[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: City Radio welcome back to Peachtree City Radio. I have, I have one thing to say about today's episode and it's going to benefit if you are a homeowner in Fayette county, you are definitely going to want to listen to this episode because you could potentially make some money, pay off part of your mortgage just by doing one thing in particular for a week or two in the summertime of 2026. So let me, I have one thing to say this, this phrase here, you may or may not be familiar with the Augusta Rule.
The Augusta Rule. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and explain it. If you, if for those of you who aren't familiar, the Masters from the PGA Tour, the, the golf pro golf goes to Augusta every year for the Masters and it is a huge 90 year tradition within professional golf.
It's one of the most prestigious tournaments of the year for, for professional golf. But the cool thing is about, for the homeowners and the residents there, they can rent out their personal residence for the time that the, the tournament's going on, the Masters are going on and it can, and the income can be tax free.
And often these folks are covering like a whole year's worth of mortgage.
And this is in Augusta. So what if I told you and this is the part you're going to want to pay attention to if you own a home in Fayette County.
This is coming to Fayette County. The, the, the Masters Housing Bureau is what they call it up there where they connect renters with homeowners that want to rent their house out.
That's coming to Fayette County. It's here already. The website will be up soon.
I'm not going to get into it too, too much. I'm going to let my guests today talk about that.
But what an opportunity. And the reason being is what we got here is the, the Arthur Blank U.S. soccer Training Facility. As most of you know, if you're listening to this and you didn't know about that, this is probably the first piece of media you've listened to in quite a while from the Atlanta area.
It's coming, it's almost built, it's almost finished. What a huge opportunity that is in general for that to be in our backyard. If you haven't been up the Veterans Parkway, take a drive by. I don't know if you can actually go in there right now, but it's, there's something being built there for sure. You can tell it's a huge facility. So on top of that, the World Cup Parts of tournament, part of the World cup tournament will be in Atlanta in summer of 2026.
So we're taking the Augusta rule and putting it into bringing it to Fayette County.
And who leading that charge is the mayor of Tyrone, Georgia, Eric Dial. He's also the executive director of the Fayette Forward, which is it's a nonprofit organization that is just was designed and created to bring together collaboration between the, the municipalities with withinside Fayette County.
Mayor Dial has a ton of experience with nonprofit organizations. He's bringing that experience to help us here in Fayette county through Fayette Forward.
It's, it's an amazing thing. I'm not going to, if I start talking about I'm going to make a mistake. So let's, let's get into the show.
We're going to talk about the soccer housing bureau that's coming to Fayette County. It's modeled after the Master's Housing bureau, which is that whole thing is where that where the Augusta rule came from. So look for a tax break, you can make a little extra money, pay for a vacation, pay off some of your mortgage. Get that like that project done around the house that you've been, you've been wanting to get done but just didn't want to spend the money on it.
What a great opportunity for us here as homeowners in Fayette County.
So let's, let's get into it. I'm just going to. Before I just keep rambling on. Let's get into it now before I do. If you are, listen, if you don't live in Faye county and you're like, wow, this is awesome, I gotta get, I gotta move to Fay County. I can help you with that. So it's my little shameless plug. Here. I am, real estate agent, realtor here in Fayette county, living in Peachtree City, Real estate services. I'll have the link in the show notes. I'd be happy to talk to you about buying or selling in Fayette County. And that's enough of that. No more advertisement, no more shameless plugs. Let's get into the show with Mayor Eric Dial of Tyrone, Georgia, and also the executive director of Fayette Ford. And we're going to talk about the great opportunity that's coming to Fayette county homeowners.
Mayor Dial, thank you so much. Welcome, welcome to the show. How are you today?
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Good. Good, thank you.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: I appreciate your time here today.
And you know, we're here to talk about the soccer housing bureau, which is great news for local homeowners. In Fayette County.
But you're also the executive director of Fayette Forward, in addition to being the mayor of Tyrone, Georgia. Tell us about Fayette Forward a little bit. What's what. What is Fayette Forward all about?
[00:05:16] Speaker A: My pleasure. So Fayette Forward began earlier this this year, and in the fall of 24, the Fayette County Development Authority took about 50 leaders from Fayette county to Bentonville, Arkansas. If you haven't been to Bentonville, Arkansas, I highly recommend it. And it's. The northwest Arkansas region is home of Walmart, J.B. hunt Trucking and Tyson Foods.
And back in the 70s or 80s, Sam Walton, J.B. hunt and John Tyson got together and they said, listen, the three counties in this area, we're all competing and, and we're undercutting one another. We're not attracting what we need. Let's work together to identify what our, our mutual needs are.
And we, we can maybe get those, get those things that we need by working together.
And they did. So they formed their own organization, the Northwest Arkansas Council.
And they now have an airport, an interstate, which they didn't have before, and they now have 400 miles of mountain biking paths and trails. And so those were things that they did by working together.
So we came back from northwest Arkansas and in our debriefing and using word clouds, we said, what, what one word would you use for northwest Arkansas that Fayette county needs?
By far, that word was collaboration.
And so we said, well, we need an organization that's going to force us to work together or come alongside of us to work together.
And so our version of the Northwest Arkansas Council is Fayette Forward. We are a 501c3, a nonprofit organization.
And I just happen to have had about 30 years of experience in the nonprofit consulting community.
And as mayor of Tyrone, which is a separate gig, I know a lot of people in Fayette county and it's been my pleasure to be executive director of Fayette Ford and I work with the entire county in promoting the projects and, and ideas that benefit us all.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Excellent. Yeah, I know some, some people they've heard of foward. I'm not sure everybody knows exactly where it came from, so it's great to get that little background on it. Now real quick, I know this is about the soccer housing Bureau, which is awesome. I can't wait to get talking about that. But I don't want to glaze over this. We just had a conversation before we hit record here about the mixed youth paths. Is that, what are the plans for that? Are we going to have a system countywide.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yes. So big project of the organization of Fayette Forward and this comes from, you know, people ask me well, what are Fayette Forward's priorities as far as countywide paths go? My response is well, local governments. My priorities are whatever yours are because I'm just here to help you to facilitate, to do whatever I can, you know, to, to assist in that regard.
We have about 130 miles of paths in, in Fayette county, most of which are in Peachtree City. But we also have an additional 20 to 30 miles that are not in Peachtree City.
So our goal is to, is to achieve connectivity of all of those paths. If you live in Peachtree City and you want to go to Trilith or you want to go to the bus barn in Fayetteville or you want to go to downtown Tyrone for, for some type of an event, you can go to all of those places. We want to include schools, employment centers, retail centers and, and make sure that we have multi use paths for not just pedestrians, biking e biking and golf carts. We have 15,000 golf carts in Fayette County. W.
Why not, why not get them on paths to go to different places in the county?
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Excellent. It's great. I'm a, I'm a runner and I'm a part of the Petrie City Running Club and that's just great news for me.
The more paths are on the better. So. Great.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thanks. We could, like I said, we could talk about this all day. We can make this a whole episode talking about the mixed use path or more affectionately known as the cart paths.
But let's, let's get into the meat of this because this is real exciting news for if you own a home in Fayette County.
The, the soccer Housing Bureau. Tell us all about that. I know it's modeled after the Masters Masters Housing Bureau I think it's called and to do with the Augusta rule and all that stuff. So give us the, give us the, the rundown of what, what we can expect.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Okay. Yes. So, so we as many of you know, probably all of you know we now have the US Soccer Federation Arthur Blank National Training center which is over in, in the county with near Veterans Parkway and huge complex. Fantastic asset to our county.
And some of you may even know that we have the FIFA World Cup 2026 will eight matches will be in at the Mercedes Benz Stadium and that's between June 15th and July 15th of 2026.
And to give you some idea of the economic impact of that, the economic impact to our metro Atlanta region will be the equivalent of five Super Bowls condensed into four weeks.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: That's, that's pretty good news for the area for sure.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: So the.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: So, so there's one. So there's a problem there.
If you've got five Super Bowls coming in four weeks, where's everybody going to stay?
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Good segue.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: And yes.
So what we are doing here is we are taking advantage of a portion of the US Tax code and the state tax code that is called either the Augusta rule or Augusta Exception, Master's exception that says if you can rent out your primary residence for up to 14 nights a year with no income tax implication.
And so we are, we're going, we're starting this soccer housing bureau where we will manage all of that. It will be a. An online platform. That's what we are as an online platform.
We're not a company that does everything for you. We are creating an online platform that allows property owners to go and listen their properties to connect with renters from around the world, whether they are corporate sponsors of the World cup or they are other soccer federations from other countries. Employees of.
We suspect by marketing to the more professional side of the World Cup.
I'm sure we'll have fans, too. But marketing to more of the, the employment side of the World cup, we will have people coming in from all over the world who need a place to stay and can't find a hotel room. And we, we don't have enough hotel rooms in Atlanta. We certainly don't have enough in Fayette county to meet these needs.
So this is a product, if you will, to. To rectify that. Yeah.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: And I think that the good news is if you're thinking, well, I'm not going to rent my house out to a bunch of crazy soccer. For football fans. Soccer fans.
But as we were talking about before we hit record there, we're probably looking more of the teams and the support staff that goes along with the team. So they're going to be pretty busy, not really looking for a party atmosphere.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Right. I mean, if you think about it, if you think about the fans on December 5th is when the first few matches will be announced.
You know, they're, they're going to fans are going to say, where can I stay in Buckhead? Where can I stay in Midtown or near the Battery or whatever the case may be. Give me a hotel. Don't have, don't care what I have to pay for it.
But I want to be there so I can have that immersive experience and party after my team wins.
That's where they're probably going to stay. But how many corporate sponsors are you going to have to the World cup and to the U.S. soccer Federation? How many different countries Football Federation as they would be called.
Those are the type. It could be media that they're just looking some for somewhere to put their heads on a pillow at night. And it could be, let's say Corporation X is going to bring, you know, 20 of their employees or different subcontractors or vendors or whatever and they say we need three houses right in a row and three bed, five bedroom or four bedroom houses and they say we want to rent those houses and that's, that's what we'll call home for that time period.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's such, such great news that it is tax free. Now I have to ask the, the, the regulations around short term rentals and things like that. Investors definitely know if you have, if you own a rental. I'm, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. But for those of us who kind of know a little bit about. We've heard in the news that Airbnbs have been, you know, local municipalities have kind of tampered down that. Yeah. To keep it under wraps. So where, where are we? How do we get around that?
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Okay, Tyrone, Fayetteville and Peachtree City have all taken steps to allow for our product if you will, the soccer Housing Bureau to operate during those two months June 1st to July 31st.
And you can this. Their short term rental ordinances don't apply during that time period for this purpose.
And there are some small variations of that depending on which city you're in.
The Fayette county unincorporated.
They are not participating as of yet.
They have, have just taken, taken a pass. So but we have the, we think we'll have the inventory we need coming from Peachtree City, Fayetteville and Tyrone.
So if you live in one of those, those cities then you can participate.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Excellent. Yeah. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna take it upon myself outside of your, outside of you. You have no pardon this. Say that out loud. I'm gonna put a link into the, the Fayette county government link. If, if you are living the unincorporated Fayette county and you want to participate, I would suggest going to your contacting the, the Fay county government and I'll put a link in, in there to kind of get, get you started with that for all the listeners out there. So that's, that's not, I want to make sure we're clear that Mayor Dial does not have to not influence that in any way. Yes.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: I have friends over there, so make sure you tell them.
And Mayor Dallas said he loves you, by the way.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Perfect.
Definitely. So how, so what.
How do we, how do we do this? Like, it's, we have a house.
Let me ask you this, because this is a question that I've been thinking of. Like, I have a finished basement that could be, could be rented out as a, like a, some people call it an in law suite or a, an additional suite on the house. Could someone just rent that part of their house and not their full house? I know because sometimes, like, I don't want anybody sleeping in my bed. Like that would be, you know.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Right, right. You might, you may. And if you may want to build a, a door going to your downstairs to have that sense of separation be the, maybe the smartest thing to do. But yes, you, you can, you can rent out half of your house or a portion of your house, too.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Excellent. Yeah, I know that that would come up. It's in just. With me. It would come up for sure. That's a. That would be a question I would have. So thanks for answering it there. But so how. So say I'm, I'm, I, I got my basement. I got. I'm going on vacation. Or I'm, I'm. Now I'm planning on taking vacation because of this opportunity.
What do I do? What are the steps? How do I go about doing that?
[00:18:40] Speaker A: So we will have our website up very soon, I would say.
I don't know what date this, this podcast is going to run, but we're recording it on the 19th. I expect that our website will be up within the week and that will be soccer. Housing Bureau.com in the meantime or even after we have ours up, I encourage you to go to the Master's Housing Bureau website, which is mastershousing.com and because we're modeling ours after theirs and theirs will, they will answer a lot of questions that you may have about how to have your home prepared for this and what allowances there are.
So both of those be good resources to answer questions about this.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Excellent.
Yeah. And I'll put both of those links in the, in the show notes as well. So if you're driving right now, you don't, you don't have to remember it.
What if we have, if we have questions, who is. Will there be a contact person on the, on the website?
[00:19:48] Speaker A: I assume I can be contacted at Eric, that's E R I
[email protected].
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Excellent. And.
Yeah. Because I'm sure that this, this episode will. Might raise more questions than answer them.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Because it's a. Yeah, it's, it's not really too, too complicated. And we definitely recommend people going to the master housing.
Master's housing website and I'll put the link in the show notes so that we. I'm not sure if it's exactly the wording of that, but it's your, the, the, the soccer housing bureau website will be modeled after the master's Housing bureau. Is that, is that correct?
[00:20:34] Speaker A: That's right.
That's right. There'll be very few differences. Okay.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And there. It's a, It's a great resource.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Yes. And I think they charge their, their homeowners. I think they charge them 8% and we're not going to charge that that much.
Our. It.
Our percentage will probably be in the five to six range. There's still a, A credit card fee, processing fee.
You mentioned earlier that there's no tax. That's only the income tax. We still have to pay the hotel motel tax. We have to pay the sales tax.
And, and then There's a modest $5 a night state accommodations tax or fee.
I'm not sure where that came from, but you get a bunch of lawmakers together and they're going to find a way to charge fee.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: What can we call another tax?
Well, that's because, I mean, I think people expect that there's going to be some, some fees involved. I mean, that, you know, for web. Just to have a website up is. There's costs involved with that. So.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: And just to reiterate you all, you're not managing the rentals or the communication. You're just, you're just the, the, the vehicle with which homeowners can connect with renters.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: And then.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yes, we've been. The term online platform is critical in understanding our role in this. We have a legal agreement with a renter. We have a legal agreement with a homeowner, and the communication and the execution of that rental occurs between the homeowner and the renter.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Perfect.
Yeah. Excellent. Well, Adam, is. Is there anything that we missed? I know there's a lot to it. I think it's.
I just want to reiterate what, what a great opportunity. I'm super excited about this for the area.
Sure, sure. Yeah.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: We're looking for, we're looking for as much inventory as possible right now.
That's our big thing.
If you are, you know, if you're in a situation where you might want to do this. Maybe your husband or wife has been saying, you know, you haven't taken Italy yet. And maybe this is a perfect, maybe this is a perfect time to do that. And you say, we'll let the, the World cup pay for a trip to Italy. Or maybe they've been saying you haven't, you know, resurfaced our, our back deck. Well, maybe this is a perfect opportunity to do that and to recoup those costs that cost through, through the, the World cup and soccer housing Bureau. And so, you know, when we get it ready, go on there and, and check it out and get your house listed. And maybe you just bought a house that's a perfect candidate for, for this and doesn't matter if it's a two bedroom or a six bedroom.
We're looking for all kinds.
And so just we, we encourage you to, to list your homes on there.
There's a $30 application fee, nothing huge.
And, and then we, we try to break those, those service fees down as fairly and as minimal as possible to, to make this of benefit to the county residents.
And that's our real desire is to cover our costs but still be a benefit to the county.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think there's, there's going to be plenty of demand where that's whatever minimal fees that, that you all are charging that they'll be more than covered for. You bake it into what you're charging for the, for the rental, right?
[00:24:28] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Excellent. Well, Mayor, thank you so much for your time today. I'm really looking forward to seeing this come about. We're going to be keeping an eye out for the, for the website to be up.
Like I say, in the meantime, just go check out the Masters Housing Bureau for.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Because it will be very similar except without the golf logos. There might be soccer.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. And bring me back, Bring me back in the future and we'll talk about the county white passes.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Perfect.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's some exciting, exciting things to talk about.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Excellent. Yeah, that is, that is a good idea. We'll definitely get that on the schedule soon, so thank you so much. All right, thanks everybody, for listening.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Take care. TJ.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us today.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: On Peachtree City Radio.
