This Is the Best City to Own a Vacation Rental Home

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
This Is the Best City to Own a Vacation Rental Home

© Bulgac / iStock via Getty Images

After months of day after day in their homes because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans are back out on the roads and on airplanes. Car traffic over the Fourth of July weekend reached nearly record levels. Air travel has almost entirely recovered. This travel has made vacation homes in some markets very good investments.

Realtor.com’s data group looked at the best places to buy a vacation home that could be offered on travel sites like Airbnb. Luis D. Ortiz, a real estate broker who stars on Netflix’s “World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals,” remarked “There’s a very big opportunity to buy cheap and make a lot of money in return.” He added: “Vacation rentals give you something that hotels can’t give you, and it’s that sense of home.”

Most of the locations that were best for investment in homes that would then be rented out were small. Realtor.com researchers added many were within driving distance of large cities. It examined a universe of the 250 largest rental markets. It then looked a short-term revenue growth for these vacation rentals from May 2019 to May 2021. It skipped 2020 because of the effects of the pandemic on vacation travel.

Realtor.com then looked at the cost to buy vacation rental properties in these markets. It assumed a 20% down payment and a 3% mortgage rate.
[nativounit]
Realtor.com’s top market is Joshua Tree, California. The median listing price of a home is $525,050. Annual revenue generated from vacation rentals rose 113% to an average daily of $268. That means nine days of rentals cover mortgage costs. One reason for the influx of visitors is Joshua Tree National Park. Unfortunately for people who own vacation rental properties there, the park has been plagued by extreme drought. Rental income in the upcoming year may not be as good.

Click here to see the most expensive cities in which to buy a home.
[wallst_email_signup]

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618