How to Set Up a Short Term Rental in Blue Ridge That Guests Will Love

Luke Carl [00:00:03]:
Welcome to the short term show from Blue Ridge, Georgia. We will cover everything you need to know, including buying, holding, managing from a distance, raising rents, renovating and how to rent it when you are not using your very own vacation home in the North Georgia mountains. For more information on current purchase prices and income data, please visit theshortermshop.com welcome to the Short Term show special episodes from Blue Ridge. And we’re back from Blue Ridge North Georgia mountains and we have an episode on setting up your property. What’s it take to get a vacation home up and running in the Blue Ridge area? And we have a special guest today, Lacy, who is a short term shopper, purchased at least one home with us and happy to have her on to share her experience with all of this as well. Lacey, I’m just going to have you say hello. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where do you live, if you live anywhere, and a little bit about your property.

Lacey Hansen [00:01:21]:
Hi, my name is Lacey Hansen. I currently reside in Phoenix, Arizona. I manage remotely the property I own in Blue Ridge, Georgia and it is a three bedroom, three and a half bath. That is my first short term rental.

Luke Carl [00:01:37]:
Wonderful. Okay. Three, three and a half. How many square feet?

Lacey Hansen [00:01:41]:
It’s about 2,100.

Luke Carl [00:01:42]:
Yeah, when you said three and a half, I was like that’s going to be a big three bedroom. So 2,100 square feet. All right, cool. Let’s go with the, the first thing first when you look at your house. And of course the thing that’s the most popular is the deadbolts, the cameras, the thermostats. What. Well, what, what, what deadbolt are you using, Lacy?

Lacey Hansen [00:02:04]:
So I use this, the schlage and code, which I think is the popular choice among this group. For camera, I use ring camera. I also use it for my personal house. I love the ring cameras. And then for locks, I also have a, an extra lock box on the side of the house just in case anything goes awry.

Luke Carl [00:02:24]:
Yes. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. So the industry standard is kind of the end code. I got no problem with it. I like it. I recommend it.

Luke Carl [00:02:32]:
Keep in mind that you can run your property and your business with any kind of, quite frankly any kind of digital deadbolt, Jaquer, these, most of these properties are you going to have when, when you purchase the house, some sort of push button deadbolt?

Yak [00:02:47]:
Not really. You know, a lot of times, you know, especially if it happens to be run by a management company, nine times out of ten, the management company owns that, that hardware and that’ll go with them. So I tell everybody, assume you’re going to buy, you know, a couple schlage encodes. I like the idea of having the extra little lockbox, you know, where you can put a physical key on the side of the house. I just had ran into an issue yesterday where I needed to get into a property. I go to hit the code, it’s not working. I call the sellers. I was like, hey, what’s going on? Turns out the sellers didn’t pay their WI fi bill.

Yak [00:03:24]:
They didn’t have WI fi. So now I had to get into the made lockbox that, you know, had the physical key and get in there and use it so that that extra lockbox. Smart, smart move.

Luke Carl [00:03:35]:
Yeah, yeah. Just to clarify that there, if they had a, you know, a dummy code of sorts in that lock, then it would have worked even without WI fi. But it sounds to me like they probably just screwed everything up on the, in that process.

Yak [00:03:47]:
And I’m, I’m a little tech ignorant, but I know that physical key worked really well.

Luke Carl [00:03:52]:
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, totally, totally. I had the same thing happen two days ago where I had a deadbolt just die out of the Blue. Went from 61%. We check our battery power about once a week on our deadbolts here in the office. And you can do all that on an app, of course. And I was at 61%.

Luke Carl [00:04:09]:
And then the next day it was just gone. So who knows what happened? It was probably just. It’s time. You know, here’s another thing. I’m getting in the weeds now with these damn deadbolts. Everybody’s, you know, every now and then you’ll hear somebody complain that their schlage encode died after a year or two, two years. That, that that person has not tried other brands because every brand is going to die at some point. I’ve had quick sets die in two years.

Luke Carl [00:04:34]:
I’ve had Nest Yales, Yales Nest, whatever it may be. They all can, can have a lifespan of sorts if it gets moisture, that kind of thing. So I always have extras hanging around and, and try to have one. You know, I maybe even have my cleaner have an extra one. Not that she would know how to do that or I wouldn’t even want, you know, ask her to do that. But at least it would be in the vicinity of one of my homes if I happen to not be. But yeah, no, no, wrong answer there. It’s interesting though that they don’t all, all the time have one on the house because, because the, that’s I think the main thing to keep in mind here is your.

Luke Carl [00:05:13]:
The, the seller’s property manager might be taking that, that old deadbolt. So are you saying, yak that when, when I come to check out my house for the first time, I just bought it, I’m going to sleep there tonight. It’s going to have just a conventional deadbolt with a key, no push button. Is that pretty common?

Yak [00:05:28]:
It might have some sort of old school push button. I tell everybody, go ahead, assume to replace it. That way at least you get, you get a deadbolt with documentation because it may have some sort of older thing and the sellers don’t have the old documentation on how to reset the locks. And you know, who wouldn’t? I mean, to me it just makes sense. I know it’s invest. I know these things aren’t cheap. They’re what These encodes are. 400 bucks now.

Luke Carl [00:05:51]:
Yeah, about three.

Yak [00:05:52]:
300 bucks. Okay. But man, you know, Luke, on your long terms, you swap out the locks.

Luke Carl [00:05:59]:
Every time you buy one, every time somebody moves out, every time you lose a key, you’re always.

Yak [00:06:04]:
There you go, there you go. It’s the price of doing business, man. I think it’s smart to have a new one in there. You never know. Somebody may know how to, how to jimmy it open or something like that, you know, the previous homeowner. You just never know. Just, you know, start from ground zero, start from scratch. Have your own locks.

Yak [00:06:20]:
If nothing else, Luke, peace of mind, brother. I mean, that goes a long way.

Luke Carl [00:06:23]:
Absolutely. It’s no different than moving into a house you just bought a house to move into. Are you going to sleep in there knowing that somebody else might have a key to that house? I don’t think so. You know, so. Okay, cool. Yeah. There’s several options out there as far as brands are concerned. Schlage, schlage, however you want to pronounce it.

Luke Carl [00:06:39]:
Quick, set, net, nest, Yale. I think Amazon’s even coming out with a deadbolt. So there are plenty of people in that space. And she, she mentioned cameras, so we’ll slide into that. I agree with her. I’m a ring guy. But again, there’s a hundred brands. No wrong answer there.

Luke Carl [00:06:54]:
The thing about the cameras is that you gotta have power. Don’t, don’t get a camera with a battery pack. Those things are not. The batteries die. Batteries die. That’s what they do. So you’re probably gonna be kicking yourself after, I don’t know, four to six weeks of having it on there, and then all of a sudden you can’t see anything. So you can replace any light on the exterior of the home with, with a digital, you know, a wi fi cam camera of whatever brand you like best.

Luke Carl [00:07:23]:
You could do the doorbell, if your house has a doorbell. Very slim chance. At least in my. What I from my familiarity is vacation homes don’t usually have doorbells. Are you seeing a lot of doorbells in Blue Ridge?

Yak [00:07:35]:
I do.

Luke Carl [00:07:36]:
Oh you do.

Yak [00:07:37]:
You know, but, but to your point, a lot of people put in the, you know, the ring. What is it? The floodlight camera, you know, right there at the front corner of the house facing down the driveway. That way you have a great idea of what’s coming in and out.

Luke Carl [00:07:49]:
Absolutely. Cool. Cool. And try not to stare at those cameras. It’ll make you nuts. And then linens. Linens, yak. Is the property going to come with linens? You know, like obviously it was usually going to be already a functioning vacation home rental.

Luke Carl [00:08:08]:
Are the towels and sheets coming with it or are they not?

Yak [00:08:10]:
Usually, you know, that, that usually is part of the gig when people are selling it lock, stock and barrel. They mean lock, stock and barrel. You’ll get the toilet paper and everything that goes with it. You know, a few odds and ends items. But for the most part, yeah, you’re, you’re, you know, you may not get whatever’s in the owner’s closet. You don’t even know what’s in there to begin with. Chances are. So, yeah, a lot of times you’re going to get the linens.

Yak [00:08:32]:
Unless know there’s some sort of quilt that was a, a family heirloom, you know, other than that, you’re, you’re going to get them. Yeah, but if, hey, fresh linens go a long way too now. You know what I mean? I, I would want my guests, you know, I would want them to enjoy new linens. Not something that’s been kicked around for 16 years.

Luke Carl [00:08:52]:
Couple things there. If the property manager, if it was a third party property manager, they’re probably going to come take their sheets and towels. Maybe, probably. If it was self managed, they probably don’t care. But also you’re, you’re, you’re talking use sheets, you know, so I would personally, I would definitely recommend you get ready to buy all new sheets and towels. Lacy, what did you do there? And then I have to ask, did you go white or did you go not white?

Lacey Hansen [00:09:16]:
So we bought a new construction house. So the house actually didn’t come with linens other than the bare bones, the comforters, essentially. And it might have come with A set of linens on each bed just as a starter pack. Um, so we did have to get linens. We did go with white. Um, I don’t know if that’s normally the popular choice, but we went with white. Um, and it’s worked out well for us. We went with the Kirkland Costco set, which we absolutely love.

Lacey Hansen [00:09:47]:
We actually ordered initially a set from Amazon that was rated really well. We tried it ourselves and didn’t love it as much as the. The Costco one. So we ended up returning them.

Luke Carl [00:09:58]:
Okay. Yep. A lot of folks say wonderful things about the Costco sheets and towels and no issues with the white. You haven’t had any complaints about stains or anything like that?

Lacey Hansen [00:10:08]:
We haven’t. And I think it’s good because they can actually bleach the sheets if there’s any stains in them.

Luke Carl [00:10:14]:
Yes. White versus not white on the linens is a never ending battle in the world of vacation rentals. We won’t get any further into it today. Myself being a not white guy. But again, most of that’s going to depend on your cleaner anyway. Ask your cleaner what they prefer. Lacy, which thermostat did you go with?

Lacey Hansen [00:10:35]:
We went with the Honeywell T9.

Luke Carl [00:10:38]:
Oh, simple, nice and easy. Any issues with it at all?

Lacey Hansen [00:10:42]:
No, no issues. It’s actually worked very well for us. I will say for my. My thermostat at home, we have an Ecobee nest. And I could absolutely see if you put a thermostat like that into your house, it could cause some problems because it will show you the air quality on the thermostat. And sometimes when you’re cooking, it will change the air quality from good to poor. So just for those folks out there that are thinking about thermostat options, I could see that being troublesome for guests. They might see that switch to poor air quality and kind of freak out.

Lacey Hansen [00:11:22]:
So I would recommend something more basic so that it’s just giving you exactly what you need, nothing more.

Luke Carl [00:11:29]:
Yeah, I would go ahead and I.

Yak [00:11:31]:
Was going to say if you as the homeowner would get notifications on your phone when that happened, it would freak you out as a homeowner.

Lacey Hansen [00:11:37]:
Yeah, exactly. It would. Myself personally, knowing that that thing will go off for literally anything. It is not as concerning. But I could see how that would raise some eyebrows for people staying in the house, especially if you have kids with you.

Luke Carl [00:11:51]:
Yeah, I’m a T9 guy. Ecobees are really cool. No right or wrong answer there, in my opinion. Just depends on whether you want Hip or. Or simple.

Lacey Hansen [00:12:00]:
Right.

Luke Carl [00:12:02]:
Team Ease. What did you go with? Tv. Lacy, did your house have. I would assume it had new TVs in it.

Lacey Hansen [00:12:07]:
It did. It came with TVs in every bedroom and common area. We actually worked with YAWC to get those switched out to be Roku TVs, so he was very nice to work with us on that. Um, and we just went ahead with, you know, setting up all the main streaming logins for guests, and that was what we stuck with.

Luke Carl [00:12:31]:
Okay. Yeah, that’s definitely the way to go. I will say that I put Roku sticks in all my houses. Don’t do that. If at all possible, get the actual Roku tv, because the stick, they tend.

Yak [00:12:43]:
To grow legs and walk off, man.

Luke Carl [00:12:45]:
And that way. Yeah, here’s the thing. Or either they steal them, or I don’t think anybody maliciously steals them, but they just kind of get misplaced. But they unplug them to plug in their video games, and then the next thing you know, my inputs are all screwed up and then you try and plug it back in and it’s undisconnected from the system and all this. And so moving forward, I’ll just buy like the tcls, you know, the stuff, whatever’s got a Roku built into it. To me, the ca. The remote is the most important part. If I can just go to a Walmart and get five or ten Roku remotes and use them on these TVs, I’m good.

Luke Carl [00:13:20]:
Keep an extra. A few extra ones in the. In the closet. What did you put in your kitchen, Lacy? As far as plates and, and glasses, that kind of thing.

Lacey Hansen [00:13:30]:
So the kitchen came stocked with. With plates and glasses. So I think we ended up. I’ve only had to purchase additional coffee mugs because one of them broke. So we just had to get some extras just to have additional stock around. But other than that, we. We kept the main plates and whatnot around, but we did upgrade the pots and pans, cutting boards, because it came with kind of a really basic stuff that felt a little cheap in our opinion. So we wanted to upgrade it with something that felt nice and sturdy and high quality.

Luke Carl [00:14:06]:
Yeah, I agree with you. I like to have stuff that’s kind of middle, mid, mid to three quarter level in my houses. You don’t want to go super crazy because then they’re just gonna. It’s gonna break and they’re gonna steal it and. But if you. If you get the cheap stuff, it’s gonna eventually affect your reviews a little more than you want it to. And. Well, but we.

Luke Carl [00:14:26]:
We do have a. A thread, an old school thread on our big Facebook group. We have a Facebook group called Short Term Rental, Long Term wealth, which is the name of Avery’ book, of course. And on that group we have what we call the Big list. So you can go join that group and search for big list. And it’s a. It’s hundreds of items that people have recommended over the years as far as, you know, shopping items to put in your house. I go cruise that all the time and I’m like, oh, that looks really cool.

Luke Carl [00:14:52]:
I’m gonna get on Amazon and buy that. So if you’re looking for ideas on what to put in your home, that’s a pretty cool place. Pretty cool place to look. What’s your coffee system?

Lacey Hansen [00:15:03]:
So we, when we purchased the house, that came with one of those Keurigs that you can do a single pod serving or you can do the full coffee pot. So we, we have that out for guests. We set out Keurig pods and we have just tea bags and sugars and pretty much the basics. We don’t stock full coffee grounds. If guests want to bring that for themselves or go out and buy it, we leave that to them. Um, but it seems like guests are pretty happy with just putting in a Keurig pod and, you know, choosing what they want.

Luke Carl [00:15:38]:
I would be. Yeah, I definitely would be. I agree with you. I do. I do try to get a couple of fancy coffee gadgets in my houses. I have an espresso machine. Nobody ever mentions it. I don’t know if it gets used.

Luke Carl [00:15:51]:
I have no idea. But, you know, it’s like a fake. It’s a Keurig for espresso, basically. I’m not very much of a coffee guy, so I don’t really know. But it has pods. It’s not an actual espresso machine, but I’ll try to make sure I have my. My Keurigs updated about once a year, usually around January, February. We will possibly send new Keurigs out because, you know, you’re only talking about, you know, maybe 150, 200 bucks for a nice Keurig.

Luke Carl [00:16:20]:
And it’s nice to start the season with a brand new one that’s not going to have a bunch of scaling in the, you know, gray white crap in the. This. Yeah, they get.

Yak [00:16:31]:
They get mold in the tank and especially on the insides. And I’ve had people point those out. So, yeah, recycling, you know, cycling them out every year to two years. Smart move, because the last thing you want Is somebody, you know, in today’s day and age, everybody’s looking for a discount. They can spin that Keurig around and find mold in it, you know, I mean, it’s easy to do.

Luke Carl [00:16:51]:
Yeah. And let’s be real, Keurig is not going to last forever anyway. Even in your own house, where you’re using it the exact same way every single time, and it’s been taken care of in a rental, it’s going to get a little more wear and tear because you are going to get. Not on purpose. They don’t do it on purpose. Not vacation homes. But you inevitably get somebody that’s never used one before. And it’s like they’re sitting there, like on.

Luke Carl [00:17:10]:
On Space Odyssey 2001, trying to figure out the computer, and they’re pushing too many buttons, and then they break it, you know, So I like to put that on my list of things to do every. Every off season. Do you leave any kind of spices or hot sauces of any kind of.

Lacey Hansen [00:17:28]:
We do. So we leave out. We purchase one of those spice racks from Amazon that has all the basic spices you might need, and we put out, like, salt and pepper and olive oil, and that’s about all we put out.

Luke Carl [00:17:43]:
Yeah, I’m very minimal on that stuff. Anything that expires or anything that touches somebody else’s face, like ketchup. No way. I’m out. I’m out. Usually what I’ll do is I’ll purge. Right. Because people bring stuff and leave it, and sometimes it just kind of ends up in a pile in a cabinet somewhere.

Luke Carl [00:18:00]:
So I like to. That’s one of the things I’ll do when I stop by and see my houses. Okay, let me see what’s going on in this spice cabinet. And then it’s got about, you know, 500 things in there, and you just get it boiled down to 20 things, you know, salt and pepper, obviously. And the. The necessities. I just. For me, rule of thumb, if it’s gross, if it’s anybody on the, you know, like somebody with the germ germaphobe thing, which is me, would think that that is gross, it’s got to toss it with salt and pepper, you know, something that you might find on the table at a diner, then that.

Luke Carl [00:18:32]:
Without. That’s not a very good example, because they would have ketchup on the table at a diner, that kind of thing. What’s the matter, Yak? Am I putting you to sleep?

Yak [00:18:40]:
No, no.

Luke Carl [00:18:41]:
Okay.

Yak [00:18:42]:
I don’t get into the food conversation. That is something I’m not, I’m not a part of everything else. I’m in.

Luke Carl [00:18:48]:
We’re in the weeds now, but what other. Do you have anything cool in your house, Lacey, that doesn’t get talked about every day? Maybe a cornhole or something?

Lacey Hansen [00:18:56]:
Ah, let’s see. We didn’t go too crazy with the extra games. I will say Yak was very helpful with suggesting that, hey, you should put in arcade games though. That’s a very hot commodity in this market. So the house came with a Pac man machine and we, we went ahead and bought another arcade game, which was the NBA Jam. So people tend to really love that one. It gets talked about a lot. So that was a really good call.

Lacey Hansen [00:19:29]:
Yuck.

Yak [00:19:29]:
Yeah, four player, Four player games is what everybody. NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, the Simpsons, the. In the X Men game. Those, those four from Arcade1up. Matter of fact, they’re going on sale right now. You know, they’re three quarter scale machines and you can get them with a stool or two each of them for four to five hundred bucks right now. Or typically they’re about seven or eight. But yeah, those four player machines, in my opinion, you know, it’s, it’s people my age.

Yak [00:19:59]:
I grew up playing NBA Jam when I was my kid’s age. So now I go to a rental, I’m teaching my kid to play the game I played as a kid. And yeah, it’s a, it’s, it’s a big deal to people my age. I’m not going to give that number out. But yeah, you know, it does mean a lot to a lot of people, especially, you know, this age bracket. That is going to be a majority of probably, you know, your clientele.

Luke Carl [00:20:22]:
Absolutely. The more games, the better. And let’s talk photos. Profotos are always necessary. Spend as much money as you can on good photos. That’s my recommendation. Lacy, what did that process look like for you?

Lacey Hansen [00:20:36]:
Oh, yeah. So I feel like, you know, Blue Ridge is really well connected with people that are into short term real estate. So we easily got a contact for professional photos and his name’s Randy. He did an excellent job. He took all the, the outdoor photos with drones and everything and then he did the indoor photos. Everything looked just very clean and wonderful. We did that when we first got the house and since then we’ve made some updates to the, you know, just a few updates with the furniture inside and then outdoors on the patio. We have just upgraded patio furniture too, so we haven’t upgraded our photos yet, but I think it’s kind of One of those things that when guests arrive, they’re pleasantly surprised with some of the upgrades.

Luke Carl [00:21:29]:
I just got a picture just now of, I got a new pool table at one of my houses. I’m, I’m not really. Before I even get into this, I don’t think that pool tables are necessary. Okay, now these are, when I, these are. I, I think I had probably four pool tables earlier in my career and now I’m down to two. Matter of fact, I think I’m down to one. No, I’m down to two. And one of them was looking pretty beat up.

Luke Carl [00:21:56]:
So I went ahead and got a new one and my cleaner just sent me a picture. So she’s cleaning, doing a deep clean and she said, oh, new pool table looks great. And I thought to myself, well, I could pay the guy to go over there. Of course she’s going to charge me 400 bucks for three pictures or whatever on a reshoot, you know, and, and I said, you know what, I think I’m gonna go with Lacey’s way of doing it and just let them be pleasant, pleasantly surprised when they show up, show up. And it’s a beautiful, brand new pool table with, you know, new modern looking table as opposed to that old beat up one that’s been in there for 30 years. So I don’t, I don’t mind that at all. If, if your pictures are already spectacular, there’s no reason not to, you know, under promise, over deliver as new things come and go in the house. Otherwise you’re going out and getting new, new pictures every four to six months.

Luke Carl [00:22:42]:
You know, I mean, that’s a lot of work.

Yak [00:22:44]:
Can I add a little semi pro tip to this? And this is what a lot of my clients, I shouldn’t say a lot, a handful of my clients are doing and it’s very smart. They are going on Instagram and you know, with, you know, certain hashtags and finding these, you know, influencers from Atlanta. And we’re not talking about people with, you know, a million followers, but Maybe they have 10,000 followers and they like to, they like to travel to North Georgia and they love doing great photography just with their cell phone. But, you know, this very Instagrammy looking stuff and they’re contacting these people and offering them, hey, you know, we’ll give you 30% off if you shoot some pictures for me and allow me to use them within my listing and in my market. These Instagramy, you know, real tight shots of, you know, things that maybe your cabin has that, you know, other Cabins don’t. The photography goes a long, long way because I tell everybody your. Your property is no better than a set of pictures and reviews online. And if those pictures rock, man, you’ve got a big leg up on everybody else.

Luke Carl [00:23:53]:
Love it. Love it. Talk to me about the. The decor of your home. What is it set up? Does it look like a cabin? Does it look little. Both?

Lacey Hansen [00:24:01]:
Yeah, I guess a little bit of both. More so. It has that modern charm look to it. It doesn’t really look like a traditional cabin that you would walk into and see all of the. The bears. And the old style decor looks definitely very updated and modern.

Yak [00:24:19]:
Lou, I gotta cut her off. Yeah, she’s got an awesome cabin. She’s underselling it. It is modern farmhouse, Chicago. It is gorgeous. It looks like Joanna Gaines walked in and threw up everywhere. Okay. It has.

Yak [00:24:35]:
I mean, it looks like a magazine shoot. And she’s successful because of that. You know, obviously hard work as well. But you know her, you know, what she has in her cabin is in tune with what people in this market want. Okay. It is very modern. It is very chic, and it’s, you know, in this marketplace, that goes a long way.

Luke Carl [00:24:57]:
I agree.

Yak [00:24:57]:
Very long way.

Luke Carl [00:24:58]:
Grandma. Crap. Get rid of the grandma. Anything beige has to go. Anything with a bear. I’ll be honest. I’m not. I’m okay with the occasional bear, but if you’ve got bear quilts and bear shower curtains and bear shower curtain liners and bear rugs on the floor and bear salt and pepper shakers, it’s just not going to fly in 2024, you know, I mean, people are looking for cool and hip.

Luke Carl [00:25:22]:
And also, Lacy has. I just noticed a whole lot of diplomas on the wall behind her. So she’s a lot smarter than you or I, Mr. Yacht.

Yak [00:25:31]:
Absolutely.

Lacey Hansen [00:25:31]:
They’re not debate there.

Luke Carl [00:25:33]:
They’re not all yours. Somebody broke in and threw one on the wall.

Lacey Hansen [00:25:37]:
One of them is my husband, so I can’t take all the credit.

Luke Carl [00:25:40]:
Yeah. One to two. Yeah. Avery’s got about five more than I’ve got, so I know what that’s like. Okay, cool. What else? What are your countertops?

Lacey Hansen [00:25:51]:
So the countertops, they’re granite, right? Yeah. Trying to think. Yep, they’re granite. So I think they look beautiful in the house.

Luke Carl [00:26:02]:
And it came with the house?

Lacey Hansen [00:26:03]:
Yeah, they. They came with the house.

Luke Carl [00:26:05]:
Okay, cool. And what do you put on the walls? Have you. Did it come with, you know, like artwork or anything? Or did you put anything.

Lacey Hansen [00:26:14]:
Yeah, I came with just basic decor. If you go to Hobby Lobby, you’d probably actually. When we were shop for more decor, we actually ran into a lot of the decor that we saw in our house, so it’s kind of funny. So we didn’t have to do a lot of shopping for wall decor. There was maybe one or two things that we replaced that looked a little cheesy, in my opinion, but they did a really good job.

Luke Carl [00:26:36]:
I’m a big Hobby Lobby fan. I do like Hobby Lobby. I like them mostly because they change the season so early, and I like seasons. So, man, you go in there in July, and Christmas is already coming out.

Lacey Hansen [00:26:48]:
Right.

Luke Carl [00:26:49]:
I like that a lot. But you keep, you know, we. We want to hit this the. The nail of the head here on the head here. Again, this is a new construction that she’s talking about. So would you. Let me ask you this, Lacy. Would you do the new construction? Again, were there any downsides to it?

Lacey Hansen [00:27:06]:
I would absolutely do the new construction. Again, there were a couple of downsides only in the fact that you arrive to the property when you’re closing, and there’s a lot of things that still need to be. But. Which was my experience, but they were just, you know, little things. I had a punch list of maybe like 15 little things that I needed to work with the builder on to fix while we were there. Luckily, though, working between YAWC and the builder, we were able to tackle those within a week and a half, which is probably not very common.

Luke Carl [00:27:42]:
No, I don’t think so.

Lacey Hansen [00:27:43]:
Yeah, I was very anxious and nervous with everything that needed to be buttoned up when we got there, but it was ended up all coming together very nicely. There were a couple things that I remember we just let go and fixed ourselves because they were just so minor. But I think the new construction route was definitely something I would do again, because you’d walk into the place and it still smells like fresh wood and amazing. And everything just looks so new and gorgeous. So I’m a big fan.

Luke Carl [00:28:17]:
Okay, cool. Cool. I’ve done two new constructions, and it’s not my thing. I get it. One of them I moved into, as a matter of fact, and it is. It can be tough. Sounds like you had an amazing experience, which is awesome. But just be advised, you know, we’re getting in the weeds here, but new construction, you know, it has its disadvantages sometimes with, like, trying to get them back over there to fix stuff occasionally for sure.

Yak [00:28:43]:
And luckily for Lacy, I met the builder at the Oasis about 11pm on a Saturday night and put my foot on his neck and said, hey, we got a week to knock out these things here, get them done. So that. That helped. But. But no, to your point, even when you buy a new home, inevitably there’s going to be, you know, everybody’s trying to hit deadlines, and you’ve got all these dates. You’ve got to get your certificate of occupancy. You’ve got to get the appraisal in, and you’re trying to really thread this needle all the while the house is being worked on and being furnished. It’s just a lot going on in those that last 72 hours where I think, you know, everybody wants to punch each other in the face, but it’s just.

Yak [00:29:25]:
That’s just part of new construction, Luke. You know how it is.

Luke Carl [00:29:27]:
Yep, yep. And for some folks, it’s wonderful. You know, some folks, that’s all they want is brand new everything. So.

Yak [00:29:34]:
And in this market, this market, I. I do think, you know, Lacey’s properties in like that, you know, that top 5% of just the new, you know, the chalet style. To me, it looks like. It looks like a ski lodge out west, you know, something that you would see in, you know, Colorado or Wyoming or Idaho. You know, it’s not the old school cabin stuff, and it’s. It’s an absolutely beautiful house. And, you know, you had asked the question, would you do it again? I. I would say I would recommend to people, yes, do it.

Luke Carl [00:30:02]:
Okay, cool. You have any baby items in the home that you supply?

Lacey Hansen [00:30:08]:
We do. So we have a pack and play and a high chair. We also have a baby gate for stairs. I will say, if you will supply those things, do your research and make sure they’re not just these rickety things that are going to fall apart. You do not want that liability. And also, I would put in your listing, if you’re going to use these things as a guest, use at your own risk. Right. You do have coverage as a host, but still, it’s good to cover yourself in every way that you can.

Luke Carl [00:30:41]:
Yep. Not offering any legal advice there, but all good. Excellent points. And let’s talk guidebooks. I do think it’s a great idea to have a guidebook if you want to be the cream of the crop. Of course, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably looking to be, you know, pretty good at this. I think a guidebook is a great thing to have. I have them on all my properties.

Luke Carl [00:31:02]:
I use Touch Day. There’s many others out there. There’s. There’s a. There’s one called you’re welcome. There’s one called dacost. So get a guidebook and it will make your guests experience a lot more, you know, seamless and more smooth. Are you using a guidebook, Lacy?

Lacey Hansen [00:31:21]:
So we have a, a digital touchscreen when you first walk in to the property. It’s, it’s from guest view. So the guests can check in and I get a notification when they, they have checked in. They can rate their first impression of the property and then all the information that they might need as far as recomm for restaurants in the area and all of that good stuff is, is in that digital guidebook.

Luke Carl [00:31:49]:
Guest View. Guest View. That’s cool. Cool. All right. Anything we missed here on setting up the old property to get it rocking and rolling for rent in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Crickets.

Yak [00:31:59]:
Yeah, I think he hit it all, man.

Luke Carl [00:32:01]:
All right. As a man of many words, we’ve rendered him speechless. So I think that’ll do it. And we, we want to thank you for your time. Appreciate you for hanging with us here. Short term show and Lacey, thank you so much for, for coming to party with us. And we’ll see you soon. And next episode coming shortly on the short term show from north Georgia.