Rental Homeowner Information

Rental competition is high with more rental homes available than prospective tenants; the opposite of the ‘COVID Summers’. Not to mention, LBI is getting more expensive compared to other beach towns, all inclusive resorts and cruises. Therefore, it is imperative to make sure your house stands out in a sea of rentals.

Many agencies are passive when they list you rental home: signing you up, putting you on their website with some dark or blurry photos & a 3 line description and then just waiting for the inquiries to come in…

Sand Dollar is always proactive with our rentals. We are constantly monitoring the market, bookings and adjusting prices accordingly throughout the booking season. We change pictures and constantly circle back to past inquiries to increase business. We also list our rentals on a variety of rental websites, post on Facebook Rental Groups, and even The SandPaper Classifieds for some of our longer term rentals.

Sand Dollar has a variety of programs and 40+ years of experience with LBI Summer Rentals to help you. Over 75% of our rental properties are Exclusive Rentals and we work hard to not only cultivate the best rental book we can, but service our homeowners at the highest level.

Tenants are starting earlier and earlier in their search for a rental. In the last 5 years, over 57% of the inquiries received in June-August were for the NEXT summer, not a last minute rental. Of those inquiries that were ‘last minute’ just over half of them are for new to market homes (listed in May or later).

President’s Weekend used to be the unofficial start of the rental season, prospective tenants came down with clipboards and looked at a dozen homes before making a decision. We are close to 75% booked by that time now and less than 25% of our tenants come down to see the house before signing a lease.

Similarly, our leases are being written earlier as well. Over the last 5 years: over 54% of our leases are written by December 31, over 68% are written by January 31, over 78% are written by February 28th. By the time we hit Memorial Day almost 92% of leases have been written! Rentals are year round; as soon as we finish one summer, we begin on the next.

Just over 50% of our total leases are ‘repeats’, which accounts for a large portion of the pre December 31st leases. The sooner we receive authorizations, the sooner we can start writing leases.

Have you heard the latest VRBO and Airbnb news?

VRBO– Unless you are ‘grandfathered’ you can now only sign up for the ‘Pay Per Booking’ model (PPB), versus the ‘subscription’ model where you pay one price each year and the only other cost you have is the credit card processing fee. The PPB model charges 12% on your total rent, this is not the “guest service fee” that VRBO charges the tenant, this is charged to the owner.

They have also implemented “Book Now, Pay Later” for guests, so now they do not even pay a deposit with their credit card until your cancellation window passes (the most strict is 60 days), so now the tenant has absolutely no ‘skin in the game’ until 60 days before check in. What happens if the card declines? VRBO tries again and then gives the tenant a grace period to update payment, then cancels the rental… You can read more here and no, you cannot opt out of “Book Now, Pay Later”.

Airbnb– In October 2026, Airbnb let their owners know that they could no longer require tenants to sign contracts, ask tenants to take out the trash or even wash dishes and many other questionable rules, read more here. Earlier in the year, Airbnb increased the percentage of their fee that they charge the owner. This is on top of the fact that you no longer even receive the tenants’ contact info once they have booked. I expect this will cause a mass exodus from the platform and a shift back to using real estate companies.

Neither platform gives you a tenants’ direct contact info upon inquiry. When you receive a Booking Request you have to respond within 24 hours; if you do not hear from the tenant within that window, you have to either accept the tenant with no further details, or reject the booking and it negatively affects your ‘host score’. You also will see that there are New Jersey taxes charged since these sites are a ‘transient rental marketplace’. The sites also no longer break out the total rent. A tenant used to be able to see the break down of nightly rent, cleaning fee, VRBO/Airbnb fee, taxes, etc. Now all a tenant see is one lump number.

Do you want to be spending the countless hours updating the websites, coordinating calendars, screening tenants, answering questions that the information is clearly stated in your listing, advertising/marketing your home on other platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc) while paying VRBO or Airbnb 14% (or more) when they do not do anything… Or pay Sand Dollar 10% and we handle all of the above and there are not taxes charged! You make more money and the tenant pays less, a win-win for everyone!

Sand Dollar Real Estate covers all of LBI, from Holgate to Barnegat Light

Some highlights that differentiate us are:

SDRE takes half of the commission from your first payment and half from the second. Our job is not done until the tenant is happily in your home.
SDRE requires 7 day turnaround for signed leases to be returned and payments made. The less time your home is off the market waiting, the better.
SDRE will always be the ‘middle man’ when it comes to your tenants, that’s what you’re paying us for. You will never be forced to deal directly.
SDRE knows renting your home is a privilege that we don’t take for granted. We’ll show our worth and never lock you into an automatic renewal.