This whole summer/fall, the big push has been to get the property dried in before the snow fell, because if we didn’t, we’d be trying to put a roof and solar panels on a steep roof that’s frozen. It would’ve been really dangerous and nearly impossible. I’m happy to report that it’s started to snow, and we’re dried in!!

The roof and the solar panels are on, and the solar battery system is working incredibly well, not bad considering the solar/battery/inverter system was DIY. By doing it ourselves, we got twice as much solar/battery capacity as any salesman told us we needed, and for about half the price of what we would’ve paid had it been installed for us. Also, had we had the system installed for us, it would’ve had half the capacity of our system.

The other huge push was getting all of the heavy machinery, building equipment and building materials to the house before the snow fell because the road to the house isn’t plowed in the winter, it’s groomed. The last really heavy material to get up the hill was the sheetrock, and we got it all up there. It’s all been hung and we’re taping/floating right now.

Now when we want to get material/people to the house, it’s going to get there by snowmobile. We have a utility snowmobile with a 1500 towing capacity, which is going to have to do all the heavy lifting until the snow melts.

After the sheetrock is done, we can get pictures that are good enough to convince people that we will, in fact, be complete by June 1^st, our opening date. That’s a big deal. For years now, money has been going into this project, and always more than expected. Once we can start taking deposits, the money stress starts to subside.

Without pictures of the finished product or any reviews, we won’t be able to get top dollar, so the first people to book are going to get to stay in the house for cheaper than anyone else in the future, that’s just the nature of the business. Then, there’s like a pricing curve that happens. Once guests start staying at the house, you start getting 5 star reviews. Once that happens, Airbnb, VRBO, Google, Booking.com make the property more visible in the search and the property starts booking out. Once the property starts booking out, then you can start to raise prices.

Pricing starts to flatten out once the property gets to like 30, 5 star reviews, then you become an Airbnb “Superhost”, a Vrbo “Premier host”, etc… and unless you add a new feature or do something else dramatic, you figure out how much money the property is going to make year in and year out. It’s taken so long to get to this point, that it feels like we’re never going to get to the finish line.

Building high end vacation rentals in very remote, difficult locations is very challenging. It’s difficult to get permits, it’s difficult to get financing, it’s difficult to build, it’s difficult to fix stuff. However, at the end of the day, it means that you get to charge a premium and it’ll be very difficult for someone else to build something similar and undercut you, because the price of real estate, and building, only goes up. That’s why we do it.