Investing at Margaritaville Orlando?

[Nancy Bender]

Has anyone looked into, or have an opinion on, investing in a short term vacation rental at Margaritaville Orlando? They are starting a new phase of townhomes and I am trying to figure out if the returns will be good. Tourism is still not where it has been before covid but I believe in a year or so it will probably bounce back to pre-covid levels.

[Christian Peterson]

I know no one has posted on this thread in some time, but I thought I would revive it with my experience.  We bought two new construction townhome units in Margaritaville back in July 2021 that were completed in January 2023, a 3 bedroom and a 4 bedroom villa right next to each other.  At least with the numbers available at the time, these looked like good investments.  

So far these properties have both been losers for us.  We are at 15% occupancy on the 4 bedroom and 21% occupancy for the 3 bedroom.  This appears to be about average for the whole owner community.  

The problem as far as I can tell is that new construction vastly outpaced rental demand.  So they may have had great occupancy at the resort when it was smaller, now it is a ghost town.  Not to mention that 2023 has been a pretty horrible year for Disney and Florida tourism generally.

We're holding on to these for at least a little while longer to see what happens.  If Margaritaville can return occupancy back to former levels these will be worthwhile investments for us.  I'm willing to give it at least one more year to see if it turns around.  

Otherwise, like others, we will likely have to sell at least one unit.  We will likely keep one as, if nothing else, we are huge Disney fans and it offsets our usual vacation budget by quite a bit.  

As for some of the other things people have mentioned.  We use Rentyl Resorts for our property management, which I think is the way to go as you get to put your unit in the rental pool.  A friend of mine who also owns in the community uses the other property manager and is not happy with them at all.  Owning these has been a completely hands off "investment".  The resort is beautiful and very fun for our family.  As a second home, we have zero complaints in owning these properties.