The Ultimate Guide on How to Set Up A Gulf Shores Vacation Rental

Avery Carl [00:00:02]:
Hey guys, welcome to our 10 episode deep dive of the Gulf Shores, Alabama market. I’m your host, Avery Carle and I wanted to let you know really quick before we get started that we do have some supplemental materials for you to go along with this podcast on our website, the shorttermshop.com. so what we have there is the current purchase prices in this market. So you can set yourself up a search, look at properties, do all that fun real estate stuff like kind of like Zillow. We’ve got it on our website and you can check out exactly how much it costs to buy a condo or single family home or townhouse in the Gulf Shores market right now. Also to go along with that, we have the air DNA data, thanks to our friends over at airdna for this market for the past few years. So you can compare purchase prices versus the air DNA data and kind of do some analysis there. We’ve also got a really cool calculator on the website that I built around short term rental investing to go along with all these things.

Avery Carl [00:00:53]:
Or if you know you want to buy in Gulf Shores and you’re ready to start talking to an agent, you can, you can reach out to us at agents the shorttermshop.com and we’ll get you connected with our agent in Gulf Shores. And last but not least, if you just really like us and you want to hang out with us more, we’d love to see more of you. There’s a few ways you can do that. You can join our Facebook group. It’s called Short Term Rental, Long Term wealth, same title as my book. It’s a community of over 60,000 investors sharing best practices and just kind of being friends with each other. It’s pretty cool. Or if you want to talk to us in person, you can do that every Thursday.

Avery Carl [00:01:28]:
You can sign up at stm. We have a one hour lunch hour, just office hours, where you can ask us anything you want about short term rental investing. So we appreciate you guys listening and please reach out to us with any questions. Follow us on Instagram TikTok Facebook. Join us in our community on Facebook as well. And I guess we’ll get to the episode now. Thanks guys. Hey guys.

Avery Carl [00:01:57]:
Welcome back to another Gulf Shores episode of the Short Term show special episode series. And today we’re talking about setup. I’ve got the usual cast of characters here and we’re talking about the basic things you’ll need to do to set up any property that you’re buying in this market. So I’ve got a List of questions. I can just start with that. Unless somebody has something they particularly want.

Tim Grillot [00:02:18]:
To bring up, I’m ready to go. So ask your questions or we can just let it rip or whatever.

Avery Carl [00:02:24]:
All right, so what does a property typically come with or conversely not come with when you close.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:02:31]:
So, so depending on the property it’s going to be in here, everybody. Depending on the property it’s going to be. If it’s a property manager, normally the linens and the lock will not convey normally if it’s, if it’s being somebody who’s self managing or second home normally if they’re not having any cleaning services at all, there is a chance those could convey. But normally the linens and lock won’t convey with a property manager if it’s self managed. Normally the linens won’t convey because, because the cleaners provide those usually. But the lock will stay if it’s.

Tim Grillot [00:03:03]:
Self managed and on the lock. You know, I’m just going to throw this in there right now. You want to change the lock. Even if it does, if it comes with the best new lock on the planet, I still would recommend changing it because there’s no telling who out there has codes or keys or whatever to that lock. And it’s fresh property locks are relatively cheap. I mean it’s 350 bucks or whatever. So I always just put new lock on no matter what. So even if it comes with everything.

Avery Carl [00:03:28]:
So yeah, you really guys, anytime you are buying a piece of real estate, if it is a short term rental, a long term rental, a primary home, change the locks. I have seen a number of people, this is A, I’m going down this rabbit hole right now. I’m getting on this soapbox. Don’t sit there for A, A you need to be changing the locks for safety reasons, period. B, don’t sit there for two weeks and complain that you can’t get into your property because you don’t have keys. Call a locksmith, be in control of your own destiny and get your house open. But guys like you’ve got to change. You don’t know when you’re buying a short term rental, how many people have access to that property, have had keys in the past.

Avery Carl [00:04:12]:
You have absolutely got to change all of the locks, period, no questions asked.

Tim Grillot [00:04:18]:
Yeah. And in addition to that, locks wear out. It’s a mechanical device, you know, I mean that’s like the number that is the very first thing you’re guessing have to have to face when they get to your property is the lock. So you know you don’t want somebody’s old wore out, like, you know, it doesn’t matter. Just put a new lock on, just backing up, whatever you said. So, yeah, yeah, locks a little bit. While we’re there, there’s like some setup stuff.

Avery Carl [00:04:39]:
Let’s talk about locks and like how there’s probably not going to be hard copy keys in a lot of cases. Let’s, let’s talk about that first and then move on to the locks.

Tim Grillot [00:04:46]:
Yeah, so I mean, for a setup thing, the, Sorry, what was that? Area. But I’m not having backup keys.

Avery Carl [00:04:52]:
Oh, just how, just how. Like most properties may not especially if they’ve got electronic locks that the previous seller has been using that there may not be hard copy keys at all, period.

Tim Grillot [00:05:04]:
Right. Yeah. So yeah, that’s step one is just getting you locked. That way you got fresh everything, you have fresh keys, all that, once you get your fresh lock, you’re going to want to set up some, some redundancies. And this is, to me, this is part of your setup. You know, it’s starting your systems, you know, this is all about your systems. And my door lock system is, I personally use Schlagen codes. They have, you know, they’re pretty good.

Tim Grillot [00:05:24]:
They are known to have some issues at the beach. So what we do is we have a lockbox on the outside of the, of the, of the unit that has the key in it. And that, that lockbox will have a different code on it that we do not give out. And unless they reach out and have an emergency, because we don’t want that key to disappear, we don’t want every guest knowing that the code of that lockbox, so that’s outside, inside of our units. We actually do another lockbox that has a spare set of batteries along with a QR code that links to a little video that tells you how to change batteries. So that’s just a little trick that we do. And then third thing, and we’ve only done this on one of our, one out of two of our properties and I don’t know why I haven’t done the other, but I have a spare lock set up ready to go in the owner’s closet. And it’s like when I say setups ready to go, it’s already programmed.

Tim Grillot [00:06:10]:
It’s already, you know, got the WI FI stuff and all it’s got to be do is be installed and batteries put in and it’s ready to rock. That way it, it makes the list of people that can fix a deadlock a lot bigger. You Know if you have a deadlock, like, there’s a smaller number of people that can program a new smart lock than there is that can just change one out. And if you got it all programmed, ready to go, sitting in the closet, you know, it just makes it super simple to swap that out.

Avery Carl [00:06:34]:
Oh, that’s genius. To have it pre programmed.

Tim Grillot [00:06:36]:
Yeah, you just. You just. You just get it live. You don’t. I mean, once you use enough of these things, you realize it doesn’t have to be installed in the door. You got to get it live. And, like, you can hold it in your hand and go through all the steps on your phone, your app, and have it all connected and ready to go, and it’s already. It’s there, you know, and you can just name it, you know, beach unit spare.

Tim Grillot [00:06:54]:
And then if it has to get installed, you just change the name on your app and you’re ready to rip.

Avery Carl [00:06:58]:
So, yeah, and you always want to have that backup lockbox with a key. We had a girl one time, the middle of the night, she was so drunk, God bless her, that she did the wrong key code in the electronic lock so many times that she killed the lock. And so luckily we had a bear then. But you never know what is going happens.

Tim Grillot [00:07:21]:
It happens.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:07:22]:
That’s an amazing preparation there, Tim. Another about their slage locks. I’ve had a lot of issues with those, just like everybody else at the beach. But the. But I still love them and the integration. So we’re using moisture packs, and it seems to be working now. But if anybody’s, you know, had better experience with beach locks that aren’t malfunctioning due to moisture issues, you know, I definitely love to hear that. But as of right now, we’re putting moisture packs in the battery pack side to help them last a little longer.

Avery Carl [00:07:51]:
So what’s a moisture pack?

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:07:52]:
Or I don’t even know if I’m using the right term, but these little packs that help absorb moisture.

Tim Grillot [00:07:58]:
Yeah, it’s a. It’s a desiccant pack. It’s a little. This little silica thing that comes in, everything that you buy that says don’t eat it, and people drop them in where you put the batteries, basically. And it helps, you know, any moisture that gets in there, it helps absorb it before it messes up the lock, the board on the lock, so.

Avery Carl [00:08:15]:
Oh, I did not know that. Good tip. I was like, moisture, like, outside the unit. What are you talking about? Yeah, got it.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:08:22]:
You can buy.

Tim Grillot [00:08:22]:
You can buy them on Amazon. You can buy a bunch of them and whatever, you can drop them in there whenever you change batteries or whatever. But it does help some or seems to.

Avery Carl [00:08:31]:
All right, so step number one, most important thing to do, change the locks. Get your, your electronic lock in and make sure that you have backups and redundancies for if people, if drunk people can’t get in or if the ocean air makes it diffic. You always want to have a few backup plans for that. All right, so moving on, what else will a property not come with in most cases that you’ll need to add? I’ll do the next one. Linens most typically not going to come with linens if it’s self managed, sometimes they’ll leave them. I’ve seen people get real, been out of shape about the linens being taken, but honestly you don’t, you don’t want the previous linens. They’re probably gross. So what are we buying and how many of each are we buying? When it comes to, we’ll talk bedrooms first, then bathrooms.

Avery Carl [00:09:17]:
So let’s talk sheets first.

Speaker D [00:09:19]:
So Jonathan made a point earlier that you’ll want to check with whatever housekeeping team you’re going with that they likely provide linens and then you don’t have to purchase them and they’re responsible for the upkeep. I think for us, we pay a quarterly linen fee, but they take care of all that. So if one’s bad, they, they get, get rid of it. But as far as comforters go, I think we do provide the comforters. We have a comforter for each, each bed and then extra comfor at each area for backup. When something does happen, there’s, there’s an extra one there that it can, the original one can get washed or removed or whatever is needed.

Tim Grillot [00:09:53]:
I think conversely, even if your cleaner doesn’t supply everything, it’s a good conversation, you know, to answer that question is talk to your cleaner because different cleaners have different processes and like what they like as far as how many such sheets. You know, if they don’t, if they don’t supply them, they’ll usually tell you, you know, we want three or we want two or whatever they want to tell you. Just kind of follow their lead a bit. You know, I mean if you guys want to make tweaks but work with your cleaner, it’s a team effort and they’ll certainly, you know, they’re, they’re doing more than just yours, I guarantee it. So they have a process of their own. So just, just kind of work with them.

Avery Carl [00:10:24]:
All right, so let’s move on to. Well, actually before that. So typically, at least I know we keep at least three sets of sheets. So one on the beds, one is being washed with the cleaner, wherever they’re washing things. And then the third or more, this is where you potentially have more, are in the linen closet or in the owner’s closet. So if something happens during their stay, they tear up some sheets. There’s some in the unit that you can tell them how to get to if needed. So.

Avery Carl [00:10:53]:
But you want at least three and. All right, let’s. Three sets of everything. So let’s talk about the bathrooms now. So this is a topic of conversation. So how many towels and washcloths and hand towels do you have per bathroom?

Tim Grillot [00:11:10]:
You’re talking to a bunch of dudes. I have no idea. My wife takes care of all that. I really don’t know, but I know it’s a lot. I know that there’s, you know, always stuff hanging up and then more underneath. So.

Avery Carl [00:11:22]:
All right, so between you, depending on how many people are the house sleeps, either you want to have four towels per bathroom, two hand towels and two to four washcloths, depending on. And then again, three sets of those. But also your cleaner will. Will be able to give you some guidance there on how many you need, how many standard. And you’ll. If you have too few, like, if you start with two per bathroom and you realize you’re going to start getting feedback from your guests that they don’t have enough, so maybe you just bump it up to four. I would prefer personally four towels per bathroom because even though we’re only four people, my kids just go through towels like so crazy. And then there’s like, you know, they spill stuff and, you know, just.

Avery Carl [00:12:05]:
I prefer more than less. So that can be a little subjective. But you want to also have three sets. Again, ask your. Your cleaner what color towels. This is not a decor question, guys. It is a functionality question. What color towels do you typically like to use?

Speaker D [00:12:21]:
I know, I know our housekeeping team provides white, and they work perfectly so that. That’s what we use. I think that’s why we use it. I. I would be open to gray, maybe show a little less, but we, we use white. You can see if they’re clean. They know if they’re clean. If not, you find out about it.

Avery Carl [00:12:35]:
Yeah, I would say why? Typically, cleaners are going to want either white or, like a light color. So some of them will want white so they can bleach them. Some of them will say even bleach won’t fix some dinginess. So maybe do like a khaki or a light gray so you hide any potential dinginess. So ask your cleaner before you buy towels what they prefer and go from there. What else can we expect to have to add to any property that we’re buying in this market in terms of outfitting it set up? I mean, it can be as far as beach chairs. So what else are we adding?

Tim Grillot [00:13:06]:
I’m gonna jump back to the smart stuff real quick. I mean, kind of your general package be something block is your thermostat and a camera. You know, so those two. Two items, those may or may not have got left behind if they do generally some steps through to switch them over. But I like, you know, smart devices as far as those two things go. So that’s pretty simple.

Avery Carl [00:13:30]:
Yeah. So thermostats. Smart thermostats and cameras.

Tim Grillot [00:13:34]:
Yeah. Camera on the front and again, you gotta look at actually in beach marks. It can be a little different in buildings and stuff. You know, knowing what your HOA allows and then also understand what Airbnb and allow, those three, you know, you got to understand what’s all. Generally it’s going to be like towards a driveway or front door. Absolutely no cameras inside, you know, ever being here. Can’t have that. But, you know, understand what’s.

Tim Grillot [00:13:58]:
And yeah, I personally use floodlight cameras. And then as far as I’m a. I’m a honey T9 thermostat. They’re super simple and easy to use. So.

Avery Carl [00:14:08]:
Yeah, all right, you’re breaking up just a little bit. But a Honeywell T9, that’s what we use also for the thermostat. And then ring cameras. If you’ve got a condo, you’re probably only going to be able to use the doorbell camera. Right. Not any floodlight stuff.

Tim Grillot [00:14:22]:
Correct.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:14:22]:
If that. You do want to check with HOA before you buy anything, including the lock. You want to check and make sure.

Avery Carl [00:14:29]:
Yeah. Because you don’t want to have it set up and then you’re back home, 200, 2,000 miles away, and the HOA says, hey, you got to change this. Can’t have that. So definitely ask when it’s anything on the outside. Even if you’re buying a single family in an hoa, you might still want to ask about the floodlight cams because sometimes they. They don’t want anything hanging off the sides of units, so. But that’s typically what we do too. Is the Honeywell T9 a few Ring cameras? Do we want to touch on why we should not be watching cameras.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:14:59]:
Where’s Luke?

Speaker D [00:15:00]:
Yeah, just go to Facebook and search Luke.

Tim Grillot [00:15:02]:
And seriously, don’t, don’t, don’t. Don’t waste your time watching cameras. It will drive you crazy. It will. You’re going to see things you don’t want to see. And I can tell you from personal experience, because we’ve all done it. We’ve all been new. You don’t know what’s going on inside your unit.

Tim Grillot [00:15:16]:
And the, the craziness outside your door does not equal a destroyed unit and vice versa. Complete calmness outside does not guarantee a not destroyed unit either. So just don’t spend your time watching your cameras. They’re there for, you know, emergencies or if you have some kind of issue that does happen, you can go back and review them. But you don’t, don’t waste all your time doing that.

Avery Carl [00:15:36]:
Yeah, you will just waste your time obsessing. That one extra person is probably not going to single handedly burn down the house.

Speaker D [00:15:43]:
So.

Avery Carl [00:15:44]:
All right, what did you have?

Speaker D [00:15:46]:
Well, I just can say staying on the theme of smart stuff, smart TVs, if there’s not smart TVs, we just go ahead and replace all the TVs with Roku TVs. We used to just buy the little Roku adapter and plug it in. Just buy the TV and then you don’t have to worry about it missing or walking away or losing the power cord. You know, TVs are at Walmart. You can get them really reasonable. So if they’re, if that’s not there, go, go buy a new Roku tv.

Tim Grillot [00:16:13]:
Totally with you there. We do the same thing and we’ve actually keep upping our game there. People, when they go on vacation, they want something, you know, they want TVs everywhere. And if every t. If every bedroom doesn’t have a tv, it needs one and as big as you can fit again, they’re cheap now 50 inch TVs like I don’t know, 250, 300 bucks.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:16:32]:
So on that note too, I, I personally learned to like the Roku a lot better than the fire and stuff because they had the guest mode which is really helpful unless I’m missing something on the fires. Roku is really user friendly with that.

Tim Grillot [00:16:45]:
No, we’re, we’re Roku all the way. And the remotes are super simple. There’s like eight buttons on a Roku remote so it’s like the most guest friendly thing ever. And the remotes are super simple to well one, replace and two, if you get in A pinch where somebody like, oh, there’s no remote, or remote’s dead, or whatever you can download. Anybody can download the Roku app on their phone, and your phone turns in the remote and it’s like super simple to do. So it’s like just redundancy after redundancy on those things. So they’re great.

Avery Carl [00:17:11]:
Yeah. And buy all the same kinds of TVs so people aren’t having to learn to use multiple kinds. That. That’s just a. Not a huge deal. But I think it definitely gets upstream of, of guests being irritated and annoyed and want to make it easy for them. So just get all new Roku TVs. I don’t care if you’re against TVs in the bedroom.

Avery Carl [00:17:31]:
This is not a moral conversation. It is a question of, you know, guests being comfortable on vacation. So who cares? They’re watching TV while they go to sleep in blue light and what, what have you let them do it.

Tim Grillot [00:17:42]:
Another note on the, on the them all being the same. That’s a great move. As you scale as a, as an owner, when you have 10 of these things and you got bedrooms, you know, if you own 40 TVs and they’re all the exact same thing, it makes your guest services end of things way easier. You’re not trying to go, oh, what, what room are you in and what house so I can tell you how to work the tv. You know, if you get a question about tv, it’s the same answer for all of them.

Avery Carl [00:18:04]:
Makes it easier. Make your life easier, make the guest life easier. Everybody’s reviews will be better if the guest life is easy. Anything else electronic wise, that we want to make sure we have? TVs are a huge one. We’ve gone over all the smart technology that we probably need. Anything else on that smart front?

Speaker D [00:18:23]:
I don’t know that it’s necessarily smart, but it is electronic. The nightstand needs to have some sort of light fixture. You know, something where you can plug your USB in and charge it. Amazon sells those really cheap. Another. I mean, when you go to a hotel, that’s the first thing I look for is where’s the USB charger. So I could charge my, my devices. So on the nightstand have something like that.

Avery Carl [00:18:45]:
Totally agree. Anybody else on. On electronic stuff? We can always come back to it. All right, let’s move into the kitchen. What do we stock in the kitchen? Let’s start with the most important thing in the kitchen, the coffee setup. What are we doing there?

Tim Grillot [00:18:59]:
I. I’m a big fan of, of both you know, you want a drip and a Keurig. We do use the combo. Un. I like having, even if you have the big fancy combo unit and everything, I still love, even if it’s in a cabinet, having an old fashioned Mr. Coffee drip machine. Just because they’re super simple and everybody knows how to use them. And at the end of the day, I mean, I know the keurigs can get a little expensive, but coffee makers are cheap and people love their coffee.

Tim Grillot [00:19:22]:
It’s an important, you know, for them. I’ve had people before we did that. We people like, well, fine, we’ll just bring our own. It’s like, no, you don’t want your guests having to bring their own coffee maker. You know, give them all kinds of stuff for that.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:19:31]:
Yeah.

Tim Grillot [00:19:31]:
And.

Speaker D [00:19:32]:
And on that, the. The original coffee maker is a great idea. At least have a backup of some sort if you have the Keurig, because they’re easy to break. You know, you drop a pot or something, have one in your closet ready to go for when that happens.

Avery Carl [00:19:45]:
Yeah. And I like to have both, like the dual unit. Because that way no matter what kind of coffee they bought on their way in, they’re covered. I’ve had. I’ve done that to myself before where I’ve thought, oh, of course there’s a Keurig. Why is there not? It’s nine o’clock at night. I’ve got kids in the car. Luke’s cranky.

Avery Carl [00:20:01]:
Everybody’s cranky. I’m just trying to stuff so we can go home and go to bed and wake up in the morning and be able to feed everybody. And got there, no Keurig. And I’m like, well, crap, now I’m going to be the cranky one because I’m the coffee drinker in the house. Luke doesn’t drink caffeine because he’s too hyper already. So that’s. I just like to have both. So no matter what they buy, when they’re coming in and they’re tired and they’ve been traveling all day, you have something to accommodate that?

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:20:25]:
I got a question on that. Just out of curiosity. Do y’ all provide any K cups or any kind of coffee? Like a. For one cup? I was talking to a client about.

Tim Grillot [00:20:35]:
That the other day. We. We do, but we say we don’t. We basically it’s kind of. We try. We try and have stuff there, but in the event that we’re out or something, we tell them that they need to bring it. So we kind of like do the whole, let Them be pleasantly surprised when they show up when there’s a little extra stuff that’s there. So same thing with spices.

Tim Grillot [00:20:52]:
We really try and keep, you know, good spices, but we say they need to bring their own usually, so we don’t.

Avery Carl [00:20:57]:
Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Ethan.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:20:58]:
That’s all right.

Speaker D [00:20:59]:
I was just saying we don’t provide coffee.

Tim Grillot [00:21:00]:
We.

Speaker D [00:21:00]:
We do try to have filters for the regular coffee, but we don’t have coffee. But it’s kind of the same thing. We don’t tell them we have filters. We just try to have them.

Avery Carl [00:21:08]:
And let’s move on to spices then and condiments. And this is like a point of contingency. I posted something on our public Facebook group on the short term rental, long term wealth group where there was a bunch of ketchup and ranch. The ranch was like people were arguing over the ranch. That was. I’m not a ranch person, so I don’t know what, you know, what the appropriate ranch is, but I’m a mustard person. We have a thousand kinds of mustard and a thousand kinds of hot sauce in our personal house. What are we doing for condiments? I say it’s gross.

Avery Carl [00:21:39]:
We don’t leave condiments. Only dry spices. What do you guys think?

Tim Grillot [00:21:43]:
Same when I said condom. Yeah, dry. Dry spices is all. We don’t. Anything in the fridge we have our cleaners throw away because I, I don’t know. It creeps me out.

Avery Carl [00:21:51]:
It does. You don’t know if that last person was like sucking on the ketchup bottle or something. Weir just don’t. You don’t know if somebody’s put something in there. You don’t know if the person before you was a serial killer. I just don’t want anything. I don’t, I don’t. I’m not into that.

Tim Grillot [00:22:07]:
Avery’s going deep on this one. For the, the dry spices we buy. Amazon’s got some pretty cool looking like, like rack that you can buy that’s already got a bunch of stuff in it. And we just buy those and, and ship them there. So. And we let her clean. If our cleaners say a bunch of stuff aimty, we get a new one. So how about.

Tim Grillot [00:22:25]:
Oh yeah, cooking spray. And then on the, on the, on the, on the dry spices. We do, you know, in addition to the rack, more salt and pepper than. Than what is. Would come in that, you know, we usually just get the, I’ll say the cheap grinder things, you know, or not. Whatever. It’s like the grinder built in. Whatever.

Speaker D [00:22:41]:
So yeah, I Don’t provide any spices or anything. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, but we don’t have any in there.

Avery Carl [00:22:49]:
It’s something else to keep up with. But yeah, I am a fan of just those pre put together spinny spice racks that already have anything, everything in there. You’re. I think it just looks nice and you can buy them pre done and it’s, it looks nicer than a bunch of like the Kroger Publix brand everywhere. I like those. I think those are cool.

Tim Grillot [00:23:10]:
We actually get a lot of compliments on our kitchen, on all, on all of our places. We get it in reviews all the time. Like this was the best stock kitchen I’ve ever been to, you know, in an area. And it. And we don’t. It’s nothing. I mean, it’s exactly what we’re talking about. I mean, good silver, good cups, you know, you want every kind of glass.

Tim Grillot [00:23:23]:
You know, I say every kind you want, you know, regular. Again, I’m a dude. So tall glasses, short glasses, wine glasses. And then like sometimes we don’t always have like champagne glasses, but we definitely. The stemless wine glasses for sure.

Avery Carl [00:23:38]:
Yeah. Those plastic stemless wine glasses are like so great because you don’t have to worry about them breaking. Those are, those are really cool. So.

Tim Grillot [00:23:46]:
And then all your, you know, you want some, you definitely, you definitely want a crock pot. People love a crock pot. And you definitely. That’s like a must have for me. A crock pot and a blender and. And then, you know, in addition to your other basic appliances, I’m trying to think what else are the must haves.

Speaker D [00:24:02]:
But I know in Gulf Shores something we get asked constantly is for like a shrimp boil. So whatever kind of pot you got to have for a shrimp boil.

Avery Carl [00:24:09]:
Right.

Speaker D [00:24:09]:
You get asked that all the time in Gulf Shores. Never, never in the Smokies. But we get asked frequently in Gulf Shores.

Tim Grillot [00:24:15]:
And then pots and pans, that’s another consumable. I mean you’re buying new pots and pans at least once a year and don’t get super high end ones because they’re going to get destroyed. But you want, you don’t want junk looking ones. You want to look fresh. So it’s. I, I prefer just to buy new cheaper ones more often than having like trying to have really nice ones and keep them nice because they get tore.

Speaker D [00:24:33]:
Up and something that. Once again, I’m comparing markets to just the Smokies market versus the Gulf Shores. But in Gulf Shores we have A lot of people who cook at the place and they need a place to store leftovers. So have some Tupperware or, or pots that you can put lids on that you can stick in the fridge and that you can use. We get that request a lot more down there than we do in the Smokies.

Tim Grillot [00:24:52]:
That’s a great idea. I’m not sure if we do that, but we pro do.

Avery Carl [00:24:55]:
I know.

Tim Grillot [00:24:55]:
My wife does everything.

Avery Carl [00:24:59]:
Yeah, so do you. Does your crock pot get as much action in Gulf Shores as it does in a mountain market? Because I feel like crock pots are like, oh, let me put some chili or a roast in like a cold weather situation, more so than at a. In the. At the beach. But I could be wrong about that.

Tim Grillot [00:25:12]:
We’ve had people ask for them. I really don’t know. I mean, I. I don’t know how much they’re using it, but we’ve definitely had people ask and it just blows me away. That’s like the number one thing that gets asked for. And all over the place. It’s like, I don’t use a crock pot that much.

Avery Carl [00:25:25]:
So, yeah, it may. It’s ease of. Of feeding people for the parent, whoever is the primary cooker, like dump it all in a crock pot before you leave for the beach that day. You don’t have to worry about when you get home and you’re tired and the kids are screaming and you’re. Everybody’s wet. Try to get. Trying to get showered. It’s just done for you.

Avery Carl [00:25:44]:
I totally get that. I just can’t really think of anything that I would want from the crock pot at the beach. But that’s me. I’m weird. I’m going and buying the pre. Pre steamed shrimp from the fish market because I don’t want the whole house to smell like shrimp after trying to boil it. But anyway, do you guys provide any type of extra throw blankets and if so, how many?

Tim Grillot [00:26:06]:
Absolutely, and I’m gonna say lots. That’s just something. There’s little baskets and stuff all over our places with throw blankets in them. I don’t know the exact number, but quite a few. Probably two or three for every couch.

Avery Carl [00:26:18]:
So perfect. I totally agree with that. As many as possible is always best.

Tim Grillot [00:26:23]:
Back to the kitchen. Wine opener. You got to have a wine opener, beer opener, and have probably four of them. And got to have those.

Avery Carl [00:26:31]:
Yeah, you need to have like 10 of those because they’re going to walk away. And there is nothing more annoying than getting ready to open a bottle. Of wine and you don’t have anything to open with. Open it with.

Tim Grillot [00:26:40]:
So just, I mean, little tidbit on the kitchen. Really make it like you would want to live there. I mean, because people want every little, you know, as many more gadgets and stuff. You can give them the better meas cups, all the normal stuff that you’d have living there.

Avery Carl [00:26:51]:
Yeah, that really good call out. And the last thing you want to do if you don’t have a beer, like a bottle opener is them doing it on your counter, scratching it up. So. All right, so we got throw blankets. So let’s talk about beach stuff. Do you guys provide any beach stuff? Wagons, chairs, umbrellas, things like that?

Tim Grillot [00:27:11]:
Yep, we subscribe to the same as our coffee, kind of where we don’t necessarily, or we say we don’t, but there’s always stuff in the closet. The beach stuff kind of comes and goes. Now ours is right on the beach and it’s a condo, so it’s not. It’s small. So we don’t have a huge number of people in ours. It sleeps six. I think if. If I was in a little different situation, I’d definitely have a wagon and stuff.

Tim Grillot [00:27:34]:
But we don’t.

Avery Carl [00:27:35]:
Yeah, you don’t need it right there.

Speaker D [00:27:36]:
So we have a duplex. We do provide chairs. We let them know we provide chairs. We provide a wagon for each side. We. We have. We don’t say that we have beach toys, but I do know there are some there. Just more people have left them and where we went and left them, but that they’re able to use those.

Speaker D [00:27:52]:
And you’re. Those the chairs for sure. At least the ones we’ve purchased, they rust out fairly quickly. So you need to keep an eye on that. They’ll let you know that the chairs are rusty. And the good thing about Instacart is you can just instacart new chairs over same day.

Avery Carl [00:28:05]:
Yeah, totally agree with that. I think you really do. Even if you don’t advertise it, you probably do need to provide that stuff. And I mean, maybe I probably would advertise it just to, you know, make sure you’re getting those bookings and people see that you’re providing, that just makes your listing more attractive. So I totally think you need, if. If you are in at a walking distance that requires it, a wagon, some chairs, maybe an umbrella, maybe not an umbrella. Those break really easy. But you definitely need chairs.

Avery Carl [00:28:33]:
We actually provide an ice chest and you know, you can get pretty affordable ice chest nowadays. So anyway, that’s What? I think you got to do that in this market.

Tim Grillot [00:28:43]:
Another thing you can do as well is again, condo world. But a lot of times you can get like a yearly rental of some chairs on the beach that will be like the. The more not permanent, but the chairs that the people go out and set up. There’s chair services out on the beach. And if you own a condo, you find out what the chair service is in front of your building and you can contact them a lot of times and have just like, you know, unit 200, you know, these are their chairs for that. And that way when guests show up, they’re already there and they love that.

Avery Carl [00:29:13]:
So, yeah, totally agree with that. And let’s talk. Oh, man, the thought in my brain has just floated away. So we talked about adding beach chairs, all that stuff. What other amenity type things are we providing in this market for guests and advertise? Oh, my thought came back. Baby stuff are we doing? My mom calls them port a cribs. That’s not what they’re called. They’re packing plays.

Avery Carl [00:29:39]:
But I’ve been with my mom for like past week. Pack and plays, high chairs, things like that. We providing those. Are we not doing anything? Are we providing the rental contact information to rent those? What. What’s standard here?

Tim Grillot [00:29:51]:
Again, our unit’s really small, so we do the rental contact thing is what we do. We don’t have room to store all that stuff, and not all our guests are, you know, do that. So we just provide the contact for where they can. Where they can have that stuff rented and it’ll be there when they show up.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:30:04]:
So we just bought a bunch of pack and plays for ours because we. We did get a lot of requests for that.

Tim Grillot [00:30:09]:
If we had a bigger place, we would absolutely have one. So I guess maybe that’s the answer.

Avery Carl [00:30:14]:
Yeah, I go back and forth. I want to provide them because I know how nice it is to not have to drag them with me. But I also don’t want the liability of if it happens to malfunction or something and were to, you know, God forbid, hurt a child. So I kind of like the, here’s the rental place for this. And, you know, shift that, that liability and that worry elsewhere. But we do have high chairs at some of ours.

Tim Grillot [00:30:40]:
Even aside a liability, it is in our small system, you know, gotta make sure they’re clean. That’s. That’s another thing is that stuff gets sticky and, you know, kids chew on stuff. Or at least my kids did.

Avery Carl [00:30:51]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s. I mean, oh, my Son, he was eating peaches. Like a. We get those peach truck deliveries, so he loves them. The like peach juice everywhere in his hair, all over everything. There’s like a trail. I’m trying to say, you know, you gotta sit right here. But it’s like a puddle of peach juice underneath his chair.

Avery Carl [00:31:10]:
It’s just, it’s a mess. So kids are messy and you do have to make sure because I would be so offended if someone else’s kids. Peach juice was sticky in the chair when we got there. So it. That’s definitely. You got to make sure it’s super clean.

Tim Grillot [00:31:26]:
Right next to the used ketchup. That’s been sucked on.

Avery Carl [00:31:28]:
Yes, that’s been sucked on. You know, maybe it has like anthrax or something in it too. You never know.

Tim Grillot [00:31:34]:
Right? Right.

Avery Carl [00:31:36]:
So, yeah, the. The weird. I have a lot of irrational worries, as do most moms, I think.

Tim Grillot [00:31:46]:
Stuff towels are another thing. You know, beach towels should be separate, in my opinion, from your normal towels. You know, we actually have beach towels that we ask people to leave our white towels in the, in the unit and not take our white towels to the pool and. Or beach.

Avery Carl [00:32:00]:
So yeah, super wise, our towels that we have for that stuff are brightly colored and striped, like actual beach towels. So there’s no confusion as to which is which. And those are just right on Amazon. Pretty easy to find. Anything else? What else have we missed? We’re right at the 30 minute mark. I don’t want to though. I’ve gotten feedback from a lot of y’ all that y’ all prefer the 30 minute format. So we’re trying to stick to that.

Tim Grillot [00:32:23]:
But anything, just real quick, just, you know, when you’re a new buyer, just have a look over on your artwork and your furniture and all that kind of stuff. You know, go in prepared to like maybe do some redecorating or if you need it, may not need it, it may be all redone. But just that’s just another thing when you’re in the buying process that you should plan for, I think is. Is what are you going to do to make, you know, anything stand out for photography and all that kind of stuff.

Avery Carl [00:32:47]:
So. Yeah, totally agree. Your decor is part of what will make your picture stand out, which as guests are scrolling, they’re not going to click on your property if the pictures aren’t good, if that first picture doesn’t grab them. I would say if get rid of anything tan or khaki colored. A lot of these things, the last time they were updated was in the mid 2000s when that was in. It looks super dated now. Everything’s white or light gray really, just like white. Now there’s a really good website called Society 6 that has really affordable cute art and like more than you could ever be able to possibly choose from.

Avery Carl [00:33:23]:
So decor is super important. If you want to add some extra amenities, like, I don’t know, like a waffle bar or something totally cool. It’s just, you know, something that you have to build a system for to make sure that it’s stocked and has what it needs. And there’s no way that guests can not be able to figure out how to use it. But decor is very, very important, especially when it comes to condos. Maybe like a mural wall or there’s some cool wallpaper that can look like a mural wall. Nowadays it’s not terribly expensive, but definitely decor is very, very important. Lots, there’s lots of great remote short term rental decorators out there now.

Avery Carl [00:33:58]:
Paige Hayes, Jenny Yee, there’s quite a few of them if you feel like you need help with that. And a lot of them can work with, with any budget. So I really recommend doing that on the condos too.

Tim Grillot [00:34:08]:
The, the balcony is a huge selling feature and that’s another area I love putting like bright blue, like a nice polywood style furniture out there. Get rid of, you know, if there’s, if there’s like old janky looking patio furniture out there, get rid of it because your pictures of your balcony are going to be a huge selling factor. So you want like just something that pops on your balcony and make it look real nice, super easy. I mean changing that stuff out is, it’s not super cheap, but it’s, it’s worth it.

Avery Carl [00:34:34]:
So, and speaking of not super cheap, but worth it. We haven’t said it. I feel like we say it too much. Get professional photos. Don’t rely on your iPhone. Yes, you might be able to take a few good ones, but more often than not, when somebody says, hey, my listing isn’t doing that great, can you take a look at it? And I look at it almost always. They don’t have pro photos, they’re dark. So make sure it is 1000% worth it.

Avery Carl [00:34:59]:
It will pay for itself to pay a professional photographer. It may be expensive, but it’s, you have to have it. You really, really do.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:35:07]:
I got a couple quick things. The. So one thing that I have noticed is with condos especially a lot of times you’ll, you’ll want to put a dehumidifier in the unit somewhere and then you can run it out to where it filters out to where it’s pretty low maintenance. It does help because a lot of people leave the, the doors open and it gets pretty, you know, it can get a lot of moisture in there. So that’s just one quick side note that can help. Another thing I did want to ask y’ all what your thoughts are on grills, because that’s one of the main things people ask about with the houses at least. And I’ve gone back and forth and now we’re providing some. But what are your thoughts on grills for houses?

Tim Grillot [00:35:44]:
I’m a fan of the park style charcoal grill that they can’t move. You know, put a post in the ground and they can’t drag it up on the porch or whatever. I like cooking on propane, but again, it’s just another system, you know, that you have to manage as far as getting tanks there and all that sort of stuff. And I don’t know, I’m just not a fan of any kind of thing of fire that people can move around.

Jonathan Lazzarino [00:36:03]:
So that’s what I like too is the ones that are, you know, in place and you can’t move them. Just want your thoughts on that too.

Avery Carl [00:36:10]:
Well, I don’t know if we’ve all heard the story about our grill burning down part of our fence. So yeah, the charcoal not movable is the park style is the way to go. Because what happened was they moved the grill out to a different part of the yard and there was some pine straw and some of the landscaping. They caught that on fire. So I like the non movable way to go.

Tim Grillot [00:36:32]:
Yeah, people will. If it’s raining and they can move a grill, they’ll drag it right up on the porch and melt your siding or whatever. So I don’t know, I just put it in concrete on the driveway, so.

Avery Carl [00:36:41]:
Totally agree. Good. Call out. Anything else before we take off? No. All right then. Yeah. So guys, if you want to learn more about investing in short term rentals, there’s a few ways you can do that. You can join us every Thursday for a Q A.

Avery Carl [00:36:55]:
You can sign up for that@strquestions.com you can also join our public Facebook group. It’s the same title as my book, Short term rental, Long term wealth. Or if you’re ready to skip all that and jump straight into buying with Jonathan, you can email us at agents the ShortTermshop.com. or you can get him directly at Jonathan at the short term shop dot com. Thanks, y’ all. Sam.