Success with a travel trailer as a STR?

[Ryan Shelton]

Greetings all!

My wife and I have been trying to get into the STR game so we can afford to have a vacation destination that would hopefully be paid for by renters. We live in California and all desirable STR destinations within a few hours of us would cost 500-600k+ that would accommodate our family. We live close to an area in the mountains where there was a big fire a few summers ago and now people are just selling their empty lots for reasonable prices, 200k+. According to the listings most of these properties have utilities in place already. It's about 10 miles from a beautiful lake and about 20 miles from a ski resort. And elevation high enough to escape the heat in the summer. Has anyone had success just putting a large travel trailer on some land and renting it out? It seems more cost friendly for us and I'm thinking we could avoid any major fire insurance fees by not having a permanent structure on the land. Thanks for any feedback!