Just Launched Our First Vacation Rental Property

[Gary Ennis]

A while back, my wife and I decided to rehab one of our long-term rentals in central Austin and convert it to a short-term vacation rental. After months and months of work, our first vacation rental property is now up and running! 

VRBO Listing #685434

We've had two parties stay with us so far, and both have left sparkling reviews. And we've got a couple bookings for South by Southwest next week. We're looking forward to settling into our new roles in the hospitality industry (we're self-managing), and tweaking amenities/rates to generate maximum revenue from the property going forward. Exciting stuff!

[Gary Ennis]

@Naeem Kapasi Thanks for the kind words!

@Jon Klaus Occupancy rate was 70% for April, 55% for May, 50% for June, and 84% for July. 66% overall for the 4 months. 

We're happy with what we've been able to accomplish thus far, but we're also optimistic that we can raise occupancy rates significantly, primarily by building our own website (instead of relying 100% upon the listing sites), and starting an email marketing campaign to former guests/prospects.

Surprises thus far:
- At least in Austin, which is a 12-month rental market, the term "vacation rental" is a bit of a misnomer. "Short-term rental" is a more appropriate description, as we've had a significant number of guests who stayed with us because they were moving to Austin and their house wasn't quite ready, they were doing renovations to their house and needed a place to park their family for a few days, their child was graduating from UT, they were helping a family member move to Austin, etc.
- May and June were slow months. I would have thought that July and August, when it's very hot here and there's nice summer weather in the rest of the country, would be the slowest. But folks who are moving here who need temporary housing tend to move in the summer when kids are out of school, and there is quite a lot of activity around UT in August. 
- That we'd love being in the hospitality industry as much as we do. Being vacation rental owners enables my wife and I to combine our love of taking distressed properties and making them better, design (you've got to furnish and decorate the place to create an inviting "guest experience") and hospitality. We're very interested in the idea of managing others' Austin vacation rental properties for them, in addition to ours. 

Reinli St - wow! We are currently rehabbing our house on Broadview about three blocks away, which will become our second vacation rental property when it launches in late August. Is the property a commercial building? As far as I know there's only one little house left on Reinli; the rest are apartments or office space. 

@John Thedford As @Jeffrey Cervi mentioned, VRBO/HomeAway charges an annual fee, and does not take a cut of individual bookings. I highly recommend joining at their Platinum level; it's pricey at $1550 for membership that includes both VRBO and HomeAway and many of their other sites, but membership level is the #1 factor in determining your placement in their search results. Thus far we are getting the most reservations from VRBO/HomeAway, although we are gaining significant traction with AirBnB lately. 

AirBnB and FlipKey don't charge a membership fee, but take 3% of each booking.

Dwellable is another site we're experimenting with. They are a startup and don't have much traffic yet. But they are optimized for mobile (which is how many millenials are searching for VR properties) and optimized for large, beautiful photos. 

@Maura Paler Thanks! We'd love to host you guys for a future trip to Austin. If you have any questions about Austin, feel free to message me.