[Closed] Owning a holiday home in the UK

Keep an eye on what local authorities in national parks are doing in terms of non-resident properties - I think the Dales is looking to massively increase council tax on second homes, so I would be unsurprised to see others following suit, which would wreck your sums a bit.

I've got one Ben.

Happy to go through it all if you want.

massively increase council tax

Council tax applies to second homes, Furnished Holiday Lets (FHL) are classed as a business and therefore you pay business rates on the property not council tax.

You can get another AirBnB host to manage your property for you - called co-hosting.
You can work out a deal - either a fixed fee per booking or a percentage.

I am arranging this to rent my apartment out in September as I'm off to Colorado to go mountain biking for a month (humblebrag)

Met a local lass who does her own place and looks after others'. She was only wanting £25 for each changeover - cleaning, change/wash linens and deal with the messages and guest interactions.

Works fine for me as I should be getting about £125 a night for the place.

[quoteWe’re considering one, don’t know where, Peak District maybe, or somewhere on the South Coast. We’d probably use it for a week or two during the year and then rent it out the rest of the time. Then maybe consider it as somewhere to retire to in later life for a change of scenery those seem like two very different areas for somewhere you are planning to retire to!  Do you like going on holiday abroad? Are you cash rich? Do you like going to the same place every year?  How far away is it from you - there will be problems - you will need to visit more than once a year.  What you describe sounds more like a Holiday rental investment than a Holiday Home that you also rent out.  Will you be aiming to use it peak season - that is precisely when it makes most profit to cover the fact nobody will want to use it in late November or early March etc.  The economics, value proposition and risk are rather different if you can afford a cash purchase v's needing a second mortgage.

I’m surprised by how much the holiday cottages/lettings companies charge, c. 20%+VAT in some cases.

Have you looked at how much it would cost to do it yourself?  Getting a half decent website with booking/availability system, and more importantly the advertising and SEO to get the traffic you need is usually a lot of work - unless you happen to have a particular niche property.   One of my other half's colleagues has a great cottage she rents out purely on a word of mouth basis - that has the advantage that she knows the people will leave it in a respectable condition.

AirBnb seems possible but haven’t done it before.

I'd be surprised if their cut was drastically different.</p>

Also need someone to do the cleaning/changeover, the gardening, generally keep an eye on it.

this could be a serious PITA.  There are people doing this of course but they will want their cut.  Often the cleaner will expect paid (at least in part) even if there is nobody in to changeover; they will want to go on holiday during your busiest period; the cleaner may not do the garden (but some will, and some will do simple DIY repairs etc); Traditionally changeovers are on a Sat - but that means the people who do them are in highest demand.  AirBnB is usually more flexible - so your cleaner will need to be too.</p>

I am arranging this to rent my apartment out in September as I’m off to Colorado to go mountain biking for a month (humblebrag)

PCD?

Generally holiday in the UK, although rarely the same place twice

It is more of an holiday home investment than a pure holiday home, but I'd rather do it as a holiday home rather than a buy-to-let as I want to actually use it myself

I live in North London. Peak district is 3 odd hours away, South Coast (e.g. Bournemouth area ish) is about the same, maybe a touch less. Prefer the hillier areas so Peak area is more likely

Aware of the 3% stamp duty, am OK with that. But the way costs are looking it's not a particularly fruitful thing to do unless I consider using it more.

Happy not using it peak season, weekends away are fine for me. 3 hour drive means we can go up on a friday and back on a sunday. I'm not cash rich, but I have some to invest and could either take out a mortgage on the place or up the mortgage on our own house.

Hadn't heard of co-hosting on AirBnB, that's a good idea. AirBnB charges the guests the service fee, hosts only pay 3%

I inherited a house in N Wales that my parents bought 40 years ago - I grew up spending a lot of time there and have lifelong friends that we see every year. I'm hoping my kids will have the same experience.

Our situation is slightly different as there's no mortgage involved so all I have to pay is council tax, insurance, utility bills and whatever maintenance needs doing (which is very little).

This year we will be paying 150% council tax which annoys me somewhat as we use less of the facilities (schools, waste, etc.) yet are paying more - but it seems to be the way things are going in many places.

The Welsh government are saying that it's because holiday homes are stopping locals buying houses - this may be the case in some places but where we are there is a brand new block of affordable homes that have been on the market > 12 months and not one has been sold while all the non-affordable homes sold pretty quickly.

The reality, according to a local councilor that I was chatting to, is that an increasing number of people who rent their homes are paying business rates (^) which go to Cardiff rather than council tax which goes direct to the local council. This results in the local council getting less money, while it effectively costs them more to supply services such as waste disposal due to the geographical nature of the area.

Our house has never been rented and I'm really hoping to keep it that way - I'm not sure I can see the point in having a place if you can't go when you want, but we're the only house in our block of 5 that isn't rented.

Luckily Mum had PV panels fitted back when the FIT payments were very beneficial and the income from that offsets everything other than the council tax. In the grand scale of things it costs us about two weeks worth of prime rental income each year. Maybe I'll change my mind one day but not this year.

Bear in mind that if you do go for business rates that there is a minimum number of days that you need to have actually rented for to be eligible and you need to keep that up every year.

Is it stressful? Not one bit, it's a great thing to be able to do and I'm a lucky puppy.
YMMV

Worth Matravers , in my old neck of  the woods, had loads of second home owners.  I'm not sure of its different to a holiday home?

I'm not a massive fan of it

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/mar/21/second-homes-vandalism

Thanks for the helpful responses. Interestingly, I read something about holiday homes vs second homes - the latter brings in tourists who spend in the local economy, the latter just buys up property. Either way not judging

I d research on the council tax loading.  In the lakes they are talking about multiples so something will happen.  20 years ago holiday homes there paid 10% council tax.

I ve let a holiday home for 15 years now and the markets changed massively, now the expectations are much higher so you need to keep investing.  Look at the laymyhat forums for owners, they ve pretty much nailed the issues.

On balance i reckon its a fair reward for the work involved, some areas are yielding 10% but costs can be high.

Good luck btw

brings in tourists who spend in the local economy

For part of the year anyway, leaving the place a ghost town for the rest of it which has a negative impact on the resident community. Often the local businesses benefiting from the tourists are also lifestyle businesses which operate seasonally and don't need to make an income all year round. These are usually owned by incomers who have made their living elsewhere and decided to take semi retirement. Of course these people put a greater strain on the services available locally.

My parents had one (actually it was my grandmothers' house which they kept when they inherited it). Bit of a pain in the arse really, having to visit when they could have been holidaying elsewhere, maintenance and arranging stuff that then meant their real home got less attention, then of course the problem was dumped in the laps of their children (inc me!) to deal with when it all got a bit too much for them.

The rise in property prices means they did pretty well out of it overall, but it's not a route I'd be tempted to go down especially now it's so easy just to airbnb somewhere random whenever you want a change of scene.

YDNPA was talking about 10x council tax on 2nd homes (not sure how they would determine this though). More power to them. People should be living in the houses that are available, rather than buying them up as investments and then other people shoehorning huge estates of shoebox-sized houses around the existing villages.