Owning on the BI, living on the Mainland

[twinfallspuddle]

We originally thought of purchasing land and building a house while off island but realized it was difficult to build when you are around (anywhere) and going to be even harder thousands of miles away. we ended up purchasing a house that had been used as a vacation rental (it was fully furnished too). We keep it as a vacation rental using hawaiian paradise vacation rentals as our agents and visit three months a year. we make sure that our agents "block out" our time there and generally give them wide dates 6 to 12 months out and narrow them down as we get our air tix.

While it may not seem like the greatest idea, vacation renting helps to keep the house cleaned regularly (at the guests' expense) looked at regularly and aired out regularly. we aren't happy when things are moved, palmed or broken, but we accept it. I recently did the numbers for 2008 ball-park as follows:

$21,000 gross income (not including the transient accom and general excise taxes that the guests pay and we pass through)
Minus:
$7000 for our agents (steep, I know)
$2000 electric
$1300 dish tv
$900 telephone and DSL
$2500 gardening
$1000 maintanence and repairs
$3000 prop taxes
$300 hoa dues
$3000 liability, hurricane, etc. insurance
$1000 water

there are probably a few other expenses I'm forgetting (like the $20,000 cost to upgrade our cesspool to an aerobic system!) but you can see that the costs are more than the income (but at least they are close) While I wouldn't need some of the items (electric, water, insurance, gardening etc. would be less but still cost something), it allows me to keep the difficult to initiate DSL for instance and the property taxes, hoa dues would all still be the same.