Vacation Home Rentals Are Hot, Physically Distant Getaways

Americans’ plans for international travel, cruises and group trips have been thwarted due to the coronavirus outbreak. That, combined with the fact that so many people are working from home while offices remain closed, has made renting a home in an appealing area the hottest way to vacation (and, in some cases, work) this summer. And many people are booking for weeks at a time.

"In March and April people were canceling their vacation reservations left and right,” says Annie Blatz, sales manager for three branches of the Kinlin Grover Vacation Rentals, the largest rental agency on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. “They were in a panic about whether they'd be able to come. But we have been absolutely overwhelmed with the number of calls in May and June for rentals. And not just one week — it's one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks — the whole season."

Pent-up demand from vacation planners has also meant a surge of interest in home rentals on North Carolina's popular Outer Banks in the past few months: Bob Kissell of Village Realty, a real estate and vacation rental agency that rents out more than 700 homes throughout the 200-mile string of barrier islands, says he's seen the company's bookings multiply nearly tenfold from mid-May to mid-June of this year compared to the same period in 2019.

(See note on safe-travel guidance below.)

Flexible working arrangements

If they're working and maintaining physical distance from others at home, and can afford the splurge, some people are thinking they may as well temporarily make their “home” somewhere wonderful, while they continue physical distancing — ideally not too far away, many say, so they can avoid air travel or a long road trip.

That's what San Francisco resident Lynda Zuber, 52, thought when she rented a three-bedroom house outside of Truckee, California, overlooking a pond and meadow, for June with her boyfriend. Zuber has been “working from home,” at her job in the wholesale gift industry, in Tahoe, while also taking a bit of time to hike and visit the lake. If it weren't for the coronavirus outbreak, she notes, she would have spent the summer traveling for work, and maybe visiting a friend for a few weeks in France. “When it became clear that none of this was going to happen this year,” Zuber says, “a long-term rental in Tahoe seemed like the perfect thing to do."

House rental agents around the country say they became inundated with reservation requests from people like Zuber beginning in early May, when some states began loosening their stay-at-home restrictions while many workplaces were telling their employees that they'd be closed for much longer.