Short term rental 4 hours away, How to manage?

[Ashley Wolfe]

My husband and I are about to purchase a log cabin in the Austin, TX area that has been in my family since it was built in 2005.  We are four hours away in the DFW area.  We have two options as I see it (since I want to keep this in the family).  

1) Find a long-term tenant or 

2) fix it up a bit more and do the short term tenant thing that is exploding right now.  

The cabin has great features for both. 2/2 (no garage) on a man made lake, private HOA community, on a bus route for the local schools.

I have no idea about any type of property management company in the area.  Its pretty rural with the closest city of ~5,000 being 15 minutes away.  

My hunch is to start it as a long-term rental.  Then, after either my husband or I goes part time with our W2 jobs, begin the short term rental conversion.  If we are to manage a short term rental ourselves, we'll be driving down there nearly every week to prep it for the next set of guests if the calendar is completely full.  Right?  That's something we can't do with full time jobs and a young kiddo.

Thanks in advance for weighing in and telling me your opinions!

Ashley

[John Underwood]

VRBO and Airbnb make it pretty easy to manage calendars and accept payments. The key in my opnion is a great dependable support staff, namely your cleaning service. Get these in place and it is easy to remote manage.