Has this been mentioned before? I'm not seeing it anywhere.
As you may know by now, Home Away is diversifying into real estate sales. They have been soliciting Agents for the last few months to get them to list vacation rental homes for sale on their new homeawayrealestate.com site, free until the end of the year. You can see the promo video here: http://ow.ly/Hgez
I could reserve judgment, but I'm not going to. They're stark raving bonkers. , and IMHO digging themselves into a great big hole into which they're going to get firmly pushed by crowds of irate guests whose holidays have been ruined because (pick any one):
1. the owner canceled their holiday on them when he sold the property, so aggrieved renter leaves a stinking review for the new owner, who wasn't sure if he wanted to rent it or not (now he probably can't).
2. The new owner said he would honor the booking, but didn't, and the guest turns up to find it's no longer a rental and the owner in situ. (Who's paying the hotel bill, HA?)
3. A guest discovers his rent and security deposit has been kept by the previous owner, but he now has to deal with someone else.
4. A guest discovers his booking straddles multiple owners.
5. An agent who doesn't manage the property for the new owner hands it over without a trained cleaning crew in place. (all previous reviews are meaningless).
6. Multiple Agents representing an owner, (most of whom won't even think about the need to follow the owner's ever evolving availability calendar,) frequently put keys in the door and shout "cooeee!, it's only me", when guests are in situ.
7. Buyers who track the property down on Googlemaps (courtesy of HA), turn up and knock on the door and ask to be shown round by the guests. (This actually happened to me within the last 3 months)
Not to mention the irate owner:
8. Who just shot himself in the foot when he realizes that nobody in their right mind is going to book their vacation 6 months ahead in a home that's also on the market for sale to a completely unknown stranger, (as if whoever manages the home is irrelevant to the quality of the experience - I'm tipping my hat to YHM here).
9. Who blocks out dates for buyers to look at the property, only to be canceled at the last minute, and asked to reschedule for next week when the house is occupied. (I have several of those T shirts).
10. Who has to deal with irate buyers who arrive to view the home on the changeover day only to discover after a 2 hour drive that the next guests just arrived and are currently breastfeeding the baby. (Only one of those T shirts thankfully, but I never want to go there again).
This is a REALLY BAD idea HA. Vacation Rentals and Sales DON'T MIX on the same property AT THE SAME TIME.
GREED will be this company's downfall.
Rant over....well, maybe not.....
p.s. I can see one potential benefit to the site though for the Guest - the ability to know which rentals to avoid by cross checking selected rentals with the sales side.
Home Away expands into sales
Home Away expands into sales
Last edited by A-two on Mon Nov 30, 2009 11:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Waves from America
Oh, this is getting better. So, I checked out my area on the new sales site and they're pushing something called "Rentential", about which they say:
First, most houses here are not rented through listing sites of any sort, it's a small fraction of the advertising sector. Second, those owners who do take ads on listing sites often throw an ad on there and never update it, and are predominantly new to the rental by owner business. They do it because they can, not to take it seriously, because they know that more than likely it's going to get rented another way, or sometimes they only want to rent for 3 or 4 weeks a year anyway, usually keeping either July or August for themselves. Did HA take ANY of that into consideration in the Rentential numbers for this area? I thought not.
Third, anyone who knows what they're doing can sell out July and August every year and personally for those 2 months I've had maybe 3 weeks in total gaps over the last 6 years, and 2 of those due to cancellations that didn't resell (but I still got paid). That data is missing.
Yet, by their 30% July/ August numbers, using the income approach to valuation, (which is a standard valuation method for rental property here, which would be taken into consideration by all parties including bank appraisers for loans), they are artificially depressing the fair market value of a house in an area which doesn't do particularly well with an HA listing ad, or should I say, may well do better elsewhere, something which HA fails to acknowledge. Conversely, HA must be artificially inflating positive impressions created for other areas where they have captured the listing market. In its entirety, this data has very limited value and is completely misleading in the way it is presented.
The only way that the "Rentential" data can possibly be useful to anyone here (in my opinion) is a) it tells you which homes not to recommend to your overspill/ excess inquiries because they're also listed for sale and likely to get canceled and b) it tells you which homes appear to work well on the HA listing model and equally, it identifies those which don't work well at all.
None of this data can be relied upon to determine for anyone, whether buyer, seller, or renter, a reliable appraisal of fair market value of a home, either for sale or for rental. What they're providing here carries only trivial weight in that respect as to be of value, it must be weighed against a significant number of other data sources that may well be far more crucial, including rental potential through multiple other means unrelated to the HA operation.
At the end of the day, Home Away and its subsidiary Home Away Real Estate are commercially operated for profit companies - they do not have a non-profit organization supplying data for no personal gain, everything is motivated by lining their personal pockets. Other listings sites, non-internet advertising, repeat renters and organic searches, ad words, print ads, word of mouth, each impacts both potential rental income and capital asset value to varying degrees depending on the local real estate market in your country, region, town and street. All real estate is local, HA knows sweet FA about THAT.
Heck, some people don't even use their availability calendars at HA. How can they possibly know what anybody has ever achieved with any accuracy?
Regardless of the fact that it seems to be based on the Zillow model (with their infamously unreliable Zestimate of value), I find it staggering that HA could be so arrogant as to even attempt to claim sufficient knowledge and experience to produce data on which to base any valuation on which their customers can rely. What they do have is one RAW data source amongst many others . It is not without value, but it's limited, and as a matter of fact, they're also not qualified to interpret the data in any meaningful way in this part of the world, even if they did have access to complete information, which they don't.
HA is basically a classified ad site with a global reach for the travel and hospitality industry. That does not qualify them to opine on value of any kind in a local real estate sales market, about which they have very little knowledge and even less experience. More fool the agents who are jumping on board. It's my position that HA may be misleading the general public because they can, even though the conclusions they draw are based on too small a sampling of available data, to which they have very limited access.
That doesn't make any part of their operation illegal, I would not expect it to be, but publishing partial Rental data from one commercial company in a highly competitive field and claiming it as an authoritative source does not make it so. HA, despite what it may wish for itself, does not make fair market valuations of anything out of it's data - nowhere close - neither capital value for sale, nor potential return on investment. You are warned. Does anybody here think I am wrong?
I'll end with this. I can't help wondering if this isn't a win-win situation for HA. After all, if the new venture into Sales doesn't work (an Agent has yet to pay a dime), they have at least broken the agent barrier and who knows where that will lead. This is a $multi-billion business and there is more than one large agency around here paying $40,000+/- per month to advertise their inventory. I'm sure there are other locations with similar budgets in Ibiza, Switzerland and other places around the world. Do you think HA wants a piece of that market? I do, but I hate the fact that they're doing it on our backs.
Where's the HA loyalty program? The only grandfathering I see is their next gig - buy in now, and you get a tiny scrap of a bonus! The people who paid their salaries to build it from day one when they were struggling - Tansy, Olive and numerous others here, are forgotten and frankly, they couldn't care less to lose every one of us. When it gets to the point, which it has, that they set their eyes on the kind of clients who think nothing of spending $40K+/- every month each, then we begin to understand that it's very big business now, and that you and I don't even have a horse in the race between us.
I extend a big thanks to Paolo for keeping this site going. There is absolutely nowhere else that I could say any of this, nowhere, and I'm not under any illusions that he hasn't had offers over the years, I'm sure he has.
Cheers Paolo, and Brooke, feel free to delete in its entirety or edit as you see fit.
Really? How do they manage to steer that when the vast majority of the rentals in any particular area may not come through any HA site at all and are never reported anywhere else either? Well here's their answer!Owners
Vacation homeowners will use Rentential information to optimize seasonal adjustments to rental rates and occupancy trends. When owners prepare to sell their property, Rentential data helps to validate their asking price.
Now let's look at this. Put another way, potential renters for your home are going to be put off because it's also listed for sale, and potential buyers are going to "cull" your property off their shortlist based on false data before they even get the chance to ask you for more accurate data. Great!Does HomeAway Use Public Records to Calculate Rentential
No. Unlike other online calculators, HomeAway's rentential data is proprietary information. The data is culled from HomeAway homeowners who list their vacation homes on HomeAway.com, or one of HomeAway's (8) other vacation rental sites.
So I am looking at the cute little pie chart for my area, and I see they are telling people to expect 30% occupancy for July and August. Rubbish!Buyers
If you're a prospective buyer, Rentential helps you compare vacation areas and determine the ideal location in which to buy. Rentential data will also assist you in establishing how much home you can afford and your corresponding investment income potential.
First, most houses here are not rented through listing sites of any sort, it's a small fraction of the advertising sector. Second, those owners who do take ads on listing sites often throw an ad on there and never update it, and are predominantly new to the rental by owner business. They do it because they can, not to take it seriously, because they know that more than likely it's going to get rented another way, or sometimes they only want to rent for 3 or 4 weeks a year anyway, usually keeping either July or August for themselves. Did HA take ANY of that into consideration in the Rentential numbers for this area? I thought not.
Third, anyone who knows what they're doing can sell out July and August every year and personally for those 2 months I've had maybe 3 weeks in total gaps over the last 6 years, and 2 of those due to cancellations that didn't resell (but I still got paid). That data is missing.
Yet, by their 30% July/ August numbers, using the income approach to valuation, (which is a standard valuation method for rental property here, which would be taken into consideration by all parties including bank appraisers for loans), they are artificially depressing the fair market value of a house in an area which doesn't do particularly well with an HA listing ad, or should I say, may well do better elsewhere, something which HA fails to acknowledge. Conversely, HA must be artificially inflating positive impressions created for other areas where they have captured the listing market. In its entirety, this data has very limited value and is completely misleading in the way it is presented.
The only way that the "Rentential" data can possibly be useful to anyone here (in my opinion) is a) it tells you which homes not to recommend to your overspill/ excess inquiries because they're also listed for sale and likely to get canceled and b) it tells you which homes appear to work well on the HA listing model and equally, it identifies those which don't work well at all.
None of this data can be relied upon to determine for anyone, whether buyer, seller, or renter, a reliable appraisal of fair market value of a home, either for sale or for rental. What they're providing here carries only trivial weight in that respect as to be of value, it must be weighed against a significant number of other data sources that may well be far more crucial, including rental potential through multiple other means unrelated to the HA operation.
At the end of the day, Home Away and its subsidiary Home Away Real Estate are commercially operated for profit companies - they do not have a non-profit organization supplying data for no personal gain, everything is motivated by lining their personal pockets. Other listings sites, non-internet advertising, repeat renters and organic searches, ad words, print ads, word of mouth, each impacts both potential rental income and capital asset value to varying degrees depending on the local real estate market in your country, region, town and street. All real estate is local, HA knows sweet FA about THAT.
Heck, some people don't even use their availability calendars at HA. How can they possibly know what anybody has ever achieved with any accuracy?
Regardless of the fact that it seems to be based on the Zillow model (with their infamously unreliable Zestimate of value), I find it staggering that HA could be so arrogant as to even attempt to claim sufficient knowledge and experience to produce data on which to base any valuation on which their customers can rely. What they do have is one RAW data source amongst many others . It is not without value, but it's limited, and as a matter of fact, they're also not qualified to interpret the data in any meaningful way in this part of the world, even if they did have access to complete information, which they don't.
HA is basically a classified ad site with a global reach for the travel and hospitality industry. That does not qualify them to opine on value of any kind in a local real estate sales market, about which they have very little knowledge and even less experience. More fool the agents who are jumping on board. It's my position that HA may be misleading the general public because they can, even though the conclusions they draw are based on too small a sampling of available data, to which they have very limited access.
That doesn't make any part of their operation illegal, I would not expect it to be, but publishing partial Rental data from one commercial company in a highly competitive field and claiming it as an authoritative source does not make it so. HA, despite what it may wish for itself, does not make fair market valuations of anything out of it's data - nowhere close - neither capital value for sale, nor potential return on investment. You are warned. Does anybody here think I am wrong?
I'll end with this. I can't help wondering if this isn't a win-win situation for HA. After all, if the new venture into Sales doesn't work (an Agent has yet to pay a dime), they have at least broken the agent barrier and who knows where that will lead. This is a $multi-billion business and there is more than one large agency around here paying $40,000+/- per month to advertise their inventory. I'm sure there are other locations with similar budgets in Ibiza, Switzerland and other places around the world. Do you think HA wants a piece of that market? I do, but I hate the fact that they're doing it on our backs.
Where's the HA loyalty program? The only grandfathering I see is their next gig - buy in now, and you get a tiny scrap of a bonus! The people who paid their salaries to build it from day one when they were struggling - Tansy, Olive and numerous others here, are forgotten and frankly, they couldn't care less to lose every one of us. When it gets to the point, which it has, that they set their eyes on the kind of clients who think nothing of spending $40K+/- every month each, then we begin to understand that it's very big business now, and that you and I don't even have a horse in the race between us.
I extend a big thanks to Paolo for keeping this site going. There is absolutely nowhere else that I could say any of this, nowhere, and I'm not under any illusions that he hasn't had offers over the years, I'm sure he has.
Cheers Paolo, and Brooke, feel free to delete in its entirety or edit as you see fit.
Waves from America
