The ups and downs of vacation rentals

After years of staying in hotels for family vacations, Jen Beauman took the plunge. Using a vacation rental Web site, she booked a private, four-bedroom home on Pine Island off Florida's Gulf Coast.

"It was fantastic," she said. "The house had a pool, hot tub and a dock with a boat lift for only $1,000 a week."

By renting a home instead of a hotel room, Beauman, a Florida resident, tapped into a travel trend fueled by the Internet. Now people can easily search for vacation spots worldwide and property owners can target a global audience for little money.

By one estimate, 2.8 million vacation rentals are online, promoted by 30,000 Web sites, big and small. Established online travel companies, including Orbitz (vacationrentals.orbitz.com), now list vacation rentals.

The advantages, especially for families or large groups, are many. Homes offer more room, more privacy and more amenities, such as a private pool, laundry room and a fully equipped kitchen.

But here's the downside. No more room service or concierge service. In most cases, you're making your bed and washing your dishes.

Bigger risks include losing money you pay in advance or finding the house you rented in foreclosure. You also need to trust that what's promised on the Internet is what you get on arrival.

"It's a leap of faith," Beauman says. "It's not a hotel where you have a corporate office if there's a problem."

But after this experience, she'll do it again.

"Living in a house rather than a hotel allowed us to live like a local," she says. "We felt much more comfortable just hanging out around the house, fishing off the dock or lounging around the pool than we would at a hotel with other people."

Renting a vacation home online is easy. Thousands of Web sites exist to connect homeowners with renters. Typically, homeowners pay the Web site an annual fee, as little as $100 on up, to advertise their home.

On these sites you find everything from condos to castles. You can search in countless ways: by country, by number of bedrooms, by price, by housing type or theme. For instance: romantic getaways, beach sites, great golfing and on and on.

Prices range as widely as the selection. Rent a four-bedroom, three-bath home from $110 to $135 a night in Kissimmee near Disney World. Or an 11-room villa on Italy's Amalfi Coast for $38,499 a night.

Those who patronize vacation rentals vary from romantic couples to large groups.

The most frequent customer at homeway.com is a married woman with kids booking a family vacation, says Vice President Justin Halloran. (Orlando is the company's biggest market with 3,669 properties, including condos, homes and villas.)

Rentals are also popular for family reunions and Baby Boomers vacationing with their children and the grandkids.

"There's a yard to play in," he says. "You can do laundry and fix meals instead of going out all the time. It's a great place to gather and just be yourself."

When traveling in bigger numbers, rentals can look like a bargain compared to multiple hotel rooms. That 6,000-square-foot villa in Sri Lanka on the beach from $550 to $700 nightly sounds pricey. But it's only about $100 a night after dividing the cost among the six people it accommodates.

Other renters enjoy the experience of living large — if just for a week.

Hollywood publicist Terri Lynn and her fiance rented an "adobe castle" in Taos, N.M. Though it was just the two of them, the home was big enough for 20.

Outside: a spectacular mountain view. Inside: lavish furnishings, multiple fireplaces and a kitchen worthy of a home magazine cover.

"We don't live in a house like that," Lynn says. "It was an opportunity to live a fantasy."

But things can — and do — go wrong.

A week before Lynn rented a cabin in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., the management company said the home was no longer available. The cabin was in foreclosure.

Luckily, another home was available. But there's no guarantee of a backup, especially if you rent directly from a homeowner with a single property.

Some Web sites offer limited refunds for housing disasters. But you'll need to prove serious wrongdoing. Fraud, for instance.

Sometimes owners double-book a property. Or they want all the money upfront, including a security deposit, and don't deliver.

"Then they just disappear," says Alfredo Purrinos, founder of Miami-based rentalo.com. "I suggest using a credit card or PayPal for the deposit."

Fraud can happen, but complaints that homes don't meet expectations are more common.

Betty Kaltenbach's fiasco started after renting a six-bedroom home in Kissimmee. The long-planned event brought her children and grandchildren together for the first time in nearly five years.

"The house was a disaster," says Kaltenbach, of Fort Lauderdale.

Lingering cigarette smoke and room freshener required a drugstore trip for medicine for her allergic daughter and two grandchildren. Once home, they had to see their doctor for follow-up treatments.

The grandkids couldn't use the game room, a converted garage, which reeked of smoke. The pool heater didn't work. Neither did the cable TV or the Internet.

"The home wasn't what was advertised," Kaltenbach says.

Repeated phone calls to the home's owner and rental agent didn't fix the problems. In the end, Kaltenbach received a refund for the nonworking pool heater but nothing else.

Kaltenbach's complaints were legitimate, but all renters aren't as reasonable.

Case in point: When a homeowner of a house on a Caribbean island canceled on a renter at the last moment and returned his money, the renter was outraged.

He demanded another home.

"There was a reason the homeowner canceled," says Halloran of homeaway.com. "A hurricane was coming and that island was in its path."