Holiday renting , good idea or not ?

Thanks Pete, will look into that , don’t really know if it’s worth it . But we will see 🙄

Hi Karol

Having had a successful rental property for over ten years (and paid tax on it even before we had to register, so always been legal) I would say it isn't something to take lightly.  To do properly takes a fair amount of setting up, but once you have your advertising and your system in place it becomes much easier. It's almost inevitable that you will need to add some extra equipment in the house in accordance with the registration regulations.

Registration has already been mentioned.  You need insurance - public liability and rental insurance (we use a Schofield's policy).  You need at least double for all linen, towels, bed covers etc.  The place needs to be completely kitted out so all the renters needs to do is bring their personal items.  Air con and wifi are pretty much essential these days, and access to a pool.  I think most owners supply a basic 'welcome pack' of essentials too (tea/coffee/milk etc).  The best advertising costs, but there are free/cheap options too.  The best site for us used to be Owners Direct but they like to take on too much control for my liking so we mainly use Spain-Holiday.com now as that way we handle everything ourselves and have direct contact with the renter.

You will need to have a booking form and a contract, but there are pro-former ones you can adapt available to copy on most advertising sites now.  Before the holiday you need to supply information on the property, contact numbers etc.  Decide what deposit you want and how many weeks before the holiday the guest pays the rest.  You also need a cancellation policy.  We have a policy of no groups where everyone is under 25 years of age, (so no stag/hen or student groups).  Our target market is multi-generation families (grandparents, parents and children) but we have other family groups too.

You also need to enter the details of your guests onto the Guardia Civil web site - once registered you can register and get log-in details at the police station.

Good keyholders are essential.  Make sure they too are legal.  They need to meet and greet guests and see them out, do the cleaning and prep the house.  The guest pay the keyholders for the cleaning.  Ours also checks the house over when empty and waters the plants.  Airport transfers are also offered by our keyholders, again the guest pays for these directly.

Lock anything personal away in cupboards but still leave enough storage facilities for the guests. Expect breakages because accidents happen and tiled floors are very unforgiving when a glass, plate or mug lands on them!  Walls will get marked and soft furnishings will get dirty - but that it par for the course.

Having said all that, we still rent out our house for over half the year, so it is worth it!

Bev

Hi Bev, thank you for all your advice, It seems the same as Turkey, I had a place there for 10yrs and was fully booked all the time, same sort of rules but we had to register every day who was there. And my insurance did all that you said for public liability ect. It’s just getting trustworthy key holders that bothers me, that was always our biggest problem that’s one of the reasons I sold in the end so don’t want that to happen again, I will ask around when I’m over, and once again thank you for getting back to me 👍

We have just changed keyholders and very happy with the ones, www.torreclean.com

So important to get the right people.

Bev