Why This Blog?

Why create a blog dedicated to vacation home rentals?

We learned the hard way. In 2003 we bought our first vacation home in Arizona. What helped seal the deal was the fact that the developer had paired with a property management company that had national exposure. They would rent the home and we would get the income. This fact helped propel us beyond our fears of taking on a second home.

What we learned was the property management company was only interested in taking 30% of our revenue and billing us a monthly fee plus all sorts of additional fees: housekeeping, monthly walk through, filters, etc etc. Things like marketing our property, competitively pricing it, and renting it was the furthest thing from their minds. But the scary thing is we kept on with it for another year and a half.

I started to research vacation home rentals on the internet and found an entire community, and industry we're springing up; unleashed by the internet. I researched prices of folks that we're competing against me right next door, and we're under pricing my unit, whose rates we're set by the property management company, by some 35%.

I slowly started to realize that I had to get back in control of my investment. Real Estate can be a wonderful investment if you keep control of it. I had given away my marketing, my pricing, my customer engagement, and my property management completely over to people whose business model objectives we're entirely different from mine.

To date we have increased our revenues some 600% in less than 12 months, our utilization rates have grown 10 fold, and we have a customer base. Things are so good we even purchased another vacation rental property, and created a company under which the units are held. Check out our web site at http://www.breovacationrentals.com

The reality still remains that the majority of people who decide to rent their homes do so in ways that do not maximize their return on investment. They use real estate agents, & property management companies. They do not take credit cards or even have a web site. What they fail at most is that they do not see their vacation home rental for what it is: a business.

We hope to share a few things we have learned in the coming months and our experiences as we continue to strive for continued success with our business. We want to receive information from others and build a community that promotes the vacation home rental industry.

Please let me know of any topics that you want to see addressed or any ideas and experiences that you have had in renting your own homes.

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