Originally Posted by
neckdeep
No, this is idaho so any common sense planning is anathema. Munis, counties and HOAs are forbidden to "restrict" the STR business. The preferred Idaho method is market forces. That way the land owners, dirt pimps and developers can fleece the out of state folks during the boom and laugh all the way to the bank after the bottom falls out.
I've been here long enough that this is my third real estate boom and bust. We get one about every 10 or 12 years. It takes about 8 years for everyone to forget about how badly the previous one ended for leveraged speculators. Then a new crop of second home investors comes along, enticed more by the lure of easy profits than actually living here in Redneckistan Wash, rinse, repeat.
In 2007, the sky was the limit. By 2009, we had 60% price declines, two failed banks and the dubious distinction of being the foreclosure capital of the Rockies. Just like today, the boom was mostly fueled by out of town money expecting big profits. When that easy gravytrain stopped chugging along, the out of state money tucked tail and ran. FOMO had caused a lot of locals to buy in during the boom and they ended up in underwater mortgages. Those lucrative construction jobs paying the mortgage just dried up and blew away like dust. Demand for housing dried up too. I knew several guys who had to leave their families for four years and go to work in the oil patch to keep their house. Targhee didn't have lift lines for years afterwards. One day the valley was packed and all go, go, go and then next year the place had just emptied out. That's how we do here; we get this sucker up into fifth gear and drive it straight into a fucking brick wall.