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FullyBookedRentals presents...

The Glossbrenner Guide to 
Vacation Rental Resources
[Free Sample]

Congratulations! You've discovered the world's only thoroughly researched, regularly updated, and highly selective guide to the very best resources for vacation-rental owners.

Quick Alice, Get Me the Glossbrenner!If you're serious about making money from your vacation-rental property, and providing your guests with the best possible vacation experience, you'll find lots of great stuff in our VR Resources Guide to help you meet those goals.

Many of the resources presented here are discussed in greater detail in our book/CD package, How to Make Your Vacation Property Work for You!, and in our Vacation Rental Secrets & Sources series. But in this guide, we've collected and organized our favorite products, services, and Web sites, along with tips on how they can help you advertise, rent, and manage your property more effectively.

What Makes Our Guide Different?

Every one of the resources you'll read about here has been personally selected by us. Other books and online sources promote products indiscriminately, or arrange to receive commissions, referral fees, or affiliate payments from the companies they recommend. That's not how we do things. 

The VR resources presented here are included for one reason, and one reason only: because they are exceptionally good products and services that can make your "rent by owner" experience much more pleasant, effective, and profitable.

How This Excerpt is Organized

We've organized this excerpt from our VR Resources Guide into several major topics. You can scroll down the page to read each one in turn, or click on the bulleted link to go directly to a specific topic. You can also use our site's Search feature if there's a particular topic—or a product, service, or company name—that you want to zero in on.     

What's In the Member-Exclusive Version?

When you sign up as member of FullyBookedRentals, you'll have access to the full-length version of our VR Resources Guide, which we update throughout the year as we discover new products and services that we feel should be brought to the attention of our members.

Here's what we cover in the member-exclusive version:     

A Message from Alfred & Emily Glossbrenner

The information presented here is excerpted from The Glossbrenner Guide to Vacation Rental Resources (aka VR Resources Guide). Our goal with this free sample is twofold. First, we want you to have some truly useful free content, not the low-quality free stuff some membership sites have been known to provide. And second, we want to entice you to join FullyBookedRentals.

Bottom line: If you think this is good, wait till you see the quality and the quantity of the information you'll have access to when you become a member of our site. For more on the benefits of joining, please click here.

Buying a Vacation Property

We often hear from people who are intrigued by the notion of owning and operating a vacation-rental property but have yet to buy one themselves. If you need help figuring out where and what to buy, we have several books and Web sites to recommend:

Books

Buying a Second Home: Income, Getaway, or Retirement by Craig Venezia (Nolo, 2007). We're big fans of Nolo books, forms, and software. We've always found them to be authoritative, well-researched, and superbly written. This book/CD package by mortgage expert and financial writer Craig Venezia is no exception. Click here for the table of contents, reviews, sample chapter, and a list of the forms and checklists that are included on the CD.

How a Second Home Can Be Your Best Investment by Tom Kelly and John Tuccillo (McGraw-Hill, 2004). In clear, hype-free prose, the authors of this 220-page book explain how to calculate what you can afford for a second home, find the perfect property, and turn the place into a "cash cow" that provides a lifelong source of income. Click here for more information.

The Complete Guide to Second Homes for Vacations, Retirement, and Investment by Gary W. Eldred (Wiley, 2000). Though not quite as current as the first two books listed here, this 280-page guide offers a wealth of practical advice from one of the country's leading experts on real estate investing. Click here for more information.

Web Sites

EscapeHomes (www.escapehomes.com). Now owned by HomeAway, this site's goal is to become the premier marketplace for buyers and sellers of second homes and resort properties. It's the best place we've encountered for finding detailed descriptions of popular vacation spots. You can also use the site's search feature to locate properties for sale and real-estate agents who specialize in vacation homes. (Note: There's also a large collection of articles posted here, but the quality varies, and the collection is not very well organized.)

RealEstateJournal (realestatejournal.com). Click on the "Second Homes" tab for current and archived articles by Wall Street Journal editors, columnists, and freelancers about buying, selling, and owning vacation properties. (Note: You don't have to be a WSJ subscriber to access these articles. Everything posted here is free.)

Getting Started as a Vacation Rental Owner

There are countless books on how to be a successful landlord or property manager. But until October 2003 when we published the first edition of our book/CD package, there was absolutely nothing designed specifically for vacation-rental owners. Now there are several. These are the ones we recommend:

Renting Your Vacation Home: A Step-by-Step Guide by Kristin W. Dorsett. This nicely organized 27-page eBook published by HomeAway provides a good introduction to vacation rentals, with sections on Getting Started, Marketing, and The Rental Process. It's available as a free download, provided you don't mind giving HomeAway your email address. 

How to Make Your Vacation Property Work for You!: The Quick and Easy Guide to Advertising, Renting, Managing, and Making Money from Your Second Home by Alfred and Emily Glossbrenner. Now in its second edition, our 300-page book/CD package is designed as a complete "seminar-in-a-box." It shows you how to create listings that really sell on the leading vacation-rental advertising sites. It also includes tips and techniques for managing your property, a CD with sample forms and checklists that you can customize as you see fit, and a variety of money-saving offers. The package also includes our Key Features Update on what we consider to be the "must-have" sites for your online advertising program. For more details, reader reviews, and ordering information, click here.

How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner, Second Edition, by Christine Karpinski (Kinney Pollack, 2007). This book by the Director of HomeAway's Owner Community goes a long way toward demystifying the whole notion of do-it-yourself vacation rentals. If you're not quite sure you're cut out to be a vacation-rental owner, reading this inexpensive guide is a low-cost way to find out. Much of the new material is also available on the HomeAway site, but if you don't have the first edition, get this one, which is available for less than $18 on Amazon. Click here for more information.

Advertising Your Vacation Rental Property

The secret to spreading the word about your vacation-rental property is to create effective listings on several of the leading vacation-rental advertising sites. We recommend that you start with three or four sites, but you may need several more if your property is in a highly competitive area, or if your objective is to book your property year-round rather than just during a few weeks in high season.

Here's our "short list" of sites that you should consider when you're just starting out. These are sites that have good reputations and a strong track record for generating bookings, regardless of where the property is located:   

  1. VRBO® (www.vrbo.com)
  2. HomeAway™ (www.homeaway.com)
  3. FlipKey/TripAdvisor (www.flipkey.com)
  4. VacationRentals (www.vacationrentals.com)
  5. VRConnection (www.vrconnection.com)
  6. FindVacationRentals (www.findvacationrentals.com) 
  7. PerfectPlaces (www.perfectplaces.com)
  8. VacationHomes (www.vacationhomes.com) 

Note: If you list your property with HomeAway, your listing information will automatically be added to CyberRentals, GreatRentals, and A1Vacations, three well-established, top-quality vacation-rental advertising sites that were bought by HomeAway in 2005. VRBO and VacationRentals are also owned by HomeAway. But they were bought more recently and are still operating as separate brands, rather than being incorporated into the HomeAway Network.   

We also have a few region-specific and special-interest sites to recommend. (FullyBookedRentals members will find a more extensive list of top-quality regional and specialty sites in the Advertising Your VR Property section of the member-exclusive version of our VR Resources Guide.) 

Note: We cover the topic of regional and special-interest sites in much more detail in the members-only version of our VR Resources Guide and in an article entitled "Fine-Tuning Your Advertising Program" in our Vacation Rental Secrets & Sources series.

If you're wondering whether you need to create your own Web site to advertise your property and how to go about it, take a look at our Secrets article on "Creating a Web Site for Your Vacation-Rental Property".

Do You Have a Site to Recommend? We're constantly monitoring the "state of play" in the vacation-rental business—searching the Net, interviewing site owners and service providers, and reading a variety of print and online publications. But one of our best sources of information on what's good, what's bad, what works, and what doesn't—especially when it comes to vacation-rental advertising sites—is other property owners. If you have a site to recommend, one that has worked especially well for you, please let us know. And be sure to tell us where your property is located. To send us your recommendations, please click here. 

Managing Your Vacation Rental Property

So far, we've talked mostly about resources for advertising vacation rentals. But what about all the management chores?

Many homeowners cringe at the thought of "firing" their property managers and taking over responsibility for handling the myriad details associated with vacation rentals-setting rental policies and rates, responding to inquiries, arranging for cleaning and routine maintenance, confirming reservations, preparing rental agreements, getting keys to their guests, collecting and paying sales tax, and refunding damage deposits.

On the other hand, they're also not crazy about forking over 20 to 40 percent or more of their rental revenue for property-management services. The good news is that it really is possible to handle these things yourself if you follow our advice: 

Networking with Other Vacation Rental Owners

One of the best ways to meet and toss ideas around with other property owners is to join the discussions on a free online forum or blog devoted to vacation rentals. You typically have to register first and get a username and password. Once you do that, you can sign on and browse for messages or post comments and questions of your own. Typical topics include where to advertise, what amenities to offer, and when to raise your rates.

Of the Net's many forums and blogs for vacation-rental owners, here are several of the best and most active and informative: 

Note: When you post messages to vacation-rental forums and blogs, it's always a good idea to include your name, the location of your property, and, if possible, a link to one or more of your online listings. Doing so will increase the likelihood that people with similar properties will respond to your message. 

Copyright © Alfred and Emily Glossbrenner, FullyBookedRentals.com. All rights reserved.