Episode Transcript
[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] Short Term Rental Management with long hair, Luke Carl and my seasonal mustache. I don't expect it to last very long, but it's here and I'm rocking it and it is metal and I am grateful for you for being here. And also the new book. The new book did sell out on Amazon the day it was released. Of course they got more copies quickly. But very exciting news. We expect it to be a best seller in at least one to three categories. So great stuff from Smarter Short Term Rentals, the new book so I do have a sensitive subject that I would like to chat about today and that is about the landlord, tenant relationship, the host, guest relationship, and the perspective of said host of said guest about the host of said tenant, about the landlord.
[00:01:20] Somehow, some way, I think it was targeted. I stumbled across a Facebook thread or social media thread of sorts recently and it was a lot of hate towards landlords.
[00:01:33] I mean massive amounts of hate.
[00:01:36] And they were saying that they should be able to live for free and this and that and politics were involved. And I was not surprised, but also shocked at the same time. I was, I was very surprised at the amount of hate that was on this thread. Hate towards people that are providing you a place to rent, to live your life, to raise your children.
[00:02:08] And as a landlord, I was pretty offended by this. I do my best to supply quality homes in both my long terms and my short terms. I have, I go out of my way, spend a little extra money on granite and stainless in my long terms, all of them, even the slightly lower budget stuff that I may have.
[00:02:36] And I, I feel that I was, I treated unfairly as a landlord by this Facebook threat. Now I do understand that there are people out there that are just not going to understand what it takes to get to where you can buy a house, to rent to somebody. That is probably a foreign concept to the people that were posting all this hate and negativity on said social media thread.
[00:03:06] And I will say that there are plenty of landlords out there that are not that great at it.
[00:03:13] Now what does that even mean? Because in their eyes, if they're making a dollar or two, they're probably doing just fine. They're doing their job.
[00:03:22] But there are landlords out there that are probably a little bit dismissive of the actual human needs of their tenants, of their guests.
[00:03:35] And I'd like to think that that is not me. And I think we need to spread that love. I think that first of all, the folks that were commenting on this Facebook thread, I was.
[00:03:47] I was not interested in any way in commenting.
[00:03:51] Hundreds of comments ripping landlords to shreds.
[00:03:57] And these are not the kind of folks that you can change their mind as to think that, oh, I am. I am a good landlord. I'm a good landlord. I provide great places to live. They thought it was all about the money.
[00:04:12] They think that these landlords are sitting in an ivory tower, laughing all the way to the bank with their money because they had misfortunes or whatever the case may be now. I just don't.
[00:04:25] I mean, I don't get it. I don't get it.
[00:04:30] I have been a person that was renting a property and I never in a million years would have dreamed of disliking my landlord simply because they were a landlord. I actually, back in the day when I lived in an apartment for, I don't know, 12 years, the same place, and I was friendly with the landlord. I used to love going and paying my rent. I pay it in person just to. Just to shoot the crap.
[00:05:00] I was friends with the. The son, he was about my age and we used to hang out at the bar and never once did I think to myself, oh, the evil landlord that's taking all of my hard earned money, taking 30% of my monthly income. My early 20s.
[00:05:22] Never did I think that.
[00:05:26] So I'm a little shocked to hear that there are people again. Of course there are people out there that think this, but it is a little shocking at times to be reminded of such a thing.
[00:05:39] So a couple things we need to consider here. Number one, there are people out there that think like this and we can't convince them otherwise. Number two, if you are one of these people, why don't you just get your act together and go buy your own damn house so you don't have to rent and blame your problems on other people.
[00:05:55] Hate to say it, but it's. It's not cool. And I don't. I don't even want to. You know, I considered reading some of the comments from this thread on the air here, and I just decided that was a terrible idea. We don't want to contribute to such small thinking.
[00:06:13] And it was. It's kind of sad, you know, to think that I've worked this hard to come this far in life to provide these properties for people to raise their kids and have vacations and that there are a contingent. There is a contingent that likely silently hates my guts.
[00:06:32] Doesn't even know that I'm a human, I'm just a figurehead of evil to, to someone, somebody like this. And it's, it's a bit of a sad situation. So the, the reason I bring this up to you, the listener, is because you need to be part of the solution and not the problem.
[00:06:59] We have to take pride in our houses. And I will say that the great, you know, the vast majority of folks that are listening to short term rental management, if anything, we probably a lot of us are overdoing it on making our houses nice.
[00:07:20] And that's a good perspective to have because you get, you know, I think we get, we lose sight of the fact that there are plenty of people out there running homes that are not as decent as ours.
[00:07:33] I would say the majority are running homes that are not as nice as ours.
[00:07:39] Again, I find myself more often than not preaching that maybe we don't need to be going overboard with all of this stuff in our rental.
[00:07:53] And then to hear these, these tenants complaining about their landlord and, and me to be on the complete opposite other end of that spectrum where I'm saying, you know, you might not need a pickleball court.
[00:08:09] I'm a little sad. I'm saddened by this a little bit. You know, it's like.
[00:08:17] But at the same time, you cannot convince one of these hate commenters that we're hard working people and we earned it.
[00:08:31] It's all ivory tower. It's all silver spoons.
[00:08:35] This program is brought to you by Smarter Short Term Rentals, the Facebook group.
[00:08:42] This group has nearly 75,000 members and has all of the information you can imagine to get you started in the right direction in the world of vacation and short term rentals.
[00:08:56] That's Smarter Short Term Rentals, the Facebook group, the search for it on Facebook, that's Smarter Short Term Rentals.
[00:09:07] I'm very proud of where I come from in the Midwest and I'm going to tell you right now, I never had a silver spoon of any kind and I didn't need it. Matter of fact, I went, I had to go get a job to buy my first bicycle.
[00:09:27] I mean, I know that sounds ridiculous and yes, I probably had a bike before that that I don't remember because I was too little. But the first bike I ever remember I purchased with my own paper route money.
[00:09:42] And here I am with 2, 300 units worth of real rental real estate for people to live in and vacation in and I earned every second of it. And I'm still earning it because guess what? Landlording is Freaking hard. That's another thing.
[00:09:59] I saw one comment that said that every landlord I've ever met was narcissistic and cynical.
[00:10:07] Well, how many landlords have you met?
[00:10:10] And maybe we are to a certain extent. You have to work really hard and believe in yourself to get to where you know you're renting extra houses to people. And I can see where that would come across as narcissism. But all we can do is do the best we can. Provide quality homes, quality amenities, quality countertops, decent toilet paper and enough toilet paper.
[00:10:38] And be part of the solution. Be part of the solution. Contribute.
[00:10:45] Contribute to society. Contribute to these folks lives. Give them a place where they can create a story.
[00:10:51] Doesn't need to be that deep, but you get the point.
[00:10:58] So I am saddened a little bit by the comments that I saw.
[00:11:03] I will say that anybody that commented on that particular thread that I'm talking about is probably somebody that you don't want to rent to.
[00:11:11] All fair housing, of course, intact at all times. We play by the rules here at short term rental.
[00:11:23] I would assume that the folks posting on those threads are very keen on not paying rent.
[00:11:32] And where I come from, we pay the rent and we pay it on time.
[00:11:40] Because again, my hard working midwestern upbringing, that's just what you do. You work hard and you pay your bills and your rent is your most important bill.
[00:11:57] You got to have that house to have the roof over your head and create a family.
[00:12:05] Now if you got yourself into a sticky situation in life and a financial burden of sorts.
[00:12:13] I hate to say it, but is that my problem?
[00:12:19] Figure it out. Go buy your own damn house. Like I said, you know what I mean. I hate to say it, but if we're going to be sitting there hating and crapping on people on the Internet, but again, that's what social media is. So I bring this up to remind you that you are a landlord. You are renting a house to somebody and there is a chance that that person doesn't like landlords.
[00:12:52] There's a per. There's a chance that that person lives in a rental and their landlord is not their. They're not their favorite person.
[00:13:03] And so when they come to your house, they have a preconceived notion that you are evil or you are living on your high horse.
[00:13:19] So keep that in mind.
[00:13:22] I think that as hosts renting high quality properties with nice everything, sometimes we can start to feel like we did these folks a favor by providing them this place to create these memories.
[00:13:41] And I think that there are a few people out there that no matter how nice your house is, they're still not going to like you.
[00:13:54] Now again, I would love to point out the fact that the vast majority of humans, attendants and guests, quite frankly, don't give a crap.
[00:14:08] I'm just coming on vacation. It doesn't need to be that big a deal.
[00:14:14] I would say that that's most of our guests, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is to be nice. Be nice. Be nice. Give them what they need, kiss their rear end, be respectful. Customer service and hospitality all the time. Number one, we love our guests.
[00:14:30] I love my tenants too. I'm saddened by the comments on that thread because I do care about each and every one of my tenants. I get a message that I got an H Vac down, that H Vac is fixed within a matter of hours.
[00:14:46] And also you go look at my spreadsheets. Every single one of my H Vacs on all my apartments and all my houses and all my duplexes is on a spreadsheet with the age. And I would be willing to bet that less than 10% of my portfolio H vacs are more than 8 years old.
[00:15:05] Because I care.
[00:15:09] I care. I do. I'll be honest with you. There is an element there that I don't want to deal with a 14 year old H vac breaking down. So I tend to keep my stuff a little bit newer than the next guy. But again, that does translate into being a good landlord and running a good house. Long story long with long hair. Lou. Carl. A little bit sad today to know that there are people out there that think like this.
[00:15:37] I'm also sad to think that there are landlords out there that deserve to be thought of like that.
[00:15:43] But I know that I am part of the solution. I'm providing awesome houses and the universe is a better place because of the vibe and the and the good times that we are curating in our homes.
[00:16:05] So don't let the haters get you down, but be aware that they are out there. Long haired Luke, Cash flow Carl, the shaman of short term, reminding you that guests will always be number one. Tenants will always be number one. Even when they're wrong.
[00:16:23] Even when they're wrong, they are right. Because the customer is always right.
[00:16:31] Okay, so on behalf of the new book, Smarter Short Term Rentals, which sold out by the way, on Amazon the first day it was released.
[00:16:43] Sold out. Of course, they got more copies in pronto. Gonna be a bestseller in at least three categories.
[00:16:51] Luke, Carl.
[00:16:54] Luke. @the Shorttermshop.com asking you. Please don't overthink it.
