Avery Carle [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 Carle [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.

Stacy St. John [00:00:51]:
Foreign.

Avery Carle [00:00:56]:
Hey guys, welcome to episode two of the Short Term show Special episode series on Myrtle Beach. Today we’re going to be talking about what to buy. So in the last episode we talked about why you might want to invest in this market. Like, what’s Myrtle Beach? Today we’re going to talk about the things to buy in Myrtle beach and we have a great panel to help me talk about this. First, we have Bradley Klein, one of our agents in Myrtle Beach. Bradley, do you want to introduce yourself really quick?

Bradley Klein [00:01:22]:
Yeah, absolutely. My name is Bradley Klein. As mentioned, I’ve lived in Myrtle beach for eight years now. Originally came from the United Kingdom, lived in Myrtle beach the entire time I’ve lived in in the United States.

Avery Carle [00:01:35]:
All right. And he is one of our agents in.

Bradley Klein [00:01:38]:
Yes, and I am one of the agents in my beach. The important part.

Avery Carle [00:01:43]:
And next we have a great friend of mine who needs no introduction, but we’re going to give her one anyway. Stacy St. John. Stacy, do you want to introduce yourself to our audience, sir?

Stacy St. John [00:01:52]:
And I don’t have an accent nearly as cool as Bradley, so I apologize in advance, but my name is Stacy St. John and I actually own several properties in Myrtle beach and manage as well. So we own nine beachfront condos along the Grand Strand and I also own a boutique property management firm called Cozy Getaways. And we have the pleasure of supporting clients in managing the day to day of their beach rentals. And it’s such a pleasure to be here with you, Avery. Thanks so much for having me.

Avery Carle [00:02:27]:
Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. So I guess let’s Start with, let’s start with the different areas of Myrtle Beach. So what are the different areas that you might run across, say if you start messing around on Zillow, looking at places in Myrtle Beach.

Bradley Klein [00:02:42]:
So essentially Myrtle beach is broken up into the north end, the downtown area, if you will, and then the south end. So the north end is going to be North Myrtle Beach, Little River, Cherry Grove, predominantly. As far as your oceanfront condos, you’re going to be dealing with north Myrtle beach and Cherry Grove as they essentially run along the coast on the Grand Strand. Then we have downtown Myrtle beach, which is of course the city limits area of Myrtle beach, which again predominantly condos on the ocean front. There are some areas within that that do have little stretches of single family homes, but a lot of the downtown area is not short term rental friendly when it comes to single family homes. And then beyond that, going south, we hit Surfside Beach, Garden City, Murrells Inlet, and then beyond that we have Litchfield and PO Island. So they’re essentially going to be your five big areas. On the south end of those areas, Surfside beach and Garden City are going to be predominantly condos.

Bradley Klein [00:03:46]:
Garden City is a little more single family home heavy also because of the lack of zoning restrictions. Murrells Inlet is predominantly single family homes. And then Litchfield and Pauley’s island again, there’s a lot more HOAs on that, on that end. So it’s not as short term rental friendly. Closer to the beach it is still possible and there’s still, there aren’t as many condos, but due to the price point down there, a lot of the times it just doesn’t make sense to buy that far south. So essentially we’re looking at basically from Murrell’s Inlet up to, to Cherry Grove. Would you agree, Stacy?

Stacy St. John [00:04:23]:
I would. And you know, I think even within those key areas that you described and I’m, I’m writing down, ooh, Garden City, lack of zoning restrictions. You need to tell me more about that. But there are also, I would call micro pockets, neighborhoods that I think perform really well as, you know, as related to short term rentals like the Mile for, for an example, it’s a wonderful little pocket of the market that I would say is outside of the central hubub of downtown, a little more quiet, but still has tremendous, you know, location where you can get to restaurants incredibly quickly. And so I would just encourage anyone who’s watching or listening and is intrigued by the Myrtle beach market to even dive deeper into some of those little mini neighborhoods.

Avery Carle [00:05:24]:
Shall we say, yeah, I agree with that. And I don’t own in Myrtle beach so I can’t really speak to that as much. But down here where I live in 30A there’s a few of like the big name areas like Seaside, Grayton Beach, Rosemary and I call it buying the pockets. So you can buy right outside of Seaside and still be able to walk like 30ft into Seaside, but it’s going to be 50% cheaper and by 50% I mean like several million dollars cheaper to buy the pocket than buy right in it. So luckily you guys don’t have to worry about those extreme prices that we have here in, in Myrtle beach, which is what I love about this market is that it is affordable. It is great for any level investor, whether you’re new or experienced that that price point is just a really, really palatable price point to get into Myrtle Beach.

Stacy St. John [00:06:11]:
So absolutely that, that was a key driver for me actually when we were looking to invest into our first short term rental, we looked at different markets. In fact we looked at the 30A area and I always tell people, you know, I could buy something with the view of a pond in Dustin and I could be looking at the ocean in Myrtle Beach. So where do you.

Avery Carle [00:06:38]:
The ponds are expensive in Destin too. You want. It’s called a dune lake and they’re. There are only three places in the world that we have them but ye. Yeah, yeah girl, yeah. Crazy purchase prices in Myrtle beach are so amazing and I think that, you know, it’s kind of a good segue into my next question on let’s talk about types of properties. So single families. Bradley, you might be able to answer this.

Avery Carle [00:07:02]:
You kind of did a little bit towards the beginning where the highest concentration of. If somebody is just anti condo which we’re going to get into that in a minute very heavily. But single family homes, some people are just single family home people. So where are we looking if we’re looking for a single family in this market?

Bradley Klein [00:07:19]:
So based on entry point and return, your best locations are going to be North Myrtle Beach. Just because essentially if, if you were to look at the map of North Myrtle beach predominantly everything east of 17 Bar and a few little pockets of HOA neighborhoods and there are very few. But everything east of Highway 17 is short term rental friendly. So you’ve got a pretty much a half mile wide stretch that runs probably 20 miles that is essentially short term rental friendly and there are a lot of single family homes in that area. Outside of that you’ve also got Surfside Beach Which Surfside beach zoning is a little more strict if you will. I mean you’ve essentially got the first two rows and it’s not a perfect straight line. So definitely speak to a agent who is familiar with the zoning because a lot of these properties are zoned short term rental, but they’re actually not allowed. But essentially you’ve got two rows that allow short term rental properties and they are mostly single family homes.

Bradley Klein [00:08:26]:
And then the unincorporated areas of the county are going to be Garden City and then Murals Inlets kind of split. So it’s kind of split between Ori county and Georgetown County. But predominantly everything at the ocean is short term rental friendly.

Stacy St. John [00:08:44]:
I would also. Sorry to jump in. I would also say if someone is looking at a single family home, think about potentially making that single family home pet friendly. So I know we’re going to talk about condos and in a, in a moment, but there is by and far pretty broad restrictions in those condo buildings about being able to bring a pet. So a lot of people are looking to travel with a pet and there are very few opportunities. And so if you’re comfortable hosting a family that wants to bring their, their furry friends along, that can be a really big game changer for you and set you apart in the marketplace.

Bradley Klein [00:09:31]:
I actually only know of one building along the Grand Strand that allows.

Avery Carle [00:09:36]:
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so now let’s talk about the thing that I think is going to take the most amount of time here. Let’s talk about condos because when I tell people, hey, you know, you can get a condo in Myrtle beach for a great price, a lot of times, especially if they’re new to this, they say, oh man, I don’t want a condo. Condos can change their rules on us and make it to where we can’t short term rent. And I’m scared of condo fees and condo assessments and all of these things. So I think now would be a really good opportunity for us to kind of dispel those, those myths about condos. So first let’s talk about why we don’t really have to worry about HOA changing anything up on us in this market.

Stacy St. John [00:10:14]:
I could speak to that, you know, and Bradley, feel free to jump in as well. But the condos along the Myrtle beach oceanfront, that is their primary driver of revenue. So many of the condo buildings are actually what’s referred to as a condot. So they oftentimes have a front desk think about walking into a Marriott or a Hilton. They’re not all Marriotts or Hilton’s. There of course, but you know, in a Marriott or Hilton situation, you’ve got folks going to the front desk to check in. Now, as individual condo owners, of course our guests don’t, do not have to go to the front desk to check in. But that’s often how those condo tells are delineated or referred to and referred to.

Stacy St. John [00:11:03]:
Those condo towels have a distinct interest in being able to short term rent because that is how they drive revenue for those buildings in general. So you know, for that very reason the Myrtle beach market is tremendous because it’s almost like an insurance policy that they’re not going to change their restrictions because the, the very nature of those buildings are for short term and vacation rentals.

Avery Carle [00:11:33]:
Yeah, totally agree with that. There’s not a lot of hotel presence in this market. And the reason that all of these, all of these condo buildings exist is to house vacationers. Like this was, this is, predates, Airbnb, predates any sort of short term rental investing courses. This is before the Internet guys even that these were built specifically to house short term rentals. So it’s really, there will be a couple, there’s a few in every market that are, you know, supposed to try to provide a more luxury experience. And they’re only for second homes, no short term rentals. But those are very few and far between.

Avery Carle [00:12:08]:
And typically all the condo buildings are for short term rentals. That’s why they exist. They wouldn’t exist otherwise. Now let’s talk about condo fees and why people get so scared of those. Because people will look at them and they’ll go, oh my God, $500 a month. They think they’re looking at their spreadsheets and they’ve got all their, their expenses and their Internet and their cable and all this stuff and they add another 500amonth on top of that and they go, oh, that’s going to kill my cash flow. I can’t do that. And they don’t, they don’t take one single closer look and just write it off and don’t end up buying.

Avery Carle [00:12:39]:
But why might that not be the smartest thing to do? Yeah, why is that not something to be scared of?

Stacy St. John [00:12:45]:
In the majority of the condo buildings, the HOA fees actually encompass your utilities as well. And so again, primarily you’ve got buildings that include your cable, your WI fi, your trash, your water. Some of the buildings also include HO6 policies. They also include your electric.

Avery Carle [00:13:11]:
So I actually love it.

Stacy St. John [00:13:13]:
I get to write one check every month and it pays for the entire, obviously amenities and being able to Utilize the amenities and the utilities. The other thing that I love is that my electric, my water is a flat fee. So if my guests go take four 30 minute showers every day, my water bill is not going up. If they crank up the AC and have it on 60 degrees in the middle of July, my utility bill is not going up. So I actually love the approach. But I did have sticker shock when I first started looking and didn’t realize this. I was thinking this same exact thing, Avery, like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. And as it turns out, it’s actually pretty beneficial from my perspective.

Avery Carle [00:14:05]:
Yeah, I agree with that. Most times condo fees are going to cover a lot of the things, the expenses you’d have to be paying monthly anyway. So take a look at that. Like again, I don’t own in this market, but I do own a condo that has a $500 a month HOA and really the only thing that it doesn’t cover that I have to pay on top is electric. But I’ve got three pools like right within walking distance. I do own a single family in this market with a private pool, so I know what it would cost to maintain that pool without. And it, it’s actually, you know, really, really worth it. It doesn’t, it’s not something that I look at as a burden of an expense.

Avery Carle [00:14:42]:
It’s like nice to have because a lot of times, and again, you might run across something where a condo fee is 500 bucks a month and it doesn’t cover anything that’s, you know, maybe move on from that deal. But in most cases you need to look a little bit closer and see because they will cover most of those monthly expenses. So definitely something to keep in mind. And the other big fear that I see investors have with condos is condo assessment. So people who don’t know what an assessment is every few years when a condo building needs some sort of capex or maintenance, like maybe we need to paint the outside, maybe it’s time for a new roof. Go get the price for that and assess all of the condo owners a share of the price of that that they have to pay. It happens every few years. So Stacy, I think you’ll agree with me here and maybe you have something to add that I don’t really, that doesn’t scare me either because I also own a lot of single families and I know that I’m having to do maintenance monthly, annually on all of these things.

Avery Carle [00:15:39]:
When a roof comes up, I got to do it right then. And you’re doing all These, all these small payments every, you know, every so often of Capex, whereas when it comes to a condo assessment, it’s the same thing, but instead of doing it just, it just here and there all, you know, for over the course of a year, you’re not doing it at all, and then all at once, you’re just paying it. So when you think about it like that, you are paying for Capex. Whether or not, you know, whether you’ve got a single family with no assessments or a condo that might have an assessment every five years, you’re paying for it either way. With condos, it’s just all at once, and single families, it’s overtime. What do you guys think?

Stacy St. John [00:16:15]:
I totally agree, and quite candidly, I would be concerned if there weren’t assessments in a condo building, because unfortunately, I’ve heard of horror stories right there in the Myrtle beach market where the HOAs aren’t taking good care of the structure of buildings. And it can be extremely problematic because, you know, if those assessments are not incorporated on a regular basis to keep the building up, you can run into situations where, you know, there are extreme cases of challenges with the integrity of the building, as an example, and your property values can tank. So I actually really don’t mind assessments because I appreciate that the building is actually being well cared for, and I have that, that peace of mind as an owner. Bradley, I was going to say, what are your thoughts on that?

Bradley Klein [00:17:17]:
Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, as you said, there’s a lot of these smaller condo buildings, two or three stories, where they’re basically still built condos and they’re managed by the owners and they don’t catch these things. And as you said, there have been some structural issues arise to where they just don’t sell. They don’t sell, they don’t rent, and you’re essentially stuck with a property that you can’t do anything with. And I think Avery hit the point the best. Essentially, you, if you buy a single family home, you have to do all this maintenance anyway. Of course, there are some buildings where they might carry three or four assessments, where maybe right now that particular building might not make sense versus another building. But, but I mean, if, if you see a building with an assessment, I don’t think you should be scared because ultimately, whether you own in a, in a building that has one or doesn’t have one, it’ll only be a matter of time before it does.

Bradley Klein [00:18:09]:
But as I say, it is, it’s protecting you as a, as an owner.

Stacy St. John [00:18:13]:
Yeah. And I always you know, share with my clients on the property management side when they are looking at different buildings. You know, I always say look at previous assessments, like ask the question, what have the assessments been? How often should we be expecting an assessment? I would also go so far to ask for, if you’re serious about creating an offer on a property, you know, make that offer contingent on review of the board meeting minutes because you can get a lot of insight as to how proactive that HOA and board is in maintaining the property. And again, I’ve, I’m fully aware of one of my clients who didn’t take that approach and she’s paying for it dearly because she happened to buy in a building that has had some tremendous problems and you know, problems that could have been avoided quite, quite honestly. So I would dig into the, the way that that condo building is being managed by their, their board and HOA because that can help you again, make a more strategic decision on which, which property is right for you.

Avery Carle [00:19:31]:
Yeah, that’s a really, really good point because even if like an assessment has not been levied yet, if you can go through the meeting minutes, you can see if it’s been mentioned and then you know, to say, oh, you know what, we want to request that the seller pays this. And that’s, that’s very important too. All right, so we talked about single families condos, so let’s talk about size. So I am of the mindset that there’s not ever a specific right or wrong size to buy, but there are differences in occupancy rates and there are differences in, in how many of that size property are out there in the rental market. So what size, Stacy, do you prefer to buy and why?

Stacy St. John [00:20:16]:
Well, I actually own everything from a studio to a one bedroom to a two bedroom to a three bedroom. I manage properties up to five bedrooms. And so there’s no right or wrong answer. I think it, number one depends on of course, your budget, your target market, who you want to be hosting and how stable you want your cash flow to be throughout the year. And what I mean by that is typically what I’m seeing with the properties I manage for the smaller units, the studios and the one bedrooms, those tend to rent really well year round, even in the, the off season. You know, typically from November to February time frame, we welcome snowbirds who come in, you know, from the Northeast or Canada and are staying in those smaller size properties. Of course, the smaller studios and one bedrooms, even the two bedrooms have quite a different purchase price. And so that is also Something to factor in.

Stacy St. John [00:21:27]:
Now, of course, your larger properties, the three, four, five bedroom, are going to be in tremendous demand during the summer season when families are coming to vacation. But my own experience has been that the larger properties tend to have a much greater difference in occupancy from the busy season during the summertime to they have a definitely a starker difference in shoulder seasons. They’re not as well occupied. And then of course, not many snowbirds are going to be, you know, staying in a five bedroom house in November. A couple is probably going to again rent those smaller size units. So it really depends on your investing goals and what you’re looking to do and how again predictable you want that cash flow to be throughout the year. From my opinion, yeah, I’ve seen the.

Avery Carle [00:22:26]:
Same thing as well across mine. So it’s entirely possible that on, you know, a larger property like a 5, 6, 7 bedroom, you will make more money and have a higher return on investment across, you know, the year. But it is going to have a lower occupancy rate. So it depends on what your goals are as an investor. If you’re new and you just really to be able to sleep well at night, need to be able to see asses in those seats all year, go with a couple smaller ones. You can always trade those up later even if you’re buying multiple because the smaller ones do have, and this is across all markets, have a higher occupancy rate now, they’re not going to make as much money. You probably will not have percentage wise a higher return on investment on those. But you’re going to do your cash on cash return wise, income wise, you’re going to do what you need it to do.

Avery Carle [00:23:15]:
But they are going to be rented more and you do have the opportunity to try and get some snowbirds. I’m not saying you’re going to, I’m also not saying that it’s going to be worth your while because typically snowbirds want cheap and sometimes, you know, if you’ve got, say you got January, February open and they want to rent it for 1500 bucks a month and you can make 1500 on like three off season bookings that you might get, sometimes it’s not worth it. So I’ve had clients before where they had to rent it for so low in order to get a snowbird in there that it just wasn’t necessarily worth doing. So keep that in mind. Snowbird. I see especially new people when they get to the off season. They’re like, oh my God, I got to get A snowbird. But snowbirds are not paying those midterm rentals.

Avery Carle [00:23:59]:
So if you guys watch like Jesse Vasquez and, and Rachel Gainsborough, those guys are pros at midterm rentals. I would not call snowbirds that because typically those types of midterm rentals are paying a lot and a lot extra more than what the typical rent would be where snowbirds are looking for a great deal. So sometimes it might not be worth it. So I just want to set the expectation that you’re not going to come in and use a lot of those midterm rental strategies to get snowbirds because it is a different demographic.

Stacy St. John [00:24:29]:
Yeah, that’s a really good call out. I also think when you are considering the size of property you also need to look at the time of year that you’re buying and your cash reserves. Because if you are buying as an example in September and you’re buying a five bedroom property, chances are your peak occupancy or you know, your dipping point where you’re actually getting into the black instead of the red is going to be in the late spring, early summer. Right. So you need to look at your cash reserves and, and understand if you have, you know, enough carrying costs in the bank to be able to pay for that property until then. So I also think that should be a consideration when you’re buying a property and making sure that again your investing goals are, are staying forefront and just making sure that you’re well prepared for what’s to come. It’s a much different story when you’re buying in February because your, your path is much shorter to that peak season.

Avery Carle [00:25:37]:
Yeah, I totally agree with that. In any market typically if you start looking right around Christmas when nobody’s paying attention because everybody’s worried about spending money on Christmas and you close in January, your first mortgage payment is not going to be due until March 1st. So you have the shortest amount of carry cost time until you hit the high season really in any market unless you’re doing like a, like a western ski market, those are typically opposite or south Florida. But in most like southeastern markets, March is the beginning of the high season. So buying in January can be a really good time because you don’t have as long of a run up until you start actually getting money coming in the door and not just out the door.

Stacy St. John [00:26:17]:
Yeah.

Bradley Klein [00:26:17]:
It gives you time to do any necessary upgrades or updates that may be needed to without impacting your cash flow too much. Also for sure.

Avery Carle [00:26:26]:
100 so you mentioned upgrades. Bradley. Let’s talk about this so is this an area where you see a lot of like grandma condos that are going to need a refresh?

Bradley Klein [00:26:37]:
We do, because a lot of them, they’ll just have a bulk upfit every 15 years or something. A lot of the buildings now they’re actually going through bulk upfits, which by the way, you don’t have to, you don’t have to do. It does generally work out to be a lot more expensive to do the bulk up fit and then you just look the same as everybody else. I always, and I do have my list of preferred contractors, but I always recommend people to get the work done independently, have something unique that stands out because of course there are a lot of condos that just look the same. From Stacey’s point, the one bedrooms do do very well all year round. And what a lot of people do, for example, is they’ll put like a firepl in the unit, like an electric one. And it, it looks really nice on the listing too to kind of have those ocean views but have like a nice electric fireplace going in the background. And it’s, it’s a very inexpensive cost to do it.

Bradley Klein [00:27:33]:
But you look at some of the revenue of some of these units that have these unique features and they far outperform your kind of standard units per se. Yeah, there are a lot of units that do have that grandma look, but I think honestly that’s a, I think that’s an advantage for you to, to stand out.

Stacy St. John [00:27:54]:
That was one of my favorite things about Myrtle Beach. So I, as an investor, I love to buy ugly, fix it up and force appreciation. And Myrtle beach had a plethora of opportunities to do that. And so, you know, for the clients that I work with, that’s actually a service that I provide. I will help manage a rehab and furnish and fit out a property so that we are able to create standout listings. I actually brought a client on and they had done some initial refreshes to the property. However, it looked very, very similar to the majority of the other units in that building. And I was able to share some data with her to show her that if we invested in making this a standout property, she could be earning more.

Stacy St. John [00:28:51]:
And we’ve seen that come to life. You know, by and large, the condos that are unique and upgraded and modernized it within my portfolio earn about 30% more than just a nice condo. Again, I’m not even going to call it a grandma condo, but just a nice condo that looks like everything else. So something to consider.

Avery Carle [00:29:17]:
Bradley, what is a Bulk upfit.

Bradley Klein [00:29:19]:
So essentially it’s where the, the HOA will, they’ll go in and remodel the units. They’ll offer a, either a fixed cost, which will usually be discounted, or they’ll break it down as an assessment, if you will, and they will go in and rehab the units that are dated. As I say, you don’t have to, you don’t have to do it, you don’t have to agree to it. For example, there’s just been one in one of the popular buildings here and for a one bedroom unit, they’re charging $42,000 for a 500 square foot unit. Whereas clients that have it done by themselves, by a contractor, they’ll pay half price for a high end upfit or let’s say 15,000, 16,000 if they want to do the floors, countertops, paint and just kind of freshen up the unit but still get it to, to where it still stands out versus most of the other units. So to me it just doesn’t make sense. Of course you, you can request if there is an assessment on one of these units that the seller pay it, which was a recent upgrade on our contract. But in most cases you’re still going to look the same as everybody else.

Stacy St. John [00:30:40]:
It’s so true. And sometimes with those bulk upfits, what I have seen is the condo buildings will try to loop in utilization of their on site management programs and give people a discount on those bulk upfits. So that’s also a question to be asking if you are buying into a building that offers on site management and has had one of those bulk upfits, you want to make sure you really understand what you’re buying.

Avery Carle [00:31:16]:
Yeah, to me, I mean I’m an experienced investor so I can see how maybe this might be attractive to someone who’s never done a rehab before. But I think you could do a better job, a cooler job, a more unique job for less money by not doing that.

Stacy St. John [00:31:31]:
Totally agree.

Avery Carle [00:31:32]:
Interesting. So I’ve never heard of that like down here, around us and like Panama City and Destin. I’ve, I, I’ve never heard of that. But yeah, do it yourself. I’m all about doing it yourself. You can, you don’t want to. Look, the thing about condos is you’re, the thing about everything is all properties, your photos are what sells the property. You people are not going to click on like literally all.

Avery Carle [00:31:54]:
I’m very triggered by this because I, I scream about photos all day long and 90% of the time when people say hey Avery, can you look at my listing and see why it’s not booking? And I’m like, you took photos with your iPhone and I can tell you right off, I’m not even a photographer. Get real photos. So anyway, photos are so important and part of that is uniqueness. And if it looks, you know, if it’s the same white box in every single photo of every single condo in the building, you know, then that’s, you know, you don’t want to be that. And also kind of in contrast to what I just said, a lot of times you’re not. People will go, oh, I don’t want to buy a condo because there’s a thousand of them in the same building. And a lot of times you’re, it’s not going to show you, hey, guys, in this building there are 1,000 condos for rent at the exact same time. It’s the way the algorithm works isn’t like that.

Avery Carle [00:32:44]:
You’ll, you’ll see a few of them based on reviews, clicks, because people do or don’t have good photos. All of these, there’s all these things that contribute to you getting on the first page. So not, it’s not organized by condo building, it’s organized by, you know, the level of management. So keep that in mind. Your guests are really rarely going to be presented with a thousand units in the same building to choose from.

Stacy St. John [00:33:07]:
Yeah, I was also just going to add something about the photos because I see people making this mistake a lot where they’re like, oh, I’m still going to make a few last tweaks to my property. So I’m going to wait to get professional photos done. I’m just going to slap up these iPhone pics for now. My friends pay for professional photos twice. Get pictures done right now so that you have your best foot going forward in being able to secure bookings. I guarantee you you will be able to have more success that way. If you think about photos, it’s a couple hundred bucks. You could be losing out on thousands of dollars in bookings by not having professional photos.

Avery Carle [00:33:54]:
100% my opinion, I, I totally, totally agree. And so many people are like, but my iPhone has a such and such megapixel camera. But you are not a such and such megapixel photographer.

Stacy St. John [00:34:07]:
And I also think it’s really important to get the right photographer in there. Unfortunately, again, a lot of people rely on real estate photographers to be taking pictures of their short term rentals and it is difficult to find lifestyle photographers. I know that I personal have utilized real estate photographers in the past. And the way that I’m able to, I’ll say band aid, that situation is I am actually at the photo shoot, directing it, telling them what pictures and what views. And I want this angle. Now. That’s probably not feasible for a lot of people. And so if that isn’t feasible for you, I would recommend finding a good lifestyle photographer to help capture those magical moments inside your property that are going to invoke emotion from people when they’re looking through Airbnb or vrbo and you want people going, wow, that’s, that’s an amazing view.

Stacy St. John [00:35:09]:
Or look at that. I want to check that out. So find a lifestyle photographer.

Avery Carle [00:35:13]:
Agree with that. Last thing I want to talk about is proximity to the beach. So my general opinion, you guys correct me, is if it’s a condo, you want to be beachfront. If it’s a single family, you just need to be walkable to the beach. But don’t take the advice of gurus etc who invest in metro markets and say, oh, go 30 minutes away to like a tertiary market where it’s cheaper and then you’ll, you’ll be fine. That’s not how it works in vacation markets. So I’ll let you guys kind of take it away from there.

Stacy St. John [00:35:42]:
Bradley, what, what say you?

Bradley Klein [00:35:44]:
Yeah, I mean the nice thing is, is pretty much everything away from the beaches, HOA managed anyway. So it predominantly restricts that in 95% of situations regardless. But even if it wasn’t to be the case, people come to the beach because they want to be at the beach. They want to be able to either walk or at the, at the least take a golf cart ride to the beach. So you want to be within a mile, half a mile really, of the ocean. So obviously you own a condo, you want to be ocean front. There are a few golf course condos that do decent, but still nothing compared to the oceanfront single family homes. Again, you, you definitely want to be within that kind of mile, half mile radius of the ocean for, for the numbers to really make sense.

Avery Carle [00:36:34]:
Yeah.

Bradley Klein [00:36:35]:
To stand out.

Stacy St. John [00:36:36]:
Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you. I would also say if you are looking at a condo building, it’s not enough to just have your condo building be oceanfront. I have so many examples of situations where our ocean front condos are performing much better than an ocean view condo. So if you have the choice and you are looking to be along the ocean, I would absolutely recommend oceanfront. If it’s within your budget.

Bradley Klein [00:37:09]:
Yeah, I think you could probably break that down even further and go to ocean view oceanfront units as well. As opposed to the kind of city view or side view.

Stacy St. John [00:37:18]:
That’s exactly, exactly what I’m talking about.

Bradley Klein [00:37:21]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Avery Carle [00:37:22]:
All right, so I think that was my last question and we’ll move on to the next episode. So, guys, if you are ready to buy with us at the short term shop and Bradley or one of our other agents in Myrtle beach, you can email us at agents at the short term shop.com and we will get you hooked up. You can also join our Facebook group, same title as my book right behind me called short term rental long term wealth. Stacy, if they want to enlist your potentially enlist your property management services. How do they do that? Where they find.

Stacy St. John [00:37:49]:
Yeah, best place to find us is either on our website at cozy getaways and that’s k o z y getaways.com or you can also check out our portfolio@stayin myrtlebeach.com all right, thank you guys.

Avery Carle [00:38:03]:
So much and we’ll catch you on the next episode. Sam.