How to Price a Gulf Shores Short Term Rental: Revenue Management Made Simple

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 sign up at stm. 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 episode of the short term show limited series on the Gulf Shores market.

Avery Carl [00:02:02]:
Today we’re talking about calendars and pricing, same cast of characters that you are used to. But guys, go ahead and introduce yourselves briefly starting with Jonathan.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:02:13]:
Hey everybody, good morning. This is Jonathan with a short term shop and happy to be here again with these awesome people. And talk about calendars and pricing.

Tim Grillot [00:02:21]:
All right, Good morning. I’m Tim Grillo. I actually live in the Smokies but own several properties in Gulf Shores. So always love talking about our, our favorite getaway from home.

Ethan McCarty [00:02:31]:
Yep. And I’m Ethan McCarty. I also help out the short term shop and have a duplex down in Gulf Shores.

Avery Carl [00:02:37]:
All right, so let’s talk about just general, generally what we see in terms of occupancy rate in this area before we get to. To in the weeds on calendars and pricing.

Ethan McCarty [00:02:49]:
Thank you, Tim.

Tim Grillot [00:02:51]:
All right, well, I’m gonna say, you know, like any market that’s gonna vary on the type of property you own, but generally it’s going to be, I’m gonna say, not as much of a year round occupancy because it’s the beach, you know, so people are, you know, obviously your summer months are gonna be much more heavily weighted and the bigger the property, the more true that is. So it’s, you know, a lot of people get really freaked out by that, that, oh my gosh, you know, I want to be in this market because it’s year round. Um, I’ll say if you’re in the right vacation market, in a true vacation market, that’s not really true because, yes, it will be lower occupancy. But really what that means is you make a metric crap ton more money when it’s hot, you know, than you would when it’s in the off season. And so you end up making the same, like, if you look at like a, a four bedroom off the, off the beach in Gulf Shores compared to a four bedroom and in the Smokies, the four bedroom in the Smokies is going to be higher occupancy. But if you look at the gross revenue for the two there, it’s going to be pretty similar. And especially like the ratio of what you pay for it versus what it makes is going to be pretty darn similar. That’s what my experience has been.

Tim Grillot [00:03:59]:
I personally own some small condos that are on the beach and my occupancy is higher and it is more year round, but I don’t necessarily make more money than I would on a small property in the Smokies, you know, so it’s the same kind of. It’s just very generally, you know, any, any beach market’s going to be a lower occupancy. So you guys kind of agree with that?

Ethan McCarty [00:04:20]:
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely agree. Really? For us, it’s from March until maybe October. October’s Hit or miss. But March is really heavy. April’s down a little bit, People are still in school. But then come the summer months, May, June, July, you know, August and September, that it stays steady. If we get a booking in the winter, it’s like just a little cherry on top, you know, I’m sure we’ll talk about maybe snowbird sometime time today. But as far as actual short term bookings, they are the holidays and that’s it for us.

Tim Grillot [00:04:50]:
Yeah, yeah. And, and like I said, that’s not a scary thing for me. It’s just you get some time off and you get some time to do some work to your property and it’s, it’s, you know, if you’ve had these things for a long time, you understand that if you’re new, you may not. But you know, and there can be anxiety in that and you have to budget your money. Right. And everything when the money’s flowing in hot and heavy in the summer. But having some time to do some things is a nice breather.

Avery Carl [00:05:11]:
So, so, yeah, and I’ll agree with that too. I think a lot of people get scared off of coastal markets when they hear that occupancy rate. But my four bedroom in Destin that has a 65% occupancy rate makes about $40,000 more a year than my four bedroom in the Smoky Mountains that has an occupancy rate of more like 85. So you guys really need to look more at the gross annual income than what the occupancy rate is because it really doesn’t matter. I’d rather it be rented one night a year for a million dollars than 365 a year for 10 bucks. So just make sure you’re not losing sight because you’re only paying attention to that occupancy rate.

Tim Grillot [00:05:49]:
Yeah. And Ethan, Ethan. Go ahead, Jonathan.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:05:52]:
Oh, I was going to say on that note that you may see even studios down here, very small properties that may have snowbirds that are in them during the winter time and they may have an 80, 90% occupancy rate. But if you compare that to a four bedroom, like in the, you know, similar location, the four bedrooms likely, I mean, it’s going to have much higher overall gross numbers. And like Avery was saying, that’s really the only important thing to me is how much you’re grossing each year. You know, if it’s 50 occupied and it’s grossing more big, you know, it’s still grossing enough.

Tim Grillot [00:06:24]:
No, I totally agree. Occupancy doesn’t pay the Bills, gross revenue pays the bills. And so that’s what you need to pay attention to. You know, occupancy can be whatever it is, as long as your gross revenue is, is what it needs to be. That’s what you’re looking at. So, and kind of what Ethan was saying, I mean he kind of touched on the seasons. I mean you kind of nailed it. I mean spring break kind of starts usually around March.

Tim Grillot [00:06:45]:
So I mean March and through, I mean September, October, that can be debated a little bit. Is, is kind of your, your, you know, obviously it slows down, no doubt after August, but that’s your hot season. Is, is, is, is March through, like I said that September, October you do. There is, I want to use the H word. There is a hurricane season. And that does need to not, doesn’t need to totally freak you out either. You know, it’s, it’s something that can happen, but it doesn’t mean hurricanes happen every year. And there’s like season, ooh, there’s a hurricane every year.

Tim Grillot [00:07:17]:
It’s not like that. But there is always that threat. And you know, so there tends to be, you know, people that travel to places like that kind of know that and they kind of, you know, bounce around it a little bit.

Avery Carl [00:07:28]:
So yeah, I think that I see a lot of posts of people who buy in markets like this and then come August they start posting on all the Facebook groups. How do I get occupancy in the wintertime? How do I get occupancy in the wintertime? And the answer to that is most likely you don’t. So so many people are like, well, what do I do to get people. Well, people aren’t coming. It’s not that they’re there and they’re just not booking you. People don’t come in the wintertime unless they’re a snowbird. And we can go ahead and get into that real quick. But so guys, snowbirds, if you’re getting a three, four, five bedroom property, snowbirds are not coming for you.

Avery Carl [00:08:09]:
They’re typically just couples. So it’s going to be one bedrooms, maybe two bedrooms that get booked by, by those guys. But you guys want to tell everybody what a snowbird, what they do?

Tim Grillot [00:08:19]:
Yeah, absolutely. I love snowbirds. So we have the perfect properties for them. And that’s, you know, the answer to how do I get bookings in the winter? If you want to have more of a year round occupancy, buy a small property facing the Gulf. That’s the answer. And because what snowbirds are, are Generally, you know, I don’t want to be too specific, but it’s generally retired folks that generally live somewhere where the weather’s horrible in the winter up north. You know, a lot of, you know, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, all, I mean, you go down to Gulf Shore is that time of year and that’s all you see for license plates is, is those northern states. And their, their choices are they can either stare at 8ft of snow in their driveway or they can go stare at the Gulf of Mexico.

Tim Grillot [00:09:00]:
And you know, the weather is not like you’re going to go swimming in the ocean in the Gulf Shores, but it is an extremely popular place. And I found there’s like a whole, like, community of these people and they, they talk to each other and they make friends. And a lot of the people that live up there, they like, have these friends they see every year when they go to Gulf Shores and they stay for two months in the winter and that’s, that’s what a snow is. They go and stay down there and get away from, get away from everything that, that sucks about where they live. And, and quite frankly, you know, we can touch on pricing with that. You are not going to rent the snowbirds for anywhere near what you’re paying or getting priced for in the summer. It is, they are a bargain group of people generally, you know, and quite frankly, it comes down to, you know, I talk about this a lot, but supply and demand. Demand is very low this time of year and the supply is very high.

Tim Grillot [00:09:48]:
So they are, they’re shoppers, you know, so your prices are going to be ridiculously low compared to July, but you do get the occupancy. So for us, it’s just barely above our mortgage, you know, and, but we do it. We love them. We have, we have repeat. You tend to get repeat people. They fall in love with your, your place and for no reason, because they’re really all the same. But I say that that’s not true. But, you know, they fall in love with your place and they want to keep coming back year after year.

Tim Grillot [00:10:15]:
I mean, our people that we have in our one unit there, they can’t write, they can’t wait to write the check as they’re walking out the door in, in February for next year. You know, that’s. And, and so, you know, that’s kind of what that’s all about. But like I said, it’s not anything. It’s not, it’s not going to be huge dollars, but it is nice, you know, if that’s what you want to have some year round. Not year round but more, more occupancy.

Ethan McCarty [00:10:38]:
Your snowbirds, Tim, did they, did they. Were they there when you bought it or how did you find them?

Tim Grillot [00:10:43]:
So we’ve had a little bit of both. So we’ve had, we’ve had, we’ve had ones that have come with properties that we have scared away because we raised the price. We have ones that have come with properties that we have kept and they love it and we’ve actually raised the price and they completely understood. And then we’ve also messed around with like having like snowbirds and we have a couple of units right by each other and we’ve messed around with having snowbirds in one and leaving the other one open on, on the booking platforms and just with the price is much lower and we tend to get like snowbird type people that book it. We’ll get two and three week bookings off of VRBO and Airbnb. So you know, just because they don’t like book, you know, traditionally a lot of snowbirds are off, are off platform bookings and you know, direct and things like that. We get a lot of them that are more, more direct and not staying the whole, the whole two months straight thing and. But they just book it off the platform.

Ethan McCarty [00:11:34]:
Gotcha. I just to mention a couple other options. I’ve never hosted a snowbird. We’ve looked, just hasn’t worked out. But there is a Facebook group for Fort Morgan where you can post your property in there and snowbirds are in there looking for the place. And I think Furnish finder is still something that you can use to get people who are looking that area. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Tim Grillot [00:11:54]:
And I know people that have done targeted Facebook ads and you know, when you do that, if you’re going to get into that, that’s a whole nother world. That’s not what this podcast is about. But you’re not where people make mistake is they’ll do it in Gulf Source and people aren’t looking. You need to do it where those people are. So you have to do some research and some legwork and it’s some work. You know, it’s a marketing g But you know, if you I’m making up towns but if you want to market, if you want to put an ad up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, that that’s the kind of place you’re going to want to put up Facebook ads is you’re going to find, you know, a northern place that’s hot for those type of people that are looking for something like that.

Avery Carl [00:12:28]:
So yeah, Canada.

Tim Grillot [00:12:30]:
Right, right. And, and that could we get Canadians? For sure. So yeah, again, I always like to say when you look at Gulf Shores, if you like make a V above, like, make it the, the point at the bottom of the V and make it a huge like funnel and that, that’s your market, you know, basically all the way up to Canada. That funnel that leads down to Gulf Shores is your, is your, your demographic you’re looking for?

Avery Carl [00:12:52]:
Yeah. So let’s talk about lead time then. So what is the average lead time for bookings in this market that you guys see?

Ethan McCarty [00:13:02]:
So just speaking on our property, you know, in the summer, we’re, we’re about three to four weeks for us, and that’s where we stay all summer long. So June, July, August, about three weeks out, we, we get bookings for the three weeks and, and we stay there. That’s, that’s where we’re at. Tim, we’re. Jonathan, where are you guys at in the hot time?

Tim Grillot [00:13:21]:
I agree. Three to four weeks and sometimes even less. You know, we get a lot, a fair amount of bookings in a one to two week and sometimes even a couple days before they show up. I will say if you are being aggressive with trying to fill your calendars, which I think everybody should be, even when you know it’s going to be tough, you got to be working on those harder months well ahead of time. So like, you know, again, once when, when demand is really high. I agree with that, three to four weeks. But when it’s not, we’re, we’re working on our calendars way ahead of times and we do get a lot of bookings that are further out. You know, like we, we got our September almost full down there and I started working on that a couple of months ago and it’s July, end of July right now.

Tim Grillot [00:13:57]:
So I probably start working that around the beginning of June, maybe a little sooner. So.

Ethan McCarty [00:14:02]:
And we’re the same and I’m glad you mentioned that, Tim. That’s if you want September and October book, that’s when you need to start doing it. If you wait too long, you miss out on the people that are coming because there are less people coming and they’ve already decided where they’re going. So. Great, great point.

Avery Carl [00:14:15]:
Yeah. So do you see a different lead time in larger versus smaller properties?

Tim Grillot [00:14:22]:
Yes. You know, the bigger the property, the further out people tend to plan. It’s not, you know, obviously there’s going to be exceptions the rule, but again, ours are Small. We got one bedroom. So ours are more last minute and more, you know, people just, you know, they find it and it’s easier for them to get into but bigger properties if you’re at a place in yours where you have multiple groups of adults. So it’s not just a husband, wife, like you got a husband, wife and grandma, grandpa or maybe some uncles or whatever that’s kind of, you know, they have to do more logistics and planning. So they’re 10 going to tend to book a little further out because those people have to all get together and usually they, a lot of people, they’ll, they’ll sit down at Thanksgiving or a bottle of wine and pick out when they’re going to go shore or something like that, you know.

Avery Carl [00:15:03]:
So yeah, there’s definitely a lot more organization involved with having, with booking a big property for a bunch of families rather than just hey, let’s go to Gulf Shores this weekend for two of us. So totally get that. So let’s talk now about your calendars and pricing. So what are we doing? We know when the season’s coming starts in March. What are we doing let’s say January 1st. We’re looking at our calendars for, for this year for Gulf Shores. What, what’s, what’s the first thing you’re doing? Just walk me through.

Tim Grillot [00:15:33]:
So obviously for me we know when that we, you know, just from some experience we know when the peaks are and we have our prices pretty high up. We’re not as concerned about booking those peak seasons in January, you know, that can wait because the demand is going to be there in July to fill it up. So our prices are pretty high and we actually it’s about four times for us like for ex. So like what we charge in like a January is going to be about four times less than what our July is going to be. So there’s pretty big swings in their prices. And again this is a one bedroom condos so but that’s, you know, we were down in the sub $100 a night you know, on, in the wintertime and up in the four hundreds for sure and sometimes even tickling 500 a night in the, in the middle of July. And so, so you really have to be on top of you know, enemy method but also supply and demand and knowing when your seasons are, you don’t, you don’t want to be super expensive in the slow time and you don’t want to be super cheap in high time. So you got to get out there and really pay att to what other people around you are doing.

Tim Grillot [00:16:34]:
And I’ll say if you have a well done property and a great listing, it’s okay to be more expensive in, in a busy time, like you can be the most expensive person out there and get it booked because you have a great place. In the slow time, that’s less true. You know, in the slow time there’s tons more to pick from. So it does become more about price.

Ethan McCarty [00:16:55]:
So on January 1st or in that time frame when, when you are, you got three holidays to work with. You got Memorial Day, fourth of July, Labor Day. So make sure you’re thinking about those when you’re doing it. And then I, I’ll loop Jonathan in here. Activities in Gulf Shores, Fort Worth. I feel like there’s a Mardi Gras week. I believe that’s true. And other activities, Jonathan, that are off the top of your head, that are big for people traveling.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:17:21]:
That’s right. I wouldn’t say the Fort Morgan parade’s too big, but it is really fun. I did go to that and it’s really cool. There’s like four. Four Things floats. But that’s in February if I’m not mistaken.

Ethan McCarty [00:17:33]:
And that’s earlier actually.

Tim Grillot [00:17:36]:
You brought up a great point there, Ethan. There are a ton of festivals and stuff. The Chamber Commerce does a pretty good job of putting stuff on, on a calendar. So look at the Chamber of Commerce, my website, and see, you know, calendars and stuff. And then also pay attention to things like the Hangout and Flor Bama. Some of the bigger, you know, I hate to say just bars, but the bigger venues that are down there that do things because they do huge festivals. And you will, if you pay attention to your price labs, you’ll see weird dates and like almost shoulder seasons that have huge prices on them. You might go, oh, that’s a mistake and change it.

Tim Grillot [00:18:08]:
That’s probably a festival or something that, that, that, that price labs is catching. So, you know, try and pay attention to, you know, when there are things going on because that is, that, that is huge moneymakers.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:18:19]:
So that’s a good point, Tim. And like in October you got Shrimp festival that we’re all booked up for this hu. And if you’re by the Flor Bama or the Hangout, you do want to keep up with their calendars because they’re doing stuff year round. So that’s a really good point.

Tim Grillot [00:18:34]:
Yeah, they actually. I don’t know about Flor Bama, but the other one hang out, the one I’m right next to the Hangout New Year’s, they do a. They call it a polar plunge. You know, everybody runs in the ocean on New Year’s. It’s not really polar because you’re in Gulf Shores, but there’s a ton of people that go there for that. We went to. We went to it last year. That’s how.

Tim Grillot [00:18:52]:
How I know about it. And it was a ball. I didn’t do it, but my wife did. So.

Ethan McCarty [00:18:56]:
Yeah. And to another point, Tim made, you know, if we’re in January and we’re getting July bookings, the first thought we have is we’re not priced high enough because we don’t really want. It would have to be a big booking for me to feel good about that. We’re. We’re. We’re wanting to be a little closer, you know, to that time to get booked, to make sure we’re appropriately priced.

Avery Carl [00:19:16]:
Yeah. And back to the Mardi Gras thing. People don’t realize that Mardi Gras actually started in Mobile, which is right. Just right 45 minutes north of Gulf Shores. So Mardi Gras is a really big deal in south Alabama. So I think a lot of people miss that, and they think, oh, it’s a beach market. Cool. Beach times.

Avery Carl [00:19:36]:
But Mardi Gras is in February, and it is a big deal in south Alabama, so definitely something to not forget on your calendar.

Tim Grillot [00:19:43]:
Yeah. If you haven’t been to Gulf Shores at all, there’s a lot of that style food there, period, all over. And that’s one of the things we love about it. You know, you can get, you know, great, great. I say New Orleans style food, but it’s that Southern. It’s great. So.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:19:56]:
And even though the Fort Morgan one isn’t that big, the Orange beach and Gulf Shores Mardi Gras are huge. They shut down the streets. And I was in one of those parades. It was nice.

Tim Grillot [00:20:06]:
You were in the parade?

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:20:07]:
Oh, yeah. I was just driving in. One is.

Avery Carl [00:20:10]:
Oh, well, that’s.

Tim Grillot [00:20:12]:
I had all kinds of stuff pictured in my head already.

Avery Carl [00:20:16]:
Oh, man. I think you need to get actually in it, like, as a character. I want that to be your goal for next year.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:20:22]:
I’ll do it. I’ll do it just for you.

Tim Grillot [00:20:24]:
I’m picturing feathers and all kinds of crazy nonsense.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:20:28]:
Hey, we’ll see. Y’ all just gotta show up and I’ll throw you some beads.

Tim Grillot [00:20:32]:
You’ve got. You’ve got the look.

Avery Carl [00:20:35]:
All right. Okay. Where were we? Back to. Back to calendars. Okay, so let’s say, you know, it’s. We’re Pulling up on March and you’re not booked for your. Why can I not think of spring break? I keep wanting to say Mardi Gras. You’re not booked for spring break yet.

Avery Carl [00:20:51]:
What are we doing? What are we looking at? What are some things we can do to get booked and what is our pricing doing? I mean, typically that’ll probably mean your pricing’s too high, right?

Tim Grillot [00:21:01]:
Yeah, number one, I mean you really got to check your pricing and, and, and you know, a lot of newbies get, get mixed up in thinking that they, they just get a number in their head. You know, they heard it somewhere or they saw it somewhere, like it needs to be 400 a night or something. But do the math and see like, you know, take that times, you know, however many days you think you’re gonna be occupied versus where you are on your, your total all in, you know, budget or expenses for the month, your mortgage on that. And generally it’s, you can go lower than what you think just off the top of your head. But obviously right after pricing, you know, it’s just your listing. You know, you need to make sure that’s top tier. You know, you can make sure that your pictures are great. You know, the way your descriptions are written is good.

Tim Grillot [00:21:40]:
You know that you got to be active with it. You need to make sure, you know, on Airbnb, make sure you hit all your insights that you can and just, you know, changing things up and your title and all that stuff.

Ethan McCarty [00:21:49]:
So, and I’ll, I’ll mention that also minimum night stay. You know, we never do Saturday to Sunday or Sunday to Saturday. We, we, when it gets busy, we’re three night minimum and we like to stay there for the busy season. Winner. You can book a night for, for cheap. But we’re, we want people to come when they want to come and book when they want to book and that, you know, if you’re seven to seven, maybe you’re not getting the booking because not everybody can do that.

Tim Grillot [00:22:13]:
Completely agree and thank you for saying that because that’s, that is like such a classic beach property manager move. It’s just like, it’s, to me, it’s gross. It’s just like they’re forcing people into seven days. And if you, again, this is another math thing. If you look at what it would cost for seven days, that might price somebody out. You could actually be more money per night and only do a three night stay and you get them and it may only, it may be like more, more per night than they would have paid for. That seven night. But they couldn’t afford the total, you know, but they can afford the total of your three night.

Tim Grillot [00:22:46]:
So like a lot of times I’ll pay attention to that too. I found like my building has a ton of property, managed properties in it and they’re all that way and I can crush them on nightly rate because of that. You know, I can, I keep my nightly rate to where I make my three nights about 25 to 30% cheaper than their seven nights is. You know, the total. That’s kind of what I do. It’s my little, my little secret. But we won’t tell anybody anyway. No, that’s a great point, Ethan.

Ethan McCarty [00:23:13]:
So that’s good math for Tim.

Tim Grillot [00:23:15]:
Yeah, that is really good.

Avery Carl [00:23:17]:
That’s a very common mistake for new beach owners because they’ll just hear that somewhere or see that somewhere. Oh, you got to do seven day minimum at the beach. And that’s really not, not the way to optimize.

Tim Grillot [00:23:28]:
I hate to say it, but people that say that it comes off a little stuffy to me. I was just like, oh no, I don’t want people checking in on any other day but this day. And I’m losing. I don’t know, it just let people come, have a good time, you know.

Avery Carl [00:23:38]:
And I think it’s just old school.

Tim Grillot [00:23:40]:
Yeah. And I, we have our price labs program to where, you know, it gradually, like as it gets close, we open up our three night to actually one night, you know, but then it, it messes with the prices and stuff in there too. So.

Avery Carl [00:23:52]:
Yeah. All right, so let’s, let’s move on to summer now before we run out of time. So when do we start pricing for summer? When do we start seeing bookings come in for summer?

Tim Grillot [00:24:02]:
So pricing for summer I do way ahead of time, but I just have it high. So again I’m, I leave my calendars open at least 12 months and we had to do a far out pricing. So it’s going to be, the pricing is going to be in there for summer and I do, at the beach I do a far out pricing in price labs and then I do an additional, I call it black lining, but I do a manual override for the summer to keep it high until about March. And then in March is when I start bringing into realistic prices and sometimes they’ll start getting grabbed that soon. But a lot of times April, May is actually when a lot of the June and July bookings really start coming in.

Ethan McCarty [00:24:36]:
So what are the exact same?

Avery Carl [00:24:37]:
All right, Jonathan. Exact same.

Ethan McCarty [00:24:40]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:24:41]:
I’ve Learned a lot from Tim today.

Ethan McCarty [00:24:43]:
So.

Avery Carl [00:24:45]:
All right, so what, how far out should we be worried if we’re not booked for the summer and should we start tweaking our pricing there?

Ethan McCarty [00:24:57]:
So for us it’s going to be that three to four week mark. Right. So as March comes, we want to be booked for March three to four weeks before. If not, I think we have price labs automatically set up to start reducing prices a little bit at that point and we’re going to stay that way consistently through summer. I mentioned again, April is an outlier, at least for us. It drops compared to March and May like it’s a dip. So we do try to be more aggressive in getting people in in April, but the rest of the time we’re three weeks out and as we get a little closer to that, our price just drops and drops. But honestly, I’ve been in the beach market two years now, I think, and I’ve never had.

Ethan McCarty [00:25:30]:
It’s booked May through August for sure. Very, very few open nights for me.

Tim Grillot [00:25:36]:
If you don’t have any bookings for June in May, I’d be looking at it. Not, not, not freaking out yet, but I’d be looking at it. You know, if you’re at like 20% for June and May, I think that’s fine. And personally, that’s my personal opinion. And then by the end of May and, and, and, and you know, you, they’ll start coming in. But yeah, April, May is when I’d really be looking at having some bookings for June and then you know, it just keeps going for July. So, but, and again, it depends a little bit on the size of your property. If you’ve got four or five, six bedroom, you may want to back that up a little bit.

Tim Grillot [00:26:07]:
And, but you know, the general one to three or four bedroom is kind of follows that rule.

Avery Carl [00:26:12]:
So for somebody coming in new in this market, what are your top tips for? Or just beginner tips for their calendars and pricing?

Tim Grillot [00:26:24]:
When you’re new, don’t, you’re going to make mistakes and don’t be scared of that. You know, you need to come in and, and I would say I would lean towards getting booked than I would towards optimizing pricing in your first year because you need to get people in your place getting reviews and you need to be gaining experience on how to handle the entire business. So don’t focus your first year and beat yourself up if you don’t do it right, because you won’t, you’re not going to. I didn’t, I’m Sure Ethan didn’t. I know Jonathan hasn’t but. Sorry Jonathan, but no, it’s just, it’s anybody that’s done this has made mistakes and I see people all the time get hung up on like completely freaking themselves out make trying to do every single detail perfect. I would much rather, you know, get people in there and, and, and learn and then you know, as you gain experience, work on optimizing your pricing.

Ethan McCarty [00:27:13]:
So and you know we’ve talked around a lot about it but we haven’t really said it but use price labs and it’s there for you to get a baseline and then look at what your neighbor, I mean Tim knew exactly what the property management company in his, in his complex is charging. Know, know what that is and know what you need to be to be better than that. Research and learn from, from whatever resources you can.

Avery Carl [00:27:35]:
All really great advice. So anything else we haven’t covered in terms of what you need to be thinking about when on your pricing and your calendars in this market, I think.

Tim Grillot [00:27:46]:
You know, Ethan just kind of nailed it. But don’t if you own in other markets already and this is the second market, don’t assume it’s going to be the same. I, I, you know, we own the Smokies and it’s not going to say drastically different. Some months are drastically different, you know and the Smokies like Christmas and Thanksgiving are like this, this massive thing and the people love to go to the Smokies for it is not like that. Like, like I’ve made the mistake of price like pricing my Christmas like I do in the Smokies in Gulf Shores and it’s gone empty, you know, because people, it’s not a big deal to go to sit on the beach at Christmas time evidently. But so anyway that just pay attention like what Ethan said, you know, spend time, do your research, do your homework. You know, I’ve heard everybody say do your push ups, you know, but you need to learn the market and what’s going on down there and pay attention. You know there are data sources out there you can look at, you can look at, you know, air DNA talks about seasonality, a lot of things talking about seasonality.

Tim Grillot [00:28:37]:
But you know, also you have to cross reference that to your specific property because they’re all different. You know, one bedroom condo like I’m talking about, if it’s across the street and pointing the opposite direction is going to be a different game than, than one that’s on. You know, there’s everything has just got its own intricacies if you’re two blocks from the hangout versus Fort Morgan. Not one’s better than the other but they’re different. They’re totally different to manage. So you got to learn your specific little micro sell of where you are.

Avery Carl [00:29:03]:
So all right. Anything else before we go? All right guys, well if you just want to learn more about short term rentals we have a live Q and A every Thursday. You can sign up for that@strquestions.com you can also join our public Facebook group. It is called short term rental long term wealth. Same as my book. I’ve just pointed in the wrong direction. That’s why I’m laughing. You guys are watching on YouTube.

Avery Carl [00:29:27]:
So same title as my book short term rental Long term wealth. Or if you guys are ready to go ahead and start looking in the Gulf shores market, you can email us at agents the shorttermshop.com or you can get Jonathan directly at Jonathan at the short term shop.com thanks guys.

Tim Grillot [00:29:42]:
Thanks everybody. J.