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How to Rent Your Property on VRBO

Authors
  • avatar
    Name
    Chris
    Twitter

Introduction

Welcome to my review and tutorial of renting your second home on VRBO (pronounced "Verbo"). I made this income stream because we've had success renting our second home on AirBNB, other owners have reported that they've done well on VRBO and someone told me the fees are less on VRBO.

Here's what I made Villa in Ocotal Bahia Pez Vela, Ocean View & Beach.

As always, this information is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be personal financial advice. There's an inherent risk involved with financial decisions and the website owner will not be held liable for decisions others make.

Results

Ocean view on Playa Azul

On Oct 10, 2022, I created a Listing on AirBNB and made it live. After updating the pricing to be inline with other villas in the resort, we got 6 bookings in a month. After updating the listing, we got 12 bookings in 2 months.

I decided to make a listing for the property on VRBO. In a month, I had one inquiry that did not book because of a pet issue. The Vrbo listing was different than Airbnb, so on Dec 6th, 2023, I updated it to match AirBNB. The next day, I had an inquiry for a 1 week booking in March 2024. In a week, I'll post the results.

Summary

I used VRBO's website to create an account and the listing. It took 1 hours to enter the necessary information and make the listing live. It took another hour to enter all of the additional information, set pricing and coordinate the calendar.

Steps

Step 1. Create an account on VRBO.

If you don't have an account on VRBO, here is my affiliate link: VRBO. Use it to create your account and we may get something, either way it can't hurt.

Step 2. Define your product

  1. I looked around on VRBO to get some background info on what users include in their listing.

  2. I already list our our villa in Ocotal, Costa Rica on Airbnb and decided to list it on VRBO too.

Step 3. Make the listing

  1. I created an account and logged in. Be careful when entering your email address. This caused a problem for me because I left a letter off in the email address. They don't validate the email during account setup so after completing the listing, I couldn't access the property. After a month and 6 support calls, I was able to get the unmanageable listing hidden on the platform. I'm still waiting for them to confirm they deleted the account with the wrong email.

  2. I clicked "Add Property."

Step 4. Tell Vrbo basics about the property

  1. Location. I used their auto-complete addess form to get started, but when it asked for the specific address, it didn't accept its own results. Physical addresses in Costa Rica can be a little challenging. Here, we had to include Ocotal in the address to get it to locate the property.

  2. Property Type. I picked Villa. There were a lot of options.

  3. Room Details. I answered general questions.

  4. Photos. I dragged and dropped about 20 photos.

  5. Headline. I named the listing "Stunning Views from Hilltop Villa in Beautiful Playa Ocotal at Bahia Pez Vela".

  6. Description. I started with "WELCOME TO VILLA HERMOSA. Your safety and well-being is our first priority. We have taken extensive measures to ensure our property is safe, secure and clean, ensuring you and your family enjoy a healthy and carefree stay." I continued by stating the rooms, baths and location, provided more detail about the property, area, what visitors can do there. You can see the full descirption at the listing Villa in Ocotal Bahia Pez Vela, Ocean View & Beach

  7. Policies. I checked the boxes corresponding to our policies; e.g., no smoking, minimum age

  8. Calendar. I chose the open calendar. The options were open and closed. The open calendar is empty and you can add bookings. This matched with how we do it on Airbnb. I skipped blocked dates because I knew I would usethe calendar import and export to sync calendars.

  9. Tax. I chose to collect tax at booking. For us, the tax rate is 13%.

  10. Pricing. I added the pricing.

Step 5. Publish

After I completed the steps above, I made the listing live!

Step 6. Maket the place stand out

  1. Follow the recommendations. At the dashboard, I found an "Opportunities" page with a few recommendations, e.g., update the amenities. I completed the tasks.

Step 7. After Setup.

  1. I went to the calendar and imported my Airbnb calendar and my office booking calendar. I exported my VRBO calendar. I updated my shared calendar and Airbnb.

  2. Adjust pricing. I reviewed the calender to make sure I could update the pricing for high and low seasons and special dates.

Conclusion

This income stream is easy to make (unless you put your email address in wrong) but has high requirements to start, minimal requirements to make effective and moderate requirements to sustain. My conclusions from renting our second home on AirBNB apply here.

As to VRBO, I've found the platform is a little rough around some edges, e.g., not verifiying the email address before creating a listing. Compared to Airbnb, VRBO was quicker to setup because there was less to enter. As far as user experience, Airbnb had a person to guide me within minutes. VRBO didn't call me until 3 days after we discovered we couldn't access the listing. VRBO's calendar syncing was smooth and the calendar is nice. VRBO is promising and I'm hoping to see it perform in the area that really matters - filling my booking calendar.

Support

Using this tutorial? Check out the place and see if you'd like to stay: Villa in Ocotal Bahia Pez Vela, Ocean View & Beach. Looking for somewhere else? Use my VRBO affiliate link: Book amazing rentals on Vrbo - the most popular vacation rental site in the US. +2 million rentals worldwide 19+ million reviews Secure online payment 24/7 Customer Service.

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