Advice on Buy to Let to Airbandb properties

Cakeguts

Sutekh666 wrote: »

That's all food for thought.

The flat we're currently letting to Airbandb guests is mortgage free and we own the freehold. We do pay the council tax and utilities but at the moment we're way in profit, but yes we'd need to pay mortgages on any other properties we buy. We've been doing this since November so it might be worth running it for year and seeing how much money it brings in and how seasonal it is. We are in a central big city with constant events.

The fact that you own the freehold won't stop the local council from changing the planning rules which they have done in a lot of places so that people can't let property in this way.

Mutton_Geoff

Are your insurers (and the freeholders buildings insurers) aware that you do AirBnB? I have an annexe on my house where I was considering this but none of the insurers I spoke to would cover AirBnB lets due to the high incidence of claims. One said for short term letting they would only accept a more established site like HomeAway. Other insurers wouldn’t consider any form of non AST lets.

Housebuy12345

All going well until Airbnb ban you.... through no fault of your own

Doozergirl

antilles wrote: »

I did look into this a last year as we were thinking of buying a holiday home and letting it out most of the year. What I found was (some of which is already mentioned by other posters):

- Normal BTL mortgages are no good for this as they require an AST as mentioned already. I did find a couple of specialist providers that do holiday let mortgages. Can't remember who they were but one was a building society. In summary - more difficult to get finance.
- Operating as a company - this depends on lots of factors, including how much other income you have. Best speak to an accountant. Main thing I found was that financing through a company was more expensive (higher interest rates).

- The costs go up dramatically if you aren't prepared to clean the property yourself or live far away as you'll have to use a management company.

Two friends of mine both owned this type of let - one in Liverpool City Centre and one in Manchester City Centre. Liverpool one was let to tourists and my friend self-managed and cleaned herself every Saturday. She spent almost every weekend dealing with breakages, drunken people locking themselves out and calling her in the early hours, police incidents, dealing with vomit-soiled toilets and sheets, etc. She then paid a cleaning company for a few months then decided it wasn't worth it and converted it to a regular BTL.

The Manchester flat - basically same story - my friend converted it to a BTL in the end - it was mainly used for tourists and concert-goers - same issues. Of course both of these will attract a particular clientele so it would depend on what you are looking at - but I'd avoid the city centre rental type thing.

Also, your wear and tear goes up massively due to constant changeovers, and people will not look after the place like (most) tenants will.

After hearing their stories and looking at the costs of management, it put me off tbh.

On the flip side of that, I have a client who does it and has some really expensive fixtures and fittings of the kind you probably wouldn't pick for a letting. Because there is a refundable deposit, people actually look after the house better than normal tenants because they want their money back.

We stay there regularly and also look after the buildings maintenance. At a high standard of property and some half decent vetting of the type of person one lets to, people will treat the place with respect.