Holiday Home

PasturesNew

I'd be interested in buying one, but for me. Just me. Strangers can s0d off. It'd be mine. My bolthole. My quiet place. I am half-actively sort of looking, but not able to do anything until I at least have a job and know where I'm likely to be based... I'd not want to buy one then find I was too far from it.

jhobson

I'm struggling to believe anybody can get 90% occupancy

Suit yourself

Having 2 rental lodges that both have neraly half their capacity booked for the year by the end of January I'm quite relaxed about whatever you choose to believe

And as I don't particularly need any more competition I suppose I should keep quiet

I suppose I should be thanking Martin for his wild exaggeration on Tonight last week when he was telling the world that the Eurozone is 50% more expensive than last year - great advert for we UK holiday home owners wasn't it!!

Nail_Lad

jhobson wrote: »

Suit yourself

Having 2 rental lodges that both have neraly half their capacity booked for the year by the end of January I'm quite relaxed about whatever you choose to believe

And as I don't particularly need any more competition I suppose I should keep quiet

I suppose I should be thanking Martin for his wild exaggeration on Tonight last week when he was telling the world that the Eurozone is 50% more expensive than last year - great advert for we UK holiday home owners wasn't it!!

I was trying to play it down for you to avoid competition! If you insist on going on about how good it is well then you've only yourself to blame when we all jump on the bandwagon!

Now quit talking about it and just tell me where this place is.

macaque_2

Pennywise wrote: »

With the utmost respect I'd disagree. Holiday homes rent for an average £500 per week - that's around £250 per week low season and upto £1000 per week high season. If you rent it for just half the year at £500 per week, that's £13,000 income, less say £3k or £4k for overheads gives say £9k per year profit. A house would rent for say £750 per month, giving £9k per year profit. So as long as you can rent your house for more than half the year, you'll be making more. In actual fact, keeping it fully let in holidays and peak times at £1000 per week will make you more money, even if you don't let it at all off peak. I don't think that people realise just how much you can rent out a good holiday let for. As rule of thumb, you're looking at earning the same per week as you can per month for a normal residential let.

I'd also stick my neck out and say that maintenace and replacements will be less as you don't have people living in it full time. Most people use a holiday home as a base, just like a hotel, and just cook the occasional meal and basically sleep in it. I'd say that your appliances etc will last a lot longer than permanent tenants.

I'd recommend the OP to go for it. I certainly would. In fact, we have just inherited a house that we are doing up and we are seriously considering it for the holiday market (although I think my OH will veto it again!).

Yup, buy a place for £200k today and sell it for a cool £80k in ten years time. And don't worry about tenants. Rocketing unemployment means there will be millions of people with nothing else to do but relax in your holiday home for £1000 a week.

Nail_Lad

macaque wrote: »

Yup, buy a place for £200k today and sell it for a cool £80k in ten years time. And don't worry about tenants. Rocketing unemployment means there will be millions of people with nothing else to do but relax in your holiday home for £1000 a week.

Daily Wail reader perchance?

macaque_2

Nail_Lad wrote: »

Daily Wail reader perchance?

Today, UK houses are overvalued by every metric in Christendom. A person buying a home today is likely to lose money but can rationalise any capital losses in the same way that a car buyer does. Buying an investment property however is a different matter. There is no certainty that houses will hold their value and future rental income carries a big health warning.

There are people who can turn a profit in property today but they generally focus on practices that most people would find unsavoury. Fantasing about buying little properties in the country and sitting back to count the money is a continuation of the same foolishness that has driven the economy to the edge of bancrupcy.

Your post sought to belittle me rather than debate a serious point. I have paid you the courtesy of a throughtful response.

Nail_Lad

macaque wrote: »

Fantasing about buying little properties in the country and sitting back to count the money is a continuation of the same foolishness that has driven the economy to the edge of bancrupcy.

Fantasising is free and never did the economy any harm.

Your comments about over valued property and future rental potential maybe valid but none of us have a crystal ball so we'll have to wait and see.

It's easy to get caught in the pessimism of the times thanks to our media and even if the recession lasts 50years being down about it and people's hopes, dreams and investments (which all carry risk) is only likely to make it worse not better.

PasturesNew

This is a true story... somebody I know.

Bought a nice B&B overlooking a beach. Ran it as a B&B. All the neighbours were borrowing/upgrading their houses and everywhere there was the City money flooding in. Neighbours persuaded them they were beating themselves to death for peanuts and they should get PP.

They got PP. 4 good-sized holiday flats and occupying the whole roof space the owner's accommodation. All posh.

Closed down the B&B, build started, spent a fortune on a website, build over-ran, had to cancel the few meagre bookings they had. A whole year without an income and the build went on.

Following year, all finished, but few bookings. They were advertising, they had their own pricey website, they just weren't getting enough bookings to pay for their original mortgage, new improved mortgage AND make a living themselves.

Try to sell one of the flats. No joy.

Year 3, put in another PP to develop the site more, possibly even demolish the work they just did.

We're now into what must be Year 4 for them.... up the price by another £500k (not sure why). Still not selling.

So, take a business that was failing and chuck money at it over 4 years for more and more spectacular ideas about making a fortune... it won't be long.

Shame, they were nice people, they just did what the neighbours did but never got the bookings. Bad marketing? Maybe. Who knows.

It's now mysteriously disappeared from RM....

stevetodd

herbiecat wrote: »

We are thinking of buying a holiday home that we can let when we can and use it when it is not rented. We are just unsure where the best place to buy would be for rentals returns. Obviously we would like to have it rented for as many weeks per year as we can and with the best rental possible. There are just so many places and we are not sure where to look.

Also it would be good to have a company who could manage it for you, eg. advertising and doing the weekly cleaning/changing for you.
We live on the Surrey/Hampshire border and it would be nice if we could find something within a 4 hour drive radius maximum.
Any help and/or website suggestions would be greately appreciated as we haven't done this before.

Thank you!!!!!

My wife and I have mused over this for some time. We have some BTL's and managage them ourselves. I am think I am too much of a control freak to allow someone else to manage for me, I like things done properly and I just think I would end up too frustrated. I think we will eventually retire to Devon and probably buy a few cottages and manage them ourselves. But I don't think renting/using a holiday cottage from afar is for us, too many things can go wrong and we would have to rely on others too much.

SingleSue

One of the problems of having a holiday home is pricing out of range of normal families.

I have been looking around for this year and the amount of people expecting to get £500+ a week for a caravan (no matter how good the site) is amazing. It appears that a fair few see it as another way of making oodles of pennies instead of covering the site fees plus a little on top.

My parents own a static caravan on a good site and they are as amazed as me at the prices people charge for the same accomodation they have.

So far we have voted with our feet and no bookings have been made by any of my family for a holiday in this country so far (apart from my parents of course who will just go to their caravan)...it has become too expensive.