Ocean View House in Westport, WA

Here’s a house in Westport, Washington that has great potential as a vacation rental house.  It has a pretty good view out to the ocean and the sunsets, being elevated up a small hill.  A beach access road is available nearby for foot traffic with the beach itself under half a mile away.  The house is a good size with plenty of parking.  Large vacation rentals are relatively scarce along the coast.  The kicker is that the house is bank owned and listed for sale at an attractive price.  There’s the possibility here that the house will pay for itself with rentals and provide your family a free place to vacation.

There’s lots of interest for tourists at Westport:

• First of all are the beaches: wide and sandy, running for 20 miles south of the South Jetty at the mouth of Grays Harbor.
• Westport has the principal marina on the coast, where you can hire charter boats for ocean fishing, bottom fishing, whalewatching, harbor cruises, and ocean-going seabird viewing.
• A three story high, blue observation tower at the north end of town gives views of the marina, harbor, south jetty, and Ocean Shores across the bay, and the Olympic Mountains on a clear day.
• The Westport Maritime Museum is housed in the 1939 Coast Guard Lifeboat Station.  This museum feature three superlative attractions: the museum building itself, two whale skeletons displayed outside, and the surpassingly beautiful Fresnel lens from the Destruction Island lighthouse.
• At the south end of town stands the Grays Harbor Lighthouse – tallest in Washington state and built in the 1890s.
• Pacific Grey whales migrate between Mexico’s Baja bay and the Bering and Chukchi seas off of Alaska.  They pass by Grays Harbor in the northbound direction in the spring from March to May, which is when whalewatching tour boats are available.
• Westhaven State Park directly west of Westport is the top surfing destination in Washington state.  Its beach is lined by crumbling sand cliffs and tucked just under the South Jetty.
• If you are quick enough and like to get dirty, you can dig rich, meaty razor clamson dates designated by the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
  

  The ocean beach at Westport

I toured this house recently and snapped over 100 photos.  The house has a little deferred maintenance on the outside that can be taken care of cheaply.  That’s understandable given the time that the house must have stood empty.  The roof is sound and built for the winter storms.  Inside the house is in tip top condition with new carpeting.  You may eventually want to replace the lovely orange formica counter tops in the kitchen, but otherwise I had no complaints about the interior.

Any single family residence in Westport can be a vacation rental (see section 17.22.030 of the Westport Municipal Code).  Owners have to fill a Vacation Home Rental Permit Application, designate a property manager within 50 miles, and notify all the neighbors with the manager’s contact information.

I own a vacation rental one hour to the north at Pacific Beach (Bob’s Pacific Beach House).  I would advise setting up this Westport house for rentals as follows:

• We had only 3 weeks to outfit our beach house.  We bought the bulk of our furniture from Phyl’s Furniture in Aberdeen.  The prices and quality were good.  Given the quantity we were buying, they discounted heavily and delivered for free.  We gathered lamps, housewares, end tables, bookshelves, and other small household items at IKEA in Renton.
• If you have more time to set up your vacation rental, then I would recommend collecting furniture off of Craigslist, where you can find furniture for 10% to 25% the cost of new.
• Many vacation rental owners skimp on the beds and furniture, which makes no sense to me.  You want the house to accommodate up to 3 families comfortably, who are then able to split the cost of the rental.  Buy king size beds for all of the bedrooms.  Add a trundle bed in the master to fit in some extra kids.  Add some futons, sofa beds, and/or folding floor mats to the downstairs family room, where a bunch of kids might gather for a slumber party.  Buy the biggest dining room table you can find.  Provide lots of seating in the living room.
• 

  Big kitchen with an ocean view

  The kitchen is extremely important in a vacation rental.  Many families like to gather in the kitchen and cook a big meal.  The kitchen in this house is very large and well laid out with lots of cupboards.  After replacing the unfortunate orange counter tops, there’s room to add an island in the middle.  I’ve had lots of compliments on how well stocked our kitchen at Pacific Beach is.  Firstly, we bought three sets of dishes, so that guests won’t run out too soon.  We bought Corningware from IKEA, which never breaks.  On top of that, we included every kitchen appliance and gadget we could think of or that guests requested.  We added a crock pot and garlic press after guests asked about it.  People appreciate our rice cooker and many pots and pans.  We had pots disappearing until I thought to buy inexpensive plastic containers for people to take extra food home.

• The most important place to advertise your Westport vacation rental is VRBO.com.  Pay up for a premium ad with the most photos and try to grab the top spot in your community.  NwCoast.com and BeachCombersNW.com are coastal themed sites that drive a lot of traffic to my website.  Next I would look for a Westport themed site – probably WestportWA.com.

The listing broker, Mollye Thrasher of Twin County Realty, pointed out to me that this house qualifies for Fannie Mae HomePath financing with just 10% down on a second home.

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