Foreign yields

Foreign yields
Shrewdly managed, property abroad can make you a tidy sumRosie Millard
So, you own a property overseas. Lucky you. And now you want to make it earn its keep by letting it out. Doing so successfully can be as tricky as buying the right place to start with, but don’t despair: rental success abroad can be yours, provided you follow some simple rules.

Essentially, holidaymakers and long-term corporate tenants are looking for the same thing: a simple, properly kitted-out flat or house in the right location that will fulfil their needs and is not full of dusty priceless antiques or ghastly plastic furniture. It needs to be spotless, workable and appropriately decorated.

So, leave the family snaps at home and choose framed pictures that won’t frighten anyone and, ideally, have a vague link to the location – arty black-and-white shots of local views, that sort of thing, to remind your tenant why they have chosen your property.

Even though your tenants have gone abroad, they will still want to keep in touch with home. “My top two tips for renting successfully are: a) install Sky and b) install a broadband connection,” says Mary McCallum, who runs Holidays Marbella (www. holidaysmarbella.com), which rents out properties on the Costa del Sol, in Spain. “People don’t want to go to a local internet cafe. They want to log on while they are in the holiday home so they can work and be with the family at the same time.”

Next, it is absolutely vital that you have someone on site who can manage your property for you. Renting by owner, as the Americans call it, sounds like a great idea and, in theory, will save you the 25% commission most managing agents charge. In practice, however, it will land you with a lot of problems, unless you really want to do it full-time and have air miles to burn.

Guests, whether long-term or not, need looking after – and this cannot be done by a disembodied voice at the end of a telephone. They need a reliable meeter-and-greeter and someone to orchestrate changeovers, not to mention cope with calamities.

Do you want your visitors to arrive in a dirty flat with unchanged linen? If not, you need to arrange a proper service for it. If the managing agent can find new tenants for you, so much the better. You’ll both have a vested interest in keeping the property neat and tidy.

Recently, one set of visitors to my flat in Paris left behind an entire drawer of new T-shirts. Another had her wallet pinched on the Métro. A third managed to flood the kitchen. All of the above problems were dealt with on the spot by Gail, my angelic Parisian agent. Not only does having a Gail save you the headache of panicking guests on the phone, or the colossal bore of physically having to go to Paris, Vienna or Cape Town yourself, but it impresses guests.

Indeed, an efficient and charming agent on the ground is one of the things that makes people rebook. And that, dear landlord, makes a 25% commission rate bearable. Finding one is easy: go back to your original estate agent, look in local papers, look on the net.

On the other hand, this does not necessarily mean you have to entrust them with the important task of finding tenants. If you are prepared to invest more time, you should market the property yourself.

Here, the internet is invaluable, and has virtually replaced other forms of advertising. In return for a flat fee, sites such as www. holiday-rentals.co.uk and www.holidaylettings.co.uk give access to thousands of potential tenants.

Tips for efficient adverts? According to Holiday-Rentals. co.uk, the average time spent on each page of a booking site is less than a minute – so the first paragraph should tell potential renters everything they need to know.

And make it memorable. “Paris love nest in the 9th arrondissement” is how mine starts. It seems to work. After a single explanatory paragraph, give further details on subsequent pages. Remember to put in contact numbers and important details (whether the property has a shower or a bath, for example). Tips on sightseeing would be handy, too.

If your property is not in the centre of town, come clean; make a virtue of it. Photographs are also crucial: I have a picture of a bath brimming with bubbles and surrounded by lit candles (it is a love nest).

The other key is not being too greedy. Offer your property at a decent rate, in line with comparable places. Then you can slash prices if you need to fill it up during slow months. August is the favoured time for discounts in Paris, but in Cornwall, it’s January. On the coast of Europe, the high season is essentially the summer months; in Asia, or the Caribbean, it is the other way round; and in some key cities (New York, London, Venice), there is no low season.

And please don’t do all your sums on the assumption that your holiday home will be let 90% of the time. This is unlikely – and unwise, because without any empty weeks, your property will have no time to recover.

I think 65% occupancy is perfect. In any case, because you have invested in such a great area, you’ll want to stay in your holiday home a bit. Won’t you?