SecondSpace is a new service to promote vacation home sales. Unlike traditional vacation listing services, which attempt to acquire rental guests and maximize occupancy, SecondSpace gives realtors and developers the ability to promote their for sale land, vacation properties and second homes. They hope to help you discover your ideal “second home lifestyle”.

SecondSpace operates LandWatch.com and ResortScape.com which both provide solutions for sellers.

How it works:

• SecondSpace charges agents $50/month for unlimited listings.
• Sellers advertise their ‘for sale’ properties.
• SecondSpace offers a simple effective online marketing program.
• Prospective second home buyers search for specific areas or types of areas and are presented current land/homes for sale

By concentrating on second home land/home sales, SecondSpace promotes liquidity and consumer awareness of the second home market. In addition, SecondSpace is able to promote ancillary services within the second home market. For example, SecondSpace cross-promotes maintenance and service repair providers to help second home owners maintain their properties, as well as offering buyers’ tax advice and 1031 exchange strategies.

How SecondSpace Can Promote the Vacation Rental Industry

At FlipKey we feel SecondSpace could provide an effective channel to promote vacation home rentals. By adding an educational section of the economic benefits associated with renting second homes and referring prospective buyers to nearby property managers, SecondSpace can effectively promote the active rental inventory of the vacation home market. Providing second home owners with a ‘revenue generator calculator’ which would calculate expected rental revenue based on how much time they plan to spend at their second home would be a great mechanism to promote expanded participation in the vacation rental market.

SecondSpace is a new offering and traffic to its sites is minimal. Should SecondSpace emerge as a prominent service we’d love to see the integration of rental promotions. We’ll keep our eye on SecondSpace’s progress.

Zillow.com is a fantastic service, packed with information that is useful to the general homeowner, vacation rental managers and anyone involved in real estate. Zillow began with the idea of helping consumers determine how much a home is worth by giving them access to data points and comparable home sales in the area. With an open platform for adding user-generated home listings and content, Zillow has created a vibrant community.

I claimed the vacation home in Mattapoisett, MA that my family has operated for over 25 years. Leveraging public database information, recent sales and other claimed homes, Zillow calculates a Zestimate for the value of our home. Through Zillow I can add to the description of the house, adjust/update house facts, and can even set a ‘Make Me Move’ price – the price I’d be willing to sell the house for. The community features allow homeowners or prospective buyers to discuss the area with neighbors.

This becomes interesting for vacation rental managers as a tool to monitor home sales in their region, cultivate community with their neighbors and generate more owner-clients. The map below shows my neighborhood with recent sales flagged in yellow.

Yesterday, Zillow announced that they recently closed a $30 million financing round, bringing their total funding to date to $87 million. Zillow has big plans for the real estate industry and we’re very interested in the tools and features Zillow will continue to develop.

As a proponent of the vacation rental industry, FlipKey continues to recognize the value in ancillary services to help promote the industry. We recommend that property managers and owners familiarize themselves with the bevy of free Internet tools in this space. There are many unique ways (some that we haven’t even thought of yet!) in which services like Zillow can help you with your vacation rental endeavors.

Rentmineonline.com is a new U.K. based start-up striving to create an eBay-like network to enable people to rent “things” to each other. We write about Rentmineonline, because we love the idea – despite some major pitfalls.

The concept of an eBay for rentals was one of the original business ideas we explored before we created FlipKey. We looked at the world around us and thought of all the great things we’d love to have access to, but were unwilling to purchase.

• A boat on a hot summer’s day with friends
• A power saw to clean up some fallen trees after the latest wind storm
• A hand bag, so my girlfriend doesn’t pay $500 for the latest craze that she will abandon in a month
• A car to do a quick grocery run

The fact is we as a society own a lot of stuff that we don’t often use. By creating a trusted network of members you can establish a cooperative that adds new meaning to the term ’social efficiency’.

With that said, if it was easy someone would have already done it. eBay evaluated this concept several years ago and abandoned it because of the inherent challenges. I had the opportunity to meet with Josh Koppelman of First Round Capital (and former Half.com and eBay fame) and he put it best, “to succeed you will have to inherently change human behavior.”

Josh is referring to the fact that we, as individuals, do not rent things to each other. Minus the obvious category of Vacation Home rentals, when’s the last time you rented a personal asset to a stranger?

Rentmineonline is not a crazy idea… In fact it won an investment award at SeedCamp (a European business competition) and was recently featured on TechCruch. However, Rentmineonline will have a tough road to glory. To succeed they will have to (i) build a critical network of people willing to rent things (ii) create a sense of trust out of the ether and (iii) figure out a way to monetize the process.

If they can succeed this will be a huge win for social efficiency, not to mention a very large business. As I finalize this post the market capitalization of eBay is only $49B.

A few weeks ago TripAdvisor launched a new social networking application – the TripAdvisor Travel Map. The Travel Map is basically a Google Map that allows you to place pins at locations you have visited. You then compare your map to your friends’ maps, and bragging rights ensue. It’s a simple, but robust concept ripe with potential.

It quickly caught my eye for a few reasons. First and foremost, I’m a proponent of expanding the online travel world through social tools. The best trips I have taken have been through the itineraries recommended to me by friends and family. Second, I like Google Maps applications – a lot. Third, I’ve thought about doing something exactly like this, so I was eager to see how a solid company like TripAdvisor would approach the idea.

The TripAdvisor.com Travel Map Review

The main interface is clean and simple. I’m offered a map of the world, a column of popular destinations, and a text box to add in new locations. Upon your first visit, a simple overlay tells you how to use the map.

I played around with various controls, adding a bunch of pins to the east coast (I own I-95!) and Europe. It was all easy enough, and there were definitely a few “wow – cool!” moments. My favorite feature is the “smart bubble” that pops up after clicking an area of the map. It picks the most likely destination areas surrounding the location you clicked on the map, and allows you to quickly pin it:

After 15 minutes or so of adding locations, I decided to stop and see what else I could do. I clicked “save and continue”. Besides an offer to invite more friends, there weren’t any other options. Bummer.

TJ was already in my network, so I went to go check out his map. Viewing another person’s map was very similar to viewing my own map, except I could not add pins to my friend’s map. One major shortcoming that immediately struck me was the inability to overlay his map on top of my own. I consider this an essential viral feature and assume TripAdvisor will soon build a useful ‘compare our maps’ tool.

What’s missing?

While the map was a solid first attempt, there are a few crucial pieces missing. My top three suggestions:

1. Better comparison with friends’ maps. As mentioned earlier, I need to see my map overlaid with my friend’s map. Assign a different color pin for each user on a map, and let me see it all at once. Theoretically, if I had 20 friends in my network and wanted to know who had been to Switzerland, the best way to do that would be to look at one map for everybody, not comb through 20 individual maps.
2. Encourage users to share the map url, and offer an embedded version (widget) that users can stick on their web sites. It is not immediately clear that I can send my map url directly to others. The url that does work is not very user friendly:
   (Click here for full Link) http://www.tripadvisor.com/MemberProfile? uid=A16F630174E76997A3695112E3883723&c=pt A non tech savvy user would never guess that goes directly to their map.
3. Give me more to do. Link directly into reviews from the map, allow me to rate the locations, show me who else has been to locations like me, etc, etc. I can think of 1001 cool things to do with these maps.

Social Travel Off to a Slow Start

Despite numerous attempts, nobody has really been able to crack the social travel network nut:

The lack of strong competition combined with TripAdvisor’s large user base could help enable them to grow into the premier social travel network on the Web. With a strong business based on reviews and lead generation, TripAdvisor can expand its share of travel mindshare by helping consumers make more personal connections through the service. TripAdvisor’s Travel Map is a simple step, but it’s a step in the right direction.