These are the purchase prices of the homes in the small portfolio of vacation rentals owned by my wife and me.
All purchased with 20% down, mostly funded from the portfolio itself.
They’re all in different places (mostly to diversify risk, but also because that’s slightly more fun).
Progressively, we’ve targeted less expensive places over time (easier to cover your expenses if things go sideways, but also easier to save up for downpayment).
Managing hundreds of properties like this would probably require some staff (or a third party property manager) which might make this uneconomical (or not, not 100% sure). Managing 5-10 is pretty doable with fairly low hours worked (occasionally dealing with stressful things).
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Since a lot of people asked me how does one exactly afford the downpayments for all these homes, I’d thought I’d break down roughly how my wife and I turned 1 house into 6.
There is a bit of a gold rush of people investing in Airbnbs and vacation rentals this year (related to pandemic remote work, interest rates, and perhaps the company’s IPO). I’m not sure if people realize quite how risky the asset class is.
This point was hit home the other day when listening to a podcast where someone with less than a year’s investing experience mentioned they were closing on 5 new Airbnb properties this month. Then i heard a podcast featuring someone with 5 properties and only 30 days experience!
So I thought I’d come up with a bunch of risks regarding investing in Airbnbs and vacation rentals.
The most interesting thing we did during the pandemic was … we bought an Earthship!
An Earthship is an off-the-grid, self-sustaining home brilliantly designed by Michael Reynolds. It’s a house that half-buried in the earth, half greenhouse near Taos, New Mexico. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship….
The electricity source is solar. In the winter, it’s heated by the the south-facing greenhouse. It can be freezing outside, but this room gets very warm.
New year, new project I wanted to share on Twitter!
My wife and I have started investing in vacation rental real estate (ie Airbnbs). First accidentally, then occasionally, now more seriously.
We bootstrapped a small portfolio of homes in Sonoma, Kauai, Taos, Mt. Hood. Started with about $150K in savings and have more than 10x that value in about 6 years. We’ve grown our starting investment around 70% a year after cashflow and appreciation.