[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the Short Term Show. The show about short term rentals and.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Long term wealth with real property owners hosting real properties who are crushing it in the vacation and short term rental space.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: And here's your host, Avery Carle.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: Hey y'. All, welcome back to another episode of the Short Term Show. Very end of the year this year in 2025.
Couple announcements. We are as always hiring agents in a few markets. Smoky Mountains, Poconos.
[00:00:44] Speaker C: Angel Fire and Park City.
I don't think I've left any out there.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: So if you have any interest in being a short term shop agent, you can reach out to us at careers, the shorttermshop.com and we're happy to hop on a call with you. We love getting into new markets, we love hanging out with new short term rental agents. So anyway, enough about that. Let's get on to today's topic. So we have Chuck Kramer. He's been on a number of times in the past. He's on earlier this year, several times. And we're talking about today something that I have found interesting over the past week and that is the potential end of tightening with the Fed. So Chuck, go ahead and introduce yourself for those who are not familiar with you and then we'll get started.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Hey, I'm, I'm Chuck. I'm in with the Short Term Shop and working with Avery and Carl every Carl and Luke for I don't know, seven, eight years, something like that, off and on. I mean helping in, in behind the curtain kind of stuff.
But 35 years in government, work IT tech, I own, I have nine listings right now. I've, I've had more in the past and you know, like a lot of people, the inventory goes up and down so.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: And not this a while.
All right, And I'll coach you over on Short Term Shop Plus.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Yes, very important. If you join Short Term Shop Plus, Chuck is one of our coaches over there. You can schedule one on ones with him and, and you can talk about this stuff all day if you want to.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Yes, but Most sessions are 45 minutes.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Yeah, 45 minutes.
You can't schedule an all day session. I suppose you could anyway, so let's talk about this. The Fed this past week has said they are looking at or beginning quantitative easing. So what does that mean, Chuck? What's quantitative easing?
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Well, the Fed has a lot of tools at its disposal and is responsible for handling a lot of things. And one of those is the amount of reserves that the Fed and the banks with the Fed need to keep. And when you do Tightening, you actually reduce the amount of those reserves. And when you do easing, you increase the amount of those reserves.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: And that generally speaking, those reserves are used to buy.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Mortgage backed securities, Treasuries, fairly safe investments.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Because after all, you know, the government, the Fed is not in the business of being speculative, or at least that's not what it's supposed to do.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: But by doing that, it can expand or contract certain economic portions of the economy.
So, you know, the argument that they've made now is that the reserves have been tight for too long. They're loosening them up. You can't just sit there and hold money in the bank. You actually have to move that into some sort of security.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: So they're buying up Treasuries and as I said, mortgage backed.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Portfolios in particular. So.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Now what that does, I mean, you think about it from a lot of different points of view, that puts more players in the market, more money in the market. It also allows the people who are holding those Treasuries or securities, such as banks or very large corporations, to, to exchange that for liquid liquidity, so then they have more money to reinvest back in the markets.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: And you know, the very simple rule in any economic situation is when you have more, the price goes down and when you have less, the price goes up.
So in this case, we have more.
So we're hoping that a, one of the effects of this will be pushing down the mortgage rates. I mean, there's a lot of different things that affect it, but this is certainly one of the big pieces.
So.
[00:04:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I agree with that and I want to get to the, the rate part in a second. But here's the part that has me very intrigued and that is so part of quantitative easing is that they may have to print some money. Now I don't think that they're gonna print as much as they did in 2020 because that was a once in a lifetime thing. I think it's going to be a much, not necessarily smaller scale, but not all at once, a more even over time printing of money. However, when that happens, inflation happens. So they are kind of choosing between allowing inflation to run a little bit hotter than they want it to, or having the markets seize up.
And when I say markets, I don't mean, I mean the Treasuries, I don't mean the stock market necessarily.
[00:05:38] Speaker C: So what that does is when they print more money, the dollar weakens, which is what President Trump has wanted since he got back in office was a weaker dollar, which we can get into that another time. But when the dollar is weaker, it costs more dollars to buy things. So it makes more sense to own assets rather than having cash sitting in the bank just as a regular person. Not.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Because if you, let's say you have a million dollars and you buy a million dollar property or a million dollars in gold or crypto, I'm not getting into crypto, I don't know anything about it, but what have you, that million dollars will grow as the value of that asset grows, whereas if it's just sitting in the bank in an inflationary period, it will actually be worth less. Because remember, the dollars are weakening. So you don't want to hold cash, you want to hold assets of some kind. So for me that's real estate for you, Chuck? Maybe real estate, maybe some other things, I don't know.
So I'm interested to see what it does to real estate values and prices because so many people are like, I'm waiting for the price crash, I'm waiting for the price crash. But guys, if you look at the data, we've been in the crash since 2022.
Really 2023, 2024 and 2025 have had lower transaction volume and lower transaction count than the last 30, 40 years. So more homes were sold in 2008, which is arguably the worst housing correction of our lifetimes, or at least the recent past, than in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Now for some reason people on the Internet love to yell at me about that and say that I'm wrong and that, that the crash is coming. And maybe it is, but we're in it, at least we're bouncing along the bottom. So I'd love to hear your thoughts about, you know what, in terms of the real estate market, not just interest rates might, may be coming. Guys, we don't have a crystal ball, but we're just kind of speculating here.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Well, real estate is a commodity like anything else, although it's a better performing commodity than most.
The, the other part of this is that as, as the Fed so called Prince money and they do this by simply going into the system and telling each bank you have 10 more reserves.
I mean they, they don't literally crank up printing presses.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Just to make sure that's clear.
By doing that you're also easing the credit markets. Banks have had and financial institutions have had to be very careful about how they invest their reserve dollars to get the maximum, maximum benefit and also be safe at the same time. Now that they have more to spend, it helps loosen up Credit that also theoretically means credit card rates come down. I mean we've been hearing for years that consumer credit card debt is at an all time high at the same time that interest on that consumer credit card debt is at an all time high.
We're hoping that we'll see some easing in that now that banks have more money that they'll loosen up that credit people be able to expand their, you know, their, their borrowing ability and not just on mortgages.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: I don't know if anyone's going out, how many people going out and got mortgages recently, you know, but the, if you go a traditional route, the banks are looking much more carefully, you know, at things like the debt to income ratios than they used to. Now private investors on the other hand, when you go with like a DSCR loan or something like that or even hard money, they haven't changed a whole lot. I mean they've tightened up a little bit. But the, the big banks, the, you know, the bank of America's, the Chases and those guys have really cracked down on that stuff, forcing more people into the private side and higher interest rates.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Even on primary homes.
So with, with this, with the increase in reserves, I'm hoping that and I think a lot of people are hoping and it makes sense that the banks will ease up on that.
Now that's helpful for everybody. If credit card, if credit card interest starts going down, it means two things. People can continue making the same payments, more of it goes towards principal or they have more disposable income than they had before.
We're already seeing, you know, some of the effects on the auto industry since this was announced.
I don't know if anyone's noticed but there have been a lot more commercials for 0% interest on car loans.
And it's not just because it's the end of the year. We didn't see this last year.
No, we certainly didn't see this during the summer when we saw that market crash.
And we know the auto companies buy down these loans a bit. But I mean just seeing those commercials pop up on TV is a very positive thing.
This is go, it should, barring any other interference, you know, in the economy, it should start spreading out into other industries and other places in our lives, including short term rentals.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: Not just the ability to buy a home, but the ability to get a reasonable loan on improving your property.
And of course it, we can't be so, so much into self interest that we only think about ourselves as those host and owners. We have to think about our customers and what's going on in their lives and how it's going to put money in their pocket and it should certainly do that.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: We have live one on one coaching sessions available with our wonderful top notch coaches at Short Term Shop plus. And we would love to help you in your vacation rental journey.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: The mission remains constant to provide amazing homes so that our guests can create awesome memories with their families.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: If you need help to set up your systems and processes, how to communicate with guests, how to improve your systems, how to find and hire housekeepers and all of the above, you are looking for short term shop plus.
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[email protected] and the best part is the price is right, reasonably priced and if you are a Short Term Shop client, please use the code client at checkout for an even better deal. On SDS Plus.com.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: There'S also been a quiet.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: It hasn't been reported very much but the big credit card companies, and I'm referring to Chase, Amex, bank of America, you know, those guys.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Over the last two years they have actually reduced the amount of credit that over 80% of their cardholders, cardholders have had. So they've been reducing their exposure at the same time. See that fits in the reserves.
So that means they're, they were pulling back on the reserves because their reserves are getting tight. Now that the reserves are loosening, they can afford to give, you know, that person they knock from a 10k card to an 8k card, maybe they can move that back up to 9 or 10.
That gives that person more spending power and in the long run also improves their credit score.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Byproduct of all this is credit scores in America have actually dropped.
I forget what the number is. It was, I think it was somewhere around 15% on average.
That's kind of significant.
And of course, you know, the higher up you are in the scale, the more you drop.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: So there's wide ranging implications here for everybody.
I, I've, you know, owning my listing. Well, already being in a mortgage with my listings, I'm focused more on how much money people are going to have to spend. Are they going to be able to travel, you know, what that's going to do to my rates as well as my overall occupancy.
You know, we're, we're, we're not like a retail store that can just change the makeup of what we have inside our stores, you know, or raise one price and drop the other. Because we have on each property, we have one property, you know, and in general our goal is to get as much as we can for one night. You know, reasonably, of course. I mean, we don't want to.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: You know, we don't want to go overboard, but that's our goal. Optimize our revenue.
So that's why we do this.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: Yeah. And. Yeah, I want to talk about that for a minute too. So I read. I think it was on Yahoo.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: News.
[00:14:15] Speaker C: I don't want to miss. Miss Site. It was either on Yahoo. Finance or it was on.
[00:14:23] Speaker C: This other one. Oh, I found a. I just saw something on YouTube. This is not a site that I follow, so I don't know if it's something weird, but Lynn Alden on Kitco news on. On YouTube. So anyway, I just want to cite where I read things before I talk about it.
Okay, so.
[00:14:46] Speaker C: What.
[00:14:48] Speaker C: What I am interested in seeing is. Or not. Not what I'm interested in seeing. Let me back up. I'm ahead of myself. So the. The economy is actually like. All the signs that the Fed uses to make these decisions have been. They've been saying, oh, the economy is good, the economy's good. But that might be a little bit of a false narrative because the majority of the economy is actually not great. You have a lot of things turning negative, a lot of things pointing towards recessions. But the very top, just few percentage points of the large tech companies and the AI quote unquote bubble, when you average all of those together, all of those. Those tech companies are kind of bringing up the average.
And it's. But the majority of, you know, outside of the top, like 5% of both companies and people, everything is kind of pointing towards a recession. So I do think that this is gonna. Gonna be big for most of the country. In addition to the fact that they're now talking about a $2,000 stimulus check to everyone, which back in 2020, we looked at this a minute ago, it was $1200 for adults and then like 600 or 500 per child. So a very similar size stimulus check to back then, which I find to be very interesting. If the economy is doing so great, why does everybody need this? You know?
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Well, boy, it's hard to answer. It's hard to talk about that without getting too political. But, you know, some of that is also to gain more favor and get people to look at tariffs in a more favorable way. My understanding is that stimulus is going to be funded from the tariff money.
You know, so there's a little bit. There's some PR going on here. Not that that hasn't happened in the past. It happens, you know, every two or three months for the last 200 years.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: But yeah, the last time stimulus money hit, we saw people take off for, I guess what we would call discretionary travel, and we saw the TVs fly off the shelves at Walmart's. So.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: I, I, I still remember driving by one and just seeing person after person after person come out the door with a TV in their hands.
And then I couldn't get any for my rentals, so for like a week. But I mean, that'll be helpful to, to people. The bigger question is though, you know, we, we know there's a portion of the population that will always take that kind of money and, and spend it on discretionary items, whatever it may be. But you know, considering where we've been with the economy for the last three years, four years, how many people are just going to turn around and put that towards bills?
And.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: That, that's the real question that I have. Because if they turn around and pay off, you know, put it towards their debt, that's probably a better way to describe it, that money is not really and directly entering the economy.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: I mean, it still has a positive effect because then it's reducing reserves and all that other stuff, but, and down the road it will increase, you know, again, discretionary income. But.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: I, I'm, I gotta say, I'm not all in favor of that until we know more about exactly where we are. It's, it's so hard.
You talked earlier about our current administration wanting to weaken the dollar because it's too strong.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: And I've been following that a bit. And, and you're right, that is, when you, when we go to buy products, I mean, it costs more, but technically on paper it only costs more because we're having to use that dollar to buy imported products.
So another part of this is with the tariffs is to help offset that as well as use that to push manufacturing back to the United States. You know, where the strength of the dollar is. As long as we're using all domestic products and domestic labor in production, it doesn't matter what the dollar is worth outside the United States. All right, well, I don't want to say that, that, that's oversimplifying, but yes, this shouldn't matter for the price of that product.
So.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: You know, because every, it's mined here, it's, it's refined here, it's serviced here, it's manufactured here, and everything's done with a US dollar. So it doesn't matter that the dollar is 10% higher than the pound or the pound or the euro or 10% lower.
[00:19:08] Speaker C: Hadn't thought about that. Yeah, that, that makes sense.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: So those of us that are in international markets, you know, the big international short term markets, that makes a difference. Makes a big difference.
So if the dollar weakens, our international tourism goes up. You know, Orlando in particular. So, so.
[00:19:27] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah, Orlando has a ton of international tourism.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: So let's, let's talk about this for a minute. So we've been in such an uncertain time for several years of what's the Fed going to do? Are the rates going to go up? Are they going to, are mortgage rates going to go above 10%? And I think that was a very real concern.
I would say 20, 23 mostly kind of dissipated a little bit over time. So the last time we, last time mortgage rates were above 10, 10, I mean we're above, sorry, 7% guys. This year was back in May.
So we've stayed in the sixes for almost six months which we have not done since they were on their way up to 8%.
So you know, that's been, I think that that's a really good sign and I feel like this is just my opinion now that the period of uncertainty with, with the quantitative tightening is over. Now that the Fed has said, okay, we are done tightening, we're going to start easing slowly.
I don't, I think it would be.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: It would not be smart to dismiss investor sentiment when this starts happening because, happening. Because I know when I read this I was like, oh thank God, now we can go back to normal investing, people can start buying real estate again. And I'm just one investor. So I do if in my opinion feel like investor sentiment improves when an announcement like.
[00:20:54] Speaker C: Tightening is over is made. So I also wonder, I don't think we're going to go back, I don't think this is going to affect real estate mortgage rates to the point, you know, we're not, we're never going to see 3% again. In my, I actually kind of hope we don't because that means something really bad is going on. But I do think, I think the 10 year yield is going to stay in the high threes, low fours. And I think we're going to see 5 to 6% rates is going to be where we're settling for the foreseeable future. Obviously five would be more preferable. So anyway, even without that happening, just an announcement like this, I feel like propels potential real estate buyers to jump back in and start looking again if they were on the fence. And I think that that can contribute or is going to contribute to prices not coming down too much further because everybody's saying oh I'm going to, I'm waiting for the crash. I mean people have been waiting for the crash since.
[00:21:48] Speaker C: Right after the last one since, since 2008.
And I feel like what this is going to do is keep put us put a floor under how low prices are going to go because in vacation markets now I'm rambling, sorry, in vacation markets we're way worse off in terms of the real estate market than primary home markets. So these are, all of these areas are places that is so buying a house here in 38 Destin the Smokies, any of these places is strictly discretionary. It's not people who need a place to live who need to buy a house. These are want to buyers. So our, I feel like our prices have fallen in these types of markets much further than what you see when you read national averages on news headlines. So anyway, all that to say I don't think to all the, all of the middle aged white men who like to comment on my Instagram and my tick tock about wait for the next 50 drop. Like they didn't even drop 50. Things didn't even drop 50 2008. What are you even talking about? Anyway, I don't think we're going to see that. I think that the end of quantitative tightening is putting a floor under real estate prices. What do you think?
[00:23:00] Speaker B: I agree, I, I, it has and.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: You know the, the.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: We'Re certainly focusing on the real estate side of this, you know, but there's been a lot of discussion about how this, this will actually boost the crypto market and will probably propel the stock market up as well.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: So the only, the only thing that the real estate market has to worry about and I really don't think it has anything to worry about here, but is people choosing where to invest.
You know when you get the, but you know the thing about, well most people look at crypto as a short term investment. By short term I mean, you know, one to two years maybe.
Whereas real estate is a longer, generally a longer term investment stock market. I think most people view that these days as also a short term investment in that same amount of time.
But then people got to have somewhere to put the money they make there, you know, and after, after they're in it, you know, they, they make 10, 20, $100,000, whatever and they start to see this market moving up and down. You're looking for some more safer to go.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: You know, something a little more stable. It's going to be real estate.
We're going to benefit in so many ways.
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[00:24:31] Speaker A: If you like what you're hearing, if you're picking up what I'm putting down, you can join me on a live weekly call to talk about your next short term rental or ask questions about the one you already have. I am live once per week on Zoom.
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[00:24:58] Speaker C: Because we've been, we've been getting our asses kicked in the real estate market for several years now.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no question.
But you know, you know, to be fair though, some of that is also based on how you're measuring it.
You've said this yourself, you know, that you know, some people just have a sellers, they have a price in their head based on what they were used to and they can't seem to come off that.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: You know, and you know, but if.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: I'm going to go out on a limb here, you know, if you've got, if you got a, a house that you've got listed for a million dollars because that's the number that you got in your head that you bought for 700,000, let's say four years ago and you just won't come off that million because it's, it's stuck in your head that that's where it should be. And you're even thinking that, well, it would have been 1.22 years ago.
You know, the reality is you go back and look at it, if you came down to 900, that's still a $200,000 profit on what is not a $700,000 investment.
[00:26:02] Speaker C: Right?
Yeah, I guess I should say that the floor is I don't think we're going to be seeing a lot of people upside down. I think the upside down people have, have moved out. I think they've gotten things sold. But we did see that happen some. But I agree with you. Just because this happen does not mean that prices are going to be what they're not going to be. 20, 21 prices.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
You know, and something else about this, we haven't talked on it much, but I've actually been talking to some of the local banks here about how they're doing with construction loans, you know, and that Sort of thing. And in our market here on the coast, banks haven't been very quick to make construction loans. They're not actually terribly interested in doing that right now.
I'm hoping, you know, not that we need more construction, but that'll, you know, construction loans can also include major renovations. Right.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: But I'm hoping that with this, and I think that's one of the reasons the Fed is doing the, you know, loosening up the reserves is to make these kind of loans available to produce more housing.
Not all of it necessarily short term, but, you know, in the long run it benefits all of us.
So that can help too. You know, we can, we can watch some improvements go on. So.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Yeah, well, something else that I've been, been thinking about too is there's two bills proposed by separate people. I remember one of them was Marjorie Taylor Greene. One of them was somebody else.
[00:27:36] Speaker C: That are working on, working their way through the system that would remove. One would remove capital gains tax on primary homes. Right now if you profit over 500,000, then you have to pay capital gains. One wants to make that cap be on a million dollar profit and one wants to just remove capital gains from, from primary homes altogether.
And I wonder if that might open up some housing inventory. Maybe not a ton because it would really mostly benefit, benefit very affluent people.
However, the, the boomers who are needing to downsize out of what was their big family home, maybe they want to move into a small condo now or maybe, maybe it's nursing home time for the older ones. If, if that would open up some inventory to kind of get the housing market moving again. So I don't think it would be huge. But I think, you know, right now we're looking at a bunch of small things to add together that will help. I don't think there's one big, you know, shot in the arm that's going to really just fix other than just rates going back to 4%.
But that's not.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Well, we're seeing so many that, I mean, I, I think that would be a big bonus too.
But most, again, that's on primary homes, you know, so it, if people can move out of that, it puts more spending money in their pocket, you know, and I mean, it's money that doesn't go to the government. I think that's going to be along the same lines as what we're seeing here in Florida about the push to eliminate property taxes on homesteads.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: I wish it was broader than that, but, you know, I'll take what I can get and we know that Texas has talked about it. I think it's only a matter of time.
Maybe people are sitting back and waiting to see how the experiment goes here in Florida. I'm not sure.
But, but, you know, the concept behind it is sound and, you know, and that is that.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: For, in most cases, you know, you're being taxed on the current value of an investment that you made five, 10 or 15 years ago.
You know, whereas our, our tax situation has traditionally been almost across the board. You're. You're taxed only when you divest the asset, you know, and the money comes into your pocket.
But that's not the way property tax works.
I've, I felt the situation needed to be revamped for a long time, but I didn't expect someone like, you know, DeSantis in Florida to say, let's get rid of it.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: You know, but that'll put a lot more spending money in people's pocket, too. And that, that will be at least a, a local economic boost.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: And, and frankly, it may even promote.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: More migration.
You know, we're already, we're already seeing migration to Florida, you know, tick up quite a bit for various reasons that I, I would think that would increase it, you know, in terms of residences.
So.
[00:30:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think, you know, just a bunch of small little things to help boost the, the real estate market and get some, get some movement going. Anyway, a little bit off topic, but I think that's. Do you have anything, Chuck, in closing, that we haven't talked about in terms of what's going on with the Fed, what's gone on up until now, you know, overall with the economy and what, what we kind of feel like. My, again, we don't have a crystal ball, guys, but, you know, what we're looking at potentially for next year, you.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Know, not a clear one. It boils down to discretionary income. You know, we continue to see travel reports, especially from the airline industry, you know, talk about how travel is up, but I've been watching some of the tax revenue numbers in big places like Orlando and, and New York City, and, and there's other factors, impact in New York City, of course, but.
And I'm not seeing that, not, not in those numbers.
So I kind of, I, I don't know what the real story is.
If airline travel is up, it doesn't seem to be recreational or tourism.
I'd sure like to see some of our international travel pick up and get back to, you know, what it was, I don't know, 10 years or so. Ago.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Strength of the dollar has a lot to do with that.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: I. I know here I'm going to touch on our market here in Florida. Again.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: A lot of Canadian license tags in town.
You know, everyone talked about that, you know, being a big boot, a big bust, you know, because of the current.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Fracture of relations between Canada and U. S. But it doesn't seem to be stopping the people from traveling down here.
[00:32:18] Speaker C: Yeah, because it's cold as heck and people don't want to be cold.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: I know. And. And, you know, frankly, the weather here hasn't been that great either, but it's that much better.
Yeah.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: I haven't been. I haven't been to Orlando recently like you have, you know, to get a chance to check out how many out of state license tags there are. I'm a licensed tag watcher. You know, as I'm driving down the road, I'm. I'm always glancing what. See what kind of tags are around. And, you know, it's. It's amazing even in this off season here, how many out non Florida tags there are on the roads. So I like to see more of that. But.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I, I mean, I feel like I was in Disney World last week and I heard a lot. A lot of other languages being spoken around me basically at all times, which I haven't.
I don't feel like I've noticed that as much or. And there were a lot of Australian accents too. And I was like, man, why is, why is everybody from Australia? So I feel like just based on that, on me noticing, wow, there are a lot of international people here everywhere I went that, you know, maybe we're heading in the right direction in terms of international tourism.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: I hope so. I mean, that's a part of our market. We don't really talk about a lot of, you know, but what was I looking at the other day? It was something in the Smokies that.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Oh, I know. It was an Airbnb report or Airbnb thing that mentioned that international interest in The Smokies is up 5% from last year. Oh, now that's interest. That's not actual. I don't know that that's actual bookings. I think it searches from outside, you know, actual, like, you know, pricing searches.
And I thought that was kind of interesting. And Price Labs had a. A similar kind of stat buried in it somewhere where you can see the origin of the searches to some extent.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: I, I never really thought of the Smokies is that big of an international market myself. But, you know, and I've been in it for 10 years.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: But yeah, I guess the interest is picking up so well love to see it.
[00:34:33] Speaker C: And it seems like all the little bits and pieces are heading in the right direction. But I've said that before and they have not been. So let's knock on wood, cross our fingers, pray that maybe we're coming out the other side of this thing and heading in the right direction. And Chuck, thank you so much as always for coming on listeners, thank you for listening to us. Just have a chat about what in the world we think might be going on with the economy and the Fed and hopefully at least it will get you. If you didn't learn anything, which you probably didn't, it'll hopefully get you thinking critically and taking a look at things and making sure you are ready for whatever is heading our way.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. It's just a reminder all of this is connected. So.
[00:35:17] Speaker C: Yep.
Well, thanks Chuck. And guys, we will catch you on the next episode next week weekend.
