Prescott? Sedona? Flagstaff? - Is it still a good STR market?

[Keetaek Hong]

Hi BP! I could use some help narrowing down the STR market to invest!

How's the Prescott? Sedona? Flagstaff as an STR investment? We are hoping to expand our footprint from Scottsdale to somewhere outside.

1) Cash on cash? Are the houses too appreciated to see a good cash flow? Is the recent small market correction help at all?

2) Seasonality? Are those places suffer from seasonality a lot? 

3) Regulations? What's the city/county ordinances per STR look like? Are they in favor? against?

4) Demographic? I can see Sedona being an international attraction. How do Prescott and Flagstaff do? Do they attract good traffic? 

Any insights would be MUCH appreciated! 

[Collin Hays]

Flagstaff has a lot going for it.  The ski basin, Grand Canyon, and of course, 100,000 cars per day coming through on Interstate 40.  

Whether or not it would be profitable depends on how much that you have to pay for a house, the demand for said house, and the projected rent.

Here is how you can do a quick and dirty check on all of that:

1.  Go to VRBO and try to book a house for February 2023.  Look at the top of the page, and it will tell you how many properties in Flagstaff that there are to rent.  That's a pretty good indication of your total inventory there.

2.  Now change the reservation to tomorrow night for nights, and see how many properties are available. Compare this to the total inventory.  If there are only a handful of properties available, there's part of your answer.

3.  You then need to investigate, by doing some preliminary bookings (not following through with the transaction), on homes that are comparable to what you are looking for.  Do this for various months.  This will give you a baseline of the potential rents.

4.  Go to Zillow and start looking for comparable houses and see what they sell for.  Then compare that to rents from your previous step.  Now you have your answer.

But but but...just make sure it isn't against ordinance to rent out your new home in Flagstaff.  In a town that small I doubt there's an issue, but you want to check.

Best of luck!