[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.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: And here's your host, Avery Carle.
[00:00:30] Speaker C: Hey y'. All. Welcome back to another episode of the Short Term Show. We've got something a little bit different for y' all today. So the Short Term shop has opened up in the Southern Utah area. So that's St. George, Zion national park, all that cool like deserty area down there. There's lots of different national parks. Actually we're going to talk about that today.
So we have a five episode podcast that you can go listen to right now. All of the episodes are already recorded, but we're dropping this first one here on the main short term shop feed so that you guys can learn this market. We have our agent Cody Roberts there here to tell us about it. So today we're just going to talk about that area, why you would invest there and what type of thing you might want to buy. And Cody, how's it going?
[00:01:12] Speaker A: It's fantastic. It's great to be here. I'm excited to talk about the Southern Utah market.
I might be a little biased, but it's definitely my favorite.
[00:01:21] Speaker C: It is a beautiful area for sure. And I the only experience that I have there is being in a Mercedes Sprinter van. So not quite big enough for everybody to sleep in. And being there in the summer, driving through Southern Utah and not being able to stop because we could not find any sort of Airbnb or VRBO to stay in. So in the summertime, I know it is impossible to get get something there if you don't book way in advance. So great market, lots of tourism. So let's talk about this really quick. So Cody, tell me a little bit about the cities and the attractions and why do people go to Southern Utah?
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And you know, just kind of expand on what you're saying. You know, we have a population of about 250,000 people in Washington county, but we get about 4 to 5 million visitors. So you can see the impact on the community here.
So the great draw for Southern Utah is simply the Zions National Park. That's the anchor.
And then the great weather that we have here. So there's over 300 days of sun and people just love to come here because they know it's going to be great weather.
[00:02:39] Speaker C: Okay, so 300 days of sun. That sounds awesome. And what I know, Zion national park is a really big one. What are the other national parks and things to do kind of right in that area. I know that you can ski right there at Brian Head in the maybe in the morning and then go down to St. George and golf in short sleeves in the afternoon. There's not a lot of other markets where you can do those two things in the same day definitely.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: So yeah, Brianhead is, is about two hours, an hour and a half, two hours north of here and in another county called Iron County. But yeah, we have a typical weekend where people will come down drive because there's a lot of tourists that drive to this area and they can come down and ski on Saturday and then drive down to St. George and golf on Sunday. So that's a very unique mixture but very, very doable.
The other parks that are within the area, there's. There's five national parks all within a few hour drive of here. So that's a common thing to come and try to hit them all. Zions is the anchor for St. George which is only about 40 minutes away.
But you've also got Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Capitol Reef and Death Valley and they can be between 100 and 300 miles away from here. So those are the national parks and they draw a lot of people. And then of course we have the state parks which is Sand Hollow, Quell Creek, Snow Canyon and Gunlock to name a few. Sand hollow is a 1322 acre reservoir. So you've got a lot of boating activities and just water activities. Again with our 300 plus days of sun, it makes it exciting. And then the other, Quail Creek is a 600 acre reservoir.
This is the desert. So they are not natural lakes but they are still a lot of fun.
So.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: Gotcha. Okay. I didn't think about the fact that there are not natural lakes there. Good to know. And I actually did on that same trip where I couldn't find anywhere to stay, tried to do. We were going to do Zion and then Bryce Canyon and kind of work our way diagonally up from southwest Utah to northeast Utah. And we ended up turning around and coming home because our travel plans fell apart. It got too stressful and dogs and all kinds of things. But that was the plan and we. There's nowhere to stay in the town where you. That's closest to Bryce Canyon. So you pretty much have to come back to like that St. George ish area. Unless you're going to get up early, drive and go out the other direction. So seems like there's not a ton of accommodations just in this area of Utah.
Unless you're you're a big baller and you're going to that Amangiri. But other than that, there's just not. Not a lot of towns to stop and stay in, right?
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Correct. Yeah. So, again, we're still a very small town, very small community. Most of the locals, though, think that we've grown substantially, which we have, but compared to everywhere else, we're still a small community. And then when you get into the cities next to Bryce Canyon or. Or Capitol Reef or any of the other places, it's even smaller than the St. George area. So you can. It can be challenging to find a place to. To stay. And so they pick St. George because you can be up to Zion's park in an hour and spend the day there. You can be to Bryce Canyon in a couple hours and spend the day there and still come back and. And have this be the hub.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: Gotcha. And like you said, the majority of tourists that come to this area are driving. Right, Just to drive to destination.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: I. I actually couldn't find a great statistic on that. But the surprising part is we still have a balance between driving and flying in. St. George actually has a really decent airport for the size of town that we have. It was three. I think it was 371,000 flyers last year, enough that they're actually expanding the airport. So we're going to be doubling the terminals.
And there's daily flights from St. George to your Salt Lake, Denver, Dallas and Phoenix. And at that point, I mean, you can just connect anywhere.
But we're also an hour and a half to two hours north of Las Vegas.
So you can still fly into Vegas and then drive up here, which is where most people do come in when they are flying, because the Zions national park brings in a lot of international travelers, so. So they'll come into Vegas and drive up and spend their time here. So we just have a mix between drive and flying.
The driving hits everyone from northern Utah, Salt Lake area, from the Phoenix area, Southern California, Nevada. Those people will drive in because they can get here within a few hours. And then everybody else tends to fly in. And typically between either Vegas or St. George, they love the idea of spending a night in Vegas before they come here. Or you can fly straight into St. George.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: We're hiring realtors.
This show is brought to you by the Short Term Shop.
Join our exciting team in the best vacation markets in America.
We're currently hiring agents in Gulf Shores, the Poconos and Outer Banks.
Email us at
[email protected] that's careers at the short term. Shop.com.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: okay, great. So now let's talk about the properties themselves.
I know the regulations are pretty regulated. The regulations are regulating in southern Utah. So can you give me a brief? Obviously, guys, disclaimer. If you're planning on buying there, always call the county or the city yourself. Don't ask your agent. Do not have a middleman. Call yourself to be sure. But what generally are the regulations in this market?
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely a great question because we always want to steer people in the right direction and we tend to always provide properties that have a legal license to do short term rentals. And it's very important because most of the cities now in Washington county, which is where St. George is, they're not issuing any more permits.
You just can't get any more. So if you're interested in investing here and getting that short term rental, you have to buy one that already has a permit. And 99% of the permits are transferable into the new buyer's name. So we look for properties that already have that permit or areas where it's already zoned for that and then you can get that that permit for that area.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: Okay, so how hard is it to find a property that is short term rentable that either has a permit or can be permanent? You said that they're not offering any more permits. You have to find one.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: That is correct. But the good part is, is there's still depending on what you're looking for and depending on what city, there's still some options to choose from, which is a good thing.
The towns that are up closer to Zions national park are even more restrictive and can be a lot more tricky to find something up there. I have clients all the time that will find a property on Zillow or Redfins or whatever it is and send it over and be like, hey, why didn't you send me this one? Well, because you can't short term rental with that one. It's a great property, but unfortunately you can't do that. You. And then they're like, oh, okay.
So we just generate a list based on what we know. You can, this is a legal short term rental and it can transfer to the new owner and then we know that, that they'll be taken care of.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Are there any areas that you would say are more friendly or less friendly or easier to find something that you can use as short term rental than not?
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. So we've talked about St. George a lot, but there's a city next to it called Hurricane it is spelled hurricane, but locally we say hurricane. Don't know the origin of that, but that's what we do. And that city is a lot more supportive and friendly in my opinion. For the short term rentals, again, they're not issuing any more permits, but they've issued quite a few. And so usually you can find something and they're just a lot more supportive. St. George is pretty good, but if you get up into the cities close to Zions like Rockville and Springdale and those, they, they are very difficult to work with, in my opinion.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: Gotcha. So you want to stick to the St. George and Hurricane. My grandmother from Mississippi used to call hurricanes in the Gulf hurricanes.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: So.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: All right, so you want to stick to kind of those areas. Is this. If you're inside the city limits, it's tough and if you're outside the city limits, it's not tough scenario or is it kind of tough in the county also?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah, so no. So the county can be a lot more, I guess, supportive and, and, and work with you. But then you also got to balance that between being a little bit further out and whether your, your, your rental demand or revenue can go down too.
So I think it, it's, it's surprisingly, it's still easy to find some good rentals even though when people hear, oh my gosh, they're not issuing any more permits, I'm never going to find anything. That doesn't tend to be the case. We can still find some good, good properties available, especially if you're okay with townhomes and condos. Those, those are, there's, there's quite a few of those available.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: Love that. That was going to be my next question. So if I'm a buyer and I come in to meet you, are we going to be able to find things? And I guess also this is kind of cuts both ways in a good way.
Everybody loves to scream about it's saturated, this is saturated. That's saturated. Like, cool, great, everything's saturated. But seems like this is an area where you don't have to worry about that as much because you are not having an influx of properties coming online because there's only X amount of permits and not anymore being issued. So that's definitely a plus. And you said it's not hard to find something. It's not like there's only two permits in town and we got to wait for one to come available. There's always stuff on the market that has permits is what you're saying, correct?
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Yeah, there's still a Good inventory available with, with existing permits. And yeah, we're definitely not oversaturated compared to a lot of other markets that, that we keep our eye on. So which makes it really good for people that are, that are interested in buying because there is properties available for them, but there's not too many available that makes it oversaturated.
[00:13:44] Speaker C: Okay, love that. And I, you mentioned there's condos and townhomes available. I love a condo and I love a condo because so many people are scared of condos. And I also love small properties. One bedrooms, two bedrooms, I've got bigger ones. But again, everybody dismisses one bedrooms, two bedrooms. They think, okay, I have a, I have an $800,000 budget, I'm going to buy the biggest property that my budget will allow. And they completely forget about one bedrooms and two bedrooms. But anyway, recent update to Fannie Mae condo guidelines. Kind of relevant here is that you used to have to put 20 to 25% down on non warrantable condos. So in this case, guys, things would typically be be classified as non warrantable because they were owned by a higher percentage of either LLC investments second homes than primary homes.
Now that doesn't matter. And you can do a 10% down vacation home loan on condos that are non warrantable, whereas a few weeks ago even you couldn't do that. So this opens up a lot of inventory for people who maybe wanted to buy at the lower end and, or wanted a condo just because maybe they don't want to deal with single family maintenance and things like that. So I, I love condos, I love small properties. And then now that you're able to put 10% down on non warrantable condos, that opens up a lot. So let's talk about now types of properties. Great segue into that. So you guys have single families, townhomes, condos. What do you typically see in terms of bedroom count? I would imagine condos or studio, one, twos, maybe threes. And then single families and townhomes are higher than that. But you tell me.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah, every great question. And again, I tend to like condos as well just because what they do here is they build some fantastic amenities into these condominium projects. And again, with the 300 days of sun that we have here, the water features that they build into these condominiums are amazing. You've got lazy rivers, you've got slides, just, you know, they, they bring some sand in and make little mimics and beaches and they just, they just make them really nice.
And so you're able to advertise that on your listing. So when someone looks at that condo and they go, oh my gosh, I can bring my kids here and they can play on the water activities and we can just have a great time and, and a lot of the feedback we'll get sometimes is, you know, they come here to visit Zions and, and the only thing the kids talk about is the pool at the condo.
And so it works out really, really well. And then like you said, it's all folded into the maintenance of, of the condominium HOA fees and you don't have to worry about it. You get a better price point in condominiums and townhomes than of course you do a single family detached. So that's an advantage as well.
And it, they, they're just, they're done really nice. And the bedroom count question.
One bedrooms around here don't tend to do as well and they're not very many.
So you know, I always recommend to be at least two bedrooms. But the three bedrooms and up are the more popular ones.
The average traveler here is usually a family that's the people that we're getting.
And the Average size is 3.6 people.
And so they want to have at least two bedrooms, if not three bedrooms. And the three two and three three condos. Townhomes work really, really well.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: This program has been brought to you by the Short Term Shop.
The Short Term Shop is the premier residential vacation home agency.
We have a large following and we work hard to ensure our clients happiness.
If this sounds like a good fit for you, we are hiring real estate agents.
We are currently hiring in Outer Banks, Shenandoah, Virginia, Galveston, Crystal Beach, Texas and the East Tennessee Smoky mountains.
Email us careershortermshop.com that's
[email protected].
[00:18:05] Speaker C: okay, three two and three three townhomes work really well. What is the average ish price point you're looking at on these things for
[00:18:13] Speaker A: the condos in, in that bedroom count, you're going to be between 450,000 to 650,000. Plus you can get into some really nice luxury condos that have like rooftop hot, rooftop hot tubs on them that, that make it really nice. But you know, you got to pay extra for that. So.
Yeah.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: All right, how about single families?
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Okay. Single family detached homes? The price tends to, to, to jump up obviously from the condominiums and you know, to find a really good single family detached home that has a permit, you're really going to start at about 700,000 and go up to even 1.5 million.
And then those bedroom counts can be the three twos and go up to five, six, even seven bedrooms.
And those can be a popular option where you rent them out to groups. So families will say, hey, let's all do, let's all get together in St. George. And so, you know, three or four brothers and all their kids will go in on a unit and then they need that bigger unit because they share it, so.
Which makes it nice.
[00:19:30] Speaker C: Gotcha. Gotcha. So guys, and by the way, if you're listening and you're like, oh my gosh, tell me how much they make. When you're talking about these, these prices and these bedroom counts. We actually have an entire episode on that. If you head over to the full podcast feed of our Southern Utah podcast series, you can hear all of that there. We're just kind of doing an intro to the market here. So do you guys have, Did I make this up or do y' all have PGA golf courses in St. George?
[00:19:58] Speaker A: We do, yeah. Black Desert is the main one. It's in a town called Ivan's. It's a fantastic course.
Again, I don't think we've mentioned that, but most people probably already know that we have that red Rock desert look and feel here that you don't get in very many places. And so to have the green courses up against that red rock or the black rock, because we also have that volcano croc is very spectacular and you, you won't see it anywhere else, but we have numerous golf courses throughout the county. Very, very popular.
And you can find homes right on the golf course that also do short term rentals. And depending on what you're looking for, those can be really, really fun and really popular too.
[00:20:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I'm just getting into golf. I grew up in a golf family. My dad is an ex professional golfer. And now I'm kind of like, oh, yeah, that'd be fun to play golf there. And I'm, I'm starting to kind of go down that road. So I bet that is really scenic out there. So I know a lot of PGA golf courses have, you know, vacation rentals on them.
And depending on where you are in the country, sometimes that's attractive, sometimes not. Like, where is it Indio? I stayed on a golf course and I think there's several when we went to Power Trip Festival with the kids a few years ago. So in this case, is the golf course attractive for investments or are there things like you have to use their property management company or something in order To.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Yep, yeah, yep. Avery, you hit it.
So unfortunately the, a lot of these communities do require you to use their property manager, which really is, I mean you can do that, but we don't typically recommend that because you can maximize your property by doing it, managing it yourself. And these management companies are between 30 and 35%.
So they're really. Yeah.
So unfortunately part of also what we look for is properties that you can self manage. Unless you're okay and you do want a property manager, then we can find you those properties. But we want a legal short term rental and we want to be allowed to, to self manage.
So we just got to balance that out between the different communities. And so there's a couple of these golf communities that don't let you self manage.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: Good to know. Very important distinction for you golfers who want to be on a golf course. My next question about that. So is this market kind of like how Orlando is where it's very regulated, but there are purpose built short term rental neighborhoods that are specifically for the short term rentals. So are you buying in these kinds of neighborhoods or is it a mix or how does that work?
[00:22:43] Speaker A: That's, that's, it is a mix. But that is correct. There, there's, let's say, okay, this community out here is all approved for short term rentals. And as long as you're in that community, you can, you can get that, that permit for, for that particular community and, and then you can also be outside of that community. But yeah, this, the municipalities around here have started to go, okay, that subdivision is going to be approved for short term rentals. And we want them all over there. And there's pros and cons to that because they make them a really nice community. And so it's, it's great to be over there. But then your property, all the properties down the street could be up for nightly rentals. So you just have to kind of weigh that out.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Yeah, and I kind of like that. So you know what you're dealing with if you're in a community and it's all short term rentals and you know, you're not going to have your neighbors complaining, things like that. I personally like that. I know some investors get a little nervous about, oh, there's so many right there. But it's really not, not something to be worried about, in my opinion. I like that when, when you're in a heavily regulated market to be in a neighborhood that, hey, this is designated for short term rentals.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: Exactly. Yep.
[00:23:54] Speaker C: All right, Cody, so what have I missed in terms of the where, the why and the what to invest in southern Utah.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: No, I think, I think we've captured the majority of it. But again we've got the anchor of Zion's national park in 5 million visitors a year. We have the weather that's just generally always perfect. 300 days a year of sun. And the, you know, the where is is in Washington county is the majority of it St. George hurricane.
And then there's even some communities up closer to the park that we can take a look at. But it is more regulated up there so we have to be careful. And if you can find one up there, it'll, it'll do better than the properties down below because it can command a little bit higher pricing. You just have to make sure and find it.
[00:24:41] Speaker C: So if you guys are listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, you can find that five episode podcast in any of those places. We also have five to 10 episode podcasts. We actually condense it into five. We, we used to do 10, we condensed into five because you didn't need that many on all of our Markets on our YouTube channel. And if you guys are interested in potentially buying a short term rental in southern Utah, you want to get in touch with Cody, you email us at agents the shorttermshop.com and we will get you connected. Thank you guys so much for listening and we will cat to you next week.
