There are a vast amount of sites, such as VRBO, that serve as a platform for owners to rent out their vacation homes to vacation goers. But the main drawback to these sites is the risk of renting your home to someone who you don’t know or have any personal connection with. Second Porch hopes to mitigate this problem with its Facebook app that lets owners create a free property listing that can be broadcast to your Facebook friends.
The app is fairly simple. Once you list a property via Second Porch’s application, this will be published in your feed with a link to the listing. The app itself aggregates all listings onto a map (owners can also choose to let anyone on Facebook see their listings) and lets people search for rentals by location, rate or amenities. And of course, you can search or filter by properties owned by friends. Currently, the app has over 700 listings for rental properties.
Second Porch plans to introduce a paid service which requires owners to pay $99 per year to provide additional marketing for the listings including redirecting your inquiry stream to a property manage and let owners link to information like a Flickr photo album, another Facebook page, a property web site and a Twitter profile.
I think the app is fairly useful and I like the idea of using your social graph to both advertise and find rental properties. If the app is able to gain a solid user base, it could prove to be a popular destination to both advertise and find rental properties.
Great App. The only problem is that your circle of friends isn’t a large enough market to rent out a vacation home to. However showing the property to all facebook users might work, you get the added “security” of seeing the tenants picture and personal info before handing over the keys.
I think startupwizz has hit the mark in the comment posted here. Although there are many people in my circle of “friends” who do not know I have vacation rentals, I would not count entirely on social media.
But I joined Second Porch because it is one more avenue to promote my condo and house on Sanibel Island, Florida and because I like to know who my renters are, when and if possible.
Second Porch will be my main stay social media outlet for promoting my properties and I will choose to be as visible as possible on Facebook. Doing so will give my potential rental guests a sense of confidence that I am who I claim to be and vice versa.
I am affiliated with Second Porch because I believe in the future of social media and want another avenue—in addition to a couple of traditional vacation rental portals— to publicize my rentals.
Looking at the pure numerical formulas, there are many more people using Facebook then there are using traditional VR portals!
Great idea. The key to smooth renting has always been the trust factor… with facebook, u’ve got a level of trust already baked in. Good luck Brent
One note on the comment about perhaps not having enough Facebook friends to rent our your home. In the vacation rental space, it’s reassuring to have guest be a ‘friend of a friend’, so our app is enabled with social features that allow friends of yours to give your vacation home visibility to their friends in very tasteful ways. Since the average Facebook member has 130 friends, that gives you a potential network of 130 friends times their 130 friends to tap into—-or well over 10,000 people all who can be “vouched for” by someone you know. That may be enough guests for the segment of vacation home owners who care more about guest trustworthiness over revenue maximization.
I’m a vacation rental guest, wannabe vacation rental owner who uses vacation rentals fairly frequently.
There is an emphasis on numbers in the comments above, but from my perspective—as a guest—I like the smaller venues for finding rentals.
I’d rather have 10 places where I feel comfortable looking than 1000 places where I am working in the dark.
pretty sure your friends won’t send it to their friends… but maybe I’m wrong.
I can see using this and still posting it on homeaway.. maybe offering my facebook friends a discount
One of the attractive aspects of renting to to people you don’t know is that it keeps the relationship strictly business. Who would want to be nitpicky about prices and minor incidental damages with your friends? I’d probably just end up losing money because i’d be more lenient with my facebook friends instead of a prudent property owner.
It seems that right now the app is geared to people not primarily in the real estate business who happen to own a vacation home. For those kind of property owners, of which there are more than few, renting to people you know through Second Porch is a really cool idea.
But the problem from my perspective is the jump to the $99 paid service. Out of curiosity, I’ve pitched Second Porch to property owners I know, the kind who are in it for more than filling their empty vacation house and making an extra buck. They didn’t bite on it even if I said it was free.
I think if it’s going to succeed over the old school venues, Second Porch needs to stick to capturing the more casual market of vacation home owners, the sort not inclined to hunt down renters through VRBO.
Mmm, don’t know if I am a casual VR owner or a serious one. I have 2 VR properties, obviously not a lot, but I spend a lot of time marketing them and communicating with vacation rental guests, past, present and potential. I am listed on Facebook and Second Porch as well as on VRBO and Homeaway. My newest listings on Flipkey/TripAdvisor has my two VR’s, a condo and house, as number 1 and number 2 in the Sanibel Island, Florida ranking results. So…am I a casual property owner or a serious one? I don’t think you can differentiate the two based on where/how they choose to market their properties.
Lets see.. I want to trade time with my 1700 square foot home for your 10,000 square foot mansion. lol
As it has a link with Facebook and think we will give it a try
A better service with similar idea is http://www.soolars.com
Please explain how this is a better service? I am always interested in new opportunities, but when I clicked on this link to look, I only found 4 homes listed on the entire site.
Any further explanation will be much appreciated.
Thanks!