Avery Carl [00:00:00]:
Foreign Good afternoon short term shoppers. You are now in the Short Term show special episode series on the western North Carolina mountains. So this is everywhere from Asheville all the way down to Bryson City, basically that entire southwestern corner of the state. We’re going to be doing a deep dive, 10 episodes worth of content on investing in this part of North Carolina. You now we do have some supplemental materials for you over on our website. Things like purchase prices of investment properties in this market as well as the Air DNA income data. Thank you friends over at Air DNA. So if you guys want to know what all of these properties cost, you know the different purchase prices, you can see that on the Shorttermshop.com as well as the income data.

Avery Carl [00:00:48]:
You can find that there too. If you guys want to buy an investment property in western North Carolina with a short term shop agent, email us at agents at the short term and we will get you hooked up. Or if you just have more questions, you want to come hang out with us some more. We’ve got a great Facebook group with a wonderful community of investors over at Short Term Rental, Long Term wealth, same title as my book. And if you guys want to chat with us live anytime, we’ve got a call every Thursday and you can join that@strquestions.com we look forward to seeing you over there. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode in the short term show special episode series on the market of the we’re calling it the North Carolina side of the Smokey. So basically everything from that Asheville area all the way to the southwestern point of North Carolina, like Bryson City area, so the western North Carolina mountains. And today we’re going to talk about why this is a good market.

Avery Carl [00:01:51]:
Why would you want to buy there? Why do tourists want to go there? We’re going to cover all of that stuff. Have a really cool panel today to help me go over that. Julie, do you want to introduce yourself first?

Julie McCoy [00:02:01]:
Yeah. Hey Everybody, I’m Julie McCoy. I’m an agent with the Short Term Shop. I am based in the Tennessee side of the Smokies, but I’ve been visiting the North Carolina Smokies since I was a child. So I lived there for a period of time as well. So I’ve got some familiarity with the area. Looking forward to contributing.

Avery Carl [00:02:20]:
Thanks, Julie. And next we have our agent in that market, Jay Lawrence. How’s it going Jay? Want to introduce yourself?

Jay Lawrence [00:02:27]:
Hey guys, my name is Jay Lawrence. I am the agent over here in the awesome western North Carolina region. I am here to help you crush a Deal. I am the resident Viking here and look forward to working with you.

Avery Carl [00:02:41]:
All right, and last we have Caitlin Glenn. Caitlin, you want to introduce yourself really quick?

Caitlin Glenn [00:02:46]:
Hey, I’m Caitlin. I am an agent on the Tennessee side of the Smoke Cookies sold in the North Carolina side for a little bit there, but since we have Jay now, it’s handed over to him. Great area, and I’m glad to be here.

Avery Carl [00:02:58]:
Thanks, Caitlin. All right, so first things first. Why do tourists come to this market? So this is obviously, as all most short term shop markets are. This is an area that’s very tourism dependent, not a big metro area, unless you count Asheville. But, you know, the regulations are a little unfavorable inside the city limits, which we’ll get to later. But why the tour. Tourists come to this market.

Jay Lawrence [00:03:23]:
Go ahead.

Julie McCoy [00:03:24]:
Oh, I was just. Since my view is mostly as a tourist and someone who’s been going there for, oh, wow, 30 years now, you know, for me, and my experience has always been just the beauty of it, the peacefulness of it. It’s a great place to just kind of get away and enjoy nature. There’s many, many things to do or not do. My favorite thing is to sit in the window seat of our cabin and take in the view and read a good book. So. But it’s great for a peaceful getaway, and I think a lot of people are drawn to that.

Jay Lawrence [00:03:58]:
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it’s. It’s apples and oranges on this side. It’s a different bag of cats in western North Carolina. And like Julie said, people come here for that peace and quiet. You know, up towards Bryson City and the Nantal Outdoor center, you know, that’s kind of your hub up here for just everything outdoors. I mean, you know, they’ve got the whitewater rafting, if that’s what you want to do, and tubing and fishing, biking, hiking, all that stuff. So, you know, it’s just a awesome, outdoorsy experience in western North Carolina.

Jay Lawrence [00:04:30]:
I mean, that’s not the only reason why people come here, but that’s a big reason why people do come here.

Avery Carl [00:04:34]:
All right. So peaceful. You’re staying in a cabin, you’re doing some hiking and just kind of hanging out, whereas the Smokies is on the Tennessee side. Right over the border is more like little kid Vegas with tons and tons of attractions everywhere, all up and down the strip, tons of traffic. So this is more of the mountain experience than. Not that this Tennessee side is not a mountain experience, but just got a lot of. A lot of extra a Lot of crowds.

Jay Lawrence [00:05:01]:
We got Popcorn Sutton here.

Avery Carl [00:05:03]:
Yes.

Julie McCoy [00:05:04]:
And Popcorn Sutton came over from the Tennessee side, if I understand my clay. So we claim him.

Jay Lawrence [00:05:11]:
Yeah, but, but he ended here, so we got him now.

Julie McCoy [00:05:15]:
Well, and I think, I think an important note is there is some of the, you know, some of the attraction that you see on the Pigeon Forge Gatlinburg side. You’ll see smatterings of it across the North Carolina side. It’s not concentrated in any one area, but there are, you know, we don’t want to imply there’s not things to do or you know, entertaining, you know, attractions for kids and so forth because they do exist. It’s just not going to be like all in one big strip like you see in Pigeon Forge. And there’s also, you know, some small mountain towns that are focused around lakes and cashiers and highlands. They have some pretty lakes and you can see boating in as well. And Asheville, even though city limits of Asheville I believe do not allow short term rentals, still lots of people come to visit Asheville, which is a really cool town. And, and so staying just outside of that you can get the best of both worlds with that mountain getaway.

Julie McCoy [00:06:14]:
But still proximity to, to Asheville.

Jay Lawrence [00:06:17]:
Yeah. And you know, we also have a few ski resorts up here as well. And then between Bryson City and Maggie Valley you have Cherokee. Unfortunately, unless you’re eastern band of Cherokee up here, you cannot own property there. It. Which is sucks because I mean I imagine a short term rental in Cherokee would do absolutely amazing. But they have a giant casino there so we have this huge casin, brings in people year round.

Avery Carl [00:06:42]:
Yeah, I’ve been to that casino a couple times mostly to see shows because they’ll get. It’s such a random place to get shows, it feels like anyway. And I know it’s mostly bands are like touring down from the northeast and you know, need a stopover between there and like getting into Florida. But it’s a very random place to go see like Coins Reich or something. So I’ve been there a couple of times myself. Not a gambler, but I do like, like to go to concerts. So anyway. All right, so you’ve kind of gone over the attractions.

Avery Carl [00:07:15]:
Are there any. Let’s go over the differences between the areas and I know that right outside of Asheville is going to be a very, very different property, different price point, different experience than out further down towards Bryson City. So do you want to kind of talk about the differences of the main areas or, or the main town names that people are going to see that they might be interested in investing in kind of give them a roadmap.

Jay Lawrence [00:07:40]:
Yeah, as you said, Asheville’s kind of not no go for short term rentals, but everything around Asheville and that’s, you know like Black Mountain and Swannanoa and Montreat and Mars Hill. They’re, they’re all around there and they’re not too far from Asheville. So stuff still does really well there because you’re, you know, you’re not that far from Asheville and you know, but that’s going to be your more like your city vibe and everything, your, your arts festivals and all that stuff. And as you move west, you know, to towards like Waynesville and Maggie Valley, you get more country, more mountainy. So we got mountains on one side and we got city on the other side, but we have mountains all around us anyway so. But you know, that’s kind of what you’ll see getting up into. You know, it’s directly down I 40 and 74. So it’s one straight shot from east to west in this and then you end that kind of over in Bryson City.

Jay Lawrence [00:08:38]:
Now I’ve seen, now we do go to Murphy. I have seen, I’ve seen people do well out there, but Murphy’s kind of, you know, out in the middle of nowhere and that’s right on the border of Georgia. But you know, Bryson City for my market is kind of like the end point where I’d say things do really well there.

Julie McCoy [00:08:56]:
So yeah, with Murphy, I mean, I feel like that’s almost an extension of the Blue Ridge Georgia market in a way. It’s seems to have a closer proximity to that than, than maybe some of you know, the more Asheville regional areas. But yeah, and then there’s like the Maggie Valley, Waynesville area which is quite close to Cherokee. So I think a lot of people who will be visiting Cherokee will be stopping over there. Maggie Valley is super like small town, quaint vibe and it’s home to the Cataloochee ski area which, which is on the western side of, excuse me of Maggie Valley. And Waynesville is the somewhat larger town that is adjacent to it. Very pretty. They’ve got a super cute downtown.

Julie McCoy [00:09:46]:
They’ve got some nice golf courses, you know, some, some good like mountain getaway without being too remote, you know, sort of, sort of set up there.

Caitlin Glenn [00:09:56]:
Yeah, Waynesville feels like a little Asheville I think. There’s so many breweries, so many restaurants. It’s very cool. Seems very hip as well for it to be on that mountainside that’s a little more slower, but I feel like there’s a lot of young people there as well. I definitely think it’s going to be built up and be somewhere super cool.

Julie McCoy [00:10:16]:
But yeah, yeah, I love hanging out in, in downtown Waynesville. Yeah, it’s a really neat.

Jay Lawrence [00:10:22]:
I grew up here, so yeah, it’s, you know, kind of partial to Waynesville, but Yeah. And it’s location to the other places is, is, you know, it’s a great place to stay if you want to experience everything around. It’s a good central hub location, you know. And you know, with Maggie Valley also, like if you’re lucky, once in a while you’ll catch Jason Momoa down here at the Wheels Through Time Museum, so.

Julie McCoy [00:10:46]:
So you get celebrity spotting too. I mean, that’s nice.

Jay Lawrence [00:10:48]:
Sometimes I just want to, I want to catch you one time I want to go throw axes and have a beer with Jason Momoa, but.

Avery Carl [00:10:56]:
Well, don’t we all?

Julie McCoy [00:10:57]:
All right. I’m only an hour and a half away, you know, so.

Jay Lawrence [00:11:01]:
I’ll let you know. I’ll let you know. We’ll get him for the day.

Avery Carl [00:11:07]:
Okay. What about Maggie Valley, Julie, what’s that area like?

Julie McCoy [00:11:12]:
Yeah, so pretty. Pretty small is pretty much the main drag there. There is a golf course that’s really pretty and some amazing scenery there. Just. Yeah, some of, some of the scenery that you can get in. Maggie is second to none in my opinion. And there’s a lot of. There’s just a lot of really beautiful nature and it’s lightly populated, easy access to Waynesville to Asheville, but still keeps that really small town feel.

Julie McCoy [00:11:43]:
There’s, you know, there’s a handful of good restaurants there and the Wheels Through Time Museum that Jay was just talking about the ski area like I mentioned. But yeah, that’s. It’s pretty low key and gets, it’s an amazing amount of traffic. You’re right, they do get car shows. Yeah, I think there’s probably some biker shows too.

Jay Lawrence [00:12:08]:
All the time. There’s always biker rallies there because they come to the Maggie Valley and then they cruise the parkway there. The parkway is very popular for cruising.

Caitlin Glenn [00:12:17]:
One time I went there during a razor convention. So I was like, gosh, there are so many razors in town and finally put it together. I was like, oh, duh, it is a convention. Not everybody drives one. But I definitely almost rented one that weekend.

Julie McCoy [00:12:31]:
Yeah, don’t run into one.

Avery Carl [00:12:35]:
All right, sorry, I was stuck on mute. I was talking and nothing was coming out. All right, so now we’ve kind of like got a general idea of the area, why people come there, what are the price points? Like, I know we a lot of our clients on the smoky side and guys, we’re not going to compare everything to the Smokies in all of the episodes in all the other markets. But since the North Carolina markets are just right over the border, it’s hard to not compare them. But for the sake of this example, I think it’s important a lot of people will get started on the Tennessee side and find it to be too expensive and then they’ll hop over to the North Carolina side because a lot of the properties are more affordable in most cases. Not always. There are definitely expensive properties in North Carolina, but I do think that the price point in this part of North Carolina is a little more favorable than in the Smokies. So if anybody wants to comment on price point, please do.

Jay Lawrence [00:13:30]:
Yeah, I’ll go ahead and start. You know, you can start finding some really good deals up here for three bedroom, two, three bedrooms up here, starting at like 350. And obviously the higher the price point on the house, the quality is going to be a little bit better. And you know, we do have lots of opportunities and properties available if you want to do something like a birth for, you know, under 300,000. So. But you know, I’d say typically around 400,000 gets, you know, starts you with that three to four bedroom place. I just sold one down in Whittier not too long ago. It was a six bedroom.

Jay Lawrence [00:14:04]:
That was a custom built house for 600,000. So I mean, there are definitely some good deals up here. And, you know, that’s what I’m here to find you. So that one was definitely a good deal.

Julie McCoy [00:14:14]:
That’s amazing. Yeah, we haven’t seen prices like that in Smokies for some years. And yeah, every time you talk about it, I’m like, oh, yeah, I need to. I need to look over there, though. My family has a cabin there, so I’m not as motivated, I guess.

Jay Lawrence [00:14:29]:
Let me know when you’re ready, Julie. Let’s do it.

Avery Carl [00:14:32]:
Julie lately has been everything that pops up on the MLS in several different markets. She’s like, oh, I want to buy this. Oh, I want to buy that.

Julie McCoy [00:14:39]:
I want to buy it.

Jay Lawrence [00:14:41]:
I want that.

Julie McCoy [00:14:43]:
Yeah, I can’t. I can’t buy everything, unfortunately. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to. It’s a lot of fun to dream.

Avery Carl [00:14:50]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so let’s talk about regulations in the different areas. We’ve mentioned it up up to now, as we’ve kind of talked about the different areas. But okay, Asheville inside city limits is a no go. Is there anything anywhere else that, that people might need to pay attention to in certain areas, inside city limits of certain areas, things like that?

Jay Lawrence [00:15:14]:
You know, North Carolina as a whole is awesome for short term rentals. Asheville does not allow them in the, in the city limits, but on the outskirts it does. So you can still get a STR in Asheville just on the very outskirts. And they do, if you do find one in Asheville, they do let you grandfather in so long as the house was permitted. Because we did require business licenses before and we did require people to register their property. So if that was still in place, you can, you know, take it over. But if it’s not, you know, you got to petition the city to get a special variance. And at that point you own a house and if they say no, it’s like, well, you’re out of luck.

Jay Lawrence [00:15:57]:
But all in all, we don’t have many regulations. It’s Asheville Woodfin, which is a suburb of Asheville Silva, which jogs over closer to Bryson City, that’s on the other side of Waynesville. And then the Highlands. The Highlands just passed the law too, and it looks like Weaverville did as well. I don’t know much about that yet because I was just made aware of that today. But you can guarantee I will be doing my research on that and you know, using the searches accordingly to that. We do not require a business license up here. The only thing that you need to do is if you are planning on renting your place out outside of like VRBO or Airbnb, you know, you would have to register with the tax office at that point, which we are.

Jay Lawrence [00:16:43]:
Our occupancy tax up here is 4%. So but you know, Airbnb and VRBO will handle that for you. So, you know, we really don’t have many regulations up here and it’s awesome.

Julie McCoy [00:16:54]:
Yeah, I think, I mean, the only things that spring to mind and Jay’s definitely the expert on this, but you know, areas like Highlands and Cashiers, I would definitely pay attention and do research on those because those are some pretty high end mountain towns and I’m sure there are areas that are not going to be SDR friendly, but I don’t know the specifics of that. Yeah, I had heard that Weaverville is recently instituted some restrictions, but I don’t know any details. So yeah, I think again, something to just research, which is always a good idea because they can, you know, regulations can change at any moment. Just because we’re not talking about them right now doesn’t mean they can’t institute some next week. So if you’re looking in one of these areas, you always want to check in with the local jurisdictions and make sure you understand what any requirements are.

Jay Lawrence [00:17:44]:
I think we will, I think we’ll be okay with that. I mean, a lot of you, since we’re at the state level, we welcome short term rentals. A lot of these cities, you know, these smaller cities at least don’t want to mess with regulations because of the whole Schroeder vs. Wilmington thing that happened. And, you know, they’re like, okay, you know, we’re good. We don’t want to get sued.

Avery Carl [00:18:03]:
So what’s the Schroeder vs Wilmington thing?

Jay Lawrence [00:18:06]:
So Wilmington, North Carolina imposed these ridiculous restrictions against short term rentals. And one of them was a lottery system, basically. So if you didn’t win the lottery, you had to deactivate your short term rental. Well, the Schroeders were one of those people that did not win the lottery. And they took it and, you know, took it all the way up and sued the city of Wilmington. And it was found that Wilmington was imposing these restrictions unconstitutionally. So now the, and Joe could probably tell you a little bit better about that. But no, the restrictions are back to normal again, as far as I know.

Jay Lawrence [00:18:42]:
But that’s kind of scared a lot of these local things. And that’s actually coming directly from one of the city planners I talked to in Maggie Valley. He’s like, yeah, it’s just, it’s got people, you know, not wanting to fool with that.

Julie McCoy [00:18:54]:
So, yeah, if I understand correctly, and I’m, again, I’m not super well versed on this, but I believe it’s been argued at the, you know, state supreme court level in North Carolina that found that, you know, that significant restrictions at least can’t be applied to short term rentals. But I don’t know how that impacts things like, you know, investing in the city of Asheville or if that’s something that would need to be litigated further. But generally, yeah, like Jay said, the state position on short term rentals is, is quite friendly.

Jay Lawrence [00:19:27]:
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, technically, if somebody had the means and wanted to, they could. There’s some trouble up for Asheville too, because, you know, those, you’re really not supposed to do it. But, you know, I don’t pretend to know a lot about local politics and, you know, like, that kind of Stuff. But the only other thing up here that’s going to restrict you also from short term rentals are your HOAs. And there are a ton of HOAs up here. Just like absolutely a ton of them. But the thing is they’re not all like, you know how to do HOAs. They’re mostly people that came together that wanted to make sure the road was taken care of and they just form an hoa.

Jay Lawrence [00:20:03]:
And it’s usually just for road maintenance. And you know, probably 80% of the HOAS are for road maintenance. And a lot of the ones that you know, offer more like the country clubs, they’re short term rental friendly. Big short term rental friendly. I know Maggie Valley Country Club area. They’re, they’re like, yeah, go bring in those tourists. So and the, the benefit of those country club ones is, is a lot of them will, with your annual dues and stuff, they will give you, give your amenities to your guests. So your guests will be able to use the country club amenities.

Jay Lawrence [00:20:39]:
So that’s cool.

Avery Carl [00:20:40]:
That is cool. I didn’t know that. So are there a. You said there are a lot of HOAs and do you mean there are a lot of like formal HOAs with a bunch of Karens that are going to like get on to you about things or are these like kind of loose? Like, hey, we, a road agreement. We’ve got, you know, we, we’ve got some things saying we can’t have junk cars out in front of the house. But other than that you’re pretty good to go. Like how structured are most of. Obviously there are going to be housing developments like rental developments that have structured hoas.

Avery Carl [00:21:10]:
But how few and far between are those?

Jay Lawrence [00:21:12]:
Yeah, I’d say about 30% of them. I don’t know my percentage math there. You know, most of them are, are just the road maintenance agreements and they tell you, you know, you can’t put a trailer in this community and that’s it. That’s all. That’s what most of them are. That’s the, the restriction. And sometimes the community will have a, you know, shared well too, which is then they just came together to make an HOA because it makes things easier in the future now and in the future when you sell because it’s established, it’s legal, it’s there, you’ll always pay to have the road fixed. So.

Jay Lawrence [00:21:45]:
But you’re, you know, you’re like Karen hoas, they’re definitely up here, but they’re not as many as these just basic HOAs. And I’ve been Compiling a list of which ones allow short term rentals and which ones don’t. So we don’t waste people’s time when we’re looking. So.

Julie McCoy [00:22:00]:
Yeah, and I think that these small HOAs that are mostly, you know, focused on, you know, road maintenance, maybe, you know, shared well and you know, water supply, things like that, you want those. I mean that’s, that’s a great thing. You don’t want to have to be chasing down your neighbors because the road is rutted out, needs to be repaved. You know, it’s like you want something where, yeah, everyone’s paying X amount into an account where when needs it, like it just gets done. And there’s going to be a lot less drama with that.

Jay Lawrence [00:22:28]:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, they also do snow removal and stuff too. And you know, especially if you’re managing, you know, outside of the state, like not having to track down neighbors is great.

Julie McCoy [00:22:40]:
Yeah, sign me up for one of those.

Avery Carl [00:22:43]:
So if we’re talking about an actual rental development, like a neighborhood of cabins or properties, are those typically more or less A, expensive and B, more or less desirable to tourists than something, you know, out in the woods that’s a little more remote or maybe, you know, out in the woods with a view or something?

Jay Lawrence [00:23:03]:
Yes and no on both. It kind of just depends on the area. I know there’s a cabin area in Maggie Valley, the eagle’s nest community. And you know, they do allow short term rentals but their bylaws will make you use their property manager. That takes 30% a year. And then, you know, you’re going to the cabins up there like, you know, start at a million dollars. So like it just really depends on the area. There’s a lot of unrestricted land up here too that’s very desirable.

Jay Lawrence [00:23:32]:
So the price points on those will be a little higher than other places. But it’s kind of even, you know, it’s not too much of a hike here or there. You know, it’s kind of steady across the board.

Julie McCoy [00:23:44]:
Yeah, no, sorry, I was just gonna say, you know, when we talk about developments that have, you know, cabins in them or you know, properties that can be used for short term rental, doesn’t necessarily mean like, you know, your track homes. It’s not necessarily, you know, really densely built. There are some of those. But like where my family’s cabin is, it isn’t an hoa and it’s one of those more, it’s a more loose hoa. We’ve got, you know, we’ve got a shared well, agreement. We’ve got road maintenance, and that’s pretty much the basics of it. But yeah, I mean, it’s like you can look out the front door and you see the neighbor cabins, but they’re not on top of each other. And it’s a really nice area, you know, that is very desirable.

Julie McCoy [00:24:30]:
So there’s, there’s all kinds of in between. Don’t get the idea that, you know, just by being in an HOA, you know, you’re 10ft away from your neighbors. I think that, you know, by and large, that’s not going to be the case.

Jay Lawrence [00:24:41]:
Yeah, we, we don’t really have much cookie cutter up here. It’s, it’s, you know, because of the mountains and stuff. So, I mean, you could take the same exact house, you know, except one house is on 10 acres and the other house is on, on one acre. And they’re, they could be the exact same house and the price point will be completely different because of acreage up here. So there’s plenty of opportunities for houses with acreage, too.

Julie McCoy [00:25:06]:
Well, if a house comes with acreage, is it typically usable acreage or is it usually just like space that you’re not going to be able something else on your, you know, it’s the mountainside.

Jay Lawrence [00:25:15]:
Yeah, that’s a good question. That’s a good question right there. Because typically, you know, I can sell you land all day long up here, except it’s like 90 degrees up a mountain and it’s just like, well, you know, bringing a bulldozer. We need a. We need to plow some stuff. But it is a little bit harder to find the flat ground, the flat acreage. You know, a lot of people will, if they do buy a big bundle of acreage, they’ll find that one spot that’s perfect on there to put the house and then, you know, less development, whatever that they need.

Avery Carl [00:25:46]:
All right, so while we’re kind of on the subject of developments and things, are most of the properties in this market cabins? Are they condos? Do condos even work in this market? Or are they like, you know, houses, like regular houses?

Jay Lawrence [00:26:00]:
I’m gonna tackle the condo thing first because you really don’t see a whole lot of them unless you’re, you know, Asheville doesn’t have a ton of them. But Asheville does have your condos down there. I know, like June Alaska here has a few condo plexes, but they’re just not very common up here. I imagine a condo, though, in Lake June, Alaska would do really well, but those don’t come up very often. And then there’s only one other one that I know of. So we don’t have a ton of condos here.

Julie McCoy [00:26:27]:
But how about cabins versus houses? I know my experience has been with cabins, but that doesn’t necessarily apply everywhere.

Jay Lawrence [00:26:35]:
Well, it’s kind of a mix up here. We do have a lot of cabins for sure. Like the log cabin look. You know, one thing I do find up here though, I mean if you just, you know, rustic it up inside, that kind of does the same thing. But you know, as far as aesthetics and that mountain immersion feeling and stuff. But we definitely have a mix. And I’d say there’s more non cabins than there is cabins. But when we’re looking, we always find cabins to look at too.

Julie McCoy [00:27:02]:
So would you say it’s important to focus on a cabin versus something that’s more of a traditional house style or does it matter? It’s more about the decorating and the location.

Jay Lawrence [00:27:12]:
Yeah, decorating location. I, you know, I tell people that are just looking for that cabin styles like, yeah, we’ll do the best we can. But here’s some other things that you know. This isn’t a great spot. Look at the, the rental history on this. It was a short term rental. It’s not a cabin, but it’s a good deal. So I encourage people not to just look for those cabins up here.

Jay Lawrence [00:27:35]:
I know, it’s great. They’re awesome. You know, people want to stay in a log cabin, but like I said, if you just kind of rustic it up inside, you know, decorate with antlers and bears, you know, you’ll get that feel, you’ll get that mountain feel and stuff. And you know, if you got a great view of the hot tub, like the logs on the outside of the house are really not going to matter at that point.

Julie McCoy [00:27:59]:
Yeah, most people are spending their time on the inside of the house, not the outside anyway.

Jay Lawrence [00:28:02]:
I think that’s right.

Avery Carl [00:28:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right. So what else? What else, Julie? What other questions am I forgetting to ask? I’m. This is my first recording of any kind back from being on vacation. So my brain is not with it today. I have my notes, but we’re. We’re through them.

Avery Carl [00:28:21]:
So what else do we need to talk about on this one?

Julie McCoy [00:28:23]:
Oh, let’s see.

Avery Carl [00:28:26]:
Are most things going to be well in septic j. Are they going to be. Probably, probably would, right? Not city water, city sewer.

Jay Lawrence [00:28:32]:
Yeah, there are quite a bit that are city water and sewer. It just depends on where you’re at. But like, seriously, a lot of them are unwell and septic and you know, we’ll, I’ll talk more about that and what, you know, we are. We already did the episode with the inspections and stuff. So. Yeah, there, there are a ton of those up here and I really encourage you to get those inspected, especially if the house is like older.

Julie McCoy [00:28:56]:
Yeah, we’re gonna talk about the roads a little bit too. You know, as far as like paved versus gravel, you know, what’s, what’s the norm, what should be avoided.

Jay Lawrence [00:29:06]:
It is a mix. You know, it depends on the neighborhood you’re in or the HOA that’s been established. They might have paved it, but a lot of places up here have gravel roads and those are, that’s where your road maintenance agreements come into. However, the houses with the really good views and stuff like that, they, they tend to be up. If they’re up a gravel road at the top of the mountain, that’s where, that’s where I always go and look at the property first because if I can’t make it up there in my little four cylinder Viking mobile, I’m not gonna recommend that because one of our biggest demographics is people from Florida and they do not have four wheel drives. So it’s not that they wouldn’t do well, it’s just you’d have to be like in the listing. Hey look, you know, you need four wheel drive to get up here. It’s awesome.

Jay Lawrence [00:29:52]:
But you know, you might have to climb a little bit.

Avery Carl [00:29:55]:
Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Julie. Sorry.

Julie McCoy [00:29:58]:
I was just gonna say as someone who’s from Florida and they know a bun Floridians who own in Maggie Valley specifically. Yeah, our, our cabin up there is at the top of the mountain and is up at least one mile of gravel road. And the HOA does maintain it. We get it graded several times a year and overall it’s not too bad. But it is. It’s a single lane gravel road. There is a steep part that can be tricky to get up. But we all, we all manage it.

Julie McCoy [00:30:28]:
We all managed it. So yeah, it’s something that I’ve had a lot of experience with and I can see how there are some folks who would be uncomfortable with.

Caitlin Glenn [00:30:38]:
Adds to the mountain experience.

Jay Lawrence [00:30:40]:
It does. You know, honestly, Julie, your, your, your cabin up there, it’s. It’s not bad. I made it up just fine in my little four cylinder and, and I can tell you there’s much worse.

Julie McCoy [00:30:52]:
Yeah, the UPS guy has a hard time every now and then, but it.

Jay Lawrence [00:30:57]:
They do. But yeah, that’s pretty much it. On roads like I typically won’t recommend a short term rental if it’s, you know, if a. I can’t make it up there. I mean, I can make it up some pretty gnarly places and I might still not recommend it. But you know that that’s a thing up here. Bumps and you know, and you can always tell when a road has a hoa that takes good care of it. So.

Avery Carl [00:31:22]:
Yeah, that is nice to have when. When it happens to snow and because I’ve got a few that are on some really steep roads and they do really, really well. But they just. You have to make sure that the guest understands. Hey, you’re gonna need four wheel drive. Hey, this, this is a scary road. Did I mention this road is scary? Hey, by the way, this road is scary. And typically like we have not had.

Avery Carl [00:31:44]:
Yeah. A hundred times. Because people don’t read disclose it 100 times.

Caitlin Glenn [00:31:48]:
Times.

Avery Carl [00:31:49]:
All right. Anything else that we have. Have not gone over that we need to go over. My brain’s fried like 15 hours of.

Julie McCoy [00:31:59]:
Traveling yesterday and losing an hour because this is day after daylight savings started.

Jay Lawrence [00:32:04]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:32:05]:
And come switching time zones during that.

Jay Lawrence [00:32:09]:
How’d that go for you?

Avery Carl [00:32:11]:
Oh my God. So you know, the time changes at 2am it doesn’t change at midnight. Daylight savings time happens at 2am and I needed to wake up at 3am like that’s what time I needed to set my alarm for to get to the airport. And so I was like, well, wait a minute, if I set it for 3am Is it going to be the new 3am or is it going to be the old 3am or am I going to miss it? So what I did was I set it for 301 and. But it was a mess. Anyway, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Okay, so everything. So you would say most of the properties are going to be kind of that remote cabin kind of out in the woods or like up a mountain.

Avery Carl [00:32:47]:
And guys, by the way, if you want to have a view, you typically have to go up. So views equal most of the time there. With some exceptions, some steep roads. So sorry about that. Yeah. So if you want to view property, you kind of have to understand that. And there are definitely developments, like rental developments that have pools and stuff. And I want to hit on that again really quick.

Avery Carl [00:33:09]:
So I think a lot of people are. Well, different people do different things, but some people are like, oh, I found this cabin that I like, that’s in my price range, but it’s in a cabin development and there’s a lot of really similar cabins. Is that going to be okay? Or will people. Will it never get booked? Because there’s a hundred similar cabins in the development. And what I always tell people is there are different types of people in every single group of people who are booking. So if we’re going somewhere just. Just my family, me and Luke and the kids, we’re probably going to go remote. But if my mom’s coming, she’s going to want to be able to walk down to the pool and read a book in the afternoon.

Avery Carl [00:33:46]:
So she’s going to want to be in a development. And every family has those different people or every group of friends has those different people. So either one will rent just as well in most cases because some people want to be remote. I’ve had people stay in my cabins that I don’t really even consider remote and say, oh, I wish there were more neighbors. It was a little scary. So there’s all kinds of different people out there that don’t want to be remote or that do. So I wouldn’t worry about that too much.

Jay Lawrence [00:34:12]:
Yeah, I don’t. I don’t think that, you know, up here that typically matters for a lot of people. If it’s in a good area and it’s a good deal, I mean, it’s probably going to do really well. So. But touching real quick on those views. So there are three types of views up here. There’s the big up in the air long range views that we’re talking about going up the mountain. But like Maggie Valley, it’s a valley.

Jay Lawrence [00:34:34]:
So if you can get. There’s places and there’s communities in there where you have that lowland view where you can see up at all of the mountains, but you’re still down in the valley. So that’s, you know, it’s just as pretty. And then the other one is a nature view. So if you’re just surrounded completely by nature, kind of up on stilts a little bit, they’re all really good.

Julie McCoy [00:34:53]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:34:54]:
And on that note too, so what I find really attractive about this market is that it’s still really behind the times in terms of most of the properties and the style of management they’re being managed by. So the properties themselves aren’t behind the time. Sorry, I worded that confusingly. The majority of the inventory is being managed by old school property management companies that might not be optimizing technology properly. So it’s kind of like what the Smokies was five or six years ago where a self manager who properly utilizes technology can come in and outperform most of the market for comparable properties. Because there’s just not a lot of self managers who are optimizing out there yet. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. Do you guys want to comment on that?

Jay Lawrence [00:35:43]:
Yeah, actually that is a big trend up here and I’d say probably about 65 to 68% of people that own short term rentals up here do use a property manager. And there’s, there’s, you know, the, the, the choices are just not, not all that great or they’re just not, there’s not plentiful. But there are some local property managers been property manager for years and I’d say about, yeah, 68% of people do use them. So if you’re self managing, you’re already a step higher.

Avery Carl [00:36:12]:
There’s a big truck going right by when I was about to talk. Sorry. Yeah, so I think that that’s gonna, and we’re gonna get into numbers in a different episode so we don’t have to get too much into this right now. But I think that what a lot of people, air, DNA, numbers, etc are going to be difficult to come by because it won’t be measuring really the entire market. It will only be measuring the properties that are measurable, which are the ones that are on Airbnb and vrbo. And a lot of them aren’t there yet. Like a lot of those local property management companies don’t utilize Airbnb and vrbo. So you’re not getting that data of those.

Avery Carl [00:36:48]:
And it probably isn’t great, to be honest. So it’s kind of one of those areas where you don’t have to be an experienced investor, but you have to be okay with not being able to know exactly which any, any area is going to be like that. There’s no way to know exactly what a property is going to do even until you get in there and manage it. Because two people can own the exact same property and everything identical and make different, different money depending on a number of factors. Julia, tell us about the two you own next door to each other that do different numbers that are identical.

Julie McCoy [00:37:19]:
Oh yeah. I built two, you know, two cabins that are literally identical. There’s some decor things that are different. That’s, that’s it. They’re on lots side by side. They’re both at the top of a mountain. They both have views, but one of them has a view that photographs better. Even though when I’m there in person, I Feel like the other property has a better view, it has a longer range view just because of the angle at which it’s set and so forth.

Julie McCoy [00:37:45]:
And yeah, but the. But one of them outperforms the other by about 25%. I mean it is a meaningful amount. It tends to get booked first and you know, booked more often. And so I’m working on ways to, you know, bring them more to parity. But yeah, it’s, it’s one of those things where I’m like, it’s the same manager, it’s the same photographer, it’s this, you know, it’s the same layout, it’s the same everything. But the only thing that I can figure that’s different is the one, you know, the view really pops in the photos the way that it doesn’t in the other. So I’m working to remedy that.

Julie McCoy [00:38:23]:
But, but yeah, so there, there can be differences. Even with something as minor as that.

Caitlin Glenn [00:38:30]:
I feel like the North Carolina properties, well, the newer investors may have an advantage. You know how the Smokies, we have arcades and all these, these crazy playrooms that hasn’t really taken off on the North Carolina side. So if you come in as a new investor, you get that super cool arcade game room and you’re self managing, you’re going to crush it.

Jay Lawrence [00:38:51]:
So a lot of arcades, yeah.

Avery Carl [00:38:55]:
You.

Caitlin Glenn [00:38:55]:
Have to have it. But on the North Carolina side, it’s, it’s not as overwhelming yet.

Julie McCoy [00:39:00]:
So I think that’s a great point. Lots of ways to kind of differentiate yourself by taking what’s working in other markets and trying to implement it there’s. And make your property stand out.

Avery Carl [00:39:10]:
Yeah, one more thing on the, the type and style of cabin. So are a lot of these still like the bear and moose decor or are we seeing a lot of like spruced up? I call it interior designer decor for lack of a more technical term. Are we seeing people that are actually like doing refresh. I don’t want to say a remodel because you’re not necessarily like remodeling things, but maybe, you know, a kitchen update and having updated decor and you know, some cute like modern farmhouse stuff instead of maybe like all the bedding and all that. Has that really hit yet? Or are we still seeing like the grandma cabins?

Jay Lawrence [00:39:44]:
Yeah, I’m starting to see a lot of that. Like, kind of like a modern rustic is what I like to call it. And it’s, it’s got the rustic flavor, but it’s still modern. You know, I’m not, you know, it doesn’t necessarily have like log post beds and stuff, but more, you know, modern style. But yeah, it is. It’s definitely a thing up here.

Julie McCoy [00:40:01]:
Would you see, would you say that there’s opportunity for people to kind of update a grandma cabin into that? Is there lots of opportunity for that or is that mostly happened?

Jay Lawrence [00:40:10]:
No, yeah, absolutely. Definitely. If you find a grandma cabin, there’s a lot of opportunity there to make it the modern grandma cabin. Cabin. Cabin. Can’t speak today.

Avery Carl [00:40:22]:
Gotta bring it out of the grandma era.

Jay Lawrence [00:40:25]:
Bring it out of the grandma or get throw the bears out the window. No, I’m just kidding.

Avery Carl [00:40:32]:
All right, Well, I think that about does it for why the western North Carolina mountains? We’ve got nine more episodes getting into the nuts and bolts of all of the different topics and questions that you guys are going to have about this market. So hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for that. Also, if you want to buy a property with us in this market and want to work with Jay, email us at agents the ShortTermshop.com or if you just have more questions, then join one of our weekly zoom calls. We call them our Office hours@str question.com. thanks, guys.