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Seasonal Rental

gnardawg

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I need some help - family is thinking of doing a seasonal rental next year but I'm not sure where to start looking. Looking to ideally ski at Killington or Pico. Should I find an agent and start that way or head to craigslist or AirBnB? What have you done in the past?
 

Boxtop Willie

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I need some help - family is thinking of doing a seasonal rental next year but I'm not sure where to start looking. Looking to ideally ski at Killington or Pico. Should I find an agent and start that way or head to craigslist or AirBnB? What have you done in the past?

From a landlord's perspective (I rent my house seasonally at Sugarbush - mid to upper end house, 4 bed 3 bath, 5 min to SB and MRG). I advertise on Craig's list almost exclusively. Using an agent or Airbnb comes with a cost and I'd rather not have to add that to the rent I charge. I'm never at a loss for potential tenants from CL. I vet aggressively and have never had an issue as long as the tenant is honest with me. Some agents double dip, charging the landlord a fee and the tenant a fee. Airbnb is usually not a great option for a seasonal. Only time I've used an agent has been when a seasonal dropped out last minute and I had to scramble to fill. They always have last minute people looking. So, since you are starting early, start with Craigs List.
 

Edd

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I'm never at a loss for potential tenants from CL. I vet aggressively and have never had an issue as long as the tenant is honest with me.

As a frequent HomeAway user, I’m curious: How do you go about vetting someone using CL?
 

KustyTheKlown

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before ikon released details we were heavily considering epic pass and a stowe seasonal rental. I'm glad to not need that now. if I wanted to, I could probably find a real crappy apt in rutland for a few months, which would provide easy enough access to sugarbush, killington, and Stratton on the max pass. I don't think that is necessary tho. stick with the pay as you go cheap hotels, airbnbs, etc, and keep my variety open to extend to the boyne resorts and tremblant
 

Boxtop Willie

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Vetting is reasonably easy given the state of technology today. I get name, rank and serial number from the tenant and have a long conversation with them. (and I take notes) First stop, google. LinkedIn is a wealth of information. Things don't add up we go to the next potential tenant. Also have a service that will do a background checks if I'm uncomfortable. Can't be too careful when renting something for $20,000. I have a few rentals, both seasonal in vacation areas and year round. System hasn't failed yet (well...there was one...story not for this is forum)
 

Edd

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Vetting is reasonably easy given the state of technology today. I get name, rank and serial number from the tenant and have a long conversation with them. (and I take notes) First stop, google. LinkedIn is a wealth of information. Things don't add up we go to the next potential tenant. Also have a service that will do a background checks if I'm uncomfortable. Can't be too careful when renting something for $20,000. I have a few rentals, both seasonal in vacation areas and year round. System hasn't failed yet (well...there was one...story not for this is forum)

So, I’m not clear on rank and serial number for civilians and I’m not a fan of LinkedIn personally. Are we talking about a phone conversation and a credit check?
 
Last edited:

boston_e

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Going on from when we did seasonal rentals years ago so not sure how current my info is.... The Killington real estate companies typically have many listings at a variety of price points. Check in with Brett at Killington Valley Real Estate or Kyle at Killington Pico Realty among others. Rentals for next season typically come up in the spring as ski season ends so the summer is a good time to look.

we did all our renting before Air B&B and VRBO etc became a big thing so not sure how that affected the market.
 

SLyardsale

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Boxtop is right, Craigslist is a good starting point since you are looking early. I have been both a tenant and a landlord using CL. As a tenant, you want the landlord to have a long conversation with you. After all, your spending a serious chunk of change and you want to make sure he/she is engaged and he/she wants to make sure you are engaged as a tenant as well. One question to ask the landlord is how far away do you live from the property... and if they are far away, what contingencies have they set up to deal with the typical problems encountered in the mountains. Frozen pipes, frozen sewer lines, broken heating systems all can happen and you want to make sure the property owner is ready. I rented a real nice seasonal place at Sugarloaf for 3 years.. over the 3 years it encountered the 3 issues - frozen pipes, frozen sewer and a furnace that crapped out - but the owner was all in and these never resulted in down time on my end. He also had a central station monitor low temp, which helped him out - he knew about the issues before I did and was at the ready to make the fix.
 

BenedictGomez

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In the advent of Airbnb and its' competitors, I doubt you can rent for an entire season at a price cheaper than just setting up repeating weekend rentals. Home rental is a massive market distributor. Big Government is trying to kill it, but until/unless they do, that's the #1 route I'm checking for vacations for now on, and it certainly would be before I rented an entire place "for a season".
 

Jully

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In the advent of Airbnb and its' competitors, I doubt you can rent for an entire season at a price cheaper than just setting up repeating weekend rentals. Home rental is a massive market distributor. Big Government is trying to kill it, but until/unless they do, that's the #1 route I'm checking for vacations for now on, and it certainly would be before I rented an entire place "for a season".

Benefit of seasonal rental is that you have the same place every weekend and can leave stuff there. No check in and stuff too each weekend.

I definitely see your point though. That has been my plan. Most seasonal rentals at the cheapest I've found (looking in ME/Northeast NH) at $6-7K. Use it for 40 nights and that is $150 a night. Can get close to that for slopeside at Snowcap at SR or hotels in North Conway or way cheaper 20 minutes off the mountain. Maybe my seasonal rental price is too high, but unless I have a family (then it is a great deal for the ease of use) I'm going AirBnB / motels for the near future.
 

HD333

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We rented seasonally for a few years. We went through local agents. Probably could have saved a grand or so by going Craigslist route but the agents had multiple units we looked at over the course of a day rather than dealing with a landlord directly and hoping to set up a few viewings in the same day with different people. That helped being 2hrs away, we were able to see multiple places and pick a place in one day and be done with it.
The rental agencies also gave us a piece of mind as far as maintenance, if something went wrong we called them and it was dealt with quickly, no getting in touch with a landlord and waiting.

Most rental agencies have a first right of refusal for existing renters, then come a certain date, say May 1st, they open up the inventory to new folks. I’d call and find out that date wherever you are considering to get the most options.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

MommaBear

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We rent our unit on a week/weekend basis via Airbnb and get multiple requests for seasonal rentals, which we don't do. Our insurance won't allow longer than 90 day rentals and we use the place also so don't want it tied up all season. We did do multiple weekends for someone that picked the weekends ahead and just moved his gear to our owners closet in between. Guessing they didn't ski other mountains.
 

Boxtop Willie

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One other thing...In VT, a landlord renting a unit for less than 30 days has to pay VT lodging tax (9%) so that is always added onto the cost; rentals longer than 30 days are not subject to the tax. I have seen listings for longer term rentals still add on the tax, which the the landlord is obviously pocketing for himself.
 

prsboogie

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I need some help - family is thinking of doing a seasonal rental next year but I'm not sure where to start looking. Looking to ideally ski at Killington or Pico. Should I find an agent and start that way or head to craigslist or AirBnB? What have you done in the past?
https://www.contemporaryassociates.com/winterseasonals
https://www.killingtonvalleyrealestate.com/winter-seasonal-rentals/
www.killingtonvermontrealestate.com/
www.vermontvacations.com/
mountaintimes.info/classifieds/
https://vtproperties.net/homes-for-rent/
https://getaway-vacations.com/killington-seasonal-rentals/
https://www.killingtongroup.com/
www.vermontproperty.com/listings/Vermont-Regions/killington-rentals/13/
https://vermont.craigslist.org/search/vac
https://www.vthomes.com/
www.killingtonzone.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=3
These are just from the first two pages on a google search.
 
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