Who has rented a vacation home for over a month at a time?

[Palmtree]

My wife and I have traveled many times to Europe but generally never more than one week in a single location. After a very rough year we would like to explore the option of spending a month or more in an apartment or small home. We would use this as a home base and day trips to surrounding areas or maybe take a train to explore a bit further out. If you’ve rented or leased for a month or more before can you please give me an education on how to find long term rentals. From what I’ve read renting by the month is supposed to be less expensive. Most of the normal sites I use like VRBO and others just add up the daily rate to give us monthly amount. Any advice from you more experienced long term travelers would be appreciated.

 

[harllee]

On airbnb and VRBO I have had good success with contacting the owner through the site and asking for a monthly discount. You can also search AirBnb long term rentals and that will show you listings that give monthly discounts.

 

[disneysteve]

We’ve never done a month or more but we’ve done 2 weeks numerous times. I second what harllee said. Contact the owner and ask for their best price. I don’t think we’ve ever paid the listed price x 14 for a 2 week stay. They always give us a deal.

 

[folivier]

We've done a monthly rental multiple times but it has been a few years since we have. We'd mostly use VRBO and send out multiple inquiries. Most rentals wouldn't respond but we always found one that would work for us. Don't get disappointed but keep pursuing.
We even rented a very desirable apartment next door to LSU campus while we waited for our home to be finished. The only stipulation was we had to leave when there was a home game. The rent was very reasonable except for home games when it shot up.

 

[marko]

We rented a house through VRBO for three months. Our old house sold too quickly and our new house wasn't finished being built. It was in a very desirable location and steps to the beach, so we had a great homeless summer!

 

[rodi]

See my immersive language school thread. We are looking at renting for just over 2 months next year. If you put in longer dates. Airbnb will show you the monthly rates for those places that offer a discount. The prices really go down if you are off season. We are seeing prices that are 1/3 the price of the daily rental, giving me hope we can get an apartment in Florence for $1500/month.

Seconding the idea of contacting the landlord. I've had good luck copying some of the description and searching for it (in quote marks) in Google... you can sometimes find the owners direct website... (they often use the same description across multiple platforms).

 

[bjorn2bwild]

We use Furnished Finder for monthly rentals, US only -
PS - Also there are local outfits like the second link.

https://www.furnishedfinder.com/


https://www.sequimvalley.com/

 

[Breedlove]

We have thought about that Summer Camp for Snowbirds in Galveston . They do it during the off season it is 1300.00 a month January , February . They do all kinds of events from cooking to wine and whiskey tasting dance lessons golf . Even though we are 100 miles from Galveston we might try it . There is lots of entertainment in Galveston year round . And off season everything is cheaper.

 

[Texas Proud]

I have never done it but one of my sisters has... she uses the normal sites...


One downside she mentioned when I went to stay with her for a few days on her last rental is that the owner can change... she has rented out the same condo for 5 to 7 years and this last time the owner did not give them a monthly rate... they like it so much they paid the double amount for rent..


Now here is the funny thing... they took a vacation from their vacation!!! Yep, flew up to meet their daughter for a long weekend during their monthly rental...

 

[oiseux]

Besides the big international search engines like VRBO, you can check with local real estate agencies and management companies. Some, but not all, may be on the big search engines. For example, in France, you can look at Gites de France or in the French Riviera, Rivera Pebbles.

 

[bigreader]

I have used Airbnb and Booking.com in Italy for stays up to 30 days. The prices drop according to season and the length of stay. I think it varies from city to city, but sometimes it is hard to rent for more than 30 days on Airbnb due to local ordinances.

 

[rodi]

One thing to consider. For most of the longer rentals (14 days or more) the heating/cooling is not included. They read the meter at the beginning of your stay and then again when you leave. It seems like an opportunity for a 'mark up' on the utilities... so ask any potential landlords what rate they charge, per unit, for electricity and gas.

I've seen this on both booking.com and airbnb.com.

 

[LateToFIRE]

I've used VRBO and AirBnB for multi-week rentals, as others have noted usually you can connect with the owner/property manager directly to negotiate for a longer stay. I've also had success with local r.e. brokers for seasonal longer stays (ex. summer beach house) and found that to be a very good experience in terms of knowledge of the area and available properties (and usually owner pays the broker fee). You have to do a bit of research to find the local rental brokers, word of mouth works best, but also they will advertise in the local publications - online and print.

 

[Rianne]

We've rented a VRBO in Destin, FL in Jan/Feb twice in the last 3 years. The 3 bed, 3 bath condo, has a direct ocean view of sunrise and sunset. Although it's listed in VRBO, we rented through the real estate management company instead. We saved the fee VRBO owners charge. We were able to contact the office directly and talk to someone if we needed maintenance or had a question about the area. Local brokers are the best way to go if you can find them.

 

[SoClose]

I’ve used Airbnb in past years.

But it is a crap shoot, took a while to find one that was outfitted well enough for a longer stay, and didn’t have bugs or other issues which make for a LONG month.

Never had luck with a any VRBO responding to inquiries.

After several years, decided we liked the area and bought our own place

 

[Palmtree]

Thank you all so much for your responses. I have a follow up question for those who said they contacted the owners via VRBO and AirBnB. Did you have to reserve a initial stay via VRBO/AirBnB and then directly work with the owners for the rest of the stay or not?

 

[harllee]

Thank you all so much for your responses. I have a follow up question for those who said they contacted the owners via VRBO and AirBnB. Did you have to reserve a initial stay via VRBO/AirBnB and then directly work with the owners for the rest of the stay or not?

I just sign into my account on Airbnb, Vrbo and click on where it says contact the owner. I then send a message to the owner asking for the monthly discount. If the discount is acceptable the owner will then show the discount on airbnb or vrbo and I sign up through airbnb/vrbo. Do not pay anything to the owner outside airbnb/vrbo, that could be a scam.

 

[disneysteve]

Thank you all so much for your responses. I have a follow up question for those who said they contacted the owners via VRBO and AirBnB. Did you have to reserve a initial stay via VRBO/AirBnB and then directly work with the owners for the rest of the stay or not?

No. I contacted the owner, gave my dates, and asked for their price.

 

[Scuba]

We’ve done this several times as we enjoy “slow travel.” Has always worked well for us to contact the owner directly and ask for a discount for a monthly or longer stay.

 

[Zona]

We are on the last night of a one month stay on Lake Como, which we booked via Airbnb. Great hosts, excellent location, water view, everything exactly as described in the listing. For stays 28 days or longer there is usually a hefty discount with Airbnb, plus the cleaning fee is a much smaller percentage of the cost so the per night cost is further reduced. We have had many long stays like this, and we always look closely at reviews and cancellation policies, if possible we choose superhosts or those with many recent reviews. We spend a lot of time looking at listings and locations, using Google street view to figure out where each place is located if possible.

In the past we tried looking at VRBO but never seemed to see any discount for long stays without sending an inquiry and going back and forth. We prefer seeing the discount upfront so we can compare different apartments. I would not use the platform to ask for a side deal where you pay outside of Airbnb, that violates the user agreement. But we did once find the apartment we wanted on its own website as well as Airbnb and that time it was cheaper to book via the owner’s website (but risky, since we had to send a wire directly. It worked out that time but we decided not to do it that way in future).

Tomorrow we head to Nice where we have another four week stay booked. Hoping that apartment is as nice as this one has been!

 

[Retired Expat]

We have done it several times and also rented our vacation house out on AirBnB and done many Long Term rentals. Not only do most hosts offer discounts on monthly rentals there can be serious tax savings as well. In CT for example there is a 15% hospitality tax on short term rentals. But the state only charges it on the first month or less , and a 90day rental pays no hospitality tax at all.

 

[Palmtree]

We are on the last night of a one month stay on Lake Como, which we booked via Airbnb.

Tomorrow we head to Nice where we have another four week stay booked. Hoping that apartment is as nice as this one has been!

Wow Zona. Two months back to back. This is truly a great example of slow travel. Something I aspire to. The longest we've ever stayed in one location was 3 weeks in Umbria and that was at least 20 years ago.

 

[Zona]

Wow Zona. Two months back to back. This is truly a great example of slow travel. Something I aspire to. The longest we've ever stayed in one location was 3 weeks in Umbria and that was at least 20 years ago.

There are a few others on this board who have also posted a lot about their slow travel experiences, which I always find inspirational and helpful (Brett comes to mind, but I know there are several others, too). For us, usually we do a long stay in a big touristy city with lots of museums and activities so when we booked this place I was worried it might be a bit too slow. But I was pleasantly surprised, and the slow pace of life in small town Italy really suited us (our town including surrounding hamlets was only about 3000 people).

Airbnb lets you refine your search to apartments with washers or air conditioners etc. We almost always have a washer but air dry is the norm in Europe so we pack lightweight fabrics. To see the monthly discount you’ll need to make sure you are searching for a stay of at least 28 days. If I recall correctly you can also specify that the dates are flexible, but I’m not sure on that. We have seen some fairly generous cancellation policies but read carefully because you don’t want to forfeit half a month (or more) in rent if your plan changes. The ones we booked for this trip would have refunded in full if we canceled up to 30 days before the check in date, which was good enough for us (we booked about ten months ago).

 

[Zona]

I also meant to add that we have never had to pay utilities separately, the total price has always included that, at least with the properties we’ve viewed. VRBO and other agencies might be different though.

 

[audreyh1]

Wow, informative thread. Thanks!