Renting out your home as a holiday let

[SausageAndEggSandwich]

Anyone done this?

Me and DH work in education & are often away over school holidays. We live in a seaside town in the south west. Just wondering if renting our house out might bring in a few quid. Or if the process of getting the house ready, storing belongings and cleaning or organising management of it is too much faff to be worth the bother.

It's a brand new build, not quirky or unusual in any way but quite spacious, with parking etc. 3 miles from the sea, very close to lovely walks. 3 double bedrooms.

Sounds like a brilliant idea - If I was you I'd test it. Set up the listing on airbnb, don't allow instant book, but then see if anyone gets in touch.What will you do with personal belongings? I think it's personally much nicer staying in a home than a business type holiday let. It's what ABB started out as and it feels much nicer.

Some Airbnb's can have guests who break stuff, are messy, and just generally impact the house.

You wouldn't want grandma's silver broken - but what about furniture (kids bouncing on beds etc?)

I have stayed in houses that were clearly a family home and it's a very different vibe - houses set up for letting have easily replaceable cutlery/crockery sets etc etc.

My friend does this. Huge amount of work getting it ready - she has a downstairs room she locks that she puts all their stuff in she doesn't want to bring with her (she goes to a rental in another area). It's worth of for her -she can get in a week what she pays a month for her other place. Mind you after three years she's told her husband 'never again'.

We rented holiday property in the SW. only to discover the owners in a huge chalet in the garden. To be fair it was an enormous garden and the chalet was clearly separate as it had mature hedging around it in an adjoining garden. But it was strange to be living in somebody's home whilst they were close by.

We paid £3,000 for that week and it was fully booked the entire summer season.

I too would be living in a chalet in the garden for that extra income. That's a boost of £36,000!

Check the new fire regulations. They are quite draconian for short term holiday lets.

I have rented out my central London flat on airbnb a few times (& also done home swaps) used the earnings to fund a holiday. The prep for renting out is a LOT of work. It would be easier if we had loft/outbuilding to store items in but we don't so it's a case of cramming lots of cupboards. We haven't cleared out every drawer but did obviously need to leave space for guests to put their things as well as hide anything we wanted out if reach. Only one guest damaged items and they paid for it without a quibble. Our guests reviews have been all great. The listing made it clear it was our main home so they all knew this in advance. It has some advantages e.g. lots of good kitchen equipment. I think it really suited one of them in particular who stayed while she was working round the corner. Anyway I'm using the past tense as the lead up work is so intense - takes days - and due to that my husband and I aren't sure we will do it again any time soon. We have unlisted our property on airbnb for the time being. It prob would be worth it for a long (4 week trip) time but not sure the hassle is worth it for a fortnight here or there. We may however do a home swap this summer if we find the right match - the prep bar for this is lower and the risk also a bit lower as both staying in each others homes.

Following as considering the same but not sure about where to put stuff. We have a very cluttered house!
I was thinking about trusted homesitters instead. I know I won't earn any money but the people will hopefully feed the cat. We've had some cheeky replies though. I think if you're getting free accommodation, electricity, water, Wi-Fi etc you shouldn't be asking whether you would be paid or whether there's a drive etc.

I don’t think asking if there’s a drive is too unreasonable - they won’t know the area and might just be worried about parking issues.

@AnonyLonnymouse I can't quite describe it, it's the tone. I think people have lost sight of the cost of housing/ electricity etc and seem like they're doing you a massive favour to stay in your house for free for a month.

I have two kids at uni and have recently cleared their rooms of personal stuff to host a couple of foreign students on exchange for two weeks.

(My kids stuff went in the junk room).
Honestly, it took me a couple of days, and that was without me clearing any shared areas and being there to make sure they didn't damage anything.

I will probably do it again but not until my kids have finished uni and moved out permanently.

Have you tried registering with a letting agency?

We have a holiday home in the South West that we initially purchased as a BTL rental but we realised after a couple of years that we could get a bigger return on the HH market.
When we first purchased the property in 2013 we rented it out at £850 PCM giving us a gross return of £10.2k.
It now lets out at approx £1200 per week as a Holiday Home in peak weeks - £700 in off peak.
There’s a lot more involvement as a HH - we employ a cleaner /caretaker who manages the change overs. You have to get a specialist mortgage and insurance to be able to do this.
We are certainly making a decent profit from this and it is giving us the opportunity to save so that we can afford to retire early.

We are registered with Travel Chapter / holidaycottages.co.uk - they have over 15k properties on their books and we seem to find that every year we are pretty much fully booked.

A whole raft of new fire regs have come in regarding short term/holiday lets - you need to do a thorough fire assessment, install fire doors if current bedroom doors aren't thick enough, provide smoke detectors in all bedrooms, assess escape routes, ensure exit doors can be opened without a key, etc, etc. Speaking as someone who knows far more than she ever wanted to about thumb turn locks, I'd say it's a bit of a (expensive) minefield.

I was going to say exactly this. I have a large, modern holiday let and it's cost ££££ to make it compliant. It was fully compliant before but the new regulations are far more onerous. And the regulations for large lets aren't being published until the new year, so I may well need to do more. This legislation applies even if you only rent out the house for a week.

Well worth looking at the PASC UK website where you will find lots of information. Returns are good, but you do need to do the work and investment - guests aren't going to thank you for old bed linen and a furred up kettle.

I work in this industry. Check the new fire regulations closely. Also from April 2025, statutory registration will be law so you will have to have comply with the new fire regs, have PAT tests done etc. It's going to put a lot of casual owners off jumping through all the hoops needed.

Crikey!

Some good info here thank you all for responding.

We don't have a mortgage but will have to consider insurance & where we would put personal belongings - we don't have a loft or a garage but we do have a study, so could possibly get a lock installed & extra storage put in.

Will have to consider fire regs carefully - the front door is a thumb turn lock at least 🤣