How to Manage a Short Term Rental in Galveston (Crystal Beach Tips Included)

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

Avery Carl [00:00:47]:
Same title as my book. Now let’s go ahead and dive in. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the short term show special episode series on the Galveston and Crystal beach markets. You guys are pretty familiar with Kelsey by now, but if not Kelsey, go ahead and introduce yourself.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:01:14]:
Yes, my name is Kelsey Ardwin. I’m a short term shop realtor in the Galveston Crystal beach market. I’ve been helping people buy homes here, vacation properties to use the short term rentals for the last two years now. And we now own two in this market and another one in the Smokies.

Avery Carl [00:01:30]:
Awesome. And do you want to give a little intro slash lead in to our other guest, Curtis?

Kelsey Ardoin [00:01:35]:
Yes, my other half of better half of the property management that we run is Curtis. He is. I find the properties and he manages them.

Avery Carl [00:01:49]:
And y’ all are married?

Kelsey Ardoin [00:01:50]:
Yes.

Curtis [00:01:51]:
That’s for a few years.

Avery Carl [00:01:53]:
How many years is it?

Curtis [00:01:54]:
12.

Avery Carl [00:01:55]:
12? Yeah, we’re coming up on 10. We’ve made it this far, so I think I’ll stick with him.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:02:02]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:02:04]:
All right, so let’s, let’s talk about. What we’re talking about today is common stuff, common occurrences that you’re going to have to deal with when you’re managing a short term rental in this market. So we’ll start with stuff that is a little more specific to beach markets and specifically this beach market because it is on the Gulf of Mexico. Let’s just dive right into hurricanes. So I know a lot of times with weather and potential weather, guests will want to cancel before they even know that it’s necessarily going to affect their vacation. So I think the way the news does, when a hurricane comes into the Gulf of Mexico, they. Everybody freaks out and they want to cancel everything, not understanding that. Okay, The Gulf of Mexico encompasses several countries, a lot of states, a lot of miles.

Avery Carl [00:02:52]:
And, you know, if a hurricane comes in the Gulf and hits Fort Lauderdale, it’s not going to affect you guys over in Galveston. So let’s, let’s talk about how we handle that. So say hurricane comes in the Gulf, we aren’t quite sure where it’s going yet. And your guests start asking questions, what are we. What’s kind of the process there?

Curtis [00:03:10]:
So in the two years that we’ve had houses here in Crystal beach, it, it hasn’t come up. But I can say one thing. I don’t want guests in my house. If a hurricane is actually going to hit the peninsula, I don’t want them, you know, leaving last minute. I need to be there, turn off the water and taking care of things. If that were to happen, I think it’s super unlikely. But if they want to cancel before and it, you know, I think I’d basically rely on the booking platforms to cancellation policies. If it doesn’t seem likely that the hurricane is actually going to hit and then it’s kind of, you know, I have to monitor it myself and really.

Curtis [00:03:46]:
And determine do I think it’s actually going to come this direction. And if I don’t think it’s going to come this direction, I’ll just refer to the booking platform cancellation policy that they signed up for when they booked the state.

Avery Carl [00:03:57]:
Yeah, I totally agree with that. If a hurricane is actually threatening the area, then we, you know, let the guests cancel, full refund. Because, yeah, of course, we don’t want you to put yourself and your family in harm’s way. So if it truly is heading our direction, then, then we’ll let them cancel and refund them. But you’re right, if, if it’s not coming anywhere near, then it’s really not something that they need to be getting refunded for. So sometimes I feel like people will use that. If it’s way out in the future and it’s not even going to hit till, like, next week, they’re still just kind of talking about it. They don’t know where it’s going to go.

Avery Carl [00:04:33]:
Is it even actually a hurricane yet? And people are like, oh, I think I’m going to cancel, maybe because they had another reason, you know, So I think that’s a good rule of thumb. If it actually is coming, you want to refund them. You don’t want to put anybody in danger. But if it’s not. You would just let them know about the cancellation policy. Make sure to point out, hey, you know, it’s heading towards south Florida. It’s not heading towards the Texas coast and see what you can do there. So but generally, and sorry, I was going to move on, but then I had another point to make.

Avery Carl [00:05:03]:
Generally we don’t give refunds for weather unless it is going to be, you know, an actual hurricane affecting our exact area. So we just make sure to have that in all of our listing and rental agreement and stuff like that. So that way we’re kind of protected if it’s not coming anywhere near and they want to just cancel kind of for no reason.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:05:22]:
Yeah, Hurricanes really have not been the issue that I think people maybe expect them to be. They hear about hurricanes in the Gulf, but Florida tends to take the hit. Like this summer, I think there were three that hit Florida and they never the closest they made it. Insurance companies didn’t even stop binding policies during all three of those. It never made it close enough that it even hit what they call like a bind box where if it enters that area they stop writing policies. So this whole entire last summer there was never even a hurricane that threatened the writing of policies. That’s not to say there won’t be. There have, you know, there have been hurricanes, but the last really serious one was in 2008.

Avery Carl [00:06:06]:
Well, I think that’s a really good point too because you made a, you made a comment that three of them hit Florida this year. And even Florida is such a big state that up here in the Panhandle we did not have any hurricane associated rain this year. So I think the news really does scare people. The media scares people about hurricanes and hurricane season because, you know, it gives them content that’s, you know, what the news is at the end of the day, it’s content. And if they run out of stuff to talk about, that’s what it is. So a lot of the times it’s not even going to be a big deal necessarily. It might be the equivalent of a bad thunderstorm. Some hurricanes obviously are horrible.

Avery Carl [00:06:43]:
I’m not trying to downplay the horror of a real, you know, a Cat 4 or Cat 5, but a lot of times there’s just so much hype around it and it’s just a very small area that’s affected. Like a hurricane can hit one side of Florida and we don’t feel anything or see anything on the other side. So I think that’s a really good point that just because there’s a Hurricane in the Gulf does not mean it’s coming anywhere near your property, wherever that may be, whether it’s Alabama, Texas or.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:07:10]:
The Gulf is like a really large area. I mean, like coming into the Gulf doesn’t mean it’s, you know, going to hit one specific spot. So.

Avery Carl [00:07:18]:
Right.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:07:19]:
And I feel like to, to your point, it is kind of a level of national weather programming, but that everyone hears about and you don’t necessarily see, then you know the reality of it. Like, did it play out that way or was it the whole state of Florida because you see this big circle coming forward an area. Did they all, did they get 60 plus mile per hour winds or did it just hit one place? So there’s really kind of no context there. So I know that it can be scary watching the news for people who do that.

Avery Carl [00:07:50]:
Yeah. Well, let’s take it back a few notches and let’s just talk about rain. So have you guys had ever had guests come in and it happens to be a rainy week and they want to complain to you and want a discount because it rained because the weather wasn’t great?

Curtis [00:08:05]:
No, actually. No.

Avery Carl [00:08:06]:
You haven’t? No, we get that every now and then.

Curtis [00:08:10]:
I’m not sure how I’d respond to that. I mean, you know, obviously we can’t control the weather.

Avery Carl [00:08:14]:
Yeah, we don’t give discounts for weather. We don’t give refunds for weather.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:08:17]:
Right.

Curtis [00:08:17]:
No, definitely not.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:08:18]:
So I would say there’s two points on that one. One is that, you know, what they say about Texas is if you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes. So it’ll rain, but it’ll clear up. And most of your guests are going to be Texans. And it’s probably not going to be. If it starts off being rainy, it probably by the afternoon it’s not going to look rainy. The sun will come out. So I think they’re accustomed to that.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:08:44]:
And the other part, I would say is that it’s really important to have things for people to do if it is raining. Like, did you stock your place with board games? Are there books, are there, you know, some kind of games for them to do? And also underneath the house, so your first floor, like livable floor is up a level and underneath your house is all entirely shaded and protected from the rain area that you can hang out in. So there should still be things to do even if it’s raining.

Curtis [00:09:16]:
Yeah.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:09:17]:
Like don’t set yourself up to have really bored guests who are unhappy by not setting anything up for them, not giving them options. Same goes for Internet. If the Internet were to go out, which does happen, like, on occasion, I’ve heard other owners say that they have guests who complain. Maybe we’ve gotten lucky. But in two years, I think, Curtis, how many people have complained about the Internet being out? One or two?

Curtis [00:09:41]:
I’d say. I’d say less than five. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, less than a handful. But honestly, like, that’s not even a thing for me at all. I don’t even worry. That’s not an issue for me. It’s like, okay, the Internet goes out.

Curtis [00:09:52]:
I tell them. I already told them there’s only one Internet provider. So what do you want me to do? Like, it’s fine. You’re not. Are you? Like, there’s lots of stuff to do, essentially. I mean, I don’t say it like that. You know, I’m super friendly with my guests and normally build a really good rapport with them, and I think that’s a huge thing. But generally, if you tell them, like, oh, sorry, it’ll probably be back on a couple hours, but there’s nothing we can do about it.

Curtis [00:10:12]:
They’re generally like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Try to see it from. From the owner’s shoes that there’s nothing we can do about the Internet going out.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:10:19]:
Yeah, we don’t make the Internet or whatever. The other part I would say is that the local Internet service should be improving. There’s a project that just went underway about a month ago. They started laying fiber optic lines in the middle of the peninsula, and within two years time, there should be fiber Internet on the entire peninsula. So that should really improve things.

Curtis [00:10:46]:
Nice.

Avery Carl [00:10:46]:
Okay, that’s good to know. So Internet is not great sometimes. And that. That happens here too. In 30A.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:10:53]:
Where?

Avery Carl [00:10:53]:
Yes, it’s a really high traffic tourist area, but the Internet is built for who lives here, which is less than 10,000 people. So there’s a lot of people here that. And the Internet’s being used by everybody. It does not work. Right. So totally get that. So you just like to mitigate that by having games and things for them to do what? In case the Internet goes out. And how often does that happen? Like how many times a year?

Curtis [00:11:19]:
I don’t follow it, to be honest. It’s not one of those things I want on my radar, you know, it’s not enough to worry about, I can tell you that.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:11:26]:
And it’s not usually for a prolonged period of time. Yeah, when it goes out, it’s like temporary. It’s like it’s out for an hour. Half a day and then it’s back on. And I just don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about. And the Internet, I don’t provide games because the Internet might go out. I provide games because I want them to have a good experience. And then if the Internet is out, you’ve got lots of options.

Curtis [00:11:50]:
So I did, I did think of something. If you. So I get emails from the Internet company and when they’re doing service, they’ll send you an email. Like I’d say once every couple of weeks I’ll send emails. Hey, there’s going to be an outage during these hours. If I have a guest in a house at that time, I do communicate that because it just really sets expectations and that really helps it. It’s a in the way. They’re not, they don’t have a bad surprise.

Curtis [00:12:10]:
They’re just like, okay, host told us it’s going to be out during this time. We’ll find something else to do. They’re not like in the middle of their movie or you know, their favorite show when it goes out.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:12:20]:
And they usually plan them at like weird times that people wouldn’t like. The last one was like at midnight or something. So not really a lot of people doing things.

Avery Carl [00:12:30]:
So if you find out about it ahead of time, make sure to let your guests know so they can make sure they go to lunch or something if it’s going to be out. So let’s get back to whether.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:12:40]:
Sort of.

Avery Carl [00:12:40]:
Well, I guess it’s not weather related, it’s ocean related stuff. And don’t in that market do people like flip out at you if you call it the ocean instead of calling it the Gulf.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:12:48]:
Local people do, yes, the ocean, it is the Gulf. But there’s what kills me is people will say on island as in that the peninsula is an island. And I’m like, it may feel like we’re all on island time. And that’s for real. The people are very much on island time. But it is a peninsula and you can drive there like on i10. You can drive around through Beaumont and Winnie or you can go south through Galveston, like coming from Houston. Go south into Galveston and get on the ferry and take the ferry across the ferry is something we’re talking about.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:13:25]:
We really mitigate the whole. There can be long waits on the ferry. Typically our guests aren’t checking in or out on a Saturday. And that’s really when you get the highest traffic is high, high season Saturday like 11:12 when everybody’s had time to gather up all their kids and all the beach stuff and make it onto the ferry to come down for the day. That’s not a time I would recommend getting on the ferry, but you actually can know that ahead of time if you, the Galveston ferry has a Twitter account and that’s what I found to be the most up to date information. You can just Google Galveston Ferry and you don’t even actually have to have an account. You can just scroll down in Google and it’s like the second result and it will tell, it will show you the latest tweet and it’ll say something like 15 minute wait. In Galveston, minimal weight.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:14:15]:
In Bolivar, three boats in service, like just super informational.

Avery Carl [00:14:20]:
Okay. So that would be a really good thing to like have in your digital guidebook in case people are coming. Because most people probably will be coming from that direction. Right. If they’re coming from Houston, they’re probably not going to go up through Beaumont.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:14:29]:
It’s a wash. We came to work on our third beach house or our second beach house, third short term rental where Curtis is now. We came over the weekend after Thanksgiving. We spent that with his sister in Kingwood. And when we came from Kingwood it made more sense to drive from that side and not take.

Curtis [00:14:48]:
And I do explain in our message that goes out 24 hours or 48 hours before check in. I have a little, a little, two paragraphs that explains Google Maps will get you right here. Here’s the link for the ferry wait times and just kind of basic information about how to get here. I think it’s a important for, for any check in message.

Avery Carl [00:15:05]:
Yeah, I think that’s really important to have in your, in your guidebook. That’s a good tip.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:15:09]:
Speaking of Google Maps, something that is specific to the area and is kind of a weird one is in Google Maps. So Crystal beach is an unincorporated city and we’re in Galveston County. A lot of the addresses, if you type in like our first beach house address, it will say Galveston is the city even though it’s in the county. And a very specific thing that all owners in Crystal beach or the on the Bolivar Peninsula need to know about is that if your address in Google Maps says Galveston, you have to contact Airbnb and VRBO and have your taxes that you’re are collected from your guests corrected because they’ll be collecting for city of Galveston, which is a 9% hotel occupancy tax on top of the 6% for the state. So on our first beach house it says Galveston for the city we had to call. And they changed it, like, in a. Like a art. Like, just, like, superficially, like, changed it.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:16:12]:
But we had to submit a tax record printout. Showing what? Showing our tax jurisdictions the taxes that are collected from the guests would be the correct ones. So that’s something I try to tell everybody.

Avery Carl [00:16:26]:
Yeah, that is good to know, because the taxes are different. If you’re in Galveston proper.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:16:30]:
Yeah. You’d want your guests to pay 6%, not 15%. It makes their stay cheaper, and they’re not getting anything for that additional 9%.

Avery Carl [00:16:39]:
Yeah. Good call out for sure. Let’s talk about locks. So you mentioned on a previous episode that you guys have had really bad luck with digital locks because of the corrosion. What are you doing to kind of work on that or work around it?

Curtis [00:16:53]:
We went dumb locks. And I love it. I love it. Seriously. I mean, our slag and code has been on the cabin and the smokies for over two years now without any problem. That cleaners change the batteries whenever it beeps at them. Here for the past six months or so, we just started using, like, a combo that we change periodically. And, you know, it’s less.

Curtis [00:17:15]:
I don’t have to go and set up the codes. It’s not resting at all. It’s super easy, straightforward to use. No one’s ever. Ever since we went to the Dunlops here, I haven’t talked to a single guest or cleaner about a key or a lock. And no one has had a problem getting in. And security hasn’t been an issue. So we just use a combo, which.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:17:34]:
You can change enough. It’s easy enough that we could have a cleaner change it for us. So if we just wanted to have it on a schedule, we could just. We can set up a calendar reminder and have it changed every month or three months or something like that and have the clean do it. And it’s really not the corrosion itself that’s causing the locks to mess up. It’s the electronics inside. So it’s hot on the outside because it’s hot here. Super hot.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:18:03]:
And it’s super cold inside because people want it to be cold in the ac. And the difference in temperature on that on the metal door knobs is causing condensation to build up inside the lock, and as best I understand, fry the electronics.

Curtis [00:18:18]:
Yeah, that’s right. Our locks have failed. You’ll see very little corrosion, but the electronics are just wet. Like, literally, there’s water dripping off of them when you open it up.

Avery Carl [00:18:27]:
That’s so crazy.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:18:28]:
Yeah.

Curtis [00:18:29]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:18:29]:
Okay, so let’s Talk about your dumb lock setup. How, how do we have this set up so people aren’t doing things like running off with your keys, accidentally losing keys, extra key sets, places. How are you guys doing that?

Curtis [00:18:40]:
So we have. I have extra keys everywhere, essentially. I have like, I have three outside combo locks. One is for. It’s just a guest, like, oh, actually I have one sitting right here that I have one. I have one just for the guests. Then I have one for the cleaners, which has an extra house key and the owner’s closet key. And then I have an additional one hidden somewhere else with an additional entry key.

Curtis [00:19:04]:
So there’s three entry keys to be had on the outside of the house. And so definitely no one’s ever knocked people to get in. And to keep the guests from losing the keys, we put a little clip on it. So like, I don’t know, it’s just more convenient for them to be able to clip on. I actually just bought these. These are cool to clip on their bag or something. Just not lose the key. And then also in the messages, communication, I tell them what the key situation is, what their key code is, and I tell them, don’t lose the key.

Curtis [00:19:32]:
So you don’t have to call locksmith to get you in. Now I would never have them call a locksmith to get them in because we have keys everywhere. But setting that expectation that they may have to pay if they lose the key. No one’s ever lost the key.

Avery Carl [00:19:42]:
That, that’s a great tip. If you tell them, oh, you’re going to have to call a locksmith. Don’t lose it. Then they’ll pay more attention than like treat. Because a lot of people I think, treat it like it’s a hotel, which it is in a lot of ways. And so they don’t think about this might be the only key that they go. They just got them everywhere, which you don’t necessarily want them to know that. So that’s a good way to kind of make it pay attention for sure.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:20:03]:
So I wanted to make two notes. The lock that he held up, it doesn’t have a shackle. You actually open the front of it and you screw it onto one of the pilings. So like the big wooden pilings, the. That the house is built on, you screw it to one of those typically and usually you would want to do that on the back side of the piling or, or on the north facing side of the piling. So you’re not getting, you know, with some of the salt air hitting it. So you can protect it from some of that just by the location of where you put it. And then we try to put our backup lock so the, not the, that’s the main one that they’re accessing.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:20:44]:
Then we have a cleaner one that’s less obvious but still easy for the cleaners to get to. And then the one that says our emergency lock is on the back side of the house where they wouldn’t be possibly entering the wrong code. And I think we even also have a backup key in our owner’s closet. So if it got lost, there’s a way for our cleaner to get inside with their key and then replace the lost key in place.

Curtis [00:21:12]:
I have one more important comment, actually. So getting a key lost is really crappy situation if you can’t rekey your locks easily. I also have this right here because I’m here setting up a house. So these, they’re not paying me, by the way. The, the quick set, they have a smart key feature. You can literally change the key on this yourself in like five seconds. So you just put in like you put in your key, you put in a tool, you twist it and it re keys it. So if you do happen to lose, somehow lose all of the keys that you’ve made, you can go back and change all the locks.

Curtis [00:21:47]:
Or if you have like this hasn’t happened, but if you thought you had a shady guess or something, you can just go in and change all the keys like in 10 minutes without having to call locksmith, removing them from the doors and all that kind of stuff. I love those locks.

Avery Carl [00:21:57]:
Okay, well, good to know. Anything else we need to know about? Obviously guys have multiple backups for even if you do have a, a digital lock with a code, make sure that you have a hard copy key somewhere on the property in case something happens to the lock. They can run out of batteries. They can, especially in beach markets, they can malfunction because of the corrosion and the moisture in the air. So make sure, in addition to that, you always have, I say, two hard copy keys elsewhere on the property in a lockbox and especially, you know, if you’re using a dumb lock as well. So all good tips. Thanks guys. So Kelsey, you mentioned in a previous episode that everybody likes to golf cart everywhere here.

Avery Carl [00:22:41]:
So what do you do about that? I’m not a fan of owning golf carts or side by sides or bicycles or anything that a guest is going to use. I try to have them direct them to where they can rent something like that. But what do you do? What are the options? Here for owners.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:22:56]:
So I thought it was a great idea initially that we would. That. That you could really bridge the gap if you’re buying a property further from the beach and you could just. I could probably get over the liability of it with a good waiver. But if you. If your guest runs out of gas, runs out of battery on the beach, or they’re just like. I mean, it’s 28 miles of coastline that you could drive a bull beach. So they’re not just, like, taking it to, you know, the entrance to the neighborhood and down 100ft to find, you know, a nice open spot.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:23:29]:
It’s like part of the experience is having a golf cart and cruising the beach. So they could have this golf cart 14 miles down the beach and they’ve run out of gas or battery and they didn’t bring a truck. They don’t have a trailer. They don’t have any way to get it back. So my personal opinion is that if you don’t have a solution for what happens when they run out of gas, run out of battery, it’s probably a bigger deal if it’s battery powered, because how are you going to charge it? You could go get gas. Then if you don’t have a solution for that, then you probably don’t need to own one.

Avery Carl [00:24:05]:
Here’s my thing. It’s the liability, because if you own it and they wreck it. Like, I have a cousin who had a really bad golf cart wreck and was in the hospital for several days with, like, a terrible head injury, and he’s got stitches across his forehead now, or a scar across his forehead now. You can really hurt yourself on a golf cart. People don’t realize. They think, because it’s not a car and it seems to be, like, lighter and it goes slower, that it’s not dangerous. It still can be. So.

Avery Carl [00:24:30]:
Or if you get hit in a golf cart. So my thing, yeah, more so than running out of gas or battery somewhere, which is also valid, is that you could be on the hook if you’re the owner of that and they have some kind of an accident. And also just for maintenance, like, if, like you said, if it breaks down or if they can’t figure something out, they’re calling you. So I prefer to point them out, point them to the place they can rent it. So then all of that liability is shifted to the rental place, and all the questions on maintenance and stuff is on stickers all over the golf cart. At least they are here telling them who to call if they have a problem. So that way you can offer that, but shift that liability off of yourself.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:25:11]:
Yeah, we, that’s a very good point. And that’s actually, actually what we do currently. We point people toward local golf cart rental places. And it’s pretty affordable. It’s like 250 for a weekend or 450 for the week. And they literally will trailer the golf cart, drop it off at the beach house before check in time, like right before check in time, and then they pick it up. So it’s super easy for the guests. I think the reason why I explain it the way that I do is a lot of people think they could get over the liability or that’s like an outside chance that something like that happens.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:25:47]:
But I think for owners, like the reality of somebody might run out of gas, like or battery is totally realistic and what would they then do? So I tell people that to discourage them from doing it or at least think twice about what systems they would need to have in place in order to even deal with the logistics of it. Because I don’t want them to spend, you know, $10,000 and then be like, oh crap, I created a problem for myself. So just do you have a solution for that? Second is, can I handle the liability? Maybe you can, maybe you can’t.

Curtis [00:26:25]:
It also be super hard to maintain a golf cart, like a golf cart at the beach if you’re. If I had a golf cart as my personal golf cart, when I get back from the beach, I would rinse it off every time. I mean, just with the hose for, you know, two minutes, rinse off the sand, get the salty sand off of it. There’s no way you’re doing that. I think it’s going to rust out in two years. And like it’s. Your ROI is terrible on it.

Avery Carl [00:26:44]:
That’s, you know, I agree. And I think same thing with bicycles. Like a lot of people want to have beach cruisers and things like that. I still think farm that out to a rental company. So that’s their maintenance to do, that’s their headache that’s there. And no, honestly, somebody who is a bike rental company for a living is going to give my guests much better service than me who can’t even ride a bike, really. I grew up out in the country, guys, so wasn’t a lot of pavement it. So a bike company.

Avery Carl [00:27:13]:
I’d rather send my guests to somebody who’s going to give them the best service rather than try to keep it in house where I don’t know what I’m doing. And I’m not going to give them good service, because I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, I don’t know how to. I think I could probably figure out how to put air in a bike tire. I could not change a bike tire, period, or work on anything or tell them what to do. So I think you just. All of those things, you farm out to a rental company, in my opinion.

Curtis [00:27:37]:
So we tried the bike thing. Actually. A neighbor gave us two free bikes. Nice. They’re in good condition and pretty much never been used. We put them out at our rent on the garage, took a picture of them, put them on Airbnb and everything. And, you know, a month later, one of the bikes, the chain was literally rusted hard, like you couldn’t turn. It was like it had no slacking anymore just because someone probably took it to the beach and then it rusted, literally to be immovable.

Curtis [00:28:02]:
And then the second one had a flat tire, and it’s like, okay, I’m not going to be coming down to these houses and changing tires on bicycles. It’s not worth my time at.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:28:10]:
And who would you hire to do it? You’re gonna hire somebody to go change a bike tire?

Curtis [00:28:14]:
Yeah.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:28:15]:
It’s not realistic.

Curtis [00:28:16]:
It’s too small potatoes to deal with when you’re trying to manage an entire vacation home and. Or multiple vacation homes.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:28:22]:
Plus, in Crystal beach, you have Highway 87. You would hope to God they’re not riding it on Highway 87. And then you will have the neighborhood that you’re in, the only thing they could do. I don’t really ever see anybody riding a bike on a beat on the beach, do you? No, you cannot riding bikes.

Curtis [00:28:40]:
I don’t see them here.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:28:41]:
No. I don’t ever see them riding bikes. I mean, you have to go over a decent amount of kind of loose sand, and then you could ride right by the water. But I don’t see people very often doing it. So riding a bike would be limited to basically in the neighborhood. And it’s probably only five or six streets. So I don’t think the reward is there.

Avery Carl [00:29:01]:
Yeah. Oh, gotcha. Okay, so I think we’ve established any of that stuff. Farm that out. Let’s talk about when do you guys give refunds and discounts? Because a lot of times everybody just asks for stuff. They want a discount, they want free stuff. That’s just, you know, the general public. So when do you think it is appropriate to offer a discount or a refund if.

Curtis [00:29:25]:
If you’re not providing. If you’re not able to provide what you’ve said you’re going to provide. That’s kind of my golden rule. If we’ve, if we’ve said we’re gonna obviously like, if we’re going to say we’re going to provide, I even go as far as, like power outages. If, if someone gets there and it’s cold outside and the power goes out for a couple of hours, I’m going to have, be in constant communication with my guests. I’m going to make sure they’re relatively comfortable. If they, I’m not going to ask them to stay overnight in a house that’s 40 degrees while they’re paying hundreds of dollars to do so. In my opinion, I’d rather just have them go somewhere warm and call it a loss on my part.

Curtis [00:29:59]:
Like, you know, we, we’re in hospitality, we need our guests to be happy. And I know people are like, never give refunds. Don’t give refunds. For me, if I can’t provide the basic things, water, electricity and, you know, a clean house and the things that they thought they were going to get, even if I, even if it’s out of my control, typically I’ll, I just want them to be happy. It’s kind of my mo.

Avery Carl [00:30:20]:
Yeah, I agree. If they’re not getting what they paid for because you were unable to provide that, I think that, you know, they do deserve a refund or a discount. And I think we, as hosts, we get so caught up in talking about. Because nobody talks about like, oh, yeah, I screwed up, so I gave him a refund. You only really see people complaining on Facebook posts and stuff about this guest wants a refund and I didn’t do anything wrong and all this stuff. But there are definitely times that it is 1000% right and deserves to give a discount or a refund. So I just wanted to mention that because I think a lot of times we as hosts talk about all the times that we won’t give refunds, but there’s absolutely times that, you know, we are running a hospitality business and if you can’t provide the experience that you promised, then you need to be able to, to do something for them for that.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:31:08]:
So I think we, I think we try to conduct our business in such a way that we think about, well, what if it was us, what if we rented an Airbnb for the weekend, spent, you know, nearly $3,000 and we don’t have electricity, we’re all hot and sweaty, our kids are, you know, we have a five year old, she said, because there’s no nightlight or, you know, whatever it is. And we can’t. You can’t shower in the dark. We’re dirty for being at the beach, you know, whatever it might be. Like, how would you want, how do you want a host to handle it if you were the guest?

Avery Carl [00:31:44]:
Yeah. So let’s, let’s not lose sight of our hospitality in this business. You know, don’t get so hardcore on the investment, cash on cash return, that we lose sight that it is a hospitality business. It’s not unlike running a hotel or a restaurant or a bar or anything like that.

Curtis [00:31:59]:
Right.

Avery Carl [00:32:00]:
Yeah. So that was kind of the end of my question. So is there anything related to common things that you deal with as a manager in this market that you think our listeners could benefit from hearing?

Curtis [00:32:10]:
Before we move on, I had a few notes. Like, you know, obviously in the, with the weather, the humidity in the air, with anything you’re building when you’re setting up, don’t come and put like cheap carbon steel chains on your swinging benches. That’s like legitimate liability because, you know, in six months or a year, those chains are going to be all rusted out. You need to get coated chains or stainless steel cable. If you’re rebuilding a deck or doing something, make sure you’re using the proper hardware so that you’re not redoing it or that it’s not creating liability for your guests. That’s, you know, I’m kind of our, I’m our, I’m our guest guy and our maintenance guy. So most of my things are more like maintenance things that. Oh, freezes.

Curtis [00:32:52]:
That’s probably a good one to talk about.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:32:53]:
That was probably what we should have covered in the refund because our biggest refund has actually been over a winter freeze. And we. It’s unusual, but we’ve had winter freezes the last two winters.

Curtis [00:33:04]:
Yeah. And so these houses aren’t like, we’re in South Texas. We there house. No houses in this entire region are built for freezes, unfortunately. And so we have like water pipes running along the pilings of the houses. You know, exposed water pipes. There’s like maybe a foam insulator around it if. If you’re lucky or if you put it there yourself.

Curtis [00:33:25]:
So basically, after experiencing winter freezes before, I think what I’m going to do is if there’s a high chance that things are going to freeze, I’m more likely to cancel or not cancel, but encourage our guests to cancel if, like, if it’s going to freeze at night, if it’s going to be 20s for three days. I’m gonna tell our guests, hey, there’s a very high chance the water’s not going to be working. If you want to cancel, I’ll give you a full refund. And that’s like one weekend a year, right? We’re making bank the rest of the weekends. That one weekend, you don’t want to have guests there. That’s what happened. Or their water turned off or the electricity turned off. And then so the water froze because there’s no heat.

Curtis [00:34:01]:
And it’s like, it’s. It’s a compounding problem. So if it is going to be in the heart, like a hard freeze, think about, do you really want gas in your house? I don’t.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:34:09]:
And it’s always at Christmas. Why is it always. It’s like ruining my Christmas.

Avery Carl [00:34:14]:
Oh, yeah.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:34:15]:
Yes.

Avery Carl [00:34:16]:
Oh, that’s. That’s definitely a good call out. A lot of people don’t think about at the beach that that can happen. It can get that cold. People assume that it won’t. It’s not often, but it can. Anything else? Anything else is before we close.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:34:30]:
I would also say that the houses are elevated, so it also has that wind chill effect of the wind. So it actually feels colder, maybe is colder in areas where the wind is blowing through, like underneath the house, where those pipes also are. Another thing that happens at the beach is we have a couple of weekends that are kind of party weekends. Jeep weekend is probably the biggest one. But I would say that definitely get Price Labs if you’re buying in this area. Curtis, speak to this. But I believe that Price Labs has done a good job in the past of anticipating when those weekends are and pricing it accordingly, even if you aren’t super on top of the calendar.

Curtis [00:35:13]:
No doubt. Yeah, Price Labs does a great job. I’ll be like, oh, no, this is a big weekend. I haven’t adjusted my pricing. I’ll go in. And it’s already jacked up. I’m like, okay. It’s, you know, trust but verify on the Price Labs.

Curtis [00:35:24]:
I love Price Labs.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:35:25]:
I.

Curtis [00:35:25]:
It works for me. Great deep weekend. And then there’s the Lone Star rally, which is a little bit smaller, but still. Like, I was here setting this place up a couple weeks ago in Los Angeles here. And there’s a decent amount of rentals with a decent amount of people on the peninsula for being, you know, in.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:35:41]:
The winter, being cold outside, and the rallies in Galveston.

Curtis [00:35:44]:
Yeah, that’s true. Next year, you need to be on a motorcycle at the rally.

Avery Carl [00:35:49]:
Oh, we. The. There’s a big one in Panama City every year called Thunder Beach. They have it twice a year. And I love going to motorcycle rallies, to be honest. But it definitely, it can bring it. It is a lot of partying, you know, so. But it’s fun.

Kelsey Ardoin [00:36:05]:
It was pretty tame. Jeep weekend isn’t. I felt Lone Star rally. Like we were out there, we were working on our house and there were other people there having fun and it didn’t look like, I mean, nobody was being wild. They were just having a good time. Which is what we all want.

Avery Carl [00:36:21]:
Yeah, right. Maybe they’re staying in your short term rental. So guys, if you’re ready to buy a short term rental in the Galveston Crystal beach market with Kelsey, you, you can email us at agents at the short term shop.com and we will connect you with her. Or if you’re maybe not ready for that, but you do want to learn more about short term rentals, there’s a few ways you can do that. You can join our Facebook group. It’s the same title as my book right behind me. It’s called short term rental Long term Wealth. We’re all just hanging out in there talking about short term rentals all day, every day.

Avery Carl [00:36:49]:
You can also join us on Thursdays. Luke and I have a live Q and a on Thursdays. You can sign up for that@strquestions.com thanks, guys. We’ll catch you on the next episode.