We love receiving emails from our readers, especially when they contain some good advice!

Here’s an idea for those of you who do not have tickets for the Olympics and therefor want/have to to get away from the city for that time:

Good Morning,

My Name is Lloyd James and together with my Wife Janet we run Graig Farm Cottages in Mid Wales.

I have been trying to think outside the box a bit, and trying to bring some of the benefit of the Olympics in London to Mid Wales.

My understanding is that many people in London are renting there houses out for the 2-3 Weeks of the Olympics, and using the Money for Holidays etc.

I am not sure how much trouble you are having persuading people to part with there homes for the period of the Olympics, but why not offer them a Holiday in Mid Wales, as part of the Package.

With weekly prices starting for the Olympic Fortnight at £ 470.00 for a Cottage sleeping 2 People and up to £ 1000.00 for a 5 Star Cottage sleeping 10 people, you can see that it starts to make sense.

Rent your House out for £ 3000.00 for the week, Rent a cottage for £ 500.00 profit of £ 2500.00 per week.

As I said I am trying to think outside the Box.

Please have a Look at our Web Site on

www.graigfarmcottages.co.uk

If you would like a Brochure and a Price List, please e-mail me back.

I thank you for your time in reading this e-mail and I very much hope you will give my proposal some consideration.

Lloyd James
Graig Farm Cottages.
Y Graig.
Llanfair Caereinion.
Welshpool.
Powys.
SY21 0ES.

Phone: 01938 810961 (Day time) / 01938 820111 (Evening)
E-Mail: info at graigfarmcottages.co.uk

Let us know what your plans are for the Olympics – will you be able to stay in your rented home? Any exciting getaways you can recommend?

Unless I decide to go to the games myself, I am willing to think about moving out for a couple of weeks as the money my landlord would earn from this short let could be used for refurbishment in the future. The only problem would be moving some of my things and also, you have to consider that short lets are risky.

*Most expensive Olympic rentals in PrimeLocation

It is an interesting time in the London short-term lettings market as the Olympics are getting closer. The selection of flats and houses has never been more colourful and probably never will be again. During the first month of 2012 the number of offers has risen significantly and so have the prices!

The most expensive property for rent during the games is a seven bedroom house in Mayfair, available through Knight Frank. You can rent it for £100,000 per week!

We can recommend PrimeLocation for the best selection of exclusive properties.

London 2012 Olympics are six months away but if you have not secured a rental home for that time yet - you better be looking right now!

These websites will help you get started:

RentForOlympicGames.com Over 300 private listings.
PrimeLocation.com Rentals Offers by estate agents. Enter ‘Olympics’ to the keywords line in the search – we got over 800 results today!
FindaProperty.com Short Lets Arranged by sports events.
London Games Rentals Contact the owner direct, no charges for tenants.
Rent it For The Games Offers from private landlords, direct contacts.
Rent At The Games Free to list site, currently 149 offers on the site.
Rent For The Games Offers from private landlords. 84 offers currently.
Loot 2012 Rentals dedicated site by the classifieds newspaper Loot.

LETTING AGENT SITES

Draker Lettings Olympic rentals Draker Lettings have a variety of excellent Olympic rentals available for London 2012.
Foxtons Olympic Rentals Rental accommodation during London 2012
Hampton International Olympic & Sport Lets Short-term let properties that are in the vicinity of the Olympics and other major sporting events.

SERVICED APARTMENTS

Clarendon Olympics Serviced apartments
Refresh Accommodation Olympics Services Rent from one night up to the full duration of the Olympics.

For more rental listings see our: Property Websites page.

Homes & Property will soon launch EventRent - a new service that will enable you to advertise your property to potential tenants for the 2012 Olympics. Anyone looking for accommodation will be able to search by location, property type and price to find the perfect place to stay during the Games.

You can register your property already, HERE.

Outside Kyoto Estates in Bayswater W2 today.

Gulliver blog asks: “WOULD you like to stay in somebody’s house when travelling? Sleep in their bed, cook in their kitchen—even if they’re not there?”

We say: “NO!”

But what do we, the locals, know! The new site OneFineStay offers something for tourists who want to blend in:

Onefinestay gives you the chance to stay in someone’s place while they’re out of town. You get to live their life for a few days and nights.
Booking a stay is as easy as booking a hotel room. And there’s service to match.
Nobody wants to be a tourist, so our homes come with recommendations from the people who live in them. For everything else, we’re here 24/7.

Wonder where the owners hide their valuables and diaries for the time they are away? Or are these part of the package? Interesting!

Anyway, don’t forget to write us about your experience if you have a chance to try it out!

OneFineStay

Uncertainty in the London property market has left many potential buyers still renting. Even those who could afford to buy prefer to wait and see what will happen. Most of those would-be-buyers are signing a short term contract these days, as it gives them the option to change plans quickly. Telegraph writes:

“Lets between one and five months are now common,” says Kari Trajer, associate director with lettings for Hurford Salvi Carr, who has just opened up a division specialising in short-term rentals.

Short-term renting is flexible, but expensive and often costs between 40-50 per cent above a standard rent, though this will often include attractive extras such as porterage, utility bills and cleaning. A cheaper option is to negotiate a break clause in a longer contract.

Update on our search for short term rental.

We have put together an initial final list of the apartments, and are now trying to make it shorter by surfing the web for some advice. What are the typical mistakes made when choosing a short term/holiday/vacation rental? Are there any companies that we should avoid? We found this from New York Habitat and on how to avoid scams:

Use caution when using sites like Craig’s List and other classified pages. Though the majority of the offers on these sites are legitimate, a significant portion of the offers are scams and there is no prescreening on these sites. These sites can be helpful in finding a local broker, as many reputable brokers, including New York Habitat, advertise on sites like these.

We’ve found a great site called Refresh Accommodation. There are plenty of apartments to our taste that are available for a short stay in London:

Draycott Place, Chelsea: 2-bed £164 per night LINK
36 Draycott Place, Chelsea: 2-bed £1645 per week LINK
No. 1 Sloane Avenue, Chelsea: 2-bed £1292,50 per week LINK
Cheval Apartments, Knightsbridge: 2-bed £ 1868,25 per week LINK

Most of the apartments provide wireless Internet & maid service.

We realize at this point that the regular estate agents’ “short term” too often means 1-6 months. So we have decided to make our search more specific and change the keywords in Google & Yahoo from “short term rent london” into “holiday rent london” or “vacation rentals london”.

Here is what we found:

HolidayLettings.co.uk We saw the link in one of the biggest real estate portals Rightmove.co.uk.

ServicedLets.com

Rentalo.com

HolidayRentals.org

Holiday-rentals.co.uk

Apartments Apart

This is the first batch we’re browsing at the moment. If you know a site we could use to find an apartment to rent in London for a short period of time (10 days), you are more than welcome to post it in the comments or you can also E-mail us at: info [at] royalsofrent.com.

PS! You can leave us comments anonymously!

We are so much wiser after talking to Foxtons estate agency today. Here’s what we learned:

The minimum stay at their short let is 1 month. You won’t be left on the street if you want the rental for 10 days only but it will be just as expensive as one month’s stay. So Foxtons Short Lets service is mainly used by people who have just moved to London (and want to get to know the market before buying property), by firms that need an alternative to a hotel, and by media companies renting for making adverts or films.

Here’s a short fact list of what Foxtons Short Lets means:

• Quite a bit of choice – Click here to browse their short lets in London.
• Minimum stay: 1 month
• Costs: 1 month’s rent in advance + 4 weeks deposit + Foxtons fee
  Bills are included in the rent (usually excluding telephone & Internet)
• A good Tenancy Agreement protecting both, the tenant and the landlord
• The short let is managed
• There is no charge for viewings
• The lettings negotiator can drive you to the viewings

We also found out that at Foxtons each prospective tenant gets an Account Manager. He is then the person you’ll be talking to during the process of your search for a suitable rental. He will be, so to say – holding your hand, writing down your wishes, appointing you to letting negotiators who will show you the rentals, etc.

We hereby send greetings to Foxtons Account Manager Richard, who was most helpful!

***

We are now browsing holiday lettings websites in London. Stay tuned!

As part of our short term rental apartment search, we are looking for an agent who can help us. Why are we not browsing offers on websites first? Mainly because we do not have time to go through all of them right away. Also because we do not know much about the short term or holiday lettings business, so we are approaching it the same way we would in case of regular lettings. We’ll hopefully find out the best way at the end of our quest.

Where we looked, while searching for an agent who deals with short term rentals:

1. Real Estate Websites Net-Lettings.co.uk, FindaProperty.com, HotProperty, Rightmove.co.uk, Propertyfinder, PrimeLocation
3. Association Websites ARLA, NAEA
5. Search Engine Google.co.uk

Real Estate Websites
While most of the real estate portals sport an agent list, not all the bigger sites have the option to sort out short let agent list. FindaProperty.com actually has one, giving us 26 estate agents for Knightsbridge, for example. Here are the first 5 on the list: 1. Andre Lanauvre International Property 2. Direct Residential 3. Imperial Homes Parked at FindaProperty.com – no website? 4. Greenwood Asset Management 5. Plaza Estates.
Net-Lettings.co.uk has a list of links to agents websites. In Rightmove.co.uk (sort in rent search) and PrimeLocation you can browse the short lets list (add short let keyword), and then see which agents appear most often. HotProperty and PropertyFinder did not seem to have the option to sort out short lets.

Association Websites
ARLA won’t let you sort out agents who deal with short term rentals. You can search for a specific agent, by county, district or town and by London Borough or area. Compared to NAEA site, at least the members search results give you the their homepage link.
NAEA does not let you sort out agents who deal with short lets. Noticed that their agent search gives 6 results for Chelsea? The list does not have any links to agents’ websites.

Search Engine
Google.co.uk keywords inserted: short.let agent Results:
2 paid advertisements in front, then Britainexpress links to sites, Foxtons agent, MarshandParsons agent, Rent-Let-Vivastreet ads, FindaProperty.com list of agents

As a result of this small research, we’ve found enough agents to choose from. The choice is actually quite random, as we have not done much of research on the firms. It’s basically come down to who has their ad at the right place and how well their ads are displayed for dummies like us:

1. Andre Lanauvre International Property Ltd. The ad in FindaProperty.com sure does pay off!
2. Foxtons Keyword Kensington gives 110 results in short let category!!! Impressive.
3. Direct Residential 7 results for SW3, the most expensive postcode in London

These are the firms we will contact with out short term letting inquiry. Next stop – searching the web for sites with short term rentals in London and then browsing through them.

If you’ve just jumped on board, you should also read:
24.01.2008 Short Term Rental Search: Action Plan
23.01.2008 1st Open Search Begins: Short Term rental