Turning Bandon’s Old Game Park Into a Golf Airbnb

I want an Airbnb near Bandon. Bandon is the one place in America golfers will fly across the country for. Five 18-hole courses, two par 3 courses and a putting course at Bandon Dunes alone. 140 holes. Every one of those golfers needs a bed.

So I was browsing listings and found the old West Coast Game Park Safari. 20 acres on Highway 101, seven miles south of town, listed at $1.8M. Let’s do the boy math.

What $1.8M gets you

20.24 acres, zoned C-1 commercial
714 feet of Highway 101 frontage. That’s a billboard.
A 5,136 square foot custom house. Stucco, metal roof, fully framed, never finished.
A caretaker’s double-wide with a detached double garage. Of course there’s a double-wide.
A gazebo ready for wedding season and a gift shop
Bandon Crossings minutes away, Bandon Dunes about 20 minutes north

The animal areas are the best part

Bandon Dunes already proved that golfers will pay to play short. The 13-hole Bandon Preserve opened in 2012. Shorty’s, a 19-hole par 3 course, opened in 2024. The Punchbowl is a 100,000 square foot putting course that takes about an hour.

We’re not building Pacific Dunes. We’re building our own Punchbowl on a budget. $150K turns the old animal areas into a chipping and putting setup. Island green in the alligator habitat. Nobody else in Bandon has one of those.

The boy math

We’re raising $3M:

$1.8M for the property
$750K to actually finish the house
$150K for the short game course
$100K to turn one of the buildings into a sim lounge and party space
$200K for everything I haven’t thought of yet

Debt service on $3M runs around $21,000 a month. Rent it at $2,000 a night with 50% occupancy and that’s $30,000 a month. In the black before a single wedding or a single gift shop sale.

Is $2,000 a night real?

Here’s the honest version. The Triton, a golf group house just north of the resort, sleeps 7 to 12 and goes for $400 a night in winter and $750 in June through September. At Triton pricing, this deal does not work.

Now check the other end. A four-person suite at the Bandon Dunes Lodge runs $1,300 to $2,100 a night in 2026 peak season. That’s four guys. We’re selling the whole group a 20-acre compound with its own short course and a sim lounge.

That’s the entire business plan. Don’t be a vacation rental. Be worth Lodge money. The sim lounge does the heavy lifting from October to May, because peak season in Bandon is June through September.

The upside nobody’s pricing in

The Keiser family has been trying to build another course south of Bandon for over a decade. The latest version is New River Dunes, 18 holes near Twomile Creek next to Bandon State Natural Area. Coos County approved it and the state land use board upheld that, but the appeals aren’t done. If it ever gets built, a golf compound on that same stretch of 101 gets a lot more interesting.

Listing pages now show the sale as pending, so somebody may have beaten me to it. Whoever you are, my DMs are open.

This isn’t my first questionable golf property. See the nine-hole course with a double-wide for $1.25M and Meriwether National.

Wanna buy an Airbnb near Bad, which is why I was browsing properties when I saw this, a 12 acre abandoned safari park. This place is only twenty minutes south of one of the world's golf meccas and comes with an unfinished 5,000 square foot mansion. That's boy math. We're raising 3 mil to grab the property at 1.8 and spend another 1.2 getting it right. These are beautiful bones. We'll spend $7.50 actually finishing the place. Tier we're gonna spend $1.50 converting all of the animal train to, like, a chipping, putting short game thing. Might do an island green in the alligator habitat. Spend another 100 turning one of these into, like, a sim lounge party area. Don't you forget the gazebo that's already there and ready for wedding season or the gift shop with inventory included revenue revenue just sitting there. Now worse% of the debt service on the 3,000,000 is, like, like, 21,000 a month. If we can put this place up at 2,000 night with 50% occupancy, that's 30 k a month, boys. We are in the black already. This ramp could have only existed so that tier could walk up on top of the house. Anyway, best part about this, if this doesn't work, we just reopened the game park. That place was in business since 1960. What do you think? You guys in?