Cape Cod Vacation Rentals

Expected pay: you set it

Husl$core: $$$$

Commissions & fees: $99 annually

Where: Cape Cod

Requirements: 18+, a Cape Cod property that you rent out at least 4 weeks per year

Review:

Cape Cod Vacation Rentals is a niche home rental site that charges a $99 annual flat fee to list your residence. Unlike Airbnb, there are no other fees — for homeowner or renter — which can be a win-win for everyone.

To explain, there are two ways to pay for advertising your property for rent — a flat fee that’s charged up-front to list; or a commission that’s charged against each booking.

Flat fees are sometimes criticized because they’re levied before the homeowner earns any money. However, for those who end up renting their homes for more than a few nights, they tend to be the less-costly option for the homeowner.

Flat fees vs. commissions

Consider someone who secures a $5,000 one-month rental of their property. If you pay a 20% commission on that rental, you give up a $1,000 commission, netting just $4,000. If, however, you paid just $99 to advertise, your net is $4,901 — $901 less. 

The challenge, of course, is that the fee is a sure thing. Rentals are not. Thus, before paying a flat fee, you need to feel confident that the site where you are listing your rental draws enough traffic to secure you a few bookings.

This is our one concern about Cape Cod Vacation Rentals. This site is relatively new and unlikely to get a ton of traffic. However, the site’s CEO Paul Buonopane formerly worked with FlipKey and TripAdvisor. And he says that Cape Cod Vacation Rentals is already ranking well in appropriate Google searches. He’s also willing to spend on paid search to make sure customers find the site.

When we Google-searched for cape cod rentals, however, the site didn’t even make the first page. Competitors, including VRBO, Airbnb and WeNeedAVacation, on the other hand, all were listed on the first page of searches for rentals in both Nantucket and Cape Cod. 

Recommendations

Cape Cod Vacation Rentals offers a 90-day free trial. That’s a no-risk way to see if they’re able to deliver enough renters to make the annual fee worthwhile. If it does, this is the most cost-effective way to rent out a vacation home by far. 

However, if you’re looking to rent your home as much as possible, we’d also recommend that you list with Airbnb. The site simply gets better web traffic than all of its competitors and charges homeowners the most reasonable fees. (Homeowners pay a 3% site commission; renters pay about 15%.)

Also consider WeNeedaVacation, another fee-only advertising site that specializes in Cape Cod rentals.

4/22/2021