[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 Shorts from Rental Management. Luke Carl in the cash cave loving life. We are in the fall of the year 2025.
[00:00:26] Happy Tuesday.
[00:00:27] I love you.
[00:00:28] We're going to talk about a couple of cool things today. A little bit different show. We're going to read some comments from the Internet from folks that are trying to learn how to manage and become better managers and, and how, and I will answer how I would in my business. So we're going to do some of that and we're also going to talk about the economy been doing that a lot lately trying to stay up to date with what's going on out there. And we're going to start with that on today's program here on Short Term Rental Management and what's forefront in the economy at least as far as we are concerned in the real estate world is the jobs.
[00:01:06] Government has reported the U. S employment is down 911,000 jobs weaker than what they initially thought. Right.
[00:01:20] So the U.S. economy has employed 911,000 fewer people than originally reported as of March of 2025.
[00:01:31] So basically what this means is that the jobs report that just came out, what 2 fri was it 2 Fridays ago which was very low, something like 22,000 and they were hoping for something north of 75,000.
[00:01:45] Now we're saying that the jobs reports in general may be worse than what we thought and for quite some time now, for most of the year I will go ahead and say that I think this is maybe a bandwagon that's being jumped on here because people are sick of hearing about interest rates and you know how it is with the news. They are always grabbing onto something that's going to get people's attention. And Uncle Larry's already talking about the interest rates and the Fed, et cetera.
[00:02:14] And now the jobs report came out last like again, I think it was two Fridays ago and it was not good, which is making interest rates go down, which is good for us as real estate investors.
[00:02:29] But you know, I, I, I, I do think that the, the news outlets are kind of jumping on this thing just because it's getting clicks.
[00:02:39] So the data they're saying covers March 24 through March 25 and trips the average monthly jobs gains seen during that period of time from an average of 147,000 to 71,000 per month.
[00:03:03] So what they're saying is for a one year period from March 24th of March 25th, they were off by two times.
[00:03:13] It was half as much jobs, half as many jobs were created than what they thought than what they had reported. Because, you know, again, the, the jobs, the jobs report comes out and then they look deeper into it and find more details, which, to be honest with you, this is what Trump wanted, in my opinion. I'm not here to get political in any way, but. And let's not forget that Trump was firing people, the whole DOGE thing.
[00:03:43] My brother is a federal work, federal worker, which is very, very stressful for most of the year for those folks. And he's a, he works for the National Park Service.
[00:03:55] So I talked to him about this quite often. He's very plugged into it. And, you know, I mean, this is, that's the truth. The president was firing people in the federal government.
[00:04:05] Was he firing people because he's trying to get interest rates to go down? It's possible.
[00:04:10] Oh, the jobs reports are too good.
[00:04:13] Maybe we can change that. Let's see what we can do about that. Start firing people. And now we had a really bad jobs report come out last week.
[00:04:22] Interest rates went down.
[00:04:25] Is it possible that the powers that be like that and they are grabbing hold of that and running with it in the news and getting more rate drops Again, the interest rates have not gone down at all. We will find out about that today. The next Fed meeting starts today, runs through tomorrow.
[00:04:46] So we will get more news on rate drops. We do 100% anticipate them to go down. The interest rates on real estate, residential real estate interest rates have already gone down, which means they are basically baking in what they think is going to happen. And I agree with them. I think that they are going to go down, especially based on all these job, jobs reports. And let's not m. Let's make no mistake here, friend.
[00:05:12] These job reports are coming out.
[00:05:17] What we're talking going back 18 months ago now, just in time for this Fed meeting.
[00:05:26] I'm not going to say it's the president, but some powers greater than myself, they want interest rates to come down.
[00:05:35] I know everybody listening to this podcast wants interest rates to come down. Everybody in real estate wants. We do re.
[00:05:42] Real estate has not been good for two years as far as moving and shaking, finding deals.
[00:05:49] My commercial, I, I was looking at an apartment building recently.
[00:05:53] It's an apartment building in a town where I own other apartment buildings. And I do like apartments.
[00:05:59] Something that doesn't come up around here very often because most people in the overnight rental space don't really want to deal with long term tenants. And I understand that, but I like them.
[00:06:10] And I haven't bought an apartment building for probably three years.
[00:06:17] And I found it very interesting to find out. I found out that they're saying 30% down has become the norm in commercial real estate, at least in the town where I purchase, which is my hometown.
[00:06:31] I was a little bit shocked by that and I said, you know, I was looking at this deal and the broker was like, I was like, man, this thing barely makes sense even at 25 down. He's like, what are you talking about, 25 down? Everybody's doing 30 now. And I'm like, what?
[00:06:45] Then why the hell wouldn't I buy a beach house, get 15, 20 down and the damn thing will actually make a buck or two if I do it right, you know. And of course he was like, well, I don't know anything about beach houses. And okay, so, you know, it's been a weird couple years for real estate with this interest rates and honestly we're lucky that things have not been worse.
[00:07:10] Folks have bought in 2022. You know, there, there's definitely possibility that you're not equity positive, but it's just, it's post covet life. It's a weird world out there.
[00:07:25] So anyway, we will find out about these interest rates in the next day or two. There is a, keep in mind here, there is a very good chance that mortgage interest rate go up in the next day or two because this is what happened last when it was an early spring where they dropped the interest rates an entire point, mortgage rates went up because they knew that the rate drop was coming and the compens overcompensated and then they had to, you know, fix the overcompensation and bring them back up just a little bit. So it's very likely that, you know, Wednesday, Thursday, tomorrow's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday of this week, that interest rates, mortgage interest rates will be a little higher than they are Tuesday morning.
[00:08:13] So keep that in mind. And I do want to talk a little bit about the people on the sidelines. You hear about this a lot. Oh, these people have been waiting on the sidelines with all this money and they're going to jump out and they're going to jump in and they're going to make it difficult for you to buy a deal.
[00:08:28] Thousands and thousands of people are waiting on the sidelines for two years now because deals didn't make sense, interest rates were too high. And now that the interest rates are going down, there are going to be More people jumping in.
[00:08:41] I do agree with that, but I also think that it's wrong that the people that have been sitting on the sidelines for the past two to three years are the ones that you need to worry about. People that sit on the sidelines, guess what they do?
[00:08:57] They sit on the sidelines. Sideline people stay on the sidelines and they sit and they wait for an opportunity to say, I told you so.
[00:09:09] And those people, the folks that don't take action, that thought about taking action, have been sitting on their ass for the past two and a half years, have been loving what's been going on.
[00:09:21] I told you, there were no deals in saturation and there were no deals.
[00:09:27] That's what that type of person is looking for in their life.
[00:09:31] They want to wallow in the mud.
[00:09:34] And there's been a lot of mud for two and a half years, so. Well, while I do think things are going to get busy, it's not those people that we're worried about. It's the new people coming in.
[00:09:48] I think that the interest rates are going to go down.
[00:09:51] Real estate is going to become attractive again. It's already happening, folks.
[00:09:57] It's getting busier.
[00:09:59] Deals are starting to close. Inventory's going down. But inventory will go back up very soon.
[00:10:08] Inventory is going down.
[00:10:10] Hold on, let me get back to that.
[00:10:13] I will come back to the inventory thing because I want to finish my speech about the folks on the sideline. The folks on the sideline for the past two and a half years that have been wallowing in the mud, they're going to go away because now they have. They're going to have nothing to wallow in.
[00:10:30] There's no more pity. There's no more I told you so.
[00:10:36] Okay? And again, I do want to reiterate, this is not happening overnight. This is not going to happen overnight.
[00:10:44] It's going to be a long, steady process to get real estate back functional again.
[00:10:54] But the new folks are going to come in and they're going to knock those six months, those people that were on the fence from becoming either a buyer or a wallower.
[00:11:08] Those five to six month shoppers that were getting ready to fall off the cliff into the mud and wallow, or they were maybe going to finally jump in, but they waited a little too long. Those new people are going to come in and push them off that board, right? So they're like standing on a pencil and here's the mud. You fall off the slope into the mud and you wallow, or you come over here and you buy a deal.
[00:11:33] So they got. Now you got these new folks coming in out of nowhere because all of a sudden real estate's a little more attractive than it used to be. A little bit.
[00:11:41] And so here come the new folks and they're going to get on the pencil and they're going to push you off into the mud, or they're going to push you off into the deal and they're going to follow right behind you and there'll be more people into those deals.
[00:11:54] So yes, there is about to be more competition. But I don't think it's those people that have been waiting around for two and a half years, because those people are just going to wait around anyway.
[00:12:04] But there's a never ending cycle of new, fresh, hungry people that are sick of their day job. And the beautiful thing about real estate is there's no ceiling. This is a $3 trillion industry. If you get into real estate and you decide you want to work hard, the sky is the limit and space is the place.
[00:12:29] Now back to the inventory thing.
[00:12:32] Inventory is down right now. And it's because in the past 40 days, give or take, people have been buying things.
[00:12:42] It's been in very recent past, very recent, that people have started to buy things.
[00:12:49] So those folks that were selling, a lot of those sellers have been trying to sell for a year or two.
[00:12:56] And now in the past 30 to 40 days, give or take, things are moving a little bit.
[00:13:03] And so that inventory is starting to come down.
[00:13:07] But it's only a very small matter of time before Uncle Larry, who's been sitting over there saying, I would really love to get rid of this house that I forgot all about, but I can't sell it because I tried to sell it a year and a half ago and it didn't sell.
[00:13:26] Uncle Larry's gonna catch on.
[00:13:30] Uncle Larry is gonna catch on and he's gonna find out that things are moving.
[00:13:37] And he's had a year and a half to get over himself on his purchase price, on his sale price.
[00:13:45] A year and a half ago, he wanted Covid money.
[00:13:48] Uncle Larry now realizes the COVID money's gone.
[00:13:53] He's gonna find out that neighbor Joe sold his house.
[00:13:58] And all of a sudden Uncle Larry's gonna say, holy crap, I can get rid of that house that I forgot all about.
[00:14:05] There comes your inventory. Inventory's coming.
[00:14:08] So don't believe it when you hear these low inventory, because that's happening right now. This stuff's starting to sell off. But as soon as Uncle Larry catches wind that Neighbor Joe sold his house. He we've got more inventory.
[00:14:21] Bob's your uncle.
[00:14:22] That's what's going on. We'll find out more about it tomorrow.
[00:14:26] Tonight and tomorrow with the Fed meeting.
[00:14:29] Okay, my guess, mortgage interest rates will go up over the course of the rest of this week but they're going to hopefully stay somewhere in that low sixes. Like 6261 would be really great.
[00:14:45] I will be honest with you. I feel if we start to trickle down into the 575 range too soon, we got a little bit of a problem. I don't think we want that.
[00:14:57] I think we would like to stay somewhere right in here around this 6:2 range, 6:1 would be great. Right at 6 at Christmas time would be fantastic. We start getting into the five sixes. Five sevens.
[00:15:10] What's going on there? That's too much of a swing back the other way and Uncle Larry's gonna get confused.
[00:15:19] All right.
[00:15:21] If you're looking to buy a beach house, a lake house, a mountain house, a vacation house, a short term rental, a vacation rental, a second home, please contact your friends at the short term shop. We are a family owned business and we operate in all of the best vacation rental markets in America including the Great Smoky Mountains, the Emerald coast with Destin, Panama City Beach, Orlando, Florida, the Disney Market, Gulf Shores, Blue Ridge, Outer Banks, Carolina Beach, Western North Carolina, Scottdale, Arizona, Broken Bow, Oklahoma, the list goes on. We are the best in the biz and we want to earn your trust. Please contact
[email protected] I promised you a couple of, you know, listener mail situations. So let's, let's, let's go ahead and dive into that.
[00:16:24] This is going to come right from my, right from short term shop plus the general, general community.
[00:16:31] So if you are, if you don't want to be gen pop anymore and you want to be in the community of rock stars that really are trying to help each other go in the right direction. Short term shot +sts/com and I have a question here from Alicia. She says I'm a newbie and I am, I live in Massachusetts under contract in Texas. Like to open a business bank account. Do you have any advice on where I should look? Should I do an online bank, Should I do a local bank or should I do a Bank of America where I have banked for 30 years. My concern is their fees are too high, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, this is a topic we, that comes up often around here but I'll give you a small little Update on that, I think, Alicia. Yes, you should have the virtual bank and you should have the local bank. The bank of America's, the Wells Fargos, those big giant brick and mortars, they're gone, they're dead, they're buried. To me they're no use. To me, they're. They've been left behind.
[00:17:28] Their software is way outdated and their customer service is absolutely horrendous and they've been sucked dry as far as profitability and they're just not able to function the way I want a bank to function. So I'm out on that.
[00:17:43] Virtual banks, this is where you do your day to day moving of the money and making sure things are functioning in your capex and your opex, etc.
[00:17:53] There's, in my opinion right now, three to choose from. There's going to be Relay, Mercury and Baselane. They are all three very similar. They will most importantly allow you to do percentage based transfers. That's what you're looking for.
[00:18:08] That has been the biggest flaw with banks to date.
[00:18:13] They do not allow percentage based transfers because Everybody had a W2. Everybody was making the same amount of money every two weeks. So why would I need to transfer percentage? I can just transfer the same amount of money every time to whatever bank account because it's always the same amount coming in. Those days have changed. Also changed a lot in business, right? If you own a small business, it's different every damn day what's coming in and out.
[00:18:36] So percentage based transfers is what you're looking for. Relay Mercury, Baselane, but I would recommend the small local bank for the relationship and cash storage.
[00:18:49] Pull another question here for you.
[00:18:52] This one is going to come from Gen Pop, which is in this case Smarter Short Term Rentals, our Facebook group that I started with my lovely Bride Avery, with zero people and now it has close to 80,000.
[00:19:07] And this comes from Annie. And Annie says, looking to put a sauna with a panoramic view at my property. Which ones would you recommend? Any words of wisdom as I go in? Go in this route, go this route, brand to buy, put it on gravel, concrete, maintenance, etc.
[00:19:27] To which I say, annie, what the hell are we doing?
[00:19:31] The economy's not good, people Main Street's hurting. You're going to spend 40 grand that you should see the picture she posted with this thing. This is like some kind of rocket ship she wants to put in her backyard.
[00:19:45] It looks very expensive. It's got to be 20 grand, this thing. I don't know, maybe it's five. I don't know, but it looks expensive to me. I haven't looked into it. I have no interest in something like this at one of my properties. And I'm sitting here like, Annie, where is this house that you need? This is this thing in Beverly Hills.
[00:20:04] To me, it's not a good idea. The general public is not doing that great right now. And price per night is king.
[00:20:12] Price per night is the answer, not saunas. Matter of fact, Eric replied to this post on Gen Pop, and it says, if you get a barrel sauna, put a roof on it. I'll. It'll stop the leaks, the molds, the drips, the rain.
[00:20:30] He says, I have one of these with an. With an exceptional set of instructions, and nobody can figure it out. 20% of my guests, only 20% of my guests even use it. Probably less.
[00:20:41] And those 20% always say, it doesn't work. Quote it, it won't work. End quote.
[00:20:48] They all messaged me this, because, you guessed it, they didn't follow the instructions.
[00:20:54] Never once has my sauna been mentioned in a review. Is it worth it? I don't know. Okay, thank you, Eric. First of all, thank you. Fantastic for firsthand. I'm glad, Eric. I'm glad you tested out the sauna. And I didn't have to because I really didn't want to.
[00:21:13] Guys, am I telling you not to get a sauna? No, I'm not telling you that. But if your calendar is not looking that great and your answer to that is more amenities, you're wrong.
[00:21:24] The answer is lower price. And I know everybody. Oh, the short term rental's so saturated. It's a race to the bottom. It's always been like, where you been?
[00:21:35] I've been in the Smokies. I'm the first. I've been on the Airbnb in the Smokies longer than anybody, and I got the gray hair to prove it. Baby, look at all this gray hair.
[00:21:46] And I'm telling you, price per night will always win. Price per night will always win. All right, I'm gonna give you one more.
[00:21:56] All right, one more from Victoria. This one is Gen Pop to the hilt.
[00:22:03] I have my own website, but where and how do you market your listing? I'm about to remove ourselves from platforms that no longer support us.
[00:22:15] Airbnb spends a billion dollars a year on marketing. VRBO spends a billion dollars a year on marketing. Booking.com 2024 spent $3.2 billion on marketing. Victoria, how much money do you plan to spend on marketing for your website?
[00:22:35] Because if it's not a billion dollars. You better damn well stay on the OTAs.
[00:22:41] Luke, Carl. Short Term Rental Management. I love you.
[00:22:46] May the rate drops be forever in your favor.
[00:22:49] And don't overthink, Sam.
