Community: Message List - We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 19:12:14 GMT

I have been in sales for 15+ years and when I am not able to close many inquiries for my product there is ultimiately a reason why which is usually my price. My experience using VRBO is there are many inquiries and there are many reasons why these don't convert to rentals. Sometimes the issue is my price, other times is my reply was too slow and the potential renter submitted inquiries to tons of properties at once and there are other reasons as well. Do you follow up with any past inquiries to see why they decided not to rent from you? It is very helpful to hear this feedback at times. Another thing I would do would be to list my rental on additional vacation websites like http://www.FVRA.com, Airbnb, Vacationrentals and others. Best of luck, don't give up.

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 18:33:56 GMT

Hello,

There has been alot of excellent advice mentioned above. I would like to offer an additional option, an Interactive 360 degree Virtual Tour.

80% of people who bought or rented a vacation home in used the internet in house hunting. That means at least 60% of your marketing dollars should be spent optimizing your listings and company online.

80% of internet shoppers say Great Clear images are imperative when deciding to buy or use a company’s product or services. (2006 Pew Study)

84% of all buyers and 87% of first time buyers use the internet as an information resource during their search for a home. In the 25-44 age group this number jumped to 91% of all home buyers!

54% of home buyers who are searching for their next home on Realtor.com will not even look at a home unless there is a featured tour. (NAR, January 2006)

Images are one of the biggest reasons Internet marketing has become so popular.
(2007 NAR profile of home buyers and sellers)

Home Buyers who used virtual tours spent an average of two weeks with a Realtor® looking at homes, compared to those who did not use the internet, who spent an average of seven weeks looking for their home. (2008 RIS Media)

By August of 2006, over half of American adult internet users (61%) had taken virtual tours of a location online and on a typical day, more than six million people are taking virtual tours in cyberspace. (2006 Pew Study)

According to the 2007 NAR home buyer and seller profile, for the first time ever the Internet tied with the agent for most important informational source used in home searches (84%) and by the end of 2007 65% of agents had their own web sites.

79% of repeat buyers & 84% of first time buyers use the internet to search for a home. (2006 NAR Survey)

Reach a higher income demographic. The median income of Internet searchers is much higher, about $86,900, compared with buyers who did not use the internet to search for a home, about $50,400. (2007 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers)

96.2% of travelers use the Internet as a source of information when planning a trip or move. (2006 Pew Study)

Home buyers use the internet slightly more frequently (66%) than real estate agents (64%) and much more frequently than newspapers (17%), home magazines (10%) or television (2%).

A site with a virtual tour and interactive media will receive 38% more views than a competitor’s site that is lacking media. (2006 Pew Internet Life Study)

Only 1% of homebuyers did not find the internet useful and 100% of those that use a real estate agent take two weeks to search on their own before contacting their real estate agent. 64% of all home buyers used the FIRST agent they contacted.

33% of all buyers are now using social networking sites with 19% using them at least a few times per week.

Daily costs for print advertising can top $66-$150 per day, and usually has a shelf life of only 30 days. Print advertising has a limited market penetration and does not allow the consumer to interact or engage with the home or product. The average cost of an online interactive virtual tour is about 27 CENTS per day -- and has a shelf life of 365 days with WORLDWIDE penetration.

A compelling use of interactive media and virtual tour technology keeps visitors on your site, and keeps them coming back...

If you would like to learn more about this service please call me at 309-502-0638. I am located in the Panama City Beach area and I am willing to travel anywhere, anytime I can. If you would like to look as some of my work, please visit www.facebook.com/qc360

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:25:56 GMT

loscuatrotulipanes - u hit the nail on the head.

Take control, or you are at the mercy of these paid sites. In my opinion, a professional, well designed website with great pictures is the key. Use listing sites to gain traffic to your personal site.

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:19:25 GMT

We feel your pain!

But southerncaliforniarental, one of the quick realizations new owners get when they start renting is that travelers won't just line up at your door to stay. In the same breath, listing on one or two or even five paid sites like VRBO or HomeAway or FlipKey is relying on something out of your control. (You can read many posts in this forum by owners who suddenly, after years of successful renting, have suddenly gone empty due to increased competition, increased prices of paid sites, yatta yatta yatta.)

My message to disgruntled owners big and small is that you need to take control of your lead flow. The longer you rely exclusively on external sites to book your rental, the longer you are avoiding the ultimate premise (let's say, 10 years down the road) when it's nearly impossible to get a booking on paid sites due to a ultra-saturated and bloodthirsty competitive rental market in your community of Huntington Beach.

The solution? Get in the drivers seat and begin working on the things you CAN control. Things like a prominent and well-thought-out website, good international press, a fine-tuned process for turning a lead into a booking, developing yourself as an expert (tours, restaurants, activities, nightlife...etc) in the Huntington Beach area, soliciting 5-star reviews, perfecting your last minute offers (good call moltened), hiring a photographer for professional photos...etc. The list goes on and on and I highlight the top-performers in my Boost Occupancy Report.

The point of my post: signing up for listing sites is an easy (and sometimes very effective) one-time effort to promote your vacation rental. But owners need to get realistic and realize it takes more work than just spending an hour publishing a listing. If you are really serious about making money, you need to get more proactive. This is not necessarily synonymous with "start spending money" since there are tons of free tools and creative alternatives to, say, paid press releases or expensive PR firms. This is also challenging for those who have additional full time jobs. But it is a mentality (I blog about this constantly) I think every new owner could really benefit to embrace.

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:32:43 GMT

Well my business is impacted here in southern California by the economic crisis in Europe and yours would also have to be impacted as well. I think that people are taking a wait and see attitude that is effecting early bookings... however my last minute business is doing well. I'm not getting bookings 6 months in advance like I did but 1 to 3 months is working for me.

I'll give you my two cents on your listing anyway because I don't think its presented as well as it could be.

Beautiful place but there is no color or playfulness in a lot of the pictures. There is no artwork on the walls. There are no colorful pillows anywhere; on sofas or beds. White table clothes miss the chance for some color. Bathroom is missing colorful towels. Spectacular outdoor shots but no place to sit anywhere to enjoy it... seems absolutely barren. Shelves seem devoid of reading material or interesting tchotchkes. Even the flowers in that vase are seemingly colorless.

Some outdoor shots are begging for tall colorful ceramic pots with or without flowers. I could come up with 10 different camera angles for that kitchen shot that would be more flattering. Lets see the table top with a vase of the purple flowers from the garden and a loaf of bread and cheese... its certainly not inviting as is.

There's got to be a better way to present and describe that pool other than as 'granite tank'. Is it spring fed with fish or chlorinated water? How is it not stagnate? How about a table pool side with umbrella or chaise loungers with colorful towels and pool toys. Show me the nearby town you describe. You have some duplicate pictures as well.

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:01:56 GMT

Hello,

I own this vacation rental in Portugal, Quinta do Bento Novo, http://www.quintabentonovo.pt/ or http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p82319

The thing is, the fist years I have worked with Homeaway it worked really well and we had a lot of foreign good renters.

But lately we had almost no inquiries.

I don't think I'm overpriced, we have advertised in several websites, and even with more competitors, I believe we have good quality, and we surely have some good reviews.

Do any of you know a company or someone who could analyze "Bento Novo" vacation rental and tell us what can be happening, or give us some piece of advices?

Thank you very much!

Paulo Barros

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:10:15 GMT

We have received equal parts of rentals from Homeaway and Flipkey. We have advertised with Homeaway long before there was a Homeaway. We started with Cyberrentals and Great Renrtals, both of which were bought by Homeaway. We just started with Flipkey in March and booked three rentals for this summer. We do not offer bargains or discounts. We have one price for everyone. Otherwise, how would an inquirer know that they were getting the best deal if we flip floped.

We also advertise on VRBO, VacationRentals nd vacationrentalpeople. Not many bookings but some inquiries.

Marilyn

www.hamptonhouseproperties.info

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:54:25 GMT

I think it definitely depends on your market. Here on Maui, VRBO is my best bet. However, it is confusing to people who don't know which complex to stay in. I do use Homeaway and Flipkey. Flipkey has gotten me some great bookings (including a two weeks Christmas stay!). But I find that searches I randomly do on Flipkey do not accurately reflect the calendar (grumble grumble).

I do like having a listing on either one. One of the great benefits is - when there is a pricewar on VRBO (don't you just hate those races to the bottom?), the customer doesn't see that on Homeaway and Flipkey as they don't necessarily see other condos on the same property.

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:01:33 GMT

Thanks for this post. Several people on this forum have said they like FlipKey and I wondered why. I had tried them briefly and was not satisfied with the type of inquiries were generated from them. I do not like last minute inquiries or people looking for "bargains."

Re: We have been advertising for over 2 months and have yet to find a renter.

community-no-reply@homeaway.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:50:46 GMT

I think Flipkey is mostly potential renters looking for last minute hotels and stumble on the vacation rental portion. As soon as I have availability within the next 30 day period I get bombarded with flipkey inquiries.