St. Croix Vacation Airbnb

[Taylor Schlender]

Hello everyone!

My brother and I are planning on buying land in STX, and constructing a multi-shipping container house. Our intent was to transform it into a vacation rental using Airbnb. Not much information was present online about the in-depth process of construction, permitting, construction loans. Not to mention, constructing a container house on STX. For example, does buying the land in cash prior to obtaining a construction loan more appealing to a bank? Is it possible to just get a preapproval for an entire construction loan? 

Additionally, we decided on the multi-container house construction due to the robust and solid nature of containers, making it survive hurricanes and the like. MY family is also familiar with the area as they frequent there for work at the refinery.

We figured this was a solid plan after looking into Airdna and seeing their rates and occupancy. Mind you, I'm going off the data of Christiansted. For a 3bed/2ba house ranges between $265 and $600 on ADR. Occupancy can range between 50% and 95% depending on season and  We assume that given our unique style of a container house, features/amenities like a pool, that our ADR can be on the higher end. I'm looking to see if people familiar with the area and vouch for this line of thinking before further steps are made. Thank you for your help.