Airbnb’s in Portland

[Neal Collins]

The Portland market has been very good to us and has provided a nice landscape to try out different real estate strategies and niches. One of these strategies was short term rentals. They provided killer cash flow and it wasn’t very difficult to oversee the system since we lived close and could be the backup if something needed attention.

Since then our business has grown substantially but evolved more towards acquiring, repositioning, and managing multi family properties—a mixture of Owner Operator and for outside clients. We scaled down the short term rentals simply because while not hard, that model seems to be more of a distraction now. We have kept a couple of them that are in dynamite east side locations, and we should be excited about going into full on tourist season, but we aren’t. With several companies and a handful of employees our time and focus simply isn’t there.

We have been discussing discontinuing the short term rentals. We haven’t pulled the trigger yet simply because the income that these generate can be so good. The other option is to not throw the baby out with the bath water and rent the units to others that want to continue the short term rental strategy.

I’m curious to know if anyone thinks that master leasing our remaining units would be attractive to someone either wanting to start their real estate career or expand their current short term rental operations. They are turnkey units with great reviews, in stellar locations, and each has legal permits.