Real Estate Sessions Rewind - Luke Carl, The Short Term Shop, Powered by EXP Realty

00:00:00 - Bill Risser

Welcome to another real estate sessions rewind episode. This week, we're going back to episode 365 with Luke Carl. He and his wife Avery run the short team shop powered by EXp Realty. I had a great time recording this episode, and I hope you enjoy it.

00:00:14 - Luke Carl

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

00:00:34 - Bill Risser

You're listening to the real estate sessions, and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers, and really anyone with a story to tell. It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me into my 9th year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now, I hope you enjoy the next journey.

00:00:58 - Luke Carl

Hi, everybody.

00:00:58 - Bill Risser

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.

00:01:42 - Luke Carl

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

00:01:47 - Bill Risser

I'm really excited about this because I. 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?

00:02:22 - Luke Carl

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 was actually smaller. I went on that one. She grew up in a college town, Mississippi State, Starkville. And I grew up. I grew up not far from Omaha. Not too far. You know, she makes jokes when I say I'm from a town of 1100 people because I did grow up, you know, about 45 minutes to an hour from Omaha. So big city, but way out. 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. I lived in New York for, man, a long time. Like 1415 years.

00:03:01 - Bill Risser

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

00:03:07 - Luke Carl

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 gonna go move to the biggest city on the planet and take over the world. And 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, you know, it's like, 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 I found there was a band from one town over Lincoln where the, where the football team is. And I knew that they had moved to the big city and I just. 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, you know, and email. And as I knew it anyway, and I shot him an email and he said, actually, we're coming through town. You can hop. Get in our van and go with us back to New York. And I said, sign me up. Let's go. Wow. Now look, it's.

00:04:15 - Bill Risser

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 let's. 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?

00:04:36 - Luke Carl

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

00:04:39 - Bill Risser

Okay.

00:04:39 - Luke Carl

Same with Avery. She's quite a bit younger than me. My gray hairs are coming out like crazy. But, you know, I am too. I'm technically too young for. For like an AC DC era. You know, I was like eleven years old when Nirvana came out. And so right in that era was. Was kind of my heyday, that grunge era. But I just. I didn't really like it, you know, my. I mean, it was okay, but my dad was blasting, you know, Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath and, and Zeppelin, like, pretty often. Like, he had a big record player, you know, old school record, big giant speakers, and. 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 really 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. Just took to it at an early age in the middle of a cornfield where there was nothing else to do, really, you know, so the rest is history, you know? And Avery, again, she's quite a bit younger than I am. Same thing with her. Her dad was a major, major rocker and he still. He goes to rock shows with us. He's an awesome dude, too. And we just. We were just raised right on good music.

00:05:52 - 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.

00:06:01 - Luke Carl

Is that.

00:06:02 - Bill Risser

That's hard to do.

00:06:03 - Luke Carl

It is hard to do, but that's a question. You know, I've been in rock and roll radio for a long time and that question comes up a lot. We can. We'll talk about that. But for me, it'd be AC DC 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 a band would be the same as necessarily my favorite band. Those. That. That might be two different questions, okay, but maybe not. But if I had to pick one, 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 in where they do Coachella in California, and it's a bunch of, you know, the really biggest rock bands ever that are still around because, you know, they're. 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 AC DC again. And so that is important to us at some point. My son just turned three. I do. 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 AC DC live. So that's great.

00:07:20 - Bill Risser

Is Axel touring with Guns N Roses again?

00:07:23 - Luke Carl

Yeah, Axel's been back with the band. Well, it's the other way around, really. He's always had the name, so it's been, you know, Axel. 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. Stephen Adler is not been in the band for two or three years.

00:07:45 - Bill Risser

So you. You played drums. You had to be in a. You had to be in a 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?

00:07:57 - Luke Carl

Yeah, I was. I started playing in bands when I was very young, and my parents were driving me to nightclubs, and because I couldn't drive yet, you know, 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 can 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. Okay. But I got into. When I moved to New York, of course, to play in bands, and I had, again, at least one or two bands going at all times in the city. I started tending 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. And 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. Definitely. Probably not the healthiest way to live your life. But, you know, she. That whole experience, especially so young, being a guy straight off the cornfield, literally.

00:09:16 - Bill Risser

Yeah.

00:09:17 - Luke Carl

You know, I learned how to run a business in New York City. A very successful. I mean, it was teeny, tiny, little 6700 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, you know, very few places in that big, you know, even in that massive city of 12 million people where you could even go hear a rock and roll song and get a, you know, cheap beer. So we kind of corner 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.

00:09:50 - Bill Risser

So how long does it take for you to move on to. I think you were. You were on SiriusXm, right? You were part of a Ozzy's boneyard, which was. Had to be a dream come true.

00:09:59 - Luke Carl

Absolutely. 100%. I still am, actually. I do that. I did that for after the bar. I kind of. 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, you know. But I worked my way up and that's like that in any business. You gotta. You gotta. You gotta sweep the floors before you can make a living, you know. And very grateful for the 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. I still do it. Gave up full time radio probably about three years ago. And I still do two shows on the one show on Saturday and one show on Sunday and play old rock and roll records and just old school, you know, old school radio disc jockey, you know, the guy talking between the songs, that kind of thing. Still love it. Yep. It's fun.

00:10:54 - 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 some. You probably went full time there. So let's. We'll gently switch over. The first is, I've got to get you and Avery connected. How did you meet? You know, because I know that. I know that you both have that rock background. I'm assuming that was part of it.

00:11:13 - Luke Carl

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 had, I didn't remember. So we ran into each other randomly twice in New York City, and it was just meant to be. And this was, you know, this. We were. We were, like, right on the edge of when everybody switched over to Tinder and all that, you know, we actually met in real life, and. And the rest is history. Madly in love, you know? And, of course, now we've been together for quite some time and have two wonderful, just amazing, perfect children, and. But, yeah, we did meet at a rock and roll concert.

00:11:49 - Bill Risser

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

00:11:54 - Luke Carl

Yeah. Which leads to the real estate, you know, so she's from the south, and I'd been in New York for as long as I needed to do whatever I was doing there. And, I mean, a long, long time. And. And it was time, you know, I met the right girl, and she was from Mississippi, and I'm like, that's not a real place, you know? And she took me there, and then she said, you know what? I want to move closer to my family. My 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, you know, 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.

00:12:40 - 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, you know, another property, a rental property.

00:12:51 - Luke Carl

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

00:12:56 - Bill Risser

It really happens that way.

00:12:57 - Luke Carl

Do you remember which number she was on your podcast? I can look it up.

00:13:01 - Bill Risser

I'll look it up while you're going. Yeah.

00:13:02 - Luke Carl

But just to refer back if anybody's interested, because she is a driving force in real estate, obviously, and everybody loves her and. 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.

00:13:21 - Luke Carl

And I grew up. You know, my dad was a hammer swinger. He grew, he built the house he lives in and did contracting on the side. And his dad, my grandfather was a contractor, so, and his, my uncle, my dad's brother, and all these guys in the whole family were builders and contractors and, you know, mostly side gigs here and there, but some of them were doing it for a living. And so it was always around, you know, my dad taught me how to, what hammer to buy and how to swing a hammer at a very early age, and, you know, how to get my way around a house, which was a very important tool that I didn't even realize I was learning.

00:13:56 - Luke Carl

And so 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 is 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.

00:14:15 - Luke Carl

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, etcetera. 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. And so. 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 started to, we started to save money and educate ourselves at that point in time.

00:14:58 - Luke Carl

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 needed, we knew we needed, well, 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 I mean, and we were commuting, too.

00:15:28 - Luke Carl

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 stop at the bar on the way or whatever, you know, or at the end, I should say. But, you know, so we just. We just. 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.

00:15:52 - Luke Carl

I decided to make it my. You know, I wanted it to be my career to me. I was. 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. And anyway, time goes by. We learned, you know, and learned and learned and read and read. And the 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, and at that point, I had not read rich dad or even heard of it. And so that would, you know, that was presented to me, and, of course, fell in love with that. And the rest is history.

00:16:40 - Bill Risser

Yeah. I mean, you were, you know, when you first got into the game, it was more long term kind of stuff.

00:16:46 - Luke Carl

Right.

00:16:46 - Bill Risser

That's kind of what you were focused on. But the name of the group, the company, the empire is the short term shop.

00:16:53 - Luke Carl

Yeah.

00:16:53 - Bill Risser

Because I think that was what I first. 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? 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?

00:17:23 - Luke Carl

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.

00:17:38 - Luke Carl

So overnight, that house was, you know, I don't want to say it doubled overnight, but it was pretty damn close, and I hated that. I did not. I mean, yeah, you would think that as a guy. I was. 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 know, you'd think that's an amazing thing. But I was annoyed because I wanted to do it again, you know? And I'm like, by the time I come up with another down payment, this.

00:18:12 - Luke Carl

This house isn't going to make any money. It's going to cost me twice as much to buy it. And the rent's 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. And the next. I mean, 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.

00:18:35 - Luke Carl

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 mountains. And so she said, you know, they got cabins out there. And I was like, what? You know? And. And so we went and looked, and we were early adopters, quite frankly. We were right place, right time. We got lucky and we worked our rear ends off. We still, to this day, I still, our very first cabin, I own. We still own them all. Never refinanced or anything. And which is something it's important to note because of how much equity has been put into the economy.

00:19:10 - Luke Carl

Everybody seems to be taking as much equity as they can, and we never did that on at least, you 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. We are nowhere near. We didn't create that, you know, I mean, 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. VrbO 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, very long time. But it just started to change right when we were getting involved.

00:19:56 - Luke Carl

And I got. 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, was a Super bowl commercial that put Airbnb on the map in 2011. And that's if you go read my profile, I've been on there since eleven. And so we were, you know, 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.

00:20:30 - Luke Carl

But again, I don't. To me, we were meant to do this. We were part of a mission. 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 is our philosophy. And it's paid off for us.

00:21:00 - 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 know, you're in the right places. Right, but this is now. 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?

00:21:23 - Luke Carl

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

00:21:29 - Bill Risser

Something less than 20.

00:21:30 - Luke Carl

Yes, probably 20 or less. And it's all vacation towns, you know, 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. 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, you know, so. 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, you know, 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, but. 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, you know, I mean, listen, either you've got a lot of money, and that's why you got in real estate, or you're gonna kill yourself and bust your ass. And in real estate, you got two choices, you know?

00:22:41 - Bill Risser

Right.

00:22:42 - Luke Carl

And we didn't have a lot of money. Now, there, this is, Bill, this is a. Real estate is a $4 trillion business industry. And so the money's there. But if you don't have the money to go buy the deals, you gotta, you know, you gotta 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.

00:23:22 - Bill Risser

That's what it takes. 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.

00:23:32 - Luke Carl

Right?

00:23:32 - Bill Risser

And that's you. You're your title. I, like, 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, like, what's the most common question or what's the dumbest? We shouldn't say dumb. The weirdest question that you're asked is you're trying to educate. My guess is not just maybe, it's also educating agents as well as the public. Is that true?

00:24:07 - Luke Carl

Yeah, a little bit, yeah. 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. 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, so she would. I mean, 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 cash. You 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. We. I sold a car, I sold it, I sold a motorcycle. She sold a guitar. Here's one for you. I don't. I don't recommend this one. We got in a terrible car accident. A horrible car accident. And got a settlement, and that went towards a down payment. Do not do that one.

00:25:41 - Bill Risser

That's good.

00:25:43 - Luke Carl

No, it was horrible, right? And we didn't get. It wasn't much. You know, 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 cannon. And honestly, man, to be. 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 that there's a big culture there where you don't really, like, take. You don't take any crap. And so we found that real estate was our. Was our path, because we could. 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 it's. And I'm glad to do it. I feel it's an. 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. You know, 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 bars packed every night. Yes, I could open more of them, but, you know. So in real estate, there's no such thing. You cannot get. You can't. There's no ceiling. You can just keep going and building infinitely if you want to. Now, the thing about this, 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, you know, if I found the right deal, I'd jump all over it. But anyway, I don't even remember where we were at.

00:27:21 - Bill Risser

I'll bring you back. I'll bring you back. Mister, Mister Rock and roll. Just for. I know it's. It would take probably two, two podcast episodes to cover this, but managing from afar some basic tips, that'd be great, man.

00:27:33 - Luke Carl

Get out of your own way. That'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 use this. You can't sleep inside of a stock. You know, 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, you know, and you can do that with a vacation home. And that's, you know, Avery loves to travel, and that's really why. Yeah, I was always definitely more towards the long term side of things. And we've got couple 300 long term rentals and only just the eight vacation homes. Now, also, keep in mind, a one vacation home is like ten or 20 long term single families, depending on, you know, how your purchase price is. Obviously, there's somewhere. It's got to be somewhere in that ballpark, really, if you're doing a vacation home, right. You know, average vacation home in America is going to be something like, you know, in a vacation town, you're probably looking at six to 800. Now, it can be done for two or three, no problem. It depends on your market. But anyway, what my point is 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 no. There's no. There's nobody in there. Like, I live here. You can't come here, you know?

00:29:06 - Bill Risser

Right.

00:29:07 - Luke Carl

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 gonna be doing. If you're doing it the way we do it, you're probably gonna 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 gonna get into vacation rental real estate, there's a 95% chance that you're gonna be doing it from a distance, and it's really not, you know, Airbnb and Vrbo 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. So is there.

00:29:55 - Bill Risser

Do you have. Was it a system you built over time? Trial and error, you know, because I imagine you got to have, like, some key people that live in that vacation down next to your vacation rental, otherwise you're just not going to make it work.

00:30:09 - Luke Carl

Well, I'd love to take credit for that, but if you want to know the truth, these people are already there. You know, these. These. The towns where we're talking about, where Avery operates and there are others, you know, there's plenty of towns that we're not in that would. 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 a kind of a cushy gig. Maybe they even had their. Their own car, you know, their work vehicle or whatever, and they kind of looked at us funny, like they're gonna. You're gonna do. You're gonna put this on what? And do what with it? You know, it was a new thing and. And now it's totally. 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 was, I happened to notice she was scrolling through Vrbo on her phone, the messages, and she had like 40 houses. She was a property manager, you know, and it's just totally normal, you know, and you go, 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 would literally had like, it was probably 100 properties she was scrolling through during service, you know, and it's just the way it is. It's totally normal, you know, 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 do, you know, 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. Landlord, you know, if you're a good landlord, people want to work for you.

00:32:12 - Bill Risser

Talking to the investor side of Luke, right? This is your passion. This is what you love doing. And what, 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, what's your take? What do you see and what's your crystal ball say?

00:32:35 - Luke Carl

Overall economy or my personal future?

00:32:39 - Bill Risser

Well, how about both?

00:32:42 - Luke Carl

Yeah. They are fairly related, I suppose. Okay. You know, 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 at the 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 a very, 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, we did have a metric ton of people buy real estate in 20 and 21, so, you know, 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, you know, like, they're not really sellers and sometimes they're getting it, sometimes they're not. I've made, 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. Three, two, three years ago, these properties would not been primary home buyers, would not have been my competition, they wouldn't want these houses. And now, today, that right now, anyway, they are wanting it. But where is it going? I have no idea, man. I do my best to stop. 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 saying, well, of course the short term shop sells houses. Of course you're being, you know, 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 to, you know, for my long terms, to raise their kids and come home from a nice, you know, 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. And I take that same prince, those same principles in my real estate, my properties are going to be nicer than the guy next door, than the other, the average Joe landlord. And I do feel that that's come back to me in the form of more wealth, quite. Quite frankly. I have no idea if I answered your question, Bill. I had fun.

00:35:25 - Bill Risser

Anyway, Luke, this has been awesome, and I've got it. I'm going to ask you the same final question I've asked every guest, and I have. There's probably 30 or 40 guests I have that weren't realtors, so 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 for me again, I'm.

00:35:44 - Luke Carl

I have the buyer's perspective, and I love, love, love a great real estate agent. It's obviously a huge deal in my household, and I know. 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 gonna get crapped on, and that's probably why I can't do it. I just can't. I can't handle it like Avery, man. She just handles it like it's just smooth as butter, you know, 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. We, you know, 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. If usually that bill, if I need to buy another vacation home, it's because Avery threw it in my inbox. You know, she's like.

00:36:48 - Bill Risser

We want this one.

00:36:49 - Luke Carl

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

00:36:52 - Bill Risser

It sounds like. It sounds like I'm hearing, you know, be. Be a relationship builder.

00:36:56 - Luke Carl

Yeah, be a relationship. Now, to bring it down, to answer your actual question, without that big, giant speech, answer the phone. That's 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. You know, I mean, 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 of 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's a little different, but we're working. We're working on it.

00:37:53 - 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, you. 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?

00:38:15 - Luke Carl

Yeah. Short term shop. We built, you know, an amazing team of awesome agents, and it's a family vibe, you know, and me and Avery have, you know, we've really worked our rear ends off, and we. We want to earn your business. Quite frankly, avery is. Is the best in the business. And if you want. If you're interested, we want to be a household name. You know, if you want to buy a vacation house, you come to Avery. It's as simple as that.

00:38:37 - Bill Risser

Yeah.

00:38:37 - Luke Carl

And then Luke will teach you how to. How to do the nuts and bolts. So the. Shorttermshop.com, again, I have a podcast as well, short term rental management. It's. It's. It. You're never going to believe. It's. It's about managing short term rentals, and. And I do that every Tuesday. And it's very, 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. Yeah.

00:38:59 - Bill Risser

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. You can grab all that. Luke had a great time. This was amazing. I hope you're going to be an exp con, maybe possibly in Vegas. Are you guys thinking about that?

00:39:22 - Luke Carl

Wifey is speaking. She's got. 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 son. We're meeting. The whole family is going to reconvene at that metal concert that I was talking about, AC DC point and Judas priest in Indio, California. So we're going to fly over the top of them and meet them in California.

00:39:50 - 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. We'll try to say hi if we get a chance to, but thanks again. This was a really wonderful episode. Appreciate it.

00:40:03 - Luke Carl

Well, absolutely. My pleasure, man. You're a rock star, and I appreciate your time.

00:40:06 - Bill Risser

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