All Forum Posts by: Paul Tschetter

There will always be another deal out there...

One other note/tool/thought is check out VRBO.com. We use this site to market (and help manage using some of their great tools) our vacation rental (with great success so far) but they have some pretty slick tools, information, ect. on operating a vacation rental.

Also, if you are looking at a certain area, you can very easily pull up other vacation rentals on this site (before you buy) you would be competing with and see how full they are (by checking the live availability calendars) to get a sense for the competition and how much these types of places are actually rented.

Just some more ideas.

@Daniel Patrick I just bough and rehabbed my first vacation rental so am not super experienced in the arena but like many of the others have said, it is a hard to provide simple answer to your questions. I think what you are asking can be done but I am guessing it might be pretty hard to do in Hawaii.

Let me share a little bit about my vacation rental deal. It is located in Washington State on a very popular island called Whidbey Island. It is located in one of the PRIME/EXPENSIVE areas (Useless Bay - I know, it is a funny name). It is a waterfront property.

We absolutely stole the cabin; paid $305K when most in the area sell for $900K+. We completely remodeled for just under $90K (very tightly managed remodel...probably would have been $150K to pay a contractor).

We are currently refinancing it and will be able to pull most if not all of our money out of the deal so our loan will be around $400K (don't have the appraisal back yet but we believe it will appraise for over $500K). With taxes, insurance, loan, ect we will need to rent the place out about 100 nights per year to break even which we are confident we can do. Having the place on the vacation rental market now for 5 weeks, we already have 60 nights booked for this year. I also live 5 minutes from the property and am managing it myself.

This deal worked for me and my business partner for these reasons:
1. I live 5 minutes away so I could invest the time to oversee the rehab this pace needed.
2. I live 5 minutes away so I can oversee the management of the asset quite easily and we are not paying the 25%+ that most vacation rental companies charge.
3. We will use the place ourselves and have already used for trade/barter.
4. We were able to pull most of our cash out and still keep a slight positive cash flow going.
5. We believe we bought this property at the bottom of the market, added value with the rehab and think it will be worth more down the road (plus we might be able to add some more cabins to the property as the cabin sits on over 3 acres)!

I really do not know ANYTHING about the vacation rental market in Hawaii. As I mentioned I am new to vacation rentals. Let me know if you have any questions and best of luck!!

PS - I tried to put a before and after picture on here just for fun but could not figure out how to do it.

Lisa - This looks like an older post and nobody replied but it caught my eye as I am from Whidbey Island and actually own both traditional rental properties as well as a vacation rental on Whidbey Island.

Are you still kicking these ideas around or did you decide to do something already?

It is hard to answer your question unless I have more information. For example, how much cash do you have to invest? What sort of return are you looking for? Do you want to manage the asset yourself or hire a management company? Do you own any other real estate?

I would love to provide any insight I can.

@Rian Chung - Welcome to BP. I am also from Washington State and pretty new to BP as well.

Welcome to BP @Will Spruill! I am from Washington State as well and pretty "new" to real estate investing. Keep up the good work.

I started in 2012 and now have 5 traditional SF rentals, 4 vacant lots (as a part of my rental acquisitions) and a waterfront vacation rental on Whidbey Island (kinda random but got a crazy deal and it cash flows).

Hope to meet some of you fellow Washingtonians @ the next meet up.

Thanks for the welcome Brandon and Ned. Brandon please keep me informed about the "BiggerPockets NW meetup" as it would be great to connect with some local BP members.

Good afternoon Forum. I am a long time reader (about a year), first time forum poster and wanna be active participant in this BP community. I bought my first handful of investment properties in 2012 and now that I have some experience under my belt and have a little better idea of the direction I am going, I am thinking I now have something to contribute to the BP community.

Thank you all you active members for the insight, stories, advice and general information that is SOOOO helpful. I look forward to stepping up and being more a part of what is going on in this group. Thank you!

Mr Good -

I know this is an old post but what did you decide to do? I think I read the whole thread and did not see how you ended up handling this situation. I am VERY curious as I own investment properties in WA and have 2 medical marijuana tenants currently. In fact, I believe there is a tremendous opportunity in this niche in MMJ friendly states.

Paul