We turned our Idaho cabin into a vacation rental after having it on the market (to sell) for 5 years.
We built it as our retirement home about 12 years ago then life / plans changed. We now only use it @ 2-3 weeks per year. I tend to have the same problem with personal real estate that I do with Porsche's, I end up putting way more into them than they're worth. I overbuilt for the neighborhood, for now but we built it that way for us NOT as an income producing property. Anyway, it's getting fairly good traction as a rental, until we do sell, AND we get a partial write off on expenses and depreciation. But, I completely agree that until you want to permantly live in the area you're considering you're money ahead by being the renter. The other issue we ran into was the increased (in our case SIGNIFICANT) cost of insurance. Most carriers will not cover a rental income property if they are unaware of its use as a rental, even on a very part time basis and charge according to the potential liability they are incurring. Check your policy carefully, or contact your agent.