Looking for a decently priced New Jersey weekend beach house!

April 16, 2014 10:12 AM

8-10 people want to rent a beach house in New Jersey for a weekend (ideally Asbury Park), hopefully for $50/person per night. Everything we've seen wants a week-long commitment. Is our New Jersey beach weekend feasible?

We're hoping to find something that's around $50/person per night. Most places want people to stay the entire week, which is not feasible for us. Can this be done?

I've been checking homeaway.com and familyvacationcritic.com but lots of places are high luxury rentals or already booked. What sites should I be using?

posted by Hwaet to Travel & Transportation around Asbury Park, NJ (6 answers total)

When i lived there, there wasn't too many vacation rentals, it was mostly year round rentals. You may have better luck looking in Ocean Grove or Bradley Beach (walkable from AP). I would check with real estate offices in the area and if you can get a copy teh Tri City News would sometimes have classifieds for independant vacation rentals.

If this is for the summer, $400 - $500 per weekend night is on the low side for the size house you would need, unless you were intending to "flop" in which case a lot of owners wouldn't want to rent to a group intentionally overstuffing the place.
posted by WeekendJen at 10:42 AM on April 16, 2014

I just checked and it looks like there are some options on AirBnB.
posted by something something at 10:43 AM on April 16, 2014

I just checked AirBNB as well. There was a house in Allenhurst for $1325 that only has a 2 night minimum, 7 bedrooms.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 10:44 AM on April 16, 2014

VRBO.com examples:

3BR house (says it sleeps 12) for $350 per night with a 3 night minimum stay
5BR house for $500 per night with a 3 night minimum stay

Availability seems to be limited by your late booking though.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 10:56 AM on April 16, 2014

Besides the unlikelihood of a large beach house renting by the weekend (like Swiss Meringue Buttercream said, they're usually Saturday-to-Saturday or else Sunday-to-Sunday: few places rent for a weekend, whether Fri/Sat/Sun or just Sat/Sun), there's also the problem of how late in the season you're starting to look --- at this point, most if not all shore houses are fully-booked for the summer, from mid-June through to Labor Day. And you can pretty well forget about renting a house over a holiday like the 4th of July; even if you do by some miracle find an available rental house, that's the prime week of the prime beach season, and it'd cost way more than your group is considering spending. (Data point: I rented a house down at the Outer Banks last summer, for June 2013; I was lucky to get the week I wanted, even though I reserved in August 2012!)

I suspect that you're going to have to look into hotels.
posted by easily confused at 12:00 PM on April 16, 2014

Weekend rentals may be available off-season. If you don't mind being at the shore in October or November your request is reasonable. During prime beach season?? Good luck.
posted by COD at 12:20 PM on April 16, 2014