All Forum Posts by: Lee Brookman

Thanks, Brandon. The specific area I'm looking into is the McKinney historic district, a quaint downtown square with a great restaurant/retail scene. Not a nationally known tourist destination, but a hot spot for DFW locals to do weekend getaways, weddings, etc. There seems to be a significant number of STRs doing pretty well in the area, and as far as I can tell the city of McKinney has already settled on their method of regulation (collecting hotel occupancy tax), though I guess that's still subject to change. Appreciate the tips on finding more market data. Haven't paid for AirDNA yet, but probably worth it, at least for a month, to dig deeper. 

Thanks so much for all your responses – incredibly helpful! At this point, my goal is to "prove the business case," so to speak, which is why I'm trying to gather as much credible/verifiable data as possible about occupancy rates in the area I'm investigating. I want to be as confident as possible that a well-managed STR in my location will be able to at least break even (covering mortgage/taxes/expenses) and ideally provide a profitable cash flow. As others have suggested, I am pulling up comparable STRs on Airbnb and VRBO and analyzing what they charge, how booked they are, etc. (i.e. the "enemy method"). However, one challenge I'm running into is the inability to look at booking calendars retroactively (i.e. you can't ascertain prior bookings, only future bookings), which makes the research process much harder since the calendar is always changing as new bookings occur. Anyone found a solution to this problem? Or do you have other suggestions on how to "prove" the cash flow potential of an STR in a non-tourist market?

I'm new to real estate investing and considering buying my first STR property. I started by looking at typical vacation destinations (popular beach/mountain towns), but after researching occupancy rates on AirDNA, I was surprised to see that occupancy rates in my hometown area (an ordinary suburb of Dallas) are just as high or higher than those in many major tourist areas. Should I take that data to mean that I could probably do just as well operating an STR here as I could in a vacation hot spot? Am I missing something? Thanks for your thoughts!

@Steve Lee I'm in Allen, TX and currently in the same position you were when you posted 8 months ago. Curious to hear if you've been able to get a project off the ground and how it's going? Right now I"m in the early phases of deciding exactly where to launch an STR (here in Allen, somewhere close to downtown Dallas that's more tourist-friendly, or maybe even some vacation destination way out of town). Any thoughts or advice based on your early experiences (or anyone else's) would be welcome.