By: Senior staff writer – Easton Ellsworth

The AP carries a nice story about HomeAway, a tech startup that helps people find and rent places to stay on extended vacations.

The current economic crisis might be keeping some people away from vacationing at all, but it is turning many others into “staycation” fanatics.

If you’ve ever hopped, skipped and jumped your away through a quick flight and hotel stay somewhere, you might like what HomeAway has to offer.

$405 million in investor financing in the last four years can’t hurt, either. HomeAway has investors with deep pockets and plans to reap the rewards of a down economy. (Here’s hoping a few bucks of that goes toward a shiny new corporate blog to go at the plain Jane media center.)

The business model? Simple. Charge users $25 a month to list a vacation rental property.

And the competition is surprisingly light at the moment.

While Compete.com’s traffic analytics show HomeAway fading just a tad over the past few months, we’d give it more than a fighting chance given the current stinkiness of the housing climate.

As more and more people grow gray stress-induced hairs over their awful mortgage situations, you can bet that thousands of them will consider putting that summer home in the mountains or by the beach up for rent at HomeAway.

What do you think of HomeAway? Will it thrive or take a dive in today’s dire economic circumstances?