Has anyone on BP used Evolve Vacation Rentals
Investor · Fort Pierce, FL · Member since 2014 · 94 posts · 46 votes
Hi Everyone,
We are closing on a vacation rental on Hutchinson Island, Ft Pierce Florida 1st week in December and have been talking to the folks from Evolve Vacation Rentals. They charge a flat rate of 10% and list on multiple sites. Has anyone used them and would be willing to share their experience.
Thanks In Advance,
Joe
Joe,
10% sounds very reasonable for managing a vacation rental.
I don't use a PM. I use Homeaway.com to advertise, take payments, manage my calendar ect.
I also have an AirBNB account but it doesn't produce many vacation rentals.
I have a great housekeeper that I text to schedule my cleaning.
I use a Lockbox for keys.
I have 2 Honeywell 9000 series thermostats to adjust temp when no one is there.
I also just recently installed a camera system so I can see who arrives and make sure no one is breaking in when vacant.
Very easy to manage remotely once everything is going.
Joe,
10% sounds very reasonable for managing a vacation rental.
I don't use a PM. I use Homeaway.com to advertise, take payments, manage my calendar ect.
I also have an AirBNB account but it doesn't produce many vacation rentals.
I have a great housekeeper that I text to schedule my cleaning.
I use a Lockbox for keys.
I have 2 Honeywell 9000 series thermostats to adjust temp when no one is there.
I also just recently installed a camera system so I can see who arrives and make sure no one is breaking in when vacant.
Very easy to manage remotely once everything is going.
@Joe Garvin I have never used them but I see them advertising all over. I've been talking to Alexandra over at Vacasa and they have a very interesting business model that I haven't seen done before in the industry. I recommend also looking into them as well. You could speak to @Gerard Lester if you have questions.
Appreciate the info John. I was already thinking about a camera system.
Thanks Erica- I will look into Vacasa and will ask for Alexandra and let her know you referred me. I also sent an invite to connect to Gerard Lester. Appreciate the feedback.
Evolve is a great option if you are looking to have a management company book & market your home! Unlike Vacasa, they are not providing full-service management, meaning you'll have to find someone else to do cleaning, maintenance, check-ins, etc. (or pay one of the people they recommend).
In Florida, full-service management fees typically range from 25 to 30%, and the U.S. average is about 24% (or 28% when all fees are accounted for).
@Joe Garvin, if you want to look at or compare other local managers, please feel free to reach out! That's exactly why my company exists.
Also, if you are interested in a more comprehensive study of short-term rental management fees in the U.S., I'd be happy to message you with the study my company did!
@Account Closed, the company is not a scam. They simply do not provide full-service management.
Evolve is a vacation rental booking service primarily, they do have maintenance people etc but that's an added cost. I think they were born from the fact that HomeAway, VRBO, now all belong to the same company and charge the guests a 15% booking fee. Its a good place to start to get you some bookings but don't discount the fact of either having a reliable team of people or a property management company.
I understand from vacation rental home owners in my area that the price you list your home for with HomeAway etc, now doesn't allow for any additions for instance pool heat so if you use them you have to include that in the price. Just remember when guests book direct with these companies they don't 'vet' your guests and very few property managers do either, despite what they may tell you, you have one home they have at least 20 in most cases. If they take the money for the booking the onus is on them to pay the sales and use tax and the tourist tax, if you take the booking its yours, if your mc takes the booking its theirs.......and if they don't guess who foots the bill and the fine.
If you have the time and can get guests to contact you directly before booking then you have much more control of who is renting your home, not always a guarantee but a lot of home owners prefer to do that. If you keep your home to a good standard, price it right (remembering there will be maintenance issues that cannot be blamed on a guest), and set up a spreadsheet include noting how they left your home when they departed you will soon build up many repeat/returning guests that you actually want to stay in your home.
Operating a vacation rental is just like any other business the more you are involved the smoother it will run.
Good luck with your venture.
Thanks for the very informative responses Elizabeth and Monika. very much appreciated! Since the peak season is Jan-April and we close on Dec 9th wee won't have allot of time to properly market the property which is why Evolve makes sense. I have another week to keeping doing research. Thanks to everyone for their input.
Evolve is a great option if you are looking to have a management company book & market your home! Unlike Vacasa, they are not providing full-service management, meaning you'll have to find someone else to do cleaning, maintenance, check-ins, etc. (or pay one of the people they recommend).
In Florida, full-service management fees typically range from 25 to 30%, and the U.S. average is about 24% (or 28% when all fees are accounted for).
@Joe Garvin, if you want to look at or compare other local managers, please feel free to reach out! That's exactly why my company exists.
Also, if you are interested in a more comprehensive study of short-term rental management fees in the U.S., I'd be happy to message you with the study my company did!
Hi Monika- I'd would be very interested in seeing that study. I sent you and invite to connect then I can provide my email address. Thanks
Hi, @Joe Garvin,
I feel like we've already been pretty thoroughly promoted! - @Monika Haebich, thanks for telling people about us - but I thought I'd step in and clarify a few points from other people's comments, since they're accurate to many remote PM companies but not our model.
Monika's correct that we don't provide full-service management, in that you're not provided with Evolve-branded housecleaners, maintenance people, etc. The upside of that is that you don't wind up paying commission fees or middle-man fees every time you use the services - you pay your local housecleaner etc. directly, and we'll simply refer you to vetted local partners who already know vacation rentals. If you already have people you trust and love working with, we're happy to work with them! And we will, of course, communicate with them directly every time you make a new booking, so that's one less task on your plate.
Since your housekeeping fees are already included in your booking rates, you're really only paying for services on an as-needed basis, with no markup. (And no overhead costs.) We've found this system saves owners a lot of money, and of course it provides them with the flexibility to change their service partners at any point. If you use a full-service manager, they'll insist on using the service partners they can get the best deal with - even if the quality of service isn't what you personally want to see.
Someone above suggested that companies like ours don't vet travelers - I can't vouch for every property management service, but we most certainly do vet travelers. We know bad renters are every owner's worst nightmare, and we look out for the red flags that indicate a problematic booking. We also abide by your personal restrictions on your property - if, for example, you'd like to stipulate that you don't want to rent to families with young children, then we will make that restriction part of your booking process.
We do not pay your taxes for you. We do collect taxes (at the rate you specify) on every booking, and you receive those monies immediately in your bank account - we do not hold funds. You are responsible for paying your own taxes and abiding by the restrictions in your area.
There are a few other reasons we might be a good fit for you. You mentioned that marketing is your biggest concern right now - we create a professionally-written description and pay for a professional photographer to take great photos for your listing, and promote you on five major listing sites - VRBO, HomeAway, Airbnb, FlipKey, and TripAdvisor. We also have a full-time team taking calls and answering questions 7 days a week, from early in the morning to late at night, so you won't lose bookings because the traveler couldn't get in touch quickly.
We also provide a property protection plan with every booking, paid for by the traveler in lieu of a security deposit. This protection plan covers you for up to $3,000 in property damage so you don't need to contest every little broken mug or ruined towel with the traveler - we'll submit and follow up with your claim for you so it can be resolved promptly. This program also provides $1 million in liability insurance, and it's free to all our owners.
That's really just the beginning of how we make vacation rental easy for owners, but you're welcome to call our Homeowner Consultants at the number on our website with any more questions you have - or ask me here and I'll do my best to help.
Great information @Astrid Lindstrom! I am closing on my vacation rental 12/19 in Bisbee AZ and have already been in touch with an Evolve home consultant. I'll be putting my local team together when I'm down there later this month. @Joe Garvin best of luck with your investment!
Thanks @Sue Willoughby! Glad to hear you're joining us - and do let us know if you need any help finding local partners. We've got a lot of great people in Arizona and we'd love to introduce you!
Fantastic, thanks @Astrid Lindstrom
I'm been thinking about having them manage all my bookings across the multiple sites for a vacation rental I'm going to purchase. My understanding is that the fee is really 10% plus 2.5% for credit card payments. Still sounds reasonable for what you get. I like the idea of aggregating all the bookings from the site in one place where you can easily block out time for cleaning, maintenance, or personal use. I also like that you can hire whoever you want to do your cleanings but that they have local folks to recommend. If anyone uses them please keep us all posted and I'll do the same!
I understand from vacation rental home owners in my area that the price you list your home for with HomeAway etc, now doesn't allow for any additions for instance pool heat so if you use them you have to include that in the price.
I am sorry, but I just do not understand this statement at all. What is "instance pool heat"?
Thanks, Mike
Hi Michael,
HomeAway does not allow for any additions to the price, for instance pool heat, meaning if you charge extra for a heated pool (and almost all do) you cannot add it on to the advertised price, if you read the whole sentence rather than 3 words it should make sense, hopefully........for instance - i.e., for example.
:)
Thanks for adding the commas! I read "instance pool heat" similar to how Michael read it. I thought "pool" referred to a specific pool of applicants, so I was confused about the heat part. Punctuation helps! lol
Anyway, I just did a search on Evolve as well. Right now, we own a vacation rental over six hours away, and I manage it myself and have trusted cleaners and a maintenance crew that haven't let me down. However, we just recently looked at another property in the same location, and our real estate agent mentioned that he owns properties and uses Evolve.
Has anyone had any extra experience with Evolve since this thread started?
I may have totally misunderstood what you said, or maybe you have received some incorrect information from the vacation rental home owners in your area, but you absolutely CAN add additional fees to the rental rate that you advertise on Homeaway/VRBO:
Not only can you add whatever fee you wish, but you can also indicate if the fee is taxable or not.
We just set up a vacation rental in Scottsdale AZ in January. It is a condo we have owned for about 10 years and was always an annual lease type rental. We put it with Evolve right away as we are busy and did not want to have to be available for responses to booking inquiries etc. They sent out a professional photographer and the pictures make it look better than it is. In the three months it has been available, we have grossed more than the 12 months rent we had been getting. Of course the net is somewhat different as we pay for cleaning and utilities, but I fully expect to make more over the year this way. we also can put up our guests from out of town at times. Very happy with Evolve.
Joe Garvin how is it going with Evolve?
Hi Aaron,
I just noticed you sent me a question- sorry for the delayed response. Right out of the gate Evolve worked out great and was able to get bookings for our peak months quicker than I believe we could have. We bought on Dec 9th and remodeled for a few weeks and had it rented out on the 2nd week in January. We have one last booking the 3rd week in April but since we are now in the slower- more competitive time of year we are struggling getting bookings.
I scheduled a call with the Success Team a few weeks back and we decided to lower our prices which we did, but this has failed to generate any additional bookings. We have been working on trying to create a simple website and Facebook page and see what luck we can have on our own and from there make the decision to use Evolve next year or not.
We have heard differing feedback from our guests on their experiences. What you need to keep in mind is that the responsibility of dealing with any issues that arise falls solely on you as the owner and that Evolve will just defer any calls they may get. From the get go when we would get a reservation booked I would take the initiative to reach out to all the guests and introduce myself so from that point on they knew to reach out to me rather than Evolve.
The greatest benefit of using Evolve is they deal with the initial contact from the shopper and thus deal with all the haggling over price questions. This could be seen as good or bad because I am sure there were cases of potential guests deciding not to choose our property because Evolve would not haggle or reduce price. For me though, I appreciated that they dealt with that portion of the interaction especially since i was far too busy at my full time job to be able to have dealt with the calls.
I hope this helps- please feel free to reach out to me again.
@Joe Garvin - What would you say the total % cost of property management for the rental is, including cleaning? I saw earlier in this thread that the national average tops out at 30%
I've been using Evolve for almost a year now. It's worked out very well for us. We have day jobs and get busy and don't have time to manage a calendar and manage bookings. Even though we live an hour away from our vacation home it's very practical to have Evolve do the bookings, payments etc.. I have a local cleaner for turn around and Evolve will notify them of my bookings and in and out dates. They also collect my cleaning fee and occupancy tax that I pay to my local city. For added convenience, I use Avalara to pay my occupancy tax to my local jurisdiction. It sure takes a huge weight off me.
Evolve lists my home with all the popular vacation rental websites. One problem I've encountered is that I need to babysit my listings! I've had issues with Airbnb in that my listing seems to be hidden and doesn't show up on a search which is very concerning. It mysteriously showed up when I called Evolve to ask why and they seemed to have found it... and lo and behold I got a new booking within 24 hours. I was concerned why i hadn't been getting bookings. Also turned out that my listing was suddenly near the top... so I don't know if that's an Airbnb thing they do with their "metrics" or Evolve. But I would keep an eye on that if you decide to use evolve.
Other than that if you are hard pressed for time to manage your rental and want exposure on major sites Evolve is great for the cost.