Latest / Short Term Shopping / Smoky Mountains with Matt Castle

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Smoky Mountains with Matt Castle · Short Term Shopping

• 0:02
  Speaker A: Welcome to Short term Shopping, where we explore homes for sale in the best vacation markets in America. Some homes we do like, some homes we don't like. Brought to you by the short term shop. It's short term shopping. All right, here we go. Short term Shopping. We're gonna. Gonna buy some. Buy some houses today. Let's do this. What's up, Matt and the Smokies.
• 0:36
  Speaker B: Hey, how's it going?
• 0:38
  Speaker A: It's wonderful. Summertime's in full effect. The kids are. You know what I mean? Like, it's is running and gunning and I'm loving it. You're never quite ready.
• 0:47
  Speaker B: A windows are open here in Tennessee. Cannot get any better weather than we got right now.
• 0:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, same here. We had a little cold front come through in. In June and on the beach. And my run this morning was spectacular.
• 1:06
  Speaker B: My run was not spectacular, but I'm lazy, what can I say?
• 1:12
  Speaker A: All right, well, we're going to look at some houses and see what we like, see what we don't like, see what we think is going to make a couple of bucks or what we want to spend a Christmas with our grandkids at. So what do we got going today?
• 1:24
  Speaker B: So I thought I'd start off with some basic kind of statistics. Can you see my screen?
• 1:31
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 1:32
  Speaker B: All right, this is a national chart. So this is not Smokies. Like this is all across United States. So this is pulling some of the latest data from national association of Realtors. So here in kind of the Smokies. Well, we. I mean, in the Smokies we got the same stuff going on, but nationally we got home prices at some of the highest prices that we've ever seen. So I'm going somewhere with this. So give me some leeway to hang myself. But we've got some of the lowest transactions since 2008 level financial crisis. So all that to say all this. We have a ton of inventory right now. So if you're a buyer, you're looking pretty good because you got motivated sellers and a lot of inventory to pick from. Right. So trying to set the stage here for some ideas that, you know, if you've been sitting on the fence for a while, right now might be a really good time to look because I doubt you're going to see as much inventory available as we have right now. So I thought I'd start with some of the. Actually put that one back. So I thought I'd start with some of the most expensive was and just kind of go down. All right, so larger cabin here. Got the sprinkler system, proven rental income history. Pretty nice setup. You know, income last year, this is with the property manager. 2.8 million gets you 398. All right, so pretty good solid one to start off with if you're on the high end.
• 3:02
  Speaker A: Again, this is actual hard facts data from the the current owner, $400,000 in 2025 on 2.8.
• 3:15
  Speaker B: I have not vetted their income, but for somebody who's going to say that, I would be pretty safe in saying this is hard, solid provable income.
• 3:28
  Speaker A: And if you get deeper in the deal, you can ask them to prove it.
• 3:31
  Speaker B: Oh well, most likely you can just pull up the MLS and they'll show it. It's either posted or we can ask for it. But one of the tactics that I use is asking the listing agent for proven income and you know, or what they did in 2025 and they'll send it over. So you can do it multiple ways. Of course you can ask for proven income, you can do your projections, you can enemy method it, air DNA it, DB and calc it, whatever you want to use. But I do like to start off with proven income.
• 4:05
  Speaker A: Where are we at with rental history right now? Because I'm personally, again, I'm not. I've never been a rental history guy. I don't really like it. I do feel like it is getting a little better, especially in these vacation towns. As to, you know, I even feel like to a certain extent property managers are a little bit more kind of receptive to what is expected out of a house than they used to be. Because most of the time this data is going to come from a management company, but sometimes it's from an owner operator. What are your, what are your thoughts at the current state of the market and on, on rental history?
• 4:40
  Speaker B: I'm going to pull an Avery and use the it depends. Right. So there's a nice cya. I think it really just depends on, you know, maybe who the property manager is. But it can also be, you know, an inverse situation where maybe you just don't feel comfortable in your own abilities to use air DNA or projections or something. Maybe you're wanting to verify multiple sources so you can verify it from, you know, whatever the property manager or self manager is currently making. You can verify it with projections from a property manager. You can DIY it yourself. So a lot of different things. I do feel like the industry here, at least in the Smokies, has shifted over towards proven income. And if you have a really good income, most likely it's Going to be listed somehow somewhere on the listing itself. But just be aware that with proven income, you're almost certainly going to pay a higher price because the seller is going to feel very confident in their asset. They're most likely doing very well management wise. So there's probably some sort of underlying issue as to why maybe they're selling the property. It could be that, you know, I've had sellers contact me and they've only owned it for a year, but they bought it in 2024. My bonus depreciation wasn't around. So they're wanting to sell it in 2025 or 2026 because they couldn't get bonus depreciation before. They've done a very good job managing it, but they're like, hey, I'm going to sell this one. I'll pay the capital gains do the 1031 and then sell this one, buy another one in 2026 just so I can get bonus depreciation and get the tax deferred gains from the sale of the property.
• 6:26
  Speaker A: The difficult thing for me is trying to convince somebody who's brand new that the property's history is not indicative of its potential. And this has just been an ongoing problem, basically forever. Yep.
• 6:40
  Speaker B: And that's one of them. And you also have the similar situation in trying to convince somebody who's brand new that their projections are trustworthy as well. So I've seen sort of a noticeable shift of people moving from projections over to wanting just proven income. Well, here's the problem. I've seen. I've seen people literally pass up a lower cabin price. Cabins right next door to each other, just a couple doors down, virtually. Same floor plan, same everything. I've actually seen one where it was the exact same floor plan cabin. The only difference was the interior furnishings. They wanted to buy the One that was 750 versus 700 because one of them had income around 60 or 70,000, but they wanted to buy the other one that was making over 100 just because they thought that one was a better performer.
• 7:35
  Speaker A: And.
• 7:35
  Speaker B: And as we started going through some of the virtual call with that particular buyer, I literally had this window and a window right beside it pulled up where we just clicked through the pictures and I'm like, look, this is the same exact floor plan. This is the same exact this, same exact that. The only difference is you've got three posters on the wall, the three paintings on the wall versus two, and this one doesn't have a couch that has ducks on it. And they're like oh, okay. So we'll just buy the lower price one.
• 8:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. And we. And again, short term shop, which is where we both work. We are very happy to get you as much data on any house as you need. We, we can pull reports for you and things like that if you get deeper on these things. Where is this? What location?
• 8:28
  Speaker B: I believe this is over on Thunder Mountain. No, this is in hibernation station. So just to kind of not to give everyone seasickness here. My clicking. So closest road that you might know, Goose Gap. So just on the western side of the county. So parkway right here. You're right down here. Soaky mountains up here.
• 8:51
  Speaker A: It's over there by the world famous llama. You ever see the llama over there?
• 8:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think I've ever actually seen it.
• 8:59
  Speaker A: Zoom in a little more. There's a windy road. I got a house right in this neighborhood is why I know that. And this dude is basically just a dude that's got like, it lives there in a trailer and he's got a llama in his yard and it just hangs out and like there might be an alpaca.
• 9:14
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 9:14
  Speaker A: What do I know? But it's really cool. I love going past. There's, there's a, there's one of the. The county dump stations or it used to be. I know they changed all that, but
• 9:24
  Speaker B: anyway, I'm gonna have to Google the world's famous one.
• 9:27
  Speaker A: I don't know if it's googleable, but it's world famous in my mind.
• 9:30
  Speaker B: Gotcha.
• 9:31
  Speaker A: I think it might be in alpaca. I don't know. But anyway. All right, that's a good location. I like that location. It's a little bit quiet over there and. But easy to get places, right?
• 9:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean you're, you're 10 minutes away from pretty much everything with the exception maybe Gatlinburg. So you can hop, skip and a jump right over here to the parkway. Yeah, but you got down to Wares Valley.
• 9:52
  Speaker A: But you do have that peaceful kind of like off up into the woods mountain vibe. Yep.
• 9:58
  Speaker B: You know, and I mean the other thing too, if, if you're going to the airport over here in Maryville, I mean it's Knoxville Airport, but it's right here in the Alcoa Maryville area. You don't have to deal with all the parkway traffic, stuff like that. So it's a little bit easier for access. But if you're going to Gatlinburg, you know, it, it might be a little Bit of a hike, but if you're driving here from Michigan or Dallas, Fort worth or Buffalo, New York, what's 15 minutes versus 10 minutes, right? You know, 12 hour drive and I've seen plenty of people do it. I actually play a game where I'm looking for license plates. North, south, east, west from the furthest places away from us. Well, not really east, but northwest and south.
• 10:43
  Speaker A: Cool. Let's look at some pictures.
• 10:48
  Speaker B: Indoor pool, which, you know, got, got the indoor pool. So this one, this one checks a lot of boxes. This one's got good location, indoor pool. I like the outdoor bar area right here. You don't necessarily have a terrific long range view from the, from the rear of the cabin, but this is from the front. But mostly you're hanging out is going to be in the, the rear section of the cabin. But yeah, pretty nice setup. I, I like these just because they're, you know, for larger families, corporate events, stuff like that. But it's pretty solid cabin. It's big, big monster.
• 11:28
  Speaker A: It's very big.
• 11:31
  Speaker B: 63, 6200, 6300 square feet. So it's got the sprinkler system. I think occupancy is, is huge on this one. 34 occupants. So we're going to go the entire gambit of monster cabin down to the smaller one bedroom honeymoon kind of stuff.
• 11:46
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 11:46
  Speaker B: I've got at least 15 cabins so we can kind of.
• 11:49
  Speaker A: All right, well, I don't want to spend too much time on one go.
• 11:53
  Speaker B: Some of the. I really like this one and unfortunately I didn't have anybody who jumped on it right away. But six bedroom cabins got my favorite name in the Smokies, Booger Town. Beavis and Butthead named some of our streets, I swear. But I like this one just because nicer, newer, bigger, got the indoor pool cabin. You come out, you've got this view from both decks because they cleared a bunch of trees for you. Really nice looking setup. So yeah. And this one didn't last long. I believe one of the more seasoned agents in the Smokies owned this one personally or maybe had family that owned it. So they, they really knew what they were doing. And I think they have multiple offers on this one. So we've been in a pretty stagnant market. Right. We've had listings that just kind of sat around and sat around and sat around, but sometimes you get something like this that's a little bit on the unicorn side. And I would even say that this is more of the pink unicorn kind of stuff. So it's it's more rare than your average unicorn. All right, so you're looking at higher occupancy, nicer, newer cabin. They did good on the photos. Got the view, got the indoor pool. Plus you're just a few minutes away from Parkway and Dollywood right here off of Boogertown, which is just connecting up on upper Middle Creek. Dumps you right into Pigeon Forge area right here. You got Dollywood right there, Parkway right here. Or you could just be a quick hop, skip and a jump down to Gatlinburg, through some of the back roads, through sky harbor, come around Birds Creek Road and into East Gatlinburg Highway.
• 13:39
  Speaker A: So wait, are you saying this was already sold?
• 13:42
  Speaker B: Well, it's not sold. It's pending.
• 13:44
  Speaker A: Oh, okay.
• 13:44
  Speaker B: I, I believe Darlene told me that. Or, sorry, Deborah, that Deborah told me that the. They have multiple offers on it. So I was going to go check it. I was going to go check it out and she told me they already had two or three offers on it. One of them was accepted.
• 13:59
  Speaker A: This is an example of a house that was probably priced correctly.
• 14:03
  Speaker B: Correct.
• 14:03
  Speaker A: Maybe even a little bit low.
• 14:09
  Speaker B: I would say it's. I think it's more the Goldilocks zone. So they don't actually tell us what they did here at income wise in the description, but I got a feeling they were, they were in that 150 to 200 sort of an area. And you take some seasoned operators here and I know I'm getting in the weeds and hopefully Avery doesn't send me a hate text after she sees this. But like, this could be one of those high 200s kind of a thing. I, I've seen less experienced managers do 250North in, in their first second year on something like that.
• 14:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's hard to find three acres. You got a fairly. Yep. Flat lot with pretty easy access on that main road there. And view.
• 14:58
  Speaker B: Yep. I mean we're not even really in bonus depreciation buyer season. And this one went fast. I think the only. The one negative I could ever say about this one. And I, you know, you know, I do my best not to, but just from a tax perspective, I don't believe land is depreciable. So if you're looking at it just from a tax advantage or tax deduction, buyer seeking point where you want the bonus depreciation. I don't think you can deduct the 2.51 acres, but it's a good one.
• 15:29
  Speaker A: Okay, that's a good example of one that came on the market and was gone boom.
• 15:35
  Speaker B: Yep. Same scenario here. 1015 Leslie Way. We've sold several up on this street. I love this one, just because when you can impress a hillbilly like me with the view, you've got something special. And the views from up here on Leslie are just amazing. Now, this is often that area of Jones Cove Road where you're not going to be getting a ton of traffic. Jones Cove Road is not really considered some of the hot spots. You're going to have a much longer drive into town. Well, maybe not much longer, but it's sort of comparable to shag bark, in my opinion. But, you know, you're. You're right here. Hop over onto Pitman Center Road, down Birds Creek to Gatlinburg, or come through the. Some of the back roads and dump yourself into Pigeon Forge somehow, some way. So it's not terrible. But you're right here on a nice road as long as you got a starlink, because I don't think there's any Comcast and Spectrum cable up in here. But this is a newer subdivision that just hasn't gained a ton in popularity yet. But there's cabins that sell up in here in the 1 to 2 million dollars range on a regular basis. So. But plus, I like this look from a rustic, contemporary kind of look, at least that's what I call it, where you've got tongue and groove ceiling, laminate floors. I kind of like it when the floors match the ceiling just a little bit more. But then you got that huge wall of windows, nice, bright white walls. You know, you're. You're talking a very sort of sophisticated, modern kind of a look, just with that rustic kind of blend.
• 17:13
  Speaker A: It's interesting to see that those. Those look like real windows. Normally in the Smokies, if you see a house like this with this big wall of windows, it's just going to be a piece of glass stuck between the, you know, the trim, basically. And those look like they're. I'm not saying it's better one way or the other. It's just not what we're used to around here. It looks like real windows.
• 17:33
  Speaker B: This is becoming a trend. I'm seeing a lot of people move over into this kind of a look or this kind of build style. Now we're never going to be able to replicate some of these views all the time. Right. But the. The build style is. Is becoming very popular around here. But yeah, it's just mainly just because of something like this. I, in my opinion, can pull people out this far. So Right. So one of the things I tell people, you know, first rule of real estate's always location. Right. First three rules of real estate's loc. If you got something that people consider pretty people like my wife and myself who are going to see this and gonna say, yeah, I'll drive an extra 10 minutes for this, no problem.
• 18:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is cool.
• 18:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. Kind of moving on down the line. More classic but proven income, right? I believe this is one of our sellers. I think this is Gina's listing. Uh, Genomatics would be one of our short term shop agents, just for the record. So full disclosure, this is one of our listings, however, I mean, right here in the heart of Pigeon Forge, 146k, four bedroom, four bath. Quite literally walk to the parkway if you want to. I wouldn't suggest it just because there's no sidewalks here, but just to give you an idea on location, you are right here. So there's a little bit of a ridge line that runs right here, sort of where these trees are. This row of cabins is looking right down into the parkway. So dolly stampede right here, there's a bunch more cabins already built. So this is an older satellite photo, but I mean, if you're going for the pure play on location and an indoor pool and proven income, hard to
• 19:27
  Speaker A: beat, right at a million four. Four with a pool.
• 19:32
  Speaker B: Right at a million.
• 19:33
  Speaker A: Man, you know, a few years ago, this thing would have been.
• 19:36
  Speaker B: Oh, tell me about it. I saw in 2021, I submitted an all cash offer of 1.05 and it got rejected. It was a 1.1 million listing this house in 21 or 22, not this house, but one very similar to it. In this. Well, every house in here is pretty much the exact same thing. 4, 4 with an indoor pool. But 5 years ago. 4 years ago, I submitted 1.05. 1031 exchange, close it in 21 days. It got rejected. It sold over asking price, I think at 1.15, all cash. But that's just the difference in the market. And so right now it's sitting here with 61 days on the market and people still aren't jumping on it. And here's the other thing. If you look at this from a price to earning standpoint, what is this? Just quick math pull up calculator. So you're looking at 105 divided by 146. You're looking at a price to earnings multiple of 7.19, which is insane most of the time. You know, in the five, six years ago, it would sell at 12 to 13 times earnings PE ratio. Now it's at a seven. So a lot of good stuff and
• 21:07
  Speaker A: two months on the market. So what if I would have wanted to offer on this thing today? What would be an offer that, in other words, my, my offer is just close, real close to making them really mad at me, but not rejecting it. All right, hold on, hold on. Before you answer that. How much did they pay for it?
• 21:33
  Speaker B: Does not show it right here in the price.
• 21:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, we'd have to do a little more digging. So anyway, back to the original question.
• 21:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, we'll put a pin in that one. But if you're going to offer on it and you didn't want them just to automatically file 13 year bid, and considering I already know the listing agent and she probably knows where I lives and would slash my tires, say 900, maybe try to meet in the middle somewhere or if you really wanted to push your luck, go 850, see if they'll sell it for 950. Maybe if you had a cash offer, 1031 or you had a, a 950 with no appraisal contingency or something which I don't really recommend, but if you just wanted to put some extra meat on the bone as some enticement for
• 22:28
  Speaker A: them and they most likely bought this. Well, they did. It's only two years old, so they probably bought it new in 24.
• 22:34
  Speaker B: It could have been something that was under contract say back in 22 because they were taking contracts for these things all the way back to 2020. Just depends on what part of the building phases you got into. Right. So I think some of these started going under contract in 29. In 2020, 21. So it just depends on whom they put it under contract. But yeah, it probably was sold right around this price somewhere.
• 23:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's the market we're living in. Okay. Yep.
• 23:05
  Speaker B: Onward we go. I absolutely love this cabin. Location on this one is down Wares Valley Highway a bit, I believe. Let me just check before I make a fool of myself. Yeah, so really good location right off a little cove road in this area. So. And it's kind of back here in an area where you're not going to have a bunch of through traffic. Love the location on this one. Love that view. Right. I, I'm a sucker for a good view because we can build cabins all day long. We can't build more of these because we're just not in the God business. And you know, we're, you're talking some serious, serious sunsets lots of beautiful twilight pictures that you can take on. A lot of nice outdoor living. Cabin itself. I don't think it's anything major league different compared to what we've seen before other than this is more the classic interior kind of a look. But I dig it. Right. And I'm stunned that it's still around. I've been trying to sell this for two or three months.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: It does have a lot going for it. It's just priced too high. You think?
• 24:20
  Speaker B: You know, I just don't know because personally I kind of feel like it's priced pretty competitively. Zillow estimates here show that it's just a little bit low based off of comps. But I think if you sent over an 800k offer, they'd probably talk to you. I think they give that consideration.
• 24:42
  Speaker A: I mean it is only two bathrooms, you know, for 900 grand. So. Yep.
• 24:47
  Speaker B: So you're going to have, you're going to have a cash flow issue potentially. But I mean I've seen skilled operators do 50, 60,000 on a one bedroom property. And here's another thing right here, bought at the height of 22.
• 25:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's March of 22. You couldn't, you could not tell that person to not buy this. You could not. They were going to buy it no matter what.
• 25:15
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 25:15
  Speaker A: It probably, they were probably.
• 25:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, they were probably ecstatic to get it at the price because. Let's see, let's see what it was listed at 998 and then sold in June, let's see, February. So I mean they even got it below asking price. Maybe there were some repair credits or something like that. But I love this one, I really do. But I, I'm always drawn to those kind of views.
• 25:43
  Speaker A: And again, it looks like a fairly easy to access. It looks like the driveway might be a little steep, but it's probably really easy to get to, I would guess.
• 25:51
  Speaker B: I believe so. Yeah. Let's just take a look here real quick. Little bit of construction work going on. But I mean, dude, in terms of the, the steep driveway tax or the mountain tax or the mountain goat tax, whatever you want to call it. All right, this is, this is pretty easy. I mean you do have a shared driveway going across your left front perimeter right here. But you know, big deal, super easy road to get on here, I don't see much of a problem.
• 26:24
  Speaker A: I mean, great second home because it's so peaceful over there, you know.
• 26:28
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 26:30
  Speaker A: Okay. I like it. It's got a lot going for it. Price, you know, maybe.
• 26:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, this One. One I just had under contract. Unfortunately it's a short sale, but it's got some issues with it. It's got some cleaning up. It needs to be done on the outside. It's got some drainage issues on the back. But I'm not going to say what price we had it at, but there's some short sale options out here. You know, foreclosures are sign of the times and you do have the occasional property that interest, short sell and foreclosure. This one's a pretty good one. Great location downtown. Pigeon Forge.
• 27:06
  Speaker A: This is cheaper than the one we just saw. That had two bathrooms.
• 27:10
  Speaker B: Correct. So this one's Right. And the reason why it's priced this way is because of the short sale. Right. So you have to get the lender's approval on the purchase price. I don't know how much room they have for additional leeway, but you know. Absolutely. Stellar location right here, right off the parkway, I believe. Let's see, where's your outlet mall? Try to catch me. Yeah, outlet. The outlet malls right here.
• 27:36
  Speaker A: You're.
• 27:37
  Speaker B: You're right in the heart of pretty much everything, man. You're just, boom.
• 27:41
  Speaker A: You're been in it.
• 27:42
  Speaker B: I've been in it. I had it under contract.
• 27:44
  Speaker A: What and what, what's wrong with it?
• 27:46
  Speaker B: Inspection related items regarding grading of the property and water coming in through some of the portions in the backside.
• 27:53
  Speaker A: So there's a hill in the back and the water's coming down the hill.
• 27:56
  Speaker B: Grading's an issue. And then you need to pressure, wash and clean up on the outside because they've got some kind of film or whatever it is on the outside. Couple other things, you know, here or there, but it can, it can be remedied. So really nice one. So there, there's deals out here. So this would be one where, you know, I don't know the exact price, but maybe if you tried the 800 approach and just said 800 all cash. See what they say. Because it's the sellers that have to agree to it as well as the lender because they paid more than what they're selling it for.
• 28:34
  Speaker A: I'm doing, I'm buying a short sale right now. As a matter of fact, it's supposed to close pretty soon. So I'm 1031 ing into a short sale. So it's like a list of. Of real estate, you know, topics.
• 28:48
  Speaker B: Riverboat gambler.
• 28:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so we found that, you know, as a percentage of what they owe is how much their. The bank would be willing to come down in Other words, there's a, you know, whatever the number is, 5%, 10% of what they owe the bank that the bank is willing to just wash their hands of as opposed to deal with, you know, putting it back on the market for sale. And we, we got approved, actually yesterday the bank approved it. And we're not, we're not far off though. This is, this is a very reasonable house. I think they owe like, I don't even remember the numbers, but it's, it's something like $8,000 or something. I think they owe two, whatever it is, two, 42, 38, seven. I don't know, 245. And I think we're under contract for 235, so something like seven or eight grand difference. And the bank did approve and again appraisal and all that. And
• 29:53
  Speaker B: yeah, and I'm not a, and I'm not a lender, but I bought plenty of short sales and foreclosures myself. And so the, basically the bank has to run the cost benefit analysis of what, holding onto that property, letting it, you know, sit vacant or sit empty or all these other kinds of variables. And they just have to decide is it worth us, worth it for us to foreclose or is it worth for us to just sell it at a loss? And you're going to, they're going to take a loss either way, but they just have to run those numbers because
• 30:24
  Speaker A: most of the time they don't, they don't want to deal with it.
• 30:26
  Speaker B: You know, most of the time they don't. And I think the only time that they may want to is when it's in a situation like it's in right now and you have a season property manager who's already got things underway and it's still a cash flowing asset, at least in some respects. So maybe they'll take it on. Maybe they won't want to jump over to this one real quick just so I don't spend too much time on each one. But I think this is probably the best value of any property in the smokies right now. 216 Oakmont. I've been in this one. 18 people occupancy. It's a three bedroom, but it's really more like a five. It's up in that area off of Newport Highway. Go up going towards the lake. So you're not going to have nearly the amount of traffic. You got multiple entry points. You can be in Silky Mountain quickly, you can be in Dollywood very quickly, just coming down any one of these ways. Veterans Boulevard, whatnot. I like it because of the size, of the price. I think it's priced very well because of the age. I believe this is grandfathered into the short term rental permit system where you don't need the sprinkler systems as long as you maintain your permit. Huge cabin, nice view up off the top floor. Like you can literally see the long distance. North Carolina Tar Heel, blue kind of mountains here in the, in the, in the distance. Needs a little bit of updating here there. But it's more than adequate as it is right now. So this is what I try to find. This is why I spend an hour a day clicking through all these listings so the buyers don't have to. But I dig this one.
• 32:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a little far out for me. But the price is extremely appealing. Yep.
• 32:11
  Speaker B: And then, I mean if you're talking, you know, 170 projection from their property manager, Avada, and I do kind of believe that. I do think this 170 is obtainable. I don't think this is really just, you know, it's actually even more. Right. So high you got a 210 to 170 performance. I mean, I've seen lesser cabins do this.
• 32:37
  Speaker A: Again, their numbers, not ours, but those are coming from a property management company. Can you explain the three bed, five bath? This thing has most likely more than three beds.
• 32:46
  Speaker B: So the way that it works, Tennessee state statute says that you cannot list a property for sale on the MLS with anything higher than what the septic permit says on it. So you can have a two bedroom septic permit, but you can have a 10 bedroom cabin and you can only list it on the MLS as a two bedroom. That's state of Tennessee rules. Tennessee Real Estate Commission rules, not my rules. So on Airbnb, different story. Right. If it's 10 bedrooms, I'm going to guess you could list it as 10 bedrooms because I see it done all the time. All right, so this is more than likely listed as a five bedroom just because you've got four bedrooms, two on the top floor, two on the main floor, and then down here in the bottom you've got an absolutely huge bunk room. See if I can find it. Yeah, so you've got just a huge bunk room down here, place where you can throw all the kids, let them come down here, make a bunch of noise. Me. This is the downstairs basement area, mind you. So there was a huge bedroom over here, huge family room, game room kind of area here. I would convert that into just like a huge game Room kind of an area. Right. I would just send the kids down there. All the old folks like me will go up on the top floor, have our lemonade, adult beverages, whatever, and just sit and enjoy that view. I'll be doing that next week, June 10th, actually, when my family comes down here. This is more of those rustic, I'm sorry, rustic contemporary cabins that I like right here in the heart of Pigeon Forge. It's kind of off on it by itself. So this one does give you plenty of elbow room and peace and quiet. But I absolutely love this look. The one thing that does kind of concern me is that it is a true two bedroom. You do have like a little bit of a bunk space up here. So sleeping occupancy might be a little bit of a problem. But for something that looks like this, you are going to pay up in terms of purchase price. They are selling it for less than they paid for it, I believe. But this look is very, very popular. When my wife and I are going somewhere. This is usually the kind of look that we pick up. But it just depends on your preference. If you're going for classic Smokey's cabin versus something on. On this rustic contemporary end. But again, right here in the heart of Pigeon Forge. So, I mean, you're. You're literally five minutes away. Newer builders, newer build, like two years old. You even got a small spot in the back for to build maybe a smaller picket ball court. You could put in a garage kind of a thing where you put an indoor pool, put in a swim spa, something. All right. But a lot of room for picking stuff up. Full disclosure, this one's a. This one's a Matt Castle listing. I'm basically putting it up here just to show what a 4 bedroom, 2 bath can do. Very close to the parkway location on this one's right off middle creek road. So right here, bing bang, boom, you're done. If traffic on the parkway is terrible because of rod run, you could always hang a left as you're coming in off the interstate down Pittman center road, come right across upper middle creek, and boom, you're right here. Dollywood 5, 10 minutes parkway. 5, 10 minutes. Go the back way down to Gatlinburg. Great location, great cabin. It's got the more classic kind of a cabin look, but all good stuff. I'll just blow through some of these even more quickly. This one's already pending, so, you know. But again, here you are. Some of this nice renewal look. A two bedroom can get you some of this kind of stuff. I Believe this one. Let's see, 46 rental. I mean they're basically giving you this stuff when I'm the listing agent. I'm doing everything I can to take all those future reservations and transfer air quotes here. Transfer from seller to buyer.
• 37:02
  Speaker A: All right.
• 37:05
  Speaker B: More stuff. This one right on Wiley Oakley just on top. It's got an amazing view from the top floor. Let's see if we can scroll down. Yeah, so leaves are off. So we're going to trim some trees on this one. But I'm personally under contract on this one. So we're going to have some tree trimming done and stuff like that. But really nice cabin and I'm trying to imagine a point in time when you could get a two bedroom cabin on Wiley Oakley and Gatlinburg for 600K. I mean it's, it's just not something that we've seen in a while.
• 37:41
  Speaker A: Hmm. What's a price history on this? Like what is, what is it? It's.
• 37:48
  Speaker B: Oh, this was listed way higher. I mean I, I busted my. You know what, to get this thing under contract because I saw it come available at 6:19 and thinking, all right, well I just kind of won the lottery. So let's just blast this out to 50 buyers and see who likes it. And sure enough, somebody jumped on it real fast. And so I think we had it pretty much locked up in two days. But I mean, price history in 2025. I'm sorry, in 2025, 799 moved down to 619.
• 38:22
  Speaker A: What'd they pay for? They paid. Oh, they've owned it. No, there you go. In 21 650. They're losing money.
• 38:29
  Speaker B: Listing removed. Sold 650. Yeah, so they're slightly in the hole.
• 38:36
  Speaker A: I hate that. But you know, it's just, it's what we're seeing in the market a little bit here and there.
• 38:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we, if we had a couple trillion dollars we could change the market. But I don't have it. So you know, just have to play the market that we got. I think one of our own listing agents, Chris Looper, got this one under contract. This one again, if it's priced well and it's got a certain kind of amenity that stand, that makes it stand out. You're going to get pretty good activity on this. So I believe this is a, I don't know if this is true one bedroom or not, but the main reason why it's in a good location and the photographer did a really good job setting this up Right. So again, this is meant for the old fogies like me who like to sit out back with their country time lemonade and just look at the view. So a lot of good properties out there available right now. Clicking through again. Gatlinburg. Under 500, one bedroom, proven income 62,700. HOA fees a little bit high at 375. I don't know if that would be enough to, you know, push people off or not. It's been available for a while, so maybe it does. But you know, something making 62k under 500 in the city of Gatlinburg. Or maybe. Let me check, maybe not. City of Gatlinburg, that's right on the cusp maybe, but super close. Being downtown Gatlinburg, 510 have a pool for 375amonth.
• 40:12
  Speaker A: I feel like it would.
• 40:13
  Speaker B: It's got a community pool. It doesn't have an indoor pool.
• 40:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's great.
• 40:17
  Speaker B: I believe this is gap, this Gatlinburg Falls Resorts, I believe.
• 40:20
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 40:21
  Speaker B: But I mean it's. There's. There's just tons upon tons of good deals out here. Another one, Gatlinburg, right here. Under 500k. Does it show any income that it's making? Actually it does. Right here. Annual revenue 48,000. So it's priced right around high nine sort of PE ratio. But exterior doesn't look. I mean, it's nothing to write home about. It looks good inside or the interior looks really nice. Everything seems meticulously maintained. Now these pictures could be three days old. They could be three years old for all I know. But listing presents incredibly well for a property under 500,000 with the alt precious.373. Excuse me, 37738 zip code.
• 41:16
  Speaker A: So you're
• 41:19
  Speaker B: Zoom out. Yeah, you're right here. Halfway between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. All right. Outstanding location. I believe you might know this one. Let's see. Sugarloaf.
• 41:33
  Speaker A: Oh yeah, I used to own it. I was wondering if you were going to show this one. Yeah.
• 41:36
  Speaker B: Yes. Well, it's got to proven income, right. So.
• 41:39
  Speaker A: Well, also I, I did happen to notice that after I got out of it, the income went down a little bit, so I was pretty.
• 41:46
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 41:47
  Speaker A: But buddy, mine owns. This is. Yeah, I used to own this thing and with him and. And then he bought me out. This has been years. I mean, if you go back and look, look what I paid for it don't show anybody that it was nothing,
• 42:01
  Speaker B: you know, but it's, you know, it's Stuff like this, if you have seasoned operators who know what they're doing. And one of the things I tell a lot of my buyers is, you know, look, if you can think of a short term rental cabin similar to what you think of as when you buy, say ExxonMobil as a dividend, a dividend stock, right? So say that you buy it at a hundred bucks and Exxon's paying out $4 per share in a quarterly basis. So now you're making a dollar per quarter, right? So you may make $4 per year in the first year or two of owning it. After that you might make $10 cents, you might make $20 cents kind of a thing. So dividends are going up. Same way with, with this guy, right? So, you know, you might make 55 in your first year or if you're a brand new owner, maybe you make 45 in the first year because you're just getting your feet under you. And you make 47, then you make 50, then you make 52.
• 42:58
  Speaker A: So I feel like I pushed 60 on it at one point, but maybe not. I know everything about, I know everything there is to know about this. It probably needs a hot tub. Again, I haven't owned it in a while, but the guy that, anyway, he's a great guy. I still talk to him every day. And he's just moving on from this one. He's got, he's got dozens of them. It's gonna need some landscaping. Those trees that you see there are, they're abundant and, and I remember like for real doing it by hand with a chainsaw back in the day. And there's a lot of them, but they're easy. They're just little pin pines. There's nothing to them. And it needs a stain. It's gonna need appliances, but it's. I, I love this thing. I had very few problems with it. It's teeny tiny, but it does have a bedroom. And I think they priced it. Like, I was surprised when this came on the market. I texted him, I was like, dude, you priced it. I think you priced this thing right.
• 43:50
  Speaker B: I've probably spoken to a buyer every two days since this hit the market. I think I've spoken to at least five to 10 buyers about this minimum. And everyone's like, you know, can I replicate this kind of success on this cabin or others just like it? I'm like, yeah, if you, you know, just become obsessed with the business, spend the time in, go to management Monday, join short term shop plus all that.
• 44:16
  Speaker A: I taught this guy how to do this. And I used to do this house. You know, I used to own this house. So, yes, this can be done, and I'm happy to teach anybody how to do it. 55 is maybe a little much for your first year. He. This guy really knows what he's doing. But that being said, he's not. He's. He's got like 50 of them, so he's not spending a million hours on price labs and things like that, you know?
• 44:38
  Speaker B: Well, plus, you guys named it. Well, I don't think it's this one. But you guys also have some of the best names for cabin. So Fat bottom squirrel still wins.
• 44:46
  Speaker A: That was him. That was all him. I was not involved with that.
• 44:49
  Speaker B: Fat bottom squirrels. I can't listen to Fred. I can't listen to Queen without thinking about that. If you've watched me or I think you've seen some of my listings and go to office hours, you'll probably see this cabin. It looks kind of similar. I can't believe this one's still on the market. But I think I've shown this one to you in the past. It doesn't look anything impressive inside, but you're literally right on the parkway, right? You're just one street down. You're basically 100, 150 yards from the parkway itself. So you got the Titanic, Hard Rock right over here, the outlet malls right there. You can quite literally just be right here on the parkway. So I'm always preaching location, location, location. Great little cabin. Even got a nice view. There's no hot tub, but put a hot tub right here. You got the mountain in the back. And now that this. Once this podcast goes live, somebody will probably snake it in the first three days.
• 45:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's cheap.
• 45:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's. I mean, it's in a. It's in a subdivision where there's a cabin every, you know, 30ft from the left and 30ft from the right of you. It put up a decent little privacy fence right here. You got a little bit of noise coming from the commercial activity to the west of you. So the only negative that I can really come up with is, you know, some of this slides and coaster kind of stuff. There's a privacy fence right here, but you're inside a cabin. There's no deck out on the back facing it, so maybe you got some noise pollution there. So
• 46:23
  Speaker A: is that local goat right there? Is that where this is?
• 46:26
  Speaker B: Let's see.
• 46:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think so.
• 46:29
  Speaker B: I think I've hit pretty much all of them.
• 46:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
• 46:33
  Speaker B: I Don't see local goat to the
• 46:34
  Speaker A: right a little bit, right?
• 46:36
  Speaker B: That could be local goat right here, maybe.
• 46:39
  Speaker A: I think it's.
• 46:40
  Speaker B: It's local goat has a big parking lot out front.
• 46:43
  Speaker A: Up, up, up, up. That one. Nope, down. It doesn't matter. It's right there. I can set the bottom of your screen.
• 46:53
  Speaker B: Got it right here, right?
• 46:55
  Speaker A: Nope, right there. Up that one. Yeah. The one you just said right there. Yeah, that. No, either way. No, there it is. I see it. I see it, but I can't get it. I can't put my cursor on it. It doesn't matter.
• 47:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I just wanted to highlight this one to kind of finish it all up and round it up. Yeah, there's a ton of motivated sellers out there, and some are going to
• 47:19
  Speaker A: be more right there. Motivated sellers?
• 47:21
  Speaker B: Yes. Right. I mean, there, there's. They could say motivated sellinger, and sometimes it's just a motivated listing agent. Right. They're trying to get this thing sold before their listing agreement expires. So it could be that the sellers are like, okay, if you send us a 400k offer, we're going to ignore it because we're not that motivated. So it could just be a tactic that the, you know, a listing agent, somebody like myself, who's going to say, yeah, I'm motivated to get this thing sold, but they're not going to give it away as well. So maybe that means 440, maybe that means 340 for all we know. So you don't know until you reach out to a listing age or send an offer, that kind of thing. But just note to kind of wind this all up. There's a bunch of sellers out there right there. Out there right now. You'll never know what somebody's going to do until you make that offer. So find your agent and let them know what you like.
• 48:15
  Speaker A: Can I see the price history on this one just before we go.
• 48:22
  Speaker B: See where they bought it? Oh, that's a Luke Carl special right there.
• 48:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's not bad. Especially in 21. Then they tried to turn it around and sell it for two times as much. Three years later, four years later.
• 48:37
  Speaker B: Well, this is what you see in the Smokies, right? So, you know, May of 25, now it's May of 26. You know, there's properties out there listed right now. It's been on the market since 22. They just pull them list on, pull
• 48:52
  Speaker A: them list and it's here's the deal. It's not that they've come down 200 grand. It's that they were being ridiculous a year ago with this ask price that, that just. What are we doing there? 75, 74 higher than what you paid for it like a couple years earlier. What do you think, it's too much? Look,
• 49:10
  Speaker B: I talk to a lot of sellers and sometimes there's a seller who says, okay, I want to see if I can get top dollar for it. I'm like, okay, I think it's important for you, Mr. And Mrs. Seller to have your home run swing. So let's be a good human being and let's at least give them their shot. Then you talk to other sellers who are just like, hey, I know that my next door neighbor sold his place 10% less than I paid for mine. So I guess I'm going to have to sell right around what my neighbor sold his for to just make appraisal value. Right? So you get certain sellers who are very realistic, you get certain ones who are hopeful and, you know, just have to let the market decide on who's right or wrong.
• 49:54
  Speaker A: All right, well, you mentioned office hours. I want to throw a plug out for that. That is STS consultation dot com. Join us anytime. You can also find that on sts plus dot com. We'd love to have you there. Do we have any more houses or are we done?
• 50:08
  Speaker B: That's it.
• 50:09
  Speaker A: Sweet. I enjoyed it. Short term shopping in the smogies. Hopefully you learned something. We're always available. I'm luke@theshorttermshop.com how do I find you?
• 50:21
  Speaker B: Matt@theshorttermshop.com phone number 865344 1823.
• 50:28
  Speaker A: All right, let's find some deals. Thanks everybody. Love you. And don't overthink it.