New to real estate investing and super excited!

[Rodney Thompson]

My wife and I have always had an entrepreneur spirit. She read an article on Mr. Money Mustache about becoming financially independent as an Airbnb host. That led us to another article about vacation home rental is a service business rather than a passive income business, which led to another article on BiggerPockets about real estate investing, and here we are, a pro member. We are super excited and ready to find our first deal! We are being cautious and making sure the numbers work for cash flow and reading everything we can get our hands on - PLUS - listening to BP podcasts!

[Caroline C.]

There are a bunch of ways to achieve financial independence over the long term via real estate. You should definitely weigh vacation rental vs other methods. 

We recently added 3 AirBNB vacation rentals in Costa Rica to our investment portfolio, and my advice is to consider:

1 - all potential expenses (it is higher than you might think for AirBNB, depending on location, upscale or not, outside management, etc), especially start-up furnishing expenses

2 - high and low seasons because occupancy may not be consistent throughout the year.  For example, high season is Costa Rica is great, but there are definitely a few slow months during the course of the year with less occupancy. 

3 - competition can be fierce as some markets are saturated with rentals, and reviews are important to getting bookings and it takes time to build reviews

You are definitely in the right place for learning more - good luck!