Make Your Vacation Home Pay For Itself

Karpinski says that in determining how to get a vacation house to pay for itself, the magic number is 17. In a typical real estate market environment, if the monthly mortgage payment -- principal, interest, taxes and insurance -- is less than or equal to a week's worth of peak-season rent, renting for 12 weeks covers the mortgage. Generally speaking, renting for about five more week will offset all other costs.

Another cost to factor in if you're not using a property management service is advertising. The Internet has made advertising a rental home exponentially more affordable. For between $200 and $300 a year, sites such as www.vrbo.com, www.cyberrentals.com and www.homeaway.com create and host a unique homepage for a property, beaming rental information and pictures of the property to a worldwide audience.

Plus, rather than leaving renter screenings to an ambivalent property manager, renting by owner allows you to make a personal connection. "People have been really burned by property managers," Karpinski says. "It's the relationship that happens between the property owner and the renter. When you talk to somebody on the phone, you realize it's their own house, and you're going to take better care of it than if you walked into it and presumed it's owned by this property manager or a big company that owns 500 or 1,000 places."