Good afternoon, As a second home owner renting out your property throughout the year I am pleased to bring you the safest and simplest way to manage your home from miles away without the needs for keys! It will be of great benefit to you and will make your life so much easier when dealing [...]
For those of you renting in a spring break area (I have a condo on the Gulf Coast), will you rent to “spring breakers”? When I first started renting and had a hard time keeping my condo booked, I would rent to the 21-25 crowd with a larger deposit. Maybe it’s my old age and [...]
Although it’s a tough thing to ask owners to constantly keep their calendars updated, or respond to renters when they send an inquiry for a date range that the owner already has booked, it is an unending source of frustration for renters. Anytime I receive an email inquiry, I make an effort to respond immediately, [...]
The verdict on the true cost of spending your vacation in a hotel versus staying in a vacation rental is in, and I have the proof. For a family on a vacation, a vacation rental provides great accommodations for far less money. I just had a very unique personal experience that allowed me to test [...]
Every vacation rental property owner gets questions from prospective renters like: How far away from the beach is your unit? How do I get to your property? Where is the nearest grocery store? Do you have a map of the area? Community Walk (www.communitywalk.com) provides a great utility to build custom maps that showcase Sample [...]
Hello Fellow Vacation Rentals Owners: Late last week, FindVacationRentals.com released a completely revamped website with new features designed to attract and keep renters attention. It also offers new ways for owners to market and promote their properties. And the best part – this comes with no price increase to our owner community. Some of the [...]
Fellow Vacation Rental Owners: As a vacation home rental owner and operator of a vacation rentals by owner advertising website, I have been following the situation closely with regards to the recent sharp decline in both real estate prices (commercial and single family homes) and the stock market. Like a lot of investors out there [...]
Vacations for Veterans is a nonprofit created to provide recently wounded veterans free lodging donated by a vacation home owner. Regardless of your views on our foreign policy, I think everyone can agree that what our veterans do for our country is incredible honorable and they are not recognized enough for their service. As vacation [...]
When I used to travel for a living, I enjoyed the perks offered by the airlines and the hotels. Upgrade to first class? Sure! Upgrade hotel room? Don’t mind if I do! Everyone likes perks and incentives not available elsewhere. For your vacation home, perks make your rental stand-out. They can make things easier on [...]
My mom likes to talk on the phone. A lot. And while she isn’t afraid to browse the web and find what she wants, she still wants to pick up the phone and talk to a human to order. If you want to maximize bookings, make sure to put phone number on your vacation rental [...]
As both vacation rental property owners and vacation rental advertising website operators, we have often had other vacation rental owners as well as online and offline publications ask us what really drives the vacation rentals by owner market. After a lot of thought and a lot of years of experience, we’ve distilled it down to [...]
The Herald Net has a short article on the main tax rules with regard to vacation rentals. Let me break down the categories of taxation: Renting out your vacation home less than 15 days a year Renting out your vacation home as much as possible while never using your vacation rental for personal use. Renting [...]
If you’ve been around the internet for any period of time, you’re well aware of the scams arriving by email informing you of the vast sums of money you have won. Or, if you help the Nigerian Princess move money out of her country, you can have a cut of it. These scams have permeated [...]
Increase your vacation home bookings by accepting forms of payments that aren’t cash. Below is a list of some popular options. 1. Personal Check As long as you have enough time before check-in, this is usually your #1 option. Since the renter has to send you the rental agreement anyway, have them drop a check [...]
As a vacation rental owner you have ample opportunities to advertise your vacation home. One such opportunity is email signatures. Every email you send out to renters or friends should have, at a minimum, your contract information. Include the following: Your name Your email address Your inquiry phone number Your listing website address from your [...]
Hello fellow vacation rental owners: I’m not entirely sure what experience everyone out there is having with keeping your rentals booked with the touch economic times, but I am sure about one thing: the two most popular adjectives attached to all search traffic on the Internet are “cheap” and “discount”. In general, everyone likes to [...]
Like many of us in the by owner vacation rental industry, you have to have a solution to the “get a key to the renter” conundrum. Here, I run down the ways to solve that riddle. Again, this isn’t for those who are lucky enough (or unlucky, as it may be) to meet the renter [...]
As a vacation home owner, you are responding to inquiries via email pretty often. And those responses are always the same. Either you have availability and you provide the renter a quote. Or you don’t, and you let them know that. Plus, you want to put your name, phone number, and listing website address at [...]
Your odds of being audited by the IRS are greater under the following circumstances: You have rental expenses on your tax return. You have large amounts of itemized deductions on your tax return. You claim tax shelter investment losses on your tax return. Your business expenses are large in relation to your income on your [...]