Stay away from Evolve Vacation Rental. We started working with them 3 years ago. It started well enough, bit in the last year, they have ceased following my instructions for minimum night stays, and they leave canceled bookings in my calendar...blocking other reservations. In the last 2 instances they finally canceled reservations after they would have started. They NEVER respond to emails, and guests constantly call me because Evolve doesn’t respond to them either. This operation is terrible. Look elsewhere.
Stay away from Evolve Vacation Rental. We started working with them 3 years ago. It started well enough, bit in the last year, they have ceased following my instructions for minimum night stays, and they leave canceled bookings in my calendar...blocking other reservations. In the last 2 instances they finally canceled reservations after they would have started. They NEVER respond to emails, and guests constantly call me because Evolve doesn’t respond to them either. This operation is terrible. Look elsewhere.
Sounds awful. I agree, in general, this is why I would never use a property manager. STR Property managers are simply schedulers. Don't let a scheduler take your profits. Either self-manage like many on here do, or hire an inexpensive offshore PM who works US hours & speaks eloquent English (that's what I do). Mine can set door codes, message (or call) guests, schedule cleaners, adjust the thermostat, monitor my cameras, & call a plumber just as easily as a local PM can, for 1% of the cost
I wrote much more about leveraging offshore assistants in this post here. If you find it useful, feel free to upvote ;)
Other than that, hire good cleaners, a solid handyman & befriend some helpful neighbors. Save your money on PMs & pay these people well instead. Call me crazy, but I prefer to spend my money on people who will actually see the inside of my houses, not a scheduler
Real Estate Agent · Surf City, NC · Member since 2017 · 648 posts · 597 votes
6y
Please dont feel the need to answer this question if it is private but what are typically the fees that you would pay them to manage? Sounds like a classic case of a company getting to big and letting their standard of service drop. I have considered turning our STRs over to a management company but dont trust anyone will take care of them as well as we do.
Stay away from Evolve Vacation Rental. We started working with them 3 years ago. It started well enough, bit in the last year, they have ceased following my instructions for minimum night stays, and they leave canceled bookings in my calendar...blocking other reservations. In the last 2 instances they finally canceled reservations after they would have started. They NEVER respond to emails, and guests constantly call me because Evolve doesn’t respond to them either. This operation is terrible. Look elsewhere.
Stay away from Evolve Vacation Rental. We started working with them 3 years ago. It started well enough, bit in the last year, they have ceased following my instructions for minimum night stays, and they leave canceled bookings in my calendar...blocking other reservations. In the last 2 instances they finally canceled reservations after they would have started. They NEVER respond to emails, and guests constantly call me because Evolve doesn’t respond to them either. This operation is terrible. Look elsewhere.
Sounds awful. I agree, in general, this is why I would never use a property manager. STR Property managers are simply schedulers. Don't let a scheduler take your profits. Either self-manage like many on here do, or hire an inexpensive offshore PM who works US hours & speaks eloquent English (that's what I do). Mine can set door codes, message (or call) guests, schedule cleaners, adjust the thermostat, monitor my cameras, & call a plumber just as easily as a local PM can, for 1% of the cost
I wrote much more about leveraging offshore assistants in this post here. If you find it useful, feel free to upvote ;)
Other than that, hire good cleaners, a solid handyman & befriend some helpful neighbors. Save your money on PMs & pay these people well instead. Call me crazy, but I prefer to spend my money on people who will actually see the inside of my houses, not a scheduler
Hi--first time poster here. I agree with Julie. I started my STR with evolve several years ago (Shenandoah Valley of Virginia) and was quite happy with them at first. But in the past six months their service has just fallen off the cliff. I understand they were slammed with the whole COVID thing, but they have not recovered. They keep changing their policies, I have to schedule at least 30 minutes to an hour to be on hold with them if I need to call (which seems like a lot lately), and my requests are either not fulfilled or misinterpreted.
I'm hoping someone more experienced at this than I am can provide some advice on what the best self-management tools are for those of us who want to leave. What is out there for managing schedules across bookings? Evolve provided damage insurance. I'm sure there are vendors who sell it. I just need to figure out who they are.
I've just started the fact-gathering phase of this process so I know I need to search this site and start googling in earnest. I'd like to hear from those of you who have taken the leap of leaving evolve and what systems you have found to replace them.