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My wife and I are looking for a family get away to use during the October - April time frame and buying something at Topsail Beach seems like a no brainer since it's a place we both enjoy, and visit often. I have family within 30 minutes of the island as well. There seem to be some real deals there and rates are too low to pass up for much longer.
We are looking at likely purchasing an older beach front place, 3 - bedrooms, probably 2 bathrooms, likely in the 1100 - 1300 square foot range. You know the type, the basic one story box on stilts with a great front porch. The types of places that are pretty simplistic, not extravagant, and tend to rent for no more then $2200 - $2400 per week during peak season. I've identified a few properties and all are with rental agents, so they provide the rent roll and I was surprised to see that all of the listings were booked pretty solid for not only the summer but also booked pretty well in May and September, which I wasn't anticipating. Honestly, all we'd want is to have it booked for the summer when we would use it less.
I'm wondering for those that may own a similar property, what the bookings look like on your house for the past three years or so, and how many people who rent are repeat renters versus first time bookings? One of the homes I really like didn't have many repeat bookers but they only gave me two years for comparison.
We have a second row home in Topsail Beach so we aren't a direct comparison. We did better than we thought on rentals, certainly not enough to cover the mortgage but enough to defray expenses like tax, insurance and improvements/maintenance. We're retiring there in a few months to we met our goals.
This will be our third year renting it. I haven't seen any repeats renters in that time. There seems to be more difficulty renting the places that don't have four bedrooms over the past couple of years. Due to being on septic four bedrooms are the maximum number of bedrooms allowed on Topsail Beach. Beach front places do better but you'll also have more wear and tear due to the ocean breezes and salt air, along with the higher insurance from being in velocity zones. Also be aware of any CAMA restrictions that might prevent you from rebuilding.
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