The holiday rental market is booming, as more people turn their backs on traditional hotels and choose the convenience and flexibility of a holiday rental apartment or villa. This offers an excellent opportunity to invest in a property and then start to generate income from it, while using it for your own holidays, as and when you wish.

This is an increasingly popular option for our buyers, but something which can be difficult to manage when you don’t live in the same country as your property and may not speak the language. To support buyers who want to rent out their property for short term rentals, we work alongside our sister company Finest Rentals. This is a family run business, which promotes luxury short term rental properties and manages the bookings on behalf of the owners.  Finest Rentals can also help you to improve your property and prepare it for rentals, to maximise the number of bookings you can get and enable you to generate more income per booking.

We asked the Finest Rentals team, Karen Foster and Emily Dight, for some tips on choosing and managing a rental property, to help you to make the most of the rental investment opportunity. Here are their four top tips.

Understand the law – In 2016 a decree was passed (Decree 28/2016) which requires any property which is being used as a holiday rental to be registered and comply with certain conditions. These include having a First Occupation Licence, good ventilation, heating and air conditioning and information about the surrounding area. You must also register with the police station closest to your property. When you rent out the property, the passports of all those staying in the property over the age of 18 must be presented to your local police station. Tax must also be paid on income generated from your property and therefore yearly declarations need to be made. It is essential to comply with these rules and regulations, or face hefty fines.

Choose the right property – When you’re looking for a buy to let investment, think like a holidaymaker! The most popular rentals are bright, modern apartments and villas, with access to a pool (private or communal), and with shops and amenities on their doorstep. If you aren’t close to public transport, see if you can offer a parking space, as this is very handy during the summer months.
Market your property well – The holiday rental market is very competitive, so good marketing is essential. Make your property look as nice as you can, invest in good photography and get the property listed on sites with high traffic, or with an agency who is working hard to maximise your bookings. At Finest Rentals, we take marketing very seriously. As well as our own website, we promote our owners’ properties on all available portals for holiday rentals, to ensure the maximum amount of people see your property. We also take the hassle of bookings off owners’ plates, with dedicated software to manage all bookings and make it easy for people to check details, availability and book online.

Try to extend your season – The peak season is three months long – from June to the end of August, but thankfully tourists are discovering how lovely Marbella is from Easter to end of October. There is also an increased interest in Christmas and New Year getaways and these extra bookings can make a big difference to your profits at the end of the year. In order to extend your season, you need to make sure that your property is comfortable outside of the hot summer months. An open fire is a good selling point, as is good heating, throws and warm bedding. As we offer a refurbishment, home staging and improvement service for our clients, we can analyse the property, see what’s letting it down for a particular market and time of year and improve this through adding soft furnishings, accessories and items, which make a big difference to your rental clients. We’ve found that these improvements increase initial bookings, boost the number of return customers and encourage them to book outside of the peak season too.

Marbella Living and Finest Rentals make a great team! We can find you an ideal property for holiday rentals, refurbish it to make it appeal to the most rental clients and then market it to discerning holidaymakers. Contact us to find out more about buy to let investment properties in Marbella.