All Forum Posts by: Collin Hays

I would go to the city and ask for zoning for each neighborhood. You want to find neighborhoods that are classified as mixed use.  Residential, multi-family, b&b, light commercial.  

Other than the obvious things, how responsive are they to homeowners? Can you get the owner of the company on the phone if there is a concern?  How much repairs/maintenance are they able to do in-house without calling out expensive contractors?  How much are they relying on "virtual assistants" to handle guest matters?  Can they provide you a list of homeowner client references that you can call?

This is a 3000 square foot cabin.  You can see, the actual nights rented are far less. 

 It just rents more days, period. Rented 299 days in 2024. That's typical.

I have watched, with interest, the rental activity of each cabin in our portfolio since 2019.  We have a number of properties that have remained pretty consistent in rental income throughout that time.  I will profile one of those today.  It's called Bare Hugs, and you can find it on our website if you want to have a look at it.  Bare Hugs was purchased in 2018 for $270,000. It is only 900 square feet - a one bedroom + loft, in Blackbear Falls Resort, and has a wonderful view.  Repairs and maintenance are probably $3,000 per year - not a lot of moving parts to this cabin.  

Here is the rental revenue, by year, for Bare Hugs:

2019  $31,712

2020  $39,028

2021  $46.322

2022  $51,412

2023  $53.364

2024  $50,817

The consistency of this small cabin is astounding. We have several others that are similar. Meanwhile, the giant cabins have seen some significant declines in the last 3 years. Perhaps a good ROI strategy in the Smokies is, keep things simple. You don't need a 3,000 square foot cabin to make money. Bare Hugs is a money machine, and looks to stay that way.

I was going through some of my old blog entries and found this one from 38 months ago. Maybe I should become a coin-operated sooth sayer.  ;)

WARNING: ROUGH TERRAIN AHEAD

As you have pointed out, there was a brief window of market imbalance which allowed some fortunes to be made.  Things went parabolic, and when you asked the experts when it would end, the answer was “never…it’s different this time.”  

When you hear that phrase, it’s time to do something else.  

 Keep it on the OTA. And no one ever reads the rules. ;)