The Free-Rentals.com business model is to put the vacation rental industry back into the hands of individual vacation home owners. What that means to the average vacation home owner is this… Free-Rentals.com offers you tools and services to actively market and promote your vacation rental.

In contrast, the big stalwart companies that currently control the Vacation Rental industry do so simply because… they got there first. So before you pay $150 USD PER YEAR just to have your vacation rental property listed at one of these corporate websites, ask yourself… what are they DOING with that money to actively promote MY rental unit?
 
My guess is that they using your money to fly themselves around business class to attend various internal meetings.

 At Free-Rentals.com, we DO NOT require a payment to host your vacation rental unit. We simply ask members to consider a donation. In return for their donation, we offer services to actively market and promote their rental unit. Specifically:
 
1.) 80% of the money you donate is spent to purchase Google Ads, directed at your specific property listing. Here is a how a sample ad appears. These ads run on Google Search Results and Google Partner websites.  

2.) We publish your listing to our dedicated regional sister website. While Free-Rentals.com attracts an international clientele, our dedicated sister websites are 100% laser focused on a given regional area. Here for example is our dedicated Costa Rica website: http://www.rentals-costa-rica.com/
 
3.) We publish your listing to Vast.com, Twitter.com/freerentals, RSS and other affiliate websites that accept our feed.
 
4.) We publish your listing on free classified ads websites such as craiglist.org, kijiji.com and several other such sites.

5.) We have a few other tactics concerning how we drive targeted traffic to your listing but we need to keep that information confidential, as we have not yet found any other vacation rental company deploying the same tactics.
 
So in summary, if you want a team on your side to do the heavy lifting for you in marketing and promoting your vacation rental, give us a try at Free-Rentals.com

Even long term renters have to be aware that the landlord who rents you a place may not actually be the landlord. With the amount of vacant and foreclosed homes in todays market, at least one scumbag tried taking advantage of it by posting as a landlord and renting out units to unsuspected renters.

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - After KRQE News 13 reported on a phony landlord renting foreclosed homes as his own property more people are coming forward claiming they’ve been scammed.

At least six people now have told News 13 that Ernest Garcia, who also is known as Ricardo Lombardy, offered to rent homes to them.

Three women interviewed for Thursday’s report said Garcia took deposits and rent for homes that were vacant from foreclosures. Two of the women said Garcia took money from them separately for the same house.

The third renter described a real estate agent telling her to get out of her home after she’d paid Garcia $1,000.

The renters said Garcia would go to the back of the house and let them in the front door after apparently breaking in through the back.

They say once he collected the money for a deposit or rent, he then gave them the slip.

The blogger HomeExchanger has announced a full boycott on VRBO and is trying to round the troups. Her first grip is that websites such as VRBO that allow people “to list a swap home for rent introduces commercialism into the equation. It also puts a price tag on individual homes which further erodes home exchange’s egalitarian ethos.”

HomeExchanger goes on to say:

What really annoys me about VRBO’s bigoted owner is his disingenuous claim that he is only discriminating against “unmarried” people. He knows full well that gay Americans CANNOT legally marry in the USA. I am against VRBO because I am annoyed by hypocrisy. Boycott VRBO. 

We don’t have any strong opinions about the dispute, but as a general rule of thumb, we take sides with the more tolerant of sides in most disputes.

Our sister site Homewelcome which offers Home Exchanges as well as Free-Rentals.com certainly does not discriminate against any group wanting to rent or exchange their home. Furthermore, both websites do not allow it’s users to post discriminatory descriptions regarding who they seek to rent the hourse to or exchange the house with.

Microsofts new search engine Bing looks promising. Not sure if I’m ready to move from Google to it, but will continue to give it a shot.
 
On the other hand, their travel search engine Bing Travel rocks. I’ll certainly be using it first and foremost for all my flight needs. Other websites I will continue to use are expedia, mobissimo, sidestep, kayak and priceline.

This summer is shaping up to offer some of the most spectacular vacation rental discounts and deals ever seen since the industry boomed with 16 years ago with the advent of the internet.

According to the New York Times, here are excerpts in store for this summer’s vacation rental industry:

Part of the reason is that potential renters are waiting longer before they commit, agents say. “People are doing more window-shopping,” said Ryan Swaim, general manager of Dunes Realty in Garden City Beach, S.C., near Myrtle Beach. “They’re pulling the trigger much later.”

While that situation is giving property owners a case of the nerves, it appears to be working in favor of renters. Many Web sites devoted to renting vacation homes on or near the Atlantic have long lists of specials, both short term and for the entire summer, meant to lure the undecided.

In Ocean City, for example, a five-bedroom house that sleeps 16 and has a view of the bay has been reduced from $3,100, to $2,995, for the week of July 4; the house is being rented by Century 21 New Horizon. Ocean City also has a significant condominium market, and many condo units are being offered there at reduced rates.

Farther north, in Dennisport on Cape Cod, a six-bedroom house near the ocean is renting for $1,000 a week less throughout July, down from its usual $6,900; the house is being offered on HomeAway.com, which currently lists around 100 special offers on Cape Cod.

A report released last week by HomeAway, which represents 200,000 vacation properties in the United States, found that about 66 percent of its vacation rental property owners had offered special deals or incentives so far this year in response to the economy.

The report, which focused on the first quarter of this year, found that 27 percent of owners had discounted rental rates by specific dollar amounts, while 24 percent had discounted by a set percentage off their normal rental rate.

Owners are also trying to lure renters by offering an additional night with the purchase of a specific number of nights, cleaning services at no additional cost and by not requiring a minimum stay. Mike Butler, chief commercial officer at HomeAway, said there was a $3,000 property in Wellfleet Harbor on Cape Cod that was offering a $500 discount and two dozen fresh oysters.

Once upon a time, the dynamics of summer rentals were simple. The person who wanted to rent would often book six months to a year in advance, even as three or four other potential renters were checking out the property.

“In years past, if a place didn’t rent by March,” said Mr. Swaim of Dunes Realty, “it wasn’t going to rent.”

While this summer’s holiday season will be flat relative to those in the past due to the global economic crisis, it is clear that at least one person will make out from all this, the vacation property seeker and vacation home renter. So enjoy the low prices while they last.

If you need to edit your vacation rental listing on Free-Rentals.com. Simply follow the following steps…

1) Make sure you are logged in as a member.
2) Visit the following URL: http://www.free-rentals.com/members
3) The image below shows how to edit various aspects of your listing.

Free-Rentals.com experiences a spike in traffic thanks to the recent donations from several members. Their money has been used in advertising and promoting the website, which has driven a lot of traffic to all vacation rental listings.
 
Free-Rentals.com demonstrates that democracy on the web does indeed work, and that a smart pooling of resources helps everyone involved. 

There is a “reverse spammer” using craigslist, they are called creditreport365.net. Here is what they do… When you post an ad on craigslist either offering or seeking housing… they will answer your ad with a simple 1 line sentence posed in the form of a question. Here are sample replies you will get from this spammer….

>>> Hi do you still need housing?
>>> Hi, I was just looking through ad’s …still need housing?
>>> Hey there, how are you? I was curious if you still needed housing?
>>> Hey, still looking for housing?
>>> do you still need a place?
>>> etc…

If you reply to such a reply, you will get back an immediate response such as this…

>>>Hi there, nice to hear from you. Well that’s good because I have many
places available for you in the area. What’s  your exact price range?
How soon were you looking to move? Before I show you any listings I’d
like to get a feel of what you’d qualify for, we can do this by
getting your credit score. Our office has a relationship with a credit
report company to give our clients free credit reports, if you’d like
to get one through our partner go to
http://creditreport365.net/?clientID=xxx or you can get one through
your own means, just please get this to me and we can get you into
something. I look forward to speaking with you.<<<

Worse yet, they have your email captured and can now relentless spam you with their credit report BS pitch.

Bottom line, don’t reply to every craigslist response you get, especially if its a quick one liner, and if the sender uses a gmail address that includes both a name and a series of numbers. 

The blog Orlando Vacation News has just posted 3 main points that vacation rentals offer over hotels. They are in a nutshell:

• Room for everyone without the added cost. Ranging from 2 bedroom condos to 7 bedroom homes that sleep from 4 to 16 people comfortably.

• Fully equipped kitchens that present tremendous savings versus dining out. With vacation rentals, you have the choice to eat when and where you want by making your own meals – all at a fraction of the cost of dining out.

• In-home and community entertainment options as an alternative to costly vacation activities. Going the vacation home route also gives you a variety of entertainment options. With amenities like private pools and spas, home theatres and game rooms plus resort community amenities like large swimming pools, fitness centers and children’s playgrounds, the savings of staying in versus going out every day can add up quick.

New start up ShopCabins.com allows you to find a cabin to rent. But for whatever reason, they also list condos and hotels. At time of this post, they have 63 cabin listings.