The latest chat with Eric G is a rollercoaster ride through the wild world of vacation rentals. He spills the tea on why he kicked his vacation rental management company to the curb, and trust me, it's a saga filled with headaches, hilarity, and a touch of drama that could rival your favorite soap opera. Eric dives into the nitty-gritty of what went down at his beach house, where the dream of short-term rentals quickly turned into a nightmare. Picture this: you’ve invested blood, sweat, and tears into a property, only to have it marred by the antics of folks who treat it like a frat house. From a not-so-friendly city council to renters smoking what they shouldn’t be, and even leaving vintage furniture out to soak in the rain, it’s a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about renting out their slice of paradise. But it’s not just the chaotic rental stories that make this episode a must-listen. Eric brings in some critical insights about the importance of having reliable property management—after all, what’s a vacation rental if it’s not managed well? He lays out the lessons learned and reminds us that management is one thing, but actually enforcing the rules is another. So grab your favorite beverage, kick back, and prepare for some eye-opening moments about the world of vacation rentals. Whether you’re a homeowner, a renter, or just a curious onlooker, there’s something here that’ll make you giggle, gasp, or maybe even reconsider your own rental plans.

Takeaways:

• Eric G shares his wild ride of ditching a vacation rental management company after a series of headaches that felt like a bad sitcom plot.
• The challenges of short-term rentals can turn into a comedy of errors, especially when management fails to do their job properly.
• If you're thinking about renting out your beach house, remember that not all management companies have your best interests at heart, especially when money is involved.
• The city regulations can be a maze, and it's crucial to navigate them smartly to avoid pitfalls that could ruin your rental experience.

Links referenced in this episode:

• aroundthehouseonline.com
• aroundthehousehq

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• KTM North America
• Gas Gas
• Husqvarna
• Goal Zero
• Modine Manufacturing Co.

Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen

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We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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Eric G. Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining me today.

If this is the first time catching the show on the podcast, thanks for tuning in.

This is our midweek update, the one that we talk about, the stuff that didn't make it into last weekend's show and of course isn't gonna make it into this weekend's show.

And this one here is one that we teased about last week, or at least I did.

I was talking about, of course we talked about last weekend kind of getting your vacation home ready.

And now I want to tell the story because this happened kind of between the days, between recording that with Wendy and then of course, the show airing.

We ended up actually getting rid of the short term rental concept for the beach house.

And I'll tell you what happened.

This was an interesting one.

There's something I learned.

There's things that you can learn from this and this is the stuff that you have to figure out.

And we talked about it in the show a little bit.

But do you want strange people running around your place that you spent all this time and effort to get restored, cleaned up and enjoyable?

And it came down to it, it just wasn't worth the hassle.

And the hassle was amazing.

First off, in Cannon Beach, Oregon, where we're at, that is probably one of the most unfriendly environments there with the city council and the people in city government and I'm talking elected officials.

The employees there are spectacular, but the elected officials have their own interests in mind because many of them own hotels and things around in town.

So the short term rentals are their enemy.

So they have a real issue there with anybody doing anything with your property that isn't in the good of the community.

And I tell you what good of the community also means for them.

It seems to be putting money into their pockets.

So there's a lot of little politics like that around there, which is pretty infuriating when you're a homeowner because they make rules for everyone else and then rules for the short term rentals.

So this one is interesting.

So we started out kind of on the wrong foot.

We got that the thing ready and the first renters show up, there's no reviews.

And this is some of the things you have to consider is managing reviews for your short term rentals and of course the company.

And I'm not here to bash them.

So we're not going to use the company here, use their name.

But they forgot to go in and put the sheets and get the house ready.

So when the people showed up, we got a 6 out of 10 review because the management company didn't do their job.

Now they came over there, they gave them a free day's rent, I think, or they did something, they tried their best to take care of it, but then you have a review of house wasn't ready when we got there.

Which as owners now, that is your plague showing up.

That was one thing.

The bigger issues got a little bit bigger as we went.

So there is a no smoking policy on the property.

This is the standard practice for this in the town.

No smoking on the property.

If there is smoking, there's a cleaning fee and I think like a thousand dollar fine.

So that's pretty substantial.

We've got people in the family with asthma, health concerns, that kind of stuff.

And nobody wants to go stay in somebody else's rental that smells like cigarette smoke.

It's just not generally in the U.S. acceptable.

And so we didn't want to trash this place after we had just done everything to get it looking good.

New H Vac, new drywall, it's all dialed in.

So the problem is the smoking rule.

When you have a management company that is more about making sure that the review is good and not protecting your property is where we start to kind of jump the shark on this.

So this is something you got to be really careful with.

We found we have cameras around the outside of the house.

We saw people, they're smoking coming in and out of the house, lit cigarette, that kind of stuff.

Of course, we reach out to the management company and say, hey guys, got a smoker in there, we got a problem.

They go over, talk to them, nothing happens.

They're still having issues.

They didn't support us as owners over there.

Now we should have gotten $1,000 fine for the damages from that.

They didn't.

We want to make sure that we get good reviews.

And I get that, but that is some of the pluses and minuses.

And then a little over a week ago, we end up going over there and we're watching on the cameras, make sure nobody's breaking in.

But we're only there a few Times a month.

So it's one of those things.

We want to make sure that everything's going good and keep an eye on your investment.

Renters show up, no big deal.

All of a sudden in the back patio.

And this is if you've watched us posted up on social media, this is where I get those great shots that my brother gets off the cameras from the elk crossing down the side of the house.

There's a barbecue out there.

So there are two what looks to be adults smoking drugs on the back patio.

This back patio is like an eight by eight at best.

It's tiny.

And they're hiding them all in the barbecue.

Awesome.

Drugs in the barbecue.

Just what I want to see when I'm getting ready to barbecue.

They're stashing it under there.

Holy smokes.

Brother gets on the phone with them, starts chatting them up, having a good discussion.

Oh, my gosh, we will evict them.

We're going to get them out of there.

We can't have that.

Now, the other thing that happened is we saw them take the dining room chairs, which are vintage mid century modern.

The bright yellow beautiful ones, perfect set.

They leave them outside overnight.

They get rained on.

So, yeah, now the furniture is getting ruined out there.

So this is where the.

The shark jumped on this one.

We hear this going on.

They're dealing with it.

They finally send somebody over there.

They get them to stop.

They continue to do it and it's like, okay, what's the plan?

They go, whoop, we're gonna evict them.

We've already started the thing.

They're banned from doing this.

Awesome.

They're gonna get them out of there.

Cool.

Unfortunate.

That's the last thing we want to do.

But even after people go over and talk to them and they don't stop doing it, they can go out and walk four houses down and get to the beach, walk along the beach, private beach.

If they wanted to do their own thing, they can go do it there.

It's not far.

It's not raining.

It's not.

It's great weather.

Just go.

Don't do it in the house or next to the house.

So we hear them come over there.

All right.

Oh, okay, cool.

Management company's there.

Basically, they throw us under the bus and say, the owners want you out.

Or it's unfortunate.

We don't see anything going on here.

But even though we'd already sent them all the video, all the stuff, all the captures, all the screen grabs, all the pictures of it raining on the furniture outside at 3 o' clock in the morning, all that stuff gets sent over and guess what?

They throw us under the bus and move these people across the street into another short term rental and then throw us under the bus and it's like, we're done, we're done.

I'm not gonna have people going in there.

And it's not like we were wrong here.

As these people walked out front, you could see the couple or whoever they were arguing about one person, alleging the other person's kids are drug addicts.

So clearly we were not wrong here.

And so you get to a point where they don't support you, they're not protecting your property.

And it's like, guys, we're done not doing this.

So we ended up taking it off the market.

And you know something, it was one of those things that by the time you pay all the city taxes, the state taxes, because you had to start an LLC for this, by the time you do all that stuff, you have to take inventory of everything in the house every year and turn it in.

By that time, you get through this.

And for the lack of rentals that they got us in the first year.

And again, you're starting out.

It's a business.

It just wasn't worth the effort.

And I don't like it when a management company tells you one thing and you can turn around and see exactly what's going on in the video that completely contradicts it.

So guys out there, I tell you what, that is the one thing for a takeaway.

Things to think about with the vacation home.

Now, this is that house that we rescued.

This thing was due for demolition.

We came in and saved it.

We probably had to reframe 60, 65% of this thing.

And we saw a lot of videos that we created over there, turned out really nice.

We didn't want to see this beautiful home get ruined.

And more importantly, who wants to be that neighbor in the neighborhood that, oh my gosh, could you believe those kids over there doing drugs in the back patio three feet from another person's bedroom at 3 o' clock in the morning when they snuck out there?

So you kind of get to a point where you go, one, I don't want to be bringing this riffraff into the neighborhood.

These are nice people in the neighborhood, they live there.

And if you're bringing that in, we didn't want to be those people.

And we figured out that eviction for them meant moving it someplace else.

And I felt bad for the neighbors across the street.

They had no idea that they were getting these allegedly drug addicted by the just taking what the person said.

People in their place knowing that they had already violated the rules.

So that also told me that these people were trying to manage the situation but just doing it really poorly with a bunch of shortcuts.

So I tell you what, the bottom line, if you own a rental, whether it's a beach house or a condo, know exactly what you're paying for.

Management is a word that means nothing without enforcement behind it.

Ours didn't have it and now we don't have them.

So we are shutting that thing down from the long short term rental and then we can do whatever we want, including they'll use a fire pit outside since they banned it for short term rental properties.

So gonna enjoy doing that at the beach.

It's gonna be kind of fun because now we can do it without them fighting that one with us.

All right, guys, there's the backstory on that.

I'll let you know if we hear anything else on that.

But I think that's pretty much a dead issue there.

So.

Lessons I and my family have learned about short term rentals coming up here.

I wanted to talk about some recalls.

There's some big ones out there.

KTM North America recalls off road motorcycles due to risk of serious injury or death from crash hazard.

The rear brake caliper can crack or break or completely leave the chat, reducing the brake system's effectiveness.

No kidding.

If you just got the front brake, that's never a good thing.

There's about 21,040 of these motorcycles.

About 4,140 were sold in Canada.

So contact an authorized Gas Gas or Husqvarna motorcycle dealer to schedule a free repair at the dealership.

So the recall power station circuit board can overheat, causing a fire hazard.

About 46,200 of these.

These are these big bricks that have these big wheels on it.

Like a.

Almost like a plastic kind of like a.

Just a cart basically.

Yeah.

Almost like a hand truck.

Again, this is another one.

We talked about it last week about one of these.

This looks like a Greenworks knockoff.

There's about 2,200 of them sold in the US and they didn't put a GFCI power cord on.

It doesn't meet US standards.

So it got jammed in.

Here's another one.

Modine Manufacturing Co.

Recalls Airedale Heating and Cooling ventilation fans.

Due to fire risk, the ventilation fan motor and heat pumps can short circuit if water gets in the circuit board, posing a fire risk.

There's about 6,000 of those, only about 735 in Canada.

All of these things like that, you can go over to cpsc.gov recalls and find out.

There's everything from mattresses to hockey gear.

There's a lot of different stuff.

We talked about fans last week.

Those are the things that we're running into out there, so be really careful.

Hey, I wanted to give you a quick update too.

I had my hand surgery this last week.

I'm feeling better now.

Got that last one.

Surgery number three is done.

So I'm gonna be back to good health and gonna be enjoying that.

So we've got a great show coming up this weekend.

If you are thinking about doing a remodeling project like a kitchen, this episode this weekend is gonna be for you.

You're gonna want to check that out.

All right everybody, have a great rest of the week.

Happy Wednesday.

If you need to find more about us, head over to our website aroundthehouse online.com and we'll see you Saturday.

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