The following is some crucial information about Sea Star Realty that you should consider when selecting a property management company for your home:
We Have Been in Your Shoes
The owners of Sea Star Realty, Robert & Dawn Gates, have been owners of vacation rentals right here at the beaches along the Grand Strand for well over a decade. In the past, we were clients of most of the well-known property managers in the Myrtle Beach area and found ourselves always frustrated with the service. Owning vacation rentals ourselves, we know how important the care of your house is to you, as well as maximizing rental income to cover the ever rising carrying cost of a beach house.
We Care
Our staff inspects behind guests and housekeeping. We have a checklist that housekeepers and inspectors must sign after each cleaning. The same cleaners and inspector service your house each week so they can become very familiar with the property, which allows for damages or maintenance issues to be quickly recognized and addressed. Our reservationists are trained to screen guests to avoid undesirable groups or activities. All guests are required to provide a photo id, and to purchase a damage waiver plan, which protects your home by covering guests for up to $1500 in accidental damages.
Other standard guest requirements that we strictly enforce:
- Maximum occupancy is not exceeded
- Pets are not allowed unless previously agreed upon in writing
- Minimum age of 25 unless accompanied by a guardian
- No house parties
- No smoking in houses.
We Appreciate our Homeowners
As a thank you to our homeowners, we offer complimentary linens and departure maid service for owner-stays. We do not nickel and dime our homeowners for minor items, such as standard lightbulbs, air filters, and remote-control batteries – you will never be charged for these minor items.
Savings Passed on to You
We have negotiated discounted rates from local service providers for our homeowners. Some of the services we help you save significantly on include:
- Cable TV
- Wi-Fi
- Pest-control
- Curbside trash pickup
Keeping Up with Today’s Technology
Today, it is more important than ever to keep up with the latest trends and we are committed to being on the cutting edge of technology.
- State-of-the-Art Website: Our website was developed by Bluetent, a nationally recognized firm that specializes in digital marketing for the real estate & vacation rental industry. Please take a moment to explore our website, if you have not already. As you will see, our website features online booking, allowing users to ‘shop and buy’ easily at their convenience, which drastically increases bookings. Our website also features an owner portal so you can have direct access to past statements, availability calendar to make your own owner-blocks, maintenance orders, and reservations.
- Going Digital: We have implemented a digital rental contract system to simplify the reservation process, and we are the only company in the Myrtle Beach area offering this latest technology. We also now accept e-check payments from guests, which is a quick way to draft payments and because there are no additional bank fees for this, guests love it.
- Keyless Entry: Ever wondered who has keys to your property? Who left the AC unit set that low? With our new keyless entry system, we will know! We have transitioned the majority of our properties to keyless entry, which will be the wave of the future. With this system, we can monitor every time the door is opened at your home, which aids in security, but also guests love the ease of access and check-in process without having a key to keep up with. Unique entry codes are generated for anyone that needs access to your property and are time sensitive with expirations. Guests, maintenance, cleaners, inspectors, repairmen, pest control – all will be generated a one-time, unique code specific for their visit that we can monitor from entry to exit and the time lapse between.
- Mobile App: Over 40% of travelers are millennials, adults age 37 or under, and this group of vacationers is accustomed to using their mobile devices to communicate and shop for a wide range of items, including vacation rentals. In keeping up with this large group of vacationers, Sea Star Realty just launched an app, which can be downloaded from the App Store for iOS devices or the Google Play store for Android devices, free of charge. Most of the families that we host include generations from toddlers to grandparents, and it is typically the millennial in the group that makes the online reservation. Again, we are the first amongst our competitors to deliver this technology to our guests' and clients' fingertips.
Marketing
Standards for all properties we manage are:
- utilizing a professional photographer ($400 value) to capture the best possible images that will showcase your home
- having a professional virtual tour created
- installing a custom yard sign that features the house name ($500 value)
All of these benefits come at no cost to the homeowner. We also utilize several of the extremely popular pay-to-advertise vacation rentals sites, such as VRBO, HomeAway, TripAdvisor, FlipKey, Tripz, and AirBnB, just to name a few. Your rental will be posted on at least one of these sites, in addition to our website (up to a $600 value), which is another service we provide at no additional charge to the homeowner. Although not cheap, utilizing multiple advertising avenues has proven to be highly effective in increasing bookings. We are also always working on our ever-growing email contact list of past guests and leads, whom we keep well informed of rental specials and area events via our bi-weekly email newsletters. In addition, we have a presence on all the social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Sea Star Standards
Our standard reservation includes resort quality linens, with high thread-count sheets and an abundance of luxury plush towels. Of course, the beds are already made when guests arrive. We can’t imagine allowing our guests to arrive to a house full of unmade beds that they must make – what a lousy way to start a vacation! Our cleaners are trained to neatly make beds and beautifully display towels in the bathrooms. The costs of linens are included in guest paid fees. We also provide the following complimentary items for our guests:
- paper towels
- toilet paper
- dishwashing liquid
- dishwashing sponge
- bath soap
- trash can liners
- coffee filters
- coffee
Guests love these special touches. But, as always, we put our homeowners first, so you will be provided linens free of charge, as well as departure maid service.
Exciting National Exposure
Upon the recommendation by the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, we were selected by HomeAway (parent company of VRBO), a well-known leader in the travel industry, to be included in their 2016 Holiday Sweepstakes that featured 6 different resort locations, with Myrtle Beach being one of the 6 featured locations. Sea Star Realty was the only company representing Myrtle Beach. For this campaign, HomeAway partnered with Expedia and Fandango and reached over 30 million travelers. In exchange for this exposure, we gave a 5-night stay away as one of the Sweepstakes prizes. The best part is that we were provided the e-mail addresses for ALL that entered to win the Myrtle Beach prize – over 90,0000 e-mails of people interested in staying in Myrtle Beach. Organically collecting this many contacts would take decades. These contacts receive emails featuring Sea Star Realty’s vacation rentals, specials, and more. We are extremely honored to have been hand-picked for this incredible opportunity!
Proof is in the Pudding
We are pleased to report that we are having another fantastic year, with rental income for our homeowners being increased drastically (some over 50%!) from their history with other property management companies. We don’t only strive for full occupancy during the summer, but we work very hard and are successful at filling homes during other times of the year as well. We are being very proactive in taking reservations for 2018 and already have the rates posted on our website as well as other vacation rental sites that we utilize. Rental inquiries for 2018 are steadily coming in and we have already taken a tremendous number of confirmed reservations. We are so confident in our ability and services that we are willing to offer a performance guarantee.
Maximizing Rental Income
Unlike traditional property management companies that set weekly rates and are content with booking most summer weeks, Sea Star Realty doesn’t stop there, instead we maximize revenue by using a common sense approach. In being vacation rental homeowners ourselves, we know the importance of rental income to cover the ever-rising costs of maintaining a beach home. We don’t quit during the off-season, but rather we have found that offering nightly stays, such as long weekends (3-night minimum), or monthly stays for ‘snowbirds’, can drastically increase the bottom line for annual income. We realize that most travelers make vacation plans in the evenings and on weekends, so to accommodate those customers and avoid potentially missing out on a booking, we have a reservationist available afterhours to answer email inquiries every evening and weekend. This is a huge advantage over other property management companies that are only answering the phones 9am-5pm M-F. As result of these extra efforts, rental income for our homeowners well exceeds their past experience with other property management companies.
Experienced Staff
We believe in employing experienced, educated personnel that is proficient in our industry; therefore, we have invested in having our reservationists professionally trained and are proud to say that we now have 3 Licensed Property Managers on-staff. We also have a fulltime maintenance manager, inspector, and two fulltime pool technicians that are certified Commercial Pool Operators. Both the maintenance manager and pool techs are equipped with service vehicles and all the tools needed to handle most maintenance issues in-house, which keeps costs down for homeowners by not having to involve a 3rd party vendor. This also enables us to handle guest issues quickly and efficiently.
Location, Location, Location
To better serve our clients and guests, we have 2 locations.
- Our Garden City office is located just a block from the ocean which allows for great foot traffic and we proudly boast that it is the most beautiful building in Garden City Beach. The address of our Garden City office is 125A Atlantic Avenue.
- Our Pawleys Island office gets great exposure from its location on the high-traffic count Highway 17 and that address is 11167 Ocean Highway.
References
Should you wish to speak to a client reference, we would be happy to provide you contact information of several homeowners who will gladly share their Sea Star Realty experience with you. They can vouch for our service in maintaining their homes and performance in maximizing rental income.
With Sea Star Realty, your home will not get lost in the shuffle of hundreds of homes.
We are adding more homes to our property management program weekly and would be honored to have the opportunity to include your home.