STR Outlook 2027

[00:00:00] Speaker A: So thank you, guys. All right, outlook 2027. Life is good. So happy that you guys are here. Use code 2027 on short term shot plus for a free coaching session. And yeah, without further ado, Avery, if you want to go ahead and get started and tell me how to go ahead and drive the slides, I'd be more than happy to do that. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Okay, one second. [00:00:27] Speaker A: No hurry. [00:00:28] Speaker B: January's texting me, trying to get in. [00:00:32] Speaker A: Well, we can't do it without her. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Okay. She said she got the max, max capacity thing, but we're good now. There she is. [00:00:40] Speaker A: We did that on purpose to create scarcity. [00:00:45] Speaker B: All right, guys, so thank you again so much for coming. So for those of you who don't know who I am or what we do, which I'm pretty sure you all do because you signed up for this. So. So the short term shop countries are just short term rental specific real estate brokerage. So we have a. We're in 20 markets across the country, sell about a thousand houses a year. So we have a pretty good cross section of what the real estate market is doing at. At any given time because we've got offices in Florida, Arizona, like all. All across the country. But one thing that is interesting is how the. The inventory available nationwide is always a little bit less than in the true vacation markets. Because in the true vacation markets like Destin, Smoky Mountains, places like that, we don't have the primary homeowners driving the market and turning that inventory over. You know, we don't have jobs in these places. We just have tourism, only second homes and vacation rentals. So the people that are buying our properties here, we are purely just people who have discretionary income who are buying them as an investment or as a second home. So we don't have the people who got a new job or had a baby or somebody died and they need to move into a different house. We don't have that. So whatever headlines you're reading about the real estate market as a whole, in terms of it being slow, not a lot of houses are selling. Take that. And I would say multiply it by a minimum of five for vacation rental markets. So that sounds scary, Luke, you can go ahead and switch the slide. That sounds scary. If you're like, oh my gosh, the real estate market's terrible. As a matter of fact, an article came out today. We now have the worst real estate market in recorded history ever. It's the as of Today, October, whatever, October 21, 2026, the worst real estate market in American history. So what does that mean. Oh, you can switch it again, Luke. We're not quite there. All right, so. So what does that mean for you? It sounds scary to me. That's exciting as a buyer, because everybody always says when you tell them you're a real estate investor or you. You're thinking about investing in real estate, well, oh, I. I wish I would have invested after 2008. If I'd had a crystal ball, I would have bought then. Well, guys, here we are. It is worse now, and it has been for three or four years than 2008. So we're now back in that buyer's market time. It's a terrible time to be a seller. Do not sell your house right now because nobody's buying them. And the way that. Can you go one more. Okay, so to kind of compare the national real estate market with an example of destin true vacation market, the way we measure the health of the real estate market as a whole is by number of transactions. So when I say the real estate market's terrible, that means fewer homes were bought and sold in this year than any other year. And January and February are the slowest season. Seasons are the slowest month. Months of the year to. For the real estate market. So if you're looking to have the most options as a buyer, probably of our lifetimes, it's probably going to be January and February of next year because we're in the worst real estate market there's ever been. And coming up on the slowest two months of the year that, you know, it's. It's always slow in these times. So there's going to be. There's already a lot of inventory. But to give you an example. So January and February of this year, 240,000 homes were sold across the US in January, 257 in February. Pretty slow. In Destiny, 40 homes were sold in January and 47 were sold in February. So these are the times when you as a buyer have the most opportunity to negotiate and go get good deals. Because if somebody won't deal with you, if a seller on a property won't deal with you, there are thousands of other properties that have also been sitting on the market for a long time waiting for you to go make offers on them. Now, I'm not saying that every seller is going to accept your very low offer, but you have all the opportunity of a lot of inventory being on the market to find that person that is willing to work with you. So don't sell your house right now. Not a good time, but great Time to be a buyer. Interest rates, of course. Elephant in the room. Next slide, please. Part of the reason that it's such a good time to be a buyer is because the interest rates went up. That is what made the real estate market dry up is back in 2022 they almost quadrupled basically overnight. So real estate market started grinding to a halt around then. We've been bouncing along the bottom for 2023, 24 and 25 and 2026 is actually the worst, but it has been better. More homes have been sold as short term rentals in 2026 than in 2025 because big beautiful bill brought back hundred percent bonus depreciation. So something to think about now, the interest rates, they're not what you want them to be. Nobody wants to have high interest rates. Nobody wants to get a loan with a 7 and a half percent mortgage. It is looking like the forecast for mortgage rates over the next year looking like it's going to stay about the same. It's not going to, stuff's going to happen. Not going to talk about politics, but you know, there's Iran stuff happening after the midterms. Um, I don't fully expect it to stay at seven and a half for the full year, but that's what we're looking at right now. And that creates more supply because there's less demand for people trying to buy houses because people don't want to get that, that high interest rate. So there's a couple ways that you can combat that. There's no real way around it, but when you're making offers on houses, you know, instead of asking for $20,000 off the purchase price, you can ask them for $20,000 towards your closing costs, which you can then take to your lender and ask to buy down the rate. There's only a certain amount that you can buy it down, but it will help. So that's something to think about as we're going into next year. But the high interest rates are what make the supply go up and the demand go down. So that's something that we have to contend with to get prices to a more manageable place and to, you know, make it to where we can see a more, a more balanced real estate market. So, Luke, you can go ahead. Please stop wiggling your cursor around on the screen. It's really distracting me. [00:07:25] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:07:27] Speaker A: Sorry. 5,000 things. Still doing it in the background. [00:07:31] Speaker B: All I can see is the cursor. Okay, so Fed meetings and rate expectations. So as you and I know, the Fed Rates do not directly impact mortgage rates, but they do indirectly impact mortgage rates. So this is what we're looking at for the next year in terms of what the Fed is saying they're going to do. And what does affect mortgage rates is the 10 year treasury yield. So that is what you need to watch closer than the Fed rate. Fed rate, of course, affects the yield, lots of things affect it. But what matters most about this slide is people who aren't in this world every day and don't understand that they see, oh, the Fed's raising rates and they think that means mortgage rates are about to shoot up again. So when you're seeing all of this Fed hike stuff in the news, the general public typically thinks that that means mortgage rates are going up, when actually what typically happens is mortgage rates will go up before they raise the Fed rate because they price, they're, they're looking ahead and they price that in. And then when the Fed rate goes up, actually mortgage rates can come down a lot of times. So this is here so that you kind of know what to expect and what you're going to see in the news, but know that it does not directly affect mortgage rates. As a matter of fact, mortgage rates go down oftentimes when the Fed rate goes up immediately after. So don't get thrown off by Fed news. It doesn't always, it doesn't mean everything's about to go up mortgage wise. It just means that one of the many moving parts that affects mortgage rates is moving. So just keep that in mind and don't get sucked into all the Fed stuff. Because I think two, three years ago, when they started raising and raising and raising, I think it was more of the public perception of oh my gosh, the Fed's raising the rate. Most people don't even know what that means, but they freak out and they're like, I'm not going to buy a house right now. So you guys are hopefully able to please, after this call, kind of cut through that noise, know that whatever the Fed rate is, that doesn't necessarily mean mortgage rates are about to jump up. So definitely talk to your lender before you do anything. See what rates are. And I don't know, I should have checked this earlier today. DSCR rates have actually been lower than conventional mortgages for the past month or two, which has never happened, at least not that I've noticed. Typically, rates for conventional investment and second home loans are usually lower than dcr, but DSCR has actually been lower over the last little while. So definitely talk to Your lender about all the different options you can do. And don't forget that it's. You're better off when you're asking. When you're making offers on properties, instead of asking for a discount on the price, ask it towards closing costs so that you can then buy down that rate. Okay, next slide. [00:10:27] Speaker D: Luke. [00:10:27] Speaker B: I think that might be it for me. Yes. Now we have Amanda and Matt, the funniest man in real estate. [00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah, hold on. Before we get. Before we introduce the Goats, I did want to say a couple of things. Yes, this is being recorded. A lot of people asking that in the chat. We will be posting this on short term shot plus probably by the end of the day if you are not in short term shot plus, you will have to wait till it comes out on our YouTube channel, which is now at 103 50,000 subscribers. So thank you. That might take a week or two, but yes, it's being recorded and we will make sure it gets back in your hands. Also, the coaching code seems to maybe not working right now. It's either that or it already all got used up. We will look into that. It'll probably be after the call, but anyway, sorry, Avery, back to you. [00:11:11] Speaker B: I'm kicking it to Amanda and Matt to the the Goats of real estate tax strategy. They're going to talk to you about tax planning and they're amazing. And I'll give it to you guys. [00:11:24] Speaker E: Well, thanks, guys. Thanks for having us. Super fun to be here. [00:11:27] Speaker D: Yes. Thank you, everyone. We're really excited. Something that Avery mentioned earlier, what I didn't know was I think you guys called this cost segregation season. And you know, as CPAs who work with people all over the US I can vouch for that. You know. You know, starting right after October 15, when a lot of people just paid their tax bill for 2025, is when people for the first time start to actually get serious about what they can do to reduce taxes for 2026. So one of the things I think people don't understand is that taxes are actually our biggest expense. I think for most people, especially for those of you who are W2 income earners, really focus on how much do I have to pay when I file my tax returns or how little my refund keeps getting every single year. But the reality is your money has been going towards taxes every other week through every paycheck, whether it's, you know, twice a month or every other week that's already gone to the government. And so what you have with your tax return is just what the additional amount is that is due. And it's really interesting because the tax. There's an organization called taxfoundation.org who does a study every single year about how much do we actually lose to taxes. [00:12:56] Speaker E: Yeah. Taxfoundation.org is kind of like a think tank for us accounting nerds out there. But their studies year in and year out show that the African American does lose more money to taxes than what we all think is probably our other three biggest expenses. Right. Food, clothing, and housing combined. Right. So if you think about that, where you're spending more on taxes than those three things combined, that's where kind of, even for CPAs, it kind of gets, you know, mind blowing to some extent. [00:13:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:24] Speaker D: And one of the things that we often talk to clients about, I know Avery just kind of went over the, you know, what's going in the market. And, you know, today is the. I was just looking up where she was talking. Today is the worst day. And the housing history. I think we all know that there is a school of thought that when everyone else is fearful. Right. We should be taking action. We see that with a lot of our clients who have been sitting on the sidelines when real estate was going up. And I think a lot of the sentiment is very similar to what Avery was just describing is that for the true investors, for the people who are smart, who are able to take action, now is the time when they're seeing this as opportunity rather than fear. And, and you know, with respect to taxes, really, we look at it in terms of a decision making process for you, especially if you're a high income earner or you lose a lot of money to taxes because of the type of income you make. Oftentimes the decision is, I, with this bucket of money, I'm either going to pay it towards taxes or I can make an investment. And what we know is if we pay it to taxes, the return on investment is zero. Right in your pocket, at least. You might get good roads and less of a national deficit. But it's different than investing in real estate as an example, where we expect to have cash flow and appreciation, provided that we buy right. And that we operate it correctly. And that's why we're super excited to be here today amongst all the other experts that are actually doing STRs and, you know, from lending to finding the deals and all that, to learn about how to do it, not just for the tax savings, but also as a good investment too. But yes, if you go to the next slide, you know, we talked a Little bit about taxes being our biggest expense. What's really concerning is, for those of you who don't know, the US national deficit is now at $37.6 trillion, and the government is projected to add another $2 trillion to the deficit per year every single year for the next 10 years. If you want to know what's the projection after the next 10 years, it's going to be over $3 trillion added to debt every single year thereafter. So the question really becomes, you know, why do we care? Well, if you think about who's actually going to pay for the deficit. [00:15:51] Speaker E: Yeah. How are they going to pay for. They're going to use taxes. Right. And who's going to pay for it? Luke is. I mean, that's what it comes down to. He's going to be the one that's going to be covering everyone's taxes. But, you know, it's. It's really interesting is, I think, looking at it from a perspective of what Amanda was talking about. Right. Can. How can we make investments? How can we plan accordingly so that we're not just giving the money to the irs? I think a lot of people forget or the only way, the only time they think about taxes is come April. Right. Like, I'm filing my taxes and giving my information to my tax preparer. They're putting numbers on a form and telling me what. Telling the government what happened last year. But that's not really doing tax planning. Right. Tax planning is looking ahead. What can I do differently going forward? Can I put my money to work for me? Can I make investments to save on taxes and then use that tax savings as an additional investment? Right. Don't blow it on vacation for a year. Go and use it as a down payment on another property. Continue to build your wealth that way. That's what really true tax planning looks like. [00:16:51] Speaker D: Yeah, we. So I had a call with Avery, I think, a couple weeks ago, just we were, you know, proactively planning on what are we going to do? How are we going to make sure we can help clients who are coming to us in the fourth quarter to make sure that, you know, they're doing all the right things to save on taxes, but also at the same time making sure that they get good investments as a result. And that's super important because Journal of Economics came out recently and said they did a study for. For 2025. They did a study, and what it showed was if you're someone who makes $350,000 of income per year over your lifetime, you could lose actually over $5 million to taxes. And again, if you think you're paying too much in taxes now, even with bonus depreciation and all of the good things, you have to make sure that you take advantage of it. Because tax law can change at any time, and because there's such a tremendous amount of deficit in the US the expectation is taxes will go up. [00:17:55] Speaker C: Right. [00:17:55] Speaker D: And so I think we all understand that real estate comes with some significant tax benefits. I think it's no secret that all wealthy people, not all, but most wealthy people have real estate in their portfolio. And a couple of the reasons why is one, you know, it allows you to use leverage to acquire properties. [00:18:17] Speaker F: Right. [00:18:17] Speaker D: That's why we don't ever buy a property with $500,000 cash. Why don't they ever. But generally, right, you have a down payment and you use leverage to buy that property. What's really great about taxes is that the government allows us to take a paper write off called depreciation. And that's basically the government saying, hey, if you own rental real estate, I expect that there's going to be wear and tear in the property. And as a result of that wear and tear, I'm going to allow you to take a paper write off on the purchase price of the property. And this is available to you regardless of where the property is actually going up in value or going down in value. So that's a stated deduction by the government, simply due to IRS rules. [00:19:02] Speaker E: Yeah. And that's where that. That's where the power of leverage comes into play. Right. And Amanda's example, if you buy a $500,000 property, put $100,000 down, that paper loss, that depreciation calculation is based on your purchase price. That's where it starts, not based on your $100,000 down payment. So now we get to take this paper loss to some extent, based on the bank's money. Right. So that's a huge benefit. And I think the other thing to look at, too, is we look at this a lot, talking to clients is you could look at, you're investing in stocks, right? You pay $50,000 for stock. We don't write off the cost of that stock. We don't write that off until we sell the stock down the road. But that's a huge benefit with real estate, is that we can use rental real estate to make cash flow, but then using this depreciation, this paper loss, it's a way to shelter that cash flow. So we got cash in our pocket, but we're not paying Any taxes on it, that can be a win right out. Right out of the door. [00:19:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:19:52] Speaker D: And if you're wondering, you probably have heard or read or someone has told you about the short term rental tax loophole. And if you're wondering why do people call it a loophole? Well, the reason is because for traditional rental real estate that's not short term rentals, it's difficult for a lot of people to use these tax paper losses to offset their W2 or business income. In fact, if you just invest in a regular rental property and either you or spouse, if you're married, would have to do real estate more on a full time basis. In other words, real estate has to be sort of your main job. But if you invest in short term rentals, so Airbnb verbals property where the average guest stays seven days or less, then you don't have to have real estate be your full time thing. So you could be a doctor doing your doctoring stuff, you can be a cpa, you can be an attorney, you do your CPA stuff, CPA stuff, you know, you can be in a rock band and real estate could be a side hustle, but still create these tax deductions through paper losses to offset your W2 business investment retirement income. The way to do that is with what we call material participation. There's a couple different ways to qualify, but at this time during the year, when we're in the fourth quarter, the most common ones we see is you earning at least a hundred hours in your rental property and nobody else has more time than you. So the most simplistic example is, you know, you buy a property, you close on it in the next month or weeks, and then you spend time setting it up, you know, getting it staged, listing it on Airbnb, have one or two guests check in and check out. So as as long as you have 100 hours and nobody else, like your cleaning crew or landscaper has more time than you, then you could make those deduct, take those deductions and use it to offset not just the rental income, but also all of the other different income that you earn as well. So, you know, for I was just looking on Instagram, one of our clients posted this morning that she bought a short term rental for a little over a million dollars. And this was from 2025 taxes. She wrote off close to $300,000 against her taxable income. So for someone who makes, you know, $500,000 to really, you know, reduce that taxable income down to 200,000 is super, super Significant. And that's the reason why, you know, when we work with clients, we're looking at, well, what are, what are our options? Right? We can either do nothing and pay taxes or we can spend time to learn how to build wealth and save on taxes at the same time. [00:22:42] Speaker E: Yeah, it's just a, it's operating a different frame of mind. Right. Instead of just earning and you know, giving your money to the government and hoping to have some money left over to spend and then even less left over to invest, we want to change how we do things. Right. We want to earn our money and then strategically put our money to workforce, use that to save on taxes and then continue to use that to reinvest and continue to build our wealth. [00:23:04] Speaker D: And you know, how you, I think a lot of people have probably heard that, you know, there are a lot of tax benefits for real estate investors. There are a lot of tax benefits for business owners. None for W2 employees. [00:23:16] Speaker E: Right. [00:23:16] Speaker D: W2 earners. And the short term rental is a great example of how you can use real estate to offset taxes from W2. And short term rental investing itself is a business, believe it or not. And I don't mean business from the sense of I have an LLC or have a corporation. I just mean if I own a short term rental, I am in the business of operating a short term rental, which means not do I only get to take the paper write off of depreciation, but I can also take business deduction as well. So business travel, you know, business building, coaching, you know, I can shift income to my kids, I can start hiring kids in my short term rental business and take a tax deduction for all of those things. And you know, comparatively, if all you have is W2 income in the past, there's very little tax deductions that you can, you know, claim. Right. So it's a, it's a little bit of difference in terms of shifting our mind frame from, you know, there's nothing I can do. Taxes is just something that happens to me. It just happened to me in April or it just happened to me in October. It will probably happen to me again next April and next October. To shift that mind frame from, well, what are the things I can do about it before the end of the year so that I can redirect my money to wealth building in assets rather than paying down the government debt. That's it for us. [00:24:50] Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you guys. We have a few questions in the chat, but I think we'll save those until the end. One quick one though, that I Want to ask you, so can somebody qualify for material participation under the 500 hour rule and track their time? Could they do it still if they have a property manager? Seems difficult. [00:25:12] Speaker E: Yeah, you certainly, you certainly could do it. Obviously it makes it a little harder. Right. Because the property manager is theoretically doing a lot of things that you would otherwise be doing. But, but yeah, I mean the benefit of using that 500 hour test is we don't actually care about how many hours anyone else is spending on the property. Right. So as long as you can get to 500 hours. Another tip, for those of you investing in multiple short term rentals, you can always combine your properties into one for purposes of meeting this test. So maybe you've got 200 hours on one, 150 on another, 200 on another property. So for three properties you got 500. Doesn't matter if you're a property manager. So we've seen that sometimes as well. [00:25:46] Speaker D: Yeah. I will say a lot of that risk kind of falls on your risk tolerance level. What we typically tell clients is in the year you're using the short term rental tax strategy, try to self manage as much as possible because it's much easier for you to meet the threshold for it. Now every year stands on its own, so it does not mean you're going to always and forever have to manage every single property. So like Matt was saying, there's different things we play with for grouping different properties together or timing it correctly. And that's Also what makes Q4 super powerful because this is the time of the year when it's much easier for you to have to use one of the other requirements which could be, you know, 100 hours as long as nobody else has more time than you. [00:26:31] Speaker B: And last question, because this is also a high level one and then we'll move on. Can I carry over losses from year to year using the short term rental tax strategy? For example, if the cost seg yields me a $200,000 loss, but I only owe 50,000 in taxes, can I carry that over the rest of that 150 over to the next year? [00:26:51] Speaker D: Yeah. So if you. So maybe I'll reword the question. If I had 150. So if I had, you know, $200,000 of losses but I don't have that much income. [00:27:00] Speaker E: Right. [00:27:00] Speaker D: Let's say only had 50,000 of income, my loss does carry forward into next year so I can use it to offset next year's taxes. And that's the benefit is we don't ever lose the loss. And in Fact, that's actually a strategy we, we use with some clients because in the tax world, there are sometimes additional limitations for people who are very high income. So, you know, if you're making over a million dollars, then there's sometimes our extra limits we have to look at. So we often work on creating more losses than we can use. So we can have a bank to use against next year's income, which is. [00:27:35] Speaker E: Can be especially powerful if for some reason next year maybe you're not going to meet the material participation requirements. Right. Maybe it's going to be passive next year. But now we've got this bank of losses we can still utilize even though the property became passive next year. [00:27:50] Speaker B: All right, and last one, Is there a maximum amount of losses you can take in one year? [00:27:56] Speaker D: Yes, so. Well, yes and no. It depends. Tax. You know, tax law, they don't make anything easy. So it depends on the type of income you make. It depends on if you're single or married. I would say high level. If you're a business owner, meaning most of your income is from, you know, a corporation you own or 1099 or partnership, generally there are no limitations. But if you make W2 income. So if most of income is from a W2 job or stock gains, then yes, there's a limitation. Roughly around 500,000. [00:28:27] Speaker E: Yeah, it's about $512,000 for a married couple, whatever. Half of that is 256 for a single person. [00:28:34] Speaker D: Yeah. And again, what that means is if I. So if I made a million dollars of W2 income and I had a million dollars of rental losses, that means I can use up to 500,000 to offset my W2. The other 500,000 that I can't use I carry into next year and I'll use it immediately in 2027. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Amazing. [00:28:55] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:28:57] Speaker B: All right, so guys, those are the goats of short term rental and real estate tax strategy. Matt And Amanda, Keystone CPA, love them. Have known them for like 10 years now. Amazing. [00:29:08] Speaker A: I love it, I love it. And by the way, the short term shop, be happy to teach you how to manage it yourself. You can do that Shop plus, which is where you found the link to this meeting. Thank you. And Matt making a statement with the Diet Coke. Dude, I love that. That. Nice, nice. Well, thank you guys. You're welcome to stick around if you'd like, but we appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here. [00:29:32] Speaker E: Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. [00:29:33] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:29:36] Speaker A: All right, let's talk a little bit about rents. I'm gonna bring Chuck into the conversation here for the next little while. We're also going to introduce Natalie here in just a little bit. So thank you for being here, guys. By the way, we also realized that that code for the free coaching session is not working. Either that or it's already been used up. Don't worry, we're going to get that fixed and you will get an email about that hopefully by the end of the day because we do want to make sure that you can take advantage of a free coaching session on short term Shop Plus. But that code is. I think it's already used up, but we're going to give out some more, don't worry. So let's look at 2027 rental forecast as far as what's going on. As a matter of fact, we got turned upside down a little bit because Air DNA just came out with a new study just yesterday. So we were able to get all this stuff updated, which was very similar to their previous study which came out in August. But demand is gonna be about 2.3% increase with nights listed at about a 2% increase across the board. This is gonna be nationwide United States numbers again coming from Air DNA for the most part. And average occupancy is going to be 57.7 in 2027. That's going to be up 0.2% for the forecasted average of 2026. Forecasted, why? Because it's not over yet. We're still a little over two months left to go here in 26. Now for those of you that are in vacation markets, you're sitting there like 57%. I'm smoking that every day. But that's not vacation markets, that is nationwide. We are actually hearing statistics as low as 43% nationwide for average occupancy. And you do have to understand that's going to include every city in America. Very rural situations where you've got one home, you know, such as my home state of Nebraska, you know, you might have 50 miles between this house and the next rental or, you know, also Cleveland is going to be mixed in there as well. San Diego, you know, so nationwide the average, which again for me is surprising to hear is 57.5, 26, 57.67, 27. So they are the, the main takeaway there is they are expecting a 0.2% increase for next year. Nightly rates. We're looking at an average nightly rate, I like to call it ANR, they call it ADR of 2%. And our RevPAR per available rental is going to be 2.2, 2.3% increase for next year is what they're saying. So things are trending in the right direction. I do agree with this. I'm personally seeing some nice, you know, level, but maybe slight increases across my portfolio. So what I'm seeing does kind of hold true to what we're seeing here. As far as travel forecasts for the year, this is going to be about 1.42 trillion in travel spending and about 3% spending growth for 27 versus 26. So we are expecting more travelers next year. 74.1 million international visitors coming to the United States, which is up 5.2% over 26. We did see a period of time slightly post Covid where we weren't getting a lot of international travelers. So that's nice to have them back and expect them to be very heavy in markets such as Disney. What this means for owners? Supply growth has slowed down a little bit. We are seeing less listings being added to the pool, which is good for people that are savvy enough to come to a conference such as this one. That's good for you. Available listings rose just 1.6% in September of 2026. Performance varies by size. The large properties are getting about 6.6% increase as far as rates are concerned. And occupancy, an increase of 1.5%. I wasn't able to pull any data on small properties for that statistic. The modest growth baseline baseline for 2027 budget with local booking pace and actual op operating costs is going to be important for the new year, you know, so make sure you're staying tuned in on your market. Long story short, and we can do that with, you know, many, many, many different data sources these days. And we are going to get a little deeper in on how to actually do that here in just a minute. Guess ratings are going to be huge, guys. Bigger than ever. We are living in an era where the strong will survive, the cream of the crop will rise to the top 100%. So 4.9 stars and up will have a RevPAR index of 107 versus 87 for 4.6 stars and below. Now, here's another thing. You don't realize how many people out there have terrible reviews. It's extremely common. So you sit there and you're like four. You know, if you're coming to this conference, you're probably having no problem hitting the 4.9, right? Or at least 4.8 to keep your super host and your premier host, which is the, you know, the gold standard. But there are plenty of people out there that are your competition that are not doing well and they don't care. They don't care. So this is the time to jump all over it. You know, you could stomp out the competition pretty easily in 2027. Top 1% guest favorites are getting a RevPAR index of 1 19. So if you're in the 1% of your market, you're going to crush it. And if you're not, there's a chance you're going to struggle. Hospitality remains an owner priority. Fix recurring guest issues. Protect services as you grow. What does this mean? Get upstream 100%. There's a book on the subject by the Heath brothers, Upstream. I recommend it daily and I plea please read that book. Yes, Unreasonable Hospitality is the greatest book in our space, period. But Upstream should be number two. That book could have a different title, and that title could be how to Be a Badass Property Manager. It really could. That book is invaluable and will be even more important in 2027 because there are so many hosts out there that are not keeping up with the times. I ran into a host yesterday that said she was struggling and she was using IGMs and I was like, oh, my goodness, girl, we got to get going. We got to get up to date. There are so many new softwares out there that are crushing it. We're going to talk about those here in just a little bit. So slight elephant in the room. Yesterday, Airbnb came out with some. Some policy changes that are all over the Internet now. They're. They' making an effort to basically limit rental agreements, as in get rid of rental agreements, which I don't really understand how this is even possible. To me, it's. It would be the equivalent of Zillow saying you can't use your own lease, you know, to rent a property. So I don't really quite grasp the concept here. I will say that, you know, again, my take on the new Airbnb thing that came out yesterday is it they came out with something in 2025 that everybody was losing their mind over also. And at this point in time, none of us remember what that was either, you know, so my plan here is just to chug along business as usual, because I have no other choice. And I trust Airbnb. I have no choice. Right? But long story short, they are going to make some new requirements before the booking. They're going to limit checkout tasks and keep them reasonable. They're going to remove surprise restrictions and penalties, you know, make sure you're reading the new updates that came out. They. They are all over the Internet, they're all over Facebook, etc. And they are in your inbox. Well, I got an email about it, you know, so it's. It's not easy. It's not hard to find this. So the old approach is disclose a separate rental agreement, and you could click a link and get it signed. They are saying they're going to no longer allow separate rental agreements. The exception is going to be something, you know, for an HOA purpose or a legal purpose regarding your state, that kind of thing. And disclosure is no longer enough. Allowed terms must appear in the designated section before booking. In other words, they now have revamped slightly their house rules section. And that is what they are. They're making an effort to bring in my interpretation of this. They're making an effort to bring rental agreements in house, which I like that concept. I do. But I think so far it's not quite landing the way that it should, at least for hosts. So hopefully that's where they're going with this, is that they're trying to make an effort to bring the rental agreement on platform as opposed to off platform. I can get down with that. Little too early to tell here. Go ahead, Chuck. What are your thoughts on all this? [00:38:24] Speaker G: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head with a lot of it. A few underlying things are, I think Airbnb is also trying to make it easier to put all these things in one place so we don't get the, you know, the guessing I didn't see this. Or by putting them in certain sections, airbnb can track whether or not they actually viewed those sections. You know, right now, you've got people putting restrictions in there or rules in the. In the listing and the house rules. Maybe it goes out in the welcome message. Then there's additional ones that show up in the renter agreement. It appears to me that this is just an effort to get a lot of it into a single place where it could be tracked. And, I mean, we. We've all heard stories about guests that have or not guests, but hosts that have some, let's just call them, unreasonable expectations about what happens in their house. And I think Airbnb is trying to, you know, get a handle on those, too. They may be the. They may be the few and the far between, but they show up all over social media. So, yeah, Airbnb is very, very concerned about their social media perception. [00:39:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the one that sticks out most here for folks is The. The one that's coming up the most so far. And again, this just came out yesterday, so we won't dwell on this too much. Is the. The dishes saying that we're no longer allowed to ask them to run the dishwasher. They're supposed to have to put the dirty dishes in the sink. To me, this is a bit ridiculous to even bring this up. Like, why is this even being brought up? And then they're also going so far as to say, you can't have signs in your house that contradict your rules on Airbnb. In other words, you can't have a sign that says, please run the dishwasher. I. I don't. I don't. I don't get it. I really don't get it. But to me, this means two things. I'm. Number one. I'm glad. I hate to say this, if anybody hears from Airbnb, I love you, but I. I'm glad that I have a good presence on vrbo. And also paper plates comes to mind. Chuck, you know what I mean? That seems a pretty good problem solver here. Let's just get some paper plates going. [00:40:21] Speaker G: Yeah, a $3 pack of 300 paper plates, you know? Yeah. [00:40:25] Speaker A: Which, if I was a guest, you know, I hate to say it, because everybody's all about luxury these days. If I show up and there's paper plates, you know, I love the. I love the environment, but, man, that would make my. My. My vacation maybe a little bit easier in some cases, you know, so I'm Joe. We're joking obviously, about that, but, yeah, I. My. My take on this is. Again, it came out yesterday. Let's not freak out about this, guys. It's no big deal. We're just gonna move on as business as usual. It's about once a year that this type of thing comes out. And again, I dare you to remember what the one last year was, you know? [00:40:58] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:40:59] Speaker B: And let's. [00:40:59] Speaker G: Let's also remember, I mean, we have a very u. S. Centric view of this stuff, you know, that it's happening to our properties in Florida or Tennessee or wherever we may own. But Airbnb is very big on trying to have one set of rules for their global operation. [00:41:15] Speaker A: So, yes, the people on this call are not who they're going after with this stuff. You know, we are. We are doing the best we could possibly do. You're going out of your way, using your lunch break on a Wednesday to learn more about how to be a rock star. And good for you. So, so great. Job. Let's talk about these fees. We do still see a lot of folks freaking out about the fact that the Airbnb fees are going to make it so I can never get a booking again. And the VRBO has now, as of what last week, they're getting rid of the old subscription way of doing things, which is kind of a downer for guys like us, Chuck, that have been around for a million years and on that subscription. So, you know, I kind of broke it down here with the old fee versus the new fee, but can you, you know, I still see a lot of people like losing their mind that they're not going to get any more bookings because of this. Can you put us at ease there a little bit? [00:42:04] Speaker G: Yeah. And obviously start with Airbnb. And we have to make some assumptions here because the, under the old split fee model, the amount charged to the guests did vary. It wasn't just one number, but, you know, it was roughly between 14 and 16.5 somewhere in there. In general, the total price the guest pays, if you're, if your rates were the same, it doesn't change that much. Maybe, maybe a couple of dollars on a booking at most. It's just moving where it takes place. And this, this also has some back end implications for Airbnb. You know, as they move the. Think about where the sales tax burden changes here. You know, you know, more burden comes back to the off of Airbnb and back to us as a host. So that saves Airbnb money on the back end. They don't have to raise prices to make more money. They can also reduce costs. So, but on that, that's a long roundabout way of saying the guests are generally not going to pay more money unless we raise our rates, of course. But I mean, then they pay more money anyway, right? I mean, what I am hearing lately, what I've been hearing a lot of is the people who are not using pms, you know, the, the people, they got one or two or maybe even three or four and they're managing everything on Airbnb. They're now moving up to the host only fee or have recently been moved to it. And I've been surprised at how many of these folks I've talked to directly and, and you know, had had some sessions with that did not. They, they haven't even logged on to Airbnb or looked at Airbnb as from the guest point of view for a long time. They haven't even been very aware of this one price display. You know, that's that comes from the FTC regulation that went into effect a year and a half, two years ago. Once you talk them through that, they're beginning to see it. You know, people are stepping off the ledge some. So. [00:44:03] Speaker A: Yes. And let's talk about the new Verbo way of doing things. [00:44:08] Speaker G: Yeah, that's a little more complicated. [00:44:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a little more complicated. They're getting. And again, this doesn't affect the people without a subscription as much like if you're not an old school subscription person. It still changes, but it doesn't change as much. But can you clarify on the new verbo fees? [00:44:23] Speaker G: Yeah, let's start with this subscription thing. If you're allowed to keep it through your. In general, and there's exceptions to all of this is, which is why it gets complicated in general, you're allowed to keep it until your next renewal period and then it goes away. For people, folks that have been at this or maybe not even be on Vrbo, we were paying 699 a year and that's it. That was what VRBO made off of us. Now, you could also only do that if you were fully integrated and you were processing the. You could only keep that if you were fully integrated and you were processing your own charges. So that was it. You know, I've got this nice big eight bedroom property. Verbo only got $699 a year out of me. That's going away. When that goes away, I'll be paying them 12% out of every booking on a big property like that, you know, if you're doing, let's just say a hundred thousand dollars, then I'll be paying Airbnb 12,000 over the year. You know, so verbo, that is verbo. Verbo. I'm sorry. Yeah, you change slides, but my brain [00:45:26] Speaker A: is still on the old one. [00:45:29] Speaker G: So I'll be paying them 12,000 a year. Of course, I don't like that. Of course I'm going to be raising my rates to cover that on vrbo. Maybe not all the way, but, you know, I'll be, I'll be figuring out a nice middle ground there that where I can keep getting bookings and be competitive. Now, when we move to people who have already been paying the commission, the 5% commission along with a 3% payment fee, which is essentially the credit card fee. That's the average price of a credit card charge. You are paying 8% to VRBO, you're now going to be paying 12%, but that's going to include the payment fee for most People. So the real increase there to us as host is really only 4%. It's important to know that the guest fee does not go away. They said there still will be a guest fee and they haven't been very clear on the range of that guest fee. For the record, VRBO has never, ever been clear on the guest fee. I guess they considered a trade secret. So the last folks, a better way [00:46:37] Speaker A: to put it, Verbo is moving to more of an Airbnb style fee structure, basically. [00:46:42] Speaker G: Well, yeah, I, some, I think it's somewhere between Airbnb and booking, to be honest. You know, they're trying to find that middle ground there and in that triad on a global basis, they're. They're on the low side. I mean, you know, we. [00:46:56] Speaker A: Low side. I'm sorry, low side of total fees? [00:46:59] Speaker G: No, no, I meant of not doing as much, you know, booking. Booking is out there doing a lot more business probably. You know, they're what, number one in the world? I'm pretty sure that's still the case. Airbnb's catching up, but Airbnb's 2 and Verbo's 3 and it's, you know, it's a big gap between Airbnb and vrbo. [00:47:21] Speaker A: Yes. [00:47:22] Speaker G: You know, so they're trying to catch up there and they're looking at how successful booking has been and now they're looking, you know, at Airbnb and what Airbnb has done in the last couple of years to pick up an extra, you know, 5 to 6%. They're saying we've got to do some of this too. This is obviously working. [00:47:36] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, VRBO is in the 30s in the US only, which again, they're, you know, booking completely dominates the world outside of the US but in the US, VRBO is about 35, 33% of nationwide bookings. That does not pertain to vacation towns per se. But that's the nationwide statistic there. [00:47:58] Speaker G: Yeah, that's true. And then the last folks we have to talk about, which you know, is probably at least half our audience or more, are people that are integrated through their pms. If you were integrated through your PMS and you were not on a subscription, you were paying 5% and you were handling your own processing fees, whatever they may be, generally around 3% now we're going to be paying 12%. So that's a 7% increase. And we're still paying our own processing fee. So that's the biggest increase for people that were using a property management system that was fully integrated. Hostfully owner res and to some extent hospitable and others. You know, we're seeing the biggest increase in the fees to set, you know, that 7% increase. So. [00:48:48] Speaker A: All right, so that's just. It is what it is. Let's not sit around. I'm hearing too many people freaking out, oh, my God, I'm never going to get a booking anymore because the fees have gone up. That's not necessarily the case. They've been restructured. [00:48:59] Speaker G: Yeah, yeah. And you know, one thing very quickly about VRBO's, you know, fees, guest fees. There are a lot of factors go into it. You know, Airbnb and booking is fairly simple. It's a percentage, that's it, on the guest fees. VRBO also factors in your, your group size, how many days you're staying, you know, play, spend some time on Verbo in the guest mode and play with your own listing and watch how the guest fee changes. [00:49:26] Speaker A: So, yeah, and again, still we have this conversation every day on the Internet about, oh, Verbo stinks. You know, I don't use Verbo. Verbo stinks. If, if that's you, you're gonna get left behind. Okay. In 2027, if you're not keeping up with Verbo and booking, you will get left behind. That's my opinion. All right, let's talk about some AI. It's a hot topic and gets brought up all the time. So there. And, and the good news is, in our space, especially in the management side of things, there's a lot of really good stuff going on that are. It's making things a lot easier for a lot of us and very helpful stuff. [00:49:59] Speaker D: So [00:50:03] Speaker A: the air DNA sees agents reshaping how guests compare stays accurate. Property data matters. I totally agree with that. Keeping amenities, descriptions and availability current and distribution deserves attention. Review channel costs and direct booking readiness, especially for those of you that are trying to focus on direct bookings and Google Vacation Rentals. I've said it a thousand times. I do like Google Vacation Rentals. I think it is the future of the way people will book houses. It's just basically a multiple listing service for vacation rentals. And so I like it. I do, I think that Google has some potential there. But, you know, it is what it is. As of right now, for those of you that are not using AI at all, we're going to get into that deeply. But the best thing you can do is just start easy with some guest, you know, approved property facts and draft replies and then maybe have a human, you know, respond, approve the reply before it goes out. This can be done on management softwares and of course there are third parties for that as well. But these are, these three here are going to be the most important at least if you're just trying to dip your toe into using some, some, some AI review analysis as well. Go through your feedback and, and find issue themes in your reviews. With AI, you can ask Claude to go through your listings and say what's coming up in my reviews all the time and then fix it. You know, if you, if you get to the point where you've been doing this for three or four years, a lot of times we get kind of, you know, lazy. So this is a great way to keep up with the times and keep yourself up to date. Right? So, and then your listing itself, I'm, I'm changing my headlines now weekly and I'm doing that with Claude and it is so easy now. It does take a long time to set it up so that it will do it correctly. But once you get it set up and you save it as a skill they call it, there's different ways to save these, these operations and within Cloud or ChatGPT, which now Chat GPT does, Chrome extension as well, you can, I just go in cloud and I say hey, please pull my current headlines and descriptions and then offer me advice on what we should change them to based on the season and based on, you know, maybe price labs. I use the listing optimizer on Price Labs, etc. And there's a million ways to, to check your, your listing optimizations these days and you can pull all that stuff together with AI and again, back to the old school way, guys. The more we're changing our headlines and descriptions, the better our algos, right? So keep up to date on this stuff and, and, and before we get deeper into this stuff because we are, we're going to get a little more in depth on what hat, what softwares have, what options as far as AI. I want to turn things over to Natalie as far as the buying process because we're seeing that a lot right now where people that are shopping for a house, you know, are plugging it into, you know, chat gbt, etc, checking air DNA and using all of these things together and it can be a very useful way to do it. But also if you're, if you're not doing it correctly, it can be a real pain in the rear end. So if Natalie's around, if you're available, I'm here. [00:53:24] Speaker B: All right, all right. [00:53:24] Speaker F: Hey everybody. I am an agent in the Smokies Luke, is my service okay? I know earlier it was kind of spotty. [00:53:33] Speaker A: Yes, sounds good. Thank you. [00:53:34] Speaker B: You're good. We like to call Natalie natgpt around here. [00:53:38] Speaker A: Yes. And I just got you pinned to the top so we can see you. And thank you so much. [00:53:42] Speaker B: Perfect. [00:53:44] Speaker F: It's so great to meet all of you that I don't know. I know tons of my students are in the chat, so great to see all of you. So I just wanted to talk really quick about the best way to actually use AI when you're shopp. Um, so over at STS plus they do a really great job of helping educate you on the best way to use it while you're managing. But what we're seeing a lot lately is clients getting a little bit bogged down trying to use it when shopping. So I just want to, in the most loving big sister way possible, just kind of like help you guys understand the best way to use it while you're shopping. So first I'm going to start and end by telling you the best place plan for using AI when shopping. So first thing I want to say is AI is a great tool, but we have to remember that that's what it is. It's a tool that we use right now. What we're currently experiencing as agents is a lot of clients who are using AI unintentionally. I don't think this is people's intention, but they're using it unintentionally to sort of think for them. And so I want to kind of talk through what that looks like and how to better use it because it absolutely should be something that you are, you are utilizing for sure. So first thing is historically the way that when people come to us, keep in mind that if you are new, if this is going to be your first short term rental and it's kind of overwhelming because it's a lot to figure out or it seems like it's a lot to figure out. Keep in mind that for the history of forever since the shop has been here, we it, everyone has been brand new when they're brand new and historically they haven't had AI at their fingertips. To what I'm gonna say at this point in the game is sometimes confusing people and it's sometimes the barrier to entry when, when entering this space is already. It already can be scary enough. So first thing is historically clients come to us and they are uneducated in this space. They come to the shop because they want to become educated and they get connected with an agent in whatever market they're interested in, who is an expert in that market and at short term rentals. That's why people come to us. And so historically, we would have a conversation or two where we are educating you on all of the baseline information that you need to know when buying in this space specific market and buying short term rentals in general. So historically, that's how it works. You come with your cup empty and we fill your cup. That's kind of how it's worked when it comes to knowledge on all of this. Now what's kind of going on is you come to us with your cup empty. And one of two things you've. Before you come to us, you've tried to fill your cup by going to chat and saying, hey, chat, I'm thinking about buying a cabin in the Smokies to make some money. Tell me what I need to know so that initial start with AI when you're starting that way, or if you come to us, we start to fill your cup, which can't happen in one phone call, but we start to fill your cup and then you go to chat and you say, hey, chat, I'm thinking about buying a cabin of the Smokies. I've already talked to an agent. Here's what they said. Tell me more questions to ask. That's kind of the nature of how people are using AI in the purchasing process right now. I will tell you that using it in that way is leading a lot of people to some confusion that is sometimes not overcomeable. So using it as a tool versus using it in a, hey, tell me how to think. Tell me what I should know. Tell me what I should ask. Those are putting some of our clients in situations where they are getting themselves onto a hamster wheel that until they get off that hamster wheel, getting started in this space, doesn't happen. Okay, so let's talk about that. So when you talk to chat and you ask it things like, hey, I'm buying a cabin. Tell me what I should know, tell me what I should ask. These kind of things, it's giving our clients a list of questions that some are okay. Like some. Some are okay questions, but it's. It's usually a very long list. And some of the questions are redundant. And to be honest with you, some of the questions are irrelevant. And so what's happening is clients are coming to US agents and they have a list of sometimes 20 to 30 questions for us to answer, either just about the market in general or about a house or a couple of Houses in specific. So what that's going to create for you, the client. Here's what happens. A lot of times those questions aren't your questions. They're not things you're wondering, they're things that Chat is asking you to ask or telling you that you should ask. So if you bring those questions to an agent at the short term shop, we are, so we are not going to take those questions and feed them into our chat to get you some answers. We are all so intentional about everything we do that we're going to, well, think through every one of those questions you send us, even if they're irrelevant questions from chat or things that aren't things that you need to really be spinning wheels about. So when you send us questions like that, you can probably expect, not intentionally, not because we're ignoring, but you can expect some delays on getting answers to things like that. And in this space, the key here is gaining knowledge as quick as possible, understanding what you're doing as quick as possible so that you can get comfortable with doing this thing that you really want to do for the tax benefits that Matt and Amanda talked about. Right. So our job is to get you to a point of understanding, to fill your cup of knowledge as quick as we possibly can. That's our goal and that's what we, we can do here at the shop. But when we have this big list of questions, sometimes if I question my clients on one of their questions, they don't even know. I'm like, what exactly do you mean by this? Or what do you need to know from this? Sometimes they don't even know because again, it's not their question, it's just a question that Chat told them to ask their agent. So the caution here is just making sure that as you're shopping, your biggest bang for your buck is going to be when you're trying to gain understanding, you need to have conversations with your agent as often as you can and build your knowledge bank rather than relying on that. So what, what happens is, let's say that we, we sit down and we take the time to put together 20 or 30 answers to your 20 or 30 questions. What a lot of clients are also doing then is they're taking our answers to the chat questions and feeding it into chat and saying, here are the answers now what should I ask? Right. So there's no actual learning happening there. And as someone who taught school for almost 15 years, that's hard for me because I do this as a labor of love to teach people how to do this like, like the teaching piece of it is why I'm here. And so when you're feeding the answers back into the machine, there's no, there's no actual learning going on. There's no actual coming to an understanding of your market and how, you know, cabins work in the Smokies and things like that. So that's the biggest caution that I want to give today is if you want to be successful on the management piece, there has to be real learning happening at every step of the process. Right? So when you are going through getting started in the buying process, figuring out how to actually there it really is. It's really a 101 class. You're really not. It's not rocket science that you're having to learn here. So just ask questions, talk to your agent as often as you can, and come to real understandings about the purchasing process of, of this, this rental. So I also don't want you to feel discouraged. Sometimes when you send a long list from AI and it, it takes a while to get a response, it is not because we're ignoring you, it's just because we're going to think through everything we send to you. And that takes time. Right. [01:02:24] Speaker C: So [01:02:26] Speaker F: back to best plan. Okay, so using it in the way I just described is allowing AI to sort of think for you and to contain knowledge for you. So we want to use it as a tool. So there are, there are so many ways that you can actually use AI as a tool. So when you have these conversations and again, keep in mind that the machine is still learning and the machine is still going to have flaws. It's very important that as you are doing, using it as a tool and doing research, having it tie into, you know, dig through, Zillow, dig through, you know, air, DNA, any of these things that you're having it dig through and using it as a tool, go immediately back to your agent, not with a list of 20 or 30 questions, but saying, hey, I talked to Chat and Chat says that 1, 2, 3 Main street is going to be the best investment in your market. I'm going to say to that. All right, well, first baseline to that is the only thing that I knows here is rental numbers that are put into the description versus the price. So what I'd like to show you is here are my top five, here's my curated list for you, and here's some, some income stuff. Your agent's gonna give you what you're seeking through AI. Your agent's gonna talk you through what you're Seeking, So it's absolutely able to be used as a tool. But it's also, I mean, you know, up until what, like two months ago, six months ago, something like that, we were. We were new clients. Like, you were doing this every day without that. So if you're feeling bogged down, if you're feeling analysis paralysis, if you feel like you are on a hamster wheel, the way to get off of that is to just have conversations with your agent. So the other thing, the only thing I want to add to that is during the purchasing process, the same clients that are. We talked about that. AI is doing a lot of thinking for you, coming up with questions for you. I want to add that it's also happening when you get to stages like contract writing and inspection reports. So the caution that I want to give you is a lot of clients are. Not a lot, but some clients are taking their contracts and running it through AI and saying, hey, I don't have time to analyze my own contract. Super dangerous. Look at it, tell me questions I should be asking, and things like that. So, number one, if you're going to have somebody review your contract, let it be your attorney, not A.I. but second to that is that contract, if A.I. comes back and tells you that something should be rewritten or added or taken away, the. The contract is written by attorneys to protect both buyers and sellers. We can't do that as agents. You know, we can't rewrite part of the contract. So having conversations with your agents about the contract, reviewing the contract yourself that you're about to be signing is super important. And also inspection reports, AI is going to. [01:05:27] Speaker C: They're. [01:05:28] Speaker F: They're going to tell you things about cabins in the Smokies. I'm going to tell you, anybody in this group right now who has bought a cabin in the Smokies or probably a rental anywhere, can tell you that an inspection report is a very nuanced thing. Every cabin in the Smokies is going to have a loose toilet. You can't rely on AI to tell you what to do about that. So have. The moral of the story here is have conversations with your agents, have conversations with your inspectors. This is not really the point on the timeline to lean on AI you can use it, use it as a tool. Your agent can even talk to you about how to use it as a tool. But this is not the point on the timeline to be leaning on AI in my opinion. So I don't know, Luke, if you want to add to that, Avery, if you want to add to that, but that is the big sister advice from an agent who wants to help you get going in this adventure. [01:06:24] Speaker A: No, I love it. You know, we're living in a fun time. It's really a lot of fun and we want you guys to lean into AI. It's important using it every day. Everybody's using it every day. And the great stuff there, Natalie, mostly on, you know, just don't drive yourself nuts with it. It, you know. So let's talk about AI some more, if you don't mind. But before we do that, we have the code fixed and Avery has been so kind as to release more. We're going to go ahead and bump it up another 10 free coaching sessions. Use the code, Avery. We're going to put that in the chat. Thanks to the boss. She approved it. As far as I know, it's working. We've already used a bunch of them. By the way, Priscilla, you can't use it more than one time. Please don't use it more than one time. Priscilla, we. We're watching you. So use it only one time. We can't limit it. So just. Honor system, one time only. But there's plenty of them left that's in the chat. So Avery and I just got back from Vermo, which was great, and we, we. We are in the know with all of the AI. So I want to mention some softwares that are definitely on the rise in our space. One of them is Touch Day. This one's getting a little weird though, because of the new Airbnb update yesterday. Are they going to not let us, you know, how are we going to get these guidebooks to our people? Is Airbnb going to put guidebooks in house? One would assume so. However, their current guidebook system is horrible. But I will say that Touch Days that they. They were recently bought by PE etc, and so they've had some major changes and they have a new dashboard. So if you're a Touch Day person or if you're not, you go on there. It will say if you want to upgrade, basically. And the new one is actually really cool. And your guest can search it and then they're searching AI. So your guests can go on there and say, what time is this? That and the other. What's the best restaurant in this area? What time do I. What? You know, how late can I use the swimming pool? What's the temperature of the swimming pool? They can ask any question they want and it will give them the answer. Now, again, with this new Airbnb regulation that came out Yesterday. Will Airbnb eventually come out with their own AI where the guests can ask questions about the listing? They kind of need to, don't they? I mean, I'm to the point in life where if I'm using a software that doesn't have AI, I'm looking at their competition to see if they have it. You know, I just want everything to be easy. But anyway, kudos to touchstay with that new dashboard that you can ask questions and it will give you great answers without even having to search through everything. Great job Hostfully, which I learned most of this from Avery's podcast. This short term show comes out every Wednesday. Margo was nice enough to come on her show a couple of weeks ago. It's been two or three times she's been on her show now. And Hostfully is, I would say, probably in the forefront of AI right now. They are actually using Host Buddy in their dashboard. So all the management softwares, you know, they're moving towards AI. They have their own AI. Owner Res has Resi. Hospitable has their own AI. Etc. [01:09:29] Speaker E: Yeah, because she's napping now, but when [01:09:30] Speaker A: she comes up, she needs record. [01:09:32] Speaker G: That's what I was saying. [01:09:32] Speaker A: Start by the shed. Can somebody find that? [01:09:35] Speaker B: Got it. [01:09:36] Speaker A: Thank you. Anyway, so some of them are good and some of them are not quite there yet. You know, I'm talking about guest messaging AI right now, but Hostfully has integrated Host Buddy into their dashboard. So you can change your Host Buddy settings on Hostful. You don't even know it's Host Buddy because it's just Hostfully AI. They've partnered together, which is fantastic because in my opinion, Host Buddy is the best AI out there right now. It's spectacular. I'm using it right now. I'm doing third party integration to my Hospitable. But man, wouldn't it be cool to just have it right there on my, my dashboard with Hostfully. But let's talk about Hospitable. Yes, their AI is there. It's not quite where I want it to be yet, but it's there. But some things that they do have that they're that are rocking pretty hard is their new cleaner situation. They have a new task dashboard for cleaners where I hate to say it, but lack of a better way to put it, they basically built Turno into Hospitable so your cleaner can upload photos for every turn. She can see exactly when it needs to be cleaned or he. And the best part about Turnos, I'm sorry, Hospitable's new cleaning system is that you can pay your cleaners on Hospitable automatically and it's damn near free. If you set it to every two weeks, for instance, it's $5 per payment. So if you have one cleaner on six houses and you only pay them every two weeks, you're paying 10 bucks a month for it to do it for you. That's really cool. And it's also cheaper than their competition. So hospital hospital making some great strides there in the cleaner space. STR TV is coming on strong. We've heard recent rumors that it will start integrating with Roku Guest mode, which is huge. STR TV and there's another one out there, out there, out there called welcome Screen. These are like when you go to Disney World and you see on the screen where it says welcome Carl Family. It's pretty cool. However, these are even more sophisticated than that where you can put QR codes for links to the weather and where to shop and your guidebook, etc. And again, difficult to say where that's going to go with Airbnb's update yesterday, but I'm not going to keep beating that to death. Right? So STR TV recent rumor integrating with Guest Mode. Why is that a big deal? Because that means after the guest leaves, they will automatically be logged out of every app they signed into and then it will come to the new STR Welcome STR TV Welcome Screen and have the new guests name on there and they're not going in to see what the previous guest was watching on the tv. All can be done from your phone from remotely. Etc. Very cool stuff as far as AI is concerned. Again, if you're looking for AI messaging and you're looking for something that can get to the point where you will, you know, feel comfortable using it while you're on a cruise and you know you can even step away from it for X amount of days. Host Buddy's the way to go 100. I'm loving it. There are several other options out there. Hello, Host is a great option. I've been using Host Buddy for quite a while now and it is very time consuming. That's the thing I want you to take away from this is that none of this stuff is going to be very easy to set up, but the payoff is huge. My Host Buddy is is set up in such a way now that and also the longevity of it helps. The longer you're using it, the more it learns your style, which is very helpful. It will just integrate with your inbox and it will go back and read all the stuff that you've ever said to guests and it will learn how to talk and you can tell it how to talk. You can have it talk like a human and be a, you know, an employee. Or you can say, you can have it say, I'm an AI. You know, I've had good and bad luck on both sides of that coin. Depends on it honestly, depends on the guest. Some of them want to be talking to an AI where they can get immediate answers like this and some of them get very annoyed when they find out it's like a machine. So Pet screening is a great service for those of you that are pet friendly. It will automate everything for you and it will also qualify the pet to make sure that it has the proper paperwork if needed, even right down to rabies shots. And they will handle the pet fee for you as well. And then similar with Pool Pilot, I'm working this in as well. Again, it's gonna be weird how this works with the Airbnb link thing, but Pool Pilot, if you have a swimming pool and you're sick of charging extra for the heat, they will do that for you. Very minimal fee on that. And it will automate the heater time on and time off. So you really don't even have to think about it. Pretty cool product coming from them. So lots of great softwares that are making a lot of great changes. I think the most important thing is, is if they're not doing AI, they've been left behind. You've got to be, you know, integrating a nice AI product into all softwares, otherwise you're, you're just going to get forgotten about. So if you're, if your software doesn't have it, it's probably a good time to be thinking of a shift. Let's talk about pricing. Some pricing strategies to begin with, match a bedroom count amenities and location to comparable sets. We can all do this with neighborhood data on price labs. It's good old fashioned as we know it around here. Enemy method. Right. So booking conditions, review booking pace. How often am I getting booked? How quickly am I getting booked? Open dates and minimum stays. So in other words, if you have dates that are open and your minimum stays are too high and you're not paying attention to that, as you know that should, that can all be automated in today's world as well and track revenue after costs alongside occupancy and rates. So let's talk about softwares in the pricing world. This has been a major shift, a Major shift that I'm really to the point I can't even defend it anymore because I am a Price Labs guy through and through. To be honest with you, they didn't really have any competition for a long time. They were it. You know, there's wheelhouse and beyond. But those of us on this call may or may not know that those two, for whatever reason, didn't really take off that well. At least they're not in our community. So Price Labs has kind of been the name of the game for a long time and I do still think that they are the top dog, period. They have just announced AI. It is in beta right now. It has not come out yet. However, they do have MCP directly to Claude. If you're not familiar with that, you need to get familiar with that. It's becoming more common every single day with everything we use in our lives, where you can connect CLAUDE directly, which is API, if for lack of a better way to put it, the MCP is Claude's version of that. And you can connect certain softwares to your Claude app on your computer, on your laptop, on your phone, and you can do that with Price Labs. So now the downside is, is that the Claude MCP is not going to be able to write certain things. So you would need to use the Claude extent, the Chrome extension for that purpose. In many cases, such as those of us who are using multiple seasonal profiles, if you're doing the short term shop way of pricing where you have a base rate per month, you can't do that with the Claude mcp. You would have to do that with Claude Chrome extension. However, it's very simple. I'm usually going in there and saying, hey, you know, like right now, October's almost over. So if I wanted to lower my October's for every single property in my portfolio, I could do that on Claude extension, say go into my seasonal profile. Please raise all lower all October's by 15. It will do that in five minutes or less. However, again, it does take some time to set that up. You need to explain to it exactly what you mean. You have to give it, you know, 100, 200 words the first few times you're using it to get to the point where it can repeat itself as a skill. And then eventually you just go in and you just say, please lower all October's by 15 bucks. Boom, it's done. It will not be able to do that the first time. Hospitable has its own pricing now and it's coming up all the time. I'm seeing all the time where folks are, you know, somewhat frustrated with the fact that Price Labs is so robust and, dare I say, complicated. There are a million bells and whistles in Price Labs, and for the average homeowner that has a day job and children and a busy life, Price Labs is overwhelming. I will give you that. It is so hospitable and Adapt are coming on strong. And I have no reason to defend Price Labs anymore. I do think it's the best. I can't personally get off of it, but if you haven't seen the ADAPT dashboard, holy crap, it's sexy. It is. It's so sexy. You can see your neighbors right on the dashboard. In other words, you can click on dates on your calendar and it will tell you what your neighbors are priced at your enemies, if you will, as we know, you can do that on Price Labs, but it is more complicated. You have to go to the neighborhood section. You have to toggle back and forth. It's complicated. It looks like a damn Excel spreadsheet from 1989 on Price Labs. Let's be real. But you are never going to get all those massive amounts of customizations on adapt. It's very simple right now, as a matter of fact, they just have toggles for four different presets, which, of course, you can customize those presets, but it's super simple. So if you're the type of person that wants to really drill down, as Avery would say, and get, you know, your calendar, like, completely honed in and down to the dollar, Price Labs is still to go to. But we do have some competition in the space now with these newcomers. Hospitable pricing, again, very similar to Adapt. It's simple, it's easy. You just push a couple buttons and it does it for you. You know, for the right candidate, these are good options. And I really like the way Adapt looks. And I. I hate to say this, even I like that Price Labs has a little competition now. I would love a revamped Price Labs dashboard. I would. It just looks so old school compared to these new ones. And I'm excited to see what comes out with the new Price Labs AI that's in beta right now that we're all kind of waiting for. So, first 30 days of 2027, review your results from last year's last year and choose one property as priority. You are going to have one stinker in the bunch. If you are a property manager, you're probably going to have three or four. So pick those. Make sure you Know which ones are the stinker and focus on them. All right, 60 days test one guest using AI. You've got to come to the future with this AI host buddy's badass. Hostfully has the best messaging as far as AI messaging is concerned right now. If you wanna. If you want an all in one management software that's gonna do this stuff for you, Hostfully is the way to go right now. I think we're gonna see a lot of people shift into Hostfully. Unfortunately, they don't have that cool stuff that I was talking about with the cleaners that Hostfully has. And there's a million other features that we could go back and forth on, but, man, Hostfully is really nailing it right now, you know? So you got to get tested on some AI because it will make your life a lot easier, especially for my folks that are property managers and co hosts. And in 90 days, review the outcome of. Of the things that you've been working on and decide what's going to work and move on, you know? So that's pretty much it for 2027 in the action plan. Avery, how did we do? Do you have any questions? [01:21:12] Speaker B: Did so great. I'm gonna have to embarrass and shout out Laura Gullett. I just saw her on here. She just bought with us. I know her as Laura Ham. She played goalkeeper for Mississippi State. Played against me growing up in Tupelo and jfc. That's so crazy. Thank you for being with. [01:21:28] Speaker A: I thought you were the goalkeeper of Mississippi. What's up with that? [01:21:32] Speaker B: Well, she was in a different club. [01:21:36] Speaker A: I see. [01:21:37] Speaker B: And I think she might be one year younger, so we'll give her that. [01:21:39] Speaker A: Okay. You didn't go to State anyway because that would have been. That would have been rough. You ended up in Texas, so. [01:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah, so. But we were friends. It wasn't like that. [01:21:48] Speaker A: Right. Could have played with each other. [01:21:51] Speaker B: We played against each other. But now she's embarrassed. [01:21:55] Speaker E: She. [01:21:56] Speaker B: She's. She said, I'm the goat. I don't know. You were. You were awesome. So thank you for being a client. Thank. Thank all of you for coming. [01:22:03] Speaker A: Wait, no questions? [01:22:04] Speaker B: Well, I was about to get to questions. [01:22:06] Speaker A: Okay. [01:22:06] Speaker B: I pulled a few out of the chat that were good ones. Let me find where I put those on my screen. All right, so [01:22:16] Speaker A: anybody from the shop, feel free to chime in. Jim. I see Jim here. David, there's a lot of people here. Love you guys. Thank you so much for coming. Go ahead. [01:22:24] Speaker B: Okay. What is the. Hang on now. I've Got it behind my camera where I can't read it. What's the best framework for a brand new STR manager to get a 4.9 to 5 stars for their new property, which has zero reviews as because you know, you don't get to. You don't get get to buy the seller's reviews. So what's the best strategy to get to a five star property when you're new? [01:22:47] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm going to give my opinion. This is an opinion which is difficult in a room full of 400 people. Okay. A fact is much easier. But my opinion is why are we worried about 4.95 to 5? That's. That's trying too hard. [01:23:03] Speaker G: All right. [01:23:04] Speaker A: I like to live somewhere around 4.9, 4.91. But I get your point. And my best advice there is just kiss ass at all cost, period. Read unreasonable hospitality. Go to Disney World. They are the best of all time at doing this. And even when the guest is horrible, because they will be sometimes, even though we can't do this without them, we love them in all capacity. Kiss the rear end at all costs, even if you have to send them instacart to the front door. Whoever asked that question, Avery, what's their name? You have their name. [01:23:37] Speaker B: Oh, no, I didn't copy the name. [01:23:39] Speaker A: Whoever asked that question, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you right now with full confidence, you don't have to worry about that question because anybody asking that question will be doing everything in their power to rock some kick ass reviews. So good job. [01:23:55] Speaker B: All right, next one. What are the best amenities, particularly for the Smokies? [01:24:03] Speaker A: Erica, would you mind taking that one? [01:24:07] Speaker C: Sure. Obviously hot tub, probably top of the list. You have to have one if you're in the Smokies. And I think some of the ones that people might not pay attention to that aren't like all bells and whistles are outdoor dining setups. People like to spend a lot of time on the decks and the Smokies. And if you have a nice outdoor dining setup out there, ones that actually see over your railing and not are all just chairs at eye level with your railing make a big difference to how they experience that other, you know, depending on what type of property you have. So if you have a property that has some outdoor space adding, you know, I know Luke is going to hate to hear this, but a fire pit, preferably away from the property. There are, I think you got to be at least 16ft per code away from any part of the property to have one but the further away you can be, the better. And, you know, some people, if they have even additional outdoor space, might put in a little swing set, because then you're also creating an avatar of, you know, not just adults, but this is a property for kids, too. And simple things in the house. It doesn't have to be big. Like, we have. I'm not saying board, like just board games, but we, you know, have very simple things in the house that kids can play with. We have a little coloring nook. We have a rock painting station outside. We have, you know, like a little Nerf gun, play area, wall. So these are not things that are costing me thousands of dollars to do. [01:25:42] Speaker A: I agree. And we need to focus more on the kids. Kids are ruling supreme right now. The economy is, you know, it's. Everybody knows exactly where the economy is. And people want to have a nice, value, friendly vacation with the children. It's a lot easier to do that when you're driving to the vacation than flying. So focus on the kids and things for them to do. Just little stuff like a basket full of food. Monster trucks. [01:26:12] Speaker C: My kids played with those at your place, by the way. We did find them, Luke. [01:26:15] Speaker A: Oh, well, that's good to hear. I've never. She stayed at one of my rentals that has a monster truck basket, and I've never heard anything about it, so that's good to hear. You prove my point. [01:26:30] Speaker B: Arthur says any indicator that indoor golf simulators are of any value or is that way over the top? I probably wouldn't do that unless it's. It's like a huge property. I think people like them. But from what I understand, those things are extremely expensive, and I'd rather put in a pool for that kind of money. But again, I haven't looked into it recently. I mean, do it if you want. I don't think it's going to be anything too crazy unless it's just, you know, already a big, big property. [01:26:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds like a broken window to me. But what do I know? [01:26:59] Speaker C: I was going to say, too. You're going to run into a lot [01:27:01] Speaker B: of problems with that. [01:27:02] Speaker C: With it, you know, not working right. The only reason I know is because I know someone who has one, so. And it's constantly needing someone to go over there to figure out why it's not working right. [01:27:12] Speaker A: Not our style. [01:27:17] Speaker B: All right, I think I had one more. I keep losing where I put it. Okay, we had a lot of people ask about this. So what's the best way to track the time that you spend on your property for material participation. So I'll grab that. I don't. Matt, Amanda aren't here anymore. So there's reps tracker, reps log. Those are great. You can use a spreadsheet, but those. Those platforms offer features to, like, insert pictures and things like that. My biggest piece of advice, and I'm not a cpa, but I have interviewed several who've had to defend audits for this, is track it in real time. So if you're sitting down to do something, track it right then if you're in Tennessee or Florida or wherever doing the work, track it. All right then. Because in an audit situation, if you didn't track it and you're like, you get a notification that you're being audited and you're like, oh, crap, I didn't track it. Let me go backtrack and track it. And you put, oh, I spent, you know, x amount of time fixing the property up in Tennessee. And then they pull your bank statements and you've got charges in California. At the time you said you were in Tennessee. Then they're gonna. Then. Then you're kind of screwed. So those are the things that's the main thing that I've heard about people losing audits over is not being able to make their track tracking match up. So just do it at the time you're doing it so it all lines up and you're not having to remember what you did six months ago. That'd be my advice. [01:28:43] Speaker A: Yes. And we are not tax advisors in any sense of the capacity of anything. We. I can't even get it out in a sentence. So we are not tax advisors. Please, please consult a, a qualified tax advisor on all tax questions. [01:29:00] Speaker B: All right, well, thank you all very much for coming. If you have any questions you want to become a client, you can find us at our website, shorttrumshop.com it's not too late to buy for. If you want to call SEG this year, we can definitely help you do it. Find you something furnished so you don't have to worry about furnishing something from the ground up. It is not too late. So go to the ShortTermshop.com hit, contact us, email us, call us, we'll get you where you need to go. And thank you guys so much for coming. We're going to do another one of these in January and. But you know, you'll know about it. Same way. Same way we promoted this one. Social media, short term shop plus all the places. Thanks, y'. [01:29:39] Speaker E: All.