Hello to everybody,
my name is Tanya, and I live and work in Venice, the city where I was born and where I grew up. I speak good English as my mother was from London,and I work as a tour guide in Venice.
I need your advice as I am planning to invest some money in buying a small flat in Venice to rent out for tourists on a short stay, and I was wondering if it would be possible for me to advertise the flat for rent also through these forums. Do you think it is a good idea? Would you trust somebody on a forum or would you always prefer to book your accomodation through an agency?What type of flat could be ideal for your stay in Venice? How much could you expect to pay?
I was thinking, as I work already as a guide, and I do also a lot of transfers, I would be a very helpful flat owner, and I could give great advice to visitors to Venice, provided they found accomodation in our flat, and therefore helped me with my mortgage payments!!
Property is extremely expensive in Venice!
I look forward to reading your replies to this forum. Thanks for reading it!
Tanya

Are you familiar with the SlowTrav.com site and the SlowTalk.com forum that is associated with it? This is a site that is devoted to vacation rentals, and Italy tends to be the most frequently discussed country.

You can't advertise on Fodors. But you can advertise on SlowTrav.com for a fee. I would suggest reading at that site, because it will give you a lot of ideas about what people are looking for in a flat.

Figuring out whether I can trust the owner, and knowing whether the owner will be available is extremely important to me.

Note that vacation rental owners also have their own site -
http://www.laymyhat.com/

Good luck with your venture.

You might also like to look at the posts of cocofromdijon - she has a vacation flat that is very popular, with its web site here:
http://www.myhomeindijon.com/

Hi

If you're renting privately you might want to list on this excellent site - http://www.vrbo.com. Yes you can't advertise on this site but I'm sure we're all interested in passing info around re a good value apartment in beautful Venice

The best way you should go on Google and type a phrase that you would type looking for a place, for example:
vacation rentals Venice
appartments in Venice
vacation homes in Venice etc.

whatever comes on the first page, consider those sites.

In Europe the biggest vacation rentals listing website is www.holiday-rentals.co.uk or www.arbitel.fr.
Worldwide, the most listings has fairly new www.HomeAway.com and loved by many www.VRBO.com.

best of success

sorry, it's www.abritel.fr not arbitel