Short Term Rental Property

[Chris Terberg]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Lake Havasu City.

Purchase price: $343,000
Cash invested: $80,000

Purchased single family home in Lake Havasu City to use as a vacation rental in the summer, and a month to month snowbird rental during the winter months.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

I was drawn to Havasu for the potential to operate as a short term vacation rental during the summer with higher nightly rates, and also as a month to month rental during the winter for more consistent income.

What was the outcome?

The rental has been performing great! I've owned it for 2 years and both summers have been booking at nightly rates well above what I expected, and winter has been bringing guests for 1-3 months at a time reducing the turnover and putting the income on autopilot.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

This was my first rental, and not having anyone who had done it before I learned a lot of lessons along the way. From accidentally double booking nights on different apps, having the pool go stagnant for 2 weeks, house cleaners not meeting the expected standard. Luckily most of them have been caught before guests were affected so to date I have 29 5 star reviews and only one 4 star!