Anyone use "Evolve Vacation Rental" for short term rentals?
Brandon TurnerPro Member
Investor · Maui, HI · Member since 2009 · 13k+ posts · 3k+ votesI'm finding that it's taking a bit more work than I'd like to manage my vacation rental.
So the folks at evolvevacationrental.com hit me up the other day, via a cold call. I looked into them - and they seem almost too good to be true.
Anyone have experience with them?
@Brandon Turner I use them for my rental in Lake Tahoe for the last few years now. They are for a specific type of hybrid investor/manager however based on their business model, which just happens to coincide with how I like to run my VR. I have written a lot about them on here and thru direct connections thru here and via other communication channels (careful choice of words there hopefully). :)
I'm happy to discuss with you directly my experiences and insights with them if you ever wanted to. They have grown rapidly lately so I have noticed some slight customer service collateral damage as they expand but I will say this, they have NEVER messed up my bookings, my calendar and my payments to my account. There have been a few minor pains in between those key aspects but certainly nothing that has made me question the value of what I'm paying for. They have always followed up quickly when I raise the red flag on any critical issues I'm having with them, which is very rare to be honest.
Hope that helps!
Cheers!
~Jon
I know they just received 11 million in venture funding this week and are growing rapidly. They are in my backyard, Denver, and I have met with them. They are the real deal. On another note, I do believe, but cannot confirm, that they have been quietly obtaining properties themselves.
@Brandon Turner I use them for my rental in Lake Tahoe for the last few years now. They are for a specific type of hybrid investor/manager however based on their business model, which just happens to coincide with how I like to run my VR. I have written a lot about them on here and thru direct connections thru here and via other communication channels (careful choice of words there hopefully). :)
I'm happy to discuss with you directly my experiences and insights with them if you ever wanted to. They have grown rapidly lately so I have noticed some slight customer service collateral damage as they expand but I will say this, they have NEVER messed up my bookings, my calendar and my payments to my account. There have been a few minor pains in between those key aspects but certainly nothing that has made me question the value of what I'm paying for. They have always followed up quickly when I raise the red flag on any critical issues I'm having with them, which is very rare to be honest.
Hope that helps!
Cheers!
~Jon
What exact and specific problem do they solve ?
I hear often about them but the idea of introducing yet another intermediary in the business bothers me. So if someone can tell me their "elevator pitch" I would be grateful.
This is pretty interesting. I'd be wary of how exactly they expect to continue to provide owner-like quality of service with a cut rate model. Or maybe they don't and it's more like a Turo of sorts grafted onto the vacation rental marketplace.
Either way I bet they might have issues with pricing correctly and guest immersion. An owner knows where the best restaurants are in the rental area, if this service relies a bit too much on speed and cursory research they might reply to that question with a bad suggestion, and spiral from there.
Thank you all for this info. Evolve sounds like a great resource to pass onto some of my clients in Sedona.
I've been contacted by Evolve, and others like Vacasa. I've not yet felt the need to have someone else manage my property, especially since they often charge quite a bit more than the 10% property management for a traditional rental. And I stay pretty much full all year round. How much time are you spending on this? If it's more than a few hours per month, maybe discuss the challenges that are taking up most of your time. There are probably solutions to make those easier while keeping more of the rental income in your pocket.
I spoke to the folks at evolve but decided it's not for me (I like to play an active role in my VR, screening guests, talking to them personally, making recommendations for them etc..) I find it keeps me on top of things and I get better guests because of it. The second things become automated I will wind up with prom groups and bachelor parties and things I filter out currently and my house will wind up trashed. I am on the other hand considering using them for future rentals we pick up that may be too time consuming for me, but if the profit is greater at those than our current home, it is worth the risk.
@Jon Crosby I spoke with someone at Evolve last fall but decided to self-manage my rentals...however, my parents just bought a vacation rental in FL they will be managing remotely for most of the year and I think it might be a good fit for them, so doing some more research. Is the 10% fee Evolve charges in addition to booking fees charged by each of the platforms? I think I remember they also charge a 2-3% or so credit card processing fee, is that right?
HI @Selena Walsh! Yes Evolve charges 10% plus 2.5% for payment processing. If the guest books thru VRBO or AirBNB they will get charged the normal booking fees those sites charge normally however no other fees pass down to you, at least not to my knowledge as I have been with them a while and am grandfathered into some of their older policies luckily, so check first to be safe.
That being said and reading some other comments here I just want everyone to be sure they understand Evolve is NOT a full service management company. Evolve will handle everything up until the guest gets to the front door and then the rest of the management is up to you or your vendors. They say they have local partner programs in most areas which they do but it's not like you are going thru Evolve to manage those services (as far as I know). They simply provide you a reference that you can use that they have vetted out for housekeeping, pool/hot tub and checkin/out services.
I use Evolve for everything until the guest checks in and then I handle all my own vendors and checkin/checkout after, which is a good model for me but not for everyone. In fact I'm only comfortable with the Evolve model if I can drive to the property within a half days drive I would say. Beyond that, I would want full time, local management to handle it all.
Hope that helps!
Cheers!
~Jon
Jon, thank you for clarifying that. I have quite a few buyers of vacation rental properties and the info is much appreciated.
Hi Brandon Turner, my wife and I have been using Evolve since March 2018. Being employed full time as a designer, I really couldn't be spending much time every day screening guests. Evolve does this for me, saving my time to focus on after guests arrive and improving the property. They do provide a professional photographer that takes great photographs and Evolve also lists your property on their website as well as VRBO, Flipkey, Tripadvisor, Airbnb for free. They do take 10% fee and the 3% processing fees are now handled by Stripe. You'll need a merchant checking account. The payments go directly into your account, sometimes days before folks make it to your rental. We're happy with it so far and let you know how it works by the end of this year!
Love your podcasts!
Pablo
I have refered several people to Evolve and am using them on one of my new STRs,starting this week with them. I operate several STRs in Northern AZ. For sure for most owners Evovle is the way to go. Especially if you have more than one STR. Even with one I would still reccomend them for the average STR owner that does not wanted to get bogged down with details and waste lots of time.
The Evolve fee is a little high for only handling the marketing side of things. Even still they will be much better than the average owner at marketing. There is so much more that goes into it than people assume.
I dont know why they dont postion themselves to be a booking engine for existing property managemet companies. They should do this as they are better at marketing than any old school property management company I have come across.
Mangaing a listing on mulitple short term rental market places, syncing calendars, having smart dynamic nightly pricing, processing payments, paying occupancy taxes, is confusing and is a ton of work. With that said you can spend a little more time on your own and use software like Guesty, Pricelabs, etc, work with professional photographers and save a good 9% of your monthly revenue and probably do a little better than Evolve if you are really on top of things.
Some STRs can really drive very high revenue. I have seen as high as 5 times what a long term rental generates in some cases, so Evolve's 13% fee (10% + 3% paymet processiong fees from Stripe) is expensive. Although I do think it is worth it for most owners because you wont drive the level of revenue they do by just throwing up your listing on a marketplace if you dont approach it like a mad scientist.
Keep in Mind with Evolve you still have to organize your on the ground operations which for multiple properties is actually the biggest pain point over the long term. You not only need top notch cleaning, but you need top notch routine maintenance and a system to identify problems. You also need to restock consumable items used up by your guests. You also need to be available for quick communications to your guests.
As you have your listing around for a while you will need to replace linens, towells, etc to keep driving that high revenue and stay competitive getting 5 star reviews on the booking marketplaces.
Evolve can point you in the direction of 3rd party service providers for on the ground services, but many of them are mediocre.
Message me if you happen to be in the Northern AZ area, I can help you with your on the ground operations.
@Brian T. Grooms I actually pitched to one of the sales directors to be a booking engine for management companies. My thought process was the mgmt team would be "powered by evolve" but they said it's not their model. Sad as they can make a crazy new revenue stream as the startup cost is not alot since they are only answering calls and sending emails.
@Brian T. Grooms I actually pitched to one of the sales directors to be a booking engine for management companies. My thought process was the mgmt team would be "powered by evolve" but they said it's not their model. Sad as they can make a crazy new revenue stream as the startup cost is not alot since they are only answering calls and sending emails.
Hey Richard,
I mentioned it to one of the regional retail reps a while ago and they said the same thing.
I really hope Evolve works out for me because I am sick of managing my own marketing operations. Even though I am sick of it, I am pretty good at it. My properties have outstanding search rank positions on AirBnb and have been killing it. I also push listings to HomeAway/VRBO, Booking.com, and TripAdvisor Vacation Rentals. I have 24/7 online receptionists responding to all guest inqueries pre, during and post stay. I also have a local call center handling guest phone calls and generating and sending out unique door codes for each of my guests. I also auto schedule cleaners through my software when any booking comes in.
I use Guesty with several different software integrations for my system. Guesty is mostly good, but they mess stuff up a lot too, so I have to stay all over them. I pay 3-4% of revenue per booking for using the software. I pay another $40-80 per month for each other integration that works with the software (price algorithms, and smart door lock integration). Unfortunately I have to manually process some guest payments depending on the booking channel the bookings came from. That is another 3% fee for payment processing also.
Evolve has only now recently started using an actual pricing algorithms in select markets. Luckily they are doing this by request in my market. They have a couple small things they could do to really improve their model in my opinion. Pricing algorithms that update to listing sites daily is an absolute must in my book. I can not believe they have been using one or developed their own a long time ago. You need this because rates adjust daily, exactly like the hotel industry or airline industry has done for a long time. This not only lets you maximize revenue but even more importantly it helps your listing search rank position on listing sites since your listing is updated daily and that helps with market place search rank position.
The damage deposit Insurance Evolve makes its guests buy is also way too expensive to the Guest's bottom line. In my own system I provide guest damage deposit insurance through AIG/Travel Guard that inures $1500 worth of property damage per stay for $13.50 per each guest stay regardless of length of stay. Evolve insurance insures more at $3000 damage per stay, but it costs around $15 per night for guests. I did the math on my new listing with them and it increased a guest's out of pocket by +18%! 18% is A LOT and will deter many guests from booking. So I am trying to see if there is a way to reduce this amount guests have to pay. It ultimately comes out of the property owners bottom line as guests will just look at the total amount they have to pay. STRs have numerous additional fees like cleaning, local, taxes, damage deposit/insurance, booking marketplace fee, etc so any additional fee can make a very big difference in total cost.
Damage insurance is good instead of security deposits, because dealing with security deposits is a huge pain, at least for my system. My properties are run like a decentralized hotel with self check in. So there is no office or personnel to deal with collecting and returning deposits and fighting with guests about what they are due back.
If Evolve does in fact work out on my one listing I have with them, I plan on bringing at least 5 more listings over to them and then repositioning my management entity to specialize in cleaning, maintenance, concierge services for guests, and guest communications via phone, text, and email. I would try to become an Evolve Partner see if they will renegotiate their fees and give volume pricing.
Then I could go back to finding Real Estate deals and improving the Real Estate to use vacation rental properties and other hospitality properties. It would be awesome. I think the only chance is to become an official Evolve Partner in your local area and getting in touch with the higher ups on the partnership side.
If they put together a white label solution for PMs it would be incredible and they would grow dramatically.
I use EVOLVE for my 3 vacation rentals and have been pleased overall. They handle the guest interaction during reservation process, collect monies, and after stay reviews. Their suggested pricing has been about where I would put it and I have been pleasantly surprised that, on a few occasions, they priced higher and got the rentals.
They don't provide local information, that is up to the owner to put in the listing. They use a form to collect info then follow-up with a phone interview. They also arrange for a photographer at their own cost.
They do NOT handle the guest at check-in or during the stay, then than if the guest contacts them. That is till the owner's responsibility. So I have a local EVOLVE partner that handles cleaning, maintenance, sending a welcome letter, adding door codes for each guest, etc.
My places are running about 65% occupancy but I am getting good revenue. I think its the right balance between income and wear/tear on the home. If prices were higher, I'd lose bookings and if lower I would get more but probably have higher maintenance and utility costs.
We have used Evolve now for 2 years. The first year was much better and we had considerably more bookings. It is nice not having to deal with all the questions and inquires from customers like we do with VRBO and AirBnB but we've had higher occupancy for the units we manage on our own because we don't have to wait for Evolve to adjust price and such. Overall we've had no problems other than we feel they don't promote our properties like they claim because I always have to dig 3-4 pages of listings before I can find our listings on VRBO.
How does using Evolve plus cleaning/maintenance etc services compare to using a local property management company for everything price-wise? We are too far and too busy to do anything ourselves at this point. Our STR is in Orlando.
I am also thinking of using Evolve for just one vacation rental I'll soon buy. I think I can manage one on my own given I live an hour away. I'm also good at photos and copywriting so I don't need that aspect of their "marketing." What I like is that Evolve can list and sync calendars on the major booking sites, do the SEO to get listings seen, and adjust rates by algorithm. And I assumed their 10% fee meant that I don't have to pay separate percentages out to AirBNB, VRBO, TripAdvisor, etc. But is that true? Or am I paying Evolve's 10% and then a percentage out to all the booking engines too?
Evolve is not a solution. You are responsible for being at the property in handling clients. They don't do that in their fee. In addition to your 10%, they also charge your guests I believe 10% that you don't hear about. The reputation it's spotty.
they don't use booking.com, which is a valuable source of good paying guests.
the calendars syncing is available already on Airbnb and booking.com and others. And there's plenty of software packages for cheap that will do the same thing. It's called Channel managers.
Hello,
Thanks for all the information! I am looking at self-managing myself and leaving Evolve.
What platform do you use for taking credit card payments an handling refunds. etc...
THanks eveyone!
For booking.com, I recommend you let them collect payments. They stood by me in a couple of cancellation attempts and got me my money.
I use evolve for a property I own in a SDIRA. They are not great on handling guest communication. I had one guest show up with no place to stay because Evolve did not cancel their reservation; even with one week advance notice to Evolve that the unit had to be taken down for maintenance issues. It was a real disaster for the guest. They do have pretty decent rates though which translates to revenue in your pocket. Their 10% fee is reasonable when you take into consideration it includes professional photos up front and all the processing fees from the booking platforms. I am considering listing a second property with them in the same area because they are able to get more off season bookings.
Their 10% fee is unreasonable when you realize that's what they're also charging your guests on average. They charge way too much and provide way too little
My understanding is that evolve is not a full service manager. That's why they are only 20%. So you do have to be an investor that still wants to be involved and not completely handing off the management of the short-term rental.
I have consistently seen ratings lower than I would be ok with on Evolve managed properties. That tells me enough.
Update: just saw this post is 5 years old lol - it just showed up on the top of the feed