[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is short term rental management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
All right. My main man Caleb coming on the show today. He's a property manager in Charlotte, North Carolina. Professional vacation rental. Short term rental, I suppose because it is a metro market property manager. He's a great dude. Just met him for the first time, but I have a feeling we're gonna stay friends. I like him a lot, so hang with us for Caleb and Charlotte. And I do want to remind you that the short term shop does sell houses. If you have any interest in buying or selling your current or next vacation home, we are the best in the business and we want to service you on that sale.
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Hey now. Hey now. I got Caleb here from North Carolina, and we were just getting into some horror stories. Not horror stories, but fun guest stuff. I had funny story that about, I don't know, two weeks ago, I had a guest that called the platform. I don't even remember which platform. They wanted a full refund because they found crumbs on the sheets. And I'm like, and, Caleb, this was a. This was a $5,600 reservation at, like, my flagship property, you know, and they didn't have any pictures, nothing. Full.
Full refund. And the platform called me and had the guts to say, this guest wants a full refund. Are you going to give it to him? I was like, absolutely not. I'm not going to give it to him. So anyway, that's how I'm going to introduce Caleb. He's a property manager in Charlotte, North Carolina. We were just getting ready to start trading some war stories, and so I figured I'd hit the record button. Caleb, welcome to short term rental management. How you doing, buddy?
[00:02:45] Speaker B: I'm doing great, man. I'm super pumped to be here, Carl. I appreciate it.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: It's my pleasure. My pleasure. So tell us your story. You're in Charlotte. This is, I guess, pretty much a metro market. How did you get involved? And I. And what's the name of your company, et cetera?
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah, my tripify brokerage here in Charlotte, North Carolina. So east coast, definitely not a vacation rental market. More of an urban kind of getaway, if you will. But how? We kind of started. Me and my business partner, Riley, he had a rental that was a long term rental that had a couple tenants. He had couple of his buddies move in with him, you know, do the whole house hack, turn it into a long term rental in, I think, 2018. 2019. I was like, dude, you need to do short term rentals. This was late 2019. Finally, he had a terrible long term tenant. It was a cash for keys type situation. And he called me one day. He was like, hey, man, what's this short term rental, this Airbnb stuff you're talking about? How do I do it? So at that point, we had no business plan, no formal agreement. We were just like, okay, I think you need to furnish it. Don't know how to do it.
Long story short, it took probably six months to furnish it, way too long.
But launched that the first property, it was like March 2020, right before COVID started happening. Put, like, eight grand into the property, and Covid happened, and we're like, are you kidding me? Like, what is this thing? This is clearly going to affect travel.
And the first couple weeks to a month, it was really bad. Like, no reservations.
Luckily, we didn't have any reservations to cancel, like, a lot of other hosts, but we started to see people travel for Georgia, you know, South Carolina, Asheville, mountains, even New York coming down. And we were like, okay, maybe there's still something here. So we put in a home office, upgraded the wifi, and then started tailoring to, like, work from home travelers. And at that point, it just took off. We ended up booking. We were, like, 80, 85% that first year after that initial Covid, and it was all, like, work from home travelers, people that wanted to get out of the house, right. Driving markets that were a couple hours away. And then from there, we were like, okay, this is still a viable business model. That's when we filed the LLC and then started taking on clients in 2021. Right now, we just surpassed 30 properties under management. They're all single family homes. Bigger single family homes on purpose. I think that's kind of a honey hole, at least here in Charlotte. But, yeah, that's kind of how we got started. And where we're at currently, yeah.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: It's a story.
I hear. A lot of folks that want to do this, but they don't even know it's what they want to do. You know, it's a lot of times people buy a house and they have some success with it and they want to do it again. And, you know, down payments are expensive.
Cost. A lot of money is expensive.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: And then I'm sitting there like, well, dude, if this, if you like doing this and you don't have enough money to buy another house yet, you might be a property manager, you know, you just figured that out yet. So what was that initial relationship with this gentleman? Did he own the house and did you get a percentage of the. Of the kitty or how did it go down?
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Yeah, good question. So me and. Me and my business partner now, we used to work at an IT company together. So we would always talk, talk shop in real estate. We're like, okay, yeah, how do we do this? Like, we want to buy properties. Like at that point we were just friends. We ended up both leaving that job, the it company that we're at here in Charlotte, and then kept in touch and then, you know, pass crossed perfectly.
But at that time, I got $0. It was a completely free. I just wanted to do it. I was still working in it, but I knew I wanted to do something in real estate. I come from a real estate family. My dad is a property manager. He owns about 20 properties in a place called Kannapolis you've probably never heard of. It's about 45 minutes away.
But I grew up around it. I knew real estate was something that I wanted to do long term, but I didn't know how. And when short term rentals kind of hit the mainstream, I was like, oh, this is nice. This is a little bit more fun. Versus the long term rental. Kind of standoffish, like twelve month lease type deal. So that's really when I jumped in. But to answer your question, yeah, I was. I was essentially working for free. I just wanted to kind of vet the idea and see if it was a viable business.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Tell me about dad. So he. He owned how many units?
[00:07:31] Speaker B: It's 15, 1517. Somewhere in there. Still. Still does.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Self manager also manages other people's properties?
[00:07:38] Speaker B: No, just his.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Just his. And how did he come across these 15 properties?
[00:07:44] Speaker B: So he is an accountant. A lot of his clients, so accountant. Full time real property manager at nights and weekends.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: So it's a very small town. Everybody knows everybody.
So a lot of just came his way. It was like, hey, you know, this person's in foreclosure. Do you want to buy this property?
[00:08:04] Speaker A: So he has a day job, I guess, is my point. He did? Yeah. Okay, cool. And let me get some advice from you. As a guy whose dad was into this and now you're into it, do you have any advice for me, looking back to your childhood as how I can get my kids interested?
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Honestly, growing up, we didn't do anything important. It was all like, paint this wall, fix this drop. You know, fix this hole in the wall.
We didn't do a lot of, like, high level activities, but also, I mean, I was, like, 10, 12, 15 years old, so, you know, he probably didn't want to put a saw in my hand, but I would say advice would just get him around it. Like, the things will rub off. You may not realize it, but I didn't realize it technically, when he would, like, you know, bring me out to a house, you know, mom was working. Go out to a house, and we're just. I'm playing on my game boy, and he's, you know, fixing a door or whatever game.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Boyd, we must be about the same age.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: I'm a nineties. Yeah, 33.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Oh, no, I'm quite a bit older, but I didn't have the game boy. Okay.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
I would just say, get. Get them. Get them in the room.
It might not. You might not realize it now, but years later, those things will rub off on them, hopefully in a good way.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I do. I mean, I take my son or whichever one I've got one of each. And last week, I took him to go walk houses. We got one under contract that I hadn't seen yet, and I had three or four empties in a particular market, and we drove over, and I walked the units with him, and I get him out and make sure he knows my guys and all know his name and everything, and my agent knows his name, and he's shaking their hands and all that kind of stuff, and I really. I enjoy it. I know that. And he seems to not hate it too much. Of course. You know, you're walking around, and we live in the south, so you're walking around in these houses that don't even have the. A lot of them. The power's not even on, so they're hot and stuff. And I can understand why a little kid would be annoyed, but he seems to. Seems to be okay with it. I mean, he's only. He's only three, you know, so he doesn't really know what's going on. But I just look forward someday to hopefully him turning to me and saying, you know, hey, can you tell me, what is it, like, how does this work? You know, that kind of thing. Yeah.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: And I think. I think they will. You can't, like, I wasn't forced into those situations. It just kind of happened naturally.
At the right time, it will click, hopefully, obviously, like, rich dad, poor dad. That was a big turning point. That kind of started to click in my mind, like, oh, real estate is the way to do it. I know, I've known, like, dad had properties and, you know, he fixed them up and had equity and, and did all that stuff. Um, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's just being, being around and not forcing it. Like, I think, you know, secondhand. Um, they'll be like, oh, I want to be like dad. Like, you know, that's a inherent kind of thing for, for most children, you know, obviously, I'm sure you're a good role model, but I think over time, they'll just naturally, like, kind of progress there, and if they don't like it is what it is.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Cashflow. Did you ever play cash flow with your dad, or did he, did you ever.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: No, we didn't. Yeah, no monopoly. That was about it.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Same thing. It's the same thing, really, you know, but I got my daughter cash flow for her first birthday, and we've still, they're still too young to get it out, but, you know, we're getting a little closer, and I still have that original one I gave her. It's in her closet. So fun stuff. You know, you just hope that they, you know, I don't necessarily want them to get completely absorbed in it because it is hard, and maybe they'll have another path or whatever, but, you know, I look around now at these aging parents that I see in my life with friends and my parents and all these parents, and I'm looking at them, I'm like, you know, if you would have just bought a duplex when you were, like, 40, things will be a lot less stressful right now because you would have a backup plan for these medical bills and such, you know, but you don't have a plan.
But let's not get into the boomers.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: One thing that I have that I have heard that's really cool that I want to do, it's a, it's a dream of mine is buying a property for my kid and having it paid off whenever they're, like, 18 and giving it to them. I've heard I can't remember who.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Brandon Turner. That's Brandon Turner.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, yeah, that. You're exactly right. It was Turner.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: That's really cool.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And then we'll get it. What a good role model he is, but. Okay, cool. So, all right, so we get this house going, and this was pre Covid, and it starts to work, and things are rocking a little bit. And then what do you start soliciting for more houses? Do you.
What's the next move there to get more properties? Yeah.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: So fast forward 2021 is when we finalized everything. We ran his the one, all of 2020 through Covid, and then 2021, we were like, okay, this is working. How do we do this at a bigger scale? So we filed the LLC, and then for me personally, this is my strong suit with marketing and sales. I started putting out content, free content. Like, hey, this is what we're learning in short term rentals. This is how to set up an Airbnb. Here's how to check the amenities. Here's what cancellation policy to do and to avoid. So I just started putting out content on social media for absolute free and honestly, expecting nothing in return. And still to this day, I do a decent amount of content that has given us all 30 properties, and we've probably had, you know, 350 people that we had a possibility of working with, but we didn't choose to work with them. So that's kind of how we started. 2021, I think we ended up finishing with five properties under management at the end of 2021. So went from one to one to five. It was one to five or one to six. And then 2022, I think we closed ten more. And then now we're at 30. And right now, we're very selective with who we work with. The property's got to fit, and the owner has to fit, because right now, I know the amount of work that it takes to keep a property, especially a bigger single family home, up to the five star quality.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: It's hard.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: I'm not taking properties that our minimum criteria is, like, 50 grand. That's absolute minimum for us to take on a property, which may sound low.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: But, Charlotte, what is that dollar figure?
[00:14:39] Speaker B: What is gross air DNA gross?
[00:14:42] Speaker A: $50,000. Gross income.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Okay, I'm gonna write that down. All right, let's. Let's get to that in a second. Now, hold on. You're talking about you only take certain clients, so you're just getting a vibe for this client and saying, this guy's gonna be a pain in my ass and not give me new sheets when I need him to. Or are you basing it on the property itself or both?
[00:15:01] Speaker B: It's both. It's both. It's a common. So typically, we do two calls. One's a discovery call to see if they're a good fit. I'm vetting. I'm asking questions about, you know, how do you handle this? Like, what. What age of this? And then also, like, getting a vibe on that person, because I've done this enough to where I could kind of see the writing on the wall. Like, you take enough sales calls that you can kind of tell, like, who's going to be an a hole and who's going to be, like, a great partner to work with. And by choice, like, a couple of years ago, we had a couple owners, investors, that did not want to reinvest back in the property. And every month they were like, hey, can we meet? Like, can you go over the accounting statement with me? Which is cool, but, like, this is three years of this. So we ended up cutting a couple clients just because it didn't fit with where we were going.
And right now, I mean, our investor partners are great. They're absolutely awesome.
I know that they have to be a good fit. Like, if the way I think about it is if an investor calls you and you see their number on your phone, what's your initial reaction? If it's a negative reaction, that person is probably not a good fit long term. If it's like, okay, great. This client, awesome. They're always respectful and upbeat. That's the person that I want to work with. So we've been super, super choosy with, a, the properties, and b, the investor that we partner with.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm the same way in reverse with my long terms with my property managers. You get to. You get to know you. You can get a vibe. It's like, dude, you clearly do not like it when I'm calling you. So, like. And I'll be honest.
How. How are you liking it when these other idiots are calling you? Because I know their. Their properties look like crap, and I. And I work on my properties and spend money on my properties, make them look nice. So I don't understand. Maybe you would rather have this guy who's got the crappy property and never asks any questions. That's not me. You know, so that's not a good fit. I want to. I want a property manager that's like you. I want a property manager who gives a crap and is not really willing to deal with riff raff. And. And, you know, crappy fixtures and all that sort of stuff. So bravo. Bravo. All right, talk about this 50k. What do you mean by that? So let's talk numbers in your market, I guess. What. What kind of house grosses 50k?
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So what I've seen to be kind of a honey hole is four plus bedrooms in Charlotte, specifically in our market. Like three ones and three twos are. They're everywhere. I know Kenny Bedwell talks a lot about saturation, right. I agree with him, with him saying markets aren't saturated. Bed bathroom counts are saturated. In our market, specifically, a three one and a three two, very saturated. There's thousands of those. So for us to manage that, the quality has to be super high. It's got to have a ton of amenities. You know, backyard space, unique design, decor like interior. Otherwise, we're not going to take it. Now, once you move from like a three bed to a four bedroom, the competition goes way down. It's like a third of the listings from a three bed to a four bed. And realistically, from a purchase standpoint, you're going to spend like, you know, maybe 40 to 60 grand more from a three to a four. So when I'm talking to investors, I'm like, buy a four bedroom minimum. Buy a four bedroom, because the revenue from a three bed to a four bedroom is substantial compared to the purchase price increase.
So right now, we're. I mean, it's very, very hard for us to take on three bedrooms. It's got to be great location, great amenities, great design. All that.
Before we would say yes, because we know on the back end we've got a decent amount of, like, three beds that you have to reinvest and add amenities to stand out and to really drive the revenue that it should be driving.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: How big of a house grows? 50k is it? A four bedroom house? Does 50k?
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah, four bedrooms should. Yep. In the right area, they should at least do 50k.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: How much does this house cost?
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Usually? About 400k for a four bedroom.
If you look hard enough, you can find them at that.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: 50K is with the cleaning fee.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: 50K is the air DNA gross number you jump on. Air DNA. That gross number includes that cleaning fee. Yep.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: And so what can you do on it on a house like this?
[00:19:23] Speaker B: I mean, at least 50. So air DNA needs to have at least 50. We, on average, we're out. We're beating air DNA by 20% to 40%.
So if it says 50, we could probably do 60 to 65, somewhere in that range.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Got it. Got it. And are you brokering these deals? Are you an agent?
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Like, how does that all work right now? No, my business partner is a broker.
We've thought about bringing it in house. It's not something on the roadmap right now. We've just partnered with other agents.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: Right. But you do have the brokerage to manage the.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: We are a brokerage.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: In other words, you're not a co host, correct?
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Yeah, we are. Full service license in North Carolina.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: Can you explain the difference between that and a co host? And also maybe some nuances of, because actually North Carolina does have very interesting real estate laws in general. So can you kind of walk me through what that process looks like in North Carolina?
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I wish my business partner was. He obviously understand.
Yeah. High level. You do need to manage someone else's property. This is a really big debate in a lot of these Facebook groups, including our own, where especially arbitrage. Arbitrage is a super popular model. I think it's absolutely illegal to do in North Carolina without a license because you have no intent to live in the property from day one. You're managing it for another investor that you don't own. So I think arbitrage is illegal in North Carolina. Co host is much more of a gray area.
The big one being handling of funds. In North Carolina, you have to follow trust account trust account laws where any, you can't commingle clients funds. So each client has their own individual funds. Co host more, they just invoice the owner investor in that scenario. So it's kind of a workaround in North Carolina for that.
I specifically, I still think you should have a license if you are going to co host because a couple other laws that you have to abide by is you can't negotiate lease terms without a license and you can't produce marketing material. So negotiate lease terms. If somebody's like, hey, can you give me a 10% discount without a license? You can't do that. You cannot negotiate anything, which a lot of hosts still negotiate. Like, okay, I'm staying 30 days. Can you give me a deal on these 30 days? The second one is the marketing material. Like if you create any marketing material, anything on the listing that markets the property, you need a license as well.
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got it. No, I'm with you. I agree on the arbitrage. And even it's difficult for me to say this because I know there's probably some co hosts listening. And I do want you to listen, mister or misses co host, because you can learn a lot from this show. That's all about property management, which is what you are doing. But if you ask me, if you're gonna manage other people's properties, you need a damn license. All right, let's do it for real. This co host thing is just, you know, it's kid stuff. And I get it. If you're just doing it on the side for a side hustle or maybe you're a very busy, maybe you're a house husband with four kids and you're just looking for something on the. I get. That's great. That's great. But for those of you who are sitting around playing around trying to get co host gigs of and alaska and New Mexico and Maine, wherever you can get them, I just don't see that that's a good business model. Are you with me on that?
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. And I actually got a story for your listeners. So we've had over, I mean, probably 2000 stays at this point.
We've generated at least 5 million on gross revenue since inception. We had just recently, actually, a slip and fall girl. Broke her ankle, fell down the steps.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: All right, hold on, hold on. These are two separate things. Now I want to get the slip and fall story and then I want this, this. So because now I'm like, wait a minute, hold on. I don't even remember the first story. So let's put that one on hold. What happened with.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Slip and fall. What happened? And again, you know, maybe there's lawyers involved. You can't get too in detail, but.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Can you keep it. Keep it high level and I'll bring it full circle with the licensure and the property management side. So guests slipping, fall and broke her ankle, went to the hospital. She was like, hey, I need you guys to cover these expenses.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: This happened inside the property situation or dispelled out situation.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: Interior. Yes, interior steps.
Yeah.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: So long story short, possible alleged disrepair.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: That's what they were claiming.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Claiming.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: But we, we had an engineer go out and verify the steps were structurally sound and all this, but let. So I'll kind of fast forward to the, to the punchline. When her insurance came after us, the first thing that they asked for was, what's your property management like? Send me your agreement with the owner, like your property management agreement and then also like your licensure, like what firm are you with? Where's your like MLS like number, your brokerage number? Those were the first two questions they asked us. Luckily we're super buttoned up and professional, like, you know, we're legal and licensed and all that. We had those, you know, saved away on the Google Drive, but those were the absolute first two questions that they asked us. I can't imagine if you're a co host and you have like, you know, a contract you got off a Facebook group or like an etsy, you know, person. I can't imagine if that were the case and we were, we had that and we had to fight the insurance with this, you know, contract that may or may not be legal. We've ran everything through our, through our attorney, so we're super buttoned up, but I would hate for somebody else to go through that without the proper contracts agreements and being a licensed broker in that state.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's just if that's not good enough for you, can we run a legitimate business here? You know what I mean? Like if you're going to be a property manager, be a property manager. And again, we don't see it all the time, but it's nice to, we are seeing more guys like you pop up and I think that there's a need for that. We need caleb in every decent sized town that's going to be willing to specialize and do exactly what we're talking about here. Would, speaking of specializing, do you have any interest in doing long term rentals or are you going to stick with just short terms?
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Short term? Yeah, I don't have any interest in doing long term. It's just, it's easier because you're dealing with one guest, one tenant for a year versus, you know, one every week.
It's easier, but it's not worth it, I don't think. You know, most long term rentals charge eight to 12%. We're charging 20 to 25. It is more work with the short term model, but if done correctly, the short term rental model will outpace long term revenue, gross and net.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: I agree. Well, I agree with the not doing both, I just don't.
And I have met several guys that do both and I've got no problem with them doing both, but I just, for me personally, you know, stick with what you know, and I think you'll, where they say the riches in the niches or whatever, you know, so.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah, and you also got to think about, like, operations. Like, I could go out and probably close five to ten long term rentals very quickly, but that just puts pressure on the operations. Our back end team, if we're doing one process for this, one process for this, it's just. It's harder to scale once you kind of have multiple business models within one. So I like the specialized model. We handle all of our clients the same. Our entire operations teams knows how all that's handled as well. So it's not like, oh, this client. We told them we would do it this way. Oh, crap. I got to remember that. What was that client again? So it just complicates the back end, the operation side if you do multiple in one.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, I agree.
I bought 55 houses in one year, give or take. I'm saying that just to be impressive. Maybe I'll get more clicks on YouTube for saying that, but a dead number is not that far off. And it did clog up the system with the property management. It was a. It was a big shock to the system. It was like a 10% increase in business in one year.
And it took us a minute to sift through that, but we made it work. And, you know, now things are. Now that we're post Covid, those days are, you know, it's a different world we're living in now, but things have settled down there. Okay, talk to me about regulations in this fair city of yours. And are we in the city limits? Are we outside the city limits, and what are regulations look like?
[00:28:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Right now, specifically, North Carolina has allowed strs with open arms.
We had a case in Wilmington, I think it was 2022. 2023, where the city of Wilmington tried to ban short term rentals. They had. They made host submit a permit. They had to go through all this kind of steps to allow short term rentals within the city limits of Wilmington.
Weirdly enough, a host sued the city of Wilmington, and during that time, Charlotte had put in some restrictions in the UDO. But fast forward, that host won, and the state of North Carolina deemed that short term rentals can't be regulated by the city.
So host one, and then Charlotte dropped off all those restrictions in the. In the UDO. So our biggest hurdle right now is hoas, which is another reason why I don't like hoas. We. We try to steer well clear of hoas. That's the biggest hindrance to doing strs. And I personally think hoas, that's the right person to regulate strs. So right now in Charlotte, it's it's, it's fair game. There's no restrictions. Outside of hoas, there are a couple cities that have some.
It's not restrictions, but you just got to be careful with how you list what you list. Like, there are some rental restrictions, but it's easy to find that, like Cornelius, for example, they have like a map of where you can and can't list, like over under. They try to make it very complicated, but they have, since, from what I've heard from another host, essentially pulled back on the restrictions to where there are none now because there's a class action lawsuit against the, the city of Cornelius. So right now, to answer your question, not much restriction.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Do you have any issues with neighbors ever?
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think if you have enough guests, you're going to have issues with neighbors. How we kind of structure it is, I like meeting the neighbors when we're onboarding a property. I'll go over, knock on their door, drop our business card off, because there are, there are eyes and ears on the ground.
If they're pissed off, our business doesn't work. So we do everything we can to make sure they are happy and own our team. We've got a couple neighbors that have our company direct cell phone. Like, hey, look, let us know if you have any issues at all. We'll contact the guest directly. And then some of our properties where we're in super, super dense areas, we put the, I think it's minute, minute noise monitoring outside.
And there's some cool automations that you can do with those as well. You know, if it meets a certain decimal level, will automatically text and message the guest.
So we've got a couple of those at the properties just to, you know, really protect the neighborhood and our neighbors.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: All right, cool, man. Cool. So let's talk about the, you know, just the inner workings of the organization as far as softwares and day to day, and I, and keeping things organized. So I guess what softwares are you using? And we'll start with that. Yeah.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Tech stack. This is something I'm super passionate about. I think at any scale you need it. Tech stack. Looks like we use guesty pro for our property management software, Pricelabs. Love Pricelabs. Slack for all of our communication internally, Asana is kind of the heart and soul of everything that we do. That's our project management software. All of our turnovers, all of our checklists, all of our onboarding stuff, all of our maintenance items live in our Asana project. Each property's got one you can set due dates, basic project management software. But it is really, really helpful once you build out templates and have a process for everything.
What else do we use?
Couple of the minute is a, is a big one. Notion is all of our sops. So standard operating procedures love notion.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Notion. I don't know about that one. All right, hold on. I'm gonna write that down. Okay, we'll come back to that. Go ahead. Yeah.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Notion. It's, it's essentially we used to have all of our policies and processes in Google Drive where we would just link, you know, thousand different articles. The problem was if you've got the same policy in three different articles, you have to update it three times. Notion. If you link everything together, you can update it in one spot and it pushes out all the changes everywhere across the organization.
It's awesome.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Can I hire you to be my personal property manager? Would be my next question. I'm just kidding.
I just wish my property managers will give half a crap as much as you do. That would be great. All right, let's talk guesty pro. How did you land on that? Did you use any other ones?
[00:33:46] Speaker B: First, we used guesty for host, which back in the day it was called your porter before guesty purchased them.
I honestly think it has went downhill significantly when guesty purchased them.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: You mean the. Your porter version? Not the pro version, your porter. Yeah.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: So we had, we had your porter when we had maybe six, seven, eight properties somewhere in that range.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: I used your guest for a good year and a half. I'm very familiar.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it was, it was awesome. Like, I loved it. It did almost everything we needed.
Anyways, we upgraded to guesty pro. And it's okay. There are some shortcomings with it, but it's all right for some of our, like, virtual co host model, we use hospitable. And I like both of them. Every property management system is. They have major downfalls, all of them. Like, I have not found a perfect one, which is, which is fine, which is to be expected. This industry is very new. I'm curious what it'll look like in the next five to ten years. Who would be the front runner? Three years ago, guesty pro was the industry leader.
I'm not sure if they are now. It seems like there's a lot more competition. But at the time, whenever we made the upgrade from guesty for host to guesty pro, that was what we thought the best on the market was.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Okay, so you're happy with guesty pro to the point where you don't want to bother switching but it could be better. Is that the vibe I'm getting?
[00:35:15] Speaker B: 100%. The pain of switching is not probably far. Yeah. Far outweighs the possible benefit.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: All right, price Labs is price labs. Everybody's familiar with that. And then Asana, how did you land on that? Did you try Monday? Did you try Trello, or you just went straight for Asana?
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Actually, no. So when me and Riley worked together, Asana, we actually implemented Asana from our it team. I've used it for probably a decade. So that was like, that was the easy choice. That was the low hanging fruit. We already knew it. We knew how to work it from start to finish, so we ended up setting that up from day one. I've tried Trello, haven't tried Monday. They all same thing. They do similar things. They just look a little different.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: They are very similar. I did. I went through that same process years ago, and I.
I know exactly what you're talking about, Asana, if I had to give one, and these do come up often, so I don't want to beat a dead horse, but Asana definitely seems to be the most in depth of the. And what do we call these anyway, by the way? I just call them organizational softwares. I mean, there needs to be a name for this.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Project management is what we call project manager.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Is that what Asana would call itself, or do they not call itself?
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't. I don't know what they would call.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: All right, Sonic, come on the show. We want to talk to you. We need a name for what you're doing there. I'm sure they have one. Okay, cool. In minute. No, no flume, no water devices. We're good there.
Cameras, etcetera.
Yeah.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Ring. Wheeze, ring.
Same thing. It's good. Not great. The ability to manage one login all the properties is really key. The billing sucks.
It's just, it's once you. Once you add a device, it recalculates all the billing for all the properties. So accounting is very difficult. Bookkeeping is very difficult to know what property was billed, when.
So, ring, we've got probably on 90% of our properties. Once again, super easy to manage from an operation standpoint.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: You feel that where you shine is pricing. Is that true?
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: And to me, the biggest part of being a good property manager, at least in short term, is price. Learn knowing how to price your damn property. So can you walk us through what you feel, why you feel? That's your strong point.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Yeah, we, once again, we've accidentally stumbled across the strategy that we use now where it's. We call it like Airbnb, you know, short term rental tetris, wherever I force people to stay longer, and then the gaps I fill in with shorter stays. So I love these, like, midterm, you know, long shorts is what we call them. I forgot who said it. It's not our claim, but I heard that somewhere.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: It's yours now. It's yours.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Our average length of stay right now, it varies from like eight days to 13 days on average, across all of our units, which this industry is like two to four days on average.
So we've been able to lengthen that gap out to where we essentially force people to stay longer. And we give them deals if they stay longer. So that increases our occupancy, increases our length of stay and revenue. So essentially, if somebody wants to book two days, two months in advance, I don't want that. Guess we're not even going to show up in search. If somebody wants to book five days 100%, we're going to be priced right for that five night stay. So essentially, we take that reservation, then we make the adjacent days shorter so we can get the five nighter and then get a two nighter up front and a two nighter on the back end.
So that's kind of high level, our strategy with what we've done. And it's worked out really well. Our average. So last year we were 80% occupied across all units. This year we're 86% so far with, you know, a super high average length of stay revenue as well. I know a lot of people crap on occupy, like, high occupancy level.
I think it's one of the indicators. It's not the only indicator. If you have occupancy, your revenue has to be up as well. So if you're priced right, you can do both of those. We've beat air DNA on almost every property. The projections that we've put out, what.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Do you mean, crap on high occupancy?
[00:39:40] Speaker B: Well, everybody says, like, if you're 100% occupied, you're 90% occupied. Your price, your price, too low?
[00:39:45] Speaker A: Who cares? You know what I mean?
[00:39:47] Speaker B: I know, I know. I just, I see it everywhere.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: And I'm like, I disagree with that. I disagree. Let's get some asses in the seats. I mean, 100%. Yeah, that's ridiculous. All right, now if you got a little zero bedroom in the mountains, then we should probably be pretty damn close to 100% in summer months and non weird shoulder months, like september, et cetera. But man, I like to live at like 80, 85%, even on a bigger house. I just do.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think the piece that not a lot of people are talking about is the occupancy. Yes. The revenue, of course. But if you consistently get booked, these platforms promote the ones with high conversion rates. Right. Like, we have an internal target of, like, we need. We need to convert. I don't really care how many views we're getting. If we're converting those stays, like Airbnb, vrbo. Like, these platforms love people that actually convert, not just the ones that are, you know, show up in every search that nobody ever books them.
So our, like, our conversion rate seems to be pretty high from what I've seen with other hosts.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Yeah, well, my whole thing is, let's get the damn house booked. And if people want crap on me because my rates were too low, then so be it. I don't care. Because guess what? In the end of the year, my gross income looks great, you know, so.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: Yep, exactly. Exactly.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: All right, cool. Well, you're wonderful at this. Uh, if anybody wants to get their house rented, um, not with a tenant in Charlotte, North Carolina, you need to call my man caleb.
Um, anything that we. We need to talk about on the way out. You seem like a book guy. Maybe you got a good book for me to put a throw in the queue book guy.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: I mean, probably a broken record. Rich dad, poor dad. That's, you know, obviously the one that really unlocked a lot in my mind when I, you know, when I first read it.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Recently. I'll tell you what, I'll give you one. Let me. Let me pull up my audible. I'm an audible, guy. Let me throw out an audible. I haven't done this in a while.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: I'm a hard copy. Tools of Titan by tim ferriss. That's what I'm reading right now, Emyth. I mean, that's a. That's a really big one right behind me.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: I got one for you. Originals by Adam Grant. I just finished that. It was absolutely wonderful.
It talks a lot about just being unique and how it can be used as a power rather than a crutch, and talks about a lot about differences in sibling numbers, you know, first sibling versus 2nd, 3rd sibling, etcetera, and what makes everybody unique anyway, so I really did enjoy that one. And originals by Adam Grant.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: Okay. Yep. I wrote it. I got one more for you. It's extreme ownership by jocko willink. 100% willink. He's. He's great. I love him. Definitely not a real estate book, but more of leadership and just owning your own shit.
Cuss here.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: But that's all right.
No, you got to own it. You're right. How do we find you?
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Business website. Mytrippy.com.
my. Me personally, best ways. Instagram, Caleb W. Sure. And then at my tripify on every. Every platforms, the business side.
[00:43:10] Speaker A: All right, brother. Well, we appreciate you, and thank you for your time. And don't be a stranger here at the short term shop. Oh, one more thing. I'm going to throw this out. There. Was Avery an influence at all for you in your journey, and can you kiss her ass a little bit on the old.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'm following Avery for. For quite some time now.
The content, you know, what she's done with. With building this thing, YouTube, the short term shop. I mean, what you guys are doing is revolutionizing short term rentals. It really is. There's. There's no other way around it.
It's just. I mean, I admire you guys from afar. You know, we've never spoke. I've never spoke to Avery, but what you guys are doing in this industry is. Is. Is awesome. So thank you.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Wow. I did not expect that. Thank you. That was not necessary. And I will take it.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Not. It was not. It was not planned either.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: I will take. But I did notice a couple of little. There was a couple of little things in there. I'm like, that's an Avery thing. That's an Avery thing. You know, so I'm like, I bet he's an Avery fan. So I wanted to ask, because I am also an Avery fan. Obviously, she's my. He's my life CEO, and, you know, she knocks me over the head with a hammer when I'm not acting right. And so we all appreciate the boss lady, as we like to call her around here. So thank you for saying such kind words. That was wonderful of you. And with that, I will leave you. And on behalf of short term rental management, please don't overthink it.
