The Affordable Gulf Coast Market Most Investors Overlook with Kelsey Ardoin

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
Welcome to The Short Term Show, the show about short term rentals and long term wealth, with real property owners hosting real properties who are crushing it in the vacation and short term rental space. And here's your host, Avery Carl.

**Avery Carl** (0:28)
Hey, y'all, welcome to another episode of The Short Term Show. Today, we have our Galveston and Crystal Beach, Texas agent, Kelsey Ardoin, to chat with us about what works in that market. We haven't talked about that market that recently on the show, so we wanted to give you guys an update, remind you that it's there.
Typically, a lot of Texans buy in that market, but it's a good market to invest in, even if you're not from Texas. And Kelsey is gonna tell us what's been working for her, what's been working for her clients, and how to be successful in this market. How's it going, Kelsey?

**Kelsey Ardoin** (1:00)
Well, it's going great.

**Avery Carl** (1:02)
Awesome.

**Kelsey Ardoin** (1:02)
So I wanted to talk about how to set up a beach house, because in this market, you're really catering to big groups, and that's where the money is, to cater to big groups. And sometimes people will create a, they'll have a house, and they'll just make it a pretty place to sleep. And if that's all you do, you're making a mistake, because people want to have a good time. Even if the house inside isn't as cute, they will book somewhere that has more fun built into the house.
So I was going to show you what we did with our property.

**Avery Carl** (1:43)
Okay.

**Kelsey Ardoin** (1:44)
Am I able to share my screen?

**Avery Carl** (1:46)
You should be able to. And guys, if you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you'll be able to see the video on our YouTube channel.

**Kelsey Ardoin** (1:56)
Okay. So this was the house that we bought back in 2023
And this is generally what it looked like. It had a lot of like, probably every bed was broken in some way, shape or form. You know, it was like little, cheap shower curtains.

**Avery Carl** (2:12)
Yeah, it looks new, but very bare.

**Kelsey Ardoin** (2:16)
It's like apartment style and quality of furniture and very, yeah, very bare bones.
So we have like the Corel plates and this bar stools and we, and this one chair and we pretty much got rid of everything else. It wasn't like a kitchen item. All right.

**Avery Carl** (2:32)
And for people who are listening, how big is this house?

**Kelsey Ardoin** (2:36)
It's a five to six bedroom house. And on the MLS, it's five bedrooms because you walk through not really a loft area, but you walk through the game room area into the bedroom.
So we use the loft game room area as the bedroom slash game room. So and then here, let me get through the end of the picture so you can see the outside. So they did have bar stools and it did have some tables and chairs, but it didn't have a whole lot else.

**Avery Carl** (3:10)
So you had some bar stools and tables and chairs underneath. So guys, for those of you listening, this is a beach house that's on the piling. So underneath the house, they have a little bar area set up.

**Kelsey Ardoin** (3:21)
Yeah. Let's talk about that for just a second. So the area underneath the house, like the whole footprint of the house on the ground floor, that is basically like a big deck. It's not, but that's a shady space that your guests are going to hang out at, which is why I never sell somebody what I call a squatty beach house. If it's eight feet off the ground, it's not going to be comfortable from a head height standpoint. To hang out there, so I never sell somebody a squatty beach house. All of this area, it's hot in Texas. It's hot 10 out of 12 months of the year. Honestly, that's one of the reasons why it does so well, is because people want to get out of Houston, go somewhere fun and you're near the water.
It's breezier and then there's this whole shady area under the house to go hang out at. It does stay significantly cooler underneath. Let me show you what we did with it.
So this is what it looks like now.

**Avery Carl** (4:36)
Oh wow, hot tub, you got some strand lights.

**Kelsey Ardoin** (4:41)
Yep, we had all kinds of games. So big games that photograph well.
It looks beachy.

**Avery Carl** (4:49)
Like life-size Jenga, is that what that is?