Tips for Renting Your Vacation Property

Not many vacation property owners know how difficult it is to rent your vacation property. The truth is many owners do not take the right approach to rent their vaction property to interested people. A wrong approach can not only increase your net loss on renting but also in some cases your unit may remain unoccupied without being rented. But if you adopt the right strategy and approach you can minimize this liability to a great extent. Basically there are two approaches which are discussed in the following paragraphs.

One approach is to go to your vacation property resort and tell them to rent your vacation property. It might seem like an easy option which saves us from the hassle of advertising, but vacation property resorts typically charge a fee for renting out the unit. The resort pools the rental income with other vacation property owners. The resort then splits the income if the unit was not rented for a whole week. This is the reality and vacation property resorts tell their owners beforehand not to expect the unit to rent out for a whole week. It can be either 2 to 3 days or 3 to 4 days but rarely the whole week. The worst thing about renting through the resort is its 30-40% commission. This is a great loss for the vacation property owner. Let’s do a quick calculation, if you rent out the unit for $150 per night and assume that someone is renting it for 3 days. So three day total rent should be $450. If the resort charges a commission of $150 then you are only left with $300, which is your net rent. Now if you pay $400 in annual maintenance your net loss will be $100. Now you have to question yourself is this really worth it? Obviously the answer will be no. Let us forget for a moment that you want to make a profit on your rental but at least you don’t want a loss also or to be practical, a minimum loss.

The other option is to market your vacation property property by yourself. What are the available options? You can either put an advertisement for rent in classifieds of newspapers or through the classifieds run by vacation property Resort which targets the right people i.e. those who are willing to rent a vacation property. The other option is to put your unit on auction sites such as eBay and bidshare.com. And keep in mind that your vacation property will be listed in the travel section but not real estate. You have to be pre approved by square trade which can take up to five days. The square trade will also need a proof of the ownership of the vacation property unit preferable deed or the maintenance bill. After this the unit is placed on auction on the website. Remember to be cooperative to the bidders and answer all their queries and give them the complete information about the unit. Your vacation property unit could go as close as your maintenance fee and thus less loss. The bottom line of renting your vacation property is to never expect a profit on the rent but only less loss.

Now let us look at the last option of going through a rental company to rent your vacation property unit. Make sure that the rental company is licensed in their state and specializes in vacation property rentals. A reputed name will be a safe bet in this regard. Ok now, you went to a licensed company and he charges a flat fee which is better than your resort company. There was a huge rush of people to rent their units. You wait typically 60 to 90 days to receive all your offers and once booking is done you receive payment but can take up to 180 days if the owner is asking more than market value. Oftentimes they can provide greater profits for the owners.