Avery Carl [00:00:03]:
Hey guys, it’s your host, Avery Carle. Welcome to the Short Term show special episode series on Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I’m super excited to do this 10 episode deep dive into this market with you and I wanted to make a few notes for you first. So if you want to set up a search for properties or see current purchase prices or current income numbers in this market, you can do that at our website, the shorttermshop.com. if you just want to connect with us and hang out and talk about short term rentals more, you could do that in our Facebook group. It’s the same title as my book. It’s called Short term Rental, Long Term Wealth. And you can also find the information on all of our other market short term show special episode series there as well.

Avery Carl [00:00:41]:
So we look really forward to hanging out with you over the next 10 episodes and we’ll catch you guys on the next one. Let’s go foreign. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Short Term show Special episode series on Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In case you didn’t know what state that was in, I have not been saying South Carolina on the other episodes, but I think you guys can figure it out. We’ve got a cool panel today. We’re going to talk about setting up a property in this market. So what does it take to set up? What are the nuances that maybe you don’t run into in other markets? And, and we’ve got a cool panel here to help me talk about this. We’ve got Bradley Klein.

Avery Carl [00:01:22]:
Bradley, they are going to be pretty used to you at this point, but in case they just picked up right now. Who are you?

Bradley Klein [00:01:28]:
Yeah, absolutely. My name is Bradley Klein and I am one of the short term shop agents here in Myrtle Beach. I wish I could say the scene behind me was what it actually looks like right now, but weather’s a, a little colder today.

Avery Carl [00:01:42]:
Yeah, it’s cold here too. And next we have Stacy St. John, who you may recognize from previous episodes and everywhere else she is on the Internet. But Stacy, introduce yourself really quick for those who may not be familiar.

Stacy St. John [00:01:56]:
Sure. Hey there. My name is Stacy St. John and I actually live in Cincinnati, Ohio, but own and manage properties down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It’s one of my favorite places to vacation. And now since I have the opportunity to, you know, live vicariously through our rentals that we own and manage, I get to spend my days dreaming about Myrtle beach all the time. So my property management company is called Cozy Getaways with a K. And I Visit Myrtle beach myself about once a month.

Avery Carl [00:02:31]:
Awesome. All right, so let’s talk about setup. Typically, the first things that I like to talk about, because I see a lot of investors not do this and it is a safety hazard, is locks. You should 1000%, no matter what you’re buying or what type of lock it comes with, change your locks. When you buy a new property, you do not know how many people have copies of the previous key or the previous code change them. But typically we use smart locks like a schlage on code or encode. We did confirm that schlage is the correct pronunciation for those who might not know. But, Stacy, you.

Avery Carl [00:03:08]:
You mentioned something to me offline a minute ago about. About smart locks here and. Or maybe not locks, something else. We’ll get to that in a minute. So what are you doing for locs? Because you do have to change them.

Stacy St. John [00:03:18]:
Yeah, we absolutely change them. And I will share with you, about half of our locks are the smart locks. We use a lot of the Yale products. And one thing that I have discovered is the saltwater air does not like these smart locks. And so it is incredibly challenging and a delicate balance because what happens is the batteries tend to deplete very quickly. And so our owners quite often are seeing, you know, charges to replenish the batteries within these locks. And our maintenance team goes out and does that, of course, but there is a cost to doing that. And so regardless, it’s either the digital locks or we’re using the keypad locks that there’s probably some fancy schmancy term for them.

Stacy St. John [00:04:11]:
But the ones where you punch in a code that are not digital.

Avery Carl [00:04:14]:
Yeah, that’s something that we run into across all beach markets is the salt air. There are some, like, silica gel packs that you can get to put inside the lock so that it doesn’t corrode. And I’ve heard varying levels of success with that. It’s worked for us, but then, like our Texas agents on the Texas coast didn’t work for them. They had to go to full on what we call dumb locks. And dumb locks.

Stacy St. John [00:04:38]:
I’m going to steal that. I like that. You know, the other thing, too, Avery, is I actually manage some property that you’re not allowed to change the locks. It is still the hotel key card that you utilize to enter the property, and that is across the building. They do not allow you to change the locks. And so making sure that you understand when you’re purchasing what the restrictions are for changing the locks is critically important. But then, number two, if you are managing remotely. Making sure you have a proper plan to get the keys.

Stacy St. John [00:05:13]:
The, the key cards to your guests is going to be really important.

Avery Carl [00:05:16]:
Yes, very, very important. And another thing too, back to the the smart locks. Something that is a good idea to do is if you’re in a market like this where locks will die because of corrosion and moisture, it’s good to have an extra already programmed smart lock so that it like in your owner’s closet. So if something happens, your handy person can just install it and they don’t have to worry about redoing everything it’s already programmed. So that’s pro tip. I don’t see very many people doing that, but it definitely helps. You also want to make sure you have backup options, which with condos might be difficult. So I know with my single families will have coded lockboxes elsewhere on the property with the actual hard copy key if something happens with the code.

Avery Carl [00:06:05]:
But how do you get around that with a condo?

Stacy St. John [00:06:08]:
Yeah, it is tough. I actually have a boots on the ground team that has copies of the of the physical keys. So if for some reason we need to have those brought on site, we can certainly get them get them there. Rather we can also keep the hard copy physical keys inside the owner’s closet. You just have to make sure you can get in the property to get to the physical key. And honestly, there are people that will actually break in the door for you. So there’s always that option.

Avery Carl [00:06:40]:
Yeah, we try to avoid that.

Stacy St. John [00:06:43]:
We do try to avoid that.

Avery Carl [00:06:44]:
All right, so next thing, I think typically, typically there’s three pieces of hardware that you need. That lock being the first one second would be your camera. We like to use ring doorbell cams or ring floodlight cams. They have to face the front. They cannot face any pool area or anything inside. Of course, y’ all don’t be creepy. I shouldn’t have to answer that question. But also it’s illegal, so you want to make sure you’re not.

Avery Carl [00:07:09]:
You’re using your cameras for good and not for evil. And evil includes just like watching everything your guests do. Just you have your cameras to refer back to if something weird happens. But don’t stare at them all day. You’re going to drive yourself crazy. But Stacy, what do you have to add to the camera conversation?

Stacy St. John [00:07:24]:
Yeah. Since the Myrtle beach market is primarily condo buildings, one of the challenges when it comes to cameras is when you are a condo owner, you own the four walls inside your condo. These condo buildings also restrict you from putting anything on the outside of your door. And so in those condo buildings, unfortunately, we can’t really use cameras.

Avery Carl [00:07:53]:
Yeah. And I mean, this is going to sound like sacrilege to some people out there, but that’s okay. Like, you should not be staring at your cameras all day anyway. It’s okay. Yeah.

Stacy St. John [00:08:03]:
Yeah. I have seen some people affix a ring doorbell with a camera to the front of their door. And I think, you know, it’s interesting because it’s just a matter of time before they’re going to get a letter from the HOA saying it has to be removed. And again, that’s. That’s part of buying in what I call a resort or a condo building. The good news, though, is oftentimes those condo buildings have security officers that are on staff and they’re monitoring the premises 24 hours a day. And so that is a good trade off.

Avery Carl [00:08:44]:
Yeah, I actually just went to a friend of mine’s condo here the other day to help with a drain, a clogged drain. She was there and I was not helping. I’ll say Luke was helping, but I was present and she was too queasy about hair to. To do the drain zip thing herself. So we went to do it and it was like, it was hard to get in there. The. The front door. Not front door, but, like, the gate guy knew we were coming, knew who we were going to see, and still stopped us and asked several questions.

Avery Carl [00:09:15]:
So you definitely have that. If you’re worried about, you know, people like, breaking in or anything, it’s, you know, they’re. They’re typically pretty safe in terms of that. But yeah, it’s. You can’t have a. A camera. I would not by any stretch of the imagination call that a deal breaker.

Stacy St. John [00:09:31]:
No, I agree. All right.

Avery Carl [00:09:32]:
Last piece of hardware that I recommend is a smart thermostat. So I use a Honeywell T9. What do you use?

Stacy St. John [00:09:38]:
Stacy, I’m probably going to give you a very unpopular answer.

Avery Carl [00:09:41]:
Nest.

Stacy St. John [00:09:42]:
I don’t.

Avery Carl [00:09:43]:
Oh, you don’t.

Stacy St. John [00:09:44]:
In. In most of these oceanfront buildings. And again, my portfolio is largely made up of studios and one bedrooms. In most of those, you actually are utilizing PTAC units. So they are. Think about when you go to a Hilton Garden Inn and the. The window air conditioner unit is in your hotel room. That is what a lot of these condos have.

Stacy St. John [00:10:14]:
And so we don’t really have smart thermostats in those scenarios. We can go like, push the arrow up or down. Now in the. Obviously the larger properties with central air or a single Family, home, then, you know, we, we, we really haven’t utilized smart thermostats at this point in time. I’m probably going to take some heat for that. So, Avery, I feel like I need to get on your bandwagon.

Avery Carl [00:10:42]:
Well, no, not necessarily. I think it’s just a really good example of, like, you’re a very experienced investor and host and there’s a lot of different ways to do things and be successful. So there’s not one, I think, especially talking to you engineers, maybe some of you attorneys out there, that kind of want there to be a right and only way to do everything, and you have to have this exact formula, period. And it’s just not like that. There’s a thousand ways to be successful with this and a lot of ways to do things. So, yeah, I like, I like to use it. Here’s why I like to use them. Not because I’m trying to be any kind of restrictive on my guests about where they want to have their thermostat, but it can be helpful when there’s nobody there and you can see what it’s set for.

Avery Carl [00:11:24]:
So, you know, maybe, maybe it’s cold outside, maybe it’s the off season and it’s 20 degrees outside and you’ve got it set for 70 degrees, but it’s 50 degrees. Well, then, you know, like, hey, it’s time to get something looked at so you can kind of get out ahead of H Vac problems before it happens to a guest and ruins a vacation. And then also, you know, is a headache for you, you’re having to do refunds. So that’s really more why we have them kind of keep an eye on things before they become a problem.

Stacy St. John [00:11:51]:
But again, the other thing. Sorry to. To jump in on you. The other thing to keep in mind is the Myrtle beach market is made up primarily of condo buildings. And not to say that there aren’t single family homes, but my portfolio is primarily, at this point, condo buildings. And in those condo buildings, in most of them that we manage in, not all the electric is included with your HOA fee. And so a lot of people will also get those smart thermostats to control their costs, which it really isn’t a factor in that case. So if you are in a single family home scenario, I would absolutely get a smart thermostat.

Stacy St. John [00:12:38]:
But just also wanted to mention that in case anybody’s like, you’re crazy, you know, people could set your, your thermostat for, you know, 80 degrees when it’s 20 degrees outside and you’re going to pay triple the amount. Actually, that’s not the case.

Avery Carl [00:12:53]:
That’s the beauty of condos is you kind of have that insulation all around you. Whereas with single families you can have, you know, you can have some problems. So. All right, all right, we talked about the three pieces of hardware. Let’s talk about the three pieces of software that I think you need and then we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of like actually stocking the unit. So there’s three pieces of software that in my opinion you need. The first one is property management software or pms. Which one do you use, Stacy?

Stacy St. John [00:13:20]:
I use owner as for my pms.

Avery Carl [00:13:22]:
Okay. So guys, there’s a lot of different ones you can use. Owner as is definitely the most robust in my, in my opinion and in other people’s opinion it does everything in the world you could possibly want it to do. But it is hard to learn. So.

Stacy St. John [00:13:43]:
You, you are right about that. And I think part of the beauty is that from the get go I’ve built my property management company. We have a very team based structure. So Stacy is not the one having to learn owner res. My team members that I brought on board already had experience with owner res and so it wasn’t an issue.

Avery Carl [00:14:04]:
Okay, well, for those of you who might be new, I don’t recommend jumping right into owner. As for one or two properties, I, we use hospitable. I don’t get paid to say use hospitable. I’m not an affiliate. I actually don’t believe in affiliate links. If I, if I want to send somebody to you, it’s because you do a good job, not because you’re paying me anyway. That being said, Hospitable is really easy to use and intuitive. So maybe I’d start there and then as you build your portfolio out then maybe you build out your, your property management software too.

Avery Carl [00:14:31]:
Or maybe stay with hospitable forever. Some people end up staying with the first one they start with forever. Some people, you know, bounce around. We bounce around between a few. We’ve used guesty for host really like that. Igms like that too. But hospitable works best for us.

Stacy St. John [00:14:45]:
Yeah, I also, you know, recommend to, to my folks that really think about where you want to be down the line in a year, three years with your portfolio. If you want, you know, to have 20 properties in your portfolio, make sure this is my recommendation that you’re actually looking at that right now. Even though you’re just starting out with one property. And if you’re looking to scale quickly. Make sure that you jot down a list of what your needs are for your property management software and vet for those future needs right now. Because when you do data transfers or. Avery, it sounds like you’ve had experience moving pms. That’s not necessarily a fun process.

Avery Carl [00:15:31]:
Not fun? No. Switching any kind of software that you use on a regular basis is not fine. Yeah. All right, so next thing. Number two on the list of software that you need is a dynamic pricing tool. Which one do you use?

Stacy St. John [00:15:46]:
I use Price Labs.

Avery Carl [00:15:48]:
Same here. Price Labs, I think, is kind of the gold standard, but there are a few others. There’s wheelhouse, there’s beyond pricing, but Price Labs seems to have, like, be becoming the main one that people use.

Stacy St. John [00:16:00]:
I also think, too, that there’s a lot of confusion about the dynamic pricing softwares that I see folks assuming that they get a dynamic pricing software, and then they just can, like, set it and forget it and walk away. And even though these dynamic pricing tools are making our lives so much easier and allow us to make sure we’re not leaving money on the table, you know, it is important to make sure that you are keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in your market and you are making adjustments to your dynamic pricing software accordingly.

Avery Carl [00:16:40]:
Yeah, I agree with that. And I think a lot of people think that the Airbnb internal pricing is the same thing, and it’s not. Don’t do that. Do not ever use the Airbnb smart pricing that is designed to get you booked at the lowest price possible for the guest. Dynamic pricing is designed to get you the highest price possible for you based on a number of things that the algorithm is looking at all the time. So keep that in mind. Don’t make that mistake. All right, so last piece of of software that I think you need, not everybody uses them, is a digital guidebook.

Avery Carl [00:17:15]:
Do you use one, Stacy?

Stacy St. John [00:17:16]:
I sure do. I use Touchstay.

Avery Carl [00:17:18]:
Do you want to explain to everybody what that does? Oh, girl.

Stacy St. John [00:17:20]:
Yeah. So a digital welcome guide is, if you can imagine, when you, as an example, walk into a hotel room, and there is the blue binder with everything about the property, how to dial for room service, how to, you know, get to HBO on the tv. I liken that to what a digital welcome guide is in an electronic format. So inside of our digital welcome guides, we have everything from how to find the unit in the condo building, how to utilize the lock on the front door, how to turn on the dishwasher, how to utilize the remote. But we also have obviously things about the community, things to do, our favorite restaurants, places to shop so that a guest really can get that on their mobile phone. We text them a link to the digital welcome guide prior to their stay so they can begin kind of planning what they want to do. We actually do not include access information to the unit, so we don’t ever include the, the code to get in the front door as an example in our digital welcome guide because it is going out in advance. But I believe one of the beauties of those digital welcome guides is the fact that you can change them on a dime.

Stacy St. John [00:18:44]:
So again, going back to the scenario where you’ve got a hard copy booklet, if something changes, whether it’s, you know, one of your favorite restaurant recommendations has closed the doors, now you’ve got to go change that inside your welcome guides. And from a digital perspective, it’s literally the click of a few keystrokes and you’ve got your, your guidebook updated.

Avery Carl [00:19:08]:
Yeah, I’m a big fan. What we do is if there’s anything that a guest needs to like, know how to work, we’ll put a QR code there that takes them to the guidebook on how to work it. And an example that I always use as a guest. I think guidebooks are amazing because I get it before I check in, so I get it at the time I book. So there’s a lot of things that I kind of want to know but that I wouldn’t bother with asking a host. Like the coffee situation. I’m not going to bother you asking you that. But I like to know so that when I swing by the grocery store with two kids who are really tired of traveling, etc.

Avery Carl [00:19:43]:
On the way in and make sure I buy the right thing. Because that’s like the one thing I require to function is caffeine. If I’m functioning, nobody else is functioning in the family. So I need to make sure that that is correct and that I don’t show up with coffee grounds and it’s a Keurig or vice versa. So, okay, three pieces of hardware, three pieces of software, few different ways you can go about that I use again, touch Day, like Stacy does hostfully also is an option. I think they’re both great. So keep that in mind. Let’s see what else.

Avery Carl [00:20:16]:
So let’s talk about the kitchen and things that we stock here because there’s a lot of back and forth and chatter about this online about what people stock and don’t. So let’s start with Coffee. Since we just talked about this. So what sort of coffee maker do you have?

Stacy St. John [00:20:30]:
I love using the keurigs and depending on the size of the unit, I also love utilizing the dual Keurig. So with a traditional drip coffee as well as the pod, shall we say, I utilize those in my larger properties that have a full kitchen. Again, for the studios or small one bedrooms. Most often we are supplying a Keurig pod coffee maker.

Avery Carl [00:20:58]:
Yeah, we like to. To use the dual so that people can we say, bring your own coffee. There’s been times over the course of the years that we’ll supply grounds, but never K cups. They’re very expensive to keep stocked and to be the right thing for people. So agree with that. In terms of other things in the kitchen, do you supply anything like, excuse me, coffee filters, spices, anything like that?

Stacy St. John [00:21:22]:
So again, it depends on the property. For our larger properties that have what I would consider a full kitchen, like you and I would have in our home, we supply things like salt, pepper, oil, vinegar. You know, a lot of. A lot of times in those full kitchen scenarios, guests might purchase things and leave them. So we often see a variety of packages of coffee filters which. Which we will supply as well. But, you know, they’ll. We supply starter essentials in that scenario, so we’ll supply a few and then allow them to get the rust that they need.

Stacy St. John [00:22:04]:
So a lot of times you’ll see, again, leftovers when it comes to garlic salt or cooking spray. But we supply salt, pepper oil, vinegar, as well as some good old coffee filters and dishwasher pods, you know, things like that as well.

Avery Carl [00:22:23]:
Okay, how many of those do you supply? And if there’s washer and dryer in the unit, too, like how many do you leave for that?

Stacy St. John [00:22:28]:
We, again, we’ll just leave starters. So we’ll leave two and then allow them to get the rest.

Avery Carl [00:22:34]:
I think that makes sense. So is there anything in terms of the kitchen that you want to make sure people know they need to have in this market that maybe people don’t really use in other markets? I can’t think of what that would be. Maybe you can. Blenders.

Stacy St. John [00:22:48]:
Blender, I would say, is an important thing. A lot of the. The smaller studio properties don’t actually have a full kitchen. They just have a little kitchenette and. And they. Some of them don’t even have a sink or a stovetop. And so in those scenarios, I like to purchase a portable hot plate. Shall we say that you can actually fix a thing of Mac and cheese on a lot of them? Again, don’t have toasters.

Stacy St. John [00:23:20]:
So I like or oven. So I like to get a toaster oven so that someone can, you know, mom of the year fix chicken nuggets in the toaster oven and Mac and cheese on the stovetop. Shop. Even if I’m saying in a little studio condo.

Avery Carl [00:23:35]:
Oh, okay. I didn’t realize that in studios sometimes they don’t have little kitchens. That’s a good call out.

Stacy St. John [00:23:40]:
I sure don’t.

Avery Carl [00:23:41]:
Sure, yeah. Toaster ovens are so versatile.

Stacy St. John [00:23:43]:
They really are. You know, for our larger properties, we also always recommend getting those nice amenities that may not be required, but again, can enhance a guest day. So a lot of times in the larger properties you’ve got multi generational families that are coming in to vacation together. And so getting things like crock pots and instant pots and rice cookers and things like that where they can actually cook a full family meal I think is really nice to have when you are bringing multi generational families in.

Avery Carl [00:24:19]:
Yeah, I totally agree with that. Let me think about what else in the kitchen. I think that pretty much covers everything. I know some people want to do like communal condiments and I think that’s gross. And I think other people think that’s gross. Even if some people don’t think it’s gross, there are a lot of people out there that do think it’s gross. So you shouldn’t do that. Yeah, I stayed in one this summer that had that and I was like, don’t touch this.

Avery Carl [00:24:42]:
Kids like Luke. Don’t. Luke did do their hot sauce. And I was like, God, no. Yeah, no. He was like, I was in a bind. I was in a bind.

Stacy St. John [00:24:52]:
You know the other thing too, Avery, that I see a lot of folks preaching and I’m probably going to say a very unpopular thing right now, so I’m just going to warn you. But there are a lot of folks out there that preach like you have to have a coffee bar in order to be a successful short term rental host. Or you, if you want to get a five star review, you have to leave coffee. Okay. I don’t leave coffee in any of my properties and we get five star reviews on repeat. Okay. And I’m not saying that to impress anyone. I’m saying to impress upon someone that you don’t have to have that if you want to provide it.

Stacy St. John [00:25:34]:
Awesome. Go for it. I’m not here to tell you anything that you can’t do, but I just want to share that you don’t have to do that in order to be successful.

Avery Carl [00:25:44]:
I agree. Again, like we kind of established earlier, there’s a lot of different ways to be successful in these markets in this asset class, I think is what I meant to say. And there’s no one size fits all. My motto is cute, clean, comfortable, sparkling clean. We’re just providing a really nice backdrop for them to have an amazing vacation and make amazing memories. I’m not trying to, like, make everybody tell me how great I am with, like, all my shit that I’m giving them. Like, I just want it to be a great experience. It’s not about me.

Avery Carl [00:26:13]:
It’s about them.

Stacy St. John [00:26:14]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:26:15]:
So, okay, next, let’s talk about TVs. I don’t know if you do this. I do this because it makes everything so much easier. I replace all the TVs with the internal Roku TVs. Like, not the stick, because the sticks find it, have a way of walking away, but that way, you know, they’ve got all the streaming and everything on the TVs, but the remotes on Roku’s are interchangeable. So things get mixed up between the bedroom and the living room. The remotes will still work. And then, of course, they have guest mode.

Avery Carl [00:26:43]:
So that’s my universal TV rule. Do you have any preference on that?

Stacy St. John [00:26:48]:
I think I want to actually start living vicariously through your Roku tv. So I. I think that’s a really, really great piece of advice I will share with you. When I started, I did not purchase those Roku TVs where I was just purchasing, you know, your. I would say your standard Vizio smart tv. And. And quite candidly, you know, I’ve seen some challenges with just having a smart. Really love that you have a baseline.

Stacy St. John [00:27:21]:
It’s got to be internal Roku. I think that’s fabulous.

Avery Carl [00:27:25]:
Yeah, that’s my fave. We just. We started that last year because we had sticks, and then we had to keep all these backup sticks because things move around and it’s just easier to go internal. They’re like 400 bucks, tops. Remember when. When flat screen TVs used to be, like, $1400?

Stacy St. John [00:27:40]:
Oh, my gosh. I mean, I. I still remember the day I’m totally dating myself when there were no flat screen TVs that we had the tube t living room and we used to have to go, like, change the rotary channel. Like, you know, turn on Wheel of Fortune. You’d have to go turn a dial.

Avery Carl [00:27:59]:
Oh, man, I don’t. We didn’t have those, like.

Stacy St. John [00:28:03]:
No, I’m. I’m not as old as you, Stacy.

Avery Carl [00:28:05]:
Not quite, but I’m. I’m up there. I’m getting up there. And we had, you know, they didn’t have flat screens when I was a kid. It was not till I was in college that they did. And they were so expensive and even then they weren’t smart. That wasn’t until like. Well, that was a few years after.

Avery Carl [00:28:21]:
Well, a few years after college was you mail in the Netflix DVDs. And yeah.

Stacy St. John [00:28:27]:
Oh, yeah, that was a thing.

Avery Carl [00:28:29]:
Yeah. Which honestly, I did love that because I would still love it. Not that I have. I. I would. I love the idea of it because it’s cool and fun to do the mail thing. But I would probably still never. I think they still do it.

Avery Carl [00:28:42]:
I’m just too busy and it would all fall apart. But it’s.

Stacy St. John [00:28:45]:
Did you ever go to Blockbuster?

Avery Carl [00:28:47]:
Oh, hell yeah. And hell yeah. We would go to the Chinese buffet that was right next door. That was my favorite. And then we would go to Blockbuster and they had all the crazy candy that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

Stacy St. John [00:28:58]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:28:59]:
And it would be a whole scene and you know, they’d have like a whole row of the one, like the block, the quote, blockbuster DVDs that just came out where they’d have like 100 copies of them. And then I’d always get to the front and they’d be like, your mother has this. A sixty dollar late fee. And so it was always her. So.

Bradley Klein [00:29:16]:
But that’s crazy. It was the same setup in. In the uk, it was the Chinese buffet right next to Blockbuster. So maybe it’s like a marketing thing.

Stacy St. John [00:29:23]:
It was a thing, right?

Avery Carl [00:29:24]:
Oh, it was so great. I feel like maybe it’s just where I live or like where I am in life that I can’t really do buffets anymore because I just will. I’ll gain £30 if I look at one. But man, the Chinese buffets back in the early 2000s, they were like, so legit.

Stacy St. John [00:29:40]:
Yeah. I also think, you know, I love a good salad bar. It’s tough to find a good salad bar these days. I think Covid really did us in with the buffets and the salad bars. Okay.

Avery Carl [00:29:50]:
Yeah, and salad bars. You know, they really are helpful when you’ve got little kids and you’re waiting on food and you can go get a few, like, I don’t know, like ham cubes and pieces of cheese off of there to get them anyway.

Stacy St. John [00:30:02]:
I mean, who knew we were going to have, like, dining recommendations on this episode?

Avery Carl [00:30:08]:
Avery, I know all things you should put in your digital Guidebook. I want to know what all, you know, doordash delivers there. Like can you get instacart there? All these things. Okay, back to what we’re talking about. How many sets? So when I say set, I mean what is out in the unit? When someone enters the unit of sheets and or towels do you keep at a time?

Stacy St. John [00:30:33]:
Okay, so when someone enters the unit, we supply. We supply as far as bath towels, Two bath towels per person, one hand towel per person, one washcloth per person. We also of course have sheets on the beds. We have sheets, spare sheets for any scenario where we have a pull out couch or anything like that. And then we also keep. We don’t keep spare sheets out. We keep them in a locked lockbox so that if for some reason they need an extra set of sheets, they can message us. We give them a code to get into the lockbox and get that spare set of sheets.

Stacy St. John [00:31:18]:
It’s amazing how things tend to walk off, which is why we don’t keep just an extra set of sheets out in the open. But we do obviously give our guests access to them if they need them.

Avery Carl [00:31:30]:
Yeah, I recently stayed in one in Indio, California that they had a whole huge walk in closet full of tons of extra sheets and blankets and pillows. And, and I was like, man, this is crazy stocked. But I agree, they, they do have a way of getting up and walking away. So. Yeah. How many towels do you stock per bathroom? Like per turn?

Stacy St. John [00:31:52]:
Well, we will stock it’s. We base it per head. So as an example, I have a three bedroom that sleeps 10 people. So in the first bathroom, you know, depending on where that bathroom is located in the property, you know, we might have enough towels for two people. So again, we’ll do two bath towels and that then will be for those two people that are staying in the king bedroom attached to that bathroom. And then we might have another bathroom that would be for four people. So we’ll supply the proper amount of bath towels for those four people and then same way with the primary bedroom. So I don’t do it per bathroom.

Stacy St. John [00:32:38]:
I do it per head.

Avery Carl [00:32:39]:
Okay, so one per head per se. 2 per head per se. Okay. I was about to say it’s a little light, but you know, do you. Okay, yeah.

Stacy St. John [00:32:46]:
What do you do?

Avery Carl [00:32:47]:
Do you, do you.

Stacy St. John [00:32:47]:
Do we do two per.

Avery Carl [00:32:49]:
Two per person? Yeah, yeah. But we don’t go any more than that because like if you have 20 towels per person, they will use 20 towels.

Stacy St. John [00:32:58]:
Absolutely.

Avery Carl [00:32:58]:
What do you do about makeup girl?

Stacy St. John [00:33:00]:
It is the bane of my Existence, basically. Okay, so we have the makeup, the black makeup towels that say makeup that, you know, you hope and pray and cross your fingers and toes that people use. But I will tell you, a lot of times they don’t. And so we try to train our cleaning teams on different tactics for getting makeup or stains out of the linens. And you know, quite candidly, sometimes those things work and sometimes you, you just have to retire a hand towel. We do in those scenarios, we try to donate them to like a local animal shelter or things like that so that, you know, there can still be use out of those stained towels. But they’re not in, in prime season for us anymore.

Avery Carl [00:33:51]:
Well, that is a great idea. It hasn’t occurred to me to donate them to an animal shelter. I’ve got several rescue animals, but one of them, Wheezy, she’s usually here with me, but she’s home sleeping with my daughter who’s sick. She likes to. She’s the kid dog, the ultimate kid dog. And she’s a chihuahua, which is weird because normally they’re snappy, but she’s like, only wants to be with the kids all the time. It’s really cute anyway.

Stacy St. John [00:34:15]:
That’s cute.

Avery Carl [00:34:16]:
Big rescue dog fan. Okay, what were you talking about? Oh, makeup. So we have the black makeup towels too, but I recently stayed in a short term rental where they had individual. They’re not individual because it was more than one use. It was makeup remover towelette packs that had like five in there, which I like to use those anyway because it doesn’t matter. Like if you’re scrubbing with a towel, it’s going to get on the towel. Even like, especially if you wear makeup that’s meant to not come off, it’s still like when you go to, you’re not going to really realize until you go to dry your face off with another towel that you got it on there. So the makeup remover wipes work really, really well for me.

Avery Carl [00:34:59]:
That’s what I use at home. And I had never seen the little like just five pack where it’s not just one. So that’s not helpful for the entire stay. And it’s not the entire pack of like 100, which is too much. Just a little five pack. And I really appreciated them having that there because it helped me not mess up their towels accidentally.

Stacy St. John [00:35:18]:
I think that’s a really interesting concept. Now I have two pieces of feedback. Number one, it’s really a question. I am assuming that that host changes that out with each turnover so you don’t have, like, the leftover condiment situation with the makeup wipes.

Avery Carl [00:35:36]:
Yeah, it’s very. It was very much like, this is part of what we put out for everyone. Yeah, that’s good.

Stacy St. John [00:35:40]:
And then that would be so gross. And then secondly, I. I’m guilty as well. So I don’t even wash my face with a towel. I mean, I’ll. I scrub. Got this Clinique exfoliator. You know, I do all the things and I think all my makeup is off.

Stacy St. John [00:35:58]:
And then I go to dry my face, and there’s, like, you know, orange on the towel. I’m like, I do it in my own unit. So I’m my, you know.

Avery Carl [00:36:07]:
Yeah, I do the same. I don’t really know, like, what. How to fix that problem. Maybe I’m just bad at washing my face, but it happens. The makeup remover wipes, though, they work.

Stacy St. John [00:36:19]:
You know what I have seen a lot lately, and it sounds crazy, is people dyeing their hair when they’re staying with us. And I’m wondering, what on earth are these people doing? And I’m talking, like, purple hair dye or red. And I don’t mean like an auburn. I mean like Bozo the Clown red, like bright colors. And I’m thinking, why are we going to the beach and dyeing our hair? I don’t know.

Avery Carl [00:36:45]:
But, yeah, it’s not the most opportune time because you’re just gonna go out in the sun and get in the water and mess it up anyway.

Stacy St. John [00:36:50]:
Right. But that can. Like we’ve had our leather couches have hair dye stains on them. Pillowcases have hair dye ice stains on them. Yeah, it’s. It’s been a thing.

Avery Carl [00:37:02]:
Interesting. We haven’t had that yet, but okay, we’ve done towels, we’ve done makeup towels. What else in terms of stocking the unit? Oh, let’s talk about the people that you need to hire. So your cleaners and handy people. Let’s start with cleaners first. So some cleaners will supply the paper towels, toilet paper, all the paper product stuff, you know, trash bags, all that. And some will. And usually they’ll charge a little more for that, and some will not supply that.

Avery Carl [00:37:30]:
And they’ll just tell you, hey, it’s time for more trash bags. You hit the Amazon, send it to them. Typically, what do you do? What do you see with cleaners in this market?

Stacy St. John [00:37:38]:
In this market, what we see a lot are the cleaners that do supply those consumables. And if they do not, as a standard protocol, they typically will offer that and so for us, in the Myrtle beach market, we will actually take our cleaners up on it. We’re, you know, we have them supplying the trash bags again, the coffee filters, things like that. Whereas in other markets that I host in, it is. That is not the customary way to do it. But in the Myrtle beach market, we do see them supplying those paper products, things like that.

Avery Carl [00:38:20]:
I think that in a lot of the bigger, like, more. What’s the word I’m looking for? Like, the more mature, I guess, vacation rental markets, the bigger ones like Myrtle Beach, Panama City, Gatlinburg, there’s lots of cleaners who do do the supplying thing, because I think they found it’s more efficient to do it that way than like, oh, Avery, forget, like, the person who cleans my actual house, who I live in. She asked me to order something like a month ago, and I keep forgetting. And you can’t really do that with a vacation rental.

Stacy St. John [00:38:50]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:38:50]:
So I think they found it to be more efficient, just charge a little more for it. Whereas I think maybe in emerging markets, it’s more common for cleaners to say, oh, no, you get it. I’ll just tell you.

Stacy St. John [00:38:59]:
Sure. And the other thing to keep in mind, that’s a nuance about this market, again, since it’s primarily condo buildings, there’s not a lot of storage space. And so if you’re having to order supplies, sometimes, you know, when you order in bulk, obviously these packages take up a lot of space. And if you have very limited space in an owner’s closet, and chances are you’re not going to want, you know, a large box of, you know, paper towels in there as an example.

Avery Carl [00:39:34]:
Yeah, totally agree with that. So what else in terms of setup? Okay, let’s talk about when. When you interview cleaners, at what point in the process do you start interviewing cleaners? Like, if you’re buying a place? So for me, I recommend that if you’re, you know, if you’re new to the market, not messing with cleaners until you know you’re going to close, so you’re through inspection, you’re through appraisal that way, because at least in my experience, they want to come look at it before they quote you. And if you engage them when you’ve just made an offer on something and you may not close on it, you don’t want to do that a few times and then make them think like, you’re not serious or something. But what do you recommend?

Stacy St. John [00:40:12]:
Well, I would recommend if you’re serious about buying in that market, you may not engage a cleaner at that early stage, but you might start building a list of people that you’re planning on reaching out to. So one of my favorite ways to find cleaners is actually to get referrals from other people on who they recommend. So you might start a spreadsheet of, you know, even just cleaners that people mention in Facebook groups that do a good job. Or you might see a cleaner promoting their services in a Facebook group. You might be driving down the road when you’re there looking at property and somebody’s got a magnet, you know, on the side of their car. I’ve actually approached cleaners in parking lots when I seen their. They have T shirts on. So I’m a no holds barred kind of girl.

Stacy St. John [00:41:03]:
I, you know, having a good cleaning team is absolutely essential. So I agree with you, Avery. You may not engage those cleaners until you’re ready to close. But I would start building that list as early as possible if you’re truly planning on buying in that market.

Avery Carl [00:41:23]:
Yes, I totally, totally agree with that. And definitely make sure that you. When people make recommendations, make sure that you ask if they’ve actually worked with them in the past. Because what you can find, especially in a lot of Facebook groups, I know if maybe you’ve seen this in yours, Stacy. I see this in mind, is that vendors will start to realize where all the clients are commenting in these groups, and they’ll get in there, which is great. You know, you do you. But they’ll have their friends get in there and start recommending them. And then you’re, you know, maybe looking at people who haven’t worked with this person.

Avery Carl [00:41:55]:
And that’s great if you want to send your sister business, but I need to know how. What kind of a job they do from previous clients. So I would say when you’re getting recommendations for any vendor, ask the person, hey, have you worked with this person before?

Stacy St. John [00:42:07]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:42:08]:
And that’s very important.

Stacy St. John [00:42:09]:
Yeah. And when you are ready to make a hire, call referrals like, pick up the phone and talk to people and find out where their strengths are and where their weaknesses are. Unfortunately, I’ve had really good cleaners that can’t keep a calendar to save their life. Right. And you can do a great job cleaning. But if I can’t rely on you to show up on time, I’m sorry, we can’t work together. So really understand where each individual, either company or person’s, you know, strengths and weaknesses are.

Avery Carl [00:42:44]:
Yeah, I’ve had, I’ve had to get rid of cleaners before that, we’re doing an okay job and, like, my friend down the street still uses them, but it was very much a communication thing. So there’s a million reasons. And you definitely want to make sure you’ve got a list of them to call an interview. Hire the one. They’re all going to do roughly the same job. In a market like this where there’s a ton of cleaners, the industry has been around for a long time, but in my opinion, hire the one that you communicate best with. So don’t hire the one that, like, makes you nervous to ask to do anything because you’re worried they’re going to be, like, prickly or whatever. Ask the one that you communicate best with or hire the one you communicate best with.

Avery Carl [00:43:19]:
And handy men, people, different stories. So, you know, you hire one cleaner and that’s your person, but with handy people, you want to have a list of like, as many as you can, because if your favorite one can’t get there, you need to be able to go down the list and. And call the next one. So how do you typically do that?

Stacy St. John [00:43:37]:
Yeah, I have an established relationship now with a maintenance team. So their organization has a roster, if you will, of different maintenance staff members. So that’s wonderful because it’s one team that, you know, we’ve worked together now for 18 months, and I know firsthand that they can get someplace very quickly. And it’s because they have a staff of people. If you are hiring individuals, absolutely. Make sure you have multiple maintenance folks, multiple plumbers, multiple electricians, so that if someone can’t get there quickly, you can quickly go through your Rolodex and find someone who can. I would also do the same for cleaners. I would have, again, if you’re working with an individual, especially make sure that you have backup cleaners in place so that if you know, that person’s kiddo gets sick and they can’t find a sitter that you have, you know, a plan B at the ready, 100%.

Avery Carl [00:44:46]:
So. And I mean, all the other vendors that you need, you can kind of build out from those two people. They’ll typically have recommendations for those things. But, you know, we’re kind of coming to the end of my questions here. So is there anything, Stacy, in relation to set? Oh, you know what? I do have another question. So is there a lot of. And Bradley, you may know the answer to this too. Are.

Avery Carl [00:45:06]:
Is there a lot of golf carting and bicycling in this market?

Stacy St. John [00:45:09]:
Bradley, I’ll let you take that one.

Bradley Klein [00:45:11]:
With condos, not so much probably. In fact, let’s just say no. Unless somebody wants to specifically go out and rent one. They do generally have designated parking per se, but it’s more popular in the single family home side of the short term rental. It’s. But even then, from a liability point of view, it probably just makes more sense to maybe give a recommendation of a place that does rent them and then that way the guest has the option to rent one if they want one. But as I say, with the condo point of view, we don’t really see them. Bicycles, again, it’s not super common one because you keep the bikes generally in a storage room and they do, they still get.

Bradley Klein [00:45:59]:
Get exposed to the salt air and it’s just one of those maintenance things that most people just don’t want to have to mess around with. You might get the little beach beach bikes with the big thick tires, but again, not super common.

Stacy St. John [00:46:14]:
I will share with you. Also, a lot of the buildings don’t allow for golf cart parking in their parking garages. And so again, if you are planning on buying and you’re dreaming of supplying a golf, golf cart for your guests, you need to ask the question, you know where those restrictions are. A lot of them will also not allow motorcycles. So if you are a motorcycle fan or want to host guests during bike week, again, making sure that you understand what the restrictions are is really important. I see more golf cart usage up in North Myrtle Beach. It’s very common when you head to the home goods up in North Myrtle that the parking lot is filled with, you know, 25% golf carts. So I do see that up on the north end quite a bit.

Stacy St. John [00:47:04]:
Something to also keep in mind is, correct me if I’m wrong, Bradley. I don’t believe that it is permitted to drive golf carts at night in this market and. Right. Yeah. So again, something to keep in mind. But Avery, I want to mention one other thing. When it comes to team members.

Avery Carl [00:47:24]:
Okay.

Stacy St. John [00:47:24]:
Am I allowed to go back? Back?

Avery Carl [00:47:25]:
Of course.

Stacy St. John [00:47:26]:
Okay, cool. We also have inspectors. So in addition to our cleaning teams, we also have teams of inspectors. This is something that I believe is critically important and I have experienced firsthand where, you know, a lot of times these cleaners have multiple units that they are turning over in a day. And unfortunately, as we all know, we’re humans. Right. And we might overlook some things and we really strive to deliver a five star experience for our guests. And again, I am remote.

Stacy St. John [00:48:04]:
So having the right way to validate that a unit is absolutely ready for a Guest and and is going to, you know, deliver a five star experience. I utilize a second set of eyes to go in and make make small adjustments or straighten the lampshade or you know, again be able to validate back to my team that yep, this property is good to go.

Avery Carl [00:48:29]:
I think that that’s very important too because people do make mistakes. They forget to wipe out the inside of the microwave, something like that. So definitely a good call out. And if you guys do have a single family and you are going to try and do bicycles or a golf cart, what I recommend doing is hiring a company that delivers those. So we have offer bicycles at one of my properties, but they’re not our bicycles. A company comes and drops them off and same thing. There’s companies that will do that with golf carts too. So that way a, it’s not your hassle with maintenance and things, but it’s also becomes not your liability if they take that bicycle somewhere and wreck it and hurt themselves and you know, crack their head open.

Avery Carl [00:49:12]:
Hopefully they don’t do that, but then it becomes someone else’s and not yours. So I’m a big fan of finding those companies that will supply those things. Then like I don’t know how to even ride a bicycle really. I grew up out in the country. There wasn’t a lot of like pavement. So I’m not good on a bicycle. So I’m not the person that somebody needs to call when they’re having a problem with a bicycle. So I like the companies that will deliver that for a number of reasons.

Avery Carl [00:49:38]:
So I would recommend doing that if you are thinking of trying to supply that stuff. I would do it that way. Same thing with kayaks, paddle boards, all that we had on the short term show a guy from proper insurance and he mentioned, you know, if, if something’s wrong with your kayak and it sinks and somebody drowns, like even if you are, it’s not on your property, you might have some liability there. So think about that. But anything else, Stacy, about setup in this market that you want to cover.

Stacy St. John [00:50:05]:
I was just gonna say, I mean to your point about amenities, I mean beach, tents, beach, you know, we provide again for the larger properties where there’s ample place to store things like beach shovels and you know, things like that. But in those smaller properties there’s not a lot of space. And so making sure that you establish a relationship with a provider that can provide, you know, chairs or tents, sand strollers or wagons, you know, a lot of the, the baby quip representatives locally will also be able to deliver those things. I would also say if you are interested in hosting multi generational families, I would recommend establishing a relationship with someone like Babyquip. That’s who we utilize. So we’re not having to supply high chairs and pack and plays and things like that. Strollers. We can call in baby quip and and have them be able to deliver the most current state of the art.

Avery Carl [00:51:03]:
Equipment and you can put that right in your digital guidebook for them.

Stacy St. John [00:51:07]:
Amen.

Avery Carl [00:51:08]:
Yep, Amen. Totally agree with that. Those guidebooks are amazing. And I also agree with with hire with hiring somebody to rent this stuff so that again, like it’s not on you if the something crazy happens. I’m a mom with intrusive thoughts. Like look it up on on Tick Tock. There’s some really funny memes about it but like if something crazy happens, that would probably never happen. Like all of a sudden the pack and play like snapshot on this kid or something crazy.

Avery Carl [00:51:31]:
It’s not you.

Stacy St. John [00:51:33]:
Yes, exactly. Amen to that.

Avery Carl [00:51:35]:
Yeah. All right guys. Well, thank you so much for your time today, guys. If you want to buy with us us in the Myrtle beach market, work with Bradley or one of our other agents there. You can email us at agents the shorttermshop.com and we will get you set up. Or you can join our Facebook group Short term rental, Long term wealth. Hang out with us there. Stacy, if we’ve got some folks who are listening who might be in need of property management services in this market, how can they find you?

Stacy St. John [00:52:01]:
Sure, the best place to find me is through either of our websites. Cozygetaways.com and that’s k o z y getaways.com or stayin myrtlebeach.com.

Avery Carl [00:52:12]:
Oh, that’s a good domain. How’d you get that? That’s a good one. All right. All right guys, thank you so much for coming and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.

Stacy St. John [00:52:21]:
Bye.

Bradley Klein [00:52:22]:
Thank you.