Experience w/Evolve Rental Management vs. Other Options

[Susan Ticson]

Looking at potentially using Evolve to list and manage my STR. Does anyone have any experience or thoughts about them? Does it save you money in the long run instead of listing on multiple sites yourself? Is it more convenient to have one calendar for all sites they Iist your STR on? Anything better out there?

Thank you,

Susan

[Jon Crosby]

@Susan Ticson   I have used Evolve for 3 years now and my quick answer to your question is, yes they provide value for what they charge...the question is, if what they are providing is valuable to you specifically.  They basically handle everything up until the guest checks in for a 13% fee (10% Evolve and 3% for Stripe payment processing). They have a nice homeowner portal and take care of a lot of the heavy lifting on the booking side of things.  I liked using them because it was a good combination of time I had to invest in my VR with what they do and saves the other 8-10% in revenue from a full turnkey provider.

They are not doing anything 'magical' however, they simply list your home on VRBO/HA/Airbnb/Flipkey/TripAdvisor and they handle all the intake.  They do pay for the high-quality pictures for your home and write up the 'copy' used to try and promote the rental.  They provide $1M in liability coverage and they are available as a buffer between you and any guests you do not want to deal with directly.

For my new property, I will be doing it all myself so I have a true comparison of what I'm getting out of it.  My biggest issue with Evolve over the last few years is how big they have gotten and some of the growing pains associated with that.  They have their own dynamic pricing model they are rolling out as well which I'm still up in the air on also. 

Hope that helps, message me directly if you have any specific questions. 

Cheers!