Holiday home rental

[babyOcho]

Is anyone lucky enough to have a second home/holiday home in the UK that they rent out?

Is it anywhere close to you? Do you use an agency for the handover? Anywhere I can get more info?

TIA

We rent a chalet out in south Wales and live in London. I handle the bookings - we use Daltons (about £140 per year), VivaStreet (which is free) and Iknow.com to advertise it. We also advertised on the Welsh Tourist Board website this year and the local tourist website but I have to say both were a waste of time and produced absolutely no bookings, as well as being very expensive.

We put an ad in a couple of newsagents in the locality and found a lady who, for the past three years, has given the keys to guests, deals with any issues during their stay, checks the chalet after they've left, and cleans it. This year we're installing a locked box with a keypad on it which will hold the keys and be located by the front door. Each guest will have a different number to punch in to open it and get the keys. Our neighbours there have it and it works well. We'll still use our regular person to check and clean etc.

We used an agency in the past but dumped them for several reasons - they were charging upwards of 22% of the rent as their fee, their cleaning was appalling, and they put whoever they could find in it ie stag parties etc, which were not the type of people we want to rent it too. The chalet's on a very family-oriented chalet park and that's the market we're aiming at. Last year we could have rented August out ten times over, and most of July was booked, but other months can be a bit hit and miss. HTH.