01 - The Challenge

When 900 Properties Outgrow Your Spreadsheet

The County's short-term rental inventory grew far faster than its ability to track it. What had once been a manageable list of around 100 properties, mostly hotels and a handful of Airbnbs, ballooned to over 900.

While the new state law gave local towns written authority to enforce health and safety regulations, the mandate also complicated the County's operations. The statute was difficult to interpret, and although major booking platforms are theoretically required to share host data, they reliably did not. This left the County without a single source of truth.

02 - The Solution

From guesswork to control

Sullivan County replaced its previous system with Deckard's Rentalscape Identification and Monitoring, quickly shifting from manual guesswork to a structured, data-driven process. As one of Deckard's earliest customers, the County team navigated a short initial setup, after which they reported essentially zero learning curve. Even non-specialist staff members were able to log in and navigate the platform easily.

Unlike their previous vendor, Rentalscape gave the County a clean, actionable, and downloadable list of registered and unregistered properties. Property start and end dates were seamlessly matched against the County's own records, immediately ending duplicate outreach and ensuring the team was no longer sending multiple letters to the same address.

Beyond the technology, the human relationship behind the software was vital to the County's success.

"To have a designated person that you can call, and know that you're being listened to and not judged, is very, very big. I think that's unfortunately the big problem with a lot of software these days; there's nobody to turn to when you have a problem."

 

Kathleen Lara, County Treasurer, Sullivan County, New York

Internally, Rentalscape is now deeply embedded in daily operations, with County Treasurer Kathleen Lara and her Room Tax Specialists keeping the platform open alongside their standard accounting tools every day.

03 - Results

"We went up over 500 properties with Deckard. We would have never found even probably a fifth of them, and that is without exaggeration. Without Deckard, we would not be at the place we are now with the number of registered people who are aware of the new laws and the health and safety."

 

Kathleen Lara, County Treasurer, Sullivan County, New York

The operational ROI was equally massive. The County estimates it would have needed to hire an additional full-time employee just to manage the manual workload of scouring the internet for listings. Instead, Rentalscape effectively became "the sixth person in accounting," paying for itself exponentially in labor savings and recovered tax revenue.

By removing the burden of manual detection, the platform freed staff to focus on high-value tasks: helping hosts register, fielding regulatory questions, and closing outstanding cases.