How Do You Run Your Vacation Home?

[stewart christensen]

I'm interested to hear how everyone runs their vacation homes and what are some tips and tricks everyone uses.

Here are some starter questions:

Do you manage your property yourself or do you use a professional management company?

If you use a company what is the going rate these days? (10%, 30%, ?)

If you manage your own property how do you do it? 

Do you use some software or website or do you just use pen and paper... google calendar?

How do you take payment? Use a merchant account, paypal, checks, etc?

Any frustrations with running a vaction home?

Lets get a discussion going in the comments. 

Also I have a survey running over on survey monkey as well. I'll post the results in the comments. go here to participate http://bit.ly/cAwZJr