How to find renters for vacation rental?

Question

Looking for guidance on marketing our vacation rental in Naples, FL. We have been very successful in getting seasonal rentals in past. Broker has now dropped us due to requirement for broker to be responsible for 10% sales and tourist tax payment. Trying to determine best way to market our unit going forward.

1.) Can we list the unit ourselves on the MLS? How much would it cost?

2.) Is VRBO or Homeaway a cost effective option? Our development has approximately 75 different vacation rentals advertised, and we are concerned about getting lost in the mix.

3.) What about developing our own website? Can we get high enough on the search engines to make it worthwhile?

4.) Our current broker was charging 10% which is under market. Other realtors are looking for 15-20%.

5.) We have a property manager who can help us with showing the unit, and dealing with tenant issues.

6.) Looking for guidance from others who have come up with creative solutions....

Jeffrey Cervi · Answer

Update - have used VRBO for a year now, and the results have been tremendous. Lots of interest in the unit, and the demand for vacation rentals in SW FL is off the charts.

Robert Bowles · Answer

I us Airbnb and VRBO for a ski cabin and have had GREAT results.

We have not created our own website, but plan to in the future.  I do wish our home come up higher on internet searches...hopefully a website will fix this.

I think the property manager will be a great asset.  We had issues cleaning, showing, ect until we found someone to take care of all of that for us.

So far it has been a little more work than our single family rentals, but a much better return.

Robert

Darren Sager · Answer

@Jeffrey Cervi I know someone who utilizes Air BNB quite effectively for rentals in NYC.  Have you looked into it or know anything about it?

https://www.airbnb.com/

Micki M. · Answer

Personally I'm a fan and user of Airbnb.com, the social networking aspect of it helps you drive reviews and referrals and you pay as you earn.  I also read http://www.vacationrentalmarketingblog.com/ which I discovered through BP, it's a wealth of answers to the questions you're asking.

Pam R. · Answer

Hi Jeffrey. I don't own vacation rentals, but I sure do use them. I am a heavy user of VRBO.com. I do pay more attention to the postings that include a link to the owners own web site, where they can provide more information. I also dig through the multiple listings for rentals in the same complex. If there are 15 two-bedroom condos listed in the same complex, I will generally just compare the 4 lowest-priced condos. I may check out the highest-priced to uncover why exactly the owner thinks it's worth $300 more a week, but it had better be good if it's going to sell me.

I also pay very close attention to user reviews. You should definitely encourage your renters to leave reviews, as that is what will sell the place to future renters. I once also received a personal thank you e-mail from an owner for taking such good care of the place. That was a nice touch.

I'm completely unfamiliar with the "showing the unit" notion - if it's for a vacation, I'm not going to see it until I get there. But you may be talking about snowbirds, who are looking to rent for the entire winter. I couldn't speak to that - although I'm looking forward to being a snowbird one day.

Jeffrey Cervi · Answer

Thank you all for the feedback and guidance.

Harold Anderson · Answer

Jeffrey,

Though most of my experience is with B&Bs, I do have some experience with VRs as well.  Both are hospitality businesses with similar marketing techniques.  We turned one B&B into longer term rentals with optional breakfast.

The way to look at marketing is how would you find a VR and how would you like to be treated.  When you do a search for VRs, what comes up?  In our market, VRBO comes up high on the list.  Also high on the list are local associations and airbnb.

Most of our guests appreciated our own website and we got the vast majority of referrals off of that.  However, we know that many of those referrals got to our site from some other source such as bnbonline.  So I believe that having your own website can make a big difference.  It doesn't need to be fancy but it does need to show off your place and why someone would want to stay there instead of the next place down the road.  We found that keeping a guest book available and placing the best comments throughout the website increased interest.  Use your best photos and keep it up to date.

Account Closed · Answer

@Jeffrey Cervi Good morning from the left coast!  I live in the Bay Area and have a vacation rental in Portland Oregon, and so while I have some competition, I believe Portland is minor league compared to Naples, that being said, here are my thoughts:

First, you have to make a decision what your goals are for your vacation rental and decide how much time and effort you are willing to put into the marketing and managing of the the home.  Based on what I have heard from others, if your time is limited, you may simply want to find a broker who will take the rental and charge 20% to 25% of the rental to handle al of this for you.

Second, economics is a big part of the equation and without knowing how much revenue you generate it is hard to assess the best next step.  For example, if you generate 50K per year in rentals, then 10K or more to an agent is a huge chunk and you could probably get to the same rental rent spending 2k to 3k per year in marketing. Likewise if you are generating 20K per year, then is the additional 1K to 2K of cash you will pay in higher management fees  worth the effort?

Finally, you need to think through what else the broker provided for you and what that is worth? Did they do the booking, collect the payment, arrange for repairs and house cleaning, etc.?  You need to figure out what else was included to help you put a dollar value on the cost.

As to your questions should you decided to take on marketing:

1) You can list it on the mls, see mlsmyhome.com, but I have no clue how effective this will be.

2) VRBO.com and Homeaway or not that expensive and should at least pay for themselves with a booking or two, so if you decide to go this route, you at least can break even.  Remember to try the featured advertisements from time to time.  In addition to the subscription level you purchase (which determines your search ranking), you can also pay extra to be featured as a top search result on a rotating basis for a certain period of time, so you may want to experiment with this as well.

3) Definitely get a web site - see myvr.com, super easy with lots of management tools included at a very low cost.  Also be sure to register your business with Google, Bing and others, as well as putting yourself on yelp, I get a lot a traffic from these sites.

4)  As to the rates charged, as mentioned above, this all comes down to how much your time is worth and the dollar amount in question.  If the cost of a realtor is more than the time required to do what the realtor did, then you have your answer.

5) A PM is excellent, so then you will be limited to marketing only, so this may be viable

6) You have my thoughts, feel free to PM me if you have more questions.

How to find renters for vacation rental?

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