Crested Butte Conundrum

[Drew Davis]

First time post, long time lurker.

We purchased our first STR in Crested Butte, CO in November 2019. It was a new construction townhome in Crested Butte South (7-10 minute drive to town), and we paid $550k. We went live on Airbnb in February 2020 - yeah, not great timing. Or so we thought. We crushed it the first year; well, half year due to Gunnison County not even letting us as owners enter the County to visit our own home until almost May 2020. We only did about $2k in rentals from February to mid-March when everything shut down, and ended up doing $57k in total from the last week of May through the end of 2020. We will gross just over $85k this year, and net around $45k.

Crested Butte is currently experiencing the typical (maybe even atypical) inventory issues the rest of the country is facing. As a result, my realtor recently told me we could expect to sell for $820-850k.

The reason I was even asking her about this is the real issue here: our property owners' association (POA) just voted to cap STRs at 90 days/year. Rentals over 30 days are allowed and do not count towards the 90 day limit.

So...what do we do? Try a mix of LTR/STRs to stay below the 90 day limit? Has anyone had success taking this approach (mixing rentals of 30+ days with typical STRs)?

Or...Sell (1031 somewhere else)? Taking the equity (around $380k assuming $850k sales price less transactions costs of 6%) is awfully tempting.

Or...any other ideas?

[Joshua Strickland]

Depends on your goals and strategy. Personally I’d sell and 1031 into something else. That $380k down payment should comfortably be able to get you something grossing well north of  $100k in a good vacation market.