Real Estate vacation rentals are known as VRs. People will always take vacations, but prefer to stay in the United States. Second, residential properies offer full kitchens, washer/dryer laundry rooms and swimming pools. Vacation rentals not only offer much more space than a hotel, they are much more economical. There’s no need to ever take the family out for an expensive restaurant meal, for example.

Competition. Two of the best places to do this are HomeAway www.homeaway.com and VRBO www.vrbo.com. Look at listings for VRs in your area to get an idea of what they offer and how much they charge.

Take great photos of your property. Make it easy for your prospective renters to visualize themselves in the scene. And be sure to “dress the set” the way professional photographers do, with an arrangement of colorful flowers on the coffee table, or a dining table set up for a family dinner.

List your property. For starters, we recommend HomeAway and VRBO, because they’re the most popular web site and charge approximately $600 a year.

Run your VR like a business. Build a team of reliable cleaning and service people, collect and pay local and state sales tax, get set up to accept credit cards, maintain an online availability calendar, and always respond quickly to inquiries from prospective renters.

Your hospitality business. Think of yourself as a host and your prospective renters as guests.

This is unquestionably a sound strategy for holding on until the real estate market turns. But you may get hooked on the financials. And with prices currently depressed, you might find yourself buying additional properties. You might just be trembling on the cusp of building yourself a mini-real-estate empire.