Fran Maier on finding herself through vacation rentals and advocacy in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Startup entrepreneur Fran Maier started renting out two bedrooms in her home in San Francisco in 2012 during a professional and personal crossroads in her life. Initially, she kept her new role as a vacation rental host a secret.

“I didn’t even admit to my friends that I was doing it because I didn’t want to come across like one of those old English matrons having to take in boarders,” Fran quipped.

Finding herself in vacation rentals

When Fran started renting out bedrooms in her house on Potrero Hill, she was newly divorced and had just left TrustArc. Formerly TRUSTe, TrustArc is a privacy compliance tech company that she founded and led for more than 10 years. She also co-founded Match.com in 1994.  

“I was trying to figure out what to do next,” Fran recounted, “and almost on a lark, I thought, OK, I want to see what this [hosting] thing is all about.”

She listed the two bedrooms on multiple short-term rental platforms, including Vrbo.

“All of a sudden, I was making some real money,” Fran said. “It made me think, do I really have to go back and get a job right away? I could spend some time doing this.”

Vacation rental twins

In 2013, Fran bought a home in her hometown of Santa Fe with the intention of operating it as a vacation rental. She had friends and family in Santa Fe. Having a vacation rental gave her a place to stay when she visited them. She christened the home, Gorgeous on Garcia, after the name of the street it was on.

Three years later, she bought and renovated a second house right next door to Gorgeous on Garcia in the same historical Eastside neighborhood. The house earned the name, Casa Kateri, for a retablo of the first Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha, that’s inside.

“There was a real opportunity to rent the two houses together at a higher premium than renting either one of individually,” Fran said, “because in Santa Fe, there just wasn’t much available with five bedrooms, four bathrooms, an office, a big kitchen, and walkable to Canyon Road or the plaza.”

Vacation rentals: medium for an artful life

She enjoyed the hospitality aspect of vacation rentals. She was able to meet interesting guests, share her love of Santa Fe, and collect artwork to decorate the homes.

“People comment on how much they enjoy the art,” she said. “It is something that I think enhances their stay.”

In addition, she loved the flexibility that vacation rentals gave her. She was able to live in two places – San Francisco and Santa Fe. She also could spend more time with her parents in Santa Fe.

A new venture modeled after vacation rental platforms

Her newfound freedom allowed her to embark on her next entrepreneurial venture, BabyQuip. BabyQuip is a rental platform. It connects customers with baby equipment rental providers around the country. About half of BabyQuip’s customer base is STR guests.

“For the first couple of years of BabyQuip, I didn’t pay myself much money. I was able to use my insights from being a vacation rental host to inform not just the way BabyQuip would help people who have short-term rentals but also to help the people who supply the baby gear,” she said. “They are like our hosts. We call them quality providers.

“The insights from the hospitality industry was really, really valuable,” she added. “In vacation rentals, you learn how to serve guests and how to have a good community of hosts, or in our case, quality providers.”

Short-term rental advocacy in San Francisco and Santa Fe

Nearly a decade after hosting her first guest, Fran is president of the Santa Fe Short-Term Rental Alliance.

Her leadership role makes her prominent voice in advocating for fair and reasonable regulations for the short-term rental industry.

In 2020, Fran became a founding member of the alliance. At the time, the city council was seeking to tighten up restrictions on vacation rentals in response to complaints about guest turnover and affordable housing shortages. The council sought to limit permits to one per host, increase the minimum distance between existing short-term rentals, require a local operator to be on call 24/7 within a one hour’s drive of the unit, and more.

Vrbo notified short-term rental hosts who used their platform about the proposed changes and invited them to a virtual meeting with Rent Responsibly to form Santa Fe’s first organized alliance.

Vacation rental advocacy in San Francisco

Previously, Fran had been involved in a successful effort to defeat Proposition F in San Francisco in November 2015. Among other restrictions, the measure would have limited all short-term rentals in San Francisco to 75 days a year. The cap on nights applied even to units where hosts rented out rooms in their own homes.

“When I saw the Santa Fe ordinance was happening and that there was going to be a group to provide some perspectives on it, it seemed like I would bring some experience that was relevant to that,” Fran said.

She joined the Vrbo and Rent Responsibly call and raised her hand to lead the local alliance.

“I knew that there needed to be another voice than just the voice of the short-term rental platforms in fighting these restrictive ordinances. We understand the need for some regulations and for paying taxes. But there were some aspects of the proposed ordinance that tended to be unreasonable, or reflect a lack of knowledge of the hosts and how they’re managing their businesses,” she said.

Alliance members told their personal stories, put a human face on the industry, and advocated for reasonable changes. While they weren’t able to stop all the new restrictions, they earned some concessions from the city council. The city waived its limit of one stay every seven days during holiday seasons. Better yet, existing compliant short-term rental hosts were exempt from the new minimum distance rules and permit limits.

“It was good to let the city council know we were organized and going to speak up for our rights,” Fran said. “Even though we didn’t get everything we wanted, they know that there is a group that represents short-term rental hosts and that anytime there is going to be a change, we are going to have a seat at the table.”

Building vacation rental community in Santa Fe

Since the ordinance was approved in December 2020, the alliance continues to foster a sense of community for hosts through its educational events and Facebook group.

Recently, the alliance held a virtual forum for candidates in the mayoral and city council race.

“It was an opportunity for us to make sure they know we are an organization and we are active, and we would like to revisit some aspects of enforcement and the regulatory environment and also make sure that our constituents could hear what these politicians are saying,” Fran said.

“For example, the mayor was really vocal in other forums about cracking down on short-term rentals. I think we made sure he understood (the rhetoric should be) crack down on unregistered rentals; Don’t just blanket us all as bad guys.”

The alliance also reminded the candidates of the contribution that short-term rentals make to Santa Fe’s economy. In 2019, short-term rentals contributed $228 million in visitor spending, tax revenue, and indirect economic impacts in Santa Fe, according to a study in October 2020 by Moss Adams LLP.

“We also made clear the city promotes hotels in part because hotels contribute to the tax base; well, so do we,” Fran said. “If you are going to tax us the same, then give us the benefits, too.”

When Fran isn’t leading advocacy efforts or building relationships with elected officials, she makes the most of the freedom and flexibility of vacation rentals, like taking BabyQuip all the way to Shark Tank (Season 11, Episode 14 on Hulu), interacting with guests, and finding new treasured pieces of local art.

“I love the freedom vacation rentals gave me,” she said. “Now, my life isn’t day in and day out or hours on the clock.”

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