For homeownersOct 16, 2026, 3 min read
Renting out our waterfront house in Pompano Beach while we pay it off
By A Pompano Beach homeowner
We are a couple in our late thirties from Chicago and we bought our house in Pompano Beach in 2022 for $890,000 with a mortgage. It is a three-bedroom home on a canal in Garden Isles with a pool, a dock and ocean access through the Hillsboro Inlet. We are not retired and we are not rich. The house is the place we plan to live one day, and the only way to own it now was to let guests pay for most of it.
The numbers
The house is booked about 72% of the year, roughly 263 nights. Our rate card is $325 a night in standard season, $550 in high season and $750 over the holidays, and the average across the year comes out around $430. That is about $113,000 in gross rent.
| A typical year | |
|---|---|
| Purchase price (2022) | $890,000 |
| Our own use | One week in February, two in August |
| Occupancy | About 72% |
| Booked nights | About 263 |
| Average nightly rate | About $430 |
| Gross rental revenue | About $113,000 |
Against that we have the mortgage payment, the property tax, the insurance, and about $900 a month in utilities, pool, lawn and internet. In most months the guests cover all of it. In a slow month, usually September, we cover the gap ourselves. Over a year the house comes close to carrying itself, and every payment the guests make is equity we did not have before.
Why it books
Pompano is a boating and fishing town and the house is built for that. Guests bring boats, or rent them in town, and the run out through the inlet to the ocean is a few minutes. The beach and the pier are a short drive. We get fishing groups, families, and every year a wave of people in for the boat show in Fort Lauderdale who want to be twenty minutes north of the crowds. A heated pool matters more than we expected: our winter bookings doubled the year we added the heater.
What we learned the hard way
We bought the house with a roof from 2019, which is why the insurance was manageable. We did not look as hard at the air conditioning, and it failed in our first summer with guests in the house. The new system cost $9,500 and we had to move a family to a hotel for two nights. Now we service it twice a year and we keep a reserve.
A house is a living thing and something is always breaking. Before you buy, look at the roof, the air conditioning, the plumbing and the seawall. Those four decide whether the first years are profitable or painful.
The guests
We were nervous about this. Three years in, the experience has been almost entirely smooth. People who book a waterfront house with a dock in Pompano tend to be families and fishermen, not parties, and they treat the house with respect. The deposit has been used twice, both times for small things.
What we are aiming for
We are not trying to make a fortune from the house. We want guests to carry the mortgage, the taxes and the insurance so that in fifteen years we own a house on the water that we love, with most of it paid for by people who enjoyed their vacation in it. We get our weeks in February and August, and the rest of the time the house is working. For us that is the whole point.
Own a house on a canal in Pompano Beach? Tell us the street and the bedrooms and we will say what a year could look like for it.
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