With property management firms charging as much as 45% of a rental property’s income, more and more vacation home owners are turning to the Internet to book their rental properties themselves in order to keep more of their rental income.
While websites such as HomeAway have given vacation home owners a new venue to advertise their rental properties, most vacation home owners are finding that these sites alone do not produce enough rentals to keep their properties fully booked. Even worse, vacation home owners are finding that the mundane tasks of replying to inquiries, manually sending out invoices and rental agreements, updating their properties’ availability calendars, and all the other tasks associated with replacing a property management firm all add up to a full-time job.
There are online software management tools for vacation rental properties, though, that can greatly reduce the amount of time you have to spend managing these types of activities.