Mrs. Weekly Flyer and I have been tossing around the idea of investing in a small vacation cottage. Location, now that is the question at hand? Mountains or beach? Our financial plan for this tentative purchase all circles around the ability for us to rent out the vacation house at least part of the year in order to generate income to pay for it.

Best Vacation Home Rental Options

In evaluating how best to accomplish renting out our potential vacation rental, we are considering the following options. Here is a breakdown of the benefits of each:

AirBNB: Airbnb lets you make money renting out your place. It is flexible in that you can offer different room types, as an example, entire home, a room or even shared rooms. I’ve rented on AirBNB before and really liked the process, as the owner of the house can approve you as a renter. They call it “Trust & safety tools to help you accept a booking only if you’re 100% comfortable.” From a host stand point, I love that AirBNB has a $1,000,000 Host Guarantee – at no additional cost to you. Get $25 off first reservation to use for travel.

If you haven’t joined AirBnB yet, you can sign up with my referral link and score $40 off your first AirBnB booking. Click here to join AirBnB.

HomeAway/VRBO: I also just completed a rental via Homeaway. It worked out very well but, I had to talk to the owner to pay for the trip vs being able to pay online. I think that this was just specific to the homeowner because it looks like Homeaway does have an online payment option. Every listing includes a property headline, description, 24 photos, guest reviews, interactive map and calendar. Homeaway has what looks like 3 different options to list your home, 2 options where you can list it yourself and one where you can use a professional to do it for you. The fees for each vary.

Bottom Line

What other options to you use to advertise your vacation rentals? In your opinion, what is the best way to go? I almost think that advertising on both AirBNB and HomeAway/VRBO might make sense.