Rental Advertising

M&N Condado Property Management launched a new website a couple of weeks ago called www.condado-de-alhama-rentals.com.  It is unique in that M&N do not require you to be one of their keyholding clients in order to advertise. Neither do you have to give them a key and can remain with your existing keyholder. M&N fiurther more do not take any booking fee or commission, because unless you particularly want them to manage your property, you use your own contact details. You get your own page, use your own photos, unless you want M&N to take them for you and write whatever you want about your property.

The cost? €1 per month! €12 per year including IVA. You get your own page or a link to an existing site and you can copy and paste the URL wherever you like. See someone on FB looking to rent? paste your URL in the comments box and they have all the information they need.

In 2 weeks we have 15 advertisers. Once more have been added, M&N will use the additional income to further promote the web site. We look forward to hearing from more of you. M&N are Mel and Natalia who have lived on N8 since Oct. 2008.

This looks like a great deal

We advertised through Novasol until this year but the charges they make made rental a pretty useless proposition. By the time you take out wear & tear, replacement of items, particulaly large ones we were worse off than just keeping it to ourselves. Unless you have an excellent property managment team (We have now but unfortunatly the horse had aleady bolted) who will check your apartment thouroughly before your clients leave you can often be left with a hefty bill as once the lient has left there is no prof as to who caused any damage.

For those of you looking to rent out I would suggest you give them ago. Its not going to cost you an "arm or a leg" but do make sure that who ever checks your clients out that they arrive at least 1 hour before departure time. Its the hidden things that get missed on a quick check & those are the items that cost the most

Jan

Hi Jan,

You make a valid point. We are keyholders and cleaners as well and some of our clients get us to take a deposit which is refunded once we have done a check but this isn't the best way as things can be missed and only found when you do the clean. It is better for the people renting out to hold a deposit until the keyholder gives the all clear.

You really do need a responsible keyholder to do this. However I wanted to extend this particular service to anyone irrespective of who their keyholder is. Some people charge commission of up to 15% to find renters. I'm not charging commission and it puts the owner in control and assists them in marketing their property.

Mel

This sounds like quite a good way to go about things

I currently use someone who charges a commission of 12.5%.

This might seem a lot, but for taking their cut, they do everything

Advertise, take deposits, organise arrival & departure, handle all the financial transactions, cleaning etc

On the other hand, if I find a customer through my own efforts, I just contact the agency to block off the period in question.

So combining this new website with my existing provider would be advantageous

Mel - would I need to set up my own personal website, so that I have somewhere for potential customers to link to, or can everything be done from your new site?

Hi Peter,

No, you don't need to set up anything. You will need to send me some photos of your property, or I can do it for you if you don't have any. Also some text, whatever you want to say about your property, any conditions, such as no smoking etc and prices. I will make the page for you with whatever contact detail you want. Once you're happy with it you pay the €12 and thats it. We can manage everything but only charge 10%. However by handling your rental fee, that would make us agents and liable to any unpaid taxes, so we wouldn't do that, we would ask renters to pay you directly. That also means there can be no dishonesty on our part.

Cheers...Mel

OK - thanks Mel

I'll rustle up some photos and compose a bit of text

Be with you in a day or so

Ok Peter, send it to MelBeasley1721L@aol.com Look forward to hearing from you...Mel