Holiday Cottage Letting

Your holiday cottage is a very valuable asset as well as being a nice place for you to stay in. Getting to best rental yield is the key to making your property pay its way, or indeed to profit in this market niche.

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Your income comes from 3 key directions:

• Capital inflation - hopefully you've already bought in an area with above average trends.
• The weekly rental values
• The occupancy rate

Occupancy rate - that's where this site comes in-- If you get your property fully let, you can also afford to price more highly. Weeks let x weekly rate = income.

If you can get more than 50% occupancy rate then you are doing better than most. Pricing here is crucial because if you were to loose just one week's rent, then you've lost around 4% of your gross income, with little change to your expenses.
So, the pecentage loss to your profits is even higher.

Following on from here, if you dropped your prices 10%, but your bookings increased to 75%: your gross income rise 35% -- Thus, Occupancy rate is what matters, far more than weekly rates.

You would be better to keep the weekly rates generously low until your occupancy rates are high. After you've been doing this for a few years, you will have (hopefully) got some returning visitors. This helps greatly and shows you're on the right tracks.
See also the Tax Advantages of Renting Out Your Holiday Home

Does your cottage really have what the people want? The trendy modern holiday-maker requires a bright modern cottage, nice kitchen, clean, child friendly.
Get rid of that £1 electric meter! Install central heating. Refurbish the property up to date. If your cottage is not as plush as my own home, I will not want to holiday in your cottage! Get a TV with good reception, Freeview....etc Get a DVD player!

I absolutely need wireless broadband access when I'm on holiday and all the other modern travelers nowadays. Why do holiday cottages so often fall behind the times?
WIFI enables us to bring the laptop and work on holiday (extremely valuable). Also a lot of people like to research local information, weather, banking and manage our own rental properties.

Now that internet is king, you can advertise your property online and manage the advertising, the bookings and run the place online.
You no longer need to pay expensive booking commissions to agents when you can do all of this yourself. Good luck!
To get started follow the instructions on this page>> Advertising Holiday Cottages