The summer is starting to drag on and school is right around the corner. You attend college at The University of Texas at Austin or another college or university and you need a place to rent off campus. You did the dorm thing your freshman year but now you want your own bathroom and some other privacy things . You want your own apartment. A roommate might be ok, but that is a topic for another day.

Well, naturally you start with the web. You visit a lot of sites and you contact them to see what’s available. Maybe you check the school newspaper provided you don’t live across country from your college. You should probably visit a few sites because most of them have different content. If you are looking in a big city, hopefully you can find an address or that the company lists where they are so you can use Google Maps or whatever, because it would su .. I mean stink if you found the perfect place and it was a 30 minute or more drive to get to campus.

Houses for rent, duplex, rooms for rent. You might not find an apartment per se; but you might find other options near your college. People are interested in renting rooms, houses, duplexes. And you might find a great deal that is convenient for you to get to class.

Try searching for apartments near ut austin and you might find some listings that cater to your school or are located nearby.

Look at the lease terms, meaning how long the lease runs for. You will probably need a co-signer; yep, that means mom or dad. What is the rental amount. How many rooms and bathrooms. What other features do you need? Let’s see. Internet service would be good. Laundry facilities or washer dryer hookups. If you don’t have a car, maybe there is a bus route. Maybe is it’s walking distance to campus.

Now with the tools of the internet it is so easy to market your second home as a vacation rental property. There are many great vacation rental websites to advertize rental property on the internet to help increase exposure. In my area it can really make a difference on the amount of income an owner can make compared to working with a full service property management company who will usually take 50 percent of the income.

When looking to buy your second home vacation rental property, you need to be careful and make sure it is allowed in the neighborhood you are looking at. In our area of Park City Utah, there are certain neighborhoods that do not allow short term vacation rentals in their CC&Rs. If you buy in an area that does not allow it then you take the risk that a neighbor may complain and force you to stop. This is very important if you are relying on this extra income to help offset the cost of the home ownership.

One way to help avoid running into this problem is to work with a local real estate agent in the area you are considering who knows the local neighborhoods well. I have found in our area that agents who come in from out of the area to help work with buyers simply do not know as a result some buyers have bought properties that they later found that they could not rent out as a vacation rental.