Apartment rental sites

I have had good luck with Homeaway and VRBO and through rental agencies. Which countries and cities are you considering? I ask because I like and have had good experiences with several agencies in Paris, for example, but only one or two of them cover other cities and I would hate to suggest them to you if you have no intention of going to Paris. Also, I ask this only because you mention that you have not rented in several years, but are you up to date on the issues, if any, surrounding vacation rentals in the places you plan to visit? There have been some changes in that landscape in some European cities in the past few years.

I find that Trip Advisor is one of the better sites as you can email the owner. They offer better value than Airbnb, often for the same property.

Airbnb is poor, as they charge too much for their service fee and they blank out most of the Q and As on points such as location, which is irritating.

VRBO are also good and I have used them many times.

My planning is still in the early stages but I will likely be spending 3 to 5 days in each of Bruges, Rome and Prague. I'll have short stays in Franfurt, Amsterdam, Passua and Budapest where we will likely stay 1 night is a hotel near a train station.

I am aware of the contraversy around AirBnB and have experienced it looking for an apartment in New York City. I seems like a good idea to do a Google search for private apartment issues in those cities where I'll be staying longer.

Unfortunately, since VRBO, HomeAway and Homelidays are now all part of one company (Expedia), things have gone nowhere but downhill in my opinion. Fees to owners have gone way up and fees to travelers have now been added. You are no longer able to e-mail owners directly but must go through the sites' messaging system. They seem to be trying to copy airbnb, of which I have never been a fan. Already, two properties in which we stayed last month in Italy have disappeared from the VRBO website on which we booked them, and I had a personal e-mail from a French property just yesterday saying they are no longer going to be on the site. There's a federal class action lawsuit pending against HomeAway by property owners (reading this filing online was quite enlightening). I've actually decided that I prefer Booking.com now, but I too would be very happy to hear of other sites (especially in Italy) which are worth trying.

Friends who had their beach home listed with VRBO gave up because of the owner fees and user fees. Plus they do not give discounts for long term ( weekly or monthly) rentals.

Air BnB has some issues, which give me pause.

We have had very good experiences with TripAdvisor vacation rentals, in London and in Rome. So like Jennifer in the U.K., I would recommend them as a first step. The website has very good filter options.

You must check the laws in each of the cities where you'll be visiting. Someone mentioned private apartments in NYC--those are not legal rentals. They are a scourge, taking much-needed apartments off the market to be used as illegal hotels. If you rent an illegal AirBnB, you must be prepared to arrive only to find you have no accommodations. Most cities permit you to rent someone's extra bedroom while they are present in their apartment, so make that your aim and you should be fine. If you need to have the whole place to yourself, plan to stay in hotels, where it is legal. Please don't aid and abet and help create a market for AinBnB, which is an unsafe nuisance in many cases.

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You must check the laws in each of the cities where you'll be visiting. Someone mentioned private apartments in NYC--those are not legal rentals. They are a scourge, taking much-needed apartments off the market to be used as illegal hotels. If you rent an illegal AirBnB, you must be prepared to arrive only to find you have no accommodations. Most cities permit you to rent someone's extra bedroom while they are present in their apartment, so make that your aim and you should be fine. If you need to have the whole place to yourself, plan to stay in hotels, where it is legal. Please don't aid and abet and help create a market for AinBnB, which is an unsafe nuisance in many cases.

This is basically the same post I see over and over again in the New York City Tripadvisor forum.

I've always been partially convinced that most of those people on that forum work for the New York convention Bureau and are colluding to try and eliminate organizations like Airbnb and even Uber.

Lots of scare tactics. We've used Airbnb all over the world and never had a problem

I have had good luck with VRBO and Booking.com. Through VRBO I have contacted owners to ask for a better price when we are staying a long time (generally a week or more) or in off-season. A couple of times on our trip this fall I got them to waive some of the traveler fees. But sometimes I just Google "apartments in __________" and find a gem. This works well in less-known locations or resort towns, IMO.

Another lesser-used site is www.SabbaticalHomes.com. Mostly longer term rentals but some will go 3 nights.

I've done some research on the topic of ownership and I find that Expedia owns VRBO and HomeAway as well as TripAdvisor. Priceline owns Booking.com, Kayak and some others. AirBnB is privately owned. So there certainly has been consolidation in this industry. Whether or not that is the reason for a decline in the usefulnes of accommodation listing and booking sites is hard to say. Undoudedly AirBnB has had an impact on everyone.

As for private apartments in New York City, I was the target of some rather rabid posters on TripAdvisor when trying to find suitable accommodation in NYC a few years back. Some of their posts were offensive and TripAdvisor actually took down my thread but did not ban the worst of these people. I eventually did find an apartment that I considered to be legal but the whole process soured me on TripAdvisor. I don't want this thread to become a battleground over the issue so that's all I'll say about it.

As for finding an apartment in Rome, I'll spend time on all the various sites as well as Googling it directly. I'll have to use sites that allow filtering so I can narrow down my search by choosing a location, features, price, etc. Thanks for the suggestions here including checking local regulations.

Vick Vega, the "scare tactics" are, if I catch tourists in the hallway of my apartment I will call 311 and my landlord and get inspectors out there immediately. I do not wish to live in a hotel and I do not want strangers to have free access to my building. It is against the law to rent out whole apartments on AirBnB in NYC, and if I have reason to believe you are putting my life and property at risk I will get that shut down. Citywide we are doing the same thing. AirBnB is a massive nuisance and it further destabilizes the precarious rental market. This is a law WE have passed, that New Yorkers have chosen. If you cannot respect our laws, you don't need to come here. Citywide, AirBnB tourists have destroyed apartments, damaged common areas, held loud parties, stolen from neighbors, left sinks and tubs running and caused massive leaks--but again, most of all, they are taking an apartment out of the rental market that we desperately need for those of us who actually live here.

The residents of a city have every right to pass laws to protect their own health and safety and manage the city's economy. We have thousands and thousands of safe, clean hotels for you to stay in. Please stay in one of them. And if you can't, then don't come here.

AirBnB does not care about quality of life in our city, and the only way to stop them is by regulation. I do use AirBnB, according to the laws of the city I am visiting. For most places, that means a room in someone's apartment while they are staying there. I've done that in Dublin, in Berlin, and in Amsterdam.

LOL. I will be doing air bnb and uber.

Seems very hypocritical to go on a rant like that and spell out all of the reasons you hate it but then use Airbnb in other cities.

Well, cool. Again, if I catch you in my apartment building, you had better have a legal hotel on speed dial because you will be homeless.

I use AirBnB as and when it is legal, respecting the laws of the cities where I visit.

It's really a matter of principles, morals, and ethics. The world does not belong to me, and I do not have an inalienable right to travel cheaply.

It's a modern conundrum, for sure, but is the absence of an ordinance really a green light if it all comes down to principles, morals, and ethics? We've stayed in some great AirBnB units in U.S. cities-never New York-where they are/were perfectly legal, but we also knew there was a potential downside to that city in terms of rental availability for residents. Is it still okay just because there's not a law forbidding it?

It's fine where it's legal. The local government is going to balance citizens' needs with fire safety and other considerations and make a decision that's right for that city. It's up to us to honor their wishes. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with AirBnB--as I said, I use it myself. But because I live in a city in which AirBnB is a burden, I respect the local laws when I travel. AirBnB won't reject a listing that breaks local laws. It's up to you not to book an illegal place. Both out of respect, and because the last thing you want is to arrive on your vacation and discover that you have nowhere to sleep because you booked an illegal room and your "host" got shut down. When I'm planning a trip, the first thing I do is Google "AirBnB law [X city]." And I proceed from there.

I almost exclusively now use airbnb (last trip - 5 diff accoms - was all airbnb). All of them last trip were in apartments or homes with the owner present, not a whole empty apartment, which is generally my preferred airbnb usage - owner's present (only time we deliberately went for a whole apartment was when my mom came with us and we needed the extra bedroom). If we are staying somewhere only one night (maybe 2), I tend more to just a hotel.

I always narrow down my amenities - I want non-smoking, sometimes access to washer/dryer depending on when in our trip we are staying at the bnb, parking available if we happening to be driving, wifi...air con usually isn't a problem as we generally don't travel during the summer months, but you can filter for that and many other things. And 99% of the time, I contact the owner first before booking just to kinda get a feel for them...how quickly they respond, ask any questions I may have (usually about proximity to public transport), tell them why I am visiting.

Some people don't like that you pay airbnb for the room as soon as you book. The owner does not get the money until either 24-48 hrs after you leave, so if something come up, you have a chance to contact airbnb. I like the fact that it's paid ahead - one less thing to worry about having on the credit card when we get back home since we've paid it off long before.

BTW - you don't need to stay in NYC proper to get a great airbnb - we stayed in a lovely airbnb (with free on street parking!!) on the New Jersey side of the Hudson - they were on the last bus stop to the Lincoln Tunnel (or first, if you were coming back from NYC) so unless traffic in the tunnel was horrible or you just missed the bus, in 15 min you could be at Port Authority. We didn't even have to worry about moving our vehicle, it was less than a 10 min walk to great views across the river and under $100 a night. I'm not sure why more people don't look for something on the NJ side...

As the OP on this thread, I'd like to thank those people who suggested some websites to use. I've concluded that I'll try TripAdvisor, HomeAway, Booking.com and even AirB&B after checking the legallity of short term rentals in Rome. I found this article that indicates the situation in Rome could change next year: https://www.cross-pollinate.com/blog/?s=. I'll also use Google to help me which is how I found that site which offers apartment rental listings as well.

I'm sorry that some of the posts here got into a debate on the legalities of AirBnB in NYC; it's obviously still a contentious issue. I'll continue my travel planning with posts in the Rome forum. Best regards, Gerry

"Good for me, but not for thee".

A real modern day phenomenon by a (sadly) larfer portion of our population that wants to impose more laws, restrictions and taxes on others.