Episode 17 - Understanding Cabin Rentals: Tony Huston's Inside Look

Mar 26

Welcome to another episode of The Breakthrough Podcast! I'm your host, Stephen Husted, and today I'm joined by a special guest, Tony Huston. Tony Huston, is a Salt Lake dweller who thrives in the great outdoors, whether fishing, snowmobiling, or hiking. Family is at the core of Tony's life, with 35 years of marriage and two grown sons shaping his values. Transitioning from executive sales to real estate in 2019, Tony's passion for serving others led to the founding of Jefferson Street Properties in 2021, named after the sanctuary of his wife's grandmother's home. Together, we embark on a journey through the realm of short-term rentals nestled in mountainous landscapes, with a specific focus on cabin properties. Join us as we unravel the secrets to success in this competitive market and explore strategies for navigating the ever-evolving real estate landscape.

Takeaway 1: Crafting Unforgettable Guest Experiences

Location, views, and amenities play pivotal roles in distinguishing your cabin property in a saturated market.
Practical tips for maintaining cabins and selecting durable furnishings to withstand the rigors of short-term rentals.

Takeaway 2: Navigating the Current Real Estate Market

Insightful discussion on the impact of interest rates on buyers and sellers in the current real estate climate.
Strategies for sellers and long-term homeowners to adapt and thrive amidst changing market dynamics.

Takeaway 3: Leveraging Market Insights for Success

Harnessing market insights to make informed decisions and capitalize on emerging opportunities in mountainous regions.
The value of understanding guest preferences and tailoring property offerings to meet evolving demands.

Thank you for tuning in to this illuminating discussion on managing short-term rentals in mountainous regions, with a focus on cabin properties. We hope you found valuable insights to enhance your property management strategies and navigate the dynamic landscape of real estate.

TRANSCRIPT

∎ Teaser / Highlighted Clip

[Tony Huston] (0:00 - 0:37)
One of the big things we did back, I want to say it was probably October of last year that Airbnb announced their big changes, first change in like, I don't know, 10 years or something like that. And one of the big emphases that they put on it was pet friendly. You know, it was both said and not said, but clearly demonstrated in their video.
And so we made an active decision to go pet friendly about a month and a half later. And my condition with my wife was if we're going to do that, there can't be any carpet in the house.
[Stephen Husted] (0:38 - 0:40)
That's when you changed out all the floors.
[Tony Huston] (0:40 - 0:47)
Yeah. Yep. So we swapped out all carpet into LVP, you know, so that we wouldn't have to worry about that element either.

∎ Podcast Intro:

[Stephen Husted] (0:47 - 2:37)
Welcome to The Breakthrough with Stephen Husted, the show that takes you behind the scenes with successful entrepreneurs, real estate investors, and other movers and shakers in the business world. In each episode, we'll sit down with our guests to explore their personal and professional journeys, including the challenges they faced, the breakthrough moments that propelled them to success, and the strategies and the tactics they used to get there. Get inspired by new ideas and strategies and get to know our guests on a deeper level.
Join us for candid conversations, powerful insights, and plenty of breakthrough moments. Please help us grow by subscribing and sharing the podcast. And welcome to the show.

∎ Guest Introduction:

Hey there, it's Stephen Husted, and I'm excited for today's episode. We got Tony Husted with us, who will walk us through short term rentals and real estate trends. Get ready for some serious insights.
We're going to break down the essentials, focusing on what makes hosting successful. We'll talk about location, amazing views, and amenities that attract guests like crazy. Tony will share his advice on staying ahead with maintenance to ensure your guests have a blast.
Tony and I also will discuss property decor secrets, the advantages of direct bookings, and the best opportunities for sellers in the real estate market. It's not just talk, we'll give you actionable tips. And for those of you looking to buy your first home, don't go anywhere.
Tony has a playbook for tackling challenges and seizing opportunities.

∎ Podcast Proper:

Well, I'm glad I could get you on. I know that we had a little issue last time you were out in the Smokies working on one of your cabins and got the time zone mixed up.
[Tony Huston] (2:37 - 2:44)
Yeah. I forgot to sync my phone with my watch and I was watching the watch, not the phone. Blew it.
Totally blew it. It was all me.
[Stephen Husted] (2:47 - 3:27)
Yeah. It's all good. Yeah.
I appreciate you jumping on. I thought that we would have a good episode to kind of give people some background on short-term rentals and the good, the bad, the ugly, what the market looks like right now. Because we've seen all the differences.
I know in such a short period of time, it seems like. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I guess we'll get started off. So I met you because the owner that owned three cabins on our street sold all three at a very good time and made a lot of money.
[Tony Huston] (3:27 - 3:27)
Yes, he did.
[Stephen Husted] (3:28 - 4:52)
He was, I think, a very smart man as far as what he was doing. But, you know, so you bought a cabin, I bought a cabin, Sarah bought a cabin. Yeah.
We're on one street. It's relatively short street, private. I think this is my thought on it when we bought it.
You know, we didn't see it. We didn't go in person. We bought it online, talked to our agent.
But, you know, I noticed that I really liked the view. The view was like just the biggest selling point for me. And being at the end of that court, just parking.
But it wasn't until I flew out and was able to drive through Where's Valley and see the pool and the ponds and just the whole road and the amenities. I was like, man, this is absolutely amazing. Like this was such a I don't think we could have in the market that we bought in.
I will have to say that we probably paid a lot and there was a lot of different things going on. However, we have the best location with the view, with the privacy, with the amenities than I see in a lot of cabins that are just cookie cutter next to each other. I don't know.
I think ours are the ones that are going to hopefully fare the weather of the kind of the cool down. So what's your take on that?
[Tony Huston] (4:52 - 5:47)
You know, I couldn't agree more. It's funny. We were similar in the point that we wrote our offer
We've never set foot in Tennessee when we wrote our offer. And, you know, and and we got out there. We went out there for due diligence, actually stayed in the property.
So we got like a weekend to kind of touch and feel it. And and we walked away with the same thing. That view is 100 percent money.
And over the course of the year that I couldn't agree anymore with you on just everything about that, that, you know, they're playing catch up now to build all these new builds that are cookie cutter cabins. They're putting pools in and they're doing all this stuff. But at the end of the day, you know, it's it's suburbs, but it's it's a cabin looking house.
You know, we have true cabins in the mountains with a view looking at Smoky Mountains. And that is going to that is going to pay time and time again.
[Stephen Husted] (5:49 - 6:43)
Yeah, I agree. You know, I was telling this to my wife when I go to Hawaii, the one thing that I want when I go to Hawaii is I want an ocean view. Sure.
I want to see the ocean. I want to wake up when I go to something tropical. I just want to get up and experience something that I don't experience on my normal mornings.
And I feel that is the same thing that I get when I go to the cabin. I don't I don't even care about what the inside looks like, honestly. I mean, is it great to have it all, you know, modernize everything?
Sure. But I love getting up and just going and seeing floor ceiling windows and then the view. It's just it's just amazing.
You know, it's just and does Sarah does Sarah have a view like ours as well? Do we all three have just different types of focal points of the view?
[Tony Huston] (6:43 - 6:55)
I think I think it is. Yeah, I think she still has a view from her cabin as well, if I recall. And yeah, you know, she has the smallest.
Obviously, it's kind of like you have the papa bear cabin. I have the mama bear and she has the baby bear.
[Stephen Husted] (6:58 - 6:59)
That's good. I like that one.
[Tony Huston] (7:00 - 7:02)
But yeah, I think we all have pretty incredible views.
[Stephen Husted] (7:03 - 7:10)
Yeah, that that's good. So what did you why don't you break down what you've had to do to your cabin so far?
[Tony Huston] (7:10 - 8:00)
Holy cow. You know, it's funny. I will I will start with this.
Our first year gross revenue, we came close to doubling what the previous owner had told us he was generating in revenue. And and I will say that because it was obviously pretty obvious to us because he put no money into those cabins, you know. And so we we ran into some deferred maintenance that we decided to tackle right up front.
So we redid two of the three bathrooms right out of the gate. I had my brother fly out with me and we spent almost two weeks out there just swinging a hammer. So we did those two bathrooms.
We did all new kitchen appliances, so refrigerator, stove and oven and dishwasher. And we replaced all that went to stainless from old white, just ugly looking stuff.
[Stephen Husted] (8:01 - 8:02)
You know, you had white in there.
[Tony Huston] (8:03 - 8:33)
Yeah. You know, and then our first round we did we did that miracle method countertop coating. We just weren't ready to do like a quartz or something like that initially.
But what we found was it within about seven or eight months, it was feeling the the wear already. So we decided to go ahead. We actually went ahead and painted our kitchen cabinets, kind of got a little less wood.
We were trying to get away from the overused bear theme, if you will.
[Stephen Husted] (8:33 - 8:45)
Yes. Yes. I thought the cab look great.
The color look amazing. I think it helps. We're going to do the same thing, but I think it helps break up just feeling like there's so much of the same with everything.
So I think it's big. It's smart.
[Tony Huston] (8:45 - 9:16)
Yeah. And then we went ahead and we added quartz countertops late this last. Let's see.
I guess middle of this year is when we did that. And it really changed the whole vibe of the kitchen. And we have since replaced pretty much all of the furniture in the house.
We kind of did that in cycles. You learn about things, bedbugs are come and go out in that area. And anything we've learned that attracts them, we get rid of.
[Stephen Husted] (9:17 - 9:21)
And why don't you break down what that is?
[Tony Huston] (9:22 - 9:22)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (9:22 - 9:23)
Because you told me something I didn't know.
[Tony Huston] (9:24 - 9:56)
So the big thing that we learned is that you need anything like log furniture, for example, if there's little cracks or crevices in those logs, those bedbugs can get in there and that's where they'll lay eggs. And just it's nasty. And as soon as we learned that, we were immediately ordering new metal bed frames and having the others taken out.
And so our whole goal with everything is to be ahead of the game on preventative stuff.
[Stephen Husted] (9:56 - 9:56)
Correct.
[Tony Huston] (9:57 - 10:05)
We want the best experience for our guests every single time they come up. And we have found the best way to do that is don't wait for something to break.
[Stephen Husted] (10:06 - 10:06)
Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (10:06 - 10:36)
Be proactive. Yeah, absolutely. So we didn't have a hot tub in our cabin when we purchased it.
So we had to buy a new hot tub for that. We've updated deck furniture. We've gone through all of that.
And then we've just tried to do some little touches. You mentioned the ponds earlier. One of the things that I did is I added a couple of spinning rails and a couple of fly rods and a tackle box that my guests can use anytime they're there.
[Stephen Husted] (10:37 - 10:43)
Yeah. And you got a really good story from a guest on that. Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (10:43 - 10:43)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (10:43 - 10:44)
Isn't that correct?
[Tony Huston] (10:44 - 11:04)
Yeah. Early fall, we had a guest that, you know, they got pretty excited when they saw the fishing poles. And I had just followed up with them after their stay and said, hey, you know, did you have any luck with fishing?
And she said, yeah, my son got a 21 inch bass. And so they were super stoked. Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (11:05 - 11:12)
In these little ponds. But that pond, I don't know which one, was it in the community one or the one right at the end of the road?
[Tony Huston] (11:12 - 11:26)
I think it was the community one because I actually, I was out there a couple of weeks ago and we actually fished in the little one at the bottom of the road. And what I saw, there's a big white carp in there and then there's just a bunch of small bluegills.
[Stephen Husted] (11:27 - 11:28)
So. Oh, really? Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (11:28 - 11:31)
So I'm pretty sure that he caught it in the big pond.
[Stephen Husted] (11:31 - 12:08)
Okay. Well, that pond is like something out of a movie, like the backdrop of it. Oh, yeah.
It's so beautiful, man. Yeah. People just don't know.
It's funny when we bought the cabin and I was telling, you know, some friends and family like, yeah, we bought a cabin. I was like, where is that? They're like out in Tennessee.
I'm like, yeah, out in Tennessee. Yep. It's beautiful.
Like you have to see it, you know, but everybody, mostly in California, when they want to go to the mountains, they'll go to, you know, Tahoe or Big Bear and stuff like that. So it's not on their radar, but man, it's gorgeous.
[Tony Huston] (12:08 - 12:29)
It's funny the questions you get, isn't it? When you first say, yeah, it's in Tennessee and they're like, oh, do you have family there? Did you grow up there?
I'm like, no, no. You know? And honestly, I tell them, I said, look, I said, it's math.
It made sense from an investment perspective. The numbers made sense. So we jumped on it.
[Stephen Husted] (12:30 - 12:38)
Do you like, when you go out there, have you gone out there and just chilled and enjoyed? You're always going out there and doing stuff like we are.
[Tony Huston] (12:39 - 13:12)
We try. We've tried. Probably this last trip, just my younger brother and I went out and we still ended up doing quite a few projects.
But we did actually go over the Smokies to the North Carolina side and did a half day float on a, we had a guided float trip, fly fishing over in Bryson City. And it was pretty awesome. How'd that go?
It was great. We both caught fish. Just had a great day.
We literally fished till dark and it was amazing.
[Stephen Husted] (13:13 - 13:16)
Wow. That's really cool. What else have you done out there?
[Tony Huston] (13:16 - 13:53)
So we've done the, I'll probably screw up the name, but I think it's the Tuckaleechee Caverns over in Townsend. They're cool. What's that?
So it is literally just a cavern that was in someone's backyard and they monetized it. It's like a little visitor center now. They've got a little store in the house and then you go down some sketchy stairs and down into this thing.
And this cavern is probably, I want to say in total, you walk about a mile and a half through this cavern. Really? Oh yeah.
It's incredible. I like Townsend.
[Stephen Husted] (13:53 - 13:55)
Townsend's pretty cool, right? I do too.
[Tony Huston] (13:56 - 14:02)
We've looked for property over there because I love the river that runs through Townsend. It's great. Yes.
[Stephen Husted] (14:02 - 14:22)
I saw a really cool campsite that somebody built out, like a glamping site. Oh yeah. Brand new.
It looks super cool. I think that would be a great little... I showed it to Bill and Bill's like, I'll sell the cabin.
Let's buy that. I'm like, no.
[Tony Huston] (14:23 - 14:24)
You know, it's funny.
[Stephen Husted] (14:24 - 14:26)
We're going all in on this. Let's stay here.
[Tony Huston] (14:26 - 14:50)
You know, it's funny. I think you probably felt a similar thing because you guys closed about the same time we did. I think when we closed on our place, we had to do a jumbo on ours at that time.
And I think the rate was like four and an eighth and I was pissed. I'm like, man, we're getting screwed. We're getting screwed.
And within two months after, I'm like, we are so good
[Stephen Husted] (14:52 - 15:13)
Yeah. You are so good. I mean, we put down a ton of money and we're still...
Yeah. And we had nothing we could do about it because you put it rate lock. And so every week, the loan officer would call and go, rates just went up again.
I'm like, oh my gosh, just close this loan. Yeah. I think we're in like the sixes.
Are you really?
[Tony Huston] (15:14 - 15:29)
On what I wrote. Yeah. Well, you know, when we bought our second one, we ended up at like seven and a quarter on our second one out there.
And it was literally half the price, but our payment is only about a thousand dollars difference between the two.
[Stephen Husted] (15:29 - 15:31)
Correct. Yeah. Isn't that crazy?
[Tony Huston] (15:31 - 15:32)
It's ridiculous. Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (15:32 - 15:41)
Yeah. So when you bought the second one, how did those numbers pencil out and how's that one performing?
[Tony Huston] (15:41 - 16:46)
Well, I'll tell you that was a learning curve for sure. Because as you know, with the bigger cabins, we tend to see bookings that come in with a lot more lead time, two, three, four months or more out. So you get to see your calendar fill up well in advance and you feel all warm and fuzzy about it.
Then we bought this little cabin because it'll sleep six, really it's four because we have two Kings and a sofa sleeper. And what we found with that, we had a few moments of panic because it wouldn't book up until like within the month. And then all of a sudden we'd start getting bookings.
And what we found is the bigger cabins, it's typically going to draw multifamily. So you're going to have kids, their parents, the grandparents are all going to come there. And so they all have to coordinate, which is great
The smaller ones, we find we get a lot of couples or just single families that come in, mom and dad and the kids. And so they'll just decide, hey, let's book someplace for the weekend, next weekend. Right.
And just take off.
[Stephen Husted] (16:46 - 16:47)
Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (16:47 - 17:08)
Last minute. So you just have to manage it differently. Honestly, what I have seen that's been one of the biggest challenges is just watching the platforms are constantly tweaking things that helps them and not necessarily helping us.
You know, and so you have to constantly stay on top of what those changes are.
[Stephen Husted] (17:09 - 17:20)
Yeah. We're doing that today. I just, it's one thing after another, after another.
It's not set it and forget it like it used to be. It's a whole different ballgame.
[Tony Huston] (17:20 - 17:57)
So I know one of the big things we did back, I want to say it was probably October of last year that Airbnb announced their big changes. First change in like, I don't know, 10 years or something like that. And one of the big emphases that they put on it was pet friendly.
It was both said and not said, but clearly demonstrated in their video. And so we made an active decision to go pet friendly about a month and a half later. And my condition with my wife was if we're going to do that, there can't be any carpet in the house.
[Stephen Husted] (17:58 - 18:00)
That's when you changed out all the floors.
[Tony Huston] (18:00 - 18:07)
Yeah. So we swapped out all carpet into LVP so that we wouldn't have to worry about that element either.
[Stephen Husted] (18:08 - 18:12)
Yeah. And we followed your lead on that too.
[Tony Huston] (18:12 - 18:18)
And I don't know about you, but it sure made a difference for us. I think I'll bet probably 70, 80% of our bookings have a dog.
[Stephen Husted] (18:20 - 18:32)
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We just had one that had a service dog and it was from Airbnb.
And I saw on the camera that they didn't pay and then they came back and I'm just like, okay, whatever.
[Tony Huston] (18:33 - 18:56)
Yeah, exactly. You learn your pain tolerance and what you're willing to deal with. I think we also have to put up with a lot more crap in the beginning until we get our reviews established.
Because our attitude from the beginning was like, oh, don't let anything screw up. And anymore, we're like, did they break anything? We're good.
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (18:57 - 19:04)
We've had a hard time on... Honestly, Will, did you take over the past owner's reviews?
[Tony Huston] (19:04 - 19:07)
We did not. No, we did not get those switched over.
[Stephen Husted] (19:07 - 19:11)
He didn't ask you if you wanted them or anything like that for Verbo?
[Tony Huston] (19:11 - 19:12)
No, he didn't.
[Stephen Husted] (19:13 - 19:14)
And did he have a lot of them?
[Tony Huston] (19:15 - 19:28)
He had a fair amount. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And I want to say he was almost all Verbo, but he was also kind of a jerk. Because we had looked through and we're like, I don't know if we want that history.
[Stephen Husted] (19:30 - 19:33)
Oh, okay. Ours were better. Ours were better and we took them.
[Tony Huston] (19:34 - 19:34)
That's good.
[Stephen Husted] (19:34 - 21:48)
Which I think it helped us. But my whole motto was similar to you. I was like, look, if this guy could be pulling off what he was pulling off doing nothing that I know we can go in there and stabilize this better.
But I think the biggest problem that occurred was he was getting the maxed rate during COVID for not doing anything. Okay. So that's one thing.
Then we go in and we get rid of all the crap. You know, we, we changed out 95% of all the furniture, you know, we do, you know, all the things we possibly do to modernize it minus doing updates as far as bathrooms and things like that. So it looked better.
And then we took professional photos, which I know is a big key to it. And he did it. He had a lot of bulky furniture in there.
It felt cramped. So we got stuff out. And so obviously it shows better.
Um, then we had a major plumbing issue that costs $10,000. Uh, we replaced all the toilets to better flow efficiency. Toilets got that had to deal with some AC issues, took care of that, did the roof.
We had to do all new screws to the roof. So we did all these like non-sexy items. You know what I mean?
Like we went in reverse. You were doing, so I would, I was talking to, I'd talk to Bill and go, well, you know, Tony got this done. He got this done.
We're here spending money on plumbing. Like no one's cares about the plumbing. Like they just want it to work, but we had to, we had to do it.
And so now we've just been playing like the catch-up of like, I know what needs to be done to that cabin. I know what would make it better. I know what will make it perform better, but it's just going to take time.
Like, you know, what's getting done today. Like as we speak, the hot tub is getting delivered. Nice.
Nice. We just had to bite them. I'm like, dude, put it on a, let's get a business line of credit and let's go zero APR and those put it on there and let's, you know, get going.
Because I think that lot, we lost a lot of bookings because of the hot tub. Like they didn't want to deal with it, just the community ones.
[Tony Huston] (21:48 - 22:01)
For sure. And especially in the winter, you know, I mean, we're going into like the time when people, you know, it's cool outside, you know, there's nothing better than sitting in a hot tub when it's nice and cold outside, you know, and just really soaking it up.
[Stephen Husted] (22:02 - 22:16)
I'm concerned about the bears because we're definitely, there's something about our location. There's bears. We hear our guests.
Do your guests talk about seeing bears all the time?
[Tony Huston] (22:17 - 22:58)
So off and on, you know, what we've had, yeah, we've had quite a few comments on it. You know, it's funny. We originally had a wicker loveseat next to the front door, you know, with our sign of our cabin, the name of our cabin, it was kind of like the spot for your Instagram moment.
And what was funny is that each night we would see guests that would take that loveseat and turn it perpendicular on the deck thinking that's going to prevent a bear from coming up onto the deck. And we would just giggle going, yeah, you know, it's not going to help at all. No.
But did you put the hot tub on the main deck, on the main level deck, or did you go down?
[Stephen Husted] (22:59 - 23:00)
Main deck.
[Tony Huston] (23:00 - 23:01)
Yeah. Yes.
[Stephen Husted] (23:01 - 23:19)
Main deck corner. Main deck corner. Like if you go out the back door, it's going to be all the way in the right tucked.
And that's where it was, I think, before. I think it's got the best view and I think it has enough room there and we can still do, you know, all the chairs and the tables and all that.
[Tony Huston] (23:19 - 23:46)
Sure. Sure. Yeah.
You know, and I find the bears don't bother much. I mean, they don't, they tend to come around. I've seen them like, I'm trying to think the times that I've seen them on the cameras where it's been like noon or so.
Otherwise it's late at night and they're usually not coming around if people are around, you know? So I think that's pretty good.
[Stephen Husted] (23:47 - 24:31)
Did you, did I tell you the story of the lady who reached out to me and said, hey, we had the bear come on the deck. They were outside on the deck having breakfast. This is great.
They're out on the deck having breakfast, having their porridge. She said, she's like, yeah, we saw a bear. We, you know, we wanted to see a bear.
No, we saw a bear. We saw the bear. We saw the cubs.
And so I go look on the camera and they're out there having breakfast and here comes the bear around the corner like, hey, what's up everyone? And they just get up. They just get up and go inside.
And then the three bears go up to the table and they eat their porridge.
[Tony Huston] (24:31 - 24:34)
Are you serious? That's amazing.
[Stephen Husted] (24:35 - 24:39)
And they sat there and videoed watching the bears eat. That was cracking up.
[Tony Huston] (24:39 - 24:42)
What are the odds?
[Stephen Husted] (24:43 - 25:56)
But they'll get up on that deck rail. I'm surprised a big bear could actually, I think that's why some of the rails were damaged. I think it's from the bear.
I think so. We had to replace those. This last time around, we got a lot of things done.
We repainted the deck. We did the landscaping in the front, took care of that. We took your advice.
We got the fishing poles. We built that whole scenario out. We got the carpets clean downstairs and all the rugs.
We only have carpet in that downstairs game room. And that's the reason why I didn't opt to put the hot tub on that deck is because quite frankly, they would go in and then they'd have to truck through the carpet with wet feet and then go up those stairs. And those stairs, it's not made for if you have any kind of mobility.
They're super steep. So I think that putting it where we're putting it is going to work. We got bulletproof rocking chairs.
So we got rid of the wooden ones. We bought some in Townsend that are lifetime guarantee. They're black.
They're like a hard composite.
[Tony Huston] (25:57 - 26:03)
The Pollywood, I think it's called. Yeah. Yeah.
We just bought a bunch of those rockers ourselves.
[Stephen Husted] (26:03 - 26:52)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
And so we're on that same path as you. We broke the lazy boy chairs. It lasted a little over a year.
I was like, nah, let's get rid of this. Get something that's a little bit more, can get a little bit more wear and tear because what people were doing is they were taking the chair and pushing it back, either playing on it or they were sleeping on it. It's not to be slept on.
And so those got ruined quick. So as you were saying, you always are going through the property to figure out the best way to make it so things won't break that they would last a little longer. You put a little bit of thought into it, maybe a little bit more money, but within the day, it saves you from having to constantly be doing different times of turns.
[Tony Huston] (26:52 - 27:16)
Well, the proactive piece of it is far less stressful than the panic when something breaks and a guest is there. Yes. Because it's going to cost you revenue and it's going to cost you the repair simultaneously in most cases.
And the guest. Yeah. Yeah.
If something bad happens and the guest has to bail, there goes your revenue for that stay.
[Stephen Husted] (27:16 - 27:23)
Yeah, absolutely. Is yours, is yours, is it a two story or is it one story? Does it have a loft?
[Tony Huston] (27:24 - 27:27)
It actually has a loft too. So we have two stories plus the basement.
[Stephen Husted] (27:28 - 27:28)
Okay.
[Tony Huston] (27:29 - 28:17)
Does the loft have a bedroom and a bathroom too? Yeah. So we have a bedroom and a full bathroom actually with like a freestanding tub.
It's pretty cool. And then we have a separate shower and that, so that's kind of like we treat that as one of the primary bedrooms. And then on the main floor, we have a bedroom.
And then downstairs in the basement, we have at the, basically the landing where the stairs come down, there's kind of an open area there. We have a smaller queen size bed there. And then we have, and then we have another room that we use as a bedroom.
And we knew going into it that it doesn't have an egress. And so we've actually been bidding that out now to have a window cut into that room because we know it's coming. So we're trying to get ahead of that now too.
[Stephen Husted] (28:18 - 28:21)
That's on the screen.
[Tony Huston] (28:21 - 28:22)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (28:23 - 28:27)
Let's break that down, the inspections.
[Tony Huston] (28:27 - 29:39)
Yeah. So it's a little unnerving. I think we're all in a pretty good spot, but they have Sevier County announced an inspection system that they're going to be implementing in 2024.
And it has to do with, there's going to be rules about where your grills can be. They have to be a certain distance from the structure and every room that is a bedroom has to have an egress. And so you can't just be cramming beds into closets and all of this stuff that there's not a way out.
And yeah, I think a lot of it is good. I think where the challenge could be is if you're in a situation where you have to retrofit something major. I'm not sure what the, I wasn't going to say body count, but how many people you can sleep can also determine if you need the fire suppression system installed, like the full sprinkler system inside.
Oh wow. That's one of the things that they're looking at with some of the larger cabins. So you almost treat it like an apartment complex.
[Stephen Husted] (29:39 - 29:44)
Yeah. That's interesting. That could be a big problem for people, for some.
[Tony Huston] (29:44 - 29:45)
Yeah, for sure.
[Stephen Husted] (29:47 - 29:53)
The barbecue, what's the deal with the barbecue grill? That makes sense. I mean, they do it in HOAs.
Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (29:54 - 30:30)
You know, the funny thing, and I can't get my head around this honestly, because everyone keeps talking about having the charcoal grills, like the camp grills out on the driveway or something like that. But you've been there, I'm sure when the winds have kicked up, up through that canyon, and it goes zero to 60, zero to 80 miles an hour winds at the drop of a hat. And if someone's got a charcoal fire out there, you can't just put that out.
People are going to bail and save themselves. You know, whereas a char or like a propane grill, you just turn it off and go in.
[Stephen Husted] (30:32 - 30:53)
I never thought of that, actually, Tony, you know, we had that little small dinky one out in front of the house. And it seems like it's always been a problem for people because they have to, you know, the kitchen is so far away from it. And we've even had people setting up like a table and chairs and their car lights on and literally eat in front of that grill.
[Tony Huston] (30:54 - 30:54)
No kidding.
[Stephen Husted] (30:55 - 31:08)
Yeah, yeah. And this lady was staying and she had a big group and she was really homing in on the grill, like how big is it? And I just told Bill, I'm like, screw it.
Let's just, let's just go buy one.
[Tony Huston] (31:08 - 31:08)
So we did.
[Stephen Husted] (31:09 - 31:11)
And it's exactly where the hot tub is currently.
[Tony Huston] (31:11 - 31:12)
Sure.
[Stephen Husted] (31:12 - 31:22)
And it's charcoal, you know, because we were hearing from about charcoal is easier for guests to use. And if the propane runs out, you don't have to be, you know, scrambling to get it done.
[Tony Huston] (31:23 - 31:23)
Right.
[Stephen Husted] (31:23 - 31:30)
I think you brought up a good point. You know, that's a way to spark, get sparks in the air. And that's a way to start fires.
[Tony Huston] (31:30 - 32:37)
Yeah. And I'll tell you, so we have at both of our cabins, we have a propane grill and we have a propane fire pit on the deck, which that is another thing that may or may not survive the inspection systems. But again, I go, they're controlled.
Um, I don't see why that should be a problem. We'll, I guess we'll find out, but, but to the propane side. So we have probably between the two properties, we probably have like 10, five gallon tanks now, um, of propane.
So you figured you'd get, you've got one on the grill, you've got one on the, um, on the fire pit. And then I tell my cleaners to always have two extras on the property at all times. Where do you store them?
So I store them out on the deck near, you know, usually on the same level where they are. And, and when I actually did, I just had signs made that says extra propane with an arrow and I had them because, you know, we, we gotta be very deliberate. Yes, you have to.
[Stephen Husted] (32:38 - 32:40)
Do you have a five-star review sign?
[Tony Huston] (32:40 - 33:24)
Um, yeah, we do. We have some that we put them on our fridge in both places asking for that. And then we put it in our messaging in the beginning and in the end.
And I have found, you know, we use hospitable is the, the system that we use for communication and I have found it to be really well done. It's super user-friendly. I like how it integrates with wifi locks or deadbolts.
I just wish their reporting was more robust. You know, they basically give you a data download and then you have to go sort it. And, but our, but our messaging I think has been on par and, and we have never had a complaint that we don't communicate.
[Stephen Husted] (33:25 - 33:35)
Yeah, that's great. And that platform is, that's a big question I get from people that live here in California. Like how do you manage it from far away?
And I just pull out my phone and go right here.
[Tony Huston] (33:35 - 33:36)
Yeah, it's easy.
[Stephen Husted] (33:36 - 33:52)
It's right here. Like, and then I explained, I'm like, look, we get a booking. It, it, the, our cleaner gets it on her calendar.
Everybody goes into motion. I mean, we don't spend more than, you know, an hour a week really tweaking out things.
[Tony Huston] (33:52 - 33:53)
Oh yeah. Yeah. We're the same.
[Stephen Husted] (33:54 - 34:03)
Yeah. But I mean, I'm thinking about things all the time. We just saw that there's a way on Verbo.
Do you get a lot of bookings on Verbo? Are you mostly?
[Tony Huston] (34:04 - 34:10)
You know, we get more on our small cabin than we do on the big one. The big one's almost nothing. It's rare.
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (34:12 - 34:57)
Okay. So we're like the, we're like the rebels on how here we have everything. We get 80% Verbo and 20% Airbnb.
And it seems like every time we have Airbnb guests, they're a nightmare. No kidding. Yes, absolutely.
For the most part, I would say, or, you know, it's hard to get reviews. The Verbo guests seem to be older. Yeah.
You know, they're coming with families. Sometimes they've never even used a short-term rental by the questions they ask. Sure.
Things like that. I don't know. I definitely think for the most part, 95%, the people that book pretty, pretty nice people, you know, all said and done.
[Tony Huston] (34:57 - 35:28)
We have seen the same, you know, we've, we've had, you could probably count them on one hand of, of bad guests. And, you know, we've, we've seen some things like we had a brand new sofa sleeper in our little cabin and the first guest that stayed there after we got it in broke it. And then didn't tell us and tried to fix it with a hanger.
So they tried to wire it back together with a wire hanger. And I'm just like, dude, you know, just tell us.
[Stephen Husted] (35:28 - 35:28)
Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (35:29 - 35:35)
And, and we know stuff happens, but yeah, it's, it's comical. Some of the stuff.
[Stephen Husted] (35:36 - 35:42)
How's your, how's, how's the bigger cabin for the month of January and February right now?
[Tony Huston] (35:42 - 37:04)
Look, you know, I'd have to think the, um, where are you? Yeah, we're not, we're not horrible, but, um, I was trying to think I should have looked at that before we got on. Um, but it's not, it's not, um, we're probably 40, 50%.
I'm guessing off the top of my head of where we were, you know, but that's typical. It was typical to what it was last year. I haven't seen us much different than we were a year ago in a lot of ways, you know, um, our revenue is actually inching up little by little.
Um, you know, our, our challenge right now, our latest challenge is, I don't know if you've seen, but Airbnb now on there, when you have your pet fee on there, when, when a guest books with a pet, it rolls into their nightly rate. And so what it's doing is it's confusing the guests. And, and so we keep getting messages going, I can't tell if I paid my pet fee or not.
And then we have to go in and check it. And it's just, it's just creating confusion. And I think that's honestly by design, I think, I think Airbnb is doing that so that we'll, that we'll give in to their whims on, you know, just, just don't charge a pet fee is what they're ultimately trying to get to.
[Stephen Husted] (37:04 - 37:08)
Bring, bring up your, your, your average.
[Tony Huston] (37:08 - 37:08)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (37:09 - 37:09)
Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (37:10 - 37:34)
You know, because what they've also been able to do by doing that is by rolling it into the, into the, uh, the reservation or the night we stay now, they can also charge a fee on top of that. So they're now taking a percentage on your pet fee as well. You know, so if you're at, let's say you're at say 200 bucks, you know, the guest is going to be paying like, I don't know, two 10, two 20, something like that, whatever their fee is.
[Stephen Husted] (37:35 - 37:42)
Where's your pricing bid for like, have you had to make some big adjustments on pricing or you've been steady pretty much the same.
[Tony Huston] (37:42 - 38:27)
We've been pretty good. You know, we're still doing dynamic and you know, we've got people that have already booked into summer of next year. And some of those nights on the big cabin are probably, you know, six, 700 bucks a night on that one.
You know, we try and keep the further out we are, we keep it high. Um, right. Just until we get closer.
Um, but, but we're still, you know, we've, we've come up a little bit from last year. You know, we've had to kind of watch, like we have, we have really fought to not get into the race to the bottom on pricing. You know, that's why we keep looking for our value ads.
What can we do to add to the experience so that we don't have to just rely on lowering our price to get bookings?
[Stephen Husted] (38:28 - 38:40)
That's what we're trying. We're, we're doing a mixture of both. We had a good, you know, we couldn't, we can't complain.
We had a solid run from April until now.
[Tony Huston] (38:41 - 38:41)
Sure.
[Stephen Husted] (38:41 - 38:46)
Um, you know, we got our December is good. February, January, February is slower.
[Tony Huston] (38:47 - 38:49)
So that's typical, you know, that's typical.
[Stephen Husted] (38:50 - 38:57)
We're going to chart working on it. But the thing is the minute you really start racing to the bottom, where do you go getting, huh? Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (38:57 - 39:00)
Where do you go? You know? Yes.
[Stephen Husted] (39:00 - 39:06)
Yeah. And it's the, you get a certain type of guest, right?
[Tony Huston] (39:07 - 39:12)
You do. And I like, we're not willing to do that. We're not willing to cater to that guest.
[Stephen Husted] (39:12 - 39:57)
Yeah. They are, uh, you know, you, you wonder, you're like, look, you're getting a four bedroom, three bath cabin, you know, for a price that you could go get a hotel with a view. You got to understand what you have in front of you, especially when you get hit on, you know, I think we had one where she, they give us a review of like for value.
They gave us a three for like value really for that spot. Like, are you out of your mind? But you know, you'd have to kind of take the good with the bad, you know, sometimes, you know, you get one guest that does that.
And then you had the next one that state, Oh, I don't know if I told you this, but we've had two weddings on our deck. No kidding. Two, two, two weddings, full on weddings.
Yes.
[Tony Huston] (39:57 - 39:58)
That's way cool.
[Stephen Husted] (39:59 - 40:37)
Yeah. It's really cool. And they all stay at the cabin for the most part.
Um, the, probably 14, 16 people total. Um, the last, uh, lady that got married on the deck, the only request she asked was, you know, do you mind if we, uh, cover up your camera on the deck just for privacy during our ceremony? I'm like, yeah, sure.
No problem. But they, they extended their stay. They loved it.
And now they're going to make it into, you know, that's where they got Yeah. Lifelong guests. Yeah.
This is the greatest. Yeah. Um, have you had returned guests?
[Tony Huston] (40:38 - 40:58)
I don't think we have yet. It's really funny, but, but, you know, we've just, so we just lapped ourselves in May of this year, you know? And so, um, we haven't really had a lot, but we get a ton of people that always say we're coming back next year.
You know, we get more and that, you know, we'll see.
[Stephen Husted] (40:59 - 41:27)
Well, I mean, I don't know. I haven't been throughout every spot of, you know, Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge and all those spots, but I just know that what I like when I'm there, I just love where's Valley. I love going up that road.
I like seeing the ponds and, you know, yeah, that we have a, you know, a one minute steep section of the road. Um, which is not that big of a deal. And then it's just privacy.
[Tony Huston] (41:28 - 41:47)
And that's the thing. And you're still so close to everything, you know? And that's what I like about it is you can have the best of both worlds where we are, you know, you can feel like you're a thousand miles from anything when really you're like 12, you know?
[Stephen Husted] (41:47 - 41:59)
Yes. And then you can get to Cades Cove and all the other spots. Yeah.
It's a great, it's a great thing. I'm glad that I'm, I'm glad you reached out. It's been good.
How's Sarah been?
[Tony Huston] (42:00 - 42:35)
You know, Sarah's been good. Um, I think it was funny as we were talking, I saw her sending some messages as we've been talking. I have no idea what she's talking about.
Um, but she, uh, you know, she's, she's been figuring out her cabin cause she had, um, I think she sold a cabin that she initially had before she bought on our street. And, and then she has since purchased another one out there. So she spent some time.
She's been putting that one together this summer and fall, but I think she's been like for a couple of months where, um, I think it's closer to Pigeon Forge.
[Stephen Husted] (42:36 - 42:38)
Okay. Okay. She's Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (42:39 - 43:16)
Yeah. I want to be as far away from that as I can. I'm just, it's not my, it's not my thing.
Um, and I'll tell you, have you been up, have you been up over like to Clingmans dome or the new found gap up at the top? Um, that's a good drive. So a lot of the, um, the typical, or the, you know, the very specific pictures you'll see of the Smokies often are done from the perspective of new found gap, which is basically the summit of the Smokies.
And that's the road that'll take you over to the other side of the North Carolina.
[Stephen Husted] (43:17 - 43:20)
And it's got, it has lookout points there.
[Tony Huston] (43:20 - 44:03)
Yeah. Yep. And the Appalachian trail.
Yeah. And that Appalachian trail buzzes right through there. Um, and then if you go, so there's a fork in the road at that, at that, at that, uh, rest area, if you will.
And so you can go to the left and you head down into Cherokee and into Bryson city in North Carolina, or you go to the right and it'll take you to Clingmans dome and Clingmans dome. You want to go on a sunny day, but if you get up there, there's a dome that you, it has a concrete walk that winds up and up at the top. I think you can see three States from there and it's the views are spectacular.
Yeah. But it's a pretty steep, about a mile hike up, but it's all, but it's all paved, you know, it's just a steep sidewalk.
[Stephen Husted] (44:04 - 44:07)
Good in the, in the, in the, in the fall.
[Tony Huston] (44:07 - 44:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (44:11 - 44:13)
September was September was fantastic out there.
[Tony Huston] (44:13 - 44:15)
Oh, it was, yeah, it was beautiful.
[Stephen Husted] (44:16 - 44:26)
Yeah. I was just like, you know, the next time I go out there, I definitely want to be able to relax and enjoy just kicking back and taking in some of the things.
[Tony Huston] (44:27 - 44:28)
It is, it's so hard.
[Stephen Husted] (44:28 - 44:30)
Instead of going to Home Depot and Lowe's.
[Tony Huston] (44:30 - 44:32)
Yeah. Yeah. 14 times.
[Stephen Husted] (44:33 - 44:45)
Yeah. I made a video about that. Let's see how many times I'm going to have to come back and either pick up more stuff or return stuff.
I went crazy at Hobby Lobby getting Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff.
[Tony Huston] (44:46 - 45:24)
I know it's crazy. It is, you know, we, one of the things we had to do this, this year was we ended up replacing all of our doors, our exterior doors. And, and, and it was mainly driven by, you know, the ladybug season.
When those come in we had our, we had a French door that before our deck was covered, it had, it was getting full sun exposure. And so the door was warping. And so there wasn't enough weather stripping to solve for that.
So we finally- Which cabin? One by you.
[Stephen Husted] (45:24 - 45:25)
Okay.
[Tony Huston] (45:25 - 45:49)
Because it was just, it gets that, it gets that Western afternoon heat on that deck. And, and so we finally just said, yeah, we're just going to have to bite the bullet. And so we did steel doors, but that gave us again, an opportunity to, you know, take a little bit of the country out of it and make it a little more modern feel.
So we did like steel French doors with a nice modern dark color paint to it. So.
[Stephen Husted] (45:50 - 46:03)
Yeah, it looks good. Yeah. I went on your deck.
I thought, yeah, it looks really good. And the bathroom looks good. That's definitely on our radars to, you know, kind of start modernizing the inside, paint the kit, the kitchen cap, get some of the wood, break it up.
[Tony Huston] (46:03 - 46:05)
Yeah. Just break it up a little bit. That's really all it needs.
[Stephen Husted] (46:05 - 46:42)
Just break it up a little bit. Yeah. And then you reshoot more photos.
I saw recently on a cabin through the short-term shop, a Facebook page, nothing fancy, pretty much a cabin grandmas, but he had a ton of photos. He had the floor plan, the Matterport floor plan in there. And then I think he had a, the cura code in there.
I don't know if that cura code went to a, a video or what he had in there, but I think the floor plan thing is a good thing to have in there, especially when people are trying to figure out the sleeping arrangements.
[Tony Huston] (46:42 - 46:42)
Sure.
[Stephen Husted] (46:42 - 46:43)
What do you think?
[Tony Huston] (46:43 - 47:53)
Yeah, I agree. We've, we've used that. We've used a, a floor plan and, and I do find that helpful.
The cura code, we've been kicking that around for a while now for our guest book to do, you know, to just make it available that way. But because right now it's just in our messaging as a link, we keep it on a shared drive and they can grab it that way. The other thing is, I know some people, if they're, if they're offering a direct booking site later, you know, that's one of the avenues to do that.
If you have a cura code in the cabin, that'll direct them to that site. And it's basically, you know, I think it's, it's not a bad idea, you know, because I think what you, what it will give you, if it's going to a landing page, you're at least going to get all the contact info, you know, and then you can, you can mark it back to your, your guests to try and get, you know, to encourage them to become repeat guests, you know, which Verbo will give you more contact information.
Airbnbs is very limited in what they do. And I don't know, as far as any of those other platforms, what they do, but it is a way to capture more information.
[Stephen Husted] (47:54 - 47:57)
Do we get, do we get their email? On Verbo?
[Tony Huston] (47:57 - 48:04)
We get their phone numbers. On Verbo you get, yeah, I think you do get the email, but not, and the phone number. And on Airbnb you just get phone numbers.
[Stephen Husted] (48:06 - 48:14)
And that's, and that's easy to get. If you have their number, you can get pretty much anything you want. You can put them on a text message kind of platform type thing.
[Tony Huston] (48:14 - 48:16)
Right. Like a CRM of some sort.
[Stephen Husted] (48:17 - 48:38)
Yeah, absolutely. Do you think, would you ever go the route of doing direct bookings and have a website? What's your thoughts on that?
Do you feel like there's too much risk on, you know, if you maybe got somebody who has never stayed in your cabin, you know, there's an issue there, or would you handle it by getting some type of bigger umbrella insurance policy?
[Tony Huston] (48:38 - 49:25)
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, that's, that's the trade-off, right?
You know, we have, we have protections to some degree with the platforms. And, and when you go to that, you know, what I've seen a lot of people do is they'll have some kind of lease agreement attached to it. You know, there's always going to be some, some level of risk regardless.
Right. We've seen that. You know, I, I see a lot of people, you know, as you get into some of the, like the short-term shop groups and you see some of the things that people complain about, or they ask questions about, you're like, dude, I don't know if you're like, you may not be wired for this business.
Because if you're worrying, if you're worrying about every little thing, you're just going to drive yourself crazy.
[Stephen Husted] (49:26 - 49:27)
Stay off your cameras.
[Tony Huston] (49:27 - 50:03)
Yeah. 100%. You know, honestly, like I don't look at them.
I let, I let the footage run and I wait for my cleaners to confirm that the guest left the property well, and I'll delete it. I just, you know, I sort it, I select all, delete. The only exception is, you know, if we're in a, if we're in a time when we're seeing a lot of bears, I'll do quick scrolls looking for bear on my, you know, just captured in the camera somewhere.
And I try and capture those. Otherwise I don't want to know, you know, I'm much better for it.
[Stephen Husted] (50:03 - 53:29)
All right. Well, let's just lead into this so that we can tell anyone who's listening to this, what not to do, because I'll tell them the story right now. We had a very last minute booking.
Airbnb came in two days. It was cheap. I think it was like a 680 payout for two days.
And yeah, so they check in and I see them on the deck and because I've had issues with these very last minute short-term bookings through Airbnb, I always pay attention to them because they've always been a nightmare in one way or another. And so I see them go on the deck and they're kind of rowdy and they're screaming and they're younger and it's a different vibe than we typically will get on Burbo. It's that simple.
Usually it's just parents with their kids and the grandparents. And so I'm like, oh, okay. So they stay, that's Friday night.
No big deal. They didn't even bring food in. I think they were ordering food.
They were, you know, smoking cigarettes on the balcony, which is fine. Sure. And then Saturday, seven o'clock, my time, I like, oh, I'm going to just jump on there real quick and see.
And I see the outside and you know how we have all that parking. So we have a lot of space right there. There's nine cars.
They're bringing in beers up and I'm going, oh, here we go. Our first party. Damn it.
And I immediately look on the deck and what seemed like, you know, a hundred people on the deck. It wasn't, it was probably about 15 maybe at that. But they're loud and they're smoking and they're drinking and smoking weed and just watching.
And I hear one of them say, say something. They referenced the cameras, like, hey, there's cameras. And so I just sat there and of course, you know, was kept looking and I'm just, you know, getting concerned like what's going to go on and didn't, they weren't getting too crazy.
There was one kid later in the night that was getting ready to throw up off the deck and they were filming him. And you know, you could, they would go, they would smoke on the, on the deck and then they'd go back inside. And seemed like they're at the big table and playing games and just drinking.
So I was concerned. And the following morning, 10 AM, got on the cameras again. They were cleaning the table off in the deck and they were throwing the trash out.
They left exactly at 10 o'clock. They all got out. So then I called Ruby and I said, hey, I don't know what you're going to find when you go over there, but I need you to check the perimeter of the property for cigarette buds and, and any kind of beer cans.
And if you could sweep the deck because they were smoking a lot and just look, really go through the property. She's like, oh, they left it. There wasn't that bad.
It was just had sticky floors, but other than that, no big deal. And, and we immediately got a review from them, but we haven't responded because I wanted her to first go through the property and make sure there wasn't anything broke. And so now I'm going, okay, now we have to respond to this review and you know, what, what do you say?
Hey, they partied, they hung out, they were younger, but they didn't do anything wrong.
[Tony Huston] (53:29 - 53:29)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (53:30 - 53:30)
No big deal.
[Tony Huston] (53:31 - 53:31)
Yep.
[Stephen Husted] (53:31 - 53:59)
You know, I guess that's the best outcome you could possibly have is, you know, they didn't do anything. They just had a good, they had a good place. And to think about it, they broke it up and they all pitched in.
What a deal. What a great space to kick back for a couple of days, you know what I mean? And just not have to drive to party and you're in a, you know, a nice safe space.
You got a great view. You can hang out with your friends, go down the road, get food and bring it back up.
[Tony Huston] (53:59 - 54:00)
Right.
[Stephen Husted] (54:00 - 54:04)
And there you go. So that, that, that makes sense. So there you go.
[Tony Huston] (54:04 - 54:08)
The nerves, the nerves getting there can just be.
[Stephen Husted] (54:09 - 54:18)
Oh, rule of thumb, stay off your cameras unless you really need to get on them because they will keep you up at night. That's for sure.
[Tony Huston] (54:19 - 55:49)
You know, it's funny. I have, I have a neighbor on the other side of me that spends way too much time on his cameras. He has way too many and he doesn't, he's not even doing the short term rentals.
You know, he'll have friends show up once in a while that'll stay there. But oh my God, he nitpicks. Like if, if my, if any of my guests are over the property line, cause we share a driveway that, that through driveway, if they're over the line, you know, six inches, I'm getting texts about it.
And you know, and I'm just like, dude, calm down. You know, if they're not causing you any grief and you don't have a guest there, don't sweat it. I wouldn't.
Yeah. What are you, what are you so concerned about? That's crazy.
Yeah. You know, I was going to say too, just you know, something that we've learned too is when you're doing like decor and especially as a pet friendly property, you know, one of the things we started going to with rugs, like, you know, big rugs for rooms, we started doing indoor outdoors one because they were a lot less expensive and they're a lot more durable. And then if a dog, you know, like we had one dog in our little cabin that the lady's dog crapped and peed all over this, this thing, and she didn't do a very good job cleaning anything.
So we just tossed it, you know, it's like, you know, a couple of hundred bucks maybe, but you're done. And, and it doesn't, it doesn't just like give you heartburn. Like, oh my God, I got to throw away a $700 rug or something.
[Stephen Husted] (55:50 - 55:53)
Yeah. That's a good point. What, how do they look?
They look the same.
[Tony Huston] (55:54 - 56:27)
They look great. You know, if you look at where'd you get them? I'd have to ask my wife, you know, you know, I think she might get them like a wafer.
We did one from Walmart, like on a pinch that we just needed something because we had one that it just, it had a stain and we're like, just get it out. We have a new guest coming. Let's just whatever we can get.
We've done it on Amazon. I think we've gotten some there, but you know, it's part of it is the cost of doing business, but it's a lot more tolerable if you know, you didn't have to pay a fortune to get the rug in the first place.
[Stephen Husted] (56:28 - 56:38)
Yeah, absolutely. What do you, how do you handle, I don't know if you do the same as me, but when we have things that we need for the cabin do you ship it over to our cleaners?
[Tony Huston] (56:39 - 56:39)
Absolutely.
[Stephen Husted] (56:40 - 57:11)
Absolutely. So that's a great, that's a great little scenario because that's a question I get asked a lot too is how do you deal with things that they break or you need supplies? And they say, well, I ship it right to my cleaners.
So I have three Amazon. I order everything. I shoot a photo.
I tell them, Hey, it's on the way. They take it, they put it into the cabin. We're good to go.
We have an owner's closet. We stock it up. We stock it up, you know, hopefully to last for a year.
And if it runs low, she lets us know we order more, pack it up. There you go.
[Tony Huston] (57:12 - 57:17)
Yeah. And you know, I think we've been very fortunate with Ruby and Kurt because they've, they've done a fantastic job.
[Stephen Husted] (57:17 - 57:18)
Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (57:18 - 57:38)
And you know, and it's, we're, we're always trying to be conscientious about not, you know, taking advantage of that with them. So like, if we've got a bunch of stuff, we're like, Hey, we still check in and say, is that all right? We've got, you know, we've got a chair set or something coming to the table, you know, you cool with that?
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (57:40 - 57:59)
Yeah. So she's removed all kinds of things for us. Like those broken lazy boy chairs, you got those removed, you know, went and picked up the new one that we bought the love seat, you know, she picked it up because I was like, well, they're going to charge me this to ship it.
What, why don't you guys go pay? I'd rather pay them and let them make money.
[Tony Huston] (58:00 - 58:02)
Absolutely. Yeah. And they've been great about that.
[Stephen Husted] (58:03 - 58:07)
So do they take care of Sarah's too? I think they do.
[Tony Huston] (58:07 - 58:07)
Yes.
[Stephen Husted] (58:08 - 58:10)
Okay. All right. Yeah.
That's cool.
[Tony Huston] (58:10 - 58:35)
You know, it's funny when we got our little cabin, you know, we waited till we were in escrow and far enough along that we're like, Hey, oh, by the way, we have another cabin and would you like to clean it? And when we gave them the address, they're like, literally we're cleaning one across the street from that cab. They already had a familiarity with that neighborhood.
So yeah, it was a no brainer for them, which was great.
[Stephen Husted] (58:36 - 58:45)
That's good. How's how's work? How's business going for you?
You know, in your neck of the woods, you know, tell me how your year's been.
[Tony Huston] (58:45 - 59:53)
Yeah. Honestly, I've had one of the best years yet. Really?
I've had a great year. And, you know, it's, it's been really difficult for first timers. You know, we've had a little bit of, of a stall, I would say the last 30 days where, you know, I think the rates people were just, it's like they froze, they didn't know what to do.
And I have a transaction right now, that's a sell a buy, and their buyer has to sell. And, you know, we've got dominoes stacked. And, you know, but what's good is contingent, contingent, contingent, contingent.
Yes. And, but what I found is, you know, this is where having a good agent representing you that understands the market and understands the processes, you know, we have conversations, we get on the phone and we say, Hey, here's what's going on. You know, can we, can we work this out?
And, you know, and we've had some great, great agents working through these transactions, like, Hey, this is the market. Now we've got to work through it. And still, we got to solve the problems for our clients.
That's right.
[Stephen Husted] (59:53 - 59:53)
You got to pivot.
[Tony Huston] (59:54 - 59:54)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (59:54 - 1:00:04)
That's so there's not been the same market over and over from the beginning. I started in 2008. It's always changing one way or another.
There's always something dynamic about it.
[Tony Huston] (1:00:04 - 1:00:11)
I feel, I feel for the first time homebuyers right now, that's still the hardest segment of the market right now. It's crazy.
[Stephen Husted] (1:00:11 - 1:00:14)
It's just, it's nuts. Yeah.
[Tony Huston] (1:00:14 - 1:00:42)
Their buying power shrunk so much. And, you know, and our, and like we, our, our median price on a house right now is about 550 here in Salt Lake. And, you know, and you start talking about, even if you're just putting like 5% down, you know, you're probably going to have a $4,000 a month house payment.
That would be terrifying as a first time buyer, you know, crazy. Yeah. So I don't know.
It's different here too. Yeah. Yeah.
How are you, how are you seeing it out there?
[Stephen Husted] (1:00:43 - 1:00:49)
Well, we've, I think we've had two thirds of all the transactions in Silicon Valley have been cash.
[Tony Huston] (1:00:50 - 1:00:50)
No kidding.
[Stephen Husted] (1:00:51 - 1:01:41)
And I think, yeah. And the buyers that are buying, you know, they're well qualified and they have a lot of stock and, you know, they can weather the storm, put down more money, you know, they can manipulate their down payment a little bit more so. So it's kind of a different market, but you know, I had a conversation with a couple of buyers that came through my listing out in Santa Cruz and yeah, they're like, God, this, yeah, this is, this is tough.
What we were looking for. And it's funny that there's some buyers that were coming through that had been looking for two years and I'm like, well, what have you been waiting? What are you doing?
Like this, you're in this position, you know, because you're not really taking it too serious or there's something that's hanging you up where you're not pulling the trigger and whatever that is, somebody needs to help you, you know, figure that out and move, move on.
[Tony Huston] (1:01:41 - 1:01:43)
Yeah. Stop watching the news.
[Stephen Husted] (1:01:45 - 1:01:54)
That's like the I'm just like, wait, what a waste of time to have to sit around and look at houses for two years. Yeah. You know, like that's, that's not how I'd want to spend my time.
[Tony Huston] (1:01:54 - 1:01:56)
No, not at all. No, not at all.
[Stephen Husted] (1:01:57 - 1:02:14)
I think sometimes it's, they think that everything should line up a certain way. Everything should fall in place. And that's just not really how real estate is.
There's, there's always things changing and there's little nuances to it that you have to adapt to. And, you know, some people get it, some don't.
[Tony Huston] (1:02:15 - 1:02:59)
Yeah. You know, I do think there's an opportunity right now for people that have been in their home 15, 20 years, you know, they've got a ton of equity, you know, maybe they're, they're more like, you know, my age closer to retirement than anything else. And, you know, kids are out of the nest where, you know, Hey, maybe we don't need all this square footage.
And for those people, you know, they have an opportunity where they can sell, take that equity and pay cash for something that they downsized. And then these rates are a non-issue. It doesn't matter.
Right. Doesn't matter. And so I've had a fair amount of conversations with some people about that too.
You know, it's like, Hey, this might be your best opportunity. You know, there's pressure on the pricing right now. And if the rates aren't an issue for you, take advantage.
[Stephen Husted] (1:03:00 - 1:03:03)
Right. Yeah. Go against the grain.
[Tony Huston] (1:03:03 - 1:03:06)
Yeah, totally. It's always a good time to buy.
[Stephen Husted] (1:03:06 - 1:03:09)
Yeah, absolutely. What are you doing for the holidays?
[Tony Huston] (1:03:10 - 1:03:16)
You know, we're, we're actually hanging out this year. We're not going anywhere and it should be pretty nice.
[Stephen Husted] (1:03:16 - 1:03:17)
Yeah. How about you?
[Tony Huston] (1:03:17 - 1:03:29)
Where you're at? Does it snow? Oh yeah.
Yep. I actually had my first ski day Sunday. I got up and skied at Park City for, I think I made five runs till it hurt and then said that's enough for now.
[Stephen Husted] (1:03:31 - 1:03:32)
How far away?
[Tony Huston] (1:03:32 - 1:03:42)
We said, Oh, it's 20, 30 minutes. Dude, we're so spoiled. That's amazing.
We're so spoiled. I've never been to Utah. You gotta come out.
You gotta come out, man.
[Stephen Husted] (1:03:42 - 1:03:47)
Yeah. I heard they have great mountain biking and I don't know why I've never been out there just for the mountain biking part of it.
[Tony Huston] (1:03:47 - 1:04:09)
And it's, it's all so close. Like literally we have four, seven, seven resorts within 30 minutes of us in Salt Lake City. You could literally, you could literally fly in, in the morning.
They actually do packages where you can fly in, in the morning, ski and then fly out same day. That's how close it all is.
[Stephen Husted] (1:04:10 - 1:04:13)
That's crazy. That's so cool.
[Tony Huston] (1:04:13 - 1:04:14)
I know we're pretty spoiled.
[Stephen Husted] (1:04:15 - 1:04:36)
Yeah, that's good. You're like, I'm sitting tight right here. Well, hey Tony, I appreciate you jumping on.
I'm glad that we were able to finally get you on. Yeah, I appreciate it. It's probably better for you to be here.
It's probably better you being in your home office than being up in the cabin. You never know what went on there.
[Tony Huston] (1:04:36 - 1:04:38)
Right. Yeah. You never know.
[Stephen Husted] (1:04:39 - 1:04:48)
Yeah. So yeah, I appreciate you jumping on. Yeah.
I guess I won't be like, I won't be talking to you. We'll, we'll be chatting again.
[Tony Huston] (1:04:48 - 1:04:48)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (1:04:48 - 1:04:58)
I should, I need to pick your brain a little bit on some other things on our cabin. I think, I think now that we've got it stabilized, the bigger CapEx items, I think it's time to look into some other things.
[Tony Huston] (1:04:59 - 1:05:01)
Yeah. Time to change the lipstick color.
[Stephen Husted] (1:05:02 - 1:05:09)
Yeah. And I think those things will, I think they would pay off. I think just like getting the fishing poles.
I think that would pay off.
[Tony Huston] (1:05:10 - 1:05:10)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (1:05:10 - 1:05:13)
Honestly. Wait, what was the other one that you did?
[Tony Huston] (1:05:13 - 1:05:54)
You did the. Oh yeah. So, so we did, let's see, we did the fishing poles.
We did, you know, we added a gate. We took that from, from your property. We saw it like, oh, a gate.
That's a great idea. When we went into going pet friendly, finally did a gate on my other one. But I think the thing I shared with you is we did a s'mores kit, a tabletop s'mores kit.
Yes, that's right. And, and we've had, honestly, in probably two months time, we've had more specific call-outs in reviews about our s'mores kit than anything else. And how much did that cost you?
Oh, 26 bucks. Done. Yeah.
I'm getting one too. All day long. I'll send you the link.
[Stephen Husted] (1:05:55 - 1:06:13)
That sounds good. All right. Well, thanks a lot, Tony, for jumping on today.
Really appreciate it. You brought a lot of really good insights, especially for somebody that wanted to, you know, get going on a short term and in a mountain cabin or anywhere that's up in the mountains. I think some of the information we passed along was definitely valuable.
[Tony Huston] (1:06:13 - 1:06:14)
Couldn't agree more.
[Stephen Husted] (1:06:14 - 1:06:15)
For jumping on.
[Tony Huston] (1:06:15 - 1:06:16)
Thanks for the invite.
[Stephen Husted] (1:06:17 - 1:06:18)
All right, buddy. I'll talk to you soon.
[Tony Huston] (1:06:18 - 1:06:18)
Take care.
[Stephen Husted] (1:06:18 - 1:06:49)
Take care. See ya.

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Stephen Husted