May 23, 2012 – To date, this season’s vacation rental bookings on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket listed with WeNeedaVacation.com have continued to outpace those of last year. Fueled by strong demand for low and moderately priced homes, bookings are up a considerable 10.2% over 2011, itself a fairly robust year. Regionally, Nantucket has enjoyed the greatest increase with its bookings up 20%, followed by the Cape’s 10.4% increase, and the Vineyard’s 4%.
Looking at the prime summer season alone (June 23-August 31), bookings overall are up 9.4%: Nantucket up 16%, the Cape up 10%, and the Vineyard up 3.1%. Although the spring season (late May/June) is emerging a healthy 8% ahead of last spring’s bookings, fall season bookings are once again posting significantly greater gains, continuing the dramatic upward trend that we’ve witnessed since 2007. In fact, fall bookings so far this year have exceeded those of 2009 by as much as 51.4%! And, once again, Nantucket is leading the charge with its fall bookings up a whopping 62.8% over last year at this time.
Naturally, pricing is always a good indicator of homeowner confidence, and prices for listings on the website have increased 2.9% on average over last year’s rates, the strongest increase since before the recession. Normally, WeNeedaVacation.com sees some price erosion at this time of year as homeowners become more incented to fill any remaining available weeks. This year, however, no discernible price reduction has taken place so far this season.
It's important to note, however, that the entire gains in rental bookings have occurred in the low and moderate sectors of the rental market, those homes listed for $3,000/week or less. Booking numbers for homes renting for more than $3,000/week are virtually unchanged from last year.
According to Jeff Talmadge, co-owner of WeNeedaVacation.com , “During the particularly financially-difficult 2009-2010 seasons, lower and moderately priced homes suffered the most, and higher end homes actually experienced a healthy increase in bookings. Now, as the economy slowly recovers, we are witnessing a reverse of that trend: lower and moderate vacation homes are resurging, while the higher end demand has stabilized. It’s possible that the more affluent vacationers scaled back during the leaner years by opting for a domestic, Cape or Islands vacation, but are now being lured by deals to overseas destinations.”
While the continuing rebound in the Cape and Islands vacation rental market since the difficult 2009 season is good news for many rental homeowners and for the general Cape and Islands economy, vacationers need not disparage of finding a suitable vacation home, even this late in the booking season. The company has activated as many as 115 new listings in the past month alone, including homes of all sizes and price ranges.