The Rental Process

Ocean City has a strong rental market during the late spring, summer and early fall seasons that many property owners take advantage of.  Some people buy Ocean City real estate purely as a rental investment.  Others rent their properties out when they are not using them to offset some of their carrying costs.  If you are interested in renting your real estate in Ocean City there are a few ways to go about it. You can hire a rental company to handle everything for you, you can do it all yourself or you can do a combination of the two. You will find these three alternatives outlined below.

Rental Companies

There are a number of rental companies in Ocean City that will handle everything in regards to renting your Ocean City real estate for you. They will handle all of the advertising, booking, check in/out, cleaning and maintenance on your behalf. You essentially give them the keys and they handle the rest. They will collect all of the monies and disburse them to you as they receive them. In the event there is a considerable maintenance issue they will contact you to see how you would like to handle it.

Depending on who you choose to work with the rental companies charge betwee 12% to 16% of the gross rental income for this service.  You will also incur the costs of cleaning the unit in between each rental, which will vary depending on the size of the property.  As an example, a typical 2 bedroom/2 bathroom unit costs approximately $70 to $80 to clean.

You often get what you pay for when choosing a rental company. The larger, more well established companies charge a higher fee, however they have the advertising reach and systems in place to ensure you get maximum occupancy and a solid return on your investment.

Rentals by Owner

With the proliferation of the Internet many folks have started renting their Ocean City real estate on their own through sites like HomeAway and VRBO. All of the rentals are booked online with payments and security deposits being made through Paypal.  Access to the unit can be handled in a variety of ways, the best of which is ResortLock.com.  For the cleanings the owners arrange a pre-set cleaning schedule with a local cleaning service for the check out days.  There is a bit more work involved when renting the property on your own, however it can lead to substantial savings.

Hybrid Approach

Some rental companies will allow you to rent your property on your own, while they are also marketing the property and taking rental bookings.  Once you secure a booking on your rental listing you can either block the rental period out and do everything yourself and save on the entire rental commission or you can forward the renter on to the rental company and they will handle everything at a reduced commission rate. Some of the rental companies will provide key and check in services to your tenants for the weeks that you rent out yourself for a reasonable fee.

This is a brief overview of the various ways you can go about renting your Ocean City real estate.  Should you have any other questions or want to discuss this in greater detail feel free to contact me anytime at 443-614-9179.