Breckenridge Vacation Rentals
A Success Story
When Matt from Colorado wanted to buy a vacation home, he knew it had to be in Breckenridge. Although living near Denver made the weekly ski trips bearable, he had always dreamed of owning a property in Summit County. When the time was right, Matt bought a home for himself and his family near Breckenridge and quickly began enjoying time away from Denver.
Matt didn’t intend to rent out his vacation home, but as the vacation rental market began to take off, he saw the opportunity. His family was spending significant time at their Breckenridge property during the ski season, but once the snow melted other activities took precedence and the family didn’t go as often as they thought.
So, Matt decided to use traditional channels like Airbnb to manage the property while the family was away. He quickly realized that he could offset his mortgage with short-term renters and still enjoy his home on his own terms. When he began researching rental channels, he saw managing multiple channels was going to be a challenge, if not impossible. That’s when he found PMBO’s vacation rental management software – and the rest, as they say, was history.
Here’s a short interview with Matt about his experience and what led him to choose PMBO for his property management needs.
- 1. What made you decide to buy a vacation home in Breckenridge?
We chose Breckenridge because of the proximity to skiing, and it’s a very desirable destination for others. Our family loves skiing, mountain biking, and the winters and summers in Breckenridge.
- 2. How were you managing your vacation rental before beginning with PMBO?
We didn’t manage the property ourselves prior to PMBO because it was just too difficult to try to work across multiple booking engines, and building a website was going to be time-consuming not even to mention the marketing of that website. PMBO makes it easy and efficient to manage a property, and as we build out our real estate portfolio, it will make it easy to manage multiple properties.
- 3. What made you decide to change your management philosophy?
The PMBO tool made it a “no-brainer” to be able to list on many short-term rental listing sites, to manage cleaners and service technicians, and to uniformly change availability, pricing, descriptions, and pictures. We didn’t really have to look beyond PMBO.
- 4. Do you use the Housekeeping App from PMBO?
We do now! It allows us to see that the work was performed and do quality checks on our cleaning staff. Since we leave a few hours away, checking the quality of housekeepers or handling the cleaning wasn’t going to be an option for us. With the app, we can see how clean our place is before marking it ready for the next guest.
- 5. How were you handling the cleaning your rental before PMBO?
Initially, we tried managing this on our own. We used a lot of texting, calls, and emails back and forth with our cleaning crew. We did not get consistency with that process that is needed to be able to keep high standards.
- 6. What channels was your property listed on initially?
We were listed initially on BreckenridgeRental.com and Airbnb.
- 7. Did you increase your channel exposure after switching to PMBO? If so, why?
Yes, because now it posts out to most of the national and local listing engines and we can control those listings better. Not everyone uses Airbnb or VRBO, so being on as many channels as possible increases exposure and gets us more bookings.
- 8. Have your reservations increased since making the change?
Yes, we saw an increase of more than double in our booking rates.
- 9. What about your ratings?
Yes, our ratings have consistently been five stars without exception since using PMBO.
- 10. Is your vacation rental more profitable with PMBO?
Yes, our vacation rental is more profitable. I don’t know the exact percentage increase, but increased profits tend to happen when your vacancies decrease.
- 11. How often do you owner occupy your property? Does PMBO make it easy?
We actually owner occupy our property more than 50% of the time. PMBO makes it easy because we can update our availability and change it across many sites simultaneously, as well as to work out cleaning before and after we use it more efficiently.
- 12. Would you recommend PMBO? Why?
Yes, we highly recommend PMBO if you are going to own a short-term rental property. You will have more effective marketing of the property, producing more bookings, creating a higher yield on the property which will allow you to increase your profit. This will enable us to invest in more properties and scale our real estate empire reasonably easily, creating a legacy for our children.
Some people shy away from vacation rentals ownership because they think they don’t have the time or resources. That’s a mistake! With PMBO you can decrease the amount of time you spend managing your rentals, while you increase exposure and profits. Don’t throw away your time trying to handle all your properties independently, or your money paying someone else to do it for you. All it takes is a few hours to set up, and you could be well on your way to a real estate empire like Matt from Colorado.
Thanks for your time and feedback Matt.