Anyone rented their home as a holiday let?

[32143]

Looking at options for our place in Scarborough as we seem to be away more often than home. Garden apartment 500m from South bay beach. If we are unable to sell it this year.
Our lease specifically allows us to do holiday lets and the way we have changed the layout we have a large room which could be locked off from the main property. This room also has a separate entrance from the rear garden, whilst still allowing the main apartment access to the garden.
Our thoughts are to make this room our main bedroom and put all our personal stuff in here, it's big enough to be a studio apartment, the plumbing for a bathroom is there. Then after making a few adjustments to the main apartment put it up for holiday rental with certain weeks or months blocked out for our use.
In the event of having to return home and it's let, we could stay in the annex area.
Has anyone ever done anything like this? Or does anyone know if it is possible to let out only part of a home as holiday lets?
As I don't yet get any pension I was hoping I could create a company and take any earnings after expenses as my income. Nige already receives an army pension which he pays tax on.

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

Lin

 

[DBK]

I suggest talk to a local holiday letting company to see if there would be demand for your house. If you go ahead they will be able to arrange the change overs, sort out emergencies with plumbing and hopefully find tenants for you. Insurance will cost more and you may have to change things like sofas if they don't have the right fire certificate.

However, it can be done, I've spoken to someone in the Lake District who lets their house out 8 months a year.

Of course it has to be the right house in the right place if you want high occupancy.

 

[Judge Mental]

sounds like a plan

we are thinking of this in the future as we could live very well on the income from our London home....

Garage and hard stand for camper at end of garden (access by road at back) is fenced off, just would need to add gate. but not sure how this would go down with renters or how you would split the elec bill

 

[32143]

I suggest talk to a local holiday letting company to see if there would be demand for your house. If you go ahead they will be able to arrange the change overs, sort out emergencies with plumbing and hopefully find tenants for you. Insurance will cost more and you may have to change things like sofas if they don't have the right fire certificate.

However, it can be done, I've spoken to someone in the Lake District who let's their house out 8 months a year.

Of course it has to be the right house in the right place if you want high occupancy.

Yes will look at finding a company when we return to UK. Hopefully it will be suitable, A chap on the top floor lets his as holiday rental permanently, never actually met him though, will try contacting him through the rental site he uses, always seems to have people in

 

[John & Joan]

Could affect your insurance status, although your plan to divide may get around this.

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[Barclaybasher]

Our thoughts are to make this room our main bedroom and put all our personal stuff in here,

Knew someone with a holiday let who locked away their possessions thinking they would be safe - a 'tenant' broke the door down and sold everything......................knowing the owner was away made the theft that much easier and longer to detect..

 

[Jac Sprat]

Jeez! Awful story

 

[Mousy]

ive sent you a pm.

 

[DavidG58]

We have a holiday let, a separate building in our own garden so slightly different, we use Sykes Cottages who are excellent, not sure if your property would fall under their norm or not

Problems for us are changeover days, you typically only get 5 hours from person leaving to new coming in, not a lot of time to bed change and clean right through

Also would you easily be able to separate electrics and gas, in winter our gas bill is horrendous for the holiday let (bottled gas) we don't separate the electrics and the let price includes both, but we don't make much profit in winter at all

As for tax, you don't need a company, your tax return actually has a box in it for property rental income, you can deduct any expenses from income and simply declare the net profit for tax purposes, year one should be very low as you can include set up costs

PM me for more detail if you think I can help, good luck with it


David

 

[DavidG58]

ive sent you a pm.

that's probably what I should have done

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[Cobweb]

We have had a couple of holiday lets over the years in Whitby which we managed ourselves but signed up with a rental company to get bookings . It was a flexible arrangement and we were allowed to have some weeks for our family and friends . The bookings were very good
since the property was directly on the harbour side. We had a few conditions such as adults only and non smoking and no pets which turned out to be a good thing . We did not have any really bad experiences propably due to the fact that everyone knew we were just a few doors away . I did inspect the property after the cleaner just to make sure that everything was like I would like if I was renting the property since I am really fussy ! I do believe that there are some letting agents now who can arrange everything for you including cleaning as well as maintenance for a fee. We have now sold the properties since we spend so much time away and do not want the responsibility and worry in case something goes wrong while we are on the other side of the Atlantic .

 

[32143]

W

Knew someone with a holiday let who locked away their possessions thinking they would be safe - a 'tenant' broke the door down and sold everything......................knowing the owner was away made the theft that much easier and longer to detect..

Wow awful, hopefully we would be ok, the annex from the outside could just be a storage cupboard, (cleaners stuff) with the blinds down impossible to tell it runs the length of the building. The internal access door we intend to make a false wall in front of it, its a deep recess as it the original exterior wall of the building, and either put a bookcase or the fridge freezer in the recess, you would never really know it was a doorway to anywhere.

Lin

 

[32143]

We have a holiday let, a separate building in our own garden so slightly different, we use Sykes Cottages who are excellent, not sure if your property would fall under their norm or not

Problems for us are changeover days, you typically only get 5 hours from person leaving to new coming in, not a lot of time to bed change and clean right through

Also would you easily be able to separate electrics and gas, in winter our gas bill is horrendous for the holiday let (bottled gas) we don't separate the electrics and the let price includes both, but we don't make much profit in winter at all

As for tax, you don't need a company, your tax return actually has a box in it for property rental income, you can deduct any expenses from income and simply declare the net profit for tax purposes, year one should be very low as you can include set up costs

PM me for more detail if you think I can help, good luck with it


David

Thanks for the info, especially about tax, sounds easier then I thought. going to be busy when we get back doing research.

Lin

 

[32143]

We have had a couple of holiday lets over the years in Whitby which we managed ourselves but signed up with a rental company to get bookings . It was a flexible arrangement and we were allowed to have some weeks for our family and friends . The bookings were very good
since the property was directly on the harbour side. We had a few conditions such as adults only and non smoking and no pets which turned out to be a good thing . We did not have any really bad experiences propably due to the fact that everyone knew we were just a few doors away . I did inspect the property after the cleaner just to make sure that everything was like I would like if I was renting the property since I am really fussy ! I do believe that there are some letting agents now who can arrange everything for you including cleaning as well as maintenance for a fee. We have now sold the properties since we spend so much time away and do not want the responsibility and worry in case something goes wrong while we are on the other side of the Atlantic .

Whitby is lovely. We looked at buying there before we bought in Scarborough, couldn't find anywhere close to the harbour with any outside space for the dogs though.
Our neighbours in the main building are all great, so there will be people to keep an eye out for us a well.

Lin

 

[32143]

Could affect your insurance status, although your plan to divide may get around this.

yes good point will check, hopefully would be able to have separate policy for the rental side and our storage area.

Lin

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[Minxy]

If everything works fine that's great, but unfortuntely it can also be a pain in the bum! Find out how easy it would be to let, how it would be managed, cleaned, keys handed over, repairs done etc and decide if it's for you. We have a bungalow which we rent out in Scunthorpe (not a holiday let) and in the past we've had loads of problems, mainly from the letting agents rather than the tenants though but if we knew when we first went down this road the aggro/hassle we'd have we wouldn't have done it!

 

[32143]

Yes, will give it a lot of thought before we do anything. Ideal situation is we sell it this year.
If it doesn't sell though would need to look at a way of covering it's costs, we have to pay maintenance charges and council tax even when away. Will look for maybe a fully managed service, as it's a holiday town, should get some interest, guy on top floor seems to always have people in and we have a bigger place and a garden.
We would need to make a few alterations first, we are thinking of doing for ourselves anyway if it doesn't sell. Stuff like taking out the huge boiler and replacing it with an ariston water heater, swapping the shower to an electric one, as it feeds direct from the boiler at moment which although a fantastic shower wastes way too much water. This would allow us to put an electric shower in the annex and another ariston water heater. I know not everyone would like this set up but we did it at our property in Harrogate and it saved us a fortune, we don't have a bath so no use at all for a large boiler.
We have no gas to the building, so would need to look at a way of change the heating, we hardly use it but it would add up if guests left it on all the time.

Anyone got any tips on a way of restricting access to electric heaters whilst keeping a reasonable temperature?
Holiday lets we have used with gas have been unaccessable other than an external boost button which we could push if we felt cold. Not sue I there is an electric equivalent?

Thanks again for all your comment guys

Lin

 

[Cobweb]

Hi . Some holiday lets we have stayed in ask for a deposit and if you use more electricity than usual it is deducted from the deposit . This of course means that the meter is read at the time of departure . I personally would hate to be cold and would quite happily pay extra to use heating anytime I need it . Maybe it would be an idea just to adjust the price of rental to allow this . You are lucky not to have gas because an annual Landlords certificate is needed if you do ....not too sure about electric best to check that out . Your insurance will need public liability and unless your soft furniture is is very old I am sure it will comply with the fire regs. We had to change the sofas in our holiday let about 11 years ago because of it .

 

[MattR]

I would get in touch with agents and identify how let-able it is, how much income you could reasonably expect to clear and confirm when the demand is greatest before doing any work. You may find that you could rent it out for 20 weeks from Easter onward without making any changes to the heating etc. The demand over winter might not cover your costs / effort.

 

[32143]

Yes all good points, some of the changes we are doing anyway as we have a water meter, the developer put in a huge boiler despite us having the bath changed to a walk in shower and assured it was only a small one, it isn't so an electric shower would be better for us as well. The amount of times the hot water has run out mid shower is unbelievable considering how big the tank is, the shower used a lot of water though almost like a tap on full blast!
All furniture is no older than two years from ikea so I know it is fire suitable, however I also know I pulled off all those annoying bits of card that said so as they were right where you could see them! Hopefully the receipts to show when purchased will be enough.

Lin

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[MattR]

Can you turn the water volume down on your pipe work? I would expect a service valve or similar would help reduce water consumption.

I may be wrong but I am not sure that receipts are sufficient - I think that the labels are required.

 

[32143]

Can you turn the water volume down on your pipe work? I would expect a service valve or similar would help reduce water consumption.

I may be wrong but I am not sure that receipts are sufficient - I think that the labels are required.

The shower settings, can control it, we only use on half now which is easily powerful enough, but I'm guessing guests would just turn on fully.
Will have to check the sofas when we get home, it was only card ones I removed, they were pinned to the cushions and visible, there maybe proper ones underneath.

 

[MattR]

The shower settings, can control it, we only use on half now which is easily powerful enough, but I'm guessing guests would just turn on fully.
Will have to check the sofas when we get home, it was only card ones I removed, they were pinned to the cushions and visible, there maybe proper ones underneath.

You may find that you can turn down the water pressure by turning the service valve as the hot pipe exits the tank.

Does your lease allow you to subdivide your apartment? You may have to pay two lots of Council tax if your annex gets its own facilities to make it self-sufficient.

 

[9526]

With regards to fire safety, I would advise the OP to read the booklet "do you have paying guests?"

It's a free download and really straight forward to understand, holiday lets are covered by the 2005 Fire Safety Order and you will need to carry out a Fire Risk Assessment.

If you need any further info on this legislation send me a PM.

 

[32143]

You may find that you can turn down the water pressure by turning the service valve as the hot pipe exits the tank.

Does your lease allow you to subdivide your apartment? You may have to pay two lots of Council tax if your annex gets its own facilities to make it self-sufficient.

It won't be self sufficient as such just a bedroom which is locked off from the rest of the apartment, its just the way our apartment is built most of it is within the original old building footprint, but because we are the garden flat an extension was added at some point, years ago before we bought it. We have the plumbing there for a bathroom at one end. At moment the room which is very long and is divided in two by wardrobes,one side is our guest room, huge easily able to divide for a bathroom, other side is a bar, so would be basically the same, with a microwave in the bar end, we also have one of those mini cooker things which could stand on the bar, same as we do if having parties. I don't envisage actually having to use it if guests in main part other than an emergency or problem with motorhome. And in that event would have to cancel any future bookings.
I think even if we weren't planning on using it to store our stuff, wouldn't have it available, would prefer just couples, not groups of friends as Scarborough does attract a lot of hen and stag parties. We've often rented holiday accommodation, where bedrooms were locked off in bigger properties as we are a couple, presumably to stop you swapping around and creating more cleaning.

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[32143]

T

With regards to fire safety, I would advise the OP to read the booklet "do you have paying guests?"

It's a free download and really straight forward to understand, holiday lets are covered by the 2005 Fire Safety Order and you will need to carry out a Fire Risk Assessment.

If you need any further info on this legislation send me a PM.

Thanks will take a look, the building was completely gutted and converted, three years ago so we have a very up to date fire alarm and emergency lighting system, too good sometimes, it never gets dark in the hall the emergency lighting gives off a horrible green glow.