All Forum Posts by: John Arendsen

That's a great question @Kevin Shuler, however, wouldn't deal with it in much the same manner as you would a long term furnished rental with a well covered contents policy? 

A blog with some hands on experience may be helpful @Francisco Arango. I'd love to hear about your experiences.

@Francisco Arango, take a moment to check out my comment to @Michael Wind. I was actually thinking about investing in HA but dismissed the notion for the same reasons as above. We are frequent visitor to the Islands and tried to justify it accordingly, however, we'd still be owners in abstentia. We frequent Cabo multiple times a year because it's only a 2 hr flight away and the surf and water temps are as good as in the Islands for the most par. But we still love HA.

BTW, @Michael Wind here's some info that @Michael Greenberg just shared with me. Perhaps that will help. I'll be heading over there right now myself.

#Twitter (can be overwhelming though), #VRMB (a private group of vacation rental managers run by Matt Landau (smart cookie), #VRMA, and a LinkedIn Group called Vacation Rental Managers.

Until venturing into Vacation Rentals we've always managed our own portfolio and will continue to do so in the VR arena as well @Michael Wind for a variety of reasons.

1. We're a licensed RE broker
2. Genera Contractor
3. Investor
4. Only invest in local properties that we can easily manage
5. Don't really trust most PM's 
6. Enjoy realizing the maximum amount of ROI we realize doing it this way.
7. Being our own PM helps us keep our eye on the ball at all times thus very intimately vested in our properties and able to arise to any occasion anytime.

Add to that we've had some experience in being owners in abstentia with not to positive results. As a matter of fact it was a property in Florida. Being in California made it almost impossible to deal with reliable PM's and maintenance issues. We were always at the mercy of people we didn't know. Believe me one of the best days of our lives was offing that property and keeping it local.

Well, @Michael Greenberg, at 71 I'm not likely to change my basic belief about faith or honesty in humanity at this point of my life. Not to get off on a philosophical bent but I've always been of the opinion that people are born basically honest and stray off the path for one reason or another as a result life altering experiences and exposure. 

But I digress. I am open minded and eager to learn so if you have some information I could refer to regarding 

"If you read recent press about Airbnb's direction" I'd be happy it causes me concern about "who's guest is it anyway?"

I'd be very happy to know about it. Albeit I'm by no means new to investing and managing long term rental properties I am a relative neophyte to the vacation rental niche and am eager to learn everything I can before investing further.

Thanks for the info on TripAdvisor/Tripkey @Jeff Piscioniere. Didn't even think about going there because we've been having such success with AB&B and VRBO when we are offering our beach home as a vacation rental.

It started out as a vacation property for our 5 children and 14 grandchildren and my wife and I to all share at our leisure. However, we soon realized that as big as our family is we're not using the property to its full capacity so that's when our daughter, who is also our property manager with with our long term rent/least portfolio, introduced the idea of the vacation rental concept. But I'm really getting so much great into about this budding industry that we're looking for additional properties.

Hi @Michael Greenberg Thanks for your feedback and participation in this thread. Glad to know there's so many folk on BP that are so well versed on this pervasively growing growth industry. Looks as though we have the potential to cater to both of the demos you've put forth due to the very popular surf and beach culture Oceanside as a vacation destination caters to.

That stated, our particular property is somewhat pricey for the average hipster unless they have a large group to pool expenses with which we've been fortunate not to have to deal with as yet. Having the ability to sleep 10 comfortably with 2 master bedrooms and 2 smaller bedrooms all with multiple bedding options and the fact that it's a very nice property really attacks families thus far. 

But I'm definitely not a newly to rental properties as we've been our own property managers for a couple of decades now. It's really all about the vetting process and leaving it up to a 3rd party i.e. VRBO and Air B&B to you're putting your faith in.

Good to know @Russell Brazil. We just had two very successful Air B&B experiences. One for 1 week and  and another one for 4 days. They actually left on January 30th instead of New Years Day which I though a bit unusual. Thought they'd want it especially for New Years Eve.  It sleeps 10 comfortably so it has some appeal for large families which might be why they decided to leave before the 31st and not have to deal with all the excitement then traffic.

We've also had some very good experiences with VRBO. This is our first year in the vacation rental arena albeit we have had years of experiences with long term rentals this started out as an experiment but I think we're onto something. The class of clientele we've received from both entities has been exemplary. 

That's exactly the type of input I'm seeking @John Underwood. Didn't know anything about Homeaway to be honest. I thought I just heard that Expedia acquired VRBO and that they are going to start charging another 6 percent to their clientele.