Do You Have a Wear and Tear Fund for your Holiday Rental?

Are you a non-resident holiday rental owner? If so it’s likely that sometime in the next few weeks you may be going to visit your property to check it at the end of the summer season and prepare it for winter.
So often these visits are fraught with annoyances. That lovely wooden garden table and chairs that you sanded down and revarnished in April is looking decidedly sun beaten and shabby. The pool lounger cushions have suncream stains and are coming apart at the seams. That cute wooden playhouse with it’s home made curtains and fake flower boxes has been taken over by earwigs and spiders all hiding in a nest of dead shrubbery that children have hidden in there – probably making potions, and the door has come off one of it’s hinges. The slats in one of the beds in the children’s bedroom are broken – someone has been bouncing. The list goes on.

In a recent blog article we talked about the issue of security deposits. Are these the sort of things that can be mitigated against by retaining security deposits? Not really – often it is difficult to identify which guests were actually responsible and it is quite possibly a cumulative effect anyway. As for weather beaten wood – you can hardly claim against the sun.

These are all things that need to be factored in to your budget under “wear and tear”. So often, when people decide to start up a holiday rental business they do not do this but it is vital to be prepared for the sake of your financial and mental health. Rather than rant and rave, draw a deep breath and may be a sip of the local wine, and dip into that contingency wear and tear fund.