Making Vacation Rental Safety Sexy! With Justin Ford of Breezeway

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Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. With more than 35 years combined industry experience, alex Hussner and Annie Holcomb have teamed up to connect the dots between inspiration and opportunity, seeking to find the one story, idea, strategy or decision that led to their guest's big aha moment. Join them as they highlight the real stories behind the people and brands that have built vacation rentals into the $100 billion industry. It is today and now it's time to get real and have some fun with your hosts, alex and Annie.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Annie, and we are here today with Justin Ford, who is the director of safety and certification programs for Breezeway. It's a mouthful there, but, justin, we are so excited to have you on the show. Finally.

Speaker 4: 1:37

Yeah, I know it's great to be on. I listened to all your episodes and you guys are definitely becoming leaders in the vacation rental industry when it comes to podcasting, so I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:50

You're very kind and I think that one of the things that I've learned from you is that you are making safety sexy and fun again. So I think that's what we're going to talk about, because it's pretty timely. There's a lot of things going on in the industry. We talk a lot about advocacy, but somehow the safety issue plays a big component of some of the advocacy and some of the regulations that are getting done or not getting done around the country. So we're excited to pick your brain and hear what you have to say about it. But before we get started, I learned a little bit about your background this morning and that I wasn't aware of. So tell us your journey from start to finish, how you got to Breezeway.

Speaker 4: 2:27

That's a great question. I think I've had a pretty unique path. I get commended which I appreciate from time to time that I don't look as old as I am when I start listing off. But my background actually was. I was in the US Coast Guard and I did fishery enforcement and boating safety for a number of years, which led me to a career as a captain a yacht captain and I managed to corporate yachting sleep for a major credit card company for 11 years and during that time I became a volunteer firefighter. Anyway, bank of America bought that company and suddenly I was going what am I going to do? And I had a little lake cottage in Maine. This is back in 1997. And they gave me enough severance that at the same time my neighbor said hey, you're doing well renting your property out. How about you? It was with money. And I grew a vacation rental company into the largest vacation rental company in the Northeast called on the water in Maine Still does great business up there in New England. And along that journey, working as a volunteer firefighter and with my Coast Guard background, started identifying there were a lot of safety issues and rental properties. I ended up having my own. That was pretty scary. Someone was injured in a way that they're impacted for the rest of their life because of that. And I realized wait a minute, how was I supposed to know that? And did research and went oh my gosh, how is anybody supposed to know what to do to keep people safe in these rentals? There's no information. And so I started some checklists and that grew into a business which I started called WellSafe. That was focused on making sure that rental properties were safe and fortunately Breezeway bought that four years ago, and so I joined Breezeway as the director of safety and certification programs.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Even you are, john. I'm saying it, you too.

Speaker 4: 4:21

And so I think it's pretty neat. I've had a unique career in which I've been involved in every aspect of the industry. I've been a property manager, I've had a boat rental company, we had a real estate office, managed as many as 600 rental properties at one time, and then I've worked for the software companies and now I've pioneered this whole safety program. That's really gone global, which is really exciting.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Wow, very cool. And so, yeah, what a varied past within the industry. You're one of the true OGs going back in the day and I'm from New Hampshire, so New Englander as well, and it's funny thinking back. I moved to Myrtle Beach in 2008, but I didn't know what vacations were when I lived up there. Vacation rentals were. Nobody really talked about them as a product, really, I would say, or as a place to say. I've stayed in them, I've stayed in ski condos that were owned by other people, but just never really thought of it as a business. And when I first moved down here, I thought that any of the companies if you had properties, that the company owned all of those properties. So a lot of learnings and just, I think there's still quite a pretty big differences between the Northeast and how vacation rentals are run up there versus in the Southeast where Annie and I are located. But that's I'll have to pick your brain more on your experience back up in Maine in those days, because I bet you have some great stories in the early days.

Speaker 4: 5:51

Yeah, the Northeast is definitely more of a repeat rental market. I think that was one of the things that we always like 87% of our runners were repeats. You almost didn't have to advertise. You just said, hey, here's the address to send a check.

Speaker 1: 6:05

Yeah, and there weren't places to advertise back then. There was no Verbo or Airbnb and then fast forward. That's what's made the barrier to entry so much easier for companies and individuals to get into this now because they've got the platform that the OG companies didn't have. We had to make our own platform to deliver great guest experience and have people come back, and if you couldn't get those repeat bookings, your business just didn't stay in business and I think from the safety side of things, you probably saw that way ahead of any of where the industry has. If something happens in a property, that guest is definitely not going to come back.

Speaker 4: 6:41

Yeah, absolutely the key difference for me. I saw a firefighter I get to go to I don't just get involved with all the vacation at all conferences, I'm at all these fired conferences, but tomorrow in Missouri speaking to fire marshals about short-term rentals, and the fire industry's been adopting a whole philosophy now that there are no such things as accidents anymore. An accident is like a meteor flies out of the sky. Yeah, in the history of humankind we don't know the meteor ever just coming and hitting somebody. That would be an accident. But they're looking now at drunk driving, car crashes. They're trying to steer away from accidents because they're preventable. You don't drink, you don't drive. How is that an accident? It shouldn't have begun with? And so that's something that I've been really focused on introducing to our industry is that everything that we encounter, as it's safety related, we can prevent incidents from happening in these properties. There's no reason for anybody to be hurt or killed, and that's something that you can't do with every other aspect of this industry, since you you can't ever get the right mattress that's comfortable for everybody, you can't ever get the right Wi-Fi speed, and no one's ever going to be happy with the tree blocking their view. But you can actually make these properties safe makes it especially impactful for what I get to do.

Speaker 2: 8:06

So one of the things that we've been talking about and I recently had a conversation with Heather Bayer on her podcast about kind of education and how we've gotten so many new people in the industry and the education that they're being exposed to would be the best work is not necessarily the deep-rooted vacation rental management. It's more of the put money here and get money there and you'll be rich and you'll be able to cash out and it's all this Vegas styles, lights and action and it's missing some of the fundamentals. And for a property manager or anybody getting into it you mentioned it earlier like how would you know? Where do you go to get this information? So if there's not a just in, like what is the person or the place that someone needs to go to to make sure that they have the right safety information? Because I think there's a lot of confusion because a lot of regulations-.

Speaker 1: 8:55

It probably doesn't exist, right?

Speaker 2: 8:57

Well, that and probably, and it seems to me like when I read some of the stuff, it's written like in the lawyer terminology to make sure that somebody's covered more than explaining exactly what something needs to be. So how do you cut through all that noise and confusion, and where does somebody go to get that?

Speaker 4: 9:13

So I called the witches' brook.

Speaker 2: 9:15

You've got that you have a name for it Okay.

Speaker 4: 9:19

If you didn't know why existed which I'm not so grandiose to say, that's a key piece. But, frankly, briggs White and my program are the only one out there in the whole world doing this. Outside of that, if you just came in right now and said you know what I want to make sure my house is safe, you've got to read international residential code books, international building code books. You got to go through NFPA and read all the NFPA books and then break out what the definitions are. What type of property am I running? If it's a single family home, okay. Then IRC, international residential codes. You got to then go through hundreds of pages of code to go. Oh, wait a minute, I have bedrooms that are more than 20 feet above ground. That means I need to have an escape ladder, okay, okay, because there's no guide for that. So it's really again like a witches' brook. It's hunting through the woods and finding little sticks and little bug tails. It's all these, oh, my goodness. You've got to find and mix in together to finally go. I think I have everything in order, but then, beyond that, you have all the stuff that code doesn't even cover. Code doesn't go into pool safety. Code doesn't go into bunk, bed safety or chemicals under the sink. That's where I've had to get deeply involved with the insurance companies, and proper insurance has always been awesome about this revealing all right. What type of claims have we had? We've had all these kids that have gotten poisoned by chemicals under the sink and that doesn't show up in the media, but we know those claims are coming in, so that's been what I mixed all together to do that. But yeah, it's real hard. If you didn't, if I wasn't putting this together, I hope somebody else would be, because there's really no way to compile all this easily.

Speaker 1: 11:06

It reminds me of a few years ago, before advocacy and all the legislative issues started happening, that some people were talking about this at conferences, just like some people are talking about safety at conferences but it was going its infancy, that it was on the brink of it's almost going to be an issue, and the people that started listening early and started to understand what could potentially be coming down the line, those are the ones that were able to really shape the future and we've gone through a lot on that side of things. But I think this kind of reminds me of just the mentality and the attitude for it and that there's a lot of people when they go to conferences probably myself included them in the safety programs aren't the ones that I'm most interested in, nor were the advocacy ones a few years ago, but now we're very active in advocacy and you have to do it right and somebody has to lead the charge. So we're very grateful that for the industry that you're the one that is stepping up to do that and, of course, that breezeway is supporting that as well. That says a lot about the organization that you're with and your experience.

Speaker 4: 12:07

It's a great point you make there and I don't think you were directly making it, but between the lines safety, sound, gory Fire, deterrence, smoke alarms. I've had to learn along the way that it hasn't been an easy road. I feel like to be honest. I've been doing that. This is my 10 year anniversary of doing safety and working with safety and sharing that. 10 years I've been going to VRMA conferences and talking about safety. It used to be two or three people showed up and do we really have Justin do a presentation next year? Now I can fill the room and that's great, but it used to be difficult to do that and, unfortunately, learning the hard way. I did a lot of scare A lot of if you don't do this, people will die and told a lot of the scary stories and I think that was off putting to some people. They don't want to be scared out of doing what they do for work. They know what's there. There's a cliff over there. Leave it over there. I don't want to walk over there. Just walk me to that cliff and I don't need to do that. It's great what you're doing and I've learned to transition that message. It's hard now because sometimes I'm getting introduced and people are like, oh, that's a real scary story. I'm like I don't know what to do. I'm trying not to walk over the cliff anymore. But the reality is, the unfortunate part is I don't have to walk people with cliff anymore, because the cliff it's in their face. Yeah yeah, with all the incidents that are happening. So trying to twist us into a positive message has been an evolution that I have had over the past few years into, as Annie said, trying to make it sexy. I think we're getting there.

Speaker 1: 13:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:46

I am. It's interesting so, having been in property management as well, most of what I worked with was condos, and so some of them were built in the 80s and some of them were built in the most recent revolution of the 2000s and the variables between what the safety mechanisms were actually built in the buildings versus what had to be retrofitted. But I'm curious, having been on the condo side of it, and especially with the newer condos, that stuff was built. That was just part of the way the building was built. You had the fire suppression. You had all the bells and whistles and literal alarms everywhere and the fire department came out to those buildings in the off season every single year. And I know in Panama City Beach a few years back that there was a new fire chief that came in and all of a sudden he came in and said wait a minute, everybody's way over the occupancy that they're allowed for these buildings. But of course people bought with the understanding that they were going to be able to house six, eight, 12 people in a unit and the fire chief was like that's not going to happen. So that was a really big ordeal and a friction point within the market with developers and owners and all of that. But what I learned from that was like if you get the people that are the ones that are going to have to do the rescuing, the ones that are going to have to be part of that safety, that's in the background. If you get them involved in the conversation from the very beginning, like people have a really good understanding of what's going on. But I think that people that go in and they manage after the fact they manage after buildings and build or after houses build they don't know to call the local fire chief and say, hey, could you come look at this? And that is as I understand it at least from Panama City Beach. That's something that anybody can do in their market. Right, they can ask the fire chief to come out or someone from the fire department.

Speaker 4: 15:25

Absolutely. There's two things there. To touch on what you just spoke of, fire marshals are great. In fact I've been doing joint presentations with a fire marshal from Florida and I've done them in Texas. They're very supportive. I've yet to meet a fire marshal or a fire chief who goes oh they occasionally. I hate them. They don't feel that way. They mostly get. They need shiny, big red trucks in their district. They need that money and they understand that tourism dollars support their ability to have good equipment and operate in a way that they can be effective. So they're great. You should be interacting with them and I think that's really important I've advised people about before. You should know your fire chief. You should be having dinner with them once a year and bite them over to the office, walking through some properties. But going back to what you're talking about with the condos in the 70s and 80s, right now the vacation rental industry is going through the same thing that the hotel industry did in the early 1980s. There was all these accidents you had. We were all just out in Kansas City at the VRMA conference this past spring. I don't know that many people realize that's a rebuilt hotel on top of the deadliest hotel accident in America where the hotel collapsed in the 1980s.

Speaker 1: 16:41

Really. Oh, that's. I'm glad I know that now.

Speaker 4: 16:44

Yeah, it's not really there, there was all these fires and deaths happening in hotels and Congress said, all right, this is getting out of hand, that we've got to stop this. What are we going to do? And that led to, signed by the first president Bush, the Federal Hotel Motel Safety Act of 1990. And that was put in place to stop and prevent this. That law also did something that nobody ever would have dreamed of and that put a huge damper on the vacation rental industry. Most people don't realize that you can't rent your vacation rentals to government workers government employees because of that act, and so we lose out on $4 billion a year. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather rent the four DOT workers that are in town to inspect the highway for a week than to four partiers that are here to get that business. Because of that act. No, we're seeing a whole rerun. Now we're seeing okay, now this is explosive growth in the vacation rental industry and there's all kinds of safety incidents happening. People are dying, people are getting injured. So we're heading down a path that's going to be restrictive, and the key that I'm trying to put everyone into the position I'm trying to put everyone into is to be prepared for that. If we're already there, if you're already doing everything that they're going to tell you you're going to have to do soon, you're going to be ahead of the game.

Speaker 1: 18:07

So I know during the hurricane we've housed workers that are sent in to help with construction and rebuild and stuff. But that is that different than what you just talked about, that you can't rent to them. They have to stay at hotels.

Speaker 4: 18:19

That's correct. You can't use your government credit card as a Pentagon Army D&T.

Speaker 1: 18:27

You can't expense that that's more like what Anthony Gantt is working on than too right. His is more, I guess, same thing military-wise, but that they can't use that money towards that type of accommodation. But that's interesting, I hadn't thought about it that way.

Speaker 2: 18:41

Yeah, and it is interesting because I know after Hurricane Katrina, the company that I worked for, we got with FEMA and we had our properties certified and so once you get that certification it unlocks that to your point. But we had to have every single one of them inspected. They had to come in and check for fire extinguishers and all the stuff that is required to meet those standards and there were buildings that they just were like no, sorry, we can't even. But it was great to be able to go back to owners and say, hey, if you bring these standards up, we had something, a document to be able to show them, and I think that's helpful. But more people should take advantage of those inspections. I think it's again to the fire chief, the fire marshal, having a set of eyes that's expert and is going to look for those things. Anthony talked about it when we interviewed him about wires, just exposed wires, and trip hazards and things that you just don't think about because they're just there and they just become part of the way you view a unit or a condo or a home or whatever. You don't think about that's. Somebody could trip on that and fall down the stairs and break their neck or they're thinking worst case scenario, unfortunately, but you don't think about it when you're in the day to day.

Speaker 4: 19:51

Yeah, Anthony was actually one of the first people to go through our short-term rental safety inspection program. Okay, I know that wire knowledge he shared with you and that came from oh, I love that.

Speaker 2: 20:04

We'll have to talk to him about it. We thought it was all his idea.

Speaker 4: 20:06

Yeah, nobody, Anthony, that was part of his program was to do that, and that's $0.6 billion a year that's going into the hotel industry.

Speaker 1: 20:15

That's not needed to that could right, yeah, Now do you foresee there being an act or a bill that's going to do the same thing for vacation rentals? Because I don't feel like, and I know Anthony's working on some things on that realm, but is that something that you see as a possibility?

Speaker 4: 20:29

No, something different is going to happen. Unfortunately, the VRMA and the advocacy board are looking closely at this. It almost happened two years ago. It's going to happen again and it's going to happen overnight. We're even seeing it happening at local levels. What's happening is each state adopts a version of the building codes. Vermont and Florida adopted NFPA, but Colorado, maine, washington they all adopt and say, hey, we're going to adopt the 2018 version of international building tone and they make some adjustments or whatever. But that's what their state legislatures do every year. And international building code and NFPA National Fire Protection Association, very similar are both looking at defining what a short-term rental is, and so, once they define what a short-term rental is, a few fire chiefs around the world sitting in a back room are going to make this decision and come up with a vote on it and say, well, this is what a short-term rental is. They insert that into code. Now, all of a sudden, state of Florida, state of South Carolina, votes and goes, yeah, we're going to adopt this code. And suddenly people are going to wake up one day and go wait a minute. Our state has now endorsed that a short-term rental is this and now must do all of this, and so that's, I believe, how it's going to happen. It's really not even going to be five years. What's going to happen in the next couple is not this year they're looking at the game this year. So when that happens, it's going to change everything for everybody overnight, and I'm trying to help prepare you for that, wow.

Speaker 2: 22:03

So what do you think that's going to look like? Because, again, that's pretty scary, but I think that's just, unfortunately, how a lot of legislation gets done is in a back room, behind closed doors, and people just have little breadcrumbs of knowledge until it comes out. But I would imagine, if it's something, that the global definition that's going to be pretty impactful. Looking at Europe, a lot of the places in Europe are very old and historic and if all of a sudden they say a short-term rental has to have these fire systems in place and you can't go in and retrofit a 500-year-old building to do something like that easily. It would be very costly. So what do you think it will look like? Do you have any sense of it?

Speaker 4: 22:46

Yeah, in the short, we're already seeing it. The governor made ran into this in Maryland two years ago when a fire marshal in Maryland decided to say that every short-term rental, by his definition of the codes, is supposed to have a sprinkler system. So we're already seeing how that's starting to evolve in Maryland. We saw it a local level in Scottsdale, arizona, where they voted in some safety requirements basically overnight. Nothing that was too prohibitive, but it suddenly changed the game for a lot of people there. Europe's good Europe has far less accidents than we do, or incidents, excuse me. They have a much better focus on safety. I was just over in the UK police and traffic workers and they wear these full-body reflective suits. We don't do that in the US. They have a much better focus. But to answer your question specifically, the first impact we're going to see is egress and it's going to change occupancy and I think that's the big one that people need to be prepared for. That loft that you've got in an A-frame, that's this cool, cozy thing. That's all over Instagram and Colorado.

Speaker 3: 23:51

It's done.

Speaker 4: 23:53

So that's going to be probably the biggest, most dramatic change is in occupancy, and you're not going to take a four-bedroom house and market it for 16 people anymore because there are going to be big occupancy restrictions. But I think Firewise you're going to be able to work with smoke alarms. Sprinkler systems are actually becoming very inexpensive to add. In fact, if I'm looking at doing it in my own home I have a home built in the 1950s it's going to cost me eight grand to add a sprinkler system to my three-bedroom home. Very inexpensive to do that it's not going to be a killer. But occupancy, I think, is where it's going to start. People who plan on having 16 people in their house and they're making $10,000, $12,000 a rental are going to suddenly see that you're only allowed to have eight people because it's four bedrooms and suddenly they're going to have to cut the rates back as well.

Speaker 2: 24:44

Yeah, that's come up a lot in the panhandle with some of the homes along 38, simply from parking because there's just been yeah, I was going to say parking, I was saying it here there's been no parking. But I know there's been a couple of incidences around the country that I can think of. I don't remember exactly where they were, but it or house parties happen and people stand out on balconies, or they stand out on decks that were built on top of, like porticoes or porticoches of a larger home. They weren't built for people to be out there jumping around and partying on and they collapse and 10, 12 people get hurt and again, nobody meant anything by it. Nobody meant for it to happen and it was just all part of doing business. But those are the kind of things that there's always one bad incidence that ruins it for the rest of the community. But I think that the occupancy situation on some levels it's going to be a hard pill to swallow but at the end of the day, if you think of a I look at some of the buildings in our market now. If you have some of Myrtle Beach too, you're talking 700 plus condos. They're maxed out in occupancy. You've got 3,500, 4,000 people in a building on 20-some floors and if the fire department's trying to get to that it's impossible. There's just no way the fire department of Panama City Beach alone could go to that building and be able to get everybody out in a timely manner. It's just the thought of it to me has always been a little overwhelming. So I think occupancy, while it's going to be a pain point, it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 4: 26:10

It is. It's frustrating. I was just down in West Manatee County. It was Anna Maria Bradenton, that market Great fire marshal down there really wants to focus on doing things to improve safety and it's exciting to see that positive approach in government. But his frustration point and I get it is that these houses come before the planning board to be built as a single family home and then the second, the plumbing inspector and the code inspector, go in and approve it for occupancy. There's a rental sign put up and I didn't get to interject and say some of the safety things that I thought would be important while you're building this property because it was being built as a single family home. Now suddenly that's a house that's running to 16 people. I could have offered some different things that I think would have helped improve safety there but wouldn't have cost much. And when you sit there and go, some of these things to be expensive a sprinkler system for $8,000 in new construction or that 16 person hot tub that's $20,000. So don't tell me you didn't have the money to spend a little bit on safety.

Speaker 1: 27:16

Yeah, how do you see this being enforced? Because I feel that's going to be a very difficult thing too and we'll lead to some people just thinking would I really have to do it? Because that's a whole workforce to be able to go out and check units to make sure that they're up to code.

Speaker 4: 27:31

So there's two parts to that, and that's our business foundation for the safety program at Breezeway. My idea, way back in 2013, is it's too difficult to enforce this. There's a curriculum and vacation levels. How do we do it? So the idea was, if we have an initial inspection done by a fire fore official, then subsequently years, it can be done through the app, and so we've been doing that now at Breezeway for three years. We've done tens of thousands of these inspections where a homeowner takes the Breezeway app and they walk through their property and they document, they geotech the photos. Here's my fire extinguisher, here are my smoke alarms. It's all documented, goes into a report, and that is satisfactory for the local government, and some of these governments do agree with that and approve of that. So that's our hope as we continue to move forward is that more governments are willing to approve these remote self inspections, and that's part of the Breezeway safety program with our short-term mental safety inspector course, which the VRMA has endorsed, is, if you get certified as a Breezeway short-term mental safety inspector, you do this inspection, you create the report. Now you can get a discount on your insurance as well, and so we're seeing a huge grace in that right now. So that's going to be the balance between government and the private sector, saying we're going to help inspect these as well. Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 2: 28:58

I wanted to ask on the insurance, because we talked about that a little bit, and what's happening in the industry? With all the Florida California the two biggest ones right now but it's getting to South Carolina, it's getting to a lot of the coastal areas Insurance companies are leaving the state. One thing that I know I love about working at Homes and Villas is that we take safety very serious. A very big part of our conversation we have with property managers and it's interesting to encounter people that don't have the right level of insurance and they just don't know. It's not that they are trying to be nefarious, it's just they don't know what they need. But with insurance getting harder, I would think that and correct me if I'm wrong if I had the right safety measures in place, they could get discounts on some of the insurance that they do have to have right.

Speaker 4: 29:45

Yeah, so insurance isn't just leaving states, it's leaving our industry. I don't know if people understand that I mentioned I've been in this industry a long time. In 2006, a homeowner would come in and list a property with me as a property manager and say what about insurance? I'd give them a list that have 40 different companies on it and say you can call Holyoaks, you can call Middle Loaves, you can call Allstate, you can just list all these insurance companies that doesn't exist anymore. There's very few insurance companies and even then they won't write in all areas. Proper insurance will tell you they're done writing in Florida for this year. Lloyds of London will let them insure a certain number of homes. Colorado, california they weren't even allowed to insure in Maui before the fires because it's still considered an active volcano. So there are so many areas. Insurance is really a big thing that we've got to pay a close attention to and it's going to be very soon that we can't have that. And even people who think they're insured or you see it all the time Only insured, yeah. Somebody people still don't know what off-premise liability is and if you're, in this vacation rental industry and you don't know what off-premise liability is, you've got a big problem. Find out what that is what is it? Yeah it's ensuring for the things that happen that are way beyond your control. Your rentor brings a dog on the property and that dog bites a neighbor. Oh yeah, I'm covered under traditional insurances. But now all of a sudden the neighbor's going hey, You're running your house out and that dog from that renter came over and bit me. I'm suing you for doing that. Yeah, from a sliability also liquor. So many of these Hosts and managers are giving wine and beer and leaving it on the counter. Guess what? You only have to give them one drop of alcohol to have. Then give them them alcohol. Now they drive the run. Oh, wow, wow, interesting yeah right, you provided off the property boats. Yeah, I did. If you don't have those coverages, almost no insurance carrier provides You're in big trouble. So you got the so many eyes to dot and teased across now and you've got to do your research.

Speaker 2: 31:48

So on that, because I'm always confused about this. So is it the responsibility of the homeowner to have insurance as well? I say they, I know they would have insurance, but what is the property manager like the management company? What should they expect? Because they have to have some sort of umbrella for all of their properties, right? And then how far down do they drill into an individual home that their coverage needs to go into?

Speaker 4: 32:11

Yeah, there's an incident that I'm aware of I'm not gonna say where it is in the country, but there's an incident that I think highlights this where a property manager Said that we will oversee the alarm systems and all the rental loans that we manage and unfortunately, a fire happened and there was a camera that caught that fire. It happened at two or three in the morning. Obviously, nobody at the rental agencies awake at two or three in the morning looking at a camera to see a fire start and the house burned down. When natural progression of things is this rental property is, the assumption is that the rental property owner's insurance is going to cover this, but that's not what happened. They went whoa, this property management company has got a lot of insurance. We're gonna go to them to pay for this house. We're not gonna rebuild it. Insurance company for the property manager is going. We weren't covering you to be an alarm monitoring company. What? Yeah, exactly yeah way outside of your sphere of influence and then so the law is encircling on this for years. That's a great example to highlight. There's so many aspects of what we're doing. If you're a property manager when it comes to insurance and you have got to make sure you're insured to do everything you can possibly do Because when they come after the homeowner first because the debt collapsed by the way, we've had over 400 people injured and debt collapses at vacation rentals this summer Just had 25 people in washington state. Oh my gosh, only half the decks in america need to be replaced and, unfortunately, a lot of our rentals. But when they come after that, they 25 people aren't getting much from a million dollar policy, from a debt collapse. Yeah, we go next. Now they're coming after the property manager and the property manager who says, yeah, I didn't know anything about it. You're that, you're done. Yeah, you know everything about it. You need to know everything about the deck at your rental property. You need to know it holds 50 pounds per square foot and you need to have a sign posted that said no more than 16 people on this deck and you need, yeah, that there's been an inspection in the last five years. It's.

Speaker 1: 34:17

We're in a serious business now this is a great name, yeah, and I'm sure it probably bubbles back up too. So if they go after the owner of the property management company, the, wherever it is that they booked, if they booked on an OTA, I'm sure people are going up that ladder as well. Anybody who's involved in this process is at risk at this point.

Speaker 4: 34:36

Yeah the OTAs. I work very closely with the trust and safety team at some of the big ones and I will tell you behind the scenes they are battling Tons of lawsuits.

Speaker 1: 34:47

I bet.

Speaker 4: 34:48

Coming at them and every lawyer is trying to find that win. They're looking for that the deep jacket yeah they're looking for the way to finally position it yeah. It's honorable and I don't. The OTAs certainly have some accountability because they've got the check box, but ultimately they're not there. They're a modern, yeah, new York Times. But yeah. There's one here in Maine where three people died in 2016, and that's still an ongoing lawsuit, because the check box on the OTA site set it at smoke alarms but it didn't. Oh. It was responsible for that, and so that yeah years of lawsuits that are going on and at some point in time there's going to be some definitive answer from some court somewhere that says, okay, yeah, we do think the OTAs have some liability, but it's, there's a lot of rain going on.

Speaker 1: 35:37

Yeah, so what would you say and what are you seeing the most? What are the things that you're seeing? I see a lot of decks collapse, like you mentioned, house fires, but would you say those are the two most things, or are there?

Speaker 3: 35:49

other.

Speaker 4: 35:50

No, it's just the most coverage as we're talking those the fire two days ago that killed three renters, and in north cheerline on the other bed. Those make the big headlines but the reality is about 83, and this comes from the insurance industry. 83 of all the claims they get are for slips, trips and falls. It's those. Okay, yeah no, a good friend of mine in the industry who manages vacation rentals called me last week and said hey, we just had a guest call for a slip truck in fall. They got home, they got injured. They're filing for $250,000 claim. What do we do? I see those the most and when I talk to vacation rental agencies around the country, I'd say about a third right now, based on my informal survey, are going through some sort of litigation related to a slip trip and fall. Type of incident core lighting Crack in the sidewalk Lights out that type carpet that we shouldn't have been where it should be. So, those are the ones that are most likely to get people into trouble on a, and it's hard because we don't people that die with the Fire stuff. But reality is you need to take a look around your rentals and go to second. Carpet makes sense right there, and is that light, bright enough? When's the last time I visited my rental at night? I just need to look like.

Speaker 2: 37:11

It's just so much to think about. And again, I was talking to somebody this morning and we're talking about standards and across the industry and like how that's hard. It's very hard to do it because you have to think like a homeowner, like living in your home, like what are the things, and you have to do that in every single home and it's different again to lighting, to stairs, to, you know, forges, decks, whatever. There's just so many things that are at play that I again, I think it goes back to the very beginning of when you start in this business. People just have to know where to go to get this information. So clearly, they can go to Justin, they can go to breezeway. Averma does do some stuff, but I think one of the things that we really need to push for is to be able to have Justin and the conversation be more central at these conferences, to be on center stage, not be a side. Yeah session that's in a room two floors down from the the main theater, like it needs to be something that people have to to be part of and and understand what they're getting into. Because I think it goes back to what you were saying about the regulation, or like what, when and if it gets defined, vacation rentals gets defined, it'll probably clean up 60% of the inventory that's out there. But wiping 60% of the inventory off the map because of a definition, that's going to be bad to the economy of any given state, of any given municipality, put businesses out of play. So I think, just wrapping up here, justin, what you're doing is such important work and it needs to have more light shown on it. And while we we focus on advocacy, I think that advocacy and safety have to be together.

Speaker 3: 38:44

They have to be a conversation that has to be shared.

Speaker 2: 38:48

So I hope that by coming on with Alex and I, we can help Get more word out there, shed more light on what you're trying to do and really get you more. I guess in everybody's conversation Everybody should know who you are, and so any way that we can do that, I think we should, but I'm in the meantime. What is the best way? If somebody wants to reach out and get some of this information, how can they get in touch with you?

Speaker 4: 39:10

So hopefully, especially, all of your listeners are members of you to the VRMA favor, which is the florida association of vacationer or professionals, or nwvrp, northwest vacation rental professionals. If you're not a member and that covers the country if you're not a member of one of those, you should be, but if you are, you get free access to the breezeway Short-term mental safety inspector course. All of those organizations, as well as astral, have endorsed it and we're now getting endorsed as well by arpo down in the latin america. All of the latin american countries now are bringing on the safety program as well, which is exciting. I even got a colleague yesterday from australia, new zealon. They want to add it on. So it's really easy to get access to the course, or free. You just have to go to the breezeway website now. If you're not in any of those categories and don't want to be, the course is $350 still minor cost to go to. It takes four to six hours online and the intent is that you are now an expert in safety and understand everything from the fundamentals that you should to make sure these rental properties are safe.

Speaker 1: 40:18

Yeah, absolutely. I know you came on our Friday Orange call for cost ago a few weeks ago and did about a 45-minute presentation on a lot of these topics. You can just tell everybody was writing notes the entire time. I think there's going to be a lot of companies that are going to hear this and, hopefully, individuals that will think about it in a different light, especially this time of year. This is the time of year that, as you're planning for the new year, start working on these programs, get this implemented for 2024, that you're starting out on a fresh start and on a safer note and just a good way to begin the new year.

Speaker 4: 40:52

One quick thing that I'd appreciate the opportunity to share is my boss, jeremy Gull, the founder of the Breezeweg. He had the insight to know early on that safety was going to be a key part of professionalism in this industry, and he brought me on, he bought my company and he has pushed forth anything, if you can, to help professionalize this industry through safety. I think in many ways. Obviously, breezeweg is a for-profit company and we're trying to grow our self-worth business and I'm a key part of that. It's also something that Breezeweg is proud to give back is through the memberships of all the organizations offering this course. He definitely deserves a lot of recognition as well for making this something important for our industry.

Speaker 1: 41:41

Yeah, absolutely, jeremy is definitely one of the OGs, just like you as well, on the technology side, and, yeah, I think it's great what you guys are doing. It's been fitting the industry as a whole, not just your business and just the areas where you live and have properties, but all over. So we're very grateful for you and for Breezeweg and Jeremy and the whole team there. But until next time, justin, we will see you at VRMA for sure in Orlando, and probably are you going to the favor events also I'm coming to a conference near you. Streamline, yeah, streamline, okay, great.

Speaker 4: 42:15

Thanks for visiting this big live event. So yeah, I'm hitting the road very soon for the fall.

Speaker 1: 42:20

And you're very easy to spot because I think how tall are you? Like six, five, six six.

Speaker 4: 42:24

I look until people five foot 17. And I love that.

Speaker 1: 42:29

You're always the tallest one in the room. I know that. Thank you so much again, justin. We appreciate you and until next time. Thanks everybody.