Lay My Hat

Have you thought about the insurance aspect? Ours is only valid for a 2 month let. It might be worth checking.

We have had our Normandy house for 2.5 years and we love it. To help cover costs and to help maintain the house we have been renting it out. For those of you who have seen my other contributions on this forum, we have not really enjoyed renting out our holiday home because of all the problems. In ad...

Speaking for myself, I have to say that, much as it would grieve me, I would accept this as part and parcel of renting the property out. Whilst I am sure it is (or was) a beautiful basin, accidents do happen and more so when people are not in their own environment. Also, as we seem to agree, many pe...

I think the most important thing is to be honest about what you are offering. After all, not everyone can afford top end of the market and may be looking for a cheap affordable break. We recently holidayed in Italy for the first time in two different locations that we had selected via the Internet. ...

You are probably right Tansy. I am not sure whether it makes a difference that we are not on site as we can not see things for ourselves but receive reports through our Property Manager and cleaner/gardener. Having had a spate of problems this year, mainly caused by last minute bookers, I am beginni...

I obviously missed the mark with my first post....it was meant to be completely tongue in cheek. Just fed up with renter after renter causing problems of some sort or otherand reading of similar and worse on here!

It seems to me we all have our own various booking conditions designed to encourage guests to behave in a respectful way whilst using our properties. If we were to add all these conditions together, it would make a very large book! Our own list has grown as we find different things, that we had not ...

This is striking a chord with me at the moment as we had a call last Monday for a booking for our French house for the following Saturday. As we are in the Uk, I said no, the house wasn't available, as we wouldn't be able to clear cheques and so on. The guy explained that he had his own house near m...

As far as I am concerned a booking is not a booking until the deposit is received. I would expect that to arrive with the booking form. That way if people are serious about booking they make sure they commit with the 'cash' and you know where you stand. My advice would be, if you have had no money y...

My husband returned to work yesterday (the first day back after 3 weeks off with stress) to discover that his manager was slightly injured as a result of yesterday's events. His manager is now going to be off work for at least a week, maybe two, which takes him up to his summer holiday. Guess who is...

Susan, We have the following statement on details that we send out once we have received a deposit. It won't be legally binding but makes the point. "Please respect the maximum number of guests as per booking. Only persons mentioned on the booking form will be permitted to stay in the house.&qu...

In this case I speak as a property renter not as an owner, but we booked our Italian holiday through www.ownersdirect.co.uk this year.

Not sure how I found them but must have just done a search....

Mmmm. The standard of English has certainly improved!

Here in South East England it is more like October. Cool breeze, rain and misty grey skies. Predicted to be more of the same for the next few days. I'm not complaining as long as the weather changes for half term when I would like very little breeze for the crossing(s), then a week of sunny weather!

Thanks Susan, I'll give that email address a try. We are midway through getting a French version of our website. Not ready to publish it yet though and as you say, that may be the reason.