How Rent Responsibly is Closing the Information Gap in STR Regulations – with Founders David Krauss & Alexa Nota

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex, 

Annie Holcombe  
and I'm Annie

Alex Husner  
and we are joined today with David Krauss, who is the CEO and founder of RentResponsibly, as well as Alexa Nota, who is the COO and co founder as well. So super excited to see you guys here today. Thanks for having us. Great to be here. 

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah. So before we get started, Dave, why don't you give us a little bit of background about rent responsibly and what you do for the industry? 

David Krauss  
Sure. Well,Alexa and I came together in 2019 both realizing the issue at hand that we are trying to solve, which rent responsibly every day works to help connect hosts, to support hosts, oftentimes with regulatory and advocacy needs, but I think our mission is broader than that, and fundamentally we feel that our industry has not had strong unified voice at the state and local level, in particular. So what is rent? Responsibly? We are a community building and education platform that provides association management services to local and state associations. We created something we like to call an association in a box or an alliance in a box. And they don't actually have to be formal. They're sometimes informal groups that are getting together, but we're helping hosts around the country, find other hosts, build organized groups, show up to really important conversations, providing them access to education at scale now, and we do that with this big tent idea. Alexa likes to say, advocacy, community, building, education. Those are team sports. So we have lots and lots of partners, lots and lots of friends, like you guys across the industry, who help us, help ourselves, right? We're all hosts at heart. Alexa and I both came into the industry that way. So we believe that the future is bright, but we need to come together on a national and scalable level and also really address needs at the local and state level. So it's quite a task, but I think we're actually really hitting a pivot point and a turning point. That's great.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, well, we're very thankful for everything that you do for the industry, and I know so many of our our friends and colleagues would say the same, and it's just, you know, it's a constant battle, and it doesn't matter where you are. We've seen issues from large destinations down to smaller ones that are kind of newer within the STR space. But you were telling us a little bit before we got started, about a report that came out just earlier this year, and wanted to hear more about that. Yeah,

Alexa Nota  
I'll take that one. Dave mentioned that one of the things that we do is bring education, bring information into these really important regulatory discussions and a bunch of other discussions that are happening in our space, and a big piece of that for us is first hand research. A few years ago, we did a study called the state of the STR community study, and earlier this year, we kind of blew that up even bigger, and we studied more than 5000 short term rental operators and more than 2000 local government staff and officials to talk about their needs and their challenges, not just on the regulatory side, but in other things that we all work on, in the industry and in our communities. And it resulted in a ton of data. We have over 130,000 new data points to work with that again, aid in those regulatory conversations, but also help us all run better businesses, help our local governments run better communities, and lots of other things. I can go into a lot of details on that. You tell me what of that is the most interesting?

Annie Holcombe  
Well, I think that's a lot of data points to kind of wrap your head around, which is great. And I think what, what that means is that you're getting out to the right people, and that people are being responsive and sharing their information, which I think, you know, go back five or six years ago, people were just kind of like, stay out of my you know, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to worry about it, almost like, hide my head in the sand, and hopefully it'll go away type, you know, type attitude. So I think you've changed people's perspective on being more transparent about what's going on and asking questions and sharing that information. So maybe, why don't you give us some of the bigger takeaways from that report? Sure,

Alexa Nota  
I think you know, I would love to take a lot of credit for us getting more people to talk, but like Dave said, it's a team effort, and as we've seen over the past few years, a lot of people are coming to the realization that you have to participate in these discussions, and your story matters, even if you have one property, or even if you have just a few or you only rent casually, your story counts when we're talking about advocacy and policy making. On that note, some of the most interesting takeaways, I think, in my opinion, that I'm curious for Dave's as well, is that we're still, you know, a very small business industry. I mean, we we go to conferences, the four of us, and we see a lot of big companies, but the vast majority of the industry are owners with less than two properties or very small managers. And that is a. Important part of the narrative. It's also a big part of the challenge when you're talking to regulators, but that's a really important thing for people to say when they're in these conversations, that, hey, it's just me. I'm renting to help send my kids to college or pay for my retirement. That is a very, very common type of story that needs to be told, and it's still reflected in the data. Another one for me was on the housing discussion. I think if you're paying attention to regulations at all, you know that housing has been the hot topic, housing affordability, housing availability, especially for workforce housing in some of these big destination areas. And one of the things that we found was more than 80% of local government staff and officials said they have a housing challenge. They have issues with housing in their area. If you look and slice and dice that data to more common vacation destinations, that number above 90, 95% it's it's a big problem, and it's a real challenge, but at the same time, a majority, let's say 40, 50% in most of these areas, the government staff and local officials don't know how many housing units they have. They don't know how many short term rental units they have. They've got a challenge with housing, but they don't have all the information that they need to make informed decisions, which in most cases is that short term rentals aren't causing the problem in your community when you've got housing issues. And so throughout those figures and a lot of the other highlights, we found there's simply just an information gap that we can easily fill. If we just start talking, as an industry to our policy makers and other stakeholders in our communities, we can fill in a lot of that missing information. We're the experts on what we do and and the in the profile of our destinations, and as long as they start bringing that information to the table, I think we're going to solve a lot of this much more quickly.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And as far as your relationships with these different entities in our cities and municipalities are, are they reaching out to you for information. Are you building relationships with them, or is it the group that gets together kind of under your guidance, like, how does that all work?

David Krauss  
I'll take that one, because it's actually really important for the world to know that absolutely not we are not proactively reaching out to any policy makers or city staff. Why? Because our mission and our like extraordinarily narrow, or at least really guardrailed, focus is on the needs of hosts, owners and managers, STR operators across the country. Those are the people we serve. That was those are us right that we are building what we wish was there for us, and so it would only be a distraction, frankly, to go and start, you know, proactively seeking conversations that said we have had in this past year. And like, believe me, this isn't a humble brag, it's more just like, I think sign of the times is that we've had Wall Street Journal, New York Times, skiff, like a lot of people who talk and write about these issues, coming to us, asking us for data and asking us for information. And hey, what do you think are the trends? And the reason I bring that up is that we put this out freely so people can find it and But on that note, as well, a lot of the folks that took the survey, 2000 plus on the on the staff and elected side, had never been asked these questions before. Like, what can the short term rental operators? What can the people in your community do to make your life easier to answer questions you might have, we asked, what questions do you have which I think some of them hadn't been asked. And one of the questions we asked just to kind of double click, excuse me, I think that one's gonna leave. We'll leave double click behind in 2024 but we asked people's personal opinions in City Hall about short term rentals. Most amazing thing is, 48% were favorable, 30% unfavorable. So by and large, policy makers and staff like short term rentals. Guess why? They freaking travel in them. We all do, right, right? Yeah, they feel a lot of local complaints. And, you know, they can't get people to submit permits or pay taxes or whatever. That's what we're trying to do. Serve those owners, associate managers, make sure they know what to do, how to do it. And a lot of that just comes to us through, through requests on, on the short term rental side, and like subtext there the like biggest divide, it's an age gap. Right? Older folks who feel that there's a lot of change in their neighborhood maybe don't use short term rentals as much. They just tend to be less comfortable with short term rentals. So I think generationally, we actually are really in a good spot. But we don't have time to wait. We need to proactively reach out and put our arms around these issues and bring solutions to the table, which I think in large part is is our mission. One

Alexa Nota  
thing to what Dave said is, when you're in a policy discussion, elected officials don't want to hear from people outside their communities too. Yeah, that's true. They don't want to hear from it responsibly. They don't want to hear from the platforms. They don't the platforms. They don't want to hear from anything that is seen as outside of their community or not local. So double clicking on what Dave said, our role in these conversations is to arm those who are local, the property managers and the homeowners who are in town, to have those conversations with their policy makers, and we saw this in the data too. The number one thing, or the number one way that policy makers get informed for the decisions that they're going to make is through things like public comment and direct interaction. So not only are they generally favorable to short term rentals, they really want to hear from local operators. To go back

Annie Holcombe  
to something that Dave said actually, just kind of keep double clicking on things in the beginning you mentioned, like, you know, for rent responsibly is trying to get, like, a collective voice and get people together, and not that you want to speak from, but just to get everybody to be more, kind of on the same page and be talking together about how we need to share the information and have these conversations. Do you think? Go back to the first report, in the first study you did to this one, do you think that you've moved the needle in that way, and that people are looking to have more of a collective voices in the industry? I mean, I feel like it's happening, but sort of to Alexa's point in that there's so many small operators out there. Like, how do we reach the masses? How do we reach those guys that have two units? I mean, we talk about that from an education standpoint all the time, but just from the regulatory standpoint, like, how do you get in front of these people?

David Krauss  
This industry is full of paradoxes, right? Like, it's all local, it's all bespoke. Every house is a snowflake. It's unique. But yet we want, like, consistent standards and consistent levels of you know, guest, guest, you know, experience. And then the platforms are all over the place too. They have to think globally, not just nationally, state, local. So they have this interrelationship between local, unique and like, mass and scale. So to get to your point, Annie, or your question. Rather, we can do 80% of the like standardization to empower folks who then need to, like, walk into City Hall themselves, like we can help folks around the country be aware of issues we can't help everybody know, like when they need to act like there is a proactivity element that everybody does need to take. So in a universal way, it's more of a movement where, if folks start to identify, I am a host or a manager whatever, but I'm a part of a community and my voice is important. That's a rule everybody should adopt that, and that should be the day you sign up for your first listing, or you get your first guest, you are part of something way larger. And we that's part of our mission, is to elevate that identity so that folks can take, you know, ownership. And the best thing about it is when, when people do, good things happen, but they're also innovative. This industry is the most innovative and has the most entrepreneurs of any other industry on the face of the earth. Somebody challenged me on that. It is damn true. And all we need to do, really, is get folks together and then help them work together, innovate, come up with whatever works for their community, and then we take and observe and study so this, like, what difference are we making? Are we moving the needle? I say absolutely, and I can give you some some case studies on that, but it's only because we kind of, like, we're there to support folks, to make it easy for them to come together in the first place. And then we have an ongoing support service that's our association management service. And it's amazing, like we we are we get to observe the coolest experiments that people run every day, every week, every month, and the good ones we take and we share with the rest of the network. And so that's how I think we are moving the needle, is letting innovators cook.

Alex Husner  
I love that. What's like the typical way that areas or groups of people are coming to you? Is it that they're trying to be proactive, or Has something happened and now they're like, oh shoot, we got to get our act together, and we don't know what to do. Like, what does that typically look

Alexa Nota  
like? I would say, in our first three years. We just passed our five year company anniversary, believe it or not. Um, doing a lot of reflecting on this. Thanks. I think in our early days we we got a lot of the reactive, like, something's about to give us final vote. Can you help us? And some things, you know, on an agenda, you know, it's, it's pretty much. Baked, and there's not a ton that you can do at that point to change that current proposal, but they are coming to us to do something. And what we typically do with groups like that is help them get organized and advocate on that particular issue. But we really strongly believe that groups should be active and sustain 12 months of the year for a number of reasons, and one of the big ones is those regulations will come up again. They will be modified. There will be a new council at some point that revisits this and is going to make changes. So you have to be ready and laying the groundwork for the next opportunity as early as you possibly can. Over the last couple of years, especially in 2024 we've actually seen any, I should go look at the numbers on this actually. But I think we've seen more groups start proactively than reactively. I think the message is finally starting to sink in across the industry that this is going to happen if it hasn't happened in your area. It's not an if it's a when you might as well be ready, and we're seeing more and more groups pop up at the state and local level to just be ready, to start organizing, to get things going, to start fundraising and all of that, to be prepared, but also to do other things in their communities, like have happy hours and do educational seminars and all sorts of other things outside of regulations,

Annie Holcombe  
maybe this last year, or maybe the report told you. But what are the big things that kind of eat up on this report that are like coming that people need to be aware of, or are there things that there's indications of stuff that's about to happen that maybe people aren't aware of, that are, you know, I look at some of the stuff that's happened in some areas in Florida, and it kind of feels like it's like, well, they're going to do it in Florida, and it's going to spread to other states, or, like, some of the, some of the things in Alabama pushing over to Florida. Like, you know, what are you seeing, I guess, in the tea leaves? Alex, I'll ask you that. That's

Alexa Nota  
a great question. I think what the report showed us was that a lot of the things that have been hot topics for the last year or two are going to remain hot topics and continue to grow. What we know is that housing is going to remain a really important thing until, pretty much, until we solve it, which is not a year long thing, or, you know, one election cycle thing that's going to be a really long effort for all of us to work on. I want to put

David Krauss  
one one thing too. It'll be a really important thing till it is solved. It is not the short term rental industry's job to solve housing, right? You're part of a major I think, Alexa, I know you didn't mean it that way, but I do also want to underscore is like explaining that is half the job when housing

Annie Holcombe  
comes up. Yeah, I did want to actually add something on that, because it when you talked about the housing that market that I live in Panama City, Panama City Beach, like we had a hurricane that came through in 2018 and the beach didn't get hit. It was the in town, the or the the urban, you know, the suburban area of the Metropolitan beach, and that was where all the people that worked at the resorts and the hotels and the restaurants lived. We lost the number that I had. I've seen it like, loosely around 8000 you know, apartments and residences that were lost. And these were not like multi million dollar homes. These were apartment complexes, you know, they were townhouses. They were multi, you know, multi family living. And so I think, you know, you've got situations like that where it was already a struggle, and then it just became even bigger of a struggle. And so, like, I think that sometimes people get lost in, you know, force for the trees. It's like, there's a problem. Everybody's screaming about it. Everybody needs the staff. The people can't afford to live there. Then you have, like, so many people relocating to the states, who's driving the cost of real estate up for developers to develop these things and and rebuild it. Also, I think sometimes people don't get, like, get all the facts straight in it. And it's very easy to, you know, point a finger at it. And I just know, for my community, I hear it all the time, and it's like, I'm the first one to say, like, there was always unaffordable areas of the you know, if you're paying someone minimum wage, they're not going to be able to afford to live in the golf course community, you know? So, like, we've already had some of that. Yeah, we've already had some of that. So I think, like that, that has to be underscore too. There's like, there was probably a problem, and now it's just like you're trying to find a people are trying to find a boogeyman in it. Oh, yeah, that's,

Alexa Nota  
that's exactly it. I mean, you, you have all this heightened need for housing period everywhere, basically, and yeah, short term rentals are getting scapegoated for that problem left and right. That goes back to filling that information gap and explaining to policy makers like why whatever you're proposing to tamp down on short term rentals is not going to solve your issues. And we see that a lot of that reflected in the ss tri data, but then you've got these even more emergency needs in the wake of a hurricane, or like what Asheville is dealing with right now, after Helene and Maui, after the wildfires, it's, it's, you know, only exacerbating those types of issues and those conversations. But again, that's why. You have to bring this type of information to those conversations. I

David Krauss  
think the best question we asked in the ss tri and I will like speaking to the who knows who's listening to this right now, but if you're listening to this right now, you can assume housing is important. And if a short term rental conversation comes up, housing will be mentioned. It's like, you know, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, or anything of that nature. Like, it's just always gonna appear whenever this happens or this topic comes up. So we asked a question of the city folk, city folk, the city elected officials and the staff. The question was sorting by people who had regulations on their books. We asked, What are the most effective regs on your books that have worked for addressing the affordable housing crisis or needs, or what have you affordable housing? And then there were a bunch of options. This is the one that I like. I'm like, see people answer this when you ask the right question, the the answers in order, were open new space for housing. That's the most effective way to address the issue. Number two is supplement the cost of new housing. Okay? Favorable zoning policies basically allow for more building and more housing. And then number four, in rank order of effectiveness was restricting short term rentals. What you have is like everybody realizes it's a supply side when you actually retrospectively look at what works and what doesn't. But then restricting short term rentals is oftentimes where people put a lot of energy, it kind of almost like, feels like it should be effective. And we all know, I mean, the clarity studies in Colorado about how many people, if not able to rent short term, would take on a full time tenant or sell to, you know, a family or something like that. And it's, it's de minimis, like it just doesn't really move the needle. So that's why I feel so passionate about the data we can bring and back to the audience, right? Like it's at our fingertips now, right?

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy to me. I mean, I think about those markets in Colorado that have had, you know, such a struggle, or even just here in Myrtle Beach, where we have not had that yet. But it's like, you know, somebody, even if they, if the regulations crack down and they couldn't rent them as short term rentals, most people would not just take bare minimum affordable housing income to rent a place for a month. You know. I mean, it's just, it's not comparing something that's even, you know, relationally connected or reasonable, I feel like, but we do see a lot now too. I mean, there's podcasts every day. I feel like that are coming out about midterm rentals and how people are turning to that. And I mean any any thoughts on markets you've been in that have had to go into that direction, I

David Krauss  
will throw out there that regulatory, not just onerous regulatory, but bands and kind of regs that nullify your ability to rent short term number one, they usually get tied up in lawsuits, which are very, very expensive. So I don't think people just say, like, Oh, okay. Like en masse, we'll just find another way to do this. It turns into, like, prolonged, multi year, very expensive fights for both the city and the short term rental folks locally. So I don't think that there's really a pivot away from this issue. We have to look at it as like an inevitable future that every every community needs some legal path to renting short term so it's the question that becomes, how do you get there? I do think it's smart to diversify your exposure to different demand channels, of course, and you can make cases for why certain markets like it could be better than under 30 day rentals or, you know, summer seasonal like rent to the workforce and then, you know, switch in different markets. But that's what's so unique about our industry. There is no one size, and everybody has different goals. So I mean, the pivot to midterm, I think, is, is more just the evolution of the industry and people kind of, you know, like having different demand channels, but, but ultimately, this, this category, this, you know, definition of under 30 Nights is some, you know, obscure or, like, hard to, hard to quantify and fathom. Concept for renting is like it's as old as this country. Yeah, happened way before then even I could tell a great George Washington story about when he was traveling all around the country. And now you have these George Washington slept, slept here, placards on houses. There are no else, no other lodging options, and that's how this country really got to know each other, is short stays and staying in people's homes. And I really think like to look away from that, or to think that there's no future for that in any particular community. I'm not going to stop trying to make sure that, you know, people learn and accept again. Messaging right, like this industry does. Have a kind of a messaging issue at times. Do understand it? I think that there's usually a path to, you know, harmonious way forward. I find

Annie Holcombe  
it interesting, though, that if you look at, you know, traditional vacation rental destinations, the reason that they became these destinations was because people were vacationing there, and then also people who had vacation there, like when they were growing up, decided I want to move there. And now you have this, like, group of people that moved to a destination, and I find this all the time. I when I was on the chamber board, was a conversation that was had all the time, like, what brought you here? Why did you move to this market? I moved here because I vacationed here as a child, and I loved it so much. And I was like, Well, great. Well, then why are you against vacation? Well, I'm not against vacations. I just don't want people being in my space. You know, it's like, it's like, all of a sudden they just, they just forsaken every reason that they came to that market. So, you know it, I think it's, it's that the NIMBY, the NIMBY mindset, you know, it's and that that becomes the, what I always call the again, ers, like, they're, they're going to complain about something, and whatever the new, hot, flashy, shiny Penny is, and vacation rentals has just become that shiny penny to blame things for. 

Alex Husner  
Yeah, and I think that's where, you know, working with the Chamber of Commerces and the DMOS and areas is so important. Like, we have a campaign that's run for years here in Myrtle Beach that is called tourism works for you. And there's billboards all over town, and there's, you know, materials in different restaurants and attractions, and it really explains, like, you know, the reason that you moved here, exactly like you said, you came on vacation, and you have all these amazing restaurants and things to do. But if there weren't forests, those businesses would not be here. I mean, we get 20 million people a year. I don't know what the year round residency is, but it's nothing like that. You know that that lifestyle is just not sustainable in that but I know the last time we talked to you, Dave, you said that you were kind of encouraging the local groups that you work with to work with their DMOS. Any success stories lately on that that come to mind?

David Krauss  
Well, geez, I'm so upset that you asked me a question. This is one of like five areas where I think we could have a step function change in outcomes by just really inviting other people. So Alexa and I talk a lot about tables, right? Not because we're interior designers or woodworkers, but because, at the end of the day, and we actually have these little chair pins, we've started giving out to people who who have been stalwart advocates, because we bring our own chairs, we bring our own chairs to tables, and just sit down, 

Alex Husner  
pull your seat right up,

David Krauss  
and it's just how it is and it has how it needs to be. But now we're also talking about building our own tables, because industry is nothing to overlook, and at the end of the day, it's trend wise, where a lot of travel is going. It became 250% more popular during the pandemic. Do you think everybody just reverts back to pre pandemic travel behavior, no people who now occupy those houses that they used to be their second home. That's another major reason housing dynamics have changed, because people are just moving to locations full time and so forth. But with respect to DMOS, destination marketing organizations or cdbs or Chambers of Commerce. Sometimes it's, you know, a mixture, depending destination marketing organizations oftentimes get their funding from bad tax or transient occupancy tax or hotel occupancy tax. All the same thing, it's that, you know, usually like six to 9% which is huge, by the way, tax comes out of the reservation, but hotels pay it, and then other under 30 night rentals typically pay it. And so I've talked to maybe 3040 DMOS this year. So to answer your question, yes, talk to a ton of them, particularly because there was that big eclipse that came right down, like, from Maine down to Texas, and I was basically calling all the DMOS along the way, saying, like, have you talked to your short term rental operators in town? Like, there's a lot of people who are maxed out, and like, we're trying to connect them, because that was such a surge moment for them, they've said en masse that this is a really important group of people. We just don't know who they are. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
they don't know how to reach them. Yeah, if it's not an established area that has, you know, big legacy companies, or just, you know, companies, it's very hard for

David Krauss  
them to reach them, but in two markets, case studies here Poconos mountain, or it's actually Pocono mountain Visitors Bureau, PM, VB, in Poconos has been working, you know, hand in glove with their short term rental, Vacation Rental community, and we worked with them on an education campaign, including messaging out to the community saying, like, here's how, here's how much your taxes would go up if vacation rentals went away. Right? That like, tourism works for everybody concept, and then also, here's how you get in. To the system the right way and registered. And we also did, as we always do, responsible renting, education, right, noise, trash, parking, all the things that you know, many of us know and called the spidey sense right, like, how do you kind of protect yourself and your neighbors and just avoid avoidable things? That was one for multiple years now, we've been working with visit greater Palm Springs, which covers the nine cities and Riverside County, and they have been on this drum beat of host education. And so we've helped them build videos and work. They actually work with their city to create regulatory and compliance videos. And then we do like how to, how to rent in the hot summer of the desert of Coachella Valley, because many folks visit there and don't actually know that, like their dog's paws could burn off on the asphalt. We're, we're just really going where that energy is. But I would love for this call to happen next year, this time and us have like 4050, DMOS that are working with their local short term rental community. We don't go to them and exclusively, it's really about closing that gap between them and their local operators. That's

Annie Holcombe  
something that looking to do with next packs, and I talked to Alexa about it is that we would go into a market and that we would pass the convention of visitor Bureau, the DMO, to host us who have a day of service in the market, but also just to have that open dialog. Because I think, you know, we were talking to Tom from Mountain moral chalets, and, like, he just got appointed to the board there, and there was markets. And Alex and I come from markets that, thankfully, the vacation rentals have had a seat at the table for a while. But I remember having a fight for that. I mean, we it was, it was you were locked out the hotels and the restaurants had it, and the vacation rentals were deemed as like unnecessary to be at the table. And so the more people that can get that and be not in lock step, but at least in communication. I think it's just so important. And I think that as vendors, you know, it's on us as well to keep that communication flow and to outreach to these DMOS, to make them understand like I think everybody wants to be good for their market, and the more we're working together, the better off we're going to be, not just from a visitation standpoint, because obviously that's their key focus, but also from the regulatory and then the PR, you know the things that when something goes awry, and Justin has to come in to give everybody a safety, you know, a safety lecture that there, there's a way to handle it and and it's not that somebody wasn't following the rules, just they made a misstep, and something happened just like it would happen in anybody else's business or home. Accidents happen. So I think that it's, it just behooves all of us to get all the people at the table. And I love the fact that you are building your own table. If you don't, are invited to the table. You know, that's a really smart way to handle it. We were talking about, like looking forward. What do you think if you were to give a manager or someone new to the business, what would you say are, like, the most important things that they need to do to, I guess, connect with, either responsibly or connect with or find the group in their area that they can, you know, learn about the regulations other than the municipality, because obviously, people are shy to go into the government and have a conversation about rules. But how to, how do they find out the best way to be able to work in their destination? I think there

Alexa Nota  
are, especially for managers, a number of things that should just be standard part of doing business, and yes, there is some shyness or hesitation to go into City Hall and actually talk to somebody, but I would recommend at least being familiar with your local government website and who some of the players are. I would say, Make friends with your city clerk, because as things come up or as you have questions, they are a gold mine of information to help you stay up to date and help you really understand what's going on. I would also recommend at least somebody on the team is talking to current elected officials, possible future elected officials, your planning department, all of those key stakeholders there just to say hi, just to make sure they know who you are, that you're a source of information, and that if and when things come up, they can come right to you. That doesn't have to be the owner or the GM, that can be somebody on the team, your director of marketing, somebody else who just really likes to be out and involved in the community. But then, in addition to that, always have time for, or have a plan for, what we call the five TS time treasure, talent, ties and testimony. So inside and outside regulatory discussions, especially property managers, have all five of these things, time they themselves or somebody on their team can contribute time to something like a task force or a volunteer event. You can contribute treasure. There are always needs that need to be funded. Property Managers have a big stake in these conversations. They have to be putting some money towards those efforts. We also talk a lot about talent, again, going back to not just the GM or the owner, but members of your team. Have you. Really important skills that can be important to different advocacy efforts, like graphic design or building a website or writing great emails. Somebody on your team can do those things and do it well. Ties is your network. Even if you're not directly connected to any policy makers, you're probably connected to people who can influence them. So think about that. Think about your homeowners and who they might be able to influence and getting them involved. And then last one is testimony. And so you can take, take that literally, testifying in public hearings, but also just making sure you're always sharing your story, and making sure that your policy makers and your general community know who you are, know what you do, know the good that you bring to your community. That is probably a part of what a lot of property managers are already doing in their marketing and PR efforts. But really lean into it and think about it from the advocacy lens, and that'll be huge. Yeah, those

Alex Husner  
are all excellent recommendations. I do have one more question too on I mean, as far as the technology goes, we have a lot of conversations about that, and how a lot of the different offerings that have come about since COVID or around that time were, you know, partly driven because of regulation and trying to combat some of these things. But is that part of what you work with your different groups with, of like, trying to get them connected to some of the solutions that are going to solve the problems that are coming up through regulations? Yeah, I want

Alexa Nota  
to answer that. And I think Dave is probably got some stuff you can add. Yes, we just celebrated the first birthday of the rent responsibly network. So that is a national digital community for short term rental operators of all kinds, but it also doubles as a member management and community software for local groups, it does not and state groups too. It does not matter how sophisticated a group is, whether you've got a board and you're a 501, c6, or you're just a loose informal coalition, this technology basically gives you a Facebook group type setting on steroids. In there, you can not only talk to each other and share really important advocacy information or different regulatory alerts, you can access all sorts of templates and other resources for things like public testimonies or getting a group more formalized if you want to do that. Also within the network is a subgroup of short term rental Alliance and association leaders called the STR community builders group that is specifically curated for people who are leading advocacy efforts or building these groups. And there's a whole other gold mine of resources and information and contacts in there. So that particular element the rent responsibility network, is the technological foundation, and it's also this really robust network of people and resources. Gotcha. Well, that's very cool.

David Krauss  
Love it. I think it's worth painting the vision too, of where, not just this coming year, but in the next couple of years that will be, and I'm going to speak in the declarative because we will be there if we have anything that's doing it. We're working hard enough. And there's actually a groundswell. So the groundswell that Alexa and I, you know, I think, have a front row seat to, because we do get a lot of inbound and like, Hey, you gotta go talk to Dave and Alexa, like, when, when you want to get a group together, happens. I mean, literally, a couple times a week at this point. And folks who are in a state and all kind of doing the same thing, maybe in their market within a state are starting to say, hey, like, is a little bit inefficient. What if we created a state group and then had local chapters or a state group that's more loose and local associations that, you know, interconnect and have a different way of you know, there's just these kind of simple formats for a state to kind of look at the whole state, and when I say a state, the leaders within a state. And what's really, really cool is that the map is starting to close in, right? There's over 30,000 municipalities in the country, but I think we all know how many states there are a lot left, 50. So when you think about the map, right, we're on in inevitable march as an industry to a 50 state network of individual leaders in each state getting together, either informal, formal or even incorporated into 501, 60 trade association. Of course, there are national organizations too, so it's kind of like filling in the middle here, and we get there, I think that's that really interesting flywheel situation where, like, it's actually not incrementally easier to add, like the 48th 49th and 50th, but you're hitting the tipping point where, with 17 states already actively, you know, Bill. In groups that you know, the 18th gets easier, 19th gets easier, and so forth. And I think that's ultimately our value add, like, in a macro sense, is we're making sure it's not just easier, but you're also connected to all the previous ones. So these network effects build so the value of the next state joining actually adds value to all the ones that preceded it. Just from an innovation standpoint, from a network size standpoint, from a we've started running these retreats called spark retreats, so we find the leaders who are most you know, these kind of do it, doing this atlas thing, where they hold their entire group up on their back for a month a year, or whatever they're feeling burned out. We get them all together, and then that network become sparklers, naturally. That is growing every year. So we're doing our third one this year, and we're starting to bring them down to more like regional, local. So even these innovations of like, wow, when you get innovative and committed people together, things just go faster for everybody. And so with 17 states with active groups right now, I think it's actually going to be easier, faster to get to 50 than it was to get to 17. 

Annie Holcombe  
Think about John Hildebrand, like how you took him and he, you say sparkler. He was a sparkler, and now he's like a firecracker. Like, what you've done with him is like a great example of somebody who he had a voice and he just didn't realize it, and now it's like, look at him. It's just like, What a great advocate for his market. But also the industry, it only takes a spark to get a fire going. I think that's a song.

Alex Husner  
Yes, we did. Yeah, take that back. Oh man. Well, I think we're getting close to having to jump off here, but it was awesome to talk to you guys today and just to see all the great things that you're doing to constantly move the needle. And I know just if for any and I watching your journey over the past five years. It's crazy that it's been five years, it feels like yesterday. But you know, you just say you had an idea and you went with it, and you've served so many communities and people in the process. So the industry is grateful for you. We

Alexa Nota  
are grateful for you guys and for this industry. This is why we wake up every day to do what we do, because we love this and we want to protect it.

Annie Holcombe  
Definitely have a servant's heart, so we appreciate that very much. But if anybody wants to get in touch with either one of you or rent responsibly, what's the best way to reach out to

Alexa Nota  
you? I would say go to our website, rent responsibly.org. If you want to dig a little deeper on regulatory and advocacy stuff, I would go to our alliance center. We've got a directory. We've got a ton of resources there, and through any page on our website or anywhere you can reach out to us and other members of our team for whatever it is you might need awesome. If

Alex Husner  
anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to alexandanipadcast.com and until next time, thanks for tuning in. Everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai