Lay My Hat

At lunchtime today my phone pinged, a text to tell me we have a booking arriving this Friday! Our first guest. So I've been dashing around getting all those little jobs finished and adding more to tomorrows list, buy fresh milk etc. Any tips/advise that I'm certain I won't have thought of? Thanks No...

We went live on Friday and got 3 bookings over the weekend. I'm excited but nervous and now thinking of random thoughts, every hour the list gets longer! Here's a few: How soon to put bedding on. Do you have the clean bedding on during un-let weeks? or just put it on the day before arrival? Meeting ...

Thank you, lots of great tips. I'm re-doing it in two separate folders and it's looking better already. Just photographed the remote controls but writing it is a job for this evening. May I ask what sort of folders you used? I can't find anything smart that's not costing a fortune, perhaps I'm being...

I had the exact same email a few days ago. I was trying to inform the enquirer/potential guest that my listing would soon be replaced by one from Sykes. By explaining it properly I broke the rules so in the end my reply was a bit vague unfortunately. I wasn't even trying to steal a booking, if they ...

With my letting annex going live any day now and the place ready for guests, well almost, just minor things needed such as tea & coffee sachets, a tea pot as the one I ordered from Amazon arrived broken, and other minor things. My mind has now moved on to getting the guest info finished. I have ...

Hi, I'm also quite new on here. We have a 1 bed annex which is going live next week. I had three insurance quotes, they all quoted for the entire property, so our 3 bed plus the 1 bed letting annex. The quotes were £315, £477 and £555. The two higher quotes include loss of rental income. Judging by ...

Thank you for all your comments. I negotiated a good deal and with the info/advise I had already got from on here I made sure things were how I wanted them such as no reductions without my say so. We can end it by October (notice by June) if need be so it's a good time to try them out and get off th...

Today I have bitten the bullet and gone with Sykes. I'm feeling it's the right decision. I tried listing our 1 bed on HL and OD about 9 days ago. The listings looked great with fab photos and competitive rates etc however I haven't had any enquiries yet (I realise it's only been 9 days). The problem...

Thank you for the many valid points. I input some rates last night into HL and set the whole year as special seasons using the below headings. It makes more sense on my spreadsheet, blue being the lowest rates, then green & purple, and red being the highest. The red has 3 different rates, i.e. S...

Most of the others are up with large agents, who we had out to look at ours. They gave us 10 different rates for full weeks. It seems overly complex to me, I like things simple.

Hello I'm nearly ready to list on HL to start with, then I'll look at OD as well. I'm really struggling with the prices for all the different weeks. I keep looking at others in the area but I'm finding such a difference and no set pattern. Some of the lets seem to charge virtually the same all year,...

If I went with OD and HL, how do I prevent double bookings? (that is if I get any bookings at all) is it just a case of logging on and amending the calendar asap?

Thank you

Thanks russellt. So they get money from the guest, I hadn't realised this and wondered how they do it for just 3%, I thought there must be a catch and perhaps some hidden charges. Ok so it's quite good for me, 3% is a lot better than the 20% that the agents charge, but how do the guests feel? does a...

Hi again I've now had three agents to look at my 1 bed let and the differences between the three agents has surprised me and left me a bit unsure. The prices they suggest I will achieve per week and the number of weeks they say it will let varies a lot between the three agents. I don't know what to ...

Thank you once again, I'll replace the fridge for a fridge freezer, it's a tall larder fridge so I couldn't put a freezer on top. I didn't realise the small freezer box wasn't sufficient for visit wales so thanks for that info because I probably would have bought one as it's only a 1 bed. Apart from...