Vacation Rental Watchdog

06/17/2023

My inside sources tell me that this happened in a managed property in Bolivar.

Not sure who exactly is at fault here, but a life was lost and needs to go through all their units to make sure this doesn’t happen again! RIP little one 🙏🏼

A 2-year-old in Texas is dead after an arcade machine fell on top of him, authorities say.

03/28/2023

This is a time to worry if you are an employee or homeowner that currently signed up with or plan to terminate your agreement with them in the near future.

They are struggling financially (amongst other things) and are scrambling for ways to raise money.

Historically, they focused on increasing fees to guests and homeowners, unit-billed labor (maintenance, etc.), and termination fees/charges for homeowners that have had enough of their BS, and of course, the recent lay offs.

Their booking fee used to be at 9% and they slowly started increasing it as a way to increase their revenue. It is up to 15+% at the moment. They may look into raising it, so keep a lookout for that. You may think that this does not affect you because the guest pays for this. Wrong! The more fees a guest pays, the less your nightly rent may become to remain competetive in the market. Some of you may be nodding your heads because of past complaints you’ve had from the low nightly rent. Trust me, their “algorithms “ don’t work, and much less in the homeowners’ favor. Be on the lookout for emails regarding the management fees and possible increase of them. They may increase your management fee without your knowledge if they send you an email and you happen to miss it. This HAS happened in the past, so just be aware.

Homeowners, pay close attention to any unit-billed labor that may appear on your statements. A sneaky extra $100+ may be on there, and that can quickly add up when you consider the whole picture. Employees may be asked to generate a certain amount of unit-billed labor each and every month whether it is needed or not. They will be told to “find” things that need repair, etc. This HAS happened in the past, so just be aware.

Homeowners that wish to terminate may experience the biggest threat of all when Vacasa is struggling financially! It is very important that you go over your agreement and look for the section that pertains to terminations. This is where they can stick it to you real good in terms of trying to collect thousands of dollars for reservations that are still on the books. They can either let it go or send you a bill regardless if they did a horrible job at managing your home. They purposely make it very difficult to leave Vacasa and will kick you in the butt as hard as they can on your way out.

If you plan to terminate, block your whole calendar or just leave it open only 30 days at a time (rolling block) and start looking around for a good, local PMC. Don’t let them keep getting bookings, especially far out in the future. Their rental agreement will state that they can collect “damages” and not be specific about it. That means THEY can determine the dollar amount that thos damages can be. Believe me, if they are struggling, you can bet they will go for 100% of the rent per booking. This HAS happened in the past! To make matters worse, they will move that booking to another property managed by Vacasa and collect even more money per booking!!!!!

Layoffs are obviously their final resort and there is talk and preparation for another round in the very near future.

03/22/2023

This is what excessive spending combined with poor leadership/management looks like on a graph:

03/22/2023

The truth is finally starting to come out as it’s much more difficult to hide negative numbers once you go public:

Oppenheiner lowered its rating on Vacasa (NASDAQ:VCSA) to Perform from Outperform after the company turned in a bruising Q4 earnings report. The vacation rental management company reported an elevated level of churn that led to a big guidance cut.

01/25/2023

Yet, another round of layoffs happening at Vacasa today. As of this morning, 1,300 Vacasers were laid off due to the fact that the company has yet to figure how to turn a profit. Yes, after operating for 14 years, Vacasa is still not a profitable company due to excessive spending and bad upper management at corporate level. Just imagine that, a property management company that doesn’t even know how to manage their own budget, expenses, company.

The only way that Vacasa has managed to stay in business all these years, is by raising capital investment (over $500M USD) through several rounds of funding, and finally going public through an S**C. Their financial crises has finally been made public and the new and 3rd CEO, Rob Greyber, has a tough job ahead of him.

ADVICE: The Vacation Rental Watchdog has some good advice for Vacasa:

1. Stop trying to be a full service PMC and turn into a 3rd-Party Advertising Channel. i.e. Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, etc. You can save on a lot of overhead and finally be profitable. You have a catchy name, use it!

2. Franchise your brand to local PMCs, offering support, etc. i.e. Casago.

https://skift.com/2023/01/24/vacasa-slashes-17-percent-of-workforce-in-second-recent-round-of-layoffs/amp/

Vacation rental property manager Vacasa is eliminating 1,300 positions, which was 17 percent of its workforce, as the company determined it had to make