Tips To Help You When You Buy A Vacation Rental House
A vacation rental home can be a great investment for yourself to use and to rent out to other travelers and vacationers. However, it is important you find and keep the right property appropriately to make sure that it is a good investment and that it remains successful by providing you with profitable cash flow. To help you buy and set up a successful vacation rental property, here are some recommended tips.
Look for a Destination Location
One of the first details to consider in buying a vacation rental property is the location of the home you buy. If you want to buy a vacation home, it is essential that you find a home in a location that you and others will want to rent and use.
For example, if you buy a vacation home in a location that is in an urban area not near any attractions or locations that people like to vacation, you might have a hard time keeping the property rented full-time. This can mean you will miss out on receiving income from your rent to cover the property's mortgage.
Look for a property that is in a resort location, next to a popular theme park, or in a destination that sees a lot of tourist activity, for example. If you want to buy a vacation home in your favorite mountain resort, for example, look at the surrounding area and check into nearby hotels to find out if a lot of tourists travel there.
Arrange for Amenities
After you have found a perfect location and purchased a vacation rental home, you will need to make sure it is furnished to provide your tenants with what they need during their stay. Your renters will only be bringing their baggage containing personal items, clothing, and some food with them, so they are going to need furniture, linens, dishes, and WiFi. Your rental house will need to provide your guests with all they would be able to get from a hotel room, plus a kitchen where they can cook and eat and an optional laundry room if the house you purchased has one.
Hire a Property Manager
Next, you should arrange for someone to handle your vacation rental property's management tasks. Unless you live nearby and don't mind doing the day-to-day work of property management, you should look for a professional and reliable property manager to handle the work for you. Keep in mind that a vacation rental home can require much more work than a traditional rental home because you will likely have new vacation tenants each weekend, week, or every couple of weeks.
A property manager will be able to take incoming calls from renters and prospective renters, manage the property's cleaning, deliver and pick up the property keys, and handle any issues that arise while a renter is staying in the house. They will also be able to provide you with an online presence for your rental property, for example, by adding your property onto their vacation rental website. This additionally helps your vacation home by attracting new customers and keeping your property rented as much as possible.
Keep in mind you will need to pay your property manager a management fee to cover their time and effort. The fee to hire a property manager for a traditional long-term rental house is around 10 percent of your monthly rent, but the fee for a property manager to handle your vacation rental house is going to be a bit more because there is more time investment involved. However, because you are providing a furnished vacation home to tourists who would normally stay at a hotel for lodging, you will be able to charge more in rent and the property will be able to cover its own costs more easily than an unfurnished home can.
For more information, contact a company like MacPherson's Property Management.