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 A: All.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of the short term show. We are. This is our last episode of 2025 into the year and I'm feeling really good about next year. And I've got Luke Carl on here to do our end of the year wrap up show with me. Before I talk about that, before I introduce him because he will talk until the end of the show with no interruption from me.
A couple things that I want to throw out there, guys. We are hiring a director of operations here at the shop. You need to have managing broker real estate experience. So managing a team of real estates. And also need to know a little something about short term rentals. We're also hiring agents in several markets.
The Smokies, where else? Poconos.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Outer Banks.
So we're. And honestly, if you're in a vacation market and you think you might be a fit for us, even if I didn't just list your market, email us at careers the shorttermshop.com and we will set up an interview, get you some more information.
But without further ado, which I hate that phrase because there's really no other phrase to say. Okay, I'm done talking about dumb stuff. Let's get to the point. I'll introduce my very tall, very handsome husband of almost 15 years and the greatest landlord of all time, Luke Carl.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Wow.
Wow, you've outdone yourself. You know, it's difficult.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: I get 30 minutes to impress my wife in front of the general public. It's different, it's very, it's distressful, you know, but I'm up to the task. Let's do it.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: All right, so I just want to have a candid conversation about how things have gone with short term rentals in the real estate market over. Over 20, 25. So, Luke, give me an overview.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: You know.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: There'S a lot to unpack. So, you know, about one year ago, it's ironic because right now I'm wearing my Detroit marathon sweatshirt, which was one October, and I was in the hotel with.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: 45, 47. And at the time, the vice president in Detroit, they were doing a.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Debate and it was while Trump was on tour and it was crazy. I had no idea, actually, the building where. I'm not here to talk about politics. We're not going to talk about politics. But the building where I had to get my bib for the Detroit Marathon, which was fantastic by the way, was in the same building where Trump was doing his rally, was doing like a rally tour and there happened to be a debate in the town at that same time. And anyway.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Man, we've come some, some which direction in that one year. I don't know what direction that is, but here we are. And now Trump's announced he's going to go on Tour again in 2026. And we have lots of interest rate drops this year.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: So it's been a, it's, you know, it's a bit weird what's going on out there, but I think we're finally at a place where things are getting back to somewhat normal. I think that as a consumer of real estate, I don't really want things to change a whole lot in 2026. I think we're ending 25 at a healthy place. I think interest rates are exactly where we want them to be. We don't really personally, you know, as for the general health of the overall economy, I don't think we want them to go much lower.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: And I think all signs are pointing to.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Boring.
And boring is what we're looking for. We've had too much volatility 23, 24, 25, all over the place. And it's to be expected with what happened in Covid. And I guess my biggest problem there is that everybody just forgets that Covid existed. And.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: We have changed in so many ways over the past four years. Just as, even as people, you know, we go to the kids musical performance for Christmas last night and the, the 5 year olds are jam packed on that stage, the 4 year olds are jam packed on that Stage and 2 and 3 year olds are a third of the stage because Covid was a time where people were making babies, which is what happens when the economy is doing great. Also, we happen to lock everybody in their houses.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: They had nothing else to do, nothing else to do.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Tiger King and the whole thing. So I do think we're going to go back to, I think, I think the next incoming classes. I think we're going to start seeing more babies being made, which is great.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: I'm not trying to say anything.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: We're done.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Anyway, I think 26, we're looking for vanilla. We want boring, we want the interest rates to kind of stay the same. We are going to see a new Fed president.
We're already seeing signs of that happening now at end of 25, where Powell is starting to become maybe Slightly less vocal and we're starting to hear more about the new guy. So that's happened. That's all right. It's going to happen. It's happening.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: And personally I'm hoping for no rate cuts. And, and as far as buying real estate, I think January and February are fantastic opportunity.
Fantastic opportunity. I'm, I'm constantly looking right now.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Nobody'S going to be looking for real estate in 20 in January and February. I think March rolls around, things get busy. They have, they always do. And this year, this, this coming March is going to look a lot more attractive than 2025 March.
So these are all things to keep, keep an eye on. And we haven't even gotten into travel yet, but.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Short Term Shop plus has live and recorded sessions on the following topics.
Creating compelling listings, marketing your STR property, setting up a new listing, managing from a distance, finding and acquiring your first or next STR.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Live revenue management audits with the pros analyzing an STR for gross revenue.
All of this and much, much more is now available at your fingertips with Short Term Shop plus, everything you need to know to have success in the world of vacation homes and STR.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Please join us at stsconsultation.com.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: That'S stsplus.com or stsconsultation.com to learn more.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so I guess the next question is you're somebody who has owned and managed multiple short term rentals for 10 years now. We've been, we've been doing this for 10 years, which makes me feel really old now. I hate to say that because I always make fun of real estate agents who are like, I've been doing this for 20 years when, when we're in a deal. But it's true. So, and why I think that that's particularly important to short term rentals is because so many people jumped in in 2020 and 2021 and position themselves as either a experts or B the opposite, that short term rentals don't work because they happen to be somebody that bought at the height and then the next year was, the next couple years were the absolute low. So they've never experienced what I would call market equilibrium like a normal year, but we have.
So as somebody who has all that experience.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: How would you say the last year went for your short term rentals in 2025? Like how'd your income do? Were people booking more last minute? And you know, also refresh everyone, all of our listeners, what you have in your portfolio and where. So they kind of have a baseline of what we're looking at here?
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Well, there's a lot to unpack there. I'm in the Smokies for short term and I'm in the beat on the beach for short term in the Emerald coast which is where I live. Where, where you. We live together and.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Vacation towns and. Yeah, you know, again there's a ton to unpack there before we get into some nuts and bolts and numbers and percentages and things. But.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: There was a period of time there where you almost start to roll your eyes with folks that are getting into real estate for what I deem to be all the wrong reasons. This is, this is the way I do real estate. And again there's a hundred ways to do real estate.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: And that's one of the beauty, the beautiful things about real estate is that if you are looking to quit your job and become some sort of, you know, self employed person, this industry has all sorts of opportunity for you.
Of course. No, absolutely no.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Exception for hard work. Hard work will always win, especially in this business. Very, very rare for somebody to actually make it in this business. But if you do, if you have what it takes to wake up early and kill yourself, there is just endless opportunity. So anyway, Covid the whole, you know, the boom, if you will of 21, 22, we saw too many people getting in expecting the slot machine. You know, I think that, that, I think that a lot of these folks thought that that's what real estate was, you know, and the cash flow.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Yeah, and the cash flow was not even a thing and really didn't even matter. And like, you know, the fact that we're trying to make sure that these homes are nice to provide great vacations for these folks. I think that people thought that buying the real estate and then selling it two was the gig.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: That's not the gig. It's not the gig. I mean you're looking at a five year hold, maybe even 10. Depends on what it is. If it's a, if it's a dumpy little $100,000 long term rental, you got to hold that thing for 10 years, you know, minimum. In a lot of cases unless you flip it, that's a whole different thing. If we're doing rehabs and things like that.
So I think 26 is one of the good things about it and there will be bad is that we may be at the point where that whole perception is, is, is kind of disappearing. Where we buy a house, we hate the slot machine, we sell it two years later.
It's never been my style. I don't Know what are your thoughts there?
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: When people, haters on the Internet are always like, don't listen to any influencers. Get rich quick, get rich quick schemes. They always call them a scheme. Like let's come up with another word.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Real estate is a get rich slow tool.
And there was a period there in 20 and 21 where you could make a lot of money relatively quickly. We had situations on the sales side where we'd get somebody under contract and in the 30 days it takes to close the loan, that house is worth more money. So if you, if we couldn't close on the exact sales date, I mean on the exact closing date, that seller would say never mind, I'm going to relist it for more money. And they would get it. They would get it. And that was not real life and that was not something that was in any way sustainable. As a matter of fact, it scared me to death back then. I was like, we, this cannot go on for very long without something breaking economically. And nothing broke. The Fed stepped in and, and raised rates and just completely ground the real estate market to a complete halt. But that's not what you asked.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: It's, it's not. You have to be willing to, if you're going to buy a short term rental, give it 10 years of your life. You need at least five years to know if you've even failed or, or been successful. You can't know after one or two years of ownership if you have been successful because year one is kind of a wash because you've got ramp up period you didn't have, you know, maybe depending on where you're starting during the year, you weren't available to be booked when people book the high season. So if you're, if you buy a short term rental down here in like May or even if you buy it in March, you might still catch a few spring break bookings. But a lot of people are booking in January for spring break. A lot of people are booking in February or March for the summer. So you've missed, even though you're available for the high season, you've missed the booking window for the high season. So year one a lot of times is kind of, you cannot expect to, you'll, you'll make usually cash flow your first month depending on when you, when you get it open or your first couple months. But you should not expect to reach your full revenue annual revenue prediction on your first year. It'll get better your second year. But it really, I really do believe it takes five years to know if you've been successful or not. And so many people, once they realized, hey, this is not like, I can't just throw my phone in the Gulf of Mexico and lay on the beach and eat donuts and let this thing print money for me. I actually have to manage it. I actually have to work at it.
Then they don't want it anymore. So I think what a lot of people did, a lot of people got in that didn't need to be, that were not treating it like the business that it is, and they were looking too short term with it instead of long term, and they, a lot of people didn't give it enough time.
So that's kind of my.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: How I feel about that period.
I do feel that over the last two or three years, that we're finally getting into a little bit more of, I don't want to say a normal market. I feel like we're definitely still kind of bouncing along the bottom, Tom. But.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: We'Re able to have some predictability Now. So in 2020, we had no idea if prices were going to be double in 2021 than they were in 2020, and they were. And then in 2021, beginning of 2022, when the Fed started raising rates, we didn't know if houses were going to drop 50%. So there's been all this straight up and straight down curves and volatility that we haven't had since like over 2023, 2024 and 2025, although we've been at the bottom, have at least been consistent.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, it's a lot easier for us on this podcast to sit here and say, I bought a house and made $2 million overnight. That would be, you know, that get a lot of hits, but it's not real life. And we've never, we've never been like that, you know, and, and anyway, I think it's a good thing to be coming back to boring. And I do think you're right. We're going to bounce along the bottom here for a while. For, for, for a while. You know, how long? We have no idea. But I would say not anytime soon.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: I would say in the next two years.
I think that we're, I think we're already kind of on a very, very slow curve up.
But in terms of the real estate market, this is in terms of being a buyer, not in terms of being a listing agent, which we've gotten our, our asses kicked a little bit on the listing side the past few years, but in terms of being a Buyer. This is exactly what you want from an economic environment in terms of being able to get deals. There was a house over here on 30A. You throw a rock and hit it. 10 bedrooms, rooftop deck of across the street from the beach, but it was directly across from a public beach access. So they're never going to build anything in front of you. So you had direct Gulf views. 10 bedrooms.
Somebody bought that for 5 million back in 21. They sold it for 2.9 a few days ago. And that's.
That is the exact environment that you are looking for when you are a real estate investor looking to buy real estate is you want an environment where people are willing to drop the prices. And if you look at, I mean, just take a quick Google. At the real estate market as a whole, it's we're in the bottom. And I've been saying this since 2023 and y' all still yell at me about it. Just Google it and look at the NAR data. Fewer homes were sold in 2023, 2024 and now 2025 than in the last 30 years. Since 1990.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Okay, maybe not 30 years. Since 1995. That is.
How many years is that?
[00:17:05] Speaker A: 30 years.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: 30 years. Okay, like is that 20 years? Is it 30 years?
2000 was like yesterday in my brain.
So in the last 30 years.
So we're in the crash. Every time I post something about real estate stats on, on social media, I get a bunch of dudes. It's always a dude saying, hey now.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Hey, whoa.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Just saying.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: All right.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: I get some guy who's like, just wait until the, waiting for the crash. Just wait until the crash. And it's usually when I've posted something that I bought, like, hey, check out my new short term rental. We've made X amount in the first four months. Then some person.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Will say, because I guess they're mad. Well, just wait till the crash or wait till the first hurricane and then see what happens.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Tell me, tell me you're broke.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: My point is, yes, tell me you're broke without telling me you're broke. Make crash bro comments on Instagram.
All that to say we're in the crash. We have been in it for three years. We have been bouncing along the bottom of the real estate market for three years.
So as a buyer, now's the time in terms of being able to get good deals. The Fed announced they are starting quality quantitative, excuse me, easing this week, which means they are going to do things to open up their balance sheet to make their balance sheet bigger, which Includes printing money, which means the dollar will be weak or weaker, which means inflation is going to go up, which means housing prices are going to go up. They're not coming down, they're not crashing. Now I don't have a crystal ball. Make sure your deals make sense. But this is where you want to be as a real estate investor and.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: We'Re in the bottom, go buy some real estate, make a bunch of low offers, get those deals. And because I don't think, and I'm no economist and I don't have a crystal ball, I don't think we're going to see a whole lot further crashing of prices and especially in vacation market. So if you guys go just Google what the real estate market is doing and if you see an article that says the real estate market is bad in vacation markets, it is five times as bad because we don't have buyers that need to buy because they've had a baby and they need to upsize or they're moving for their job and they need to buy a primary. All of our properties here in these types of markets are discretionary spend properties. So like, hey, I want to have a beach house, I've got some extra money, or hey, I want to rent this out. You know, it's like it's a toy. So we don't have those drivers of people that need to buy. We only have want two buyers. So our markets are much worse than metro markets at the moment. So now the, the flip side of this is because the economy is bad and you can say the economy is not bad. I think there's a small percentage of the economy which is tech and AI driven that's holding up the rest of the data for everybody else that is not doing good.
Travel is down, so the rental history that you're seeing on properties is not going to be as good. So you get low prices, you get low rental history because the economy is not that great right now. Also you always have the factor of is the person managing any good at it? Is the person managing it making more money than I'll ever be able to make. You got to do your analysis there. But that's kind of the flip side of it. You got low prices, but then you got to kind of figure out where we are in the market cycle in terms of rents and how much you can get price per night because that goes up and down too.
So with the economy and economic cycle, so you have to pay attention to that as well. Anyway, I'm, I'm way down a hole here.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: But no, I mean, you can lead a horse to water. You know, it's like, it's like 20, 21, you know, I mean, you could not stop somebody from buying something then when really today looks much more attractive and nobody's buying anything, you know, and.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: There'S only so much you can do, you know, people, people do what other people are going to do and it makes it, it's more comfortable. Nobody wants to be the wayfinder. Like, like Moana.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Oh, we're big Moana fans.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: That's why she has huge hit movies, because she was a wayfinder and you know, she had a good story to tell. And most people are sheep. Unfortunately.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Ladies and gentlemen, Smarter Short Term Rentals is now available.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: The new book from Avery Carle.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Smarter Short Term Rentals. Build a dynamic real estate business and out host the competition.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: If you want to take your short term rental to the next level.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Pick up the new book, Smarter Short Term Rentals.
Wherever books are sold.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: This episode is brought to you by Short Term rental listing Advice.
Join this Facebook group and post your listing. To get advice from other hosts, including myself, on how you can improve your listing listing or just post your property so you can show off, join us at str listing advice.com that's str listing advice.com by the way. I'm shopping. You're making me fired up. I would like to shop. So let's talk about travel because it is directly related here, you know, and numbers overall. Now I will say my pro, my portfolio vacation rentals only is up 6.1% year to date. We have three weeks left in the year over. 24.
Yes, sorry, 24. That being said, it's difficult to, it's difficult to put all these numbers in perspective because there's always a lot of moving parts. You know, like I, I sold one big one and bought two little ones. So then you got to really like sit there and do a ton of numbers and separate this property and that property, which is easy to do with your management software. As a matter of fact I have, you know, I have it set up for 24, 25 you different dashboards you can put. So you can just click a button, find out what you're making and things like that. But travels down for sure and it goes back to exactly what you're talking about. These folks that it's the discretionary money that goes into buying a beach house. But it's if it trickles down to, you know.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Regular blue collar folks, same thing, maybe they're not going to go out and buy the beach house, but they're going to rent the beach house. And their discretionary money is not as big right now either. So rents are, you know, across the board, probably.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: A little bit down. I, I hate to say that because then you get all these again, these doom porn folks that are going to jump all over and say, oh, the ship is sailed or whatever. And to me it just means opportunity. Means opportunity. You know how many people are complaining on Facebook about not getting enough bookings and stuff like that? It's because they're not doing anything. They're not doing anything at all. And don't get me started on these amenity people.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: You know, that was 2025 in a nutshell. Amenities. If I had to narrow it down to the vacation rental space in 2025, it's amenity and I don't get it. It's a noob way of doing things to me. And it doesn't, you know, these are folks that don't have a long term rental.
It's, it's the only way I can explain it. If you've never walked a long term rental that became vacant, somebody moved out, evicted, stopped paying rent, bailed down, whatever the case may be.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: And you're trying to be in real estate, you need to do that. And it's a huge batch of perspective. You know, sometimes I will jump from beach house, beautiful, beautiful, fresh coat of paint, nice countertops, beautiful floors, nice appliances and jump the next day into one of my long term rentals, you know, at a different town, several hours away. And man, it's a perspective shift. But.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: To me it's just a rental property. Right? So like with these amenities, we went overboard, guys. You went overboard. We've been telling you that since day one in my opinion. Went overboard. You probably worked harder than you needed to on stupid crap and not as hard as you should have on the stuff that actually matters.
You know, just because you have a five thousand dollar fire pit doesn't mean your guest is going to be happy. You still have to kiss their rear end and pay attention to them and give them a good price.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah, you still have to host. And the amenities thing, it does work. You will get a higher price per night. However, I think where a lot of people make the biggest mistake that I see with that is you get new investors and they think if, okay, if I buy this $500,000 house and put in 250 in amenities, now I have a $750,000 house and you don't. Because a lot of those types of things do not add value to the house. So if you're not updating the kitchen, updating all the bathrooms, flooring, paint, those, those things increase the value. But unfortunately like putt putt and pickleball and.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Saunas don't increase the value. I wouldn't say don't get a sauna because you know the, that it totally works and you can move that around, but it does a sauna and hot tub, that's actually personal property, it's not real estate. So you have to be really careful when you're doing this about what you're spending the money on.
Because if you go, if, if you spend $300,000 on furniture versus a hundred thousand dollars on furniture, you're still, your house is still worth what the house is worth, not what the furniture is worth. So we, we've had a few listing situations over the past year where people want to list for 500, $600,000 above the next highest property that is for sale, not even the next size that's sold because they have nicer light fixtures, they've got nicer decor. And like guys, people want to deal right now. I mean, I want to deal all the time, but now is not the time to try and sell a turnkey, something crazy for way more, way higher than comps because it's just not going to happen in this market. That's a 20, 21 thing, that's not a today thing. So anyway, I'm not saying that you're not going to make that high price per night, but you have to look at both sides of the coin. If you've never done this before and you think it's going to be a walk in the park, I'm never going to have to deal with anything. I'm going to buy this, I'm going to throw all this money into it. I have this beautiful property to impress my mom friends with and then oh, six months later you're like, this is kind of a lot of work. Sometimes my guests are mean to me. Sometimes, sometimes stuff breaks at inconvenient times for me and then they don't, then they want to sell it because oh shit, it's work. It's not a slot, it's not a slot machine. So just pay good attention to what you're spending your money on when it comes to amenities because especially if you're new, you're going to need to plan again. You, if you're buying a short term rental, you need to plan to dedicate 10 years of your life to that to know exactly what kind of investment that's going to be. Because you cannot just throw 200, 250,000 worth of decor, furniture, amenities into a house and then sell it a year later, two years later in this market when you realize, I don't really want to manage this thing for. And you're going, you're going to lose money, you're going to be in the negative. So 10 years is what you need to be willing to put into a short term rental investment.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Good stuff. And along those same lines.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: I think there's too many noobs that first of all, people get into this, this space, the vacation space, because they like the design aspect and they like the hospitality aspect, which is great, it is fun, it is fun, it's great. But that brain is absolutely the other side of your brain from the price per night brain and the spreadsheet brain. So keep that in mind. And with that being said, I think there's too many people, especially the type of folks that got into vacation rentals, that brain that are just throw again, typically typical, throwing good money at bad instead of focusing on price per night and reviews and guest happiness.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Oh, let's put in a new skeeball, you know, let's put in a new shuffleboard. And that, that's going to get me out of this pickle of not having enough bookings or whatever.
We see that all the time where you're price too high, you don't realize it because you're that design brain. And then the design brain wants to add more design rather than just bringing your prices to reality and you're painting yourself into a corner doing that crap and then you have more stuff to manage. You got to manage the skee ball, you got to manage the shuffleboard. And then when they message you at 11 o' clock at night saying hey, we, we hit the shuffleboard puck through the window and now the window's cracked. And they're never. Well, it was like that when we got here. You know, you're making your life harder. You're making your life harder when really all you probably needed to do was lower your prices a little bit. And then a guy like me who does stick to the meat and potatoes and it has a beautiful kitchen and.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Nothing crazy like you're from Brooklyn.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: That was so a guy like me who has a regular house and all my neighbors are surrounded by hockey pucks and whatever else and all this crazy petting zoo nonsense, then I got to drive my prices, Tell them about the.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: Petting zoo, tell them about the petting zoo.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: There's a petting zoo now in the Smokies. It's real. I've been. I've been making the petting zoo joke for what, three years?
And now there is officially Tim, of course, but close friend of ours who's a photographer in this monkeys took photos of the. He said he was on the way to the house and the guy called him and said, by the way, I need some pictures of my petting zoo while you're there.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: Oh my goodness.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: It just.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: There's so many things to go wrong.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Oh, it's horrible idea. I was like, was somebody attending, you know, attending to the animals? He's like, no. There was just. No, it smelled stunk. Yeah, you got to clean that stuff up and change out their bedding and everything else. They had pigs and goats and stuff. It was an hoa. It wasn't like the actual property had this, but it just looked like a terrible idea. But. But again, then there's a guy like me that's got a regular old meat and potatoes house. Guys, I'm pretty sure.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Okay, I'm gonna Rick. Rick flare you right now. I'm pretty sure I'm the first guy to ever put a Keurig in a cabin in the Smokies, probably.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: You know what I mean?
[00:31:53] Speaker A: So back when I first started, Keurig was a big freaking deal. And now I gotta have pet pigs.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: It's crazy.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: So amenities? Too many. It's ridiculous. It. The next time you want to spend money on an amenity.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Go buy a long term rental instead.
That's the perspective you need. And I know you know it's ridiculous, but I'm telling you, it will make you so much better at your short term, at your vacation house, at your cabin, at your beach house.
If you have a little 150,000 $2 three bedroom brick ranch from 1978 that turns tenants every four years. It's just meeting. You got to get back to basics here. That's 20, 26 for you. That's. That's my. That's why I'm here today, is to say that the fundamentals are going to win in 26.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: I agree with that.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: All right. And I got Avery to laugh in front of strangers on a podcast. Let's talk some numbers real quick.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Again, overall, my portfolio is up 6.2. That's not a decent number because it's not apples to apples. It's. It's a lot of work when you're moving and shaking and buying and selling to. To Quantify all that stuff. Right? But I did see a study just came out literally yesterday from Airbnb.com who we are all very familiar with.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: That they are saying that national park searches, as in quote, this is the actual quote is in quotations on the the article I read near a National park searches for that are up 35% which means once again that Avery is right as always.
So national park Searches are up 35, Avery. That ought to make you feel pretty good.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I don't.
I did not say let's buy a cabin in the Smokies 10 years ago to be right. I said it because we lived in Nashville and we knew we wanted to do a short term rental and Nashville was already like, we don't really like this. And we're like, well, we can't afford for you to not like it and for us to buy something and you tell us we can't do it later. So let's go somewhere where it's normal. Let's go.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: And you know you're from Mississippi and your dad used to take you there as a kid just like everybody else.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Well, yeah, we only went once because, well, there was one time that we were supposed to go and then I got appendicitis the night before.
But yes, that's where we went as a kid, as a southeastern north Mississippi family there and then down here.
[00:34:38] Speaker A: So another thing I want to mention is that right now the main searches on for travel in general are for big ticket items. So World cup etc.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: But we're also expecting.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: No, wait, Thursday. Never mind. Sorry. Thought I was applying World cup tickets today, but It's Thursday.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: 4.9% global passenger traffic increase for 2026 is what we're expecting.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Sorry, say that again. I was talking over you.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: 4.9% global passenger traffic increase.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: For 2026.
And this will bring us up back to about.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: The peak, the long term average, if you will. So that's really where we're looking to be. According to some predictions from IATA etc, some publications.
Most of this stuff is based on flights and things like that.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: But interesting.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: You know, gas, how much gas are we using?
But 4.9% is what the forecast is for 2026 of increase for passenger traffic and that will bring us right back to basically the long term average, which is where we want to be. So again, more signs pointing towards boring and vanilla, which is what I'm hoping for.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what you want as a real estate investor. That is what you want.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: One more thing. I do Want to have one housekeeping thing? Not that you're cutting me off.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: Airbnb just announced yesterday they are now doing, and I don't have all the details on this, but it should be fairly cut and dry. Airbnb just announced that they are go host. This is a good big win for the hosts.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: They now have rolled out season seasonal cancellation policies on Airbnb, meaning if you want to do a 30 day cancellation policy for these particular dates surrounding Christmas, you can now do that. You don't have to stick to, you know, up until recently, up until now it's been basically, you have one cancellation policy and that's it for the entire year. Of course, we had all the rule sets and all that sort of stuff for check in days, check out days and things like that. But the actual cancel and get your money back has not been super favorable for high dollar dates like fourth of July. And now as of yesterday at the time of this recording, we are going to be able to customize that based on periods of high demand, which is great.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: All right.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Of course, the object is to always make it in favor of our guests. We want our guests to have a great time. But there's no reason for a guest to be canceling the 4th of July with six days notice. That's not good for anybody.
So.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: All right. Party, Party, party. You know, it's been a great year. It's been hard. It has. It's been a battle. You got to get out there. You know, I touched on this a little while ago. If you're, if you're like, well, I got to go get a.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: I got to put a peloton tread and a, a pet goat in my house to get bookings, then you're, you need to look elsewhere and, and, and start really get back to get back to the basics.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: You know, that makes me really nervous, actually, now that you mentioned that. I've seen a few.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: Like full on, fully stocked weight rooms in the Smokies, which I have a lot of opinions about that. But just the fact that, so there was this story, I think I feel like everybody has a story like this. There was a lock in at a church, a church youth group.
It was in Jackson, Mississippi when I was a kid. But I heard about it and the church had a weight room and you know, the kids are locked in and they're running around raising hell and they're in the weight room. And one girl was in the weight room, somebody everybody else had like left and she was the bench press bar. She was playing around with it and it fell on her neck and nobody was in there and she died.
And that's all I think about when I see the weight rooms. And I guess, you know, there's pools and whatever, but pools are normal. A normal, very common thing. Like there's insurance for that.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: I don't know if it's your bow.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: Yeah. What's the insurance for dropping a barbell on your neck?
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Well, I don't know. But again, I have a two pound and a five pound and a yoga mat in all properties. And I'll tell you right now, you go look, you go set foot in one of my properties, the yoga mat usually still has the plastic on it from two years ago. You know.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Which I love yoga. I do it every day. But you know, when you're on vacation. Yeah. You're probably a little more interested in the beach and the bar.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well, I get it, but I just feel like everybody, and this is going to be my last sentence on here, Everybody's trying to look for the next big thing, the next big thing.
Just do the thing that has been working forever. Find the thing that is working for you and stop trying to keep up with everybody on the Internet or your neighbor or whoever.
It does not you don't. You said it. Best meat and potatoes to me is the best course of action all the time. Not getting too crazy. And if you want to drop 250,000 on amenities, go buy a long term rental.
And I'm not saying don't amenitize you do need amenities. I'm talking about just, you know, the insane immersive everything. And it does work. And if that is what you're going to do again, just make sure you're planning to hold that property for 10 years and then you'll have all that cash flow and that's great. But you got to let.
You got to hold the property for a long time to make up for the amount you're putting into it.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: Damn. Nearby, two long term rentals for 250, you know, depends on where they are. But.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Fundamentals, that's the, that's the whole point.
2026 needs to be brass tax.
Stop playing around. Get back to the fundamentals and make sure that your systems are functioning properly. I can't tell you how many people come to me looking for help and they're not even on verbo. And it's like, well, I didn't like verbo, I turned it off. And you're coming. What you want, Luke?
Third person. I'm third person in you over here. You want Luke to help you. Meanwhile, you have turned away the vacation rental platform that does $11 billion in business every year. How is that. What are we doing? I mean, you know, it happens all the time. People just don't have their systems in order. They. They're scared to death. The Price Labs or whatever it may be, you know, or.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: I don't. My. My big one is when people ask me for help, and then I'm like, well, let's look at your prices. Oh, I don't handle my prices. Price Labs does. No, you handle your prices. Price helps you do that.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Yeah, they just. In their brain, they signed up for Price Labs. They did help me choose a base rate, and that was it. That was.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Doesn't work like that. You know, I've said it a thousand times. If in vacation rentals, if the white. The white squares on your calendar, you. You're a grocery store selling bananas. And if you don't sell them, they're going to turn brown.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: From Luke. Cash flow Carl, the very first person to ever put a Keurig in a short term rental.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: And with that, we will sign off of 2025. Go hang out with our family.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: I made her laugh. That's the whole goal. That's my whole goal in life.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: First person to put a curig in the Smoky Mountain.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: I have proof. No. Any short term rental. Not just the Smokies.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: All right, guys, have a very happy new year. We will see you in 2026.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Later. Don't overthink it.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Sam.
