Short Term Rental bookings in Dallas

[Jorge Maldonado]

Curious what other investors in DFW are seeing right now with short-term rental performance — are bookings holding steady for you?

[Bruce Lynn]

I expect the results are mixed for the most part. More of a hobby than a business for most owners. The peak was probably 2020/2021 during the Covid shutdown and travel nursing boom. Since then many people have gotten out of the business or converted to MTR or LTR or sold out when the bookings bottomed out. Seems like around 2024 there were a lot of gurus pitching this, but they almost would never give addresses, but just showed some pictures and talked about how they were making $5000-$6000 a month. Often I would find the address on my own based on the info and pictures they provided and would look at the AirBnB booking calendar. That's not perfect research as it is a snapshot in time, but most of the time their booking calendars looked like ghost towns. Unless most bookings happen same day, they were dreaming about $5000 a month or their data was a year or two old. There were a few properties I would see and track where the STR was about the same as LTR gross rent. So when you calculate the costs they were making a lot less than if they would just have set it up for LTR. Obviously there are exceptions and probably depends on your network and how hard you market and pay attention to the property. I think the people who are making decent money work at it. Nothing passive about it. Certainly not a set it and forget it and watch the profits roll in.
Of course there will probably be about a 30-60 day pop this Summer with world cup matches, but that probably won't last long enough to justify a purchase, just for that short time period.

With that being said, I did see one pop up this last week that looks interesting to me in DFW area.  Mainly because the price is very low and looks like it is set up to accommodate families with kids coming to sporting events and concerts.

One thing I always suggest is find a property you think looks ripe in the area you want to buy.  Then go to AirBnB and look at the booking calendar and study the rates and bookings.  Then calculate your gross rents off of that.  Just throwing out a number that costs might be 40% of that number since you're paying for utilities, internet, booking fees, and such.  See if that hits your target return.

Good luck and best wishes.