Episode 365 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop, powered by eXp Realty

The Short Term Shop

Episode 241 – Avery Carl, The Short Term Shop powered by eXp Realty

Time Stamp

(00:01:28) The Benefits of Using Short-Term Rentals

(00:07:32) Rock and Metal Enthusiast’s Musical Journey

(00:11:40) Finding a Southern Balance in Nashville

(00:16:26) The Responsive Vacation House Experts

(00:21:09) Short-term Rental Success in Vacation Towns

(00:27:19) Creating Memorable Experiences with Short Term Rentals

(00:32:22) Cautious Sellers and Increased Competition in Real Estate

(00:36:44) Responsive Communication: Key to Agent Success

Transcript

00:00:00 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

But if you don’t have the money to go buy the deals, you got to hustle and crush it and work hard and patience. Got to take your time. Slow down. I see all these new folks that are just, like, so shot out of a cannon. I got to have 14 doors tomorrow, and it’s just not realistic.

00:00:20 – Bill Risser

You’re listening to the Real Estate Sessions podcast, and I’m your host, Bill Risser, executive Vice President, Strategic Partnerships with Rate, my Agent, a digital marketing platform designed to help great agents harness the power of verified reviews. For more information, head on over to Ratemyagent.com. Listen in as I interview industry leaders and get their stories and journeys to the world of real estate. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 365 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend I had so much fun recording this episode. If you could see me right now, if I can beam, I’m beaming. I got to talk to Luke Carl. Luke is Avery Carl’s husband partner in the short term shop. Powered brokered by EXP Realty, luke handles all the nuts and bolts of the business that the Short Term Shop has built. A fantastic background, much like Avery. Rock and roll all the way. So we’re going to have a wonderful time in this conversation. Let’s just get this thing started. Luke, welcome to the podcast.

00:01:28 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

My pleasure, man. My pleasure. Absolute honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

00:01:33 – Bill Risser

I’m really excited about this because it’s very rare for me to interview the husband and the wife right on the podcast, especially literally. I think this is almost three years after I had my first conversation with Avery, and she was just doing some great things. Both of you were doing some great things at that time with the Short Term Shop. We’re going to spend a lot of time talking about that, but first I like to find out about my guests. I like to go back in time. And I know that you and Avery lived in Brooklyn at one point, right in your lives. And I know that Avery’s from Mississippi originally. I’m just guessing you’re not. Did you grow up in New York?

00:02:08 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

No, I didn’t, as a matter of fact. Blow your mind again. I’m from Nebraska, so we’re both from states that nobody’s ever heard of, but yeah, we both come from really small town. My town is actually smaller. I win on that one. She grew up in a college town, Mississippi State, Starkville, and I grew up not far from Omaha. Not too far. She makes jokes when I say I’m from a town of 1100 people, because I did grow up about 45 minutes to an hour from Omaha. So big city, but way out in the sticks in a cornfield. But, yeah, small town boy, for most purposes. And we both moved to the city. Yeah, I lived in New York for, man, a long time, like 1415 years.

00:02:48 – Bill Risser

Okay, so how old were you when you left Nebraska? I mean, did you go to high school there? You went all that, stayed there till.

00:02:53 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

That time, yeah, born and raised. My folks and my brother and most of my family still lives there, immediate family. And I moved when I was 20. I couldn’t wait to get out. I said, I’m going to go move to the biggest city on the planet and take over the world. That’s pretty much what I did, at least to my standards anyway. And I did go to college at University of Nebraska, Omaha for three years. That didn’t go so well. And so I just basically I hopped in a van with a couple of guys I never met. And this is the early days. That’s actually a pretty good story. I won’t get into the weeds. But way back, this was like, MySpace hadn’t even been created yet, and it was like right on the verge of that MySpace era. And there was a band from one town over Lincoln where the football team is, and I knew that they had moved to the big city, and I found their email address somehow. This was like email. I mean, this would have been like 1999, probably, and the creation of all that internet stuff. Email as I knew it. Anyway, and I shot him an email and he said, actually, we’re coming through town. You can get in our van and go with us back to New York. And I said, Sign me up, let’s go. Wow.

00:04:00 – Bill Risser

Now, look, it’s no secret that you are a massive fan of rock, especially, we’ll call it metal. But you’re way too young. Like, right now, you’re wearing an Iron Maiden shirt. I’ve seen the Motorhead, I’ve seen these other shirts that you’re wearing. You’re too young. So I want to hear from you. Who influenced you? There had to be somebody in your life that loved that music and played it when you were younger, or did you just discover it on your own?

00:04:23 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

No, 100%. Yeah, it was my dad.

00:04:25 – Bill Risser

Okay.

00:04:26 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Same with Avery. She’s quite a bit younger than me. My gray hairs are coming out like crazy, but I’m technically too young for like an AC DC era. I was like eleven years old when Nirvana came out. And so right in that era was kind of my, heyday, that Grunge era, but I didn’t really like it. It was okay, but my dad was blasting Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath and Zeppelin pretty often. He had a big record player, old school record, big giant speakers, and he was always playing his old records and it just rubbed off on me. He never really went to concerts or anything like that, but man, I got hooked. I got hooked at a real young age. I started playing music when I was really young. I think I was probably seven when I first started kind of getting a little bit more serious and started taking lessons and things. And I had my first drum set by the time I was eight years old and just took to it at an early age in the middle of a cornfield where there was nothing else to do, know, so the rest is history. And Avery, yes, she’s quite a bit younger than I am. Same thing with her. Her dad was a major rocker, and he goes to rock shows with us. He’s an awesome dude, too, and we were just raised right on good music.

00:05:38 – Bill Risser

So I’ll make that really tough question for somebody who’s as deep into the music as you are. If you had to pick one band, you only get one. That’s hard to do.

00:05:50 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

It is hard to do, but that’s a question. I’ve been in rock and roll radio for a long time, and that question comes up a lot. We’ll talk about that, but for me, it’d be ACDC. If I had to pick one band, period, that was like, I guess, my favorite, because we can go on about this for hours. I don’t know that my desert island or deserted island, however you want to say it band would be the same as necessarily my favorite band. That might be two different questions, but maybe not. But if I had to pick one band as my favorite of all time, I believe AC DC would be the top of the list. And we’re taking the kids. We have a five and a three year old next week. There’s a concert where they do Coachella in California, and it’s a bunch, know, the really biggest rock bands ever that are still around, know, they’re getting older, and AC DC is going to be there as well as Iron Maiden, who’s on my shirt today, and Guns N’Roses Metallica. And this is a big event, and we are taking our five year old and our three year old because I can’t imagine they’re ever going to get the chance to see ACDC again. And so that is important to us at some point. My son just turned three. I do feel that he’s got a pretty good chance to be the last person on the planet someday that can say he saw ACDC live.

00:07:05 – Bill Risser

That’s great. Is Axel touring with Guns N’Roses again?

00:07:09 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah, Axel’s been back with the band. Well, it’s the other way around, really. He’s always had the know, Guns N’Roses was Axel with a different band for many, many years, but the band has been back together for four, five, six years now and touring full time with the original guys, except for the drummer, Steven Adler has not been in the band for two or three years.

00:07:32 – Bill Risser

So you played drums, you had to be in multiple bands. I mean, I can’t imagine you weren’t playing and playing music and doing covers of this kind of stuff. Is that what you were kind of driving towards?

00:07:43 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah, I was. I started playing in bands when I was very young and my parents were driving me to nightclubs because I couldn’t drive yet. And dropping me off and playing shows with, I’d say about 15 is where that started to get pretty serious, and 16 somewhere in that neighborhood. And I always had at least one band, even at that age, I usually had two. And I never really made a career out of it. There’s not like any band that I could mention that you’ve ever heard of or anything, but it was a huge part of my life. And then eventually, just to move the story along, because, quite frankly, there’s not anything interesting in the band section of my life. But I got into, when I moved to New York, of course, the playing bands. And I had again, at least one or two bands going at all times in the city. I started attending bar to make ends meet and then eventually ended up owning a little rock and roll bar in Manhattan when I was 25 years old. The lady I was working for owned several bars in the neighborhood and she was opening a new one and basically brought me in to run the show. I was a very young age, and that’s where I learned how to run a business. I’m very grateful for her, even though it was a lot of work and definitely probably not the healthiest way to live your life, but that whole experience, especially so young, being a guy straight off the cornfield, literally, I learned how to run a business in New York City. A very successful I mean, it was teeny, tiny, little 600, 700 square foot bar. But rock and roll, it was rock and roll all the time. And that was a time and place in the world where you couldn’t find that thing, that type of thing. There was very few places, even in that massive city of 12 million people, where you could even go hear a rock and roll song and get a cheap beer. So we kind of cornered that market in our neighborhood and it took off right away. And the bar was very popular. And then it eventually moved into the radio thing from there. Yeah.

00:09:36 – Bill Risser

So how long does it take for you to move on to I think you were on SiriusXM, right? You were part of Ozzy’s Boneyard, which had to be a dream come true.

00:09:46 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Absolutely. 100%. I still am, actually. I did that after the bar. I got lucky and I fell into a couple of overnight shows on a channel on satellite radio and, well, lucky making $80 a show or whatever, but I worked my way up. And it’s like that in any business. You got to sweep the floors before you can make a living. And very grateful for radio and satellite radio and my career. There and did that for many, many years. Worked my way up. Eventually got to the point where it was like a real job and I was in love with it. And I still do it. I gave up full time radio probably about three years ago, and I still do two shows on one show on Saturday and one show on Sunday and play old rock and roll records and just old school radio disc jockey, the guy talking between the songs, that kind of thing. Still love it. It’s fun.

00:10:41 – Bill Risser

I would say three years ago is kind of when the short term shop took off, in my opinion, looking at some of the results. And so you probably went full time there. So we’ll gently switch over. The first is I’ve got to get you and Avery connected. How did you meet? Because I know that you both have that rock background. I’m assuming that was part of it.

00:11:00 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Oh, yeah, we met at a rock and roll concert. I don’t remember much of it, to be honest. And I ran into her again, like, a week later, and she was like, you’re that guy from the concert? And I’m like, what? I didn’t remember. So we ran into each other randomly twice in New York City. And it was just meant to be. We were, like, right on the edge of when everybody switched over to Tinder and all that. We actually met in real life and Rest is history, madly in love. And of course, now we’ve been together for quite some time and have two wonderful, just amazing, perfect children. But, yeah, we did meet at a rock and roll concert.

00:11:35 – Bill Risser

How do you go to Nashville? What was the move there? What was it for? Why?

00:11:40 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah. Which leads to the real. So she’s from the south, and I’ve been in New York for as long as I needed to do whatever I was doing there, and I mean a long time. And it was time I met the right girl. And she was from Mississippi, and I’m like, that’s not a real place. And she took me there, and then she said, you know what? I want to move closer to my family. Family’s important to me. And I agreed with her. I said, that’s a good idea. And so we landed on Tennessee, Nashville. It was a good, happy medium between having a big city, but also in the south. And we did that for a number of years and then eventually moved further out into the woods. And now these days, we’re in Florida, actually. But that’s a whole nother story.

00:12:26 – Bill Risser

So Avery shared a story. I’d like to hear your version of it, of how you first got involved in investing, in owning another property, a rental property.

00:12:38 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah. And my story is a little different than her story, even though this is the same story.

00:12:42 – Bill Risser

It happens that way.

00:12:44 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Do you remember which number she was on your podcast?

00:12:46 – Bill Risser

I can look it up. I’ll look it up while you’re going.

00:12:48 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah, but just to refer back if anybody’s interested because she is a driving force in real estate, obviously, and everybody loves her. But anyway, for me it was very simple. We moved from a place where I could never in a million years dream of affording real estate to a place where we could afford real estate. And that was it. And I grew up. My dad was a hammer swinger. He built the house he lives in and did contracting on the side. And his dad, my grandfather, was a contractor and my uncle, my dad’s brother, and all these guys in the whole family were builders and contractors and mostly side gigs here and there. But some of them were doing it for a living and so it was always around. My dad taught me what hammer to buy and how to swing a hammer at a very early age and how to get my way around a house, which was a very important tool that I didn’t even realize I was learning. We bought our first house there in Tennessee and we were both just extremely drawn to the experience and fell in love with it, which as many people do. And I actually thought I was going to. I ended up going to home inspector school. I knew that I was sucked into this house buying thing. I didn’t know which part of it was going to be for me. So I just started to explore all avenues and I happened to dig the guy that did our inspection and I related to him coming from a blue collar family, et cetera. And I went to home inspector school and I quickly learned that wasn’t going to do it for me. And it wasn’t until years and years later that I realized that just the actual landlording was what I was meant to do. But at that time I did start to focus on that. It took me many years to realize that was my goal, my mission in life, my gift, if you will, because it is not easy and not everybody can do it. But we started to save money and educate ourselves at that point in time and that’s when it all started. And I believe you heard the story about the first home we lived on. $25 a day each for it was 18 months. I think it actually took us 17. We were a month early to come up with our first down payment on a rental property. We had a goal of $100,000 house and we knew we needed what we thought we needed. 20% down. That’s all we knew about real estate. And so we came up with 20 grand the hard way and we were commuting too. So that was $25 a day for my gas and that was man, it was a long drive to get to working back and food and a stop at the bar on the way or whatever, or at the end, I should say. We bootstrapped it. We worked our asses off and we set goals, and we made it happen. We ended up 18 months later buying our first rental property. And then shortly after that, we just got completely immersed in the I decided to make it my you know, I wanted it to be my career for me. I was just learning my trade. I need to know every single teeny tiny detail of this business if I’m going to succeed. And that’s what I did. I first started with lending was my first obsession. I wanted to know everything about it anyway. Time goes by. We learned and learned and learned and read and read, and bigger pockets, of course, was a big thing for us at the time. And just found them I think I originally found them around episode 70 of their podcast or so and became obsessed with that. And they were doing a great thing over there. And then the books, of course, at that point, I had not read Richstad or even heard of it, and so that was presented to me and, of course, fell in love with that. And the rest is history.

00:16:26 – Bill Risser

Yeah. When you first got into the game, it was more long term kind of stuff, right. That’s kind of what you were focused on. But the name of the group, the company, the Empire is the Short Term Shop. Yeah, because I think that’s how I first met Avery was you guys kind of evolved into this. How do we get these properties to get them onto the sites? Right. And how do we manipulate or at least work with Airbnb or VRBO or all these other places? So when did that little transition come in your mind? And I know you still do both, and you still consult or help investors with whatever plan they want, but how did that short term stuff come about?

00:17:09 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah. So for me and again, Avery’s story is slightly different, but for me, it was we needed a new market, so we bought that house in Nashville, and then all of a sudden, Nashville like, you couldn’t even go to the grocery store without seeing a famous person, and it just completely skyrocketed. So overnight, that house I don’t want to say it doubled overnight, but it was pretty damn close, and I hated that. Yeah. You would think that as a guy. I was maybe 31, two, something like that at the time, young guy. We were just married, and you get handed $100,000 because the city you’re living in blew up. You’d think that’s an amazing thing, but I was annoyed because I wanted to do it again. And I’m like, by the time I come up with another down payment, this house isn’t going to make any money. It’s going to cost me twice as much to buy it. And the rent is still going to be the same as what it was when I rented my tenant. So I was annoyed and we had to look elsewhere. Quite frankly. It was really as simple as the fact that the next town where you could make a couple of bucks was Pigeon Forge Gatlinburg, and it was right down the road. And Avery had quite a bit of experience there because she grew up in the south, and that’s what you do in the south, you go to the so she said, you know, they got cabins out there. And I was so we went and looked and we were early adopters, quite frankly. We were right place, right time. We got lucky and we work our rear ends off. We still, to this day, our very first cabin. We still own them all, never refinanced or anything, which it’s important to note because of how much equity has been put into the economy. Everybody seems to be taking as much equity as they can, and we never did that at know on those properties anyway. We still today own what are the longest running airbnbs in the Great Smoky Mountain area of Tennessee. Now, that being said, Bill, we are nowhere near we didn’t create that. They’ve been doing overnight rentals in the Smokies for 150 years, right? But we were early adopters on this whole new hip way of doing things. Also, I do want to give credit where credit is due. Verbo has been around since 1999, going again back to me being in high school. So people have been doing what we’re doing for a very long time, but it just started to change right when we were getting involved. And I’m also an early airbnb adopter. I’ve been on airbnb since 2011, and if you remember, they kind of started in 2007, give or take, but it was really in the infant stages. And what it was was, believe it or not, it was a Super Bowl commercial that put airbnb on the map, right, in 2011. And if you go read my profile, I’ve been on there since eleven. And so we were right place, right time. Nobody was doing this new hip, cool way of doing things in those old Tennessee mountains, and quite frankly, we got lucky. But again, to me, we were meant to do this. We were part of a was, honestly, it was really a bigger thing than what we were capable of, and we were just the figureheads in some capacity, of course, many other people doing what we’re doing, but we got in, we did it, we had success, and then we shared it with other people. Go giver, give, give, give, give, give is our philosophy and it’s paid off for us.

00:20:46 – Bill Risser

Yeah, three years ago, I think you were in three states, and I remember Avery talking about how you open up a state. It’s not like you do it remotely, you like, travel there and you make sure you’re in the right places, right? But it’s now 2023, and if you look at the map on Short Term Shop, you’re in a whole lot more states. How many states are you guys in now?

00:21:09 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

20. Well, 20 markets. Some markets are in I don’t know the number of states, if you want to know the truth.

00:21:15 – Bill Risser

But 20 something less than 20.

00:21:17 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yes, probably 20 or less. And it’s all vacation towns, so we have a model. Right? And again, I should mention that, of course, avery in this whole process. Again, extremely hardworking human being. She’s not a human. I mean, I live with her, so I get to see it. She’s not normal. She plugs herself in at night. She’s a freak, and I’m very proud of her. She works her ass off, and she, over time, became literally one of the biggest real estate agents on the planet. And the Short Term Shop was born, and we have this amazing team of really amazing agents that she’s trained and hired and curated the entire process. And of course, I was there along for the ride. I’m not an agent. I should mention that. I’ve never been an agent, and I’ve never sold a house that I didn’t own, and even then I used an agent. But yeah, so the Short Term Shop was born, and it’s been our honor and our privilege to give back all this stuff that we’ve learned by basically killing ourselves, quite frankly, over the years. Because, listen, either you’ve got a lot of money and that’s why you got in real estate, or you’re going to kill yourself and bust your ass in real estate. You got two choices, right? And we didn’t have a lot of money. Now, Bill, real estate is a $4 trillion business industry, and so the money is there. But if you don’t have the money to go buy the deals, you got to hustle and crush it and work hard and patience. Got to take your time, slow down. I see all these new folks that are just, like, so shot out of a cannon. I got to have 14 doors tomorrow. And it’s just not realistic. And that’s how we did things. And we learned and learned and learned and learned and still continued. I still, every day wake up at four in the morning and I listen to two podcasts and read three books, and I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to work so hard, because that’s what it takes. That’s what it takes.

00:23:10 – Bill Risser

If only there was someone at the Short Term Shop that was producing content that could help that new person trying to figure out how to get into the game.

00:23:18 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Right.

00:23:19 – Bill Risser

And that’s you. Your title. I love the title. CEO, chief educator officer, we’ll call it. And you’re doing a ton of videos. You’re obviously not a shy person, so let’s talk about that process for you, I think it has to be right up your alley. You’re very comfortable in that position, and I’m sure you get tons of questions in that role. And I always like to find out what’s the most common question or what’s the dumbest question? We shouldn’t say dumb. The weirdest question that you’re asked as you’re trying to educate, my guess is not just maybe, it’s also educating agents as well as the public. Is that true?

00:23:54 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah, a little bit. On investing I obviously have nothing to offer an agent in the way of closing a deal. That’s not something I am capable of doing, and I don’t have the credentials. But on investments absolutely. And that’s where I came in. My wife was getting huge as a real estate agent and making a name for herself, and she needed help with all these questions, and I had the answer. I remember in the very early days, they would just call me clients, would call me her clients, and they would ask me a million questions about what do I do when this happens, what do I do when that happens? And of course, it evolved into actual presentations and more professional over the years. And now I teach a class called Management Monday, which is our big thing at the shop, where it’s a three hour intensive. Basically everything you need to know about how to manage a property from a distance. But just to answer your question, the two biggest repeat questions I get are, how do I get into my next deal? How do I get my next property? And then, how do I do this from a distance? I can’t do this from a distance. To answer the first question. Bill, as you know, I hate to be brutally honest, but if you want to get into your next property, you’re going to need some know. It’s kind of as simple as that. And Avery and I put in the time. I mean, we were doing everything back in the day. I sold a car. I sold a motorcycle. She sold a guitar. Here’s one for you. I don’t recommend this one. We got in a terrible car accident. Horrible car accident. And got a settlement, and that went towards a down payment. Do not do that one.

00:25:28 – Bill Risser

That’s good.

00:25:29 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

No, it was horrible.

00:25:31 – Bill Risser

Right?

00:25:32 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

And it wasn’t much. It wasn’t enough to buy a house. But it went in the fire. Everything went in the fire because we were so shot out of a canyon. And honestly, man, to bring it back full circle, I think it goes back to the rock and roll thing. Avery and I are both rock and rollers, and there’s a big culture there where you don’t take any crap. And so we found that real estate was our path because we could be our own boss, basically, even though we knew we were going to have to work harder. I’ve worked 20, 30, 40 times harder than any job I’ve ever had at this real estate thing. And I’m glad to do it. I feel it’s a privilege to be able to do this. And Bill, here’s another thing I’ve always lived by. If you can’t go up, get out, that’s a huge thing for me. It’s back in the bar. I knew that I was at the top. I was like, this is as big as I can get in the dive rock and roll bar business. I’m in the biggest city in the world. My bar is packed every night. Yes, I could open more of them. So in real estate, there’s no such thing. There’s no ceiling. You can just keep going and building infinitely if you want to. Now, the beauty about that, again, even more beautiful, is that at some point you might slow down and be like, you know what? I think I’m good. And I’m still trying to find that happy level, that medium, that level right there. I think I’m pretty close to it, but if I found the right deal, I’d jump all over it. But anyway, I don’t even remember where we were at, but we went a lot of different directions.

00:27:08 – Bill Risser

I’ll bring you back, Mr. Rock and Roll. I know it would take probably two podcast episodes to cover this, but managing from afar some basic tips, that’d be great, man.

00:27:19 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Get out of your own way. It’s my best piece of advice. It’s not that big a deal again. David Green, of course, wrote the book on investment. Long distance real estate investing doesn’t have anything to do with short term, but the principles are still there. And here, let me throw this one at you, Bill. And as you can tell, I’ve probably said this once or twice before. If you’re going to get into short term, one of the best reasons to do that is because you can actually use it. There’s no other asset class out there on the planet. You can’t sleep inside of a stock. You can’t create memories at a long term rental. I mean, you can rehabbing it and working on it and stuff, but you can’t take your kids there and go fishing, and you can do that with a vacation home. And Avery loves to travel, and that’s really why I was always definitely more towards the long term side of things. And we’ve got a couple of 300 long term rentals and only just the eight vacation homes. Now, also keep in mind, one vacation home is like, ten or 20 long term single families, depending on how your purchase price is. Obviously, it’s going to be somewhere in that ballpark, really, if you’re doing a vacation home. Right? Average vacation home in America is going to be something like in a vacation town, you’re probably looking at 6800. Now, it can be done for two or three, no problem. It depends on your market. But anyway, what my point is that you can use it. You can take your family there, you can utilize it in the off season. There’s no lease. There’s nobody in there. Like, I live here, you can’t come here.

00:28:53 – Bill Risser

Right?

00:28:54 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

And that’s a wonderful thing. That is a wonderful thing. So that being said, nobody is going to go on vacation in the town they live in. So almost everybody’s going to be doing if you’re doing it the way we do it, you’re probably going to be doing it from a distance. Because why the hell would you buy a vacation home right down the street? It’s just part of the gig. If you’re going to get into vacation rental, real estate, there’s a 95% chance that you’re going to be doing it from a distance. And Airbnb and Verbo have put millions and millions and billions of dollars into the marketing for us and kind of they don’t get enough credit, in my opinion. They get crapped on a lot, and sometimes they deserve it. But man, think of all the money they’ve spent to make it easier for us to do what we’re doing. And I’m grateful for that.

00:29:42 – Bill Risser

Was it a system you built over time, trial and error? Because I imagine you got to have some key people that live in that vacation down next to your vacation rental. Otherwise you’re just not going to make it work.

00:29:55 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Well, I’d love to take credit for that, but if you want to know the truth, these people are already these the towns where we’re talking about, where Avery operates, and there are others. There’s plenty of towns that we’re not in that this would work. What you’re looking for, Bill, is a town where a lot of people go on vacation, but not a lot of people live. So most of the people in those towns are working in this industry. And over the years, it has been more and more common. When we first started, it was difficult to find a cleaner because they were all working for the property management companies, and it was kind of a cushy gig. Maybe they even had their own car, a work vehicle or whatever, and they kind of looked at us funny, like, you’re going to put this on? What? And do what with it? It was a new thing. And now everybody knows what Airbnb is, everybody knows what Verbo is, and so it’s a household thing. Now. We live in a tiny I mean, it’s about 7000 people in the town we live in, but again, millions and millions of people coming in. For instance, I was at church on a Sunday morning, and the lady in front of me, I happened to notice she was scrolling through Verbo on her phone of the messages, and she had, like, 40 house. She was a property manager, and it’s just totally normal. And you go to any other town outside of one of these little vacation towns, and that would be like, wait a minute, what are you doing? How do you know about verba. But down here she literally had like it was probably a hundred properties she was scrolling through during Know. And it’s just the way it is. It’s totally normal. And of course, she knows how to find a good housekeeper. Now, Bill, as you know, it’s never easy to find a good employee of any kind. So you got to do your work there and put in the time and effort and get basically you got to be let me put it this way, you hear sometimes every now and then in this business where I can’t find a good cleaner, oh man, I can’t do this because there’s no good cleaners. That’s somebody that nobody wants to work for that person because they aren’t good at Know. If you’re a good landlord, people want.

00:31:57 – Bill Risser

To work for you. Talking to the investor side of Luke, right? This is your passion. This is what you love doing. And what do you see going forward, right? Because rates are still kind of a problem. Inventory can be a problem in a lot of places in the country, probably especially in the places where you want to have those rentals. So what’s your take? What do you see and what’s your crystal ball say?

00:32:22 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Overall economy or my personal future?

00:32:26 – Bill Risser

Well, how about both?

00:32:28 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah, they are fairly related, I suppose.

00:32:31 – Bill Risser

Okay.

00:32:31 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

It’s rough out there. It is. It’s tough. What we’ve got is a standstill, right? You’ve got sellers. Well, and there’s two different kinds of sellers right now. You got the sellers that bought in 2021 and 2022 that quite frankly, they’re only selling because they’re scared. And if they were smart, they would not sell. Don’t do that. If you bought in 21 or 20, you need to hold that thing. You’ve got to hold it. I don’t care what it is. Trailer park, mobile, home park, storage units, if you bought it to peak, don’t sell. But we do have those sellers right now because they’re scared and it’s sad and it’s unfortunate and I hope that they change their mind, quite frankly. And then you’ve got these others and that’s kind of a small, really in the grand scheme of things compared to all property owners worldwide, you’re talking a very small number of people that buy in a one year period. Now that we did have a metric ton of people buy real estate in 2021. So it’s higher than a normal year, but it’s still just one or two years. And so then you got the people that were before the gold rush when the money printing and those people are like, okay, let’s put it at this super high price that it could have gotten a year and a half ago. Let’s go ahead and see if we can get that. But I’m not really like, they’re not really sellers and sometimes they’re getting it, sometimes they’re not. I’ve made four offers in the last week. These were on single family long terms and they didn’t go anywhere. I think they probably got scooped up by primary homeowners. Two, three years ago, these properties would not been primary homebuyers, would not have been my competition. They wouldn’t want these houses. And now, today, right now, anyway, they are wanting it. But where is it going? I have no idea, man. I do my best to firstly, I’m always positive, right? I am eternal optimist. You’re not going to get me to say anything negative, and I think that’s a good thing. Some people are so well, of course the short term shop sells houses. Of course you’re being positive. And I’m like, well, if you want me to sit around and crap on real estate, that’s not going to happen, because it has given so much to me. For me, it’s more about making sure my houses are awesome. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. I do that in general. I want to be a really good landlord. I want my people to have an amazing place to create memories and an awesome place for my long terms to raise their kids and come home from. Nice place to come home from soccer practice and cook dinner, granite countertops and nice home. And they deserve it. For me. Again, I like to give, give, give, give, give. And I take those same principles in my real estate. My properties are going to be nicer than the guy next door, than the average Joe landlord. And I do feel that that’s come back to me in the form of more wealth. Quite frankly. I have no idea if I answered your question, Bill. I had fun.

00:35:12 – Bill Risser

Anyway, Luke, this has been awesome. And I’m going to ask you the same final question I’ve asked every guest, and there’s probably 30 or 40 guests I have that weren’t realtors. So you don’t have to be a realtor to answer this. It’s what one piece of advice would you give a new agent? Just getting started.

00:35:29 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

For me again, I have the buyer’s perspective, and I love a great real estate agent. It’s obviously a huge deal in my household, and I know what real estate agents go through on a daily basis. And it’s hard. You’re in a client facing business, and you’re going to get crapped on. And that’s probably why I can’t do can’t I can’t handle it. Like Avery, man, she just handles it. It’s just smooth as butter. She’s absolutely born to close deals. She’s so good at it. I have a lot of respect for the agents I work with, and I have spent time on those relationships. I have one agent that I talk to every single day. I have several agents because I also buy multifamily. A number of years ago, you evolve and grow, and eventually we started buying apartments. And so I have a number of agents in that space as well. And I have one agent in the single family long term space. And then, of course, I have the short term shop. Usually that bill. If I need to buy another vacation home, it’s because Avery threw it in my know, she’s like, Here, go buy this.

00:36:34 – Bill Risser

We want this one.

00:36:36 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah, go buy this. And I’m like, oh, boy, here we go.

00:36:39 – Bill Risser

It sounds like know, be be a relationship. Yeah.

00:36:44 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Now, to bring it down, to answer your actual question without that big giant speech, answer the phone. For me, being responsive is number one. As a buyer, that’s what I want. Now, not every buyer is going to be the same, so you need to be a chameleon. To me, I learned a lot about client facing in the bar. Being able to judge character and figure out what they need, that’s the most important thing. Listen to some zig ziglar and figure out what this person actually wants out of life. And at this stage in my career, I want to be able to provide amazing places for these people to create a nice life. And so I’m looking for neighborhoods and things like that. Good neighborhoods, but respond and find out what they need and yeah, build a relationship, you find a guy like me. Man. My long term agent closed, I don’t know, 35 deals with me last year, so she’s happy. This year is a little different, but we’re working on it.

00:37:39 – Bill Risser

Nice. Yeah, I think that’s a great answer. And by the way, only two people have ever said, answer the phone. It was the first guest, Jay Thompson. And now episode 365.

00:37:51 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

You.

00:37:52 – Bill Risser

So that’s very cool. You’ll always have that. So I can’t tell you how much fun this was. Luke, if someone wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?

00:38:01 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Yeah, short term shop. We’ve built an amazing team of awesome agents, and it’s a family vibe. And me and Avery, we’ve really worked our rear ends off, and we want to earn your business. Quite frankly, Avery is the best in the business. And if you’re interested, we want to be a household name. If you want to buy a vacation house, you come to Avery. It’s as simple as that. And then Luke will teach you how to do the nuts and bolts. So the shorttermshop.com again, I have a podcast as well, short Term Rental Management. You’re never going to believe it’s about managing short term rentals, and I do that every Tuesday, and it’s very niche down. I mean, it’s about as niche down as you can get my podcast, but we have a lot of fun over there.

00:38:45 – Bill Risser

Yeah, that’s super important in the podcast world. Niche is good. Episode 241 was Avery’s year 365. She was 241 back in June of 2020. So I’ll put links to that. I’ll put links to your podcast. I’ll put links to everything we talked about in the show notes. So if you’re listening, just go ahead and click down there and you can grab all that. Luke had a great time. This was amazing. I hope you’re going to be at EXP Con, maybe possibly in Vegas. Are you guys thinking about that?

00:39:09 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Wifey is speaking. She’s getting three awards. Avery and she’s speaking. I am not coming, but my daughter is my daughter is coming to see mom get some awards and then I’m taking my meeting. The whole family is going to reconvene at that metal concert that I was talking about, ACDC and Judas Priest in Indio, California. So we’re going to fly over the top of them and meet them in California.

00:39:37 – Bill Risser

Well, I’ll try to find her. I’ll be there with Rate, my agent. So we’re excited about our partnership with EXP, so we’ll try to say hi if we get a chance to. But thanks again. This was a really wonderful episode. Appreciate it.

00:39:49 – Luke Carl – The Short Term Shop

Absolutely. My pleasure, man. You’re a rock star and I appreciate your time.

00:39:52 – Bill Risser

Thank you for listening to the real estate sessions. Please head over to ratethispodcast.com forward slash re sessions to leave a review or a rate hitting and subscribe to the Real Estate Sessions podcast at your favorite podcast listening app.

Follow The Podcast and Bill

https://www.therealestatesessions.com

https://www.facebook.com/billrisser

https://www.youtube.com/billrisser

https://www.instagram.com.billrisser

https://www.linkedin.com/in/billrisser