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Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:05] You’re listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. We believe hosting with heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette’s background in business operation–
Annette Grant: [00:00:15] And Sarah’s extensive hospitality management and interior design experience, we have welcomed thousands of guests from over 30 countries, earning us over a million dollars and garnering us thousands of five-star reviews. We love sharing creative ways for your listing to stand out, serve your guests and be profitable. Each episode, we will have knowledgeable guests who bring value to the short-term rental industry–
Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:39] Or we will share our stories of our own experiences so you can implement actual improvements to your rentals. Whether you’re experienced, new, or nervous to start your own short-term rental, we promise you’ll feel right at home. Before we dive into the content, let’s hear a word from our sponsor. Hello, welcome back for another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.
Annette Grant: [00:01:05] I am Annette Grant, and together we are–
Both Sarah and Annette: [00:01:08] Thanks for Visiting.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:01:09] Let’s kick this episode off like we do every week. Annette is sharing one of you our amazing listeners, viewers. And we want to showcase one of your amazing properties. Netty, who we sharing this week?
Annette Grant: [00:01:20] This week we are sharing @BayshoreBeachLodgeNJ, again that’s @BayshoreBeachLodgeNJ. And this is a special shout-out. This is one of our members inside our hosting business mastery method. Her name is Sharees and she came to us when she was just opening up her rental and she has just dug into all the content. She has taken all the advice, she is all in on her short-term rental. And you can tell by her Instagram she’s doing a great job.
One thing which I want to know how this is going for her. She actually has her phone number in her profile so people can book direct. And I like that. When do you see a phone number like that? So I might have to prank phone call you, Sharees. Anyways, but check her out. She’s got her blog on there. She is the segue into today’s episode. She is safety certified by Breezeway and we are going to get into all of that today. But, Sharees, we just want to give you a huge shout-out. You have been such a go-getter, really focused on creating an amazing space that’s safe and great for your community. And we cannot wait to see you grow in the future. So gift Sharees and Bay Shore Beach Lodge NJ a follow. Sarah.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:02:33] Well, if you’re new to our podcast, we are gaining some new listeners each and every day. And we’re so grateful for that. And so that whole section of our podcast is dedicated to you, our listeners. If you use the #STRShareSunday, on our Instagram channel, we share these properties and give you some love there. But we also, of course, like you just heard, share them on the podcast. And you also get shared in the show notes, in our email blast. It really is a great way to market your property, celebrate your success, celebrate what you’re doing well. I know our guest today is going to be so excited that you are safety certified with Breezeway, which is one of our wonderful podcast sponsors. Netty, is showing off her Yeti from Breezeway.
But let’s welcome to the show. We’re going to have a safety conversation today. If you are even thinking about not listening the rest of this episode, don’t you dare. We need to really take our guests’ safety to be the top priority, and then safety of your asset, of your property. It’s got to hang out for a while if you want it to continue to make you money. So Justin Ford is no stranger to the show. Justin, welcome.
Justin Ford: [00:03:37] Hey, it’s great to be back here with you ladies again. I’m here at my South California beach house. We’ve got fire going getting ready for fall.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:03:46] Justin likes to play with his Zoom–
Annette Grant: [00:03:48] Background.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:03:49] This is a non-brand one for Justin. We really love it. Justin, can you give our listeners who maybe are new to the show or we haven’t heard from you for a couple of months, what do you do at Breezeway? What is your expertise and what’s going on in the safety world these days?
Justin Ford: [00:04:02] Hey, it’s great to be back with you. The last time I was on I had COVID. I just didn’t know it yet. So I’m sure I’m going to sound much better today for anybody who just tuned out back in April when I was in Colorado. But yes, I’ve been working in the short-term rental industry. I always like to joke around with us, but it’s true since Brian Chesky at Airbnb was in diapers.
I’ve been around since 1997 in this industry, and know all about the short-term rental industry for many aspects, background and safety in the Coast Guard, firefighter for 15 years, and started and own the largest vacation rental company in the northeast, at one point managing over 600 homes. And despite all that, the thing that I still think is the coolest is just how many vacation rentals are a challenge at somebody out there who has been to as many as I have. I get to really travel the globe and see so many, and it’s probably the most exciting thing about what I do.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:57] I] love that. The last time you were on the show in April, we talked about smoke detectors, correct?
Justin Ford: [00:05:05] Yep, we did. We talked a lot about smoke alarms. And that episode was is really important if you haven’t listened to it yet. It’s so important and it touches on– ladies, I run into people all the time who listen to this podcast. And I’m always excited to hear people that have heard the episodes that I’m on with and have heard the safety stuff. I’m always fearful people are going to be bored by it. But I’ve been learning lately that a lot of people are just terrified.
There’s people who just reach out and go, “I heard your stuff a year ago, and I’ve just been terrified about this or that.” And I just want people to know, the coolest thing about the safety side is it’s the one thing you can actually do at your rental and achieve it. You can make your rental safe. You’ll never get the right thread count, you’ll never get the right pillows, you’ll never have a guest who thinks the mattress is perfect, and you’ll always have a guest that wishes you had a different coffeemaker, but you can make your rental safe. So you shouldn’t be scared. And I think you both have heard. We’ve saved lives on the show. That’s pretty freakin cool.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:34] Yeah, we have.
Annette Grant: [00:05:38] It’s so cool. And I think what Justin’s alluding to, we have some listeners that hadn’t been in their property for quite some time and realized it was a flip, and there weren’t any smoke detectors. We had someone that had her deck inspected on a brand new condo and found out there was structural issues that she had to bring to the condo society. She had just purchased it. So we have the stories firsthand. What gets us motivated, I’m sure just like Justin it’s all the stories we’re never going to hear because there was preventative measures taken. It was safe. So our goal is to actually not hear any stories because that means we’re doing our job.
So, Justin, I know you wanted to bring up maybe a specific incident to tip off the show after saying, “Hey, everybody, tune in, don’t tune out. This is not terrifying. This is important.” So I’ll offer this to you listeners, even if you think your home is safe. I’ve learned so much from Justin, that everywhere I go now, I pay attention to things I never paid attention to in commercial buildings, in short-term rentals. And it’s about keeping myself and my family safe. So that’s another reason just to listen. It’s going to help you when you’re in those places that you’re like, “Wait a second, I also need to have my own back.” So, Justin, let’s get into some of the incidents you want to talk about in particular.
Justin Ford: [00:07:27] Yeah, absolutely. And just to echo that, I focus on short-term rental safety. And there’s a huge difference between that and residential or commercial safety. And if you’ve listened to me before, you’ve heard some of those things. But you’re absolutely right. If that’s the only reason you listen to this, make sure your own home is safe. So scary topic, but this again, goes back to the last podcast we did in April where I talked about smoke alarms. And I told you so because I’m not gaining anything by this except for the hope getting everybody here to say, “Hey, we need to do this.”
Big headlines this past early part of August, where the two young ladies died in a short-term rental. Leading news story, Fox, CNN, NBC, if you live in Washington, you’ve seen a lot of articles because that’s where the girls and their family were from. And up in New York, this happened in the Hamptons and Long Island. So it’s been really all over the New York papers as well. It’s an instance where we don’t know what this time exactly, what’s the cause of the fire or if the smoke alarms were working, we do know that they were there.
But there’s one thing I know, factually, and that goes back to again, what I said in April, is it is possible to wake everybody up. This fire happened at 3:00 in the morning. My guess is educated, strong, educated guess is that if the parents woke to the sound of cracking glasses, they’d been reporting and not to the sound of smoke alarms if the smoke alarms weren’t working properly, or one wasn’t near the kitchen, and the fact that it was too late for the two girls to get out and that their brother had to jump out a window tells me that there just wasn’t notification to them.
So it’s really important. I think if those property owners had listened and followed what we talked about in April, I don’t think this tragedy would have happened. So go back and listen to that. But the thing I want to touch on in this tragedy is something we don’t usually talk about, and it’s the homeowners. In this particular fire, it’s been publicized, the homeowners came over that morning, they had not had any safety inspections done as required at that property.
And the thing that grabbed me the most was a comment from the media who called them. And when they call them up and said, “Hey, can you tell us about this fire, your house, and the deaths that happened?” And she said, “We don’t have any comment.” The wife did. And then a little while later, she actually called back the reporter and said, “We’re vacant.” Her quote was, “We’re vacant right now.” And two girls died. This family’s life’s been changed forever. I don’t want to discount any of that.
But because this is a show that’s talking to hosts, I want to just talk about those hosts. You can never prepare for an accident happening in your short-term rental. You can’t. It’s in some cases going to be just as bad an experience for you as it is for the people who lost lives or were hurt. And so it’s really important to prevent accidents by using common sense and just doing basic stuff. We’re not asking you to join the local fire department or to become the world’s best safety person. We’re just saying you got to remember, as one of the women that they interviewed for this, one of the articles said, “I stay in Airbnbs all the time. I just assumed that they’re going to be safe.” And remember that these guests assumed the rental is going to be safe, and it’s on you to make sure that they are. It’s up to you.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:10:42] And, listeners, something that you can do, number one is you haven’t walked to your property in a while, do that. And number two, this is a big reason why you hear Annette and I talk about not putting your entire business on the shoulders of your cleaning team. Having an inspector between the cleaners on the guest’s arrival is not to babysit the cleaners or nitpick the cleaners, it’s so they can check the safety elements. Yes, do detailed work, yes, fluff the pillows, all those things.
But our team looks the fire extinguishers, we test the smoke detectors, we look for slips, trips, and falls, anything that could cause a hiccup in our lives and having them be focused on that. The cleaning team they walk in, and it’s a giant mountain and they have to get to the top of. And so this inspector role, they’ve got a clear mind, they’ve got the guest in mind, they’ve got a checklist too so they can stay on task. But that is why it’s really important. And honestly, even if it’s you being the inspector, it’s one of those roles that they say that the cleaner is the first person you to hire, but really dialing in, making sure that every guest who checks in is going to be safe, and they’re not going to either get hurt or cause an insurance claim.
Annette Grant: [00:11:40] And, Justin, how often do you see batteries removed from smoke detectors? Because let’s say guests were cooking, they’re not familiar with the range, and so they pull out the batteries in the smoke detector, and then they throw them away. They just don’t set them down. Do you see that happening often where they’re removed by the guest and then who knows how long time goes by without the batteries being replaced?
Justin Ford: [00:12:02] I do. It happens a lot. And I’ve said it on every show I’ve been with you. We know that only about 70% of short-term rentals actually even have smoke alarms and more than that aren’t working. But here’s something that should shock you, and should you as a host take deep thought on. And that is that right now all these travel experts that are always on on Good Morning America to The Day show, they’re telling people when you stay in a short-term rental or you go stay in an Airbnb, make sure you bring your own smoke alarm and your own carbon monoxide alarm. We hear it over and over again.
Now imagine if a cruise ship said, “Hey, when you come bring your own life jacket.” Imagine if a hotel said, “Hey, when you come bring your own fire extinguisher for the hallway.” And imagine if the car rental company said, “You need to bring your own seat belts.” This is not a good stamp on our industry that travel experts are saying to one sector of the hospitality industry and the only one sector, “Hey, you got to bring your own safety items because these places aren’t safe.” We need to get in front of that and we need to be better about that, every single person who hosts.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:13:13] Yikes! Yeah. Justin, you went to a conference. I’m going to let you share with us the title, so I don’t mess it up. But there are some exciting new products that are doing really cool stuff. And so our listeners are always looking for ways to level up their properties. And if they can integrate safety into that too, holy cow, that would be fun. So share with us the conference you went to and what are those exciting new products that we can talk about?
Justin Ford: [00:13:38] Absolutely. So I went to the National Fire Protection Association conference in Boston this year. And people might think that’s boring. Who goes to that? It’s Old Boston out, you couldn’t get a hotel within 50 miles away. It’s very good, several-day conference. A lot of what goes on safety in the National Safety Council puts on a conference, there are big conferences that happen that are related to safety and residential safety. A lot of them relate also to commercial safety.
But there’s so many cool new safety products out there right now. I thought it’d be fun today to talk about what some of those are because I think people think the safety world say, “All right, you have a smoke alarm, you have fire extinguisher, and a first aid kit, what new can be done with safety?” But there is. There’s a lot of new things. And then it’d be fun to talk a little bit also about things that aren’t good with safety products. So get your pen and paper out. Here’s some cool things. And I think we’ll probably give you links.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:14:31] Yes, we’ll give links and show notes. Netty is ataking notes. Listeners, if you’re driving, stay safe. Get to your destination. You can check out the show notes for all these things.
Justin Ford: [00:14:40] I’m not getting paid by any of these people. I need to fix that when I get some time. If people start making their rentals safe, I’ll have more time to reach out to some of these companies and say, “Hey, I talked about your product.” The first one I want to talk about is a relatively new product. It’s called Loackabox One. And what it is it’s a clear box and it has a little three-digit padlock on it, but it’s for child safety.
Basically, one of the hardest things that we have is keeping chemicals out of reach. And as you know, one of the top calls from a short-term rental is the poison control. That’s another terrible mark on our industry. But because kids are in these rentals and they’re not familiar with Tide pods while back at home, they have powder. So what is this in their candy, or cascade, the little pods?” Everyone loves to use pods at the rentals.
Well, this is a nice large-size clear box. And you just put a three-digit passcode on it. You can tell what the runners are on the guidebook or in an email or a text. And so now it’s locked and it’s under the sink, and you can put the chemicals in there that the kids shouldn’t get into. It’s clear. They can see into it and see what’s in there, so they’re not hunting around. The really cool thing about this box is it’s clear. So it’s not like, look under there.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:15:51] This is so good, Justin, because I will admit there are some of our properties that we manage where there’s nowhere else to put this stuff. And we want to arm the guests with a way to clean up themselves. So that is brilliant. And the code could be 123 because most likely kiddos are not going to organize those numbers, I wouldn’t think. Maybe I’m wrong there. I don’t know but–
Justin Ford: [00:16:09] They might do 123, if–
Sarah Karakaian: [00:16:12] Not all three zeros, at least, yeah.
Justin Ford: [00:16:14] That’s right.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:16:15] Brilliant.
Justin Ford: [00:16:17] Absolutely. And there’s some other different ones as a canister with a childproof cap. But getting something that’s not a lot out there to address that, the only other solution obviously, is to put it really high up on a shelf in a closet. And that’s not always convenient. So keeping those things locked up is really important. And they’re about $40. So really inexpensive. You could get a couple of them. Go in with some other hosts and do a bulk order.
Annette Grant: [00:16:38] So, listeners, that is something that Justin taught us right away, we’ll be very honest, is that I kept all of my chemicals, dishwashing detergents, everything under the sink. And he was like, “No, no, no, no, you got to it raise up.” I don’t have children. I don’t think about a childproof home. And I will say that was one of those– Sarah and I were filming something yesterday and I’m like, “You got to put it up high. We got to show people where the cleaning supplies go.” So if that is the only takeaway you take away from today, it’s like move those cleaning supplies off of that bottom shelf underneath the sink like we all put them. You got to move them up higher, out of reach.
Justin Ford: [00:16:42] Yeah, absolutely.
Annette Grant: [00:17:11] All right, what’s next?
Justin Ford: [00:17:17] Really cool, Kidde, which is a part of the Carrier Corporation, Kidde smoke alarms, Kidde fire extinguishers, they just rolled out this year, a whole new line of smoke detectors, carbon monoxide alarms. And the thing that I really love about this new product line is it’s the very first time that they’re putting air quality testing inside of the smoke alarms as well. So it has an integrated system for checking carbon monoxide, smoke, and air quality.
And the really nice thing about this product is it has an app that goes with it that’s free. And so many other apps that are out there that are related to safety products are not free. But now you’re dealing with the world’s leader. These guys have the highest scoring smoke alarms on the market. Consumer Reports gave them 92 on their dual detection alarm. And so this is a much better product than Nest. Nest, a lot of people don’t know that Nest only score 50.
A lot of times Nest isn’t going off very well for the slow smoldering fire. So I know it’s convenient, and people like it because they’ll tell you what the temperature or different things are. But these new Kidde ones are really fantastic. They also measure temperature and humidity. So that’s a nice bonus to be able to get that in there. And you can connect them up to different accessories. One of the accessories I like is you can add on a strobe light to that alarm. So it’s going to flash and wake people up as well.
I did a study recently. Something like 12% of people who stay in rentals have some sort of hearing disability. And as you know, we got to keep 85 decibels in the same room that they’re sleeping in and if they’ve got a disability they’re having that strobe lights a nice added feature. It’s like 40 bucks to add on the strobe light.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:18:57] I have a question though for you, Justin. Are they interconnected, these new ones?
Justin Ford: [00:19:01] They are interconnected. There’s a limit to how many can interconnect. I’d love to see the house where they have to go this far. But I think 18 is many as you can interconnect. So that might be a pretty big rental. The other cool thing is you can also add on to this smoke alarm home safety package that they have from Kidde. You can add on a water leak and freeze detector. You can add on multiple of those.
Annette Grant: [00:19:24] And Kidde is K-I-D-D-E, right?
Justin Ford: [00:19:27] Yes, K-I-D-D-E.
Annette Grant: [00:19:29] Oh really? You’re getting Kidde. The brand is K-I-D-DE.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:19:33] I’m giving you that face that’s my little emoji where all the teeth are exposed like, ooh, am I wrong? And, listeners, interconnected means if it goes off in the kitchen on the first floor, it will connect to your third-floor smoke detector so they can be alerted to a fire starting all the way down on the first floor. Justin, are these battery-operated or are they hardwired or there are options?
Justin Ford: [00:19:52] Options, yeah. You can go both ways, battery operated or hardwired. And again, that’s what I think happened at that new York Fire. They weren’t interconnected. I firmly believe you’ve got to have interconnected smoke alarms. You can’t have a smoke alarm down in the kitchen going off and not have it connected to the one in the bedroom to let you know because what was it 40 years ago? Big news that just came out from the US Consumer Product Safety Council, they’re highlighting that there’s been a lot more fire deaths lately. And it’s 40 years ago, you have 17 minutes to get out of a house. And now you’ve got less than three. And it’s because of all that particle board furniture that we throw in these rental houses.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:20:33] Don’t get just started.
Justine Form: [00:20:36] Yeah, it don’t get just started.
Annette Grant: [00:20:34] Okay, all right, we got Lockabox and we got the new Kidde roll out. They’re crushing it. What else?
Justin Ford: [00:20:39] Really interesting. A lot of people I don’t know if they know this. So I’ll make sure they do. It’s been kind of a software update that Nest has. They’re little listening devices, the little hockey pucks at play music in all the rooms that I know a lot of hosts like to have. I want to do a rental in Tennessee a little while ago. And as soon as I punched in the code and opened the door, I walked in, the Google welcomed me. It said, “Hello, Justin Ford. Welcome to the rental.” It told me the weather and the temperature and told me what the Wi-Fi code was. I was like, holy crap. It turned on lights and stuff.
But you can actually set up sound detection for those. And they’ve done some updates to their software to allow for that. If you have those, turn that on. And we’ll send you a link on how to do that. But it’s really important. It can detect not only broken glass for someone smashing windows or a renter’s breaking all your wineglasses– we know that happens all the time, but it can actually detect any of the alarms that go off in the house. So you’ll get notifications. And then it can actually notify back into the other Google Home devices throughout the property and make them go off. And you can really light the place up with sound and let everybody know.
Annette Grant: [00:21:50] I love that.
Justin Ford: [00:21:51] It’s very, very important.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:21:53] Cool, cool, cool. What’s next? Anything else?
Justin Ford: [00:21:56] Fire extinguishers. Now people hate these, and it drives me nuts.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:22:01] They’re not pretty, Justin.
Justin Ford: [00:22:02] They’re not pretty I get it. Here at Breezeway, we do safety reviews all the time. And it’s my pet peeve when we do these reviews I’ll see that someone has the kitchen stove, and then the fire extinguisher right next to it or they have buried under the sink that’s right next to the stove. Now, Annette, last year, you may remember we were up in Vermont when we were touching off some fire extinguishers. If you’ve never done that, hosts, you want to do that. It’s really important that you know how one works and see how far they shoot. And if you don’t, we’ve got some cool videos, we can show you. The little ones don’t shoot very far very fast. And so if you’ve got a fire, who’s your ally? The renter, right?
Annette Grant: [00:22:45] Yeah, let the guest help you.
Justin Ford: [00:22:48] Yeah, it preserves the rental. If you’ve ever had a fire in your kitchen, which is where more than half of fires start just like they did in New York last week in rental properties, as soon as you have that fire, you’re out of commission three months minimum for getting a contractor, getting it repaired, all the work, you got to do all the phones, it’s a nightmare. But if you actually give the guests a tool to use that they can put the fire out with that’s convenient, not buried under the sink or on top of the stove where the fire probably is they’re going to do well.
So Oval came out with these really nice new fire extinguishers that I love. And we’ll have a link to this, but the 10JABC, so it covers fires a, b, and c, grease, paper, electrical, very important to have that ABC in the kitchen, they’re low profile, they’re flat. So they don’t jot out into the room so much. The 10-pound fire extinguisher that’s what I want in my rental properties. I want to give that renter as much power as they can to get the fire put out while the wife’s trying to dial nine or the husband’s trying to dial 911 and, “I think we’re at the sandy shores rental. I don’t know where we are,” all that confusion stuff that’s going to go on. Give them a tool that will work. And so I’m a real big fan of it.
And it’s a little pricey, but it’s low profile, and it’s a good one. It’s about $270. If that’s too much for you, I’m also a really big fan of Amerax has come out with a new fire extinguisher that I like the 500B or the B500, excuse me. These codes are important. That one is $66. It’s a five-pound fire extinguisher, covers ABC. And again, it’s going to put it out for a while. It’s a rechargeable fire extinguisher. I’m a little bit environmental. Throwing away a fire extinguisher after 12 years or refilling it after seven, I really would rather refill it. It’s relatively easy to refill a fire extinguisher. Lots of companies around that do that for you. So in that way, you will be a little bit more green having that sitting around. So really important.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:24:53] Cool. I have questions with that. What was my question? Any of these– the number one I wanted to tell the listeners, so ABC, that’s listed on the fire extinguisher. I know it took me maybe two episodes with you, Justin, to register that. And so when you shop for one, you can see sometimes they’re just AB or AC, but the ABC they’re listed on the unit so you know that you’re covering all your bases there.
Annette Grant: [00:25:14] Well, if let’s say, you didn’t have an ABC, what’s the alternative? Would it not be able to put some things out?
Justin Ford: [00:25:22] Exactly. A is wood-based paper type of thing. So if the kitchen cabinets are on fire, and it’s a grease fire, you’re not going to get both of those at the same time. So it’s really important to have coverage across the ABC.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:25:35] Okay, got it. Yeah, took me a minute to register in my brain when I was shopping for fire extinguishers. Do any of these come in more than one color, Justin? Just wondering.
Justin Ford: [00:25:43] They do. So there is a company that’s out there that does. You can have a custom logoed fire extinguisher, and I do like them. The only reason I can’t recommend them is they’re not UL-approved. Underwriter Laboratories should be on all the safety products that you put in your house. Smoke alarms to alarms, all that stuff, they need to be UL approved. And the problem with the ones that you can make look like a flame or a Campbell soup can, I’ve seen people decorate them all kinds of roses, is it doesn’t now look like a fire extinguisher. And it needs to be obvious. So there’s silver, white, red, and UL has standards so that it’s obvious to the person.
Again, just like what’s behind me here, if you’ve got a great view and comfortable furniture and all these different things you’re giving the guests all these incredible beautiful things to look at that have point 0.00001% of the space taken up by an ugly red fire extinguisher could very well be a savior for you one day. And I hear that one every day.
I had a call this morning. Renters at the property next door had a grill fire and it was out of control and they couldn’t find a fire extinguisher, but the renters staying in the house that was next door had access to one and ran next door and they put it out. So you hear that stuff all the time. The other house wasn’t convenient. Thank gosh, the neighbors did, but it will happen. Safety isn’t a matter of if it’s when it will happen.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:27:11] Yeah, just a reminder. All right, any other products you want to share?
Justin Ford: [00:27:15] Yeah, real quick. A couple of other ones, Denlar Range Hoods, D-E-N-L-A-R if you’re doing over the kitchen in your short-term rental or if you’re building a new short-term rental, these are beautiful stainless steel range hoods. To me, they look like a wall for a KitchenAid. Same price point. I just saw one online for around $500. And they have a built-in fire extinguisher system in them. And when over half of fires and short-term rentals do come from the kitchen area, I think it’s really good to have built-in fire extinguishing system in the rangehood that can put the fire out.
So I really would encourage those hosts that are getting ready to do some updates to the kitchen to consider putting in a range hood that’s like that. They’re highly rated, very easy to recharge if something ever happens. The renters get distracted and they walk away, and that’s why these kitchen fires happen.
And the last one that I think is really cool– and you may not necessarily think of this as safety initially, but there’s a company called Wallplates.com. And they will print professionally on any type of switches and outlets that you have in your rental property. One of the things that we know is the most common accidental short-term rental is what– Annette, please answer.
Annette Grant: [00:28:28] Slips, trips, and falls.
Justin Ford: [00:28:30] Slips, trips, and falls. Our friends at Proper Insurance have told us 83% of all accidents that they pay out claims on are slips, trips, and falls. And so having light switches that are properly marked so people know which ones they’re turning on– I know some people like these a label maker, they peel off their humidity, they rub off. These guys laser etched these off. And they’re not that expensive. I just ordered a bunch for my rental, like four or five bucks a plate and you can do it double, triple.
The thing I like too is you can have them done on the outlets. You might have an outlet where the renters are always tripping it, which should cause you to get an electrician. You might not want them to plug certain things into that, especially on an outside outlet. So to be able to print, maybe don’t do this. And so I really liked those and I liked the laser etching that they do on those very easily metal, plastic, almond, biscuit, white, black, whatever color outlets, printed different colors. There’s a company that started doing them commercially for the hospital industry, but now they’ve expanded into offering it for residential homes. So I’d highly recommend people take a look at that so that everyone knows what switch they’re turning on and off on the rental property.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:29:44] I know our listeners will love that because it looks nice, it looks nice, it looks tidy, but also in our use, Justin, is we have a property where if the power goes out the generator kicks on, but only some outlets are powered by the generator. And so now our guests will know we labeled them like “plugin in here” or welcome to the section power block because it’s a remote property. Here are the outlets, but it’d be so nice to have it because sometimes kiddos because– because outlets are lower, so kiddos will rip off the labels and it’s like, okay.
Annette Grant: [00:30:12] I love that. Okay, these are great. All right, well, Justin, anymore because I feel like we got to go shopping. We want to go shopping, but I felt like we got to go to the events through you.
Justin Ford: [00:30:23] Yes, lots of cool new things that are out there for residential safety. But you got to keep an eye out on things that aren’t good. And there’s US Consumer Product Safety Council. I’ve gotten to do some work with them recently. They’ve reached out to us a Breezeway. We worked with them a little bit on elevator safety. Everybody knows if you have a residential elevator, there’s big recalls. North Carolina actually, if you have a short-term rental in North Carolina, and you don’t know, they just passed a law– I think we’ll see it go into other states– that now require inspections on short-term rental elevators.
So residential elevators, if you’re up there in Montana and you’re going what, why do people have elevators? On the entire basically eastern seaboard from Delaware all the way down into Texas, all those rental houses that are up off the ground have residential elevators in them so that guests
can ferry their luggage and groceries and things up and down, but they’ve had some accidents with them.
So the US Consumer Product Safety Council started looking around and they’ve actually said, “Wait a minute, what’s going on?” They did a huge marketing campaign this summer about safety in rentals. They made a big octopus climbing out of a pool and were focusing on pool drownings and different things. But one of the things that they do is they track all the recalls and there are a lot of them. I took a quick look today just to see– and you should do this. You need to like set a reminder in your phone. If you use Breezeway, you can set it up as a quarterly inspection in your inspection tool that you’re going in and going, I need to take a quick look and see what’s out there.
And just looking in the past few weeks, there’s a whole house AC evaporator drains that are causing fires, thousands of them recalled. And then I don’t even want to hear comments on this, but this is true post poo drops different things that you can do to make your bathroom smell better. They’ve been recalled because they’re not child safe. I’ve seen those in rental. I’ve seen them in rental properties.
Hammock stands from Lowe’s. I know a lot of rental properties there because I’ve given a couple calls on those. They are collapsing people, breaking backs and getting hurt. There’s a bunch of dressers that have been recalled. There’s another boiler that has a recalled because it has crackers, carbon monoxide, hammock chairs that collapse, umbrellas that collapse and have injured people. One impaled someone out, egg chairs, and then millions of electrical panels. And that’s just been in the past couple of weeks.
Annette Grant: [00:32:49] And you’ll give us the links to this, right, Justin so that we can put that in show note?
Justin Ford: [00:32:51] But it’s like a quarterly thing. You need to go on and check for recalls and might even go back a little further to see what’s out there. I don’t get why there’s so many things that are made today that ended up needing to be recalled. But the big one that we’ve actually seen two fires and short-term rentals from is Ford expeditions and Lincoln navigators for spontaneously catching on fire.
I told people when this first came out, don’t let the renters park those rental Ford expeditions and whatever in your garage because some people let which I don’t like. Don’t let renters Park in your garage. You don’t know anything about their car. But if you do that, they weren’t telling people not to do that. And sure enough, we had two fires one in Tennessee and one in Texas, from the rental car. So you got to pay attention to all these recalls that are out there to stay out of trouble.
Annette Grant: [00:33:39] All right. Well, listeners, I think we all have a lot of homework to do.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:33:43] We do. Our show notes are going to be chock full of links and resources for you. But do something today, whether it’s check your smoke detectors, whether it’s move your cleaning supplies to a higher place, look at the recall list. Do us a favor as listeners in the whole entire industry. Please take action on one thing from the show today. And if you haven’t listened to Justin’s other episodes, put that in your to-do list also. He’s always giving us great knowledge. I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned from Justin over the past two and a half years.
Annette Grant: [00:34:14] Thank you, Justin, for always bringing the knowledge and for going out and educating yourself and then bringing it back here to Thanks for Visiting. And where can people if they want to reach out to you because I know our listeners like to reach out to you, Justin, where can they find you?
Justin Ford: [00:34:25] They can find me over at Breezeway. We have a safety page on the Products page, on Solutions page at the Breezeway website breezeway.io. Breezeway, obviously, we’re a leader in offering inspection and cleaning, and maintenance tools through our software for your short-term rental. And I’m the only non-software person there.
I’m on the other side of things, basically helping to educate people how important that software is. And one of the great things you can do is use it to keep your rental property safe. So when you use it, you can get access to some free safety checklists that we offer you. I’ll help you as much as anybody on here and I’ve done it many times. I’ve got some great people that I’ve connected through this podcast and happy to help anybody make sure their rental is safe and keep them out of trouble and make sure the renters go home only with great memories. We don’t want them to go home with anything else.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:35:18] That’s right. All right, listeners. My name is Sarah Karakaian.
Annette Grant: [00:35:22] I’m Annette Grant and together we are–
Both Sarah and Annette: [00:35:24] Thanks for Visiting.
Annette Grant: [00:35:25] We’ll talk to you next time.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:35:30] Thanks for listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. Head on over to the show notes for additional information about today’s episode. And please hit that Subscribe button and leave us a review. Awesome reviews help us bring you awesome content. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to hanging out with you next week.
