This is one of the areas of the market I know best, because I spent 11 years working in property management here.
Vacation rental
A vacation rental is a business with a building attached. Gross rental income is the figure people quote; what an owner keeps depends on management arrangements, cleaning, maintenance, utilities, insurance, taxes, vacancy and the shape of the season.
I worked across more than 150 vacation rentals here, which helps when it comes to reading a property’s history and testing the assumptions behind any projection you are shown.
Long-term rental
A different proposition, with different income patterns, use restrictions, expenses, management responsibilities and owner-use considerations. It is not automatically steadier, cheaper to maintain, or lower-returning than a vacation rental — that depends on the property, the terms, and how it is run. I worked across more than 120 long-term rentals here.
Which approach suits you depends on what you want the property to do, how involved you want to be, whether you intend to use it yourself, and what the records for that specific property actually show.
Second homes
If you want to use the property as well as rent it, that changes the math and it can change which property makes sense. The weeks you most want to be there are often the weeks it would otherwise earn most.
Before you buy an investment here
- Income and expense history for that specific property, across a full year rather than a peak week
- The assumptions behind any projection, and who prepared it
- How rental use may affect insurance and financing — questions for an insurance professional and a lender
- How the purchase fits your wider tax position — a question for your accountant
Past rental performance and any projection are not a guarantee or prediction of future results. Nothing on this site is investment, tax, legal or financial advice.
Send me the property and I will help you work through what the records show.