Virginia graduate banking on market for college getaways

During event weekends in college towns, hotels fill up and locals looking to avoid the mayhem head out of town. Gordon Sutton, a University of Virginia graduate and Charlottesville native, has been on both sides of the fence.

In 2005, his third year at UVa, Sutton started a business to bring the two sides together. His business, http://www.collegeweekends.com, is a platform for short-term and vacation rental property owners in college towns to advertise their homes to people looking for a place to stay while they visit their alma mater, come to parents weekend or graduation, see a big game or just take a long weekend in a nice place.

Sutton is ready to expand collegeweekends.com after spending the last two years getting his master’s of business administration from the University of Colorado, which he chose because of its strong entrepreneurial program. He is launching the business in localities in the Southeastern Conference and already has listings in Athens, Ga. and Oxford, Miss. Sutton’s goal is to have 30 to 40 properties listed in each locality by October. He plans to expand the business to Atlantic Coast Conference schools after that.

“We want to try to grow by conference so we can take advantage of word of mouth,” Sutton said.

To get his company listed higher by search sites such as Google, Sutton plans to do hands-on marketing, sponsoring tailgates and hiring student “evangelists,” or interns, to spread the word across campuses.

Kevin Cook, the Web site designer, is the only full-time employee of collegeweekends.com. But Sutton has been able to take advantage of the tough job market that has left some business school students unemployed after graduation, an unfortunate situation for them, Sutton said, but good for him, in terms of hiring part-time employees.

That personal aspect of the company is what sets collegeweekends.com apart from larger competition such as Vacation Rentals By Owner and homeaway.com, said Steven Braden, a property manager who has listed four properties on Sutton’s site for a couple months now. One of those properties is his primary residence. The bigger vacation rental advertisers also target typical vacation spots, such as beaches and mountain towns, Braden said. And it’s more expensive to list properties on those sites than on collegeweekends.com, Braden said.

Collegeweekends.com charges an annual fee to list the property, $179 for base listing and $229 for a premium listing, and has a rental agreement to protect the owner in the event of an accident. But the site isn’t directly involved in the renting of the properties; that’s left to either the property owner or someone the owner hires.

“It’s remarkably simple in its premise,” Braden said.

The “inconsequential” price to advertise is great for property managers looking to help homeowners rent their houses, Braden said. Travis Wilburn built a carriage house behind his main residence two years ago and has listed the house on Sutton’s site for about a year-and-a-half. It’s one of the most visited houses on the site, Wilburn said.

“I’ve received probably a 4,000 percent return on that investment,” Wilburn said.

The carriage house costs about $1,100 a month to maintain and brings in about $3,500 a month in rent, Wilburn said. The house stays booked most of the year, he said. And 60 percent of the business comes from collegeweekends.com, according to Wilburn.

Despite the name, renters from collegeweekends.com aren’t limited to alumni and family of students. Wilburn said he has rented his house to a wide variety of people, from professors to a sheik from Pakistan. About 40 percent of those people are coming to try Virginia wine and visit the surrounding area, Wilburn said.

The process of renters contacting the property owners builds a relationship between the two, Braden said, and alters the mindset of the renter. He has found they often leave the house in better condition than they received it. In the months that Braden has listed with Sutton, he said the only incident has been the disappearance of two rolls of toilet paper.

Renters trashing people’s houses was his biggest fear when he started the business, Sutton said.

“In the last five years, not having one instance of damage or property lost … it’s been a real testament to humanity, I think,” Sutton said.