Hey everyone I am Ryan from Tyler, Tx I am a real Estate Photographer as-well as a freelance photographer in the custom automotive world, but being around real estate and listening to BP podcast has really lite a fire for me and my wife to want to invest in the Short Term rentals. our plan is to use our equity from our home now to pick up a Vacation rental in the smokies, we are in Texas so I really looked at Broken Bow, Ok originally but that market has sky rocketed in price way out of our budget. once we get the vacation home producing a income, we plan to do some fixing up to our townhome to turn it into a medium term rental for nurse and collage students since we are a 10/15 min drive from both here locally. for some of you veteran investors does this sound like a proper way of going about getting our foot in the door of our investing? 

We enjoy figuring out what our guests need and providing it.We are just finishing up a 6 week vacation in the Southwest & California.

Hey @Don Konipol, we only do STR, but for mid term stays, you can't really expect people to bring a full household of furniture etc when they are traveling workers.Frankly, I would leave our vacation rental as is except for the various consumables.

Hey Soloman, Agent here in Charleston, South Carolina and it might be worth checking out the high-end vacation rental market here.

Galveston is a fantastic place to own STR if you are looking to rent to the vacation crowd (and maybe even use it yourself!?)

Give me 30 days notice and then vacate?

Besides location, I am convinced that the amenities that you provide in your vacation rental can change the demographic / audience of guests drastically. 

@Colin HassellWe choose vacation markets, and then pick the areas that we like to personally vacation at ourselves to take advantage of function stacking.

I have a little cash to invest and was looking to buy a SFR in one of the oft-mentioned cash flow cities... Indy, KC, Cleveland, etc... but I keep getting lured to places like Phoenix as it's always nice to have an ex...

If the building has underground heated parking, a pool, a kick-a__s workout room, and other luxury amenities it might make sense, otherwise, I doubt it would be worth getting into that building.