Bacon Farmer
Top Contributor
Actually even if they do pay an agent commission if it means the house is let instead of being vacant they're winning.
You're assuming the market is efficient.
I said 10% or worse [Stayz charges 8% plus $14.95 per night].
Given you are saying it's up to 40% this means the domain/site as a lead generator would be even more valuable.
The $4k pw is relevant to my argument though where the cost of leads via a website based on this keyword domain might only be $1k.
The searchers are looking for "houses" afterall, a choice, and they likely have some fairly specific budget/quality/location expectations.
Either way an agent with dozens/hundred of properties is going to be able to monetize the traffic far better than someone with 1 house.
They've still got to hire someone to look after the place and physically handle bookings, I'm talking about giving someone a set of keys, drawing them a map of how to get to the place, getting them a spare set of keys when they lose them at the beach, handling things when they decide to have a party with 100 people invited. I think it is easy to say "the home owner can do this, this, and this and save on whole lot of fees", but in reality it probably need to be done by someone who does it for a living, someone actually there.
Personally think it would be hard job getting the site to no.1 and then selling for $1000 to holiday home owner.