Asheville, NC · Member since 2017 · 23 posts · 6 votes
Hey folks. I'm closing soon on a cabin in western NC that has a good HomeAway rental history. Unfortunately, their official policy is that you are not alllowed to transfer a listing to a new owner. The current owner is willing to just give me his login info and let me impersonate him, but I'm not sure that's a great idea.
There are a lot of future bookings in place that I hate to have to cancel. Plus, he has about 40 five star reviews which I also hate losing. I could start my own listing but I'm worried I'll have to cancel the current owner's listing first, losing all the future bookings. Anyone have experience with this? Any ideas?
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
I purchased a vacation rental that was in the same situation being listed on homeaway with a ton of reviews and bookings. Basically I just ended up creating a new listing and the previous owner just sent me the contact info for the future bookings. I just emailed them to let them know I bought the house and would honor their bookings. At that point I just updated the new calendar to match the bookings I took over and when it came time for the final deposits to be paid, I just invoices them through PayPal. So far so good. All bookings transferred and I'm up to about 10 5 star reviews so we are getting there. It's always better to just bite the bullet and make your own listing because it becomes a real pain to change the banking info for payments and homeaway does not want people transferring the listings.
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
I purchased a vacation rental that was in the same situation being listed on homeaway with a ton of reviews and bookings. Basically I just ended up creating a new listing and the previous owner just sent me the contact info for the future bookings. I just emailed them to let them know I bought the house and would honor their bookings. At that point I just updated the new calendar to match the bookings I took over and when it came time for the final deposits to be paid, I just invoices them through PayPal. So far so good. All bookings transferred and I'm up to about 10 5 star reviews so we are getting there. It's always better to just bite the bullet and make your own listing because it becomes a real pain to change the banking info for payments and homeaway does not want people transferring the listings.
Asheville, NC · Member since 2017 · 23 posts · 6 votes
9y
Thanks for the info, Henry. Did you create your new listing before deactivating the old one? Or if not, how long was the gap between? Sounds like you didn't have too much trouble with guests being hesitant to rebook with you. That's reassuring.
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
The new listing and old were both active for about a month before the old one was deactivated. The old owner was going to leave it up and just send any inquiries my way but I think homeaway canceled his when they saw what was going on. In terms of keeping the old old bookings, I think a thing you need to remember is that I was honoring existing bookings that had already paid a deposit. The previous owner would always collect a 25% deposit for all bookings with remainder due 60 days before checkin. Any existing bookings always had at least a 25% deposit paid. If they didn't agree to keeping the booking, they would have lost the deposit. Thus it was very easy for me to keep and transfer over any existing bookings.
Have your existing bookings already paid a deposit? I would assume the previous bookings you are trying to transfer over paid a deposit. Otherwise I don't know what your previous owner was doing with his business.
If they didn't pay a deposit, why would he even hold a booking? It should be simple for you to transfer over these bookings.
Let me know if this makes sense or if you have other questions.
Henry
Asheville, NC · Member since 2017 · 23 posts · 6 votes
9y
Thanks Henry. Actually he has it set up so HomeAway handles all the money, so deposits have been collected by HomeAway, not the owner. So for me to keep all the bookings under his account I would have to trust him to pay me later. Or sign some kind of contract, but since we would be breaking the HomeAway rules I assume it wouldn't be legally binding. Such a hassle. You'd think HomeAway would have a better plan for this situation. I called and after being on hold for 45 minutes got someone who was totally unhelpful. No wonder AirBnB is taking over their market share.
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
A lot of the bookings I took over were from homeaway as well. The previous owner just sent them an email that I was the new owner and would be taking over their bookings. I then emailed them and said that I will honor their bookings but they would have to pay the remaining balance via PayPal. This is really the only way to do it unless you or them want to eat the homeaway booking fee a second time to redo it via their site. You can still save the reservation in the homeaway calendar without charging through the site.
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
I was given all of those. I guess it depends on how detailed the previous owner was. I was pretty lucky in that regard. He even included the website for the house.
Glenwood Springs, CO · Member since 2012 · 127 posts · 22 votes
9y
I was in a similar situation a couple of years back when I purchased a vacation rental from my brother and sister in law. We actually just kept the old account in place and changed the payment settings. Turned out not to be a big deal, but you do have to educate repeat guests on ownership change.
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
What did you do to changed the bank account linked to the account? I assume you had to change that to accept payments. You have to call homeaway to do that and they will know you are trying to reuse the old account for a new owner when you do that. This is against the homeaway terms and they will tell you that at the time.
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
Yes but the payments have to go to a bank account with someone's name attached to it. An account that you take over will have a bank account that belongs to the previous owner attached to it. If you take over the account you would have to change it to your bank account so the payments go to you and not the previous owner. Homeaway does not change bank accounts to ones in another persons name very easily. Again, they don't want people transferring accounts so they probably won't allow this.
Investor · Asheville, NC · Member since 2017 · 7 posts · 1 vote
9y
Henry, why did you have the renters pay you via Paypal? Were they comfortable doing that? Also, when you set up your new VRBO account, did you just block off the dates that were already booked so they were not open to new rentals? Could the existing renters not just book the dates on your VRBO listing page and pay you what they still owed?
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
I sent the payments via PayPal because if you use vrbo, they would get charged the vrbo fee again. They were ok with PayPal.
I blocked off the dates on the new site. Again if we did it through vrbo, they would incur a second vrbo fee. If you are ok eating it or they are ok paying it again, I guess you can do that.
Rental Property Investor · Asheville, NC · Member since 2016 · 32 posts · 17 votes
9y
As the owner of an Asheville VRBO/Homeaway place, up and running since Sept 2014, we had help from a realtor friend to manage it till late in 2016. I populated the listing. I screened guest requests and did some of the communications - he coordinated getting it cleaned and was boots on the ground if we needed it there.
When I retired last year and could travel there myself with a bit more freedom, I told VRBO I wanted to change it to my name as owner. I was able to change the bank account info so VRBO/Homeaway sends payments to my account - but it remains IN THE NAME OF the realtor that was helping us out (we were paying them to manage it). As the OWNER, for the entire period, they will NOT change the name on the payment to me - I presume forever? Aggravating policy, IMO.
Investor · Asheville, NC · Member since 2017 · 7 posts · 1 vote
9y
Thanks for your response. Just to be clear, would they be charged the VRBO fee by trying to pay you via VRBO because since you had set up a new listing page, it appeared that the renters were booking a new rental?
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
9y
That's correct. There is no way to remove the fee on new bookings. Only way I found around it is to just reserve the dates for them in the calendar and invoice through PayPal, QuickBooks, or any other cc processing service.
Investor · Orlando, FL · Member since 2016 · 152 posts · 86 votes
9y
How many bookings are you talking about here? I ask because it may be worth it to offer the current guests an incentive equal to the booking fee plus a little more to cancel the booking on the old VRBO account and re-book on the new one.
This only works if you want to get the reviews on the new VRBO account and those reviews are worth the discount to you. More reviews (assuming 5 stars) would equal more trust from future renters but how much that's worth is something on you can make a decision on for this rental.
Henry, How were you able to get the star ratings for these reservations if you didn't actually book the reservation? What you were doing was just blocking the time on your account. How were they able to give you a review, if they didn't really process the rental through your VRBO account?
Edison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 13 posts · 4 votes
7y
Hi Sharon,
Once the guest has completed their stay, you can send them a review request through HomeAway. Their is a link in your account for reviews that can be sent to anyone who stayed at your property.
Real Estate Agent · USA · Member since 2016 · 909 posts · 1k+ votes
7y
I have purchased 5 of my own Airbnb/VRBO properties and have helped investors acquire over 80 in my market this year. The question of what to do about future bookings comes up every time. In my experience it can get very messy, and usually it's the buyer that gets burned. You are correct that there is no way to truly transfer bookings on these platforms. The only way is for the seller to cancel the bookings on his end, refund the money to the guests, and to send them a link to your new listing. This will annoy some guests and they will start their vacation with you with a bad taste in their mouths, thus affecting your bread and butter, your REVIEWS. Our market is busy enough that I have 100% confidence that even with a brand new listing and no reviews, the property is going to get booked and fast. I always recommend making a clean break and starting a new listing. Put in your headline "new owner special" and set your prices to below market. You will get booked. Good luck!