Avery Carl [00:00:03]:
Hey all. Welcome to the short term show special episode series on the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. We are doing a ten episode deep dive into buying short term rentals in the Smoky Mountains. So we’re going to talk about a lot of things in these episodes, and we’ll probably be doing a quarterly update from here on out after we finish these ten. So make sure you hit that subscribe button so you get those delivered straight to your phone when they come out. We do have some supplemental materials for you in addition to the content on this podcast. So any information that you need on current property pricing, you can find on our website@theshorttermshop.com and we also have, courtesy of our friends over at Air DNA, current air DNA data for this market on our website as well. So you can check that out on the shorttermshop.com.

Avery Carl [00:00:52]:
and if you guys are interested in buying a property in the Smoky mountains with a short term shop agent, you can email us at agents@theshorttermshop.com or if you just want to learn more about buying short term rentals in this market, you can join our Facebook group. We’ve created a 50,000 person community on Facebook all about investing in short term rentals. You can join that. It’s the same title as my book. It’s called short term rental, long term wealth. See you guys over there. Hey, guys, welcome back to the short term show, special episode Smokey’s edition. Today we’re talking about pricing and calendar.

Avery Carl [00:01:31]:
In this market specifically, we have three experts. We have, first, Julie McCoy. Julie, if you want to introduce yourself.

Julie McCoy [00:01:38]:
Hey, everybody, I’m Julie McCoy. I’m one of the agents on the short term shop in the smokies. And I own, I own seven, um, vacation rentals and the Smokies. And, yeah, have been doing this for a while now.

Derek Tellier [00:01:54]:
Awesome.

Avery Carl [00:01:54]:
Next we have Derek Tellier. Derek, you want to introduce yourself really quick?

Derek Tellier [00:01:58]:
Absolutely. Uh, Derek, uh, over in the Smokies agent as well. Uh, been around the short term shop for. Since just short. Julie was in before me, but since very early stages of the short term shop. But my friendship and relationship with Luke and Avery goes back way before that. Hence the rock and roll t shirts because that’s where our lives all started. I have got eleven active short term rentals in the smokies.

Derek Tellier [00:02:25]:
One more that’s in the process of a major remodel right now, and I like to play and experiment, so I’m always learning new stuff about pricing and calendars. So this is going to be exciting for me, regardless.

Avery Carl [00:02:37]:
And the man who needs no introduction, Mister Luke Carl.

Luke Carl [00:02:43]:
I’ll tell you, Avery, it’s great to be here. I’m fired up. I’m having a great day. It’s a beautiful day here in sunny Florida, but a big, giant piece of my heart is in east Tennessee. I love it very much. So I appreciate you for having me on this call. I do own five cabins in the Smoky mountains on the Tennessee side, and one of those is the longest running Airbnb in the Smoky mountains because Avery and I were doing this back before anybody ever heard of it. Well, on Airbnb, anyway.

Luke Carl [00:03:14]:
Not necessarily the entire concept, obviously.

Derek Tellier [00:03:17]:
Yeah.

Julie McCoy [00:03:17]:
I was going to say there have been cabins up there being rented since before you were born.

Luke Carl [00:03:21]:
Julie likes to tell me I’m wrong, so I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Avery Carl [00:03:27]:
Okay, so we’re talking all things pricing and calendars. Do you guys think, as the experts, that it would be better for us to start with general pricing or start with calendars first and move into pricing? I’m thinking calendars first.

Julie McCoy [00:03:43]:
Yeah. Because I think, you know, discussing the seasonality of any market is going to be relevant to how you’re pricing.

Avery Carl [00:03:50]:
Very, very good point. All right, so what is the seasonality of the Smokies? Let’s start there. When’s high season? Are there any dips throughout the year that people might not be aware of that might come as a surprise? Let’s talk about that first.

Julie McCoy [00:04:05]:
I mean, yeah. In short, I think every vacation market is seasonal to some degree. One of the reasons why I wanted to invest in the smokies is because it has less seasonality than a lot of markets. So it felt very consistent, but there still is ebbs and flows. Um, just looking at the calendar year going in January, February is low season in the Tennessee smokies. It’s, you know, you’re past the holidays. The weather just is kind of nasty. It’s just cold and rainy for the most part.

Luke Carl [00:04:36]:
And.

Julie McCoy [00:04:36]:
And so that’s. That’s our low season and the opportunity that we get to go in and, like, make any repairs and kind of get, uh, you know, rest and recover from the rest of the year. March, when things start warming up, spring breaks start happening, really starts to pick up their peaks in the summer, June through August till school starts, and then you get a bit of a lull. And October is another high season when we have the leaves turning the colors rolls right into the holidays, and you finish it. You’re strong. So it’s kind of a broad overview, but, yeah, I’ll let Derek and Luke talk about some of the nuances within that.

Derek Tellier [00:05:16]:
Yeah. To dig in a little bit. One thing with the off season, January, February, Dollywood is closed in January and February, the entire park is, they closed after the first week of January. So that slows things down. And the park itself can get closed down because of weather. We don’t have really bad winters here, but it’s unpredictable and we can get snow at any point between December and February. And when it does, it pretty well shuts everything down because we’re just not prepared for it because it doesn’t happen often enough. So that’s definitely a slow season.

Derek Tellier [00:05:46]:
That being said, there’s still people coming here. So there is still, it’s not like it drops to zero. May typically slows down a little bit. You get spring break through March and April, and then May is kind of a little bit of a hangover because school’s wrapping up, people are finishing up. So you get a little bit of a downturn in May compared to April. And certainly June spikes up. And then September, same type of thing with Labor Day. People go back to school.

Derek Tellier [00:06:09]:
It kind of dips a little bit before the leaves start to change, and then you get that fall season. And even I’ll let Luke get into the holidays more. But even through those November, December, you can make, you can do phenomenal in those months. But your occupancy may not be crazy in November and December because there’s going to be weeks in there where there’s just nobody coming.

Luke Carl [00:06:30]:
Well, yeah, I mean, if I’m taking the holidays, then, yeah, it gets a little weird. Like the first three weeks of November are going to be slow. First three weeks of December going to be kind of slow. You can get them booked. You can absolutely get them booked. You got to work on them further in advance than normal, as everybody knows. Well, you should know 90% of all, according to Airbnb, 90% of all vacations are booked 30 days in advance or less. So when it comes to a time like 1 November, 1 December that is more difficult to book, then I would recommend trying to get those booked more than 30 days in advance out.

Luke Carl [00:07:02]:
You know, like doing a little work, meaning like moving a couple of things around in your description or your headline or using some kind of catchphrases that are season specific, that kind of thing. And then November. The cool thing about those is, you know, November, December, you get Thanksgiving and Christmas, which are massive. And a lot of times your December will end up being my December usually ends up being right on par with like a march give or take, like a normal ish month, if there is such a thing. In short term because of, you know, Christmas is going to be so heavy and you, maybe you could put a longer minimum night stay on your Christmas and Christmas is a sweet spot, you know, we could do a whole hour on just Christmas and when and when and how to book it, but, and then, you know, you roll in after New Year’s and things get a little wacky again. But what I want to, what I want to point out, I’m sure we’re going to get to this anyway, but I’m just going to throw it out there. Don’t, don’t, don’t. You know, when you hear all these dates, these slow times and this and that, don’t base when you’re going to buy your property on that, you know, so, you know, oh, I shouldn’t buy in the slow season yet.

Luke Carl [00:08:03]:
Why? I mean, you first of all, don’t overthink it. And second of all, just buy when you got the down payment. That’s the hard part anyway, you know, and yeah, maybe you have to carry this thing, thing for a month or two. Uh, big deal. You’re going to be too. So busy getting it ready. These things are hard to get set up, you know. I mean, it’s a lot of time and effort with couches and, and pictures and all this other stuff.

Luke Carl [00:08:23]:
Um, but anyway, yeah, I wouldn’t spend too much time on basing, basing your purchase on, on whether it’s busy or slow out there.

Julie McCoy [00:08:29]:
Well, and the other part is our slow season is only a couple of months long. So, you know, your average real estate transaction from when you go under contract closing is going to be at least 30 days. And so that’s half of it right there. You know, nevermind the part that goes into, you know, identifying the property offering, getting under contract and then, you know, after closing the setup, as you’re saying. So, you know, if you open the year, it’s like, oh, it’s slow season. You’re running right into high season, you know, as you’re ready to launch. So I actually view that view, all other things being equal. I like buying in the slow season for that reason.

Julie McCoy [00:09:05]:
But I agree, don’t try and time the market in that respect. Just when you are ready to pull the trigger, go for it.

Avery Carl [00:09:13]:
And to take that a step further, after you close, your first mortgage payment isn’t due until the first full month that you own it. That’s even a little bit longer time, depending on what part of the month you closed. Sorry, Derek, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Derek Tellier [00:09:27]:
No, that’s fine. Good point. Very good point. I’ll just put a bow on it and say one of my earliest mentors in real estate said, every day is a good day to buy real estate. It’s just buy a good deal. Care if it’s January, February, June, July. I’m not basing my purchases on the season. If I, I’m always looking and if I got a good deal in front of me, I’m buying it.

Derek Tellier [00:09:48]:
I don’t care what the, what date it is. So. Yeah, for sure.

Avery Carl [00:09:56]:
All right, so let’s talk about our actual calendars on our, on our property management software. So how far in advance do you open your calendar and make it available, your property available for booking?

Julie McCoy [00:10:10]:
Twelve months.

Derek Tellier [00:10:14]:
I have played with this. I have gone back and forth because I listened to Luke and he changed his mind every, every six months or so. But I have gone back and forth. I have done three months. I have done six months. I have done like four months. Just to be weird, I just recently went back to twelve months. I’m keeping it simpler.

Derek Tellier [00:10:31]:
I’m going twelve months. My pricing is, we’ll get into pricing. My pricing is set to make sure that we have bumps later on. But I am at twelve months now on almost all my calendars. I’m trying to keep it simple and I don’t see any reason not to if you have things set up appropriately otherwise.

Luke Carl [00:10:48]:
Yeah. See, my answer to this is, there is no wrong answer on this. And twelve months, absolutely. You’re both right. One thing to note, in my experience, make sure whatever you’re choosing on both platforms, you keep it the same. There have been times where I’m like, man, I wish I could do three months out on my Airbnb in six months out of my verbo, because Verbo guests, again, I’m not, I don’t want to start this conversation, but verbo guests tend to be a little on the older side, maybe do a little more planning ahead, you know? So it would be nice maybe to, if you really want to get in the weeds, that might be, but it doesn’t work like that. Unfortunately, it will screw up your calendars if you do that. Now what I do is I do, I would call it a custom calendar.

Luke Carl [00:11:26]:
So I go on Airbnb and Verbo and I clicked. And so you got, you know, three 6912 months in the future. I click all future dates, which is an Airbnb term. It’s got a different name on Verbo, although same meaning and very similar but slightly different name. I can’t remember what it is off the top of my head, but. And then what I’ll do is that allows me to. Well, what happens if you do that is it no longer rolls off a day in the, in the future. Right.

Luke Carl [00:11:53]:
So if you have a twelve month or a six month, let’s say you have a six month, which for right now would be just after the 4 July. We’re recording this in February. So the 15 July. Today’s Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine. Will become available tomorrow. Right. And then the 16th, the next day and then the 17th.

Luke Carl [00:12:11]:
I don’t like that because I’ll get caught off guard, caught with my pants down, if you will. And two weeks have gone by and then next thing you know, a big holiday rolled open. There’s other ways to fix that, though. So this is why I’m telling. This is why I’m saying Julie and Derek are not wrong. You could do a season on price labs for whatever, you know, 4 July. Let’s say it’s a big, major holiday, getting ready to roll out. You can do a season on, on, on price labs that will recur every year based on whatever dates you want it to.

Luke Carl [00:12:37]:
And you can put whatever price you wanted to for those dates. So when those dates become available, they’re automatically bumped up to whatever you want them to be. You could do it that way, too. Um, but I do like the custom thing. Like I said, right now I’m currently available until Thanksgiving. As a matter of fact, I’m open until the first, first two weeks or three weeks of November, and then I’m blocked as of right now. I change it all the time, as Derek said.

Julie McCoy [00:13:01]:
Well, in the way that I deal with that sort of. Sort of thing. Because, you know, okay, it’s the day after Christmas. You don’t necessarily want someone booking next year’s Christmas, you know, especially if you don’t have your rates set the way you want. But, you know, and we’re going to get into price labs and, and stuff like that in more detail, I’m sure. But price labs has a feature where you can say, all right, I, you know, price lab is going to look at what they think the pricing should be looking into the future. But you can go in and say, all right, any dates that are more than whatever number of days, whether that, you know, they call it like, far out pricing and, like, very far out pricing. You tell it like, if it’s more than 180 days in the future, then I want you to raise the rate that you think it should be by x amount of dollars or x percent.

Julie McCoy [00:13:52]:
And so I’ve got mindset that way, you know, and you can do this in different levels. So I’ve got it set. So if it’s more than 180 days in the future, it’s got something like a 50% premium on it. If someone wants to book my Christmas next year that badly, that they’re going to pay one and a half times the rate that pricelabs thinks it should be, and price labs knows that’s a holiday, be my guess. That sounds great. I’ve had that happen once or twice before. Paid a sky high rate, and they were no trouble. I have no problem with that.

Avery Carl [00:14:25]:
Well, before we get too far in the weeds on price labs, let’s talk about the importance of using a pricing tool such as price labs versus pricing manually. Who wants to tackle that? Because it’s a big one.

Derek Tellier [00:14:39]:
Well, I mean, I’ll lead it in that if you’re sitting at a base price, you are leaving so much money on the table, it’s not even funny. And as agents, we see this all the time with properties that our buyers are buying and even list agents will tell us, I’m working with a client right now where the comment was where she’s not making much money. She has it priced at dollar 150 a night across the board. There is seasonality. There are going to be weekends. There are going to be dates. There are going to be times that people will pay more, obviously, holidays. There are stuff that goes on that you don’t even think of.

Derek Tellier [00:15:12]:
The Smokies has rod run in the spring? They have another car show. They have several car shows throughout the year, another one in the fall. As the typical person, even somebody that lives here, I don’t remember when those dates are. But guess what? Pricelabs does. And then they know, because they look at the history, they can see it. I’m surprised sometimes when I see it. Jacking up my rates for certain weekends, and I don’t even realize why it. I’ve got properties over in Townsend, just the other side of the.

Derek Tellier [00:15:37]:
Of the foothills, and I saw a weekend that was all jacked up, super high rates. Turns out there’s a jeep invasion there that weekend. I didn’t even know it was coming. So you are going to leave money on the table if you’re not using dynamic software?

Julie McCoy [00:15:49]:
Well, I want to say, when I first started using dynamic software. I was very concerned that it was pricing too high. I would look at the rates that it was charging and I, or suggesting, and I was like, no one’s going to pay that. And yet I was wrong, you know? Did every night get booked? No, but that’s not going to happen anyway, generally speaking. And, and, yeah, I was amazed at what people would pay to stay at my property. And so I learned very quickly to trust it. It’s not infallible. Like, you still have to pay attention to it.

Julie McCoy [00:16:26]:
But, man, I mean, that’s probably the biggest revenue driver that I’ve done. And it’s so simple and so inexpensive, so absolutely worth it. It’s going to be a little scary at first, probably. You’re going to look at it and be like, there’s no way that’s going to book. Keep an eye on it. You. You will be surprised. And yeah, once it kind of gets past a certain comfort level, then you can always override it and adjust it.

Julie McCoy [00:16:52]:
But I really recommend giving it a shot and seeing what it can do. And it’s going to change your expectation and understanding of what people will pay in your market.

Luke Carl [00:17:04]:
You’re going to use price labs. Simple as that. There’s 8 million podcasts out there on this, and of course, they have their own YouTube channel and everything. There’s wheelhouse. Beyond pricing, et cetera, every single person I know in the business uses price labs. It’ll definitely make your life easier.

Avery Carl [00:17:17]:
All right, thanks, guys.

Derek Tellier [00:17:19]:
And never underestimate what somebody’s willing to pay.

Julie McCoy [00:17:22]:
Yes.

Avery Carl [00:17:23]:
Yeah, definitely.

Luke Carl [00:17:24]:
No discounts. No discounts ever.

Avery Carl [00:17:27]:
All right, so we talked about opening your calendar and what general rules are surrounding that. Really, we kind of found that there really aren’t any rules. What about minimum night stays? And everybody here owns a range of different size properties. So I see one of the biggest mistakes that I see people making when they’re doing, when they post in our short term rental listing advice Facebook group, and they say, hey, why am I not booking? And they have some outrageous minimum night stay. So what is y’all’s advice in terms of minimum night stays for small versus medium versus large properties?

Julie McCoy [00:18:02]:
I think, I mean, part of it’s market specific. We’re talking about the smokies. And you kind of want to understand the vacation pattern here. So there are people that will come and stay for a week, but for the most part, you’re looking at stays of three and four days long. Um, and that is pretty across the board. So if you are limiting yourself to, like, oh, it’s got to be like a Saturday to Saturday check in. Like, you might see it in a beach market. Um, you’re really, you’re really creating an obstacle for yourself.

Julie McCoy [00:18:33]:
That’s not necessary. Now there’s the other side of the fence where it’s like, oh, well, you can just book a one night stay. That can be problematic for other reasons. Um, as a single night stay, especially at a larger property, is going to, you know, create a scenario that’s more inviting to parties and other situations you may not want to mess with. With a small property. If you got like a little one bedroom, a one night stay might be fine. I would. You’d want to make sure your cleaners are cool with that, but, you know, you can do that.

Julie McCoy [00:19:04]:
And I’ve done that before without having any issues now. I just don’t like the hassle factor of it. So I’ve got a two night minimum on my little properties. And these are like one bedroom cabins. And for my bigger properties, I have a minimum of three nights for like a close, but I’ve got it. I want at least three nights. If it’s within the next two weeks, I’ll probably cut it down to a two night minimum. If it’s far out, I want four to five nights, depending on the season.

Julie McCoy [00:19:32]:
This is all stuff that I have set up in price labs.

Derek Tellier [00:19:35]:
Yeah, very similar. My smaller stuff, I have two night minimum as it gets. And again, seasonality. And, and there’s really no necessarily wrong answer, I don’t think. But I don’t do, I don’t do one night on anything unless it happens to be an orphan night or we’re coming into a, you know, a situation where, you know, it’s last minute and then I might open it up. But generally I’m looking for at least two nights anything. One and two bedroom for sure. Three bedrooms.

Derek Tellier [00:20:00]:
Depends on my three bedrooms. I’ve got some small three bedrooms. I’ve got some larger three bedrooms. So my smaller three bedrooms, I kind of run just like a one and a two. They only sleep six, probably. Um, so I’m usually doing those at two nights with three nights on the weekend. So Friday and Saturday, I’m usually trying to get three nights, and then I kind of watch it. And again, as we get into summer, I might expand that a little bit.

Derek Tellier [00:20:21]:
I’m still going to probably stick with twos, but the three nights, I’m going to be a little bit more diligent about on the weekends. On my bigger properties, I’ve been doing three night minimum with four night on the weekends. And, you know, I just recently is slow time of year, but I was trying to get a couple of bookings and President’s Day weekend is today’s recording is this coming weekend. And I wasn’t booked. And I was like the only property, the only good sized property not booked that I could find. And I had it set up with Friday and Saturday as four night minimums. I dropped it to three night minimum and within 24 hours I had a booking for the weekend. So you got to recognize that a weekend travel like that, someone’s going to come in on Friday, stay till Monday.

Derek Tellier [00:21:00]:
On a holiday weekend fortnight may sound good. You think you’re going to get maximum, but the reality is people aren’t even seeing it because they’re looking for Friday to Monday. So I’m sticking closer to three nights unless I’m about five or six months out. Then I’m looking at four or five nights again because same thing, back to the holiday stuff. If you want to book it that far in advance, you’re going to pay a premium and you’re going to lock in for a really long, for a longer stay because I’d rather you not book it that far in advance.

Avery Carl [00:21:27]:
Luke, do you have anything to add to that?

Luke Carl [00:21:28]:
No, they’re crushing it.

Avery Carl [00:21:31]:
Okay, so let’s talk about the ins and outs of price labs. Not necessarily in a like, how to use it sense, but using it to tailored to this market. So I know there’s minimums, there’s maximums, there’s all kinds of little settings you can do. What are the tips and tricks that are specific to the smokies that you guys use and recommend the most?

Luke Carl [00:21:53]:
I don’t know that there’s anything specific, you know, for any market. It’s, I’m in. I’m in how many markets? And it’s the same thing everywhere. It’s enemy method all the time. For me personally, if I don’t know what to price my property, and it’s usually only when I’m new to a market, I just sit there and spend a couple hours, you know, over a period of a week maybe, you know, not. It doesn’t even have to be all the same time studying my enemies. People get, people get obsessed. I think a little bit, too.

Luke Carl [00:22:18]:
If you, by the way, if you’re not familiar, we shouldn’t assume anybody knows enemymethod.com. it’s basically just studying your competition. But watch Avery’s video on that. Enemymethod.com. right. So I think people get a little too obsessed with not being able to find the perfect enemy when, in my opinion, somebody that’s not perfect is. Could be even more perfect than the perfect enemy. Right.

Luke Carl [00:22:41]:
You know, just go find somebody who’s good at it that’s with. Within a certain range of your house. And if you can’t, I mean, if you’re in. If you’re going into a small area, a little, small, little market like cape sandblast, I’m dealing with a cleaner locked out of my house right now. Uh, anyway, so, uh, you know, like a little town, a little. Little area like that, there might not be any competition, which is great, but it’s scary, you know, if you’re brand new going into a smaller market like that, and you’re like, oh, because it gives you warm fuzzies to see that your neighbors are doing well. Oh, I. If they’re doing this, I can probably do a little better.

Luke Carl [00:23:13]:
I. This guy’s. I mean, he’s got terrible pictures. He’s only got 14 pictures. And the kitchen sinks are for micah and all this stuff, you know, I can. You know, you get a little bit of a confidence boost seeing that somebody like that is doing well. And so, you know, find your enemy. Doesn’t have to be like, this is the guy.

Luke Carl [00:23:30]:
I’m going to go to battle with him every day and take him down. You know, it’s not a freaking video game, you know, but you just go around and you find people and see what they’re doing. It’s exactly like long term rentals on zillow. Okay, I got this. Three, two. Over here in this school district. Let me go see if there’s anything for rent over there. How much can I get? You know, it’s not as broad of a range.

Luke Carl [00:23:50]:
In long term, you can usually get a pretty decent idea just by guessing. And then you go and reassure yourself on zillow, same thing here with the enemy method, except for there’s a whole lot more stuff out there to. To examine. And that’s pretty much how I do it. Everybody’s looking for some secret sauce with all these data websites and all this stuff. Maybe I’m old. Maybe it’s my gray hair coming through. I just go look at what my neighbors are doing and I figure out how I can do it better than them and how much I can charge by doing better than them.

Derek Tellier [00:24:17]:
Well, and here’s what’s great about short term rentals, right? You’re watching this. You’re obviously in short term rentals, but here’s the obligatory plug about why short term rentals are so fantastic is you can change it every day, you can change it. You can try some stuff and it doesn’t book. You go in and you change it. Long term rentals, you get somebody, they sign a lease, you’re locked into them probably for twelve months. Short term rentals, if your pricing is not working today, you drop it tomorrow, you can raise it back up the next day. You can constantly play around with it. There is a.

Derek Tellier [00:24:45]:
And again, just like Luke said, there is. It’s the same for every market. You know, I don’t think there’s nuances. I think every individual is going to play around a little bit different. Thing has more to do with what helps you sleep at night. But yeah, I go in, I do far out pricing. We’ve talked about that. You can have aggressive pricing so that if you’re not booked and it’s getting closer, price labs will automatically, you know, raise or lower your prices.

Derek Tellier [00:25:07]:
If you have orphan nights, there’s so many different little things. You can get in there and you can get in the weeds and spend hours upon hours in there and I’m sure there’s people out there doing that and they’re absolutely killing it. But you can also just hit the high levels, get a nice consistent system going. If you’re going to do the same basics for your entire properties in price labs, you can do a full calendar, all your listings adjustments, so that all these terms happen on everything. And then if you have one or two properties that are anomalies, you can go in and override that on the individual listings. Um, I mean, I don’t have in front of me, so I don’t want to get into all the details. There’s just tons of them. Get in there and play with them.

Derek Tellier [00:25:43]:
See what works for you.

Julie McCoy [00:25:44]:
Well, that’s one of the things I really like about price labs is because it’s so customizable, but it doesn’t require you to be in every nook and cranny to make it work the way it’s supposed to. So it’s really about, it’s really about like your comfort level, the amount of time that you want to spend with it, get the basics down for sure. You really need to understand that. But beyond that, you know, you can leave it as is or you can, you can go in and tweak to your heart’s content. So if you’re, if you like playing with numbers and metrics and things like that, you’re going to be in heaven. If that’s not your thing, that’s okay. It could still do a great job.

Derek Tellier [00:26:24]:
For you as an easy button. But price labs is the closest thing, because you can. You can just put it in there and it’ll do okay for you. But you’re going to have. You’re going to have to get in there and play around and tweak it and just really get to know it, because there are just so many little things that you can do. There’s stuff in there that I probably don’t even realize I can do because I just haven’t dug as deep as some others can and would. So if you’re going to get in there, get in there and play with it, though.

Luke Carl [00:26:49]:
Price labs is a race car, but without a driver, it’ll go straight into the wall, right? So you do need to get in there a little bit. You just need to. You can put it on cruise control if you want. You’re probably not gonna get the same results as if you’re in there doing double pedals with your, you know, breaking with your left foot and stuff like that. But, um, car analogies, I don’t know where that came from, but. And this is starting to sound like a price lapse commercial, and I do apologize, and I do want to mention that we do not. None of us here have ever gotten any kind of kickback or referral fee or anything from price labs. It just.

Luke Carl [00:27:18]:
It really is. If you’re going to be in this business, you’re going to use it. Um, and every now and then, I’ll see on a Facebook group where somebody’s like, you know, price labs is stupid or something like that, and I’m just like, what? Like, I mean, where.

Julie McCoy [00:27:30]:
What.

Luke Carl [00:27:30]:
What rock do you live under? I mean, you know, uh, so, yeah, you’re going to use it. Long story short. Oh, and then this was my point, uh, which, yeah, uh, avery mentioned about the market. Now, here’s the deal with the smokies. This is something that we should mention. There are a million things going on in the smokies all the time. I mean, it’s overwhelming, like, you know, and especially if you’re brand new and you get in and you get into this market and you’re like, oh, my God, jeep invasion. Oh, my God, this is another jeep invasion.

Luke Carl [00:28:00]:
And then that rod run and then this and that and weddings and this and. And the cow Rubin baseball season and all this stuff, and it never ends. And the fireflies, you know, and it’s all this cool, fun stuff and it can be very overwhelming. And I’ll be honest with you, I just kind of let price lapse handle that stuff. And I, and I feel that it does a very good job. And, and a lot of that has to do with scaling, I think, too, you can’t move on to the second, 3rd, 4th, 28th property if you’re sitting there worrying about Firefly season every year. You know what I mean? At a certain point, you got it. You got to stop micromanaging.

Luke Carl [00:28:31]:
But it is a very fine line between micromanaging and not paying any attention.

Derek Tellier [00:28:37]:
Agreed.

Julie McCoy [00:28:37]:
That’s true. When I feel like in the last year, you know, I kind of tipped over from, you know, the micromanager to not paying attention. And I know that I left money on the table as a result. You know, I just, I had a lot going on, and my cabins were kind of on autopilot. I, you know, had good enough systems that I could do that and knew the wheels wouldn’t come off. And so that’s what I did. But also, looking back on the year, I’m just like, yeah, they could have done better had I been more engaged.

Derek Tellier [00:29:06]:
This is going to depend on where you’re at in your journey. I have a good friend of mine who is a, you know, at a point where he’s been doing a bunch of remodels and he needs to optimize what he’s got available right now, even in the slow season, and he is in there every single day making tweaks and making adjustments. And hes like 100% booked in February on a couple of these little one bedroom studio cabins that he has. And it may feel like hes dirt cheap on his rates, but hes making 35, $3,600 out of this little cabin, whereas my one bedroom is going to do like $1,800 this weekend or this week or this month because I didnt get in there and tweak it. So whos doing better, him or me? Well, it depends on the perspective. Maybe I’m in a position where I’m okay with not trying to keep it full and I want to have get some more work done because I’ve got, you know, ten of these things, eleven of these things. But, you know, you got to get in there and tweak and play with it. And if you’re needing to keep those things full, then you’re going to spend a lot of time.

Derek Tellier [00:30:06]:
If you’ve got one or two, you definitely should be spending a lot of time in there playing with it and tweaking it. There is no true cruise control, but if you’ve got ten or twelve, you, you may not be as worried about it, but you are leaving money on the table. Absolutely. I know I’m leaving money on the table. I’m just willing to accept that for the net for now until I can, you know, figure out the system that’s going to improve on it.

Julie McCoy [00:30:28]:
Well, and I think he’s a great example of someone who’s really using the enemy method and doing a lot of just like, manual a b testing to like, all right, so I’m going to change this lead photo. What does that do to my ranking on Airbnb? And, like, he spends a lot of time doing those things to really try and optimize, you know, it’s like, what happens if I, you know, lower my cleaning rate? Um, for, you know, what if I drop it by 25% or whatever and just like, lots of tweaks like that and just like. But really not just doing it and seeing what happens in the kind of abstract sense, but just like, okay, now I’m going to go in my other browser window and see. Did that increase my ranking? Um, and so it’s very, you know, that’s very time consuming. That’s very tedious. But he’s really doing a great job of putting that to work and, and is paying off for him. I love to pick his brain about it. I’m like, wait, you did what? What photo did the best.

Julie McCoy [00:31:25]:
Why do you think that is?

Avery Carl [00:31:27]:
I would love to know if you guys can remember, because you can always remember everything until somebody asks you about that specific thing, and then you can’t. What is the biggest pricing mistake you’ve ever made?

Luke Carl [00:31:39]:
Going live and forgetting to raise Christmas, you know, the whatever, the upcoming holiday. It happens to everybody. But you go live and, and, you know, Christmas is two weeks from now or whatever, right? Let’s say you go live now and 4 July is coming in four or five months and you forget about it, or you don’t even think about it, and next thing you know, somebody books 4 July, your $2 million beach house for $150 a night. You know, it’s super common.

Derek Tellier [00:32:04]:
I’m going to go the. I’m going to go the other end of that spectrum. My biggest mistake is pricing too high and not getting booked and not necessarily realizing and then realizing it too late again. I had ten active listings last year, and I knew one of my cabins wasn’t doing as well as it should. I just knew the calendar wasn’t staying full and it was a conversation between Luke and I that actually went in there and looked at it, and I realized how bad it was. And it was because I was priced too high. I wasn’t paying attention. And I gave up so much revenue last year on that cabin because I forgot about it.

Derek Tellier [00:32:41]:
And as soon as I started playing with the pricing and getting it down to where it needed to be and using the enemy method and recognizing where I was, I started getting bookings, and I made up a lot of ground that last quarter of the year, but so, yeah, dont price too high. Find that happy medium, especially when youre new to a market or youre new to an area in the smokies especially. Drop the pricing, put some safeties in place, but pay attention, because a month or two will go by in your life and you’ll realize you had zero bookings and you can’t make that up. It’s gone. The time is gone. And when you’re trying to book very last minute, you will have to be dirt cheap, especially this time of year.

Avery Carl [00:33:22]:
So back to Luke’s thing, when you have someone accidentally book when you forgot to raise the prices. I see this a lot. I see this question a lot in our Facebook groups. Do you go back to the guest and say, hey, I’m so sorry, I accidentally didn’t have this? You do. You go back and you try to get your money back.

Luke Carl [00:33:41]:
Don’t tell Airbnb because they’ll remove me in the middle of the night. But I have told people that I was actually probably going to be selling this house and they wouldn’t be able to stay there anyway. So please go ahead and cancel things like that. But, yeah, you know, that’s the last resort. Don’t do that. But, but, yeah, you beg and plead with them. You know, here’s the deal. When it’ll happen, it will happen.

Luke Carl [00:34:02]:
When it does happen, they know they got a deal. They know, and they’re gonna throw a little bit of a fit. But, I mean, you know, I had to tell one person one time, listen, you went up to the cash register at this, at the store with these jeans, and they had the sticker from the wrong pair of jeans on them. And I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it. And, you know, maybe that store would let it slide on a pair of jeans, but I’m not gonna do that on a $3,000 vacation, you know? So most of the time, they realized that it was. I had a one time where some, I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but not that long ago, I had. Oh, here’s what it was. I put.

Luke Carl [00:34:41]:
I put a seven night, $7 a night instead of a $7 minimum on price labs and a manual override. And the minimum price per night on both platforms is $10, so it defaulted to $10. And I had somebody book, like, you know, it was like eight days in May or whatever, or march. It was like a spring break thing or something. April, I don’t know. And it was like $1110 a night. And I messaged. It happened to two people, and I was like, hey, just, you know, I’m sure you’re aware that we can’t rent this house to you for $10 a night.

Luke Carl [00:35:15]:
I don’t know what happened. You know, I’m sorry. And, you know, they threw a little bit of a fit, but they, you know, they. All you can do is hope that they’ll understand, and they really kind of have no choice at that point for $10 a night. Now, that’s an extreme example.

Derek Tellier [00:35:29]:
Yeah. Fortunate I’ve never had an extreme one happen. My first ever listing, we were putting it. We were setting it up in. Used to be called your porter. It’s guesty now. But Luke was helping me, and we set it up. And as soon as we activated the listing in guesty, it automatically made Airbnb live.

Derek Tellier [00:35:49]:
And neither of us realized that that had happened. And while we were on the phone setting it up, I had gotten a booking. Fortunately, I had had my price set a little bit high anyway. So I had no cleaning fee. I had nothing else. But I booked a one bedroom cabin at like, 250 a night on Memorial Day weekend. It was, like, nothing to complain about. So we kept it.

Derek Tellier [00:36:08]:
But, yeah, other than that, I’ve not had to come to that situation. But if it was extreme, I absolutely would reach out to the guest and have a conversation, try to have an adult, professional conversation with them about that. There was an error and a request that they cancel, and hopefully it resolves itself. I’m sure there’s stories out there of the guests that refused, but most of the stories I’ve read, the people who have been in that position, the guest has been understanding and been willing to cancel.

Luke Carl [00:36:38]:
Avery, your uncle did this recently, did he not?

Julie McCoy [00:36:40]:
Yes.

Avery Carl [00:36:40]:
I was just going to bring that up. Good old Uncle Jody. So they went to book, I think, a trip to park City for maybe this Christmas or January, and it was. It was super cheap. And the host said, oh, my gosh, I’m sorry. I just opened my calendar and I wasn’t paying attention. And so they texted me, and I didn’t know they were going to use this information for good, for evil and not good. But, uh, they said, can they cancel on their end? Can the host cancel on their end? She says she didn’t have her calendar, right.

Avery Carl [00:37:10]:
I’m like, well, they can, but they’re risking, you know, losing their super host status. They’ll get dinged. And so they went back to the host and they said, well, you’ll lose your super host status if you cancel me, so I’m going to stay here. And I was like, oh, my gosh. So I just stayed out of it from that point. But, yeah, they did. They did do that. I haven’t asked for an update on if they kept the reservation or not.

Julie McCoy [00:37:30]:
But actually was a Sundance weekend or week because that’s Christmas, January, and that, that’s like the peak in Park City.

Avery Carl [00:37:43]:
Oh, yeah, it was definitely either way. It was peak. Maybe not Sundance peak, but definitely peak.

Luke Carl [00:37:49]:
Well, I actually went out of my lane on that one, and I texted your uncle on the side and I said, dude, um, you’ve got to cancel that reservation. I’m sorry to tell you, but you can’t go stay at that house for $50 a night. You know, you just can’t do that. And so he finally, I don’t know if he ended up doing it. He didn’t tell me, but it. I felt like I did get somewhere with him.

Derek Tellier [00:38:07]:
Hey, I’m a believer in karma. You know, you did something wrong. Own up to it. And you didn’t do anything wrong in that situation. The host made the mistake. So I take that back. It’s not that you did something, but you know that it’s just not right. It may be legal, there may be nothing wrong with it from some perspective, but there’s some part of you that knows.

Derek Tellier [00:38:26]:
If you have to ask yourself, should I do this or not, the answer is probably no. I mean, that’s pretty safe if you’re asking that question of yourself, you know the answer, and then it’s up to you if you sleep well at night.

Luke Carl [00:38:36]:
Dude. Derek, where were you in my twenties, man?

Derek Tellier [00:38:39]:
I was. Yeah, I was. Not this promise.

Luke Carl [00:38:42]:
You shouldn’t be doing this. I should not be doing this. And it’s so cool, but I’m not. I should not be doing this.

Julie McCoy [00:38:50]:
Well, I’m going to say we all.

Derek Tellier [00:38:52]:
Talk about wishing we knew ourselves in our twenties, what advice we give ourselves. The fact is, none of us would listen to ourselves now.

Luke Carl [00:38:58]:
I wouldn’t even want to talk to that dude.

Julie McCoy [00:39:03]:
Well, I feel like this is not directly related to pricing, but when you’re setting up on Airbnb and Vrbo, they as like, their main onboarding process. They do not ask you what the cleaning fee is. You have to make your listing live and then go in and set the cleaning fee after. And that’s. I’ve definitely been caught a couple of times where I forgot to do that and got bookings, so I just had to eat the cleaning fee on it. So make a note that you need to do that immediately after going live because they don’t give you the option when you’re doing your first setup, which is annoying as can be.

Derek Tellier [00:39:36]:
But yeah, I was gonna say, I don’t know if we want to get into that right now, but we can talk about that. That initial setup, you know, when you’re first setting up guesty, I hit on it. Julie just brought up a good point. When you go into Airbnb and you start your listing, it’s only going to ask you the bare minimum. And if you’re not, you know, savvy enough to recognize that that’s all they’re asking you, is the bare minimum. And then you go live, you’re going to miss a lot of stuff. So as soon as you go live, you go back to your listing, pause it, and now start going back through page by page because there’s a ton of stuff that is not going to be there. And your calendar is going to be a big part of your calendar.

Derek Tellier [00:40:12]:
Your pricing is all going to be a big part of that. And if we want to talk about that initial pricing, Luke has a phenomenal method where the number keeps going up because of the world we live in. When I started, it was $250 a night. Now it’s $4,000.

Julie McCoy [00:40:26]:
$4,000 a night.

Derek Tellier [00:40:27]:
Are we higher in that now, Luke?

Luke Carl [00:40:29]:
$4,000. And as a matter of fact, that’s chapter ten in the blue book. Not the purple book, the blue book, chapter ten.

Derek Tellier [00:40:36]:
So, yeah, so when you’re setting it up, do that. That’s your default to protect you a little bit and then spend time again, calendars and pricing. Spend time when you first set up, get it active, and then pause it and go in there and spend some time and really dig in. You’re not going to make your listing active in an hour. You’re going to spend an hour on what you think is an active listing. You are going to spend several hours over the course of a week if you’re doing it right. Unless you’ve got really good systems getting your listing and your pricing and your calendar right in order before you go actually go live.

Luke Carl [00:41:08]:
I’m going to go and take this opportunity to give a little plug. By the way, if you want to know more about that stuff and how to do all that, I’ll teach you that in a little class called management Monday. If you buy a house with the shop, if you found this video inadvertently or whatever, and you, if you like our vibe, you want to come buy a house with us, I’ll teach you that and much more every Monday in a class called management Monday. Plug, plug, plug. Sorry.

Avery Carl [00:41:33]:
Awesome. So do we have any more points we want to make that we feel like, you know, maybe some common mistakes or tips or anything that we want to hit before we wrap up that we haven’t talked about already?

Derek Tellier [00:41:44]:
I can’t think of anything. I mean, it’s such a, you know, the most important thing we’ve, we’ve said it over and over again is, is get in there and learn it. Get in there and play with the calendars. That’s the most important aspect is I don’t care if you’ve been doing this for a day or ten years. The algorithms are changing, the softwares are changing. Don’t ever think you’ve got it figured out, because the minute you think you’ve got it figured out and you think you’ve got your systems in place and they’re all operating and you don’t have to get involved anymore, that’s when it’s going to bite you in the ass. So whether it’s you personally, whether you’ve got somebody working for you, whether you’ve got somebody involved, stay on top of it and never, ever, ever stop learning.

Luke Carl [00:42:24]:
How it works for me. You know, long story short, January, February, a little bit slow. Work on those in like October, September ish, you know, work on those, meaning make sure your prices are where you want them to be. A little ahead of time. Fewer people coming in January and February, so you want to be the first to scoop them up. I think the 30 day, 30 to 45 day in advance. Things out the window for these slow, slow seasons. Mays a little slow.

Luke Carl [00:42:50]:
September’s a little slow. Went back to school. So just don’t be caught off guard. You know, I see it all every year. Everybody’s like, oh, my God, it’s so slow. Well, dude, what were you expecting? This is the gig. That’s like saying, oh, my God. I had to repaint the kitchen after this tenant moved out.

Luke Carl [00:43:04]:
Well, what were you expecting? Of course, you had to repaint the kitchen. You know, it’s just part of it anyway. Don’t overthink it.

Avery Carl [00:43:12]:
All right. Well, on that note, if you guys want to buy a house with us, Luke already told you how to do that. But the shorttermshop.com or make sure you join our Facebook group called Short Term Rental, long term wealth. Same as you’re really distracting me with the baseball thing. Same as the, as the name of the book. Look how distracted you got me doing that. Short term rental, long term wealth is the name of our Facebook group if you want to learn more. And we also have a weekly office hours session week that anybody can sign on to and ask Luke and I questions about short term rentals.

Avery Carl [00:43:46]:
And you can get the link to that@strquestions.com. thanks, guys.

Derek Tellier [00:43:53]:
Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.