Houfy Rentals: Should It Be Your Next Platform?

Thousands of hosts all around the world are relying on Houfy to rent out their property directly to travelers. Whether you have a portfolio of apartments or a single condo in a popular urban location, here’s how Houfy helps hosts save money on service and booking fees. 

What Is Houfy?

Houfy describes its website as a social marketplace for real estate properties and vacation rentals. The website connects travelers directly with property owners so that they can book directly.  

Basically, you can think of it as Facebook for the vacation rental industry. According to its website, it’s the biggest vacation rentals direct booking advertising platform. 

Aside from using it as a platform for direct bookings, you can also use it to find potential buyers if you’re interested in selling a property. 

What Benefits Does Houfy Offer?

Houfy offers two main perks. It helps hosts save money, while giving them more freedom to run their vacation rental business as they see fit.    

No service fees

One of the main reasons why direct bookings are an attractive option is that property owners and guests won’t have to pay extra for service fees. For example, if you use Airbnb as your booking platform, service fees can range anything between 3% and 16%. 

If you opt for Airbnb’s host-only fee structure, the entire amount which is generally closer towards 16% will be deducted from your payout. It adds up to a pretty penny that hosts can save by using Houfy instead. 

As guests also don’t have to pay booking fees when using Houfy, the vacation rental is more affordable. Who knows, the money that they “save” might be used to book an extra night? Another win for owners and guests. 

More control

With Houfy, property owners can create their own rules. A customizable rental agreement is included in all the plans along with the ability to create custom quotes. 

What’s more, it also gives you more control over your brand, helping you to grow your business. Hosts can, for example, share links via its messaging platform. Plus, if you sign up for one of its paid plans, you can display external links on your listing page itself. 

How Much Does It Cost to List on Houfy?

If Houfy doesn’t charge service or booking fees, how do they make money then? The answer — listing fees.

Houfy offers two subscription options for owners wanting to list their vacation home on its website. In addition to these two paid plans, Houfy also includes a Free plan. While you won’t be charged a monthly subscription fee, you’ll need to pay a one-off host verification registration fee of only $5.99.

Depending on the number of properties you want to list and the plan you pick, the monthly listing fee ranges anywhere between $9.99 per listing per month to less than $1. Houfy uses a sliding scale where hosts with more listings pay less per month to list. 

For example, if you have only one listing and you choose the Premium plan, you’ll pay the maximum amount of $9.99. However, if you list three listings, the price for this plan suddenly drops to only $4 per listing per month. 

Which Features Does Houfy Offer Hosts?

All plans (even the Free option) include the following features:

• Instant payments to your Square/Stripe account
• Calendar synchronization with other sites like Airbnb and Vrbo
• A multi-calendar
• The ability to upload unlimited property photos
• A host verification badge
• Custom quotes and a customizable rental agreement
• Message notifications
• Scheduled messages
• The ability to add co-hosts
• A connection with PriceLabs for dynamic pricing

To help hosts with marketing, it also offers other paid features. For about $1.50 per day, hosts can create featured listings or last-minute specials. 

These optional tools will increase your visibility by highlighting your listing in another color and displaying it at the top of the search results. Your listing might even show up on the website’s home page or destination page. In fact, according to their data, it can boost your click-through rate (CTR) by as much as 50%. 

What Do Other Hosts Say About Being a Houfy Host?

On Google, Houfy has received two dozen reviews, boasting an average star rating of 4.7 out of 5. 

Hosts have praised it for its ease of use, pricing model, and the direct communication line that hosts and guests can enjoy. Compared to other vacation rental platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo, a number of users have also found it easier to search for properties.

The only negative that Google reviews mentioned was that if you need to contact Houfy directly, you might experience issues. 

On Reddit, Houfy hosts have highlighted the lack of insurance as a drawback. That being said, while other big-name companies like Airbnb offer some form of insurance, this too is insufficient and hosts will in any case need to take out their own third-party vacation rental insurance. 

Another consideration that a Reddit user mentioned is that while it’s great to get a direct booking, you’ll need to market your property actively. Sure, the platform offers paid features to boost your listing’s visibility, but the actual website doesn’t attract that much traffic. 

According to Similarweb, the Houfy website attracts only about 100,000 monthly visits. Its Facebook page has just over 3,000 followers, a drop in the ocean compared to Airbnb’s 16 million followers. 

All in all, online reviews indicated that the Houfy community is happy and healthy. 

The Verdict: Should You List Your Space on the Site?

If bookings fees are one of your major pet peeves, exploring an alternative site like Houfy makes sense. The fact that it doesn’t charge any extra fees or commissions is its biggest selling point. 

It’s also a worthy alternative for hosts who prefer a more hands-on approach. It doesn’t restrict you as much compared to other leading websites when it comes to choosing your cancellation policy, for example. That said, it means that you’ll have to do more work, especially when it comes to marketing. 

However, with a good vacation rental software solution, you’ll have enough tools to deal with the extra workload and still manage to deliver an enhanced experience. 

For example, with iGMS you can add the following tools to Houfy’s features to make booking vacation homes directly even easier:

• A unified inbox and automated messaging to streamline guest communication
• Multilingual support for message templates to help you reach a wider Houfy community
• A website builder and direct booking management toolset
• And more.