By Judy Dutton
• less than 3 min read
He turned the Yellowstone stampede into a cash cow
You can’t go wrong buying in a tiny town near a hugely popular national park.
Alex Wright/Airbnb (home); Sanghwan Kim/Getty Images (sign).
You can’t go wrong buying in a tiny town near a hugely popular national park.
Alex Wright/Airbnb (home); Sanghwan Kim/Getty Images (sign).
Yellowstone National Park attracts over 4 million tourists per year. Alex Wright at DealForge has turned that seasonal stampede into a winning real estate strategy.
How he got started: Wright bought a duplex in Bozeman, MT, for $420,000. “My mortgage was $1,900 per month, and the other unit rented for about $1,850, so it gave me an affordable way to live in a growing mountain market,” he explains. Wright eventually sold it for $850,000 and funneled $375,000 into a house in Cody, WY. “It was originally my primary residence,” he says. “I now operate it as a short-term rental.”
His market’s pros: Cody is a primary gateway into Yellowstone. “This creates strong demand for short-term rentals,” he says. At least, when the park is open…
The cons: During winter, when most of Yellowstone’s roads close to regular vehicle traffic, Airbnb hosts may struggle to fill rooms. “Another challenge is scale: Cody is a small market with a population of around 10,000,” Wright explains. “That means fewer transactions and opportunities than you’d find in a larger city.”
His advice: During the winter, turn your empty short-term rental into a mid-term rental open to month-long stays. “Travel nurses, contractors, and other professionals often need furnished housing,” Wright points out. “The investors who do best here usually aren’t relying on a single strategy; they buy properties that can adapt if the market changes.”
