Buy to let to Holiday let

[Happyhetty]

Evening all, please be gentle as I don’t post often!
We currently have a 4 bed house that we bought to let 12 years ago, it’s owned outright and we’ve had 4 tenants in that time. Our current tenants have given notice and are due to move out soon. We are seriously considering selling this property (we will make around £70k on it) and buying a holiday house (proper home on a leisure park not a lodge/caravan) that we could use ourselves and obviously let out via the travel agent who runs it.

We’ve been doing our research and the property has amazing reviews on trip advisor, the annual site fees are reasonable and their letting fees appear to be fairly reasonable but we have nothing to compare it to.

We are obviously worried that going from a secure(ish) monthly rental income to a holiday let income might be risky (not counting the current situation as we will will always have a years funds in the bank that we could spread out if needed).
We are trying to weigh up the pros and cons; it would be great for us to just escape to as and when it’s empty etc but is the income from a holiday let viable-can someone give me some insight-maybe you have a holiday let etc?

Btw we are looking at a luxury 4 bed house type thing on a very well maintained park rather than a residential property.
Thanks in advance!

Holiday lets are a huge amount of maintenance.
You need cleaners in between each let. You need to maintain things like sheets and duvets and towels to high standards, as well as replacing breakages or where things have spilled or been damaged.

I can't visualise a '4 bed house type thing on a well maintained park' but I know - apart from the annual fees - there are issues on many holiday parks where the site owners try to dictate quite a lot about the appearance of the homes. So with mobile homes that have to update them more often than owners might like. Not sure how this impacts on a house as haven't come across this arrangement.

Plus - I presume you have worked through the fact that most people want to holiday in the same few weeks or months, and you will have many months of it not being let.

Think very carefully about this. A holiday park might sound a good idea but speaking from personal experience not your best idea. As has already been said you have to take into consideration all the cleaning and general maintenance. I don't want to sound a dismal desmond but have seen some awful sights of homes being treated without care and attention. I am puzzled as to how you can buy a house on a holiday park, is it brick built or just an up-market mobile home? If the latter definitely would not consider it.

I would advise against the holiday home route. My cousin has holiday property in a very popular town and they were regularly damaged by inconsiderate guests. Last year was awful. She had to spend thousands getting the houses fit for rental. She now has long term tenants - less income but also less hassle.