As we enter September we see an increase in people considering a switch from holiday letting or short-term rental to potentially letting out their properties long term. If you are currently owning a short-term rental, you are probably experiencing some of the following:

• Tired of cleaning out your property or managing and paying external cleaners
  
  
• Not able to go away at weekends as key change over days and supervision and set up is needed
  
  
• You have been through a series of broken washing machines, kettles, roller blinds and furniture.
  
  
• You have now lost track of your booking calendars that are all different on different websites and your own diary.
  
  
• You are surprised at how much time, effort and cost was needed to market your property to fill your weeks needed.
  
  
• Empty weeks have caused stress and last-minute price reductions may have left you out of pocket.
  
  
• You are concerned that over winter your property is going to be empty for more than 30 days and that can have insurance implications.

Realistically the holiday/short term letting market is now busier and more competitive than ever before. The multiple websites and platforms that you can use to fill your property are useful but also a minefield and when added together can become expensive. If you use a holiday letting company, you will be paying them around 25% of the income and often cleaning and maintenance costs are on top of that. So, do the figures really stack up compared to long term rental? You are also paying all of the utilities and council tax costs for your property. 

 By long term letting you cut out almost all of the issues, costs and concerns listed above. You are getting a solid, predictable monthly income with very little outgoings compared to short term letting. Demand in the market is high and at Start and Co we can usually seamlessly manage long term lets in and out with no gaps in income (after all we have a couple of months to prepare for it normally under notice periods).  

Long term letting puts you in control, we are happy for you to specify the type of tenant that you are looking for and we are currently seeing that rental prices are stable and landlords are getting the monthly rental prices that they are asking for. You are also in control of your package – we can just find the right tenants for you and leave it at that or we can fully manage everything for you.  Take a look at our options here:

The good news is that September is great time to now try a long term let for winter so why not take your time back and work out what is your best option?