Getting Ready for Graduation

With Commencement weekend only a little more than a month away, it couldn’t hurt to start planning for the rental weekend. If you are a first time renter, around two weeks prior to the rental we will provide you with a key box that will allow the renters to punch in a code and let themselves into the house.

More importantly, it is good to think about what the renter will see when he/she enters the house. Renters tend to come back to the same home year after year if they are treated well. Putting out small welcome gifts go a long way in goodwill. Some gifts we have seen in the past are flowers, baked goods, bottle of liquor, etc. By accompanying the gift with a welcome note, the renter will feel right and home and will be many times more likely to rebook your home for the next year.

You are by no means required to put anything out. Gameday Housing will do everything we can to help you book homes, but ultimately, renting your home is your own business and the more you do to encourage renters, the better off you will be in the future.

Also, if you have an entertainment system, thermostat, or anything else that may not be easy for the renters to use, it may be a good idea to type up an instruction list to put out before the renters arrive. You can also list anything that you want the renters to stay away from.

If you have any questions about the rental process, please email tom@gamedayhousing.com and I’ll be happy to help you anyway I can.

All the best,

GamedayHousing.com

Booking Statistics for the week of April 6th

Each week we plan to update the marketplace with booking statistics for the ND market. This should help home owners set their rates and renters compare prices.

Commencement
8 Homes booked at an average rate of $1,675

Nevada
4 Homes booked at an average rate of $2,488

Michigan State
1 Home booked for $3,000

Washington
3 Homes booked at an average rate of $2,250

Southern Cal
2 Homes booked at an average rate of $2,700

Boston College
2 Homes booked at an average rate of $2,400

Navy
1 home booked at $2,000

UCONN
No bookings yet!

Please let us know what other information you might find helpful!

Property Owners - How to get more bookings

Although it is still very early in the booking season (we didn’t even begin until late July last year and still got great results) it is never too early to make sure your website posting is the most enticing it can be for renters.

Many homes have booked several games already. However, if you are unsure about how your home’s price compares to others, we can help you. You may want to think about lowering the price for one key game to ‘test the waters’ and see if your home is just a couple hundred dollars too high. If the lower price point books up fairly quickly you may want to think about lowering it for other games as well.

Gameday Housing wants to see you book games at the best market price you can get, but booking even one more game almost always outweighs higher prices.

If this sounds like something you would like to try, please email tom@gamedayhousing.com

Hotel Rates for the week of April 6th

All data is gathered from www.hotels.com. We looked at hotels within 25 miles of ND Stadium that had either one king bed or two double beds in their standard rooms. Many hotels are already booked up for some of the more popular games. Still, many of the usual favorites such as the South Bend Marriott are still available.

Nevada
Low: $152.99 per night, Knight's Inn South Bend
High: $296.10 per night, Hampton Inn

Michigan State
Low: $152.99 per night, Knight's Inn South Bend
High: $399 per night, Marriott South Bend

Washington
Low: $152.56 per night, Econo Lodge Airport
High: $311 per night, Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites South Bend

Southern Cal
Low: $152.56 per night, Econo Lodge Airport
High: $449 per night, Marriott South Bend

Boston College
Low: $152.56 per night, Econo Lodge Airport
High: $399 per night, Marriott South Bend

Navy
Low: $123.11 per night, Quality Inn South Bend
High: $299 per night, Marriott South Bend

UCONN
Low: $123.21 per night, Quality Inn South Bend
High: $633 Candlewood Suites Airport

Please let us know what other information you might find helpful!

Hotel Rates for the week of March 30th

All data is gathered from www.hotels.com. We looked at hotels within 25 miles of ND Stadium that had either one king bed or two double beds in their standard rooms. Many hotels are already booked up for some of the more popular games. Still, many of the usual favorites such as the South Bend Marriott are still available.

Nevada
Low: $30.56 per night, Knight's Inn Elkhart
High: $326.57 per night, Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites South Bend

Michigan State
Low: $30.56 per night, Knight's Inn Elkhart
High: $399 per night, Marriott South Bend

Washington
Low: $30.56 per night, Knight's Inn Elkhart
High: $311 per night, Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites South Bend

Southern Cal
Low: $30.56 per night, Knight's Inn Elkhart
High: $449 per night, Marriott South Bend

Boston College
Low: $30.56 per night, Knight's Inn Elkhart
High: $399 per night, Marriott South Bend

Navy
Low: $30.56 per night, Knight's Inn Elkhart
High: $299 per night, Marriott South Bend

UCONN
Low: $30.56 per night, Knight's Inn Elkhart
High: $633 Candlewood Suites Airport

Please let us know what other information you might find helpful!

Goals for 2009

Despite the final 7-6 record, 2008 certainly ended up being a fun year. We tried to build a better mouse trap for people looking to find accommodations for football weekends and we certainly did something right because we managed to book more than 100 home rentals and make lots of people happy. But that's not good enough. People can always be happier, and the happier our clients are, the better we think we'll do.

So to that end we decided we'd share our 2009 Company Goals with everyone:

1. Provide best in class service to our Notre Dame clients
2. Gain majority market share in Notre Dame
3. National Domination (yeah we're going to expand to more markets, but more on that some other time)

We think our existing platform at www.GamedayHousing.com is doing a great job at making goals 1 & 2 happen, but to accomplish goal 3 we're going to have to spend some major capital and time... but more on that later.

Right now we're trying to figure out how we can measure goals 1 & 2. To do so we're trying to look at the market and give ourselves an honest appraisal. As we see it, our clients, whether they're the kind that has a home or the kind that needs a place to stay, have a few marketplaces they can visit:

1. Craigslist.com - The ultimate classified ad platform. We love craigslist and use it to help bring traffic to www.GamedayHousing.com. We do so for many of the reasons that homeowners might - craigslist is free. It never "hurts" to list one's home on craigslist.com, but it takes a big leap of faith for a renter to trust that the home they find on a free service like craigslist is going to actually be there when they arrive. We can't measure how many people actually rent a home they found on craiglist, but if you have please let us know how your experience went.

2. Homeaway.com, Vrbo.com, Vacationrentals.com, etc. - The paid classifieds. Back when Gameday Housing was just three company owned homes we listed with one of these services. The cost was $300 and we didn't get a single booking from the service, though we got a lot of suspect emails from people with weird names. We also had to use our own contracts and payment processing systems. We didn't renew due to bad results.

From our point of view, these services don't provide a "turn key" solution for property owners, and don't provide any protection for renters. How can a renter know whether the home won't be double booked by a unscrupulous land lord? How does he know the home will even be there when he arrives? Still we get it - this is a good service for people who have a home, know how contracts work, have a way to accept multiple forms of payment, who live in a high traffic area, and who don't need help with the little things like key boxes, welcome books, etc. But is there anything else we're missing?

3. Build your own website - Why not? We did! We found that our website helped legitimize our cragislist ads. Our renters were also happy with our website because they could email links to the other fans in their group to get the approval to rent. Unfortunately we also rapidly found that it was hard to get traffic, but that's what word of mouth, friends, and craigslist.com are for. So the website cost a lot of money and time to manage, and we were fortunate enough to have a web designer as a partner. The trade off was we probably booked at higher rates and for more games than if we had just relied on craigslist.

4. Real Estate Agents - We've never done this or heard of anyone who has. If you have please let us know how it went!

There's a lot of information for us to analyze, and analyze we will. Please be on the lookout for stats where we monitor the market for football weekend rentals. Going forward we plan to keep a tally of rentals we've booked, total homes available on our website, and lodging rates we observe throughout the market. We'll also try and capture how many homes are listed on the web for each ND home game. Crazy we know...