Having successfully established our web-site in Edinburgh, we now have facilities to advertise London self-catering property.  We’ve done lots of research and discovered that it is very difficult to find self-catering accommodation in London.   Several guests in Edinburgh had mentioned how difficult it was in London, compared to Edinburgh, Paris Rome and other major cities – which we were quite surprised about.

I took my daughter and some friends to London last year and wanted a holiday let apartment.  I discovered exactly what people meant.  There were no dedicated web-sites.  The only advertising sites were global sites – which are really geared up to provide information about Villas for beach type holidays on the Mediterranean or Caribbean.  I had to send out lots of messages – most of which resulted in no reply.  I just couldn’t search on availability, see details and prices and book with any confidence.

This was actually an even worse service than visitors to Edinburgh had before we set up.  Hence us making London our latest destination.

Ideal properties are existing holiday homes, 2nd homes or “pied a terres”.  Properties in city centres, near tourist attractions, conference venues, universities all have a market for people wanting to stay in self-catering accommodation for short (up to a few months) periods.

Properties let as student accommodation from October to June, can be let as holiday lets in the summer.  Existing properties let as 6 month shorthold assured tenancies can be good holiday lets if they are in a suitable location.

Letting their properties as self-catering properties can be very useful for “accidental landlords” to enable them to generate income from their property whilst retaining control and having access to the property themselves.  For example Joe has a nice flat in central London that he bought about 18 months ago.  He’s furnished it well and doesn’t want to sell it just now, even though he’s just been offered a great new job in Manchester.  Whilst he thought letting the flat in London for 6 months, he was worried about the state it would be in after the let completed and  he wants somewhere to stay when he comes down to London to visit family and friends.  He’s decided to let the flat as a holiday let, so it’s only let for a week or so at a time.  It’s cleaned and checked after every visit, and when he wants to coem to London, he simply books it out for himself.

To start, I’ll introduce ourselves.

Lenore Kennedy and Janet Unsworth own self-catering-online.com.  We live in Edinburgh where we started our business as Edinburgh-Flats Partnership in 2007.

We are both landlords and between us have 30+ years experience of letting properties as what come to eb know as “Buy-to-let” type letting – 6 month assured leases.   In 2007, we started letting some properties in Edinburgh as Holiday Lets.  We were getting good income, but felt better services were needed for both owners of holiday let properties and guests staying in these properties – that’s when the business started.

Now, in early 2010, we have almost 200 properties live on our Edinburgh web-site and have just made available the web-site for properties in London.

Tomorrow I’ll talk do a post about the type of properties that work as self-catering/holiday lets.