How to Manage a Short Term Rental in Broken Bow: The Complete Owner’s Guide

Avery Carl [00:00:02]:
Hey guys, it’s your host Avery Carle with the Short Term Shop. And I’m really excited to dive into the Broken Bow market with you guys. We’ve got 10 episodes on everything you need to know about investing in short term rentals in Broken Bow. A couple notes that I want to give you guys before we get started. Any up to date purchase prices or income numbers on this market you can find on our website theshortermshop.com and if you’re ready to buy with us in any of the 20 markets that we work in, not just Broken Bow, if you want to work with one of our agents in any of those markets, you can email us at agents the shorttermshop.com be sure to follow us on YouTube and Instagram and Facebook at the Short Term Shop and of course join our Facebook group. It’s called Short Term Rental Long Term Wealth. It’s just me and 60,000 of my closest friends in there talking about short term rentals all day, every day. Again, if you need anything from us, you can email us@agentshorttermshop.com let’s dive into Broken Bow.

Avery Carl [00:01:11]:
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Short Term show special episode series on Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Got a few familiar faces here. You guys are all familiar with Kathy and we did have Wilson Van Hook on a previous episode, but Wilson, go ahead and introduce yourself one more time.

Cathy Craig [00:01:28]:
Yeah, absolutely. So we started out as self managers in the Broken Bone market and from Oklahoma, myself and, and just kind of been around the area for a little while and that’s where we decided, decided to start our journey and then things were going well for us and so eventually we started our own management company, Vandell Vacation Rentals. And now we manage a handful of properties in the area. So we’ve, we’ve kind of seen it all at this point.

Avery Carl [00:01:53]:
Awesome. So today we’re going to talk about, and thank you so much for coming on by the way. Today we’re going to talk about common occurrences when you are managing properties in this market. So there’s a number of things that, that can happen in any market, but there’s, you know, certain things that might come up more often in some markets than others. So I think my first question here is are most of these properties on wells and septic or are they on city water and city sewer?

Cathy Craig [00:02:22]:
A lot of them are on septic in this market. So that’s something that you have to. City water?

Wilson Van Hook [00:02:27]:
Yeah, city water and septic is the main thing.

Avery Carl [00:02:31]:
So you’re not dealing With a lot of. Not a lot of wells, really.

Cathy Craig [00:02:34]:
No.

Avery Carl [00:02:35]:
That’s good because that’s an extra thing. So do you ever run into any problems? I know a lot of city slickers out there get real weirded out by a septic system, so is that anything to be scared of, really?

Cathy Craig [00:02:46]:
Not really. It’s just. It’s just an extra thing to be mindful of. You want to just routinely get the septic pumped so that it doesn’t get too full. A lot of, you know, our properties, maybe that’s something to just get done once a year. But it’s just one of those kind of routine maintenance things that you want to keep in the back of your mind when, you know, when is the last time that I got it pumped? And make sure that you do get it pumped. Otherwise, you know, it’s like toilets can start backing up and you’ll start seeing signs inside of the cabin. And that’s not really a situation that you.

Cathy Craig [00:03:19]:
You want to find yourself in.

Wilson Van Hook [00:03:21]:
The good news about Broken Bow is pretty much everybody has a septic. So it’s so common that everybody knows about it, they know how to deal with it. It’s not. It’s not unusual where in some places that you might be the only one with a septic or you might, you know, have a bunch of cabins or houses that don’t have septic and then you get woman septic and nobody in town knows what to do. So it’s. It’s not hard to find, you know, people that can work on them and. And the companies that dump them and all that stuff. It’s pretty easy process.

Avery Carl [00:03:51]:
Awesome.

Wilson Van Hook [00:03:52]:
I think.

Avery Carl [00:03:52]:
I think septics get such a bad rap because people get so worried about it and it’s really like, not a big deal. I don’t think I’ve ever. Well, the house that I live in now is not on septic, but other than that, I don’t think I’ve ever lived in or owned a house that wasn’t on septic with the exception of my beach places. But anyway. All right, so here’s another question that I have surrounding that kind of toilet, water pipes scenario. So is this a market where I know it can get cold, but it doesn’t get cold? Like it doesn’t get freezing and snowy all the time like in. In Northern Market. So is this an area when it does snow, things kind of.

Avery Carl [00:04:32]:
The town kind of shuts down. Maybe the power goes out, stuff like that. Or is it a little more equipped for that?

Wilson Van Hook [00:04:39]:
Well, so it does get cold and we have sudden freezes sometimes, which can cause issues. But the snow is, you know, minuscule. It’s enough to get everything white. But typically no car problems or getting places problems like you would have in another place. And it goes away pretty quickly. So, you know, it, it, I mean, it might last for a couple of days. It’s not all that common. People do freak out and start to clear out the grocery stores like it’s Armageddon.

Wilson Van Hook [00:05:14]:
But other than that, it’s okay. Last year we had a flash freeze and we did have some people that were out of water for a couple of days. But the people were managed to handle it and the water companies were, you know, got on it pretty quickly and it unfroze within a day or so. But I mean, it can definitely can happen.

Cathy Craig [00:05:36]:
Yeah, it, it can definitely happen in this market because Oklahoma weather is just wild. Like it can be like the summers are really hot and then winter time, like we just get some really weird weather sometimes. Like, you know, maybe like once every like seven or eight years, we’ll have a pretty bad freeze come through the state where everything will be iced over for five days plus. But I know that in Broken Bow last year, we actually, like Kathy said, we did have things frozen up pretty good for a couple of days at one point. And there were owners that were, you know, having to deal with a lot of problems with guests during that time because we will lose power and water and things like that during those instances. But as far as the roads, yeah. Like, I agree with Kathy that they’re pretty on it for getting things cleared up. Like it’s not.

Cathy Craig [00:06:32]:
This is not Maine, this is not Minnesota. This is nothing like that. Like the roads will get cleared up pretty quickly and you can still drive on them and people can typically still get around, get around town and things like that. Yeah. And as far as car problems as well, I also agree, like, that’s not really an issue that we run into. It’s more of sometimes we’ll have. We’ll lose power and water for a couple of days.

Avery Carl [00:06:57]:
Gotcha. So at least they’re not trapped in the cabins like in some other markets that we’re in because they can’t. Because it’s steep and they can’t get down when it’s a little icy. So we’re really just dealing with maybe like a snow a year and it just kind of dusts and it may or may not freeze things up. So let’s talk about when, when it’s looking like this is going to happen. So let’s say it’s mid February and it’s looking like, okay, this weekend we’ve got Mike freeze over and guests coming in from Texas, because Texas has had some pretty bad freezes the past few years are like, you know what? Hey, Wilson, I think I want to cancel because it looks like it’s going to freeze. So do we. Are we giving those cancellations and refunds in advance of freezes, or are we just saying, you know, get here if you can get here and then if you can’t, if you truly can’t get here, then.

Avery Carl [00:07:46]:
Then we can refund? Or like, how do you handle that? Because I know nobody wants to come up and get stuck with no power or water, but there’s also no guarantee that that’s going to happen anyway. So how do we handle that kind of thing?

Cathy Craig [00:07:57]:
Yeah, personally, I think it’s too costly to act as travel insurance for those type of instances where something might happen, if something might happen. We’re not giving away money or refunding or doing anything like that yet. And we’re basically just saying, yeah, like, you know, get here if you can get here. And then when the time comes, you know, sometimes I just take those on a case by case basis. And what I’ll do is let’s say that we have some. Somebody that’s trying to come over, you know, a few days in December, and they. The roads are icy and they just can’t drive down these back roads and just can’t make it here. What we’ll do is maybe offer them like a date change.

Cathy Craig [00:08:43]:
You know, I don’t want to just necessarily just give a refund completely, but maybe we’ll offer a date change to say, hey, we’re still going to keep your money. We’re still going to. You’re still going to stay with us. But what we can do is say, you can maybe come again, you know, try to come again in a few weeks or a month or. Or something like that. That’s what I prefer to do. That way, we’re not just out of money altogether. We’re offering somewhere a meet in the middle, because normally they wouldn’t get any money back at all.

Cathy Craig [00:09:12]:
So now it’s like, on our end, we’re saying we’re still going to get the money, but you can still, you can come stay with us, you know, on some days that are open.

Avery Carl [00:09:18]:
What happens if they. Okay, y’ all both do that. So what happens if they say, oh, I want to push this out like a month and a half, and they Push it out far enough that now they’re in that Airbnb or VRBO free cancellation period, and they get their money back anyway. How do you, like, avoid that?

Cathy Craig [00:09:36]:
So what you can do, I’m trying to think about, because, yeah, I’m not a fan of doing that either. But I think there’s. There’s a way that you can. You can structure the payment to where you still have the money, and you do an alteration on sites like Airbnb, and guests don’t have to. They don’t have the ability to cancel for that refund. So, for instance, what I’ll do is I’ll. I’ll kind of just take it as a credit. So, like, I’ll.

Cathy Craig [00:10:04]:
I’ll keep it. I’ll keep the money as a credit, and then I’ll make them. Let’s say they choose dates that are, like, two months out. I’ll make them a special offer on Airbnb, and I’ll say I’ll take $700 off of that stay. Now, you paid that. That next day was going to be $1,000. You’re going to pay $300 for that reservation. So I still have this reservation standing.

Cathy Craig [00:10:25]:
That’s good. I collected my $700. I’m just giving you a credit on that future stay. Now, if they cancel that future stay, they only paid $300 for that stay. And so I still have my $700. Does that make sense?

Avery Carl [00:10:36]:
Yeah, that makes sense.

Wilson Van Hook [00:10:38]:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I don’t know that you can actually do a whole lot about it. What Wilson said is brilliant, but, you know, I take the attitude that I do the best that I can. And then if somebody. Luckily for us, we don’t have a lot of people like that. We haven’t. You know, if you’re. If you’re coming there, you either from Oklahoma, north Texas, and you’re used to weather, you know, we have this.

Wilson Van Hook [00:11:02]:
We have all four seasons in one day, so it’s not uncommon. So I haven’t had to. I’ve only had to deal with it one time. And. And she was super honest about it, so I ended up just giving her money back because it wasn’t worth the fight. You know what I’m saying? Like, it was. It wasn’t a long stay, and sometimes you have to just figure it out and let it go, because if you’re, you know, fighting over a certain amount of money for however many days, it just. You have to calculate it into how much you’re making in an hour, and then just.

Wilson Van Hook [00:11:34]:
Just you know, either fight it or let it go. But Wilson’s idea was brilliant. I’m going to start doing that.

Cathy Craig [00:11:40]:
Yeah, I’d say just like, keep that, keep that initial reservation. Let them cancel the reservation. They won’t get the refund. And then the money will go into your bank account and just offer it as a special offer discount on the next day. That’s, that’s my preference.

Avery Carl [00:11:54]:
Okay, well, that makes sense. Well, okay. So still on the subject of winter weather, are most fireplaces around here, are they gas? Are they electric? Do people need firewood? How do we handle that?

Cathy Craig [00:12:06]:
Most are gas. And for people that are doing new builds, I recommend getting electric because the pilot lights and the upkeep on the gas fireplaces is one of the biggest headaches this time of year. In the winter months, whenever people want to use the fireplaces, the pilot lights are always going out. They always need to be cleaned. Like, there’s just so many headaches and, and just like from a safety standpoint as well, you know, just electric is just going to be safer. You know, you’re not really gonna, you’re not gonna have to deal with a potential gas leak inside of the cabin from the fireplace. So I prefer, you know, if you’re doing a new build, I’d say go electric. But gas fireplaces, you know, it does provide a different type of ambiance.

Cathy Craig [00:12:53]:
And so there, from a guest standpoint, it’s probably a little bit nicer. But my personal opinion would say would be to go electric for firewood. And again, I would say inside of your cabin, have a gas or electric fireplace. Don’t have a fireplace where people need to put the wood in and start their own fire. You can potentially do that outdoors on like a back patio. I still recommend doing electric or gas on a back patio as well. But for a fire pit, we offer firewood as an add on to guest reservations. So we charge extra for firewood.

Cathy Craig [00:13:29]:
We don’t just provide that amenity. But that is a great way to make some extra revenue if you have the ability to provide firewood for people. That way they’re not having to transport it themselves. It’s just at the cabin whenever they arrive. That’s a really convenient thing for a lot of people. And they’ll pay for that amenity.

Avery Carl [00:13:47]:
Yeah, I would too, if it had, if it had a real fireplace. And I think real fire fireplaces just, they, they’re, they open up a lot of ways people can mess up. Like I have a real fireplace in a house. I have. That’s not a rental. And I almost like last year we got there for Christmas and we opened the flu and a whole bunch of dead wasps fell out. Like probably 200 dead wasps fell out of the flu. And we’re like, oh, okay, let’s just light this fire and then it’ll burn up the wasps and whatever.

Avery Carl [00:14:20]:
Well, they weren’t dead, they were just dormant. And we lit the fire, it warmed them back up as if it were springtime outside. And then we had these 200 live wasps and I was flipping out, grabbing the kids running out of the. Like. That’s a really specific thing to happen to one of your guests. And you’d probably have somebody, you know, check on that before. But that’s not even a thing you would think is going to be a problem with a, a real fireplace is that you’re going to reanimate 200 wasp zombies and have to run for your life screaming out into the cold night. But you know, people can forget to open the flu and smoke up the whole inside of your house.

Avery Carl [00:14:59]:
So. And then there’s just the general like fire safety. So I personally, we just replaced last year all of our gas fireplaces with electric because people were. Even though gas fireplaces are easier than regular fireplace and a quote, real fireplace wood burning and the ambiance is nicer than electric, there’s still a lot of ways that people can really mess up. Like they blow out the pilot light and then they start trying to mess with it to turn it back on and then they’ve got gas on in your house and fire and maybe blow it up. We had somebody who said they’re their 18 month old burn their hand on the pilot light and like somebody clearly was not watching. There’s just all kinds of like things and then if you run out of propane. So I agree, electric fireplace is the way to go.

Avery Carl [00:15:44]:
It’s just low maintenance and it really is just the easiest.

Cathy Craig [00:15:48]:
And it’s also nice with electric or gas that you can have a timer on it. So then you don’t have people if some, you know, you can instruct your guests to leave it unattended, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll follow that instruction. So if you have a timer on it, then it’ll get cut off and it won’t be unattended for long. In the instance that somebody does leave it and just head out of the cabin without turning it off.

Avery Carl [00:16:10]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Wilson Van Hook [00:16:12]:
I would say 99.9 of our cabins have fire pits. So if they want the Real fire thing. They can go outside and get that ambiance there. So. And there’s a lot of companies in town that will deliver firewood and management companies will have it there. And so it’s, you know, but we don’t. I don’t leave firewood because I’ve made that mistake of putting a rick of firewood at the beginning of a season and it’s gone in two visits because everybody just burns. So now we just, you know, if they want it, we deliver it.

Cathy Craig [00:16:43]:
Yeah. What we do is we just offer a couple different tiers of firewood packages to each one of our guests. So we say you can get like a small firewood bundle, a large one, or like what we call an extended stay firewood bundle for anybody staying like maybe four or five nights or more. And we just do like 10, 20 and 40 pieces in each bundle. And then we also offer s’ mores as like an add on package. So if you’ve got like a team member in the area that can provide that amenity, then you can also upcharge for things like s’ mores to add on with their firewood. And a lot of guests will end up buying those as well.

Avery Carl [00:17:16]:
Yeah, I think that’s really smart too. And that was actually going to be. My next question was, other than an add on for firewood, are there any other services not necessarily related to fire or winter, just anytime that you might want to make your guests aware of that are available, whether you’re offering them or whether it’s something third party that a lot of guests might like to have. Are there any other things like that that you want to make them aware of?

Cathy Craig [00:17:42]:
So firewood. Yeah, go ahead, Kathy.

Wilson Van Hook [00:17:45]:
So, yeah, there are. There are a ton of things there. So there’s companies that do charcuterie boards. There’s all the different wine places that, you know, I have a list, it’s a scan list, and then I actually have a list in the property that shows all the different things available. There’s people that make cakes, there’s people that do charcuterie boards, people that do balloons, there’s people that do all of those things. I personally don’t do those as add ons for my, you know, to be delivered. I feel like it’s too much for me to keep up with, so I’ll do the s’ mores and I do the firewood. But everything else I just let people, you know, give them the information and let them order it themselves.

Wilson Van Hook [00:18:25]:
But there’s. We’re really lucky that broken Bow is still, while it’s growing, it’s small and everybody kind of takes a lot of personal pride in what they do. So there’s a lot of really good companies out there that do those special things. There’s a personal chef, there’s, you know, all that stuff. So I just give them the information when they first book. So if they want to have that, then they can, you know, plan for it.

Avery Carl [00:18:50]:
You know, there is a company, I haven’t used them yet because I’m lazy, but I did have their founder on the short term show called the Host Company. And what they do is they just go into markets and have all of this, all this third party stuff set up and then you pay them a subscription. It’s something really, really cheap. I think it was like 10 bucks a month to able to offer your guests when they book this menu of things like to coordinate like a private chef or an in house massage or charcuterie boards, things like that. And they do all the coordination and you make like a commission off of it. Again, I haven’t tried it, but I think it’s a super cool concept because I love. I order a charcuterie board. Is it charcuterie or charcuterie?

Wilson Van Hook [00:19:32]:
I don’t know charcuterie.

Avery Carl [00:19:34]:
I think it is, yeah. What? I’ll look it up. So guys, I’m aware if I, if I am mispronouncing it, I’m aware you don’t have to comment in the show. So anyway, I love those. Like there’s a lady here in town that she has the code to my garage and she just goes and puts one in the, in the garage for football Saturdays every Saturday. And I just venmo her and we’re good to go. So having services like that I think really does it, it does enhance the experience for guests. So I think that’s really cool.

Cathy Craig [00:20:04]:
Yeah, I actually was going to bring that up because I listened to that podcast just the other about the host co. So that’s something that we’re looking into now as well where we could just consolidate and make our own kind of online shop that everybody could just purchase add ons at and then we could potentially offer more add ons and get a commission on those things that, those extra things that we don’t necessarily offer now like grocery delivery and you know, other things like that. We could add that on to like a, the host code. It sounds like they may have the ability to, to do all of those things. So that’s something that we’re looking into. The ones that we offer now ourselves are like firewood s’ mores. And then for our cabin that has a heated pool, we offer that as an add on as well. But there are other things that you can do.

Cathy Craig [00:20:49]:
Grocery delivery is probably something that people value in the area for people staying at honeymoon cabins, maybe like a romance package. And we have connections for people that offer those things. So we provide that. We provide that to guests so that they have the option to buy those extra things. But it would be cool to like, be able to offer all of those things ourself and be able to, like, get an extra commission on those other things, you know?

Avery Carl [00:21:14]:
Yeah. I’ll tell you, I stayed in a two bedroom hotel room in Vegas with my husband and kids and my mom a few weeks ago for exp con. And there was a complimentary romance package in there. And it was very embarrassing to like, be because it’s right there on the mini bar with next to the skittles and the cashews and things. And like, it’s awkward when your mom’s there and being like, oh, I don’t know what this is. And then it charges you. The mini bar charges you, like, if you move it, if it looks moved. And even though of course, we did not get involved with the romance package at that point, it was just like a weird topic of conversation every time we were at the mini bar in that hotel room.

Avery Carl [00:21:56]:
So I don’t know about all that.

Cathy Craig [00:21:58]:
Don’t bring your mom to the honeymoon cabin.

Avery Carl [00:22:03]:
All right, so let’s talk about maintenance for a minute. Is there anything maintenance wise that you have to pay attention to here that maybe isn’t a thing in other markets, like carpenter bees or anything like that?

Cathy Craig [00:22:14]:
So as far as. As far as like, bugs, what I recommend anybody in this market do is just set up a quarterly service with the. The company that we use in the area is called four way pest control. And we just set up a quarterly service with them. And I think it’s a must in this market. Just be just the location that we’re at. Like, bugs happen. They will happen.

Cathy Craig [00:22:36]:
You have to get ahead of it, and you have to do preventative maintenance on those type of things here. And then if you get set up on their quarterly service and let’s say a month and a half in, you start seeing bugs in the cabin again, that particular company will come out complimentary since you’re already on their service. And they won’t charge you anything extra to come back out and do an extra spray or something like that. So that’s that’s how we deal with things like bugs, pests. Pests of that sort.

Wilson Van Hook [00:23:04]:
Yeah. Four ways, you know, I mean, sometimes there’s only one game in town, and four way is the best one. Interesting about four way. When you. On inspections, when you schedule an inspection with them for term for, you know, pests, if that person is already on their program, they don’t charge you for the inspection. So they’re a good. They’re a good company and they do a good job. The only thing that I’ve encountered, which is.

Wilson Van Hook [00:23:31]:
I don’t know if it’s an Oklahoma thing or. But to Avery’s wasp comments, we get wasps in the fall, which is kind of weird. So I think it has to do with our weird weather and like, with Avery’s fire. They think they’re dormant, and then it gets hot and they come alive again and it happens quite a bit. So they’re pretty ticked off about it. But, yeah, we’ll have wasps in the fall. So the pest control companies know to start, you know, treating for wasps and making sure that there’s no, you know, place where there’s a hole and they’ve gotten in or something like that. They don’t do a whole lot because the minute they come back alive, it freezes again and they’re back to being dormant.

Wilson Van Hook [00:24:14]:
But it is kind of a weird Oklahoma thing that we have. Have wasps in the fall, not so much in the spring, and mosquitoes. So, I mean, you know, not really a lot of mosquitoes or. But I mean, we have normal bugs. We don’t have anything really. Normal bugs. We don’t have, like, Florida bugs. Not Florida bugs.

Wilson Van Hook [00:24:33]:
Not, you know, like tarantulas the size of your head or anything weird like that. We don’t have anything like that, really.

Avery Carl [00:24:41]:
That’s a little bit boring, guys.

Wilson Van Hook [00:24:43]:
I know it’s. It’s not a. It’s a pretty easy market in that kind of. In that way, because, I mean, we don’t have a lot of bears. I mean, there’s the random bear, but we don’t even have to have bear cages on our trash cans.

Avery Carl [00:24:57]:
There’s one bear. One random bear.

Cathy Craig [00:24:59]:
There’s, like, one.

Wilson Van Hook [00:25:01]:
Yeah. And he lives. He lives with Bigfoot down the road.

Cathy Craig [00:25:06]:
I got a couple of stories that are a little bit. That are slightly less boring. The last time that we were there checking out one of our cabins a few weeks ago, there was just in the middle of the day, there was a raccoon on the back porch. And I know that there have to be guests or other people in the area feeding this raccoon. If he was so comfortable to just come out in the middle of the day and just stand on the back porch. And we were guilty of it. We ended up. We ended up tossing him something to eat.

Cathy Craig [00:25:37]:
Like he was just kind of cute and we just tossed him something out there. But there’s another thing that happened to us. One time we had a guest arrive at a cabin. It was about 8 o’ clock at night, and they messaged us pretty late. And it’s. They said there’s a bat inside of the cabin. So it’s a bat that flew inside of the cabin. And we’re like, oh my gosh.

Cathy Craig [00:25:59]:
Like at this, at the, at the point that we heard about it from them and everything, it’s probably like 9:00 o’clock at night. And we’re just like, oh my gosh, what do we do? This is the first time we run into this. How do we deal with a bat in the cabin? Well, this is a thing that can happen in our market. So there’s actually a guy, he calls himself the Batman. And I don’t know if anybody else calls him the Batman, but he gets.

Wilson Van Hook [00:26:22]:
Everybody calls him that. Everybody calls him that.

Cathy Craig [00:26:24]:
Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to call him the Batman, but that’s what he goes by. And so we called him up and he was like, yeah, I can do like an after hours call for you guys and I can run over there and get the bat out. And so he hopped up out of bed, went over, and it kind of, I think, turned into almost a cool experience for the guests because, like, they got to watch this guy come capture a bat inside of the cabin. So they weren’t too upset about it. And. Yeah, but that can happen. Bats.

Cathy Craig [00:26:54]:
Bats can happen in our market.

Wilson Van Hook [00:26:56]:
So like the Batman. So it’s the. Another great thing about broken bones. We’re such a small niche market for. Or niche market, I don’t know how you say it, for Oklahoma. There’s really nothing else like it. And although we’re growing, growing, growing, growing, everybody’s just like a small town person. So there’s a guy that runs his own security company and you can call him at midnight and he’ll run over there and deal with a guest.

Wilson Van Hook [00:27:24]:
Or, you know, there’s the Batman or there’s the, you know, this person or that person, or there’s always some person that you can get to help you. And everybody kind of takes you on to race. So you know, 90 of my clients don’t live in the state or anywhere near the state. And they don’t really have any problems because they have somebody like Wilson or they have, you know, a list of people that take care of, you know, all of that stuff. And you can pretty much call them, you know, anytime, day or night. I mean, I’ve had things happen and I’ll call somebody and they’ll go out there right then and they’ll be like, hey, I’m charging after hours thing. And I’m like, oh, okay. And it’s like 30 bucks.

Wilson Van Hook [00:28:08]:
And I’m like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, no problem.

Cathy Craig [00:28:11]:
We had to, we had to have that particular guy kick someone out of our cabin. One time that throwing a party and it was, there was some like, violence going on that we noted noticed on the camera. And he ran over there and just kicked him out. Like, but everybody knows his name. Like, everybody knows who he is. So, like, if you ever ask any other owners or anything like that, you’re like, hey, who can do this? Like, he’s the go to guy. He’s like, the guy. Yeah, and he’ll go over there and do it and he won’t charge you much either.

Cathy Craig [00:28:40]:
Like Kathy said, like, you can even get on a service with him. You pay him, I don’t know, like, like 15amonth or something like that. Like, I’ll go kick people anytime you need.

Wilson Van Hook [00:28:50]:
Yeah, it’s, it’s really inexpensive and he just goes over there and takes care of it. It could be anything he’ll take care of, you know, even if it’s something random like, why is this car there? Or, you know, somebody stole my firewood, or somebody’s kid is peeing on my deck. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.

Avery Carl [00:29:08]:
Let him pee on the deck. Just let him pee on the deck.

Wilson Van Hook [00:29:12]:
Yeah, it’s like, you know, just do whatever. But yeah, he’s, it’s really. That’s a great part of this market is there’s so many people that really, this is their livelihood. So that’s, you know, they take it seriously.

Avery Carl [00:29:24]:
Yeah, yeah, I totally, totally agree with that. I like how Wilson’s very casually, you know, we were noticing some violence.

Cathy Craig [00:29:31]:
Well, the reason why I say that is because, like, I don’t want people thinking that we just kick everybody out every single time we notice someone drinking a beer on the porch. Like, we let people enjoy their experience. We saw somebody get tossed off of the porch by another person. So we’re like, yeah, you got to go one’s too Far.

Avery Carl [00:29:49]:
We’Re not throwing people around here.

Cathy Craig [00:29:52]:
No, no, no.

Avery Carl [00:29:55]:
Okay. So anything else? I mean, I think that’s really the end of my questions. And I didn’t really expect this to be a market that had a lot of nuances, but anything else that Wilson, you run into, or Kathy, you run into with your properties that you feel like the listeners could benefit from hearing, like, common occurrences, maybe what you do to prevent batteries from running out in locks or what happens when people show up to a dirty house, anything like that, maybe that’s not technically market specific, but stuff that you deal with, you know, more than one time.

Cathy Craig [00:30:29]:
Yeah. So let you know whenever a guest shows up to a dirty house for us, because it happens, you know, like, I’m sure that you’ve talked about this in other episodes because it happens in every market and everybody’s human. Cleaners can miss cleans eventually. If it’s a common thing that your cleaner is doing, it’s probably time to get a new cleaner. But everybody’s human, so, like, it’ll happen eventually. And, you know, when it’s happened for us, the very, you know, the very first way that we react is, you know, we’re very apologetic to the guests. Let them know, because that’s like. That’s one of the most uncomfortable situations you can be put in as a host is like a misclean.

Cathy Craig [00:31:07]:
Somebody shows up to a dirty cabin. So, like, I’ll be very apologetic and, you know, I’ll probably, you know, and then I’ll call my cleaner and I’ll get them out immediately. And for this market, I. There are cleaners that have larger staffs. And I prefer. I like that because, you know, our cleaner, whenever that happens, they’ll grab three or four girls. They’ll go out and just replace the linens and just demolish it in like an hour or less and just get it completely ready to go. And then what I like to do is just fill out the guests a little bit.

Cathy Craig [00:31:41]:
I don’t necessarily do the same thing for every guest, but, you know, if the guest is just like, oh, yeah, it’s completely fine. I totally understand. You know, I’m like, well, there’s probably not necessarily anything more to do. They saw that we reacted fast, and that’s good enough for them. But if it’s somebody that’s upset about it and I. It’s. They’re noticeably upset about it, maybe I’ll offer to give them a credit towards their dinner, you know, to go out and eat somewhere while their cabin’s getting cleaned. Or if it’s really serious, what I like to do is get ahead of it before guests start making demands for refunds.

Cathy Craig [00:32:13]:
Because guests, when they stay for, at these big cabins, you know, let’s say they paid like 700 for the night to stay there before they come at me and they start saying, I want this whole night refunded, I want 700 back. I try to get ahead of it a little bit and say whenever I know the guest is really needing something and I say, why don’t we offer a refund on the cleaning fee to you? And then that in their mind, instead of me saying, I’m offering you 300 back, I say I’m offering the cleaning feedback. Now they’re registering that that’s a fair trade off. They’re saying, okay, the cabin was unclean, they’re offering me the cleaning feedback so I’m saving my 300. And then that’s a fair resolution to them. And usually like, you know, we’ll still get a five star review out of that gu, but it doesn’t happen often. You know, it, it can happen and it’s an uncomfortable situation to be in. But the important thing is just, you know, don’t panic, don’t go yell at your cleaner because people don’t like to be talked to like that.

Cathy Craig [00:33:12]:
Just deal with it and, and try to get through it, you know, in the best way possible. Do you have anything to say about that, Kathy? I don’t know if you’ve had that.

Wilson Van Hook [00:33:20]:
I do the same. It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while I think it’s only happened to me twice now. I have an auto text that goes out on the day that somebody is checking in and I say, hey, it’s the, are we ready? Is the cabin clean? Just in case, like something has happened, then it triggers them, oh cool, I gotta go do it, or whatever. The times, the two times it’s happened to me, it was just, they just made a mistake and I’ve just bought the client, I’ve just bought them dinner. You go have dinner on me while you, while we do this. And it’s been fine. I’ve never had a real issue. But like Wilson said, the another, the good news is everybody is pretty much local.

Wilson Van Hook [00:34:10]:
So if you need that done, they’ll get over there and get it done quicker. If you need somebody to take sheets or towels or whatever it is, one time, somebody over, I don’t know what they put in the toilet, I don’t know what toy or whatever, but it Got into the closet and got everything just destroyed. And within an hour, my people were there cleaning it up and replacing everything. And all the guests could say was, oh, my God, this is amazing. You know, things were getting it done so quickly. So, you know, it’s. Yeah. And.

Wilson Van Hook [00:34:42]:
And the other good thing is, is that, you know, if you have an issue, and this is something that I’ve really found in Broken Bow versus a couple of other markets that I’m in, is I had an issue one time where the people could not stay at my property, and so I needed a property for that night, and I just reached out to a couple people, and they’re like, yeah, you know what I’ve got? Yeah, send them into my cabin. Here’s the code. You know, you just. Just, you know, reimburse me for the night, and we’ll just move on past. Down the road. So it’s a really good community in that people will really help each other if there’s a. You know, if something happens, somebody just can’t stay there for whatever reason it is. And I don’t even remember the reason why they couldn’t stay there.

Wilson Van Hook [00:35:32]:
I forget now. But there was some kind of issue with the. Oh, the refrigerator wasn’t. Something was wrong with the refrigerator, and they had all this food, and so I was like, okay. Just, you know, and. And so it worked out.

Cathy Craig [00:35:44]:
Yeah. We have, like, three or three or four really good Facebook pages that people can join for this market. And there. There are always other owners and people that service this market willing to help. So in those, like, crazy instances, you can. You can almost always within, like, 30 minutes, find somebody to give you the answer, like, the answer that you’re looking for. Like, hey, I need to relocate a guest. People will jump on it so fast and be willing to help.

Wilson Van Hook [00:36:12]:
Yeah. When it froze last year, one of my cabins, there was a. Some piping that was freezing. And I made a couple of calls, and I had two guys out there with heaters, you know, and freezing the pecs, and just, you know, it’s. It’s. That’s really good there, and it makes for being in that market really wonderful.

Cathy Craig [00:36:33]:
So, yeah, we. We had a guest call us recently, just a few weeks ago, and they were staying at the cabin, and they call me up and they’re like, hey, there’s a light bulb out in the bathroom. And my first reaction, I was like, you got to be kidding me. Like, this person didn’t message me on the platform on the ota. And they called me to tell me there’s a light bulb out. But this is an example of one of the things that can happen during a guest day. And every guest is different. Some people are more needy than others.

Cathy Craig [00:37:10]:
So I guess the light bulb was out in the area that was like right above the toilet. And this is a five bedroom cabin. It has five bathrooms. And in my mind I’m like, if I were staying at the cabin, I would just use any number of one of the other bathrooms. Or like, I would. The other lights in the bathroom are still working and everything, but I had to like, fill out this guest. And they, they really wanted somebody to come over and like, replace the light bulb. So I gave them the code to the.

Cathy Craig [00:37:36]:
You know, before bothering my cleaner, I gave them the code to our cleaning closet. And I was like, hey, can you, you know, check if there’s a light bulb there as a replacement and just replace it yourself if. If we have a light bulb there? So we did that first. They checked and we didn’t have any light bulbs in the closet. And so I was like, okay, well, you know, what, what is your preference? Like, how would you like for us to deal with this? Would you like for us to have somebody run over and fix it, or are you okay to make do until you check out? And they really wanted somebody to come by. So we’ve got a great team set up. And so I called up one of our girls on the cleaning team and I was like, hey, I know you’re gonna hate me, but I need you to do a little service call for me and run over there and replace this light bulb. And she did it.

Cathy Craig [00:38:18]:
And. But the point is that, like, there are a lot of those little things that come up and you can prevent them. So in the future, you know, after. After an occurrence happens like that, you know, I take that information and I’m thinking, well, if we would have just kept light bulbs in the cleaning closet and make sure we had those stocked there, we would have never had to bug our cleaners about it. And it’s the same way for, like, batteries running out in the lock during a guest day. If we have batteries somewhere at the cabin, the guests can replace it if they need to. And if they get locked out, what we do is we put a little lockbox outside of the cabin somewhere with a physical key in it in case the batteries die while the guest is out of the cabin, they get back and they can’t get in. So those are things that you just want to, like, try to foolproof the place as a host to Just be ready for, like, anything, anything.

Cathy Craig [00:39:14]:
Any of those little things that can go wrong at the cabin. It’s always better if the guests can deal with it instead of like you constantly having to send somebody out there or tell the guests, sorry, we don’t. We don’t have a way to deal with that. Like, just deal with it until you leave. If you can foolproof the place, it’ll be a lot easier to get through guest days for those needy guests.

Avery Carl [00:39:34]:
Yeah.

Wilson Van Hook [00:39:34]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:39:35]:
Sorry, guys. I’m getting over being sick. We had to cancel all our recordings last week. People who were listening because I had no voice. And now I’m having to, like, mute and unmute to cough and all that fun stuff. So anyway, anything else that you think we need to touch on that we haven’t in terms of just general things that you will run into more than once in this market before we go, I think we got everything.

Cathy Craig [00:39:58]:
Maybe the only other thing that I could think of, we kind of talked about freezes that can happen the wintertime and stuff, and power going out. I would say that for summertime, try to get some preventative maintenance done on AC units. Probably in May before the summertime gets really crazy, kids get out of school, and you have a busy summer calendar. I would probably say get a checkup done on your AC unit because when the AC goes out in the middle of summer, that is a really big headache to deal with. And that’s not something that you want to have to deal with during a guest day. But that is. That’s probably the only other thing that I could think of that would be a good tip for hosts.

Avery Carl [00:40:39]:
Gotcha. All right, so if that is it, we’ll go ahead and go, guys. If you are interested in going ahead and speaking with Kathy about maybe moving forward with buying a property in the Broken Bow market, you can email us at agents the shorttermshop.com and we will get you hooked up with her. Or we’ve got a few more ways that you can just learn more if you want to. If you’re not quite ready to go down that road, you can join our Facebook group. It’s the same title as my book, Short Term Rental, Long Term wealth. Or every Thursday, we have a live Q and A and you can sign up for that@strestions.com thanks, guys.