[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Karl.
[00:00:16] All right, let's talk about an annual checklist. People love that word, checklist. I'm not a big fan of this term.
[00:00:25] It, to me, it assumes some sort of anal retentiveness, which is true, but checklists are useful for certain personality types.
[00:00:40] Really all personality types. It's just that some personality types, the kind I have, doesn't pay attention to the checklist because I don't like authority.
[00:00:49] And the checklist to me is telling me what to do.
[00:00:52] But they're nice to have.
[00:00:57] Okay, so first of all, I would like to mention that it's best to do these types of things in the off season, which in most cases, at least in my life is going to be January, February, and then once the end of February hits, which is we're already here this at the recording of this podcast program, YouTube, whatever you want to call it, it's too late, right? By March, March 1st, you really kind of need to get out of your house and out of your guest's way for the most part.
[00:01:29] But let's talk about some things that may need to be done. As a matter of fact, more importantly, rather than a how to, I would rather just talk about what I have been doing to my houses. Number one, I've had an issue with and I have been replacing all of the smoke detector batteries. And it's funny because you go to start replacing these smoke detector batteries, if somebody can put smoke detector batteries here on the screen somewhere and you realize that you don't know anything about your smoke detectors. Like, are they double A, are they square?
[00:02:10] Some people think that all smoke detectors are square batteries. That's not true. I've got a bunch of them that are double A. And then I found out real quick that the brand new batteries I put in one of the houses that had bad batteries, they were Amazon batteries, they were alkaline and they went bad.
[00:02:26] So then you get into this conversation, like, do I really need to buy lithium batteries for a smoke detector which uses very little power and you're going to swap them every year anyway. Do I need to pay $20 for a battery? I'm making that up. But you probably don't. But I just had a situation where I put new AA batteries in all these smoke detectors. And then that, that night, that night they, two of them had dead batteries because I have to assume those batteries I just put in them were dead.
[00:02:59] So I have started putting I've ordered a bunch of battery testers. I got them on Amazon for 10 bucks. Buddy of mine recommended one it had. I'm not going to give you a link. It's too much work to be honest. But it was has slid out. You put the battery in, you test it and it slid back in. And very small and compact. The brand name on said battery tester was lacrosse. It was 15.99 on Amazon.
[00:03:31] And I'm gonna keep, I'm gonna keep those everywhere now because I never even thought to test batteries before installing them. But then it ruined my night with this damn battery going off. And it's two days in a row actually on two different houses with dead batteries. Brand new dead batteries. All right, so change your smoke detector batteries. Make sure your smoke detectors are interconnected. If they are not, get some that are. If you don't have wires in your house, there are brands that will connect to each other without wires. In other words, if one goes off, the other one detects it and it goes off. They just kind of speak to each other rather than having wires behind the wall and. But it is better, safer to do that. I am not offering any kind of legal or fire advice here, guys. I'm just a dude, you know, I'm not a fire professional.
[00:04:20] Justin Ford is the STR fire guy if you want to look into him.
[00:04:25] He's been on my podcast.
[00:04:27] But not all smoke detectors have square batteries. Keep that in mind. Also, I'm going to replace all pillows.
[00:04:42] Because if you have not walked one of your houses after a season and looked at the pillows with no case on it, then I would recommend you don't do that. Just have them thrown away. They are going to be nasty.
[00:04:56] New fresh pillows are worth their weight in gold.
[00:04:59] Don't hesitate.
[00:05:01] New pillows every year we're looking for guests.
[00:05:07] Are you a professional short term rental property manager?
[00:05:12] Perhaps a co host or a host that has a fantastic story that you want to share with others?
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[email protected] that's guestrmshow.com number three. Get somebody over there to look at and service the H Vac. Get it cleaned, get a new filter, just have them go through it, blow out the drain, the whole thing. That way you're starting fresh with a ready to rock system at the beginning of the year and you don't hopefully have to think about it too much, too much for a minute.
[00:05:56] What's next? We want to paint the staircases. That's why the People don't understand the beauty. Number four, paint your staircase.
[00:06:06] I'm writing this down. People don't understand the beauty of the smokies. Everything's tongue and groove. There's no paint.
[00:06:12] It's wood rather than sheetrock. It's more durable.
[00:06:17] So you smokies folks have it good when it comes to overnight rentals.
[00:06:22] But beach folks don't have it as good in most cases unless you have shiplap. But shiplap does need to be painted and it gets dinged up. But it's. It's also more durable because it's wood in most cases.
[00:06:33] Right.
[00:06:34] So paint your staircases. They're going to be dinged up. You really need to go through the whole house and have do touch up paint of all types.
[00:06:43] And this is why I like to paint every single one of my houses the same color. I don't have to wonder what color the house is and get paint and this and that and the other. Sometimes I see people, like trying to do every house different and have a theme and all this. Different colors in each room. You're going to hate that. It's a nightmare. One collar. Keep it simple. They're gonna beat it up. It's a rental.
[00:07:05] That's just me.
[00:07:08] All right. Touch up paint and paint the staircase.
[00:07:13] Number four.
[00:07:16] New bedbug encasements is number five. They will be gross.
[00:07:21] Even if you're using a mattress protector on top of the bed. Bug encasement, which you should be the mattress encasement. The bedbug encasement will be gross. Trash it. Get new ones. You'll be glad you did.
[00:07:35] Go through your kitchen. Throw away anything that looks gross or broken. Is number six.
[00:07:46] You should probably just plan on.
[00:07:52] The kitchen utensils. You know, like the. I always get like a holder and you get the spatulas and the wisp and all that stuff in there. Just get a new one every year.
[00:08:04] 25 bucks, 30 bucks. It's not worth trying to keep these things around.
[00:08:11] But you have your. You can have your cleaner do this. You're obviously going to deep clean. All right. I should have started with that. I'm not. Deep clean is not even going to get a number. It's implied. You do need a deep clean.
[00:08:21] I don't really. I'm not really falling for this. You know, I pay a little extra for my cleaners to clean. Deep clean every clean. So I don't have to do deep cleans. My house is always deep cleaned. I don't know about that.
[00:08:33] I just thought I Don't know about that.
[00:08:36] So we do want to have a very intentional deep cleaning session in the spring, at the very end of the winter. Early, early spring.
[00:08:48] Basically the end of February, early March.
[00:08:51] March is probably too late, to be honest. And that's. That's. They must. You gotta do that. All right, so that doesn't even get a number. But during the deep clean, you get to number six, which is the kitchen. Refreshing of the kitchen. If you've got a cookie sheet that's scratched up and getting nasty, get rid of it. Get another one. Get a nice cookie sheet. One of those nice ones I like to get there. Like Viking or they got a. They got a Viking on them. Norland or something.
[00:09:23] Those are nice Norwegian.
[00:09:26] But go through the kitchen. Refresh new coffee pot if necessary. That kind of thing.
[00:09:35] Have a meeting with your cleaner. All right, that's number seven.
[00:09:42] Just give her a call.
[00:09:45] Have a meeting with your cleaner.
[00:09:49] Give her a call. Feel her out. Hit him or her. Make sure that she still likes her job.
[00:09:55] Because it's fairly common for people to get sick of their job in general, and that's a job that somebody could get sick of and maybe want to move on from.
[00:10:05] So give her a call, Feel her out. See how many houses she's got.
[00:10:10] Oh, my. You're up to 22 houses. Aren't you a little overwhelmed?
[00:10:15] Maybe we should consider getting rid of a couple of those houses. Well, no, I'm hiring a new girl. You know, this is the conversation.
[00:10:23] Get a feel for where she's at in life and how things are going. Make sure she's happy 100%. She's got to be happy. Or he.
[00:10:34] I don't know. I have had male cleaners.
[00:10:37] It's not that common, but I have, and they were great.
[00:10:42] Jerry and Jerry. They were two gentlemen, same name.
[00:10:48] They're still. They're still around, I think.
[00:10:51] Replace the batteries in the remotes.
[00:10:54] All right, Go into the season. That's number eight, battery remotes.
[00:11:02] Replace the batteries in the remotes.
[00:11:08] Roku remotes are AAA batteries.
[00:11:11] It's just nice to go into the season with fresh remotes.
[00:11:16] Light bulbs. Number nine, light bulbs.
[00:11:20] If you're not able to go to the home, then have your cleaner go through the home. And I would be very clear that I do not like bright white or daylight light bulbs in my house. Not even in the kitchen or the bathrooms where are. Where they're designed to be. I don't like that.
[00:11:38] It just looks like a crack house. That's me. I don't like it? No bright white, no daylight. Soft white. Only if you've got an LED or a ceiling fan that is bright white and you just happen to notice it, open it up. There's probably a setting in there where you can change it. Same thing with the can lights.
[00:12:02] Recessed can lights.
[00:12:05] Usually they have settings on them that you can change them. So not a bad idea to swap every light bulb in the house, really. I mean, that's a little overkill.
[00:12:18] But we definitely need to not have any burned out bulbs and we need to make sure we don't have any daylight bulbs. There's exceptions to that. If you like daylight in your bathroom, I get it.
[00:12:32] All right, and then number 10, Pump your septic tank.
[00:12:45] Pump your septic. If you got a septic tank, get it pumped. Doesn't have to be done every year, but probably should be done every year.
[00:12:53] Okay, so there's a million other things to do, obviously, but those are some good ones that I've been doing this year.
[00:13:03] Oh, I'll throw you one more that's not on the list. We're going to stick with the 1010 list today, but checklist.
[00:13:10] I also rebuild my beds. So if you pull up the mattress, you'll notice that it's just some slats under there and it's really kind of janky.
[00:13:20] We, we want to go in there with some two by fours and put two by fours that are connected to the two by fours as legs touching the ground with felt. Of course, I never let anything touch the actual flooring. I do put felt on every single thing or furniture pads, same thing. And we're going to rebuild the frame inside the frame. So like the, the part you see is just decorative at this point. We're going to rebuild a frame inside of there with two by fours. It's going to be a perimeter and then two two by fours going from foot to head with feet on them. And then we're gonna put 58 inch plywood on top of those.
[00:14:00] This way you have an indestructible basically bed. Because people on vacation like to have fun, if you know what I mean, and they're gonna be wearing that thing out. And if you have just a regular old off the shelf bed, even if it's a high dollar bed frame, it's not going to withstand renters on vacation.
[00:14:27] They having some fun.
[00:14:29] Okay, so keep that in mind. So you got two bonuses today with deep clean, rebuild your bed frame and then steps one through ten, whatever the hell they were. I hope you got some value out of it. Oh yeah, change your number one was change your smoke detector batteries. All pillows need to be replaced. Number three was H vac get it serviced.
[00:14:56] Number four paint touch ups paint your staircase. Number five bed bug encasements need to be replaced. Number six on the deep clean. The kitchen needs to be refreshed. Obviously we're also going to refresh our linens, our towels, our sheets. All that stuff needs to be you've got a little stain of any kind, throw it away, get more, have a meeting with your cleaner. Feel them out, make sure they're ready for another season.
[00:15:22] Replace the remote batteries. There it is.
[00:15:26] Number nine light bulbs and number ten get that septic tank pumped and you may consider rebuilding your bed to make it fun friendly. I love you.
[00:15:37] Hopefully you got some value out of this short term shop plus and strm short term rental management. I love you.
