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Okay, I think I see the source of the misunderstanding ....

I'm not wanting to share a zillow link to my properties
I'm am wanting to get a preformatted link to the property address of my guests

For instance, Guest Jim Smith has address 123 Sanders Street, Anywhere TX 11111

I'd like to see the zillow listing for that address. Maybe it's not his home (meaning he rents) but it's helpful nonetheless to get some sense of the address that my guests list. What I do with that isn't always clear of course. If someone is living in a mobile home for instance would I do anything different? Of if their house is a 5M estate in Key Largo? Who knows... It just helps add some context to the messaging that we exchange. Maybe the only situation that would raise a red flag would be if the address is fraudulent.

In any case, I don't think there is any way to format a link using just a property address. This kind of link works: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/218-Pompano-Ln-Surfside-Beach-TX-77541/26540342_zpid/ but it only works with the zillow ID at the end. I think that as recently as 2010 it was possible to access zillow at an arbitrary address using the URL, but that seems deprecated now.

I guess that in my case what I could do is send an email with the address to my crm and then do all the zillow searching in the background . But that wouldn't help anyone else of course.

Let me know if I'm still missing something. the missing key here is WHAT the url would need to look like, and HOW to create it from the fields for booking address + the fixed parts.

They claim to be able to most of the time ignore things like iPads, AppleTVs, etc. In their support articles there is one about copying calendar links from Airbnb and VRBO into the Party Squasher mobile app. I wonder if the same thing would work for OwnerRez? There must be a way to match the party squasher sensor to a specific property. Don't know how it would work for multiple sensors and properties.

Randy

You can set up property level field codes, not just booking ones. Create a property-level field code called PXZILLOW and then you'd enter the Zillow URL (or even just slug) for each property one time. You would then embed that short code anywhere you want to use it.

I'm not following how this would work, can you give some more specifics? I'm familiar with setting up the custom field itself (eg: for keycodes) but that requires manual update per booking. That's more work than just doing the search myself.

I did a quick google search and I don't know that it's even possible to preformat a link to zillow as a url (eg: www.zillow.com/homes/123 smith street, anywhere, US)... Seems that it needs to be done with an API call.

It would be fine to get an email that is preformatted, so all I have to do is click and inspect the result. What I'm looking for is automation that saves steps and helps ensure I get interrupted (by an email is fine) with either the summary or at least a link.

I didn't think (and still don't) that the zillow API has a cost.
https://www.zillow.com/howto/api/APIOverview.htm

I can send you a detailed workflow that shows how to use POST (or GET) to retrieve property details, but that's more complicated than I am thinking.

I don't mind doing more research on this, but if your suggestion to use custom code + automated email template can be set up one time so it works for all new bookings, that would be sufficient. I'm going to have to personally view the webpage anyway, I can't avoid that step, just want to avoid needing to manually update each booking.

Stacy - I haven't looked at this in awhile, but I remember learning about a way to keep daily rates in OwnerRez and then push them to VRBO and other places. I'm in the same situation, rates for a given day are unique based on how far in future, is it a gap day, is a around a holiday like presidents day, etc.

I'm not sure that I want to rely on a 3rd party for dynamically adjusting the rates, seems like doing it myself is a worthwhile activity.

My point is - look into pushing rates from OR into VRBO, instead of the reverse. I believe that the OR team is working to enable that through the channel bridge extension for Chrome.

Stacy, also check this support article out. Forgot we had this one:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/renter-legal-agreements

For sure. Create a custom field definition called Property Zillow Link (with short code PXZILLOW) and then fill in that Zillow URL in that new custom field on every property. Then, in your email templates, you would use that PXZILLOW short code to have it dynamically inserted.

We've looked into background search API/partnerships in the past but back-burned it. We were in serious discussions about it at one point. One of the big problems is that they are pretty expensive. The buy rate is about $30 per report. For most VR users, that isn't cost effective. Even at half or a third of that, it would still cost too much to be effective. There are some public APIs we might be able to use to auto-fill guest data and we've looked at this too but haven't moved forward.

Hi again Stacy, sorry for the lack of support articles on the subject! One of our major goals for 2019 is correcting that.

Basically, the renter agreement is presented to the guest one of two ways:

1) For direct bookings (when viewing/accepting a quote or the guest books through your website) the guest is shown your renter agreement as one of the pages in the booking workflow. The fill in POC info, read and sign the agreement, make payment and so on. The booking is then created and the renter agreement is stamped into a PDF and the signature applied and the PDF is stored on their booking under the Legal tab and Files.

2) For channel or imported bookings, you can go to the Legal tab under the booking and use the Request button to send them a link to the agreement to sign. Every booking has a unique link. You can also automate this by creating email templates and triggers to ask the guest to sign (with that unique link) right after the booking is imported.

You can use the Legal tab of the booking > Request button to send the guest a URL to sign at any time even if they already signed one before.

Never heard of that before. Brilliant little tool! No promises, but I did fire off an email to them and ask if they have integration options. That might be a cool stat to show on bookings - how many devices showed up at the house. Of course with all the IoT devices out there, each guest might really have more than 1 device. Watch, phone, laptop - all from one physical person. I suppose this device might be able to delineate those things.

That's PERFECT! Thank you so much. And yes, definitely a much better solution. I rarely have problems and take a small deposit that covers the little things. -That's more to make them feel accountable than concern about the little things.

Thank you!!! Yes, I'd actually like to have the inquiry (& booking) widget at the top of every page but right now I'm adjusting rates almost daily in VRBO based on demand to get traction again with the listing after having a management company fail with it. I haven't been able to get the VRBO rates to feed OR yet but once I do, that's definitely a priority. (I'm now remembering how much work this was last year and why I considered a management company in the first place! haha)

GOOD POINT about the reviews. I'll be sure to add a page and a nav item for those.

Thanks for the feedback!

Yes, our damage protection (ARD) product covers all bookings equally. You don't pick or choose (or offer it optionally to guests on a case by case basis) like you do with travel insurance. It covers everything by default. If VRBO guests buy the CSA policy, then you would have double coverage yes. I would not trust the CSA coverage however - it requires admission of guilt by the guest in order to be paid out which can be a large obstacle. Our product was designed to be low cost (a spread risk model) and not involve the guest.

You can't set up "direct" syncing between HomeAway and Airbnb in the API sense but you can with calendar syncing, yes. That's just something to keep one side updating with bookings/blocks from the other. We don't recommend doing that however. Instead, we recommend treating OwnerRez as your "master" calendar and syncing out from there. So all channels should sync/import into OwnerRez and then you use a single calendar export to sync out to all channels/listing sites.

Thanks! I took the pics up there (DLSR, not phone lol) but actually have some pro pics coming soon and will add a lot more. :-)

Sexy looking site, Stacy! I notice the inquiry widget you dropped on the Contact page. If you get credit card processing (or some payment method configured) you should add a Book Now button to that as well. I'd also recommend adding a menu for availability and drop one of our calendar widgets on that. Also one showing reviews.

Cheryl's issue was something different - it was matching to a different booking than she thought for the same property/dates - so it's not related to this.

@Jim:
Can you create a ticket (email help@ownerreservations.com) with the import file and booking URL from OR that you're referring to. That sounds like something we'll have to take a look at. If you already have, we'll get on that this morning. Apologies for the delay!

@Jim:
No tutorials yet. Sorry for the lack of support on that subject. When you click the button, a little window will open that will show you what will be pushed across. Click the See Details link to expand it and see the "rate groups" that will be used. Rate groups are just the date ranges that we see in OR where the nightly rate has changed from a day/date range before it. We break that up into start/end date ranges so that we can update the channel in chunks. It will also show you if taxes and any rate adjuster (% markup) will be included in the numbers being used. In the case of VRBO/HomeAway, it will also send across fees for cleaning, pet and extra guests based on what we find in your OR surcharges. We definitely need tutorials around this - thanks for your patience on that.

@Robert:
That's because you don't have a HomeAway listing # right there next to the OR property. Fill in that HomeAway listing # column and the Push Rates link will work.

@Stacy:
Thanks for the feedback. We actually have a new beta feature that was just released (no joke - yesterday) where you can Import Rates from VRBO or Airbnb dynamically in OR. It's not a background thing - you have to press the button each time - but check that out. It's under Settings > Spot Rates > Import Spot Rates button. In order to use it, you have to have mapped VRBO or Airbnb listing #'s to your OR properties under Channels.

Yes, I'm also looking for a video on that. I'd actually like to set my rates in VRBO since I can dynamically watch trends and make adjustments there. Then pull rates from VRBO and push OUT to other OTAs. (I do not currently have those set up but planning on it.) Plus I'm currently using a widget with pricing on my website and would like to actually turn on the booking component but won't do it until I can trust true integration of pricing and booking rules from VRBO into OR and not have to manually manage it.

Thanks for any videos to walk us through it!!!

Cheryl
Did you get a response? solution?

Thanks for sharing your site @Stacy, your pictures are really well done!

I did not try it yet, but I read that you can set up direct syncing between Airbnb and the HomeAway family OTAs. I did not get to the point of seeing if Booking.com or TripAdvisor / FlipKey do this as well.

I kind of assumed this would be iCal, but not sure whether this is advisable or not advisable (interfere with?) when using the ownerrez syncing...

Is this damage insurance in place for every reservation that feeds into the platform? I have it on but have 2 VRBO guests that I had pay their $59 insurance fee. Does that mean I'm paying $20 and they're covered twice?

Just want to make sure I understand that before I take the VRBO option off of my booking settings.

Thanks!

I used Wix. It was really easy and super flexible. Here's my site so far: www.gulflesson.com
More work to do to build out content and SEO but they have great tools. I'm a marketer and I'm really impressed with what they've got to walk you through the process both for building but then for setting your site up for Google indexing, SEO and more. I already owned my domain and that was also easy to connect.

I only knew about them from their Super Bowl ad and coincidentally needed to get my site up after leaving my management company. Definitely recommend checking them out.

Hi Kimberly,

Here's a few I like to give out when answering similar questions in the ticket system:

https://www.shenrent.com
https://sasquatch.vacations
https://www.mtshastavacationrentals.com
https://www.rentalscbborrego.com
http://www.dawnsrentals.com
http://www.mountainsidetreasures.org

I am not sure if you really scrutinized your website. If I was on the right place, which redirects to another site, you have quite a few issues and glitches with the page I see in chrome on Android.

Haven't done them yet, are Google reviews the same as Google plus? Where Google plus is going away?

Has OR considered integration with a mobile device counting sensor like Party Squasher? I think Party Squasher already has integrations with Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com. If you have considered, what are your thoughts on solutions you might recommend?

Randy

I was able to get my contract set up with the correct fields pulling from the reservation but I cannot figure out how to make digital signatures work and how to send the contract out to my renter directly from the system. Are there any pages that detail those specific items?

Thanks for any help!

I'm considering using OwnerRez for our B&B, and if I choose to do this, I would want to choose the option of including website building. I cannot seem to find any information about this, except for the price increase for the add-on.
Do you have any examples of websites built through OR?
Thanks

Since the VRBO bookings are dwindling, I found that Facebook bookings are growing. My new and upscale property performs badly on VRBO (https://www.vrbo.com/1233689) , more than half of my bookings are direct or Facebook. I think most of them come from posts in FB groups and Marketplace. But I do hashtag my property name like this #BlueMountainLodge or #RidgeViewLodge in my group posts and marketplace where they do not allow links. So apparently guests find my FB page and follow to website. Social media presence also gives legitimacy and a place to leave reviews/recommendations.
yes I request Google reviews in my post departure review request email but about half were unsolicited. https://goo.gl/maps/RXWjt3hx57x
I do not know which direct bookings come from Google. I have a custom field on checkout form that says "How did you find us?" but people may answer "Google" or "Internet search" and I don't know if it was Google listing or simple search. If there is a way to tell, I would like to know how.

I believe Google has demised G+, so I may need to remove that reference.