Retreat on the Ranch: Vacation Rental Tips for Owners

Creating a vacation rental on your property can invite new opportunities for sustainable homestead income.

By Dan Smith
Updated on October 23, 2022
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by Dan Smith

Increase your homestead’s income by learning how to make money on a vacation rental property. Try these vacation rental tips for owners of rural properties.

As a longtime Mother Earth News reader and homesteading enthusiast, I’ve always enjoyed the articles on homesteading and sustainability. When my wife, Ellen, and I retired from our respective corporate careers, that enthusiasm turned into more than just a passing interest. Since the onset of COVID-19, inflation has continued to rise, sometimes drastically, in every sector, from food and health care to lumber and automobiles. For those of us on a fixed retirement income, maintaining a reasonable monthly budget can be a challenge. Fortunately, there’s also been a rise in new technology-driven revenue opportunities for the entrepreneurial property owner. Many homesteaders capitalize on those opportunities through vacation rentals and agritourism.

How to Make Money on a Vacation Rental Property

Inside Mountain Ranch Retreat. A shot of the living space, which

Our homestead vacation rental experience started in 2017. Both Ellen and I have always had a strong entrepreneurial spirit, so it was a no-brainer when retirement afforded us the time and the economy provided the motivation to begin planning our new business. We’d recently sold our suburban home and purchased a small 7-acre farm in a rural area among the northern Georgia mountains. The new property connected to our existing 30 acres, where we have a small weekend cabin we’d purchased out of foreclosure and renovated ourselves a few years prior. The farm consisted of our primary home with a horse barn about 100 yards away and a 5-acre fenced pasture. The barn had a three-stall horse stable with a small kitchen and bath on the ground floor. The 1,200-square-foot loft was finished off as a one-bedroom apartment, which was nice but basic in construction and décor.

Having grown up on a small horse farm myself, it seemed only logical to start with a horse-boarding business to bring in some immediate working capital. And thus, Mountain Ranch Stables was born. We placed a few inexpensive online ads on equestrian websites, and soon, we had three horses boarded in our pasture, along with a small monthly income. The next step was a full renovation of the barn loft apartment, which we aptly named Mountain Ranch Retreat.

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