We were at Costco last weekend and ran across this lovely set of melamine dinnerware.  I don’t know if this has happened to you but it seems every time we visit our VR a plate or glass or two or three seems to be missing.  Whether they were broken or hijacked, I am not sure, all I know is I greatly dislike forking over money for nice, pretty dishes each time.  So, enter beautiful, durable melamine dishware.  This 16 piece set is super cute, dishwasher and microwave safe, HOA approved for pool and common areas and best of all super cheap but quality look and feel.  The set was only $30 for a 4 piece place setting, including goblets and comes in two or three colors.

The nice thing about this stuff is my guests can take it to the pool, the beach, it’s kid friendly and I can mix and match different sets as pieces turn up missing.  The dishes we currently have are too design specific to mix and match and not look funny, so right now I think we are sporting 4 dinner plates, 3 salad plates and 6 bowls!

Anyway, go find a Costco near you.  I didn’t see that they were available online, however, melamine is the summer trend this year so check Target, TJ’s, or KMart if you don’t have a Costco near you.

Have a great weekend!

[courtney]

We signed up for the first ever HomeAway Owners Summit which will held May 14-16 in Austin, Texas.  It looks to be a fantastic, educational event with a great line up topics and speakers from HomeAway, VRBO, All Star Vacation Homes to name a few.  I am excited to mingle with other VR owners, exchange stories and business cards and hopefully learn a thing or two…or three or four.  According to their site they are only selling 250 tickets and the early bird discount ends April 15.  Sign up now and I’ll see you there!

[courtney]

I called our mortgage broker last week to get a better idea of what the market is like  right now in Maui and what type of conditions and terms we would be looking at.  I just want to be prepared for as many potential hurdles as possible so that when we do ask for that pre-qual letter so I don’t have a sudden panic attack or bust out in tears.  That said, we are trying to go into this purchase with two feet forward, instead of two feet behind us like last time (it sure was fun though–ignorace can be blissful-at least momentarily).  As I mentioned in my last post, we are aiming to put down 10-20% depending on how much we can save over the next few months.

Let me just say that when I finally got in touch with her, I had to take a seat, take two deep breathes all while telling her to tell me like it is with no sugar coating.  Since we own several properties already (some long term rentals), I needed to know what we are looking at in terms of minimum credit score, down payment, and cash reserve requirements.  This property can’t be considered our primary residence as we already have one of those or our second home as our existing VR has taken that spot, so this beauty will be considered a straight investment property–wa, wa, wa.  Enter strict loan conditions.  Did I mention my heart was pounding at the mere thought my dreams of another VR could be crushed?  Ya, I thought I was going to have to call 911 to bring me back to life.  Back to the details…The first words out of her mouth were…”well…it’s real tough and they are requiring at least a 740 credit score, full docs loan and at least 25% down…”  HOLY SHIT is all I was thinking.  Dream was crushed.  I KNOW we don’t have anywhere near the 740′s for a credit score because of all the loans for our various properties and frickin’ A I thought 10-20% would be considered a generous down payment.  Oh, and she went on to say that if the condo complex we are purchasing in isn’t at least 51% owner-occupied it would be considered a ‘condotel’ and lenders are requring 40% down payment!  You’re kidding, right?!?

I knew the lending requirements in Hawaii would be a bit different than on the mainland but I had no idea they would be this strict.  No clue.  Call me stupid.  When we purchased our first VR three years ago it was a total loan disaster, but the terms were minimal.  They wanted a whole lotta paper from us but didn’t care about credit scores or cash reserves.

I can’t help to think about the number of properties on the market in Maui, let alone ALL the foreclosures and really don’t understand why they make it nearly impossible for someone with the funds to buy a place, but that is just me and I don’t make up the rules.  The crappy part of this whole situation is that I was surfing the listings the other night and found the PERFECT condo in our complex for the PERFECT price.  I was preapred to scrape together 10% and buy it on the spot….I am sure you can figure out the ending to my temporary dream.

So the dream of buying today is ruined but the dream of buying in a few months is still within the realm of possibilities!  Oh, I haven’t pulled our credit reports yet…I am just so scared.  We will save this fun task for another day!

Wa, wa, wa…

[courtney]

Happy Monday!  I hope you had a great weekend.  The big project for this weekend was hammering out our budget to see how many months it will take for us to reach our goal.  Budgets are for the birds…I hate being restricted to “X” amount of dollars for this and that and not being able to shop freely and buy that iMac I have had my eye on for several months now.  It sucks.  The end product, however,  is exciting and inspiring and adds to the long term goals in our life.

So, if we stick to the budget religiously we will be the proud owners of another VR in December.  One that may even be cash flow positive (this story to come in another post).  In sticking with the carefully designed budget, we have vowed to live in our very cheap, ghetto fabulous rental (yes, we rent) that is decked out in 70′s brown berber carpet, beautist gold and brown linoleum and BRIGHT gold and brown appliances.  No joke, ORIGINAL appliances in this joint.  Oh, did I mention that it is amazingly small to fit all 8 of us?  Yes, thats right, 8 of us.  We have 3 cats and 3 LARGE dogs.  Did I mention it was cheap?  We had planned to move, actually, buy or build a house this year but instead thought it would be more beneficial to our long term goals to buy another VR.  Real estate prices in Maui are the lowest they have been in decades and there are several foreclosures in our complex. 

 Our fancy, smancy living room!  I love the wood panel wall :)

Our cute kids: Franklin, Ellee Mae & Cooper

Another major cut back we took was in the travel department.  Prior to the big goal announcement we traveled regularly.  And by regularly I mean at least once a month!  This year it looks like we will be entering into a travel freeze except for three trips–one weekend in Park City, UT, a few weeks in Maui to check on our existing VR and check out prospects for our second VR and to Chicago this fall to catch the Fighting Irish in action.  I must say this was the most difficult cut back for me as I live to travel…anywhere, anytime, count me in. 

Those were the major noteworthy items in the budget.  Oh, if you are wondering, we are a one car family and it was a much smoother transition that I had imagined.  We do have the luxury of working from home (yes, we both have jobs other than the VR and the dog biscuit company) and when we are not home we are traveling for work or pleasure.  The budget is set-up so that every single item that requires money during the month will be accounted for, ie: groceries, dog/cat supplies, lawyer and accountant, utilities, rent, mortgages, entertainment, gas, etc.  By the end of December we will have saved $12,000 plus some stock options we have set aside that will allow for a healthy down payment, furnishings and remodel costs. 

This is the budget in a nutshell…and it begins January 15…yikes!  I am just doing a final review of it this morning before I print 20 copies and post it all throughout the house as a constant reminder of the goal.  I will be sure to document the ups and downs of the process and the months go by.

To this, I say HAPPY SAVING!

[courtney]

Hello and welcome 2010! I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing New Years. I feel as though this year is going to be the year… The year I become organized (finally), keep up with blogging, get my dog biscuit company up and running, learn to decorate cupcakes with more proficiency than a 4 year old and purchase another vacation rental. Yes! A new vacation rental. I am super excited to have this little goal on my 2010 resolution list, of course along with the other items mentioned above. I am SO excited!

It has been a long time coming for a second VR and I just can’t wait to begin the journey, again. This time I am coming on this journey with so much more knowledge than I had three years ago (this month to be exact) and I am confident this purchase will go much smoother and be much less expensive than the first. I wish I would have started this blog three years ago as it was such an experience. It was so emotional and confusing, yet exciting and super expensive. Did I mention confusing and emotional?!?

So in light of this hefty goal, I thought I would bring you all along on this roller coaster ride and give this blog another stab at life. I plan to bring you regular diary entries of my progress including the big goal of saving up, the plotting and planning, the search, the decorating ideas, the theme- the whole kit and kaboodle! It should be an entertaining ride, to say the least.

So join me on the ride. C’mon, it’ll be fun…

[courtney]

People have returned from summer break and are getting back in the swing of things with school and work, which means people have vacation on the brain. The holiday traffic is picking up at our rental’s, is yours? If not, make sure you are marketing your rental NOW! I am almost booked solid until through April and am turning people away daily!

Here are a few “free” ways to get your place out there…

*Craigslist -takes some work to post regularly

*Postlets -this is a great site as it creates a “pretty” ad that you can use over and over with just a click of a button. Oh, it also integrates with Craigslist so you don’t have to waste hours posting daily on Craigslist.

*SecondPorch -this newer site that allows people to share their vacation rentals with other people, friends and their social community. I have mine listed but have not yet received a booking from it.

*Message Boards/News Letters-My mother works in a large medical office and they have an office “news notes” that they send out regularly and our rentals are featured weekly. We have received a large amount of our business from the news notes advertising. It is cheap (free!) and I literally have to do no work after the original details were provided.

*Adding your website to your Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media pages

Happy renting!

[courtney]

So, here it goes…

Wintery Night Dreams:  I was browsing Craigslist on a cold wintery evening in Seattle, Washington.  I really hated living in Seattle and I have always wanted to live in Maui since the first time I visited several years back.  It was a dream but one I knew would turn into a reality at some point in my life.  Anyway, I am sitting on the sofa, on my soapbox telling Ron all about my wsih.  He asked if it was expensive and how would it work with all the animals (we have 6!), as if he was super interested and it MIGHT be a possibility.  I did a quick search on CL and the very FIRST property I looked at was the keeper.  The bones were good, the style was not.  It was a workable space that need a wee bit of sprucing and a creative touch to pull it together.

So anyway where was I?  Oh yeah, here I am sitting in the dark making a quick call to the Realtor in Kihei at half past eight, like two days before Christmas and by morning I had an offer drawn up in my hot little paws.  Ron paced through the house chatting to me in gibberish as if we just won the lottery.  Seriously, we were like two kids in a candy shop who could pick out anything they wanted.

We didn’t ever look back and we had NO clue what were doing or what we had just gotten ourselves into.  No clue.  And we weren’t scared, not one bit.  In fact, we didn’t even begin thinking about how we would pay for it every month or that it would be a vacation rental and if it was a VR, how all the logistics would roll out until we finished signing the closing documents.

Hold onto your hats for ‘part’ two as we embark on this whirl wind adventure!

Aloha,

[courtney]

[courtney]

Websites are easy, cheap and effective!

Mind you, creating a website doesn’t have to be hard.  It will take some time, but we aren’t looking to win any awards here.  I won’t discuss the process involved in creating a website here, but I do want to discuss some of the key points that make this such an effective marketing tool.

People are searching for your property on search engines – they just don’t know it yet.  Take a moment and think about the way you search for things online…. it could be a bowling ball, a shower curtain or the nearest dry cleaner.  What are the words you use, the details needed to find exactly what you want, the locations (if necessary).  All are specifically tailored to bring back that small piece of information you need to proceed on whatever project you’re working on in that moment.  Your potential renters are doing the same thing.  Will your Home Away, VRBO or Craigslist listings show up in a search result?  They might, but given the fact that there are hundreds or thousands of properties listing on these sites in your area chances are good that you don’t have a prayer.

To illustrate my point, I want to direct your attention to our own Maui Vacation Rental website.  Look at it…it’s not spectacular, there are no flashy doohickeys or Flash anything.  It’s just a one page website, with all the vital information our prospects need to know.  They can see high quality pictures, check our calendar, inquire for more information and even read some great quotes from our satisfied customers.

All-in-all this site took about 5 hours to create, but you know what?  The look isn’t all that important.  It’s the keywords.  The results that our site comes up for in the search engines.  Can you guess what our primary keywords are?  I’ll tell you…it’s “Cheap Maui Condo” and we’re #1 in all major search engines.  We’ve been #1 for that precious keyphrase since we launched the site in 2007.  WE GET 50% of our bookings from our website!  We do still carry listings on HomeAway.com, but we dropped our VRBO listing over a year ago.  Why? Because our $8/month website brought us enough bookings to cancel the VRBO subscription and spend the money on other things – like high speed internet (which in turn has raised our bookings).

Now, you’ll notice we aren’t trying to rank #1 for “Condo” or “Vacation Rental”, this is because we wouldn’t get any bookings from these keywords (and they’re probably out of most of our leagues).  We translated our business model into a succinct keyphrase.  We have a condo, it is cheap and it is in Maui……”Cheap Maui Condo”.  Some folks say that the domain is the #1 most important item when trying to rank for specific keywords.  Still some say it’s the title tag.  And, still others say it’s the links coming from other websites.  I’ll save the search engine theory for others in the profession as it’s been discussed and debated 1,000 ways from Sunday.  I will say, however, the congruency of every part of your website is key.  Give it a relevant domain, title tag and text and you’ll be on your way to gaining visitors from the search engines.

There are plenty of other reasons to post your own website.  We use it as an FAQ, a single point of contact, a reference for more information, a dedicated email address and even a central calendaring function (through an embedded Gmail calendar).

Listen, if you’re still on the fence about whether or not to create a website for your property, STOP.  Just do it.  Get some help, read a book, research online.  Whatever it takes.  It’s cheaper than any vacation rental directory over the long run and you’ll reap many, many bookings and in increase in your bottom line for years to come.

Note to self: Does a successful, dedicated website increase the value of your vacation rental?  The built-in marketing and long-term booking source would be a nice addition to a prospective buyer.  Must write future blog post on this very topic

Happy Renting!
[Ron]

Here are some wonderful pieces of art that I heart…

Hanalei Fence

Snow

Garibaldi

The Drive

Orchid No. 1

Autumn’s Splendor

And you can pair any of these photos with inexpensive frames such as this one, this one or this one or if you are feeling extra crazy you can paint frames you already have but are too ugly to display!

Enjoy the hunt.

[courtney]