Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the Short Term Show. The show about short term rentals and long term wealth with real property owners hosting real properties who are crushing it in the vacation and short term rental space.
And here's your host, Avery Carle.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Hey y'.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: All.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of the Short Term Show. As always, I am your host, Avery Carl. And today we are so lucky to have the top agent in Broken Bow, Oklahoma for the past several years, Kathy Craig. How's it going, Kathy?
[00:00:45] Speaker C: Great. Good to see you.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Good to see you too. Kathy also just happens to be with the Short Term Shop. So we are very, very proud of her and how well she has done for her clients out there in Oklahoma.
And Kathy, so what I kind of wanted to talk to you about today is what the market looks like in Broken Boat today because, you know, we in all the markets across the country, we had the big Covid boom and then we had the dip afterwards. But over the last three years, I would say 20, 23, 4 and 5, things have been pretty steady and predictable in terms of the real estate market. Well, the real estate market is never predictable, but it hasn't changed a whole lot, with the exception of about the last six months where rates came down from 7%, they stuck around 6.25 for a while.
Three or four days ago, they went down to 5.99, they went back up to 6.01. So rates are coming down and which in my opinion is going to drive demand up. People who have been waiting on the sidelines for rates to go down are going to start jumping back in. I think that eventually that's going to drive prices up. The general Internet loves to disagree with me and yell at me about that because prices are the biggest crash since 2008 is coming. Whatever. We already did that. We've been there, we've done it. That was the last three years. Here we are.
So I'd love to hear what we're seeing in Broken Bow specific, specifically in terms of like, what's the market doing?
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Well, I completely agree with you. When interest rates go down, prices go up. I mean, that's, that's how it's always been.
So we are right now at some of our lowest prices. We, you know, they hit, we hit a high right after Covid and during COVID and then it steadily kind of come down. We've been pretty stable, but right now we're at some of our lowest prices. So this is kind of the time people are jumping in where a three bedroom, three bath may have been a million Dollars at the high now they're in the 657 hundreds and you can really jump in and really make that thing kind of hum. So we're at really low prices. Our one bedrooms are lower than we were running. One bedroom selling for $700,000 and now where we can be in the mid threes to mid fives, depending on what it is and how much work it needs. But for sure, as soon as rates drop, our prices are going to steadily increase. And that's what we've always kind of seen happen.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: So what I want to hear about is everybody, I mean like everything loves to say oversaturated. Let me get on my computer and call stuff oversaturated in places that I don't even own anything. So what would be, I'd love to hear your opinion on the saturation level because you own some short term rentals as well. So yeah, I would like to hear, you know, what is still working and if saturation is a big factor in this market.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: So for me oversaturated is just, it doesn't make any sense to me because if people are still coming and we're still 80 occupied, 90 occupied most of the, you know, on a weekend you're not over saturated.
So where Broken Bow is concerned, the bigger North Texas has gotten, the bigger we've gotten. So even in January, I'll just speak from my own personal places. My one bedroom is 95% occupancy.
And because people can drive three hours and do something completely different than they have around their home. So you know, I can only speak for my market but I think oversaturated is a ridiculous, ridiculous term because you know, if you have a market and, and Broken Boat specifically is only vacation rentals, that's all we have. I think there are 440 permanent residents in Ho Chi town. So literally it's not a place where you can come and take a house and turn it into a short term, they're all short terms.
So in our particular case, we have hundreds of thousands of acres of land still to build on and Oklahoma is starting to put in better roads. We have a new city manager, he's fixing the roads.
We're moving upwards. Not in any way. Are there too many cabins now? Are there too many cabins that only sleep six people?
Maybe?
Yeah.
Don't just buy something to buy something.
Talk to me. Let's figure out what you want to do, what your goals are and let's get you the right thing.
If you want to stay with the honeymoon market or small Family one bedroom is going to be perfect. But don't buy something that only sleeps six people and expect to do a tiny a ton of money on it. And don't go buy a cabin that's $4 million that sleeps 50 people and expect it to do $400,000 a year. That it might, but that's, you know, that's a lot of risk.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Thank you for listening. We sincerely hope that you find value in this podcast.
We would love it if you would use our team to purchase your next vacation home.
We sell houses in all of the best vacation markets in America and we want to earn your business.
Reach out to us anytime@the shorttermshop.com sts consultation.com.
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[00:06:40] Speaker B: yeah, yeah. And do you see speaking of big properties that sleep a lot of people, do you see a lot of the over amenitization of properties in Broken Bow of people adding all kinds of crazy things that may not be necessary?
[00:06:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there, there has been a trend. Everybody wants to add a sauna if you have a cabin that sleeps over 12.
I'm not sure that that's the thing that's going to do it.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Move the needle.
[00:07:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't think it's going to change if you have a one bedroom cabin.
Yeah, I think that might move the needle.
You know I personally might be guilty of, of having too many games at a cabin or 400 DVDs like smoking the band and ET.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: What are we doing with DVDs can
[00:07:35] Speaker C: you believe is the craziest thing? I put a DVD in one of my cabins and I started getting tons of comments.
They love it, they want to look through them. They oh, I never remember this. I mean it's the craziest thing. It's almost gone back to a I want to touch it and feel it kind of thing.
And so I've had so many comments about people just looking through the videos together with their family and then putting it in. And no commercials?
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Oh yeah, no, you know there's probably. Yeah, there's something to be said for that and it's not something I've, it has never occurred to me to do that.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: But I went on to Walmart and bought every five dollar DVD I could find. I've got Smokey in the Bandit et Cannonball. I've got stuff from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and people especially the big cabin that I have the generational talking about it and oh, I watch this and it's a connection thing and I think people are really starting to look more for that connection part of it. And I'm not saying it's going to work for everybody, but I've done it in three cabins and I've gotten some pretty cool comments.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: That's crazy. And it's interesting the things that you find that people really like.
[00:09:02] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a cheap thing to do and a cheap thing to add and you know, it's just another little thing, another little, you know, another little niche. Right. Because people don't have it. Right. But it's super easy for people to touch and feel and look and see versus hey, come look at my computer or let's scroll through Hulu and.
Or whatever it is that people are doing. So. So it, it's worked.
You know, I'm not saying it's for everybody, but it's worked. But yes, back to your question. Yes, people are over doing it. They don't need to do as much as they're doing.
They need to focus more on for us.
It's really, they need to have the amenities because there's nothing to do in Broken Bow. I was talking to somebody the other day and they said, so what's the draw of the lake? And I said, no.
The river? No.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Well, what is the draw?
[00:09:58] Speaker C: The draw is people are getting away from the city and just hanging out in the cabins. They're beautiful cabins. They have a lot of amenities. They're going to dinner, but there's literally eight places to eat. There's like not a lot.
And there's a petting zoo and there's a bigger like drive through safari zoo. And there's, you know, there's little stuff that's added all the time, but mainly people are just kind of disconnecting and hanging out in the cabins. And they're big groups and it's a diverse, a very diverse group of people that we have. We have from college students to biker groups to, you know, people on the bus going to the casino.
So we do have that and that's great because that means you can appeal to a vast number of people. You don't want to, you want to be, you want to do that. You want to appeal to the groups and all different groups. But yes, people are putting in pickleball courts. Everybody wants pickleball court. Well, I'm not a pickleballer, so I can talk about that.
I'm not running anywhere. So. So. But people love it.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: There's, it's very little running involved in pickleball.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm not Doing it. So. But people love pickleball courts. But there's also a, a place in Broken Bow that has. It's called pickle putt and pour, I think. And they have a pickleball court. So.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah, pickleball and putt, putt and drinks.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Oh, that sounds fun.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: I personally, if I'm going somewhere, would much rather go do something like that as an activity than look at my husband and play against him at home.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I don't want to do that. So, I mean, in my big cabin, I have a nine hole, putt putt. People love it.
So. But I don't have a pickleball court because I don't need one.
So, you know, if you're gonna do pickleball, make sure it's a sports court where it's got a basketball goal or something else and not too specific. But yeah, people are going crazy and, and that's fine.
But there's just so many things people can do and at some point you start to take away the nature part, which is what people are really coming for.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that a lot of this stuff, it does make money, but it, I think that it makes people think that, oh, I could never. When really you can.
[00:12:32] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Buy a property that's, you know, almost ready to go, add a little value to it and make it cute, clean and comfortable and get booked and that you don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think it is kind of gatekeeping industry from people a little bit. I mean, now can you go buy something cheap and junky and make money? No, no, you do, I write. But you also don't have to spend $1 million in amenities to be successful.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: No, you don't.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: The cabins there are so nice compared to other cabin markets. Like, what is an average looking cabin in Broken Bow is like a luxury cabin in the Smokies.
[00:13:11] Speaker C: What?
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Why is that? How did this happen?
[00:13:15] Speaker C: Well, most of our clients are coming from Dallas, North Texas and that's the, that's their requirement, that's what they want. And so that's what they've done. Now it doesn't matter. I mean, we have older cabins, newer cabins in the middle, but there, I mean, some of them are as high end as you can possibly get, but you don't have to have the highest end one to make money.
You know that philosophy of buy the ugliest house on the block. Right. And make it your. The best one that can. That can apply to Broken Bow.
And I've said before Broken Bow has really been focused on people from North Texas. That's kind of who all comes. If you take a group of people in a room and you have 50% from Oklahoma, you and 50% from Texas, everybody from Texas will know about broken bow. 10% of the people from Oklahoma will know. What the strangest thing.
So the Choctaw Nation has started really advertising, you know, for Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana. Because we're not that far from Louisiana. We get a lot of, you know, we're starting to get more people from Louisiana.
Arkansas were really close. Broken Boat is an hour from the.
From Texar Cana. I mean, from Paris, Texas, and I'm full 30 minutes from the Arkansas border. Oh, I mean, it's close. We're situated between, like, the Ozark Mountains. And so, I mean, it's. We can get a lot of people. And when we put a. They put a casino, we. I didn't do it.
They put a casino in two years ago. A big one. A big one for us.
And it's where we're situated. We're kind of between all the big Oklahoma casinos, as Windstar is in Durant, and it's supposedly the largest casino in the world, square footage wise.
And then there's another one. They're all over the place. But where we are, we're right in the middle. So if an act is going to one casino, they could stop at ours and go to another one. I've been saying this ever since it started, and just now they're announcing they're starting to bring bigger people in. Country star Jamie Johnson is coming in March.
And so my prediction is they're going to build a venue.
So that's going to be another thing to draw more people into Broken boat. And there's 100 rooms in the casino. Even if they built two more buildings, still doesn't affect the cabinet business. The cabin business is two different.
Two different groups of people.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I would totally agree with that.
A lot of times casinos have, like, a bunch of nice restaurants in there, too. Like, we've got a.
A Caesars, used to be a Harrah's, right down the road from our.
Our condo in New Orleans. And there's like a Nobu in there. There's all kinds of things.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: Like, we're hoping for that. We have one in ours. So we're hoping. We're hoping.
But I mean, I think, you know, we're getting bigger all the time. There's more restaurants, more stuff. But like I said, people come to hang out in the cabin. So the focus would be, you know, games, things you can do, family activities, nice TVs and nicer beddings. Nicer, you know, give a little bit. Nicer shampoo, give a little.
A little upscaled coffee bar. You know, I have a waffle bar in mind.
So when they book, they get, you know, the mix that goes with water and they have the little accoutrements and stuff that go with it. And, you know, that's not an expensive thing. Just be different.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: We're hiring Realtors.
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[00:17:44] Speaker B: so what is the. The outdoor attractions? They're hiking and stuff. So they're not coming to, to do boating or anything. What are they coming to do?
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Well, they can, I mean, you can rent a boat. The lake is pretty big.
It's pretty, I would say, really clear water.
So people do come to do boating stuff, but it's not the, it's not the focus.
We do have mountain fork river, which runs through everything. It is a crystal clear river. People go down there to kayak, paddle boat, fish, a lot of fly fishermen. There are a ton of hiking trails. People do, do hiking.
You can rent motorcycles and jeeps and ATVs. There's thousands and thousands of acres of ATV trails and then bikes there. You know, people are riding bikes and, and doing that kind of thing. But there's, you know, there's plenty of outdoor stuff, but a lot of it is. And we have wineries and we have distilleries and all those things. So people do that and sit around the fire and hang out and talk and, and do that kind of stuff. So. But there's a ton of outdoor stuff. If you're an outdoorsy person. There's, you know, miles and miles and miles and miles of hiking trails.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah, I, I can see myself coming and doing a little hiking. I'm not doing any ATVs, but.
[00:19:10] Speaker C: No.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Every year I grown up in rural Mississippi. Every single school year, someone in either my school or the other school, there were two schools, either died, had their arm ripped off, maimed themselves in some way by going too fast or doing something stupid on a four wheeler. So I'm not doing ATVs, but I'll, I'll hike. So I can't ride a bicycle. I don't know if you knew this.
I sort of can, like, but not. Not. Well.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: Bike.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Bicycle.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: Oh, bike. Oh, yeah. Can't do it. No.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Yeah, well, no, I grew up on gravel road, so there was ride a bike.
[00:19:49] Speaker C: Oh, no, I can't. I. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm. I'm not doing any of that stuff.
I'm happy to show people where to go to do it, but no, that's not happening.
I'd rather sit. No, that's just not. Not.
I'm not doing it. I'm not. I can barely walk and not trip. So no, it's not happening.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Okay. All right. So guys, you don't have. Okay, we've established you don't have to go crazy. Prices have come down quite a bit. I would like to hear a little bit more about how prices have come down and what you're looking at for the different houses.
[00:20:21] Speaker C: So they really have. I mean, there are some deals to be had, that's for sure.
There is. I sold a cabin that was a. It is a four bedroom cabin, four bed, four bath. Now it's an older cabin.
Back in the day, you know, at the height of everything, they could have easily gotten a million dollars for it. What? I don't think it would have been worth it at the time, but that's what they would have gotten for it. And I sold it for 670.
And they're going to go in, redo a few things, change one of the bedrooms to a bunk room, and that thing will do great.
So clients are coming in and wanting one bedrooms in the four hundreds. That would have been impossible at the height. I mean, impossible.
But now the clients that came in way back then that wanted something high, threes, fours.
Now they're back and, and we're looking and they're finding things that really can do extremely well.
Extremely well.
So. And when I say well, I mean, I. Everybody's going to do something different and. And I can't guarantee what somebody is going to do.
But personally, my one bedroom, which is a.
We consider a one bedroom, a one bedroom, even if it doesn't have a door on the master bedroom or somebody could call that a loft or a studio as it's a one bedroom. Now that's an Oklahoma thing. I mean, they'll call it a two bedroom and have a, you know, a mattress on the floor, in the closet. You got to be careful about that. But my one bedroom this last year grossed $74,000 for one bedroom.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: That's great. How much, how much would A property like that cost to buy today, how much would that have cost back in the day?
[00:22:20] Speaker C: At the height, at the height, it would have been 650, 700. And now you can get one probably for right around 4, 425.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:22:32] Speaker C: It's good. And I mean, mine has a sauna. Mine has a little, a little three hole putt putt, but it's also in the middle of a field. And this is something people don't realize.
I bought the cabin because I got a great deal on it and nobody was doing anything with it because it's literally sitting in the middle of a field. There's one tree.
Now that sounds counterintuitive, right? People want to be in the woods. They want to do this, they want to do that. Okay, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna prove you wrong.
So I went in, I planted like a hundred saplings.
Not all of them lived, but some did.
And so this spring, I'll probably figure out what's going on. But that cabin is, has a five star rating.
It's got 130 reviews. I think I bought it last March.
And nobody cares.
Nobody cares that it's sitting in the middle of a field.
They say we love seeing the sky. We love the location, we love the bed. It's the best blanket I've ever had. Now that blanket is a Pendleton blanket, A soft Pendleton blanket. Right.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: It's a nice blanket.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: It is a nice blanket. But guess what? If you go on to Marshalls or TJ Maxx, you can get it for 30 bucks, not 175 bucks. Oh.
Smarter, not harder is you just have to pay attention and put a little bit of legwork in and you can do really well.
I mean, it, it's the small things, but that cabin just rocks. 90, 93 occupancy in January.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:24:26] Speaker C: January.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: That's crazy.
And it's just people popping up from
[00:24:31] Speaker C: Dallas Fort Worth, Dallas, Arkansas, Louisiana, but mainly Dallas, North Texas. And they're just coming in for the weekend and they're coming in, you know, for whatever. And I, I mean, it does extremely well.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the, the height of pricing or not of pricing, the height of the market pricing, not the pricing per night of short term rentals. I think that that really kind of made people feel like prices got so high that people, people found it inaccessible. And I think it's back to being more, which I find to be really exciting for people who really want to get into the industry.
[00:25:12] Speaker C: So we're, we're really Good on pricing right now.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Love to hear that. So you got some deals out there. And Kathy, we're getting towards the end of the show. Is there anything that I have not asked about Broken Bow that you feel like our listeners would benefit from hearing about?
[00:25:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I just want to talk a little, you know, just really quickly. We are three hours from Tulsa, three hours from Oklahoma City, and three hours from the Dallas, North Dallas area. So we're right in the middle. So there is a vast amount of people to market to and to get to come to Broken Bow. Our infrastructure is.
We're growing and growing and growing with the infrastructure, the roads. All of those things are getting infinitely better than you might see on Facebook or something where people are making comments about stuff like that.
You know, we went through a little growth spurt or we're going through a growth spurt and that's gonna, you know, cause comments.
But we're doing really well. And it's a great place to vacation for a family or a couple. And it's the great thing to know about work and boat is there are the jobs in Broken Bow. You are a cleaner, a handyman. You work on trees, you do dirt work. There is no shortage of people to help you with your cabin. And they all this is their source of income.
They're not people doing it on the weekends or on the side. So it's. It's a great place to have a cabin and have that kind of structure that you need to really operate it on your own.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: Great advice. Love that.
So, guys, if you're interested in maybe talking to Kathy about buying a property in Broken Bow, you can email her at Kathy the Shorttermshop.com@c a T H Y or you can email us at agents the shorttermshop.com and we will get you connected. Thanks, Kathy.
[00:27:07] Speaker C: Thank you. Bye. Bye, Sam.
