My aunt has a holiday cottage which she very kindly rented to us last summer at a nominal charge, it has never been a rental business to her it has been for family use. This year she decided to refurbish the cottage and spent a great deal of money on it. We discussed the possibility of our family using it again and she offered us the same 2 weeks and said that actually she and her OH would come down and spend the last few days there with us. She never said she intended to turn it into a rental business and the indication was she continued to keep it mainly for use of her family and occasionally extended family like ourselves.
We are now due go on holiday this week and I saw her at the weekend and I asked her to let me know how much I would owe her for cleaning, laundry and covering running costs, she told me that they have decided family should pay 50% of the rental value for the property, she said she felt very awkward as obviously we were using it at the peak time so was very expensive so perhaps she would charge us a bit less, but that we should have a think about what we would pay her and let her know.
I know she is being very generous letting us use her cottage, she is totally within her rights to expect payment for this and even 50% of the rental value is very reasonable but the cottage would rent for £1,750 a week in the school holidays and she has essentially told us this 3 days before our holiday, so 50% of the two weeks is £1,750 not exactly the kind of cash you have floating around and in any event if we had know we were going to have to pay this we would probably have rethought what we did as a holiday. In the end I agreed a 60% discount and will pay her in two chunks but feel really awkward and embarrassed about the whole thing.
AIBU to think that she should have told us this at the outset when we discussed using the cottage, not 3 days before our holiday and she should set out a clear price and not tell us to come up with a price ourselves.