All Forum Posts by: Courtney Barnes

 It's completely unrealistic. How do I know? This is what I did, when interest rates were a little cheaper and prices hadn't quite maxed out yet 🤣🤣🤣

I own a 4/3 3k SF house right in 4 Corners (near Cagan's Crossing). It is a beautiful house, and I'm on a small lake and it's a pretty easy drive to Disney and a little harder to Universal. Since about April of last year rental rates and occupancy has been in the literal toilet. Last summer was about 50% occupancy, this summer is shaping up to be a total bust. There is a ridiculous amount of saturation and a "race to the bottom" in rates. I use the home about 2 months in the winter and a few 10-14 day stays during the year. Outside of my principal & interest costs, here are my monthly expenses:

Electric: averages $300

Water: averages $50 (including irrigation water for lawn)

Management (includes weekly pool care, trash cans out & in, pest control): $280

HOA: $52

Property taxes: $400

Insurance: $325

Lawn care (weekly): $100

Florida STR license: $15

Niceties (internet, tv services for guests): $100, and this is generous as I include some stuff I pay for from my own house that would cost more if I didn't. 

All of that comes out to $1622. That is outside of any repairs & maintenance. I do a lot of repairs and maintenance myself when I come down in the winter and during the quarters I make the trip, but here's just a sample of things I had to pay for in the last year:

Pool screening: $985 (big hailstorm destroyed 13 screens)

Irrigation repair: $394

Irrigation repair #2: $230

Palm trimming (twice: $200

Pool light replacement: $950

And all of that of course leaves out routine replacement of towels that get left at theme parks, sheets and pillowcases, busted blenders, and a host of other things I can't even think of right now. 

Now, I don't need this thing to make a profit - it's a luxury for me, and we enjoy staying in the winter and having a place that family can all gather - but if I did I would be losing my ***. There have only been a few months that it's ever made enough to "earn its keep" and never done so in the course of a full year. We rent in the summer at $199/night which puts us high and keeps bookings down, but I've learned renting out to the cheapos just ruins your house faster and you end up replacing more things, and your bills are higher so you're still not making any money and your house is getting ruined faster. The fact that it loses money is somewhat mitigated by my tax savings at year's end (I have RE professional status).

You just have to keep in mind that although there's a lot of tourists to the area a lot of them are cheap bastards that gravitate towards the lowest fares out there, and there's so much supply especially in the last 2+ years that it's a serious race to the bottom as you're competing with people who bought at $150-200k 10-15 years ago, never fix up their place and don't care if they rent for $99/night. If you want to make money in this area, you either need to be in the very bottom or at the top, meaning 6+ bedroom places on resorts that are tricked out with theming, etc. If you're in the space I'm in, you are competing with 50k Tom Dick and Harry's. 

Just an honest reply from someone who once thought like you 🤣

If you search the previous threads you will see Orlando is quite saturated at the moment.  It would be difficult to break even with the saturation and high interest rates even with it being on the market 100% of the time.  There are other markets in FL where this may be possible.