<i><font color=#555555>"People pre-book simply because they think they have to pre-book."</font></i>

Not true. Much like fabulous hotel rooms, there aren't that many fabulous apartments available in popular city centers. Many apartments come and go, because there are numerous reasons why an apartment could be on the rental market for a specific period of time. If you have certain standards, you most likely will be sorry if you wait until the last minute to book. Those of us who have been doing this a long time know what it means to be told, "Sorry, but that fabulous property you love so much is not available for your dates."

A known property owner has every right to his/her own payment procedures. If the property is popular, why not ask for prepayment? It makes sense to me. Would I send prepayment on a brand new property, to an owner with no rental history? Absolutely not. Would I send cash or check to someone unknown? Absolutely not.

<i><font color=#555555>"Absolute rubbish."</font></i>

Let me be clear: I'm not endorsing, recommending, or defending VRBO. There isn't a vacation rental site on the internet that is perfect. There are almost no guarantees in the vacation rental business. When you own a home, unexpected stuff can happen. There will always be scams and scammers. A thief does not need to pay VRBO for a listing if he knows how to hack email accounts.

Research is key. Insurance can help (although, to my knowledge, there is no such policy that covers <i>phishing</i. There are thousands upon thousands of success stories on VRBO. Market pressure is forcing them to strengthen their weaknesses.

Here is a lengthy "scam warning" post from 2012: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic...ai_Hawaii.html

This is a must-read for anyone considering using VRBO. It is telling that the OP was excessively paranoid, although one could argue she may have had good reason.

<<Now StCirq, tell me that if you owned an apartment in Rome, it's vacant and I phone you to ask to see it at 3pm today that 1. You wouldn't show it to me. 2. That you would ask for payment before I showed up. 3. That you would need some kind of guarantee that I am going to show up at 3pm.

In fact, if I chose to rent it, you would be quite happy to rent to me without having had a deposit or full payment 6 weeks before I arrived.

What's more, once I decide to rent we will discuss price and payment. I will negotiate price. You can negotiate or you can refuse. Either I will give in and agree to your price or I will walk. You, the landlord, are not in charge. I am, I have the money and you want it. That means I have the power, not you.

Once we agree on a price I will walk with you to the nearest ATM and withdraw whatever the daily limit is in local currency. My bank allows me to withdraw $2000 but the equivalent in local currency may not be allowed by the local bank ATM. They have their own daily limits. I know, I've done this many times. Whatever amount I can withdraw, I will withdraw. I will hand you that cash as a first payment.>>

IF I lived in Rome and that's where my apartment was, it's possible I would take your phone call and meet you, but there is no way I would negotiate with you over the price, and you'd have to walk to that ATM and get me the full price pronto, not some "first payment." You have this notion that you have the power here - you don't. I would probably laugh at you if you offered me a "first payment" on the spot, or else I'd let you into the hallway but not the full apartment until I had the "full payment."

But your scenario doesn't apply to me. I live 3500 miles away from my rental. The price is the price. No negotiating. And I'm not going to go ringing up and hunting down the caretaker for someone who just shows up out of the blue looking for a rental on the spot. It's my house, my terms, not yours. I AM in charge and no, I will not discuss price and payment. If you don't agree to my terms, never fear, someone else will. Besides, the chances of there being an opening for you would be impossibly slim. Places get booked up a year or more in advance.

dulci - you may be prepared to spend hours of your valuable holiday time searching for a good apartment but most of us aren't prepared to do that, especially as we often have children/elderly parents, [or god forbid, both] in tow. our families want to know that they have a bed for the night. I have toured, where we had no bookings, but would never dream of doing so in a big city like Rome or Venice at Christmas.

We have taken the odd last minute booking through the tourist board but we expect full payment up front.

NYCFoodSnob, you wrote, "If you have certain standards, you most likely will be sorry if you wait until the last minute to book. Those of us who have been doing this a long time know what it means to be told, "Sorry, but that fabulous property you love so much is not available for your dates.""

I suspect what you mean is you have NOT been looking for a property after your arrival. Instead you are referring only to trying to book at 'the last minute' meaning before you go somewhere. I don't do that as I have said. You are not talking about what I am talking about.

You cannot speak about something you do not do (book after arrival) with any authority. You might think you wouldn't find suitable properties but unless you have been doing THAT for a long time as I have, you have no experience to comment on. Or were you actually trying to say you have arrived in a place and THEN looked for a rental and have done so many times?

As for maintaining a standard, I don't find that an issue. IN fact, the better the standard the easier it sometimes is to find a place after arrival. What that means of course is that I don't look for the cheapest place I can find. You might agree that budget is often the driving force for many people. The bigger the budget you can afford the easier it is.

Let me give you an example. Arriving in a small southwestern US ski area in New Mexico one summer we found there were many places to rent since it was their off-season. We viewed about 8 properties with a local rental agent before finally finding one my wife found acceptable.

Most while size wise and location wise fine, were just too run-down, showing wear and tear as you would expect in condos in a ski area. We ended up in a 5 bedroom house way up the hill for around 2.5 times the price of the cheapest we saw.

I have no issue with the rest of what you have written.

StCirq, all I can say is you must be the exception. While not all will negotiate the price (I covered that already), I've never had anyone refuse to rent based on my payment method. Believe me I have indeed done this dozens of times at least.

As for the power, while you have the power to refuse to rent to me for any reason you wish, I am talking about the power that exists in any transaction. One party always has more power than the other and in a transaction that involves money, it is the one who has the money, not the one who wants the money. I think that is pretty simple to understand. It has nothing to do with your power to refuse to rent.

Re your scenario, I will refer you to the example I just gave. Absentee owners obviously and a rental agent in town handling literally hundreds of them. I did in fact negotiate that rental. The agent phoned the owner and gave them my offer, the owner accepted.

If you have a property in high demand you are in a better position to dictate terms StCirq. There is no question about that. But if there are 100 empty rentals and you know yours is at the top end of the scale, you might sing another song don't you think?

If I had been trying to rent that property in the ski season, no doubt there would have been no negotiating and no doubt it could well have been unavailable because of advance bookings. But in the off-season, they're all sitting empty.

We have to compare apples and apples. Rome (the original topic) has countless places to rent at every price point and I would suspect that it is very rare for all of them to be booked at any given time. Trip Advisor lists 1271 hotels in Rome. Do you think there would ever be a problem arriving in Rome and finding a 4 or 5 star hotel room? I believe the same is true of any other type of accommodation.

The scenario that applies here is the one the OP has presented to us. Rome over Christmas. There will be plenty of places empty.

I don't have an issue with people who pre-book their travel. That's their choice. All I have said is it is not necessary based on my personal experience at finding a place after I have arrived.

As I have already said, " The difference is I am willing to travel that way, others aren't. If you don't feel the need to pre-book, this whole issue doesn't exist."

The issue being the reliability of what you see online.

Annhig, what others are prepared to do or not has no relevance to what I have written.

In other words, someone's reluctance for whatever reason does not mean what I do will not work for anyone else. It will work for those who are willing to do it that way.

I'm not suggesting it is the only way. I've said several times that those who wish to pre-book are free to do so. I'm not objecting to anyone pre-booking. Why would anyone want to object to my not pre-booking? It's not a right or wrong issue. What I have said is that my way means there is NO need to be looking for people to 'alleviate unease' about a place you have rented sight unseen.

On that point some have suggested doing some due diligence. None have answered that the OP can eliminate that unease though have they annhig.



VRBO alone shows 1873 apartments for rent in Rome. I just clicked on about 10 and then on 'view calendar'. Some were booked over Xmas, some after new year but about half were vacant. Looking at the calendar it was pretty clear that November through April is their low season. No surprise there and no shortage of places to rent.

<<StCirq, all I can say is you must be the exception.>>

I assure you, I'm not, at least where my property is located. We're not talking about a U.S. ski town in the off season. And while your money/power argument makes sense on a simple lever, owners in the locale I'm talking about are confident that they're not abdicating any power by refusing to negotiate. Someone who's willing to pay the full freight is always just around the corner, or someone who wants to rent in an unpopular month will show up, keeping the bottomline income quite predictable.

<i><font color=#555555>"You are not talking about what I am talking about."</font></i>

Oh honey, hell if I know what you are talking about. I don't have time to read such lengthy, self-absorbed posts.

<i><font color=#555555>"You cannot speak about something you do not do (book after arrival) with any authority."</font></i>

Of course I can. You don't know me, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

<i><font color=#555555>"I have no issue with the rest of what you have written."</font></i>

Oh thank goodness. I can go on living now.

I think we can put this to rest now and cease with the sniping, ok? I googled the landlord and got reviews on properties he lists on VRBO - all positive. I also looked at his bio and the firm is not a year old - that's when the website went live. He manages 14-16 apartments and his family owns some of them. If its a scam, all I can say is I did the due diligence I could and @dulciusexasperis, this was not the cheapest property by far. it had the size, location and bedding options I was looking for. I didn't want to pay over $5000USD for a place but neither was I looking for something in the $1200 USD range for our 12 nights there.

Dulciu sounds more and more like Improvisor reincarnated . . . Who can wade through all that ???

Janis, well spotted!

Improviser is / was a 67 year old bloke living in Ottowa

so not that crazy italian person from last year

One thing is for sure, the issue of third party listing sites has certainly been given a thorough going over.

Janisj and Peter-S, I am not whoever you are referring to. I'm neither 67 nor living in Ottawa.

I know you are not the mentioned Improvisor. But you certainly are fulfilling his role.

. . . Or the "Z" girl bilboburgler hints at . . .

no, no don't mention "she who must not be named" 's name, I can't handle being lectured like that again. ;-)

She had too many screen names so I only hinted at the most 'famous' (or infamous) one.

I think we can put this to rest now and cease with the sniping, ok? I googled the landlord and got reviews on properties he lists on VRBO - all positive>>

no sniping here, cmeyer, it sounds as if you have done what you can to check it out - after that, i think it's a matter of feel/instinct.

if it feels good, go for it.

I remember very few complaints here about property rented in this way; one of them was mine in respect of a gite we rented in France and the price alone should have tipped us off.

jj - please no mention of the zzzzzzz word - the memory still lingers on.

What role would that be janisj? Are you in fact attempting to insult me? Is that why annhig mentions sniping, is she referrring to you? Are you known to be a smart-assed forum type who thinks she owns the forum? They exist in every type of forum there is. Always a few around. I do hope you are not one of those but I am beginning to wonder.

d... we are just chatting

The z word was not Italian but a yank who lectured everyone as to how little they knew about Italy. Fairly boring without her.

D there is a role to fill ... Interested?

Janis is a smart arse as you out it, because she talks a lot of sense and helps a lot of people.

Shame she still drives so slowly.