Short Term Rental In Fort Myers Beach, FL

[Rob Lawrence]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $1,150,000
Cash invested: $275,000

My wife and I purchased a single-family house with a pool on the weekly rental zone in Fort Myers Beach, which we intend to use as an Airbnb. We anticipate that it should make $2,500 to $5,000 a week in revenue, maybe grossing somewhere between $125,000 and $175,000 per year. It should, at the minimum, break even but it's possible we could cash flow $50,000 a year. The property is really close to the beach and you just have to walk across the street so that's great. You can see the ocean from the front porch. The pool deck, they did an awesome job making the whole thing like this big giant marble tile and we just put in a cabana.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

My wife and I love going to Florida, especially in the winter months, because it's just so dang cold here up in Pennsylvania. We have invested in a place in Clearwater Beach, which is a monthly rental. We took a trip to Fort Myers Beach about a year ago and thought it looked like a good opportunity where we could get a house for a decent price in a rental zone that was weekly. It was really important for us to get a weekly rental because we've done the monthly and we know how tough that can be.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

We traveled down to Fort Myers and looked at a bunch of houses with a realtor that I actually found on Bigger Pockets through their agent referral program. It's kinda funny because I actually am also a Bigger Pockets agent and I used the service myself when I was looking outside the location. Chad Roby is who I used and he did a great job.

We toured the houses when we were down there with one of his teammates. This one was up for 1.4 million. About a month after we went down I saw the price dro

How did you finance this deal?

I used an 80% interest-only DSCR, which is interest-only for the first 10 years and then turns into a third year. For the down payment I used the proceeds from my last flip.

How did you add value to the deal?

House definitely needed some touch ups and accommodations added so we probably put about 10-15,000 into getting it fixed up. The main value add is just turning it into a short-term rental. The people before were just kind of using it as their own house. I think that the value could increase substantially if we're able to show some really great income.

What was the outcome?

We are still working on getting the property up on the market but I'm hopeful that will be up this week.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

One of the lessons I learned is that other real estate agents can be a great resource and also that you should give yourself some time to get the Airbnb up and anticipate that in your budget. Also even if a place looks turnkey, it's probably not so be prepared to spend some money getting it right.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

I worked with Chad Robey as an agent and Mike at No Limit Lending. Both of them did a really great job.