Buying the "perfect" vacation home - Where to start

[Freyja]

Are there any Orlando villa owners here? Hope someone can help me out.
If I wanted to buy a vacation home in Orlando, how would I go about it? How do I find a respectable reatlor or builder? Where do I find the best info on financing? I really need a bunch of info without leaving my message on a billion websites for someone to contact me

 

[Frothy]

We asked the owner of Florida Leisure about this a year or so ago as we were interested but his advice was not to do it if we were going to be reliant in any way on rental income.

He was absolutely honest with us and we really appreciated it. I remember one thing he said clearly... and that was the vast amount of owners he looked after didn't even come close to breaking even. He said that if owning a home in Florida was the cost of their annual vacation then most of them were happy. He also said that whilst this was the fact 3-5 years ago, it wasn't anymore and even with 30 weeks of rentals, the average owner would be out of pocket around $12-15K per year.

This was about 15 mths ago and real estate prices have dropped since so maybe it's a different situation now but it was enough to put us off. We're so glad we got this advice because we also spoke to two other Realtors and they told us that the home would cover the cost. Neither of these Realtors had any management company experience though and we just felt they wanted a sale.

 

[gqchicago]

Personally I think I'd buy on the resale market right now, why build? Building a home is a pain, done it a few times, and that wasn't when I was remote like you are. Pick the resort, size home, your budget, etc, then ask a realtor to send you listings. I have the name of a great realtor in the area PM me if you need it. They can send you listing information, etc, even suggest a mortgage lender, that sort of thing, then the rest is up to you. Come and visit and do "showings", meaning look at the homes you like?

Get financing arranged first so you're prepared to make an offer?

How serious are you? Do you want it to be an STR rental when you buy it?

Any resorts in mind?

Lots for sale, even turnkey fully furnished rental units ready to go, that's probably the route I would go, then change or upgrade stuff in it you want to, lots easier than starting completely from scratch, let me tell you, that was ROUGH! The market is down, the exchange rates are good, good time to buy if you can afford it and plan on holding it until the market recovers, some day.

A lot of questions for you to think about! How do you plan on running it? Managing it?