New Season Brings Tourists. How About Rentals?

Happy Memorial Day weekend and thus another tourist season is about to kick off here on Cape Cod.

We all know how the real estate sales market is performing, but how about rentals?

A month ago, The Boston Globe reported that vacation rentals on the entire cape were down. The slow pace was motivating homeowners to make deals in order to fill vacant weeks.

The only town that was not experiencing slow rental activity was and is Provincetown. This past week, I spoke with three rental agents who told me that both seasonal and weekly rentals have increased and that this may be the busiest summer in quite a few years. In normal rental market performance, either the weekly or the seasonal market is strong than the other, but never the same as in this year.

The consistent demographic for the weekly rentals seems to be twenty something’s grouping together. This means entry level professionals coming town to shop and blow off steam. 

This past week The Boston Globe reported that elsewhere on the cape, weeks are now filling up quickly. In the majority of cases, the discounts that homeowners made, generated renters that booked numerous weeks,

This is welcome news for our local economy. It means that consumers, tired from a recession have saved enough money to vacation. Now let’s see what they spend it on.