Renting my holiday home

sevlow

Got a nice place in Turkey. Bought and furnished as our own holiday home but we can only use it 5 wks a year. Any tips or opinions on renting?

destiny_star2006

maybe advertise in local paper holiday papers etc etc!
I have seen a few on ebay selling for set price or bidding above certain price!
Also a few is advertised here www.ukclassifieds.com and www.adtrader.co.uk
hope this helps!

destiny_star2006

Overseas property

The excitement of owning an overseas property can turn usually cautious individuals into ones that are prepared to sacrifice their common sense. Risks that they would not entertain in their own country are being made every day by some overseas property buyers. The thought of losing the home of their dreams and confusion about the buying process has some buyers signing contracts in a language they do not even understand. Some are not taking advice from qualified solicitors or other independent professionals. Others throw their complete trust into real estate agents who have a vested interest in selling them a home. They also believe wildly exaggerated forecasts on rental returns to help them feel secure about the purchase of their holiday homes.

The truth about renting

The rental income you can achieve on letting your holiday home is all about location and the type of property. Long term rentals can be heaven sent, having a person willing to rent on a long term basis will reduce the likelyhood of having a bad tenant. It will also serve to reduce your stress in finding new people willing to rent your home. Best of all long term rentals are great for your financial planning. Short term rentals can be higher especially in holiday seasons. The perfect holiday home would be a property that was attractive to both types of tenants. Many city apartments are good examples of this and present a win win situation to the overseas property buyer. Areas in France, Spain and Portugal for example really lend themselves to both rental markets. Recently Bulgaria has attracted overseas property buyers who can let to both summer holidaymakers and to the winter skiing fraternity.

Do your own research act like a tenant

It is important to do your own research when assessing the rental value of a property abroad. Put yourself in the position of a tenant or holidaymaker. Conduct local research matching your requirements to the property you own or intend to buy. Rental markets like house prices have peaks and troughs and will have periods in the year when demand may outstrip supply. Know when these periods occur for your rental property. Holiday homes are particularly vulnerable to off and high peak pricing. You will need to compare like for like to get it just right for your property.

Furnishing your property abroad

Many buyers forget about the cost of buying furniture and do not even consider the local laws regarding furniture, electrical items, fire safety and gas appliance safety. In your own country these areas have strict regulation and it is probably the same in the region you intend to buy. Owners need to know what the exact situation is regarding local regulations to avoid disastrous mistakes.

Have a budget

Owners need to have budget for unexpected costs for repairs and general maintenance. An advertising budget should be set along with a marketing strategy to let your home fast. Good marketing could save you thousands in lost revenue from your overseas property.

Decide when you are going to use your holiday home

Many buyers intend to let the home to holidaymakers and also spend time in the property themselves. This creates a conflict as the best time to visit your holiday home abroad may be the time you can make the most money from your overseas property investment. This will be for you to decide.

Renting a holiday home can be the best thing you ever did. Overseas property buyers are winning not only on owning a holiday home they can use, but also the fact that efficient renting can pay for their investment.

Hope this is of a little help to you!

sevlow

Thanks for your responses. I may just start out with friends, relatives and people I know from work. My concern is that we got the place solely for our own use, never planned to rent & dont need to. Consequently we furnished the place to a good standard and I am concerned about who we might have staying and what damnage we might have.

On the other hand I know I have a potential income stream left untapped and given the effort I put into knocking £20 of one bill or another it seems madness to pass on several hundreds per year.

Cheggers thanks for that offer I may well take you up on it. I'll be in touch.

josie

We had similar concerns about renting to strangers. (we have an apartment in the French / Swiss Alps near the border that we let for skiing and in the summer). I did a one page flyer and just shamelessly used all my work contacts, relatives, friends etc., and asked them to send it out to their mates and to put it on noticeboards at work and that way at least you're getting friends of friends or at least acquaintances.

We've found word of mouth spreads pretty quickly from people who have been already and you soon build up contacts.

I'll email it to you if you like, if you PM me. I put a few photos on and a description etc.

I've also put quite a few photos on flickr.com so that people can see the place.

The 2 most well known sites are www.holidayrentals.co.uk and www.holidaylettings.co.uk.

I would suggest you need someone like an agent or contact out there who can help if things go wrong - power cut, burst pipes etc., or even just dishwasher not working. It may cost you a bit, but pretty essential.

Take a deposit too, refundable when all is ok and to offset breakages etc., and ensure timely return of keys - we're living and learning! HTH

Cheggers, are you interested in anyone else for your year's free trial, pretty please?

red_devil

holiday rentals is ok we have found.

corris3

when we had a holiday cottage in the UK we used daltons weekly which gave us a regular stream of bookings, my brother now uses Daltons online for his holiday home in france and finds it OK as he links it to his website, for our french home we just have work colleagues and friends using it but even this can be stressful if something goes wrong, luckily we have good friends and neighbours there who are willing to help out in an emergency.

Sarahjovi

Have a look at www.ownersdirect.co.uk

Sarah

Dave_hsb

Another idea is creating your own holiday home website using something like www.holidaysitebuilder.com. You can then link to your site from Ownersdirect and all the other classified sites you can think of (Craigslist and Gumtree are excellent and free) and you should get traffic from Google once you have been indexed. Other options for building your own site are Wordpress - but I have found this was quite limiting as it was not designed with holiday homes in mind.

With HolidaySiteBuilder you will end up with a site like www.paradiselets.co.uk
Your site can be customised with different styles to suite your market. Take a look at the videos on the home page for a better idea.

Good luck! :beer:

biskit4444

:beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:

sevlow wrote: »

Got a nice place in Turkey. Bought and furnished as our own holiday home but we can only use it 5 wks a year. Any tips or opinions on renting?

we are buying in altinkum when we go in july but with intention of using agent for cleaning,and checking for damage to anything, for 2 per cent of weekly fee charged . do you recommend solicitors here or abroad, pls forward advise and contacts as caution is known.and wot fees would be.

can_do_2

It’s difficult at the moment to advertise your property at a competitive price. I’m in the process of advertising my rental property using the services of a relatively new business for FREE at https://www.rentourproperty.tv. At the moment they require a limited number of private advertisers who would like to place a video advert of their property for free for 12 months. They also provide downloadable versions for iPods and Mobile phones which is a great idea. I’m sure this offer is still on. This is a completely new concept and I’m sure that using this service I will be able to rent my home a lot easier.
:j