangerous for someone to come, and it’s also probably dangerous for the cleaner to come. So I wouldn’t want someone to show up to a dirty house either. I just. I would prioritize safety for sure.

Luke Carl [00:20:23]:
Absolutely. Safety first. Safety first. Mountains and snow, you know, they don’t generally mix. Of course. The roads around here are not all that bad in most cases anyway, but batteries on the lock. All right, now, here’s. Here’s the old foolproof trap on that one.

Luke Carl [00:20:43]:
You just have a lockbox on the front of the house somewhere with the key to the lock. And if your batteries die, you got a backup plan? I go further than that. We do check our locks once a week, every Monday to make sure the battery level is okay. Matter of fact, if we are. And again, I should. I’m getting ahead of myself, I would assume. I’m just assuming. Everybody already knows that these fancy deadbolts that are out there today are battery operated.

Luke Carl [00:21:08]:
They’ll connect right to your phone, they’ll connect right to your management software, they’ll change codes for you and they will tell you what the battery level is. So we will check ours every Monday. Anything under 60%, I’m actually going to write this down. I’m on a battery level. I’m going to bring that back up to myself later. Taking notes on the show. Thank you for your time. Anything under 60% gets a new battery.

Luke Carl [00:21:32]:
Just shoot the cleaner a text say, hey, it’s time for new batteries on this one. For a couple of reasons. I just don’t like being any lower than that. For one. And number two, once it gets to like 50%, it shoots down a lot quicker than when it’s between 150, when it’s between 160 and 150% somewhere in those, not 150% but 100%. And 50% goes pretty slow once you hit 50 and then a little lower, man, it can go like that. So 60% is my number there. And then of course you got a lock box.

Luke Carl [00:22:04]:
Just a good old master lock combination pad lock box somewhere on the house. One pointer on that. We’re just talking old school vacation rental stuff now. But one point on the, on the lockbox that I want to point out. Well, two things actually. Number one, don’t put the lock box with the key in it anywhere near the front door because people are not that bright a lot of times. And they’ll go up and try and put their door code into that lockbox and then they’ll send you a message at 11 o’ clock at night and say, hey, we can’t get in the house. So I like to put the key lockbox.

Luke Carl [00:22:37]:
You know, generally what I like to do is put it directly behind the front door. If there’s like four by fours or six by six holding up a porch or something like that, put them back here so that they can’t see it as they’re approaching. But it’s also easy to find another trick. Here’s another cool trick. I put another lock box in the house with batteries in it so that if, if the guest opens the lock to get the key goes in, then I can say, hey, there’s a lockbox in the house with four triple double A’s. And then they can, if needed, re. Re. Juice up the, the, the lock.

Luke Carl [00:23:13]:
Because here’s why if you leave batteries just laying around in the house, they’re gone. Are they going to get used in and remotes or whatever it is? I don’t think, you know, people aren’t. I, like, give people a benefit of doubt. Nothing malicious here, but batteries do walk away, flashlights walk away, that kind of thing. So any other. What did I miss, Melody? Any other tricks on the front door lock?

Melody [00:23:33]:
No, I do the same thing, except I didn’t. I didn’t do the one inside the house for the batteries. That’s smart. Yeah, I have a spare lock box or a spare key lock box under my deck. So if it ever actually turns off on them, then they can get that key and use that code. And yeah, I have the Schlage lock. So that one, the app gives me a notification if it’s low battery. And also the cleaner will also see that it’s low battery because the lock blinks red.

Luke Carl [00:24:04]:
Anything else, Jacques? We’re good.

Yok Re [00:24:05]:
I would just add to the battery storage. Be kind of OCD about it. I know I am on my battery storage. I don’t like to keep them in a, you know, a cold part of the house because that’ll drain it. And I just like to make sure my new batteries are new. Everybody’s got different battery drawers and I go over to somebody else’s cabin and there’s eight different brands in this box. And how do you know which four of these are new to put in? You know which. Which one of these double A’s are the new ones? Be.

Yok Re [00:24:32]:
Be careful how you store those batteries because some of them you put in. You’re like, all right, we put in new batteries, but two of them were at 30% because they got pulled out of a TV remote. Be a little OCD about how you store and manage your batteries. I know that seems trivial, but I’ve seen it too many times where people are putting bad batteries and, you know, swapping out batteries. So have some hidden on site that your cleaners can get to. And I, I tell people, keep them in a place where it keep. Stays kind of warm, not necessarily, you know, in a storage shed outside or something like that.

Luke Carl [00:25:05]:
I do Amazon subscription for batteries and my cleaners get a big box of batteries once, once a month and just in case, because I do not want to show up at one of my houses and say, you know, the kids need. I got little kids, so they always need batteries. If my kids can’t find a battery, then the door, the deadbolt, sure as hell can’t find a battery. You know, so I put them on an Amazon subscription. Let’s talk about swimming pool maintenance. Completely shift gears here. Not many pools in the area. Yak.

Luke Carl [00:25:35]:
You want to give me a speech on that? Do we even need a speech?

Yok Re [00:25:38]:
I don’t think we need to. Need to go too far into this. I mean, I’ve sold a couple pool cabins, but I wouldn’t even call them cabins. You know, big eight bedroom houses that had them. But for the most part, you know, in our culture, if you want to call it that, we’re not like the Smokies where there’s a ton of these little indoor cab or indoors pool things. We really don’t have those. So I don’t think this has to be. We don’t need to expound upon it too much.

Luke Carl [00:26:05]:
Okay. Firewood. Do we, do we have many wood burning fireplaces? Oh, yeah, yeah. So, Melody, do you have a wood burning fireplace?

Melody [00:26:15]:
Yes, I do. And I have it too.

Luke Carl [00:26:17]:
You say that again.

Melody [00:26:19]:
I have a fire pit too.

Luke Carl [00:26:20]:
Okay, so what do you do about firewood? Are the guests bringing it themselves or do you have it delivered?

Melody [00:26:24]:
Yeah, it’s a BYO firewood policy, so bring your own firewood and I make that apparent in the welcome message. But I, my neighbor does sell firewood, so I give them his contact number and then he will deliver it as well. And it’s a pretty good price compared to buying it in store. So, yeah, it’s pretty.

Luke Carl [00:26:45]:
Have you looked into your neighbors at all, like enemy methoding and are they doing the same thing you are, or do they offer firewood or are you not sure?

Melody [00:26:53]:
I don’t remember.

Luke Carl [00:26:55]:
Yeah, but if your system’s working for you, so no reason to fix it.

Melody [00:26:58]:
Yeah.

Luke Carl [00:26:59]:
Okay, cool. Personally, I am, I am anti fire. I am fire free at all my properties. I just don’t like drunk people making fires in my properties or outside of my properties. So that’s my policy. Melody’s policy works for her and there, you know, it runs the gamut. So any other thoughts there on wood burning?

Yok Re [00:27:20]:
I don’t, you know, here, you know, usually going to have a gas fireplace inside and you know, outside you, you have a kind of a 50, 50 shot on whether it’s, you know, if there’s an outdoor fireplace, whether it’s going to be gas or wood. But I don’t really, I think, you know, your, your firewood policy, your personal policies. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s just like your, you know, politics or what truck you like to drive or do you let pets at your house, everybody’s free to kind of distinguish the way they want to run it. I know there’s a lot of people, they’re like, by God, we’re going to a. I want to have that smell of a burning fireplace in the house. That’s going to, you know, that’s what I live for. And then some people are just like, hey, I’m good with some Christmas tree lights where the fireplace would be. Cut it on, looks good.

Yok Re [00:28:07]:
I’m fine. Heaters on. I’m not worried about it. You know, keeping the house warm. So it’s different strokes for different folks. And you know, whatever makes you happy, whatever you feel comfortable with, go for it.

Luke Carl [00:28:18]:
Yeah, you nailed it. It’s the. It’s the what truck you drive thing, you know. So in other words, if you’re selling folks a Ford for three night nights, then don’t make it look like a Chevy. This is all it is. You just got to decide what kind of thing you’re selling here. Paint that picture, set the expectation and you’ll be fine. I am absolutely anti fire.

Luke Carl [00:28:38]:
I actually have in my house rules 250 if we find that you started any kind of flame anywhere near my property, including a candle, because I have I ever charged that? No. And I’d like to never have to do that. But I just want to make it perfectly clear that fires are not cool anywhere near my houses. And Melody’s having great success with good old fashioned wood burning. So end of the day, as long as your system is working, it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Right. That kind of thing. What else? What do we need to touch on here? Well, let me ask you about Melody.

Luke Carl [00:29:11]:
What’s your kid system? Do you have any kind of, you know, kid stuff in the house at all?

Melody [00:29:15]:
I do not.

Luke Carl [00:29:16]:
Okay, well, that was. That was easy. I do have pack and plays and I do have high chairs if the property is big enough or, you know, I mean, I’m actually even kind of considering putting a high chair in my littler properties. And here’s why. I was always kind of anti. I didn’t want to deal with cleaning it and making sure it was safe and then worrying about a kid hurting himself or anything like that. But I’ve had back. Back years ago, back in my Tennessee days again, we.

Luke Carl [00:29:46]:
We had a second home in the beach and we had babies and we used to go down to that beach house on the weekends all the time. And we got a high chair and I left it there and forgot about it. And you know, the season went on. This was years and years ago. The season went on. We went back down for the weekend and there was that damn highchair in the corner. And I was like, I forgot that thing was here. And I have not heard about it.

Luke Carl [00:30:14]:
And I’m here to tell you that was, I don’t know, four or five years ago. And that same high chair is still sitting in the corner and it still looks brand new. So I have now decided that that high chair is good because it’s got four years worth of proven track history, track record. And I’m looking into maybe expanding that into a couple more houses because, again, I’ve got little kids and, man, when you show up and there’s somewhere to put that kid, to give him some food, it is nice. But you got to be careful with that stuff. Obviously. Talk to your lawyer. And then one more thing I’ll talk to say about that is a lot of.

Luke Carl [00:30:45]:
A lot of markets will have a rental place and where you can call. You know, you give your guests a phone number or website and say, you know, call these folks, they’ll bring baby items that whatever you need and you rent them and then when you leave, they’ll come and get them. So if you’ve got like, say, a whole family where the kids come in a bigger home or something like that. Yak, I’m sure you’ve got a recommendation for somebody if they needed a baby rental place or of sorts.

Yok Re [00:31:12]:
Sure, sure. We’ve got a couple of those type suppliers around here. You know, if you know what any odds and ends, you know, anything from baby chairs to people need a. You know, if you want somebody to have a charcuterie board when they show up, you know, we. We can cover you.

Luke Carl [00:31:26]:
I got to tell you, I would be in on that if you had that charcuterie. How do you say that? I don’t know. But whatever it is, the board with the meat and cheese in your guidebook and I was coming to your house, I’d call that place, I’d be like, hey, set me up with the best board you got. I want it on football Saturday. And. And that’s. That’s cool, you know. So what did we miss? I think that the.

Luke Carl [00:31:47]:
The point here is if Racist and Blue Ridge. Melody.

Melody [00:31:53]:
No, I think that was a lot. That covered a lot of stuff.

Luke Carl [00:31:56]:
Yeah, I got one. I got one. What about tree trimming? Does that ever come up? Do I ever have a tree that needs to be taken down or. Have you ever had to take a tree down for any reason?

Melody [00:32:05]:
Yes, I have.

Luke Carl [00:32:07]:
Why?

Melody [00:32:07]:
It was leaning towards the house. So we do get strong winds sometimes here, so trees can fall, so you don’t want it to hit your house. And also branches that are too low, I’ve had those trimmed as well. Yeah, it’s just good for peace of mind and safety as well.

Luke Carl [00:32:26]:
100%. Yes. Peace of mind is safety. Make sure you get. If you got a tree that looks sketchy, get it inspected. The wood tree guy will come out and I’m sure Yak’s got a tree guy or two. He can, he can give you a reference and, and they come out and inspect it and they’ll say, yeah, this thing needs to go, or no, it’s healthy and it’ll be just fine. But when it comes to mountains and in this area of the country, lot of trees, A whole lot of trees, so keep that in mind.

Luke Carl [00:32:52]:
And then speaking of, I thought of another thing. So where there’s a lot of trees, there’s a lot of power outages. Yak, how often do we have in power outages? Is there a website I can go to to check on the power outage, etc.

Yok Re [00:33:05]:
Well, depends who your carrier is. I mean, some of them do have, you know, a coverage map. Some of them do not. It also, power outages can, can vary. I, I can tell you there are days where you’re sitting around and you’re like, man, why don’t. Why is there no power? And the wind happened to blow over 20 miles an hour for two seconds somewhere in a rotted tree fell down and then you’ve got snow on the ground and you still have power. I, I can say that the power outages here, we’ve got a variety of, of suppliers can be kind of random, to be honest with you. And, you know, whole house, generator.

Yok Re [00:33:46]:
Is it something you have to consider? I would say, yeah, consider it. Consider it. Is it mandatory? No, Melody, I don’t know. Have you had any power outages there? I would guess a day or two.

Melody [00:33:58]:
Yeah, I have had some for sure. They, they definitely range in the duration, but usually it’s not more than like a few hours or even less than that. Yeah, it just depends. But yeah, I, I was considering the generator as well, but I opted not to because I, I was there living in the house during powder power outages and I was like, it’s, it’s doable for a short period of time and I just make sure that the guests have what they need in that time. So, like, make sure they have warmth Flashlights and like some games, some like board games to keep them entertained. And there is a wood burning fireplace in mind. So yeah, I’ve actually had one guest actually enjoy their experience during the blackout. So yeah, it was interesting to see.

Luke Carl [00:34:47]:
That’s where you got me. You got me there. Because if the power goes out, my house is kind of screwed, you know, so. Because I don’t have a wood burning fireplace. So that, that, that’s something to consider. And then again you mentioned flashlights and, and yeah, so what I’ll do is again I’ll subscribe on Amazon for some flashlights and make sure the cleaners are getting or even if a lot of times depending on the house, you can ship it straight to the house or you know, depends on your situation. But you know, I’ll ship like 10, 10 flashlights every three months, give or take or, or maybe twice a year just to make sure because they do, they do get up and walk off and it’s nice to have those if the power does go out. You know, if you’ve ever been through that 9 o’ clock at night with the little kids trying to get them in the bath and there’s no light and it’s a pain in the rear flashlight comes in very handy.

Luke Carl [00:35:36]:
So anyway, all this stuff is way more fun than the day to day nine to five that we deal with in our day jobs. Right. So if you, if you want to get into the rental real estate business, we would be more than happy to help you. We are the best in the business and we are so grateful for you for coming to hang with us and, and talk about rental real estate and vacation rentals. And Melody, thank you so much for, for coming and sharing your story and unless somebody has something that we forgot. All right, cool. We will let you go and we will be back in the next episode to talk about pricing here on the short term show.

Melody [00:36:15]:
Thank you.

Luke Carl [00:36:21]:
Sam.