About Internet Rentals
Web-based Vacation Rental Platforms
The internet is ideal to search for option to buy or rent a home. But, there are no free lunches, and these websites do it for a profit, which comes out of your pocket. Here’s how:
FurnishedFinder.com
This is the “go-to” platform for a longer-term stay (≥ 30 days): FurnishedFinder.com serves traveling professionals, notably “locum tenens” physicians; usually retired doctors who travel and fill-in at hospitals for a few months given chronic staffing shortages. Nowadays digital nomads, military people, consultants, etc. also use this popular site.
This writer uses FurnishedFinder to rent his condos off-season in downtown Sarasota, FL seeking off season renters. Inquiries constantly come in asking to rent in the winter season for $2000/month, and he responds that the units go for $4000/week in season. Still, it’s worth a shot as there’s no cost and you can communicate outside of the platform. Don’t count on it to rent in the summer season on Cape Cod or in the winter in Florida.
Airbnb & VacationRentalByOwner (VRBO)
Airbnb specializes in short rentals, and VRBO in longer multi-week stays. What you don’t know is both build in “booking fees” in the daily/weekly rates. When you book on Airbnb they keep 14.1% – 16.5% of your payment, while VRBO keeps 6% – 15% depending on length of stay.
They handle the billing and you can communicate with a host only through them. Hosts also pay fees for CC transactions, etc. which are passed on to you. Many listings are handled by co-hosts or property managers and, of course, they have fees you pay.
While they easily process your payments (to get their fees), they are inflexible making it hard to add “orphan” days to a four week (28-day) stay to hit 32 days which avoids lodging taxes. So, we just don’t use them, and you save at least 15% of your vacation costs if you don’t either.
Aggregator Platforms
Aggregators comb the internet for features matching your search dates and criteria, just like airline reservation sites. They charge sites like Expedia, Booking.com, etc. a fee whenever you click on a link to them. Booking.com aggregates many private homes (not just hotels) and won’t charge you fees. But, they charge hosts a 15% commission on everything (cleaning, pet fees, resort fees, rent, etc.) which gets passed on to you.
Tripadvisor.com now presents private home options alongside hotels. We like them because they have many traveler reviews with photos. But, if you rent directly on their site, they charge the owner a 12% – 15% commission, which is why it is always cheaper to book through a hotel’s front desk to avoid the commission they must pay to the aggregator. A monster aggregator is RentByOwner.com which aggregates and adds in high fees; I seached them for all rentals in Mashpee on 09/27/26 and found hundreds with the lowest being $274/night, our condo’s price was the next lowest at $312/night. Why even look further?
Social Media and Service Platforms
One of the best ways to save is FaceBook Marketplace’s “Housing for Rent” where owners can, for free, advertise monthly-leased properties; nightly-rentals are not supported. But these are searched hourly by desperate people seeking non-existent long-term housing on Cape Cod.
For Cape cod there are at least four Facebook Group forums that are solely for owner operated vacation rentals. This writer advertised with photos on all four, and could provide links directing interested parties to this website. There are no fees or costs to anyone. The down-side is the rules differ for each Group, and you can only update your ad every few weeks or even monthly, so the ad slides down their VERY long list quickly, until you are able to update it. That’s a chore I gave up on. Search criteria is nearly nil, so renters have to scroll through hundreds of ads. But there are gems in there.
Another option is Craigslist, but again it is dominated by rentals for off-season homes, that quadruple in price during the summer season on the Cape, just like they do in Florida in the winter season. Vacation rentals appear, and they are fee-free, but they are buried among the “off-season” rentals which is just what you don’t want.
Subscription-based Platforms
These are locally owned (often by a real estate office) websites designed to help rent their internal listings. For example Martha Murray Vacation Rentals is family-owned and has represented Dennis Port area homes for 50+ years. Leighton Rentals represent 111 properties which they mostly manage for distant-living Cape Codders. The problem is they are small (limited options), and usually only rent what they manage, so you’ve got fees that get built into the pricing.
There are larger sites like NewEngland Vacation Rentals with lots of rentals they manage meaning fees, and they also aggregate from multiple sites which means hidden fees when you get directed to VRBO.
To find local vacation rentals-by-owner websites, do a Google search and scroll way-down past VRBO, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Hotels.com, Tripadvisor, etc. –or– just enter an artificial intelligence (AI) search for:
The Best Platform for Cape Cod Vacation Rentals?
The premier vacation rental site for the Cape & Islands that AI always recommends is WeNeedaVacation.com. The only fee is a yearly subscription of $449 which I pay, plus I pay $10 per photo beyond the ten they allow. So, I “eat” all the fees which are affordable and no costs are passed on to you, saving you at least 15% right off the bat. Furthermore, almost all the owners manage their own properties (Sorry to Martha Murray and the Leighton family!) thus you don’t have to cover the 12% – 15% typical management fee.
Since I manage the rentals and control the calendar, I can can easily build-in extra days to a four-week (28 days) vacation rental, to get you to the 32-day threshold which saves you over 14% in Barnstable County/Mass. short-term lodging taxes. We’re up to over 50% in savings here…
Finally, WeNeedaVacation does not interfere with our communications nor are they involved with payments, so I can advertise my rental’s website (which you are reading), my phone number and email address right on their platform. You can mail me a check for deposits, saving CC fees. I think you get the idea by now. Use WeNeedaVacation.com for your next Cape Cod rental regardless of where you choose to stay!
Contact me (Jerry) on the booking site or by using the Contact Me button at the bottom of any page here.
To Sum it all Up
Because we save 15% by not using VRBO, etc., not having a property manager, and not charging you 14% in taxes you can stay in our oceanfront condo in the high season for $312/night. You’ll be charged only for the cleaning fee, at the rate we pay.
So what’s the down side? Well, only two people can stay overnight in our huge (but still one-bedroom unit). Most ocean front homes are shared among a bunch of people or a large family, so we can’t get top dollar for our location and beach access. No pets are allowed. And, because our condo association allows only a few rentals per year, we must rent by the month. BUT, if there are just one or two of you wanting a place in New Seabury with access to a beach:
Read the section on: Beach Access Vacations, for the details about how this can be true.
Consider that our Tidewatch one-bedroom condo with 1175 sf and an additional 340 sf of covered deck space costs $312 per night (total) in the high season. The condo is directly on the ocean and overlooks our private beach, a two-minute walk away. The only other private community in New Seabury with beach access is Maushop Village, where the least least expensive mid-range (might have a peek-a-boo view), one-bedroom unit rents in the high-season for $723/night (tax included). For a peek-a-boo view, the cheapest is $971/night.* Those fees add up…
* Rates generated by Gemini AI for Airbnb rentals on 09/27/26 for July/August high season.
In the next section we’ll give you an overview of our rates.
