Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
[00:00:16] Short Term Rental Management, how the hell are you? I love you. Cash flow Carl in the cash cave, living the dream. All joking aside, man, it's a lot of hard work and I'm happy to have done all this hard work to get where I am, which is I don't know where the hell. I don't know where I am, but I'm here and I'm with you and I love you. And it's Tuesday if you're. If you're on time and happy holidays, depending on when this comes out. But we're here, man.
[00:00:47] Loving life, loving the dream. I'm living in a tourist town and the tourists are gone.
[00:00:52] So it's now a teeny, tiny little town where I'm free to hang with my family and raise my kids and no tourists. And I'm glad to have them gone. But very, very shortly, I will be missing them and happy to have them back.
[00:01:08] Government is still shut down at the recording of this podcast.
[00:01:12] Interest rates have.
[00:01:13] Well, I should say the Fed rate has gone down. Mortgage interest rates have gone up a little bit. It's a wacky time.
[00:01:19] It's, it's. You know, real estate's not super fun right now.
[00:01:25] I should say.
[00:01:27] I'm having fun. It's not super popular right now, you know, and I think as soon as we start to realize that, things will get better. But today, what we're going to talk about are the two different kinds of brains involved with overnight rental real estate.
[00:01:47] All right, so there's two kinds of people.
[00:01:52] There is the creative brain and the logical brain.
[00:01:59] All right, so the creative brain, otherwise known by some people as the right brain, which is actually a bit of a.
[00:02:14] What's the word I'm looking for? Misconception. Because the right and left brain obviously are working together at all times, but the creative, you know, is said to be on the right. Okay, so right brain folks are going to be the people that are really good at decorating, making their listing look good, making their home look attractive, making it easy to get eyeballs on your listing on Airbnb. You got great pictures in most cases, sometimes you're doing your own decorating in the home or you're working in conjunction with an actual decorator to put nice stuff in the home. Furnishings, et cetera, couches, art on the walls is very important to you, but you may not be all that great at the analyzing. And the logical side of this. Okay. And then we've got the left brainers or the logical brainers that are. You're going to be better at the numbers, spreadsheets, facts, making things logical and analytical.
[00:03:32] And if you are too far to one of those two sides, you need to be aware of it. Okay, I'm not saying that you can't function in this biz being far left or far right brained creative or logical brain.
[00:03:50] You can function as a creative brain, you can function as a logical brain, but you need to be aware that that's what you're dealing with because you will have deficiencies on the other side.
[00:04:05] So usually what I see is a beautiful home with a gorgeous listing. Got a great view, great loc, because that was important to them. It's like part of their designer brain was it has to have the great location.
[00:04:19] Although everybody, I think can agree on the location. All the brains, beautiful. Maybe like artwork on the walls and nice paint colors and schemes and things that were well thought out, well done. Maybe they spent a couple extra bucks on some furnishings and things like that, which I do want to kind of go down that rabbit hole. Okay.
[00:04:42] Money on furnishings.
[00:04:45] The more money you spend on furnishings, the more money it cost you when they break stuff.
[00:04:52] Okay, this is a whole nother podcast, but I, I want to mention, you know, this is what drives me nuts about all this. This over amenitizing and theming and things like that. It's like, dude, all that stuff you're putting in your house, dude, that's a, that's a professional, technical term.
[00:05:06] If it breaks, it costs you more money. It's a rental. It is a rental. And again, this is more so speaking to the right brainers, the creative brains, than the logical brain, because the creative brain wants it to look gorgeous.
[00:05:23] In that case, a lot of times it's like, I don't care what it costs. Let's make it look beautiful.
[00:05:28] And you're not wrong. But you do need to understand that the more money you spend on, on the coverings, on the walls and the furnishings, et cetera, the more money it's going to cost you when somebody breaks it.
[00:05:42] It's a rental. It's a rental, It's a rental, it's a rental. When I see these big giant houses with these, it's not necessarily the size of the home, but it's all this money that people are spending to put in there to make it all pimped out as. Can I use that? Is that a technical term? And over the top and beautiful. And trying to compete because there's saturation. And they heard it on a podcast and bop, bop, bop, bop, ah.
[00:06:07] Did you, did you consider the fact that that customade.
[00:06:16] Ski ball, what do they call that? Oh, man.
[00:06:21] Shuffleboard. Did you consider the fact that the custom made shuffleboard that you paid five grand for is going to break?
[00:06:32] It is a rental to a certain extent. When I see these houses and I see these creative brains going over the top with these houses, I'm like, is this your first rental? Because they're going to break that stuff.
[00:06:50] And it's not a bad thing. I'm not saying that everything in rentals gets broken, but it kind of does. You know, it's just part of the deal. They're not doing it on purpose. They just don't know whether their way around the house and things break all right in the weeds.
[00:07:02] But the thing to look out for is if you are one of these creative brains, you probably stink at pricing.
[00:07:14] The logical, analytical, factual stuff is not your bag.
[00:07:22] So if you spend a ton of time designing your house, be aware of the fact that that's how your brain works. And your bra, your brain probably does not work that great with pricing.
[00:07:35] If you spend all your time with spreadsheets and numbers and numbers and facts and rental history and rental projections and air DNA and this and that and the other, then you probably stink at making the house look good.
[00:07:49] You probably are also not that great at talking to guests, Which is interesting because the right brain, the creative brain, is the non verbal side. But it wants to please. It wants people to enjoy. It's the fruits of its labor and the creativity. And it does so in the form of like making the guests happy, you know, communication high, good reviews. The creative brain cares about those good reviews.
[00:08:22] Making sure everybody loves their hard work.
[00:08:25] It's like almost like a badge of honor. I got a blue ribbon on my painting at the county fair.
[00:08:33] This episode is brought to you by short term rental listing advice.
[00:08:39] Join this Facebook group and post your listing to get advice from other hosts, including myself, on how you can improve your listing or just post your property so you can show off.
[00:08:52] Join us@str listingadvice.com that's str listingadvice.com so I just want to point this out because, you know, there's a lot of people that come to me short term Shop plus. We're very happy to help you. But I want, you know, one thing you need to realize is that you have weaknesses, okay? And there's some well rounded People that can. Can travel evenly between both sides of their brain or both types of brains.
[00:09:23] But if you are way, way, way into the design, you probably stink at pricing. And if you are way into the pricing and the spreadsheets and the numbers, you probably stink at the design and the. The listing and the guest communication.
[00:09:40] And knowing that. And maybe it's this podcast that makes you realize that I think can help you to the point where it doesn't have to be a problem.
[00:09:51] Okay, so think about it.
[00:09:56] Is my listing killer? Do I have fantastic design and art and furnishings etc?
[00:10:06] Unlike my office right now, which is under construction, by the way. I'll have a new office in the spring.
[00:10:15] Then you probably need to slow that down and focus on your pricing.
[00:10:22] Let's figure out this pricing, okay? I'm not getting any bookings. I'm not. I see it all the time, Luke. I'm not getting any bookings. Okay, let's take a look. Wow, your house is freaking gorgeous.
[00:10:34] Did you buy it like this? No, I did it myself with the help of workers, of course.
[00:10:41] Wow. So you have equity and your house is gorgeous, but you're having trouble because your pricing stinks. And also, let me throw this at you. That type of person that's really good at the design and the art and all that stuff is they have a hard time renting their property for. For low dollar figures, which is something you have to do in this business. It's a rental house. You rent it for what somebody's willing to rent it for.
[00:11:08] Now, the good news is, is if you're one of those people that has that brain that's pimped it out and made it look beautiful and gorgeous and the design, et cetera, then you know you're offering a better product than almost everybody. So that's good. But sometimes you gotta drop it to where it gets rented at.
[00:11:24] And the reason it's good is because if that's you, then you know that it's just a supply and demand situation. And you don't. It' a house problem. You know, the. There's the. The folks out there, the numbers folks, the logical folks, they may have an issue where their home needs to be updated, but they're not willing to admit it because they think they can spreadsheet the house to the point where it will function.
[00:11:48] Am I saying it's better to have the creative brain than the logical brain?
[00:11:53] Not really.
[00:11:55] But the logical brain probably does play a little nicer in the long term rental space.
[00:12:05] That makes sense. Which we all need to be getting into the long term rental space. Okay?
[00:12:11] All of us. I love them.
[00:12:13] They're boring, they're slow. If you hold it for 30 years, you make 50 bucks.
[00:12:19] But the equity and the, the, the, the, the. Just the taxes and I mean all the great advantages. You got to do it.
[00:12:27] Pass it on to your kids. Whatever. Whatever it takes.
[00:12:32] All right, so we made some good points today. I'm gonna let you go early. I love you. Happy holidays. Join me here every Tuesday. Short term rental management. Please leave me a five star review. I'd love to hear from you. Lukeshortermshop.com we do sell houses. We sell houses in vacation towns.
[00:12:51] The short term. Shop.com. don't overthink it.
