I recently posted a video to my YouTube channel about how I make £4000 per month from a small house by offering it as serviced accommodation. While other houses on the street rent for £875-950 per month on normal tenancies, serviced accommodation is a much more profitable business model that is often overlooked by traditional landlords. If you want to do better than the average, you need to be willing to do what most others are not.
Turning your single let or HMO properties into serviced accommodation can be extremely profitable, but only if it is done correctly. There are many things that you need to consider before taking this step with your portfolio. If you are thinking of getting into serviced accommodation, then read on. In this article, I will talk about the 3 things you need to consider before turning your property into serviced accommodation and putting it up on AirBnB and Booking.com.
1. Research It
When you are deciding whether a property would be good for serviced accommodation, you need to establish demand. This isn’t the same as demand for housing. You need to find out if there is demand for hotel rooms. Call the local hotels and see if they have rooms available and find out pricing. This will give you an understanding of the local market. Do online research and find out how available rooms are with the larger chains.
You should take a look at your direct competitors as well, have a look at the calenders of other properties being offered on AirBnB. Find out what people are looking for in the area, number of rooms, decor, clientele targeted, etc.
2. Systemise It
Before you go ahead and turn your property into serviced accommodation, you need to set up a system for handling guests. You don’t want to be letting each guest into the property, or cleaning the property between each stay, yourself. You need a system that can make sure that your bookings on AirBnB and Booking.com don’t clash. You need a calender so your cleaning company knows when to head to the property. You need someone near the property to handle any maintenance issues.
It can be a big job to get everything set up for the first time, but once you have your system up and running it is reasonably easy to keep it going. For example, you can have a key safe for guests to collect keys to the property from. Once everything is set up, the work needed to keep everything going is reasonably minimal. However, as your portfolio of serviced accommodation properties grows, you may want to hire someone to help you manage it and thereby systemise it further.
3. Design It
Serviced accommodation should be decorated and presented to a high standard like a hotel. The exact presentation will depend on the clientele being targeted. Contractors will want something that is very different to holiday makers. You will have already established who to target in the research stage. Stick to what your research shows the market wants.
If you want to get a more in-depth understanding of the serviced accommodation and property business, why not book a free ticket to my next training day? Tickets are limited, so book now. You can get your free ticket here.
