Property Letting Guide

 
 
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We have put together a crib sheet of the most common questions and concerns we hear from new owners.

Our holiday property letting guide will give you a flavour of what to expect from holiday letting.

Choosing the right agent to work with you is especially important when holiday letting your second home. It is vital to find a team that you are confident will work together with you and your guests to ensure that everything goes smoothly from initial enquiry through to checking out at the end of each stay. Equally important, is the ability for your agent to ensure that any little niggles that might occur whilst guests are staying are dealt with in a professional, friendly and prompt manner.

That is why, regardless of whether you are new to holiday letting or have been welcoming guests for several seasons, the whole team at Big Skies Holiday Cottages are on hand to offer a degree of personal service that we feel is second to none.

We do things differently at Big Skies, drawing on years of experience of the Norfolk holiday letting market and marketing Norfolk Cottages to guests, we are here to act as your local agent when that local presence and knowledge is paramount and also to ensure that your property has the best possible exposure across all the major booking platforms to ensure that you achieve the level of bookings that you desire.

You are likely to have many questions and whilst we can discuss everything when we chat together in person, here are a few of the common questions from owners, answered in brief.

This is a question we get asked all the time and of course there are no absolute guarantees but overall guests who come to visit the North Norfolk coastline are extremely well-behaved.

Your home will of course experience the normal wear and tear associated with having people living in it and you can expect the odd glass or plate to be a casualty of clumsiness along the way.

Where accidents outside of the realms of normal wear & tear occur and things are damaged, we can help with replacements or repairs where necessary, using either the damage waiver fund (more on this later) or the damage deposit; both paid by guests.

My best advice to new owners thinking of holiday letting is that if you have items in your home that have significant sentimental or financial value and you would worry about leaving them, then take them away ahead of hosting paying guests in your cottage.

Absolutely not. It is your home and you are welcome to come and stay as much or as little as you wish. At Big Skies we place no restrictions on owner bookings, we will ask that you let us know when you are coming so that we can block your calendar for you.

We can absolutely help you to find the right housekeeping solution. We can introduce you to housekeepers and laundry services if required and once you have chosen the person / company that you are comfortable with, we will keep in contact with them directly to let them know when guests are arriving, any special requests they might need to be aware of and can be their first port of call throughout the season (if this is what you would like).

All of this is part of our service and does not entail any additional cost to you.

You will be responsible for paying your housekeeper, however, if this doesn’t work for you, we can manage paying their invoices through your account with us. Since the invoices will be addressed to you, this can be a disbursement on our part and therefore will not attract any additional charges or VAT (unless your housekeeping company is VAT registered of course).

Managing changeovers in this fashion, is more cost effective than having to pay the ongoing management charges levied by many other agencies.

We have lots of excellent local trades and maintenance people that we work closely with and can happily recommend companies to help you with any maintenance that may need undertaking at your property.

If required, we can book work in and even manage the payment of invoices for you through your account as a disbursement.

Again, at no extra charge.

We have an excellent pedigree in producing stylish and compelling marketing for properties both for sale and for holiday letting. A great deal of time and effort goes into creating the listing for each property.

We use excellent professional photographers and will dress your property for photograph day. We also produce a detailed write up and floor plan for each property and uniquely amongst agents, a walk-through video to help guests orientate their way around your property which encourages them to have confidence to make a booking.

Your property will be listed on the Big Skies Holiday Cottages website where prospective can make a booking online 24 hours a day. During working hours, the Big Skies team are available on the phone, by email or online via Live Chat to answer any enquiries that guests may have.

Alongside our own website, your property will also be listed on major booking platforms, like Airbnb and TripAdvisor and we will manage the listing, enquiries and bookings at no extra charge to you.

Where a guest contacts us directly with an enquiry, we can work with them to ensure that the cottage they choose is right for them (and they are right for the property). Where a guest books directly online (which is more often), this is a little harder.

We do have procedures in place to help ensure the suitability of guests, occupancy is strictly restricted to the correct number of guests, and we ask for details for each of the guests coming to stay and we do not process the payments for any bookings until we have checked these over.

Guests are also provided with a comprehensive set of Booking Conditions which sets out what is expected of them during their stay.

Of course, there are no guarantees, but we certainly undertake to be as thorough as possible to ensure you have the right guests for your property.

We have a handy list setting out the sorts of things that it is useful to have in your cottage for guests. It is not a requirement to have everything on the list but it is a very useful crib sheet.

We do recommend that you equip your property with a few things, like a travel cot and high chair for example for guests who are travelling with babies; although if you prefer not to, as long as we know and we can let guests know in advance that works too.

You will need to have two full sets of linen and towels for your cottage, so that one set can be being laundered whilst the other is on the bed. However, there are even options around this too and some local housekeeping companies or laundries offer a linen hire service.

Even if you have a dog of your own, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to welcome dogs with your guests.

Our experience is that dog owners take great care when they bring their pets on holiday and are happy to follow house rules like ‘no dogs on furniture’ or ‘no dogs upstairs’.
You can charge extra for four-legged family members if you wish and limit the number of dogs allowed. Norfolk is an extremely dog-friendly area, so if you are dog-friendly too, this is a positive thing.

Equally of course many people prefer to stay in a property that does not allow dogs, so to be honest, it really is entirely up to you.

Keeping guests safe during their stay is obviously important and there are a few things that you will need to do to ensure this. View our guide on Health & Safety for holiday lets.

Many insurers will include or add holiday letting to your existing policy, so your first port of call will be to get in touch with them.
If they will not cover holiday letting there are a number of insurers who specialise in holiday letting, for more details please just ask one of the team at Big Skies.

We charge a commission fee out of each booking that we take for you. This fee is a percentage of the total rent paid by the guest.

You are paid monthly in arrears, so for example, for all bookings that take place in April, you will be paid in full at the beginning of May.

Any disbursements or deductions levied on your account in April will also be reconciled in May with your statement.

Your monthly payments are made by BACS into a bank account of your choice.

Naturally it is more straightforward if all of your bookings are being generated in one place but we completely understand if you have your own website or like to manage your own channel account (Airbnb, for example).

With a little straightforward organising we can work together to ensure that no double bookings occur and we are happy to work in tandem with your existing outlets for attracting bookings.

Running a holiday let business can be quite tax efficient. It can also allow you to arrange more regular bin collections in the summer (quite a bonus for larger houses).

For more information on the basics: Guide to Running a Holiday Let Business

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