One who spent a million dollars on one. Purely as an investment as a vacation rental.

I can understand buying a property, renting it out, and making some income. What I can’t understand is spending that much when interest rates and prices are high and being able to make significant money. My family has owned vacation houses before and while it was enough to pay for itself, after fees and cleaning and all that stuff it really wasn’t a huge money maker. The only real upside was the increase in property value while we owned it bought at a perfect time and sold after the market went crazy. Not to mention the headaches of managing a rental property, it seems like the margins were pretty slim.

I hear them say things like “It only needs to be rented like 18 nights out of the month to pay for itself.” And all I can think is if that counts the off season when these places aren’t being visited nearly as often or when the nightly rate is way lower.

All of the people I know who own such a property were sold it by a real estate agent who was selling an entire neighborhood or street and all of the properties were built to be long term rentals.

I don’t know. I just don’t get it. Seems like the Airbnb fad is sort of dying off. Vacation home rentals are obviously never going away but when I see all these entire neighborhoods popping up that are all vacation rentals I just can’t help but feel like many of them will sit empty as supply outpaces demand. Or their nightly rate will be way lower than they expected when crunching the numbers.

Maybe I’m just jealous and all these people are raking in the money. But I’m very skeptical about all of them and I think buying a vacation rental across the country is about the last thing I would do with a million dollars.