[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
[00:00:16] Short Term Rental Management. I love you.
[00:00:18] Happiness is a choice and I choose to be here with you being happy. So thank you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Today I want to talk about how we rent these things and the future of how we rent these things. And I find it very interesting that Zillow's not involved.
[00:00:37] I just don't understand why they're not involved. Because Zillow likes to put their fingers in all things real estate, right? So why are they avoiding short term rental, overnight rental, you know, just a little bit of a history lesson or long term rentals, you put them for rent on Zillow, you go to your manage rental section and you post your rent. Your, your house for rent for free.
[00:00:58] You can chart, you can do a premium version which is, I think it's like a hundred bucks and you get featured and that kind of a thing. But it's a very simple concept. And then people can even fill out their application on Zillow or they can go to your website if you include a link. They can go to your website through, you know, your management software generally, which, whether it's going to be apartments.com or something smaller like tenant cloud or something like that, and people will fill out the application, do the background check, et cetera, and off you go, Very simple stuff. And I understand why this wasn't the case with short term rentals historically because of the payment processing. You know, VRBO came out in the mid-90s and they figured out a way to process these payments for these overnight rentals. But times have changed. We now have Stripe. Stripe is a huge company. It's been around a long time.
[00:01:48] They have a lot of competitors and everybody now has a website. If you have a property management software in short term rental, you, you have the ability to have a website, which is easy. This is a relatively new concept I think is the problem.
[00:02:03] The short term rental property managers did not come around until about 2018, which is mind blowing if you think about it.
[00:02:12] But overnight rental in the United States is a fairly new concept. In Europe, it's a normal thing.
[00:02:18] But over here, you know, it, it's just a little bit of a weird deal. Like there's, there's areas that still can't figure out how to do it. Like, like the jurisdiction, like the local government can't figure out how to do it.
[00:02:34] So, you know, then along comes Google Vacation Rentals, which is basically exactly what I'm talking about. And it's backed by Google, it has a huge name and you would think that it's working gangbusters because it's direct to consumer. You can see the prices from all the different platforms on Google Vacation Rentals. You just go to Google, click the vacation rental button and search. They even have the calendars figured out. You can find out whether or not the property's available on your Google Vacation Rental dashboard. It's very simple and easy. Here, let me show you. I've got it pulled up right now. I'm going to share screen on this. Here you go.
[00:03:08] Here's Google Vacation Rentals. You literally just click the vacation rental button.
[00:03:13] Looks like this is defaulted to my area here. 30 a Destin and you just put in the dates you're looking to go and you can find houses on here. And these go directly to the property manager. In most cases it's a property manager. Occasionally it might be an owner because I hate to tell you that owner operators are pretty small potatoes. There's not a lot of us out there. But here you go, you got bikes to steps to the pool, bike to the beach. $182. We can view details and open this up. Looks like some sort of townhouse. It's got a VRBO price here, an expedia price here, couple of different price tags. The reviews, you know, not looking so great. It's pulling those directly from vrbo by the way and it gives you the opportunity to.
[00:04:00] Well, usually there's a button right here that says this is a bad example. Go to the website. Right. So let's see if we can find a better one here. I was looking for an actual house. These are mostly like condos.
[00:04:10] Maybe it's just the area I'm in. I think these are coming from some property manager here and this is going to be their. See that's why I don't like to share screen because you know, things get wacky and slow the momentum down here. But here's a good example. This is a house for rent here on 30A here. Looks like some sort of, you know, I don't know, five bedrooms. But is it that whole thing? I don't know. Who knows? Sleep 20. So maybe it is that whole thing. But if you come in here, there's the, the property manager's website.
[00:04:37] It actually shows it's a little, actually a little less expensive on Wednesday, a little like quite a bit more expensive on vrbo etc.
[00:04:46] So you know, one thing to note is make sure you're set up on Google. Vacation rentals in your house is looking attractive on here for one thing, you know. But also the point is, my point if I had one, is that you can go directly to this property manager's website and book this thing. And I found it on Google. So the concept is there this benchmark management of some sort, you know, just some property manager in the local area here. So anyway, you get the idea we're looking for guests.
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[email protected] so I do feel like this is the future.
[00:05:49] I, you know Google vacation reel has been out for like two or three years now and it's not really caught on. So that's a little weird. I don't know why.
[00:05:56] But that being said, you can book on vrbo, you know, people can search for. It's, it's exactly like searching for a flight on Google, you know, but some people go straight to kayak or whatever. So I think this is going to be the future because now we have a, Everybody's got a website, every property management company's got a website and they have their own way to process payments. And that's where VRBO came in strong in the 90s because nobody had a way to do that was like, well, I want to rent this house for a few nights but how are we going to do, how am I going to take payment over the phone?
[00:06:30] You know, the Internet was new at the time and VRBO came out with this way and they were, they actually did third party. When I first joined vrbo they were doing third party payment processing with a company out of Ireland and if you had an issue you had to call them, you know, so I had the Ireland phone number in my phone and get an issue with a payment or something which was fairly common. You would have to call their customer service and it wasn't even verbose customer service. Then they implemented their own payment processing, etc. You know, so it's just an evolution. It's an evolution. But now what I do think VRBO is doing right is that where did right was that subscription.
[00:07:08] Why am I paying per booking when I should just, you know, just basically pay you to let me list my property for rent on your website, you know, and so it's a give and take like they're paying for the marketing, they're spending billions of dollars on marketing.
[00:07:24] We spend this much money to get our property for rent on their website, you know, basically. But now, anyway, now that everybody has a website and a way to process payments, I do think that things are going to start shifting here and it might take 10 years.
[00:07:38] And again, it blows my mind that Zillow hasn't gotten involved with this much like Google did.
[00:07:43] Because it seems to me like Zillow could just put a vacation rental button on their rental section and I could post my vacation rental website on there just like exactly like how it is on Google. It's very simple.
[00:07:56] And then people could, you know, basically find me on Zillow and book, book the house for rent and off they go.
[00:08:06] So it's an interesting concept, you know, and I'm not gonna, I'm not, I'm not here to name any names about this, that and the other, but I feel like this is maybe sort of where things are going in the future.
[00:08:20] The booking fees are very high, you know, in some cases and I'm not sure why, because I can process my own payments over here and pay 3%. That should be the end of it.
[00:08:34] You know, with my long term rental, I'm, I'm posting it for rent, literally for free.
[00:08:44] And this is mostly to the guests advantage. You know, this would be to the guest advantage. They would get to pay less fees and we would have a few less fees also if this, this type of system were to catch on.
[00:08:58] But I just don't understand why. You know, I think over time that it will become more common knowledge that all of us property managers have our own website. And let's just figure out a way for everybody to find those websites much almost exactly like what Google Vacation Rentals is doing. But for whatever reason, like I said, it's not really catching on that, well, at least not for me, the small potatoes guy, you know, So I just. Zillow, long story short, Zillow, we want you. Hello, we're knocking on your door. Vacation rentals are a big asset class. Now could you please put a little vacation rental button on your website and let me post my website on there for rent exactly like Google does it. I would like to do what Google does on Zillow because you're a big name, you spend a lot of marketing dollars, you got your hands in every cookie jar in real estate already. Anyway, why not get your hand in the vacation rental cookie jar, you know, and other people have tried to do this, other companies have tried to build this out like what I'm talking about right now.
[00:10:00] Like I think HUFI has a way where you can connect directly, you know, to your management software and.
[00:10:06] And people can find your website that way. You know, that kind of a thing. And people have tried that but. But nobody spends the kind of money that a Zillow spends. You know, that's big, big marketing dollars. So it's an interesting conversation and I do feel like over the next eight to ten years we may see some sort of a shift where we're gonna be. It'll be more common to book directly with the property manager's website and use their payment processor.
[00:10:30] I think the calendar is probably the biggest hurdle at this point in time as to why that's not happening. But Google's figured out the calendar, you know, so it's something to consider. I do feel in the next eight to 10 years we will see some sort of a shift there in and how the consumer is finding overnight rentals.
[00:10:51] But let me know what you think in the comments. I love you.
[00:10:56] Don't overthink it.
