Short Term Rentals Disney Area

[Dan Pangburn]

Hello. My wife and I are looking to purchase a short-term rental in the Disney area. We currently live in the greater Tampa area, and there seems to be too many local restrictions on STRs making it difficult to maximize profits. We have experience owning and leasing out condos since 2009. One was a condotel in St Pete Beach area, and the other was a condo in NH we leased out for 10 +/- years having gone through a few tenants, renovations, tenant issues ect..the condotel was much easier to manage but management fees were very high.

We are now looking to get back into RE investing and be much more hands on, utilizing Airbnb/VRBO and manage everything ourselves eliminating the need for outside property management. We have time to commit to this pretty much full time.

My question lies in investment strategy, with a modest budget. Essentially, we have 150k in cash and 85k via a HELOC at 4.25%/10yrs interest only. The investor in me wants to leverage the 150k into 2x down payments on 2x 300k STR properties..but it seems almost impossible to get financing on STR properties, and not being a cash buyers could hurt us given current market conditions. So I am left with 235K as a cash buyer.

Any thoughts?