Colorado: Portland-based Vacasa has launched a community association management programme that will provide management services to Colorado’s vacation rental homeowners.
The vacation rental provider had already recently expanded its reach in July when it launched its own real estate offering.
Meghan Lutterman of Vacasa community association management programme said: “This is a new offering from Vacasa. Most people are familiar with Vacasa as a short-term rental management offering for our vacation rental owners but we are now launching this programme as a full service management support for communities that are highly transient.”
The programme will work with the boards of directors of associations by providing association governance for them, accounting services and on-site management to ensure pools are clean, front desks are staffed appropriately with friendly people and Vacasa guests leave with a positive experience at Colorado’s Steamboat Springs ski resort.
Lutterman said: “As you can imagine, most of our homeowners don’t live in Steamboat or in these complexes. We believe in transparent, professional management and are providing that service at a new level not offered in the marketplace.
Lutterman has licences in community association management and is a certified manager of community associations. She will work alongside long-time Steamboat Springs resident, Bob Milne, who has a wealth of experience in property management.
Before joining Vacasa in August 2017, Milne founded and sold the Resort Company in Steamboat Springs to Wyndham Worldwide. He moved to New Jersey briefly to be president of Wyndham Vacation Rentals North America but returned to Steamboat before taking up the role of chief operations officer for Vacasa.
Vacasa recently surpassed Wyndham as the largest vacation rental management company in North America with more than 10,600 homes in its portfolio, including 22 in Steamboat Springs.
Lutterman said: “One place where we have excelled since 2009, when we founded Vacasa, is working with individual owners. Those homeowners have developed a lot of trust with us in managing their individual homes.
“When they walk out of their home and see a fitness centre that is closed, or a pool that doesn’t quite look right or an elevator that needs to be mopped, they come to us and ask us to provide them with that larger service to make sure that, when they enter that property or their guests or tenants enter the property, they can experience the Vacasa quality from the parking lot all the way in through to the unit, or the home that they own there,” she added.
She said the community association management programme’s aim was to support community associations and their boards of directors.
Lutterman said: “The board of directors are required by law in Colorado to preserve and enhance commonly held property – that includes the hallways, the elevators and the parking lots.
“The boards of directors are strictly volunteers. Most of them are sophisticated business people, but they are not paid for these positions.
“We are here to help them and guide them with making sure meetings are run pursuant with Colorado law, making sure we provide accurate and transparent accounting services as well as on-site management,” she added.
Vacasa’s community association management programme started operating in Summit County, McCall, Idaho and Costa Rica in the last 12 months.
Lutterman said: “We are currently operating ten associations in Summit County. We have a community association management team there, and they are incredibly successful, and that has allowed us to expand northward to Routt County.
“We manage two in McCall, Idaho and four in Costa Rica and expect to see pretty massive growth in 2019 with this offering. We have proven the concept and we are looking to expand it based on our successes,” she added.
