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The Inspection That Saved My Business · Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions

• Jeremiah: Think you can expect cleaners and guests to be reasonable? Good luck. I thought so too, but I was wrong. Now you realize it's not all sunshine and five star reviews. That means you're in the right place. Today we're discussing one of the least discussed and least emphasized aspects of operating your short term rental but it's one of the most important. We go over how high stakes it is that inspections occur with each clean and some of the issues I've found inspecting units in this region. That's because this is the community where we talk about the gross, awkward, and the operational messes, as well as the real strategies that help you keep going instead of quitting. Because this industry is somewhere where you can win big, or you can ignore education and you can quit. Welcome to short-term rental problems and solutions. So I was invited to record a webinar for the Poconos Vacation Rental Owners Association this week and wanted to discuss one of the topics that is, I think, the most ignored, but the most important. Everyone's out here on podcast talking about revenue management and finding your next deal. Meanwhile, the most important thing is the guest experience and making sure the property is safe for your next guest. So let's talk about inspections and not just cleaning inspections, but maintenance as well. This ⁓ talk is titled ⁓ The Inspection That Saved My Business. So I want to start with an embarrassing short story to illustrate the importance of inspections. Melissa stayed at my house recently, and like many other experienced guests with 25 reviews, she knew what she needed to do in order to get a refund. Did she intend to use the hot tub? No. But she booked a house where the hot tub is the amenity. It's the primary listing photo. She did this so that she could stage an issue. And get a discount for her stay. She knew there's no camera on the hot tub, so there's no proof of what she's done to it. And she knows that that's an Airbnb policy. She also knows that this property is highly rated, so the host must care about their reviews. She came and she stayed with her boyfriend for two nights, and at 11 p.m. on a Monday night, her first night here. She reported that the hot tub was discolored. She sent a photo of the water and it looked gross. The next morning my crew was there to empty and refill the hot tub, And Melissa complained again that the water was discolored and said, quote, I don't feel comfortable going in the hot tub with this color and she told us not to come back for any further correction. Upon checkout, Melissa requested a refund due to not being able to use the hot tub, which was the main reason I booked. I made a mistake. I denied her request. And I did so because I had evidence that she was reason the water was discolored. She made a call to Airbnb. They notified me that were going to give her the credit anyway. I presented my evidence, they denied her credit. Then what followed was a one star review, taking me from 4.96 stars to 4.94. And then I spent another five to ten hours of my life on the phone with Airbnb support ambassadors and filing complaints and appeals. Did Airbnb take down the review? No. It's still up there. Does Airbnb have a policy to protect hosts from this type of guest? Yes. But those policies are ignored. And more and more guests are figuring this out. Did my claim for the cost of emptying and refilling the hot tub get paid? No, because Airbnb ignores those policies too. More and more hosts are at the mercy of the guest on Airbnb. More and more, we're being denied reasonable claims, reasonable requests, and fair treatment. To illustrate this, there's a house over in Tobyhanna making over $235,000 per year. It was bought in 2016 for just $400,000 and it's up for sale today. Why? Because the host is tired of the hospitality industry. That's what happens when the platform denies hosts their most basic rights. Good operators get burned out. We can't just wait around while hosts around the world organize a class action lawsuit or put together a host bill of rights. So what's our only defense? Inspections. Why? Because you have to present your evidence in order to have any chance of winning. There's also guests out there who know the line between legal blackmail and illegal. Like Melissa, whose guest profile actually says that she works for the New York State Court system. Without the evidence that comes from inspections, you are defenseless. You have to assume your guest is correct and the issue is legitimate. Also, you might be thinking, I could just leave her a bad review. Yeah. But that doesn't get you any money. It doesn't win you a claim. And at the end of the day, the guest can call Airbnb and get that review taken off without any of your permission. And I've actually talked about that situation before. Are hosts able to get their bad reviews taken off their profile? No, but a guest is. So, what's the inspection that saved my business? My cleaning service is called GMG Clean. I knew that if I become a property manager, I need a cleaning service in-house. During a routine cleaning procedure, a lead cleaner was inspecting and taking photos of the areas most people do not look, and she found. A handgun. The previous guest was law enforcement and put it on top of the refrigerator. The next guest would arrive in two hours, and the cleaner didn't feel comfortable driving a loaded pistol back to the office. So what do we do now? Imagine for a second that like most property managers, I hire a cleaning service with 10 to 20 independent cleaners, some of which have maybe 10 minutes of training and have never been to your rental before. They're in a time crunch because they have three houses to clean today, and the refrigerator was clean. The oven was clean and the dishwasher had just finished its cycle. What are they doing? They're wiping down some surfaces, and they're moving on out of the kitchen so they can take care of the laundry. When the house is set, they're rushing to get to the next house. Maybe before they leave, they take some wide-angle photos of the kitchen, each bedroom, the bathroom, maybe with the toilet seat lid up. Max twenty photos. Any pictures of the top of the fridge? Now let's say the guest arrives and, like Melissa, is looking for an issue they can use. Like she's searching through a circular ad for a coupon. Right there on top of the fridge is not the dust she expects, but a loaded firearm. That would get the listing shut down. That would get media attention. That would get this guest compensation for emotional distress. Now that you can see how important this is. Let's jump into some of the things that I've found during inspections. you ever heard of the broken window theory? This was a theory originally made by James Wilson and George Lelling in 1982. If you've studied sociology, psychology, or criminal justice, you've heard about this theory. This is the idea that if there's a property that's not being taken care of, other people are not going to take care of it. The theory actually started with when law enforcement enforces small crimes, the big crimes aren't really a problem. When they only enforce big crimes and they look the other way for the small crimes, a lot more of the big crimes happen. So with the broken window theory, if there's one broken window in a building, people are likely to throw stones at the other windows. If there's no broken windows, people get the impression that this is a property that somebody cares about. And they tend to not throw stones at those windows, even if it looks abandoned. broken window theory applies to short term rentals in ways that are hard to explain, but ⁓ can easily illustrate them. If your cabinet doors are on hinges that are falling apart, then your guest is gonna feel like they're allowed to throw their beer bottle caps from the hot tub into the yard. If the hardware is broken, falling off, and you've got, you know, cabinets that are scuffed or scratched, the house is clean and your cleaners feel like they did a good job, but you've got other issues going on. Your guests are going to feel like as soon as they're finished with their cigarette, they can throw the butt wherever they feel like it, into your driveway, for example. Do you know how difficult it is to pull ⁓ all cigarette butts out of gravel driveways? And you think you've got them all, and then some of the stone moves around and you find some more. When your guest sees that you have electrical boxes holding switches together that are a half inch out of the wall, it just looks bad. And it makes them think that they can disrespect your property as well. A property owner who takes care of their place is not going to leave these issues. They're going to maintain their property well. But damage from guests happens, and a lot of that damage doesn't get noticed by cleaners. And it has to be something that you take care of, or more damage is going to occur. So I'm going through some slides, through a slideshow with photographs that's gonna help illustrate a whole bunch of these issues. Now, if you are not able to watch this on YouTube, if you're only listening to this through Spotify Apple I'm gonna explain what's in each photo so that you can get a better idea. Because we have sixty slides here. This is a sink that has no bead of caulk or silicone around the rim. You should have silicone or sealant so that your Bathroom sink is secured up to the wall, but it's also so that things don't just fall down in there. Now that would also be a great spot for spiders to hide. So having that caulk there is gonna give people the impression that it's a property that's taken care of. Also, this is something that has to be followed up with over time because these sinks do move around sometimes and that caulk can let go. I can't tell you how many screen doors I see that have malfunctioning hardware, or screws have completely fallen out and they are no longer being pulled back into place with that little piston. do not like bifold doors, the closet doors, because they're constantly off track, they're constantly breaking, and they're difficult to replace. I'd rather you replace your bifold doors with a different type of closet door. Loose doorknobs or doorknobs that do not work. This is an illustration. In this photograph, there is a loose door handle. ⁓ And ⁓ it operate well because of how loose it is. But if you were to just use a Phillips head screwdriver, you could tighten that down nicely and your guests are not going to be getting the impression that you don't care. This is a sliding glass door. What ends up happening when these break? Most handymen just cut a piece of wood and they put it down there in the track. But that gives people the impression that you don't really take care of things. So my recommendation is find the right hardware, use AI or Amazon and order it so that it's there and your handyman can replace it In this photograph, there's a lamp on a nightstand and there's an outlet right behind and it's not plugged in. It's not plugged in because the plug doesn't stay in the outlet. The outlet works, it's electrified, but it's so old and broken that the plug doesn't have any friction to stay in the wall. So if you are able to get it to stay in the wall, you've got the hazard of something falling on the metal contacts of the plug. When it's halfway out of the wall. This is dangerous. I don't think I have to keep explaining why. I get so bothered by switches that do nothing. I think your guests do as well. Because when a switch does nothing, it tells them there's a light bulb that's dead somewhere. Now this is not as bad if they're labeled. And if you have a switch that does nothing and it's labeled that it doesn't do anything, I don't think it's gonna bother your guests so much. But having them there when they are supposed to do something, I think is a big deal. Like in this next slide, we have is a switch that controls an outlet, but the lamp is plugged into a different outlet. So the lamp is only acting like a lamp, and the switch is only turning on an outlet that nothing is plugged into. Make sure these things are plugged into the right place. I want to pause for a moment and just point out. None of these issues are going to be pointed out by your cleaners because these are all maintenance-related issues. And there's a purpose because I found plenty of improper cleaning things during these inspections, but I'm pointing out to you the things that those cleaners are not going to find. And this impacts your guest experience considerably. So again, getting right to the point, I think it's very important that at least once in a while you walk through your properties. And more frequently than that, you get a second set of eyes to walk through your properties and to look for issues like this. So let's continue. Exterior penetrations. Now your guest is not going to be impacted by this, but you might, because now you've got mice crawling into your dryer vent in the wintertime. And they could easily bite through the foil of your dryer vent and get into the house and out of the house. And now when the dryer is running, air is exhausting into the house with the lint. And not only that, but you've got mice crawling in and out of your house. You can fix this quite easily. By installing the proper cover. This is a photo of a grill that was still hot when somebody put the cover back on. And that's why the covers all melted. A lot of cleaners don't notice things like this. They should be checking the grill. I agree. And they should notice this kind of damage. I agree. But in this situation, I called this out and the host that we were doing the inspection for didn't know about it. And the house was already cleaned. Here's another one. Imagine that Melissa showed up with her children to an Airbnb that I'm hosting, and she opens up a cooler that's outside, and she finds a block of melted ice and a bunch of white claws. She's got kids there. The kids are likely to be playing in the yard. The yard is where the cooler is. These are not drinks that were left intentionally for the guest. If they were, they'd be in the refrigerator. These were left behind. And nobody checked the cooler. But during an inspection, I checked the cooler. settlement. This is not something that your cleaners are gonna pick up on. And it's not something that's like urgent. It's not like it has to happen right now that you have to fix it, ⁓ you should be reminded about these things. And the fact that you've got a stoop that's kind of overhanging just open air makes the guest, I think, a little concerned that things are gonna wobble around a little bit, maybe not be so secure. Floors can sometimes have tripping hazards. You have to actually walk around your property in your bare feet to know. And a guest like Melissa will call out those tripping hazards and call them unsafe. You've got to watch out for this stuff. In this situation, it's a transition strip with a nail that's hanging a half inch above the transition strip. So it's just gotten loose and needs to be pounded back down. Here is the downspout. when you have downspouts, they should exhaust the water at least five feet from the structure. In this situation, we've got a downspout that's allowing water to accumulate right next to a structural support. And it's right next to a deck that is supported by blocks that are just sitting on the ground. Which means if you exhaust a lot of water over there, ⁓ erosion and and mud. is gonna allow that structure to sink. You've got to be careful about this stuff. These types of things can be called out with an inspection, but they wouldn't get called out by your cleaners because your cleaners either don't know better or they don't care because they're there to clean. Sometimes I'm doing inspections and I find furniture that looks like a death trap. Here's a photo of some very flimsy-looking outdoor furniture. This is a love seat chair made of wood, and it is so old, weathered, and splintered. This is very gray. It doesn't look like it's been painted in forever. My recommendation is dispose of it and get something that's built out of waterproof, materials like Trex or lumber. always finding kitchen chairs that have fallen apart. Almost always they're made with wood and these sockets apart. I don't know why nobody on to this, but this is very easy to fix. For $4, you can get a bottle of wood glue. can pour some wood glue in one socket, and you can push the stuff back together. And you can even put a nail through it. Here, make sure you're looking underneath beds. In this photo, we've got a bed with one leg that is on a diagonal, and it's not made to be on a diagonal. It's meant to be vertical, straight up and down. So this is an accident waiting to happen. Somebody's going to sit on this bed, put enough pressure on it that that leg collapses. And then they can't sleep on the bed. Then they leave. And a guest like Melissa is going to say that their back hurts. And that they need to go visit a chiropractor. Guess who's wanting to pay that bill? Furniture like drawers can fall apart if a separation is not taken care of quickly. It can get worse and worse, and before you know it, you need a whole new dresser. And I've sold dressers for over $1,400. So this furniture can get very expensive. The one in the photo looks like it was picked up at a yard sale for $50. But nevertheless, it should be taken care of because then it has to be replaced. here's a photo of some furniture ⁓ it's made out of like fiberboard and then it's covered with a wood veneer. This wood veneer is falling off and it can be glued right back on. If it's glued on ⁓ it's all the way off, this can actually be taken care of nice easily. The next thing I've seen a lot of ⁓ is tub issues. So if your hot tub doesn't have a cover lift, then I think you're making a mistake. You're now expecting your guests to fold it over and put it somewhere neatly where it's not going to get covered and grass and leaves and dirt. And then to put it back on whenever they're not using the hot tub. But when something is difficult for the guests to do, they just don't do it. now you don't even have a camera on this area. And you can't tell ⁓ if the wind blew that lid But your guest may have just left your house while it's cold outside, and your cleaner arrives, and now there's no lid on your hot tub. More than three times I've been showing houses in the Poconos, and I've found hot tubs with no lid on them, where the lid was ⁓ somewhere usually downwind, or right next to the hot tub. ⁓ And happens because there's not a lift in place to fold the hot tub cover over. and then lift it up out of the way. People can bathe and they can use the hot tub the way they want to. And then it's easy enough for them to pull this all the way back onto the hot tub to save you electricity, to save the heat in the hot tub, and to keep that hot tub from freezing solid. If you don't have a lift, your guests are gonna end up putting it in the dirt. When they put it back on your hot tub, that dirt and that grass and those leaves are gonna fall back into the water, which creates even work for your cleaners when they take care of your hot tub. Sometimes during an inspection, we find that there's furniture a little bit too close to heaters. Now, obviously, this is a fire hazard. One time I was checking a house after a tenant moved out, and there was a wad of toilet paper on top of the electric heater element. Like the the element, the fins ⁓ inside electric heater. Yeah, that there was a ball of toilet paper. on top of that element. So when that heat was eventually turned on, the tenant was at fault for burning down the building. Fortunately I found this before the heat was turned on. Your air conditioning systems. These mini splits, these PTAC units, they've got filters. And if those filters aren't getting checked, cleaned, and replaced, then you're actually burning more electricity than you need to. And if you restrict the flow to your air conditioning system, you may burn it out. It could just continue running, unable to cool the room down. And that will reduce the lifespan of your heating system and your cooling system. While something should last thirty years, twenty, thirty years, it might last only nine. lighters. I see lighters in drawers everywhere. Test them. Make sure they still work. Because it's so annoying for a guest to find a lighter when they're looking to start the grill or a campfire and they test the lighter and it doesn't come on. we talk about pest control. One of the most common pests up here is mice. So look underneath your kitchen sink, look underneath your bathroom sink, look around and behind things, behind trash cans, especially. Anywhere there could be food or crumbs as well. Look for those little black pellets. That's ⁓ poop. ⁓ need to vacuum those things up. You need to put out traps, you need to do something to show your guests that you are doing something about this. But certainly do not leave the mouse poop around. One time I opened up the bottom of the oven and there's that drawer with all the pans in it. Well, I took out a cookie sheet and there was a whole bunch of mouse poop on that cookie sheet. Do not allow this to happen. You need to be checking these things. Also, ⁓ is anybody telling cleaner to check these things? Because they should be checking the pots and pans, in my opinion. Another thing for pest control is outdoor pests. Make sure you walk around the house and you look for beehives, wasps, or bird nests. These types of things do affect your guests. And if they know that there's a wasp nest nearby, Lord help you if somebody gets stung and they find that there's a wasp nest on your property. Just inspect for these types of things. It's not your fault, but if you find out about it, You can deal with it before the guest arrives, before it becomes something that they want to complain about. Monitor and take seriously icy conditions, especially in the Poconos in the mountains. People come here for snow, but then they get here and they complain about it. It's that they want there to be snow where they want the snow, but they don't want there to be any snow where they don't want it. So make sure that your guests have the tools they need to take care of icy conditions. Make sure that there's salt or calcium chloride. Make sure that it's in waterproof container. Because if it's just a bag that's been ripped open, it's gonna get wet the next time it snows. And you could have ruined salt. The second thing is a snow shovel. Make sure that there is a snow shovel at your property and that it's easy enough to get to. It's so, I don't know, uninviting to arrive at a property in the winter while it's snowing and you've got to walk inside in the snow, wet shoes. They could be walking across your beautiful hardwood floors with wet shoes and they're blaming you because there was no snow shovel available. Now they take your broom outside and they do their best to clear a path. None of this is creating a good guest experience. Just make sure that you have the right stuff. An inspector will point out, you don't have a snow shovel. You don't have a bucket of salt. What are your guests gonna do in poor weather? Wait for your cleaners to show up? Another thing that goes along with safety is making sure you have railings. Make sure that your railings are graspable, meaning that they can grab two sides and they can go down safely. There are plenty of guests that have issues with mobility that would really appreciate having the ability to go up and down your stairs safely because they can hold on with both hands. At the very least, you should have a graspable railing on one side. In this photo, we've got an open wall on one side and what looks like a two by four railing on the other side, which means that it is not graspable. And you could very easily add in a dowel graspable railing. On the other side. This is not expensive. During an inspection of a game room, I found a junction box an electrical outlet that was hanging out of the wall a half an inch and there was no cover plate on this outlet. Probably because it had gotten broken off. But the fact that it wasn't there, there was no screw there, means that whoever is managing this property, whoever's hosting this property, ⁓ is ⁓ at risk ⁓ some in this room. Touching the little metallic screws on the right hand side of the outlet and getting electrocuted. Now, I don't mean to be, you know, a drama queen. It's not going to kill them. I've been shocked by 110 volts before. It doesn't kill you. It doesn't knock you down. It just feels like a a strong vibration. But at the end of the day, this is going to freak out a kid and you're at fault. And what do you think a guest like Melissa is going to say? You did this. to electrocute my child. This is not safe. And when Airbnb gets wind that your property is not safe, they shut down your listing. That's when all your future guests are assisted in finding another rental to continue their stay. And even once you provide proof that you've taken care of this, they're still not going to reinstate your listing. Good luck with that. There's also things that are more seasonal, like air conditioners, like window air conditioners. These units should be taken out of your windows in the wintertime. Why? Because the cost of labor to uninstall these ACs is about equivalent to the amount of electricity that you're going to lose trying to heat a room with an air conditioner in the window. There's so much heat loss because of this AC still being installed. It's difficult to explain. Another issue is septic systems. So imagine your guest contacts you and says, Water's backing up, brown water's coming out of the shower drain. What am I supposed to do? What are you gonna do? Well, if you find out that this is all happening because you have bleach in the house and you have a septic system, this is your fault. So during a routine inspection, I found that there was a bleach cleaning product under the bathroom sink. And I know that that's a house that has a septic system. Is this a problem if it's connected to ⁓ a public sewer or community sewer? No, it's not problem then, but it is in this situation because this is a house that has a septic system. And bleach ⁓ kills the bacteria that breaks down solids. And if kill the bacteria that break down solids, then your holding tank is going to fill up very quickly. And once that fills up, Your pump tank is going to fill up. And once that fills up, solids are going to make their way into places where they shouldn't be, like your drain field. And then you have to get a new drain field. And all of this could occur before water starts backing up into your shower. Good luck. A new septic system's like a $30,000 price tag. Trash is the number one way that you're going to get your neighbors angry. Make sure that you have a plan for what to do with it and you have people who are responsible taking care of these things. If your guests decide that ⁓ their car is too nice to put a bag of trash in, going to end up with trash at your house. And there's not a whole lot you can do about it. So make sure you have a plan to take care of this. ⁓ In this situation, I found these trash bags next to a house, next to the front entrance, by the way, after the house had been cleaned. And it wasn't the kind of property where trash gets picked up at the curb. So they weren't just waiting for trash day. I can't tell you how many towel racks I found falling off the wall or already falling off the wall and laying on the floor. Towel racks seem to get the most abuse in the entire bathroom. This is often because it's done poorly, installed poorly, and not done with good drywall anchors and it's usually only into the drywall too. Can't tell you how often I find holes in the wall underneath the dartboard. If you're gonna have a dartboard, have a plan for what happens when your guests fall short. Think about the flooring underneath it. Think about the wall underneath it. The best solution I've seen is cork board. Secured to the wall underneath the dartboard. Walls that have scuffs on them. If you are the kind of host that's going to maintain a property and not paint over the scuffs on your wall, I recommend updating your photos and having scuffs in the pictures. I know it's not going to be as attractive, it's not going to look as good, and it's going to cost you a few hundred dollars to get a new set of photos. But you don't want to give your guests the impression that they're going to a property that's brand new. And when they arrive, they find that 50 other people have. scratch the wall with their shoes. These scuffs, they occur, they happen over time. Part of maintaining a property well is touch up paint. And while you're painting, do not paint over your switches and outlets. It looks bad. This handyman special it chips over time, it doesn't look right, and it's another thing that you're gonna have to do touch-up paint too. But your electrical switches are not meant to be painted, They're meant to be clean. In this photograph, we see an access panel for plumbing repair. The access panel is not holding in the way it was designed to because it's on a ceiling. It needs a couple screws to anchor it into the ceiling. Now, the leak that was repaired seems to have come back because there's more water staining on this access panel. So this is a recurring issue. When there's problems that don't appear new, your guests lose their patience. I recommend doing this the right way, fixing it the right way, and then maintaining it. If you're getting water stains that don't get wiped off, it's telling your guest this has happened before. And I'm not doing anything about it. Here's what looks like a hole in the wall from a door handle. A drywaller can fix this in 20 minutes. And then a few hours later, 20 more minutes to sand and paint it. This can be fixed. This is part of maintaining a property. Don't just allow there to be drywall holes. And then my pet peeve walking through properties and finding that they're not secure because the windows are not latched. Probably the most common type of window in this region is the double hung windows. And here the top window comes down slightly, and the bottom window goes all the way down and it doesn't latch. And it's because the top window has come down a little bit. These are double hung windows. So what do you have to do? You have to push the top window up and you have to push the bottom window down so that this latch can be secured. But so often I'm finding these windows unsecured. And there was a there was a show on TLC years ago. It was called It Takes a Thief. And this was an interesting show. I don't think they went into a second or third season or anything. But what I learned from it was that burglars, like home burglars, they choose homes based on certain criteria, based on certain appearances. And then the way that they break into these homes, one of the weakest and most ignored areas was windows. So they walk around the house checking the windows. When they find a window that's like not secured like this one, they go right in. It's very easy for them to climb through a window like this. Now, I hope that you noticed from this entire episode that none of these things were failures of your cleaner. All of these issues exist in highly rated rentals in the Poconos, and nine out of ten guests are not going to say anything about it. But the condition of your property determines how your guests treat your property and how they review your property. The condition of your property gets called out sometimes by every single guest. Because they don't want to be blamed for the damage of a previous guest. These are not cleaning issues. You can't just find a good cleaner and hope that these maintenance items will be taken care of. Because a lot of times they're just called out once and then forgotten about. And you and I, we're busy people. We might forget about it if the cleaner doesn't say it twice, So it's so incredibly important to have somebody who knows what they're looking at, knows what they're looking for. Do a home inspection for your property on a regular basis. Does this have to be every time the house is cleaned? No. But it should at least be once every couple weeks. And the inspection that saved my business was that type of inspection. Because that was a lead cleaner walking through ⁓ after the house already cleaned, looking in those areas where a guest like Melissa is going to look for dust. And because she found This gun, nobody else had to find it. We were able to contact the guest and they were able to meet me at the property to pick it up. of course, they ⁓ They were very embarrassed that this had happened. But at the end of the ⁓ our inspection did its job and we found this issue. How often are your guests leaving behind boots, swimsuits, ⁓ luggage, bags? I had a laptop in a house one time, AirPods. They're forgetful guests. Monday morning at 11 a.m. comes a little bit too quickly. They're rushing to get prepared. They're rushing to get out of there. And sometimes they forget things. I've heard about throwing stars, like ninja throwing stars being left in properties. I've heard about a katana left in a property. Fortunately, these things were found before the guest arrived. But if a guest who's looking for a refund, if that drama queen guest arrives at your property and they find these issues, good luck getting them resolved. Good luck sweeping it under the rug because this is potentially a business-ending lack of an inspection. So I feel like it's too big of a risk to run, to manage property, and to leave yourself at risk of being put out of business. I think inspections is one of the most important, least talked about topics in this industry. And when the Poconos VRO asked me to do a webinar. I decided that this is something that needed more exposure. And why have I not done a podcast on this yet? Because nobody's called in asking about it, because it doesn't get talked about very much. These are the kinds of challenges that people just don't talk about when they sell the dream of easy passive income. But they're exactly the problems that make or break your operation. If you've got a situation or a question, then please email me. Info @ galvanized management.com Your problem might be the next one that we break down, and chances are you'll help a lot of other hosts in the process too. If this episode helped you, share it with another host who's in the trenches. Rate and subscribe too, so that we can organically reach more people. That's how we make the industry better. I'd also love to see you follow on TikTok at Galvanized Investments, and Facebook and YouTube at Galvanized Management. Until next time, stay steady, keep learning, and keep building something real. This is short term rental problems and solutions.