Best income strategy for ski resort tow home

[Catherine Lacey]

Hi! I'm under contract to purchase a home in a ski resort town. The place needs a ton of updating but is quite large (7 bedrooms/5 baths) and I see incredible potential. It has a separate 1-bedroom  apartment attached, as well. My goal is to fully update and rent out the apartment as a ski/summer vacation rental, as well as use this portion for my family occasionally. I'm less sure how to manage the house, which itself has been turned into two separate units. The current owners rent each room on an annual basis...and wow do they need maintenance/updating. The other option is to list those rooms as vacation rentals (shared kitchen / private bathrooms). There's a strong rental market up there for both.

I have a full time job and live hours from this area so I can't manage it myself. Vacation rental income could be much greater but maybe  not so much if I have to pay a rental management company their 40-50%. Plus, I won't yet have the cash to update the larger house so not sure how many vacationers want a dated place. I'm thinking that sticking to annual leases is best until updated as they'd alone at least cover mortgage. Other ideas or suggestions?

Happy to provide more details. Thanks for any help

[Shelby Pracht]

I respectfully disagree, @Andrew Johnson. I can't speak for Fort Collins exactly, but our vacation rental in Mammoth has consistently had 87-92% occupancy. Using Airbnb we make about triple what we would make with a long term lease, and that's still factoring in all the expenses that go along with vacation rentals. I've noticed here that vacationers will still rent places that are out of date, but that's normally in a lower price range. For a 7 bedroom place you might have people looking for a higher end property (Or maybe not...you might be able to price it appropriately and have a couple of families that want to come up without spending a fortune.) An annual or seasonal lease would keep you from having to worry about the property for awhile, but if you decide to throw it up on something like Airbnb or Homeaway, you can use your vacant days to start working on little projects too. Get a room painted or put in new carpet when you have it empty for a few days. Just make sure you are pricing it appropriately for what people are getting.