Getting Started
When deciding on whether your property is suitable for holiday rentals, you'll want to consider:
- Legal obligations & tax laws
- Insurance for your property
- Property management
- Promotion of your holiday home
- Financial implications
Below are more specific details about these considerations with links to our partners that may be able to help you:
Legal Obligations
Finding out the laws for letting property in the country you have bought or are planning to buy in should be your first step if you're going to try to earn an income from your holiday home. There may be legal obligations and tax laws that you are unaware of so make sure you speak to your lawyer or solicitor and tell them that you intend to let out your property. If you are buying a property on a complex or a resort then there may be certain restrictions or obligations that you need to adhere to. In this case, make sure you speak to the property management company or the person in charge of the resort community.
Insurance
You will need to make sure your home has the relevant insurance for your guests as well as buildings and contents. Getting insurance with a holiday home specialist could save you a lot of time and stress in the long run. To learn more about insuring your holiday home visit the Rightmove Overseas Insurance Zone.
Property Management
One thing that's important for you to decide is whether you want to use a property management company to look after your holiday home or not. There are many benefits of using a property management company, such as holding the keys, cleaning the property, repairs, finding holiday maker tenants or help with insurance. Whilst this provides a great service for you, you may want to think about how much of this you can do yourself to save on costs. A good tactic is to speak to as many of the locals and neighbours as possible to find out if there someone you could trust to leave the keys with, or who the best local cleaning company is etc.
Promotion
There are many ways to promote your holiday home to potential holiday makers including:
- Holiday rentals websites
- Expat websites
- Local letting agents
- Social media
- Friends & family
- Referrals from previous tenants
If you are working with a property management company or letting agent then they may be able to do a lot of this promotion for you, or you may want to try a mixture of both theirs and your marketing methods to get the most exposure possible for your holiday home.
Financial Implications
If you've been careful and taken into account all of the above then you will be in a good place to start doing the maths and work out what level of occupancy you will need for your property to become a good income generator. It may be useful to set yourself a target income from your home that you can work towards so you have an idea of how much work you will need to do yourself and what you can use third party providers for. Lastly, make sure you're not cutting your time in the property too much in order to make the numbers work, because after all it is your holiday home.