Although it appears to be in the process of being gentrified with home prices in that area increasing 72% over the last 5 years. 

Rockaway Beach has made consistent appearances on many top beach STR investment lists due to a balanced price to ROI ratio (and majestic destination) with a historically a low barrier to an STR permit.

Millennials prefer spending on experiences and there is a general shift away from 'things' to living life in a broader way with Instagram selfiesCONCLUSION: Travel and leisure growing at twice the rate of GDP is intact as the longer term trendA counter point to these three favorable points is that short-term (urban) and vacation rentals (destinations) have taken market share away from hotels and this appears to be a permanent trend. 

I also like the idea of  having a "scary man" who appears to be incharge so I can just look like I am a helper, instead of incharge. 

We want your unit to appear like it would if you were owning it and not renting it.  

It is now a very complicated and involved process to appear in the top 10 of any kind of Google search.You could spend tens of thousands of dollars to achieve this goal.

But that appears to be the case.

A year later they contacted me about re-upping on their platform after they said they fixed the problems that were causing the fraudulent bookings (which appears to be true, since I haven't had a fraud one on there since I reopened). 

It gives the appearance but no protection.In Arizona at least, you can't charge for filling out forms if you are not an agent or an attorney.

Here is an article that appeared in the Worcester Chamber Exchange.I've been hammering away at this issue for years on my BiggerPockets blog.