Vacation Homeowners and Vacant Long Term Homeowners

Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals is asking for your help. Due to the wildfire, thousands of Horry County residents have been asked to vacate their property. Many of them are my personal friends and they have had to leave their homes until the wildfire is contained.

I am asking you to donate your property to these residents for a few days until we can move them home. Southern Coast Vacations will donate all the linens and towels. The staff and I will donate our time and personally clean your unit. We appreciate your generosity during this tough time.

Please call our office or email us at stay@southerncoastvacations.com and let us know if you are able to donate a few days.

Several of you have already opened your second homes to our community and we really appreciate it. Please keep all of our evacuees in your thoughts and prayers.

Rental Update Jan 2009

I want to share with you my feelings about this year. I am very optimistic about 2009. Both our long term and vacation programs are extremely active for the first 3 weeks of January.

Vacation Rentals: Gas prices are still extremely low, we have a new president, and people are getting their tax checks in. Hopefully this trend will continue we will get some of those peak vacation weeks booked earlier this year. Our number of reservations and total rents are up, so the staff and I are pumped and ready to answer the phones and make some reservations.

Longterm Rentals: In January we have already shown over 80 long term properties and our lease signings are up. Lots of walk in traffic coming in to see properties. Most have found us through the internet. Many tenants have been renewing leases though they have been negotiating lower rents. This is normal, due to the heavy surplus of long term rentals along the Grand Strand. The current mortgage crisis has definitely increased our long term leases.

In 2009 we will putting more of our advertising budget into the internet. Also we have a billboard going up soon right on Hwy 17. I am very excited about it.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

From my family to yours, Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals wishes all our homeowners, tenants, past and future guests a happy holiday season.

We have been very blessed this past year, and we are looking forward to a prosperous 2009.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Tim

Snowbirds flock to Myrtle Beach

Our Myrtle Beach Snowbird website is getting great visitor traffic and recently placed #1 in the http://www.yahoo.com/ search engine for the phrase "Myrtle Beach Snowbird". Yea!

Great Article in the Sun News this week, you can see it at MyrtleBeach Online. Click the link below.

Economic headwinds and tailwinds are pushing at snowbirds this winter. Read More....

Also if you want to see our personal Snowbird webpage go here. http://www.myrtlebeachsnowbird.com/

Rent my property please!!!

If you have a vacant long term rental then please keep on reading! This is the list of what we are are doing, what we are up against, and what you the homeowner can do to help fill your property.

Let me first start by discussing Southern Coast Rentals exposure and advertising. We have reviewed our marketing program and we are doing everything possible to drive tenants to our properties. Our internet placement is the best, we are located right at the top on most Google searches, we are doing multiple craiglists weekly, we are advertising weekly in the local papers, and we have placed signs everywhere we are permitted.

Additionally, we are offering multiple specials on our properties. Examples are: 1 month free, installing blinds in new units, new washer/dryer with a year lease, including offering referral fees to agents bringing us qualified tenants. If you have any more suggestions, please contact myself or the staff.

So what else could we do? We could lower our standards of our screening process. Thus allowing tenants with lower credit scores to rent. Bad idea! Historically I know that this will never work and the administrative costs and damages to the unit will cost you and I more in the end.

Let's face it, the market is flooded with properties and the competition is extremely tough. If we can not rent your property then no one will make any money.
So what can you do to help? Read on faithful homeowner!

My first recomendation is for you to make sure your property is in good shape. As a management company we will do everything possible to maintain your property but please understand that if it has not been maintained prior to coming on our program, then it going to take time and money to get it in the right condition. Remember if you wouldn't stay in the property then more than likely we are not going to find a tenant that will want to stay in it either.

Second, make sure all HOA, POA, taxes and insurance is paid on your property. Nothing will stop a lease or renewal faster than certified mail or a notice on a door for the owner.


Finally ....drum roll please.........you have to lower your rental rate.

As painful as this may seem please understand that in most circumstances lowering your rate just $50-$100 dollars can make a difference. Would you like to make $0 or something? anything? Ok... let me clear this up for you even more...read on my patient property owner!

As we enter the Fall season, here are some reasons you should consider lowering your rental rate on your property.

1. We are in an area that is already heavily saturated with rentals.

2. The rental season is slowing down, and all the those vacation properties start entering the long term market for short leases. we rent many vacation properties for 2 to 6 months at very low monthly rates and they usually include all the utilities.

3. During the months of November and December very few people move or relocate due the Holidays. That generally means that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are very slow times for my industry.

4. The current state of the economy is wreaking havoc on the real estate and rental market. So many properties are going into forclosure or approaching it. That means the property owners and investors are renting their properties for anything they can get. I mean anything...I have seen some ridiculous low rates on gorgeous properties. This is driving rental rates down and also placing many unqualified tenants in their properties. Ahhh...I can't stand it.

These tough times call for tough decisions. Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals wants to rent your property, please contact us and let us know if you have any suggestions for specials or advertising, and if you are willing to lower your monthly rental rate.

Thanks for being a part of our Southern Coast family and understanding as we strive to fill your properties with the best possible tenant at the most reasonable rental rate.

Myrtle Beach Snowbird

Please check out our new website for Snowbirds/Winter Rentals.

Myrtle Beach Snowbird!

I will point these domains at this new website and start a Google campaign to drive traffic to it.

myrtlebeachsnowbird.com
myrtlebeachwinterrental.com

Please let me know what you think.

BlogTV and Twitter

Couple things I have been thinking about doing for a while are BlogTV and Twitter. I have been trying to figure out a way to make these unique internet communication tools work for Southern Coast Vacations and our homeowners.

Let me briefly explain what the are...

BlogTV is a real time video stream that will allow you or anyone to contact me through the internet. So you could log into your email get a notification that I was broadcasting, stop by and visit the BlogTV show. You can ask questions during the broadcast and get your answers right away. When broadcasting I could be discussing the current market or just making myself available to answer a homeowner's question.

If I had several subscribers I would probably set up a regular time to broadcast.
For more information, visit my channel on BlogTV.

The other thing I am considering is Twitter. With this web based product, I could update homeowners on exactly what I am doing at anytime through their email, phone or webpage. The cool thing is I can do it on the fly by using my phone. Why would I want to do that? Well.... here is an example that comes to mind.

Remember the recent hurricane warning we had along the Grand Strand? My staff and I were so busy running around to all the properties, securing patio furniture and checking rooms that I was unable to update the homeowners until later that evening by posting on this site. If I was using Twitter you could get real time activity of our progress.

Please go here to subscribe to my Twitter account.

Please be patient with me as I begin using this items, there will be a learning curve for me. If enough people subscribe to this Blog, Twitter and BlogTV I know it would encourage me continue to update everything more often.

On one final note.. all this stuff I am writing about does have a very positive effect on our website Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals. Search engine positions improve when using sites and products like these and then linking back to our main webpage. This includes social networking websites like MySpace. Please check out our MySpace page as well while your here.

I am going to include the web addresses in the side bar for you, and please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments about this!

Thanks for your support and subscribe!

2+2+2 Program

Southern Coast Vacations has just started a new customer service program for our Long Term Tenants. The 2+2+2 Program. Here is the concept.

After we have signed a lease with a tenant, Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals will follow up with this schedule.

2 Days after the initial lease we contact the tenant and make sure everything is fine in the unit. We will also request the tenant to return the inspection form which we provided during the lease signing. We require that the tenant return an inspection form back to our leasing specialists with any damages or problems with the unit. This prevents us from charging the tenant for damages that were in the unit prior to their arrival.

If you are a homeowner and would like a like of our inspection sheets, please just drop me an email and I will send you one.

2 Weeks after the lease signing we contact the tenant again. During this follow up we ask how their transition into the new property is going and ask if they need anything or are having any problems.

2 Months later we have our final follow up and check once again on the tenant. At this time we remind them about filter changes in the unit and that our maintenance department will be contacting them next month to schedule a property inspection. (We Make every effort to inspect each unit 3 to 4 times a year.)

This sums up our new program. If you have any comments or suggestions please let me know.

I will be follow this post with a great new marketing program we are working on for Winter Rentals.

Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals Homeowner Update.

The staff of Southern Coast Vacations and Rentals has secured all vacation and unoccupied long term properties due to the current weather conditions. Additionally we have contacted all our tenants and asked them to secure all exterior items at their properties.

When weather conditions permit we will revisit your properties and inspect them for any wind or water damages. We will contact you immediately should we find anything that requires attention.

We have closed our office at 3pm today and will reopen tomorrow when weather permits.

I want to thank my staff for a job well done.

Tim

Myrtle Beach Rental Market April 2008

Everything you see online, in the newpaper, on TV, from your friends, family and politicitians is negative information about the economy. The reprecussions of this economic state on the rental industry is rather unique.

Long term rentals are increasing due to the ability of consumers to rent for less than the average mortgage for a home. It is not uncommon for a standard 3 bedroom 2 bath homes with a 2 car garage to rent for around $1000.00 a month. Every since the real estate boom from a few years ago the long term industry has been suffering from the surplus of units on the market.

Increasing demand in the long term market will finally start removing the surplus of properties available in the Myrtle Beach and Grand Strand area. This should increase the rental rates back to normal.

So the current rental market is actually favorable for the long term rentals. Considering the fact we are entering the busiest season along the Grand Strand, it really is the best time to place your property on a rental program.

The short term vacation rental market is a different story. Currently we have the same surplus in the this area, plus we have the additional issues of discounting from buyers who were intent on flipping their property.

Lets add the way rising gas prices may affect our travelers, and also the overall state of the economy and the fact it is an election year. We probably are in for a tough year on the vacation side. Property managers and Resorts are going to need to focus on value as well as exposure to survive the lack of demand on vacation properties.

I know I have focused on my internet pages ranking and specials heavily this year with limited results. Lets buckle in and keep smiling to all our guests and focus on customer service as we dig in and ride out the economic state of the hospitality industry.

This beach I call home.

The beach...my beach has provided so much more than a suntan. She has given me glorious sunrises my entire life.

She has offered herself up as my private gym with endless miles to roam, an ever changing pool for swimming. When I surfed the beach she became a dramatic medium for carving out a path on the pulse of the Atlantic. At times rising up and violently fighting me at other times she is calm and peaceful.

Her shoreline has provided me a treasure trove of items. Endless hours have I spent searching for sharksteeth,fossils and shells.

When fishing from the surf or from one of the Grand Strand's piers I have brought forth from the depths all manner of creatures. From the plates of Red Lobster to aquatic terrors of million dollar movies my beach delivers a marine biologist's dream list.

This is where my story begins, along the beaches in South Carolina. Welcome to my home.