Avery Carl [00:00:03]:
What’s up guys? It’s Avery Carl from the short term show doing the intro for the panhandle of Florida. We are doing a ten episode deep dive on two markets here, both the Emerald coast and the forgotten coasts of Florida, which basically makes up the entire Florida panhandle. So ten episode deep dive here. We are going to add quarterly updates, so make sure you hit that subscribe button. We also have some supplemental materials for you guys on our website. So anything you need to know about current short term rental property pricing in terms of how much it costs to buy a property in these markets, you can find that on our website@theshorttermshop.com, dot. You can also find current air DNA income data thanks to our friends over at, you guessed it, AirDna. And we’ve got all that for you guys.

Avery Carl [00:00:50]:
So that you can listen to this at any point in time and go find live pricing and live income data. Also, if you guys want to buy a short term rental investment with a short term shop agent on the emerald or forgotten coast, you can just email us@agentshorttermshop.com and we will get you hooked up. These are two of my very favorite beach markets, by the way. I’ve chosen to live in the Emerald Coast. I also invest in the Emerald and Forgotten coast, so very near and dear to my heart. Also, if you guys just have more questions and you want to chat about short term rentals, we’ve created an amazing community over on Facebook with over 50,000 short term rental investors just talking shop all day. It’s got the same title as my book. It’s called short term rental long term wealth.

Avery Carl [00:01:33]:
So head over there to chat more about short term rentals. And if you want to chat live on Zoom, we’ve got a call every Thursday that you can join@strquestions.com happy investing, y’all. Hey guys, welcome back to to another Emerald and Forgotten coast episode of the short term shop special episode series. This time we are talking about calendars and pricing best practices for these markets and we’ve got a great panel here to help us do that. First, we have the man, the myth, the legend, Mister Luke Carl, who is not paying attention.

Luke Carl [00:02:14]:
Of course I am. Long hair Luke in the house hosted the short term rental management podcast, owner of the two longest running Airbnbs in the Smoky Mountains. I’ve done it all, I’ve said it all, and I’m happy to be here and share my crazy stories. I also happen to live in this market, so it’s, it’s close to home.

January Johnson [00:02:37]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:02:38]:
He’s seen a thousand faces and he’s rocked them all. Or is rocked them all.

Luke Carl [00:02:41]:
That’s right. Money can’t buy you happiness, but it’ll buy you a boat big enough to pull up right alongside of it.

Avery Carl [00:02:48]:
Mister David Lee Roth. Next we have Austin Lewis. Austin, introduce yourself.

Austin Lewis [00:02:54]:
What’s up, guys? I am Austin, obviously, born and raised Pensacola Beach. I am the agent that covers from Purdue Key all the way over to Fort Walton beach, and everything in between would be Pensacola beach and Navarre Beach. I am also a Airbnb host, and not. Not the longest running anywhere, but. But I’m in it. Winning.

Avery Carl [00:03:17]:
Awesome. And next we have January Johnson. January, do you want to introduce yourself really quick?

Luke Carl [00:03:22]:
Yes.

January Johnson [00:03:22]:
Thank you, January Johnson. I live in Panama City. I’m the longest running Airbnb host in the city of Panama City, and I have four short term rentals, and I’m a community leader for Airbnb.

Avery Carl [00:03:33]:
Awesome. All right, so let’s talk about calendars and pricing for this market. So let’s start with lead time because lead time, I think, is the number one thing. Lead time and seasonality together, number one thing that really gets new hosts, or even sometimes season hosts really, like, outside of their minds. When we get to a low point in the season and then they go, they take to Facebook, oh, my God, I’m not getting bookings. And then we have to say, guys, it’s May. May comes every year. September also comes every year.

Avery Carl [00:04:12]:
It’s slow. Both of those times, just chill. So let’s talk about first let’s hit seasonality, and then we’ll talk about lead times. So what’s the high season around here? When are you going to get booked? When are you not going to get booked?

January Johnson [00:04:25]:
Well, my experience is that March and July are the best months of the season, and that is because spring break is super in effect in March, still in April also. And then July, of course, is peak summer season. So those are the two biggest months. But basically our season runs from March 1 through Labor Day. And that takes us in. And even though October is a beautiful month to still be at the beach and even into November, depending on the weather. But November and December are slower. And I tell people, if you have bookings in November and December, you should be really excited about that.

January Johnson [00:05:02]:
And then that takes us back into January, February, and March, which January and February and March are snowbird season. So we have lots of those people and they come for longer periods of time. And then that takes us back into the high season that starts in March.

Luke Carl [00:05:16]:
Yeah, pretty much the exact same. I mean, we’re basically talking same area here. My properties are a little larger. I don’t, I can’t get snowbirds for. They just generally don’t like larger properties. Both my houses are in the 3000 square foot range and. But yes, same thing. You know, March 1 really is kind of when you start to remember that this house exists.

Luke Carl [00:05:39]:
And March and April are heavy. April is real heavy. May is a little down, sometimes a lot down, but you know, like maybe 30% of a July, that kind of thing. And then the whole summer is crazy. Usually, my house is usually book a little further in advance. Seasonality has changed a lot with COVID Uh, but uh, um, yeah, I find that my, my whole summer books up, uh, usually by, you know, 1st, 1 May, give or take. My whole January, June, July, August are going to be pretty rocking. Um, September is slow again.

Luke Carl [00:06:15]:
Um, nothing crazy, but the kids are going back to school and the summer vacations are kind of over. So it does slow down in September a little bit. Pretty similar to, I mean, really, honestly, it’s similar to the mountains. Other than the winter time I got ahead of myself. October is pretty heavy on my properties. They don’t get like July rates or anything like that. But I will get basically, you know, I would say three quarters of the month, of October pretty easily. And then November, December, you know, you’re probably going to get the holidays.

Luke Carl [00:06:43]:
It’s no guarantee, but probably. And probably for a pretty decent rate. But first two weeks of November 1, two weeks of December are a little rough. And then January, February is no man’s lands for me because I can’t really get a snowbird. And just nobody comes, which blows my mind because it is my favorite time of year by far. I just love it here. There’s no people and you can still wear flip flops. You know, it’s, it doesn’t really get crazy cold or anything like that.

Luke Carl [00:07:07]:
And so I just absolutely love living here in the wintertime. But yeah, I had one more point. What was it? Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Yeah, for me.

January Johnson [00:07:18]:
Well, I want to say that those downtimes, I’m sorry, Austin, I stepped on you there in the downtimes like November, early December. That’s a great time to go in and do any renovation or repairs or you know, go visit your property, put, you know, change out the couch, whatever you want to do. Those are good times for that. And it’s a good time seasonally here too, to have work. That work done because it’s easier to get contractors who’d rather work in November, December than in the heat of the summer. So that’s. That’s a good point.

Austin Lewis [00:07:44]:
Yeah. And it’s a little bit time off from. From hosting people. I mean, you don’t have to deal with, with guests as much. And, you know, the revenue is going to be pretty similar. And, you know, as far as seasonality over here on my end, it’s. It’s pretty darn the same. You know, like Luke said, the snowbirds, if you’ve got anything over a two bedroom, I wouldn’t plan on getting any snowbirds.

Austin Lewis [00:08:02]:
And cuts off October, November, December during the holidays, like you said, probably going to get those, actually. Give you an example. I had a client by last October, I believe is when he closed. I texted him in February to see how his year was going. He was a little nervous. He was just stepping out of his, his farming zone, I guess you’d say, where he’s normally, he’s always bought in Blue Ridge, bought down here. And he said in February he had already had enough bookings to pay for his, basically to break even, so. Which tells me it was probably priced too low.

Austin Lewis [00:08:35]:
But, you know, so lead time is normally a little bit, maybe a little bit higher over here, it sounds like, but as far as seasonality goes, it’s all going to be the same.

Luke Carl [00:08:47]:
Yeah. And I’ll just basically say exactly what you guys just said. It’s a little different vibe than my mountain properties where, you know, if I see something like a paint situation on a mountain house, you know, maybe say the smoky mountains, that kind of thing, I would maybe send somebody over there on my next, you know, break of a day or two between guests to kind of fix a few things as far as, like, you know, paint and cosmetics and things. But when it comes to my beach houses in this, in this market, I’m always gonna wait on that. In the summertime, you do not have time to get a painter in there. It’s just jam packed. It needs to. It’s like, in other words, you ever get on an airplane? This is what it’s like.

Luke Carl [00:09:27]:
If you ever get on an airplane that’s a little late, like a little late getting in and they got to get it back out to try and get it back on time. And those stewardesses and the stewards or whatever, they’re. And they’re just like cranking that thing to get it ready for the new set of people getting on the airplane, that’s kind of what it’s like at my houses on this market in the summertime time, so in the wintertime, that’s when you go through and you, you know, you replace all the little stuff. If we’re doing the. Still doing the airplane analogy, like the upholstery and the plastic trays and things like that. So it’s just a slightly different vibe.

Avery Carl [00:10:00]:
Is it any different down in the forgotten coast and emerald coaster? Is the seasonality roughly the same?

Luke Carl [00:10:06]:
Forgotten coast is sleepy. It is sleepy. It books a little further in advance. The weird thing about the. Well, at least where I’m at, I think. I think actually, Mexico beach and Port St. Joe are probably a little heavier than where I’m at, which is the cape. The cape is its own animal.

Luke Carl [00:10:24]:
It’s way out in the middle of the ocean. There was actually no properties on there at all. There was no structures there at all until the late seventies. And now it’s got a lot of houses and things, and it’s a really cool place. It’s an interesting place, and it’s not something that a lot of people know about. I learned about it from Avery, and we bought a beautiful home there. It doesn’t have any restaurants or anything. I mean, it’s literally just.

Luke Carl [00:10:50]:
You’re lucky this. You got running water out there, to be honest. And so there are a contingency of folks that go there every year, and they’re familiar with it, and they’re in love with it. And again, it’s only been around for 40 years. Well, with being able to sleep on it, but, you know, it’s definitely a different vibe. It is super sleepy out there. Everybody’s like, real moves real slow, and doesn’t really, you know, like. What? You want me to do something? No, I’m gonna go to the beach, you know, so it’s a different vibe.

Luke Carl [00:11:23]:
Whereas Destin and Panama City beach, things move fast, and a lot of kids involved, people going to the amusement park and things like that, or the. Well, I guess we don’t. Well, theme park we don’t have, but we do have, you know, the Pierpark and things like that.

Avery Carl [00:11:35]:
Yeah, gotcha.

January Johnson [00:11:36]:
But you also have scallop season. That depends on the time of the year, and I know Austin can probably speak more to that. That’ll get you a bump of people as well. And I think sometimes that’s maybe in September.

Austin Lewis [00:11:50]:
Yeah, early August is when we normally go.

January Johnson [00:11:53]:
Okay. Gulf county is middle of August to the end of September, so, you know, that’s a little bit of off season, but it’s a bump for rentals down there.

Avery Carl [00:12:03]:
I know, yeah, totally.

Luke Carl [00:12:05]:
I keep my prices real high on that Cape house. It’s a different vibe for me because, honestly, because I’m so in love with it. Like, I’m not really trying to crank that thing for every dollar it’s worth. I kind of like when there’s some gaps in the calendar, because then we can grab the kids and go, you know, that kind of thing.

Avery Carl [00:12:19]:
You could crank it if you wanted to crank it, I would be okay with.

Luke Carl [00:12:23]:
Pretty cool with. I mean, it’s. Let me put it this way. It’s may right now. There ain’t no way we’re going there until, you know, probably October, because it’s. It’s. Even though I keep it high that summertime. No way, you know? Yeah, it’s packed.

Avery Carl [00:12:39]:
Okay, so what are typically the lead times for bookings that we see? And I know it’s probably going to vary depending on the size of the property, but is there any kind of average?

Luke Carl [00:12:50]:
Well, for me, there used to be. I used to like, again, my houses are big. I like them to be about six weeks, five, six weeks in advance, if not more, in the summertime. I just got the other day, I got a booking for the next day at my big destin house, which I was, like, blown away. I was blown away that it was just a one day in advance, for one thing. And I was also blown away. It wasn’t already booked. I probably should have looked a little closer.

Luke Carl [00:13:15]:
It might have been a cancellation or something. So it’s a little all over, but used to be traditionally, you know, again, bigger houses for me, I’d like to be, you know, average for the year, maybe four weeks, five weeks. Now. Now, like I said, right now, my summertimes on both my destin and my cape sandblast house are gone. Except I think I still have 4 July open at both properties, and that’s because the prices is sky high, and I got a little. Little time to. To keep it where it’s at. Again, we’re recording this in early May.

Luke Carl [00:13:48]:
So, yeah, I’m a little all over the place. I’d like to say four weeks. If you had to. Had to give me an actual. You know, like, I had to give you an actual number.

January Johnson [00:13:56]:
I like to cover my calendar up certain times of the year or certain holidays and just wait until I call it scarcity marketing. And I’m sure I’m jacking with the algorithms, and it might not be a good thing mathematically, but it’s worked for me, for nine years. And that is, you know, covering up the whole week of 4 July and then waiting until two weeks before the, the holiday and then uncovering it. And I can jack my rates up and, you know, everything else around me is already booked already. And so I get, you know, people that jump right on it. Then, um, instead of just waiting and letting it sit there, I just, I kind of look and see what’s around me.

Austin Lewis [00:14:30]:
Definitely there’s going to be some people that are procrastinators. And whenever they try to get on, I see, like, you know, the Facebook groups, just local area Facebook groups. Hey, we’re looking for a place to stay for 4 July, and it’s July 1. It’s like, well, you’re going to pay out the eating game for it if you can find something.

January Johnson [00:14:47]:
I would be, yeah.

Luke Carl [00:14:49]:
And I’ll speak a little bit more about that way that January is doing it. I think that’s a great way to do it for the right candidate. I personally, I don’t like to wait until the last minute unless it’s like 4 July. I think everybody will agree with me. You’re your guests. Come be probably a pain in the ass no matter what. So I do like that strategy for a major holiday like that. There is an element there that, like, you know, if you’re waiting to the last minute, they only kind of picked your house because it was the only one available.

Luke Carl [00:15:18]:
And if everything had been available, they might not even looked at your home. So that, for that reason, I don’t like doing it that way. But again, like I said, these, these high dollar holiday guests, they tend to not get out of the house that much anyway. So I think, I mean, she’s. You’re definitely bringing in more revenue doing it that way, for sure.

Avery Carl [00:15:36]:
Yeah. So we’re saying an average of, like, how many weeks, Luke, did you say?

Luke Carl [00:15:42]:
Well, I mean, here’s the deal. Different time. It’s different time, different times of the year. It’s different. You know, right now, I’m, I’m booked, you know, like 812 weeks out. But if this was, if this was February, I would, I would not be booked at all, really. You know, maybe two weeks in March or that kind of thing. So it changes a lot because, you know, those, those summertime days, dates are so desirable.

Luke Carl [00:16:10]:
Those will book in advance big time. And then, you know, so to give you an average for, across a 1212 month period, it’s very difficult because it changes so often. But, you know, maybe four to five weeks, it’s, if you wanted me to nail it down to a, to a twelve, you know, a full twelve month calendar.

January Johnson [00:16:28]:
I think a lot of people don’t need to freak out if they don’t have that same booking schedule. I see a lot of chatter on groups and, you know, people are, I don’t have bookings for June or I don’t have bookings for July, and it’s, you know, two months or three months ahead of time. Bookings come, but then also, you know, what’s going on at your property. Do you have professional pictures? Do you have, you know, there’s all kinds of other things that we could get into about why that might be, but there are things that you can do if you’re freaked out about your bookings, but don’t freak out.

Avery Carl [00:16:56]:
What about minimum night stays? So I’ve seen some people do different things. What are y’all’s recommendations for minimum night stays during the different seasons? Because this is a truly seasonal market, unlike some other ones. So I want to hear by season what you recommend.

January Johnson [00:17:15]:
I know a lot of people that have condos book seven night stays. So like Saturday to Saturday, and then on Saturday is the big turnover day and everybody’s, you know, it’s a zoo, getting in and out of the condo buildings and things like that. But you have week at a time guests and you have fewer turnovers. I had a two night minimum stay at my properties. My properties are not condos and they’re smaller, but, you know, two bedrooms and I have one three bedroom. But I actually looked back like a whole year or two’s worth of bookings to see how many nights did I actually have? And most of my, most of my bookings were more than three nights and more. So I just changed my minimum night stay to three nights because I thought, well, that’s fewer times that I have to worry about a turnover, you know, getting people in and out. So I do a three night minimum on most of my properties and then I fill in gaps with, with two nights.

January Johnson [00:18:05]:
If there, if there are some gaps.

Avery Carl [00:18:06]:
Luke, you’ve got bigger ones over here. That’s what she said. So what is your minimum night stay strategy? Any different?

Luke Carl [00:18:16]:
Yeah, most of my competitors are doing Sunday to Sunday because they’re using property management companies. There’s not. There’s really not a lot of people out there that are really looking to self manage a $2 million home. Most people that can afford that don’t want to deal with toilets and reviews. And the folks on this call, we’re the crazy people, you know, but so most of my competitors are not, quite frankly, they’re not competition because they’re not, you know, they’re not as good as I am. I mean, I hate to say it, and it’s, you, even if I wasn’t that good, you could still say that, say the same thing, you know? So most of my competitors are Saturday to Saturday. And just because of the fact that I’m not, I’m able to, to really kind of crank it because property managers don’t want to deal with anything less than a Saturday to Saturday. They.

Luke Carl [00:19:04]:
Which gives them a lot of disadvantages, honestly. You’re. You’re eliminating a lot of different bookings. And then also your cleaners don’t like it because they have to go in there and turn as many houses as they can on in one day. And these, a lot of times are big houses, you know? So, you know, most of my turns are going to happen random days of the week, like Wednesday, Thursday, whatever. And my cleaners are super happy because, uh, they’re still keeping busy on Saturday with everybody else they’re. They’re working for, you know, that kind of thing. So I do like a little bit longer, especially in the summertime.

Luke Carl [00:19:35]:
I would say maybe, maybe five days is. Would be really nice. But I don’t, I don’t require it. You know, I will probably require four night minimum across the board for the heavy summer months. But I will dip down. I will dip down to two nights occasionally. Like, if I got a little gap in my calendar of two nights, I’ll go ahead and do a little manual override on my price labs for two night, man. It’s rare that that happens, but when it does, it’s either you get deal with a two nighter or you don’t get booked, you know, and I like to.

Luke Carl [00:20:09]:
I like, I do like to have asses in the seats with my. With my properties. No way, no way. No way. No way I’m doing one night or no way not. My properties are way too big and even the two nighters, super rare. But again, this goes back to more of a pricing conversation, quite frankly. And I just look at my calendar and I figure out what gaps need to be filled in.

Luke Carl [00:20:27]:
And I do whatever I got to do to fill those in.

January Johnson [00:20:30]:
I do a five night minimum over 4 July and I do three night minimums for Labor Day and Memorial Day.

Avery Carl [00:20:36]:
Yeah.

Austin Lewis [00:20:37]:
Size of the property is definitely a big deal. On determining that, I think. And I see a lot of seven days around here and you can always play around with price labs, you know, and say, hey, if they’re booking six months in advance and let’s do a seven night minimum and we start getting, getting tired to D Day, then we’ll, we’ll drop it down some.

Avery Carl [00:20:57]:
Okay, what else in terms of calendars and, and stays have we not talked about yet? There’s kind of, you could go way in the weeds on this, or it could be like super short conversation. So what else do we want the listeners to hear about in terms of calendars and pricing in this market?

January Johnson [00:21:18]:
Well, I want to say that I frequently find for a long time I was just on Airbnb, and I find that Airbnb, their smart pricing is way, way too low. And I mean, they don’t know when it’s going to be bike week and they don’t know when spring break is. I mean, it’s algorithms that are figuring things out. And sometimes you have a six month out booking and they’ll tell you October is, you know, twice as high as it should be. So I don’t do smart pricing on Airbnb. I do have price labs now. And so I’m working on, you know, on those rules and algorithms, but that’s more controllable, I guess I should say. So, I mean, I think you have to know the market.

January Johnson [00:22:01]:
I encourage all of my buyers to subscribe to the local Panama City beach and Destin and PC Panama City turrets newsletters so that they know when the different events are and when they’re coming and, and they can manage the, their, you know, their pricing themselves that way because the algorithms don’t always know that. So.

Avery Carl [00:22:21]:
Yeah, so I, well, let me ask this question first and then I’ll make the point I was going to make. So do you need to use a pricing tool?

Luke Carl [00:22:32]:
Yes. Well, here, I mean, listen, if you’re brand new and it’s like scary and you’re like, what is this thing I have to learn this. This is crazy. No. Then, no, it will honestly, in the long run be harder if you’re not using it because they’re really, they’re really good these days. There is a downside there, though, and we see all the time, I mean, more often than not, we see people that just sign up for price labs or beyond pricing and never look at it again. And then they sit around and they said, well, why am I not getting any bookings? I’m sick of this thing. Let’s get rid of it.

Luke Carl [00:23:06]:
Which, if that’s you, by the way, call the short term shop. We’d be happy to help you do that. But I’m kidding, of course, but not really. We’ll have, we’ll sell your house for you. But, you know, it, it depends on how much, how hard you want to work. If, if you want to maximize and get this thing, like, squeezed for every single dollar it’s worth and, you know, quit your job or something, which is ridiculous, but it’s, you know, a lot of people want to do that, then you’re going to spend time on it. You know, I mean, I work hard. I like, I enjoy working hard.

Luke Carl [00:23:39]:
To me, this is not work. I just enjoy it. And I love, because at the end of the day, this doesn’t get talked about enough. I truly enjoy offering these folks a really great place to have their vacation. I’m actually more involved with my short terms today than I was ever, than I ever was. I love making sure that these folks are happy. I like winning, too. So that’s part of it for me.

Luke Carl [00:24:03]:
I like to see my calendar full and my guests have a smile on their face. But it’s just like anything in life, the harder you work, the more time you spend on your, your, your pricing. That’s the biggest part of it, period. In my opinion, short term rental is pricing. I don’t think anybody’s going to disagree with that. But, yeah, so more time you’re spending, more money you’ll make. Simple as that.

Avery Carl [00:24:25]:
All right, so is there anything we can do? So I see a lot of people ask this question is, how do I get booked in the off season? What can I do to get booked in the off season at any size property? And is there a way to do that? Or is there even an answer to that?

Luke Carl [00:24:40]:
I don’t even, I don’t even care. I’m out on that. I don’t even, look, you just shut the house off, you know, ended Christmas, and then you start doing your, well, you got to get that stuff planned in advance. You can’t. Another thing you got to realize, if you’re new and you’re like, oh, I’m going to get some. The stairs retreaded in January or something like that. If you wait around until January rolls around and you don’t already have that job lined up, it ain’t going to happen. You know, you got to get these guys lined up two, three months in advance or more because everybody’s jam packed with work in the wintertime because they can’t work in the summertime.

Luke Carl [00:25:14]:
The houses are booked, you know, so I just turn it off. I feel like, you know, with my beach houses, I feel like I’m a school teacher. I get the, I get the winter off and I’m happy with, I’m super happy with that. I love it. And it does get a little stressful about third week of February where you’re sitting there like, oh, my God, nobody likes my house anymore. Nobody’s ever gonna book my house again. And then all of a sudden you’re just slammed with busy, you know, busy. So for me, again, larger properties, each one of my, all my bedrooms in Florida have their own ensuite.

Luke Carl [00:25:48]:
These are pretty, pretty nice big houses, at least for where I come from. I just turn it off and don’t even think about it for about two to three months in the wintertime.

January Johnson [00:26:00]:
So I have smaller properties, and my properties are in Panama City, not Panama City beach, but they’re in a cute little fishing village area that’s got lots of tourism and local things happening. But in the off season, I frequently have medical students. We have a physician assistant school in Pennsylvania that they send a lot of their people down here for rotations, physician assistants, students. And so frequently I get a five or a ten week stay for two or three of them, being a community leader in Airbnb. But any group that you join, that’s a local short term rental group, we try to help each other out, and so frequently somebody will say, I need a, you know, I’ve got a guest that needs a place for three weeks or five weeks or ten weeks, and I can’t accommodate them. You know, who can? And so we’ll share information like that among our hosts so that somebody can help them. And I think that’s, that’s really important. I have contractors, you know, there’s colleges and shipbuilding companies and, you know, contractors and things that come to town for different reasons.

January Johnson [00:27:05]:
And, you know, they’re not going to book your five bedroom, you know, fancy beach house, but they will book your smaller places. And so there’s, there’s some advantages there, but, but a lot of it is word of mouth and, you know, networking with other hosts that can refer you business. So it’s good to join the local groups or, you know, have a group of people that you can bounce things off of for those reasons.

Avery Carl [00:27:25]:
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that. And so what I was going to, the point I was going to make about pricing tools earlier, I know I’m kind of jumping around. Was that so? Price labs. I interviewed Annie Rog from Price Labs on my big podcast a few weeks ago, and he kind of explain me how all of this works. So they are watching all of the hotels and all of the short term rentals in the area. And if they notice, like, a cluster of them getting booked at higher prices and raising their prices, then that’s kind of how they adjust. So there are certain things that, like, they know are coming, like 4 July, for example. But past that, they’re watching what the hotel industry is doing, too, to see, okay, are they raising their prices? And if they see any bumps, then they will recommend that you raise yours, too.

Avery Carl [00:28:11]:
So it’s really interesting how the pricing tools work, and I really recommend using a pricing tool, by the way, because there’s just so many little things that we, as people wouldn’t know, necessarily. Again, like Jan said, subscribing to those things that’ll tell you, hey, we’ve got this coming up. We’ve got that coming up to where you know, too, because there will be times that the algorithm can’t pick up on things to where you know. Okay, this isn’t a time that I should probably raise my prices some. So you kind of have to do a little of both. A little bit of the technology and a little bit manual.

January Johnson [00:28:45]:
And I think knowing the events that are coming. So right now, Panama City beach is all set up for Thunder beach, you know, bike week. And if you know the events that are coming, you can change your title of your listing and you can say, you know, bike friendly or room for bike parking or different things, you know, different seasons, or maybe. Maybe have your, you know, do something special for the guest that’s related to that event. Or, you know, you can make it attractive, you know, for the events. Like, we have an Iron man triathlon here and different things. So if you don’t know about them, then you don’t know to alter your listing to pull those people in.

Luke Carl [00:29:21]:
Yeah. Which is why we’re so popular. Iron Man Florida’s here. That’s huge. You know, Thunder beach happens twice a year. It’s awesome. We’re going this way. It’s this week.

Luke Carl [00:29:29]:
Yeah, we can’t wait. You know, every. Dad’s coming down. We’re gonna go see some rock and roll. You know, it was a wonderful, wonderful place.

January Johnson [00:29:39]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:29:39]:
All right, so, is there anything else that we haven’t touched on in terms of calendars, pricing, lead time, anything that you think the listeners would benefit from hearing about?

January Johnson [00:29:49]:
Yes, I think we should address what happens when people want discounts on your pricing.

Avery Carl [00:29:54]:
Okay, let’s address that.

January Johnson [00:29:57]:
I’ll let Luke go first.

Luke Carl [00:29:59]:
Well, my house, they get a hell, no. I don’t do discounts ever. I mean, that’s, I’m glad you brought that up. It doesn’t get talked about enough, quite frankly. I got a strict no discount policy, period. I feel my prices are fair and market rate at all times. And, well, if you give somebody a discount, they are going to take you 20 miles. You know, it’s just not for me.

Luke Carl [00:30:22]:
And it’s not, it’s not about the $5, it’s not about the $50. Not, it’s about policy and procedure.

January Johnson [00:30:30]:
Yes. I feel like people who ask for, if their first question is a discount, then I don’t want them because they’re, they’re not going to be happy with other things or they’re going to, they’re going to try to nitpick and nickel and dime and so on and so forth. It’s like, you know, I like to say, you know, thank you for your inquiry, but these are, this is high rental season and these are the, these are, these are the rates or these are the best rates I can offer you. You know, I don’t ever give a discount. I don’t give a military discount. I don’t give any kind of discount, especially during the season. I don’t even give my friends and family discounts. What I tell them to do.

January Johnson [00:31:01]:
The first year I had property, I did give a bunch of people free stays or, you know, inexpensive stays, and then I changed that policy altogether after the first year. And I just decided that, I said, go on Airbnb and act like you’re booking my property and then send me the screenshot of what you would be paying from Airbnb and I’ll give you a discount on that. And then, because then that’s just basically, I’m discounting the Airbnb fees. I’m still getting the money, but I mean, I don’t have to do that very often. But when friends and family know you have beach property, sometimes they want to come and they want to come in July. And I’m like, no, I mean, I give my assistant a year. I mean, a year, a week stay at one of my properties in the summer is kind of a bonus. She lives in Texas, but she doesn’t come in July.

Austin Lewis [00:31:47]:
Yeah. Unfortunately, the people that pay the cheapest are going to be the ones that complain the most, for sure.

Avery Carl [00:31:51]:
All right, so I think we have a pretty across the board outlook on, on giving discounts. All right, then. Well, guys, if you want to buy a house with us in the emerald or forgotten coast you can email us at agents at the shorttermshop.com. or if you want to just learn more about short term rentals, there are a few ways you can do that. You can join our Facebook group called Short Term rental long term wealth, same as my book. Or you can join one of our every Thursday live Q and a calls. You can sign up for those@strquestions.com thanks everyone.