Barefoot Technologies Blog- Vacation Rental Industry News

               In Hawaii, a bill is currently under legislation that will allow the state to collect an additional $35 million in tax revenue.  Currently, if a Hawaiian property is owned by a non-resident and additionally, rented by an out-of-state company the taxes due from the rental are difficult to track down.  With states looking for additional revenue, this has been low hanging fruit and a loop hole in many states lodging tax models.  Barefoot has written a blog about several cases in Colorado where VRBO homes have been rented without paying the proper taxes, seriously limiting the money collected.  For example, Breckenridge Colorado has estimated that it has lost over $1 Million in taxes and fees based over the past few years because of this loop hole.

                For years out of state owners have rented out their properties under the radar of state lodging tax laws, but with the introduction of large online travel agencies and vacation rentals becoming more main stream these transactions are now out in the open.   The taxes structured around all lodging   are designed to help with the wear and tear on the environment and infrastructure in the area as  well as to pay for tourism marketing programs.  The question  is how does a state manage this efficiently.

             Over the past few months we have brought you many stories about scams and how renters have been trapped by them.  Almost all the scams we have found highlight a significant weakness in for rent by owner.   The bottom line is that a company that is brick and mortar, can take credit cards, has a legal contract and insurance and knows what they are doing is a significant advantage over an owner who does this part time.  The only thing that the owner might have is price and possibly the uniqueness of their property.      As you have read in our blogs in the past, scams abound, and main stream media is just starting to pick these up.  This potentially helps the managed properties, but it also hurts everyone in rentals as not everyone understands the difference between a FRBO and a managed property.  For those in the managed property business, understanding these articles is very important, it is a tool that can assist you in targeting your owners and potential owners and it is a marketing reality that needs to be address for tenants.  We will continue to provide you these articles as we come across them.

Image Courtesy of Gold Beach Real Estate

Barefoot Agent Software Part 3- Tenant Net

 If you read last week’s blog’s then you read all about the importance of social media and the connections that you can make through these free simple mediums.  Y Partnership has some interesting statistics that, when paired with social media tools, could yield some amazing results.  These stats are collected from the 2011 VRMA conference.

                This week we are focusing on one of our social media tools-Advanced Owner Access.  It was built 7 years ago when we started to look at social media. Social media from our perspective is not Facebook, Twitter and linkedin, those are just new automated tools for social media. Social media is empowering those that love, worship and are devoted to you with the ability to assist your business.  Obviously owners have made a commitment to you, they trust you and that is the bases of most social media-Trust. We have talked about trust before in our blogs-, take a peak by clicking here.  

Here is the logic behind this tool.  Owners where once Tenants, they fell in love with the area and decided to buy a property or two in the area.  Owners surround themselves with people just like themselves, except many of their friends, family and associates may not have made the commitment to buy in the resort area.  In addition, while all owners are proud of their properties, the ownership is not something that often comes up in a conversation.  But, a friend who knows of the owner’s property trusts that property and the property management company the owner works with immediately.  What needs to happen is the connection.

As many of our customers know, Barefoot is constantly striving to make business connections that will reward our clients.  We continually announce new partnerships in our news page and always try to have a blog post up describing our new partnership and what we can do for you the customer.  The newest partner to come on board with Barefoot Technologies is Vacation Storebuilder, a Software-as-a-Service platform that enables vacation rental companies to quickly and easily manage their websites.

Why your busines needs to do vacation rentals.

Will your company be there to capitalize on these trends?  At Barefoot our motto is “Vacation rental software fitted for Visionaries”, and we are curious if you fit this description.  If you would like to be a leader in your market, build a stable cash flow and asset worth to your company, and set the bar that your competition will follow then contact Barefoot Technologies to talk to us about what we can do for your company.

                Last week Ed and I travelled down to Atlantic City for the Triple Play Relators Conference.  It was held on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at the Atlantic City Conference Center.  While we were there we met a lot of great people, often they confused us for Barefoot wine which explains their excitement to meet us.  Throughout the week classes were offered as well that we were able to take.  Ed received his certification in (forgot the name of your class for second homes) on Monday while I was lucky enough to sit in on several classes about technology in this field.