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 While vacation rental companies, including Airbnb, HomeAway and
others, report doing a brisk business in advance of this weekend's
Super Bowl 50, some of their most expensive offerings have found no
takers.
Still available on the website Super-Bowl-Rentalz.com, for example,
is an 11,000 square-foot, five-bedroom, eight-bathroom "executive
mansion" that comes with helicopter and limousine service for $7,500
per night, reduced from $15,000 in January.
Airbnb said it has booked housing for more than 11,000 guests into
Bay Area rentals for Super Bowl weekend, but 85 percent of bookings
were for $300 per night or less.
The typical Airbnb host renting for the Super Bowl will make about
$1,000 for the entire event, a company spokesperson said.
That's a far cry from the $10,000-per-night price Katrina Johnson
sought for her four-bedroom, four-bath home in Santa Clara, which is
walking distance from Levi's Stadium, where the game will be played.
Johnson said she turned each bedroom in her home into a master suite
last winter in anticipation of renting it out for the big game.
Despite throwing in high-end amenities, such as car service and a
personal chef, she has yet to close a deal.
After dropping the price to $8,000, Johnson said, she is talking to
a few possible takers found through friends, but nothing is certain
yet.
"It may happen, it may not," she said.
On Super-Bowl-Rentalz.com, the average listing for game rentals is
between $1,500 and $2,500 per night, but managing director Bill Ryan
said he is seeing more price cuts as the game approaches.
He couldn't provide an average booking price but said the site's
listings receiving most traffic were "value priced," a change, he
says, from past Super Bowls, including the recent games in
Scottsdale, Ariz. and East Rutherford, New Jersey.
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"At other Super Bowls there's been a nice mixture of high-end and
value-priced listings, maybe there was a little more leaning toward
the high end," Ryan said.
For HomeAway, parent company of VRBO and 10 other short-term rental
companies, some expensive listings were reserved early, which helped
boost the site's average booking price.
Sean Duff, who runs Stay and Play, a company that sells luxury
travel packages to marquee events, said that with just days to go
until the big game, there is still plenty of housing available in
San Francisco.
"Things aren't selling as well as they should," he said. "I have
three houses I could rent."
He said comments like those by former San Francisco Mayor Willie
Brown, who predicted residents would make "a killing" by renting
their apartments on Airbnb, created an unrealistic market
expectation, which inflated prices.
One thing in high demand, however, is helicopter rides to the
stadium in Santa Clara, he said. The new stadium has been criticized
for being difficult to get to and park at.
He sold two helicopter round-trip rides, which carry 5 people each,
as soon as they were put on the market. "That sold right away," he
said. "People are concerned about the traffic."
(Additional reporting by Rory Carroll Editing by Stephen R.
Trousdale and Sue Horton)
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