Mary Beth Blackwell

Mary Beth is the person behind Blackwell STR and lives in St. Pete, Florida.

Originally from the East Coast of Florida, she moved to Tampa in the early 2000s where she graduated from USF with degrees in Business Finance and Marketing.

This is when she fell in love with the West Coast lifestyle, gulf beaches and sunsets.

She’s an owner, operator, and 9x Airbnb Superhost.

Her ability to leverage tech systems and automation has turned her into a remote STR management expert.

Her business model produces pure positive cash flow on a monthly basis.

Who is she?

She comes from the corporate analytics world with over 15yrs of experience consulting multibillion dollar companies, helping them launch internal Marketing Analytics and Consumer Insight Strategy.

This is where the consumer-first mindset was born, because the data shows it works!

A premier customer experience provides higher profitability for companies, and loyal guests!

A winning recipe for everyone.

Today Mary Beth runs Blackwell STR and is an investor-friendly real estate agent with Copeland Morgan in St. Pete, FL.

Learn more about the real estate business at Copeland Morgan here..

Copeland Morgan Real Estate

How did the STR journey begin...?

Mary Beth's career in analytics ended up being quite mobile. She moved to new cities every 2-3yrs, to work in-house at client corporate offices. This meant leaving neighborhoods and friends behind to relocate out-of-state. Torn by the idea of selling and leaving 'home', she decided to figure out a way to hold onto properties to come back and visit.
The solution.. long-term rent!
She self-managed for one year, then another, and another. Falling into property management overnight.

Along the path of self-management, she did get a chance to visit 'home', but only to find out that having long-term rentals truly meant returning to manage, while someone else lived in the house.
Not exactly what she had in mind.
This lead to asking.... How do you get to come back and stay in your own property?
...You Airbnb it! This was in 2018.

In analyzing the short-term business model, she discovered STRs could produce 6-9x more in profits than long-term rentals.
With the added bonus of coming back to stay yourself! The switch to short-term was a no brainer. She went full throttle into transitioning her first property into an STR. Remodeling, designing and furnishing in three months. Driving or flying in from out-of-state to manage the rehab in-person on the weekends. Then the second and now third..

The leap into Short-Term Rentals was four years ago and ever since, has not looked back.