Buying Land in Maine for Cabin Vacation Rental

[Gregory Mizzi]

Hello everyone,

I am currently looking at buying land in Maine (near Bangor) to use not only as a personal vacation spot (to get out of NYC for once), but also as a vacation rental for when I build on the land. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with buying land, building an off-grid (or even on-grid) cabin and renting it out as a vacation spot on AirBnB and/or Vrbo, using a property manager to manage the space, etc. My wife and I have been wanting to rent a cabin for a while now and they always seem booked, even listings that are only a safari tent and a hammock are booked months in advanced, so it seems like a good idea. However, I naturally want as much information as possible when it comes to these things.

What are some things I need to consider? Ideally, this would be a place to disconnect from the world. A digital or tech detox spot if you will. Enjoy the outdoors, live rustically for a while, hunt/fish/hike/bike, etc. What do I need to know to give this a good chance of succeeding? What would be some things to include as a vacation rental? A couple of canoe's for the lake? Some mountain/dirt bicycles? Transportation from the airport? Or am I overthinking? At the very least, this would be for our personal use, but we would like to turn it into a cash flowing property when we are not using it (which would be most of the time I would imagine).

Thanks