My experience with VRBO has been positive - as a renter. I rented the same property three times over three years in Ft Lauderdale as an option to renting a small hotel room for 7 days at a time. For about the same price of an inflated, tiny hotel room, we rented a nicely appointed house with our own pool, hot tub, bikes, kayaks and access to a waterway from the backyard. And free parking (as opposed to paid hotel parking). We also brought 3 people with us!

John,

What is happening here in Santa Barbara and other places like Napa is that we recently passed a law that home rentals have to be over 30 days, otherwise you have to pay the bed tax and other taxes associated with hotel rentals.  I would check your local ordinances.  A

I have heard nothing but good from those that travel & rent these. Those that do the renting out say it is a goldmine and wish for more investments like it

I have not but based on your question looked at their website.  Good luck on finding additional information and reviews.   Are you looking to adopt any adult children and provide nice accomodations in other prime vacation destinations?   If so, I can forward a list of cities I enjoy.   

Yes, we have used VBRO to rent vacation spots with excellent results.

Not as a renter but lots of my customers use it to rent their condos

Sorry, I don't know what a VRBO rental is. Working on two listings now where tenants so trashed the homes, sellers are spending $65K and $30K to put the houses into sellable condition. Not a big fan of renting one's property.

We use them to help rent one of our houses and they were great until expedia bought them last year. They changed their policies and started charging the renters a 9% fee and the traffic crashed. I am not sure if we will be using them this year if they don't fix the problem.

John DL Arendsen - looks like a 'mixed bag' for the reviews of VRBO - though some of the encouraging answers, too.

No sorry.  I have always steered away from vacation rentals.  I hear that the tenants often trash the property.

I've used VRBO as a renter many times with good results. Many of my clients use it as one of their rental marketing strategies but are finding the pricing now is getting too high compared to other options. AirBNB is very popular among rental owners as a less expensive option. Most of my clients use more than one site for rental marketing.

I have friends who own vacation rentals in the mountains of North Carolina.  They swear by VRBO.   Please remember that VRBO sends you customers / refers customers to you...  if you have legal issues with a tenant, that will be beyond the scope of VRBO.

We stayed at a property we found on VRBO last month. We had a phenomenal experience with the landlord and would totally do it again. He had so many wonderful reviews. 

I have a friend who has a couple of these on Maui and one in Malibu.  Almost a fulltime job to keep these rented out.  Just be careful of the short-term rental laws out there.  Santa Monica just cracked down hard on one guy and he lost in court.

Never heard of it before, but after reading a few comments, I may check into this place.

I have not personally however I know many who have ... I've not heard of any bad experiences. All the best to you!

Some factors to consider include insurance, maintenance and security.

John, not only have we used VRBO for rentals, we own a condo in Jupiter Florida that we do weekly rentals on through VRBO when we are not using it as our second home. Much superior to Airbnb for this type of rental. It has worth paying the fee to make sure you are featured. Our condo is one of the few that allows for weekly and we make more money this way. 

My broker is doing this with two homes he owns, and I haven't heard him say anything about it being bad. In fact he's been with VRBO for over a year now, and switched to them from property management firm in the town where the houses are located. 

You mean like, should you rent it out to keep it occupied?

I don't but know some who have done this successful. There are potentially local ordinances that can have an impact and issues with some HOA rules and regulations

I've had a number of condo owners use this service.  It's good for finding potential tenants.  How you handle these tenants is totally up to the owner.  So it can be a good or bad experience.

I had a friend who used them for a rental in New York. They were good to work with. Also, Air B&B has gotten good reports in this area, and they are supposed to include insurance against renter throwing toga parties

I do not

Nope.

I agree with the others who said you should know local ordinances. 

I agree with Ron and Alexandra Seigel ..check your local ordiances!!