Short Term Ski Town Rental

[Justin R.]

Does anyone have experience renting out cabins in the west coast? I am looking into possibly purchasing a Cabin in either Lake Tahoe, Mammoth, or Big bear. I am thinking about purchasing one as a "second home" which should secure me a good interest rate. The cabin would be utilized by my family several times (6-10) a year, but not enough for me to justify the costs.

I have contemplated on using a property management company to do short term rentals to offset the costs. If I purchased a 500k cabin with 20 percent down, would I possibly "break even" after all net operations costs are accounted? If someone has experience in this field please let me know.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Justin R

[John Underwood]

Justin,

Look at Homeaway and Airbnb for similar properties, then see what their rates are and see how full their calendars are.

This should give you an idea of how much they are bringing in annually.

If you put it this in a spreadsheet and make a column for each property it should be easy to do the math.

Then you'll need to deduct for Mortgage payments, cleaning, utilities, upkeep, advertising and Property Management.

You can pretty quickly see what the numbers shake out to be.

You could also play with the numbers like different mortgage payments, PM or doing this yourself, different rent levels etc.

You may be happy with a 50% or 75%  offset on your overall costs since you primarily want a second home/vacation place for your family.