Roadside ads offering the possibility of a $10,000-per-night payday were among the earliest and most plentiful signs that the Super Bowl was approaching.

Hundreds of garage sale-style signs – many placed illegally in medians and rights-of-way – have people intrigued by the profit potential in renting their homes for the Feb. 6 Super Bowl in Arlington. But with seven weeks left before kickoff, it’s unlikely that there’s a lucrative market for home rentals.

One vacation rental website shows a three-bedroom house about seven miles from Cowboys Stadium for $250 per night. Another website, specializing in Super Bowl rentals, offered comparable houses for $3,500 per night.

Mark Kreditor, a Dallas resident and past president of the National Association of Residential Property Managers, said it’s tough to figure out what properties are worth for that brief time.

“When you see that kind of disparity in price, obviously there is no market that’s been established by the demand,” said Kreditor, who owns Get There First Realty.

“There are just a lot of people with supply.”

Super Bowl XLV host committee officials have said there are plenty of hotel rooms in this region and that home rentals aren’t crucial to housing fans. The area’s top luxury hotels are sold out, but rooms are still available in budget motels charging less than $100 to mid-range hotels with rooms for $300 and $400 a night.

But that hasn’t stopped people from offering everything from one-bedroom apartments to mansions to football fans with enough money.

Donnie Payne has had her aunt’s house in Dallas rented for Super Bowl weekend since March. But at $300 per day, it’s nowhere near the windfall many expect.

“I don’t know why people would fall for it,” she said about the promise of huge payouts. “There are still enough hotels in Dallas. I don’t know why someone would think that’s even real.”

For many who live in the home they intend to rent, the Super Bowl is a one-time bonus. Payne looks at the rental market long-term since her aunt’s house is vacant and always available for lease. She said it mostly goes to business people in town for extended stays, but there have been some people here for Cowboys games.

Keith Johnson, who owns Phoenix-based majorevent rentalz.com, said a couple of properties listed on his site have been rented for Super Bowl XLV at a price of $250 and $750 per day. The $750-per-day home was originally listed for $3,500 per day, but the price was negotiated down.

Johnson said many customers find bargains by renting a house rather than two or three hotel rooms. He said he’s had a total of a dozen listings this year, far fewer than at previous Super Bowls.

The numbers, though, appear to be even lower. A pair of current listings for homes near Cowboys Stadium are actually located in Queens County, N.Y.

Swiss Avenue splendor

Despite those problem entries, there are North Texas listings on the website, including one belonging to retired state Rep. Harryette Ehrhardt. Her five-bedroom Swiss Avenue mansion is available for $25,000 for Super Bowl week.

For her, it’s more about the experience and adventure than the money, she said.

“Anyone who would come from out of town and invest a great deal in it [rental], they would probably be very interesting people,” Ehrhardt said. “We thought it would be fun to know that kind of family.”

Ehrhardt said she hosts about 50 events annually at her house and likes to keep it open to others.

The 92-year-old mansion in the historic Swiss Avenue neighborhood was built by the Marcus family of Neiman Marcus fame.

So far, Ehrhardt said she hasn’t been contacted by anyone interested in renting her house. She considers the rental a long shot, even though the price is consistent with other listings.

“It’s an astronomical amount of money,” she said. “I wouldn’t think that anyone would respond.”

In Arlington, Denise Langley has a house on the market just a couple of miles from Cowboys Stadium but has also had no luck yet on a Super Bowl week rental. That’s despite a price of $2,500 per week, less than what some homeowners are asking per night for similar houses.

Langley said she tried to make the asking price competitive with the combined cost of a couple of hotel rooms since the three-bedroom house can sleep about eight.

She said she’d like to have it rented for Super Bowl week, but she’s not necessarily counting on that income.

“It’s extra money. It’s not needed money,” she said.

Location, location

In the home rental market, few are more prepared to take advantage of the opportunity than the owner of Chelsea Park Townhomes. Arlington’s priciest town home development has struggled thanks to a recession and failure of a neighboring mixed-use project.

That means that nearly two dozen luxury town homes in walking distance to Cowboys Stadium are available for rent for the Super Bowl – for $2,000 per day.

Besides leaving some homeowners up in the air, the Super Bowl rental market has also created headaches for local code enforcement officials.

In Arlington, it would be difficult to miss the so-called bandit signs since they started going up in large numbers along thoroughfares last summer. City code compliance officials have removed 416 Super Bowl signs and issued 28 citations since July.

Ten tickets were issued to Phoenix-based Major Event Rentals, which appears to no longer be in business. The website is down, and its phone number is disconnected.

Major Event Rentals received an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau and was under investigation by the Kentucky attorney general for its home rental efforts at the World Equestrian Games, according to news reports in Lexington, Ky.

Sbowlrentals, one of the only locally based businesses of this type, has been issued two citations for its signs. The owner – calling himself Joshua Thunder – initially agreed to talk about his business but then did not return phone calls.

Tarrant County records show that the company was registered in October to Joshua Hestad, a former employee of a Tampa, Fla.-based Super Bowl rental website.

Jimmy Martin, a Dallas code enforcement official, said attempts to contact the companies about the signs were unsuccessful. In Fort Worth, code compliance director Brandon Bennett said “stern” letters from the city’s legal staff were sent to violators warning of criminal action. Since then, he said he’s seen few inside Fort Worth’s city limits, though some were placed just outside Fort Worth’s borders.

Tax issues

The Super Bowl home rental business has also gotten the attention of Arlington tax collectors. Officials placed notices on the city website that people renting their homes for the Super Bowl will owe hotel occupancy tax to the city and state. Arlington hotel occupancy tax coordinator Erin Clark said this is done on the honor system because the city doesn’t have the staff to constantly monitor these websites. But the city isn’t turning a blind eye.

“Whoever we discover, we’ll be contacting those homeowners and inquiring with them and asking them to pay if they have indeed rented,” Clark said.

She said the city has received about 10 calls recently from people wanting more details about these taxes. And this month, she said, she received the first call from a homeowner planning to pay taxes owed on a home rental.

In Fort Worth, a city ordinance forbids renting homes for periods shorter than a month. A rental there would be treated as a more traditional residential lease and wouldn’t be subject to hotel taxes.

Although rental property owners have to worry about tax obligations as well as potential damage to their homes, Kreditor said there’s an economic concern. By holding out for a Super Bowl payday rather than accepting a more modest but long-term lease now, lessors are likely to lose money.

He said that was a common story during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

“If the Olympics didn’t prove to be a real home run for all the people who do what I do in Atlanta, then I just guess I’m not excited about the Super Bowl and leasing out my clients’ homes,” Kreditor said.