VRBO Account Swap - How to do it?

Question

My wife and I are buying a house that has been on VRBO for several years, has a solid rental history, great reviews built up, etc., and we’re trying to work with the seller and the folks at VRBO to transition their account (and bookings) over to us, as we close on the house this coming Friday. This hasn’t proven to be the easiest process. Has anyone encountered this issue before or have any advice on how to best facilitate the transfer? Any help is very much appreciated!

Ken Boone · Answer

@Justin Griffin - Ok so here is the deal. If the seller is willing to work with you it should not be a big deal. Like @John Underwood said though you cannot take over the account you need to create your own account. So here is what we did when we went through this process. The seller will need to provide you the guest's contact information and booking dates and rates for all future bookings. Prior to the closing you will need to go ahead and set up your VRBO account and listing for the property. Perhaps the seller would be willing to provide you with the existing pictures. Once you have your listing up, the seller will need to contact all of the guests of future bookings and let them know they are selling and you are buying. They will need to inform the guests that they will need to cancel their reservations, but if they still want to book the property, they can book with you at the provided new listing. We also told the seller to inform the guests that we will be honoring all of their prices as well. When you set up your listing you will need to block all of the future booked dates. You or the seller will need to communicate to theses guests that they will need to contact you prior to booking so you can open up the blocked dates for them. We also provide a timeline like it had to be done in the next two weeks or we would no longer hold the dates for them. Blocking the dates prevents someone else from out of the blue taking their dates. When we went through this process we had about 30k worth of future bookings. We changed two things - no more fire pit - due to new HOA rules and no pets. Out of all the guests that were previously booked with the old owner we only lost 2 guests and that was due to the no pet rule. Overall it went very smooth and provided us with immediate cash flow as well as reviews on the platforms.Now after we went through this process we learned from VRBO, that if we would have contacted them first and let them know that we are taking over the property and we are re-listing the property under a new listing, they would have transferred all of the previous reviews over to the new listing. I did not know we could do that at the time and so we started with 0 reviews. So I would definitely talk to VRBO about this before you set up your new listing.Hope that helps.

Nancy Bachety · Answer

We just did this exactly as Ken described. Seller went so far as to build my new VRBO listing for me by transferring her same pictures over and even the wording (both five star professionally done) directly onto my account and listing. She printed out for me all bookings including contact info and pricing. I blocked out everyone’s dates and gave them a week to contact me. Then she included my listing’s link in her email. We were even able to keep all but two reservations out of 32 but took them off-platform, as direct-bookings. I sent them a contract, made possible by a couple of members here who shared their’s, @Michael Baum was one. I kept their gross pricing the same, even a few dollars less than what they paid. That off-platform part was not essential to do but I didn’t really care about getting more reviews and it was so simple. I had a well-drafted introduction email from the seller to guest and another one from me to the guest. Her prices were great but when I took over and started with PriceLabs, our prices were even higher, shockingly. My seller wanted to keep her reviews as she was buying a larger condo in the same complex and will just change a few things and her new photos to her listing with her great reviews. We wouldn’t have transferred bookings because of this. Good luck and reach out if you have other questions.

John Underwood · Answer

I have always heard you can not take over someone else's account, that you need to start over.

Justin Griffin · Answer

@Ken Boone thank you so much for your thorough explanation of your experience with this process. My wife has spoken to VRBO a couple times, and seems to get different information each time she calls them. A lot of what you’re saying, she’s also found to be true, so getting some consistency is a good feeling.