Casago Sold Off Vacasa's Markets. Do You Know Who Holds Your Agreement?
Two weeks ago Skift reported that Casago has sold nearly all of the property-manager acquisitions it inherited from Vacasa and turned many of those markets into franchises.
That is the end of a story that started in December 2024, when Casago announced it would acquire Vacasa and I wrote at the time about what a transaction that size actually changes for an owner. The deal closed at the end of April 2025, which is when I told owners at national brands to go pull the executed document and read the exit terms. Fifteen months later, the national brand that bought a national brand has largely converted it into a network of independent local operators.
If you have a Nashville home with Vacasa, or you did, this is worth ten minutes.
What a franchise conversion actually means for an owner
The sign on the door stays. Almost everything behind it can change.
Who your agreement is with. In a franchise structure, your management agreement may be assigned to the local franchisee. Different legal entity, different insurance, different bank account, different people.
Who answers the phone. Central support functions get redistributed. The person who handled your account may now work for a company you have never heard of, or may not work there at all.
Standards enforcement. Franchise networks vary enormously in how much the franchisor actually enforces. Some are tight. Some are a brand license and a software subscription.
Your cleaning and maintenance vendors. Local operators bring their own, and the transition period is where service quality goes wrong.
None of that is necessarily bad. A local franchisee who knows Nashville can absolutely outperform a national call center — that is the whole argument for the model, and I have some sympathy for it, being a local operator myself.
But it is a change, and it is a change you did not choose.
Four questions to ask, in writing
I would send these by email so you have the answers in text.
Which legal entity currently holds my management agreement? Name it exactly. If it changed, when, and was I notified?
What is my current fee, all in, and what is it calculated on? Gross booking revenue or net nightly revenue after the platform service fee? Since Airbnb's shift to a 15.5% host-only fee, the gap between those two bases is large.
What are the current add-on charges? Linen programs, accommodation protection, smart-home fees, hot tub service, "guest damage" waivers. List them.
What is my notice period, and to whom do I give notice? If the entity changed, the notice address probably did too.
Any well-run operation answers all four in one email. A long delay is itself information.
What I am not going to do
I am not going to quote you Vacasa's or Casago's fee. I do not hold their current contracts, published fee schedules are not public, and third-party estimates vary widely enough that repeating one as fact would be dishonest.
What I will say is what is true of my own business, which I can substantiate: Boost charges 18% of nightly revenue at one or two properties, 17% at three or four, 16% at five or six. Nightly revenue is the owner payout after the cleaning fee and after the platform's service fee. Maintenance and supplies pass through at the vendor's actual cost with no markup. There is no onboarding fee, no linen program, no protection plan, and no annual account fee. Month-to-month, cancel with 30 days' notice — all of it published on one page.
Read your own statement and compare. That is a better exercise than reading anybody's marketing, mine included.
If you decide to move
Check the notice clause first — that is the only part of the timeline you do not control. Then find out whose Airbnb account your listing lives on — and whose Vrbo account, if you have one, now that Premier Host status is moving to the listing level rather than the host account — because if it is your manager's, your reviews are attached to their account and a switch means starting a new listing at zero. That is recoverable but it is the real cost, and you should know about it before you decide rather than after.
Once we have listing access, most switching owners are live with us inside 48 hours, on the checklist I laid out in April: listing rebuilt, pricing set from scratch, locks integrated, deep clean, supply inventory, guest messaging live. Reservations already on the books transfer and get honored.
Permit work runs on Metro's timeline rather than ours, and I will not pretend otherwise.
The one-line version
A national brand becoming a franchise network is not a scandal. It is a reason to re-read your agreement, because the thing you signed and the thing operating your home may no longer be the same company.
If you want a second opinion on what you are actually paying, send me one recent statement. I will work out your effective rate and tell you straight — including if it looks fine.