Boise startup launches online marketplace for vacation rentals

[Michael Alexander]

There’s a new startup in Boise providing an online real estate marketplace for investors, buyers and sellers to list or shop for short-term vacation rental properties.

Similar to the MLS, Revnest displays detailed information about properties, including the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, lot size, and year built.

Traditional listing sites like Realtor.com and Zillow are sufficient for selling traditional homes, but are not the best option for selling and buying vacation rental properties. It was a struggle to find investment properties on these platforms, and it was from this first-hand experience that there was a market need to create Revnest where real estate sales are simplified for vacation rentals.

Detailed historical data on vacation homes, including financials, operating expenses, revenue, occupancy rates, and average daily rates are also provided on Revnest. A link to the vacation rental on VRBO/Airbnb is also provided so that potential buyers can see past reviews, rates, and other information.

“Revnest is ideal for buyers and sellers of short-term vacation rentals; seasoned or looking to get started,” co-founder St. Marie said. “Listing on a marketplace like Revnest ensures that your property is seen by the right people, increasing the chances of a successful sale and fewer days on market.”

The platform is free for buyers and sellers to use worldwide.

“This is just the beginning for Revnest. Our mission is to shape the future of short-term real estate,” Co-founder and CEO Keith Breon said. “We are proud to be the first in the industry to offer this marketplace and network, and are excited to witness how it can transform the buying and selling experience.”

Would you use this new platform to buy your next vacation rental property? 

[Ryan Moyer]

Quote from @Richard Elvin:

It's an interesting concept, but I don't see any real value in it.

My thought is why would I want to go to a str specific website vs finding it on an already established site? This seems like a solution in search of a problem. Especially the statement that "Listing on a marketplace like Revnest ensures that your property is seen by the right people..." Who are "the right people"? Typically buyers that intend to occupy a property are the one's willing to pay a premium, most investors are looking for a discount. So it would seem they're bringing sellers to buyers looking to pay less than MLS prices. I would posit that the entire theory is flawed.

Are sellers going to list on this website but not list on Zillow? That seems like a way to market to a smaller audience vs marketing to a larger audience. When I've sold property I've always marketed to the largest audience possible, so I would consider listing on a site like Revnest, but it would be in addition to FSBO sites not in replacement of Zillow/FB groups/etc.

I agree that the post reads like an adverstisement.

There are Facebook groups specific to established STR homes for sale with revenue history that have hundreds of thousands of members so there is clearly a market for this. There is an unlimited supply of people with lots of money that just want a plug and play rental property for tax purposes or appreciation or inflation protection, etc and don't have the time, care, or ability to source and underwrite properties on their own like most of us here do.

This is the same reason sites like roofstock and memphis invest, etc exist and do very well in the LTR space.

Or heck, people that pay wealth managers obscene amounts of money to buy a crappier version of an existing index with a higher expense ratio when they could just buy the index it tracks themselves.

Not only are those of us here that spend 10+ hours every week just underwriting properties not representative of all buyers in the STR space, we're likely the overwhelming minority.