First Time STR Investor Looking for any Suggestions/Tips

[Anthony Espinosa]

Hi Everyone! I am looking to start my first STR investment before the end of this year with a partner who has a background in real estate as an agent. We were initially looking to invest $100k (down payment and renovations) in a property in the Catskills between Windham & Hunter ski mountains (2 hour drive from where we live in NYC), but cant seem to make the numbers work with the property we were interested in regarding ADRs and seasonality for the size of investment we were looking to make. We have since been given the idea of buying a property out of state and putting in a larger investment of $150-200k to achieve a higher ADR and occupancy rate in a market with less seasonality. My partner is only an agent in NY state (we were hoping to use his 3% commission towards closing costs in NY), so we would need a good STR specialized realtor wherever we choose. I've been using airroi.com to check out different markets that look attractive and so far have came across Charleston & Nashville. I was also looking at Colorado (Breckenridge & other ski areas), but am running into a similar seasonality issue as the Catskills, albeit less impactful to our ROI & margins. The Nashville market seems a bit oversaturated with STRs and Charleston seems to have a lack of available properties in the main historic district.

Does anyone have any advice on how to go about finding markets out of state / suggestions on target markets? Also once we pick a city how do you determine which neighborhoods might be best within that market? Is that where the STR realtor comes in? The idea of purchasing a property without even visiting it and seeing the surrounding area is a bit intimidating, so it would be great to hear from anyone on this forum about how they went about it and any advice they may have. Especially around finding contractors, property caretakers, maids, handymen, etc.

Thank you so much in advance and I look forward to connecting!