The following is an excerpt from Christine Karpinski's book, How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner, 2nd Edition: The Complete Guide to Buy, Manage, Furnish, Rent, Maintain and Advertise Your Vacation Rental Investment (Kinney Pollack Press, 2007, ISBN: 0-9748249-0-9, $26.00).

There are a few common mistakes that people who own multiple properties make. The mistakes almost always pertain to advertising. While owning two vacation rental properties will give the benefit of being able to cross sell your properties from one ad to another, you need to make sure you are giving equal exposure to both of your properties.

Here's an example of a common mistake. Say you have two condos in the same complex. You only list one of your condos thinking that single ad will give enough exposure for both properties. While you'll likely be able to benefit from the overflow of one ad, it's important to advertise both properties in separate ads because it gives them equal exposure as well as giving you slightly more shelf space on the vacation rental portal websites. Another common mistake is not listing all your properties on all the major portal websites, as in the following scenario: Your first property is listed on VRBO.com and CyberRentals.com, and your second property is listed on A1Vacations.com and GreatRentals.com. While you think that the exposure you'll get would be ample because collectively you have four ads, you are really shortchanging both of your properties. You need to have ads for each property on each of the listing sites.

And the last most common advertising mistake has to do with your calendars. Most often, multiple property owners don't keep calendars up to date. I understand the thought process and have heard all of the arguments—you don't mark dates as booked until both properties are booked for a particular time period with the mindset that you can “sell” the other property. While sometimes you';ll be able to convince the renter to look at your second property, often the renters want to rent the property they are looking at, and have a different back-up property in mind. They also want to know instantly whether or not it's available. It's been proven that properties with up-to-date calendars book better than properties with no dates shown as booked. So not marking your booked dates on both ads can be a greater disadvantage to both of your properties.

© Christine Karpinski 2007