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It's time for the show, let's go!
Hey, welcome to CasaCast, I'm Steve Schwab.
I'm here today with Justin Ford from Breezeway.
Justin is known as the safety guru in the short term rental industry.
He spent the past five years with Breezeway.
Justin's coming up on his sixth year anniversary as the director of safety and
certification programs with Breezeway, and we're so glad to have him on today.
Justin, thanks for coming on.
Steve, it's great to be here.
And it's, yeah, I got to tell you the interest and focus that Costco is
having on safety is industry leading.
And it's really exciting to be able to talk to you.
Thanks for that.
. Justin, I didn't know that you'd spent 11 years as the largest property manager.
Yeah, you know, everybody has their story.
It's funny.
I, you know, most people either got in for real estate or they got in
because, you know, they wanted to make some extra income renting out
their apartment or whatever they did.
I got in as running a boat, I delivered a boat to somebody and they
said they were renting the house.
I went.
Really like this isn't your house or like now we're renting it for a week.
And I'm like, well, that's kind of cool.
Here I am renting a boat to somebody.
It seems like there's more money in renting a house than a boat.
So yeah, I started a vacation rental company.
Originally we called it on a lake in Maine.
And then some people on an ocean said, Hey, what about us?
And we grew it into the largest, highest grossing vacation rental company between
Pennsylvania and the Canadian border.
So all the way.
All the way up the entire coast.
So that was pretty exciting.
I think manage as many as 600 homes, which was a lot.
That is a lot.
And you know, I had no idea.
I didn't realize that was your background.
Now you took a special interest in safety from a specific incident
that got you focused on this.
Am I, am I wrong in that?
No, that's absolutely right.
I was a firefighter too.
I was a volunteer firefighter in my community.
So I knew smoke alarms were important and I knew that you had
to do a few things here and there.
I wasn't like zeroed in though.
It wasn't like, wow, I could lose my business.
But then, yeah, we had an incident where a woman was injured in a hammock.
It caused her a permanent disability.
And it woke me up to kind of going, well, wait a minute.
How was I supposed to know this?
How was I supposed to prepare for this?
And so, uh, I almost lost my company and I went, all right, let's step
back here and make sure now I realize this could happen, not just from a
hammock, but a fire or anything else that's, that's where it all started.
Yeah, you and I were talking just a couple of weeks ago about the incident that
happened in Rocky Point with the gentleman who lost his life in that jacuzzi.
And that's a whole nother story to talk about at a later date, but something
we talked about there, when you think about it into the future, it's safety.
When you're thinking about it in the past, it's liability.
First and foremost, we're here to make sure our guests are safe and cared for.
But once this happened, now you have to think about liability and it's two
different paradigms when we have to think about what's about to happen
in the future and how we can prevent that as opposed to it's already
happened and now we have a liability.
So, Justin, a pretty interesting story that I've become aware of recently is
you had 23 years between your third date and your fourth date with your wife.
That's right.
I don't, we don't even remember where they were, but yeah, she was roommates with
one of my high school buddies, girlfriends and showed up and I said, who's that?
And they're like, you know, that's Lisa Brown.
She only dates football players.
You don't have a chance.
I asked her out anyway.
And after the third date, somebody, you know, this is for cell phones
and texting and all that stuff.
Somebody went, you've really gone on three dates with her.
I think she thinks you're sweet.
You know, we just saw her hanging out with somebody else, so I
don't think she's too Indy.
And I was like, Oh, that's a bummer.
So yeah, let it go.
And you go all this time.
And then, uh, you know, the miracle of Facebook, you know, you're plugging
along and wait, you're still around.
You're not with somebody.
I'm not with somebody.
So, uh, you connect again.
So Justin, today we're talking about five things that our property managers can
do to help ensure guests are more safe.
In our homes here at Costco.
Yeah.
You 11 years, very focused in on safety.
And I think it can be overwhelming to people sometimes, you know,
you give them a checklist of.
You know, there's like 70 things on there.
You got to do this.
And like, Oh my gosh, I can't do all that.
And really I I'll focus on this.
If it's intimidating to look at a long list of things, don't worry about that.
Set it aside.
Cause you don't want that to happen.
You know, we have.
The responsibility of a baby's first trip to the beach or to the mountains and
possibly grandma's last trip to the beach or mountains and making sure that it's
safe and that they're well cared for is part of our credo and these five things
are going to help us get a lot of the obvious things out of the way right away.
So for number one, Justin, you said smoke alarms.
Yeah, smoke alarms.
I mean, they're the single most important item in a rental property.
I think a lot of people think that a smoke alarm is a smoke
alarm, you know, whatever it is.
Most of the time, and we see it in surveys all the time, people purchase a smoke
alarm based on convenience and price.
They're never looking at quality or type and don't even realize
that there are different ones.
In a nutshell, real quick, you've got a photo electric smoke alarm.
Those have been around since the early nineties.
And then you have an ionization.
Type smoke alarm.
Those are the two types that are really out there.
Ionization has been around since the 1960s, but they detect
things completely differently.
Um, one is good at detecting fast flashing flames.
One is good at detecting smoke.
And so there's a reason you want one versus another in a different area.
And there's actually ones out there that detect both.
They're called dual detectors.
So I see people also install them.
Improperly all the time, they don't want this ugly electronic device
on the ceiling in their 200, 000 living room with this mantle that's
got stone and it's beautiful.
And, oh, I'm going to put this ugly 30 electronic device.
So they're like, put it in a corner, but then it makes no sense that it went there.
So you've got to take a strong focus and recognize this from the
get go before you do anything.
What is the best smoke alarm?
Where do I install them?
How do I install them?
And how do I make sure that they're all going to work as needed because
my guests need to be able to wake up.
So just for my edification, where would I put it in the photo electric
smoke alarm, as opposed to the INS?
The, what was the word ionization?
Yeah.
Typically you want a photo electric smoke alarm closer to like a cooking area.
Might be like a kitchen because you're going to have some fast
flash flames that are going to probably jump right out there.
You might want an ionization smoke alarm, more likely maybe in a couch
area, living room area, because maybe someone's dropped a cigarette in the
couch and it's going to smolder might be electronics, the TV, something like that.
Personally in my home.
I have duals.
Consumer Reports has ranked dual smoke alarms the best.
The U.
S.
Fire Administration has said that dual is the best way to go.
So I, in my house, I have dual everywhere, every room, every space in the house.
That actually makes a lot of sense.
And just from a price point of view, what's the difference in the dual as
opposed to the ion or the photoelectric?
Yeah, that's the thing that blows me away.
You like, you'll look at like those Google nests, they're like a hundred
bucks and people think they're the best because you paid a lot.
But those only use photoelectric and then first alert, which makes the
highest ranked according to consumer reports, dual detection alarms.
I scored like a 92 on consumer reports, which is really good.
Um, those are 30 bucks.
So from a price point of view, they're cheaper than a lot of
the photoelectric ones out there.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
I don't like combos combos mean it's a smoke and a CO alarm together.
And those are very confusing.
We've seen incidents where that a combo detector is going off and the people
like, well, there's no fire, there's no smoke and they disable it, but what
they don't realize is it was going off because there was carbon monoxide.
So in your own home where you've read the instructions and you know, the
difference in beeps and all that, maybe, but not in a short term,
I don't get rid of those combos.
They're cheap.
They're just, they're meeting a consumer need.
We like things packaged.
So for number two, you said egress.
Yeah.
Egress is really important.
Um, there was a fire in Destin this past week.
The family barely made it out alive.
They were interviewed on the news about it.
When you listen, First off, the smoke alarms didn't work.
So they're lucky they got out.
They woke up to the sound of breaking glass.
And actually the fire department was notified because the next door neighbor
had a Jaguar with OnStar that detected the heat from that fire and said, Hey,
you know, the car's melting and called the OnStar, which called the fire department.
But when you hear the story that they had, they had a difficult time getting out.
They barely got out.
They're like dropping kids off of the deck.
They had injuries from it.
And we see, you know, there was another fire in Wisconsin where six people were
killed two weeks ago, they didn't get out.
So we've kind of make sure people can get out.
You've got to get into the property and say, all right, I'm in this bedroom.
You need to do this with every sleeping area, every bedroom in your properties
that you manage, and you've got to go.
All right.
There's a fire right now.
It's pitch black.
I'm exhausted.
I've had some drinks.
How do I get out?
And if you can't figure it out, landing it, trust me, your guests
in a moment of panic, can't.
So yes, egress is extremely important.
What are some things we can do to make sure the guests understand
egress and what they should be doing, you know, maybe when they've had a
couple of drinks and it's dark, what's some things we can prep them for?
We're going to make it easy 1st.
Don't block it.
And just to be clear, egress is required when you don't have a sprinkled building.
So, if we're dealing with a condo, it's got sprinkler systems.
You don't have to be as concerned about this, but we're talking about the majority
of short term rentals out there that do not have a fire sprinkler system and they
have to have an exit to the outdoors.
So it's got to be clear.
It's got to not be blocked.
You don't want them to have it set up that that's where they put their luggage
in front of the window, put the luggage area off it, just, you know, emphasize to
them, you know, you can use some stickers.
This is your egress point.
And if it's more than 20 feet above ground, you can provide an escape ladder
form there, 50 bucks, it's easy to get it, put a sign escape ladder in the
closet or escape ladder under the bed.
Do whatever you can.
To then also make sure the window works, you can open it easily.
Some of these older homes in the summer, you get humidity, they stick.
Some of them are painted shut.
You don't want that to happen.
Go through that exercise and make sure that it's very clear and easy for them
that if they can't go out the hall and now they've got to jump out the
window, that's going to be easy to do.
So one, making sure that there actually is an egress that works and two, making
sure it is clear to the guests what that egress looks like or what it is and
how they get out excellent information.
So, for number three, trip hazards.
So this is where people get injured the most.
And unfortunately, sometimes it leads to fatality.
When you look at the fact that almost 30 percent of our
guests are over the age of 60.
And as we age, we go from, you know, marching with big
steps to starting to scuff.
But now you've got people also in a home that they're not familiar with.
And if you just even remove short term rentals from the factor, the most
common reason people are injured in their own home is a trip and fall.
Now you're putting them in an environment they're not familiar with.
They're not familiar with that rug leading into the living room or that stove.
Step that leads down to the pool.
So you've really got to go through and make sure that you've used some
transition tape or a little bit of paint to highlight steps if they're
painted the same color as a floor.
So that's aware that you're, you're stepping somewhere different.
Carpets shouldn't have curls in them.
In fact, I like to see area rugs removed completely from an SDR.
If you can, certainly not in the kitchen, never on the bathroom floor
and things are lit up really well.
Yeah, I'm a big advocate for getting rid of area rugs altogether.
If you're going to have to have them, making sure that those corners
are flat, that they're taped down or that they're weighted down.
But you know, my own mother fell over an area rug and I'd asked her
to take it out, but sure enough, she fell over it and she's in her
eighties and she broke her hip.
And I thought that was going to be the end of her.
Now, thankfully she's recovered from it, but area rugs are just one of the big.
Liabilities that we have in these properties and I don't know how
we get away from them except to tell homeowners, please.
I know they look great.
I know you love them, but if you're going to have to put them
in, they have to be weighted down.
They have to be taped and they should be thin so that as we get older and
we shuffle or it's just dark or we're drinking or whatever that might look like
that don't become those one small eighth of an inch ledge as somebody Hit their
toe over and busted themselves up with.
It's just a terrible thing to be part of somebody's vacation to fall
over something they didn't have to.
One of the things that I've been really excited to see, cause it breathes way.
I can see people's property management companies, templates.
We're seeing a huge increase, which is great.
And owner turnovers, they have a special checklist for the owner turnover.
So if the owner's coming in, they know, all right, the owner
likes having the rugs out.
So they bring them back out of storage or where they're locked up and put them out.
All right.
Now, if you're the owner, you want your rugs.
Great.
But then they roll them up as soon as the owners leave . My
biggest pet peeve is those cattle skins that are like really thin.
Stop.
Those don't belong in a rental property.
. That's a low hanging fruit.
We can certainly work on number four, which I think we all think about often
is There's a lot of rental properties with pools and you, you know, you could
almost slightly throw spas and hot tubs in there and other popular amenity.
There are a lot of kids that go on vacation that don't know how to
swim or don't have a pool at home.
And so now they show up at a rental property.
They're excited.
They want to use it all the time.
And the parents are on vacation too.
They showed up at the pool to have a glass of wine, have a margarita.
They're excited.
And they turn their brains off.
It's called vacation brain.
And so they're not paying attention.
We've seen some recent cases where like the kids get up early before the
parents and they go down and they open the door and they're in the pool and
the parents wake up two hours later and there's, you know, this unfortunate
thing with their kids are in the pool.
So you've gotta make sure that these pools.
Are inaccessible and the cheapest and easiest way to do that is
start with a water watcher program.
I think it's inexcusable at this point.
If you're a professional manager and you manage properties with pools, you don't
have a water watcher program in place.
It's almost free.
They almost pay you to do it.
It's that easy.
Yeah.
You know, I just saw where at a vacation rental in Florida, somewhere at a
15 year old boy drowned and there's supposed to be a safety rope that went
from the shallow end to the deep end.
They had two islands for it and the rope wasn't on there.
Apparently the boy didn't know how to swim and was unaware that it
went from shallow, shallow, shallow, and then went deep quickly and he
slid down and he lost his life.
And it's a tragedy.
I think the second most important thing you should have in there, like 40 bucks
is a shepherd hook or a pool safety hook.
They need to be accessible because you're right, Steve.
There are a lot of people and we've seen a lot of drownings
where someone you have kids.
I have kids.
If one of our kids is drowning in front of us, we're pretty healthy people.
We're going to jump in and try and save them.
So you just assume that's the same for everybody, but it's not.
There are a lot of people out there who don't know how to swim.
And in that case, the one you're referring to, the parent
was there, but was too young.
Terrified to jump in the water and save their kid because
they didn't know how to swim.
But if they had had a pool safety hook, they could have put it in
there and he could have grabbed it.
So, and I've had some saves from those, so I believe in them strongly.
Yeah.
Me too.
I think that's a great piece of advice that every property should have.
Number five, fire extinguishers.
This has been my favorite topic of being a safety expert and trust me, I mean, I get
excited about smoke alarms, which I know that sounds crazy, but that's what I do.
I get excited about this stuff, but the fire extinguishers, it just
blows my mind that people don't want to put those out in the open.
I bet you in the short term rental industry, There is a million fire
extinguishers in a box under a sink or in a laundry room up high.
They never even taken out of the box and they just people put it there because
they go, I guess I'm supposed to put it there, but they don't think about
the fact that someone may need that.
And the person who's going to need it.
Is someone who's going to save their home.
It's like, it's such a no brainer.
You're giving your guests a tool to put out a fire in your rental property.
Make it easy for them.
Don't bury it.
Yes.
It looks ugly for 10 minutes on the wall and then you get used to it.
Trust me, you get used to it, put it out, mount it, put it near a
door and exit point and get the big one, get the big old five pounder.
That's going to shoot 20 feet for 30 seconds and actually do something.
Cause most fire departments are 10 minutes away minimum.
If they can knock it down with that, the guest does that.
I don't care how insured you are.
You're still calling the next 20 guests to say, I've got a contractor coming in
to do repair work and you're losing money.
So I think when we think about that, number one is the lives and the injuries
that you can save from that, right?
Number two is the real damage property that's going to happen to it.
And number three is even if everybody's safe and you got the
property saved from major damage.
Even without a fire extinguisher, the amount of damage is going to happen is
going to destroy your future income.
This is all income for both our homeowners and for us as property managers.
So when you think about the hierarchy of this one, obviously guest safety, number
two, real damage, and number three, rental income, as we think about that.
And I think I might actually have a business model for you and I to get into.
Decorative hear me out on this decorative smoke alarms and fire
extinguishers that look good in public.
Yeah.
You know, there's slowly different products that are coming along.
I just saw someone who's come out with the first, you may have seen it
too, at the spring VRMA conference.
I've had the first hot tub designed for the industry where, you know, it
can quickly drain and quickly fill.
So I'm like, we got to do that.
Pool alarms are on my list.
Smoke alarms, fire extinguishers.
Uh, sign me up.
Justin, I appreciate you coming on and talking to our partners today.
You know, we're encouraging everybody to get through the safety
program that you put together with breeze away before the year.
I appreciate everything you do and the contributions that you give to the
industry as a whole and the contributions you give to us here at Costco.
You're an important part of the industry and really grateful for your time today.
No, I really appreciate that.
And the best thing about all this, Steve is all of this stuff.
When you market it, we'll get you more bookings because safety sells.
Yep.
Sure.
Well, sure.
Appreciate you coming on today.
Thanks again.
Justin.
We're so luxurious.
They all want to be us.
Don't call it an Airbnb.
Okay.