Jim and Patty Tolotta bought a 2-bedroom condo in family-friendly Orange Beach, Alabama with the intention of visiting a few times a year with their young daughter. They knew the area was popular, and thought they might earn enough renting it out during the rest of the year to offset the costs of the mortgage and upkeep - around $15,000.
The main problem? They weren’t going to be able to manage the property locally, and the property management companies in the area wanted to charge a 22% fee - on top of extravagant cleaning and maintenance fees. Those companies would only distribute the property on their own sites, without promoting elsewhere, and Jim thought he could get better marketing and management for his money. As it turned out, he was right.
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Pretty much immediately, we started getting confirmations - and really, it hasn’t stopped since.”
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I was really pleasantly surprised at the volume we did in that first year. And I didn’t have to be the landlord - all I do is pay the taxes and the mortgage, and Evolve takes care of everything else. It’s as close as I think I could get to having somebody there full time!”
Jim & Patty Tolotta, Evolve Homeowners
Solution
Jim considered simply promoting his condo on VRBO and hiring individual service providers to handle key hand-off and cleaning, but he really needed someone to field inquiries, process payments, and handle the scheduling. VRBO said they couldn’t provide that directly, but they did have a partner that did everything Jim needed and more: Evolve Vacation Rental Network.
Jim was immediately impressed with the low 10% fee and the fact that Evolve would distribute his property on VRBO, HomeAway, Airbnb, TripAdvisor and Flipkey. “You have to put your property where people are looking for it.” He loved the professional photos and listing description we created for him, and was impressed with how quickly - and consistently his property was rented compared to other owners in Orange Beach.
Performance
Time with Evolve
1 year
Nights Booked
131
Total Bookings
34
Rental Income
$33,824
Results
Using our dynamic pricing system, and having been introduced to a local cleaning service that charged $50 less per cleaning than the original property manager had wanted to charge, James was pleased to discover his property was far more profitable than he had originally calculated. “Pretty much immediately, we started getting confirmations - and really, it hasn’t stopped since.”
Jim also loves how hands-off the entire process is. “I work full-time, I can’t be a landlord.” We’ve even managed to help him make his tax payments easily. “Here, you have to pay every month, and I can run a report in Evolve’s dashboard for that month and get all the information I need to pay my taxes right away. I love the whole process. It’s so easy.”
Jim’s experience confirms what we’ve been saying all along: Evolve makes vacation rental easy for everyone. Even brand-new owners competing against experienced ones!
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Schedule a call with one of our vacation rental advisors to see if you qualify.
