Updated on March 21, 2023
When Heidi Lawson stumbled upon her dream beachside home in the small resort community of Punta Pescadero in Baja, Mexico, she had a feeling that she’d never experienced before – a complete sense of belonging and destiny.
“When I walked in the front door, I was like, this is my home,” Heidi said. “If anything happened to me tomorrow, this is where I want to be. It was a whole revelation.”
Her adult twin sons, Jesse and Jake Lawson, supported the idea and helped her brainstorm ways to afford the property.
“They were like, ‘Mom, this is your dream home for the rest of your life,’” Heidi recounted. “’There’s got to be a way you can do it,’ so they were really influential.”
Ultimately, Heidi sold everything she owned to put toward the purchase and came up with a business plan for renting the estate as a vacation rental.
By the time she finally bought the property in May 2021, she was excited and committed to sharing the experience of Punta Pescadero with others by hosting vacation rental guests and artists at the house when she was back in Reno, Nevada, for her work as a real estate agent.
Called Casa Alvarado, the villa and two detached casitas are tucked in a cove on the Sea of Cortez.
Guests can swim in a pool on the property or rest in chaise lounge chairs on the patio while enjoying a stunning sunset over the sea, or they can ramble down the staircase to the beach.
A hand to hold in her first vacation rental venture
Even though Heidi previously owned corporate rentals, she had never owned a vacation rental. She needed help with marketing the property to the right guests and developing an optimized system for listing with online travel agencies, updating availability, pricing, and processing payment.
Her son, Jake, a financial analyst, researched the options for companies that could help his mom accomplish those objectives and ultimately recommended Futurestay, an operating system for short-term rentals, after an unsuccessful experience with another company.
Futurestay helped Heidi list the property on all major online travel agencies like Vrbo and Airbnb and made sure that all of the bookings on the sites synced on Casa Alvarado’s calendar, preventing double bookings. They also ensured that the listing was inputted according to each OTA’s specific policies and procedures. When there were problems with a listing, Futurestay would step in and contact the OTA directly to correct it.
“Futurestay was able to kind of integrate it all together and check all the listings and make sure they were all saying the right information, which is hugely time consuming if you are trying to call all those places yourself. I mean, it’s almost impossible,” Heidi said.
Their services in processing reservations and payments made a huge difference in Heidi’s ability to operate the property and manage her stress levels while still keeping her realtor job in Reno.
“What was left for me was to do maintenance and manage my staff,” she said. “I feel safer knowing that they are thinking of everything; that’s the hugest part of it. But then they also take the time to help you optimize, how to make sure that more viewers look at your site than others, and that’s really important.”
Jake initially helped Heidi set up a website for Casa Alvarado. After she signed up with Futurestay, their staff went through the website and provided recommendations for improvements. For instance, they gave her advice on optimizing keywords, pictures, and descriptions to help the right guests find the listing and book it.
A place for family, friends and community
With 4,200 square feet and beds to sleep up to 24 people between the main villa and two casitas, Casa Alvarado is ideal for bringing people together, such as holding family reunions, intimate wedding celebrations, and company retreats.
After just a year of operation, she already has several repeat guests.
Her sons and their friends were her first guests.
“I wanted them to really love it, and they wanted to be one of the first to book it, so they took all their college guys and did their football draft down there right between hurricanes,” Heidi said.
Heidi herself has visited the property 15 times and is always excited for her next trip back.
“It’s really a great life,” she said. “I’m finding that I want to be down there more. It’s like I’m starting to feel like that is almost more my home now than my home in Reno.”
During those visits, she has made friends in the area who look out for her vacation rental when she isn’t in town. They warn her about hurricanes and direct guests to her property. The sense of community that she feels makes her want to be at Casa Alvarado more often.
“I have a lot of people and connections that would help me anytime, and I would help them at any time,” she said. “It’s so important to get comfortable with the community and really take care of the people there.”
Heidi helps take care of the people in her community by directing her guests to their local businesses. She takes pride in connecting her guests with the best of Punta Pescadero’s food, products, experiences, and activities.
To that end, she has curated a 12-page guide to local businesses in the area that she recommends and provides the guide to her guests when they book.
The guide helps connect guests with resources for things like transportation, day trips by boat to the Bay of Dreams, fishing excursions with pickup at Casa Alvarado, cooking classes, catering, shopping, a Mexican fiesta, ATVs, side-by-sides, and massages by the pool.
How to enhance your guest experience by supporting local business
“I help coordinate to make sure my caretaker is getting them anything they want,” Heidi said. “If they want photography, we will we have photographers that come out. If they want to go fishing, the fishermen literally bring their boats right in front of the house and pick up the guests, and they can catch Marlin in front of my house. My brother and nephew both caught Marlins. They could see the house while they were catching them. It was so cool.”
An artist’s retreat
In addition to large groups, Heidi enjoys hosting artists at the property because as an artist herself, she appreciates the inspiration Casa Alvarado provides.
She has fused her passion for painting landscapes and murals with her job as a realtor by doing custom paintings for her real estate clients.
But after she bought her property in Punta Pescadero, she started bringing her art supplies to Casa Alvarado so that she could start painting landscapes and seascapes depicting stunning sunrises and sunsets over the Sea of Cortez and the teeming sea life.
“Eventually I want to be able to paint a lot there and actually even show them at the house,” Heidi said, “because, then, people will have something they might want to have shipped home.”
Some of her guests have already started using the estate as an artist’s retreat and have left their artwork for Heidi as a gift.
“I’m making a little board of their artwork for the house,” she said, “because I want to encourage people to create artwork at the house.”
Heidi’s first painting at Casa Alvarado was a mural that evokes her first memory of Punta Pescadero. The mural, which stands on the poolside of Casa Alvarado, depicts turtle hatchlings entering the sea for the first time.
On the day she found the house, she took a video of a little turtle that was trying to make its way to the water. She decided to try to help it.
“It took me four times to get that little turtle in the water,” she said.
Like the turtle’s journey to the sea, Heidi knew that this house would change her life.
“It was just up to me to complete my fate,” she said.
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The Interconnection Series is powered by Futurestay
Futurestay is The Operating System for Short-Term Rentals™, empowering independent managers with a roadmap for success to build, grow, and optimize their short-term rental business. It easily connects to their listings and existing business; automates payments, distribution, direct bookings and guest communications; and maximizes revenue with built-in solutions that every business needs, like dynamic pricing and noise control.
