| Where they are actually listed | The MLS, mostly — but the short-term-rental flag is unreliable, and the good ones move before they are widely marketed |
|---|---|
| What “turnkey” usually means | Furnished. It does not mean licensed, legally rentable, profitable, or that the bookings come with it |
| The one disqualifying check | Whether nightly rental is permitted at that exact parcel — county and association, stricter wins |
| What decides the price | For an investor buyer, the income it can produce. For a second-home buyer, the comps. You are usually bidding against both |
| The number that kills deals | Carrying cost — HOA plus CDD plus reassessed tax plus insurance, which in this corridor runs $1,000–$2,000 a month before the mortgage |
| What rarely transfers | The listing, the reviews and the Superhost status. Those are personal to the host |
Where short-term rentals for sale actually are
Most of them are on the MLS like any other house, which is both good news and a problem. The good news is there is no secret inventory you are being kept out of. The problem is that the MLS field indicating short-term-rental eligibility is entered by the listing agent, is frequently wrong, and is never a substitute for reading the association’s documents.
Beyond the MLS there are three other channels worth knowing about. Owner-direct sales, where someone who has been self-managing decides to exit and tells their property manager before they tell an agent. Portfolio sales, where an owner of several homes sells them as a group. And pre-market inventory — homes a manager knows are coming because the owner has stopped taking bookings past a certain date.
That last one is the genuinely useful channel, and it is the reason working with someone on the operations side of this market matters. A cleaning and management company sees an owner disengaging months before a listing appears.
What “turnkey” does and does not mean
In this market “turnkey” almost always means furnished. It is a statement about the sofas. It is not a statement about whether the property is licensed, whether the association permits nightly rental, whether the existing bookings convey, or whether the operation makes money.
Treat the word as the beginning of a question rather than an answer. Furnished is genuinely valuable to an investor — furnishing a vacation home properly is tens of thousands of dollars and months of lead time — but it is a separate asset with a separate value, and how it is structured in the contract affects whether the appraisal survives.
The furniture question is its own decision with real money attached, and it is worth understanding before you negotiate rather than after.
The five checks, in the order that saves you the most money
1. Can it legally be rented nightly? This is the only check that can end the conversation entirely, so do it first. Two authorities have to agree: the county or city zoning on that parcel, and the association’s recorded declaration. The stricter one governs. A rental history is not evidence — plenty of Florida homes have been rented nightly for years in communities where it was never permitted, and the enforcement risk transfers to you at closing.
2. What does it cost to carry? HOA dues, CDD assessment, property tax reassessed at your purchase price rather than the seller’s, and Florida insurance written for short-term-rental use. In the Disney corridor that stack commonly runs $1,000 to $2,000 a month before you have made a mortgage payment. The listing’s tax figure is almost always the seller’s homesteaded number and is close to fiction for your purposes.
3. What does it actually earn? Ask for real owner statements, not a pro forma and not a manager’s projection. Twelve months of gross revenue, cleaning costs, management fees and platform fees. If the seller will not produce them, that is information.
4. What condition are the expensive things in? Roof and AC, in a climate that eats both. An AC system here typically lasts 10 to 15 years rather than 20. A pool heater, a pool cage, and in older communities a re-pipe. These do not show up in the income statement until the year they do.
5. What happens to the calendar? If there are confirmed reservations, somebody has to decide who honours them and who holds the money guests have already paid. It belongs in the contract, not in the closing week.
How to value one without fooling yourself
There are two valuation lenses and you will usually be bidding against buyers using each. A second-home buyer values the house on comparable sales. An investor values the income stream. When the two diverge sharply, the market usually clears nearer the comps, because financing is underwritten against the appraisal and the appraisal is built from comps.
For the income lens, the figures that matter are not revenue. They are net operating income after the real operating stack, then cap rate, then cash-on-cash after debt service, then the occupancy you would need just to break even. That last number is the honest one: if your break-even occupancy sits above what the market actually achieved last year, the deal needs a lower price or a bigger down payment, not a better forecast.
A useful discipline is to run the property twice — once on the seller’s numbers and once on market numbers with your own operating costs — and see how far apart they are. The gap is usually management fees, cleaning, and a maintenance reserve nobody budgeted.
The things that do not come with the house
You cannot buy the listing. Platform accounts, reviews, ratings and Superhost status are personal to the host and do not transfer with the deed. A buyer taking over a well-reviewed property starts a new listing from zero, with no history and no ranking, in a house that is otherwise identical.
That is a real loss of value and it should be in the price conversation rather than discovered afterwards. It is also the strongest practical argument for taking over the existing bookings where you can — arriving with confirmed stays partially offsets starting from nothing on the platform.
The management relationship does not transfer automatically either. If the property is professionally managed and you want to keep that manager, that is a conversation to have during the inspection period, not after.
Red flags worth walking away from
A seller who will not produce twelve months of owner statements. A community where the association is actively moving to restrict leasing — read the minutes, not just the declaration. A property whose rental history predates a rule change that has since made it non-conforming. A CDD assessment that has been rising sharply while the listing quotes a builder-era figure.
And the most common one: a pro forma built on a nightly rate the property has never actually achieved, multiplied by an occupancy nobody in that market achieves, minus operating costs that omit management, cleaning and reserves. That is not a projection. It is a brochure.
General information, not investment advice. Rental eligibility, association rules, tax rates and insurance costs are specific to each parcel and change — verify all of them for any property before you rely on them.