Are You Marketing Your Holiday Home as Best You Can?

Most people that own holiday homes rely on agencies and other websites in order to promote their house/villa/cottage as a potential place to rent, and most of the time that works well, but you have to make sure that you take the proper steps to ensure that your house is picked over a competitor.

At the end of the day, you will always be fighting against other people in the area also renting their properties out. You’ll need to present the best house possible. So here are a few tips about how that can be done:

First off, pictures. I cannot stress this enough. Landlords seem to fall into this trap time and time again, whether it is overseas or in the UK. People will not pick your house if they can’t see what it looks like. It’s as simple as that. It also means that you’ll need decent quality pictures, not a grainy and small image that was taken on a mobile phone. Spend money on a decent camera (you’ll make money back easily enough when you get picked in place of the rest), and make sure you take lots of photos. Lots. Potentially renters will want to see how much space the living room, bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen have. They’ll want to know the layout and be able to easily recognise the house when they finally arrive. They will be living here for a short while and they want to make sure they live in comfort. That brings me on to my second point...

Clean your house. It seems trivial, I know. In fact, it seems like I don’t need to mention it, but even landlords with lots of pictures will not be picked if their house doesn’t look spotless. It helps when the decor is more modern as well (but that’s a personal choice for the landlord on how much refurbishment they want to do). Potential renters will want to see fairly open spaces - even small areas can be cleared to reduce the amount of clutter. When they arrive from a (probably stressful) long journey they’ll want to find an open and relaxed space, not a house cluttered with stuff they don’t care about. Try to remove as much needless clutter as possible, no figurines or pictures dotted around the house – if anything this will stop the renters from relaxing as it reinforces the feeling that this is not their space.

Fill out the proper details. When looking at your house online, potential renters will want to know how large the house is (the pictures tend to help), they’ll want to know how many bedrooms – and the size of the beds – there are in the property. They’ll want to know about amenities like whether the property has a microwave, a washing machine/dryer, it’s own driveway, an internet connection. They’ll want to know about the storage space available to use – they don’t want to have it lying around everywhere. The more information you provide them with, the higher the chances they’ll pick your fabulous home.

Make sure you think of the marketing of a property from a renter’s point of view – what would you want to know? What would you expect to see?

If you can supply the answers to those questions you should have no problem letting your property out.

photo taken from Castlerock Holidays