Is this small Oklahoma town a rising marketing for NEW STR investors?

[Garrett Brown]

I was recently tasked with finding an unheard-of market that could potentially attract brand-new STR investors. Surprisingly, this small town in Oklahoma had a lot of data that says yes.

Is it near major feeder cities? Yes, 2 within 1-2 hours and 2 more within 4-6.

Is it near state and regional attractions? Yes, 3+ actually.

Are the median home prices actually reasonable? Yes, around $135,000. 

Are the occupancy rates, ADR, and occupancy growth trending positively? $225 ADR, 55% Occupancy, 11% occupancy rate growth (according to AirDNA).

What about appreciation rates? They are around 4%, which is higher than some major cities.

Could you do mid- or long-term rent well if everything fails? Very easily. Goodyear and a national army base are located nearby.

Which city is it? Lawton, Oklahoma. https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/lawton-oklahoma-is-the-be...

I used data from The Market Finder https://www.biggerpockets.com/markets and AirDNA.co

I found out Lawton is one of the Market Finder's picks hottest 25 LTR also.

Here are a few caveats before people tell me how wrong I am.

1) I probably have a location bias, as I am primarily in Texas and the Southeast markets. I'm sure tons of small towns could make for great potential markets.  If you have some hot tips on new markets I should check out in other areas, I'm all ears, and my list of things to report about for BiggerPockets STRs is never-ending.

2) This is for NEW investors. If you are seasoned or have a lot of capital, there are much bigger players you can look at. Most new investors don't know if they will like the rigors of taking on a STR and dropping $200,000 for a down payment. My approach was for places that appear to have great potential for STRs, but the investor could always turn it into any type of rental they wanted and have success.

3) I could only pick one. Do you know how many markets could have actually been here? My fingers are cramped from crunching market data that was almost comparable to Lawton's.

[Andrew Steffens]

Markets like this would make me nervous.  Maybe if I had a lot of geographically dispersed properties I could take a flyer on one, however I have seen a lot of towns show up on AirDNA list and then disappear.