All Forum Posts by: Ai-Lang Ford

We would love to attend, but are not available this Thursday.  Can you please let us know when the next meet up will happen?  We are new investors (if you can even call us that), but would love to chat and network with some like-minded folks in our vicinity.  Thanks!!

Hi Melissa, 

We pulled the trigger on purchasing a condo in Palm Desert back in Sep 2021 - it's at a country club that allows STRs, so we have been doing a combination of STR and seasonal rentals since Nov. We closed in Sep and after we got it ready by the Nov timeframe, it's been doing really well...it's basically been booked from Nov all the way through April. My question is...how dead is AirBnB and seasonal rentals in the summer months? Wondering if we should expect any activity at our place or will it just sit empty along with the thousand other Palm Desert condos out there? We don't rent out our Big Bear Lake home....but may pick your brain if we decide to do that in the future. Thanks.

I'm looking to buy an investment property to use for STR in either Big Bear Lake or Coachella Valley (Palm Desert, La Quinta, Palm Springs, Indio area). Looking for feedback on what makes the most sense. We own vacation homes in Big Bear Lake (Moonridge) and Lake Havasu, but have never been in the STR game as of yet and don't really want anyone staying in our existing vacation homes (cause we have basically moved in with all our stuff and personalized our 2nd homes). We live in Fountain Valley in Orange County. I would love to buy a property in the OC to STR, but prices are just too insane. I was also looking at Joshua Tree or Yucca Valley as prices seem to be more reasonable in those areas (although creeping up) and I have heard the area is up and coming, but I have never been out there before. Do that many people visit Joshua Tree to support a good STRs business? We have never gotten any kind of cashflow from our properties, but I have a real interest/passion for real estate and think I would really enjoy doing this. We may now start looking at a seasonal rental for our Lake Havasu place....rent to snowbirds from Canada/Minnesota, so that may be our first foray into the world of investment properties. Is positive cashflow the main goal? I'm of the mindset that if someone else is paying my mortgage and I break even or say I end up paying some of my own mortgage/HOA during the slow months....that's not the end of the world, right? So we're now looking to buy a property that my husband and I will strictly use for STR purposes....would you recommend Coachella Valley over Big Bear Lake or vice versa and what are the reasons?