Top 3 reasons YOU WANT to list your home on VRBO

Hey, guys. Mike Taylor Broker Owner, Red Door Property Management today we're going to talk short term rentals, specifically VRBO, and we're going to do the top three reasons why you should list your home on VRBO. If you have a short-term rental here in the Indianapolis market. Now, we also have top five reasons why you do not want to. So be sure to take a look at that video because there are some cons to listing your home on VRBO. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Today we're here to talk top three reasons why you do want to have your home listed on VRBO in addition to Airbnb. So, everybody knows, I think Airbnb is the biggest player out there. However, listing your home on VRBO definitely has its advantages. 

Reason number one

So, number one is that you're going to get more bookings. You just are, you're on another platform, you're on another website, it's another avenue of marketing, and you're just going to get more bookings. So, in 2022, on our portfolio that we manage, about 20% of our bookings came from VRBO. So again, there are cons that come with it. So, it's got to decide if you're worth it or not. The average nightly rate, but20% is pretty significant.15% to 20% is probably what you can count on. So, reason number one, you're definitely going to get more bookings. 

Reason number two

Reason number two that you want to consider putting your home on VRBO is you're going to get better guests. VRBO has been around longer. They've been around for I don't even know what time, but ten or 15 years beyond Airbnb. So, it tends to attract an older clientele, just leading to a better guest. Not to say that guests from Airbnb are bad. We have plenty and plenty of good guests from Airbnb. It just seems to be VRBO guests are consistently better. There's almost never, ever a problem, honestly, with a verbal guest. And it is rare to have a problem with an Airbnb guest. But it does happen, and it does seem like it almost never happens with a verbal. So, you're going to get more stable clients, more families. That's kind of the clientele that typically tends to book with Verbo. At least that's what we found. This is just anecdotal evidence of our experience of what we have found in working with both Airbnb and VRBO. VRBO typically has typically a better guest profile. 

Reason number three

And reason number three that you want to consider listing your home on VRBO is you're typically going to get longer stays. So, when VRBO first started out, I think they were definitely more geared towards a weekly rental. And I think that that's the mentality that people who still use that site have. And so, you typically see, like with Airbnb, you get a lot of weekend type stuff in Friday, out Sunday, kind of two days. But what really makes a big difference in your bottom line is if you can get those 34567night stays, ten-night stays, two weeks stays, and you typically see those come through more often with VRBO because people are just thinking, oh, well, it's VRBO, it's got to be a week long. And so, you just kind of tend to get longer stays with Verbo stays. And I told you top three, but I'm going to give you an extra one. Number four is that you're just listed on a different site. Again, it's another avenue of marketing.If something happens to Airbnb, I mean, you have to be on Airbnb, but if something happens to Airbnb, they decide to change their algorithm. And now all of a sudden, you're at the bottom. You've got another avenue; you've got another resource to market your home. You're not just totally dead in the water. Now, it's not going to be great because Airbnb is the biggest one, but you're not just going from 100 to zero. You at least have something to fall back on. So, we here at Red Door, when we manage your home, we do lists on both Airbnb and VRBO. We just feel like it's the best thing for our clients, and that's what we need to do. If you're managing this yourself, you're going to need to decide if it is worth it. There are some serious drawbacks and some serious annoyances that come with VRBO. Check out our video link to that one, because we do point out the top five reasons why you don't want to list with it. So here, we do it for you. If you're doing it yourself, you need to probably watch the other video and decide if it is something that you want to do. 

So that wraps up our top three reasons why you do want to list your home on VRBO. Again, take a look at the other video of why you may not want to list your home on VRBO. For me, I think it's a no brainer. It's worth the headache and the sacrifice that you have to make to increase your bottom line.