Foley, AL STR to MTR in winter?

[Sarah Taylor]

Is it more profitable to turn a STR to a MTR for the winter months in a coastal town? If so what platform do you market it on? Stay with Airbnb/VRBO? Property is a 3/2 SFH 7 miles from the beach and 4 miles from OWA.

[John Underwood]

Look into Furnished Finders.

[Andrew Steffens]

Like John said above, look into FF and also list on Zillow.  We keep our properties on both year round but push them a little more during the slower months. 

[Ashish Acharya]

@Sarah Taylor From a tax perspective, you would lose the STR tax benefit if you expect paper losses from the property.

[Terry Ouimet]

I prefer platforms like Airbnb and VRBO  that we normally use during the busy months. Just change your settings and discounts to attract MTR or LTR crowds,  personally, I would be careful Of furnished finders. We just had an incident… a guest tried to steal money from the host , my mother in law -long story but lied stole cheated while staying and furnished finders will do very little to back you up, they’re like a hands off broker essentially, just do your due diligence and have good contracts in place, and research / background check really well if you use FFinders.

[Courtney Roberts]

Hey @Sarah Taylor I own a STR in south Foley as well! We looked into both. We made around the same monthly when we rented for 3 months in the winter than we did when we kept it as a STR. But with the midterm I did not have to worry about turnovers, scheduling the cleans, and stocking the home. We choose to rent it by the month again this winter to snowbirds! I used to manage my own properties full time and never had much luck with FF or VRBO in this area, so I just stick to Airbnb. I do have a friend that has larger homes with 5+ bedrooms and she does well on VRBO and only uses that platform. For snowbirds we get requests from Airbnb but if you are not seeing many month long type of requests try FB marketplace. When someone wants to book you can have them book direct or through the platform you use!