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We are purchasing a new property with the intention to use as a vacation home. The home already has a wonderful Vrbo listing. The current owners are offering us to take over their listing. It sounds great, what are your thoughts? Pros/cons? Thank you.
Also, thoughts on Vrbo? I only have experience with Airbnb at this time.
Just like with Airbnb, you can’t transfer a listing on VRBO
No listing can be transferred to another party. In the event of a property sale or change in property management, we provide guidance on options for creating a new listing.
Any existing content you provided, such as photos or a description, won’t be transferred over to any new listing created following a property changing ownership. The new owners may request that other content, such as reviews, are transferred to the new listing.
If you’re selling your property, and if you can’t host existing or new reservations, hide your listing as soon as possible. If you’re aware of a future sell date, but not ready to hide your listing right away, block the calendar for dates you can’t accept guests. These steps help prevent cancellations and negative guest impacts.
Note: Always accommodate reservations when possible and only cancel the reservation if it’s affected by your listing sale. If you can’t honor a reservation as the result of your listing sale, hide your listing and cancel any scheduled payment requests for canceled reservations. A full refund is required on any impacted reservations.
If the new owner wishes to continue advertising the property, they can create a new account and new listing. We recommend that you work with the new owner to gracefully transition future reservations and inform travelers of the change of ownership.
For help in setting up a new listing, select Contact Us for assistance from our support team.
Interesting. I thought there may be a formality not allowing us to assume the listing. I like the possibility of being able to possibly transfer the reviews. We intend to use the same caretakers and cleaning crew. So other than a few items the current owners are keeping, I see nothing really changing. I appreciate your feedback and helpful information.
I actually appreciate that Airbnb doesn’t allow this. Just because a new owner is using the same caretakers doesn’t mean that reviews earned by the previous hosts are all based on the quality of the property managers. While I’m not saying you would fall into this category, sometimes a new owner doesn’t want to spend the money to fix things or replace damaged or worn-out items, or may even remove amenities that were previously there.
So it really doesn’t seem fair to future guests to be unsuspectingly booking based on reviews given before a change of ownership. However, maybe VRBO makes it clear that the reviews before a certain date were given when the property had a different host or owner?
Great info! I have a lot to look over. The current owners didn’t have anything about cameras in the listing, however the only camera I saw was in a room labeled “private”. And then there was a sign stating you were being surveillanced.
We only have a ring doorbell at our current Airbnb and make it known.
Thanks for your reply.
I understand and agree. I thought it was generous of them to offer and possibly they (like myself) don’t know the ins and outs of the situation.
We have wanted a home in this particular area for nearly 15 years (they hardly ever come up for sale & go fast), so we truly intend to have everything just as nice and well kept as our own home.
To answer your question, I’d probably add to the listing that we are new owners but are looking forward to keeping everything the same.
Or better. 
20202020
Excellent point.
I’m am so glad I found this forum. Everyone has been knowledgeable and quick to reply.
I appreciate everyone here.