Article

From 2 Listings to 150+ Airbnbs While Working Full-Time

August 5, 2026

Vinci Sevilla Jr. has worked in the electrical industry for over a decade. He's also a father of 2, still holds his full-time job, and runs a short-term rental portfolio that nets him more than $50,000 a month. Host Camp first connected with Vinci back in 2021, when he booked one of Host Camp's very first one-on-one consulting calls.

The Full Picture

Total listings, 2021: 2
Total listings, end of 2024: 150-plus
Current net income (stated directly): $50,000-plus a month
Campground scale: 12 cabins in December 2023, now 120 units plus 48 RV sites
Rustic cabins: ~$100,000 each to build, $60,000 to $75,000 a year each
Prefab pod units: $50,000 to $60,000 each to install, ~$50,000 a year each
RV sites: $20,000 to $25,000 per slab to build, $10,000 to $20,000 a year each
New compact cabins (40 currently being installed): $50,000 to $60,000 each to build, projected $50,000 to $60,000 a year each
Nightly rates across the property: $180 to $450

The First 2 Properties

Vinci and his wife closed on their first short-term rental in April 2021. It was a cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains, TN, and they launched it that June. One month later, they opened a second listing in Joshua Tree, CA. His wife was 5 months pregnant at the time. Their daughter was born that September.

Vinci picked the Smokies using real data. He compared visitor traffic across national parks and found the Smokies pulling in more than 10 million visitors a year, more than double the next closest park. That demand gap put an unfamiliar market on his radar.

Their goal was modest at first: Hit $10,000 a month combined and call it a win. They hit that inside 6 months. The Smokies cabin closed its first year at $123,000 in gross revenue. Joshua Tree crossed $100,000 in that same window. Net profit across both properties ran $10,000 to $11,000 a month after mortgage, cleaning and every other expense. His wife left her job soon after to run the business full-time.

The Domino Effect: 2 Listings to 150-Plus

The jump from 2 properties to a real portfolio started with a stranger's message on Instagram. Someone who'd bought a property in Big Bear, CA saw what Vinci was building and asked for help managing it. That single message turned Vinci into a co-host, running other people's listings instead of only his own. If you're weighing whether to buy your first property or start smaller first, our complete framework on buying your first rental property in 2026 walks through that exact decision.

From there, the growth ran in clear jumps. He had 2 listings by the end of his first year, then 12 by the end of 2022, then 24 by the end of 2023, then 76 partway through 2024, then 150-plus by the end of that year. Vinci points to 2 things behind the jump: Getting genuinely good at operations until other owners noticed and referred him, and deliberately networking inside the STR space instead of building alone. Co-hosting also let him test new markets with someone else's money before ever buying there himself.

Start Co-Hosting Today

If you already host at least one property with a solid track record, Airbnb's official Co-Host Network lets you build a public profile, list your services (guest messaging, pricing, cleaning coordination, listing setup), and get found by hosts looking for help, formalizing exactly what Vinci stumbled into through a random DM. Eligibility requires 10-plus hosted stays (or 3-plus stays totaling 100-plus nights) in the past 12 months, a 4.8-plus rating, and a cancellation rate under 3%.

If you don't have hosting experience yet, Airbnb's Community Center is the more realistic starting point, connecting directly with hosts the same informal way Vinci's first opportunity happened.

How He Actually Keeps the W2

Once income crossed $30,000 to $50,000 a month, Vinci and his wife brought on virtual assistants and business staff specifically to handle daily operations, guest messaging, scheduling, the tasks that don't need him personally. His wife runs the business day-to-day. Vinci's own time goes toward the decisions that actually need his input: which opportunities to take, which markets to enter, when to say yes to something like Camp QYB. The full-time job stays intact because the business was deliberately built to run without him for most of the day.

The Pivot to Campgrounds

A Texas campground drove the single biggest jump in the portfolio: Camp QYB, a glamping and RV resort on Lake Bridgeport, later named Glamping Resort of the Year by the Texas Association of Campground Owners. In December 2023, Vinci started managing 12 standalone cabins there on a new 40-acre development next to the lake. The property's owner had no reason to trust an outside campground operator, but Vinci had already proven himself managing single-family rentals well enough to earn the job. A few months later, that same owner told him he was adding 30 to 40 more units and asked Vinci to take those on too. Our Playbook on how he turned $27,000 of land into a $6 million business covers a similar jump into multi-unit properties, if you're curious how the numbers stack up.

The property, which Vinci manages rather than owns, now runs at 120 units, with another 40 cabins currently being installed, plus 48 RV sites. The lodging mix includes rustic cabins, Oregon Trail-style covered wagons, 10 futuristic prefab pod units parked steps from the water, tiny cabins and Airstreams. Nightly rates run $180 to $450 depending on the unit.

A commercial property like this gets valued differently than a single-family home. A single-family rental's value stays about the same no matter how much it earns in a given year. A campground's value is based on net operating income, revenue minus expenses, multiplied by a market rate called a cap rate. The campground pulls income from more than lodging: 2 event venues, 5 to 7 on-site restaurants and activity rentals like pontoon boats and golf carts. Each added revenue source raises the property's total value on top of raising its monthly cash flow.

What To Steal

Pick your first market using real evidence. Vinci compared national park visitor numbers before choosing a market he'd never even visited.
Cheap land is often cheap for a reason. Before buying raw land to build on, confirm water, electrical, and road access exist or can be added. Entitlement and rezoning alone can take 1 to 2 years, and that timeline is the real cost most people underestimate. Our guide to finding the zoning rules for any short-term rental walks through how to check this before you buy.
Let managing someone else's property fund your market research. Co-hosting let him test markets with someone else's money before risking his own.
Trust built managing something small earns the bigger opportunity later. Vinci ran 12 cabins well enough that the owner handed him the next 100-plus without a pitch.
A single-family host and a commercial operator play by different rules once a cap rate is involved. Once you're managing anything valued that way, every new revenue stream is worth more than its monthly cash flow alone.
Build the business to run without you. Once Vinci's income passed $30,000 to $50,000 a month, he brought on staff specifically to handle daily operations, so the business didn't need him every hour. That's what let him keep his W2 the whole time.

Want to be like Vinci?
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