Best Short-Term Rental markets

[Tariq A.]

I have some rental property back in Atlanta, and have been wanting to get into short-term rentals through Airbnb for years.  Close family passed and I'm now looking at buying a small house/cabin in Colorado to do STR.  Aside from restrictions, the thing that is surprising me is the low cap rates.  Back when I was looking at Atlanta properties, I was always looking at 8-9% cap rates (2018 era).  I would have figured being short-term that the cap rates would be about double that.  But I spoke with an agent earlier on a property and he gave me the NOI for last year for Airbnb on it.  $32,000 but closed Nov until May.  Assuming I keep it open the whole year and get half the occupancy for Nov until May, that's still 42k, which with a 515k listing price comes out to only about 6%.  Are the cap rates for STR just lower here?  Is there another mountain area with much higher cap rates, even out of state but preferably in the upper western US?

[John Underwood]

32k or even 42k on a half million dollar house doesn't sound all that good.

What's your projected cash flow after all your expenses including a likely higher mortgage payment than the current owners?