The Well Went Dry

[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl. Short Term Rental Management. Luke Carl, happy to be here. And I have Jeff and Jenny here with me today who are Short Term Rental investors. They own a house and they worked with the Short Term shop. And I've been working with them a little bit one on one, and it's been a great experience and they have a pretty cool story and I wanted to bring them in basically from the, you know, the aspect that they are a little bit newer and they did go through some issues and trouble kind of in the early days of purchasing the home. And I thought this would be valuable for other people to hear, you know, like, hey, there are things that can go wrong and, and I think they handled it well and I wanted to get into that. But let me introduce the two of you, Jeff and Jenny. How are you? [00:00:59] Speaker B: Good. [00:00:59] Speaker C: Great. Thanks for having us on. [00:01:01] Speaker A: It's my pleasure. A little bit about you guys, where do you live, etc. [00:01:07] Speaker B: We live in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm a business owner. I run automotive repair shops. So I'm not new to remote management because my repair shops are actually in California. So the whole idea of running an Airbnb remotely wasn't exactly, you know, scary to me. And I'm also a business coach to other shop owners around the country, which, you know, when it came time to, you know, start investing in real estate and we definitely like the idea of short term rentals. Short Term shop seemed like a good idea to me. Not new to coaching. I definitely see the advantages of it and the value in it. So it was an easy call to make. And yeah, it's, it's been a journey. [00:01:55] Speaker A: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Yeah. So you are in Short Term Shop plus, which is our, you know, it's our all in one program with coaching, et cetera. But I want to hear more about your automotive coaching side of things, that you're a coach at a community of other coaches or how does that work and what is it called? [00:02:12] Speaker B: Shot Fix Academy. [00:02:13] Speaker A: Okay. [00:02:14] Speaker B: And yeah, it was started by Aaron Stokes. He's based out of Nashville, Tennessee, and he kind of came into it kicking and screaming. There is one particular shop owner that really just wanted his advice and wanted to be coached by him, and he reluctantly agreed to it and then started bringing on other business owners as coaches. And so now it's grown into, gosh, I think there's altogether about 50 coaches thereabouts, probably close to a thousand shop owners around the country. So I. I coach about 20 other shop owners. They're spread out throughout the country. So, yeah, it's. It's a lot of fun. And I like, you know, sharing in the success of my clients. And, you know, that, that first time they get to that. That next level of business, it's super exciting. And as a business owner that's growing businesses of your own, you only have that first time you get to that next level, it only happens once. And so coaching someone else up through those levels, you get to relive it through them, and it's a lot of fun. [00:03:32] Speaker A: I've never heard it put that way. Wow, that is so true. And good for you. So you, I guess, started out as a mechanic and just basically took it to the next level, opened your own shops and then. And it all kind of just grew. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm actually the son of a shop owner, so I don't have technician background. Like, really, I would say 80, 90% of most shop owners do come from the technician background. I was the boss's kid, and he had grown it to a pretty good single shop. And after joining Shop Fix Academy, I was able to take it from a really good foundation and really make it grow. We've got two shops now, and my goal is to run four remotely and, you know, maybe start. Start another empire out here in Tennessee. [00:04:26] Speaker A: How did you end up in Tennessee? Just because it's the land of the free and no income tax or. [00:04:30] Speaker C: Sure. Gavin Newsom sent us here. We got kicked out of California. We didn't agree with the. The group think I see. Save our girls from the school system, so. [00:04:41] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Yeah, I can understand that. California is. It's a weird. You know, it's a thing. It's a thing. [00:04:46] Speaker C: It's a beautiful place. [00:04:47] Speaker A: It's gorgeous. [00:04:49] Speaker C: Tennessee more where we. We want to be holistically. [00:04:53] Speaker A: So I see. Yes. And it is the land of the free. I mean, Tennessee is. It's. It's America really. I mean, you got no state income tax. There's. It's very. It's a very. It's a wonderful place. I've lived in New York City for a very long time. Not completely undifferent than California with worse weather, and. And then I. And I moved to Tennessee from there and you realize, wow, this is. This is a whole different thing. It is. You know, so. And I like them both. I do. I am actually desperately trying to get the family back up to New York this summer. And of course, Tennessee is a little easier to get to, you know, but at least for. For us living down here in the southeast. All right, and. And Jenny, what. What's your end of the deal there? What do we got? What. What do you have going on? [00:05:40] Speaker C: I've been a stay at home mom, and I'm like the professional assistant. He's the dreamer, I'm the doer. I'm obsessed with details. I'm obsessed with projects and organization and implementation. I'm a really good multitasker, really good manager. So I'm the organizational manager for the shops in California. I do all of the recruiting. I help audit all of the work orders, making sure everything's on the up and up. Making sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing. I'm just a very extreme rule follower. So Jeff comes up with the ideas and I figure out the websites and the forms and make it happen. [00:06:23] Speaker A: So we have a visionary and we have an integrator. [00:06:25] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Which is what every relationship needs, whether it's business or otherwise. You get in trouble when you have two visionaries or two integrators. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Right, exactly. [00:06:35] Speaker A: Or you can just. Neither. Neither one of you could be either one and everybody would be fine as well. [00:06:39] Speaker C: But just have another mouth to feed. Another want another paycheck to pay. [00:06:44] Speaker A: Right. And how old are the children? [00:06:46] Speaker C: Chloe's 19 and Samantha's turning 18 in September. [00:06:50] Speaker A: So very close together. And two girls. Okay, wonderful. My daughter is. She's just everything to me. I love her to death. And my son, he's. He's cool too. But I grew up with all boys, so that's a different vibe, you know, never ever did I have a female in the. In the mix other than my mother, you know, so that. That little girl is just something else. She'll. She'll just eat you, Al. And it's wonderful. [00:07:15] Speaker C: It's pretty special. [00:07:16] Speaker A: Yes. Very special. Strong father, strong daughter. Fantastic book. I bet you've read it. [00:07:22] Speaker C: No. [00:07:22] Speaker A: No. Okay, well, Jeff read that book. You'll love it. It's never too late. Never too late. Strong father, strong daughter. It was great. There's several books on the subject, but that was my favorite. Okay, cool. So you guys decided. Was this rental that you have now. I believe you just have the one overnight rental. Was that your first venture into real estate or do we own other real estate? [00:07:41] Speaker B: I do own the. One of the buildings that we operate one of the shop locations out of. So that was purchased in 22. And so the shop was. [00:07:53] Speaker A: I'm sorry, the shop was in that building prior. [00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah, correct. And so I. I Bought the, the real estate. So I rent it from myself. [00:08:01] Speaker A: That's a. For tax reasons, I would assume. Yeah. [00:08:05] Speaker B: Yep. [00:08:06] Speaker A: How did that come about though? You were renting from this? I mean it sounds like you have owned this thing for two generations now. And then eventually the shop, the building owner just said, what do you think? [00:08:14] Speaker B: Right. So the, the original building owner sold it to my dad back in, I want to say the late 80s, early 90s. And so he owned it. He owned both the business and the shop. I took over the shop in the mid teens and then in 22, I had the, the cash to put down on a, on a purchase of the building. We did an owner carry on that so we didn't have to involve the banks. We just had our lawyer draft up the, the purchase agreement. And so now I no longer pay rent to him for the, for the billing. I just pay him a mortgage. So now I'm building equity in the, in the business and paying myself rent. So it's a nice tax advantage way to, to build wealth within the, within the building. [00:09:06] Speaker C: Yeah. The cabin is our first short term rental. [00:09:09] Speaker A: First rental real estate of any kind other than the shop. Okay. We own the personal primary home or we rent the primary home. [00:09:19] Speaker B: Yeah, technically that is also being rented. We rent that. We had the cash to purchase a home and we ended up working out a deal with my dad. He had other rental properties and he wanted to dump them. He didn't want to do that side of it anymore and decided rather than, you know, pay a huge capital gain, he could 1031, exchange it into another property. And I said, look, I'll be your, I'll be your renter. So we've basically just treated it as our own home and paying, paying rent on it. [00:10:00] Speaker C: He's a great landlord. [00:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Is dad out of the equation at this point? In other words, is he, I guess what, lack of a better word, retired? [00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, no, he is definitely retired. [00:10:11] Speaker A: Sounds like a really good dude. [00:10:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We pay him every month what he probably would have just, you know, received from his retirement account. So it's, you know, it's a nice way of helping him support him without it being icky. [00:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah. But it's also, he's helping you, you. [00:10:31] Speaker B: Know, I mean, it's mutually beneficial. It's a nice, you know, financial vehicle for him. You know, we have, we have a great home to, to live out of. I have a great business and a great property that it's being operated out of. So he's, he's generating Income. I'm, I'm paying him a lot of money each month with, with these payments, but I would have paid that to, you know, any other person that I buy the property from. [00:10:58] Speaker A: You know, I'm, I'm at an age where I have friends and etc. That the parents are getting older and it's, you know, my parents are luckily in good health, but definitely older. And you look around and you have these conversations with your friends and you say, you know, if this, if the old man would have just bought a damn duplex, we wouldn't be so stressed out about all these medical bills and things, you know, because he would have some equity and maybe a couple of rent dollars coming. But they don't, they don't do that. And so good for your dad. That's a wonderful thing. Great, great deal, great deal all around. So you decided to get into some more rental real estate and you actually moved to Tennessee and of course that, that, so that's not far fetched at all. Living in East Tennessee to get into, you know, what is really the biggest overnight rental market in the world for single family homes anyway and seems like a pretty natural evolution. So you started shopping around and ended up with this, this, this particular cabin. Can you talk more about that? How did you decide which one you wanted and all that kind of stuff? [00:12:02] Speaker B: Well, when it comes time to rent a cabin or a vacation that, that we're having, I would always, you know, gravitate towards. It's got to have a view, got to have a view. And we, you know, so when shopping for one for ourselves that we would use, that's my number one criteria. And it's, if it has that feature, it's something that could never be taken away. It's just it, it doesn't, doesn't deteriorate, it doesn't depreciate. It is, it is what it is and it is a beautiful view that we have. So that was my number one criteria is a really good view and I wanted, you know, a four bedroom that we could, you know, host, you know, our family. We have a moderate sized family. It's not huge, but enough to fill. [00:12:56] Speaker C: A four bedroom house. [00:12:57] Speaker A: Yeah, well, first of all, hold on, let's stop you there. I'm loving everything I'm hearing so far because you know, you get a lot of these folks to get into this because they're looking for some sort of hit up, hit the lottery or some something and you guys were being really wanted it personally used. That to me is a huge deal. Why Not. And. And the back to the view thing. My thing there is, you know, and again, I've been in the Smokies a very long time, really longer than just about anybody since the Airbnb era. And that question is, like, it's constant. Should I get a view? Should I not get a view? Because the view is, in most cases, you know, more expensive to purchase and. And hopefully for rents as well. But my thing there is. And you tell me, if you need a view, buy a view. And if you don't care about a view, don't. Don't get a view. Because you. You can probably have success renting. Either way, the purchase price is going to be lower. And if you don't care about a view, then your guests won't care about. About. Of you. I think you're. It's almost like you're creating the vibe that you want for yourself and you're selling that to other people. Is that fair? [00:13:57] Speaker B: Yep. [00:13:57] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:13:58] Speaker B: 100%. [00:13:59] Speaker A: Okay. And did. Did the view pay off? Because you do on your property? We won't. You know, I'm not going to give the address out or anything, but the view is absolutely ridiculous. [00:14:07] Speaker C: Yeah, it's awesome. It's insane. There's another cabin owner that lives. He doesn't live, but he's. He's across the street from us, but he has introduced himself to me, and he likes to go on to our. Our deck and sit on our porch when we don't have guests, and he sends me pictures from our. Our deck. [00:14:30] Speaker A: And does he check with you to make sure you don't have guests? [00:14:35] Speaker C: I think he just looks to see if there's cars in the driveway and just he's. He spends a lot of time in the air. I think that there's some screw loose or something, but. [00:14:46] Speaker A: I see. So he's a. He's always a flight attendant that made. [00:14:49] Speaker C: Pictures of this spectacular dou. Rainbow in the middle of this view, and it was just incredible. [00:14:57] Speaker A: But he doesn't live there. He's. [00:14:58] Speaker C: He stays there when he doesn't have guests. [00:15:00] Speaker B: He's a. Yeah, he's an owner, so. [00:15:03] Speaker A: Interesting guy, it sounds like. [00:15:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:15:05] Speaker A: Okay. So the view, I mean, almost sounds like you've got yourself a little niche there. You can. You can almost market this thing as, like, the best view in the Smokies. Pretty much. This is a. This is. This is a view that's good enough that neighbors are coming over to steal the view. [00:15:19] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Okay. That's pretty cool. That's a nice Little niche there. I would much rather be marketing that than a damn pickleball court. So I like that. I like that. Okay, so you purchased the home, when was this? [00:15:32] Speaker B: October of 24. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Okay, so last October at the recording of the, of the podcast here. And until. And how did it go? Because obviously there's a little bit of a story. It had some issues in June and I think it was January. So let's, let's, let's get to that. So you went live in November? Ish. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Well, we hosted for Thanksgiving and then we were live in December. [00:15:56] Speaker A: Okay, so you're going live at the beginning of dead season. With the exception of obviously, Christmas can in most cases be pretty lucrative if you time it right. So did you have a good Christmas? [00:16:09] Speaker C: Yes, we were, we were able to get renters pretty much right out of the gate. So every week was full. [00:16:18] Speaker A: Oh, not, not just Christmas. [00:16:20] Speaker C: Yeah, it was, it was full December. It was full in January. Oh, then it didn't start falling off until February, which we needed because turns out that the well was drying up. Being at the top of the mountain, being at the top of the hill is spectacular for the view, but not so spectacular for the water flow. That's kind of where the water originates, not where it flows to. So we were started in January, mid January, started getting complaints by the maid, the cleaning staff, that they didn't have water coming through the faucets when they came to do the turns. [00:17:03] Speaker A: We have live one on one coaching sessions available with our wonderful top notch coaches at Short Term Shop plus and we would love to help you in your vacation rental journey. The mission remains constant, to provide amazing homes so that our guests can create awesome memories with their families. If you need help to set up your systems and processes, how to communicate with guests, how to improve your systems, how to find and hire housekeepers, and all of the above, you are looking for short term shop plus. You can find [email protected] and the best part is the price is right, reasonably priced. And if you are a short term shop client, please use the code client at checkout for an even better deal on SDS plus.com hold on a second. Is this the first time you've ever had any experience with a well? [00:18:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:18:11] Speaker A: Okay, so we have a lot of learning curve there as well. So you're freaking out. You're like, oh my God, my wells run dry like you hear on the movies or whatever, you know, and, and I actually don't know how this story ends. So maybe I can even offer some Some help. But it does sound like it's been completely resolved at this point. [00:18:25] Speaker B: But so far. [00:18:26] Speaker C: So far. [00:18:27] Speaker A: So the water has. It's not. Not doing too well. And, and was it a situation where it would get better or. You never really got to that point. [00:18:36] Speaker B: Well, it was kind of a dry winter, so I don't know. I mean, it's, it's drilled like 200ft. [00:18:43] Speaker C: It's. Yeah, it's an 800 foot well. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Okay. [00:18:46] Speaker C: Well, yeah, 800 foot well. The. Wherever the water, the water table. Table is at like 750. So. [00:18:54] Speaker A: Okay. Like that's pretty deep in the Smokies. That's pretty deep. [00:18:57] Speaker C: That's what I've been told. [00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:59] Speaker C: Yeah. The, the cleaning staff would say they would run out of water. Then a half an hour later they're like, oh, it's back on. And then a half hour later, oh, it's off again. [00:19:07] Speaker A: I'm so sorry. Are you sharing the well? Is it yours? [00:19:11] Speaker C: We are supposedly it's. We're supposedly we're not sharing. But hush, hush, wink, wink. The well guys said that pretty much you're sharing with five other people because there's only like one or two water tables at that spot in the mountain. So supposedly it's only ours, but there's no way to tell. [00:19:30] Speaker A: Okay, so this sounds to me like that you do have your own private well. But what he's saying is that all the five wells that are up there are basically sucking out of the same water table, which is true. Yes. And another thing that happens when that's going on. Let's say your house was the first one. Then they build the next one next door, and they build the next one and they build the next one. Yours was the first well. When they drill that next well, your well is going to be nasty for like a week because they're drilling a hole down into that water and it kicks all this crap up. And usually what happens with a brand new well is you'll get bubbles and it's like super white water. It almost looks like milk for the first week or so, but it's just bubbles. Now, in a situation where you have multiple wells right next to each other, it can kick up more stuff like sediment and rocks and, you know, little pieces of sand or whatever. That kind of thing. All that kind of stuff is good times. But of course, this would have been 25 years ago or something, I would assume, you know, whenever that home was built, you. You didn't actually go through that. But I'm just pointing that Out. And in other words, if you were to have somebody build one right next to you, tomorrow when they go to drill your well, your well is going to get funky again because you're all at the top of this mountain, you know? Okay, so the water starts getting inadequate. What did you do? [00:20:52] Speaker C: We called the well company to see what we needed to do, trying to figure out the next steps, and they drew down the well, which I, of course, since I've never had experience with that before, I didn't know what that meant. They were there all day sucking all the water out of the well, and because they wanted to see the refresh rate, to see how much quicker it would fill back up. Well, once they did that, it never filled back up. They discovered that the well, the refresh rate was about half a gallon a minute. And for they. They didn't know that at the time, so they. They drew it down. They're like, okay, give it a couple days. We'll see how quickly it refreshes. And of course, then we had. We were booked. So we had people coming in, and it had kicked up so much sediment because it was down at the bottom that we had mud coming through all of the faucets, right? [00:21:48] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:49] Speaker C: And they're like, it's okay. It'll just take a day or two, maybe even just a couple hours, just, you know, run the faucets and then let it filter through. Well, they kept doing that, and they would run out of water, and every time they would turn, every time it would refresh, it'd be mud. So for weeks, we had mud coming out of the faucets through two different guests. [00:22:09] Speaker A: Did you try Multiple well companies tried. [00:22:13] Speaker C: Calling, but only one would respond. [00:22:15] Speaker A: This is east Tennessee. It's not. It's not easy to get people on. [00:22:18] Speaker C: The phone, especially when you have an of state zip code. [00:22:22] Speaker A: I've been discovering area code. Yes, but you live in Knoxville now, so you could drop that. You're local enough, but. Okay. So was fracking ever on the table? [00:22:33] Speaker C: It was. It was suggested, but they said that that starts at $8,000. They. They suggested we try water storage. [00:22:44] Speaker A: And is that what you went with? Yes. Okay. Yes. Fracking. And for those that don't know, and again, I'm no well expert here, I just own a bunch of them and I've been through a lot of this stuff. They drill it deeper. So if you got a 600 foot, in other words, when you drill the well to begin with, they drill until they hit water, and then they pretty much quit. And then they drop the well pump in there and it's really pretty simple. If something changes or you now have five wells sucking from the same water table, et cetera, then sometimes fracking is, is where I live. They wouldn't even call it fracking, like down in the super deep South. They would just say, hey, we're going to drill you deeper, you know. But this word fracking has become popular and it's really the same thing. It's just a fun, it's a, it's a fun way to say it's nothing fun about fracking, but it's a sexier word, Right? So usually you pay by the foot. Now when it comes to fracking and you're in a vacation town and it's a small town, there's not a lot of folks working and they're busy, busy, busy. They probably said, you know, for us to even bring, probably what's going on here is they said for us to even bring our damn drill truck up there. We're not playing around for anything less than eight grand, which is X number of feet. Did they give you a number of feet for the eight grand? [00:23:57] Speaker C: No, they just start to start. [00:24:01] Speaker A: That was basically, I would assume, their way of saying, in order for us to bring our drill truck up there, we're not doing anything under eight grand. And. Which is, you know, I mean, usually you pay by the foot. I've drilled fresh wells from scratch and, you know, hopefully they've done other ones in the, in that area and they usually have and they can say, we think we need to go this deep, we'll charge you this much per foot and this is how deep we're going to have to go. And then they're like, oh, we actually had to go another 100ft. So it was this much more, blah, blah, blah. So you decided not to frack. Although I guess just so we can move on from that subject. Is that still possible? Should we choose? [00:24:40] Speaker B: It's possible, it's possible. But this was the, this water storage is like the, the first solution and should it draw down to the point where it's, it's not refreshing, you know, fast enough, then that would be the next step. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Okay, we'll get into the water. I'm sorry, Jenny. [00:25:01] Speaker C: No, that was just. It was meant to be a band aid to get us to the point where we could replenish our money to try fracking. And it was also giving us this, the short term solution that if the well wasn't refreshing the storage tanks, we could always get water delivered to the cabin. So at any point we wouldn't be wholly dependent on the well. We could just even make water delivery part of the normal day to day. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, yeah. So just weighing your options and you decided not to frack. Let's go ahead and go with the storage tanks. Which again, if you do frack later then you. It's nice to have both. It can be nice to have both. Right. So talk about the storage tanks. The biggest problem with storage tanks, especially in this area that we're talking about right now, is where the hell do you put them? So I would assume you had somewhere to put them. A crawl space. [00:25:55] Speaker C: Yes, there's a huge crawl space underneath the house where they had the, the well pump and the hot water heater. So all we needed, all we needed was to have a contractor come and do a property. And yeah, he. It's flat. Ish. But there's a definite slope you can see with the water storage tanks. But yeah, he did a platform and then we had another company come and install the, the storage tanks. [00:26:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I, I think flat ash is all you're going to get in East Tennessee. And I, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just. It is what it is, you know, I mean it is what it is. So. Okay, how much storage did we go with? How many gallons? [00:26:38] Speaker B: Thousand gallons. [00:26:39] Speaker C: Thousand gallons. [00:26:39] Speaker A: One tank or two? Five hundreds or 250 gallon tanks or 250s. Okay. Has that been working just fine since. Okay then. Then all signs are leading to. We should be good to go. We're going to knock on all the wood we can find. We have a system for our storage tanks. In other words, a camera or some sort of an electronic monitor coming. No monitor of any kind right now. [00:27:05] Speaker B: Other than just the. We've asked the cleaners to check it both before they start and when they're finished so that we can know the status of the water. [00:27:15] Speaker A: Got it. So those of you that don't know the storage tank, the idea there is that the well can continue to pump basically all the time rather than when somebody just turns on the shower. The well pump pumps. So the well pump is feeding into these large storage. They're just plastic is really all they are. And it's almost if they really look like, like a horse trough when you were a kid, if you grew up in the country, you know, but they're plastic, obviously they'll have a lid to keep the water from getting gross. And the well pump pumps until the storage tank is Full, which it'll have a float gauge in there and that'll tell the pump to stop pumping and then it can. At that point, the well has time to refill. So long story short, we're basically creating our own man made version of the well in these storage tanks so that it's a less of a chance that the actual well will run out of water. Is that a fair explanation? [00:28:10] Speaker B: Yes. [00:28:11] Speaker A: Okay, so we've got a thousand gallons. Now the fact that you haven't needed a camera or a sensor tells me that again, we're knocking on everything. You're probably pretty good to go. These storage tanks are very common in East Tennessee. You. I would recommend a camera or, or a sensor. There's several you can get on Amazon, etc, or even just a ring cam in the crawl space. [00:28:34] Speaker C: Yeah, it just. Yeah, this sucked everything out. [00:28:37] Speaker A: Oh, I hear you. I hear. Well, mostly emotionally as well, I would imagine. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, right. [00:28:41] Speaker A: Okay. So that way, if it starts to get. And here's moving forward, in my experience, what will happen is you'll learn who did what. In other words, if you have some sort of camera or electronic monitor that goes to your phone and your sensor is saying, hey, your tanks are going down. The cleaner left the hot tub hose on is usually a pretty common culprit. That can be very common in general. I have a well that's shared with six or seven. I'm actually the vice president at hoa, so I get those phone calls and every single time now between me, the president and myself, we're next door to each other. We just text each other at this point, we don't even bother emailing the other members. Are you sure your hot tub water got turned off because we ran out of water. And I'm like, crap, I don't know. Nobody's in there. Can you send your guest over? It's always whoever's house is empty that left the hose on because otherwise there's pretty good chance that somebody would have noticed. Right. So if your house goes empty for a day or two and the well goes empty in this particular community, they all have their own personality. Then we know that the empty house is probably the one that has the hose on. Somebody needs to get over there, turn that hose off so then we have the well can replenish itself. It takes, you know, several hours, but it always happens. It works that way at that particular HOA. That HOA has 14 properties. Two wells, I believe it's eight and six or something like that. We call it the upper well and the Lower. Well, man, it's always something. So anyway, let me ask you this. Were there any. Was. There was no indication when you purchased the home that this was going to happen? [00:30:21] Speaker B: And when you think about it, you know, you want to. Do you want to have good due diligence and, you know, have it inspected? And, and actually there were a couple of things that were noted on the inspection. You know, specifically the deck. The deck needed some. Some work, and we were able to negotiate that into, into the sale. We got some credits to be able to. To take care of that. And we had cash reserves after the purchase to. To finance the. All the decor that we wanted to get, a couple of additions we wanted to put into the cabin. And still, after all that, we had reserves so we could check all the boxes. Well, thank goodness for the reserves, because this, this came up and it's not something that is checked in an inspection. They don't check flow rate. They check to make sure that it's your hot water is hot and that you have no leaks in the plumbing. But flow rate is not something that's measured. [00:31:19] Speaker A: Well, also, it sounds to me like at the time of the inspection, there probably was no cause for alarm. [00:31:24] Speaker B: No. [00:31:25] Speaker C: Again, we have. The former owner reached out to us. [00:31:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say, because if I'm in this situation, you know, I might dig a little deeper or at least go maybe find those reviews or something. So anyway, the owner reach out to you? [00:31:37] Speaker C: Well, because he had, he had clients that, that he worked with personally, not, you know, outside of Airbnb and vrbo. And he wanted to make sure that we could accommodate the. Those customers. And he was, he was texting us quite often, and then when we told him that we were having water issues, he disappeared. [00:31:58] Speaker A: You're kidding. [00:31:59] Speaker C: He stopped responding, he stopped reaching out. [00:32:02] Speaker A: And we're like, okay, so you said, hey, did you ever have water problems? And he ghosted. [00:32:07] Speaker C: I think he said, I don't think that we had any water issues. I think it was just really vague. But, you know, why do you. Why do you give up on an opportunity like that? If. Because he had to fix the deck. There was a lot of foundation problems, and he was probably running out of water, too, so he's probably just fatigued. Yeah. [00:32:28] Speaker A: Well, I mean, how long did he own this thing? You know, he was probably just over it in general. [00:32:32] Speaker B: Yeah, he. He wasn't a long time owner. [00:32:35] Speaker A: Oh, he wasn't? [00:32:36] Speaker B: No, I think he had it since like 20 or 2103 years. Yeah. And it was being managed by a property manager. So that probably, you know, I don't know if the, like, maybe the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. He probably wasn't using it either. And just, you know what? I, I think he says he had, he has other short term rentals in like South Carolina or something like that. But whatever, he stopped reaching out. Yeah, we're over it. Moving forward. [00:33:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So it sounds like. I mean, if you would not. If you knew now what you knew then, would you still do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And you love the home. [00:33:13] Speaker C: Spent as much money on decor. [00:33:15] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I got you. But you love the home. And, and this was. Now we're talking four, three, four months ago since the major water issue. Knock on every piece of wood. Once again, no issues since. Great job. We do have the backup plan of fracking if need be. And, and what's happened since then? We're happy with the bookings. [00:33:41] Speaker C: They're slow right now. Yeah, they've slowed down significantly since the. [00:33:46] Speaker A: Issue because it sounds like January had no problem, which is weird. [00:33:49] Speaker C: I know it was crazy. But yeah, it's definitely slowed down. I haven't had many new bookings in a couple of weeks. [00:33:56] Speaker A: But what does the calendar look like in general? How was your May? We're recording in the middle of May. What's May look like? Well, don't, I mean, don't bother pulling it up, but. [00:34:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's about every other build up halfway. On average, it's about every other week. Well, and they're long, long term guests. Yeah, usually four or five days. And about every other week seems to be the, the pattern. And then they'll come in clusters where we'll have, you know, there'll be a lot of same day turns and like, you know, three, four guests in a row. [00:34:29] Speaker C: Yeah. So it's. So this month, you know, May, June, July, we only have one week available in those months. [00:34:38] Speaker A: Oh, that's wonderful. [00:34:39] Speaker C: And then we have the first week of August and then it's open. [00:34:43] Speaker A: Okay, that's. I mean, honestly, Jenny, you're too booked. [00:34:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:47] Speaker A: Are you a little light in May? Is May. May's pretty filled in. Or. [00:34:51] Speaker C: Yeah, we got somebody in there right now. And then, then we have a week off and then we have two bookings. [00:34:58] Speaker A: Okay. So there's something I want to point out and this is extremely common, you know, for, I hate to say newer folks, but you know, when you first start, you get bookings and it's exciting and fun and I think that your brain got used to that. And now all of a sudden, you're full, so there are no bookings. And now it's. You're like, you got excited and used to those emails that said, hey, you just got a booking, but now you're not getting those because your calendar's full. And so you're like, you're. You're not getting that dopamine hit and you're disappointed. [00:35:25] Speaker C: I was getting him, like, daily. [00:35:26] Speaker A: Right. But now there's nothing to book. It's supply and demand. Right. So if you're full, give or take, for the next three months, I would say you're. We need to go ahead and raise some prices there, you know. Okay. [00:35:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I've been lowering them and changing the. [00:35:40] Speaker A: No, no, no, we don't need to be booking August right now. We're getting into some coaching here, which is totally fine, but no reason to lower anything right now unless you have, like, an immediate need for, like, next week or something, then we need to get rid of that. But sounds to me like your calendar. And again, we're not looking at it right now with podcast purposes. We can do that later. But sounds to me like your calendar is probably a little better than it needs to be. And I would. I would even go so far as to say maybe raise a couple of prices, you know, but we'll take a look at that and. And make sure that you get what you need. [00:36:12] Speaker C: Yeah, Perfectionist. I'd like every. Every day full. [00:36:15] Speaker A: No. Yeah, we want every day full. Yeah, absolutely. So any. Anything you have in the near future that's not full, go ahead and get rid of that. But if you're. If you're worried about getting August bookings this far in advance, no way. You know, we're good there. September. We'll take a look at September because that's usually a pretty slow month, but definitely not any, you know, dire need because it's. It's quite a ways away right now, so. Okay. All right, well, what's next? What do we do next? Are you going to continue to do more real estate? Are we focused on the. The. The shop in general? [00:36:47] Speaker B: Yeah, right now we're really focused on the shop as far as, like, big purchases, investing in the future. I kind of, you know, look into, you know, expanding on the shop, then expanding the real estate and expanding the shop. Expanding. It's kind of. Kind of a seesaw. So we're on the. The shop side of things since we did the. The short term rental. [00:37:09] Speaker C: But yeah, I think we. We have two locations in mind since we go Back to California every quarter to visit the shops we're interested in either looking for a short term rental out there that we can just stay in while we're out there. We also have a daughter going to Savannah College of Art and Design. So looking at possibly getting a short term rental down in Savannah so that she could stay in there while she's still in college and then we could rent it out. [00:37:40] Speaker A: Okay, wonderful. [00:37:42] Speaker C: Wherever, wherever the deal is. [00:37:44] Speaker A: Wherever I hear that. [00:37:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:46] Speaker C: We don't want to force it, but. [00:37:48] Speaker B: Keeping the options open. [00:37:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Gotta find those deals. All right, listen, you went through some crap. It was not fun. I'm sure it was very stressful and you made it work. So hopefully somebody listening to this can learn a thing or two about wells and, and what to look, look out for and how to handle it if something bad happens. And I appreciate your time. [00:38:07] Speaker B: I more than anything. It's a mindset thing. It's, it's easy to get bogged down and, and thinking, oh my gosh, what did we get into? Like why did we do this? But you know, as long as you have a long term perspective on it and this is growing, you know, not just lifetime wealth, but generational wealth, it's, it's just a blip on the radar. Not, not a huge deal. It can, you know, cost quite a bit of cash. And this is just one example, you know, that, you know, real estate is, it is risky. There are risks associated with it. But as long as you have the reserves post purchase again, you, it, that's what allows you the peace of mind to be able to maintain that long term perspective on things. [00:38:53] Speaker A: Love it. [00:38:54] Speaker C: And then just one final point before you cut us off whenever we're doing new things, because we're always trying new things, we're always trying to expand our horizons. I like to keep that mindset of like fail fast because you're never learning lessons when you're totally successful. You're only learning lessons when you're, when you're failing. So the faster you can fail, the faster you learn those lessons and the faster you get to the successes that you can build upon. So I was grateful for this happening within our first year so that we could fail as fast as possible to get to the point where we could reap the rewards and not have to worry about that BS and, and use the, use that cash flow to continue investing. [00:39:42] Speaker A: Yes. Michael Jordan, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 3,000 games. 26 times. I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I failed over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. Yep. [00:39:59] Speaker B: Awesome. [00:39:59] Speaker A: Michael Jordan. Look at that. Pulled that one out of my rear end. All right, you guys are awesome. We'll see you in short term. Shot plus. And thank you so much for telling your story. We appreciate it. [00:40:10] Speaker C: Thank you for having us. [00:40:11] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:40:12] Speaker A: Don't overthink it.