Luke Carl [00:00:03]:
Welcome to the Short term show from Blue Ridge, Georgia. We will cover everything you need to know, including buying, holding, managing from a distance, raising rents, renovating and how to rent it when you are not using your very own vacation home in the North Georgia mountains. For more information on current purchase prices and income data, please visit theshortermshop.com welcome to the Short Term show special episodes from Blue Ridge. Grateful to be here. Happy to be here on the short Term show. It is as for right now, anyway, the final episode of the North Georgia mountains. We are going to talk pricing today with my main dude, Mr. Yock.

Luke Carl [00:00:59]:
Love this guy. And today we’re gonna again talk about how to price your calendar. So first thing I wanna do is kind of go over what a 12 month calendar looks like, give or take in this market. And also, you know, when you can expect things to be slow. Before I get into that, I do wanna point out having done this for a long time, I, I like it when it’s slow. You know, to a certain extent a house is gonna make what it’s gonna make, right? You need to make sure you’re on top of that, your gross annual income and your nightly rates to make sure that you’re on track. How do you do that? You set goals. This month needs to hit this much and this month needs to hit that much.

Luke Carl [00:01:40]:
And I need to pay. You got to pay attention, Set goals, pay attention. Exactly. Like everything in life, like weight loss. But you know, because what I, what I hear all the time is oh man, it’s slow during that time of year. I don’t like it when it’s slow in my, my vacation rental because then I’m not making any money. Well, you’ve already made all your money and so who cares that it’s slow in those couple of months. I like that.

Luke Carl [00:02:05]:
You know, it’s almost like being a school teacher now again, we don’t have a ton of like dead, dead, dead season here in North Georgia. It’s not like Wisconsin or somewhere where it’s like freezing cold. You know, typical mountain market is going to get fair amount of traction year round. I think let’s just go ahead and start with the beginning of the year and wrap it through the end of the year. And yak, feel free to raise your hand and step on my toes if I’m screwing any of this up. I think you can probably expect your January and February to be pretty damn dead. With a few exceptions. You got MLK weekend in there in January which is going to book for sure.

Luke Carl [00:02:44]:
And probably had a pretty decent rate. You’ve got. I’ll get to New Year’s at the end of the year. And then you’ve got Valentine. Valentine can. Can do pretty well, particularly on smaller properties where the honeymooners are coming. And I do keep an eye on my. My Valentine and have, like, a little bit longer of a nightly stay, maybe one or two nights longer than normal, depending on the size of your property, and a couple of bucks more on a Valentine.

Luke Carl [00:03:12]:
But it’s not, you know, a home run. But then, you know, usually once March rolls around and the leaves kind of start coming back in first, maybe the second week of March, third week of March, that’s when things get heavy again. And. And we’ll kind of stay heavy until about May. But before we get to that, I do want to mention April is spring break, and that is a big deal in this market because there are so many major universities in metropolitan areas that are within driving distance, particularly Atlanta. Millions and millions of people on spring break. And spring break is gonna be different based on whether it’s a Georgia school or an Alabama school or a Tennessee school. So your al.

Luke Carl [00:03:54]:
Your April should be pretty. Pretty good across the board. I like to keep my prices a little. A little higher than what Price labs tells me on. On April, by the way. I’ll get into Price labs here in just a minute, But May is when that switches. The spring breaks are over. Everybody spent their money on vacation.

Luke Carl [00:04:11]:
They’re back in school. So it does. It’s probably gonna slow down quite a bit in May. And the. The problem with that is we don’t. A lot of times we don’t see it coming with May. You know, you get comfortable in March and April, and you’re thinking, oh, and another thing with Maven, the weather’s fantastic, so you get a little bit comfortable, and you’re sitting there saying, well, why the hell are the people. Well, they’re back in school and the parents are back.

Luke Carl [00:04:33]:
The kids are back in school, and the parents aren’t taking them anywhere or the college and et cetera. So May is one you got to keep an eye on, and you got to, you know, maybe do some May specials as early as January or February, and then June, July should. Should be pretty smooth sailing. And you’re probably top dollar for those months, and especially 4th of July, you want to have a long minimum night stay and a high dollar rate for the big holidays there in the summertime. And August can tend to. Tend to slow down a little bit, especially the first two weeks. Of August, three weeks of August, whenever the kids are going back to school, you’ll see there’s a recurring theme there. When there’s school, vacations are slower.

Luke Carl [00:05:12]:
It’s just the way it is. Think about your childhood. It was exactly like that. Right? So. And then September is back to school, back to school. So that one, that one can be a lot like May. October is probably going to be pretty decent, if not very decent. You got the leaves changing on the trees.

Luke Carl [00:05:30]:
Everybody wants to come to the mountains. It’s beautiful. It’s gorgeous. And then November and December are very similar in the fact that the first two weeks are a bit of a throwaway. You just kind of try and get those booked as early as possible for whatever kind of number you can get on them. And then you’re looking for the real high numbers for the Thanksgiving and the Christmas and as many, many, many, many nights for those two bookings as you can. Personally, I like, I have a goal usually about six weeks out. I like, I feel like Thanksgiving six weeks out and Christmas six weeks out is the sweet spot for those to get booked.

Luke Carl [00:06:08]:
I’m not mad at them that they book earlier than that. And I do get a little bit stressed out if they’re booking later than that. I feel that was my optimal period of time to get not only a decent rate, but also a really nice guest. The closer you get to those major holidays, the more risk you have that the guest is only picking you because you were the only one available. So I don’t really like to be the last man standing on the major, major holidays like that. And then of course, New Year’s gets lumped in there with the Christmas holiday. It’s really just a few days after and it should be pretty high. Maybe not quite as many nights in a row as, as a Christmas minimum night stay anyway, but should be pretty high.

Luke Carl [00:06:47]:
And then we’re back, back in a slow season again. And I did want to mention there are softwares out there that’ll do the bulk of this stuff for you. Price Labs is the most popular. It’s the one we like around here. I use it myself. I do pay for my subscription. We don’t take any kind of, you know, we don’t get any kind of advertising fee for saying that, and I’m proud of that. But just big fans of Price Labs.

Luke Carl [00:07:10]:
And there’s Wheelhouse, there’s beyond pricing, several to choose from. But again, Price Labs is, is or any of these softwares, they’re just a vehicle and you got to get in there and drive it. And if you’re not doing the heavy lifting, then it’s. You’re not going to get the heavy return. If, if you want to squeeze this property for every dollar it’s worth, then you need to spend way more time on pricing. I think that’s where the bulk of your pri. Your. Your time should be spent.

Luke Carl [00:07:39]:
But if you’re just a regular person with a regular job that likes to take your family to this property and use it when you’re not renting it, that kind of thing, then, you know, you could, you really could just put price labs to bit to work and not change much of anything on there. And there’s all sorts of folks out there that kind of run that spectrum. So anyway, I’ve been yakking real hard here. Y. What do you have to add on this one, buddy?

Yok Re [00:08:03]:
No, I mean, you, you covered it. I would like to add that, you know, add some intentional, you know, reasons why to get more money or to get more stays. And what I mean by that is here, college football, pretty big thing that bowl game week. I know a lot of people, they theme their house that, that, you know, their basement has got, you know, SEC football stuff all over it, wet bar, everything else. They, they really promote sports and a lot of times they can pick up a, you know, an extra thousand dollars because they have a theme in their basement that kind of speaks to football and bowl week when it’s kind of slow. Slow. I mean, granted the, you know, first of the year, new year shouldn’t be slow for you, but they’re playing games all the way through the 8th, I think something like that. So Tom, I know a lot of people that have, you know, pick up a lot of business during that week simply just they’re kind of insinuating, hey, this is the house to come to if you want to watch bowl games.

Yok Re [00:09:05]:
You know, you want to have a long, you know, three, four day guys weekend retreat or whatever, you know, that they pick up, they do pick up extra business. Even kind of those slower weekends, maybe in the fall as well, where it’s not, you know, it’s that, you know, that November, you know, end of November. Not, you know, or before, before than given. Not a lot going on. Going on. You know, talk to these people, talk to these clients with your listing. Let them know that your, your cabin, your property is more than just a place to come during the summer. You know, have some intentionality when you’re speaking to these people and you’re, you’re essentially marketing Marketing to people that have a common interest.

Yok Re [00:09:47]:
And you can pick up maybe 20 extra days a year, you know, three, four, $5,000 maybe, simply because you do that. Yeah, I would, I would also add fishing here. You know, the, the fishing seasons kind of, you know, that. That spring and then again that late fall, not times that are typically super slow, tends to be a little slower in the spring, but there’s some great fishing time. Maybe you have something throughout your house in the photography that speaks to that fly fisherman, you know, that says, hey, this is the cabin for you. All right? They’re going to pick your cabin as opposed to somebody else, because, hey, you’ve got that trout fishing. You’ve got a map on your wall that talks about trout fishing. You have the old antique rods crossed above, you know, the couches.

Yok Re [00:10:28]:
You know, again, you, you’re. You’re marketing your cabin, but you’re also, you’re marketing it to pick up more people, to speak to different audiences, to hopefully make more money.

Luke Carl [00:10:39]:
Big college football guy myself, but I’m not so. I’m not so up familiar with this thing you call the sec. Being a Big Ten guy, Midwestern guy myself, but what bowl game do you have in the area?

Yok Re [00:10:54]:
Well, we got the Sugar bowl that plays in. In Atlanta, you know, and typically, whoever wins that’s a champion of the sec, and typically that person ends up being the national champion.

Luke Carl [00:11:04]:
Okay, let’s take it easy. Let’s take it easy. And we’re not going to talk about Georgia this year, but anyway.

Yok Re [00:11:09]:
Alabama.

Luke Carl [00:11:10]:
Yeah. Well. Yeah. Okay, here we go. Yeah.

Yok Re [00:11:15]:
I don’t cheer for either. I don’t cheer for either. I’m glutton for punishment, so I’m not.

Luke Carl [00:11:19]:
Going to use the word monopoly, but anyway, so let’s talk about some events that you have in the area. I know you got a rodeo in the fall. You got a big Christmas situation going on. And of course, all that’s going to pertain to the prices. Throw a couple of those things at me just so I know what to keep an eye on an annual basis.

Yok Re [00:11:37]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, we, we. We do have festivals all the time. I mean, honestly, it seems like there’s one once a month. I don’t necessarily know if they’re a huge draw. You know, they’re kind of more for locals. The, The Christmas stuff is becoming bigger and bigger. To be honest with you. One of the bigger draws, I would say for a lot of people is that Blue Ridge Scenic Railway.

Yok Re [00:11:59]:
And it. They. They do a great job of making it Seasonal as well. They almost run year round but as you can imagine right now they’re doing Polar Express stuff. Right. And then before that, you know, they’re kind of doing the watch the, you know, watch the leaves turn colors, you know, the, the fall thing. And then in the summer it’s. The windows are open, it’s a nice little cool drive through the mountain or a ride through the mountains.

Yok Re [00:12:22]:
And then the springtime you get to see the leaves come in and see kind of the woods come alive, so to speak. So I think the railway does a great job of bringing people in the festivals. Yeah, I mean they do fairly well. I don’t know if I would necessarily set my calendar by them. I think people go into the wineries and, and you know, doing the wine tours that definitely add some seasonality, some things. You know, again, another market you can speak to. I’ve got clients, they have the bottom of their house kind of decked out with you know, you know, different posters from all the different wineries and orchards and everything else around. And that’s going to pull in a certain audience.

Yok Re [00:13:03]:
You know, a lot of bachelorette parties, you know, do the wine tours. And again that’s mostly going to be kind of warm weather stuff. But again for us I would say the number one biggest draw is going to be, you know, if there’s a, if you want to add an event to this, it’s going to be the leaves changing colors. I mean October for if you’ve got that cabin with a, with a really good view, I’m going to say that’s, that could very easily be your best month for sure.

Luke Carl [00:13:30]:
Got it. All right, cool. Let’s talk a little bit about minimum night stay. Obviously that’s going to vary greatly depending on the size of your property. You know, so like a, you know, and also by, by the time of the year as well. And, and to me the main thing is there is just get in there and, and move things around and staying stagnant is, is what’s going to get you in trouble. I mean if you’re just looking for a regular old rule of thumb on a minimum night stay, you know, maybe somewhere around one night per bedroom, you know, so four bedroom house, maybe four night minimum in the summertime. And maybe, but maybe you go further than that.

Luke Carl [00:14:05]:
Maybe you say four night men on the week with the weekend and two or three night men on weekdays only, you know, something like that. And you can automate all that stuff on price labs. Used to be you had to go in and click Every damn night of the year and put in your settings, etc. And all that stuff can be automated. And you want to get to the point where you’re really not doing much, you know, and even with the guests, you know, a lot of that stuff needs to be automated as well, is making sure that these guests are going to be good people so you don’t have to deal with riff raff. And it’s the same thing here with the price pricing of the property. Get in there and, and do your work, you know, and the longer you spend on it in the early setup stages, you know, the first, you know, six months or a year of owning this property, quicker, the quicker you’re going to get to the point where you’ve just said it and forget it. Because to me, again, it is very important that you’re not spending a massive amount of time on properties that you already own.

Luke Carl [00:14:59]:
To me, the hard part is coming up with down payments. How do I get to that next deal? That’s the hard part. And, and if you’re sitting there, I like to say, rewriting a song you’ve already written, then, you know, you might be wasting a little bit of your time. But for now, if you are new, I do. I want you to focus the bulk of your time and energy on pricing your calendar and learning how to price your calendar. Obviously spend a lot of time on your enemies. Go check out your neighbors, see what they’re doing. How can you do better than them? Which guy’s doing the best and why is he the best? Why is she the best? How can you be better? That’s why we call him enemies.

Luke Carl [00:15:35]:
This guy’s crushing it. I’m gonna make it my enemy. I’m gonna, I’m gonna bury him. I’m gonna do better than him. You know, that’s the whole, the whole point and just talking about being a better landlord and in general. So anyway, back to the minimum night stay now the small properties, I, I have no problem doing a one night men. Now that’s not for everybody. It does take a little bit more of a seasoned landlord to be dealing with one nighters because they can, they can be a little bit more, you know, party types where they’re just passing through.

Luke Carl [00:16:05]:
They tend to be a little bit more last minute. We need a place to stay tonight. We’re gonna probably bring some booze with us and we’re gonna have a good time. And then they’re gone and they left a mess, you know, so I don’t have any problem doing that. I do have rules in place to kind of try and mitigate that riff raff, but like I said, one one nighter on a smaller property or even a two, hell, I’ll do one night on a three bedroom if it’s the, if the price is right, you know, so there’s no right or wrong answer on minimum night stay. There’s, there’s a lot to, to discuss as far as, you know, all aspects of that. But a lot of it again is going to have to do with the size of your property, bigger the property, more nights you’re going to want out of folks. And honestly, the more, the bigger your property, the more occupancy you’re going to have.

Luke Carl [00:16:49]:
You know, you’re going to have vacancy, I should say you’re going to have less occupancy on bigger houses. You could have. Let me put it this way, I’m just making stuff up now. Don’t put this on a spreadsheet, but if you had two two bedrooms and you had one four bedroom, let’s say that the two two bedrooms hit somewhere around 80%. I’m making that up, but maybe, and let’s say that the four bedroom only hits, I don’t know, 65% occupied for the year. So what you do is take 365 times 0.8 and whatever that is, it’s right at 300 nights, 291 nights or whatever. 97 maybe. And, and then you know, the, the four bedroom is only hitting 0.65 of the 365.

Luke Carl [00:17:33]:
But you could end up having the same gross revenue on the four bedroom. Maybe I’m being again, I’m making stuff up right now. Would you have higher gross income on two two bedrooms than one four bedroom? Probably. Probably. Is one four bedroom going to cost you less or more than two two bedrooms? I’m going to ask you that. Yac two two bedrooms are going to cost me more than one four bedroom to purchase.

Yok Re [00:17:55]:
Man. If you want to just talk about averages, I would say probably. Probably. Yeah, I mean it would probably be the same. You know, we’re talking, you know, a $400,000 two bedroom, probably, you know, moderate, you know, average 1,800,000 dollar four bedroom. Okay, yeah, I mean that, that makes sense.

Luke Carl [00:18:14]:
Yep. So you’re looking at that bad boy to kind of be like having two two bedrooms. Except for you only have one roof. That’s something to consider. You only have one kitch to two kitchens. So when it comes to rehab, the four bedroom theoretically might be a little Bit less money because you don’t have as many things to replace. You don’t have two roofs to replace, you don’t have two dishwashers to replace. But you do have more square footage, probably, you know.

Luke Carl [00:18:39]:
So is the square footage the same now? We’re going way into the weeds here, but all things to consider as you get into your property management career here in the vacation rental business. Average lead time. Let’s talk about that a little bit. How far out do I want a property to be booked? Well, Airbnb says that 30 days is what you’re looking for, and I think that that’s pretty true. I used to want it to be a little further in advance than that. Now with COVID hell, some of my small properties are booking like two days in advance, and I’m okay with it. It’s a little weird sometimes. It gets a little stressful.

Luke Carl [00:19:14]:
But that’s the economy we’re dealing with when we’re at the recording of this podcast, which is first of the year 24, you know, so I’m, I don’t take too much stock in that. And I, frankly, when I see folks stressing out about that on the Internet, I get a little like, man, you’re really worried about the wrong stuff. I don’t have, like, let’s say it’s January 1st and they’re sitting there like, I don’t have any bookings in April. Why. Why would you even want a booking in April? That means you pressed it too low, you know, so keep that in mind. Keep that in mind. What else y. Am I missing anything?

Yok Re [00:19:45]:
I would say here because we don’t have a ton of, you know, we got mostly three bedrooms and two bedrooms and, you know, vast majority is three bedrooms. If you do have that four and five bedroom during those slower months is your time to be a thief. You start backing those prices down and you can, during those slower months, steal a lot of money from, you know, if you’re a five, stealing it from a four, if you’re a four, stealing it from a three. You know, be aggressive on your pricing on the, on the low side to get that occupancy up during those slower months, you have the ability to do that with a bigger cabin as opposed to if you were a smaller cabin. And again, see a lot of people, you know, with a lot of bookings or more bookings than I would expect in January and February just because they said, screw it, I’m going to let this, I’m going to let my four bedroom go for you know, 399amonth, a night to 99, whatever that is. You know, where typically they may be getting 550. Get some butts in there, get some reviews, right? That’s going to make you money down the road. It’s a win, win.

Luke Carl [00:20:50]:
I can’t agree more. I do that, I do that. I will go low in January, February on a four bedroom. I will try and scoop up what a three bedroom guy could have gotten. And you will also notice, you’ll notice that your number of people on the reservation might be a little lower in these slow seasons because you went low enough to scoop up a four person booking that may have rented a two bedroom house in a four bedroom. I got no problem doing that. And I wish, I really wish there was a way and there will be eventually that I could customize the number of people I will allow based on the time of year. I think that would be beneficial like 4th of July, you know, or customize my price.

Luke Carl [00:21:33]:
Even better, customize my price based on the number of people. It’s too difficult to automate that because you know, that’s the downside of the winter time when you got a bigger home. I may be willing to rent that to two people but for a little bit less money. But I’m not going to rent it to nine people for, for the same price, I’m going to rent it for two people. It’d be really cool if I could customize that. I think we’ll probably get to that point at some point because you know, maybe now we’re way in the weeds. But let’s say I had a two bedroom house or a four bedroom house and I got a group of four people shopping for the same too. Well as those people, as the shopper, as the, the guest, I would be willing to spend a little bit more on the four bedroom to have the extra square footage and I feel like I should probably get a little bit better price on that four bedroom than somebody that’s going to bring twice as many people as me, you know.

Luke Carl [00:22:23]:
So I think that’s where we’re headed in the future. Probably a few years from now before that actually happens. But anyway, again, way in the weeds. What else? Yach.

Yok Re [00:22:34]:
I mean that’s really it. Again, I’ll, I’ll try to hammer this point home is try to make your, you know, do things to your cabin, you know, understand you’re listing, you know, photography, you know, it is your digital footprint is all people know about your cabin. Right. So speak to people, you know, I hear so many times that, you know, people are, this is a dead time. This is a dead time, man. I don’t care where you are. If you’re in Destin or, you know, Big Bear or Blue Ridge, you know, set up your cabin in a way that’s going to speak to these people and kind of add to the seasonality, because no matter where you are, there is going to be some sort of seasonalness to what you are trying to accomplish. And if you’re able to go in and kind of speak to different audiences, you know, people interested in football, people interested in doing wine tours, you know, people interested going to the orchards, fly fishing, tubing, whatever it may be.

Yok Re [00:23:24]:
I mean, there’s a lot of money. I think we all leave on the ground because we’re worried about pricing. But what we’re not doing is talking to people. We’re just generic, putting a generic message out there. And if, if people would be a little more intentional with what they say and how they present their home, I think there’s, there’s a lot of extra money to be made on the cheap.

Luke Carl [00:23:43]:
Well, we went all over the place today. But what I do want to hammer home is that pricing is, number one, the most important part of landlording and vacation rentals. You got 365 nights to price. And again, the management softwares, the pricing softwares will. You know, I hate to say it, but they will do that for you if you let them do it for you. You’re not going to be as effective as if you get in there and drive that car like, like Dale Earnhardt. And then also basically going to say the same thing a different way. The more time you spend on this, the more return you’re going to get.

Luke Carl [00:24:19]:
Your pricing is, is. Is extremely important. The love you make is equal to the love you take according to some rock and roll band way back in the day. But. All right, yuck. Unless you have something else, I’m happy to, to. To. To let you go.

Luke Carl [00:24:33]:
Episode 10 is bittersweet. We’re gonna miss you. I’m sure we’ll do an update at some point in the near future getting the episode 11 going from blue Ridge, but. Yuck. You want to say goodbye to the fine folks?

Yok Re [00:24:44]:
All right, Luke, just thanks for having me, man.

Luke Carl [00:24:46]:
My pleasure. Absolutely. My pleasure. I love getting together and yakking with you anytime. So we’ll, we’ll see you soon. And on the, on behalf of the short term shop. Oh, let me go throw a little couple of plugs. You want to buy a house in this market.

Luke Carl [00:24:58]:
Call us. Okay. The shorttermshop.com y’ all could be helping. Happy to help you with the transaction. And I’d be happy to teach you how to manage it. Management Monday Happens every Monday and I teach folks everything I know about landlord and the vacation rental space in which I have been for a very long time. And dare I say, I’m damn good at it. So let me come and teach.

Luke Carl [00:25:21]:
Come, let me teach you how to do it every Monday. The ShortTermshop.com we would love, love, love to earn your business. And as always, don’t overthink it.