Steve V2: Welcome to Keynotes, a podcast just for Casago homeowners.
This is where we explore how to get the most out of your relationship with
Casago, learn tips and tricks on how to make more income with your property,
and learn a little bit about the short term rental industry along the way.
I've been a vacation rental nerd since my twenties, and the team has finally
let me have this podcast so I can share everything I've learned with you.
I'm your host, Steve Schwab, and this is Keynotes.
Hey, welcome to Keynotes.
Keynotes.
Casago is podcast for homeowners.
Today.
We're talking to Justin Ford.
If you're not in the industry, you may not know Justin's name, but Justin is
infamous within the industry for safety.
And he's actually the safety expert.
If you ask anybody who's in the short term rental industry as a professional.
Today's going to be talking about seven things that homeowners can
do to help make sure that our guests are safe and cared for.
And that we're talking about safety looking forward.
So we're not talking about liability, looking backwards.
Justin, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for having me on Steve.
Yeah, I've been working with safety for 11 years now, five years at breezeway.
My family owns a short term rental, so I'm very focused on an understanding
from the perspective of a property owner, how important it is to
address safety in your property.
, Justin, I think about what you do and all the things that you've been able
to help with a lot of property managers and especially us here at Casago.
And I think the measure of your success is in those safety
incidents that never happened.
I know for a fact that there's a lot of people out there who are walking around
a day because you've got to talk to the homeowners or to the property managers
to make sure those properties were safe.
And a lot of homeowners and property managers who didn't end up having
a liability because they were proactive because of your coaching.
I think that's fantastic what you've been able to contribute
to the industry as a whole.
I get a lot of calls about it.
Every time this topic comes up and you just talking, it just goes right back.
You know, there was a dad who called me because a property manager did
something with a property owner to a property to make it safer and it saved
his two year old daughter's life.
And, uh, I was on the floor when he called me.
I said, you're the guy that recommended this.
And, you know, we did this and I went, yeah.
And he goes, I get to walk my two year old down the aisle someday because of you.
So it's, uh, I think about that every time.
And that's why I'm here with you.
I feel like if I don't keep going, that I might miss one.
So I'm very committed to trying to make sure that we keep everybody
moving about and enjoying life.
How did that make you feel when you got that call?
I was blown away.
I was actually at Whole Foods and I was shopping and I was getting a
repeated phone call and I'm like, I'll call whoever this is back.
And finally, you know, I answered cause they kept repeatedly calling me and, and
they said, Hey, are you sitting down?
You're going to be blown away.
I'm patching somebody in on the phone with you.
And it was the guest and I was blinded by it.
I didn't know what was going to happen.
The thing I remember the most was a security guard that they have at Whole
Foods, which I guess is there to keep people from shoplifting or whatever.
I remember him helping me get up off the floor.
He's, they, they thought something had happened to me medically and,
and I was just, I was a wreck.
Having, having this person come on and surprise me like that.
It was, um.
It was mind blowing and I've had that more than once now, but that one's
always the one that stands out the most because I don't know who he is.
He said his name.
I don't remember it and they asked not to share it.
So I don't even know who he is.
I hope someday he reaches out to me again because it meant a lot to me.
That's a phone call you'll never forget your whole life.
And if you ever get any award.
For what you're doing.
That is the award that probably is going to stand out the most to you as you one
day retire and sit back in a chair or on the back of a boat somewhere fishing.
That's going to be one of those big ones, right?
Oh, absolutely.
So Justin, thanks for coming on today and talking to the
Casago homeowners about safety.
We're just going to write down the list you gave me and talk to our
homeowners about things they can do in their properties to make sure
that guests are safe and cared for.
And for number one, you talked about smoke alarms.
Just real quick before I go into that, one of the things that I always want to make
sure property owners understand, because I get someone who owns a vacation rental,
their prime goal is to generate income.
And I've highlighted and broken it out for years now that
you're looking at, Less than 0.
0083 percent of your income over 10 years going towards safety.
So safety is a small amount that you need to do.
And in most cases, the investment in safety is like maybe one week's
rental over a 10 year time period.
And I think a lot of homeowners don't get that.
It doesn't cost a lot to do that.
I think it's really important just to highlight just because you're the
local regulations or government isn't saying you're supposed to do something
doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
And it's very important to do that.
But smoke alarms are the single most important item.
And when you're working with a property manager.
You've got to understand if they've gone through my safety program,
they get that there's different ones that are out there and the
best ones aren't the most expensive.
And there's a reason for placing them.
What happened when, especially if you built your home new, you sat down
with a contractor and he came down with a price list and you said, Oh,
you know, I want that nice mantle and we want granite countertops.
And he got to the safety section and he did what's
called the basic safety package.
And that includes contractor grade smoke alarms.
Most Short term rentals that I go into have what are known as contractor grade.
They're the cheapest ones out there.
And it's because they wanted to make sure they had more in the
budget for your marble fireplace mantle or your granite countertops.
And so you gotta, you gotta go to that next level because having the
best smoke alarms in your property is critically important to making
sure the guests wake up and get out.
Now, Justin, we talked a little bit before, and you said that there was.
Three different kinds of smoke alarms.
There's the ionic, the photo cell, and then the dual detectors and the
ionic and the photo cells both have different missions and methodologies,
how they detect it, but you thought that the dual detectors are the best, and
that's what you put in your own home.
Yeah, so ionization, ionic ionization in the photo cell or sometimes photoelectric,
those are two different types of sensors.
Ionization is using radioactive material and it's zapping it back and forth
and it can detect smoke particles, but it doesn't see flame very well.
Whereas a photoelectric smoke alarm, Is using light.
It can see flame, but it can't see smoke as well.
So the U S fire administration has made a very clear statement.
You can see it on their website.
It's like the most prominent statement on their website, us fire Marshall,
all the big guys in us government that says dual detection, they
recommend that you have both sensors.
And fortunately the best and really.
Pretty most affordable.
They're on 30 bucks.
Smoke alarms that are sold out.
There are those dual detection alarms that detect both ways.
They detect both fire and smoke.
It was so surprising to me when you told me that the dual detectors can
often be cheaper than the others.
And that's the best one to have.
So what a great piece of information to know, because quite honestly,
I would have thought like the a hundred dollars smoke detector
would have been the one to go with.
And obviously not.
I think for our homeowners, it's a great piece of advice for that.
And for those that, by the way, that have a monitored system, which if I
had a short term rental, as I said, my family has one, but if I personally was
setting up one, I would probably go with a monitored system where you've got, you
know, like an ADT or an alarm company.
They do have dual detection alarms as part of those systems as well.
So if you do have a commercial monitored alarm and you're short term rental,
you can also request that your alarm company installs the dual detection ones.
That's fantastic.
Now you can go and check mine today at my house right now.
So, Justin, for number two, you said egress.
So, right now, egress is probably the thing that regulators, government
regulators, the people who write the codes, National Fire Protection
Association, International Building Codes, that's the number one thing
they're looking at because they're concerned that Too many people in a
bedroom or a sleeping area could not escape timely in the event of a fire.
Egress is not as much of a concern if you have a sprinkled building.
That is, you have a fire sprinkler system.
If I was building a new construction, if I was an STR investor, I would
be using a sprinkle system in my rental property with PEX tubing.
Now they're so inexpensive to do and even retrofitting
putting PEX tubing in that way.
You don't have to worry as much about egress because if there's a fire, the
sprinkler system is going to come on and that gives people the time to escape.
So if you don't have that, you have to have two means of a way for someone to
get out of the sleeping area or bedroom.
And this includes open lofts, you know, like in an, a frame, um, this includes
the basement one would be the door, you know, I'm going to walk out the
bedroom door, the smoke alarm went off.
I got enough time.
Oh my gosh, it's on fire.
I'm out of here.
Two is that you have to have an exit to the outside and that exit.
Has to be 5.
7 square foot openable door or window has to be clear and it has
to be within 44 inches of the floor.
So really simple dimensions there, then it can't be blocked.
So you can't like have an air conditioner in it.
You can have the bed up against it.
I see that all the time, like in tall and skinnies in Nashville, you
know, they've got these little teeny bedrooms, the queen bed and headboards
up and it's blocking the window.
You can't do that.
So you've got to have a clear way for someone in a fire to go.
I can't go down the hall.
I guess I got to jump out the window and that's your egress point.
So one, making sure that there's two ways out.
We talked a little bit earlier about also making sure that the guests
know what those egresses are, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
If you're more than 20 feet above the ground, you should have an escape
ladder so that they can get out.
Those are like 50 bucks, easy to get a lot of different companies make those.
And it's really important.
I think if you can to indicate that's what it is and focus on that.
A sticker's not that.
Offensive to put on the window, the small three by three inch egress window.
Just get them to thinking about it a little bit, you know, and you can have
the kind of stickers that you peel off and put back on again when you're not there.
I think it's important to make sure you highlight that.
I would certainly have that in my rental property.
Cause again, these people have given you the ultimate trust
when they come stay with you.
Why not make sure that you're meeting that.
Yeah.
You know, Justin, I saw a piece on TV where a gentleman, And his
family ended up having a fire.
And for whatever reason that day, he just happened to remember
seeing the egress plan and it was dark, uh, the lights were off.
They couldn't, you know, smoke going on.
And from his memory of just happening to see the egress plan, he was
able to get him and his family out.
And you know, that one piece of paper that he happened to look over.
May have saved him and his family's life.
Simple things to make sure that the responsibility we have
to our guests is being met.
So Justin, for number three, this is one of the more common problems that we run
into tripping hazards, tripping hazards.
I mean, it's in your own home.
You're most likely to get injured in your home because you tripped or fell.
Over 50 percent of safety incidents that happen to the human being, whether
you're in Bali, you're in Seattle, or you're in Paris, you're most
likely to get injured in your home.
Or your condo or whatever, where you live.
That's where we spend the most amount of time.
And so now you're putting people in a property.
They're not familiar with, and we see so many of these, the insurance claim
data shows that 60 percent of incidents happen within the first hour of arrival.
And that's because guests are showing up.
30 percent of them show up after dark for the first time, the lighting isn't good.
We can easily address that with solar lighting, motion sensor lights.
There's timer lights out there now.
Things are so sophisticated now that your computer knows you got a booking.
It knows that there's a guest arriving.
The guest can even tell you when they're arriving and the lights can all come on.
So making sure they got a clear path in there and that they're not
going to trip over anything, those carpets that you want in there.
I know they look beautiful and in your own home, that's great.
But when you've got a short term rental in there.
It's really not a good idea to have them get them out of the bathrooms.
Hotel industry taught us that back in the eighties, let the guests put
their own towel down on the floor and create their own trip hazard.
And the same for the kitchens.
You know, I know people love to put a rag mat down in front of the sink, but
if it's just for looks, get rid of it when you're looking at it and it's like
the only purpose is it is for aesthetics.
Maybe it's time to take it out.
Yeah, I think I've even told you that even my mother fell over an
area rug and I'm convinced that while I understand how they create space
and are attractive, those are one of the biggest hazards we have in these
vacationals and just getting rid of them so that we don't have this safety issue.
Is absolutely worth the consideration for our homeowners to think about.
And the, unfortunately the liability side is really big.
This is the one area where lawyers are very focused.
I just saw a 2.
2 million settlement on a slip and fall case in Pawleys Island, South
Carolina, at a short term rental.
America's live very litigious area.
They definitely look, you know, if you don't have a good handrail going
up the stairs, that's a big one too.
So you want to make sure.
You go about the property and you might do that.
You might have your grandmother come over or, you know, the nice little
old lady down the street to make that, uh, that's made you cookies before.
Invite her over.
See how she moves around the property.
And if she's having trouble, just imagine a guest that you're not there to help
and coax around moving around there.
So it's time to spruce things up.
Yeah.
Or grandpa with the old man shuffle as, yeah, grandpa, the old man shuffle.
Exactly.
As men, as we get older, we go from these big long strides to these short shuffles.
I, I saw Bono on stage, you know, from U2 doing the old man shuffle.
I was like, oh boy.
It only takes the thickness of a nickel to create a trip
hazard, which is mind blowing.
That's a great statistic.
I didn't know that.
A thickness of a nickel.
Thickness of a nickel can create a trip hazard.
Yeah.
You know, the, you just catch your toe just at the wrong angle, get that short
step and suddenly you're falling forward.
Justin for number four, we hear a lot about the safety issues in
the news, which is swimming pools.
What are the, some of the things our homeowners can do if they have a swimming
pool to make sure that the guests are safe and that we're providing the best
experience for our guests and the least amount of liability for our homeowners.
Yeah, unfortunately, pools are the number one cause of death of
guests in a short term rental.
And the statistics, I mean, the numbers that we're seeing this year, this has
been the worst year we've ever seen.
It's bad.
And it's because these kids are coming down here and they generally
speaking, they're going on vacation.
They're not used to having a pool at home.
They don't have one at home.
Now they're here.
They want to use the heck out of it.
And they want to use it even when their parents aren't there and their
parents don't always want to be there.
Um, you know, they're coming down.
We know from statistics that 75 percent of North Americans acknowledge
that when they go on vacation, they get intoxicated at least once.
And of those 90 percent of them said they don't do that in their own home.
So they're coming to your home to sit by your pool and drink and maybe get a buzz.
And they don't even do that at home.
And I know this is a hard pill to swallow, but you really got
to go down to the Marriott.
You got to go down to the holiday Inn and you see how they set up the pool.
That's what you got to do.
You got to have depth markers.
If you're not going to do depth markers, a lot of insurance companies
require depth markers, but if you're not, you need to have a sign says
what the depth of the pool is.
You need to have a pool safety hook.
Um, they're about 40 bucks and don't Mount it like way on the other side
of the pool or swap it out with a net.
It's got to be in close where someone can use it.
You need a life ring and it needs a rope on it.
If someone's drowning and someone can't go in the pool to get
them, you and I are healthy guys.
We both would do that if it was our kids.
So who's not jumping in the pool, someone who's not healthy,
someone who can't do that.
And so they need a rope to pull it back in and you need to make sure you've
got the water watcher program in place.
It's practically free.
The government even sends out cards.
A lot of property managers have them.
It should be on the counter.
When the guests arrive, the card is a lanyard.
It goes around the guest's wrist and it says, I'm watching the pool.
I'm not drinking.
I'm not going to the bathroom.
And if I do, I'm passing the card to another responsible person.
And then finally it's access to the pool.
Most of the time when people gain access, it's because the pool arms don't work.
People pull the batteries out or the pool gates aren't closing
and latching as they should.
So making sure you've got secure access to the pool is very important.
Yeah.
All great advice.
And, you know, I think those hooks are so important because if you think about
it, often the children who don't know how to swim is because the parents Don't
know how to swim and couldn't teach them.
So we see that one other quick note too, is those darn pool toys.
Some of the leading insurance companies now have come out
with a blanket statement.
You are not allowed to have pool toys at the property.
And if the guests leave them behind, you need to pop them and throw them
away, which is horrible for landfills.
I get it, but they're only allowing us Coast Guard approved flotation devices.
So I know some people love that white.
Pegasus unicorn thing in the pool and they look great in the marketing photos, but
don't leave those behind for your guests.
Yeah, that's good advice.
Justin for number five, he's good fire extinguishers.
Property owners do not like fire extinguishers.
I'm blowing the bet that probably 99 percent of the ones listening
to this are going to go.
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
It's under the sink.
It's in a box or you don't even have it.
You might've seen that guy on Instagram.
Who's got that little can of bug spray called prepared hero.
I call it declared zero.
I can't stand that thing.
Um, you gotta have big five pounders.
I'm sorry.
But you need a five pound fire extinguisher within 30 feet of all
cooking appliances, including the grill.
And here's the great news.
They work and the renters use them to save your house.
You're actually putting them out in the property so that if there's a
fire, who cares how the fire started?
I don't care if the guest was drunk.
They were an idiot.
I don't care.
You've gotten guests coming in next week.
And so if they can put out the fire and first save lives, we've seen that.
We've seen, um, many short term rental fires.
I got the keys to the city down in Chincoteague, Virginia last year, because
a homeowner listened to me, move the fire extinguisher out where they belong.
And everyone says there's no way that this house fire would have not
grown much bigger, except the fact that that fire extinguisher came from
under the sink and got moved into the hall that led to the outdoors.
The guests saw it.
They woke up to the smell of smoke and they put the fire out.
And so the next guest came in and everybody was happy.
So they work.
I know you don't want to hear this after three or four weeks.
You don't even notice it there.
Yeah.
Often in a big, beautiful, luxurious home, people don't want to see that fire
extinguisher and part of Casago's minimum.
Required items is having a fire signature there, but making sure that placements
in the right area where guests can see it, they have a mental note of it.
And often, if you see these fire signatures underneath the sink
or somewhere inaccessible, often that's where the fire starting.
It's hard to get in underneath the sink or underneath wherever
it might be to get that out.
And now you're kind of blocked by the fire in order to put it out.
And like you said, number one.
Is making sure that the guests are safe and, you know, and our own
families that are, and homeowners that are there are safe, but then
number two is property damage.
And number three is the rental income that you could lose for future
reservations while the repairs go on.
So there's a lot of good reasons to make sure those fire extinguishers, no
matter how big and red and ugly they are, are out where guests can find them.
And I like what you said, red, not the white ones.
Those white ones are for your boat or for a car.
So they gotta be red.
Gotta be red.
Justin, for number six, you said barbecue grills.
So barbecue grills, people love them.
When you look.
Barbecue grills in public use, the best ones, the ones where we don't have any
issues are the ones at a campground.
And why is that?
Cause they're staked into the ground.
You can't move them.
It's a no brainer.
Someone brings a bag.
They dump it in, they light it and there's not going to be any issues.
So that's the ideal situation.
And I do see an increasing number of SDRs going in that direction.
But again, we're dealing with luxury properties.
I know a lot of people want that nice big gas grill.
My advice is to switch over to the griddle type, at least the
flames not up in their face.
And we just saw an incident in Florida where the renter couldn't light it.
The igniter wasn't working.
That's always the problem.
And they didn't realize they hadn't turned the gas off.
They went into the bathroom while they were in the bathroom.
The grill exploded.
Thank God the guy had to go to the bathroom.
Cause if he had stayed out there, he would have perished, but the grills
that are made out there, a lot of them, unfortunately, aren't great quality.
The igniters fail in them.
You should never be leaving them by the way, the lighter.
If your igniter isn't working, it needs to be removed from service,
but we do need to recognize timers.
Gas timers are very important placement of the grills.
Get them at least 10 feet away from the properties if you can or away from
combustibles, but recognizing that they are a strong point for combustion injury.
And damage to the rental property is the first step and then make
a good choice on the best way you want to go with the right grill.
Yeah, the two things I always look at when I'm looking at barbecue
grills inside the properties from a safety point of view is one the
igniter because the little batteries go out in those igniters so often.
And then people are expecting it to work.
They leave the gas on and then they start searching for something to light it with.
And just like the gentleman's whose barbecue blew up.
The second thing that I always look for is the O rings inside of the
connectors because they dry out.
Yeah, exactly.
That's great.
That's a great, I talk about that a lot.
There's some kid being paid 14 bucks an hour to check those when he fills them.
And trust me, he doesn't see all of them.
And I've seen cracks and leaks in them, um, up in lake of the Ozarks.
They lost a 13 million condo complex from a vacation rental fire because of
that exact scenario, you know, where they turned the gas on and it was leaking
in the, he hit the igniter and boom.
I treat mine a little bit with a little bit of silicone when I get a chance
a little silicone keeps it fresh.
It keeps it from cracking.
And then if it goes bad, it's less than a buck for a little packet of them.
These guests are crazy.
I've seen at least five videos on Instagram this summer.
I saw one this morning where they don't know what they're doing with
these things and they're, they've been putting charcoal when the gas goes out.
That's yeah.
Well, the general public we're dealing with when it comes to garage grills,
they don't understand them a lot.
So my, my advice is to keep them as simple as possible.
You want a really awesome grill at home.
Great at your short term rental.
You're not going to have somebody calling on canceling because you've got a charcoal
grill that's in a stake out in the ground.
And I got to go out here to cook, trust me.
So think about a good grill.
That's going to be easy for them to operate and not cause any issues.
Charcoal grills are great as long as in the description, we put this a charcoal
grill, set the expectation for it.
Guests don't have a problem with it.
There's no big deal, but we have to make sure that we put that in the description.
So if you're switching over to a charcoal grill, make sure to let your property
manager at Casago know so they can make sure that's in the description.
But that's a really good.
And one other quick one to Weber makes a really nice electric grill
now that looks just like a gas grill.
They're about 500.
There's actually some locations I've seen in Colorado at where they're
required to have the electric grills.
And if you're on an elevated deck because they're not producing an open flame.
So those are worth consideration as well.
Yeah.
You have my own property in Rocky point has the electric grill.
It does great.
And when not quite as great, but overall, as long as it's not a windy day, it does
really well and obviously a lot safer.
So for number seven and the last one is you, you talked
a little bit about products.
Yeah.
What do you mean by that?
So if you go on online and you Google search hotel grade products,
you get millions of returns and everybody knows about that.
You get hotel grade sheets, hotel grade pillows, hotel grid, mastresses.
We don't have products for the short term rental industry that
are short term rental grade.
So everything that goes into the home is essentially made for the idea
that whoever buys it is using it.
In their own lives.
And a refrigerator is a great example.
Refrigerators are designed when you buy, you know, like I'm talking about 000
ones, you might get it like a big box store, a Best Buy, Lowe's, Home Depot,
at a Whirlpool or something like that.
Those are designed that they're full of food all the time.
And yet in the short term rental industry, we run them empty all the time.
And that requires them to run that much harder all the time.
I go into short term rentals all the time where I, the first thing I
point out, I'm like, you hear that the refrigerator is running and
people look at me like, I'm crazy.
Like, why are you talking about the refrigerator running?
I'm like, I just want you to know, we're going to come back to this.
And like half an hour later, we go over and I'm like, see, it's still
running and you open it, it's empty.
And it's sucking all the dust in there, which collects on the
filters, which becomes a fire hazard.
And actually refrigerators are the number three cause of fire in short term rentals.
So we got to clean them more.
The list goes on and on, but you just got to take a better step back
as you're setting up your properties and understanding you're using a
lot of the products in this home.
That are not designed for the general public coming in and using them.
So we've got to use the right ones.
We've got to think about it.
We've got to realize that there's more maintenance that's going to be needed
and be thoughtful about all of that.
Yeah.
A lot of the products are built for residential, but really as short term
rentals, we had to think of these as commercial properties, right?
And there is a difference.
And yeah, when you don't store food in there, it doesn't store.
The energy that's put into that food.
And so it has to cycle constantly to keep them running.
The one that blows my mind, Steve, and you know, you're in Arizona.
I was just out there.
A lot of people take the refrigerator that doesn't work very well, or when they
get a new one and they put them in the garage, which is not air conditioned.
So now that refrigerator.
That they said, didn't do a good job staying cold.
They'd be like, ah, it's for the drinks for the guests to
put their beer and drinks in.
And now it has to run really, really hard.
And I've seen at least 10 fires from those, especially Florida, Texas, Arizona.
So yeah, the refrigerator is old.
Don't stick it in the garage for drinks.
. It's time for it to go because you know, the garage gets even hotter than outside.
And today it was 111 degrees out.
I bet you it was 125 degrees in my garage.
Justin, thanks so much for coming on.
I really appreciate you taking the time coming in on a Saturday while
you're on vacation with your family.
Thank you so much again for talking to our homeowners and making sure
that all of our guests and homeowners are safe and well cared for.
I really appreciate being here.
I know someone's listened to this.
And it's going to take some action that's going to make a difference.
And that's why I came on today.
And I appreciate being here to do that.
Yeah.
Thanks again, Justin.