Latest / Short Term Shopping / Smoky Mountains STR Investing: What $400K–$650K Cabins Look Like Today

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Smoky Mountains STR Investing: What $400K–$650K Cabins Look Like Today · 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 market target, with Natalie here to talk about the Smokies. And we're just gonna have some fun today, I guess. Let's go ahead and start with a map, if you have one available of your market. And obviously this is east Tennessee. Before you pull that up, let's go over the market itself. It's obviously the biggest and baddest overnight single family home rental market, really, in the world. People talk a lot of crap about it on the Internet, but people become interested in it as well every single day. So just tell us a little bit. Well, hold on. Getting ahead of myself again. I also want to say that this is the most gorgeous area of the. Of the country. It's beautiful and the weather's great most of the time. And, you know, you don't have, like, the extreme extremes and the extreme. The other directions and so great place to live.
• 1:20
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:21
  Speaker A: Great place to vacation and a lot of things to do. And it's absolutely breathtaking and.
• 1:26
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:26
  Speaker A: And love it there very much. But anyway, Natalie, one of the biggest agents in the market. How are you and what's going on?
• 1:35
  Speaker B: Good, good. Yeah, The Smokies is still rolling. And the Smokies, I would say, is back really rolling. We do garner a lot of haters online, and that's okay. We garner those haters for various reasons, and a lot of times it's because they didn't jump in and they're scared to jump in now, I think. So, yeah, it's going great. Still a buyer's market, but we're in that weird in between where buyer activity is picked up for about a handful of reasons and properties that are maybe like, let's say, the best option in their price range. They're going quick, and we're even seeing some multiples, multiple offers and things like that. So. Yep.
• 2:18
  Speaker A: Yeah. So it's recording. Recording this in the fall. We're getting ready to slide into holiday season 2025.
• 2:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:26
  Speaker A: And it has been a very weird market for two plus years, really. Probably closer to three years. And what we're all hoping for, and I think we're starting to see it, is some normalization. Just products selling again and people feeling comfortable with real estate again. And we are starting to see that. And I think it's starting in the Smokies and that again, we'll get Back to the hater stuff. But smokies, like it or not, it is a good barometer for world, you know, nationwide travel towns because, you know, this is the Great Smoking Mountain National Park, I believe is number 10 in the country. I was actually looking at this the other day, and I'm pretty sure it's magic kingdom number nine, Great Smoky Mountain National park number 10, and EPCOT number 11 for number of tourists per year. Now, obviously there's, you know, it is the most visited national park in America, so it's number one on a lot of lists. But just all physical places for human beings to enter. I believe it's number nine or ten. Now, I think, again, I'm doing this from memory. I think that was from a 2021 survey. So it's probably gone up because a lot of that New York City city stuff has probably come down because they've lost a lot of interest there with COVID et cetera.
• 3:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 3:53
  Speaker A: But anyway, top 10 places for humans to gather in the United States of America. I don't know. Did I have a point?
• 4:03
  Speaker B: Just a great place to be.
• 4:07
  Speaker A: Well, let's talk about the haters. So for me, that comes from a place of, you know, people are going to say things about Taylor Swift, you know.
• 4:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 4:18
  Speaker A: They're going to say things about the New York Yankees.
• 4:21
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 4:22
  Speaker A: The Patriots, you know, the, the most winning teams and the biggest rock stars there. It's just one of those things if you want to be the biggest and the best. People are going to say stuff.
• 4:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's so true. And so, so what the what the haters kind of stick to what they're, you know, because in, in any hater of any realm, you got to pick a thing you hate. Right. Like whatever it is and go with it. Go, run. Run hard with that. And the big buzzword we get a lot is saturation. Right. And it's funny because it's, you know, Avery and I, we actually just were talking about this the other day. I don't think people fully understand what that even means. Right. So in a short term rental market, saturation means that there's more places to stay than people who are coming. Right. And what I'm going to show you this map in just a second that you want me to pull up. And what I'm going to tell you is our vacation market, what makes it so cool is it's a tight little area, right? So it's about a 15 mile radius at the most, east and west and not even north and south. So it's like a squished little condensed area. And we have. I pulled it up while you were talking. So last year it was right at 14 million people that just entered the park. Just so number one, most visited and about 14 million people for 20, 24. Okay, so you've got a 15 mile radius area that people want to be and 15, 14 million people coming just to enter the park to stay in that tiny little area versus other markets where, okay, there might be that many people coming, but they have this big wide spread out area of places they can choose to stay from, you know, and, and so anyway, so we have this tight knit area and inside of that you cannot have mass developments like you can in some markets. You just can't have it. It's too mountainous. And then you also it. It specifically really to see Smokey's income numbers needs to be a cabin. Right. So we don't have the competition of people turning their like brick ranch into a rental. So it won't get more saturated from, from that angle and it won't get more saturated from like condos and things like that. So keep in mind that 14 million people that are coming to and enter the park, there are a slew, I think it's like 3 to 5 million on average that are also coming who do not enter the national park. They're coming for other good old fashioned mountain fun. They're not going into the park at all. So. So we're talking, you know, we're talking between 15 and 20 million people in a tiny little area every year.
• 6:56
  Speaker A: Yes. And speaking of tiny, also very few primary residents. I mean Sevier county is only something like 20,000 people living there.
• 7:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm one of them. I enjoy the traffic. Everybody, all the other locals that are my friends complain about it. And it feels like money to me. If it takes me an hour to get to dinner, it feels like money.
• 7:15
  Speaker A: So yeah, it was the same thing down here on the beach. And it was 20, 20, 2021. You could start to get a little complainy with all the COVID folks that were running around and, and then reality came back and now I'm very much back to that. I'm like, man, if I leave my house and it's not jam packed out there, I'm crying inside a little bit. No, damn. We need these because there's no jobs here in a vacation, a typical vacation town where you live? Where I live, yeah. There's no jobs at all. It's real estate, it's hospitality and to a certain extent, you know, Doctors. But other than that, there's just. There's no industries of any kind. It's all just tourism. Tourism industry, obviously. But yeah, and. And so the way these areas make their money, because this area. These areas are thriving and doing well and can be. Can be pretty wealthy.
• 8:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 8:08
  Speaker A: The money's coming from elsewhere. These cars are bringing in the money. I read a study one time that was a. It was down here in Bay County, Florida. And they. They did. They determined that every car coming to the county is down PCB way, $5,000 that they're bringing with them to spend. On top of the accommodations, on top of the Travel, they're dropping $5,000 in the local economy. And that's what we feed on. We need that. And I think honestly, the local economy should do a better job of being accommodating to that because you can get. And now we're just getting into the local culture. You can get some get off my lawn type folks in these areas. And the thing is, is that those folks that are coming and stepping on your lawn, every single one of them is bringing five grand, according to this survey that I read. And that's good for good for your let your area, you know, you want to.
• 9:00
  Speaker B: You want to know something? The haters. To your point, the something that the haters also don't understand is so Sevier county has been a tourism market for so long. My grandparents vacationed here when my. All of their kids were little. Like, it was. It was a thing. And so it's been a vacation rental market for so long that the families that are still in charge of everything. We're a very small town, they thoroughly embrace tourism because it's the reason why they all drive G wagons. I mean that, you know, you've got these mountain folks who are living because of tourism for decades, you know, and so they are not here to run it out. They are here to make sure that it thrives. And that's important. You know, you don't have a lot of get off my lawn. Because like you said, not a lot of locals still live here. And the ones that do, they created this and they love it.
• 9:53
  Speaker A: So another thing I love about it is that if you are willing to work hard in an area like this, you can move to one of these areas that we're talking about. And again, the Smokies basically created this whole thing. If you're willing to work hard, the sky's the limit. There is no ceiling. There's no ceiling on how much money you can make, how well you can do with any.
• 10:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:18
  Speaker A: Gig that you choose. I mean, obviously it's mostly going to be trades and stuff like that, but if you wanted to be the ultra hot, mega high end sheetrock guy, you could do that.
• 10:27
  Speaker B: And we need that. That's the number one vendor we need is a sheetrock guys with that.
• 10:31
  Speaker A: I hate to sound like an old man, but man, these kids don't want to do sheetrock. What is with that?
• 10:36
  Speaker B: I know, I'll tell you right now,
• 10:39
  Speaker A: I cannot do it. That is a skill. I can do a lot of stuff around a house, but man, I don't have what it takes. It's hard. It is hard, but.
• 10:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
• 10:49
  Speaker A: You know, I got another theory for you. Let me throw this at you because it's timely. 1 year ago Right now, as hurricane Helene came and hit North Carolina, $53 billion in damage, okay. Horrible, horrible. Still having all kinds of problems, but because of this, we, we have had lots of roads shut down into East Tennessee into the number one drivable tourist market in the. In America.
• 11:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 11:18
  Speaker A: And so I've got a theory that when they finally figure out this road situation, which they almost got it, you know, they got a couple roads open and then they ended up closing again, that kind of thing. So you've got a very large chunk of folks from that side of the mountain from the North Carolinas and down past Asheville and all that and the 40 folks, Interstate 40 folks that can't, a lot of them just, you know, they're coming in for the weekend and I think they're saying, I don't want to bother because it's hard to get there. And it's been like that for about a year. And as soon as they get these interstates figured out, because let me tell you something, the United States is not going to not fix Interstate 40. They're going to figure out it's a major passageway here. They're going to figure that out. And when they do, you've now got all these new tributaries to bring people right back to town. So I think as soon as we get a better post hurricane interstate fix that, we're going to see a nice little boom.
• 12:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that could be because that's like you said, that's, you know, South Carolina, the east side of Georgia. It's a lot of people that come up that way to get to us. And there the, the great thing though, the reason why it hasn't like hurt our numbers is because there are still a couple of ways around it. It may take A little bit longer. Like my mom, when she comes to visit, she has to go around and she picks a. You know, she's got a couple of different options. And so there's still routes to get here. But yeah, I agree. Whenever it's easier, there are certainly people who have been holding off who will be here. I mean, I grew up in North Georgia, so I grew up coming here like three times a year at least. People in this region who are just like normal, salt of the earth people, they come here at least yearly. Right. My family was not the European vacation, Disney vacation, cruise family. Right. Like we were going to the mountains and the beach. The mountains and the beach. That's all we did. You know, it was drivable and it was affordable. And anyway, so, yeah, I do think that there will be some people who typically come who haven't been coming that will be back for sure.
• 13:30
  Speaker A: Absolutely. All right, well, let's see a map. Let's. Yeah, let's say I'm brand new or, you know.
• 13:35
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 13:36
  Speaker A: Looking to get a little more info on what's hot right now. What. What do we got going on?
• 13:40
  Speaker B: Yeah. So tell me, are you able to see what I just pulled up?
• 13:42
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 13:43
  Speaker B: Okay, so this is my most recent map that I give to my clients. You know, we've always kind of talked about the triangle of tourism. We've always, you know, whatever. But this is the most recent map that give my clients. And I'm going to talk you through it in the same way that I talk my clients through it. So what I did is I went on air DNA and I asked air DNA and I did this specifically. I'm going to tell you why, but I asked it to show me all rentals that had a severable address, and every rental that has a severable address has a purple dot. Okay. So then you can see that I drew a kind of sloppy yellow oval around all a certain part of that. So here, let me talk you through it a little bit. So first thing I want to point out is that my yellow oval, it's not quite far enough down. It should go below the word Gatlinburg. But you. You get the. You get the idea. So I tell people that that yellow oval is the primary area that you want to focus on. And if you are going to get in the far east or far west pockets of that, that's okay, but you better have a killer view. If you don't have a killer view, let's stay away from the furthest pockets of that. And then. Or If. Or maybe we have some other stellar amenity or something. Otherwise, if it's apples to apples, let's just stay a little bit closer to town. So if you'll notice that there's a big empty spot in the middle of the map. That is the map city of Pigeon Forge. So all of that empty spot, the reason why it's empty is because every rental within that area would have had a Pigeon Forge address. So this kind of shows client that if something says Pigeon Forge on the address, it tells you where it is. It tells you that it's inside of that little, little spot. Same thing with Gatlinburg. If you look down at the bottom of the map, below the yellow line, which again, the yellow line should be, should hold this. But the empty spot to the left of the G in Gatlinburg, everything under the word Gatlinburg and then everything just above, northeast of the berg in Gatlinburg, that is the area that would have a Gatlinburg address for a rental. Now, obviously, the darkest part of the map at the bottom, that's the national park. So no rentals are, you know, you don't. You don't have homes in the national park that, that you can occupy. So if you see an address that says Gatlinburger Pigeon Forge, it does tell you something about the. The actual location. But if you see a property that says Sevierville, that's like 99% of our properties. And so that doesn't tell you anything about the specific location. And so I tell people, I'm like, just know that if it has a severable address, just kind of like refer back to this map as far as, like, where is it located as compared to this. But that, that's what this map is kind of showing is everything with the spherical address. Some of those things are north of the bubble that you want to stay in. And then you see the empty Pigeon Forge in Gatlinburg.
• 16:36
  Speaker A: Tell me your thoughts on Townsend as of right now.
• 16:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, so I love Townsend as a local. Locals that live in Townsend love Townsend. But if I'm. If I'm being completely honest, our tourists, sometimes they do want to stay in Townsend sometimes. If they've been coming here since they were kids and they just love the area and they love that it's quiet, that's fine. But what I tell my clients is if you're going to buy there, here's what I want you to know. My goal as an investor in the Smokies is I want to fish out of a bucket as much as I can. I want to lure in as many tourists to pick me as possible. And Townsend is not that because it is far from all the fun. And on this map, if you see in the open spot for Pigeon Forge, if you see the road that's going through there kind of. Kind of north to south, that's the parkway, and that's where most of our fun is. So your fun is along the parkway or down along, you know, the. The. The. The Gatlinburg area. You've got multiple entrances to the park. The thing with Townsend is you do have the Cades Cove entrance. You do have some. Some fun stuff to do, A couple of good restaurants. Now, it's an amazing place to be. But as far as rentals go, it is not fishing out of a bucket. It's a very specific clientele that's going to book you does not mean that you cannot be successful. I just. You're. You're. It's not as cruise control as a lot of our clients would like to be.
• 18:05
  Speaker A: And I do think we might be getting to a point where if somebody had their heart on it, they could go down there and put the coolest, cleanest property and do great.
• 18:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:15
  Speaker A: Because you do have more stuff coming in down there, and it's got progress. And of course, everybody's going to Cades Cove, but like you said, it's pretty far away from all the other stuff that everybody's coming to do.
• 18:26
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't think it's ever gonna have. It's never gonna have the baptist Vegas vibe of Pigeon Forge. The locals in Townsend, rightfully so, Are not going to let that happen. They're okay with the volume of tourism that they have, but they don't want go karts and arcades in Townsend. They don't want that. And that's okay. That's fine. So, yeah, you could go and buy something in Townsend and make it, you know, super rad, and someone's gonna book it again. It's just not fishing out of a. But it's not as cruise control.
• 18:57
  Speaker A: Talk to me about the state of new construction in the area. That's. You know, when I first got into this, it didn't exist.
• 19:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:08
  Speaker A: And of course, with COVID it brought building everywhere. And then, of course, you get the folks that say, oh, there's too much building going on there. Well, it's going on everywhere.
• 19:15
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:16
  Speaker A: What is this? You know, what's it look like right now?
• 19:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of people who want to talk about saturation. That's obviously one of the things that, that they talk about. But so we are not the type of market that a developer could buy 10 acres and put 100 homes. It just, it's the mountains, it doesn't lend to that. But we do have little developments that pop up here and there and that's, you know, not frequent, but it does happen. But the, the biggest thing in the Smokies for new construction, again, it's pretty much just been since 2020, but it's like one off development. A builder or developer will buy a lot, build a house and sell it. I will say that that has slowed quite a bit over the last couple years. It was really big in 21 or 20. 2021 and then in 22. But towards the end of 22 it kind of started to die off. And it's. And let me say this too. So new construction as far as like someone just building it and it being available as a spec for you to buy has always been pretty minimal. But. And it's, it's still pretty minimal. But that has. There used to be this world of getting into something called pre construction where you would get the construction loan and you would fund the builder and they would build this like ready set, you know, they already had the plans and everything for. And then it would take you like nine months to a year and then it would be yours and you, you would, you know, you would have done the construction loan but then it would turn into a permanent and all that. So that has almost died right now because not a lot of people in this current market are willing to jump into getting a construction loan and waiting that long.
• 21:02
  Speaker A: And that's because things are just not really, you know, selling as much, I would assume.
• 21:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. That is right. So anyway, it's building still happening. It's still happening, but it's very slow. It is not like 20, 21 and 22.
• 21:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's not. If I'm a builder, it's less appealing right now.
• 21:23
  Speaker B: Right.
• 21:23
  Speaker A: For sure. There's no guarantee I'm even going to sell that thing when I get it done.
• 21:26
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 21:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:27
  Speaker B: But that, but that I will say build it and then sell it is, is a, is a builder's best bet right now because people are more likely to jump on something that is ready to go versus yeah, as long as
• 21:42
  Speaker A: you can get it built with a reasonable price tag at the end. And then in other words, I got a brand new house versus a 15 year old house in the same price, same square foot, same all this stuff, same view. Maybe we're going to lean towards the new one.
• 21:55
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 21:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. So if a builder's smart, they can still maybe get somewhere. But it's, it's, it's rough right now. It's. Let's talk about that. What are we looking at for days on market? You know, what? If I'm a buyer, I'm trying to find a smoking deal, do I want something that's been on the market longer? All that kind of stuff.
• 22:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it's. We've been kind of running an average of at least 100 days on market that over the course of the last month, maybe two. That has shifted. I will say this. What shifted everything was obviously the announcement of bonus depreciation coming back to 100%. And then when the gal got fired over the fraudulent labor numbers or whatever, we saw an immediate tick down in mortgage rates and that caused a little bit of a surge. And then the most recent announcement of a very likely rate change coming. So those three things have really, really, really, really pushed the, the buyers back into the game. So, I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I've had clients over the last like two or three weeks end up in multiples. Granted, there were only like two or three offers, but we've been in multiple offers several times over the last few weeks now. That doesn't mean that the market is back to that. Okay. But what it does mean is when something hits that is either really good or really, really well priced. And, and heaven forbid it's both. Right. Because we've had that too. It's a really, really good option and really well priced. There are so many active buyers right now that they're jumping on that. And those people, if you're jumping on a property that is very popular, it's tricky because we're in a situation still where you're able to negotiate some closing costs, possibly even a little bit off the purchase price, things like that. So how do you shift gears when you're a buyer from. It's still a buyer's market where you can possibly negotiate some of those things into this world of, okay, well, I've all, you know, I've got a top three. And now all of a sudden one of them, I'm having to compete. So you have to totally shift gears and you know, it's leaving clients a bit confused. So of course that's where having a good agent kind of can come in. But it's also a little bit of a crystal ball. We're like, well, we're. We don't know what that other offer is. I don't want you to compete harder than you want to. And if there's a top three and there's a world where we can go get one of those others and negotiate, you gotta really make sure you want this one where we likely can't really negotiate very much. So it's a little bit of a weird limbo right now. And it is property to property, you know, so you just, you have to just be on your toes like there, this is no more. This is the best advice I can give to answer that question. We are no longer in the market of where we have been for two years, where you as a buyer can leisurely have a top 20 and narrow that down over a long period to a top 10 and come to town a couple times to look at all of them. And those days are dwindling because when you have, you know, people have been over the last couple of years, they've kind of been looking for the absolute best option. Where in 21 to 21, 20, 21 and 22, we were just grabbing the option, like whatever the option was as it would hit, then we were trying to find the perfect option, which is fine. We were in a market where we could do that. We had time, we could do that. It's kind of getting away from that. So you have to be prepared to just move a little bit quicker. Not as quick as 21, but a little bit quicker than the last two years.
• 25:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. I think we still the pro. We got a big problem with. A lot of folks don't even realize that the market slowed down to begin with.
• 25:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:47
  Speaker A: You know, and those folks are still. They have no idea that it's dead. That's been dead for two years. And now all of a sudden it's not going to be dead anymore. It's starting to be maybe, maybe it's way too early to tell, but maybe a little bit more. More normal. Like people actually buying stuff again.
• 26:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:06
  Speaker A: And good luck talking, you know, all these billions of people into realizing that again, you know, so it's just, it's, it's. You gotta really pay attention. You got to pay attention. And I think that's where you give yourself some credit as a buyer right now. If you are paying attention and you're. If you're watching this, you are. You've got a leg up on like 96 of your competition, you know.
• 26:27
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:28
  Speaker A: Because they just. Nobody cares. They don't do any research. And yeah. And. And so I've also heard now that the interest, or, I'm sorry, the inventory is coming down. We're losing inventory, which makes sense, but guess what? That's not going to last long because now all these sellers that they tried to sell two years ago, they let their, Their, their listing expire and then they hate their, their agent because they couldn't get it sold, blah, blah, blah. The second they hear that things are moving, yeah, they're. They're listing again. So that's why, you know, if you, if you are hearing things, in my opinion, that there's low inventory, just keep watching, keep paying attention. Give, Give it three months. And all these people that have been wanting to sell for two and a half years that couldn't sell, are they're going to come out of the woodwork?
• 27:17
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I, I have a few sellers who over the course of the last couple years tried, and then we made the decision to. Instead of just keeping it on the market, we pulled it versus just sitting and, you know, whatever. And I've been, you know, we've. I've been talking to some of them recently where they'll check in and they'll say, is it time yet? Is it time yet? You know, are we there yet? And so I'm trying to be very, very. I don't. I am not an agent, especially on the listing side, that wants to give one ounce of false hope. I want to be super real, you know, and so I'm telling them, I'm like, okay, things are absolutely starting to pick up. Do I think that we're at the. Do I think we're there yet? You know, we're. There is no science, right? Like, there is no way to time it perfectly. But we are definitely headed back into that where, especially if you're a seller who can be priced competitively or you have other. Some other kind of edge, like one hit the market last week where the price was really good, the income was really good, which is not, not, not often easy to find on one that someone's selling because it's usually the reason why they're selling because they're not, you know, they're not, they're not doing a great job at this thing called hospitality. So we had really great income and it was like a really good option. Like, you know, it was like a, you know, not perfect, but it was like a good option. So he had like the trifecta. It was like, hit the market at a really good price, had really good rental history, and he was still he had really good rental history and was priced lower than a lot of his competition, like his direct competition. So anyway, you just gotta. This, you know, the price is the driver. If you are a seller over the last two years or even for the next coming up, six months. If you're not happy with your agent, I'm not saying that your agent is super duper amazing. I'm just saying that if you're not happy because your place isn't selling, the only thing in our market that drives these investors to buy something is the price. So if you're not getting movement, it is almost very likely nothing to do with your agent. So, I mean, it's just price. It's 100% driven by price. And if you're not even getting offers, like lower offers, that it. It usually means that you're not even being seen by the budget group of people on their search, that would make you a little bit lower offer. So, like, if you're priced at 899 and buyers would buy you, but they're only searching from, you know, 750 to 850 or whatever, like you might be missing it by a hair. So anyway, being open to price adjustments, it's. It's also ruling the day right now.
• 30:17
  Speaker A: Do you ever have a property that we could take a look at? You know, maybe something just in your market? I mean, just 1, 2, 3 Main street and something that's for sale right now.
• 30:27
  Speaker B: All right, how about this one?
• 30:28
  Speaker A: What is this new construction?
• 30:30
  Speaker B: Well, it's newer. It's. It's been a rental for a little while, but it is. It is a newer house. Yes. Pretty modern.
• 30:38
  Speaker A: Again, I've been. I'm a little older for the, for this, and to me I'm like, oh, that's brand new. Yeah. Because it's definitely modern.
• 30:45
  Speaker B: It is, yeah. Yeah. Built in 2023, it says. Yeah. So this one, it doesn't have a spectacular view, but it's. It's certainly very sexy. On.
• 30:56
  Speaker A: Hold on a second. Now you got me. What are your thoughts in two minutes about all these amenities?
• 31:05
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:05
  Speaker A: So this house.
• 31:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:07
  Speaker A: What are your thoughts on amenities?
• 31:10
  Speaker B: I think in our market, you can overdo it. I think in the world of amenities, the best thing you can do is know your avatar, know your guest, know who's coming in the Smokies. We are not necessarily a peloton and Swedish sauna or pickleball clientele. Does that make sense like that?
• 31:31
  Speaker A: 100% agree.
• 31:32
  Speaker B: That's not really who's coming here.
• 31:34
  Speaker A: We did not. This was not premeditated, by the way. I just asked her opinion. And, and I agree. To me, you're spending too much money on stupid crap that nobody's going to use sometimes.
• 31:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes for sure. So I think just know your. I will say this. There are a lot of people buying right now who are buying for multiple purposes, not just investment. So if you're buying where part of the aspect of this is that it's also your mountain home and you want to have a peloton there when you go there, or you want a Swedish sauna when you go, whatever it is, that's awesome. But just kind of know that there is such a thing as overspending with no return on that investment.
• 32:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, Buy for yourself, not the guest.
• 32:17
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 32:18
  Speaker A: I agree. All right, go ahead. What are we doing here on this house? What's good about it? What's not great about it?
• 32:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So this one is, it's, it's. So the trick with any of them, whether it looks more like a cabin or more modern like this or whatever, you got to photograph sexy. You just, that's the key. You just have to look. Make somebody stop scrolling when they're shopping for a place to stay. And so this one, I mean, I feel like we can agree that it's, it's sexy, you know?
• 32:47
  Speaker A: No, definitely sexy.
• 32:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean, it's not your typical Smokey's vibe.
• 32:52
  Speaker A: I'm not crazy about these, these fireplaces. There's one on the porch, there's one here in the living room.
• 32:57
  Speaker B: I'm not either. And it actually. So, so this type of fireplace, again, pros and cons, not talking anybody into or out of anything. But when, if it's a real. I can't tell from this one if this is gas or if it is real wood burning. If it's real wood burning and it's a place like this, I would like for it to be a honeymoon cabin. I don't really like the mom in me thinks about someone's, you know, three year old walking by and touching it. So I don't, you know, I'm not super crazy about it. And plus, you know, the embers popping out onto the floor, I don't know, I, I'm a little, little bit leery of them, but it could be gas and you'd still have the heat but not the embers popping out. So. Yeah, I'm with you. I don't know, I'm a little, little torn on that also. If you're Going to have sheetrock in the, in the Smokies. You definitely have to have some type of a unique feel. Doesn't necessarily have to be a cabin feel, but you know, this is a good bit of sheetrock, but you have tongue groove ceilings and a very unique overall feel. So yeah, this is, this is a unique one. This is not your typical Smokies cabin. I literally just opened Zillow when you said that and started scrolling and found this, clicked on this one price tag.
• 34:10
  Speaker A: If I'm a, I'm a buyer right now, keep in mind this is not, not a ton of people or this is a just short term shop. Plus, is this thing priced too high? Is it, is this a seller? I mean. Cause they bought it pretty high probably, you know.
• 34:23
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So 650 is about average for a, for a, for like a fun two bed. Can you get a two bed for cheaper? Absolutely, you totally can.
• 34:34
  Speaker A: Won't be this nice.
• 34:35
  Speaker B: Won't be like this though. Won't be as ready to go. Won't be as, you know, sleek, modern.
• 34:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I have a theory. You can have cash flow.
• 34:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 34:44
  Speaker A: Or you can have, yeah. You know, brand new.
• 34:50
  Speaker B: Well and I'll tell you so in the world of like, is this overpriced? So the way that I've been talking my clients recently through that is because everybody's numbers look so different based off of like how much money they put down or whatever. So like this one could make a lot of sense to work one person and not much sense to another, you know. So I tell people that before running the, a typical calculator where you take like an arbitrary number for income that is based on something but is not an exact number, like it would be in long term world, you know, and then start subtracting things to get yourself to cash flow. I tell people before you do that, let's just work our way up to some absolute definite expenses that we're. We'll have and think about it through the lens of like how confident do I feel that I'm just going to hit that, you know. And so I would do all in mortgage, all in utilities, which you can get an estimate for that. If you don't know the real your, your realtor should be able to, especially if they work for the shop, they can give you good estimates to get an all in annual mortgage and all in annual utilities and an all in annual cleaning fee. You can get very, very, very good, very close to precise numbers for those. So like on this house at 649. If you're putting 10% down versus 20% down, you might need. And I'm totally making this up, but you might need $60,000 a year for those all in expenses, versus $70,000 a year for those, all in expenses. And so when I look at that with my personal how much I'm putting down and the way I'm going to run it, and I look at it and I go, okay, well, I'm putting 20% down. I only need 60 grand. How confident do I feel that I can hit that? And then how confident do I feel that I can take it beyond that? Because if that's all I need, then every ounce I can push it beyond that is just gravy on top.
• 36:38
  Speaker A: Excellent points. I also noticed it has a starlink, which tells me that it probably can't get real Internet. Whether that matters to you or not. Keep in mind that that is a thing in the Smokies. Sometimes there's areas where you can't get Internet, which is not a deal breaker. Yeah, Obviously, they found a way to fix it on this one. All right. Do you have another one?
• 36:54
  Speaker B: Oh, let me go back. Let's see here. Let me.
• 36:57
  Speaker A: Cute house. Very brand new. This is definitely an easy button situation. Maybe not super peak cash flow. And that's what you're gonna get when you got something ready to go.
• 37:05
  Speaker B: All right, so this one that I'm gonna pull up right here, this is actually my listing. I'm. I'm just picking up because I'm super familiar with it, you know?
• 37:12
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 37:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. So this one. Look how cute. This is quintessential just typical Smokies, right?
• 37:22
  Speaker A: Yep. Where's this? Hidden Mountain West?
• 37:25
  Speaker B: No, it's actually Hideaway Hills. It's a tiny little loop of a neighborhood. It's not even a. I don't even believe that there's an HOA So it's like. It's in the Grand View area. It's, like, just north of Hidden Mountain West. Anyway, it's over there on that side of town. Anyway, super cute cabin, amazing price. But if you take a look, say this is a really good point for things in the Smokies. Like, it's listed as a one bed, one bath, but look at it. It's, like, over 1300 square feet. So it does have a loft that they're using as a bedroom. So it rents as a two bed and sleeps six people because of the sleeper sofa. So anyway, this is just a super cute Typical Smokies, but it's at a
• 38:10
  Speaker A: great price because it's basically a two bedroom.
• 38:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So we just looked at a two bed for 650 and here is a rentable two bed. Even though it only has one bathroom. It's a rentable two bed at 3:99. So, you know, prices are, I'm going to say all over the place, but obviously it's taking all things considered. Right. Like that's a super unique modern, you know, very. Lots of rentability, whatever. But this one, like this is not one to skip over for sure.
• 38:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. So keep that in mind. The bedroom count on the listing may be different than the bedroom count in the actual home, usually due to septic issues. Now this. Not issues, but septic purposes. This has a. This needs a kitchen, which is great. I would prefer between this one and the one you already showed us. I'm gonna buy this one.
• 38:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:57
  Speaker A: Because I don't want to. I don't like to buy, you know, peak. You know, somebody's already gotten all the, all the juju out of that one.
• 39:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:08
  Speaker A: And it was the builder.
• 39:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 39:10
  Speaker A: So, you know, this one's got the stupid Christmas stuff over the cabinets and horrible countertops and horrible refrigerator appliances etc and just little things like that. I mean that doesn't take much of anything to upgrade those, you know.
• 39:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. Easy.
• 39:24
  Speaker A: Super easy. All right, well, listen, we're out of time.
• 39:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 39:29
  Speaker A: Sake of time. I'm gonna. Thank you.
• 39:32
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 39:33
  Speaker A: And how do we get a hold of you?
• 39:36
  Speaker B: Natalie at the short term shop.
• 39:38
  Speaker A: Wonderful. Natalie@theshorttermshop.com. don't overthink it.
• 39:43
  Speaker B: Don't overthink it.