Airbnb is a great starting investment for your portfolio

You might think that with all of the technology that helped you to find the property that you want to buy for Airbnb, the process of buying property was now considerably quicker. Unfortunately, the buying property (property transfer) system has not improved in the past twenty years, and in some instances, it is worse.

Choose Your Advisers Wisely

Seek out Independent advice in all areas and ask lots of questions. It is worth doing homework before you engage advisers and agents with whom you will be spending the next who knows how many months. Deal with the people that provide you with good service. If they can not answer their telephone or emails, move on to someone who can. If you catch the slightest hint or scent of poor service, ditch them.

Shortlisting

Prepare a short list of your requirements and write down all of the reasons why you want to move and what you want to buy.

Bear in mind this keyword COMPROMISE. The ideal house doesn’t exist. Have priorities but decide which ultimately comes first and what has to be sacrificed.

Viewing

Leave enough time between viewings. Don’t take the children, in-laws or parents on first viewing. Don’t view property that you have no intention of buying just to add to the list. Sellers can invest lots of emotion leading up to and after a viewing appointment. Please be courteous and provide honest feedback for us to relay to the seller.

Management

Before making the deciding offer, taking responsibility for another home can be difficult to balance with your everyday life.

An Airbnb management in London will offer this for you PLUS:

• Guest communication and support
• Guest vetting and bookings
• Key exchange
• Maintenance – Plumbers, handymen, locksmiths, and more!
• Listings

Here’s a management company we have found that is commonly used by Airbnb co-hosts.

Making an Offer

There is no Golden Rule, formula, or percentage that an offer should be below an asking price. The advice given on one estate agent website is? offer the full asking price. That may be right in some instances but with erratic valuations systemic in the current property market and over ambitious expectations of some, is that really the best advice on offer to buyers?

We know of examples of Estate Agents’ overvaluation and inflated expectations of sellers of £50,000 to £100,000.

Culturally we are hopeless at negotiating, and too much is read into an asking price as though it were set in stone.