Home Insurance
Marketing Your Holiday Home: Part Two
There are a range of unavoidable costs associated with operating a holiday home – maintenance costs and UK holiday home insurance are just two. But one cost some holiday home owners try to minimise is that of marketing, which is particularly understandable if investing in this area doesn’t pay off. While the term ‘marketing’ can turn a great many people off, especially those who have run what they think of as a fairly straight forward business for years, adapting to the latest techniques can pay off big dividends.
Marketing simply means ensuring as many of the right people as possible know that your property is available to rent: in this blog we’ll identify one more key way to do this.
The major search engines – particularly Google, Yahoo! and Bing, all offer the opportunity to advertise on their search engines. The ads tend to appear on the right hand side of the ‘organic’ listings, but also at the top and occasionally at the bottom.
By opening an advertising account with one of these search engines, you’ll be able to start creating adverts for your holiday home. You’ll be able to choose what term an advert shows for – for example, when someone enters “holiday home Cornwall” into a search engine, you can ‘bid’ for your ad to be shown. depending on how much you bid, you may get the top position, or you may not even get onto page 2.
Learning how to make the most of such advertising opportunities can be time consuming and challenging, but if you put in the time to learn about it, it can be an extremely cost effective way of finding customers who really want to stay in holiday home just like yours.
For more information on UK holiday home insurance contact click4quote.
Wales: The Ideal Holiday Home Location?
Before you can settle into a new holiday home, choose new furnishings – and of course take out a good holiday home insurance policy – you first have to choose where that holiday home will be. There are a great many stunning locations in the UK where you might buy a property – to the degree that it can be quite a perplexing task. But for those looking for serene – or even wild – countryside, Wales is hard to beat.
Together with stunning mountains – including Mount Snowdon in Gwynedd – there are also many beautiful beaches to enjoy. But for many, the mountains are one of the biggest reasons for heading to Wales. As well as hiking, there are numerous other activities to enjoy around such a varied landscape; rock climbing and parasailing are just two. But even if you’re not looking for adrenaline sports or strenuous hikes, the simple beauty of the area is enough to engender a deep sense of wellbeing.
And then there’s the coast: while they may not be the hottest in the world, the beaches of Wales are surely among the prettiest. And yet again, a whole host of sports activities can be enjoyed on many of these sandy stretches.
While Wales is only one area you might consider when buying a holiday home, it does offer a very wide range of countryside pursuits, and is still within easy reach of some of the UK’s most important cities.
Clearing Out Your Gutter: Top Tips
When things really go wrong with your property, the applicable holiday home, buy to let or unoccupied property insurance policy (or indeed one of the many other types of property policies available) is there to give you peace of mind. But when it comes to general up keep, the buck remains firmly with you, the property owner.
And in the world of ‘up keep’, clearing out the gutter and downpipes is often at the very bottom of most property owners’ to-do list. But here are some handy tips to help you clean out these crucial exterior fittings with ease:
*Try to clean your gutters in the drier months of spring or autumn (but if you haven’t done it for a while, it’s still very much worth doing this winter).
*Check the weather and plan to clean your gutter when the weather is dry; dry debris is much easier to remove than wet.
*Items that will help you clean your gutter: trowel, a ladder, wire hooks, buckets, garden hose and a sturdy pair of work gloves.
*Items that will help for any repairs: sealant, drill, touch-up paint – and any hardware required.
*If you don’t like heights or working on ladders, hire a professional to do the job for you.
*When clearing out the gutter, remove any large pieces of debris first, as this can loosen the smaller pieces and any compounded dirt.
These tips should help you clean out your gutters more easily, and limit any damage to your roof caused by overflowing water. Equally, it should reduce any damage caused by water landing on your foundations and entering your basement – if you have one.
Holiday Property rental: Unleashing the Power of the Discount
While ensuring your property is fully protected, be it by policies such as overseas holiday home insurance or unoccupied property insurance, ensuring your income is protected is equally important; and for some, this is one and the same thing. For those who rent their property out as a holiday home, ensuring they get the maximum level of income is a never ending task.
As part of keeping the money rolling – especially in such economically tough times – discounts can play a very important role. But learning to use them effectively is not always easy. Along with the winter months come many requests for discounts – from all sorts of people. Receiving such requests can sometimes get tiresome, if not irritating. But offering strategic discounts can help to maximise revenue.
For example, if you know that a particular time of the year is difficult to get full occupancy, offering a discount could be a good idea. Offering ‘late deals’ – a few weeks before a time period that has not been booked – can also be a good way of utilising the power of the discount.
The peak times for people to search for cheaper holidays are, generally speaking, January and July, so be ready for requests around this time. The best advice is to tell them that they are welcome to make contact again nearer the desired dates, when a discount may be available.
But offering discounts too readily can reduce the perception of your property being ‘high quality’. High prices are synonymous with high quality – so long as the service matches the cost!
Undeniably, though, discounts have their place in a carefully planned strategy for renting out your property, a place that can help bring in even more money than you currently make – ensure you use them wisely!
Big Freeze 2010: A Reminder of How Important Pipe Maintenance Is
While taking care of your holiday home has always been more challenging during winter months, the weather in recent years has meant that good property maintenance is even more important. One way we can see the monetary effect of cold weather is by looking at the payout figures published by the insurance industry.
Between the 24th November and the 31st December 2011, UK insurers paid out GBP 1.4 billion – one of the most expensive ‘big freezes’ on record – a rise of GBP 700 million on the previous winter (2009/10). On that period UK insurers dealt with more than 467,000 claims. 190,000 claims were related to property damage, which cost more around GBP 900 million.
Of those property claims, 103,000 related to burst pipes, costing GBP 680 million. This demonstrates – if it were necessary – how important a factor pipes are when leaving your property vacant for any length of time. While taking out a good standard home insurance or holiday home insurance policy is undoubtedly a prudent thing to do, the risk of flooding caused by a burst pipe can be greatly reduced by turning off the water mains and draining the water system when your property is not in use. You should check your policy to make sure you comply with any such requirements as failure to do so could leave you uninsured.
By taking all reasonable precautions as regards maintenance of your property, you’ll help ensure that if the worst does happen, you’ll be fully covered.
Flood Prevention: Do Auto Valves Make Your Holiday Home Safer?
As well as being very rewarding, owning a holiday home can be a stressful experience at times – especially during the winter. Along with colder weather comes the risk of burst pipes, one of the most costly causes of damage to property a landlord can experience.
As well as having the ultimate back up of a good holiday home insurance policy, there are of course a number of other practical measures that can help reduce the risks of burst pipes.
One of the more innovative measures is the ‘auto flood valve’ or ‘auto shut-off valve’, which has been designed to detect when a burst pipe may have occurred and then shut off the mains water supply in response. This piece of kit will shut off the mains if water has been running continuously for a pre-determined stretch of time – usually between 10 and 40 minutes, depending on what you select.
It will also shut off if the temperature dips below 3 degrees Celsius, or if there is a sudden or unusual demand placed on the water supply. Equally, if no water is used for 24 hours, the water will also be shut off. One of the better known systems is called ‘Floodcheck’.
While such measures can be very convenient, it’s worth remembering that simply shutting off the water manually can be equally effective, so long as you remember to do so at the appropriate times.
Surveyors say house sales activity firm
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has published its 2011 UK Housing Survey. The main findings are that activity remained relatively firm during December and an increasing amount of new stock came on to the market.
The average number of completed sales per surveyor in the three months to December was 15.2. This is slightly down on the figure for November but is still close to its highest level since the autumn of 2010. Surveyors say that some sellers are asking unrealistic prices, which may be hindering sales.
New instructions edged up for the third consecutive month. However, the RICS survey supports other commentators who say that prices continued to fall across much of the UK. This may not be very be good news for those unoccupied property insurance clients who are thinking about out putting their property on the market this year- unless of course they own a house in London where the surveyors believe prices rose in December.
Most people seem to think that the market will be pretty flat in 2012 because of worries about the Eurozone and the UK economy. If you are thinking about selling an empty house this year you might like to take a look at the RICS survey- go to www.rics.org
Swapping Your Home for the Holidays
The challenging economic conditions in the UK at present mean that many Brits are looking for cunning ways to save money. As is so often the case, luxuries are the first to go – and pricey holidays would fall into this bracket.
One way to save some money is to swap your home – temporarily that is. Many families are starting to discover the possibilities offered by swapping their home with other families, in lieu of an expensive getaway. While it is true that those who live in more glamorous locations will be able to do this more easily, even if you don’t live in the most exciting city, you may be near special facilities such as indoor ski centres, 3D cinemas, unusual museums, beaches or national parks.
While the notion of swapping your home on a temporary basis for a holiday is more popular in the United States than the UK, interest is picking up here too.
Those who own a holiday home could also benefit from this idea – especially since they are likely to be located in a very desirable location. Be sure, however, to check with your holiday home insurance provider before you go ahead with any swap.