All Forum Posts by: Alice Horn

@Bernadeau C. will do!

@Bernadeau C. I am based in Orlando too, and interested in the meetup. Is this happening in person or virtually?

@Adrienne Donato If you are thinking about vacation rental properties, I would suggest looking at older homes in stable vacation rental communities close in to Disney, that can be renovated to a high standard. You'll get the best bang for your investment, with higher rates and occupancies. 

@Bernadeau C. I am based in Orlando too, and interested in the meetup. Is this happening in person or virtually?

Also, @Valerie Rogers just a small note of clarification. Orange County, where Orlando is located has the highest number of Covid cases. Orange County actually has very few (legal) vacation rentals. Osceola and Polk Counties, where the vast number of vacation rentals are located, currently have far lower rates and the rentals are typically pool homes spread apart from each other in quiet neighborhoods. All eyes are on Disney, which reopened last Saturday with extremely rigorous safety measures. Reports were very positive from park goers.Fingers crossed all will continue to go well.   

We are based in Orlando and have added a number of restrictions and disclosures to our Rental Agreement which guests must sign. We enforce occupancy limits for each home, for total number of people in the house at any given point in time, including visitors who are not staying overnight. Doing everything we can to avoid parties in the homes.

We have also deployed CDC cleaning and disinfection standards as well as guidelines for guests staying in the homes. These are reinforced in our listings, confirmation email, guestbook and even signs in the home. 

Hi Matt!

Thanks for the kind words! We are strictly property managers and marketers. We have a F/T revenue manager who stays focused on occupancy and revenue. That helps!

It will be interesting to see what happens with the market!  So far, so good. All eyes are on Disney and the reopening yesterday. So far response from visitors is positive - they are having a great time and feeling safe. 

Alice

Love all the positive energy on this thread! Happy to be part of any virtual meetings. We are vacation rental property managers and marketers using technology and a data-driven approach to secure the best return for our investors. Would love to share and learn from the group.

@Matt Sandidge sorry about the delay. we also use Beyond Pricing, Guesty is our channel manager. We also use Key Data Dashboard for data analytics and forecasting, and Properly to schedule and monitor cleans. 

Matt, I am not a financing expert but can address the other issues. Depending on your market you should be able to hire a professional property manager/marketer to handle ALL of the above, starting with professional photography, listing on all the channels, revenue management, scheduling cleans, handling maintenance and more. The most important aspect is your revenue management. Vacation rentals have entered the sophisticated and complex world of dynamic pricing. Prices can and should fluctuate every day, depending on seasonality, local events, weather patterns etc. A professional manager will be able to generate top revenue for your unit by using the right software and understanding the marketplace.