All Forum Posts by: Monika Haebich

Hi @Teri Feeney Styers! 

Absolutely! A recording of it with all of the slides will be available here tomorrow: http://www.rented.com/vacation-rental-best-practic...

Hi Taylor,

Here are some sites and blogs that might be useful:

• Short Term Rental Advocacy Center: They have a lot of current information on short term rental regulations.
• AVROA: The American Vacation Rental Owners' Association
• Rentals United blog: Rentals United is a channel manager, but they have a great blog on managing your vacation rental.
• Cottage Blogger

• rented. blog: Lots of resources for homeowners and property managers on how to best manage properties. Also lots of industry news/trends

As Tanner said, we're also hosting a webinar tonight! Hopefully, we'll see you there! :) 

Hi everyone,

My company is hosting a webinar today at 7:00pm EST on short-term rental & vacation rental industry trends and how they affect investors. 

I'd love to hear if anyone has any questions that they'd like to ask during the webinar. What do you want to know about the industry?

Likewise, if you'd like to join and watch, I'd be happy to private message you the link! 

Hi @Maura Paler! Thank you again for contributing! 

If anyone else is interested in the VRBO instant booking / best match changes happening now, here is the article.

Welcome, Jeff! Congratulations on choosing to buy your first investment property! Where are you buying?

I work in the vacation rental industry, so if you ever have any questions about the industry & best practices or are looking for help managing the property, I'm always happy to chat!

My company is also hosting a webinar on industry trends and predictions in the vacation rental space, and we'd love to have you join! If you're interested, you can save your seat here! :)

Good luck!

Hi Nick,

Is your home in Austin, TX?

Here are two options:

• Sell All Available Weeks at Once: I've heard of owners doing fixed rent deals with PMs (i.e., selling a year of weeks at once to a management company and having the company manage the home and take on the risk of doing the short-term renting). 
• Vacation Clubs: You could also work with a vacation club. They could also buy out a year of weeks so you avoid dealing with licenses/short-term rentals, and the vacation clubs can legally place their members in your home (as they're not technically short-term rentals). 

If you do have any questions about either of these options or would want to try either, I'm happy to talk! 

Hi everyone! 

I'm currently working on an article that covers homeowner/manager frustration with VRBO, HomeAway, Airbnb & other listing sites, and I was hoping to get homeowner feedback and quotes from people doing short-term or vacation rentals.

I'm specifically covering homeowner frustration on changing algorithms for VRBO's "Best Match" function & thought on the instant booking function.

Have any of you been affected by VRBO's "Best Match" function? And how do you feel about instant bookings on the horizon?

Hi John,

I unfortunately haven't seen a lot of demand for vacation rentals there, and I haven't heard of a vacation rental property manager in that area. 

Good luck! 

Hi Aaron,

I'm not a property manager, but I work with hundreds of investors who profit primarily from vacation rentals. 

Some words of advice: 

• Really look into the numbers! Consider everything from occupancy taxes to marketing costs to maintenance to cleaning, and get a good idea of typical occupancy rates in the area. This calculator includes some industry averages and may help. 
• If you're looking to self-manage the home, be aware of how time consuming it will actually be. Owners spend on average 8 hours self-managing their vacation home, so know whether or not you'll have the bandwidth to successfully manage the home.
• Use smart technology to automate the home. You'll have better control of your utilities even when other people are there, and it'll vastly ease up your involvement in the home.
• Look into doing outright rentals. I work for a marketplace where professional managers buy up owner weeks, which gives owners guaranteed income and removes all the risk of self-managing, and we have over 400 management companies that make offers like these. If you're thinking of working with a PM in your area, 1. I'd be happy to see if we have demand. 2. Even if you don't want to go through a marketplace where you'd get a competitively-derived offer, ask the PM you plan on working with if they do outright rentals. It's a little-known solution, and there might be significantly more upside for you there. 

Best of luck! And please let me know if you have any questions! :) Always happy to talk about vacation rentals. 

 Hi Keith! 

Thank you for the feedback! It certainly is a daunting task, but we're hoping to really build something of value here, and I think it'll definitely be worth it. :)

To echo what you said, it really is surprising how many home owners don't have a better grasp on their vacation home numbers. 

I used to work directly with homeowners in a marketplace that generates fixed, guaranteed incomes for vacation rentals (i.e., property managers would essentially pay self-managing homeowners their net income and take on the expenses and work/financial risk of managing), but it was pretty crazy to see how many homeowners would confuse revenue with how much they're actually making. There were countless times when PMs would offer significantly more than people were making, and people just didn't realize because they couldn't grasp their numbers.