This Is the Best Place to Buy a Vacation Rental

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 25, 10:30AM EDT

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This Is the Best Place to Buy a Vacation Rental — © mnm71 / iStock via Getty Images

Airbnb ushered in the nationwide short-term rental economy. It has allowed millions of people to rent their homes, mostly for a few days. However, the long-term rental market has not gone away. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that a number of these were vacation homes.

Among the data considered for Evolve’s recently released report on rental properties (Best Places to Buy a Vacation Rental in 2022) were places that regularly outperformed the market and those that offered the owners the best return on investment. The report looked specifically at vacation rental performance, median home values from housing research site Zillow and yearly expenses to run a vacation rental per year.
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Louis Olds, senior manager of real estate services at Evolve commented:

Evolve’s 2022 Travel Trends Forecast uncovered that out of more than 5,000 travelers surveyed, the majority are seeking out rural, secluded mountain escapes and waterfront getaways – 60.7 percent and 83.7 percent respectively – over urban experiences.

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The research showed the top 12 places to buy a vacation rental. Three-quarters of them were in mountain regions. The balance of the places were on the water.

The Poconos in Pennsylvania topped the list, as it has for four consecutive years. The area is southwest of New York City and north of Philadelphia. Most likely, its proximity to such large populated areas helps it. New York City residents can get there in about two hours.

These are the 12 best places to own a vacation rental:

The Poconos, Pa.
McGaheysville, Va.
Sevierville, Tenn.
Bryson City, N.C.
Surfside Beach, Texas
Branson, Mo.
Waldport, Ore.
North Conway, N.H.
Ruidoso, N.M.
Windham, N.Y.
Gulf Shores, Ala.
Pinetop – Lakeside, Ariz.

Click here to read about the best place to buy a vacation home.
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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.