Hi

My girlfriend and I are going to be buying a house sometime soonish, and one idea we’ve had is to see about getting a property which includes a little house/annex that could be used for holiday letting.

I’ve had a chat with my current mortgage provider and they wouldn’t be interested in providing a mortgage on the above basis. I expect most high street mortgage providers have the same mentality – is this correct?

Can anyone suggest where to start with this project? Are there any websites or books there that can be recommended, to give pointers on who provides good mortgages, what to consider when doing the holiday letting as a business?

Too many unknowns at the moment…

Cheers

Ed

Be aware that it’s very hard work – my folks have three self catering cottages on the Isle of Skye [/blatant plug] and it takes my mum and her ‘hired help’ a good chunk of Saturday to clean them to her exacting standards.

They also spend a fair whack on advertising, including listings in the various online directories (which even if you have excellent word-of-mouth referrals, you’ll need to be in).

Personally speaking, I wouldn’t be keen on hiring an annex – I’d always feel like the owners were watching / listening and would far prefer to be in a separate building…

user-removed makes very good points.

i would add that the first consideration, cliche as it is: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.

a good idea would be to go see some local holiday letting agencies and have a chat with them. when we were looking we did that and it was interesting to find out what areas they would and would not consider. some of the areas we reckoned would be hot they said that unless the house was exemplary they would not be interested as they had too many on their books already.

you maybe also do some research on what people will expect. days of cheap pine furniture and mismatched cutlery are long gone (at least down here in cornwall). boutique is the buzz and you do need to pull out the stops.

then you have the lovely guests themselves. do a search on my name and you’ll see my dilema this last sunday (another reason why an agency is a good call at first).

and then we had a questionarire returned yesterday where someone really had a go because we only provided one chopping board (ignored the fact that its a hand-made butchers block, lovely piece) and no washing up bowl (that’ll be the sink then).

last thing, the lower the market you cater for the worse your property will be treated.

anyway, here’s mine… http://www.littlebeachhouse.co.uk

Gav – you really need to update your site to make it clear how many bedrooms it has and the set-up of each room.

I have given up trying to work it out so – how many and what set-up?

its in the property details, but yes a bit vague and thanks for pointing out that a site plan would be useful. the whole site is about to be rebuilt (when i finish the project i’m trying to get off the ground, have done some work for some other guys hassling me, sorted the wife’s craft site, helped a guy publicise an event this summer, found time to ride, surf, chat on stw etc etc.) as what you see is still the remnants of the original site i rushed up and i think its important to refresh teh site annually.

anyway, freshly sketched on the back of a fag packet…

I am sure it is there, I just couldn’t find it easily and gave up – I am sure others will do the same.

Pity it isn’t big enough for our needs though 🙁

Looks nice Gav, but if we are picking on you 😉 then be sure to spell check your refresh. Amazingly you actually need an apostrophe in your ‘it’s’ and there is no ‘e’ in airy.

Sorry OP – just google ‘starting a holiday cottage/ self catering business’ there’s loads of stuff out there, and on the Visit England/Wales/Scotland and other relevant association websites. Not a holiday cottage owner but it is an area I have/am researching.

Also agree on the annex thing. Have stayed in a few, but always prefer to be separate – at a good distance – from the owner. HTHs

yes, i spotted a few miss-spellings when checking the info earlier. oh well.

mastilles, if its sennen you are after have a look at our agency http://www.westcornwallcottageholidays.co.uk as they have a couple of bigger houses there.

also worth a look is http://www.cornwallfarwest.co.uk/s_loc_senc.htm as a lot of owner operated properties are listed. looking at the availability some even available for high season still which is surprising.

Thanks for the comments.

Was useful to get comments on the annex being a bit of a disadvantage when trying to attract visitors. I think everyone’s standards have shot up since those makeover programmes, so I know that mismatched cutlery and dodgy furniture wouldn’t do.

More surfing, I guess…