By JPorter

I started a vacation rental company last year. I was working at an office for someone else and while booking reservations I found that a lot of people were working at home. So I decided to give it a try. My son was hurt by a baby-sitter and I didn't want to ever go through that again. If your a mom -- I know you know what I mean.

To start my business I spent $399.00 on a fax machine joined a referral service in my town for an initial $600.00 and I was in business! I got a list from the title company of all the people that owned homes in my area that would be in high demand and started calling them to see if they wanted to join me. At first it was slow and I only had two houses to rent but it didn't take long to acquire about 10 homes. Then word got out and I started doing permanent rentals (that is a rental that goes from month). I now have 10 of those.

You don't need a real estate license to manage property for anything under 30 days, although in the slow times it helps to have permanent rentals. My income isn't that much different. Of course as I make money I spend it on office equipment and advertising, but all in all this last year my take home pay was approximately $11,000.00 which is about what I was making for someone else! Only then I paid a day care center to watch my children, and on top of 12 hour days I cooked did the laundry, you know the scoop. I worked hard in the busy season but now it's slow and I have more time to spend doing things with my family. Heck, I don't even have to get dressed for work anymore.