Lessons learned when renting out a Spanish property – Part 2

November 26, 2008 in Buying Property During the Crash, Factsheets & Downloads, Renting or Letting Property During the Crash by admin | No comments

Part 1 of this article on Renting Your Spanish Property covered understanding your costs and what fixtures and fittings to include…

Key holding and property management

The first consideration should be finding a property management company, especially during the early phases to supervise furniture deliveries and access for tradesmen. Some of the most successful people that rent do their own marketing, through friends and family and the volume property rental sites and only use a local service provider for cleaning, maintenance, meet and greet and key holding. Meet and greet is potentially the area where most people fail as a friendly and informative meet, with good information provided, can start a happy holiday experience and try to provide a basic pack containing tea coffee milk water etc.

When selecting a property management company you should see a number of providers and find out, how long they have operated, are they registered legal business, with the necessary insurance cover and you should check their references, perhaps visiting a property they already manage. Ask how many properties they manage, with how many staff. Problems normally occur with the smaller providers at peak time as 2 people can easily manage 100 properties in November but what about a peak Saturday in July. They should provide a contract which explain the service level ALL of the charges and include out of hours cover, ideally with a landline and mobile telephone numbers.
Do they promote your property for rental as an extra, or as part of the standard service? If yes via what media, get examples of their marketing and costs but check that it is not an exclusive contract in which you have to block out weeks and pay them if you obtain your own rentals.
There are some organisations now promoting guaranteed rentals income, or refunds against fees or if they fail to find you rentals and may start by giving you a first booking. Using the old adage there is no such thing as a free lunch, check their terms very carefully, check how long they have been established, as they will always require you to pay for their services in advance.
If you have a garden maintenance is key, is this included in the management fee, is it maintained by the urbanisation, is the pool maintained on a contract and are the cleaners qualified and insured.

Marketing your property

There are hundreds of websites promoting thousands of rentals just do a Google search to see how many. In our own property we have succeeded in renting via some of the larger rental sites, where they charge an annual fee, typically £140 and some success from the larger sites that charge a percentage of the rental fee. The Our Property Guide service includes more tips and details of the better sites and how to get more visibility on the search engines. These sites work because they spend thousands of pounds on getting their site on search engines ranking pages on Google and Yahoo Again do your own research, talk to people already renting and look at similar properties, look at their calendars, descriptions, and photographs and compare them with your offering. Most sites include statistics on the number of people looking at the property, check these regularly and remember that the key booking time is immediately after Christmas.
Invest in your own website, with your own unique domain name that you own for example apartment-in-villamartin.com, as this is essential for local and network marketing through friends and family. This isn´t expensive as there are lots of template providers with easy to use tools DIY cost £35 or developers that will charge around £100 for a site with area details and a calendar and Our Property Guide provides a lot more information on this. You can refer people to a site created on the main rental site but the issue with this is they reach a site on which they can immediately find details of competitive properties and immediately compare price.
Just having your own website will not generate bookings as you have to get people to look at your site so unless you are willing to spend on promoting the property to search engines, you have to promote your own site and there are some low cost ways to achieve this .Promote your website by using advertising in the local papers, notice boards in clubs and supermarkets. Promote through your work colleagues and friends and family and get some cards and a simple information sheet printed up with the web address on.
It is important to use information on the local area on your website and promotional material ideally take your own photographs including the pool, beach, golf course and even restaurants and local shopping ideally when there´s sunshine and a blue sky and when they are not too busy.
You need an informative welcome guide as this will enable the renter to get the most from their holiday from day 1. Happy renters will return and tell their friends and this is a vital part of marketing the property. Just some of the information in this guide should include details of the property, terms and conditions of the rental, information on the resort and the area. , Details of the local shopping areas, markets bars and restaurants and ideas for days out and this information should be kept up to date. What can the children do if it´s raining and what to do if section including tips on security and emergency contact number. Last of all a facility where they can provide feedback as good feedback is important to future renters.
To get more information on welcome guide ,to get more tips on renting your property, plus find out how The Our Property Guide Service can help you get more renters.