The visionary in Fort Bragg, Calif., who ordered up a living room large enough to accommodate a rugby match. The risk taker in Idyllwild, Calif., who one day must have said, "Hey, what about a round house?" The fearless renovator in Santa Fe, N.M., who asked, "Why just one kitchen?"
I've never met these people, but you could say that I've slept with them -- under their roofs, that is, in beds they bought. I know them, dear readers. The guy in Joshua Tree who insisted that guests not only re-shelve books alphabetically but also line up their spines. The Paso Robles couple with the saddle in the living room and the canary preserve in the frontyard.
Yes, this is what a travel writer does on vacations: He rents private homes and critiques them.
For several years now, my wife and I have been relying more on rented homes, cabins and condos.
Sometimes, they're handled by property-management companies, other times by the owners themselves. The arrival of our daughter pushed us even farther down that path; along the way, we have learned plenty.
First, we've learned that we're not alone. In 12 years, the website www.vrbo.com -- that's Vacation Rentals by Owner -- has grown to hold about 100,000 rentable residences (86% of them in the U.S.), drawing millions of hits yearly from would-be tenants like me.
About 115,000 homes, cabins, cottages and condos in the U.S. and abroad (50% U.S., 43% Europe) are listed on HomeAway.com, which consolidates information from smaller sites. (The VRBO and HomeAway websites are two of many owned by Austin, Texas-based HomeAway Inc.) Then there are BeachHouse.com, VacationRentals411.com, GreatRentals.com, OwnerDirect.com and OwnersDirect.co.uk, plus scores of local property-management companies.
This is a trend fueled in part by the Internet -- homeowners can advertise on some of these sites for less than $230 a year -- and in part by the rich getting richer: About 6.6 million Americans now own second homes, according to a 2006 report by the Research Institute for Housing America, so it's not surprising that so many are rentable.
Two other likely and closely related factors in this trend: the slumping national economy and psyche. Consider Christine Hrib Karpinski, an Austin-based rental-property owner who works for the HomeAway empire and has written a book about how to rent out your home.
