Holiday rentals

New_horizons

Hi all,

This is my first post on this or any site so appologies if it's in the wrong place

I current have a couple of properties which I have on long term lets but have been considering the options of doing holiday rentals, which obviously have much higher turnover, but with the potential of a higher bottom line. Has anybody done this before?

With the fixed tenancy it's an easy option to use them under personal allowances, but I'm thinking that for the holiday lets it would be better to work as a limited company?

Has anyone done this? What are the options etc.

Any advice or your lessons learned would be great

Thanks

booksurr

here are some previous thoughts
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4610991

use the search function for:
- holidays homes
- furnished holidays letting

IIRC there is a whole website and forum given over exclusively to FHL

eddddy

If you're going to do it legitimately, maybe first steps are:

Planning - discuss with the planning department the likelihood of getting consent for change of use from dwelling house to commercial leisure accommodation.

Mortgage - if you have a BTL mortgage, check that it allows holiday lets. If not, you'll need to look for a commercial mortgage instead.

Insurance - it's unlikely that regular LL insurance would cover holiday lets.

Leases - if the property is leasehold, the lease may not allow it.


I'm sure that some people do holiday lets without bothering with these things.

The problem would be if a neighbour complained to the planning department, they might issue an enforcement notice. You'd then have to cancel all your bookings, and spoil people's holidays.

And if the property burnt down without the correct type of insurance in place, that could be catastrophic financially.

PasturesNew

Many holiday homes don't get bookings. It's hard to get bookings, which are most often gained from either extensive marketing or a build up over the years.

Some holiday homes are owned by hotels, who offer them as an alternative to booking with their hotel, so they have marketing in place.

Other people rent them out while they are out of the country, so more to cover a few bills and to have a house to return to rather than to "break even" or make a profit.

Don't think "oh that house round the corner gets £800/week!" - he might only get 6 bookings/year.

You have to be available 24/7 in case there's trouble. Not just a problem with the services (e.g. telly not working/boiler broken), but also in case the neighbours phone and complain there's a wild party that needs breaking up.

You need to set aside your changover mornings to do a thorough clean. Cleaning isn't what you might think. e.g. I spoke to one cleaner one morning that said the fridge was full of sand; another week they'd broken the ironing board. Lots of high jinx go on in holiday lets.

Also be aware that you might have booked a "nice young couple", but they also had 5 other mates staying close by and it was decided that your place was best for their huge BBQ/party, complete with 4 dogs.

What are you going to do if you get a call at 2am saying "huge/loud party at your place....and I can smell drugs"? I've made that call..... I know what the LL did next.... do you?

When you turn up on changeover day you have to look for all of this and more - and be able/prepared to fix any problems.

Somebody's wet the bed? Very common - you need to instantly get a new mattress in there. Broken something? You need to replace it in the next 2-3 hours. Some joker shoved a whole toilet roll down the loo? Get it out now. And that's all before you start to think about cleaning.