SPEAKER_04 0:00

I've had some properties on Airbnb but it was just never um it wasn't the way I wanted to run my business as far as just letting somebody take the money and tell me when I when I can do things. We have a a neat little thing we do at our seminars. We show a a guy with a a pizza hat, you know, and he runs a pizza parlor and you go down the street and you go into the pizza joint and you want to buy a pizza from the guy, so you give him ten dollars and he cooks you a pizza. Well, how would that pizza guy feel if somebody set up a tent in front of his door and you had to go into that tent and pay that guy and then the guy in the tent went and got you the pizza and came back out and handed it to you. We don't want people in between the two people that should be doing business together, and that's kind of how we see that end of the market.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Welcome to Live Let Thrive, a podcast about the Airbnb life, the share economy, and everything in between. Here are your hosts, Micah and Steve.

SPEAKER_05 0:57

Hello, hello, hello. And welcome back to another exciting episode of Live Let Thrive.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

That was for um Alaria's um kids. Apparently they like how we harmonize together. I was like, oh, I'm gonna try to do it. Anyways, um episode uh 70. 7070 and uh of Live Let Thrive, your favorite Airbnb, STR, LTR, short-term, long-term real estate, whatever. And um, thank y'all for joining us again. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_06 1:41

Yeah, and today we have a special guest coming all the way from, I believe, Florida, Mr.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Mr. Joe Goddard. How do you say it, Joe?

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Godar, you had it right the second time. How are you guys?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

I had like two options and I got, you know, I you know second time. So um so Joe, Joe Hell's out of the the awesome state of Florida, and um he's doing something very interesting with the um short-term rental market. Um so go ahead and introduce yourself, Joe, and tell us a little bit about your company if you if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_04 2:16

Sure. Um I'd like to say my name is Joe Godar, and I'm with Emerald Coast Buy Owner. Uh we also call it ECBYO, and we do have a sister site to this, which is SMBYO for Smoky Mountain Buy Owners. But we like to just call it a a regional uh vacation rental listing site. And you know, with all the giant OTAs that are out there kind of doing all kinds of different things in the market now. Um we've been in the vacation rental business uh for about 20 years uh with owning properties, managing properties. We have vacation rental software, we've built vacation rental sites, and about two or three years ago we decided to get into the listing side of things and just focus kind of on a boutique type level for very specific areas and since we're you know in the Emerald Coast and have been there for so long, we we thought that was a perfect market to start in. And we just want to get back to a really clean traditional way of marketing vacation rentals so the guests can get in direct contact with the owners and managers and let them do their business together.

SPEAKER_06 3:18

Okay. Uh you said a lot there. What what what exactly is an OTA?

SPEAKER_04 3:24

Online travel agencies. Okay. You know, the the big guys, the home aways, the VRBOs, Airbnb, etc.

SPEAKER_06 3:31

Okay. So how so when when you guys started and when you decided, hey, we're gonna create our own one our own site for this area, what what what was the factor behind that? What made you do that?

SPEAKER_04 3:43

Well, being in the in the business and actually, you know, renting my own home out, uh homes and then managing my friends and being in a you know basically like a manager, um, we needed to have marketing. And so for years the gold standard was VRBO. And this goes back to you know 20, 30 years ago when they started out in Colorado, um, then came along home away and kind of brought all these companies together. They bought dozens and dozens of websites and built a home away uh network, uh, which VRBO was the lead horse of that pack constantly. And they were the strongest marketing players in the vacation rental world, and they did a great job. Anybody that had a vacation rental knew, all you had to do was put it on home away, your phone would ring, you'd fill your property up, and things were great. And people did that and thrived in this market for years. And about two years ago, we saw the landscaping starting to change, and we saw that home away was positioning themselves to sell out and basically flip to a uh commission-based system that we didn't think would be proper, you know, for us to run our own business. And by that I mean I had my set group of customers, my clients, I had my homes and my properties, and I knew how much money I had to bring in each year on each property, uh, to make myself happy, pay my bills, pay my mortgages, and to keep my other owner friends happy. Um, I didn't see where I could give up ten or twenty percent of that just to be on a website. So we decided to kind of step into the market and we thought we could handle marketing a regional site, and the word marketing is a very strong word when you're talking about uh, you know, a listing site or a a marketing site, because you really have to do a lot to market a website. And we thought if we went on a regional basis we could handle that. We're taking on a worldwide we we weren't gonna take, you know, Home Away or VRBO on a replace them. I mean that was just not even in the equation. Um but we thought the the boutique and the smaller regional sites we could come into that market with proper SEO and you know, billboards up and down the the road. Um we went into the market and had seminars up and down on the beach. So we really tried to do a guerrilla type marketing uh to get people behind, you know, being on one site for one area.

SPEAKER_06 6:04

Wow. So you guys it was a lot of marketing behind all of this then, right?

SPEAKER_04 6:09

A ton of marketing. Um the biggest thing people don't understand is it is all marketing. And it it's not that a website doesn't matter, you know, everybody there's a million pretty websites that have come out, but if they're not being properly marketed, the people don't get to the site to to call the owner or manager, and then it just becomes a uh empty ship out on the ocean just sitting there. Where you know we have to push this out to get the guests to get to the site to see our owners and managers to call them. And we just want to be the marketing end of it. We don't want to take their payments and give them, you know, terms and conditions and tell them what they can and cannot do. We just want them to get together on the website and then they can do their business. Um the guest needs, in my opinion, to talk to the owner or manager directly and not go through a third-party uh source that is going to call an outsourced um, you know, foreign person for customer service. I think you should talk to the owner-manager of the property that you're staying in.

SPEAKER_06 7:05

Yeah, I I definitely see where you going on that. I actually agree because uh me and Steve were actually looking to kind of dump it, jump into that type of market soon, too. Like kind of something where it's more just directly the host and the guest. I definitely see where you what you're talking about with the OTAs. Sometimes the OTAs have a little bit too much power. Airbnb. Um, so I definitely see what you mean.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

I noticed you didn't mention um Airbnb one time in that whole um discussion there. Were they not a con Oh you did? Okay. Well, cause mostly you're um you're I wouldn't say taking business, but um you were dealing with um VRBO, VRBO or home away more than uh Airbnb.

SPEAKER_04 7:48

Correct. Um, you know, Airbnb kind of came along and really did well with the you know the European sharing market, mainly, you know, rooms and apartments. Um they've moved into the vacation run of world. Um and they're probably more popular now with, you know, the younger crowd than they are the older crowd. And I'm probably showing my age by saying I've you know been doing this for twenty or twenty-five years. Um I've had some properties on Airbnb, but it was just never um it wasn't the way I wanted to run my business as far as just letting somebody take the money and tell me when I when I can do things. We have uh a neat little thing we do at our seminars. We show uh a guy with a a pizza hat, you know, and he runs a pizza parlor and you go down the street and you go into the pizza joint and you want to buy a pizza from the guy, so you give him ten dollars and he cooks you a pizza. Well, how would that pizza guy feel if somebody set up a tent in front of his door and you had to go into that tent and pay that guy, and then the guy in the tent went and got you the pizza and came back out and handed it to you. We don't want people in between the two people that should be doing business together, and that's kind of how we see that end of the market.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

And that's pretty cool. Uh that's a great analogy, by the way. And that's how we've been we've been seeing it, because we're on a lot of these um Airbnb uh Facebook pages. And a lot of people get on there and they and they gripe. I mean they they complain about Airbnb, you know, how how how come they're doing this? How come ch they're charging for this? How come they're not reimbursing for this, or how come they're putting these, you know, this these people now we can't even see who's gonna be put in our house. I mean, it's like all these, it's like constant complaints. And at the end of the day, I'm like, hey, it's it's your house. You don't have to let them do it, you know. It it you're acting like they are your house and they're the ones dictating everything. I mean, you don't I mean, the only thing is there's not not really another option for them but Airbnb and perhaps VRBO.

SPEAKER_04 9:42

Well, I I call it success by convenience. Um people, you know, if you had that apartment over in Europe and let's say you had a bedroom and you could just put on Airbnb and start making money off it, that's very convenient. But, you know, if I went and spent saved up my money and spent a half million dollars on a home on the coast of Florida and I'm running my business for years and everything's fine, I don't want to back into giving somebody ten to twenty percent when I just want somebody to make my phone ring. And so I we see a distinct difference in people that um really want to control their business and be able to run their business and and work it like a business, or some people just want a little bit of income and the Airbnbs and the VRBOs that take their percentages and use their payment processing, and you you have to abide by their terms. If the guest has a problem, they call Airbnb and Airbnb tells the owner what's gonna happen, and that's the part we just don't kind of agree with.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Right, right. And so um so in other words, you're putting you're putting them in touch with each other, and that's and that's cool. And so so how exactly does it work? So I I'm a host, I got this, you know, like you said, five hundred thousand dollar property. I call you guys up, or I who who who makes phone calls anymore. But I um I um they have a cool chatting fixture, by the way, Micah. You can get on their and their website and chat with that's how I've gotten in touch with Joe. So pretty pretty sweet. But anyways, so so they hit you up and they say, hey, I want to list my house. And um or condo or whatever. What are the what's the next step?

SPEAKER_04 11:14

It's all done online. And um, you know, they just go through where it says owner log in, create an account, um, they purchase a listing, they could buy, you know, one listing. We have managers that put up dozens or hundreds of listings. Um we do have the capability of doing a data feed with the larger people, but if you have one condo, that's perfectly fine. Uh you pick your community, and let's say you're in, you know, the Calypso in Panama City Beach and you have a three-bedroom condo, then you put your pictures up. Once we see the listing has um more than enough, we have like a a scale of around 60% completeness. We push it out to the live site, and then hopefully our traffic on the site is seeing that condo or or home, and then they call and email you directly to books you know, directly with the owner from the gas.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Okay, and and um how much would that cost for me to book uh put my place on there?

SPEAKER_04 12:06

Our rate for one property for one year is three hundred and forty-nine dollars.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

That's very reasonable. That's very or it's very good. Um so so do you you provide the owners with like a calendar and stuff too, kind of similar to Airbnb, VRBO?

SPEAKER_04 12:22

We do. We have again different things that we can do. Um we have a software package, it's called iVacationOnline.com that integrates with Emerald Coast. So if you see a listing that says book online, they're using the online booking software. That means that owner or manager has their own merchant service, and so that listing, when you click on the dates and actually book it online, that money's going directly to the owner and you're booking with the owner. You're not booking with Emerald Coast by owner. Um others have their own websites outside of our system, and they might have um, you know, like the property manager, let's say Wyndham, they might you might book on Wyndham, but you find them on our website and you click and then you end up on their website or their tech or somebody or representative that you call puts them on your website or the email comes back and you book somewhere else, but we're the uh originator of the inquiry, you know, through our marketing.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

That's pretty awesome right there. And so um so so I guess insurance or anything like that never comes into play, not from you guys. Not they're gonna they're not gonna call you up and say, hey, these guests, you know, broke something in my place, and you're gonna say, uh, you know, yeah, I put you in touch with them, you you did you you did business with them, it's it's kind of on you. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_04 13:38

That's correct. Now some of the uh there is damage insurance and travel insurance available through, you know, the booking portal that we use, iVacation Online. Um, but the other insurance would be through whoever, you know, whoever you book with, if it's a separate uh manager or separate owner, you'd be booking directly with them and maybe buying insurance through them.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Okay. That's cool. Um sorry about that. Um I'm fighting through a little bit of a cold right now, Joe. Um anyways that time of year, yeah. Yeah. So y'all operate yellow over there on the on the um Emerald Coast, the um where Destin, uh, you know, I've been there a couple times. I love Dustin, Florida. And um it's it's just beautiful. And and so y'all you you just always done business there, and that's why you decided just to cover that area, right?

SPEAKER_04 14:28

Right. Well, yeah, that's where I you know have my properties, and I've been down there for about twenty-three years, I guess, exactly. Um but we go, we called now the Emerald Coast is not an official name. You know, you can't look on a map and say, where's the Emerald Coast? It's uh, you know, people have named it that over the years. And so when we decided to do this, um we didn't want to go too big, but we w we didn't want to go too small either. And so we decided to go over into Alabama on the other side of um Fort Morgan. It's Dolphin Island, and so that's the f the west side of our region, and then we go through Alabama, through Florida, Pensacola, Destin, Panama City Beach, uh Cape San Blas, uh unfortunately where all the Hurricane Michael was uh a few weeks ago, and out to like uh St. George and Apalachicola. So it's about a 300 mile stretch of beach that we call the Emerald Coast, and that's what's represented on the website.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

So you've um so I guess I mean you found your niche, obviously, and it's uh been and it's been pretty successful so far.

SPEAKER_04 15:31

It's going great. Um we're thrilled. You know, it it's been somewhat of a learning experience for us. We knew we had a you know really dig into the marketing and the FCO. Um so we've tried to bring in some of the you know best companies and the best people that are out there as far as uh you know really tweaking things to to make it a serious player in the area. And we think that we can take like a magnifying glass and just you know make this a hotbed for um we want to be the guy in this area that everybody goes to, you know, to find their vacation rental and also to list their property.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Cool, and you keep saying we um who was your partner that I mean who was in that video, that that famous YouTube video of you guys?

SPEAKER_04 16:11

That's actually uh my nephew. Yeah, we have a a team of people. Um his name is Corey, Corey Godar, and he does a lot of the marketing. Him and I basically head up the marketing, but he's very strong in social media, um, FEO, so he is my go-to guy as far as he's behind the scenes doing a ton of the social media stuff that we do. Um, you know, we have a big Facebook page. Um something that we have that is you know people are really, really liking is we have a lot of Facebook groups, and you guys mentioned that a few minutes ago. Um on our Facebook page, you know, Emerald Coast by Owner, you can click and see group. And so we've got a group for every one of like our communities. So we have a a Gulf Shores group, uh, a Pensacola group, a Destiny group, Panama City, and so people are joining these groups, and this becomes a whole nother level of marketing for us. And it's an Emerald Coast group, but the guests are in there communicating with themselves and with the other owners, and it's like a complete chat system and uh thriving community, you know, totally outside of our website, but it's um represented by our listings, and our owners go in there and uh they're posting what dates they have available, what specials they're running. Meantime the guests come along and say, Hey, I want to come to this area for these dates, and then it's a great way for them to communicate and it's kind of a newer version of marketing that we're really happy that we stumbled on in.

SPEAKER_06 17:35

So the uh do you guys plan on expanding?

SPEAKER_04 17:39

Yes. Um we did this year launch the SMBYO site. Uh Emerald Coast by Owner's been up. Uh we're coming up on our two-year anniversary. And we were really happy with how that went, so within a year we uh decided to start another one. So we went to the Smoky Mountains, so it's smoky mountains by owner.com, and we launched that in January. And we just want to take our time and get each one, you know, recreate the system in different areas one at a time and not try to grow too fast. Um, but we have our third area kind of picked out, and hopefully within the next six months we'll get that one up as well.

SPEAKER_06 18:15

Okay. So are you guys just focusing particularly on vacation rental areas? Yes. Okay. So you're kind of not doing the whole Airbnb going into the inner city, having to deal with the fighting city councils, things like that?

SPEAKER_04 18:30

Correct. Yeah, we're sticking with the traditional vacation house, vacation condo. Um, it doesn't necessarily have to be on the beach, of course, because some of these are mountain areas or lake areas. Uh, but the traditional rental, uh vacation rental of a house or a condo, uh townhouse, that's what we're sticking with.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, we're um we're definitely going through a fight right now where we're at. We're in Arlington, Texas. And so they're on the verge of banning Airbnb or short-term rentals altogether. And you know, like it's like you were saying, well, it this is this is in neighborhoods. And so I I can we can see, you know, the arguments of people um that don't want it in their neighborhood, you know, mostly um older older people. And we we went to a city council meeting and you know, on one side was uh with a lot of elderly people who didn't want it in their neighborhoods, and the other side it's a lot of younger people who are doing this and making money. You know, helps uh helps get by, make some money and uh pay off them student loans. But so it's like um it's a real battle going on and it and it I guess it is um it's beneficial you're staying in the in the um vacation areas but but I like if you did, you know, branch out to the neighborhoods and stuff like that, inner cities like Michael was saying, would um I guess I don't see how they could come after you because you're just you're not even I mean you you're like the facilitator, I guess, but you're not the ones um you know taking money from either side, right?

SPEAKER_04 19:57

Correct. Yeah, and then um in the industry we call it the uh agent of record and uh that's who's taking the money. And so we're we are not in that ballpark. You know, once Airbnb and now VRBO stepped into that, it just there's so much more that comes along with it. You know, the sales tax reporting, the responsibility, liability. Um we think there's just plenty of room to just be a marketing source. And then and I I firmly believe and always will that the person that whose house you're staying in, that's a person you should pay. You shouldn't pay some marketing company, you know, to book a house that you're staying in. I think you should book the house and pay the person that's staying there. So we want to keep that model where you know we don't get involved in that payment process.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

That makes sense. That makes sense. Um So do you you use um Google ads, I would I would assume, and then um and Facebook ads too, since you have a big presence on Facebook?

SPEAKER_04 20:52

Yes, those uh very much so, yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

And how would I I'm just getting a little technical, but how do you go about targeting the you know, potential consumers, or potential um partners, however you would say it, uh people that want to list their place, how would you go about and targeting them? Because that's like a big thing that we're trying to learn. Try to, you know, do some target ads.

SPEAKER_04 21:16

Well, there's uh there's a million levels to this, and uh the thing that I've really come to enjoy and getting to learn is the you know Facebook marketing is like an onion. There's so many layers and layers and layers and layers and layers to peel back. Um I'll just give you the a quick overrun of kind of the elevation that we went through. Um you could have an email list, which we did. We had thousands and tens of thousands of emails of people that have stayed and inquired in these areas before we started. So you put that into a Facebook marketing campaign and then they find the people's Facebook pages. So you're not emailing those people necessarily, but you're now able to market to them through their Facebook pages, they see your ads, and then they come to the website and then you have a pixel on your website and you're grabbing that information that that person just visited you and now you can retarget them. You know, this is when you go to Facebook and all of a sudden you're getting the same ad shown to you over and over again. Well it's it's effective because people are shopping for a certain reason at a certain time and they want to be able to purchase something in say a three day period and if you're in front of them at that time then you're more likely to get that sale. And there's levels to that that go very very deep. You know we can create a lookalike audience. If we have a hundred thousand people that are of this demographics we can go into Facebook and say give us two million people that match that group and then we push our ads out to those people. And then as they come to the website anything they touch, you know, our Facebook page, our Facebook groups, our website, we're then able to re-market to them so it's like a sticky paper or a a web that they come into and the minute they touch us we keep emailing them. And then we ask them for or I'm we keep marketing to them on Facebook and then we ask for their email. Then we build our email database and we have a campaign of once a week sending emails out. Um so it it's things that are kind of tied together but we do extensive Facebook marketing, email campaigns, we work endlessly on SEO so if somebody Googles something they find us, we do Google AdWords. So it's a comprehensive plan that some of it fits together and we try to be strong in every area.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

So who whose idea was it to do the YouTube videos?

SPEAKER_04 23:27

That was mine. YouTube is a great source of SEO um so we can we load up our YouTube channel uh with and we also know that video is very very strong now on social media a lot of stuff I don't know if you saw Mark Zirkelberg at the uh congr congressional hearing where he talked about you know everything's going to video um you know so we think little clips and little snippets of like if you went to go on vacation wouldn't you enjoy just watching a 60 second video of the condo that you might be staying in and that would probably tell you so much more than reading a description or paging through photos.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

That's great man video is a very important thing. We're a visual type society I believe is that right Micah Yeah and you had some questions for Joe?

SPEAKER_06 24:11

Yeah yeah what were you using? Because you said you had to prove to the owners that you were getting traffic to your site is there anything in particular that you were using to show the owners like hey we do have the traffic we have people visiting and we could definitely market for you guys and be a viable market for you guys.

SPEAKER_04 24:29

Yeah we came out right away and uh we we produced a marketing plan and we showed them and we have that on the website some people just want to hear you know in general what we're doing but then some people want to see really what we're doing. And so we try to give each person what they need on the level that they need it. Of course we have analytics we can show them exactly how many people are coming to the site at what time um which areas get more traffic than others and and what keyword terms people are coming into the site on. In the beginning we did drove a lot of traffic with social media because it's something that you can just kind of turn on and start marketing and bring them to the site and then as the site got some age and we were able to work on the SEO uh the organic traffic is now you know the number one thing that brings traffic in and we we can track all that. So we constantly are producing graphs and charts and showing people you know the traffic from one month to another and we just believe in being totally transparent because you know we have to market the site better than they market their stuff or they wouldn't be with us.

SPEAKER_06 25:34

Okay. Gotcha. So you're using like Google Analytics and things and you different analytics to prove to them prove that to them. That's why I always wondered um if there was anyone to ever come out to compete with Airbnb how where would they start?

SPEAKER_04 25:50

Well there was a a great article um written by a guy named Conrad and he's into search engine optimization uh web design he's highly embedded with the vacation runner world um I I might I'll be might be able to find it and email it to you but he wrote the article on basically why it's close to impossible today to come out and compete with the Airbnbs or the you know Expedias um under you know the four or five billion dollar market just because you can't take all the terms that they have already and compete with them. I mean you would need and he he put some real numbers to it. You know he figured it would take you know three thousand people doing Google AdWords with a budget of three hundred million dollars a month to be able to get the terms up the way they did and he went he went through that process. And that's the biggest reason we stuck regionally because to do what we did on a global basis you would need four billion dollars. But you know we just stuck to a three hundred mile stretch of beach and we put all of our efforts into one area because we respected that it would take a a ginormous effort with you know big big backing to be able to do something like they have now.

SPEAKER_06 27:01

Well if you start passing the hat around I got I got a hundred bucks on it bro well we'll definitely stay in touch so you think so we could officially say Airbnb is here to stay.

SPEAKER_04 27:15

There's no competing with that i in general yes but I I think that there is it's so big that there's so much room underneath it to do other things. Uh-huh wow you know it's it's just just so big that there's they can't control and do everything and the the problem that we see and this was this is real world um for our owners and managers when we sit down with them uh we go visit the managers in Panama City Beach and they say you know we can't be on Airbnb because they take you know 18% of the total take. So that's why we advertised on home away and we didn't mind paying them fifteen hundred dollars a year for a property but now they're eight percent for the owner and eighteen percent or fifteen percent for the guest to book so that's another twenty-five percent I'm charging my owner twenty-five percent so that's fifty percent of this booking that math doesn't work for us we just we can't do that and so it's not a matter of competing with them it's providing an alternative to people that can't use that model. Um not everybody can use that model. That model will work for a bunch of people but we're servicing the people that that model doesn't work for gotcha that's smart definitely and so how is uh the host feedback uh bib for you guys oh they're they're thrilled uh you know with the people that we have are you know what they do our downside is people compare us to VRBO and Airbnb immediately right out of the gate and so they call us and say well I'm on VRBO I want to leave there um I want to list with you you know I've got eighty thousand dollars worth of business last year how much am I going to get with you? So those are big shoes to fill. And you know so we try to explain to them in when we have our seminars we call it an umbrella of marketing. We're like don't put all your apples in one basket. This is what got you in that trouble in the beginning and we try to teach them how to you know market on our website maybe some other websites that are similar to ours start your Facebook page what get your email database going you need to become self-sufficient so no one site can then control you because some some people are literally hung out the dry because there's they they have no other alternatives but then to stay with you know the Airbnbs or the VRBOs give up their 20% and then the wheels fall off. You know these people will cancel a vacation on two days before 4th of July and that might be a $7,000 booking that person needs that money to pay their mortgage they can't pay their mortgage now and so real problems start happening. So we're just trying to be a part of their marketing not control the whole business.

SPEAKER_06 30:03

Wow that's awesome I I I've been saying that like people putting all their eggs in one basket because we're we're in Arlington Texas and we're currently going through some legislation a lot of people are running scared because they've done that with their business. They've put it all on Airbnb and if that gets shut down they're done you know I'm happy you guys are well go ahead yeah the other problem is Airbnb will shut you down.

SPEAKER_04 30:25

Yeah yeah if if they don't like something let's let's say you have 15 properties and the only thing you do is Airbnb or maybe the only thing you do is home away and both of them are doing it now. If you violate their terms and conditions if they see that you say something about booking offline or contact me direct, boom the whole account goes down. Everything offline. And how can you run your business you know knowing that tomorrow the whole thing could be turned off by somebody else and you have no choice in a matter.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 30:58

You're at their mercy Yeah that goes back to the uh little tent sitting in front of the pizza parlor if I have a pizza parlor there will be no tent in front of it.

unknown 31:07

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Come and grab a slice. Um yeah that's cool that's cool how you also you um you talk to the and y'all are very receptive. That that was pretty neat because uh we saw your video and you know and and someone posted it on the Arlington short term short term rental alliance this Facebook page we're part of and we're like you know we're we're banning together to to try to banning that's a good word to fight the ban you know and um just to get the word out there about air Airbnb, VRBO, whatever how you know people using in town and how city council is trying to ban it. And anyway so your someone used your video as an example. I mean all the way over here in Arlington Texas we saw that that's the power of um of YouTube power of um advertising. But right but I clicked on it and that's all it and I was like whoa so I I went ahead and tagged Micah right away and I was like check this out and he's like get him on the show right away. And so and that's and that's cool because we we automatically saw like um how useful it would be especially let's say you know someone wanted to you know like I said you're not getting your hands dirty in a way if someone from you know someone I I guess y'all are sticking to the to the you know vacation rental spots but if someone's just are in one of those cities that's kind of uh questionable or strict with the city council or whatever and um you know Airbnb let's say a city you could only rent your plates out for 60 days out of the year. Airbnb would um put like a thing on there after sixty days is up you can't rent it no more. Y'all on the other hand you said well hey it's whatever you do with your plates it's your place you know if you choose to yeah if you choose to you know skirt that 60 day rule that's on you that ain't on us. And so um I guess we saw potential for it like with cities that are um that are you know people that are fighting this this um these Airbnb bands popping up everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 33:05

Right. Yeah it it some people said you know they're too big to fail and you know I I'll kind of well I mean we've seen big businesses fail in the past but um I just like to think that there's plenty of room that's why it's called the World Wide Web. You know it they can be number one and number two I'll be number three, four and five and I'll get my piece of the pie and our our clients can thrive. And the other thing that I wanted to drive home for a lot of people is uh we went to a meeting with the Walton County in Florida um and they talked about their tax base. Now this is a a county uh commissioner having a meeting about the disruption in the you know big OTAs taking over control of the of the rentals in the market. And the first thing they said is we're losing about twenty percent of our tax base because Airbnb and VRBO and homeway are are taking the bookings now, not our local people and our local people are only getting eighty percent. They're not getting a hundred percent. So that struck you know a lot of people they didn't understand what would happen to a municipality when they lost twenty percent of their income. And then everybody there just understood we gotta find a different alternative. Of course we're there to present our our alternative and we also tried to educate them that you know every week hundreds of thousands of people come to this destination. They've been doing it for years. They will continue doing it for years. It's not dependent on a website. So we go back to just trying to educate the people you know people don't wake up in the morning and say you know what I'm gonna go to Airbnb and maybe end up in Destin. They wake up and say I'm going to Destin how do I get there? And they just need to understand how to market themselves and not let somebody else control it.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

That's cool. So you've been at these city council meetings. Yeah yeah oh yeah yeah oh yeah it is big time. And what do you um I guess how do you how do you come across to the people I guess let's say let's say the angry people first how how do you come across to them trying to speak reason and say you know this is how it's this is how we do business and this is how we differ from Airbnb.

SPEAKER_04 35:18

How does that how does that go across for uh for the um the enraged well there um in our market what we're dealing with is I mean everybody wants the rentals. It well I I shouldn't say that. There there was an uprising in Destin where they literally tried to shut down a lot of short term rentals and that didn't go over so well for that contingency inside the city council. But what we deal with is you know they were trying to make sure the the economics of the whole area isn't changed by these big places taking 20% out of the market. And so they look to us um we got a ton of cheerleaders. I mean we've got people that are cheering for us like none other on the other hand they literally think you know Airbnb and BRBO they're billion dollar companies and so there's some things we don't have and can't do that they can do because we're not a four billion dollar company or a fifty billion dollar company. But it'll take us time and we have the advantage of you know being small and we can do things like the guerrilla marketing and return your phone call quickly and be on the beach making videos where VRBO is not on our beach. You know we fly planes up and down the coast, say book direct on ECBYO VRBO and Airbnb is not doing that. So we can be very effective in a very small area and I think that's you know that long term that's what we think is going to be our version of success is you know we want to be spectacular for a small place and not just average for a big place.

SPEAKER_06 36:54

Wow that's really cool pound that niche right exactly and I'm I love the point you made up because I never I actually never thought about it from that scope of the money that you do take away from the people that are actually in the city to market these you know that that's a really really good niche I never thought about yeah and our area the rentals are a given you know so I I understand you know in downtown Manhattan New York and you know your suburban areas that it's they're not understanding people renting homes in a normal environment but if you go to Destin and pull into a condominium complex those are all rental you know I'm sure there's you know maybe a dozen out of a hundred people that live there but the rent it's a resort community always has been and always will be.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

You know so they don't have uh we see a lot of short-term rental problems in bigger areas like in Orlando and uh Tallahassee you know where it's getting into the urban areas and not just on the coast um but our personal experience has been um you know the the city councils and stuff are more worried about the economy and the effects of the big OTAs than trying to ban the vacation rental wow that's cool man um so you're um you're obviously good at helping helping the host understand you know what this is what you need to do if you want to you know continue to make that whatever they're used to twenty thousand to eighty thousand a year whatever they're used to this is what you need to do you know market on all these sites have your own Facebook page have your own website etc and um and that's cool I mean because you're educating them so on that note if if Micah and I were to create a website here to cover the North Texas area what what would you do to to educate us? What pointers would you give us?

SPEAKER_04 38:48

And speak slowly please well you you know get a good web designer make sure that you build the website right lay out your marketing plan also identify you you want to make sure you have the numbers on your side and we've seen some people that that make a run at this and they they're the numbers just aren't there meaning there's not enough rentals you're only going to get a percent of a percent to list with you and so if you have a very small rental base you know because some people think oh 400 condos over here and 200 condos over here we can build a website well you really need hundreds of thousands you know to get 10,000 on your website. So I would definitely just do some hard look at the demographics to see how many doors you have in that area and then look at the travel patterns is it seasonal um is it year round and and those are the kind of things that we looked at before we decided on you know the markets that we went into well I think I I I definitely agree with that.

SPEAKER_06 39:50

I see if you think because if you stick into a vacation rental market you're gonna have like you said it's a resort style area so everything's pretty much every building's a rental correct right correct okay so doing it in the inner city you'd run into more a few probably a few more issues because not you you have neighborhoods of course where people actually live okay yeah we're not going to start a Chicago regional vacation rental site.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

Yeah yeah that's I mean Airbnb is there and there's a presence there and people are renting short term things there but that's not the market that we would say hey that's where we need to be next that just wouldn't it wouldn't make any sense to us for what we'd like to do.

SPEAKER_06 40:33

Okay. And there are any areas that you yourself personally are looking to possibly expand to more vacation rental areas what areas would you be looking at?

SPEAKER_04 40:43

You mean our next area? Yeah yeah yeah yeah um our next area will be the Carolinas North and South Carolina like they call it the Grand Strand. Uh-huh and it's it's for the same reasons again there's uh we we call them doors and that just means you know like one condo building could have 400 doors where a neighborhood might have you know 300 homes those are 300 doors so that's a you know a highly uh densely populated area of vacation rentals that's traveled to very easily a lot of driving destinations a lot of people just you know simply drive there it's just kind of a an altar side of the Emerald Coast it's on the Atlantic side and so that's the next one we're working on.

SPEAKER_06 41:22

Oh okay it's the Myrtle beach area all in there yep Myrtle beach Hilton Head um it'll be Carolina beaches by owner Carolina wow man you guys are really making an impact I like that you guys have been able to create a niche under all the OTAs the Airbnbs the VRDOs and still you know be very impactful for owners yeah that's uh we're not trying to be greedy and they can have their you know billions and billions but if we can grow and have uh multimillion dollar companies we're totally thrilled with that you're over there in Florida aren't you Micah Yeah yeah I have a few places in Florida but yeah and and like you said they're mostly vacation rentals my v my Florida properties I mean yeah vacation rentals kids have been down in there excuse me uh isn't it true that um well is Airbnb totally banned in Miami now? Uh it has not not banned I think so there if it's not banned it's real strict restrictions.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Do you know anything about that Joe?

SPEAKER_04 42:28

I no I've I've seen and heard it um the one we deal with more is Hawaii we have a friend of ours that um we've been kind of co-helping him uh his website is called Hawaii Chi and it's a regional site very similar to ours. You'll see him referencing us on his website because we've helped him along the way and he has a very difficult time. Uh the regulation they literally have people that I don't know what you want to call it lie, cheat, steal. You know they can't they um they rent but they're not supposed to and it's you know that they got stuck in these they've owned multiple homes and millions of dollars worth of real estate and overnight they banned them. And they can't sell 'em and so they rent 'em you know under the covers or under the table if you will and it's archaic what they're going through out there. And it's it's everything which you guys are talking about. They designate certain areas and it's very small. You know like this area of the beach that has this resort is a rental market. Everything else on the island is no short term rental.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Wow that's insane it's a nightmare for them. That sucks um I love I love Hawaii. I love Maui. Um yeah it sucks we can't get something out there. I mean well that's that's so restrictive like that especially when it's so expensive to live there. It's but I you know I feel especially feel bad for the I would say locals but like the ones that have been there for generations I mean hey you know they're they're struggling to get by because everything's so expensive because so many people move you know, rich people move there and they make everything go up, and yet you're not letting them make a living, you know, trying to to to make ends meet by using their house as something to to make money with, you know.

SPEAKER_04 44:12

Right. It it's it's it's a very politically driven thing. You know, you have um a lot of the landowners and homeowners that have been there for a long time are not necessarily in the majority, um, but they're the ones on city council and they're the ones that, you know, run things. And the people that own a lot of the properties are absentees. They're not there. They can't be hands-on. And that's how this stuff gets through. It's done in the middle of the night, you know, at city council meetings that nobody knows what's going on and all of a sudden the law changes and then problems happen.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

Yeah and I um I was joking with some friends at my at my job because I was I was telling them, you know, because I guess they saw it in the news, oh Airbnb's gonna ban or um Arlington's gonna ban Airbnb next I mean because these um these towns in um in North Texas they're just they're just falling like dominoes. And I was like yeah well you know that's that's the plan. I went to that council meeting and this is what happened and they're like wow and and I was like I asked them had because they live in Arlington have some friends that live in Arlington too I was like have you ever been to a council meeting? They're like nah I've never been to one in my life and that was the first one I've ever been to and I'm like you know it's it's kind of crazy from what I witnessed I was like how much how much the um I'll say the elderly kind of run our city because they're the ones that are showing up to these meetings all the time and and they're the ones you know they know that they're gonna they're gonna vote for these for the whoever's in the council and they'll push for them and and they're the ones voicing their opinion and and us youngsters or younger generation we're too busy trying to work you know one job, two jobs raising a family and stuff to go to stuff like that. And I was like it's it's just y'all need to start going to those things because they're kind of running the direction of all your cities and they're passing stuff that's kind of crazy sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 45:55

Yeah and it it it happens they they tried it in Destin and people did not believe uh how far they got um luckily in the election a a new mayor came in and we're able to turn things around. On the other hand there has to be a balance um the one lady that led the charge in Destin the city approved three homes to be built across the street from her and it was a a normal you know if you will vacation rental area with very nice resort style homes and these were typically five bedrooms that would sleep maybe fifteen people that would be on this street and she lived there. And so the developer came in and put up three homes each one sleeps thirty-five people and so on any given week there'd be a hundred people directly across the street from her and so the pressure that puts on the infrastructure of that area the parking was almost impossible the access to the beach with a hundred more people coming to it back and forth. Um so that was the tipping point for her. And so she led the charge to try to um limit the number of people in a home based on the number of bedrooms because they're building these bedrooms and they'll put you know five bunk beds in one room and it could sleep fifteen people in one room and so you know they go to a restriction and say one bedroom can sleep two people if you got a six bedroom house it sleeps twelve people not thirty five. Um so if those laws change overnight on you and people aren't aware of what's going on it it's a huge issue.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

Yeah. Yeah big time.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

All politics is local right yeah I got I got some more selfish questions to ask you if you don't mind Joe. Sure far away all right I've been um looking for a while now and it's and it's very well documented on our show. I've been looking for a a condo in South Padre Island and I I'm sure you're familiar with South Padre right yes and I mean I I haven't been there but I'm familiar with it. Right right it's uh you know where the teenagers go to party that's not why I want to go I want to most of the year it's not like that. It's just a you know little sleepy beach town and they get you know get summers and and spring break they get tourists and then the winter Texans they call them that come through for the you know the the older folks from up north come to come through and and stay there for the winters. But um I've been looking for spots down there and I've been trying to trying to figure out how to make these things work you know on paper. I I I guess I I just keep coming across the best case scenario on on owning a owning a condo on the beach for using it as a rental but you know using it as a family too and the best case scenario keeps seeming that I can I might be able to break even on these. Now um if you could give me any pointers on what to look for on on buying like such a property and how you know how I could market it better. Of course using your site would be awesome if y'all were down there. But like if you could give me any pointers what to look for and um and it yeah and how I could be successful with one of those things.

SPEAKER_04 49:03

Yeah that it's pretty much what we do all day long. The first thing is to learn your market which it sounds like you do know your market there's going to be certain uh properties that are going to be more popular than others um so people are familiar with it they're those properties will rent more. Um improve them uh this is one mistake we see a lot of people do is they look at a rental property and they think I'm gonna bring my grandma's couch down and let's put go the opposite. Update it to the nines, redecorate it, get it all to the current most current standards that you can get so when you take professional photography of your property and you put it online it outperforms and just looks better than all the other properties. And then price it reasonable. Don't be so high that you're fighting and you miss a week 'cause we have a a very perishable commodity, it's a it's time. And if you miss a week in June because your price too high and I'm priced a little bit less and I get all four weeks, I just made I I gross more than you and your property might be trying to get more per week. And that's probably the number one thing we see people is I got the best condo on the beach, I gotta charge this. It's like well you can charge that but it doesn't mean you're gonna get it and so pricing it right and improving it um to the best that you can for that area. Um and then just comp it out, see what the other properties are doing in the area. We create spreadsheets of performa before somebody buys something and we can estimate and look at it and say well you should be able to gross you know seventy five thousand on this property and then start backing out your expenses. Is that gonna, you know, pay your bills to your satisfaction.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

Nice, nice.

SPEAKER_04 50:43

And so your company does that well we we kind of do it more like on a personal level because it just uh depends on you know we we're we're in contact with certain realtors that we work with that um you know they have good buyers and if they come into town and say Joe they're looking at this condo, you know can you comp this out for us? We'll put together a quick spreadsheet for 'em to because we'll we probably have condos in that building that we know exactly what that condo should bring. Oh cool. But we always say if it's done correctly.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

Nice, nice. Um if you find if you know of any good ones in Destin, yeah go ahead and then s and send them my way please. I love Destin.

SPEAKER_04 51:21

Sure. Yeah that market we know I you know I wouldn't know the Texas market intimately but I you could do the same you could go through the same you know exercise there as we would do it here and just have somebody get you supply you with that information um you know the way we're supplying them with it. You know a lot of it you can find online and comp it out to see what the other condos are getting and then you just see how much um you're gonna use it. I also will argue that if you break even you're successful because you're gonna have appreciation you have how many weeks a year that you're using it. It's enjoyable. I mean I've never met anybody that doesn't like going to vacation in their own vacation rental. It's it's something that's just really cool to do. And if if you go down two or three weeks a year and then you rent it out the rest of the year and you can pay your bills and five years, ten years down the road you have it paid off and you have a nice asset sitting there, that's not a bad investment.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Huh that's pretty good. And um I guess the only thing I worry well another there's so there's a lot of things to worry about, but uh is the HOAs, you know, they're kind of steep and you would just imagine they're gonna go up higher and higher every year, right?

SPEAKER_04 52:30

Yeah, and I would um I would talk to people about the HOAs. Um you know it's the old adage like we talked about with the city councils if you're not there and you're not on the board, um you could be going into a a beehive of activity that you know nothing about and you it's very very beneficial to call a few of those condo owners and say who's the president? Do you like him? What's he do? What rules do you have? Because you know, because there could be unsaid rules and there could be written rules. Um and all of a sudden these people will light up oh they're trying to do this they want to ban this they don't want to do this or they might have a big assessment coming up that they've been talking about that all of a sudden next year we're gonna have a thirty thousand dollar assessment because we didn't have enough reserves for our new roof and you know it's just people will talk to you if you ask them and I would definitely ask questions of the current owners of a place before you buy there.

SPEAKER_06 53:22

Sweet. You looking to buy one Micah I'm staying away from the vacation rental market but I'm learning from listening to Joe. So yeah I'm staying away from the vacation rental market but once I learn it I may buy a retirement house somewhere Destin or Myrtle Beach Myrtle Beach is nice. Yeah that's where he's planning on going so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

Oh sweet. Do you have any um because I I stepped out a minute ago and Micah was asking you about where you plan on going next.

SPEAKER_03 53:58

No um yeah we haven't really looked at that area very hard yet okay cool then I'll I guess I'll go ahead and start one over there if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_06 54:07

No go welcome to the club we always say quick question so in Destin how much would like a one bed one bath condo go for um there's not a whole lot of one bedroom one baths that are on the rental side that they're there but they're probably in the mid-twos they'd start. Mid twos? Yeah okay and what what would like what would the occupancy rate be on that on a year?

SPEAKER_04 54:36

Um you probably could get six a lot of times they'll have a bedroom and then they'll have like a little hall bunk and then a sleeper sofa in the living room.

SPEAKER_06 54:46

Okay so you could fit six and how how how much of the year can I plan on that being rented out?

SPEAKER_04 54:53

You mean like the gross rentals or percent of occupancy? Percent of occupancy um in our market if you want to you can rent it out a hundred percent of the time and it's just gonna you're gonna have to vary your rates is all summers you know your peak rental time uh spring break is your secondary peak time your fall is your shoulder season and then you the snowbirds love the one bedrooms. So we get the same thing. We get people to come down from Michigan Canada um and they'll rent from you know November till February and it's it's bottom dollar but they you know it'll stay occupied and they usually take very good care of it because they're living in it. If you don't get a snowbird you can still pick up weekly rentals. You might not be a hundred percent full during that time if you don't get a snowbird but you might be sixty percent full. Um but most of our properties if we choose to we can rent them a hundred percent of the time. We'll take time off for our personal use and then we always try to take time off to make improvements, uh remodel a bathroom, paint the house so we'll schedule that you know in a certain two or three week period in the off season.

SPEAKER_01 56:05

Nice, nice. And um so you go I mean y'all go high end on everything. What what are some advice on how to like um to go in there and and and you know and and redecorate something or bring it up to to modern what would be some affordable tips to to do something like that um it it just it if you can spend the money on it you get the money out of it.

SPEAKER_04 56:29

So you know we'll see somebody come along we'll try to do it our friends will do it our clients will do it. If you buy a a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar condo and put a hundred and fifty thousand dollars into it um you can sell it and flip it for f five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Um because it's just people want the higher end stuff and you know if it's a brand new property that's that's great but if you come across a a ten year old condo building and it has ten year old carpet and ten year old countertops and ten year old cabinets and ten year old bathrooms you know that's a lot to change. So if you come in and do a complete redo for a hundred thousand dollars you can really do very well either by keeping it and renting it now for top dollar or flip it and you know make your money back. Those are the top rentals that we have I mean they just they rent like scalded dogs because people want that high end stuff now and they look great in pictures. Oh yeah everybody's an HGTV fan right yeah oh absolutely that's exactly what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 57:34

You take this old dingy condo and all of a sudden you know three months later it's like wow and and I've I've told Micah before like it's it let's let's Dustin I'm I'm sorry um South Padre for example and we've been going there for years and it's still I mean they're getting into the newer way of doing things but they've still got that old school mentality where they have some they expect people to just uh show up at the beach and go to one of the one of the rental agencies on the beach and say hey I need a I need a condo for the weekend what do you got? And they'll get you one give you the keys and hand you some towels and and off you go you get to the place there's a set of rules oh they they hand you a set of rules um bring your own toilet paper bring your own trash bags bring your own I'm like and we stayed at one of those recently I'm like man we've been spoiled by like the the Airbnb and VRBO model where people are trying to you know really go out of their way to to provide everything for the guests. Right. And so um I just think that I mean I mean how do you I guess well you're the middleman but you encourage I'm I'm sure you encourage your host to to go above and beyond like that for their guests don't you?

SPEAKER_04 58:45

We do. We'll have electronic locks um you know we have seamless online booking we have automatic reply on emails we have automatic uh email notifications of their reservation their access information thank you notices you know so we wouldn't embrace all the technology like that to make it quick and fast they don't have to go to a rental office they literally drive in with their phone they have their you know codes on their phone to get in the gate they got their codes to get in the house they got instructions all week being text to them and mail email to them about hey it's garbage night on Tuesday and don't forget your checkout times tomorrow morning at ten o'clock and then they pull out and leave. But we don't ever want to replace the one-on-one communication between the guest and the owner. So if the guest is in that house and has an issue they call me or call one of our managers. They don't call a you know a third world country uh service center and Airbnb yeah and um you know get a canned response on what to do when this happens and they get they get totally left out of the cold. It it's just not a good customer service experience in in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 59:57

And and that's what um you see I I guess um I list my I have a you know I have an Airbnb here in in the DFW area and I and I you know Airbnb is like you said it's convenient they handle everything you know the the payment goes straight to your bank account uh VRBO the same thing and um booking dot com I don't know if you've worked with them before but they're they're finally coming around to that whereas they kind of did the something similar to what to what you what you y'all are offering whereas they okay this person wants to book boom boom boom they're booking your place for this week go ahead and accept payment when they get there or a week before they or a few days before they get there you can you can hit them up and then and charge them. They were doing that and I was like whoa what the hell and so I went ahead and how do I gonna accept payment for these people and I went ahead and downloaded the um the Square app which is pretty awesome and so they paid me directly through the phone and um of course Square took a little chunk but it wasn't it wasn't as big of a chunk as like Airbnb or VRBO would and so I was like right this is pretty cool. Why do I I was thinking to myself why would I need I mean for the exposure I'm sure but like I could kind of do this myself. It's a little scary at first because I'm the one in charge of taking the money and um and either meeting with the people or talking to them on the phone or something like that. But I could see getting used to that and if I had my systems in place then of course you're helping the hosts with their you know put their systems in place and do it this way and um I guess I guess do you go ahead and guide them towards apps like that and say hey you need to get PayPal you need to get Square you need to get whatever else on and and be ready to take these payments when they get there?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:37

Yeah that's a hundred percent what we do. We we help 'em get all that stuff set up we have the software so you just take the booking on your own like all the things I just talked about. We have all the automation. We want them to do that but we want that merchant service to be in their name. Like you said it's your you you you pay a service fee for the merchant service that's like a banking fee. But you take control of the payments coming to you. And what the nightmares we see are these larger management companies and even even private owners with a bigger house. Um you start talking you know some of these rentals might be over ten thousand dollars for a week you know with a big home with two or three families coming in and they have one two or three disputes during the year and it goes back to VRBO or homeway or Airbnb and they favor inside for the guest um that's a these are real heartaches that these people go through and they're like I I can't let these people control you know who's giving back my money and that and that's what they do. Um so that's why we always say you're you're paying me we want you to be paid by your guest. If the guest has a problem they call you you fix your guest problem so they don't have a reason to try to you know get the money back. Anytime you bring in that third party more problems will come down the road and and we see it every day.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:56

Wow that that's that's real huge. Yeah because I know most host complaints on Airbnb is they they control the payment. Do you guys offer like let them know hey like let's say the host are they they're gonna control of taking like a security deposit and things like that, correct?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:14

Well we want them to but uh now they can do it on Airbnb or VRBO you know you the whole thing goes through them. So if they damage your house and the guest says I didn't do it and they give the guests back the damage deposit there's nothing you can do about it.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:29

Right yeah so you you guys because I I I've been really looking at kind of going more your way you can be controlling everything that comes in like let's say I collect a guest credit card it kind of protects you rather than like an Airbnb the security deposit really isn't even real so do you guys kind of encourage that we do.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:51

Yeah we well we also use uh a damage insurance product through Travel Guard and so far it served us extremely well and all the clients that we use it served them extremely well um we don't see you know if you have a big problem you have a legal problem like if you have somebody that tears out a bathroom or something that that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about if you know Junior steps on the dishwasher and breaks the door. Well we have a damage insurance product that you know for forty nine dollars the owner just files a claim and gets up to three thousand dollars worth of coverage so it's a very good experience for the guest.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:29

And if the guest breaks his window or you know spills wine on the carpet um it's all covered and then the owner just files uh with the insurance company it's an online uh form they fill out they send it in they take a picture and they get the money paid back directly so the guest isn't put on guard about well my son didn't do that well so who did it somebody did it it's a very bad experience when you gotta tell your guests they gotta pay for something at your house it's nothing ever goes well in that situation and that insurance kind of solves that issue uh here's a big question what what do you all do in the reviews department like um either the hosts can review the guests or vice versa I mean that's huge with Airbnb and somewhat with VRBO but that's that's that's what that's what's a a real big part of Airbnb that we can say hey these guests sucked or or hey this host sucked you know or they did good yeah I I have um I'll say two different things about it I'll I'll go one way and then I'll I'll flip on you here.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:31

Okay so reviews are great it's one way to tell you know what somebody thinks about a property what somebody's um experience is with dealing with somebody in business um I think you need to have great reviews we work on reviews we try to get reviews uh we try to get good reviews on the other hand I think a lot of people know and it's very public that a lot of reviews are bogus and you know there's people out there that are faking reviews um You know, I I think the better people run the better businesses and the cream rises to the top. And I'm never afraid if I have, you know, twenty five five star reviews and I got one three star review. Um I don't try to, you know, get rid of that. What I try to do is explain it. Um I had a lady that had a plumbing problem in one of my properties and I called my guy and he said I'll be there in an hour and he didn't show up for two days. And he was v so reliable I never had to call him twice and so she leaves and gives me a bad review saying, you know, I called and nobody showed up. And I d I went back out and just said, Hey, I'm that was my fault. I didn't check on my guy, he was supposed to come, he didn't, I apologize. And I think people understand you're human, but then they can read my other twenty five, five star reviews and say everything went well and sometimes, you know, crap happens and you you have to deal with it and if they know that, you know, twenty-four out of twenty-five times it's gonna be a really good thing, I think the odds are in your favor that they think that now this is a realistic review because we do see uh you know, one that was bad that was handled, and we have confidence that this is a good system and not a bad one.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

I mean if you think about it that um if God could be reviewed, I bet he wouldn't get five stars across the board. So why worry about your place so much if you're doing as not that you're being godlike or whatever, just but you're you're doing the best job you can making it as as awesome experience for your guests as you can, and like you said, there's always gonna be there's always gonna be haters out there, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:37

There are. And I mean, like you guys mentioned, uh if you want to Google right now, you know, Airbnb reviews or VRBO reviews, and I can show you thousands and millions of negative reviews. So it that's the problem I have with reviews. It it's uh it means well, but it there you should put a big asterisk by do I trust this whole system emphatically throughout everything. And I say, you know, be very careful, you know, look at the reviews, get a get a feeling in your gut. And reviews, you know, I I'm on seven, eight different websites advertising my property, and there's reviews everywhere. So if you come along and see one website and it has three reviews, well I might have seven reviews over here and four more over here and six more over here and twenty-two over here. Um it's hard to get the whole picture, but you know, if you start with it and then you have a good relationship and you know, the person answers the phone and they return your emails. Most people will get a warm and fuzzy for you with, you know, how you run your business in general.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

That's true. That's so very true. And so do y'all offer the reviews right now in in your platform?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:48

We do. Yeah, you'll see them on, you know, they can submit the reviews and they get posted on the listings. But we run through the same things, you know, the owners will call and say, Well, I don't want this review up there because this person was this, and you know, it's like, well, now we got an argument on our hands, who who do you believe? And then we're put in that position, and it's it's a very it's very difficult to to deal with it in a straightforward manner.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

How do you do it?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:17

Well, y yeah, you we we just try to we always encourage them to respond to it because I think you know, if it's something negative and you don't respond, you didn't have a chance to explain yourself. And sometimes donors think the only review the only good review is a five star review, um or the highest level, whatever it is. And I think it's okay if somebody, you know, hey, it it was a good vacation, but it was rainy all week and we left early and they give them a four-star review. Well, you know, it wasn't your fault, but you know, it the person didn't have a great time, so he's just giving his honest opinion. It it it's just very subjective.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:54

He was really giving God that four star review.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:59

Which i is crazy. Um yeah, speaking of reviews, I just had a you know, some guests stay there and they loved the place. They gave me they said how awesome it was, gave me a glowing, you know, you know, write-up and everything, and they left me a four-star. So I was like, what the heck is that about, man?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:17

And some people might say, Well, I just don't give five stars. You know, we've heard that before.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:22

Right, right, right. You know, I didn't have a bidet or something like that.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:26

Yeah, I've I've heard like people in uh like I had people a guy from I think France, and he kind of said the same thing. Like he was saying in Europe, uh he said, Yeah, we don't really give five-star views because it's it's impossible, I guess, to have a five-star experience. I'm like, okay, you know, but that's just what what he came from, what he said. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:50

Yeah. Well crazy, man. Well, um Joe Godar. Godar, I'm sorry, it's Godar, right? Right, right. Okay, Godar, like like Hodar from Game of Thrones, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:02

Go and Dar, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:04

Go and Dar. Well, um, man, we appreciate it. Uh appreciate it so much that you came on the show. Sorry, I have a bit of a cold. Um I'm struggling through this a little bit. But um, man, we got so much awesome information from you. We appreciate you hopping on and and and letting us know how uh there's another way to do it. And I'm glad that these um and and you're keeping it regional, you're you're perfecting your niche right now, and that's great, and you're you plan on expanding. That's how it should be, you know, a a slow methodical expansion, I think, before you just I like there's something to be said, because I mean Airbnb, boom, all you know, they expanded real fast, and all of a sudden there are all kinds of legal issues everywhere, and they're fighting legal battles all over the globe. And um, but you're fine, you're you know, you're doing it, you're doing it right, I think. And and you go into the council meetings and and you're and you're explaining this to people both sides, and I think that's really important. Uh we're over there, you know, fighting, and all all these people are are are mentioning about Airbnb to us, and we're like, hey, you know, we're not the company, but you know, we're we benefit from them in a way, and this and trying to explain things away, whereas Airbnb is not really up there, you know, talking for us. But I mean, for you to actually go to those meetings and and and try to educate people, I think that's really valuable, and that's the a big thing that's missing in this STR market we got going on right now.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:25

No, I appreciate being on here, and uh we're just trying to you know find our niche and and hold on to our niche and just try to bring something beneficial to the uh to the market.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:36

That's awesome. And so where can uh folks get a hold of you at, Joe?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:40

Um the easiest way is just go to Emerald Coast by Owner and uh just click on uh the contact us and you can send us an email or a phone call directly. Or jump on the chat like you did, and uh you'll see the little chat button in there, and uh we try to man that best we can, usually Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:58

Yeah, I hit that chat button because I uh like when we saw that video and I and I told and I told Mike I was like, I need to get uh I said this guy's got a cool idea. And he's like, get him on the show. And I went to that website and I was like, I was about to send a message, like, oh, there's a chat button there. And so I clicked that chat button and uh this lady answered, um, I forgot her name. She answered you know right away, and I was like, hey, uh, can I speak to the owner? Kind of maybe not like that. And I explained to her what we were doing, and she's like, oh, hold on one sec. And then boom, there's there's Joe, the the founder of Emeralds. Um Emerald Coast by owner. Right. And I'm talking directly to the founder, and I'm like, wow, where where does this ever happen? You know, it'll happen on Airbnb for sure. But I thought this is the coolest thing, and he's very responsive. Hit him up. I mean, you have any questions, and um, hey, you might get a spot out there on the Emerald Coast and and start making some money with Joe.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:53

Yeah, come down and visit us. There's uh a lot of people that had uh some problems with the hurricane, so we're hoping they could get all back up and running. The best thing that somebody could do is you know go visit them and you know go back to those restaurants and book their vacations with them again, and uh at they're rebuilding it and cleaning up as fast as they can, and everybody down there appreciates the business.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:14

Wow, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:16

Heck yeah. Well, thank you so much, Joe, and we look forward to keeping in contact with you and seeing where this where this whole big thing goes.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:24

Yeah, let's stay in touch and I really appreciate you guys having me on. All right, man. Thanks. Take it easy. All right, have a great night.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:32

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Live Let Drive. Be sure to tune in next week for all the latest in the world of Airbnb and all that entails.