1st VR Investment, more ROI on Mountain Cabin or Beach Condo?

[Brett Shoemaker]

As the title states, my wife and I are new VR investors looking for the best ROI and cash flow situations with a consistent occupancy percentage (something greater than 65%). Initially, we've leaned more towards mountain cabin rentals in the Gatlinburg/Sevierville/Pigeon Forge area as we've visited that area quite often and some research has shown us that on average most properties listed a minimum of 200 days have an occupancy percentage of roughly 61%, but we haven't ruled out purchasing beach condo either. We've done less research on the beach condo route and I am looking for other investors caught in a similar predicament.

Our ultimate goal is to comfortable pay the mortgage while gaining a decent annual profit towards the next down payment on another vacation rental.  Should our focus remain strictly in the mountain cabin VR just starting out?  I've heard the beach condo route can be a larger risk with less occupancy percentage, but a potentially larger annual gain?  Any advice is greatly appreciated!  

[Avery Carl]

Hey Brett!  I have 5 vacation rentals in the PF/Gatlinburg area.  We manage them ourselves, and are consistently hitting a 3% monthly gross return on all of them.  Before we purchased our 3rd we looked into a beach condo in the Destin/Panama City area, but were quickly turned off because there were a lot of hangups with the condos that we didn't want to deal with, and there are also a lot more fees and taxes needed to pay to the city per booking that we just found it not to be as worth it (at this time) than the mountain cabins.  I have my real estate license and we are out in the Smokies all the time (will be this weekend), and we have worked for quite a few investors on acquiring high-rental potential properties out there quite a bit.  Let me know if you need any help!