WeNeedaVacation: Affordable Cape Cod Rentals

What is WeNeedAVacation?

WeNeedAVacation is a home rental site that specializes in Cape Cod listings and only Cape Cod listings.

How it works

If you have a home in the Cape Cod area, you can advertise it on this site for $99 for two months and $409 for a year. To list your home, you’ll put in the location, a description, multiple photographs and (if you want) a video. You’ll add a price and set the site’s availability.

WeNeedAVacation review

While other home rental sites, such as Airbnb and VRBO, charge a percentage of your rental amount. WeNeedAVacation simply charges homeowners a flat fee to advertise. That may seem like you’re taking a risk — all cost, no promise of return.

Besides, WeNeedaVacation offers a relatively inexpensive two-month trial for $99. And it says you’ll get free extended membership, if you get no rentals during the first term.

Flat fee vs. commissions

Moreover, the flat-fee model works well for the high-end rentals located in this part of the country, particularly if a home is booked for weeks at a time. That’s because other sites charge booking fees that are set as a percentage of the rental amount. And those percentage-based fees can add up quickly.

Consider, for instance, what you’d pay for listing your vacation home on WeNeedAVacation vs. Airbnb. With WeNeedAVacation, a year’s listing costs $409. With Airbnb, you pay a percentage of your revenue to the site.

So, let’s say you’re listing your 4-bedroom home in Martha’s Vineyard.  Most listings in this category go for $3,000 to $15,000 per week, depending on the house, the season and the proximity to the beach. So, let’s say you get 4 one-week rentals over the course of a year — two during high season at $10,000 a week; and two during low-season at $5,000 a week. Your bookings gross $30,000 for the year.

That listing costs you $409 with WeNeedAVacation, which nets you $29,591 after the cost of listing. With Airbnb — the least expensive of the commission-based rental services, you’d pay 3% or $900, netting $29,100. However, your guests would pay considerably more, since Airbnb tacks a fee of up to 15% on the customer’s bill as well. So, while you pay $900, the guest is likely to pay $3,000 or more.

That makes WeNeedAVacation’s flat fee look like a screaming bargain.

You communicate directly

Perhaps because this site is not charging a percentage of the gate, WeNeedaVacation also doesn’t get in the way of direct communication between homeowners and renters, either.

That can preclude many of the problems homeowners complain about with other sites, such as getting hit with steep cancellation fees when someone wants to make a minor change to the booking. Or renting to unsuitable clients — people planning to use your house for a frat party rather than a family vacation, for instance.

Notably, you can have a representative from the site take professional photographs of your residence for an additional fee.

Recommendations

This is a great site if you plan to rent your expensive home for more than a few weeks each year. The site gets good traffic. (Not as much as Airbnb, of course. But it’s only for Cape Cod rentals.) And homeowners say it works well for them.

If you want to list elsewhere, our top recommendation in the rental space is (unsurprisingly) Airbnb, the industry leader. Other sites that arrange flat fee rentals include SabbaticalHomes, which is another great choice if you want to rent your home for months at a time.

Check it out

Want to list or book with WeNeedAVacation? You can find them here.

What their homeowners say: (from Yelp)

“My  gf and I own a  house on the cape  in Eastham.  The first year we used a rental company, and they charged us 17 percent of every rental. Thankfully  I found WeNeedaVacation and we have been with them for 4 years.  They charge a one-time reasonable fee to post your house with 14 pictures.

Helpful

They are extremely helpful if you need assistance. Most importantly they just give you a rental inquiry. After that, I am in charge of communicating with the prospective tenant, answering any questions they have. I feel like I have a relationship with the person that is renting my house, instead of other sites that just take the booking without me having any control. They know the cape area very well. I can’t recommend them highly enough.”

We’ve been listing our West Tisbury home on We Need A Vacation for over 10yrs and love it. The staff is always helpful and responsive – and I’m very techno-challenged. We are listed on several other sites. But most of our renters come through this site. We get fewer “tire kickers” from WeNeed than VRBO or Home Away.

Updated 2/20/2025