Airbnb at home - anyone advise?

[Twoshoesnewshoes]

Morning
im still looking at ways to invest now for a retirement income, with a better return than a pension.

I was considering buy to let, but we also returned to a previous idea of upsizing to somewhere with an annexe or similar and then renting this out as holiday space.

I think this would give us flexibility- we don’t need a big house now, but we have three adult DCs and would like to accommodate them when they visit.

any experience, comments, ideas?

thanks!

This is exactly what I did. We bought a bigger house with a ready made annexe ( although we looked at places where we could convert part of the house to an annexe too)

It has been brilliant I have to say! Beyond what we expected. Location is key if you want a good income, do plenty of research in the area you are looking at. At the moment the market is saturated as during lockdown lots of people had the idea to start holiday lets, our winter bookings are 20% down on the last four years.

Two things to watch out for are -

If you need a mortgage it can be difficult. You would probably need to use a specialist broker as the property will be part commercial.

You need to check the original.planning permission for the annexe. Don't wait for the conveyancing process to look at it, do it yourself. It mustn't exclude holiday letting ( some planning does)

That’s so helpful, thank you! And interesting about market saturation. We live in a national park so I’m hopeful it will be popular, - also would be a retirement income so doesn’t need to be a full income- more of a top up I guess.
I’ll have a look at our mortgage stuff too.
thanks!