[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 Carl.
[00:00:16] All right, Short Term Rental Management. Luke, Carl, Happy to be here. Love you.
[00:00:21] Gonna talk about managing vacation houses and things like that.
[00:00:27] And we'll start with the jobs report. It came out on Friday. I did record this prior to Friday, so I apologize. I don't have any info on the jobs report. All signs were looking like it would be a little bit, shall we say, lackluster, which would point towards rate drops, which is what we're all kind of expecting after the Jackson Hole meeting.
[00:00:50] Let's put it this way, it is not fun to be Jerome Powell right now. He's getting it from all sides, man. It's just a tough gig for him. I don't feel. I don't admire what he's doing. Whether you like him or not and what's going on out there, it is. It's a tough gig. And it's become a household conversation.
[00:01:10] When your uncle starts talking to you about the interest rates in the Fed.
[00:01:16] I mean, when, when, when has that ever happened? In my lifetime. I don't ever remember my parents talking about the Fed.
[00:01:23] You know, of course, they weren't out using leverage for much of anything other than maybe a car here and there. But it's. It's household conversation now.
[00:01:34] It's a very large topic, and now they're trying to stop the tariffs, and it's a lot going on out there. Yet the stock market remains positive, so very soon we should have a rate drop again. There's been some huge news since I've recorded this podcast, so I do apologize for not being perfectly up to date. But all signs pointing to rate drops, whether that's good or bad, it's really good for housing. Housing needs it. Housing has not been that attractive for the past two or three years.
[00:02:12] It's funny, because prior to the rates going up, housing was very attractive, and that's when the prices were the highest they've ever been.
[00:02:21] And if you bought in 21 or 22, you might be, you know, in a situation where you can't sell it right now, which is all right, because in general, with rental real estate, you want to keep it.
[00:02:35] The wealth comes from keeping it. This is why I get so mad about this pickleball court crap. That's, to me, somebody that's trying to. To hit a jackpot on a slot machine. It's not a slot machine.
[00:02:48] It's just a damn house. You. You. You provide a very Clean, comfortable product for your guests at a good price and they will come.
[00:02:57] Going out there and buying $100,000 house and doing a $200,000 rehab on it.
[00:03:04] I see people doing that. I don't know that that's a good idea.
[00:03:08] Is your house worth what you've got into it at that point? It's a tough one, but we'll see. It's an interesting economy to say the least. I do think it's a good time to buy a deal. I just went live with a brand new beach house last week, just a couple days ago.
[00:03:26] Got the pictures up on it and got it up for rent. It's on the beach. It's already slow season so, you know, not going to be that impressive of a launch here for my new property. But that's okay.
[00:03:40] It's a place for my, my parents to stay when they come to town and family to stay and we can rent it a little bit here and there.
[00:03:47] Cute. Cutest little two bedroom house. It's a two bedroom house in an area where there's nothing but, you know, four, five, six, seven bedrooms.
[00:03:55] So it is a unique property. Location is good. A little bit far from the beach, but I'm providing a golf cart so that'll help with that. But exciting little house for me. Spent about 50 grand on the rehab. Posting about it on Instagram a little bit. You can find me there at Luke Cash Flow Carl on Instagram.
[00:04:14] Hey, while we're at it, please leave this podcast a five star review. It's a very, very, very niche down podcast. I understand that, but I work hard and I enjoy it.
[00:04:24] It's not for everybody, but if you're listening, hey man, every little bit helps. I'm getting close to 300 reviews which, which believe it or not, that's actually pretty good for a podcast.
[00:04:38] So hit me with a five star if you don't mind.
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[email protected] that's str listingadvice.com so I do want to talk about travel as I have been traveling and I've been traveling to a very travel heavy area. Disney, Orlando just got back.
[00:05:22] First of all, I want to say that I cherish the moments with my children at these parks. I do. It is just an incredible thing. I never went as a Child never really went at all until I had my own kids. I went when I was like 17 at Disneyland.
[00:05:39] Played in the marching band and marched down the, you know, high school marching band in Disneyland.
[00:05:46] I don't remember much of it. I remember I broke a stick.
[00:05:52] Ralph Hardiman's. I was using the, the white, the big thick, you know, we. Marching drumsticks. That was center snare.
[00:05:59] Anyway, I don't talk about the kids much. I protect them from the Internet. They don't know what the Internet is. I, by the way, I think that's the way to do it.
[00:06:12] Putting. I'm never going to put my kids on social media. It's just not for me. They don't even know what it is. It's not fair. It's not good for their innocence and I don't like it. So, so. But I have them and they're wonderful and they're the best, best thing in my whole life. It's just a wonderful thing. Family is all that matters.
[00:06:30] But we took the kids to Disneyland. Disney World, sorry, we live in Florida and Universal. We went to Universal for the first time.
[00:06:40] And the reason I mentioned this is because there's a lot of travel going on here. Honestly, Disney World and Universal are a huge, they're a very good barometer for travel in general because these are huge attractions that probably Disney World is, you know, likely the biggest, at least child childhood tourist attraction in the country. And I could be wrong about that. I didn't do too much research. Maybe I will real quick. I'll be right back. So number nine, to be exact. Disney World's Magic Kingdom is the number nine attraction for tourism in the United States. Times Square is number one. Central park number two.
[00:07:25] This is as of 2021.
[00:07:28] So I would imagine this has changed dramatically because as we all know, Covid most certainly affected New York City.
[00:07:36] I heard as much as 30% and primary residents lost in New York City. In other words, number, number of people living in New York City is 70% of what it used to be.
[00:07:50] Central park number two, Vegas number three, Vegas Strip number three, Union Station in D.C. mall of America number five, National Mall in D.C. millennium park in Chicago, My kind of town.
[00:08:06] Golden Gate park and then magic kingdom number nine, Lincoln park in Chicago. Disneyland number 11.
[00:08:13] And then it trickles down. Epcot, etc. Great Smoky Mountains is actually right behind Epcot in 2021.
[00:08:23] So Epcot, which is the second most popular park at Disney World, had more visitors than the Smoky Mountain National Park. Great Smoky Mountain National Park, 2021 and oddly enough, Hollywood Studios is right underneath the Great Smoky Mountains.
[00:08:41] So my point is a lot of traffic, a lot of tourism.
[00:08:47] Pretty good barometer for what's going on out there in the world as far as travel is concerned. And I was. I was a little bit surprised. It was pretty slow. I went over Memorial Day weekend. We took a long weekend, a few extra days, and we went to Universe. We went to Epcot. The first day, it was jam packed. The first day of the food and wine festival. So that was to be expected. It was jam packed even in a terrible storm. A lot of rain. You know how it is in Orlando, though. It only rains for like an hour.
[00:09:15] And then the next day we went to Universal. Was our first time at Universal. It was great. I had enjoyed it.
[00:09:23] Definitely see why folks are going there. I enjoy. I think I enjoyed it slightly more than I was hoping, which I did not have huge expectations because I'm going to go ahead and say I'm. We're Disney folks. We are Disney folks.
[00:09:35] Huge Disney fan. I really like having this Disney in my life. It's a. It's really enjoyable and it is.
[00:09:45] I. I can't even come up with a word for how expensive Disney is. It's unbelievably expensive.
[00:09:55] We have a Disney budget and it's worth every penny. It is worth every penny. Everybody's happy. They're very happy to see you. We will get into that here in just a second.
[00:10:06] I want to stick with the travel for right now.
[00:10:09] We went to Universal the first day, which would have been the Friday before Labor Day. It was my daughter's birthday and it was. It was not busy at all. We bought the Express Passes so we could just walk on without having to wait in line. And there were no lines. Basically, on any ride, there were no lines.
[00:10:31] Rather surprised at that.
[00:10:34] I don't have anything to compare it to because it was my first time. Now, keep in mind, Epic, the new Universal park, is now open and that seems to be where everybody's going. We opted to not go to Epic because we've heard and done a lot of research and found that a lot of the rides are not working properly because it is new and it's to be expected. It's new. You got to work the kinks out. So I ain't mad at them. I'm just going to take my time and go next time. No big deal.
[00:11:02] So it's possible that Epic was packed. I don't know. We didn't go. We went to the other two parks, Highland of Adventure and Universal Studios, they did get busier after lunch, but they were not really that busy at all. And I was disappointed in the customer service. Again, we'll talk about that.
[00:11:22] The next day we went to Animal Kingdom, and again, not that busy. It did get busier after lunch, at which point we left and went to Blizzard beach, the water park, which was very busy.
[00:11:34] Again, I think there was a trend here. People were sleeping in or something of the sort, or waiting for school to get out, I don't know. But by this time, it was already Saturday.
[00:11:45] The afternoons were definitely much busier. And Blizzard beach we went that afternoon was very busy.
[00:11:51] We, you know, it was difficult to even really find somewhere to park the stroller. And it was nice. It was nice to see that. I was happy to see that.
[00:11:59] I think during COVID we were annoyed with all these, oh my gosh, everybody's traveling and spending their money. And he got used to it. And it was like, everything's so busy. I don't even want to go anywhere. And now the economy has completely changed. And it's the opposite where I'm like, I'm refreshed and happy that to see folks out and about.
[00:12:18] So Blizzard beach was very busy on Saturday afternoon.
[00:12:21] Sunday we did Magic Kingdom. It was packed in the afternoon. The morning was really not that bad at all. We were the second in line to get on our first rope drop, which was Peter Pan.
[00:12:33] And we also, by the way, we took a picture with one of the photographers before we got in line for the ride. And we were still second in line. So it really wasn't that that crazy busy. And then again, another pretty bad storm that afternoon around 11 in the morning, until 1 in the afternoon, about two hours of storm, we. We hit under the Big Top souvenir store. And we met. We went and did a meet and greet with Minnie Mouse and Daisy, waited that out and then turned into a light drizzle and we went on our way over to Winnie the Pooh, which is one of my favorites.
[00:13:09] Again, if you are a Disney operator, in other words, if you have a vacation rental in Disney, then all this stuff is going to make sense to you. And I would like to do a Disney specific podcast here in the near future. And I think we will do that because I just enjoy it there so much. I guess we're kind of doing that right now.
[00:13:32] Those are the only two Disney parks. Well, we went to three, right? We went to Blizzard beach. So we went to Animal Blizzard beach in the same day. And then we went to Magic Kingdom the Monday or Sunday, and we left Monday. It's a long drive for us. It's six or seven hours.
[00:13:47] And that's how we roll. We. We hit it hard. We go early, early, early. We're the first ones to the park. First ones on the monorail, first ones in the. In the line for the minivan, that kind of thing.
[00:14:03] And first one's in the park.
[00:14:08] Love that. Love being early. And then by, you know, two, three in the afternoon, you start winding down.
[00:14:12] It's kind of funny that, you know, when you go to bed early also, I mean, sorry, when you wake up early also go to bed early. Some people don't. Some people just rage all night. And that's cool, too. But we hit 25, 000 steps a day, give or take.
[00:14:24] We've become incredibly efficient with Disney.
[00:14:29] So it's not, you know, sometimes we used to hit 30, 30 plus thousand steps, and now we don't have to because we're just efficient.
[00:14:36] But I like the steps anyway. I do like the steps. So anyway, we rounded it off with Carousel Progress.
[00:14:45] That was our last event at Magic Kingdom, which was wonderful. That's my favorite. It's just such so much nostalgia. I know a lot of folks don't like that one, but it started it all, really. So anyway, by the afternoon, by the time we were leaving and the rain had cleared up, Magic Kingdom Sunday, it. It was definitely busy. It wasn't anything crazy, though. And again, Labor Day weekend. Yeah, you get the extra day, but the kids are back in school, and it's not necessarily known as a super busy weekend. We also went Memorial Day this year, and it was not crazy either.
[00:15:22] So I was. I was decently optimistic, let me put it that way. As far as the travel and the, the traffic was concerned at Disney and Universal, I think it was. It was decent, but it's definitely a little slow. I think the tourism and travel are a little slow. Not really the first thing on people's minds right now is spending money.
[00:15:44] So we got to keep that in mind when it comes to our properties and pricing our properties.
[00:15:49] You know, I don't. I really hate to say this, but it might be a decent time to have a talk with your cleaner about maybe lowering the rates a little bit for the winter, especially if you're on the beach, because if you got Covid cleaning fees, you know, times have changed a little bit, and it might be, you know, your cleaner might be noticing it too. Like, man, I'm not as busy as I used to be. Well, there's a way to get busier, and that's to charge less money.
[00:16:12] So you might want to have a chat with your cleaner. Maybe there's 50 bucks worth of wiggle room on a big property or something like that. Maybe.
[00:16:21] Please do not tell them that. Luke said I should ask you if I can have a better cleaning fee.
[00:16:26] Hopefully you're happy there with your cleaner and your cleaning fee and you don't have to do that. But it's getting to, you know, it's getting to be a little weird out there, and we got to do whatever we can do. This is why I keep talking about these pickleball courts and all these amenities. What are you doing? Price per night is king.
[00:16:39] It's always been king. But right now, especially with Main street hurting, Main street hurting.
[00:16:46] Uncle Larry's talking about interest rates at the dinner table.
[00:16:53] Main Street.
[00:16:56] So price per night is king. If you're thinking about putting some amenities in your unit right now or putting in a basketball court or something like that, I. I would say don't do it. There's no reason for it. Price per night, keep those prices low.
[00:17:10] Those who can keep the prices low will survive and thrive.
[00:17:17] Absolutely thrive. It's a market swing right now, and things are at the bottom with sales.
[00:17:23] And tourism's a little slow as well, which I witnessed this weekend at Disney World. So I do want to talk about customer service a little bit because I am definitely getting all. I'm already getting excited about this Disney podcast. I'm going to put that together here in the near future.
[00:17:37] But I will say Universal garbage, horrible customer service. Nobody even knew where the bathrooms were. I obviously, I like to ask a lot of questions, especially when I'm new and I was my first time at Universal. So I asked a lot of questions.
[00:17:50] Nobody had answers.
[00:17:52] None of the people at Universal had any answers to any of my questions.
[00:17:59] Very disappointing.
[00:18:01] Disney World forgot it.
[00:18:04] I had one slight disappointment where the guy, the bellman or the. I don't know if he was the valet guy or what, but he saw him. I was standing there putting the stroller in the back of the Suburban.
[00:18:19] Two guys, two or three guys were near and doing nothing, and they did not offer to help. And this was also. This was at Grand Floridian, which is considered to be kind of the cream of the crop, one of the top two or three resorts, you know, if not the top, as far as price per night and things like that.
[00:18:39] And these guys didn't want to lift a finger to help me with my stroller. I was very disappointed at that. And then I went to Universal, and the customer service was so horrible that when I went back to Disney, I was extremely impressed because the stroller thing did not continue. You know, our minivan. Minivan is a Lyft. It's an Uber. At Disney World, for those that don't know, the driver was fantastic. Everybody's so friendly. Everybody knows exactly where everything is. They're so happy to see you. The customer service is second to none.
[00:19:14] Every time I go to Disney World, I get fired up and. And inspired to be a better host.
[00:19:20] And that's just what Disney teaches you.
[00:19:25] So, to recap, the parks were not that busy on a major holiday weekend, which I was a little sad, but also kind of expected. I was. You know, I. I don't know. I was expecting it to.
[00:19:38] I was expecting to be annoyed, but hoping that it would not be that busy. And now looking back on it, I was. I wish I was annoyed because that means that people are out spending money. But, you know, the consumer spending does seem to be pretty good right now.
[00:19:56] I don't think that's our problem. I think people are consuming.
[00:20:04] Matter of fact, the spending is high enough that some folks are saying that it may not negatively affect the jobs report, which is expected to come in a little, you know, like I said, lackluster. Again, it's already been out. So I do apologize for not being completely timely here, as the jobs report came out on Friday.
[00:20:22] But I do think folks, you know, they're spending money, they're out, they're moving and shaking. I've been looking at motorhomes and Rolexes lately because those are directly related to vacation homes. They're all the same kind of thing. I don't need this thing, but I want it. Good news is, with a vacation home, you can rent it and get it professionally cleaned and make improvements to it when needed. Can't do that with a Rolex.
[00:20:52] I mean, maybe you can. Is there an Airbnb for Rolex? I. I don't know. I don't think I'm gonna put mine on there.
[00:21:01] And motorhomes. I did a little poking around on motorhomes the other day because I do love a road trip with the family in the summertime, and we've had motorhomes before. I don't think I'll do it again. I mean, to me, it's. At this point, let's just get in the suburban, call it a day.
[00:21:17] But there's a lot of motorhomes for sale. Let me put it that way, you know, whereas in 2021 you couldn't even get one. You couldn't even get insurance for a motorhome.
[00:21:33] Times have changed. It's a good time to be buying these things that you don't need.
[00:21:38] And I do think people are spending money like I mentioned. I mentioned last week, I think it was that I went to an Apple store recently and I was shocked how many people were in there. So it's just an interesting time with the economy. Keep in mind that tourism is down a little bit in general.
[00:21:56] Main Street's hurting.
[00:22:00] Do your best to keep your price per night low and pretty soon we're gonna have the Disney podcast here at Short Term Rental Management. I'm looking forward to that. I'm gonna start putting that together right now. I enjoyed my time with you. Happy Tuesday to you.
[00:22:12] As we start to slowly roll into the holidays, keep an eye on those prices and don't over ra.
