In March of 2025, my family purchased a cabin in McCall, Idaho, for $590,000. The goal was not to become millionaires. The goal was simpler and probably more relatable: my in-laws come to McCall every other month and needed a comfortable place to land while they visit their grandchildren (and us), and we needed a way to offset the real cost of owning a secondary home. So the property had to do two jobs — function as a real second home for the family and earn enough through short-term rentals to cover costs.

Eleven months and $110,002 later, I’d list this property today at $829,000.

That’s a $128,998 spread between our all-in cost basis ($700,002) and current market value. Most of it didn’t come from the McCall market doing us favors. It came from buying the right property at the right price, knowing where to spend on the renovation, and doing about 70% of the work ourselves.

Here is what that actually looked like.

Two of these numbers usually surprise people.

The first is furniture and setup at almost $37K. That feels high, considering we bought it “turn-key,” until you’ve run a short-term rental. Guest reviews are the entire engine of repeat bookings, and a half-furnished, poorly designed cabin gets exactly the reviews you’d expect. We bought well once instead of cheaply twice, and I’d do it again.

The second is windows and doors at nearly $14K. Some of that was aesthetic. Most of it was simply bringing the home to standards we would expect as short-term rental guests.

The rest of the spend was where we made our money back. Construction we couldn’t do ourselves — the bathroom remodel, drywall and lighting, exterior painting, the gas line, electrical — totaled about $35K. Everything else, we did over weekends and evenings for the better part of a year. Plus, my in-laws thoroughly enjoyed the place and took the opportunity to stay for a while.

The part that the spreadsheet does not show

Sweat equity is the line item that doesn’t appear in our renovation file. It’s the framing, the demo, the trim work, the interior painting, the installs, the staging, the dump runs, the troubleshooting. We did roughly 70% of the renovation work ourselves.

I’ll be straight with you about what that means in practice. It means weekends in McCall that weren’t weekends. It means our marriage ran on a shared task list for almost a year. It means I learned more about cabinet soft-close hinges than I ever wanted to know.

It also means that, conservatively, if we had hired all that labor out, this renovation would have cost us another $30,000 to $50,000. That’s the sweat equity, in dollars. It’s the difference between a project that pencils and a project that doesn’t.

This is the part most McCall vacation rental investment content skips. People love showing the after photos. Almost nobody shows you the spreadsheet.

How the “rent it vs. use it” schedule actually works

The model only works if family use and short-term rental income don’t fight each other. McCall’s high-revenue STR months are roughly July through early October, plus December and parts of February and March for ski and spring break.

So we built the family calendar around that.

My in-laws were at the property for six weeks starting April 1, then came back from late May through the middle of June. They’re not here in July. That’s not an accident. April and the first half of June are shoulder season — lower nightly rates, fewer competing bookings — which is exactly when family use costs us the least. Peak summer stays open for paying guests.

If you’re thinking about a McCall short-term rental you can model your own life against, that scheduling logic is more important than the renovation budget. A vacation home that pays for itself requires that you actually let it earn during the months it earns the most, or at least minimize your owner blocks. But you don’t have to do it this way; we just needed to.

What the rental has done so far

We just listed the property on Airbnb and VRBO this past March. March is a shoulder month in McCall, and listing into a shoulder month with zero reviews is a slow start by design. We did well for the season, but the meaningful test is the summer ahead, and I will write about that when there are actual numbers worth sharing.

The early signal I do care about is this: people who book us in March are the same kind of guests who book us in July. They’re paying attention to the property, not to the price. That tells me the renovation choices we made — the furniture, the kitchen, the photography — are working the way we hoped. I mean, look at July – we’re almost to $6,200, have just 5 reservations with an average daily rate (ADR) of $479.77, and a 42% occupancy. My goal is to get as close to 100% occupancy as possible, which could get us to $15,000. Now we’re talking.

What I would tell someone considering the same playbook

A few things to keep in your head if a vacation home that pays for itself is what you’re trying to build.

This is not passive income. It’s a small hospitality business with an attached renovation project. If that idea sounds heavy, the model is not for you, and that’s a perfectly fine answer.

The numbers have to make sense on the purchase, not on the projections. We bought at $590K because that was the right price for what the property could become, not because of what someone told us it might rent for. Optimistic STR pro formas have ended more vacation-home dreams than every interest-rate hike combined.

Sweat equity is real equity, but it is not free. It costs you weekends, energy, and patience with the people you live with. If you don’t have the appetite for that, build the cost of hiring it out into your model up front. Most McCall vacation rental investment plans I see underestimate this line.

And one more honest thing: the McCall market is balanced right now. There are 98 homes on the market, the median list is around $1.3M, and the well-priced ones still move in about a month. That means there are real properties available for the right buyer, and there are also a lot of properties priced like it’s still 2022. Knowing which is which is most of the job.

If you want to do something like this

If this is the kind of thing you’ve been thinking about — a second home that earns its keep, a place for your family that doesn’t have to stay empty when you’re not there, a real plan instead of a Zillow tab you keep open — let’s talk.

Fill out this form and let’s start working together.

It’s short. It tells me what you’re looking for, your timeline, and how I can be useful. The McCall buyers I work with best are the ones who want a strategy, not a sales pitch, and the ones I help most are the ones who reach out before they’ve fallen in love with a specific listing.

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Numbers in this post are from our actual purchase and renovation records for our McCall, Idaho, property. Market value estimate reflects current McCall comps as of late May 2026. Your results will look different. That’s the point of working with someone who has done it.

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I’m Ragan Erickson, a McCall, Idaho–based Realtor® and short-term rental advisor helping people build wealth and memories through real estate. After moving from Southern California’s mountains to Idaho’s, I turned my love for small-town living and data-driven investing into a business that helps others do the same.

On my blog, you’ll find tips for buying and selling in McCall, launching profitable short-term rentals, and designing a lifestyle you don’t need a vacation from. Whether you’re dreaming about your first cabin, an STR portfolio, or a full-time move to the mountains, you’re in the right place.

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