Be your own property manager

You've already decided that you'd like to turn your property into a holiday home, and you'd know like to begin the process of renting it out to guests in the weeks you don't use it. You do not wish to employ an agent to do this for you, or at least not completely.

There are many reasons perhaps of why you came to these decisions, and these reasons are important in understanding what you need back from your investment so far and for the inevitable investment of setting up to run it as a business.

For myself it was because I was living there less and less due to work contracts taking me to other countries. It was my main home, my only property, and I had tried residential letting for brief periods, but often the income didn't even cover the mortgage and maintenance costs. True, the tenants were responsible for all utilities, Council Tax rates and keeping it in good condition but so often not all tenants will respect that.

I discovered, after the last tenant vacated, a lot of damage and neglect but more importantly, rising damp which she had lived with without telling me, in fact had actually tried to hide it believing it was her fault. By this time I needed to make major repairs and decided to completely renovate, adding a second bedroom. After this huge expense and investment I decided that holiday letting would better provide regular checks on the property, any repairs could be done immediately, provide an income which would potentially cover all overheads and provide a little profit to put back into the property as and when needed. It also meant that I could stay there during the weeks it wasn't booked.

Pros and Cons

I started by listing all the pros and cons of running this as a small business and the more I researched the more it became a no-brainer to make it a holiday let. There are some things that I considered when coming to my decision to becoming a holiday home owner including:

• What will be the start up costs?
• What will the weekly, monthly or annual overheads be, including mortgage repayments?
• What is the minimum annual income I require to run the business without a loss. In other words what is my break-even point?
• How many years do I expect it to take to meet that break-even point. Was I prepared to make a loss for this time, could I carry that?
• Is my property in a desirable location? Why? Does it have enough of the right qualities and amenities? What are the benefits?
• What is the competition like? Are they close by and how do they compare to mine?

Ask for advice from holiday letting agencies

Before I could fully answer these questions I needed to make more research and approached a local holiday agent (as against a national one) to ask their advice. They were Cornish Cottage Holidays and even though the property was still looking more like a building site they were happy to visit and discuss my plans as they they did not have many properties in that local area and were keen to expand.

Once the cottage reconstruction was complete and furnished, they visited again and seemed genuinely impressed as they entered the property for the first time. This is one of the most important aspects of having a holiday home, the welcome the guests feel when first setting foot inside after an often long journey to get there. Cornish Cottage Holidays were keen that I signed up with them and I liked what I heard from them regarding their attention to detail and support. However, I was concerned about the 20% fee they would take from each booking, I knew that without them it would be slow going to get established and they had 40 years of experience in the region which would be invaluable to me.

I had also sought the same advice from one of their competitors, however the response I had from them was more distant and they were reluctant to visit the cottage first. To clinch the deal Cornish Cottage Holidays offered to waive the registration fee and drop their commission to 15% for the first year.

So my original aim of me managing the property totally by myself had now been watered down a little, by taking away the initial pressure of marketing and leaving that to Cornish Cottage Holidays along with getting bookings. I would begin my own marketing in parallel during this first year with the aim of reducing my reliance on another company.

If you do take the same route and sign up with someone for similar services, make sure that you are not tied to them for an unrealistic period of time and that it is not for exclusivity. With Cornish Cottage Holidays any owner's bookings were limited to five weeks in the high season and anything above that would still attract their commission fee (+Vat). One downside to using an existing online marketing solution is that they will want to protect their own client list and maybe reluctant to pass on your guests email to you, although you will most certainly receive the guests' phone numbers. This is slowly changing and you will now find that most will have a way for you to contact your clients by email even after they have finished their stay.

Similarly when you make a booking of your own and you relay it to the marketing company, don't feel that you need to give them any guest contact details unless you have an agreement that they will deal with any issues arising with your guests during their stay.

I will deal more specifically with that in another post.