Should you let friends holiday in your property?

When friends show their true colours, is when you let them use your property in Spain!

Renting to friends.........so called 'friends'
Saturday, September 14, 2013 @ 12:39 PM

May have to come to decision on renting out my apartment for friends holidays, I use the friends terms loosely! Friend, we will call him Bob, asked if he could take his daughter over for a short break to get over splitting from her boyfriend. What a nice dad I thought. Nice and simple, 5 nights, so quoted a reduction, and armed him with all the info on the place. Get a text that they had arrived at 8 am Saturday, funny was sure they were going Friday, so asked how come they got there so early on a UK flight from Gatwick. Ahhh, simple answere, they stayed in Alicante Friday night, and were going to stay in the city the night before they came home, so as we had agreed he could pay me when he returned the keys, it would be just three nights accommodation. Fine I thought. Then ask me if I am naturally suspicious after my last experience, I emailed a neighbour, just to see when he saw anyone in my place, he lives opposite. Well quell surprise, he arrived Friday and left late evening weds. Now I calculate that as 5 nights. The daughter by description , was certainly not his daughter, unless she is 50 plus and a rather large blonde, not 23 slim and brunette. I need to choose my friends a bit better, or have mug tattooed across my forehead! So do I confront him, or put it down to being naive ......again!

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5 Comments

Graham said:
Saturday, September 14, 2013 @ 2:18 PM

Clearly your friend (sic) thought it was ok to lie to you and avoid paying you the correct letting money. Unless you really do have 'mug' written across your face, I would suggest a polite request for an explaination from the 'said' person and his squeeze ...

At the very least you'll either get your money or your friend will be no more ...

eggcup said:
Saturday, September 14, 2013 @ 2:36 PM

Hi Benny. Interesting stuff and right up my street as I have a blog here on life in Spain and one on renting in the UK - and I think it will be great to have more stuff on renting in Spain (I do a bit on that, but only as it comes up now and then on my Spain blog). I generally think it's a bad idea to mix friendship and business and we usually try to discourage any friends who want to rent our houses - we only did it once, reluctantly as the friends kept going on about it, and it wasn't a good experience. I would always advise to keep it business-like and making £80 profit would definitely not be enough to take the risks involved. All the best with the letting and with the blog.

christinejoyce said:
Saturday, September 14, 2013 @ 6:06 PM

In all fairness it appears both my holiday renters left the place clean and tidy, it's seems that everyone is out to get that little bit extra. I explain that other apartments in the community rent for about £100 more for a week, and they then add on 50e fir cleaning, I ask them to do it before leaving unless they would like to pay the extra. On top of that a number of the other people's apartments are barely furnished, same pine stuff that they had from the developers, where ours has been fully furnished to a high spec. The downside is I don't think I would feel confident renting to people through a website, especially as I don't have anyone in the locality to be my representative. To be honest, I don't think I will rent it out except to family, and even that can be awkward, because they think they can just offer a contribution to the bills! Oh well ........

fazeress said:
Sunday, September 15, 2013 @ 8:19 PM

A difficult one! Can't believe what your so called 'friend' did though! I would've been straight up and said that a neighbour had informed you of how long he/she was there and the reason why, which is naturally a securtiy issue! I would be a nervous wreck if I had a place to rent out I think. We have rented from people through websites before and we have the attitiude that if we wouldn't do it at home we certainly wouldn't do it in someone elses place! We always left a place clean and tidy but we are that way inclined! :)

fazeress said:
Sunday, September 15, 2013 @ 8:27 PM

Perhaps you would like to see the comment I left on your first entry, I read them in the wrong order! :)

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bennycatsmum
I work in health provision, for a local council, after 25 years in the mucky end of publishing, advertising and marketing. Wishing I could be a lady who lunches but no doubt working till I am 66 to get to that stage.