Be The Bank

011 - Safety Talk (That Isn't Boring)

July 01, 2020 Justin Bogard & Super E Season 2 Episode 11
Be The Bank
011 - Safety Talk (That Isn't Boring)
Show Notes Transcript

2 Wealth Show S2 Ep11 – Safety Talk (That Isn't Boring)

Justin Bogard and Super E interview Justin Ford in the 11th episode of season 2.

Key Takeaways:  

  1. Safety in Short Term Rentals + Everyday Living
  2. Home Inspections vs Livability Safety
  3. Simple, Cheap, Life Saving Devices

 Resources and links discussed  

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About the Hosts 

Justin Bogard – Note Investor specializing in performing Residential Real Estate Debt. He finds deals and acquires them for his own portfolio as well as educates investors while walking them through the process of owning a Real Estate Note!  

Super E – Real Estate Investor specializing in short-term rentals and the management of them. She connects investors with short-term tenants and manages everything in-between.

Connect with the Hosts: 

  • @2wealthshow – Facebook/Instagram 
  • @wealth_show - Twitter 
Justin Bogard:

Welcome to the 2 wealth show a show that shares how you can create real wealth for you and your family. I'm one of your hosts, Justin Bogard. And my cohost is Elizabeth Sickles, AKA super E I am a real estate note investor specializing in performing residential real estate debt. I find the deals acquire them for my own portfolio, as well as educate investors while walking them through the process of owning a real estate note, my cohost, he a real estate investor specializing in short term rentals in the management of them. She connects investors with short term tenants and manages everything in between. Our show is sponsored by bright path notes and Elizabeth Maora. You can find out more information by visiting our websites at brightpathnotes.com and elizabethmaora.com. Hey everybody, Justin Bogard from the 2 wealth show. This is episode 11 and we have our special guest interview today with mr. On my screen, Justin Ford. And like that introduction. I love it. Thanks for having me here. You're very welcome. Yeah. So Elizabeth, why don't you tell us a little bit about, uh, mr. Justin here and also introduce yourself, Elizabeth. I kind of stepped over you a little bit. I'm sorry.

Elizabeth Maora:

That's okay. So Elizabeth, with Elizabeth Maora, we do all things short term rentals, and we do have a very special guest. Justin Ford is the guru literally for safety, not only, especially in short term rentals, but it's nice because this is for any type of property that you are invested in. So he speaks at conventions all over the world. And again, he's the foremost export expert in safety. So we're very honored to have you today, Justin.

Justin Bogard:

Thanks. Thank you for having me here. Absolutely. This is going to be fun. So Elizabeth, let's, let's start off with, uh, with some questions here.

Elizabeth Maora:

Absolutely. So just Justin if you want to tell us, so he has a really unique background. Um, if you wanna tell us how you got into vacation rentals and your safety.

Justin Ford:

Yeah. And before we lose listeners in the first two minutes, I promise you safety is always thought of as a, uh, a boring subject. I promise you'll walk away from this, um, saving someone's life. I'm going to go that strong if we're going to do something here, but you'll feel good about this, this short time that you'll have with us here today. Um, I am a former us coast guard boarding officer. I was involved with boating safety, uh, for four years. And then, um, also what was a firefighter for 15 years in my local community where I lived, I was the training officer and I owned and, um, coast started the largest vacation rental agency in the Northeast from Pennsylvania, Michigan, all the way up into the Northeast. Um, grew that from one property and, uh, over the time managed almost 600 different, uh, vacation rentals. So, um, very unique experience, I think combining all of those together. Absolutely. I, um, I had the unique opportunity at times as a firefighter in the same town where we offered, uh, vacation rentals that, uh, I would get toned to go to a call. I actually went to a grill fire at one of the vacation rentals we managed. And, uh, that was, that was interesting. But what, one of the best parts was about being a firefighter is I could always get out of a tough meeting with a property owner who wasn't happy with something at their house or the way their house had been left. I could go, Oh, you know, those are a little recording button. You could play it back the last fire call and I could make it out that I got to go to that alarm investigation story. Absolutely. You gotta go. You gotta go. So that was always helpful. I love it.

Elizabeth Maora:

There's always an angle, right?

Justin Ford:

That's always an angle.

Elizabeth Maora:

And speaking of angles, can you tell us what's, what's the deal with that picture in the background?

Justin Ford:

Yeah. Yeah. So behind me is a deck collapsed, you know, deck collapses, um, made a lot of the news last year, um, on Memorial day alone, Memorial day, weekend alone last year, um, over 60 people in the United States were hospitalized for deck collapses and I try and highlight, um, deck collapses a lot. Um, that's pressure treated wood decks. Aren't made to last very long, you know, 10 to 20 years, depending on where they're located. If they're in an ocean environment with a lot of salt there, and boy people love to take pictures on them. So this is just an example, you know, of a deck that's about it's actually, the picture was snapped just as it was collapsing, but, um, every week in the United States, people are hospitalized for deck collapses. That's incredible. It doesn't you just listening on our audio stream here. So Justin has a virtual background on the zoom call that we're recording on, and there's what that's like about 30 to 40, uh, seniors on, on some sort of raised a second level deck attached to a house. And you can tell about halfway down the deck is actually obviously bending and actually breaking in the center of the deck. And the students are still me yelling in the background as if nothing's going on. So yeah, they're just starting to come back after that, right? Yeah. Not even second. They're just starting to get the sensation.

Elizabeth Maora:

What, what is a question that, um, you would love for people to ask, but never have before, or they never have asked you?

Justin Ford:

You know, I think when people talk a lot about home safety, whether it's for a vacation rental or not. And, um, I want to highlight real quick though, before I go into that a little bit more that when it comes to short term rentals, vacation rentals, they're one of the more dangerous segments of travel right now. When you take into account that over 50% of the accidents that happened to us, human beings, as we go out, go through life, happen at home, um, which makes sense. Cause that's where we spend the most amount of our time. You just have to understand that when you now put somebody in somebody else's home, that they're not familiar with the opportunity for those accidents increase. And so what a lot of people think about when it comes to home and home inspections, um, or home safety, they often think about what they go through when they purchase a home or when they first go to maybe rent a home or an apartment, the home is bare and you can get, and you should get a home inspector to come in. And those are typically people who are licensed in most States, I believe about 20 States in the U S require home inspector to be licensed. They're going to come in and look at your roof, shingles, your plumbing. Um, they do look at smoke detectors and co detectors, not necessarily in depth, but just to make sure that they're in there. Um, and they're going to do some things that are really important to make sure before you move into that home, it's safe, but what never happens in this country. And that's what I've been involved in is we don't do a lot with livability safety and that's after you've moved the carpet in that's after you've put the grill on the deck, that's after you've placed the hot tub on the deck, that's after you've bought a certain bed or a dresser and put a TV on it. Um, so what I really like to talk about that nobody really asks me about is what's, you know, what's the difference between the type of safety that we've typically looked at in homes when it comes to home inspections and actual livability safety.

Elizabeth Maora:

Wow. That's a really great point. Yeah, absolutely. And what are some of the things, you know, that you're seeing in vacation rentals that are easy fixes that people just are not doing?

Justin Ford:

Well? The big one is, um, certainly with carbon monoxide, that's gotten a lot of attention recently. Um, everybody who, uh, tuned into the news over Thanksgiving this past year, 2019, saw the today show and ABC this morning, CNN, all what we're talking about, Anna Faris and how, uh, the actress and how she had rented a vacation rental at Lake Tahoe. And, um, they were poisoned by carbon monoxide because of some faulty equipment in the house. And that happens a lot. It's pretty frustrating to me as a safety expert that we see, um, those shows and correspondence. So it's news correspondence saying, Hey, when you travel to a vacation rental, now make sure you bring your own CEO detector. To me, that's like saying, Hey, make sure when you go on a cruise, you bring your own life jacket. It's crazy that we're, we're not as an industry doing a better job and that people aren't doing a better job, getting these simple devices that cost 30 or$40 and putting them in their homes.

Justin Bogard:

I mean, they're the life saving devices and, um, you just it's mind blowing. There's not enough attention around that. Yeah, you're right. That's interesting. So as someone that stays in an Airbnb or someone that is a landlord owns a rental property, so what, what are the, like the two most common things that you see that nobody everyone's just oblivious to? It seems like that. So carbon is carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is one and smoke alarm awareness is another one. Okay. Um, you, you, Justin and Elizabeth, probably both in a position where you've burn some popcorn and you burned some food in your house and the smoke detector goes off. What do you, what is the normal reaction to that? When that happens, I want to rip the thing out of the wall thing out of the wall, take the battery out of it, pull it down, stick it in the closet, I'll deal with it later.

Justin Ford:

And then they forget about it. And that happens all the time and Airbnbs and, and vrbos and any of these other type of short term rentals, the runner goes in, they burn something, they pull the smoke detector down in there. They toss it off to the side. And what a lot of people don't know is that, um, a couple of years ago, UL underwriter laboratories, they looked at this problem and they realized that the federal government's aware of it. Um, the FEMA, any U S um, consumer product safety council, all these groups, federal groups have said, wait a minute, we got a serious problem with this. And so UL has put new standards out that we're actually supposed to go into effect this March, but a lot of the manufacturers have behind that now has come out with a new type of smoke detectors. The biggest change in smoke detectors since 1977, that these type of new detectors will not go off, um, for burnt food. And there's YouTube videos that show that maybe you can link to one of them that people can look at afterwards, but there's information out there. Uh, kitty is the first one that has one on the market. They, they marketed under the name, true sense. And when you go into home Depot or Lowe's, or some of these other stores right now, you'll notice, but there's a tremendous amount of smoke detectors on sale. And it's, cause they're kind of clearing the supplies out to prepare for the fact that there's this whole new wave of smoke detector types that are coming out onto the market over the next year. Wow. Thanks for sharing that. That's awesome. I've never heard of that before, but that would, that would be a game changer for me because I'm the expert at burning popcorn or anything in the stays in too long. Yeah, no, absolutely. And if you're someone who uses like ADT or a professional alarm monitoring system, and you took typically, you know, go to home Depot to buy a new smoke detector, um, your professional alarm company also has access to these new types of detectors. In fact, the professional versions are on the market in a great, a much greater quantity now. So you would definitely want to talk to your alarm company about that and have your house updated. Wow. That's great information, great information for me because I'm getting ready to move into a different house pretty soon. So make sure we got that stuff in there.

Elizabeth Maora:

And go ahead, Justin.

Justin Ford:

I was just going to say that the second part of that I know the first part was long, but the second part is the age of smoke detectors. Um, 73% of smoke detectors still work after 10 years. And that's why everybody recommends that smoke detectors are replaced. After 10 years, I go into houses all the time and the smoke detectors are off white. There are, some of them are yellow. They look like a, a smoker smoked under it. They don't sell off white smoke detectors. And when you think about the chemicals in the air that have changed the plastic to that color, imagine what it's done to the chemicals on the inside, that okay, are used to detect whether it's ionization or photo electric, um, type of detectors. So, um, real important to make sure that you put a huge emphasis and focus on smoke detectors in today's homes, especially if you have a home that's been built in the last 20 years and you've got, you know, Ikea type furniture, inexpensive furniture, um, that's mostly wood construction. You've got seconds, seconds from when a smoke detector goes off to get out of a house. So a that's how critically important they are.

Elizabeth Maora:

One of the things too, when, um, so I took Justin's class in Vegas in 2018. And one of the things that you told us, which was fantastic was to incentivize your cleaners to find safety issues. And so my cleaners, they get$20 for, so I'm looking up because of smoke detectors. We had guests that had put, they were having a party, they told me they were going to have a party, but, um, they put saran wrap over all of the smoke detectors because they did a fog machine. Also. They did not tell me that by the way. Um, but so my cleaners love it and they just send me a picture and I send them$20. No question asked for any type of a safety issue.

Justin Ford:

Yeah, that's, that's really awesome. And, uh, you know, the same goes for the, again, going back to the carbon monoxide detectors, it's important for people to know those are only good for five to seven years. Um, they're much more sensitive and so you want to replace those. Um, they've got some great new ones out on the market now that actually detect both carbon monoxide and explosive gas. It's like natural gas or liquified propane, propane type gas. And so it's great that you've kinda got a Bumble there where you're able to monitor. Yeah. The gas leak could lead to a fire as well. So, um, having, having those in good shape is important too awesome. Absolutely.

Elizabeth Maora:

And one of the things that Justin, so he does a lot of, for those of you that are on LinkedIn, Justin does a lot of great information on LinkedIn as well. And another thing that I learned from him and just, if you want to talk about it are the actual location that fire extinguishers are supposed to be in the property.

Justin Ford:

Oh, so this is a big one. Um, 2017, I believe. So about three years ago, there was a fire at the Tamarack resort up in Idaho. And this was at a short term rental. It had been changed and management and the homeowner who purchased the home, I decided to put it on the rental market. And the previous owner had taken a gas fireplace, insert out of the, the fireplace and replaced it with a wood burning fireplace insert. And he thought he'd be helpful. And he disconnected the gas line before the gas company guy came to install it. The gas company guy figured well, the homeowner already took care of that. So he didn't do anything. And then, um, they put the wood insert in, renters showed up. There was no information on how to use it. And they use the gas key, turn the key on and filled the living room with gas. And then of course, when they lit the fire, the fireplace exploded. It covered everybody in the rental living room with rubble. And one of the five people was able to crawl out. He could not find a fire extinguisher anywhere, looked everywhere for it. And a neighbor came over and the two of them actually took bowls of water and were dumping water on the fire to try and save the other four people. And unfortunately, that just wasn't enough. Um, what's key about that. And the fact that there wasn't a fire extinguisher in that property, it was proven obviously that had there been one that would have suppressed fire enough that maybe they could have rescued those four people, but it highlighted the lawsuits and interesting thing to read. I've read it. It's it was actually just settled here a couple of months ago. And one of the things they highlighted was international building code international building code nine Oh six. It's been adopted by all 50 States, all the outlying islands, the Virgin islands, Puerto Rico, all that stuff. It specifically States that fire extinguishers need to be mounted in homes in the brackets in which they came. And that's a huge problem for anybody, whether they own a short term rental or they own an apartment just in the house, you're about to move into, you got to put those fire extinguishers properly mounted on the wall and a bracket. So you know where it is when you need it. Yeah. And too many times we see people stick them under the sink and then all the chemicals get in the way they tip over. When you need that quickly, you don't want to be fumbling around looking for it. You want it mounted on the wall, according to international building code requirements. Yeah. I don't recall. I've ever had one in the house before

Elizabeth Maora:

At all.

Justin Bogard:

I think in one house I had one in the pantry. I definitely haven't had one mounts on the wall, but that's, that's something that I should definitely make sure I do. I'm writing all this stuff now. Okay.

Elizabeth Maora:

I know I'm even taking some extra notes. Yeah.

Justin Ford:

Yeah. People think they look ugly and there's some cool new products that are coming out. Um, I'm seeing a lot now of these fire extinguisher balls. They're actually like a lightweight plastic ball that you can Mount that don't look necessarily as obtrusive as a fire extinguisher. And you can actually, if you're, you're good at throwing your arms in good shape, you can toss the ball on the fire and it will put it out. Um, and they actually have not a lot of people know, but you can put in a suppression system over your stove and your own house. Um, there are products that are out there that are relatively inexpensive, 70% of all fires in a, in a home start in the kitchen and are related to cooking unattended cooking. So I'm having extinguishing devices that are relatively inexpensive installed in your home can certainly help too. Awesome.

Elizabeth Maora:

And Justin, you went to work for breezeway, which is very well known in the vacation rental space. So can you tell us about that and what you've been able to do at Breezeway?

Justin Ford:

Yeah, it's really exciting when I'm, I got just to step back a little bit further there. I had an accident at one of the short term rentals when I owned my vacation rental company in the Northeast. And that that's what opened my eyes as it was a serious accident. That's involved the hammock and it's left somebody with a disability for the rest of their life. And, um, it really was something that was an eye opener and it made me look around and realize that nobody else not even in the U S nobody really in the world was taking a look at safety as it applied to rental properties and even not a lot core focus on livability safety. And so I developed, um, and took a look at the problem and the real problem that's out there. And this goes for any type of home short term rental or not in the United States, the 25 million plus homes, we can inspect them and who would inspect them. And well, the people who would inspect them, we're firefighters. We don't want firefighters doing inspections and our local governments don't have the money to do that, or the time or the resources. So Dwelling in the United States is occupied as a four unit or less. It's typically on their own to do safety. And so, um, having developed these programs, I built safety checklist and came up with a process which allowed people to basically do their own self inspections with an app. And, uh, as I developed that, um, breezeway and I'm their CEO, Jeremy gall kind of saw that what was going to happen and what's happening now, you know, CNN just had a post the other day that said, um, safety is the sexiest word in travel. And we were ahead of that, um, from a business point of view, that was fantastic that we were, but it's true, sexy and travel are now the same thing. And, uh, at least in our industry. And so breezeway is a home Mmm. Basically maintenance software. It's a software that's designed to help you manage and clean and inspect your, your professionally owned property or manage property. Um, you're just somebody who rents out a house on Airbnb. And so we've built all of my inspection checklists and all the things that we should look for into the breezeway software. And so someone can just use that app and it guides them through their home, what to look for, what to fix. And as they take pictures using their smartphone or smart device, um, it comes back to us to review and well, that's not as perfect as an in person inspection. It's the solution that addresses the big gap that we have, um, in this country. And that is that we just can't get out and do it. So having somebody at least do their own self inspection, that's reviewed remotely is a whole lot better than nothing. That's awesome. So how do people get ahold of that? So short termrental safety.com, and vacationrentalsafety.com. All of those link back to our site at breezeway or breezeway as a software company. So it has that funny ending of.io on the end. So breezeway.io as well. That's why I like the reference. You can just use the links of short term rental safety or vacation rental safety, and those link you over there at$69. I'll even though I have a promo code that I give up, sometimes from my friends, um, BESAFE will save you 15%. So it's like 50 bucks for the year, and we'll give you the checklist and, um, be there to support you to do the inspection of your home. And as I said, and Elizabeth pointed out to, um, you don't have to have a short term rental. This, this safety inspection is good for anybody if they want to make sure that their home, um, it's kind of in a position where the only reason you're going to trip and fall and get hurt is if you don't tie your shoelaces, if you're playing baseball in the house or something, they're already playing baseball in the house. That's right. Does that give you some sort of certification after you pass all the checks? Exactly. And, um, we've been working with some insurance companies, proper insurance is one of the bigger ones we work with. They, they mainly focus on, um, short term rental safety. They're actually giving discounts on premiums to their owners who pass our safety certification, which saves some of them, uh, you know, two, three,$400 a year on their insurance, which is nice. Oh, wow. Yeah. Small, you can save yourself

Justin Bogard:

Three,$400.

Justin Ford:

Exactly, exactly. And, you know, thinking of those guys, Elizabeth makes me think of also one of the big things that's overlooked when it comes to safety and homes, not just rentals, um, bunk beds, bunk beds. Oh my goodness. The only people who like bunk beds are kids. I think, um, Justin, have you ever made a bunk bed? Well,

Justin Bogard:

I haven't made one, but I currently have two of them in my house.

Justin Ford:

We've got four kids, you know, in 2007, the federal government said enough with all these accidents on them. And they came up with regulations that railings need to be all the way around the top bunk. The ladder has to be permanently affixed with screws and that there has to be a five inch gap between the top of the mattress and the railing. So kids don't fall out of bed. Oh yeah. By the way, let's not have a ceiling fan in the same room as a bunk bed. And yet everywhere I go, I'm seeing these bunk beds that are all shabby chic and people are building them in. I was just before the pandemic started, I was in a$10,000 a week rental in Montana. That was gorgeous. And they had built in bunk beds in the mattress. It was right over the top of the rail. It's like, what's the real even for, and yeah, the ceiling fan was spinning four inches away from the top of the bunk. So people need to be smart. I personally say, get rid of bunk beds. I hate them. They're not safe. There's been too many accidents. And Elizabeth, I know I could see you nodding. You've made one before. They're a nightmare for cleaners to make.

Elizabeth Maora:

Yes. My cleaners hate him too. So we, we don't do them because of safety, but also we did have them, but yeah. I want my cleaners happy also.

Justin Bogard:

Yeah. Well, Hey Justin, thanks for getting on our Podcast today. You've been a wealth of knowledge with safety. I wish we can continue on for another couple of hours because I have failed every day. Talk to me today. I'm going to go get the safety checklist and I'm going to make sure the next house we get into is a, I'm going to be Certified. Awesome. Yeah.

Elizabeth Maora:

Justin, thank you so much. Thanks for all you do for our industry and for homes for all over the place as well. No matter what industry you're in.

Justin Ford:

Absolutely. And anybody who wants to reach out anytime, like you said, Elizabeth, I'm on LinkedIn or vacation rental safety on Facebook and or breezeway. So happy to help and give anybody advice or answer questions anybody has.

Justin Bogard:

And one more time, what were the two, um, websites? You mentioned that a short bit ago.

Justin Ford:

Yeah. They're just, um, bookmark URLs. You can either do shorttermrentalsafety.com or vacationrentalsafety.com.

Justin Bogard:

Alright. Now you had everybody that was episode 11 with mr. Justin Ford as our interview. And, um, well, he's the, he's obviously the expert at it. So I know I got a lot out of it. I'm sure everyone else to do so, Justin, thanks again for being on our call. I'm Justin Bogard from BrightPath notes. And I'm Elizabeth with Elizabeth Maora. Don't forget to check out the video cast of this. So you can see the picture behind Justin on our BrightPath notes, YouTube channel or Elizabeth Maora's YouTube channel. And this episode is brought to you by integrated health solutions from Indianapolis, Indiana. So check them out. IHS Indy, u m, t heir w eb, the web a ddress i s integrated healthsolutions.com. Until next time. See you guys thank you 2 wealth show is produced by Justin Bogard and super E sponsored by BrightPath notes and Elizabeth Maora. Thanks for listening and watching for our show.