Can You Invest in Short Term Rentals on Maui?
I hear a lot of people saying you can’t invest in short term rentals on Maui. We’ll, that’s not true. You just have to understand what qualifies as an approved property.
According to the county of Maui, a short-term rental is a property that is rented out for a period of less than 180 days.
What about permits for these STRs? Yeah, that’s the factor here. A few years ago, there were some hoops to jump through but technically if your single family home met certain criteria you could apply for a short term rental permit. Well, investors ate those up and those days are pretty much gone. Sure, you could still apply for a B&B permit, but you must live on property, provide breakfast and meet other qualifications, but even those are really hard to get anymore. So, if you’re looking for a straight Transient Vacation Rental license, you can pretty much forget it for single family homes, as the county has all but said it’s not going to be giving out any more.
And if you’re thinking you can get around that by purchasing a house with the permit in place, those are not transferrable on sale.
This is to help with rising home prices on an island that has an average home price of over $1 million and an average job salary of a Starbucks barista.
So does that mean I can’t invest in STRs on Maui? No, it just means you have to play by the rules. Forget single family homes, that’s not going to happen. However, you can still invest in short term rental condos and do pretty well. The key is to know which condo complexes are hotel zoned or have been grandfathered in to allow for short term rentals.
