Letting a home is an excellent way to make income, and has become a growing economic phenomenon in recent years. As of 2021, Airbnb has more than 4 million hosts and those numbers continue to grow thanks to the staycation boom.
If you've been considering jumping into the holiday let rental business, now is a great time to start! Here are some key things to keep in mind when you plan on short letting your holiday home:
Managing Your Holiday Home
Renting a home through Airbnb or similar sites can be challenging, especially if you're new to the short let business. There are a lot of factors to consider, and it takes a lot of work to figure out the ropes!
A good place to start is to look at hosting with Airbnb to see the steps necessary to lease your home through them. Once you find out what you need to do, you can begin preparing your home for short letting.
Managing a holiday home involves a lot of organisation, management and free time. Figuring out your rental price, deep cleaning, making your holiday home rental worthy, and finding suitable guests are just some of the steps involved! It can be worth it, but there is a lot of work involved.
Thankfully, if you decide you need help, you don't have to do it all alone! You can hire a company like Pass the Keys® to help manage your holiday home and get your business off the ground. It's a great way to grow your business quickly and tackle your weak spots, and customers are often thrilled with the results!
Location and Distance
If you decide not to hire a holiday let management agency, you'll have to take care of these issues yourself, including cleaning in between guests and maintaining the property. Needless to say, this can be more difficult if you're far from your potential holiday home or have multiple rentals to manage.
When planning to short let your holiday home, figure out how far you'll have to travel to maintain the property or fix any emergency problems that arise. Is your holiday home in the same county as your own home, or is it 50+ miles away?
If you're going to have to travel long distances to manage your holiday home, you may have to cut down on the number of properties you short-let. A good tip is to rent your property during the week, and travel to clean things up at the weekend.
On the other hand, if you're in the same area or you have a holiday let agency managing your rental, you can probably up your rental frequency. This will help you increase your income as well!
Guests
Let's face it: as much as you'd like to hope, your guests aren't always going to be perfect. You're going to have to factor this in when planning to rent your holiday home.
Whilst Airbnb hosting has allowed countless people to make a steady income and start successful short-let businesses, the nature of the business makes it impossible to control the people who enter your property. You may have months or years in a row with great guests, but sooner or later, someone undesirable will book your holiday home.
How you deal with these situations when they arise is key to the success of your short let business. It's important to start making plans now while you're still setting up your business, so you have a good strategy in place if any nasty guest business happens.
A good way to reduce your chances of hosting unpleasant guests is to screen potential guests. But how can you do that? What are your options for screening through guests and their renting histories?
Whilst major short letting platforms like Airbnb offer basic guest screening, a holiday cottage management company will set your mind truly at ease regarding guests. With their own guest screening services, as well as accidental damage insurance, you can feel confident with your rental choices if you lease to guests through a third-party manager.
Costs and Income
There are a wide variety of costs to consider when you're trying to get your rental business off the ground. If your holiday home needs sprucing up or repairing to make it guest-worthy, that will definitely factor into your upfront costs, but there are other expenses to consider too.
Airbnb charges fees for using their company, and you will also lose some portion of your income to credit card processing fees, local and national taxes, and business licensing. There's not really a way around most of these costs, and they will eat into your earnings!
Additionally, you'll need to pay for things like standard cleaning, repairs, utilities, and of course, the cost of actually owning your property. If you clean your holiday home yourself rather than hiring a service, you can cut down on some of these costs, but it is an extremely time-consuming task.
You can hire a holiday let company to handle many of the extra issues like cleaning, repairs, and guest management, freeing up your time and allowing you to add more properties to your portfolio. They will charge for this management service, of course, so you'll have to weigh how much your time and peace of mind is worth to you and your business!
Additionally, you are free to choose whatever rental price you want to set, but there is a science to maximising your profit without scaring off potential renters. Expert short let companies like Pass the Keys® are armed with an in-depth knowledge of the rental market and are able to guide you to the rental prices that will maximise your profits.
Learn More
This is an overview of some of the factors involved in renting a holiday home through a short letting platform, but there's a lot more to learn and consider! Whether you're planning to rent one home for the first time, or you're looking to expand your rentals into a big business, it's important to keep your ears to the ground!
If you are interested in short letting your holiday home, we'd love to help! If you're interested in hiring us to manage your property, or you just want to ask more questions about our holiday let management, contact us or check out our FAQ's! We're here to answer any questions you might have.
Happy Hosting!