Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey y'. All, welcome back to another episode of the short term show special episode series on the southern Utah market. So we have our expert agent Cody Roberts on to talk about building your buying team in this area. So if you want to buy in southern Utah, who do you need to be on your team? You need an agent, you need a lender, home inspector, and then you're going to need your post closing team, which is your cleaner, handyman, all those people. So we're going to walk you through what you need, how to find it, how to vet them, most importantly. But before we do all that, let me introduce Cody. How's it going?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Cody Avery. Great day. Great to be here again. Love having to be able to chat about this kind of stuff. It's just always exciting for me.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: All right, well, and I apologize guys, my voice is kind of gone, so. Sorry I sound weird.
All right, let's talk about.
All right, we want to buy in southern Utah and we need, let's jump right into the real estate agent part. So we need a real estate agent and everybody knows a cousin or an aunt or a friend, a brother in law, a friend who is a real estate agent who can technically write the contracts. You know, they're licensed to do that. But why might that not be the best route to go when you're buying a specific type of real estate like a short term rental in this market?
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Great question. And like you said, yeah, there, there seems to always be somebody knows somebody that, that can do their realtor for them. But the difference here is knowing and understanding the short term rental market and the investment market. It's, it's a different animal than just your typical real estate transaction. We're going to want to make sure that we're vetting things like is it illegal Airbnb or nightly rental, Is it in the right area? Can I self manage? If that's one of your requirements, there's just a few more requirements to it. And it's really good to work with someone that's owns short term rentals, that's done short term rentals before and can guide and steer you to the right property that's going to be successful for you.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: All right. Yes. Very, very important that you are interviewing an agent and asking them questions. Because every agent in the world, when you say, hey, I want to buy a short term rental in your market, do you do short term rentals? They're going to say yes, because nobody wants to turn down business. And they're not lying, they're not doing anything bad by Saying, yes, they can sell short term rentals, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're the best person for the job. So there are a few ways to, to do this, questions to ask. So the first one that I like to ask, do you do short term rentals? Yes, course. So what percentage of your business last year was short term rentals? Because if they sold a hundred houses and one was a short term rental, that's not really the ratio that I'm looking for. I would want to see at least 25%. Ideally we would want it to be 100% because they're fully specializing in short term rentals like the short term shop, like Cody. And another question that I want to ask too is how many deals did you do last year? And that can be kind of an offensive question when you're an agent. You're like, what, you don't trust me? You don't think that I know what I'm doing? But I want to know because the market changes so quickly. It changes slow, but it also changes quickly that, that Aunt Susie agent who does, you know, one deal a year, if she's giving you last year's advice, that may not work this year. So I want to see somebody who did a minimum of 10 transactions last year because that means they are constantly working and in the market writing offers, seeing what works, what doesn't work, and they just kind of have their finger on the pulse of the market, more so than somebody who just sells one, like one house a year. So for example, the market completely changed in 2021, and in 2019 or beginning of 2020, before COVID you could do things like get discounts, offer under asking, things like that. So if you've got an agent in 2021, an Aunt Susie agent, I call them, who sells one house a year. The last one they sold was pre Covid, 2020. Well, they're going to tell you, yeah, negotiate, let's offer 10% under asking, see what happens. Well, in 2021, it was 100 offers on every single property. You couldn't negotiate. You had to go 100,000 over asking just to be considered. So that was not good advice. Same thing when the market switched the other way.
And I saw this, I saw this happen to a Wall street fund, who I will not name, that came to us to sell the piece of shit properties that they bought with bad advice from an Aunt Susie agent at the turn of the market. So here's what happened.
2022, end of 2022, rates had already quadrupled the market had already ground to a halt. Wall street fund, little late to the party, comes in and says, we're going to buy some short term rentals. They hire some agent that nobody knows. Like, this is not. We're not throwing shade here. Nobody knows who the agent is. They're not in the scene, okay? So they hire an agent local, and they pay cash at asking when they did not have to, because that agent was not aware that the market had totally changed because they hadn't sold a house in six months.
So this fund paid way too much money. They just said, oh, cash asking. Here you go. When they could have gotten a $50,000 discount, you know, 20% discount on these properties, and they didn't. So when it came time for us to sell them, less than two years later, when the market was still completely stopped, we had a real hard time getting that done because the. The agent that they used was not in the market doing deals every single month. So they did not have their finger on the pulse of what the market was doing. This is a big soapbox of mine. Another big one that's popped up since COVID Ask your agent where they live. This seems like it should not be a thing, but we have seen so many. We had guys in Michigan trying to sell houses in Tennessee. We've got people in all kinds of places trying to sell you houses that they have to get on a plane to go look at for you. So make sure you ask your agent where they live, because I don't care how often they get on a plane and come down here.
That is not working in your best interest. That is working in their best interest. So they can live in the place that's maybe cheaper than here or maybe has more resources than a vacation market to raise their family.
But if they're getting on a plane or driving seven hours to show you a house, that's not the agent for you. Make sure the agent lives in your market and is walking through these properties every single day.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: They have geographical competence.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
What else? So you want them to live there. You want to be doing a consistent amount of deals. You want them to specialize in short term rentals, if at all possible. But if not, you want to see at least 25% of their volume. I'd say 50% being short term rentals. What else do you have to add, Cody? Maybe that's specific to your market, if anything.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Avery, I think you really nailed all the key points to it. And to just kind of reiterate, like, what we put together here is yeah, all I do is short term rentals. All I do is these type of investment properties. I might do one or two regular deals as we would call them, just for people that I, that I know and want to help out. But yeah, the majority of what we do is short term rentals investments. We, we understand the market and, and then the other thought that I had to add to it is making sure that we have a legal nightly rental property, which there's not a short supply here, but they're not issuing any more permits and I think we mentioned that on a previous podcast. And so I just, I've seen it before where as you pointed out, they use Ansusi Realtor, they bought a property, they start nightly rentaling and the city shuts them down because they didn't have a legal permit and now they have a $700,000 property. What are they going to do with it? Because they can't get it. So it's really important to understand these types of markets.
I had another one that again, I guess an Aunt Susie situation. They purchased the property, it was an illegal area to do short term rentals but they could not self manage. It was required to be done through the HOA.
And when they paid the 35% to the HOA to manage that short term rental, the numbers obviously didn't work for them and it put them in a pickle. So just understanding where and how is critical when you're making these type of decisions.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Totally agree.
I'll also say, you know, it is your job. This doesn't really have anything to do with the agents, but I'm putting it here, it's your job as the buyer to make sure that you understand and know and call yourself the city, the county, the municipality that directs the permitting process for short term rentals in your market and make sure in this market and get that information directly. So don't take the yes, yes. Don't take the advice of somebody on Reddit or Facebook or whoever Instagram call directly because another very, very well known real estate influencer, not as well known anymore, but was a while back bought a bunch of properties in southeast Florida for short term rental, did not check the permitting process and ended up with a bunch of things that he could not rent because they had some, some things that were not, I don't want to say illegal, but they were not legal bedrooms and things so they weren't allowed to be rented as bedrooms.
Things that were maybe a little bit too old.
There, there were just in that market some nuances to the way the house is built, things like that. And he had to sit on them and he had to sell them or he had to put long term rentals in them. So that it's. Your agent needs to know this and be aware of it, of course.
But there's so much that can get lost in translation when you as the investor are not doing your own due diligence and you're relying on other people to do it. The road to hell is paved with the best intentions. So make sure you are always getting that information directly because you never know, you never know.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: And Avery, I would add to that that I actually highly recommend as opposed to a phone call, an email to, so that you get it in writing from the municipalities.
And I think that I've just, I've just seen it where maybe somebody called and they misunderstood the information and then there was still question on whether they could or couldn't. And I just did one this morning because we had someone go under contract over the weekend and I help with the contacts. I know who in most cities, I know who to email.
And so I sent an email and CC the buyer and just said, hey, please confirm this is a legal nightly rental. And what do we need to do to put this into the buyer's name once they close? And we got that all back via email and it's in writing for the buyer.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Yeah, gotta have that.
So now let's talk about lenders. So lenders work similarly to agents with the exception of the having to live locally. So you want to make sure that when you're finding a lender, you're finding a lender who does deals in the market that you're buying in of the asset class type that you're buying in often.
So we call that a local lender, but a lot of times they're not necessarily local, but they need to have experience in the market that you're buying in the asset class that you're buying in. So I'm not going to use the bank of Kansas City to that. I buy multifamily long terms to go finance my short term rental in southern Utah. And they've never done a deal there nor have they ever done short term rentals. So it can be really easy and really tempting to, you know, want to call your local credit union that you do a lot of business with and see what they'll do and call them. You know, there's no harm in doing that. But a lot of times, again, you get in the situation of hey, you think you can do this deal yeah, we can do that deal because they're not going to turn down business because nobody is.
And then you get three weeks into a deal, and then they can't do it. And then you hope that the seller will agree to extend your contract so you can find a lender who can get it closed. But when the market gets busy and hot, which it is heating back up right now we're In April of 2026, market is bouncing back pretty significantly.
So you don't want to have to ask for extensions because sellers have to say yes.
Most of the time they will. But if they get in a situation where they've got. They could put it back on the market and resell it in a day, they might not be so willing to work with you.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: So, yeah, so the seller will be in. So the seller does have to agree to the extensions. And depending on the market, they'll usually extend it. But if it's a seller's market and they've got three other offers, then typically they don't. Right, right. So right now we're in more of a buyer's market.
So you do have a little bit of flexibility there. But that's. That's also good to know. And I've also found out I'm not a loan officer, so I can't speak to the exact specifications. But in Utah, the licensing seems to be a little bit more strict than other states. And so I've had. Because we get. We get buyers from. From all over the United States. And that's fine, that's great. That's how that works. But they'll be like, yep, I've got a lender. I'm approved. I'm good to go. And then we find out their lender cannot lend in the state of Utah in. Goes back to what you're saying by making sure that we have somebody local. And again, they don't. It's a little bit different than Realtor. They don't have to live in southern Utah. They can be up in northern Utah just fine, and they can even be outside of Utah as long as they're licensed in Utah.
And it makes a big difference. And we want to make sure that they're licensed here so that there's no concerns.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Gotcha. Yeah. And typically your agent will have good recommendations for that.
You want to get several recommendations and hire the one that works for you. But your agent will typically have lenders that they've worked with in the past that have done a good job for their clients, like Cody, and be able to get you squared away there.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: So there's one other point to kind of make here. We've seen it a couple times locally here, especially with when you're, when you're working with the builder directly, they typically want you to use their lender. Now you're not required to, but they offer incentives to do so. Hey, if you use our lender, we're going to give you 2% or 1% or 3% towards closing costs. And to me, I mean that's just money. Why leave that on the table? So in those cases I will recommend to use their lender but again you don't have to, but it's something to keep in mind. And then when you're working with the lender in that subdivision, they are very, very familiar with the comps, the area, the process. It does actually make it a little bit smoother and you get that additional benefit. Now that doesn't happen all the time, but it's something that's common around here.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Good to know.
So you've got your agent, your lender, you're going to get under contract, you're under contract now you need a home inspector. So where does one find a home inspector in Southern Utah? Cody?
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, obviously they can Google it. But the better option is I'll send them a couple of options. We've got one that usually stands out, A to Z inspections. They're very responsive and their inspections are thorough. I have seen some very, just not very good inspections. Right. Someone that thinks they can be a home inspector and they walk through and they just don't provide a very good report or a comprehensive report. So you want to make sure you get a good one and that they go through all the inspections accordingly.
One of the things that we have very common out here are pools. There are some home inspectors that don't cover pools or you have to tell them there is a pool so that they add that inspection to it. We had a scenario where they got a home inspection but they didn't. It's not that the home inspector didn't know there was a pool.
You, it's just, it's usually an add on service. So you have to tell them, inspect the pool as well and to make sure that there's no problems there. So make sure that it's all inclusive and that we get a good comprehensive inspection report that covers everything.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Very, very good to know. So what is everything in your market? So is that general home inspection? Make sure you have a pool add on if you have the pool roof, is pest inspection included or Is that separate?
[00:17:19] Speaker B: It's separate and not very common here.
Not, not, not something that we typically have to worry about here.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Interesting. Okay, and are, is anything on a well and a septic or are things pretty much on city water and sewer since these are a lot of like purpose built neighborhoods?
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So honestly, the majority of what we run into is on city sewer and water. But there's still a fair amount of properties out here that could be on a, on a septic in a well. And if it is, then we need to make sure that's part of the inspection report. And we also will ask in disclosures. Okay. When was the last time you serviced your septic tank and when was the last time you had anyone inspect the well?
A few things like that that we can also handle during the disclosures, but those properties are usually the ones that are a little bit on the outskirts.
So it doesn't, it's not as common, but it can happen and they can be great properties too. So we want to make sure we take care of that.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Great.
And there was one other thing. Oh. So something to note, guys, if you're new to buying investment properties, is that home inspectors only can inspect what they see. So they're not opening up walls, they're not digging up pipes, they're not doing sewer scopes unless you've paid specifically for that.
So, you know, they're not going to know things like, oh, there was, you know, mold on the inside of that wall, that there was no visible water or, or moisture or penetrate or penetration or no visible signs of mold moisture penetration.
And sorry, I'm a 14 year old boy.
So anyway, they can only expect what they see. So if something crazy happens years down the road of something that's inside the walls and you're like, oh, the inspector missed that. That's not what they look at. And it's very important too. And for those of you who've been listening to my podcast for the last 10 years have probably already heard this story and I'm sorry about that if you have, but I'm going to tell it anyway. So here is why you need to call and interview the three or four home inspectors that Cody or your agent gives you and make sure that you understand what, what they're looking at, what, what the communication is there. Because there's a few mistakes that I see people make with home inspectors and getting through the home inspection process. So number one, don't just tell your agent. Yeah, use whoever you like, just schedule it. Because one time I did that for A client. I was trying to give white glove service. I was coming from a place of giving good service. Yes. Let me. You don't worry about it. I'll get your home inspection scheduled. I'll take care of it. Scheduled. A guy who always did a great job for all my other clients. Closed. Turns out he missed something. And then it was squishy floors in one of the bathrooms. And then this client accused me and the home inspector of colluding to make one sale. Which guys people don't do. People who have businesses do not collude to force one sale. It is not worth one sale to lose their entire business. So just note there also.
So that is why a good agent gives you a list of a few. It's your job as the investor to make sure you're doing your due diligence on them. And here's where I see people mess up with home inspections a lot is they don't ask their home inspector any questions. So every home inspection is going to be pages and pages. Even a brand new construction is going to be several pages long.
And it doesn't mean that the house is falling down or bad or you shouldn't buy it. It means you just need to call your home inspector and say, hey, can you kind of go through this with me and tell me which of these things are normal? Which of these things am I going to see on every single house out here? Or which of these things are really concerning? So, so many people just get a home inspection and they look at all the pages and go, oh my God, I can't buy this. And they freak out and they don't, they don't buy it. And then they go get under contract on something else and see all the same things. So your home inspector works for you, they don't work for the agent, they don't work for anybody but you. So call and utilize their expertise and ask them questions. And then the other side of the mistake that I see is they're not licensed home inspectors. They, I mean, sorry, they're licensed home inspectors. They're not licensed contractors. They're home inspectors. So they, they're not going to be able to tell you how much stuff costs to fix. They're just going to point out things that they see.
And it's almost always going to say, and this is the part that scares everybody and freaks everybody out and they don't buy stuff.
Consult licensed contractor for further evaluation.
So anything that is outside their scope of just pointing out something, they're going to say, call licensed professional so if they see something, you know, a tile kind of off on the roof, they're going to say, call a roofer. It doesn't mean we got to rip this roof off and start over. It just means I'm not a roofer. If you have further questions on this tile that's out of place, you need to call a roofer.
So don't get too caught up in that. Just be very comfortable with calling your home inspector and asking them, what's a big deal? What's not a big deal? What's common? What's going to be on every single house? Because there's always going to be stuff. There's always going to be a huge list of people things.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: And I've always looked at it like, yeah, you know, a home inspection is good because it points out everything. But what I'm really looking for are the, the major issues or major problems. You know, if it, if it points out, oh, you know, there's a kind of a crack in the sheetrock over here, okay, I can get someone to fix that. That's not that big of a deal. But if there's a crack in the foundation, whoa, that, that's a big deal. And we need to, we need to investigate that during our due diligence process and like you said, some licensed contractors out there to take a look at it so that we understand the full scope of, of what it would be to fix it and if we still want to move forward with that particular property.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And so, Cody, while we're talking about inspections and contingencies, because you'll have, typically on a real estate contract, you'll have a financing contingency and an inspection contingency. So can you kind of walk us through what that looks like? You know, how much earnest money are we putting down and what are these contingencies that we have to terminate based on in order to be able to get that earnest money back?
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. Great question.
So typically, what we see around here is about a 1% earnest money. So on a $500,000, you're going to do $5,000 worth of earnest money. Now, you can always offer whatever earnest money you want. There's. There's not a rule or a law that says it has to be that 1% or it has to be this particular dol up. But that also incorporates how strong your offer is. If you have a $500,000 property and you're doing $500 worth of earnest money, the seller's probably going to be like, I don't think this, this buyer is serious and they're not going to take it serious.
So it's important to have that, that right amount. And if you're trying to, this is part of strategies, right? If you're trying to negotiate on pricing, Maybe you do $10,000 worth of earnest money, go, hey, I'm really serious about this.
But it has to be at this price. And it just helps to know if they're, if they're serious or not, depending on how you make your overall offer.
But the contingencies part.
So like you said, there's two different kinds. There's inspections. So typically what we like to see here is you're going to be between about 14 days roughly on your inspection due diligence timeline.
That one's kind of your all encompassing get out of jail free card, if you will.
So any reason whatsoever, you can be like, okay, I want to back out.
We submit it in writing and then you can get a full refund on your earnest money.
If we write it as 14 days or if we write it as 7 days or 21 days, whatever that is, that's the timeline. And these dates have to be taken very seriously.
If we submit in writing a cancellation on the 15th day, we're not going to get that earnest money back.
And we have to put a reason in. But it can be anything.
You know, we ran the numbers again and we just didn't like it. Or that fourth bedroom wasn't quite as big as I thought it was. It doesn't matter the reason.
Now, once we go past due diligence timeline, the other one is the financing timeline and typically that's a little bit longer just to get all the paperwork in order. And so let's say we have a 14 day inspection timeline and a 21 day financing timeline.
Now what that says is I can still exit the property and get a full refund on my earnest money based on financing. So if I didn't get approved, if the interest rate wasn't what I thought it was, if the payments weren't what I thought it was, closing costs, any of those, any reason tied to financing, we can then submit and say we're going to cancel this contract and get a full refund on earnestness.
Now if you've gone past both of those timelines, then we typically in the industry say that earnest money is hard or non refundable at that point. Now you can still exit the contract if you want to after those two timelines, but you're not going to get your earnest money back.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Gotcha. So two questions on this. Your due diligence period. So in some states it's a true due diligence period. And at the end of that, if it's raining outside or you stubbed your toe, you can get out of the contract and get your earnest money back. But in some states it does have to be related to the inspection. So in Utah, is it a true due diligence, you can terminate for anything or does it have to be related to the inspection?
[00:27:18] Speaker B: It's a true due diligence. You, you can, you can, within that time period, you can cancel if you didn't like the weather that day.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Cool. Good to know. That's a good distinction. And your earnest money is refundable. There's no additional non refundable deposit when you go under contract. Because that's common in some states too.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: That is correct. Now you can write up an offer that way, but that's not that common. So again, that's part of a bigger discussion. Maybe another podcast and strategies and making offers. But you can have multiple earnest money deposits and you can make different ones. Like you could say, you know what, I'll give you a thousand dollar non refundable earnest money plus a 4000 that is refundable based on these inspection periods.
Again, not as common, but strategies like that are available and can be done.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: Okay, good to know.
And one thing to note, guys, on getting your earnest money back, I would not try to like get cute with contract wording and getting getting out of contracts. So you're even if you're entitled to your earnest money, if you do everything right, you get out under the inspection period, the seller typically still has to sign and say, okay, releasing the earnest money.
So just know that if there's a dispute or maybe you terminate outside of the due diligence and you still think you're entitled to your earnest money, it doesn't automatically go back to you if you do everything right. And it doesn't automatically go to the seller if you terminate outside.
What it does is it ends up having to like go through the whole legal process in front of a judge and the judge looks at the contract and decides who's entitled to it. And that does cost time and money. So I would take take these contingencies seriously because I see people get mad at each other in deals all the time and then say, well, fine, I'll sue you and I'll win or you'll sue me and you'll lose.
Okay, but that also costs a lot of time and money to get to the point of winning.
So it's probably easier just to swallow your pride and move on than to try and terminate outside of the contingencies and do all these things. So just keep in mind that the other side of the deal does have to sign a piece of paper that says they're releasing it, they can hold it up. So most of the time, everybody just.
Nobody likes to lose a deal, but everybody just signs and moves on. But just don't try to do like, cute maneuvers that maybe you heard somebody on Instagram talk about because it can cost you time and money. So just take the date seriously, take the, the contingency seriously, and you're fine.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. And what I've seen too, is depending on what market it is, if it's a seller's market there, they can be a little bit more motivated to be like, okay, even though you're outside, I'm going to release your earnest money back to you because I've got two other offers over here. But in a buyer's market, when it sat on the market longer than they wanted and they finally got it under contract and now you're trying to exit and they've got no other options, they're not as motivated to release that earnest money because they, they want that as liquidated damages. Basically.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So anyway, moving on, that's getting you through your contract. So now we're closed, or now we're getting up on closing, and we need to find the vendors that we need to, to buy this thing. I mean, to, to run this thing. So where are we finding those? How are we finding them? Who do we need?
[00:30:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so again, that's where I can come in and offer some, some recommendations.
So, like, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Avery, I know you've said this a thousand times. The key in this business is a great cleaner that'll make or break your property.
So we have several companies in southern Utah, one of them being Southern Utah Cleaning Company, Creative Name, Pristine Shine Home Cleaning Company. I mean, we just, we just have a few. And it's a good idea not only to call and vet all of them, but also have more than one. You don't know what might happen. And you don't want to be stuck in between a booking when you've got a new customer coming to stay, and for some reason your, your cleaner got hit by a car and no one's coming. And that's another discussion. One man band shops are a little bit dangerous. If you get with a company where they can send other people out, that really helps. But also have that backup.
And just.
And some of these cleaning companies are booked, meaning they're not even taking on new clients. So you have to call them, you have to interview them. You have to make sure they're going to take on new clients and work out a system with them and then have a backup. I think that's one of the most important portions of it.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: And when you're interviewing them, I would say wait until you're through your due diligence period and you know you're going to close on this property. Because these guys are busy. Good cleaners are busy, and they don't have time to talk to you. When you're thinking about buying a property and you don't know what it's going to be, they. If you don't have a property in hand, they can't give you a quote. Because even two four bedrooms that are roughly the same amount of square footage can be different prices based on, are we doing a hot tub? Do we have a bunch of bunk beds where they're going to have to climb up and clean? There's different things that can make the property more expensive or less expensive to clean. So if you don't have something to show them in terms of what they're going to be cleaning, they can't quote you and you're wasting their time. And then you're going to make them not want to bother you when you finally do have something, you're going to be the boy who cried wolf. If you just want to talk to them, talk to them, talk to them before you have a property, then they're not going to answer your call when you actually have one.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: Absolutely. And then make sure that when you work with them, you can find out what their system is, meaning what kind of calendar do they have? How are they tracking your bookings? Are you going to give them access to your calendar? Are you going to just let them know every time you get a booking, which works with maybe one or two properties, when you start getting more than that, and there's a whole nother discussion on managing that, of course, that Luke and Avery can help you with, but making. Because what, what you don't want to have is again, you got a booking coming in, the property hasn't been turned over, and you're reaching out to your cleaner to find out why. And they're like, we, we don't show that you have a booking, so we thought we could clean it tomorrow. So you just don't want little Things like that to happen. So you want to make sure that you've got a really good system in place.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Yes. And you will learn how to do that in management Monday at the short term shop to connect all of your property management software to your cleaners, Google calendars, icals, all that to make sure that it automatically gets onto their calendar so you're not having to, to play catch up and you know, maybe somebody books something and you're in a meeting and you forgot to let the cleaner know you had a last minute booking and then you got somebody showing up to a dirty house. So automation is key there.
And so let's talk about handyman and your other vendors that you're going to need. So typically in my experience if you find your cleaner first, they're going to have recommendations for the other things. But you tell me Cody, how you recommend.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: No, you're absolutely right. But I also have a couple of handyman companies that I share as well. And again another critical component to the process because, because if you've got a guest that goes to turn on the water and there's no water or the fridge stops working, you need to jump on that immediately. So you have to have something worked out ahead of time to where you can get that emergency service and emergency status from your handymans to get out there and fix the problem that's necessary.
And so we recommend again the same process. Interview these handymans, make sure you work out a relationship with them, get a contract put together ahead of time to where you know what the rates are, what the fees are, how much notice they need and that way you're all on the same page. When you have to call them up and say, hey, I need you out on this property within the hour and they know it's been worked out and they can go.
And then those handyman can also tell you if it needs to be outside of their particular scope.
Oh, you know what this is, this is more than I can do. You need to get with a plumbing company or an H Vac company and then usually they have additional recommendations for that. But I also do as well where I can help. I've had someone say, hey, I'm going to need a whole new roof.
Do you have a roofing company you can recommend? Absolutely. Here you go.
So I'm always available post closing for anything like that to help out.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Awesome. And, and one thing in closing before we get, before we take off, when you're getting recommendations for all these vendors, whether it's agents, lenders, cleaners, etcetera because there's all kinds of Facebook groups out there for every single market now and then also just general short term rental ones. Always ask the people recommending, like if you go on a Facebook group and you get a hundred recommendations, ask every single person, have you worked with this person? Because every single industry has figured this out and I call it review collusion. You. You go in there and actually real estate was the first one to figure this out. I started seeing it in 2020. There was a group called Real Estate Mastermind on Facebook group and it was a whole bunch of real estate agents, hundreds of thousands of them. And they would go on there if they had an agent, I mean a client moving to a new city, and they'd say, hey, I need a recommendation in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And 1000 agents would say, my go to in Chattanooga is Pete Galleon. Well, this is this guy's name, Pete Galleon. And you're telling me this Pete Galleon has these. All of these people, these thousand people recommending Pete Galleon and Chattanooga all have enough clients moving from wherever the hell they are to Chattanooga that 1,000 of them have a go to? No, they don't. It's called fan clubs. And what it was back then was they would all join like a referral group. They pay to be in it and they pay into it when they close a deal. So those thousand people and Pete Galleon are all paying a subscription to this referral group and the referral goes back into the group. Everybody gets a little piece of it when Pete closes a deal. So every single industry has figured this out. You go in there, hey, I need X vendor and Y market.
All their buddies, all their colleagues in their office are going to recommend that one person that's in their office that works there. So ask every single person, have you actually worked with this person? Or just go look at their profile. And does it say they work at the same brokerage as the person they're recommending?
That's not a real recommendation. So ask every single person that you're taking a recommendation from, have you done a transaction with this person? Not just do you like them, not just do they sit next to you on a zoom meeting twice a week.
Have you bought a house with this person?
Anyway, off soapbox on that. Make sure you're getting real recommendations and not recommendation collusion.
Cody, is there anything else involving vendors in this market that we haven't talked about that we should before we go?
[00:38:56] Speaker B: You know, one thing that we didn't really spend a whole lot of time on that we'll just hit really quick is making sure you have the right title company.
And in southern Utah, honestly, any company, any title company in southern Utah works. We have our recommendations, but you can use anyone you want to use.
What I, where I caution you, is title companies that are not in southern Utah. So you can get title companies up in Salt Lake or northern Utah and they can definitely do the transaction because they're in Utah, but they're not familiar with some of the little nuances of southern Utah. And it is a desert. And a lot of you might find this funny, but water is scarce, water is a commodity, and you actually have to have water rights to do transactions. And when you're buying a property, a home that's already built, most of the time everything's been checked out and the water conservancy district has been paid. But I've seen in some situations where that hasn't. And that can be a 20, $30,000 check.
And so there's just little things like that that usually happen in the build process and the land development process.
But maybe if it's a new construction, for some reason they deferred it and it hasn't been paid yet. So there's little things like that that can add up. And having a good title company in southern Utah is important.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: Very, very good to know.
Yeah, make sure the title company is local basically.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Now, as far as vendors, post closing, beyond that, honestly, my, my big ones are the, the, the cleaning company and the handyman. The other ones to think about depending on. If you're in a condominium that already takes care of landscaping, you don't have to worry about it. But having a good landscaper is important too, because you're going to want to make sure and get that on a contract where they just come out and handle the landscaping as well as if you've got a private pool, you need to get a contract with a pool company to make sure you're maintaining that and keeping that clean.
One of the quickest ways to get a bad review is to have a dirty pool. Trust me on that one.
So make sure you get with a good pull company that is out and keeping that pool clean and precise, pristine and maintained. So those would be the two additional vendors that would need to be considered is landscaping company and a pool company. And again, we're in the desert, so if you're not careful on your landscaping and let's say the, the water was turned off, your grass will die within a week, maybe even three days.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's I would imagine grass doesn't live very long out there, not
[00:41:43] Speaker B: unless you're watering it, that's for sure. So just some little things like that, that, that can make a difference. But again, let's just recap. Cleaning company, your handyman, your landscaping, and then a pool company if, if you have a private pool.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: All right. Well, guys, if you are interested in buying a short term rental in Southern Utah with Cody, email us@agentshort term shop.com and we will get you connected with him. And be sure to stay tuned for the rest of our episodes on the Southern Utah market. And of course, subscribe to our main podcast, the Short Term show, the Short Term Rental Management show, and Short Term Shopping, where we analyze deals every single week. So anyway, thanks guys so much for tuning in and we'll catch you next week.
