Caravans - Buying to Let?

Dopple

I got a leaflet in one of the local papers about a Haven Holiday Park.
They were offering a holiday home (caravan) for £13,000 and said that you could make up to £7,000 a year sub-letting.

Does anyone have any experience of doing this at Haven or any other holiday park?
If so, is it a viable investment?

scotsbob

Dopple wrote: »

I got a leaflet in one of the local papers about a Haven Holiday Park.
They were offering a holiday home (caravan) for £13,000 and said that you could make up to £7,000 a year sub-letting.

Does anyone have any experience of doing this at Haven or any other holiday park?
If so, is it a viable investment?

The word "could" might be the important one here.

Who would pay for the letting adverts?

How many weeks would it need to be let to bring in that income?

How easy will it be to sell if you didn't want it anymore?

Those might be the questions to ask.

Madcatgirl

Hi - this is something I find quite tempting. My folks have a mobile home (not at haven) and on a visit earlier this year, there were some new homes for sale (they are like posh flats now!) for about 30K. The holiday park were offering a deal that you would get a guaranteed income this year of about £6K. It was really tempting as it's a great yield. However, you still need to pay out for rent and servicing to the holiday park, and what happens next year?! I've not looked further, but I would want to buy a top spec mobile home if I did and do loads of research on the holiday park etc, speak to people who already do it. I'm still tempted - maybe I'll have a proper look into it!

inmypocketnottheirs

Madcatgirl wrote: »

I'm still tempted - maybe I'll have a proper look into it!

I would too.

babyx1uk3

i was interested too and just wondering if any of you have looked into it any more? How much are the fees for rents and servicing? anyone know?

Anyone own a caravan already and have rough amounts to go on? x

nexuss

Dopple wrote: »

They were offering a holiday home (caravan) for £13,000 and said that you could make up to £7,000 a year sub-letting.

If this was true they would buy 100 caravans to make £700,000 a year.It is just a trick where they sell you a caravan for an over inflated price that you would let in an over saturated caravan rental market.

jaynemaria

Before I became ill we used to have a caravan on a private site, we bought it second hand on the plot for £6500. Ours was a three bedroom with another double bed that could be made up in the lounge area,galley kitchen and bathroom with small bath and shower.
It cost us £1300 a year in ground rent and water rates and then there was the electric and gas bottles on top of this, plus insurance and annualgas service check which are compulsary.

We used to use it mainly familly and friends but when we have rented it out (only to friends of friends) we asked for £200 a week which most people were happy to pay. we only rented it out though to cover our ground costs and not to make an income.

If its a haven site or one with other facilities such as pool, clubhouse etc you can ask for more money but your ground rent is likely to be a lot more. a friend of our had a caravan on the beachside of the road 15 minutes walk from us and their ground rent was another £600 a year so you need to look out for this.

Before commiting to anything from Haven or the more well known ones I would look at the area you want and then contact the sites in that area and I think you will find some a lot cheaper as yur not paying for the privelage of using their name

moneymakestheworldgoround

Also look in local papers, gumtree, Daltons Weekly etc.. and find details of people who already own at that park and rent out.

Give them a ring and either make an enquiry to rent in peak time and see if they say they are full, or ask them outright about their bookings.

Jacka87

I have a good bit of background knowledge of people who run caravan sites and I know a good bit on caravans based on a variety of experiances such as some friends having to live in a caravan for a while etc.

This whole advert has me worried, its like somebody advertising saying, "buy a flat and let it out and you could earn x amount". Haven would be guaranteed your rent for the year if you managed to rent the caravan or not, where as you are not guaranteed anything. On top of that you are giving them a nice lump sum to start with when they sell you the caravan.

It sound to me like haven are needing to boost there bank balance and are looking at a new way of helping therselves out of troubled times.

On the other hand, like with the buying a flat as a rental, you could rent it out all year round and make a good rental income and it "could" be a good investment.

I would say think of it like buying any property to rent out, tho consider that you dont own the property, you are renting a bit of land that you will then rent out for profit?

Also caravans only depreciate, I know house prices are not rocketing at the moment but caravan costs only go one way.

They can be made to look very well and very much like a house. My Grandparents once bought 2 static caravans, put them together and then resurfaced the outside to look like a house and refurbed the inside to be like a house as it was a way of geting a "house" on the bit of land they had bought, got them round some planning laws. Oh and the whole neighbourhood thought it was a real house for the whole 25yrs they lived there! So that proves that caravans can be very homely. But theres did cost as much as a house to get like that!

butlinsmum

We own a caravan at Butlins Skegness that we let out privately & whilst you can "make" up to £7000 a year subletting this would in my experience not be a nett figure taking into account your ground rent, insurance, cleaning costs, gas & electric etc

If you look on any static caravan forum there are multiple nightmare stories about using Haven to sublet your caravan so do your homework first!!

Having a caravan you and your family can enjoy can be great but if you're looking to earn a fortune doing it I think you'll be sadly disappointed!

butlinsmum x