Interesting, I didn't think about that consolidation and supply and demand. I have heard people quote that AirBnB generates 50% more revenue than long-term rental. I guess it's good that vacations are much more affordable though. What area are you in?
Sure, lots of people say they win at video poker at the casino, too. And they do, if you don't count those 5 times they lost for every time they came out ahead...
What I mean is that while in some cases doing short term makes sense, there are a lot of people out there who have no idea how to run a business who aren't accounting for any of their costs and paying themselves zero to manage/clean who are looking at the gross income number and saying "man, we're killing it!"
That assumes they even track the income properly, of course. I've met people who think that if they can get $100 a night part of the year, that they're going to make $36,500 a year and just will tell you that's what they make.
So even setting aside the oversupply, the buddies you talk to who say they're making a fortune (or the bloggers who want you to click on ads on their sites or use their VRBO referral codes) are mostly full of shit, in my experience.
There are situations where nightly rentals (if you live *right by* a major attraction where people can walk out the door to the concert/ski slope/whatever) make a ton of sense. If you live in a normal residential area, it's IMO probably not going to be more money than long term, and it'll be a ton of unpaid work, to boot.
YMMV. I tried it, I did several hundred hours of work that I didn't need to, I'll never do that again. Long term is easy.
-W