Should My Airbnb Be Pet Friendly?

[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. Welcome to short term rental management, where you will learn every single thing you need to know about managing a vacation property. There's no reason to take a $20,000 course. Just listen to my show, man. It's on the house. Short term rental management with Luke Carl, the reverend of real estate preaching it. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, the short term shop on YouTube, where you can find everything you need to know about how to manage a second home or a vacation home, or if you want to call it an Airbnb or a verbo or whatever you want to call it. We've got it all. And today we're going to talk about pet friendly. Should I be pet friendly? How do I be pet friendly? What systems will I need to implement? How do I charge my guests? It's going to be a good time. I have some awesome co hosts with me today on short term rental management after a word from this week's sponsor. This episode of the short term management show is brought to you by short term rental, long term wealth. This is the book in the STR space written by my lovely wife, Avery Carl. It has hundreds of reviews on Amazon and it will teach you literally everything you need to know about STR, short term rental, long term wealth, the book wherever books are sold. Welcome to the program. Today we're going to talk pet friendly. Should I be pet friendly? Why should I be pet friendly? And how does it work? And of course, brought to you by the short term shop. I do have Derek, who is a total rock star, been in this business for quite some time. And I have Stacey. Both of these lovely folks are real estate agents and they sell vacation homes. Derek, you've been on the program before, but it's been a while. So what's new with you, man? Give us a little bit of background. [00:02:16] Speaker B: This is the first time I've actually been on your show. I don't know why it took this long, but this is the first time I've been on your show. But I have been on several short term shop shows, man. I've just been staying very busy. The market is changed. It's different. But we're working on our rentals. We mix and match things. The weather's been pleasant this fall in the smokies compared to the last three years. We've had snow and ice and all kinds of stuff, and this year was actually pretty nice. So, yeah, I've just been rocking and rolling and making things. [00:02:50] Speaker A: Wonderful. Wonderful. And Stacey, you are in Texas. Tell us a little bit about you. [00:02:55] Speaker C: Sure. So, yeah, this is my first time on your show as well. I'm in the Texas hill country, pretty much the whole area to the west of Austin and San Antonio. And we've actually had a pretty busy end of year. So it was people trying to get their cost segregations in before the end of the year. It's been busy the last couple of months. [00:03:16] Speaker A: Your son has been on the. [00:03:18] Speaker C: He has, yes. [00:03:20] Speaker A: Great kid. Love it. Okay, so you guys are both short term rental operators, and Derek, you've been doing it for quite some time, and you are both pet friendly to some capacity. And I will also mention that I have a little bit of experience on the subject. My very first property, I went pet friendly. I am a pet friendly household. I've got dogs and the whole thing rescues. It seems like there's always some kind of mayhem happening around the house with the animals. Our first rental had vinyl floors and we said, why not let's let it go. And this was years and years ago. I did it for maybe six months and I decided it wasn't necessarily for me, but I do see the value in it. So I guess, Derek, let me ask you, why did you go pet friendly and are you pet friendly at all your properties? [00:04:15] Speaker B: I am not pet friendly at all my properties. I am selective about which properties I am pet friendly at, and my logic behind it is every property, and I'm mostly in the smokies, so I'll talk the smokies. Every cabin has its own nuances. Like, I've got some cabins with great views, great locations. Those cabins take care of themselves. I'm not pet friendly at those cabins. That's the only reason I'm not pet friendly. The cabins I made pet friendly are the ones that had some other type of deficiency. Maybe the location wasn't as good. I have a duplex in the heart of pigeon forge that does not have a hot tub. It is a quarter mile from the parkway. That was the first one I made pet friendly with my idea being this is not your typical cabin. It is not what people are typically going to be looking for, but it's really close to the parkway. If I make it and I say pet friendly, we are dog friendly. I am strictly dogs only. We use that pet friendly term loosely, but on all my branding it says dog friendly. So we decided we were going to take dogs at that property, and on that particular one, we'll get into this a little bit later, but I do it a little bit differently in that I don't charge a pet fee. But again, I'm trying to compensate for something. So my logic behind it is if you need to do something different to stand out, then adding pets and allowing pets for a fee is a way to balance out what you don't have. And I can get into details on some of the other ones, but that's the overview of it. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. I do want to mention, I should have probably started with this. There's no right or wrong answer with this. Okay. So if you're listening for the first time, or if you're new or even if you're not, I mean, think about going pet friendly. Everybody's going to have a different system. Everybody's going to have different nuances to their system, what size pets, what type of pets. So keep that in mind. I really think at the end of the day, zero wrong answers when it comes to this, you just do what works for you. And I'm glad you brought up the dog thing because I guess for me personally, when I hear pet friendly vacation home or hotel or whatever it may be, I just assume dogs. But you never know. Sometimes maybe people want to bring parakeets and ferrets. So I guess. [00:06:25] Speaker C: Or monkeys. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Monkeys. Do you have a monkey story? [00:06:29] Speaker C: I don't, but I've seen monkey stories on the Facebook groups. [00:06:33] Speaker A: Okay, cool. [00:06:34] Speaker B: Cats are a big one. I know for a fact in my duplex only because I used to live upstairs from it, that I had at least one guest bring a know. My issue with cats, I don't have a problem with cats particularly, but at my rentals is cats are not the cleanest thing in the world. With dogs, you take outside and if they do go to the bathroom, it's not terrible to clean up. Cats are a problem. I've had people ask about cats and I've had people sneak in cats, but I am definitely dogs only. [00:07:05] Speaker A: I would be prepared. There might be a little bit more of that type of talk on today's program, so we might get a little gross in some aspects. So that one that you're talking about, you went pet friendly because of location. That makes perfect sense. Do you have any others that are pet friendly and why or why not? [00:07:23] Speaker B: Yeah, so I have a little itty bitty one bedroom honeymoon cabin. No hot tub. And in the smokies, that's kind of unheard of. So again, location was okay. Not spectacular. No hot tub. No real feasible way to add a hot tub. That made sense to me at the time. I could spend some money and put one in there, but I said, let me just try going dog friendly a second. [00:07:49] Speaker A: Let me stop you there. Is it because there's no flat areas, no way to build a porch? We could do a whole hour on. [00:07:54] Speaker B: This, but it would be inconvenient. So the cabin sits on a little bit of a slope, and it's actually right in front of a cabin that you used to operate on. Sugarloaf. [00:08:04] Speaker A: Oh, yes, I'm familiar with this property. [00:08:07] Speaker B: It's right in front of it. So the yard slopes a little bit. So you would have to build. There's two places you have to build a gazebo down at the bottom, which is you have to go down the stairs and walk around to get to it. I don't think that would be good. The deck itself, I would have to completely rebuild if I did that. And we know the costs that can be involved in that. So it's not a matter of just spending five or $7,500 on a hot tub. I'm going to be spending 1520 grand to build the decking and everything else. Now, will a hot tub add five, seven grand to my bottom line? I could get paid back in a few years, probably, but at the time that I was doing it, and at this time right now, it's like that property is not. My spending that kind of money on that property is not the best use. So if I adding the. Allowing the dogs in, it's allowed me to keep that property booked. Lower rates, it doesn't blow it out of the water, but it more than pays for itself and makes the money and does pretty well for me, cash flow wise, without adding the hot tub by having the dogs. And it's a nice little fenced in yard, so it's very good with dogs. One of the other ones I have is a five bedroom, same exact floor plan that you have that I have in the new development that was built over the last couple of years. And I'm in a partnership on that one. And again, cost wise, it's like we need to queue up with the Joneses. And we were having trouble getting bookings, a lot of new cabins all around it. We just are having trouble getting momentum. So we said, let's try making it dog friendly because we don't have the fire pit. Maybe it's new. It's not really getting it, and let's see what that does. So we did, and we instantly started getting some extra bookings. So that's the reason it's always got to be some discrepancy. There's too many properties around you. They're all the same. You need to stand out. There's location may not be as good. Don't have a hot tub or some other amenity that other people want. So to me that's always the reason for it because the ones I'm not pet friendly at, again, they don't need it. They do very well without that. And it's always compensating for me. [00:10:06] Speaker A: Are you saying in some way you would prefer not to be pet friendly? [00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I would if I had all ideal, all my properties are up at the top of the mountain and would book solid without then I would not be pet friendly at all. [00:10:20] Speaker A: Why is that? [00:10:21] Speaker B: Just the wear and tear, the cleaning, the consistency. There's people out there that are allergic to pets. So all of my properties that are pet friendly, I specifically put in the listing that our properties are pet friendly. If you have allergies, this will not be an ideal property for you. We do our best to clean and we do get people every once in a while that will complain about finding dog hair under the couch or something along those lines. [00:10:49] Speaker A: Yes. And I do want to reiterate something here. Okay. So when it comes to long term rentals, which Derek has or has had long terms, and I've got long terms and I'm a big fan of long terms, there's actually a statistic. It's one third, 33% more applications on a home long term rental if you're pet friendly. Now, I've never heard a statistic on short term. I've looked and I can't find one. And I don't know that you would be able to come up with one, frankly. And I don't think that that 33% statistic is going to carry over. Here's why. In short term, they're gone in three days. So the person coming in behind them is probably going to could be turned off. Because let's face it, there's going to be a hair here and there. There's going to be a little bit of a stink every now and then. Maybe not a stink, but a smell every now and then. Now the long term rental, they move out. You're going to be turning it, painting it, probably new everything. And they're taking their furniture with them. So the new person coming in doesn't even need to know or care whether it was pet friendly in the past or the previous tenant had a dog or not. Now with short term again, since it's only a three or four, five, six day thing. Very good chance that they are going to notice. And so you could be, for lack of a better way to put it, alienating non pet people by going pet friendly. Now, I do think, though, that you, in some capacity, have a bit more of a built in audience if you are dog friendly. Would you agree with that? [00:12:20] Speaker B: Yes, I would. Absolutely. And that is the key to it. There's a lot of people that do travel with their dogs. A ton of. [00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Casey, do you agree you get a little bit more of a built in audience if you go pet friendly? And I'm going to ask you a million more. [00:12:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. In our situation, it was exactly what Derek said is we had a property that was kind of our underperformer. Didn't really know it wasn't special, didn't really stand out amongst the competition. A little bit further out. It's a great location, but not where people are necessarily looking. And we had a yard. And so we said, well, we were not pet friendly for probably the first year and a half. We had planned on launching pet friendly, and then we took our two dogs and our mature, very well behaved dogs had an accident twice the first day we were there and I was like, you've ruined it for everybody. We're not doing this. And so it took us about a year and a half when, again, it was kind of our lowest performer and we just needed something to stand out in the market and so we made it pet. So that was kind of our exact experience, is what Derek said. [00:13:37] Speaker A: Stacey, do you think that, is there a world where somebody would prefer to be, even though you two seem to, in a perfect world, not be pet friendly? Is there a candidate out there that may actually prefer to be pet friendly? [00:13:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there is. There's actually a Airbnb or a short term rental in Fredericksburg right now that's owned by a company that they are a dog store company. And so that's their whole theme, is they're themed after their dog store. So I think people like that for sure. And I think there's just people who are, know their dogs are their babies, which ours are, you know, some people even more so than us, that would want to offer that to other people. To me, like Derek said, there's just additional cleaning and there's just additional worry when every guest checks in. Is there going to be a problem or am I going to get a message from the next guest that there's dog hair? I've had a couple of those where the next guest checking in said there was excessive dog hair, that's only happened once or twice, so it's not a huge deal, and the cleaners will go right back out and take care of it. So that's not a huge thing. It's just an added stressor. [00:15:04] Speaker A: Do either of you have carpet in any of these properties? I can imagine that would be not a good thing. [00:15:09] Speaker B: No. [00:15:10] Speaker C: I do have area rugs, but no carpet. [00:15:14] Speaker A: I personally would not even dream of doing pet friendly if I had carpet in a property. Do you guys agree? [00:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Good point to bring up. Yeah, none of my stuff has carpet in it, and most of it is LVP. I do have some that are hardwoods, so we just have to kind of keep an eye on those because they're not as forgiving of accidents in hardwoods. So definitely LVP is the ideal scenario. And you talk about the people that somebody want to do it. The riches are in the niches, right. So if you went full on, like, this is going to be your thing, then I firmly believe that if you really stand out, you could make a very good living off of being very specific pet friendly. What I do is adding dogs to compensate as opposed to intentionally going after that market. I'm just trying to open myself up. If you were going to go after it like those folks Stacey's talking about, then I think you're definitely going to make good money promoting it, because, again, there's a lot of people that travel with their dogs, having a truly, completely, 100% fenced in yard where they can run free, having stuff set up for them, maybe even having a kennel or something in or outside of the house. I mean, if you really wanted to go all out and make yourself stand out as being pet friendly, people will pay a lot of money to bring their pets with them. Tremendous amount of money to bring their pets with them. I mean, if they're going to board them, you're spending, at minimum, $50 to $75 a day to board your pet while you're gone. So unless you have a friend or somebody that's house sitting for you. So people who, why wouldn't they travel and spend 100 or $150 to pay to have their pet with them for the week or the weekend or whatever it is, and they get to travel, in some cases, it's cheaper. [00:17:00] Speaker A: I see no issue with going overboard with this thing. I really don't. You guys are just doing it just kind of right down the middle, vanilla style. But, for example, I've got a neighbor at one of my rentals and he does this for a living, is a retired or ex police officer and he does rentals for a living. And all of his signs have pet paws and their pet oriented materials on his signs. I think you could take it so far as to be renting the house to the pet, not the owner of the pet, because there are certain owners out there that would love in. You put in the little kennel, you put in maybe a dog bed or different size dog would. I would even say maybe, hey, auto ship on Amazon, do a dog bed subscription because we all know those things get mean. You could clean them, you can throw them in the washer. But at least for my dogs, I prefer to get a new one here every month or two and wash it in the meantime. But, yeah, I think you could put some milk bones on the kitchen counter, maybe some fancier treats on a couple of different treat options. Like if you're giving the humans granola bars, you give the kid or the dog a bacon strip or whatever. Yeah, I think if you took it real far in a certain direction, again, you got a niche there. There's not very good chance that a lot of your competition is doing that. And if you're the type of person that finds that interesting or attractive, I think that that's a hell of a good idea. My neighbor's doing it and he's doing it for a living. [00:18:38] Speaker B: And I think in a market like the smokies, more often than not, it's going to come down to because there are a lot more pet friendly cabins in the smokies in 2024 than there were in 2020, 2021. We definitely have seen a lot more of them pop up, and I think it's because there's a lot more competition out there now. So we're having to do things to stand out a little bit. So going all out might be the way to go. Or maybe you're just compensating because we still get a ton of people that don't even know how to use the search functions to recognize what's pet friendly. So, I mean, we still having to educate our guests constantly. So if you make it really obvious, that might make it really easy to find the person that's looking for pet friendly. Most of my listings that are pet friendly, it's in the headline pet friendly, even though there should be a box they can click on. But that's one way I'm going to try to pull them in is seeing that right in the headline when they don't click pets when they're doing their search? [00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And Stacey, do you get a lot of questions or is that often the first thing they ask? How does this work? [00:19:42] Speaker C: Not really. I do get a lot. Our listing limits it to one dog. I do make exceptions for that. So usually the questions I get are, hey, we have two dogs, can we bring them? And they'll give me the details of the size of the dogs and things like that. But other than that, not really. I think it's pretty self explanatory in the listing. [00:20:03] Speaker A: So you can set it up for number of pets and type of pets, much like number of humans? [00:20:09] Speaker B: Yes, you can set the number. I'm pretty sure that's the only parameter you can set in the otas as far as what guests can click on. But it's no different than number of guests. How many guests do we have that don't set any of that stuff? And it says one guest is coming and it's a five bedroom house and there's really eight people coming. They just don't know how to set it up. So it's in my listings, it's in the notes. It talks about it. Please let us know if you're bringing your pets. And we try to bring up the fact that there's a fee and to hit it. But we are definitely having the conversations both before and after they book say, hey, you mentioned they take the time to send us the message and say, hey, you said to let us know if we're bringing our dog. We're bringing our dog. It's this breed, it's this size, blah, blah, blah. It's how strained all the stuff that they're supposed to tell us and then they do the reservation, but they didn't actually click the little box that said they were bringing pets. So then I have to send them a message back and say, hey, I see that you told us about your dog, but for some reason, I always blame it on the OTA. For some reason, the system didn't check the dog thing. So there's an additional fee for that. I'm just going to go ahead and send that right now and then I'll just send the fee. And 99% of the time they just pay it. Sometimes they apologize and say they missed it or they didn't see where to do it. Verbo specifically, if they're booking through one of Verbo's third party integrations that they have, a lot of those don't even have the option to check pets because they're not actually booking on Verbo. But again, I've maybe had one guest in three years actually balk at me and cancel their reservation because there was a pet fee. [00:21:48] Speaker D: Did you know that we're officially back in a buyer's market? That's right. Even though interest rates continue to rise, they are causing prices to fall. So there's finally room for you to do regular real estate investor things that we couldn't do for so long, like gas negotiate, make lower offers, ask for sellers to cover some of your closing costs. So it's a really great time to buy in terms of being able to get a lower purchase price and being able to negotiate. So if you're looking for your first or next short term rental, it's a perfect time to reach out to us at the short term shop. Let our team of agents in any of our true vacation market destinations help you find the perfect investment. Jump on over to theshorttermshop.com and click get connected to get started. We are brokered by exp Realty. See y'all over there. [00:22:37] Speaker C: And Derek, that's a great, great point because it took me a long time to learn that is that it is not super intuitive when they're know or they don't always have the option to select the pet fee. So having that in your like, I send a message once they book and say hey, thanks for booking on this particular property. I also say, please let me know if you plan on bringing a pet so that way there's no surprises and then I can add the fee on if they have not selected it. [00:23:06] Speaker A: Well, while we're on the subject, I'm going to ask you, Stacy, the same question here in a second. But Derek, go in detail with and again, there's multiple ways to handle this and I think if you ask 20 different operators, they're going to have 20 different answers. But Derek, can you describe to me in detail your financial, your payment system for being dog friendly? [00:23:29] Speaker B: So I've changed over the years as far as what my cost is, but I'm $100 per stay if they're bringing a dog. The exception of that is I do have a beach house in Texas, outside of Crystal beach area, Texas. I'm 150 at that one. So that's the only difference. But I'm $100. I've done it differently. Different prices. I went with blanket $100. If they click the box that says they're bringing pets, Airbnb or Verbo, it automatically adds it in. I don't have to do anything if they don't check the box. And Airbnb didn't used to have that. It's been within the last year, maybe 18 months that they added that you had to manually do it. So they do have it now. So if they check the box, it's set up in the system. If they don't check the box, then I have to go in and say something. But if I know that they're bringing pets, like if they took the time to send me the message to say, hey, we're bringing our dog and they didn't check the box, then I can go in and talk to them. I have no idea how many times guests have stayed in my property, didn't check the box and brought dogs. And I don't know about it. And I'm not going to nitpick about that. I'm trying to get ahead of it and hopefully they do it. That doesn't mean people aren't sneaking dogs into my cabins all the time. They probably are, but I'm not worried about mean. My system is that simple. It's $100 across the board except for the Texas place. And I just try to watch the messaging. [00:24:51] Speaker A: And if they don't click the box, you send them a resolution of sorts. [00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So in Airbnb, you can actually go in and modify the reservation, add pets and it will just send them a new invoice. Verbo, when you go to modify the reservation, you can't add pets, you can only change number of guests. So in verbo, I actually have to go in and send an additional payment request. I forget what it's actually called, but send additional payment request and it gives you the drop down pet fee. And then I'll write in the little notes, pet fee. Because even though the description says that when the guest gets it, it just looks like a charge. So you have to put a note in there and I'll just send that note. And like I said, 99 out of 100 times, the guest just pays it and it's not an issue. [00:25:41] Speaker A: Would you say you almost don't even care if, I mean, obviously we prefer that they pay their pet fee, but is there to a certain extent where if somebody sneaks one through, you don't really care because you got the booking anyway? [00:25:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not nitpicking about it. I'm not looking at cameras. I don't know if somebody is sneaking a dog in. I would have no idea of knowing that. I'm depending on the integrity of the person to actually list it and say it. But I also recognize that because I say I'm dog friendly. I'm doing that because this property may not get the kind of bookings I want anyway. So the fact that I have a booking because I was dog friendly is probably better than not. Again, I am absolutely going to charge it if I know about it, and most people are going to pay it. But like the duplex, I don't have a fee. I don't even charge a fee for it. And I'll drop my prices in that place down to $99 a night this time of year because it's not the most desirable place to draw in. So the fact that I'm outright saying bring your dogs and I won't charge you, even though I might be not getting any more money or less money than the guy next door, people will book it. [00:26:53] Speaker A: I totally agree with that. If you get the know to a certain extent, who cares? Stacey, can you describe in detail your payment system for being dog friendly? [00:27:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm still experimenting with it a little bit right now. I have it set. It's $50 a day. So it's a pretty hefty fee. And my reasoning on that is like, well, if they were going to board their dog, it's going to cost them at least that much. So to bring their dog, I charge a pretty hefty fee just to number one. I'm not that crazy about pets. I love pets. I love them myself. But I don't necessarily want people to bring pets if they're not paying a high fee because I want to make sure I'm covering my additional wear and tear on that. [00:27:41] Speaker A: In other words, I've got a house that I will allow twelve people, but I would rather not. So I will charge quite a bit extra for a person. Eleven and twelve. Yes, that kind of thing. [00:27:49] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:27:50] Speaker A: I like that. [00:27:51] Speaker C: Exactly. And to your point, like watching the cameras, I'm sure I've got lots of people. In fact, that's why I put the messaging in with my thanks for booking message about the pets, because I realized that a lot of people weren't checking the pet box just because it's not easy to find, not because they're being dishonest. And so I know a lot of people were bringing pets without me knowing about it inadvertently. And even at my properties that are not pet friendly, people still sneak pets in occasionally. So to me, it's kind of the same thing. [00:28:26] Speaker A: I got you now. I've heard now again, we're recording this winter of 24. Things change all the time. So please make sure that you're paying attention to what's going on with your otas and your softwares at current date, but Derek already mentioned that Airbnb recently kind of redesigned things to basically include the pet fee in with the total price of the entire stay. I've heard several people say that they prefer not to do it that way because it makes it look more expensive up front and then they'll just charge them on the back end. But are you guys both including it in the nightly rate? If they click that, it's not. [00:29:05] Speaker B: I don't know how Airbnb does it. If you click the button, it may change it. I've actually never looked at it from the guest perspective. I know that they didn't used to have a button at all to select pets, and now they do and I have my pet fee. But I think you're right. I think they do spread the pet fee out over the rate, but at that point, the person's already come in and selected their dates and they selected pets, so they're kind of seeing the price anyway. I've never had it come up. Now does that mean people have not booked after clicking through? I don't know. I've never had somebody come and ask me and say, not for that reason, and come and say, hey, your nightly rate said this, but when I check this, it says this. I've never had that come up. So I don't think it's an issue right now. [00:29:52] Speaker A: Yes, I've seen and heard several people say that they prefer to not let the system include the into the overall price of the stay, and then they'll just hit them with the after they've booked because it basically makes their stay. In Stacey's case, it might make their stay look $300 cheaper. [00:30:14] Speaker B: I will say this. I would prefer to see it as a separate line item because it just makes it more obvious. I have had guests check the box and then after they booked, come in and say, how do I pay the pet fee? Because my listings say there's $100 pet fee and they don't even realize that they already paid it. So I will just tell them, hey, you checked the box that said pet, so it's already built in and it's included. So I've had that come up a couple of times. So, I mean, there's potential that I could have double dipped on some guests by having it rolled in. I wouldn't. But it's potential that you could do that if you didn't even realize that it was done. [00:30:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And I like your way of doing business. There's no reason to get completely obsessed with your damn pet. So, Stacey, anything to add there on the payment method? [00:31:02] Speaker C: No, I think Derek covered it all. [00:31:04] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Let me ask you, breed came up. How does that work? Is there an insurance thing involved with certain breeds? And do you cover that with guests? [00:31:12] Speaker B: I think there probably, realistically is. I've never actually had a conversation with my insurance provider about it. Maybe I should. We get people a lot of times that will say, what are the pet restrictions? And what we kind of express is we ask our guests to tell us the size and breed of the dog. And really, the only reason I'm doing that is to discourage somebody who's trying to be sneaky about something, because I have never turned down any animal. I mean, I had german shepherds for years, and people think, like, german shepherds are these big, awful, scary dogs, and they're just not. I know people who breed rotweilers. They're not a dangerous dog if they're taken care of. So, I mean, we just express to our guests that say, look, we want to know, so we know what's coming. We use the insurance as an excuse, maybe, to find that information. But I've never had damage. And the reality is, some of the damage I've had at my duplex are not from big dogs. They are from little dogs that get in and scratch at the doors and the bottoms of the doors and the frames around the doors and that kind of stuff. Is there more wear and tear? Is there damage? Yes, it's going to happen. Be prepared that you may have to replace or repair something a little bit more often than you would otherwise, but you have to offset. Is the revenue I'm getting worth it? And not just the pet fee revenue, but the revenue for the property because you're allowing pets? [00:32:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Stacey, do you have a breed system or anything to add there? [00:32:47] Speaker C: No. And to Derek's point, I've not actually checked with my insurance company, so that's probably something I ought to do just to make sure, you know, violating any policies or anything like that. But I'm kind of the same thing. I asked for the breed and size, but we've never not taken a dog. I had somebody who came with two large pit bulls, but they assured me they were well trained in family dogs, and we didn't have any problems whatsoever. [00:33:18] Speaker A: Okay, wonderful. And have you had any weird pets come through the door or somebody ask you to bring, like we mentioned earlier, I never have. [00:33:29] Speaker B: Like I said, I've had at least the one cat I'm aware of. I'm sure there's been a few others. I've not had anything else outside of that. And again, my listings, the OTA say pet friendly, but all my verbiage says dog. It specifically says dog. I've actually gone back in, and there could be a couple of places I've missed, but I actually try to go back in every once in a while and just search the word pet in my descriptions to make sure that I didn't forget someplace that I'm very specific to say dog. [00:33:58] Speaker A: Yes. And I will say that back when I was doing it and I decided to stop doing it, the payment system was much more of a pain in the rear end, and it was a lot of conversations that had to be had, and I just kind of got sick of dealing with it. I was scaling, and my focus was on trying to hustle and buy more properties, and I just didn't want to deal with pushing that button and things like that. Any horror stories, Stacey, you have any horror stories at all in the pet realm or. Everything's been pretty smooth? [00:34:27] Speaker C: Not for our pet friendly cabin. We actually had one of our non pet friendly cabins. A guest checked in after somebody else had checked out and found the dog had left a mess under the pool table. And so we had to provide a pretty big refund on cleaning and things like that. But my pet friendly cabin, no. And we are pretty specific. We do provide a large crate, and our rules state that the dog is not to be left unattended inside the property at any time. They're either to be left in the backyard or put in the kennel. And it's a large kennel. And we provide a bed and even towels and dog blankets for pets just to try to reduce the wear and tear on the property and also give them something to use rather than the regular white guest towels, because it's very. [00:35:21] Speaker A: Possible, since it wasn't a pet friendly property, that your cleaner had no reason to look around or even pay attention to such a mess. I've had that as well, one time under a bed, and I must have been a little dog. But, yeah, I had no knowledge of a pet being in there until this guest decided to look under the bed. Yes, look under the bed, because that's what guests do. Certain guests. Yeah, they'll pull out the couch cushions, and you're like, here we go. [00:35:53] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I don't have any real horror stories. I mean, I've had what you would expect. I've had cleaners show up and there be messes in the property. The one that stands out the most was the cleaner showed up and there was three or four piles of poop in the house. This was at the duplex where it's free, where I don't charge a pet fee. And the cleaner had come in and he was having a bad day, I think. But he pulled the bed spread off and dropped it on the floor and ended up putting it on a pile, not realizing it was there, and then stepped in it or something. So he went off. And then turns out there was a couple of other pilots in the other bedrooms. And I started paying attention. And that was the one time that I did reach out to the guest because I was like, this is pretty bad. I mean, this was pretty disrespectful. And I felt the need to reach out. And the guest tried to deny it, tried to say that it wasn't their dog. And I'm like, seriously? It's like my cleaner just showed up. I can show you timestamps. [00:36:53] Speaker A: He was blaming it on your cleaner? [00:36:54] Speaker B: He was blaming it on the cleaner. He was thinking that the cleaner brought their dog in or something. I don't know. But anyway. So that was probably more stressed than it needed to be. My cleaner was stressed. He was adding stress to me because of it. I get the guest up. So the horror story of it was that I let it get blown out of proportion. I think the key is it's going to happen. They're going to find dog hair. I had one guest move a couch and find a bunch of dog hair and a dog toy, like a hard bone dog toy. And he sends me a picture of it and tells me that he found dog poop under the couch. And I look at the picture and I said, that's not poop. That's a chew toy of some kind. So this guest was obviously not somebody that was very familiar with pets or what things even looked like. So I can't call those horror stories, but they were pain in the ass little stories. I tried to get that guest out. He ended up being okay and staying, but, yeah, stuff like that. This is the kind of stuff you should expect. [00:37:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And the kind of guest that's willing to let their dog leave three or four piles around the house, there probably is a good chance they're never even going to respond to you if you say something to. I understand. I probably would have said something. I don't know. It would have been a coin flip on that. And I'm sure it was for you, too, to say something. To them or not. But in the years of doing this, I'm thinking that dude's not going to give it if he was okay with those things being there for, I mean, it was probably two or three days to pile all that up. Then he's not going to fess up to it or pay or anything. So it's just the cost of doing business. I'm sure you just cleaned it up and moved on. [00:38:36] Speaker B: Exactly. And that's the key. And most of the time I tell my cleaners up front, this cabin is pet friendly. Once or twice I've had a cleaner come back and ask me for extra when they showed up, and that one was obviously one of them. Other than that, my cleaners know it up front. So unless my cleaner comes and tells me that there was a big mess or a big problem, I don't know. So if there's stuff happening, I probably don't even know about it because I've got some great cleaners that just take care of it. And they know, they knew when they got into it that it was pet friendly. And 99.9% of the people that are bringing their pets are very respectful and do absolutely clean up after them. And all of my pet friendly cabins have an outdoor area where I actually have one of the little posts with the little box with the little bags in it that says, please clean up after your pets. Now, I recently found out at one of them that the box was empty and I didn't know, so I had to get some more put in there. But I do provide that. At most of my pet friendly, I can't say everyone, but several of my pet friendly properties, it's right there. Cleanup bags are there. My lawn guy, my cleaners, I've never had anybody complain and say that they found a big mess. [00:39:52] Speaker A: Yes. Actually, at my apartment buildings, I debated that, because in apartments, well, first of all, you're going to get a lot of tenants when you buy it that already had pets in there. So in most cases, you're probably going to go ahead and allow pets, I would think. At least we did. [00:40:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:10] Speaker A: Now, obviously we're very picky about it, but I debated whether to put the stations at the complexes with the trash can and the bags, and it was very cool. Look like at a bucky's or at a park. Yeah. And I finally, after much debating, I said, you know what? They're going to be there anyway. So I can just let them make a mess or I can encourage them to not be nasty. [00:40:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:43] Speaker A: I went ahead and opted for the stations and you get them on Amazon and you just concrete it in the ground and make sure that it's got bags and it's not that big a deal. [00:40:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it really isn't. And you go to a rest stop and the reality is if you put them in a place and you ask people to use this area, most people will actually do that. And if you don't give them any place to go, then they're just going to go anywhere. You're always going to have 5% or whatever. They're just going to go wherever they want anyway. But most of the people will use that area if you assign that area. [00:41:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like at the grocery store. If you have somewhere for me to put my used cart when I'm getting in my car, I will put it there. But if you don't, I'm not going to walk it all the way back up to the damn grocery store in the front door. Speaking of the cleaners, are you negotiating this when you hire them and say this place is pet friendly and is there an additional cost there, Stacey? [00:41:45] Speaker C: No. When we went pet friendly, we just notified our cleaners. We didn't ask them if it was okay or anything. We work with one of the larger cleaners in the area and they were fine with it. They don't charge me an additional fee unless there's excessive pet hair or something, then it's per clean. [00:42:06] Speaker A: Okay. Derek, what was your experience? [00:42:09] Speaker B: Same. All of mine that are pet friendly. Well, except for one I knew upfront. So I told them up front that it was pet friendly. So whether or not they adjusted their pricing because of that or not, I do have one cleaning company that does two of my one bedroom cabins that are very similar. One has a hot tub, the other one doesn't. But the one that doesn't is the pet friendly one. So they charge me the same at both. And they were like, their logic was that, well, we're going to charge you the same even though this one doesn't have a hot tub, but because it's pet friendly, we're just going to balance it out that way. So we had that conversation, which is a reasonable price, I feel for the market right now anyway. So I was good with that. The other ones, I don't think they really truly price it in. It may be in their mind, but I mean, pricing on cleaning is getting very competitive right now. So I think a lot of cleaners are like, it shouldn't have that big of an impact on them doing their job well because if they're vacuuming, they're sweeping, they're mopping, they're doing all the things they're supposed to do, then the fact that it's pet friendly shouldn't change that. Yes, there may be some dog hair, but if they're cleaning up and vacuuming anyway, if anything, it makes it easier to tell that you actually clean the place because they picked up the dog here. So I don't think they're having to do a whole lot different. [00:43:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with that. I'm cool with the hot tub versus pet friendly price tag. I'm cool with that. And I do agree. Rabbit hole. I think that, yeah, prices on cleaning has gotten more competitive because everybody wants to sit around and talk about saturation this and that and the other. But it does bring good stuff, like more vendors to the market, and we're seeing that in the world of had. Derek, you were around in the early days, man. It was impossible to find a good cleaner. And now I don't even really sweat it. I would prefer to have a wonderful relationship with you. And we get along great and you're happy working for the business. But if not, and it's not the end of the world like it used to be. It used to be the end of the world. So that's one good thing about what we've got going on. [00:44:16] Speaker B: There's almost too many of them out there now. It makes it challenging because I'm looking at a couple of my cabins right now and making some changes in the cleaning teams, and it's almost overwhelmed trying to find some. And the challenge is there's some really good ones out there, but they charge more and you get what you pay for. So we're going for a little tangent, but it does tie in. You get what you pay for in the quality of the cleans, but there's a law of diminishing returns here. There's only so much you can charge a guest. So you have to question, where am I breaking even to the point where I'm overpaying my cleaner, but they're doing a great job. But if I'm already getting five star reviews with my crappy cleaner, then what am I really gaining? So the pets can play into that, because the cleaners that are actually going to take the time to truly clean it up might cost you a little bit more, and you're going to have to decide whether or not that's going to have a significant impact on your business. [00:45:11] Speaker A: I agree. I think that some cleaners are starting to charge too much they are and because they are rock. Yeah, but it is getting diminished return situation here for some of these folks. [00:45:23] Speaker B: Especially with Airbnb trying to convince the industry to not charge cleaning fees or to roll the cleaning fees in. Fortunately in the smokies, that's not happening because it's really broad and the market says that we charge cleaning fees, but I've heard stories of other places where they're trying to really push getting away from cleaning fees at all. [00:45:43] Speaker A: Yeah, a topic for another day. Stacey, have you noticed any more? We've talked wear and tear, but are you replacing couches more often or notice anything like that? [00:45:56] Speaker C: No, not yet. We've only been pet friendly for about a year and we're going to inspect our property next month, actually. So I may have a different report after that, but I don't think so. The couches still appear to be in good shape. My cleaners are really good about letting me know about wear and tear and things like that, so not that I am aware of yet. [00:46:21] Speaker A: Okay. [00:46:22] Speaker B: I'm three years in at my first pet friendly one. And other than a comforter, a couple of comforters had to replace because they got tore up. Other than that, have not had to replace any furniture. A couple of pieces of trim around doors where they scratched up, but now buy good quality furniture. I have a small sectional sofa in that and I don't know if it's actually leather or not, but it's a leather material. It's not cloth. If you're going to be pet friendly, I don't recommend having any kind of cloth sofa or chairs or anything like that. It's got to be durable stuff because it cleans up pretty easy. But again, no significant damage of any kind that would cause me to have to replace any of it. [00:47:03] Speaker A: Well, you're going to lose quilts no matter what you do. Pet friendly. Not pet friendly. It doesn't matter. [00:47:08] Speaker C: And we have a rule that pets are not allowed on the furniture. I am 100% certain that many people break that rule, but we also provide blankets for the dogs to use. They can put that on the furniture. So hopefully that helps. But it's not really been an issue so far. [00:47:28] Speaker B: Same. [00:47:29] Speaker A: Okay, wonderful. Well, listen, I think we covered it all. Unless anybody has anything on the way, don't. [00:47:34] Speaker B: I like Stacey's idea. I may start buying some dog beds from my places, but I like that. [00:47:39] Speaker A: That's a good idea. Yeah. You're going to be pet friendly. Be freaking pet friendly. You know what I mean? That's one more thing I will say is that every now and then I see a host that's pet friendly, but they're, like, resisting it all the time and charging it. Nickel dime this. That the other the pet did. Oh, my gosh. You're never going to believe it. I'm pet friendly, and a dog slept in my house like crazy. If you're going to be pet friendly, be pet friendly and stop losing your mind over it. All right? [00:48:08] Speaker B: And don't look at your cameras. [00:48:10] Speaker A: Don't let Dab. Never look at your cameras. There's nothing good going to come of that. Well, listen, thank you guys so much for coming to hang. I think we nailed it. The ultimate short term rental pet friendly podcast has been completed. Short term rental management, Reverend Luke saying, don't overthink it.