Lay My Hat

Hi,
New to the site, and am a little bogged down by all the information! Basically looking for some advice....
My name is Joe, and my OH and I are about to move back to the family home in Wiltshire, of which we have a 44% share in the property. The house is beautiful, with a lovely stretch of the river Avon, large gardens and ample floorspace spread mostly across a bungalow.
In order to make the move financially viable, we are considering converting the ground floor area at the rear of the property into a two bedroom apartment for holiday letting. We would live in the annex flat, and the parents would continue living in the main bungalow (although they actually only spend two to three months of the year in UK), with the long term plan of moving into the bungalow area when the parents get a little older.
We are also planning to build an indoor swimming pool extension, with sauna for all of us to use, with guests at the holiday apartment having sole use during the daytime (10am - 7pm).
So far I have based my calculations on 25% occupancy in the first year and 50% thereafter, and at present the sums seem to add up ok.
Basically do you think the idea seems reasonable, and do you think the occupancy rates are likely or not?! What should we be considering etc...
Any advice greatly appreciated!
Kind regards,
Joe

Hello Joe, welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry but I can't give you any answers because it all seems a bit of a "how long is a piece of string" type of question! Every type of property is different, and every type of area is different, so I don't think there is a definitive answer.

Maybe if you gave a bit more info (is the house in a touristy area, provide some photos maybe?) then other people with relevant advice might be able to help. For example we only let out a house in France, and this will be very different to what you will be offering.

But very good luck and I'm sure you will get more advice from other people with more relevant experience.

Joe, I think Normandy Cow has got it right.

However, it is important to get the formula right. There are a huge number of ways of getting things wrong and far fewer which will appeal to the market.

In our area, I often visit holiday lets which are higher spec than the houses of the farmers who run them. They know that the market is very tough and only high quality will win through. It is a cliche, but still true, that quality will always be saleable at the right price; get the quality wrong, and you could find that it will not sell at any price.

It is important to try to design the let so that visitors do not sense or feel that they are in a second class part of a development, round the back where 'the tradesmans entrance' used to be. Guests like to feel special.

We have our own advice in the signature of this post, but mine info from this forum as much as you can, it is excellent. It's worth getting used to its seach facility to do this.

Nothing much to add regarding the general numbers; you need to dial in all the outgoings, and there's various threads on here that discuss them.

One particular point that occurred to me regarding occupancy - do you have full fishing rights on the stretch of the Avon? It's a renowned trout water and largely inaccessible without the appropriate club memberships, and if you can offer fly fishing as part of the deal it's a very good niche market. Dad can spend all day in heaven, mum and the kids can go off to Salisbury, Winchester, Stonehenge....... there are a lot of attractions within easy reach, even if it's not the most obvious location for a holiday.

Offering short breaks is going to be pretty much essential.

Good point about the fishing rights - that would be a very lucrative USP.

Agree with the others.

I think "special" is the holy grail. Make the guests feel special as Charles says. Provide something special like fishing rights, or indeed your indoor pool.

It doesn't have to be a mansion, what it has to be is...something they don't have at home, as you're selling a dream, an escape. Niche is great.

If you are going to be living there, and possibly your parents too in the future, you've probably already figured out the importance of planning the outside, privacy, access, that kind of thing - so that guests don't have to see you if they don't want to and so that they don't feel like lodgers tacked onto the main house.

Good luck with it all!

tavi wrote: If you are going to be living there, and possibly your parents too in the future, you've probably already figured out the importance of planning the outside, privacy, access, that kind of thing - so that guests don't have to see you if they don't want to and so that they don't feel like lodgers tacked onto the main house.

Spot on - and really important for you as well.

Others have pretty much said what I would have said; my keywords would be quality (of fittings and furnishings), flexibility (agree with GB that short breaks will be essential) and individuality - finding a particular niche that has some real meaning for you so that you can sell it with a passion!

Oh - one search tip that I picked up from someone on here - the forum search function isn't brilliant, but if you use Google site search you're likely to get good results: site:www.laymyhat.com/forum followed by whatever keyword(s) you want to search for.

Welcome to the forum, good luck, and have fun!

Hi it's been our first year of letting out in a totally different area to you but when we considering it we wanted to make sure we had a fallback plan so chose a property that would not only be suitable for holidays but if needs be we could rent out for someone to live in.

Also, we were very aware of our budget and although we could have been a bit more ambitious with the amount we spent we were very guarded about this.

Have a look at agency sites such as Sykes and see what else is available in your area and the facilities offered.

Hope this helps.

25% occupancy in the first year and 50% thereafter doesn't strike me as very ambitious, but I guess it all depends on your pricing/marketing. I think if you got those right, you could do better than that (but of course I speak without having seen exactly what you're offering).

Wow - Thank you everyone for your reply's!
I hadn't received a notification of a reply, and what with the busy Christmas, and January madness, I had not check back in some time.

Ok to answer a few of the questions:

To charles cawley: Yes - I completely agree, whilst the apartment will be at the back of the house, we're trying to design it to feel as luxurious as possible. We decided to change the access to the other parts of the house, so that all three share the newly built entrance. I'm hoping that this, coupled with the apartment having the best garden access, will make our guests feel their accommodation is equal if not better then the rest.

To Greenbarn - the fishing rights are (from what I understand) somewhat of a stale mate. The water is owned by a local army based fishing association, however we own the grounds it runs through, and therefore cannot stop us from using it. I will check this however with my extremely keen angler father-in-law. If we can use this as a USP, then we'll try to target the right markets.

To Tavi - your right, privacy is my biggest concern atm. The annex flat we will be in is out of the way, and the bungalow and apartment face different directions, but we don't want to fence off the two areas. I'm thinking of putting in some careful screening to indicate which area belongs to which part of the house without actually splitting the garden up. With the in-laws away for 9 months of the year though, I hope it will be ok.

To Happylady - thanks for advice - will look into it!

To kendalcottages - is it not ambitious? I was fearing it being to high! If occupancy could be higher, then we'll be ecstatic!

Once I've finished the drawings, I'll post some pics etc of what we're thinking...

Thanks again for all your input. This site has already proved an inspiration, and the advise is gold dust.

Just found out - we definitely own the fishing rights...

Well that's good news indeed. There's one of your niches identified!

Concerning the garden; I'm sure others will think differently, but although it's important to have access to outside space, many guests will be out and about visiting the sites, so perhaps the privacy issue is less important. A more critical feature will be if you plan to accept dogs (which is a huge market especially off season); then you categorically need to provide a secure outside area for them.

Thanks nemo, and good point - we're big dog lovers, but I have two big concerns.

Firstly, dogs can cause a lot of damage, and whist I do not allow my pets to jump all over everything, other people have different standards.

Secondly; how do I secure a garden with a river? Our dogs don't wander off, but if a dog was determined, a short swim and a gap in a hedge could lead them to a main road.

If the market for dog friendly properties really is that good however, maybe we could put in a (nicely) fenced area immediately outside the living space.. an inner garden i suppose?!

That sounds like an excellent compromise and what my properties effectively give. We are in 13 acres of grassland, open to the coast, but each property has a decked terrace with balustrades and a gate; so somewhere safe to leave the dog outside.

Most dog owners are good, but the odd few let them on the furniture etc. It's up to you to decide whether you take a security deposit to cover possible damage. If you design it dog friendly from the outset, you'll have less of an issue.

but we don't want to fence off the two areas. I'm thinking of putting in some careful screening to indicate which area belongs to which part of the house without actually splitting the garden up.

I differ a bit on the garden thoughts. We have a similar situation to you, annexe attached to our home and initially thought that we would not be too bothered by sharing our garden as in all probability not many would make use of it. That is true, not many did but a significant enough proportion to make us rethink and we now have a clear divide between our private family part and the guests area. We do though have a shared area at the lower part with childrens play stuff in and seating/barbequeing areas. It is quite large, you can kick a football about if wanted.

The reason we did this was that all guests are different and whilst some didn't want to have much to do with us, some wanted to be our friends and if we were out in the garden they would want to tell us their life stories and didn't seem to understand that we had not got all day to sit and chat with them.

Maybe that makes me sound unfriendly but that's not true, it's more that we missed our privacy and everyone needs to be able to go into their own garden and relax with their family and their own friends.

It has worked really well and our reviews say over and over how friendly we are so it doesn't seem to have inmpacted on their experience.