How to Manage a Short Term Rental in Gulf Shores: The Complete Owner’s Guide

Avery Carl [00:00:02]:
Hey guys, welcome to our 10 episode deep dive of the Gulf Shores, Alabama market. I’m your host, Avery Carle and I wanted to let you know really quick before we get started that we do have some supplemental materials for you to go along with this podcast on our website, the shorttermshop.com. so what we have there is the current purchase prices in this market. So you can set yourself up a search, look at properties, do all that fun real estate stuff like kind of like Zillow. We’ve got it on our website and you can check out exactly how much it costs to buy a condo or single family home or townhouse in the Gulf Shores market right now. Also to go along with that, we have the air DNA data, thanks to our friends over at airdna for this market for the past few years. So you can compare purchase prices versus the air DNA data and kind of do some analysis there. We’ve also got a really cool calculator on the website that I built around short term rental investing to go along with all these things.

Avery Carl [00:00:53]:
Or if you know you want to buy in Gulf Shores and you’re ready to start talking to an agent, you can, you can reach out to us at agents the shorttermshop.com and we’ll get you connected with our agent in Gulf Shores. And last but not least, if you just really like us and you want to hang out with us more, we’d love to see more of you. There’s a few ways you can do that. You can join our Facebook group. It’s called Short Term Rental, Long Term wealth, same title as my book. It’s a community of over 60,000 investors sharing best practices and just kind of being friends with each other. It’s pretty cool. Or if you want to talk to us in person, you can do that every Thursday.

Avery Carl [00:01:28]:
You can, you can sign up@strquestions.com we have a one hour lunch hour, just office hours, where you can ask us anything you want about short term rental investing. So we appreciate you guys listening and please reach out to us with any questions. Follow us on Instagram TikTok Facebook. Join us in our community on Facebook as well and I guess we’ll get to the episode now. Thanks guys. Hey guys, welcome back to another Short Term Shop special episode series on the Gulf Shores market. Today we’re going to talk about common occurrences. So things that you’re going to deal with in this market that are kind of specific to this market that you’re going to have to learn, you know, that are maybe things that are going to happen every year.

Avery Carl [00:02:12]:
Things that happen often for a beach market, just the general things you’re going to need to know about managing your property or managing around things that are going to happen. So we’ve got some of the usual cast of characters here today to help us do that. We’ve got Tim and Ethan. And so let’s. Who wants to start? Let’s start with. I’ll give. Give you guys the floor. Who wants to.

Avery Carl [00:02:31]:
To go over the first comment started off.

Tim Grillot [00:02:34]:
All right, well, good morning everybody and thanks Avery, for having us do this. It’s always fun. So, you know, I guess, you know, Gulf Shores, really, it’s a beach market. So I’m just going to touch on some beach stuff. And I guess one of the biggest things for me that’s different because I own stuff in the beach and the mountains. But saltwater, you know, salt water is in the air. It’s everywhere. And depending on how almost, I mean, if you’re within what I would consider a good distance for being a short term rental, you have to deal with salt water in the air.

Tim Grillot [00:03:02]:
So that attacks some things that you may not be used to dealing with. And I guess one for us, one thing is H Vac. We’re in a condo building, so this is slightly different for houses. And it depends on where, where your H Vac is. Ours don’t get rained on, which is, you know, some people are like, oh, that’s nice. They don’t get rained on, they don’t get weather, but the rain actually helps wash the salt water off. So in our building, if you don’t, you need to rinse those off like once a year or more and just plan on the outside unit not lasting as long as it would in like Michigan or something. Somewhere that doesn’t have salt water in the air because they get corrosion and it eats everything up.

Tim Grillot [00:03:40]:
So that’s, that’s one thing for us is like we’ve kind of added that to our list as we have our handyman go over there and hose off our unit a couple times a year and then really we just plan on replacing it. And unlike a lot of places like H Vacs and I’m not a licensed H Vac anything. So don’t come back and say, well, Tim said to do it this way, you know. But you do seem to get away with just changing the outside unit more often, not having to do the whole inside reinstall. So it’s not like a full expense of like a full H Vac install. They just replace the outside unit. So that’s one thing. And then on the same thing, like our doors, you know that your metal exterior door.

Tim Grillot [00:04:14]:
If you have metal exterior doors, we. We repaint those with quality paint every couple years because, you know, if they get chips in them from people banging suitcases in them or whatever they get. They get rusty, you know, so you don’t. And first impressions are everything with these things. So you don’t want people walking into a rusty, gross look. You could have this cool, you know, beachy color in your door and big old rust spot on it. You don’t want that, you know, So I. I don’t know.

Tim Grillot [00:04:36]:
Ethan, do you have that. You have a house. So I know. Do you guys. What kind of stuff do you guys get with salt water? Do you get much issue so far.

Ethan McCarty [00:04:42]:
We haven’t, but, I mean, you’re definitely right. The deck’s going to last us a shorter amount of time. You know, we try to keep paint on it to make sure it stays coated. But yeah, the door issue, we have that same problem. Our H Vac is outside. Does get rained on. And that’s interesting. I didn’t know that.

Ethan McCarty [00:04:58]:
So thank you for sharing that. But around moisture, you got your locks, your entry locks, you got your smart locks, and most of the time, if those get moisture in them, they. They don’t work right or may have some issues. So recommend someone, if you have someone down there beating a little silicone around the outside of the door lock to keep that moisture out. We found out that works really well for us. So similar issues with the. The salt water, it’s always there, always lingering. Just try to play preventative defense to keep you from costing a lot all at one time.

Avery Carl [00:05:30]:
So you bring up a really good point that I want to kind of circle back to on the. The lock getting corroded and, like, stuck. Do you guys keep an extra key, like an actual hard copy key, in a lockbox somewhere around the house in the event that something crazy like that happens?

Ethan McCarty [00:05:47]:
Yes, we. We do keep the lockbox for. We own a duplex, and so both sides have a spare key and a lockbox that they can use to get in.

Avery Carl [00:05:57]:
Same here. Are you allowed to do that?

Tim Grillot [00:06:00]:
So I’m gonna say I’m not sure, but we do. They. So our building, everybody. The common thing for the building was to hang lock boxes off of, like, the railings. Like, outside of the unit. There’s, like, railings in the hallways and stuff. And a couple years ago, we redid our whole building and put all new really nice aluminum powder coated railings in that are really resistant. And anyway, they asked us not to do that anymore.

Tim Grillot [00:06:23]:
So I actually have mine mounted to my door, so. But yes, I do. I have it mounted right to the door. And so that is. And that’s across all our properties. We do that different code on that than I have on the door. So it’s like an emergency code that I don’t share with anybody unless there’s a problem. So that’s.

Tim Grillot [00:06:39]:
Yeah, that’s definitely one of our systems across the board. So that’s the last thing you want is somebody to get there, and they can’t. They can’t get in.

Ethan McCarty [00:06:45]:
So we had that once. No backup key. And it was late at night. They got there and they had to go to a hotel. It was. It was an expensive night of sleep for us. Yeah.

Tim Grillot [00:06:53]:
Yeah. Your options there are a hotel or. Yeah, most guests don’t carry a sawzall with them in the car, but I do.

Avery Carl [00:07:04]:
All right. So corrosion is a thing that has to be maintained, and it can especially. I mean, the H Vac is definitely a bigger problem in terms of cost, but in terms of, like, emergency, the. The lock thing is a really big deal. So that’s a great call out. So do you see. Actually, I’m going to stick on the rust thing for a minute. Nails.

Avery Carl [00:07:25]:
So you may not, Tim. Because you’re in a condo, but. Or in several condos, but Ethan, on yours. So do you notice. Do you have to do any, like, maintenance of where your siding is nailed or where your trim is nailed on the outside? Because you. You’ll see when you walk by some of them, like, little rust drips on it.

Ethan McCarty [00:07:41]:
Well, I think you. You can start to see that we haven’t done anything about it yet, but it’s something to definitely keep note on. Absolutely.

Jonathan [00:07:47]:
Yeah.

Tim Grillot [00:07:48]:
It’s definitely a pain with stuff like that. And it’s. You just got to stay on top of your stuff, you know, and there’s different ways to do it. Some. Some, you know, like the decks. Some of the higher end deck builds, they actually use all stainless steel fasteners, which is nice, but it does add to the cost of building the initial thing. So.

Avery Carl [00:08:05]:
Yeah, I. Rust is like, you don’t realize that it. It’s such a maintenance item, but you also need to realize that it’s very, very normal and common in these markets, as these guys have said. I’ve seen a few buyers, like, want to terminate contracts overseeing corrosion on the exterior, and we’re like, no, no, like this is a good deal. Yeah, they’re all gonna have that.

Tim Grillot [00:08:26]:
Yeah. If you’re not gonna. If you don’t own at the beach, if you don’t. If you can’t deal with that a little bit, you know, that’s just part of it. And it’s nothing. It’s. You and all your friends are having the same problem. So it’s nothing to be too alarmed about.

Tim Grillot [00:08:36]:
It is something you gotta work on, but nothing to be like, oh, my gosh, it’s plate falling down.

Avery Carl [00:08:41]:
So, all right, so next thing, while we’re on the. The outside elements. So is there anything we need to manage around or have a system for regarding sand?

Tim Grillot [00:08:52]:
For me, for me, sand is drains. I mean, you know, people are going to the beach and coming in with sand on them. And, you know, you obviously, no matter whether you’re in a condo or a house, whatever, you want to have some kind of system where people can rinse themselves off outside. But it is inevitable. People are going to have it on their skin and everything, and it builds up in the. And then a P trap. If you don’t know what a P trap is. A P trap is a part of your drain that actually keeps the smell of plumbing.

Tim Grillot [00:09:18]:
It intentionally holds water, so that way the smell from your sewer system doesn’t go through your house. But it’s just a little low spot in the plumbing. It’s a little dip, and sand will collect in there and eventually clog. So for us, we have, you know, preventive maintenance. Part of our preventive maintenance is having those cleaned out, because if you let it go too long, they’ll fill up with sand and you’ll inevitably get a guest saying that the sinks aren’t draining or the tubs not draining or something like that. So that’s one of our biggies then. The other is just really managing what kind of flooring you choose. You know, you don’t.

Tim Grillot [00:09:49]:
Carpet is bad, you know, and one of mine had carpet in it until like a year and a half ago. And I’m almost a embarrassed to say that, but we had a carpet in a bedroom and it was so gross. It was just. It was a sand trap, you know, so any kind of smooth pouring, you know, it’s good lvp, you know, pile, whatever. So, yeah.

Ethan McCarty [00:10:07]:
And first of all, we got electrician Tim and now plumber Tim. So thank you for that, Tim. Along with sand, just a common occurrence is guests you would think would be aware that there could be some sand lingering around the house. I mean, obviously the goal is to get it all out. But they. They may find sand in the house and that they just need to maybe be okay with. And another thing is we. We provide vacuums for our cleaners at the.

Ethan McCarty [00:10:33]:
At the property. That’s something. And I don’t know if every cleaner does that or not, but for us, we do. And that sand is tough on vacuum. So, you know, we make sure you’re emptying it out, changing the filter, or changing out the vacuum completely just to make sure you’re. It’s sucking up everything it needs to suck up.

Avery Carl [00:10:47]:
Yeah. Not even regular beach sand, but like kids colored sand. Bested my. My dustbuster a few weeks ago.

Tim Grillot [00:10:55]:
The old Dustbuster?

Avery Carl [00:10:57]:
Yeah, I guess they’re not called that anymore. It’s called something else. But I’m never going to get over the early 90s in a dust.

Tim Grillot [00:11:02]:
Yeah. Let’s throw back to my childhood. We had one hanging on the wall. Loved it.

Avery Carl [00:11:07]:
Yep. Okay, so sand is a thing. It’s going to be that you’re never really going to be able to get every little grain out, and you just kind of have to be okay with that. So let’s talk about wet bathing suits and furniture. Is this something that you have to deal with or do you guys get upstream of that by having furniture that it’s not going to, you know, get water stains if somebody sits on it?

Tim Grillot [00:11:28]:
Yes, it’s an issue. And another thing, again, I want to talk about condos a lot because that’s what I’m in. But the condo buildings typically frown on people hanging stuff off the balconies. And that’s the most logical place for a guest that is from not there to hang their stuff. So you got to have a plan around that. So having. We actually provide nice racks in the. In the bathrooms and stuff to hang up, you know, to hang it up.

Tim Grillot [00:11:53]:
And actually we have. It’s kind of old school, but we have one of those. It’s like a string that you pull across the tub, like a. Like a clothesline that you can buy them off Amazon. And it’s retractable, so they can pull it out, hang up a bunch of swimsuits right above the tub and it hangs them there. And so that. That’s our system. And we just basically put in our instructions.

Tim Grillot [00:12:12]:
Here’s this thing, and we label it really well and say this is what’s for. And that’s the way we handle it. But it is definitely a thing. You don’t want your furniture covered in salt water all the time.

Ethan McCarty [00:12:22]:
So we have the balcony. So people do that. We also have what Tim mentioned there, the line in the. In the shower. But speaking. You know, one thing I was going to mention in general, compared to my smoky properties, we have to have the carpet cleaners and the fabric cleaners out a lot more often to clean the couch and to clean the chair. So we’ve not prevented that from happening. So we.

Ethan McCarty [00:12:46]:
We do have them. They come out once a quarter, probably, and clean everything for us.

Avery Carl [00:12:50]:
All right, Jonathan, what do you do about sand? Do you have any systems for keeping sand out or. Or also wet bathing suit systems?

Jonathan [00:13:00]:
Well, nothing is too effective as of yet. I mean, we just harp on the outdoor showers. It’s just really important and try to get guests to wash off before, but you know, they’re going to do what they’re going to do. So nothing too effective as of yet.

Tim Grillot [00:13:15]:
I actually experimented with a no bathing suit system, and it did not go over well at all. It was heavily frowned upon, so.

Avery Carl [00:13:22]:
Oh, my goodness. Okay, moving along from that, I think the elephant in the room that everybody is sitting here waiting to, for us to talk about is hurricane. So let’s talk about it.

Tim Grillot [00:13:35]:
Yeah. So hurricanes are real and they do happen in environments like this. So our big thing is like, one, there’s a lot more scare of hurricanes than there are actual hurricanes. And most of our guests are not local, which it makes sense. You know, people are traveling to this area to enjoy it. And most people’s knowledge of hurricanes is a lot of fear. You know, so in hurricane season, you have to be prepared for a lot of people that are one wanting an answer from you on, like, is this hurricane going to hit that they’re talking about on the news? Or can I cancel? Or I won’t even. I want to cancel.

Tim Grillot [00:14:10]:
And we have fairly strict policies on that. That. And we follow. We follow basically the weather service. You know, if there’s an evacuation, of course, we, you know, full refund and cancel. That’s our policy. But if there’s no evacuation, we. We just try and educate our guests the best we can.

Tim Grillot [00:14:26]:
And we’ve had way more instances where there’s a fear of a hurricane and the weather ends up being perfect for their stay. And, you know, it’s just getting people to understand that. And, you know, rain doesn’t warrant a refund, which, you know, it sucks if you go to the beach and it rains the whole time. But, you know, as a, as a host, you don’t have control that. My big thing is just to be respectful of your Guests and not be like, oh, you come to the beach, you gotta expect a hurricane. You know, that’s not really cool, I don’t think, you know, I think it’s just you gotta find a way to do it where you’re, you’re nice and, and you know, give them as much education, you know, point them to sources of the education. Don’t, don’t try and be like the expert on hurricanes. You know, point them to sources.

Tim Grillot [00:15:03]:
You know, there’s lots of sources out there. The law, there’s local websites you can point them towards that are very up to date on things as far. And then like the nice weather page. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Jonathan [00:15:13]:
And then just to say something on that note, and I agree completely about your cancellation policy. I mean, if there is an evacuation, I think you kind of have to refund. But, but as far as the store, you want a contingency plan in place. If you have a house that has like cutouts instead of impact glass, that’s kind of labor intensive. So you’re going to have to work something out with your handyman beforehand to be aware of what storm protection you have. And that’s something you want to be aware of when you purchase a property too. If it has impact glass, that’s going to be the best, the best thing you can get. If you have shutters, you know, you have to know how to have those function and if they’re all working correctly and have that planned out before a hurricane is announced or tropical storms brewing, because then it’s going to be tougher to figure everything out in such short notice.

Tim Grillot [00:16:00]:
That’s a fantastic point. And that’s something I didn’t, I got. I’m from Iowa originally, so I didn’t know about hurricanes, but our, we went through Hurricane Sally and our cleaner, you know, we knew it was coming. It’s coming in everything. Our cleaner’s like, oh, I’m going over there and getting all your stuff off the porch. And I were like, dude, why are you going in the hurt like that will that. Now we’ve found out that’s like the biggest thing that destroys places is the windows get broke out and then that’s what lets all the water in. So she went in and moved all of our furniture from the porch inside.

Tim Grillot [00:16:28]:
And that saved us from having broken deck for, you know, windows and stuff. So that is, you know, great point, Jonathan. You got to have systems not just for the guests, but also to protect your property.

Avery Carl [00:16:39]:
Yeah, yeah. So do you guys have a, a certain time period for allowing them to cancel. So what I mean by that is, so there’s a storm in the Gulf. We don’t know where it’s going. We don’t know if it’s going to Houston, if it’s going to New Orleans or if it’s going to, like, south Florida. A lot of times it’ll be in the news and people will want to cancel, but it doesn’t, it isn’t coming anywhere near Gulf Shores. It’s going, you know, maybe Fort Myers or Tampa or even like forgotten coast area where you wouldn’t really, you might get a little bit of rain, but maybe, let me. Like last year, that big one, I can’t remember the name of it that hit Fort Myers.

Avery Carl [00:17:17]:
It didn’t, it didn’t even, wasn’t even cloudy up here. It was just some wind. So at what point, where’s, what’s the point where you say, yeah, we totally get it. Yeah, probably a hurricane. We don’t want you guys to, to do this or like, hey, let’s wait and see a little longer. Is there a time frame?

Tim Grillot [00:17:31]:
Unfortunately, it’s very case by case for us and minute by minute. And you know, we kind of generally have a rule of not calling our guests, but we break that rule for, you know, like, you kind of nail it down to what, what guest it’s going to be. Because hurricanes, you do generally kind of have a time, you kind of know, like, you don’t know exactly where it’s going to land when, but until you do and then you do, you know, so it depends on, like, is the guest already there? Because that could be. And then, and then at that point, we’re, we’re calling them and tell them to get out of there and, or are they on their way? You know, and it generally comes down to kind of last minute. Unfortunately for us, that’s the way we handle it. And, and we just, we just stay super involved and, you know, talk them through it. But if it’s, if it’s like a week out and they’re wanting to cancel, we tell them now and. Because we just don’t know.

Ethan McCarty [00:18:16]:
So we’re the exact same.

Avery Carl [00:18:17]:
Yeah. So about a week then.

Tim Grillot [00:18:19]:
Yeah, yeah, we. Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:18:21]:
Okay, that makes sense. And do we have any particular language that we like to use so that we are so staying empathetic to, to people and that they don’t want to be forced to come down during a hurricane because they paid too much not to, and, and saying like, well, well, you know, it’s not quite time to make this decision. Yet do we have any, any phrases, key phrases that are helpful?

Jonathan [00:18:44]:
Well, travelers insurance, you know, is one of those things that if people are worried about getting a refund, I think, I mean, I get travelers insurance just in case I have to cancel last minute. And I think it’s just a, the prudent thing to do. So that’s what I harp on is travelers insurance.

Tim Grillot [00:19:01]:
Yeah, you nailed it. And I’ll say the verbiage I used got deleted by my wife because it was too mean and I don’t know what she replaced it with. So that’s much nicer than what I used to say. I, I basically just said no refunds for weather or something, you know, and, but she has a lot nicer and it includes travel insurance. So that’s, that’s what we do. Whatever my wife says.

Avery Carl [00:19:21]:
All right. Patty’s the boss. Okay. So in terms of protecting the actual property, is there anything else that you do besides going to, getting all the stuff from outside? You have a pool, typically, I mean, I don’t know if it’s different over there. You throw the furniture in the pool. Anything else?

Jonathan [00:19:39]:
Well, well, there are. That really just depends on your storm protection. I mean, a lot of the older houses will have those cut out boards, which definitely is time consuming. I mean, depending on the size of the house, that could take two hours to put up all the boards. The pre cut boards that you need to put up and you need to know where they are. You just have to be prepped. As long as you know what contingency plan you have in place, know what kind of protection you have, it’s not really difficult and you do have to pay somebody to do it. But you know, it’s really dependent on that.

Jonathan [00:20:07]:
If it’s impact glass, you just have to make sure outdoor furniture and like you said, you know, make sure everything’s good there. But, you know, but it can be a couple hours to very little time to prep it, depending on that.

Tim Grillot [00:20:20]:
And I think the big thing there is, and you kind of said it before John, and you don’t wait until hurricane season to learn all that, you know, so if you buy a house or you’re buying a house and it’s different property type to property type, a condo is drastically different prep than a single family home. And a single family home on the water is different than four rows back. So you got to understand what do you got and, and prepare ahead of time and talk to local. There’s a lot of local resources that know, you know, so, you know, you, you Generally have. Unless you close like the day before hurricane season, you have a little bit of time to prep and you definitely want to get ahead of that and have a plan before it happens.

Avery Carl [00:20:55]:
All right. Makes a lot of sense. So now we’re just. It will be open. Open forum here on. Because I don’t actually own anything in. In Gulf Shores. So what other things not necessarily related to hurricanes, but what other common occurrences do you need to have an upstream system for that can happen in this market, I think.

Tim Grillot [00:21:14]:
Understanding. Well, I’ll say it’s a little different again, property type. But beach chairs, people want to know. They want to go still on the beach, you know, so having a system around that if you’re in a condo, that can look a little different than if you’re in a house. But the Gulf Shores in particular has pretty strict rules on what the beach chairs can even be and tents and things like that. So. And again, we are kind of be the source of the source. We provide them with information on what the rules are of a local.

Tim Grillot [00:21:40]:
You know, the local websites and stuff we send them, but then also we turn them towards the beach rental places or the beach chair rental places. So they. They already know what they can rent and what they’re allowed to take out there. If you have a house, it’s going to look a little different because you are probably going to provide like some sort of wagon or something for them to transport their stuff to and from. And you can do that for a condo too. There’s nothing wrong with that. We actually have that too. But it just looks a little different on both.

Tim Grillot [00:22:05]:
But I think beach chairs and beach toy stuff is a. Is a big thing because that’s. People are going to the beach. So.

Jonathan [00:22:11]:
Yeah, one other thing. I’m sorry. One thing I learned that’s really important. The Schlage have you say that on codes. The. The main block that most people use. They. I don’t know if you all have experienced this, but they will malfunction because of the humidity.

Jonathan [00:22:28]:
And what a lot of people are doing are putting the moisture packs behind the battery pack and that’s helping to extend the life of those. So that’s just a. A trick that’s very important that, that I had to do because my. My locks kept going out. And that’s helpful.

Avery Carl [00:22:42]:
All right.

Ethan McCarty [00:22:42]:
Something that I have had to deal with is pest control. So we got a roach or two here or there, and I’m not from the area, but the pest guy seemed to think that was a common occurrence with the temperature and that once you maybe get a roach, it’s a little harder to get rid of the roach. So he had to come out four or five times. And he did get rid of them, but he said it’s pretty, pretty common. And then another thing is, we’re down in Fort Morgan and I don’t know what season it is for them, but there are snakes, cottonmouth snakes. We’ve had. You see them on the road. We’ve had one under our deck.

Ethan McCarty [00:23:20]:
And more than anything, maybe just let your guests be aware that it could. You could see a snake. The one we did have under the deck, we did call a resource officer and, and paid a pretty penny. But they did come pick up the snake and remove it and move it to a different area. But just something to maybe let your guests, especially down in Fort Morgan, we’re down by mile marker too, that, that you could see those.

Jonathan [00:23:44]:
That’s a great point, Ethan. And being from the south, I don’t really think much of snakes and gators. I mean, I’m wrong. I’m not going to run up and grab them, but I still don’t think much of them. But I was talking to a few of my clients. They’re like, you got snakes there and gators?

Tim Grillot [00:23:58]:
And I was like, oh, yeah, I’m never coming back. Give me bears all day long. I. I’m out on snakes. I hate them.

Avery Carl [00:24:05]:
I think snakes are cool. It’s the alligators that really freak me out.

Tim Grillot [00:24:09]:
I’ll ride a bear before I get within eyesight of a snake.

Ethan McCarty [00:24:15]:
Some. Something else, not on pests, but that I wanted to mention was. And once again, I’m just speaking about Fort Morgan and maybe it’s different Gulf shores, but, you know, we have the tech set up to get alerted what flag the water is, and you can have certain flags of if you should get in or can’t get in. I would provide that resource to the guest so they can see what the water’s doing. But it, it changes daily down there for sure. When we get text about those flags.

Tim Grillot [00:24:41]:
Yeah, I think that’s really smart segueing off of that too. And this kind of rolls into pests and water and everything, but, you know, there’s pests in the water. Jellyfish. You know, you’re definitely going to have, you know, again, trying to educate your guests on that. Not scare them, but just tell them. And this is the ocean in general. This isn’t just Gulf shores, but, you know, jellyfish and. And I’m gonna say sharks say the S word.

Tim Grillot [00:25:03]:
But you know, stuff like that. They’re around and, you know, you just gotta have some education on that. And again, don’t be the one saying this is the rule or this is how you do it. Send them, send them a link that’s educational. That’s the same thing we do in the Smokies with bears. You know, there’s bears all over here. And, you know, we don’t say, oh, just. Just do this.

Tim Grillot [00:25:19]:
We send them to someplace that they’re the ones telling them how to deal with it. But. Right.

Jonathan [00:25:23]:
So that’s very true. There are sharks in the Gulf and the ocean and. But the. There’s one more thing on the pest that’s very important. Termites. So termites are very prevalent here. I haven’t had any clients with issues. But what you want to do is have a termite bond.

Jonathan [00:25:40]:
And on that bond, you want to make sure, to me, it’s important to have a repair bond instead of a retreat bond. Because those repair bonds, actually, if for some instance, termites do damage your property, they will cover the repairs as well. Where the retreat bonds just treat the termites and don’t cover the repairs. It’s. As long as you have the Centricon stations and everything set up. I’m not going to say it’s likely to happen, but you do want the prevention for that too.

Avery Carl [00:26:05]:
Yeah, totally agree with all that.

Tim Grillot [00:26:06]:
So another little beach thing, again, that a lot of guests don’t realize is the landscape of the beach can change drastically. You know, like in front of our place sometimes it’s like this perfect flat, like, picturesque thing of it, just going out nice and flat to the ocean or to the Gulf. I keep on the ocean, so I’m just gonna punch me in the face for that. And. But sometimes it gets like, there’s like a. Almost like a steep drop off. If you get a few days of some big waves, it just changes. And it changes daily a little bit.

Tim Grillot [00:26:35]:
So we, we do put a little paragraph in, in our, you know, in our guide about that, that the dynamic of the beach can change day to day. So just be aware it’s not always perfectly flat. So.

Avery Carl [00:26:46]:
Yeah, that’s also true. And the, the flag thing is really important. I think over here. They may have them over there too. They have little magnets that you can get from the visitor center and put it on your fridge. Because the. A lot of times the tourists don’t know that. A red flag.

Avery Carl [00:26:59]:
It doesn’t mean be careful. It means you’re not supposed to get in above, like Your shins. And so when we’re out there sometimes, and sometimes it’ll change while you’re, you’re out there. So you kind of have to pay attention. But like if we’re walking on the beach and we see the flag is red and my, even my 4 year old is like, mama, they’re not supposed to be in the water. And sometimes it’s really little kids with no life jackets and it makes me a nervous wreck. So it’s knowing what the flag systems are very important for your guests so they don’t get caught in rip currents and that’s really important. So get those, get those magnets for sure.

Avery Carl [00:27:35]:
But switching off of. Well, we weren’t still on pests. I went to flags, but back to the animals. So Fort Morgan is pet friendly. So do you. Are you guys pet friendly that are there and what are your systems for that, if any?

Ethan McCarty [00:27:50]:
I am not pet friendly. It is a pet friendly beach. It is a pet friendly beach, but we’re not pet friendly and we’ve never had any issues with, with that. So we stay rented out and. But we’ve, we’ve never ventured there. Not saying we wouldn’t, but we haven’t had to.

Avery Carl [00:28:05]:
Yeah. Are you pet friendly, Jonathan?

Jonathan [00:28:07]:
Yes. All ours are pet friendly. And the funny thing is is we’re closest to the beach. This the one part of the beach that’s not pet friendly in Fort Morgan by the wildlife refuge. But if you go a little bit farther than off of Cortez, there’s a great pet friendly beach. But to me it is part of the great experience of Fort Morgan. But you know, so all mine are pet friendly too.

Tim Grillot [00:28:27]:
Don’t walk your dog in Gulf Shores. I did that and got pulled over on the beach. It was awesome. You can walk your dog on the sidewalks, you just can’t take them on the beach. You can have dogs in Gulf Shores, you just can’t take them on the actual beach. So.

Avery Carl [00:28:41]:
All right. So we don’t have pet systems. I, I really wish we could be pet friendly. It just. And we tried to be at first because Luke will be the first person to tell you that I have too many rescue dogs. I have a problem. But it, I really wanted to be pet friendly because we travel with ours, but it just took one like big. I don’t know if it was a German shepherd or maybe the hair was a little light.

Avery Carl [00:29:03]:
Maybe it was a white German shepherd. But a big dog with kind of long hair like that that just gets woven into everything. And our cleaner just. It Wasn’t necessarily that the dog tore anything up. It just took way too long to get rid of any evidence of it that we just didn’t. We’ve never done it again. Part of me wants to revisit that sometimes. And then part of me is like, no, because I’ve stayed in pet friendly places that when I get there, they already smell like somebody else’s dog, which they don’t all.

Avery Carl [00:29:29]:
But I don’t want ours to do that. So I wish I could be that person. I want to be, but I’m not. What are some other common occurrences that you have to get upstream of around here?

Ethan McCarty [00:29:38]:
Tim mentioned beach supplies. You know, we, we do have. We do provide chairs, we do provide some toys and they do go missing. So you got to restock, replenish those. They’re not too bad. We had a wagon go missing, but it’s, it’s. You can’t predict a wagon going missing. But the toys, you probably need to.

Ethan McCarty [00:29:58]:
If you’re going to provide them, make sure that you have them, especially if you let them know that you have them, you know, so that it’s there. So I just want to make mention that they do walk off more frequently than not.

Avery Carl [00:30:09]:
So the wagons are kind of big. So do you keep extra, like an extra wagon there in case that happens or you just Amazon it when it happens? You wait till it happens.

Ethan McCarty [00:30:17]:
Well, we’ve been instacarting everything so it gets there in a timely manner. But it’s still, it’s an expensive. Those wagons aren’t cheap, but they’re not. If we tell somebody we have it and it’s not there, we get them. Get them a new one.

Tim Grillot [00:30:30]:
Instacart’s an amazing thing. And if you’re not, if you’re not using it as part of your system, you need to. It is such a game changer in this industry and just. It’s pretty new, but it’s. I forget about it sometimes. Like, oh my gosh, I’m like, oh, wait, Instacart. I have it there in an hour.

Ethan McCarty [00:30:44]:
Yep, yep.

Avery Carl [00:30:46]:
Do you guys provide beach chairs and stuff like that? That’s all. Or that’s kind of encompassed in this wagon conversation.

Ethan McCarty [00:30:52]:
We, we provide beach chairs and our only issue with them is what Tim talked about earlier with Rust. We’ve gone through them fairly quickly. You know, it’s just something else we have to replenish. But I do think it’s something we provide and then anything else. We give them a couple numbers if they want a, an umbrella or Any other beach covering. You know, we, there’s a couple places down there that you can give them their number and they can rent those.

Tim Grillot [00:31:13]:
I’ll be honest on ours, we, we say we don’t provide that stuff, but it’s generally there. We provide some starter kit stuff and then inevitably people buy stuff and leave it behind. So it’s almost usually really at the end of the season we almost have to do a closet clean out because our closet’s so packed with stuff that people, people leave behind. So, you know, different methods. I don’t think there’s a wrong answer there. But we, we basically say kind of what Ethan said, here’s the numbers of places and there’s a place right across the street if you, if there’s something that you feel you need that, that isn’t there. And then, and then sometimes people get there and they’re just ple. Plenty surprised by.

Tim Grillot [00:31:47]:
It’s all in the closet.

Jonathan [00:31:48]:
So yeah, the good thing is if you don’t provide them or you don’t want to, there are, I mean, which, you know, most people do. But there are services that’ll set up everything on the beach and you, you know, really good services for that too.

Tim Grillot [00:31:59]:
That’ll drop. Absolutely.

Jonathan [00:32:00]:
Kayaks, paddle boards too.

Tim Grillot [00:32:02]:
Yeah, that’s another thing. There’s a lot of, beyond the paddle board, I mean there’s a lot of water sports stuff. You know, if you want to go out in the water doing stuff, there’s you know, all, everything you can imagine that you can go rent. So. So another little thing just like what to expect and this is just kind of again a little bit educational for guests is I’ll say talk about like wildlife type back on that. The dunes are protected and a lot of people, you know, guests don’t realize that and they’ll, they’ll be out there running around in them and then anybody that’s local freaks out and like starts yelling at people, you know. So we do our best to educate people about the rules on the dunes as well as lighting that’s allowed. You know, it’s a really popular thing to go out on the beach at night with flashlights and look for crafts cabs and stuff.

Tim Grillot [00:32:45]:
And you’re really supposed to be using like a red filter or a certain color. So we, we again send education, education, education for things like that. So.

Jonathan [00:32:53]:
Oh, on that note, I have a quick funny story. I had a client who was conveyed with the sale was a high powered gas golf cart and the guests loved it, don’t get me wrong. But they were one of his guests were ramping up the protected dunes and destroying them and it was chaos and they were calling him. So I do recommend if it’s in a golf cart community to have a low powered electric golf cart. I think that is less tempting to do stuff like that with. But also disclose and explain the dunes are protected as well.

Tim Grillot [00:33:27]:
That sends me right to my favorite Napoleon Dynamite scene. Take it off any sweet jumps.

Avery Carl [00:33:35]:
That’s not something I would ever be tempted to do. But yeah, you can’t do that. What else? What else? Before we go, anybody have any, anything else that we haven’t mentioned that the listeners might benefit from hearing? In terms of common things we need to get upstream of.

Tim Grillot [00:33:50]:
I think we covered a lot today, really. It’s just again, just, just do your best to educate your guests and, and educate yourselves on. You know, I’m glad Jonathan brought up the property protection part. I was going on and on about guests but you got to, you know, take care of your property as well. So.

Avery Carl [00:34:05]:
All right. Nothing else going once. All right. Well, thank you guys so much. Thank you listeners for being here. If you guys want to learn more, we have a live Q and A every Thursday. You can sign up for that@strquestions.com if you guys are ready to buy with Jonathan, you can email him at Jonathan at The Short Term Shop.com or agents at the Short Term Shop.com will get you there too. And you can also join our Facebook group.

Avery Carl [00:34:29]:
It’s called Short term Rental, Long Term Wealth. Same title as my book. And thank you guys so much. We’ll catch you later.

Ethan McCarty [00:34:35]:
Thank you.