Traditional or bet on Florida STR?

[Robert S.]

Hello all, new to the group here. I currently have 6 traditional rental units and looking to potentially refinance one of the properties in order to buy another investment outright. I'm debating a traditional rental in my current area or a vacation rental in SW Florida.

I have family in SW Florida (Venice area) and I'll ultimately end up down there (hopefully in a couple years). My main concern is that I know a traditional rental in Philly/NJ will perform but I'm not terribly familiar with the return on a vacation rental in SW Florida; it's more of a risk IMO. I'm looking for real world input and figures from any folks who run vacation rental in SW Florida (anywhere from Tampa area to Naples), though I'm mainly looking at properties from Venice to Sarasota. Standard 3/2 pool home, private yard/pool/lanai in the 250k range. For it to work in my situation, I'd like to see at least 24k/year from the FL property. I have a friend who has a property in Cape Coral that does about 70k/year in vacation rentals but it's much more house than what I'm able to afford so I can't go off of his track record.