VRBO-Safe? Experiences

[FUEGO]

Nothing but good experiences domestically. Good experience in Canada and a great experience in Paris. We read the reviews - it turns out that many property owners post their property on multiple sites like homeaway, vrbo, etc. They'll tend to post the same description so find a key phrase and google it. That'll open up the door for even more reviews. That's not perfect of course, but we also never go with a property with zero reviews, either.

That's generally good advice, but a rule we broke when booking a place in Mexico City this past summer. The place was on Airbnb and had zero reviews. It looked really nice and was priced very competitively for the area. I contacted the owner and it turns out he just started renting his property and his very first tenant was wrapping up a long term rental of a few months, so there would be a review in a couple of days he says. Sure enough the reviews started showing up soon thereafter (he had a few more short term renters leave reviews).

We chatted back and forth about the property and I was convinced it was legit and a great deal. I also mentioned we were looking for a very clean place and he specifically mentioned the weekly professional cleaning by a real maid and the fact that the unit was only 2 years old.

Everything was perfect. We had booked elsewhere months ahead of time then the owner got sick and couldn't rent the place any more, so this zero review property was a last minute find to replace the rental that we lost.

Great place in a great location for an incredible price ($41/nt IIRC).

 

[BellBarbara]

No problems for us, we have rented all around. I make sure to call the owner and ask a lot of questions.